Recommended Links of the Week #671

The disease of bad jokes, wet water, war dogs, moving trees, and aliens from the past. All great things, one after another, and organized for a good time. Viral videos, image galleries, and much more. Enjoy!

You can't tell if water is wet: "Our ability to perceive stimuli is really complex. In principle, it needs a receptor capable of detecting a stimulus and transmitting the signal to the central nervous system, which will interpret it and act accordingly... but it doesn't have to be that way. Not only can any of the components of this circuit fail, or some receptors become habituated and decrease their signal, but an inexistent stimulus can also be perceived. In the case of moisture, we can recognize it, but we do not have specific receptors or a sense of our own that detects it unequivocally."

The atomic physicist who lost "the biggest secret on the planet" in a train bathroom (and the mystery of where it ended up): "On the morning of Wednesday, January 7, 1953, atomic physicist John Archibald Wheeler stood on tiptoe on the toilet of a train's bathroom to look into the next stall, where another man was doing what one does in those intimate spaces. Wheeler, a happily married man, risked being caught and labeled a sexual deviant. His prestigious position at Princeton and at the top of the American scientific community would surely be destroyed by the scandal that would ensue. But that moment he did not think about any of those consequences."

The disease that makes you addicted to telling bad jokes: "It was first described by the German neurologist Hermann Oppenheim at the end of the 19th century. Specifically, he treated four cases of people with what seemed to be an addiction to inappropriate jokes. In addition, they showed exaggerated laughter at their own jokes, but did not seem to understand sarcasm. Therefore, he decided to name the condition Witzelsucht, since in German witz means joke and sucht translates as addiction."

The time for civil disobedience has come: "Anyone who has information regarding the gravity of the two great crises we face, the climate and energy ones – the economic crisis, which worries us so much, depends on them, and not the other way around – knows that we have been dangerously circling that point of no return, of irreversibility, that no one can determine exactly where it is but that is sensed as very close. That is why the time for civil disobedience has come."

First sequenced genome of a Pompeii victim: "Researchers have achieved the first successfully sequenced human genome of an individual who died in Pompeii, Italy, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Until now, only short stretches of mitochondrial DNA from Pompeian human and animal remains had been sequenced. The University of Copenhagen (Denmark) researcher Gabriele Scorrano and his colleagues examined the remains of two individuals found in the House of the Craftsman in Pompeii and extracted their DNA."

The heroes of Frank Miller: "Miller's heroes always act under a strong moral premise, not always the same one by any means, but his actions, more or less fair, more or less correct, always respond to a deep moral pattern, marked not by the author's ideology but by that of the character himself, which makes Miller's work as a screenwriter even more impressive. He is capable of not just capturing a social and political sensibility in his works, but of showing several."

War dogs in ancient Rome: "Today we consider it a member of our family and even tend to humanize it. However, there was a time when the abilities of these animals were exploited for strictly practical purposes. In fact, it could be said that they were relied upon, because the dog could, among other things, greatly facilitate many tasks. But one of the fields where it stood out most, mainly due to its fierceness and sense of hierarchy, was in war."

The Cold War in Soviet cartoons (II): "It is interesting to recall, and for those who don't know, that the TASS posters (Soviet Telegraph Agency) known worldwide as "TASS Windows" were "paper ambassadors", exhibited in the United States during the war and also sent to Britain and other allied countries. The United States-Soviet Union alliance would be forged to fight their common enemies; after the war the two nations became enemies for half a century, reviving that Cold War atmosphere in recent years."

The Stalingrad of India, the bloody rebellion of English bullets bathed in pork fat: "The soldiers had to tear with their teeth a pre-lubricated paper cartridge that wrapped the bullets, pour the gunpowder into the rifle and then insert the bullet by pushing with the ramrod. The Company, instead of using a harmless ointment like beeswax or olive oil, opted for a mixture of cow and pork fat, a true desecration and outrage for the Hindu and Muslim sepoys."

The curious case of moving trees: "To track down our moving trees we have turned to literary sources and popular tradition, through which we will try to explain some examples in chronological order. To do this we have chosen six illustrative examples: the poem Câd Goddeu, medieval travel books, Macbeth, children's stories, the imaginary world of J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Marvel universe. Without further ado, we proceed here to give life to the trees through the recovery of these stories."

Spinoza and Nietzsche, the pessimism of the strong: "It is not an easy task, for the earth proclaims that everything is ephemeral and fragile. Becoming ends up reducing everything that exists to dust. Time is an incessant river that drowns anyone floating in its waters. The pessimism of the strong does not let itself be intimidated by that panorama. Although everything travels toward nothingness, life itself is something prodigious, a gift that should be loved with courage, without deploring its edges."

In the 17th century they already believed in aliens: "It is precisely after this scientific revolution of the Renaissance that we find a book written in the 17th century by the Dutch astronomer, physicist, mathematician, and inventor Christiaan Huygens (discoverer, among other things, of the Orion Nebula), who explores his fascination with the possible existence of extraterrestrial beings. In this ancient volume, Huygens predicts extraterrestrial life on Saturn and Jupiter."

Videos

Surfing the highest wave in the world, if a whale swallowed you, baby sloth reunited with its mom, exploding toilets, AI recognizing dog poop, Happy Birthday Beethoven style, the alien intelligence of octopus, the largest remote control helicopter in the world, Marblevator, he tears off the rear axle by brute force, advertising against pay TV (70s), the longest suspension bridge in the world, he installed a graphics card on Steam Deck, balancing trash cans on a bike, compilation of dial-up modem sounds, builds a boat in 90 days, introduction to Microsoft Excel (1992), False Gringo Propaganda I Learned in School - The Bombing of Japan, Star Wars live on four guitars, How does the Brain Work in War?, cat with melted face, Killing Me Softly by Soren Madsen, magnetic vibrations, Earth from the air, baby fox, Takashi Ito - Box (1982) and Star Wars: X-Wing A Star Wars Fan Film

Galleries

Viruses under the microscope, nuclear explosions, the bombings in London in color, industrial wire sculptures, the fantasy of Julie Bell, important historical photographs, The Twilight Zone magazines images of the Milky Way, dead cockroaches as canvas, cars built from other cars, Ridley Scott's shoots, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the week to round it out.

Thanks for stopping by and reading! Hugs!