This week brings you a bit of everything: the culture of fear, the Intellectual Dark Web, video games and philosophy, 300 orgasms a day, and the killer rabbits of medieval manuscripts. All that and much more in the best links of the week, all together in the Recommended Links.
Culture of fear: why there are fewer negative reviews: "It seems counterintuitive. Now that we have more online media than ever (and while paper hasn't quite died), music criticism is abundant to the point of being overwhelming. And instead of broadening criteria or increasing variety of tastes, it's showing a unification of voices to the point of virtually eliminating dissenting opinions. The greater the consensus, the harder it is to step out of the established line. The correlation isn't entirely clear, but there are factors pointing in that direction."
Freedom of expression in science is in danger, and that's why the Intellectual Dark Web was born: "It's possible that we are against the dissemination of science that could weaken the ideology we consider correct and good for everyone. For example, imagine (just a hypothetical) that it's discovered that an ethnicity has statistically lower intelligence than other ethnicities. Should we silence it to avoid xenophobic outbreaks, or explore the idea to find the underlying reasons (while fighting xenophobia by remembering that we shouldn't respect others because they are like us, but precisely because they are or could be different)?"
Video games that will teach you more philosophy than any book: "Playing video games is often labeled in popular culture as an unproductive activity that only cultivates leisure and waste of time. Contrary to that belief, there are titles whose story is so deep that it has inspired the creation of books, films, and other artistic manifestations. In addition to improving spatial reasoning skills and encouraging motor coordination that translates into fine and faster movements between the brain and hands, there are some video games whose background is free of trivialities and, on the contrary, possesses deep philosophical content. Behind every artistic expression or scientific theory, there is a philosophical message that sustains it. And video games are no exception." The title is an exaggeration, but well...
The scam of the rebellion of the machines: "Raymond Kurzweil writing about the technological singularity and conscious machines for 2029, Nick Bostrom alerting us to the gravity of the problems we will reach when the "explosion of intelligence" occurs: the moment when an AI emerges whose intelligence surpasses ours and devotes itself to making itself more intelligent, which will lead to a process of exponential growth... Machines will take over the world and will have to decide whether we are a threat to them or not! Much fuss, but should we take this seriously? Should we start worrying about the rebellion of killer machines? No way."
They discover how the brain manipulates our memories: "The brain has an autocomplete function that helps us perceive the world around us better. For example, in the case of vision, the process is quite curious. When we look at a place, our eyes only capture small aspects of a scene to optimize their resources. Then the brain merges the two images captured by both eyes (stereoscopy) and adds texture, depth, and orientation. And finally, it fills in the spaces from which it hasn't captured information with images it assumes are in the perceived object."
The tribe that had no words for 'war' or 'violence', we don't need them for anything: "Against the Hobbesian assertion that man is a wolf to man, we usually embrace as a last hope the Rousseauian assertion that man is good by nature and that it is society, and also reason, that ends up corrupting him. That's why a large part of the first world's inhabitants aspire to flee the city, modernity, technology, the 21st century, to take refuge in some island inhabited by a tribe intimately connected with nature or some nation where tradition and the rural continue to be preponderant. That's why many people were excited to discover that there was indeed a tribe where, because they didn't exist, there weren't even terms like war or violence."
The nightmare of having 300 orgasms a day: "Diana is 41 years old, lives in Badajoz, and is one of the few people in the world who suffers from a rare condition known as "persistent genital arousal disorder" (PGAD). The night the syndrome appeared ended in the emergency room and doctors told her it had probably been the vaginal cream. For a couple of weeks everything returned to normal, but one morning, while attending to a client in her telemarketing job, she realized it was happening again."
The mathematical principle underlying the way pedestrians cross a zebra crossing: "One of the most popular places in Japan is the Shibuya crossing, located in front of Shibuya Station in Tokyo, famous for being the most crowded crossing in the world. So it's no surprise that it was precisely a team of mathematicians from the University of Tokyo that described the mathematical principle by which pedestrians cross zebra crossings." With this, three articles by Sergio Parra have been recommended in this edition of the links. You can tell I like how he writes, right? ;)
The evil and murderous rabbits of medieval manuscripts: "The illuminators or illustrators of medieval manuscripts were a bunch of comedians, and there are thousands of graphic proofs that they had an absurd and surreal humor that we love. These illustrations, found in many margins of codices from that glorious era, show a superior race of rabbits that murdered, tortured, and subjugated any knight or feudal lord that got in their way."
Ten things you should know to appear to be a watch expert: "There is a widespread idea that mechanical watchmaking is something anachronistic, a profession of old people to fix old junk. But that's not so. Although it's increasingly common to check the time on your phone, the traditional watch industry remains a growing sector that feeds on (and presents a growing demand for) very young professionals who know the ins and outs of this fascinating object and therefore understand that paying thousands of euros for certain pieces is not crazy (when you have a healthy bank account, of course)."
Human head hunters: the obsession with beheading throughout history: "Cut-off heads. Symbols of Power focuses on the Celtiberian period of the Peninsula and on the findings at the Ullastret and Puig Castellar sites in Catalonia. In the first one, in 2012, fifteen skulls belonging to the 3rd and 4th centuries BC appeared, two of which were pierced by a 23-centimeter nail. It wasn't the first evidence that our Iron Age ancestors rolled heads, but it was that they joined the phenomenon of displaying them as trophies."
Places that only exist on Instagram: "If you compare photos of current trips with those from ten years ago, you can draw a conclusion: yes, they're prettier now. The passion for getting a good frame, the democratization of editing apps, and access to much more affordable cameras have made it so that anyone can take a high-quality snapshot. So far so good, but the thing is getting out of hand. Photos are no longer taken to have memories but to get likes. This new paradigm has brought two dramas: first, that this obsession is the only motivation for the trip, and second, that many places have become unreal. That is, they only exist after hours of waiting or after a few touch-ups that aren't makeup: they're directly visual transformation."
VIDEOS: "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" (Trailer), nightmare creature, girl loses patience, Guinness records March 2019, Mike Tyson vs Steven Seagal, 10 piano music themes created by artificial intelligence, Commodore 116, dog breaks TV, it rains spiders, excavator steals ATM, new vs old math, stair fails, 70 people from 70 countries saying 70 different tongue twisters, riding a pony, 190-kilo kid, veteran parachutist tries VR, orange kitten, the melting face scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, encounter with an elephant, if life had glitches, storks celebrating egg, run, Daniel!, impressive ping pong shot, how to remove a Coca-Cola can without removing the Coca-Cola or something like that, "We Will Rock You" roller edition, and the short films "Eldritch Code" and "Being Good".
GALERIES: The striking art of George Redreev, multicolored fur squirrels, Italy in the 19th century, a Pontiac made of Plexiglas, Star Wars paintings, find the lost objects, references from Disney's "Cinderella", plastic waters, lonely astronaut, 3D tattoos, the image of sound, plush animals, the new works of Low Cost Cosplay, Johnson Tsang's twisted clay portraits, blue whale devoured by 60 orcas, David Bowie on pulp covers, pencil portraits, the Vertedero Animado and the Tiradero Visual de la Semana
https://old.neoteo.com/creepypasta-scp-966/
