What will you find in the Recommended Links of the Week? Many things, but here are some examples: Dopamine and riches, Buzz Aldrin's helmet, millionaire 'astronauts', window tax and the minimalist language of happiness. Convinced? Keep reading!

Recommended Links of the Week (No. 627)

What negative effects can billionaire 'astronauts' have on our planet's atmosphere?: "The burning of these propellants provides the energy needed to launch rockets into space and, at the same time, generates greenhouse gases and air pollutants. Large amounts of water vapor are produced when burning BE-3 fuel, while the combustion of VSS Unity and Falcon propellants produces CO2, soot, and some water vapor."

They reconstruct what Buzz Aldrin saw on the Moon from the reflection in his helmet: "From the collection of historic photos taken 52 years ago during the Apollo 11 mission, after the first historic landing on the Moon, the one showing Buzz Aldrin taken by Neil Armstrong was iconic. More than half a century later, a visual artist shows us what the astronaut saw through his helmet. The author of the work is Reddit user and visual effects artist Michael Ranger, and the result is…"

Your dopamine will make them rich, notes on the free market of attention: "Operant conditioning is the learning process by which behavior is influenced by a system of reward and punishment. It can take the form of positive reinforcement —a new kitten video, a hilarious meme, a photo of your crush— or negative —loss of followers, less reach. The typical punishment imposed by the algorithm when there is no repeated use of the platform—."

Spectacular drone show in Tokyo 2020

Centuries ago there was a window tax. These are the architectural remains of a calamitous law: "In principle, the tax had two parts: a fixed rate of two shillings per house, equivalent today to about 16 euros, and a variable part depending on the number of windows: houses with 10 to 20 windows would pay four shillings more, and those with more than 20 windows, eight shillings. A house with 20 windows would therefore pay the equivalent of about 78 euros per year."

'Toki Pona', a minimalist language that helps us be happier: "Only about 4,000 people in the world understand this language invented by Canadian linguist Sonja Lang that seeks to express a lot with few words. Only about 4,000 people in the world understand this language invented by Canadian linguist Sonja Lang that seeks to express a lot with few words. It is about simplifying complicated things into small parts, eliminating the unnecessary, having fun, helping us live in the present, and fostering a simple and happy life."

Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan's song of hate and revenge: "When Dylan listened to the master, he asked that the organ sound be more prominent, since it had been relegated by the band's volume, and so Like A Rolling Stone finally ended up after twenty takes in which they emphasized that electric spirit, which combined with the cynical tone with which Dylan sings, became the best rock song in history, according to Rolling Stone magazine's poll."

7777 Days

Al-Badawi, the oldest olive tree in the world: "The olive tree is an ancient tree, used by humanity since remote times. It is easy for an olive tree to live many years, several hundred, and to maintain its lush appearance. But reaching 40 centuries of history, as the oldest olive tree in the world has, is a testament to the extraordinary strength this tree possesses. And you might be wondering if it still produces olives. Indeed it does. Do you want to know more about this magical tree?"

The first man killed by a robot: "Asimov's three laws of robotics are nothing more than ideas. (...) After all, if the software industry has been fighting piracy for decades and hasn't managed to stop it, why would it get this right? Today I'm going to tell you a curistoria about the first man killed by a robot. Mind you, no murders or intentionality, but, as we will see, we could say that the robot violated Asimov's three laws that day."

The eyes don't stop seeing when they move from side to side: "To test to what extent we stop seeing during those retinal jerks, the team of Richard Schweitzer and Martin Rolfs designed a series of experiments (...) with which they have managed to demonstrate that the eyes capture important information from the environment during those lapses and the brain uses it to make decisions. To do this, the authors of the work used a special type of high-speed projector that generates about 70 images per saccadic movement."

Coolio - Gangsta's Paradise with Tesla coils

A massive data leak reveals that spyware from Israeli company NSO Group is used to attack activists, journalists, and political figures worldwide: "The Pegasus Project is an innovative collaborative investigation involving more than 80 journalists from 17 media organizations in 10 countries, coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a non-profit media organization based in Paris (France), with technical support from Amnesty International, which conducted cutting-edge forensic analysis of mobile phones to identify traces of the spyware."

Toxic positivity, the danger of always seeing the good side of things: "Classrooms, hospitals, and offices are full of posters that encourage us to find meaning and happiness in everything. At night, we sit on the couch and scroll through our phone screens, which take us from one quote or motivational photo to another. If we don't progress further, we tell ourselves while seeing all those smiles, that perfection, and those good vibes, it's because we're not trying hard enough. The pressure to be happy and appear so has never been greater at any other moment in history. Just as there have never been more anxious and depressed people."

The medieval fear of the number 0: "Indo-Arabic numerals are ubiquitous and recognizable worldwide. Their application with positional notation spread through Europe in the Middle Ages thanks to the Arabs and to Leonardo of Pisa's Liber abbaci in the 12th century. However, the church did not like the idea of zero and, by extension, Arabic numerals...or at least, that's the usual story. It is commonly said that zero represented nothingness, a concept that seemed to conflict with the soul and spirituality. Nothingness would have been associated with the work of Satan, so zero would be his symbol."

SONIC 2 made of cardboard

Videos

Flying a drone in an abandoned factory

Galleries

Beautiful embroidery, landscapes by Anastasia Trusova, watercolors by Hiroki Takeda, heat in Soviet Russia, Prentzinger's Celestial Atlas (1851), encounter between the ISS and the CSS with the sun in the background, making wine in Burgundy, overly creative designs, mobile phone photography awards, people making fun crafts, Hikaru Cho's body illusions, when everything was polluted without guilt, public urinals in Paris, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump to finish off.

https://old.neoteo.com/prince-of-persia-open-source/

I went to sleep. Thanks for stopping by!