Recommended Links of the Week (No. 491)

The dot-com crash, the siliconization of the world, flat-earthers, comets as big as the Moon, and prototype jet trains, with dozens of viral videos, galleries, and other super nice things. All that, and more, as always, in this week's Recommended Links.

Bursting the Dot-Com Bubble: "In the one celebrated on January 30, 2000, seventeen dot-com companies filled the halftime ads, the most watched of the year in the United States. More than two million dollars per thirty-second slot; that was the sum paid by companies that had barely just been born, and whose viability, as would be seen shortly after, was more than compromised. Of the seventeen advertising companies, a year later half (eight) had disappeared, and the value of any of the others on the stock market was infinitely lower. That Super Bowl is considered to have marked the highest point of the bubble madness."

Against the Digital Age: 'The Siliconization of the World', Éric Sadin: "In my children's school there's a nine-year-old kid who is already an expert YouTuber. He has opened his own channel, knows how to address his audience, and I suppose he hopes to make money ('monetize,' Sadin would say) from it. His father thinks it's great. This is the world we live in today, that new and shocking economy, an economy capable of mobilizing a child's jokes to extract money and popularity from them on their own initiative."

What Will Happen to Facebook When Nobody Wants to Use It: The Lesson of Myspace: "The important thing about Myspace, and the reason it has been sold and bought several times even though no one remembers the site anymore, is the data it continues to hoard. After years of redesigns, including several security breaches, most Myspace users are unable to recover the information they once poured into the social network."

Anime in the Real World

Why Are the Capital I and Lowercase L Identical?: "A zero (0) could be an O. Sometimes the Ø was used to differentiate them, a solution as long as you didn't write in any Scandinavian language or in Greek, where they could be confused with the letters Ø and Φ, respectively. The number 1 could be confused with the capital I (I) or the lowercase L (l), as well as the pipe or vertical bar (|). It didn't help the reader that some typewriters didn't have a key for 1 and/or 0, with I and O being used instead. In the case of the pipe, it could be displayed separated into two bars (¦)."

Flat-Earthers, My Personal Experience: "When someone said that water doesn't curve and that the Earth can't be round, I would show them a photo of a water droplet or a glass full of water with the water curved at the top. When they wrote that there are no real images of the 'Earth ball,' as they call it, I would show a live video from the International Space Station. Many times, flat-earthers challenged me to convince them with arguments or images that weren't CGI, as I said when I wanted to laugh. Every time I demonstrated the sphericity of the Earth, they kicked me out of the group."

The Scientific Origins of Frankenstein: "Indeed, in Shelley's time, electricity was the fashionable scientific mystery. The Italian Luigi Galvani had demonstrated how a spark infused movement into dissected frog legs. "There is evidence that Mary saw galvanic demonstrations, which were popular then," Guston recounts. Galvani's nephew, Giovanni Aldini, went much further when in 1803 he used electricity to animate the limbs of George Forster, a criminal executed in London, to the astonishment of a horrified audience."

Fire Tornado in a Bubble

Trains and Rockets: The Delirious Jet Train Prototypes That Russia and the US Designed in the 60s: "During the 1960s, the Cold War was at its peak. The United States and Russia not only competed to see who was the world's greatest economic and military power, but also engaged in a space and technological race. From it were born the first (and only) rocket trains in the world."

The Neverending Story: An Anguished Author, an Inspired Illustrator, and a Translator in Trouble: "Seen in isolation, it might seem that writing The Neverending Story drove its creator mad, but it wasn't the first time Ende's behavior worried those around him. A few years earlier, he abruptly and traumatically abandoned his theater acting career without apparent cause. His friend and biographer Peter Boccarius speaks of an "artistic crisis," but gives no more details."

Kirk Douglas Turns 102 - The 25 Best Movies of an Immortal Man: "The actor, famous for his roles in films such as 'Spartacus' or 'Paths of Glory', celebrated his 102nd birthday this Sunday. For his long and acclaimed career, Douglas received an honorary Oscar in 1996. He is the last star of Hollywood's golden age, along with Olivia de Havilland, who is still alive."

Oh Japan...

The Peacemaker Incident: "This wise Swede with a curious mind, an army officer, member of the academy of sciences and of that of war of his nation (among many other honors), was known for his condenser, the hot-air engine, a solar machine that used mirrors to run an engine, his technology for manufacturing laminated cannons, and above all for being one of the first to develop and implement the propeller on ships."

Are There Comets as Big as the Moon?: "Well, it is estimated that there are about a trillion bodies made of ice and rock contained in these two regions combined, with diameters ranging from a few meters to a couple of thousand kilometers. Fortunately, most of them don't move from there and don't bother anyone, but every once in a while, the orbit of one of these objects destabilizes and it rushes toward the inner solar system. And that's when the show begins."

The Failure of Two Galileo Satellites That Has Demonstrated Einstein's Theory of Relativity: "Two Galileo satellites placed in incorrect orbit are to blame for physicists being so happy right now. Thanks to these probes, it is once again proven that Einstein was right when he proposed his general theory of relativity. However, the importance of this new confirmation doesn't lie in whether the physicist was right, since we're used to that. No, this time the difference is in the 'great precision' with which Einstein's relativity has been demonstrated, as explained in a press release by the European Space Agency (ESA)."