Humans are a bag of cats, painting a cow like a zebra, Pentagon-funded movies, and the mysterious dwarf community that disappeared from the Pyrenees are some of the juiciest articles in this week's Recommended Links. But there's much more! Keep reading and discover it.
The eighteen-year-old scientist who wanted to get rich synthesizing mauve: "However, Perkin noticed a purple flash in the mixture and added alcohol, which dissolved the mixture and left a purple substance that was excellent at dyeing silk. He immediately saw that there could be a good business there."
This is how they prevent a dead person's face or a severed hand from being used to bypass biometric identification systems: "As biometric identification systems become more present in our daily lives, it becomes increasingly necessary to have this type of technology dedicated to detecting cases where the face or fingerprint being identified might not be from someone acting voluntarily (because they are dead, asleep, or unconscious): these are known as liveness detection systems ('liveness' in English)."
Humans were four species that interbred: "Excavations and DNA analyses are revealing that these four species not only inhabited the same places, but even produced common offspring, mixing their genes and complicating our understanding of our origins. This week Nature published a study detailing the most complete Neanderthal genome to date, further complicating the soap opera of relationships between our ancestors and their relatives."
A look at the art of 'Rick and Morty': how they draw aliens, pizza people, or surreal planets: "Many factors have led to many fans currently awaiting a fourth season scheduled to premiere in November of this same year. References to its gags or the richness of its universe, defined by species and planets that follow absurd logic, are common. But there is something else that has contributed to this success, a work that is sometimes so naturalized as to go unnoticed: the work of the artists responsible for giving it shape and color."
What happens when you paint a cow like a zebra?: "In recent years, various studies have highlighted the evolutionary usefulness that the characteristic black and white stripe pattern may have had for zebras in keeping savanna insects away. Although other explanations have been proposed, such as the possibility that it helps confuse predators or has some thermoregulatory function, the hypothesis that it helps them avoid painful horsefly bites is gaining strength."
Hollywood movies financed by the Pentagon: "That's if you're making a movie and you have a script the Pentagon likes. The arsenal described above was deployed in support of Ben Affleck in the Jack Ryan movie THE SUM OF ALL FEARS. The use of the Pentagon, and therefore the support of the American taxpayer to subsidize cinema, allowed filmmakers to produce a film full of expensive military sequences, considering the total budget was $68 million, a bargain in Hollywood, even by 2002 standards."
Phosphate, the "unknown" environmental crisis that could starve us: "An international group of 40 scientists, cited by Science Alert, has just issued a distress call to the world: if nothing is done to conserve phosphate, our planet could exhaust its reserves in 50 years and cause a global catastrophe for the next generation. Phosphate is an essential chemical element for all plants and animals on Earth… and for humans. When extracted from mineral, it can be used to make fertilizers, to increase agricultural production, detergents, or pyrotechnics."
The woman who recorded the Indian 'spirits': "She recorded the shaman's visions, who often sang possessed by powerful spirits and recounted them in the form of poem or song, and over time, a lifetime, these became part of a vast musical library, currently at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institute, comprising more than two thousand pieces and constituting one of the richest records of North American Indian folklore, of its customs and traditions disguised as songs."
The 'golluts', the mysterious community that disappeared in the Pyrenees: "Their stature, as far as I could verify, is around four feet, that is, one meter and ten to fifteen centimeters. A good number of them suffer from mumps, phenomenal in some, as they range from the size of a small orange to that of a small melon, and from this, since mumps is called 'goll', people call them 'golluts', 'mumpy' as we would say, to translate the word literally."
The colossal depot of Soviet trains fallen into oblivion in Shumkovo: "Although the Soviet Union recycled the vast majority of retired railway material, at Shumkovo station, connected to the Trans-Siberian Railway, hundreds of locomotives and thousands of railway cars were deposited, decommissioned but in relatively good condition. These, if there was no other option, would serve as emergency trains in case of a long-term war. After the fall of the Soviet colossus, they were left rusting in oblivion. Currently, it is only the work of volunteers, mostly retired railway workers like Grigoriy Gordeyev, that allows some of these machines to be preserved from destruction."
The most famous groupies in the history of music: "She left her husband to be with Mick Jagger, with whom she had a long romance, although she was always in love with Keith Richards. After Brian Jones's death, things went from bad to worse. She lost custody of her son and attempted suicide. Over time, she regained her spirits and has had an excellent career in music and as a writer."
Cannibalism, extreme cold, and three years abandoned - The most dramatic expedition to the North Pole: "We have been abandoned here until our destruction. The sentence was written by American lieutenant Adolphus Greely in his diary in May 1884, with half-frozen fingers, in extreme conditions of cold and hunger, in an ice desert in the middle of the North Pole, with half of his men dead or dying and the other part devouring their companions to survive a little longer. They had been wandering the Arctic for three years, enduring hellish temperatures, hoping for a miracle that seemed more impossible each day."
VIDEO: The perfect Internet video, puppy cuddles kitten, helping the octopus, chimpanzee wants a drink, songs from '79, songs from the 80s, the future of work, deepfake imitations, poker in stop motion, "riding" a T-rex, climbers competition, drunk in Italy, baroque contrabassoon, his piano doesn't work and he entertains until it's replaced, the endoskeleton factory from T-2, the hilarious AI script about Batman, and the shorts Box 616 and Natural History Museum.
GALLERIES: Environmental photography, Russia in the 90s, the most charming girls of Oktoberfest, the art of Helena Hauss, cosplay of the 70s, the largest diorama in the world, the fattest bears competition, how animals see, the Soviet Union through Vladimir Sokolaev's lens, wing transplant to a living butterfly, animals with evil auras, the komodo's armor, the ghosts of William Hope, the Vertedero Animado de la Semana and the legendary Tiradero Visual.
https://old.neoteo.com/creepypasta-scp-2401/
