Instead of boring you with some barely-coherent rambling from my keyboard, let's just get this Monday started with these links:

Going offline is fun. Living offline was not – just ask a child of the 90s — A different perspective on neo-Luddism and taking digital breaks, one applies a little more balance and a different perspective to the issue.

From the article:

If you were awkward or socially inept, if your life was restricted by illness, caring responsibilities or geography, if you just never quite found your people, life could feel awfully empty and isolated. I spent years lacking connection (the nightclub trips were a rare exception, and I didn’t actually enjoy them) and thinking I was unlikable – maybe I was!

What Did We Lose When We Lost the Stars? — A fascinating exploration of what the night sky (and the dimming of it) means to us physically, psychologically, and philosophically.

From the article:

But Starlink was only a point of departure leading me to consider the costs of the unrelenting drive toward artificial illumination, a technological development most of us now take for granted. The loss of the stars, after all, could only happen because of a more general loss of darkness. Our relationship to the night, like most human things, is not simply given. It has a history, which varies from culture to culture.

The Computer That Helped Win World War II — A jaunt back to a time when computers where massive pieces of hardware, almost jerry rigged, that were capable of some impressive feats. Sometimes, human ingenuity is a wonderous thing.

From the article:

There were 10 Colossi at Bletchley Park by the end of the war, housed in two vast, steel-frame, bombproof buildings, running day and night. Although concealed behind a thick veil of secrecy, Bletchley Park accommodated the world’s first electronic computing facility.

How Amsterdam invented the fire department — Another example of human ingenuity: how the Dutch in the 17^th century developed firefighting equipment and infrastructure that were adapted to Amsterdam's various quirks.

From the article:

It was the final fire fought in Amsterdam using unmodified old engines. Shortly thereafter, the Van der Heyden brothers were appointed supervisors of the city’s fire engines and fire fighting equipment. The transition to new technology, and the organizational changes to back it up, took time. The retrofitted engines weren’t as portable as fully new ones, which were light enough to be carried by fire fighters without horses.