Vintage vibrators, the word “puto” as an intensifier, the illusion of knowledge, when you think you’re dead, and the “boiled frog effect” are just some of the things you’ll find in this new edition of the Recommended Links of the Week. The usual, you know. The best of the web this week, with videos, galleries, and various surprises. Thank you for visiting!
The horror according to Richard Corben: “Corben is considered one of the greatest comic artists of all time and can afford to do whatever he wants. That's why he wanted to return to the kind of comics with which he began his career, in the 70s, in Warren's horror magazines, and similar. And they are also the kind of comics he grew up with, because he has always confessed his admiration for the legendary EC horror comics.”
The RAE approves the use of 'puto' as an intensifier prefix and we can now tweet freely: “After accepting the use of words like 'cocreta' and highlighting 'bruxism' as the word of the day, we can say that the RAE never ceases to surprise us. As if it were that hip grandpa who masters WhatsApp better than your own father, the RAE doesn't disconnect for a moment from the evolution of Spanish.”
The Museum of Antique Vibrators, a curious walk in San Francisco: “To start the tour, it's important to remember that the vibrator did not always have a purely sexual connotation. Sexist perhaps, but not sexual. In its origins it was marketed as a cure for female 'hysteria' and was known by names such as heat massager, personal masseur, blood recirculation system, and those who didn't beat around the bush called it 'the magic wand'.”
Marc Augé – “There is an illusion of knowledge that is even worse than not knowing”: In his analysis, achieving universal access to knowledge is one of the main challenges facing humanity right now. “In the realm of knowledge and also in that of economic resources, the distance between the most favored and the most disadvantaged continues to grow, also in emerging countries. We are heading towards a planet with three social classes: the powerful, the consumers, and the excluded,” he writes in The Future of Earthlings.
Cotard's syndrome: “What fails is the emotional response that should accompany this processing, since for them everything lacks meaning. The patient suffers from an alteration in the intensity of their emotions, loses vital energy, and is dominated by negativity. Apparently, the main root of this delusion lies in the anomalous functioning of the part of the brain associated with emotional processing: the limbic system, at the base of the brain, hyperactivity in the amygdala, and a significant reduction in dopamine receptors.”
Generation Z, more anxious and depressed than young people of other eras: “These young people and adolescents (those born after 1997, according to some researchers, or those born after 2004, according to historians who coined the term millennial) no longer fear teenage pregnancy or getting lost in drug hallucinations. That belongs to the early fears of their parents, the X (born between 1960 and 1980). What scares the youngest today is mental illness, according to a study by the American think tank Pew Research Center.”
It's increasingly clear that all the decisions in your life were made by your 'you' from 11 seconds ago: “A new study from the University of New South Wales has analyzed, with the help of machine learning, that brain activity prior to conscious decisions and has just shown that we can predict what pattern people will imagine 11 seconds before they actually do it. Another blow to free will?”
Why fewer planets than we thought can harbor life: “It is usually considered that the entire region around a star where planets could have water is a habitable zone. But a team of NASA researchers points out that, if the levels of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide that allow life are taken into account, the number of habitable planets is reduced”
What is the 'boiled frog effect' that makes us lose interest in climate change: “To reach this conclusion, Moore and his team analyzed more than 2 billion tweets, published between 2014 and 2016, in which people commented on unusual temperatures, such as a winter that was too hot or extremely cold. By observing the comments, the researchers realized that even though the same extreme events occurred year after year, people commented less and less on them, that is, they normalized them in a relatively short period of time.”
How did our grandparents live without plastic?: “Currently we might think it's impossible to live without single-use plastic. The reality is that in the middle of the 20th century plastic barely existed and our parents and grandparents lived without it, without any problem. The waste generated by single-use plastic mostly ends up in the sea, damaging marine ecosystems. Although you may not believe it, it is possible to live without plastic; our grandparents did it.”
The big lie of fast food: it's not getting healthier, but worse: “In times when nutritional quality concerns consumers more than ever, large fast food chains try to shake off the label of junk food. They offer alternatives like salads and fresh fruit to the usual combos of burgers, fries, and soda, and try to recruit chefs and nutritionists to defend that they have cut calories, salt, saturated fats, and added sugars from their menus.” That's why it's best to cook at home.
History of the Ukulele: “Speaking of the ukulele is speaking of the Hawaiian Islands, of beautiful wahines dancing hula with plumerias leis and endless white sand beaches. However, contrary to what it may seem at first, technically the ukulele is neither native to Hawaii nor part of traditional Hawaiian music, which is based solely on chants and rudimentary percussion (na mele oli) used to accompany dances (hula).”
Videos
Lightning filmed at 103,000 frames per second, human kaleidoscope, territorial owl, Disney animatronics, modified piano, duck fans of peas, The Song of the Golden Dragon (Estes Tonne), green snow in Russia, the evolution of Chucky, a wooden bicycle, The Diva Dance (Dimash Kudaibergen), snail eating carrot, a baby loose in the world, piano concert with a Shyamalan-style ending, if drug dealers had an anime, chain reaction, oriental girls eating sausages, light modulator, Marvel movies without special effects, drunk pigeon from rotten apples, Rubik's cube magician, domino effect, Devo's Whip It remake, tire blows out at 290 km/h, if you're about to vomit don't run, card trick blindfolded, carnival of excess in Fail Army and the shorts The Worst Planet on Earth (produced by Sam Raimi) and Dungeon Crawlers (a pilot canceled by Nickelodeon).
Galleries
The robots of Fukushima, evil records with puppy faces, loving grips, pop character origami, the hidden colors of the Moon, the space art of Virgil Finlay, magical moments, behind the scenes of the classic Batman series, abandoned Olympic venues, New York 35 years ago, David Hasselhoff with all the glamour, forensic reconstruction of a crystal skull, inside the opium caves of the USA, selfie arm, the art of Adrian Chesterman, aurora borealis in dragon shape, modern life according to Frank Soltesz, and to finish, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the Week. Don't miss anything!
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