You have to believe me when I tell you that I tried to keep the amount of coronavirus-related content as limited as possible. I more or less managed, but not as much as I would have liked, since the web is monothematic on the subject. A subject that, of course, is very serious and requires attention, but not too suitable for this oasis of relaxation and entertainment that we have called Recommended Links. That said, there is something for all tastes and colors. Enjoy!
This week’s recommended links
The Red Zone of France, a consequence of World War I: “This battle was one of the most horrible of the First World War and of the entire twentieth century, we might say. It lasted almost as long as that 1916, as it began in February and ended in December. They were 300 days that cost around 300,000 lives. The grounds where it all happened remain today devastated territories. The artillery, which simultaneously changed geography and demography, left a trail that has not yet been erased.”
Iron Harvest, the annual collection of World War I war material that will take 700 years to finish: “Because the figures are chilling: it is estimated that during the conflict, one ton of explosives per square meter was fired on the Western Front, an impressive figure that is even more serious when you consider that one in three failed to detonate. Or in other words, two thirds of the projectiles remained intact, buried in what then were front-line mudflats or simply hidden from the view of the brigades that, at the end of the war, dedicated themselves to cleaning the battlefields.”
Foldable puzzles as war propaganda: “During World War II, the Allies spread forms of propaganda in occupied Europe that differ greatly from posters and other traditional media. An example is “Find the Fifth Pig,” a small and amusing foldable paper puzzle that had a lot in common with those eccentric memes that today make their way across the internet. It was a sheet with drawings of four pigs in its corners, with printed instructions inviting you to make a series of folds to transform the four little pigs into what the pamphlet version called “the biggest pig of all,” Adolf Hitler.”
Spacetime before Einstein: “Now then, merging space and time into a single entity changed the way we understand reality, but typically it was not a sudden discovery: for years, the accumulation of experiments, new mathematical tools and observations unexplained under old models converged in a period of just one decade to shape this new idea. Our conventional history includes four names that “created spacetime”, but surely there is more to it. These are the thinkers we usually mention, in an extremely condensed review.”
Should we censor our past?: “The present cannot reissue the past. Although it is true that this is something that has been attempted since always. Especially with the advent of photography, where it was no coincidence that the great dictators, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Mao, were the ones who got ahead of Photoshop wielding the scissors.”
“I’m 47 years old and I’ve gone 5 years without leaving home. All because people drain and bore me”: “I am 47 years old. Five years ago I decided to retire and since then I practically don’t leave the house in Santiago, Chile. I spend 90% of my time locked away, I only go out to water the plants and buy food, a couple of times a year to the beach for a few days. All mainly because people exhaust me and bore me.” More or less like me.
A carnivorous dinosaur smaller than a hummingbird found preserved in amber: “It is a tiny dinosaur skull, the smallest known of the entire Mesozoic era, the time of these animals that have become famous for their colossal size. The Oculudentavis khaungraae, as it has been named, was similar to a bird, but had eyes similar to those of a lizard, with features suggesting a small pupil, something that indicates it was prepared to live during the day.”
Can you solve this simple math problem that nearly fooled Einstein himself?: “In 1934, psychologist Max Wertheimer sent a letter to his friend, physicist Albert Einstein, with the following riddle: There is an old car that needs to go up and down a hill. The hill is 1 mile (1.6 km) up and another down. Because the car is old, it can only average a speed of 15 mph (25 km/h) during the ascent, though it can go faster during the descent.”
Borges vs. Lovecraft: two views from the Labyrinth: “Who knows what cognitive effect makes us notice differences rather than similarities, or even worse, assign greater importance to some than others. Of course, H.P. Lovecraft wrote in pulp magazines about bulbous, amorphous, if not directly gelatinous beings, while the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges preferred mirrors, tigers, labyrinths (God, there is not a single proboscis in the entire Borgesian edifice!). However, the similarities between them are much stronger than their differences.”
How they fought the Spanish flu: “How the Spanish flu was fought can be summed up as fresh air and few crowds. Nothing like the plague doctor’s beak masks. But there is one last rule or recommendation that is wonderful, and it is still valid today as it was a century ago:”
A year of quarantine without leaving home: the town that condemned itself to stop a pandemic: “Of all the stories about communities in quarantine, that of Eyam was probably the most notable. To stop the advance of a deadly disease, they decided to mark off the entire village and not leave for 14 months. And they didn’t do it to save themselves; they did it to save the rest of the population from a plague. A year later, a man crossed the marked land to see what had happened.” Also, because quarantine is forty days, and remember, as Sheldon said, it is dangerous to dry your hands with those machines that blow hot air.
Coronavirus: why most epidemics originate in Asia and Africa: “I am a virologist and associate director of the Animal Diagnostic Laboratory at Penn State University, in the United States, which studies zoonotic viruses, those that jump from animals and infect people. Most pandemics have at least one thing in common: they began their deadly work in Asia or Africa. The reasons that explain this fact might surprise you.” We were already warning about this in NeoTeo more than 13 years ago.
Videos
When Bill Gates predicted the coronavirus, “in the name of Jesus Christ, get out of my planet, coronavirus”, slow-motion hummingbird, time-lapse of a crinoid, real lightsaber battle (comes from here), behind the scenes of “The Exorcist”, near death, bombardier beetle, the most followed Twitter profiles from 2010 to 2019, festival of cat videos, cat playing theremin, pug in an obstacle course, Mel Brooks - The Critic (1963), duck with shoes crossing the street, Japanese etiquette rules, near death, cuddly little fox, android kitten, the dry noodle joke, fire centipede, crazy hungry monkeys due to lack of tourists, snake fart, how to apply makeup with a prosthetic, flying in first person in 1980, how easy it is to fool the brain with a vanishing point, near mega death, record in eating Big Macs, little bird on skateboard, the most dangerous job in the world, headphones made from mushrooms, rice tortilla tornado, toy Ferrari tournament with commentators, the otter Kotaro is very affectionate, again: don’t use hot air hand dryers, they pass out on a slingshot, the trailer for Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge, and the short “The Collector”.
Galleries
the heroic delivery workers of Wuhan, retro propaganda about washing hands, characters without their characteristic features, small highly detailed tattoos, food too cute to eat, Stefano Colferai’s animated characters, the space photos of the Xiaomi MI 10 PRO, Richard Doyle’s illustrations of giants, teddy bear puppy, illustrations with found objects in nature, the little dog that stands up, interesting comparisons, hyper-realistic 3D art, Francoise Nielly’s paintings, Ford assembly line in 1964, more photos of the beautiful Mylène Demongeot, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the week as the finishing touch.
https://old.neoteo.com/creepypasta-scp-027/
