Epic trolling in MMOs, the political incorrectness of Postal 2, Japanese manholes, and the identity of the screaming mummy. More? More! Shakespeare's plagiarisms, the tragedy of Richard Pryor, and... what color are tennis balls? Don't miss the recommended links!
This Week's Picks
10 trolls that went down in MMO history: "MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online) are a reflection of society. Millions of people interacting online in a sci-fi or fantasy environment is no reason for the human being to stop trolling their fellow man. If the gamer community has created the concept of swatting (the art of playing a heavy prank consisting of sending the SWAT team to another player's house claiming they are a terrorist and thus watching their arrest on stream), the examples on this list shouldn't surprise us. The more freedom, the more chances of seeing global pandemics that have served as case studies for universities, scams of hundreds of thousands of euros, systematic genocides in cities..."
Postal 2, when we didn't care about political correctness: "On Friday afternoon, the last day of the game, the apocalypse occurs and society as we know it collapses, with law and order completely overthrown and voided. Cats begin to fall from an increasingly dark sky, all the secondary characters in the city become violent, heavily armed people, and aggressive random battles break out in the streets of Paradise. Despite this, Postal Dude returns to his trailer as usual, where he only has to listen to his wife berate him for never buying the ice cream she asked for at the beginning of the game. Postal 2 ends with a gunshot, we suppose aimed at his wife, before the final credits roll."
Japanese manhole covers: high technology and design: "The word manhōru, used for manhole covers in Japanese, actually designates the vertical cavity through which one accesses the sewer for inspections and repairs of its underground installations. What we see on the street is only the cover, which is much more than a simple circular piece of metal. The structure of the cover is composed of five elements: the cover itself (top plate), the rim, the robust hinge and the lock that join them, and the anti-fall ladder with locking."
When Japan bombed the United States with thousands of balloons: "The Japanese meteorologist Wasaburo Oishi had already discovered around 1926 the atmospheric jet streams (curiously, he described his discoveries in Esperanto, a language he was a passionate defender of). These air currents are used today by intercontinental flights to save time and fuel, but during World War II the Japanese army thought they could be ideal for sending large waves of balloons to attack the United States. The 'crazy' idea, in reality, was not as strange as it might seem (the British also tried it, but in a more limited way, against the Germans)"
Who is the 'screaming mummy'?: "Egypt is, possibly, one of the civilizations that keeps the most secrets inside. Three millennia after its fall from grace, researchers continue trying to discover many of the mysteries. And now, one that has been troubling experts for centuries has been solved: who was the screaming mummy? After much investigation, Zahi Hawass, one of the greatest experts in the field, has managed to reveal the secret."
An anti-plagiarism software reveals the sources of eleven Shakespeare works: "Anti-plagiarism programs are a type of software designed to detect plagiarism by comparing a document against different databases for matches; they then allow generating a report with the percentage of similarities, thus determining how similar two documents are. However, what if what is used as an original source is a classic work and it is compared with databases full of earlier documents? Would it be possible to detect historical plagiarism or, at least, new sources on which those works were based? That is what Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter tried to do with none other than William Shakespeare"
The tragedy of Richard Pryor: "During the 80 minutes that Richard Pryor: Live in Concert lasts – recently added to Netflix's comedy catalog – you can see the comedian at the peak of his career: he jumps quickly from one topic to another, from police brutality to the differences between whites and blacks, his relationship with animals – the imaginary conversations he has with dogs are great – his heart attacks, and men's insecurity in bed. Always being funny. Very funny. He navigates between contingency and the surreal, in a way inviting the audience to take a look inside his head, which could never stay still."
Phantasma: a nightmare turned into a horror saga: "Luckily for my mental health, I didn't see Phantasma II back then. It could be that its disjointed narrative (I'm in a good mood today) would have fascinated me, but most likely it would have frustrated me and to this day I would still detest the film and everything around it. But the truth is that instead of suffering such a shock then, my encounter with the Phantasma saga came much later. Taking advantage of the fact that in 2016 it came to an end after thirty-seven years and five installments, let's look at what Don Coscarelli's most famous work really meant."
A second encounter with the 14,000-year-old man: "For those who love the genre, the film The Man from Earth, released in 2007, is already one of the essential titles in modern science fiction. Included in independent cinema circuits, and with a modest box office, it never reached the general public, and not even its twelve international awards managed to attract the critics' interest. But it has already accumulated more than 3.6 million downloads on the internet, and ten years later there are a thousand torrents available, where hundreds of users continue to obtain it daily. Therefore, it is expected that its number of viewers will continue to increase. And it will do so thanks to word of mouth, as it has been until now."
Byung-Chul Han: 6 books by the first philosopher you need to read to understand this era: "Among the topics Han has addressed with lucidity are the system of permanent performance in which we live, how society moved from surveillance and discipline to power and self-exploitation (and the relationship of this with the "epidemic" of anxiety, depression, and exhaustion that we are currently experiencing); he has also written about the adversity that love now faces and why it almost always ends up agonizing, why the expulsion of difference and the positivation of the world have led us to live in the "hell of the same," how capitalism has transformed from the so-called "Big Data" or why it seems we have lost the ability to appreciate "the aroma of time."
The 30,000-year history of the dildo: "The dildo is not a modern invention. Archaeologists have tried to conceive non-sexual uses for these ancient objects, but the incredibly detailed nature of all archaeological finds leads scholars to believe these phalluses were used as dildos. Some of these objects lack a foreskin, but there are plenty "adorned" with piercings, tattoos, and scars. This specificity, along with their smooth and polished construction (of siltstone, chalk, or bone), seems to confirm their most logical use: pleasure."
What color is a tennis ball?: "It seems like a simple question, but it has almost as much substance as the famous blue and black or white and gold dress question. Journalist Marina Koren discovered how complex the matter could be when she saw a tweet in which someone asked people whether a tennis ball was green or yellow. She sees them as yellow, but she discovered in the survey results that a slight majority (52% vs 42%) considers them green. What is going on here?"
Videos
Baby elephant, the sound of ice, ski robots falling, Spiderman in Panama, wombat chases its keeper, centipede mom, a little train on the cat, cats vs dogs, detecting metal in a waterfall, koala fight and the shorts: Raised By Zombies (animated), The Herd (sci-fi), Ramblers (Nickelodeon animated short) and Werebeast (animated).
Galleries
The foods from Miyazaki movies in real life, Soviet propaganda posters, the illusion of the floating building, 70s deodorant ads, photos of Don Corleone, Tati Moons' illustrations, a sculptor who wants to be like Michelangelo, the spectacular photos of ancient Egypt, sculptures of "sea wood", the best escalator ads, sculptures of dogs, Japan after the war, women in video game ads, Richard Teschner's illustrations, nominees for Best Press Photos 2018, and the sensational Visual Dump of the Week.
This Week on NeoTeo
Pornhub knows which video you finish with, six people who claim to have traveled in time, the darkest building in the world, a drone inside a closed box on a scale, rich photographer vs poor photographer, build Elon Musk's flamethrower, what would happen if we ran out of water and food, Suffragetto to download, a lamp that fights the flu, a virtual girl who is an influencer on Instagram, Furby musical organ, an SD made of microSD cards and these two photos that are the same even if they don't seem so.
The end. Thanks for stopping by this corner of the web. See you next time!
