Recommended Links of the Week #662

The Soviet metaverse, horror books, synthwave music, time travel, and the world's first folding car. As always, plenty of things to read and several to watch. Pure enjoyment. Welcome to the Recommended Links of the Week.

10 albums to get into synthwave: "But if there is a more or less accepted trigger with some unanimity, it was the release of Drive, the movie starring Ryan Gosling (he must have had one more line than in his other movies, that is, a total of two lines) and that ended up revealing what neonoir was, a new aesthetic evolution based on neon, purples and fuchsias that synthwave matched wonderfully. Its soundtrack featured \"Nightcall\" and \"A Real Hero\", two tracks that ended up kickstarting the buzz (and about which I will comment later)."

Cybertonia, the Soviet metaverse of the 60s: "The idea of the metaverse is not new, but rather a further step in proposals and concepts that have been entangled in the world of technology for decades. It is true that the advancement of that same technology makes each time go a step further in virtuality and possibilities. We could say that Cybertonia was already a similar idea, a virtual world beyond reality. And this has its merit, because we are talking about the Soviet Union and the 1960s of the last century. At a time when computer networks were still incipient."

The 25 best horror books to get really scared: "There is nothing to face boredom like being scared: get some horror novels and abandon yourself to the most chilling fiction. The monotony of your daily life will not seem so unpleasant; you will feel adrenaline running through your veins, you will know you are alive. To feel genuine fright, I prefer books to horror movies; what the imagination recreates is always much more terrifying than what any screen can offer you, such is the power of our mind."

Who are the most boring people in the world?: "A team of researchers from the University of Essex conducted a study to find the jobs, characteristics, and hobbies that are considered the most boring. After examining 500 people with whom they conducted five experiments, the researchers found that the most insipid jobs are: \"data analysis, accounting, taxes and insurance, cleaning and banking operations\". The article has been published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin."

Traveling through time, where we're going we don't need roads: "Both filled the pages with intrepid adventurers in fascinating expeditions. But it was Wells who dared to change the units of measurement of extraordinary journeys, from kilometers to hours, minutes, and seconds. He achieved it with a pip of a work called The Chronic Argonauts and its literary evolution, the well-known and notorious The Time Machine. Verne decided to travel through time in a much subtler way: the imaginary created in his pages was revealed, over the years, as ridiculously close to reality by quite accurately prophesying future events."

The mistake of the 1918 pandemic that changed medicine forever: "Today, Pfeiffer's story is a powerful reminder of the challenges scientists face when a new microscopic threat emerges. Efforts to establish the connection between the bacterium and the disease, which was spreading rapidly, led to many frustrations and setbacks, including multiple failed attempts to develop an effective vaccine. By the summer of 1919, tens of millions of people had died worldwide and scientists still couldn't agree on exactly what had killed them."

The War of the Posters: "Our \"War of the Posters\" does not refer to internal struggles between criminal organizations, nor is it about Colombian soap operas about \"The Cartel\"; we are going to deal with a \"short\" collection of propaganda posters of the informational or disinformational war - depending on the position adopted by the parties in dispute - during that long period known as the \"Cold War\"."

How Was the Zaschka Three Wheeler, the World's First Folding Car: "The automobile he built can probably be called the ideological ancestor of the Czech Velorex: it was also a three-wheeler with a rear engine and had a body in the form of a spatial tubular frame covered with waterproof material (in this case, vinyl). The air-cooled 1-cylinder engine (the \"radiator\" at the front is just a design element) accelerated it to 40-50 km/h. In order to provide the car with safe storage, it was made... foldable."

Armor against howitzers, this was the strangest and wildest war: "Grandfathers and old men dusted off old shotguns and arquebuses, wore sabers or carried ancient helmets. All that clamor collapsed when the destructive face of a war that would make metallic, thunderous sounds and dazzling flashes fashionable was shown. The pre-surrealist Guillaume Apollinaire dedicated entire poems to those wonders. He spoke about the \"wonders of war\". Then, after a while, news of the massacre of the Belgians arrived. But also the first mutilated returned. Then everyone fell silent."

The jade suits with which the emperors and princes of the Han dynasty were buried: "This use and taste for jade in Chinese society would be maintained over the centuries, valuing it for its hardness, resistance, and beauty, becoming a symbol of wealth (more valued than gold and silver) and power that, moreover, ended up being associated with Chinese beliefs about the immortality of the soul and life after death. Jade began to be used in the funerary trousseau of emperors, aristocrats, and nobles, since it was attributed with properties in the preservation of bodies."

Who were the Sumerians?: "The Sumerians were the first and oldest civilization that existed, located in the southern part of Mesopotamia, in the Middle East, on the alluvial plains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They appeared around 3100 BC, after the Agricultural Revolution, and their empire controlled the area until approximately 2000 BC, when they were conquered by neighboring civilizations. The Sumerians spoke their own language and had their own religion, which was central to their social order. Their civilization established large city-states throughout their territory, which operated as temples from which their priest-princes directed the people."

The Day Nietzsche Wept (Pinchas Perry, 2007) - On midlife crisis and the pain of loneliness: "The Day Nietzsche Wept (When Nietzsche Wept, 2007) is a film directed by Pinchas Perry, starring Armand Assante (Friedrich Nietzsche), Ben Cross (Dr. Josef Breuer), and Katheryn Winnick (Lou Andreas Salomé), and based on the book of the same title by psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom. The film starts from the real fact of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's infatuation with Lou Andreas Salomé (who along with Paul Ree established a kind of intellectual trio), and the melancholy that Lou's refusal of his marriage proposal seemed to plunge him into. Fiction begins when, worried about the philosopher's health, Lou contacts the renowned Dr. Josef Breuer, who seems to practice something he calls \"the talking cure\", to help him."

Videos: Mortal combat!, rotating sandwiches with Nintendo music, the history of Art of Fighting games, file compression in 1991, cheerleader saves the day, examining a super old TV Tennis, Super Mario Bros. Piano Medley, challenge "hold my beer", LED to breathe better?, real autobot, inside a capsule hotel in Singapore, how a boa breathes when it eats, super close lightning breaks the front of the house, the catastrophe of monoculture, Kim Jong Un and his intercontinental missiles, adapting old lens to new camera, whale shark in 4K, cat singing the blues, how LED works (Light Emitting Diode), a VHS to watch Netflix, burnt caramel cake, the strawberry squid, tornado flips pickup truck, African dance style (Zaouli), five automatic food dishes, and a day in the coldest village on Earth.

Galleries: Fantastic creatures from another world, adult pacifiers, digital botany, World Nature Photography Awards, the Rolling Stones in 1964, comic covers based on biblical horrors, the urban art of elektri4ki, the best aerial photos of Skypixel 2022, the nurseries of Almería, ballpoint pen art, portraits of roosters and hens, the Vertedero Animado and the Tiradero Visual de la Semana.