Recommended Links of the Week (#703)

Welcome to the Recommended Links of the Week! In this edition, among many other things: the Highway of Death, protective statues, a cosmic superbubble, the 50 years of the Walkman, Russian dystopian novels and, bad news, humanity will not go extinct. Enjoy!

The Highway of Death: "The road, a key strategic point for access to the sea and the main communication route with Kuwait, ended up becoming a veritable graveyard of vehicles, a scene worthy of any post-apocalyptic film. The Iraqis, aboard all kinds of vehicles, many of them stolen from Kuwaitis, were heading back to their country when the U.S. Air Force attacked those at the head and tail, forming a huge traffic jam."

Nio: the protective Buddhist statues that guard the temple entrances: "Originally, Nio was a deity that protected Shaka Nyorai (the historical Buddha Shakamuni), but it is said that he divided into two distinct bodies. The Nio stand on either side of the main gate of temples where the image of Buddha in the form of Shakamuni is enshrined, and their function is to watch over the temple as guardians."

First 3D map of the magnetic field of a cosmic superbubble: "The map reveals the likely structure of the magnetic field of the Local Bubble, a giant cavity 1,000 light-years wide in the space surrounding our Sun. Like a piece of Swiss cheese, our galaxy is full of so-called superbubbles. The explosive supernovae that cause the death of massive stars burst these bubbles and, in the process, concentrate gas and dust."

When money was invented and when the dollar became the world's main currency: "Archaeologists, historians, philosophers and economists have their own theories about the mysterious leap that humans made when we developed the first commercial systems born after barter. We can find the origin of money in transactions that thousands of years ago were made with grains, grams of silver, clay objects, sea shells or cacao seeds."

Walkman – 50 years of an invention that changed the way we listen to music forever: "Its first public appearance was on July 1, 1979, when Sony launched the blue and metallic TPL-S 2 audio device on the Japanese market. In 1980, the novel gadget reached the North American and British markets under the name Soundabout in the United States and Stowaway in the United Kingdom, acquiring from its massive sales success its classic name of Walkman."

Living is knowing how to choose: Golden Age advice for the 21st century: "There are books that contain infinite wisdom and, every time we read them, they surprise us with some new teaching. This is the case with the Oráculo manual y arte de la prudencia (1647) written by the Jesuit and Golden Age writer Baltasar Gracián. It is a didactic compendium of 300 aphorisms based on the premise that the world is a horrible and decadent place, where widespread malice and stupidity make advice on how to get through life necessary."

6 terrifying Russian dystopian novels: "Although North Korea is one of the last bastions of 20th-century totalitarianism, dystopian fiction is more popular than ever. From the risk of another global pandemic to nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, the human race has much to fear. Nature is threatened by the advent of global industrialization, and technology increasingly makes it easier for our governments to spy on us. Where will we be in 50 or even 20 years?"

The Creation of RuneQuest – A Tribute to Steve Perrin (1946-2021): "The game format was very similar to the war games published by Avalon Hill and Strategic Simulations, with a hex map and cardboard pieces to represent armies (although in the first edition they were made of cardstock, which presented certain problems for storing and stacking the pieces). But instead of using the usual military terms for infantry and cavalry, each piece was decorated with runes, which represented the type of unit the piece was supposed to be."

How humans lost their body hair: "Humans seem to have the necessary genes for a full coat of body hair, but evolution has rendered them useless, according to scientists from the University of Utah Health and the University of Pittsburgh in the journal eLife. The findings point to a set of genes and regulatory regions of the genome that appear essential for making hair. The research answers fundamental questions about the mechanisms shaping this defining characteristic of human beings."

Humanity will not become extinct: "The most predictable, perhaps, is that between the cracks of the epidermis of the soles of the feet, tiny amounts of soil are detected, indicating an ancient physical relationship with it that has persisted from our peasant past. Furthermore, the membranes of the cells that make up this epidermis have microscopic cilia or hairs, vestiges of our plant past, which help understand why we like to put down roots in a certain place."

The "demon of the brush" who invented manga: "It was his teacher, the painter Maemura Towa, who gave him the nickname shuchu gaki, or "painting demon," a label he wore proudly throughout a career spanning two crucial eras of modern Japanese history: Edo and Meiji. His pictorial work is the product of another trauma: that of a feudal and divided country becoming an industrialized nation under a single flag. In 1854, the year Kyosai turned 23, the Tokugawa shogunate signed an economic treaty with the United States, opening its borders to an avalanche of Western culture, money, and technology."

Homo ludens: when life was played on a board: "Ten thousand years ago, in the Neolithic, before humans began making pottery, we played on stone boards perforated with several rows of holes. Three millennia later, the hieroglyphs of Queen Nefertari's tomb depicted her playing a board game in ancient Egypt. The ancient Greeks, for their part, had Tabula, a direct ancestor of backgammon, and the Romans had latrones, an ancestor of chess. In the East, people played the Game of Twenty Squares, while in China they preferred Liubo and in India Moksha Patam..."

Videos

Stop-motion animations of mukbang, a raccoon trying to catch snow, what are those little things that look like spots in your vision?, music video Light - Betray by the genius cyriak, chain reaction of an ice cream machine, down an Antarctic hole, explaining frozen bubbles, disassembling a battery of o million mAh (with a close-up), is DNA the future of data storage?, a guy hammering nails so well it’s hypnotic, NVIDIA and AI eye contact, cats and kaleidoscopes, a whale giving birth seen by drone, “Riker sits down” and The Rock of Ages (an epic fantasy short).

Galleries

Galleries: The most precise image of an atom, dozens and dozens of arcade manuals, fluffy cows, the strangest beauty queens of the past, portraits of patients in an 1800s psychiatric hospital, winners of the 2022 Dog Photography Awards, an AI recreates past celebrities with current styles, retro collages by Toon Joosen, 2022 Mountain Photo Winners, the best 100 close-up photos of the year, the best 25 aurora borealis photos of 2022, 70,000 free color photos from the turn of the century, prehistoric animal renders, crocheted food, Asimov magazine covers, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the Week.

That’s it, friend. I hope something here caught your interest. That’s enough for me. Thanks and see you next time.