Recommended Links of the Week No. 521: Hugo, SimCity and More

Playing with Hugo, “Te Lo Resumo Así No Más,” the 30 years of SimCity, the history of the ballpoint pen, and the hottest pepper in the world. A roller coaster of emotions, with excellent videos and very good galleries. Don’t miss it!

Hugo (SilverRock Productions, 1990): “Hugo is a platform video game developed by the Danish company SilverRock Productions in 1990 to be used in the interactive television program Skærmtrolden. In this program, contestants could control the game from their own home through the numeric keypad of the phone they were calling from. The game was published in numerous versions for personal computers such as PC, C64 or Amiga. In these versions, the player had to use the keyboard as a control instead of the phone.”

The keys to the cinematic universe of “Te Lo Resumo Así No Más”: “How did “Te Lo Resumo Así No Más” explode? Largely thanks to the success of two series: The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. Pinarello, living in La Plata, Argentina, uploaded a weekly summary with the most recent episode of The Walking Dead. The narration, which gradually evolved into the format of raspy voice and “classic jokes” of the channel itself, initially had a different rhythm and goal.”

SimCity: 30 years making urbanism and city management a game: “Legend has it that while Will Wright was designing a new war game titled Raid on Bungeling Bay, he found the scenario editor more exciting than the game mechanics itself. In fact, he perfected it to such a point that for his next project he decided to go one step further: create a game in which you had to plan and design an entire city, with its resources, economy and a realism simulating real cities. That game would be called SimCity, and this happened exactly 30 years ago.”

The Simpsons in Russian style

Addams, Monster and Collins, television Gothic for all audiences: “The Addams Family, The Munsters and Dark Shadows. The fact that these three series coincided in their theme and were broadcast in the same decade, and that also the first two disappeared the same year that the third began broadcasting (1966), was due more to a question of competition in the medium than to some kind of satanic signal from beyond. Although, look, if you invert the 9 of 1966, and ignore the 1, you get the number of the beast… or something.”

The first astronaut and cosmonaut watches: “Gagarin wore one, into outer space, which had been a gift from the Air Force, a Sturmanskie. The military gave this watch to the best pilots and Gagarin had been one of them. On April 12, 1961, they sent Gagarin to become a Hero of the Soviet Union. Fortunately, it was not posthumous and he lived to tell the tale. His Sturmanskie, too. It was the first watch to orbit the Earth.”

'Cocaine cowboys' - The story of how Miami achieved prosperity thanks to cocaine: “In 2006 Billy Corben analyzed in detail how cocaine trafficking changed Miami. In the 80s, at the time when the most cocaine entered, businesses did not stop growing nor the rest of economic activity. The area did not notice the recession. Bank branches appeared everywhere, they deposited more bills in the Federal Reserve than all banks in the rest of the country because they had nowhere to physically store them. The city skyline was covered with cranes, they did not stop building.”

If “Stranger Things” were an 80s anime

How to put together your first Synthwave track: “Recovering the sounds of synthesizers and drum machines from the '80s (like the TR-808 or the Linn LM-1), this musical style had its beginnings in the past decade. However, post-2010 is when it acquires greater relevance and diffusion, with many focused musicians and even having virtual radios on YouTube. For this reason, at Culto we asked ourselves: what would we have to do if we want to produce our first Synthwave single? Here three musicians give us a series of recommendations to keep in mind.”

History of the ballpoint pen: “Today, a tool as useful as the ballpoint pen has more uses than writing itself. It is one of the most effective advertising instruments there is. Advertising pens are one of the best investments for any company or professional, even widely used at fairs and events. Your company's logo will be visible to thousands of people. Besides being economical, they are present in our lives much more recurrently than you might imagine.”

Pepper X, the hottest: “Pepper X has become the hottest chili in the world with its 3,180,000 SHU on the Scoville scale. This impressive figure exceeds the previous king the Carolina Reaper* by almost 1,000,000 units. The creator of Pepper X is the same Ed Currie, famous for being the creator of the Carolina Reaper. Yes, this Man, we are not worthy! , puts all his dedication to creating new chilies that surpass the record of heat established by himself, reaching unprecedented levels.”

https://www.youtube.com/embed/YH2T94XWqck

The forty years of the Walkman

“People resist the idea, but life is just chemistry”: “Life is chemistry: nothing more and nothing less. The functioning of the brain is so little understood that it tends to be associated with magical or mystical meanings. But chemically the brain is a collection of wires and switches. All human brains are more or less the same and the small differences are the result of different patterns in the switches, based on a combination of our genetics and our experiences. But, in the end, it is chemistry, nothing more and nothing less, although people resist the idea.”

Corn cultivation pollutes the air to such a point that it is responsible for the death of thousands of people a year: “Forget about coal or cars powered by diesel. They are both main responsible for the poor quality of our air. But we should also start looking at other sources that seem harmless to us, such as corn production. This is what a new study published in Nature found that analyzed corn crops in the United States and concluded that these could contribute to thousands of deaths from air pollution a year.”

When the siren lost her wings: “In Homer's Odyssey, the sirens (Σειρῆνες) are women who attracted sailors with their song so that their ships would crash against the rocks. Euripides would present them in Helen as “winged women”, as they were represented in ancient art, even with male presence until the 5th century BC. However, at some point they stopped being avian hybrids to immerse themselves in the sea with a fish tail. Was there a transformation or a confusion with another creature?”