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One person on a bus infected 23 others, probably through the air during a 100-minute trip. A/C was on with recirculation. Infected people were randomly scattered throughout the bus, not just near the index case.
(tags: covid-19 aerosols airborne transmission diseases buses public-transport travel sars-cov-2)
Gerät 32620: the machine that powered numerous number stations
Fascinating details of the hardware behind “number stations”, the mysterious radio stations broadcasting streams of numbers in a monotone. One example of their use is the story of Gabriele Gast: ‘After agreeing to help [the Stasi], Gast very soon found herself sent on an intensive spycraft course, including hands-on training with the latest in covert communications equipment. She was given a Stasi code name, “Gisela”, which came with a false passport and a new handbag, incorporating a well concealed secret compartment. Back home in Aachen, every Tuesday evening at the same time she tuned into a shortwave radio station from East Germany and carefully wrote down a long line of numbers, read out in a monotone, without further elaboration, by a “radio presenter”. When she decrypted the messages from Schmidt she found some were instructions while others were simply encouraging love messages.’
(tags: spies number-stations 1980s history ussr hardware encryption gabriele-gast germany)