What will you find in this edition of recommended links? Just a taste to whet your appetite: Ozzy studied by science, if Germany had won the war, explaining magic tricks, a cloud farm in Tibet, and the ghost towns of Route 66. Oh, you want more? Keep reading, then.
Science analyzes how Ozzy Osbourne is still alive after 40 years of drug addiction and severe alcoholism: "It was the artist himself who accepted this proposal, also indicating that once he was dead he would donate his body to science so they could continue doing studies regarding his resistance to illicit substances. He himself confirmed this research to the American newspaper Sunday Times, indicating that he himself was curious to know how he had reached 60 years of life with full health."
If you can't stand seeing accumulated notifications on your phone, science explains why: "The effect of notifications on us is such that they could even modify the chemistry of our brain. At least that's what some recent research finds. According to these studies, every time we receive a notification our body secretes cortisol, which is the hormone known as the 'stress hormone'. This hormone is related to stress levels, makes our pulse accelerate, and we can even feel sweaty hands or tension in the muscles."
What if Germany had won the First World War?: "Much has been written 'what if' about a German victory in the Second World War. Alternative histories of a German victory in the First World War are less popular, but they exist. In fact, people began to think about the consequences of a German victory during the war and feared it could give way to a German empire that covered almost all of Europe."
"Willow" turns 30 as an undervalued fantasy film classic: "If you managed to see 'Willow' during the tender stage of childhood, it's impossible for it not to become one of your favorite movies. Magic, adventure, heroism, friendship, love, comedy... What more could you ask of a movie when the most you had seen was Disney's filmography - many, many times - and the cartoons on TV? It has been 30 years since Ron Howard's movie failed at the box office and was battered by critics."
The secret of this magic trick that has left you speechless all your life was mathematics: "The following card magic trick first appeared in the early 1950s, amazing the masses. Since then, other versions have appeared whose basis remains the same. The trick was always in the math. This is its formula. It is known as the Fitch Cheney's Five-Card Twist, a card trick invented in 1951 by the American math professor William Fitch Cheney."
EA and Mega Drive cartridges - When EA was a pirate in the 90s: "If you enjoyed Mega Drive (Sega Genesis in the United States) at the time, you probably remember that Electronic Arts games cartridges for Sega's iconic 16-bit console were very different from those of other companies. Not only were they much larger and had a kind of yellow band on one of their sides, they were quite eye-catching. Did you ever wonder why that was?"
Ikigai, the life philosophy of the longest-lived people on the planet: "According to the Japanese, everyone has an ikigai, a reason to exist. Some have found it and are aware of their ikigai, others carry it inside, but are still looking for it. This is one of the secrets to a long, young, and happy life like that of the inhabitants of Okinawa, the longest-lived island in the world..."
When technology was going to make us stupid and blind: "For many years, the alarmist calls about the deterioration of vision were continuous and were attributed to the rise of the printing press, compulsory education, and the number of novel inventions such as the steam engine and the rise of cities. To the point that 'urban myopia' was spoken of. The 'age of reading' and a sedentary lifestyle, with new means of transport in which people spent hours glued to their newspaper or books, was going to cause a great problem, according to the columnists of the time, in the nervous and visual system of people."
China plans to create a cloud farm in Tibet to control the weather: "In China, the country's major political and economic events are almost always accompanied by unusual good weather. The methods the Chinese government uses to ensure a blue sky on the most important dates are well known. It began using them with the 2008 Beijing Olympics and has used them again in military parades and large multilateral summits."
The 'photographic' rocket of 1911: "When today a photographic shot at a certain height is needed (apart from aerial images), special poles are usually used or, at most, a drone or even a small balloon. But this image was taken more than a century ago (it is assumed it would be the only good photo from a long series of failures, given the technique used), taken by launching a camera into the air propelled by a fairground rocket. Let's see the technology used..."
The ghost towns of Route 66: "However, the time of greatest boom of the route was also the beginning of its inevitable decline. The increase in traffic and the ever-greater power and speed of automobiles quickly made many of the roads of the American national network obsolete. It was precisely Eisenhower who in 1956, thanks to having known firsthand the network of Autobahnen created by Nazism, promoted a huge public works project to modernize the road transport network across the country, creating the Interstate Highway System, which largely replaced over the next thirty years the saturated road system of 1926."
The secretary who secretly earned nine million dollars by copying her bosses: "Few people know how to invest or have enough financial culture, however, saving little by little also allows fortunes to increase. Sylvia Bloom, an American secretary, amassed a fortune of 9 million dollars by copying the investments her bosses made, but on a smaller scale according to her salary."
Videos
Prismatic smoke, how to make food pretty from commercials, restoring a rusty hammer, the sound of Hanna-Barbera, owl on Segway, kitten on leaves, door that doesn't work, Soyuz seen from space, 'Beauty and the Beast' at Tokyo Disneyland, lizard slips, idiot throws planter, makes shapes with scissors, they explode a World War II mine, Japanese animation from 1935, creating a metal ant, how to create an ultra-realistic river, pizza master, adding color to World War II, the conservation of 'Iron Workers' by Reginald Marsh, blacker than Vantablack, obstacle course for squirrels, Queen - Don't Stop Me Now on trumpets, rescuing a kitten and the shorts Cabin Killer and GUARDSMAN.
Images
The decorated trucks of Japan, Fukushima after the disaster, Freddie Mercury with his cats, drawings of a soldier in Normandy (1944), Bond girls then and now, face swapping with animals, transformed Victorian portraits, art with Pringles, the first photo of Earth taken from space, photographs of forest animals, photos from Stenin Press Photo 2018, Roberto Benavidez's piñatas, the symmetry of insects, girls in kodachrome, the Russians' trip to the moon, Vertedero Animado and the Tiradero Visual de la Semana.
