Recommended Links of the Week (#666)

Super precise science fiction, the Great Unconformity, mass manipulation, the unknown father of the personal computer, and architectural failures. If you want more, keep reading because there's much more. And yes, the number of the beast. Muahahaha. Enjoy it!

Science fiction films notable for their scientific precision: "Science fiction has given us many wonderful and interesting stories that sometimes leave us with many questions while showing us a glimpse of a usually devastating future. There are all kinds of stories, and that's the incredible thing about the genre, since thanks to the fiction part many filmmakers take the liberty to tell anything they can think of without restrictions; after all, it's something common in movies that take place in space. But it's equally good when we come across films that take the science part seriously and build stories attached to the reality of what the scientific community says."

1982 - Once Upon a Time... Space: "Certainly, given its theme, it was not an educational series in the same sense that its predecessor had been. Instead of a review of the past of our History, it was about offering speculative fictions, but yes, transmitting to its child audience two very important things. First, faith and hope in the future, a future in which wonderful advances would be achieved in science, technology, political unification, social peace and the exploration of our universe. And second, a series of positive values of a universal nature."

What is the "Great Unconformity", the period of millions of years with no record on Earth (and possible explanations for this enigma): "Each of the layers of soil that form mountains, canyons, cliffs and other geographical features are like the pages of that book that contain information about when and how the landscape we see today was formed. The rocks closest to the Earth's crust are the first pages of the book, the ones that tell the beginnings of the story. From there, as more layers are superimposed, we learn about more recent eras of our planet. But what if that book were missing pages? How could we understand a story if we can't read all the chapters?"

The 10 most used mass manipulation strategies: "In 2002, French writer Sylvain Timsit published a decalogue of the strategies most frequently used by the media and political elites to manipulate the masses. It is a list that has been attributed by a press error to Noam Chomsky, philosopher, linguist and politician who has also described how through entertainment the mass media achieve the reproduction of certain relations of domination."

How Grim Fandango was made: "Despite its high quality and considerable sales, the development of Grim Fandango was an expensive and laborious process, finally being a small commercial failure that barely generated profits for the company. Ironically, the title became the definitive confirmation that the golden age of graphic adventures was a thing of the past, with the genre then experiencing a period of decline that continues to this day (and in which fortunately there are also some honorable exceptions)."

Respect for nature as a moral duty: "Akira Kurosawa's environmentalist message in 'Dersu Uzala': "In one of the film's climax scenes, Dersu Uzala shoots a Siberian tiger to defend himself. From that moment on, the animal haunts his dreams. He has defiled nature and wounded a sacred animal: he did not kill it out of hunger, but to defend his friend. What for him is torment, for a Westerner would be pure fun.""

Chuck Peddle, the unknown father of the personal computer: "Chuck Peddle is one of the great figures in the history of personal computing, perhaps the engineer who contributed the most in the seventies to the emerging personal computer industry. Charles Ingerham Peddle, known as Chuck Peddle, was born in the state of Maine (USA) in 1937. At the University of Maine he studied electronic engineering. Shortly after he began working at the large company General Electric on time-sharing systems, which was a new computational model that revolutionized computing, assuming a new approach."

8 failures of modern architecture: "What was going to be one of the first fully smart cities in the world got underway in 2006 with ambitious objectives: it would be a hub for the new knowledge economy and information technologies, an energy self-sufficient city where 45,000 people would live and with a complete network of ecological public transport. The 2008 crisis and the consequent budgetary problems brought the project back down to earth."

They find a 'mummification workshop' in an Egyptian cemetery, with the original tools: "The discovery of mummification instruments used to embalm pharaohs could be one of the greatest funerary discoveries in the history of Egypt. An aura of mystery surrounds the mummification process developed by the Egyptians. The instruments, embalming techniques, and even funerary rituals around Egyptian burials have been dusted off after decades of research. However, few findings have yielded as much information as the one recently made in the Abu Sir cemetery."

Pan Am's club to fly to the Moon: "The executives then decided to launch a campaign halfway between marketing and who knows if a real sale of tickets to the Moon. The idea was to offer manned space flights, round trip to the Moon. I insist, there were 5 years left for NASA to send three men up there, so it was unthinkable that standard flights would reach the satellite soon. In reality, applications were not opened to the public until 1968 by Pan Am."

This is Yanjin, the narrowest city in the world, more than 300,000 inhabitants and less than 300 meters wide: "In total, Li Jun estimates that around 376,000 people live in the county, although other sources raise the total register above 400,000. His aerial images show groups of buildings of various heights, businesses, parking lots and traffic sliding along the asphalted streets. Having grown over kilometers, nestled between steep slopes and at the foot of a river, greatly marks the landscape of Yanjin."

The Moon in ancient Egypt, multifaceted manifestation of the gods: "Although the Moon always hides one of its faces from us, we see the one it shows us in multiple forms. Under the innocent appearance of a child, it hides a bloody past; as an ibis, a god with ingenuity and knowledge to work miracles with his magic; as an adult, a deity that ends up being confused with others. Before a civilization that worshiped the Sun significantly, it would have been surprising if it did not take the Moon into account."

VIDEOS: chocolate bunny melting, professional scream queen, Stockholm at night, the best FPV drone shot in the world?, Danny Elfman - The Simpsons - Live at Coachella 2022, testing the resistance of manhole covers, deer licks cat, microwave tries to kill its creator, Neurocom (soul catalyst), the evolution of Strandbeest art, a very detailed view of a crater on Mars, new species of jellyfish in the depths of Monterey Bay, Recycle Song (Rocko's Modern Life), the failed Pretoria robbery edited as an action movie, lemon versus little boy, baby llama tries its legs, Boioioioioioioioioi, Oingo Boingo selling beer in the 80s, a love story, PVC multi-flute, Batman from 1989 but only trying to move, and the short films Room 8 (BAFTA Short Film 2014 winner), Take My Muffin (Season 1, Episode 1) and The Goat That Ate Time.

GALLERIES: Very few because I have to go to sleep. Skeletons in video games, photographs of Königsberg Kaliningrad, Indian men with cotton candy, dangerous girls, Harry Potter characters by an artificial intelligence, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the Week.

Thank you for passing by, whoever you are! See you next time!