Recommended Links of the Week (N°738)

The AMIGA at NASA, when silence doesn't exist, if you masturbate it's because you know, and yes... alien mummies. All that and much more in a deluxe edition of the Recommended Links of the Week, with lots of alien mummies. Enjoy!

The importance of the AMIGA at NASA: "The spacecraft launch process was a choreographed ballet of precision, where any mistake could have had catastrophic consequences. In this context, the collection and processing of telemetry data became a task of vital importance. From the countdown on the ground to the ascent into space, the precise collection and transmission of data had to be carried out in real time. Amiga computers proved to be reliable allies in this process, downloading and processing large volumes of data from spacecraft."

When silence doesn't exist: "A few years ago, Shatner admitted that he had considered suicide due to the suffering caused by the constant ringing: 'There were days when I didn't know how I could survive the agony,' the actor told the website of the American Tinnitus Association. Others have succumbed: in 1994, a study at a British hospital documented a total of 28 suicides caused by tinnitus, to which at least four more recent cases should be added. Perhaps the most recent is that of a ship captain from Wales, who last December threw himself into the void from the top of a quarry because he could no longer stand the noise in his ears."

The sapient paradox: Why did civilization's evolution take so long?: "And archaeologists like Colin Renfrew, who chose that work to introduce a lecture a few years ago, are dedicated to trying to solve the first, as he himself noted. He was not there, however, to give answers. Quite the opposite: he had gone to talk about a great enigma that continues to puzzle both experts and simply curious minds. This is the sapient paradox, as he called it when he formulated it in an essay published in 1996 in the book 'Modelling the early human mind'."

A study indicates that people with more knowledge masturbate more often: "The Department of Health and Sexual Behavior at Indiana University conducted a revealing study with 6,000 volunteers indicating that people with greater academic and cultural interests masturbate more frequently than others. A study conducted in the United States reveals that people with more academic knowledge tend to masturbate more often. The recent research asserts that there is a correlation between the frequency of masturbation and a person's level of education."

Science fiction and its genres - Cyberpunk (with some of its lesser-known works): "Science fiction is usually thought of as a genre that serves to analyze the present. I often joke about it —so I say it very seriously— saying that within it there is a theme that has already acquired the rank of costumbrista: Cyberpunk. Although in the Anglo-Saxon sphere it is sometimes defined as high tech-low life (literally 'high technology-low standard of living'), let's look more deeply at some of its defining features."

If you think you don't have time to play everything, you're right. I calculated how many hours you need and it's a lot: "We have set aside remakes and expansions that didn't really bring a substantial change, such as Dead Space or Resident Evil 4. And for the rest, well, a bit of indie here and a good handful of triple-A there, from Dave the Diver to Baldur's Gate 3, reaching among all of them a whopping 481 hours. Almost 500 hours of gameplay that, according to data taken from How Long to Beat, would be the average among hundreds of players to complete the main campaigns -without focusing on side content or being completionists, only finishing the story mode- of some of the best games of the year."

September 11, 2001, the largest maritime evacuation in History: "When the second Twin Tower fell, chaos broke out in Lower Manhattan that New York City, essentially chaotic, had never even imagined. Hundreds of thousands of people, workers who had come to the island from any of the other boroughs of the city, or from the neighboring state of New Jersey, found themselves trapped: all the city's bridges and tunnels had been closed and there was no way out of Manhattan. And then the miracle appeared."

Blade, the underrated vampire hunter that saved Marvel cinema: "A girl drives a guy through a slaughterhouse. At the back, among slaughtered cattle, there's a door that leads to what looks like a nightclub. Techno music, people in leather clothes, sweat. The guy soon begins to realize that something isn't quite right... and confirms it when blood starts falling from the ceiling. He had walked into a Blood Rave. Soon, he discovers that he has been brought to a trap to be the delight of vampires, until across the room appears a guy with a face that doesn't want to make friends, and someone shouts: 'It's the Daywalker.'"

The fraud of the alien mummies of Nazca: "Maussan presented two small whitish humanoid figures, adding that C-14 analysis by the National University of Mexico gave them approximately 1,000 years of age. These remains would supposedly have been buried in diatomite mines, a type of single-celled algae with a hard silica cell wall called a frustule, which is preserved and accumulates when it dies. It is used in powders to control insect pests and, according to him, helped preserve these mummified bodies, since he assures they are not mummies. Jois Mantilla adds that the cadmium chloride, which he says is only artificial and poisonous, also contributed."

Invaders from Mars (1953) – William Cameron Menzies: "Since 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea, the Cold War had only gotten hotter, so to speak. Politicians and ordinary citizens of the West and, especially, the United States, were worried, first, about communist infiltration that they feared would end up undermining their capitalist and democratic system; and, second, about that sword of Damocles that was the nuclear bomb. This anxiety, in many cases, degenerated into paranoia and seeped into the world of fiction, including, of course, cinema. Sci-fi proved to be a perfect vehicle to comment on the situation, transforming the atomic bomb into destructive monsters and communists into insidious aliens who brainwashed humans and whose only goal was absolute domination."

Out of Breath: "You know, often the things we don't want to talk about are the ones that generate the most interest. Only that, when it comes to paraphilias, both for those who practice them and for the simply curious, it is an interest confined to the private, secret sphere, which, in light of our overexposed society, is quite a feat. It also has its negative side, of course. For example, underestimating the risks of depriving the brain of oxygen, or the lack of contrasted information about the history of hypoxyphilia or autoerotic asphyxiation, giving rise to a good number of assumptions and myths."

The business of coloring in classic cinema: "At this point, the coloring technique, mentioned earlier, resurfaced in Hollywood's minds. But this time it would be used massively. Computing put the entire chromatic range at the disposal of sinister editors, who did not hesitate to pervert the vision of directors who witnessed how, without any permission, their films returned to theaters, to the prime time of the world's main television networks, and to the shelves of the then-new VHS format, but in a radically different way."

Videos: Retro special effects ads, how a tractor works, anteater eating from a transparent jar, feeding six kittens, Quake engine on the ZX Spectrum, it can't be, how to make your mummified alien, assembling the cheapest scooters in the Congo, Alien Mummies Explained (Again), the first video of Appalachian music (1928), The George Lucas Eggsperience, the USSR's vision vs. the USA's, and all the times we almost flew around the world.

Galleries: Spider photos, free-use logos, Windows around the world (retro), the beauty of post-pandemic Japan, astronomy photos, winning ocean photography photos, California girls from the 70s, fashionable Victorian girls, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the Week.

Done. Lots of mummy, as promised. And, to finish, let's take a few seconds to thank the programmers of this beautiful simulation we live day after day. The plots are getting more and more interesting. Until next time!