Cyberpunk, cosmic horror and repugnant bacteria experiments are just the appetizer. Because in these "Recommended Links of the Week" we also have bad-smelling farts, motorized roller skates and Jean-Claude Van Damme, among many other things.
In search of the mouth of madness, the first Carpenter and Lovecraft: "Howard Philips Lovecraft is one of the literary authors with the worst cinematic luck in history. His stories are classics of horror, but the films based on them are few, irregular at best, and usually leave a bitter taste in the mouths of followers of the writer born in Providence. To this day, we still lack an outstanding version of any of his works, orphans of a textual reference on the big screen with which to understand Lovecraft's own world. All we have left is the ability of a few authors to reconstruct that universe within their own work, and among all of them, the enormous figure of John Carpenter." If you're interested in the topic, I highly recommend my list of cosmic horror films.
What is Cyberpunk?: "The characteristic of cyberpunk lies in the representation of the confluence between high technological levels and a low standard of living. The impact of the pace of advanced technology on social relations is presented, particularly in the urban environment. The city is a determining spatial element and present in cyberpunk expressions, which reveals the scope of technology in the very character of the people who live under this unbridled regime. The technological mediation and construction of the urban environment is a leitmotif of this type of science fiction."
The repugnant experiment of a teacher who proved why you should always wash your hands: "We all know that washing our hands frequently and thoroughly is important. But how many of us wash our hands as much as we should? A teacher wanted her class to see the negative effects that dirty hands can have, so she came up with a disgusting germ experiment using something simple: slices of bread." PUAAAAAAAAAAJ!
A sword of Damocles over my head? A question of probabilities: "Aneurysms are dilations of the artery wall, which due to a certain weakening of its wall will lead to the formation of cavities, where the blood that enters them widens them silently as if it were a large balloon until at a certain moment they rupture. This moment means that the content of blood that circulates through the arteries on the surface of the brain will pass at full pressure through this ruptured aneurysm to the meninges, which causes the worst headache one could ever have, of very sudden presentation and maximum intensity."
Were dinosaurs as we have imagined them?: "In Kosemen's opinion, there is a tendency among paleoillustrators, among whom he counts himself, to exaggerate the claws of dinosaurs and to make their heads similar to those of crocodiles. "They always have those strange smiles where you can see the teeth," he assures, while recalling that most animals have lips and protrusions of fat and skin that cover the teeth and protrude here and there. The problem, in his opinion, is that depictions of dinosaurs do not resemble living creatures."
The industrial history of the old world through the lead content in the world's glaciers: "As you will understand, for there to be metal residues in the ice, they must come from a large-scale manufacture, so we have no evidence of the first metals that were worked in prehistory. Thus, although in Europe, Asia, and Africa there was a copper age (Chalcolithic – about 5000-6000 years ago) and a bronze age (about 4000 years ago) before the iron age (about 3000 years ago, already in written history), only evidence of the latter is found in the world's glaciers. And although the dates of these periods vary from one region to another, in general, in the great civilizations it was in the first millennium BC when metallurgy began on a larger scale, surely related to a growing population with greater commercial exchange and also territorial conflicts that demanded more weaponry."
Two centuries of deceptions, inventions that sold like hotcakes and turned out to be false: "Already around 1750, experiments with electricity multiply and, unfortunately, so do the shrewd inventors who see in the current a form of "cure" and business. It is at this time that the Danish veterinarian Peter Abildgaard revives birds and quadrupeds and when the works of Galvani, Faraday, Andrew Cross, and other researchers attribute to electromagnetism the ability to alleviate most diseases. "In a few words, it seems that there is no doubt that electricity strengthens health," points out Sandoz."
Why some farts smell so disgustingly bad, others not so much, and how to avoid them: "Almost all of us have accidentally let one slip at some point. What happens is that not all are the same. Some are tremendously loud and yet don't smell. Others are born as spies, tremendously silent, but disgustingly smelly. What is the reason? Can they be avoided? Let's go first with the definition of the fart or flatulence. When we talk about them, we refer to the mixture of intestinal gases that is expelled through the anus, all accompanied by a characteristic sound and, above all, a characteristic smell."
The triage of truth, don't accept the opinion of experts passively: "Jean-Paul Sartre captured the inevitable responsibility this imposes on us when he wrote in L'existentialisme est un humanisme (1945): "If you seek advice, for example from a priest, you have selected that priest; and deep down you already knew, more or less, what he would advise." The pessimistic interpretation of this is that recourse to expertise is therefore a farce. Psychologists have repeatedly demonstrated the power of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. People select authorities that support what they already believe."
Motorized roller skates and a swimming propeller: "We are at the beginning of the 20th century, when a motor is practically being put on all types of vehicles. It was the time when motorcycles, the newest automobiles, trucks, buses and, of course, roller skates were being born. The protagonist of that cover was not the only one, far from it. Electric, combustion, and even steam engines were applied to skates, scooters, tricycles, and unicycles."
What does it mean to be intelligent?: "Intelligence is not only a gift, it is also a practice. A practice that is exercised like muscles or memory are exercised. The only difference is that its training is somewhat more complex, because to develop it you have to learn to combine many components at once: imagination, logic, memory, culture, reflection, experience... But trying to summarize them all, it could be said that intelligence develops through detachment."
A Tragedy Called Jean-Claude Van Damme: "Action cinema, in the eighties, reached its commercial peak. The heroes of the decade, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, were a guarantee of a box-office-breaking film. Their most emblematic successes became worldwide phenomena, at a time when home video was about to explode. But, silently, a Belgian actor, whose real name is Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg, but known worldwide as Jean-Claude Van Damme, was carving his space in the mecca of cinema, through his appearance in "B-movie" productions."
VIDEOS: The history of the ñ, the chorizo sandwich à la Chinese, eating lots of hyper-spicy chili peppers in two minutes, "Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers", scooter tricks, TERRYFOLD, mosquito swarm, how they walked in the Middle Ages, Batman VS Elmer Fudd (narrated by Neal Adams), time-lapses of a VHS dissolving in acid, kittens coming out of a box, a sculpture of Freddie Mercury, kid swallowed a squeaky toy, Blue Planet II: The Prequel, you have something in your hair, micro-sculptures, baby elephant wants to wear sandals, bears vs trash can-bear-proof, Fails of the week, fireball lights up the sky over China, the music of the solar system and the brilliant short film ADAM: The Mirror.
GALLERIES: Polar bears devouring a whale carcass, 40 years painting the chapel of her village, famous logos from memory, if classical art had smiles, wax hand that melts and..., coloring classical statues, parents funnier than their children, amazing hay sculptures, calves, girls doing cosplay, Pokémon monsters, committed photographers, the streets of Amsterdam between 1890 and 1910.
This week on NeoTeo: NeoTeo also has a bunch of cool stuff. Don't miss them! Russian hackers used Kaspersky to steal NSA data, Internet Explorer leaks everything you type, 3000 million accounts affected in the Yahoo attack, Microsoft servers to mine cryptocurrencies, copy faster to a USB drive, excellent alternative to CCleaner, free photographs, instant translation with Pixel Buds, the 1000 queens problem, how pinball machines are built, errors that seemed like cheats, the Stranger Things video game, Sonic 2 HD.
So much to read, watch and admire! If you got to the end alive, congratulations! You must have lost at least an hour of your life that you could have used for something more useful.
