Recommended Links of the Week (#679)

Retro game maps, Martian science fiction, the size of soda cans, the creator of WiFi, and sexualization in video games, among infinite other things, all top quality. Welcome to this week's Links. Enjoy them!

Einstein was wrong: we need a new theory of the cosmos "The current cosmological model only works by postulating the existence of dark matter, a substance that has never been detected, but which supposedly constitutes approximately 25% of the entire universe. But a simple test suggests that dark matter does not actually exist. If it did, we would expect that the lighter galaxies orbiting the heavier ones would be slowed down by dark matter particles, but we do not detect such slowing down."

Maps in the time of the ZX Spectrum, or why the Goonies never say 'dead' "The best part was that we didn't have #maps. Discovering the map was a big part of the game. The 'fog of war' that the great Sid Meier's Civilization game series popularized was already emerging in the video games of those years. We felt like explorers of planets, castles, and all kinds of worlds. Thanks to exploration, we drew the video game map in our heads while all kinds of dangers and monsters chased us. We learned to be cartographers under stress."

Mars Trilogy – Kim Stanley Robinson "In 1986, writer David Brin gave a series of lectures at several sci-fi conventions on the topic 'Is hard science fiction dead or dying? That's how bad fans of that particular way of understanding sci-fi saw the landscape. However, in the years that followed, a series of advances revitalized the presence of science in speculative fiction: the expansion of home computing first and the rise of the Internet later; the formation of certain technologies as forces of social change (from mobile phones to social networks) as well as new discoveries in fields such as astronomy, biology, or medicine..."

10 remixes so good they eclipsed the original song "If, as Haruki Murakami wrote, 'originality is nothing more than imitation done with judgment,' in the world of music there have been numerous examples over the past decades where a good producer or DJ has known how to get more out of a song than the artist who composed it, whether by adapting it to their style, speeding up the tempo, enhancing the bass lines, giving more prominence to the chorus, adding an electronic rhythm base, or even creating a new musical wrapper around the vocal part."

Sexualization in video games doesn't affect anyone, study suggests "Sexualization in video games does not seem to harm players, according to new research published on the ScienceDirect portal. The results indicate that playing video games does not lead to misogynistic opinions or harmful mental health outcomes. Female characters are often attractive and scantily clad in video games, so some people have raised concerns that the sexualized portrayal of women has negative effects on players, but research on the topic has yielded contradictory results."

Why are cans that size? Tall vs. classic cans "Many of you have probably wondered why cans have the shape and dimensions we're used to: for a 330ml can it's approximately 6cm in diameter and 12cm tall. (...) In this article I'll talk about why drink cans have that shape and what each decision affects. Additionally, I'll do a mathematical development showing what would be the optimal size of a can that minimizes the amount of material used in it. That way we can put an end to the debate started with my friend Alfonso about whether a fat can with the same volume as a thin one has the same material or not."

When have the most people died in the shortest time in history "That thing in Tokyo was terrible, although in reality the B-29s, the Superfortresses, razed the main cities of Japan with incendiary bombs. A country with high construction density and population in its cities, where houses were also largely made of wood. We're talking about cities like Toyama, in the north, disappearing by 90%. Dozens of cities ended up burning, such as 81% of Fukuyama, 86% of Fukui, or 85% of Tokushima."

WiFi was created by an actress and pianist, this is her story "This is the story of Hedy Lamarr, who invented WiFi, and it's a story that has everything: Nazis, fascists, death, conspiracy, nude scenes, military weaponry, gender violence, machismo, a world war, intelligence, acting, music, problematic consumption, betrayal, persecution, and escape, in a concatenation that only happens in movies, with one difference: this is not the product of anyone's creativity, but rather the perseverance and drive of its protagonist. Although in the end (spoiler alert) she ends up helping the bad guys."

Race planes that always won but killed all their pilots "Almost a century ago, airplane races were the equivalent of today's Formula 1. Saving the distances, of course. Popular in the early 20th century, they were mass events that positioned race pilots as great heroes. Also as madmen who risked their lives every time they got into one of the planes. Among all the manufacturers of these models, the company of the Granville Brothers (the Gee Bee for their acronym in English) stood out, which went bankrupt in 1934 for killing practically all its pilots. Though also for winning almost all the races they competed in."

The first plant where MIT will produce unlimited electricity "The revolutionary system created by MIT researchers to obtain unlimited, emission-free electricity anywhere in the world is now much closer to becoming a reality. Its pilot plant will be located north of New York State, and its promoters ensure it can produce electricity in just four years. Paul Woskov is a researcher at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. His research in the field of nuclear fusion led him to think that the gyrotrons he used in his experiments could also be used to make much deeper drillings than those achieved with conventional mechanical methods."

The original Pinocchio, too evil for Disney "Lorenzini's Pinocchio was much darker than the story Disney collected almost 60 years later. In the original story, the puppet is not led astray by other figures who exploit his naivety, as in the Disney movie: he is a natural scoundrel from the start. As soon as he can walk, his first action is to kick Geppetto and escape to the city. There he is found by a policeman who assumes Geppetto has mistreated Pinocchio. As a result, the poor carpenter is arrested and sent to prison. Jiminy Cricket appears and warns Pinocchio about being a selfish satyr and a liar."

Would you rather kill a cockroach or a butterfly? "Beauty is fundamental in Nietzsche. In his view, it is an aesthetic that gives meaning to life, and as we all know, a life without meaning is hardly worth living: in his work, the fundamental course of our existence should be beauty embodied in the various arts, among which music would occupy a special place, as it already did with Schopenhauer. In the latter, for example, music represented the 'thing in itself' of the world, its essential being. As he stated, 'music does not speak of things, but of well-being and affliction in their pure state (the only realities for the will), and therefore it speaks to the heart, since it doesn't have much to say directly to the head.'"

Videos: If cats sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger, asteroid impacts in 3D, the emu Emmanuel, pizza delivery man rescues five children from fire, a submarine with a LEGO engine, the musical instrument rabel, mobile avatars from a photo, Tower Records in 1995, a year making a clock, the difficulty of motion capture, song written by a guinea pig, the art of Ray Harryhausen, Fraggle Metal, and from here a lot of beautiful shorts or films forgotten by time: the first animated 'Hobbit' (early 60s), The Planets (1993), Star Wars: LARRY - Episode 2, and the IMPRESSIVE: Dragon's Heaven (1988).

Galleries: Pocket calculators of the past, sculptures with moving water, the best photos from the Leica Awards, photos of lightning and rainbows, aging famous dead people who never grew old, funny photos of little animals, the brilliant art of Sean Andrew Murray, comparing Webb and Hubble images, trash turned into art, surrealist creatures, the oriental horror of Marina Shirakawa and Shintaro Goto, cat portraits, the atomic house, the Vertedero Animado and the Tiradero Visual.

Thanks for so much, sorry for so little. See you next week.