This week's recommended links feature the Devil's excrement, Argentine parrots, The Goonies and dismantling an atomic bomb - that and much more in this week's recommended links. Want more? Keep reading, there's a lot more!
Seven green architectural utopias made real: "We are still very far away. The dream of living in big cities as close to nature as possible remains a complicated challenge. However, there are some architects who still keep in their imagination that utopia of bringing nature to big cities. Not only have they imagined it; on occasions they have also achieved it. Today in 'El Asombrario Recicla' we show you seven very representative examples. Seven wonders. We travel from Valencia to Turin and Milan, from Oxford to Singapore."
How to dismantle an atomic bomb: "A new high-tech method can help inspectors verify the destruction of nuclear weapons established in international treaties. The method, developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), uses neutron beams to establish certain facts about the warheads in question and, crucially, uses an isotopic filter that physically encrypts the information in the measured data."
Uses of poop: "Although poop may arouse some rejection, because it is associated with dirt, it is incredible the many uses it has had (and still has) for humans. Today we are going to review the uses of poop (for this adventure I have relied on several sources of information, but one main one has been the book 'Don't Flush! Scientific Secrets About Poo and Pee', by Mary and Richard Platt)."
We don't live in 'Futurama', but almost: seven inventions from the show that seemed crazy but have become reality: "'Futurama' has turned 20 and still surprises us today. Perhaps its crystal ball for predicting the future hasn't been as fine as 'The Simpsons', but even so it was able to predict quite a few inventions. Some will materialize in a relatively short time, others have fallen into oblivion, and many others have remained as curiosities."
'The Goonies' and the cinema of adventurous kids: "There are generational films that, when we are children, mark us in a special way, whether because of what they tell us or because of the way they do it. That's why, when you grow up with a film like that, even as an adult, no matter how much time passes, you still remember it with a certain nostalgia and there is always a feeling of wanting to return to that point, as many times as possible. And boy do we return to The Goonies."
How the first commercial airplane accident in history happened and the radical idea it inspired to avoid it happening again: "Flying at just 1,500 meters high, the trimotor was vulnerable to bad weather, which made it an unpleasant journey. And dangerous. In September of that 1929, a trimotor crashed on Mount Taylor, killing everyone on board."
The mystery of the matryoshka diamond, a diamond inside another: "The Russian company Alrosa announced this Friday the discovery in the Russian region of Yakutia of what it has called the first matryoshka diamond ever found. It is a hollow diamond with a cavity in which another diamond moves freely. Hence the similarity with traditional Russian dolls (matryoshkas) that have served to name the gem, whose formation is a mystery over which various hypotheses have been formulated."
Why the color red drives humans crazy: "Thanks to linguistic anthropology we know that if a human language only has three words to designate the external appearance of things, those three words will be 'light', 'dark' and 'red'. Obviously, that attracts the attention of any cognitive psychologist. Of all colors, red must be special because, linguistically at least, it is almost always the first color. Or, put the other way around, it must have something, some special vivacity, so that it always gets to be the first, the big brother."
How an argument over a board game ended in the Rebellion of the Seven States, which led to the unification of China: "Like almost all countries, especially those that cover immense areas, China experienced a unification process that culminated during the reign of the Qin dynasty, in the period of the so-called Warring States, in 221 BC. However, not everything was done by any means, so less than a century later there was a last attempt by some kings to avoid the imperial pretension of centralizing the territory further. It was during the Han dynasty and it is known as the Rebellion of the Seven States."
Doctors are less empathetic, but is it their fault?: "The results of the study were very interesting, but it may be that we are not seeing the complete picture. We know that doctors' empathy is constantly decreasing, but could it be that we ourselves are judging them in an unempathetic way? Have you ever 'put yourself in the shoes' of that grumpy doctor who treated you the night you were so sick with a cold that you felt you didn't have the strength to move your feet?"
'The Devil's excrement': how the price of oil became so fundamental to the world economy: "It was August 27, 1859, and a crucial message had been sent. The last financial backer of businessman Edwin Drake had finally lost patience: Pay your debts, give up, and come home, the message said. Drake had been trying to find 'rock oil', an unrefined brown oil that sometimes bubbled near the surface in western Pennsylvania."
Common women's lives in the Middle Ages (from the 13th to the 15th century): "For the study of the daily life of common women between the 13th and 15th centuries, historians consider two main groups, according to the location of the houses or rooms in their environment: rural life, directing or carrying out the activities of survival that the environment allowed them, adapted by the technology of the time, and urban life, where they were basically dedicated to domestic tasks and childcare."
Videos
- New Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
- the history of Microsoft Flight Simulator
- game for drunk girls at Oktoberfest 2019
- the gecko gladiator
- finger push-up records
- the best records of September
- landing a glider in the rain
- how to make a plane that flies around pizza
- draining drains
- bridge collapses in Taiwan
- why "you can't see stars from the Moon"
- camel wants bread
- sneaker bicycle
- abducted by an alien
- reverse free running
- 3D makeup
- knife salesman
- magnet gun against magnetic ball castle
- thirty days in thirty minutes
- all programming tutorials
- sound failure
- frozen fast food
- whale returns GoPro
- cheetah misses its mom
- dog plays piano
- Will Smith in Enter the Dragon
- low-budget Deadpool
- The Gate
- Corporate Monster
Galleries
Galleries: Pixels toward extinction, people doing vodka shots, the Ninja Turtle suit that rots, the largest eagle in the world, macrophotography of water drops, life hacks, women in dresses, 'terrifying' wool-knitted costumes, Kake Darci cake designs, apocalyptic weekend, cyclists crossing snow, beautiful wool-knitted things, surreal makeup, ironic reality, Egypt in 1909, the 391-year-old bonsai, the aesthetic memory of Blasphemous, eccentric habitats, people electrocuted with a taser and we end with Vertedero Animado and Tiradero Visual.
