Japanese posters, round planets, Amstrad magazines, Rendezvous with Rama, and the taste of clouds are just a couple of the cool things you'll witness in this week's Recommended Links. Enjoy!
Amstrad User: A Complete Collection
Amstrad User: "One of the largest and best magazines dedicated to the Amstrad, devoted exclusively to its CPC, PCW and PC computer lines. Its complete collection consisted of 41 monthly issues, with issue 1 seeing the light in October 1985 and ending its publication with issue 41 in February 1989, giving way to a new era of computing with the Amstrad Sinclair Ocio magazine, because Amstrad had acquired Sinclair and had more platforms at their disposal, as they began publishing for all existing systems on the market." Complete collection!
Original Japanese Posters for Train Etiquette
Original Japanese posters to raise awareness about good manners on the train: "Japanese trains are so punctual that even one-minute delays are announced on board. Safety is also usually excellent, there are hardly any problems with luggage, and anyone can sleep peacefully during the journey. Many international visitors appreciate these features of comfort and safety, although some rules can cause confusion for those not used to them. For example, people are expected to refrain from using phones on the train or bus."
Why Planets Are Round
Why are planets round?: "With the help of a specialist, we explain why planets are round, how they form, and the nature of these celestial bodies. Another consequence of the vastness of the Universe is the great number of questions that arise about all that extraterrestrial reality. In fact, from simple observation come some of the most interesting questions. Undoubtedly, one of them is the one this text addresses: why are planets round? Although many of the cosmos's questions remain unanswered, the one that brings us here escapes that group."
The World's Top Microchip Manufacturers
The world's top microchip manufacturers: "In total, Asia concentrates more than 90% of the market share in microchip manufacturing, although Chinese companies (8%) are still far from the numbers achieved by Taiwanese and South Korean firms. Meanwhile, the United States, which dominates global patents and technological design, only has one company on the list of top semiconductor manufacturers: Global Foundries (7%). TSMC and the vast majority of these suppliers located in Asia are what the industry calls foundries."
A Floating Time Bomb in the Red Sea
SOS to defuse the floating time bomb that threatens an ecological catastrophe: "It has been stranded for eight years in the waters of the Red Sea, off the coast of Yemen. Its hull, eaten away by sun and saltpetre, remains abandoned in a country turned into the backyard of regional disputes, completely devastated by famine and diseases like cholera or diphtheria. The FSO Safer, a supertanker with more than a million barrels of crude oil in its holds, is a ticking time bomb. In search of a solution, the UN has chosen an unprecedented way out."
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke (1973): "The real challenge for the writer is, therefore, to come up with something genuinely 'inhuman', beings with whom it is difficult or impossible to communicate and, therefore, to understand. And it's a challenge not only when imagining those civilizations but also the story they must share with the human protagonists. Fortunately, the most demanding fans have in the canon a good handful of fictions that meet these requirements, from the possibly intelligent ocean of 'Solaris' (1961) to the heptapods of 'The Story of Your Life' (1998). And, of course, 'Rendezvous with Rama', one of the most awarded First Contact novels in the genre."
Pinball's Prohibition in the US
Hard hand against pinball: why was it banned in the US after Pearl Harbor?: "That normality was once not so normal, and that game (those games) that were moving us away from the street were once 'of the street' in the most pejorative sense of the expression. Not long before they came into our lives, they proliferated in the United States, their country of origin, through the underworld and the mafia. We are in the 1930s, and pinball is not for kids. Its history is the history of marginality against the working classes and the authorities' fencing off of so many marginalized people. For pinball to be born, it first had to die."
Tarantino Praises a Forgotten John Carpenter Film
Tarantino champions a forgotten John Carpenter film and is sure 'Star Wars' stole an idea from it: "'Dark Star' tells the story of some astronauts tasked with destroying unstable planets that could threaten the colonization of other planets. 20 years after starting their journey, the ship they pilot begins to fail too often... Shot on a tiny budget of $60,000, 'Dark Star' was born as a joint university project between Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon, who here serves as co-writer and brings to life one of the great protagonists. And among its admirers we have not only Tarantino."
What Do Clouds Taste Like?
What do clouds taste like?: "Clouds are composed of vaporized water and feel like mist. If you run your hands through one, you probably won't feel anything because the water in it is in gaseous form. As a result, clouds can move with the weather. They can also form from water vapor or ice crystals. This can potentially determine how clouds would feel if you tasted them. We can expect clouds at lower altitudes to be heavier and warmer than those at higher altitudes. The higher the altitude, the colder it gets. So clouds closer to the ground are full of water vapor."
Pre-World War I Flight Simulators
Three pre-World War I flight simulators: "The need to learn to fly without risking the student's life or the machine has been evident since the beginning of flights. We have already seen many cases on this blog; in some cases, they manually placed the student pilot in an abnormal position and had the student return to horizontal using the controls, as in the case of Antoinette. In other cases, they used fans to simulate the airflow over an airplane, or even towed the simulator with a car, thus having aerodynamic control. The ones we present today all work on the same principle."
Vladimir Komarov: The Cosmonaut Who Fell to Earth
Vladimir Komarov, the cosmonaut who was to take the first steps in space and crashed into Earth: "At the height of the Cold War, two superpowers competed to put their man on the Moon. However, before the historic 'a small step for man', there was a great leap in spaceflight. This was a daring mission, one that would end in disaster for a brave cosmonaut. This is the story of Vladimir Komarov, the man who fell to Earth. Komarov was the son of a worker and was born in Moscow in 1927. From an early age, he showed a natural talent for mathematics and a great interest in aviation."
Not the Cordyceps: A Fungus Worries Scientists
It's not the cordyceps, but the spread of this fungus seriously worries scientists: "The Last of Us depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which a fungus called Cordyceps, which normally affects arthropods, mutates to use humans as hosts, something with catastrophic consequences for our species. However, beyond the creative license of cinema, fungal infections are one of the problems likely to cause havoc in the future that specialized scientists should pay attention to. This is precisely the case of Candida auris, an ascomycete fungus that was described just over a decade ago, in 2009."
Videos
Robot cicada, eleven insects in slow motion, Ashnikko - Worms (animated music video), don't play in 8K, robot girl, kitten mimicking birds, making a cube with staples, a 12-year-old terrarium, Police Academy as you've never seen it, a bitcoin skull, cat and parrot best friends, the largest pizza in the world, he built a miniature room for his cat, what happens to the brain if it listens to reggaeton vs. classical music, Rollerman, and the shorts: Welcoming Spring with To Spring (animated, 1936), I Am In Control and Ding... You're Dead (about a killer microwave)
Galleries
The faces of the Mona Lisa according to AI, other actors in famous movie roles, AI doesn't understand how people eat noodles, humor news created entirely by AI, women laughing with salads, Debonair dolls, Tsunotsuno's giant women, a falcon attacking a pelican, putting heads on people, the Vertedero Animado and the Tiradero Visual
Thanks for reading! ♥
