Recommended Links of the Week #716

A test to test what you know about the 90s Internet, the history of the Luddites, us getting dumber, science and ethics, and 500 days in a cave serve to tempt you to discover the rest of the things we have in these Recommended Links of the Week, all read and hand-picked for your mental pleasure. That and lots of videos and galleries. Enjoy!

How much do you remember of the 90s and 2000s internet?: "The most veteran internet users remember the era with nostalgia. For many companies, however, the golden years of the internet ended in a nightmare. The web we know today was born then, in the late 90s and early 2000s. Test your knowledge about that era with these ten questions." Great test! I got 9 out of 10, for a very silly mistake. How many points will you get?

The trick to remember the name of the person you are greeting without offending them: "It has happened to all of us at some point. It is inevitable. We are introduced to someone at a work meeting, at a party with friends, or in any other circumstance, and shortly after we completely forget that person's name. It is normal to wonder if we have a goldfish memory or if it is something very common and we should not worry about it at all." Great trick!

Dragon Ball's biggest influence: "Long before Dragon Ball focused exclusively on titanic battles, as well as the inflexible will of its protagonists to be the most powerful in the universe, there was an original stage where fantasy, humor, and the passion for martial arts went hand in hand. Ideas wrapped in a very distinctive aesthetic that, by the way, Akira Toriyama himself reused with great impudence from one of his earlier works: Dragon Boy."

When someone was beheaded on stage because the play required it: "Jody Enders is the one who echoes this legend in her book Death By Drama and Other Medieval Urban Legends. It is said that the death occurred in 1549, during a performance of the play Judith and Holofernes, which tells the biblical story of Judith, who cut off the head of an Assyrian general named Holofernes. The theater company wanted the play to have a greater touch of realism, so they prepared everything so that the actor playing Holofernes would actually be beheaded."

Luddites, the 19th-century workers who destroyed factory machines to avoid losing their jobs: "The term Luddite, which is not included in the RAE dictionary because it is an anglicism, is an adaptation into Spanish of the term used in English historiography to refer to members of a 19th-century movement against the mechanization of factories, especially textiles. It was led by numerous workers, afraid that machines would take away their jobs."

Seven gems of movies that just entered the public domain: "The first film to win the Oscar for Best Picture ('Wings'), Alfred Hitchcock's first suspense film ('The Lodger'), the first talking film in the history of cinema ('The Jazz Singer'), and Fritz Lang's masterpiece ('Metropolis') have this year, along with other films, entered the public domain; that is, they are no longer protected by intellectual property rights and can therefore be freely distributed. We review these and other well-known films that are now common use."

Are we getting dumber? IQ stagnates, according to study: "Data analysis of IQs of 20-year-olds belonging to the so-called 'baby boomers' (born between 1946 and 1964) and 'millennials' (born between 1981 and 1996) show higher results in favor of the younger generation. But one of the first things that the scientists who authored the study 'Examining Flynn Effect trends in adults,' published by Northwestern University, clarify is that 'this does not automatically mean that millennials are more intelligent or more skilled.'"

Science and ethics, a disagreement: "Socrates, in the 5th century BC, before the cosmologists who studied natural phenomena and sought the origin of the universe, pointed out that before worrying about what is external to the human being, one had to reflect on the nature of man. The maxim he adopted as the motto of his philosophy after reading it on a wall of the Temple of Delphi is well known: 'Know thyself.' However, human curiosity through the centuries has not followed the Socratic imperative, but has dedicated itself to exploring the 'external' of man, that which surrounds him, which the human being has not built and of which he is only a witness."

Recover the time of life: "In our hyperproductive society, in which any activity has been subject to the standards of profitability, the dynamics of consumption itself, and a dizzying and anesthetizing speed, walking or wandering without any purpose may seem like a rarity. We move to go to work or to our place of study, to attend therapy, or to meet with our friends. The 'for'—that is, utility and profit—is the new idol of our time: nothing is done without that thing containing a certain benefit."

How to make a clarinet with PVC pipes and a rubber glove: "Pollak's imagination seems to have no limits. In many cases, his instruments consist of a saxophone mouthpiece attached to some tube-shaped object. That is, in part, the charm of wind instruments and what makes them one of the oldest technologies of humanity: they are very easy to make. But some of his inventions go a little further. Such is the case of Mr. Curly, which plays with the spiral shape of the very long tube (hence the contrabass register) so that all the holes are accessible within the space of one hand."

Can a person get drunk by drinking the blood of a person who is already drunk?: "Vampires choose their victims carefully and drunks are an easy target. If you drink a lot, the concentration of alcohol in the blood is high, which, among such delirious assumptions, could lead us to think that it would also affect the vampire, why not. As improbable as it may seem, some scientists had already asked themselves all these questions, and seeking to know if bloodsuckers were safe when consuming the blood of a drunkard, they pointed out that the answer is that it is very difficult for them to suffer any effect from alcohol."

500 days in a cave: Beatriz Flamini, the elite athlete who spent almost a year and a half isolated by an experiment: "Athlete Beatriz Flamini, 50, left a cave in the province of Granada, Spain, this Friday, where she voluntarily isolated herself for 500 days at 70 meters deep. At the moment the athlete entered the cave, where she remained without contact with the outside, Russia had not invaded Ukraine and the world was still submerged in the pandemic. Flamini's experience, which could be a world record, is part of a scientific experiment that has been closely followed by a documentary production team."

Videos

How to make homemade soap, what is heavy water, mechanical GIFs, there are no sidewalks in the US, bicycle with square wheels, how caffeine conquered the world, the piano that electrocutes you if you make a mistake, Gangsta's Paradise in the style of Johnny Cash, Roller Derby of the past, it's not a snake, it's... argh, (NSFW) The Black Tape Project (NSFW), impact tests at different speeds, fox steals camera and wants to bury it, cat comparisons, special effects in super old movies, cleaning the ocean, the telephone game analyzed by LGR, Tom and Jerry comparison (1950/1966), and "Dial L for Luigi"

Galleries

The songs that generated the most money on Spotify by country, surrealist paintings with neural networks, fun foods with faces, 'The Mind's Eye' 2023 awards, Nature Was Metal, rescued kittens before and after, your childhood fantasies drawn today, if pop characters were made by Pixar, the art of Alfred Choucrac, many more photos of Jennifer Connelly, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump

Lots of nice things to read and see! I hope some of this caught your interest. If so, mission accomplished. If not, let's try again next week. Sounds good? Thanks for your visit!