From censorship, Nazism and cults that self-immolate; from crimes solved by parrots, the smell of old books and a recurring unknown space signal. That, along with viral videos and galleries of all kinds, only in the Recommended Links of the Week.
The greatest social advance of the 21st century is censorship: "The BBC and Netflix digital libraries have withdrawn the series 'Little Britain' because of its high concentration of bad-taste jokes, including blackface -white actors playing black characters- and offensive stereotypes about any number of groups. Above all, against the group of the British themselves, by the way, but these things don't count today. Today cultural criticism is made by a brat who just learned to count. The cultural criticism of the abacus."
The leaders of a Christian cult who burned more than 700 of their followers alive in a church 20 years ago: "Judith Ariho still cannot cry when remembering the massacre in the church in which her mother, two brothers and four other relatives died along with 700 other people. Twenty years ago, in the Kanungu district in southwestern Uganda, hundreds of people were locked inside a church and its leaders set it on fire from outside."
Camp Sigfried, the Nazi summer camp on Long Island: "Camp Sigfried was a Nazi summer camp on Long Island, New York, founded in 1935, managed by the German American Bund, an American Nazi organization also known as "Friends of New Germany" and owned by the League of German-American Settlements, an organization that still functions today as a private community."
New normal and old fears: living the dystopia: "Years ago, many would not have understood what the hell it referred to, but now, the term dystopia, which once belonged to the esoteric language of science fiction –like uchronia, space opera and many others– has become part of everyday language, from the Palace of the Cortes to the terraces of bars."
The 1930s crime that was solved by a parrot: "The newspapers that covered the news dubbed the case the Crime of Badalona, because the house was on Nuestra Señora de Lourdes street in that Catalan town and because in those early days that was the only information available. The corpse was completely disfigured and it was impossible to determine the identity of the deceased person, who ultimately turned out to be a woman."
1393 - Slaves as a devout alms: "Nor should we be too surprised that Church entities and people had slaves, like any other owner. That happened frequently. In the inventory of the commanderies of the Order of the Templars, 43 'catius' appear, in their house in Gardeny, in Lleida, for the care of their extensive lands, 45 in Mirabet, 49 in Monzón and a similar number in the others."
Why do we like the smell of books?: "Matija Strlic is a chemist and professor at University College London but he is not an ordinary scientist. Professor Strlic specializes in heritage conservation and —although I don't know this with total certainty— a great reader. This researcher has wondered what old books smell like and has developed a sort of artificial nose capable of detecting and identifying the aromas they emit."
'Dracula' would have been Nietzsche's favorite novel: "The Dracula of the novel —never the one from the movies— powerfully represents Nietzsche's Will to Power, that is, a will, or force, without the weakening influence of love, compassion, and guilt. Hence it is quite absurd that Dracula falls in love in almost all film adaptations."
10 literary books for 'gourmets', 'foodies' and other sybarites: "Perhaps during these months you have cooked at home and have been carried away by more 'gourmet' recipes. It is always good to innovate and take a little risk (risking at level zero is making a Spanish omelette, and that is already good). But surely you also want to go to a restaurant, whether it is more traditional food or cuisines from other latitudes."
The power of rituals: "Depression does not occur in a society defined by rituals. In it, the soul is totally absorbed, even emptied, in ritual forms. Rituals contain world. They generate a strong reference to the world. Depression, on the contrary, is based on a hyperbolic reference to oneself. When one sees oneself totally incapable of leaving oneself and moving into the world, one encapsulates oneself."
Alquerque, a medieval game antecedent of checkers: "The name alquerque comes from the Arabic qirkat. But it seems that its origin is much earlier, possibly from Egyptian times. However, the first known mention of the game is from the end of the 10th century, in the work Kitab al-Aghani (The Book of Songs) by the Persian Abu’l-Faraj al-Isfahani."
This signal arrives every 157 days from deep space, astronomers have no idea why: "Billions of light-years from Earth there is something emitting radio signals that are received on Earth. This is not as strange as it might seem at first, but that these signals always arrive every 157 days is. In fact, only one other case is known in which the signals are periodic, and in both situations astronomers have no clear idea why it happens."
Videos
Baby shark, leaving a dog alone with roasted chicken, masks or face shields, T-Rex kitten, fire hydrant cut in half by a 60,000 PSI water jet cutting machine, 64,000 turtles, dangerous doggy, the echo of the saxophone, Toto's Africa on Tesla coils, synchronized walking, rescue of two tied baby seals, excellent and funny fight scene, bear vs bison, the impossible climb, the theme of 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' on 10 cellos, Star Trek Supercut, the turn signal doesn't work, the floating lawnmower, computer that works with marbles, Hayao Miyazaki's animation, having breakfast in LEGO and stop motion, the flying motorcycle accident, Peter Dahmen's reliefs, fat kitten can't escape, the cyberpunk cat game, a robotic hummingbird to observe butterflies and the fun short 'Selfies'.
Galleries
Obsolete technology and its heirs, we want plates!, famous women as Sailor Moon, children who look a lot like their parents, 'holographic' hair, colorized photos from the early 1900s, the winning photos of the Sony World Photography Awards, stoned cats, a Reddit dedicated to Instagram vs reality, The Bots of New York, a camera in the birdseed for birds in your backyard, the art that defined the aesthetics of the 80s, animated characters as real 'people', 3D origami animals, brilliant designs made with common objects, botanical illustrations, a rare 19th-century photo of a smiling Aboriginal woman, black and white photos of immigrants and Normandy immediately after the war. More? Animated Dump and Visual Dump.
