The Great Sandwich War, Monster Planets, how to stop climate change and why we no longer tell jokes are some of the things you'll find in this week's Recommended Links, along with videos, galleries and curiosities.
30 years of ZIP, the compression standard: "When Phil Katz created the ZIP compression format, no one could imagine that it would end up displacing any other format and would be integrated into most operating systems. It wasn't the best, but it did manage to compress all kinds of files without losing data, which was complicated back then. And contrary to what it may seem, the ZIP format is more alive than ever, since it is the basis of Microsoft Office's Office Open XML documents, OpenDocument, and Apple's office apps."
Why don't we tell jokes anymore?: "As with so many other topics, the internet kills or revives. In this case, it has revived jokes by reincarnating them as videos, comics, audios, texts and all kinds of images characterized, fundamentally, by the fact of ironizing about some recent issue."
Who the hell invented the five-day workweek (and why it's time to change it): "Microsoft Japan revealed the results of the test it launched in summer: four workdays a week for its employees. What happened was that, among other things, productivity increased by 40%. So we've delved into the origins of the modern workweek to see if it makes any sense that in the 21st century we still have a Friday (or a Monday) of work."
This is the largest mass of fresh water in the world but we can't access it: "All the water on Earth, 97.5% is salty and the other 2% is frozen in the polar ice caps. So what percentage of water can we drink? Well, we have approximately 0.5% of all the water in the world. So most of the world's drinking water is inaccessible, for now, to us. As is the case of what is considered the largest mass of fresh water: the Antarctic polar ice cap."
They recover amphorae with Roman-era sauces in perfect condition: "If preserved foods are prepared in the right way, they can be stored without spoiling for months, years... and even centuries. This last thing is what has happened with a hundred Roman amphorae that have been found under the Mediterranean Sea with their content in perfect condition."
How to stop climate change? By reducing the number of humans, according to 11,000 scientists: "Between 1900 and 2019, the human species has gone from 1.6 billion individuals to 7.7 billion, a leap that has transformed our relationship with the planet. For the worse. Now, 11,000 scientists from around the world have identified global population growth as one of the barriers to stopping climate change."
Monster Planets - NASA compiles the most terrifying exoplanets we've found in recent years: "NASA itself has compiled two fascinating lists of planets whose conditions seem straight out of a horror movie for the last Halloween. Some are the spitting image of hell, others are dead worlds, places of perpetual darkness, or exoplanets whose atmosphere would tear apart any ship crazy enough to get close to them."
How civilization has transformed the human species: "In a recent study, they compared the genomes of individuals who lived in Europe between 5,500 and 3,000 years ago with those of current Europeans. The study identified the functions whose genetic substrate has undergone the most changes (mutations), giving rise to more variants, and also those in which the opposite has occurred."
The problems of Starliner and Crew Dragon, the new American crewed spacecraft: "On April 20, the DM-1 capsule that had flown into space exploded violently during a routine test to check the spacecraft's escape system engines before carrying out a second test of the same, this time in full flight. As if that weren't enough, that same month SpaceX suffered another setback during a routine test of the parachute deployment in Delamar (Nevada), in which they failed to inflate correctly (and no, there are no images of the incident, just as no high-resolution video of the Crew Dragon explosion has been released)."
The curious history of the sandwich (and why it caused the Great War): "According to Bee Wilson, author of Sandwich: A Global History, Montagu's real innovation was asking for that specific dish to be made for him, instead of taking the ingredients himself. This soon led other gamblers and workaholics to start asking for "the same as Sandwich" and soon just a "sandwich". The word became common usage from 1760."
"Without utopia we become mere resigned complainers": "What remains of utopia for democracy? Does neoliberalism have its own utopias? To what extent is this system alien to metaphysics and authoritarianism? Can the rebellion of the cyborg be considered utopian? Is transhumanism the best of possible futures for man?"
It never sinks, the scientific finding inspired by spiders and ants: "An innovative metallic structure that repels water and always floats has been developed at the University of Rochester (United States), taking inspiration from water spiders and fire ant rafts. This metallic structure has the property of not being able to sink, no matter how often you try to submerge it and despite being perforated and damaged. And how was it achieved?"
VIDEOS
The best card stacker in the world, popcorn exploding at 30,000 FPS, Junji Ito in a "haunted house", how speakers are made, kid has a spider on his face!, "Let it Go" from Frozen in Klingon, juggling while playing the drums, people trying to cross the street during a marathon, juggling with fire chairs, the difference between tubas of all prices, Jesus cosplay, funny documentary about a crazy insect, serious and disgusting documentary about ticks, Lego Pizza in stop motion, levitating ball, miniature horse, exciting cat rescue, chicken embryo grown in a glass, the impressive fish with a human face, more slaps from Vasily Kamotsky, the Dragon Ball Z dragon, free fall ride, iPhone 11 Pro vs iPhone Original, funny madness, the effect of a plane crashing into water in a movie from (1940), excavation of a giant ant colony and the animated short "The Oscars".
GALLERIES
Hand-painted shops in Somalia, the humor of Washbeast, Triste Mojave, the nightmare cat, Russians recreating famous paintings, famous GIFs in context, beautiful mushrooms of all shapes, rocket launches, sculptures in pencil mines, the good dentist, Easy Rider behind the camera, El último día para mañana and the most expensive photographs in the world. To finish, as always, the Vertedero Animado and the Tiradero Visual.
https://old.neoteo.com/creepypasta-scp-4666/
