Best Weekly Links: Christmas Edition

A Week in Links: Christmas Edition

This week's link roundup is out on autopilot, as it was written on Wednesday. In this edition: the orgies that may follow lockdown, Disease X, the DNA of computers, and flight attendant anecdotes.

Reads

Happy 20s?: Sex, Sacrilege, and Spending Will Dominate the World After the Pandemic, According to a Yale Professor: "Once the world emerges from the crisis—which Christakis estimates will happen in 2024—people, tired of self-isolation, will begin seeking social interaction 'relentlessly,' which could be marked by 'sexual licentiousness' and a 'retreat from religiosity.' The same, he argued, happened after the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which gave way to the Roaring Twenties."

In Search of 'Disease X': "So far, there is a vaccine and treatment for Ebola that have reduced the death rate. But the question on everyone's mind is: What if this woman doesn't have Ebola? What if she is patient zero for 'Disease X,' the first known infection of a new pathogen that could sweep the world as fast as covid-19 but has a mortality rate of 50% to 90% like Ebola?"

Benjamin Franklin's Decision Not to Inoculate His Son: "At that time, Edward Jenner's effective and safe vaccine didn't exist; they used the technique of inoculation. They used a thread that had passed through the pustule of a smallpox patient, dried and stored. For variolation or inoculation, an incision was made and the thread was passed through it."

Schröder's 3D staircase

The DNA of Our Computers Is Over 4,400 Years Old: The Surprising Story of the Binary System: "The DNA that has made life on Earth possible and the binary system used by our digital devices have a lot in common. Just as DNA encodes the instructions that enable the development and proper functioning of living organisms, the binary system is the natural method used by our electronic devices to encode information and perform operations with it."

The Hays Code That Censored Hollywood Movies for Decades: "There are many types of censorship, from preventive self-censorship due to prudence or fear, to external censorship of a finished work. Between these two extremes lies the Hays Code that censored Hollywood films for decades. That code established a huge set of rules controlling what could or could not appear in movies."

The Real Story Behind 'Mank' and the Dispute Over the Authorship of 'Citizen Kane'’s Screenplay: "Using the race to write the Citizen Kane screenplay as a thread, the film revives what may be one of the greatest disputes in film history: speculating about the true authorship of the screenplay of what many still consider the best film of all time."

The "KFC console that heats up chicken"

Invasion USA: 5 Plans to Attack the United States Throughout History: "Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about the Chuck Norris movie or the two versions of Red Dawn. Today I’ll dedicate the post to invasions or plans to attack U.S. territory. I set aside the 9/11 terrorist attacks or Pancho Villa's incursion, and I'll mainly stick to more 'conventional' operations aimed at occupying territory."

11 Urban Legends About Movies That Aren't True: "One would think, with all of us having Google at our fingertips, that easily verifiable myths would already be dead. But no: paradoxically, the Internet has made it much easier to spread nonsense as fact. So-called fake news, right? Let's try to debunk some of the most famous ones in film."

Asimov Monograph: The Foundation Trilogy: "Asimov was one of the main cultivators of what he himself called 'hard science fiction,' characterized by building stories on speculation about the future possibilities of science, honoring the genre's name. Therefore, soft science fiction would be that part of the genre that uses the futuristic setting as mere scenery to place classic adventure plots (for example, the so-called space opera)."

Duck playing the drum

https://www.youtube.com/embed/vdnlptVP2B8

10 Songs Inspired by Charles Bukowski: The Great Poet of the Mundane: "Below we review a dozen songs inspired by Charles Bukowski's texts, some clearly and others more tangentially. But there’s the pen of the emperor of the forgotten. Because Bukowski is a state of mind with no possible redemption, always condemned."

Curiosities and Anecdotes from a Flight Attendant Without Secrets: "I assure you that flight attendant anecdotes could fill a 'best seller.' From stories with celebrities to surreal requests from business passengers who think they're God, scatological moments, limit emergencies, gossip, and on-board curiosities we couldn't imagine, or WTF moments during flights that even the most perverse film director or comedian would never have imagined."

The Women Who Defeated the Terrifying Nazi Submarines with a Strategy Game: "In January 1942, faced with the devastation caused by Nazi submarines in the Atlantic waters, the British Royal Navy decided to create a special unit to develop new and more effective tactics in naval warfare. This mission, based in Liverpool, was entrusted to Captain Gilbert Roberts and a team composed mainly of members of the Royal Naval Service for Women, better known as 'Wrens' for the acronym in English."

Hamster in a trap maze