Recommended Links of the Week (No. 592)

Strange websites, unknown operating systems, cheese rind, dystopias, and a tax for remote workers are among the best of the week's web. If you want to know more, come on in, keep reading, and you'll surely find something to entertain you.

Absurd but addictive – The strangest websites in the world: "On the Internet you can do practically everything: from buying anything you need to checking data, searching for information, browsing, finding your childhood friends... But there are also pages that apparently serve no purpose. Today we compile the best strange websites, the strangest and most curious pages you can find on the Internet."

Your computer is not yours: "It's here. It happened. Did you notice? I'm talking, of course, about what Richard Stallman warned us about. What Cory Doctorow also warned us about. On modern versions of macOS, you simply can't turn on your computer, start an e-book reader or a text editor, and read and write without a record of your activity being controlled and transmitted."

The other operating systems: "Believe it or not, there is life beyond Windows, Linux, and macOS, but a lot of life, eh! Much of it hidden because in this world the only thing that matters is what's “mainstream”, but in those corners of the internet that few visit there are endangered species that manage to survive. Here is a compendium, with details on each, of at least 23 operating systems you can download and use."

Lovecraft and AI: the future belongs to the Shoggoth: "Lovecraft glimpsed the emerging relationship between man and machines, and the possible future of an AI and its attitude toward its organic creators. The problem, in any case, is that Lovecraft never intended to teach moral lessons to his readers, something common in science fiction, so that much of his speculations go almost unnoticed within the main plot."

Can you eat the rind of the cheese?: "The good news is that the answer to the question could not be more Galician, since depending on the type it can be eaten or not. But don't worry, it's easy to identify edible rinds from those that aren't and, best of all, you can also eat some that you probably thought you couldn't, and you can get much more out of them than you imagine."

Why do we like dystopias? Post-apocalyptic worlds and what we can learn from them: "There is no doubt about the current boom the genre is experiencing. But why? Why do we find this type of story so attractive? 'Even if they portray a dangerous or suffocating world, they have an element of escape from our reality. They serve to disconnect us from our own dystopia: from what we live now,' points out writer and journalist Francesc Miralles."

Nintendo's parallel reality, it never cared so little what Sony and Microsoft do with their consoles: "It's the first time the company has achieved what it needed: competing against itself without depending on the renewal cycles of its immediate competitors nor trying to compete by offering what they offer; because Sony and Microsoft do it better. The Switch is the culmination of an idea and a strategy that began in the era of Wii and DS."

The extermination of sparrows and the Great Chinese Famine: "Using a certain logic, they thought that eliminating sparrows would make those harvests more abundant since it removed one of the elements that damaged them most. All of China declared war on this little bird and practically managed to exterminate it. They destroyed nests, eggs, poisoned them... any method was good to kill sparrows. The plan was a success, only in that sense, in eliminating the sparrows."

The drawing with which John Coltrane illustrated the relationship between mathematics and music: "The brilliant saxophonist gave the drawing to his colleague and teacher Yusef Lateef in 1967, and he included it in his seminal text, 'Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns'. Where Lateef sees Coltrane's music as a "spiritual journey" that "highlighted the concerns of a long tradition of autophysiopsychic music", Alexander observes "the same geometric principles that motivated Einstein's quantum theory"."

A 5% tax on all remote workers, the coming debate about the future of the economy: "That's what a Deutsche Bank report published this week proposes. The argument goes like this: since remote workers stop interacting with a good part of the economy and since their salaries are generally higher, they should pay an extraordinary tax of 5% of their monthly income. The proceeds would be redistributed among workers who are forced to be on-site whose incomes do not exceed a certain threshold."

Origin and genetic legacy of prehistoric dogs: "That finding reveals that the diversity observed today among dogs in different parts of the world originated when all humans were still hunter-gatherers. According to Pontus Skoglund, group leader at Crick's Ancient Genomics lab, "some of the variations seen among the dogs walking on the street today originated in the Ice Age.""

Alain Bombard, the voluntary castaway who crossed the Atlantic alone and without provisions on purpose: "In 1952, French doctor Alain Bombard set out to prove that it was possible to survive a shipwreck by feeding on the fish you could catch and drinking rainwater and seawater. To do this, and against general disbelief, he set off to cross the Atlantic in a four-and-a-half-meter inflatable boat, with a sextant, a watch, and a canvas to cover himself as all his luggage, in an adventure known as the Bombard experiment."

VIDEOS: Jim Carrey as the Joker, Animal Crossing TV Teaser, Tetris in bluegrass, the "Among Us" that will destroy your PC, the "sausage shaker", how soy sauce is made, the birth of the monarch butterfly, the secret of the PS1, James Hancock playing the hydraulophone, super realistic transformer, Gizmoduck cosplay, animal bloopers, reading is useless, God created the nose because he knew we would wear glasses :D, roller coaster in Switzerland, building a tunnel in a weekend, Gelmer Funicular, No Es Justo (Remix) Marimba de Chonta - Enrique Riascos, Tarantino Clapper board by Wizz, the evolution of FPS, how billions of blueberries are harvested in six weeks, Jane Aaron - Set in Motion (1987), tribute to public telephones in cinema, cat gag reflex, herding the flock, multiplying by nine, TOM & JERRY - Official Trailer (hmm), caterpillar stuck in a loop and Russian cyberpunk farm.

GALLERIES: Social criticism and humor, rat in New York subway, dad and baby, aerial photos of ballet, winning photos of the "International Photography Awards 2020", the art of Horacio Salinas, absolutely brilliant cakes, the happiness of small things, superheroes if played by Keanu Reeves, the best photos of "Nature Photo Competition 2020", super realistic drawings, artificial blooms, the highest resolution snowflake photos ever taken, the art of Kajahl Specter, the art of Steeven Salvat, Russian girls with cars, the fish of Louis Renard (1700), the naturalist digital art of Julien Tabet, Volkswagen Beetle of 1961, award-winning architecture photos, the Vertedero Animado and the Tiradero Visual.

Thank you very much for your visit! Today we publish later due to a problem in the alignment of the planets totally unrelated to this server. Big hug!