Massacres, monsters, and Lovecraft. Engines, the sociology of Spirited Away, and the 'New Weird'. LSD and the number 42. If you add many other articles, videos of all kinds, and the best galleries, the result is simple: the Recommended Links of the Week, nothing more, nothing less. Enjoy!
Turning on the last engines similar to the RMS Titanic's still in operation: "In the present only two machines remain in operation similar to those that propelled the RMS Titanic, and they are two Worthington-Simpson machines of 1008 hp built between 1926 and 1929, about a decade and a half after the historic sinking. These machines were used to pump about 19 million gallons of water daily from the River Thames to supply the water purification plants of the London network."
The secrets of the number 42: "Many wondered if the use of 42 in Douglas Adams's novel had any special meaning. The author's answer was blunt: "It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary and rather small number, and I chose that one. The binary representations, base 13, and Tibetan monks are nonsense. I sat at my desk, looked at the garden, and thought '42 will do.' And I wrote it.""
This is how the world agreed on time: "There was no scientific reason to fix the imaginary line at any specific point. It was therefore a political decision in which the power and prestige of each country came into play. A purely geopolitical choice. Three proposals as base meridians were put forward."
Curiosities about H.P. Lovecraft: "These curiosities will focus mostly on data related to his works, but I thought it interesting to add some more personal data about the author, which I believe help to better understand the mind behind all his masterful science fiction and horror stories."
The vindication of doing nothing, when yawning becomes an act of resistance: "And on this journey towards procrastination, in this unmatched apology for yawning, what better than to use science to vindicate once and for all that another world (less efficient) is possible. Young researcher Andrew Smart, an expert in neuroscience, explains in 'The Art and Science of Doing Nothing' that being in a daze, spaced out, or staring into space does not mean reducing brain activity to zero."
Spirited Away from a sociological perspective: "In this article we will analyze the film Spirited Away and the different messages present in this fantastic film. To do so, we will talk about the film and its relationship with four subdisciplines of sociology: urban sociology, environmental sociology, economic sociology, and gender sociology. All without revealing pivotal events of the plot so that those who have not seen the film can still enjoy it (no spoilers)."
Transcribing at full speed with a 21-key keyboard: the stenographer's craft, according to someone who's been in it for 35 years: "Not a single sigh escapes them. They are the impartial eyes of History. They enter the room with their little 21-key machine and write down everything that happens in trials, the Congress of Deputies, or any event that requires someone to write down everything that is said and happens in the room to be kept neutrally, without a single comma escaping."
'New Weird', cartography of a lost genre: "In a way, and from a Burroughsian perspective, we could say it behaves like a virus: it mutates so that the reader -or the host- never comes to naturalize it. It changes to survive. It is a literature of instability that draws on various genres, hybridizes them, but to transcend them or transform them into something else."
The crazy plan to flood the world with LSD: "In psychedelic circles, there is still talk of a mysterious tank of thousands of liters of LSD that a hand will one day open to "expand universal consciousness". This dream -or nightmare, depending on how you look at it- was wanted to be made reality by the members of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, former drug dealers turned hippies who created their own acid brand, Orange Sunshine, and distributed millions of doses during the 60s and 70s."
The Yellow Fleet. The ships that got stuck in the Suez Canal for seven years: "About two hundred ships have been seen trapped in the jam, and they were there almost a week waiting to be released. But the experience they lived, trapped in a ship that cannot move, is absolutely negligible compared to what the crew of the so-called Yellow Fleet had to live through."
Wendigo, the winter cannibal: "Among the Algonquin peoples of eastern Canada, such as the Cree or northern Ojibwa, there was talk of a solitary giant with bulging eyes, a heart of ice, and a lipless mouth with sharp teeth from which blood flowed, because he himself had devoured them. It was said that in the cold of winter, he lurked in the forests, moving literally like a storm that uprooted trees and hunting humans."
The Cassinga Massacre, 1978: "The indiscriminate attack by the South African army against the refugee camp resulted in the death of 624 civilians, mostly women and children, and 611 wounded of varying severity. This massacre against civilians, which constitutes a serious war crime, was denied at the time by the government of South Africa, considering the deaths as collateral damage."
VIDEOS: Spider crab hugs camera, The Wellerman (by Gingertail), the sound of a Paleolithic shell, dog detector, people playing volleyball next to erupting volcano, the music of Bosch's butt, the most beautiful formula in the world, cars balancing on a seesaw, "hacking" Omegle, Power Rangers VS King Kong, if the Simpsons were British, the music of 1999 in three and a half minutes, how to win at Jenga, incredible trick with six balls, dog ruins report, giant python in the drain, reindeer cyclone, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by a thousand musicians, Cobra Kai Anime, Lego Chocolate Cake, the backgrounds of the first Pokémon cards, Rick and Morty Babies.
GALLERIES: Realistic transformations of animated characters, photos of chicks, things deep-cleaned, catalog of retro exotic models, paintings of a nostalgic past by Philipp Kubarev, meat emojis, giant model cosplaying as Lady Dimitrescu, the art of Andrei Riabovitchev, adorable portraits by Maromi Sagi, salt like flowers on the floor, Mother Russia statue, Andy Warhol's recipe book, Viking tattoos, completely frozen apartment building, the psychedelic seafloor, more photos of Barbi Benton, the Louvre collection online, the Week's Animated Dump and the Visual Dump.
