Links 22/07/13

'On October 24, 2012, Bibi Mamana and her grandchildren were gathering firewood or picking okra outside their home. They may have been in a field. Perhaps it was a militant compound with a weapons depot. 2 missiles were fired, killing Mamana and up to 5 other people, injuring 6 to 8 of the children. Some other men, maybe 3, maybe militants, may have been caught in the blast. A house and a car may or may not have been destroyed. Either 3 cows or 1 buffalo and 2 goats were also killed. The drones remained overhead and 5 to 7 minutes after the first strike more missiles fell.

'This moment—the drones, the missiles, the people, the livestock—is a node in a vast network. It spans the globe, connecting villages to secret installations to office parks to seats of government. It reaches backwards for millenia and will resonate forwards for untold centuries. To trace it out completely is impossible. We are hampered by its size and by the fact that much of it is hidden behind classified protections and some of the rest is barely recorded at all.

'This is an attempt to understand the geography of a drone strike.'

'Mike's morning commute to the battlefield begins with his usual Egg McMuffin and black coffee from a McDonald's drive-through window in Alamogordo, New Mexico. After driving out of town in his Ford pickup, clearing a security checkpoint, and attending a daily briefing, he will be remote-controlling an MQ-9 Reaper drone 10,000 feet above Afghanistan.' Elijah Solomon Hurwitz's photo essay on the mundane lives of drone pilots.

'The United States’ entrance into the First World War in April 1917 marked Americans’ first truly organized attempt at keeping watch on its citizens.'

The graveyard of New York's old telephone booths.

'A sliver of wood coated with tin could make a tiny, long-lasting, efficient and environmentally friendly battery.'  Ideal for your ecoconscious robots.

'3D printing can now be used to print lithium-ion microbatteries the size of a grain of sand.' Ideal for your nanobots.