I hope you are having a good Memorial Day holiday today. This is a round up of the most interesting things I saw online this past week. I follow what I’d consider to be a large variety of interests, so I hope you find something interesting below, too.
Space: This is an historic week! On May 27th 4:32pm EST, SpaceX and NASA are launching astronauts to the International Space Station from US soil (Kennedy Space Center) for the first time in 9 years – the first time since the Space Shuttle’s last flight and the first crewed NASA Commercial Crew program flight. Space.com’s full coverage here, watch party live on Twitch and from SpaceFlightNow.com; be sure to tune in. Some fun trivia: the astronauts on board, best friends Doug Hurley and Bob Benkhen, are both married to former astronauts, Karen Nyberg and and Megan McArthur, respectively. (See more here.) And Doug Hurley was also an astronaut on the last Space Shuttle flight back in 2011.
Coronavirus/COVID-19: Amid the Coronavirus Crisis, a Regimen for Reentry (h/t to kottke; a good write-up of the 5 things that hospitals are doing that we as citizens out in the world need to be mindful of for reopening; of note, this line grabbed my attention: “…although ninety per cent of symptomatic COVID-19 patients eventually develop fevers, early on, fever is present less than half the time. So it’s the mild symptoms that are most important to screen for…”)
Beauty experiment: Dyeing Your Hair with Kool-Aid (h/t to Lifehacker; well, what color should I make my hair?)
Book Recommendations: You Should Read from the DePauw Libraries (each year since 2016, the library staff has put out a call to students, faculty, and staff for fiction and non-fiction books to recommend to others and puts the list here; inevitably, scrolling will lead to a long list once libraries re-open or to buy or read digitally now)
Nostalgic + Computational + Funny: Digital Humanities meets the Baby-Sitters Club at InsideHigherEd (this is amazing; as a card-carrying member of the BSC Fan Club who read, I think, every single book, I can’t wait to see what they learn)
Video: Building the Perfect Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder, Mark Rober’s latest video. I learned a lot about squirrels, but it’s also just an enjoyable look at one guy’s ridiculous use of time during quarantine (h/t and thanks to Eric)
And I’ll leave you with this groan-worthy funny…