Decision blindness, polygamy, and cannibalism. Want more? Ugh, so demanding. Okay, we also have legal cocaine, Spanish tortillas, and a hidden message in a letter. Welcome to this week's Recommended Links!
How the Chinese store that sells dog glasses for 0.70 euros on AliExpress and ships them free to Spain makes money: “When we say low, we really mean low: phone cases for 0.40 euros, bracelets for 0.30 euros, stickers for 0.10 euros, and the new viral phenomenon, dog glasses for a cent. How does the Chinese website make money on these products that cost a few cents, if even shipping to Spain alone should be more expensive?”
Netflix didn't kill video rental stores: “When the poet Horace coined the Latin adage Carpe Diem, recommending that we live in the moment, in a way he was also saying “in 2006, go to Blockbuster and rent all the movies you want, because you won't have to return them.” Almost overnight, that video rental company whose franchises populated the globe (we had two in Oviedo) disappeared without a trace.”
Reasons to walk out of a debate: “Should we dialogue in any circumstance and with anyone? No way. Or better said: talk yes, and negotiate, and even argue if necessary. But dialogue, no. Dialogue requires ethical and philosophical conditions that are not always present in other forms of communication. Without those conditions, dialogue is not possible (without prejudice to continuing to talk, negotiate, or even argue).”
How to hide a secret message inside a letter: “This way, if the letter fell into enemy hands, they couldn't read the message. Without the mask, it was just a simple letter. The mask, with its peculiar shape, was sent by another route and with another messenger. Therefore, in a capture, the enemies would have the letter or the mask, but not both at the same time. And without both, they'd have little to do.”
Spanish tortillas made by foreigners, from curious twist to culinary crime: “Because in this matter we can't be too purist either, eh. Who knows what a Japanese person from Kanazawa thinks of the sushi your cousin José Juan makes, or the curses an Italian would hurl at us if they saw us making carbonara pasta at home. Maybe many don't respect the classic recipe or prepare them with the texture of a pile of rubble, fine, but it's a joy to know that such a representative dish of Spanish cuisine is extended all over the world.”
La Gloria, a medieval heating system: “The region has few trees, which is why both heating and cooling have always been a challenge. In the early Middle Ages, the Castilians developed an underground heating system stemming from the Roman hypocaust: 'la Gloria'. This system, with its low combustion rate, allows the use of small fuel, such as hay and twigs, instead of firewood.”
A project of more than a century to unite two continents: “The history of this project is not new. In the last third of the 19th century, the artificial union of Europe and Africa emerges as more than a fantasy in some writings of medieval Arab historians. In 1872, the Frenchman Charles de Villedeuil outlined the idea of building a tunnel under the Strait of Gibraltar in the Spanish press, where he defined it as “one of those enterprises that ancient poetry deified, because they seem truly superhuman.”
Mesopotamian myths hidden in the Bible: “References to characters, cities, or events of Babylonian and Mesopotamian history in general are quite abundant in the Bible. But to what extent did Judaism, and even Christianity, drink from the cultures that once inhabited the lands bathed by the Tigris and Euphrates?”
Those 40 golden years of legal cocaine: “Driven mainly by anesthetic medical use from 1880 onward, world cocaine production soared to 6.2 tons at the end of the 19th century and rose again in the early 20th century to 10 tons, with expansion in Asia and the Middle East and the rise of recreational use, which offset the decline in medical use due to the discovery of safer anesthetics.”
Decision blindness, don't trust your choices too much: “We all suffer from decision blindness, although we usually don't realize it. If we are asked why we have made certain decisions in our lives, we are likely to give very convincing explanations. We are sure we know our motives and reasons. However, psychological experiments show that in many cases we create those reasons ad hoc and retrospectively.”
Polygamy and cannibalism, the brutal heresy that a baker started in the 16th century: “During the 16th century, central Europe gave rise to some of the most important religious reforms of our time. The arrival of Protestantism with Luther, the advance of new reformist currents, and the rise of cities as centers of knowledge marked the end of the Middle Ages to open the doors of Modernity. However, among the amalgam of heresies and cults that developed in northern Europe, one shines with a certain degree of madness: Anabaptism.”
Your currency sounds familiar, the currencies most countries officially use in the world: “A legal tender currency is one of the traditional characteristics of independent states, but in recent decades many countries have abandoned their traditional currencies to use newly created ones, or sometimes currencies of other countries. Today we are going to see which currencies are used by the most countries in the world.”
VIDEOS: The brilliant engineering of the Llangollen Canal, firing chainsaws from a cannon, cleaning 50 years of dust, pig unplugs vacuum cleaner, a giant 120-sided die, how to recognize a dystopia, high-tech snowboard simulator, the Mandalorian theme by the U.S. military band, Imagine Dragons - Believer performed by the appliance orchestra, having fun at his wife's expense, a wooden rocket, New York from above in 12K, how barriers stopped killing people, how to make a wall miniature, a diorama of a meteor destroying a city, what would happen if Yellowstone volcano explodes, Age of Empires III performed by its creators, what have you done with your life, toothbrush vs mouthwash, Cherry Coke commercial (1985) and the shorts The Rule of Three (Horror), Hellboy: Pancakes (animation), THE END, Room with a Sea View and Martha, the last living person in the world.
GALLERIES: Photos of big cats, the horror of eye licking, thirteen Guinness records, Disney princesses in the Renaissance, portraits of bees, find the silly mistake in these images, Star Wars characters out of context, covers of Starblazer magazine, covers of Terra magazine, photos of ice buildup in your freezer, wildlife murals, rotten gem fruits, tattoos that glow under UV light, old and crazy illustrations, the makeup of Planet of the Apes, the Animation Dump and the Visual Dump of the Week.
https://old.neoteo.com/evolucion-animacion-de-los-simpsons/
