Recommended Links of the Week (No. 654)

Only for you. In this edition of Recommended Links we have haptic suits, comet parties, vampire novels, and leftover women, among many other things. A moment of healthy procrastination. Enjoy!

Here comes the comet! The dangerous comet fad that captivated the world: Since then, every appearance of Halley was accompanied by a huge fad that translated into all kinds of objects, accessories, and fetishes, such as scarves, fans, card games, books, or hairpins. The Halley fever had arrived. The supposed end, for many, was the closest thing to a party, and in 1910, while the phenomenon was happening, they held parties with dances and music, decorating their heads with ribbons with commemorative illustrations of the comet, or wearing necklaces and pins with Halley motifs, turned into a fad that dragged in a lot of money.

Vampire time, five indispensable novels beyond Twilight: Mythology and folklore aside, if we refer exclusively to the figure of the vampire in the novel genre, everything begins in the nineteenth century, a nice time to wear a top hat and frock coat, inhale the black smoke of capitalism, and catch syphilis doing things outside the house that you shouldn't. It is also a prolific moment for letters. Gothic narrative and the Romantic movement, in their journey to the irrational, the supernatural, and the dark, will find in vampire literature a particularly fertile field to explore the beauty of terror.

PolyStation, the console that ruined a generation's dreams: Children's greatest fears are the dark, the monster in the closet, and opening a gift that turns out to be a PolyStation. At least for those born between the late 80s and early 90s. There was no greater misfortune than a relative with little gaming knowledge having to handle the Christmas gift, because then the chances increased that some unscrupulous clerk would palm off a PolyStation on them.

The key to the metaverse's success will not be sight but touch: Mark Zuckerberg and company want to sell us the metaverse as a place to work, play, and meet with friends virtually, but for this new virtual universe to have its 'big bang', a 'killer app' is needed. Something that really irresistibly attracts the entire population of the planet. As happened with the explosion of VHS video or the internet, that 'killer app' is sex. Virtual sex where you will necessarily have to feel that you are being touched and can touch others.

12 Recent Movies Where Sex Scenes Were Real: Actors and actresses highly committed to their work, their director, and the expected result. Unsimulated sex has been gradually becoming another attraction of cinema. Without choreography, without rehearsals, and without many instructions (sometimes none), some explicit scenes where eroticism takes over the big screen no longer leave anything to the imagination. No, we are not talking about pornography.

China's 'leftover women': "My mother calls me every week to ask if I have a boyfriend": "Woman, over 27 years old, single, economically independent, focused on her work, and in no hurry to start a family. In China, that status has had a name for years: 'sheng nu'. It is not an empathetic term. It translates as 'leftover women'. (...) "

Longest line of sight photographed on Earth: In April 2020, residents of the state of Punjab, in northern India, were surprised to see the Himalayas from the rooftops of their houses for the first time in decades. The country, like the rest of the planet, was in the middle of a lockdown to stop the spread of Covid-19. The closure of factories and the clearing of traffic from the streets had a significant impact on air quality. The improvement in air quality became evident when the Dhauladhar mountain range, part of the Lesser Himalayas, located about 200 kilometers away, "appeared" in the landscape one random morning.

"It was like descending onto another planet": what the first scientists to go down to 8,000 meters deep in the Atacama Trench found: Since reaching those ultra-depths is technically more or less like going to the Moon, dreaming of being eyewitnesses to their object of study was never an option… Until now. Both scientists descended to the place last week with the expedition of American explorer Víctor Vescovo, who in 2019 became the first person to visit the five deepest points of the five oceans piloting a submarine specially built for that purpose.

Gladius, the sword that conquered the world: Year 200 BC, after a battle against the Romans, the Macedonian warriors wanted to bury their dead comrades. A chronicler reported on the terrifying wounds inflicted by Roman swords; the Macedonians were totally horrified by the damage the Romans had caused to the bodies of their soldiers. Those men were destroyed; it was a success from both a psychological and military point of view.

A cocktail of drugs allows frogs to regenerate their amputated limbs: For millions of people who have lost their legs and arms for different reasons, such as diabetes or trauma, the possibility of recovering function through natural regeneration is still out of reach. This remains a thing of salamanders, starfish, crabs, or lizards. Now, scientists from Tufts University (USA) and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University have come a little closer to this goal of regenerative medicine thanks to work published in the journal Science Advances.

When the Finnish army deactivated Soviet mines using music: Today we are going to tell another case in which the same song was broadcast in a loop for three consecutive days, sowing confusion among listeners. Only this time the mystery was solved after that time: the objective was to drain the batteries of mines controlled precisely by radio. It happened in Finland in 1939 and the music in question was a very popular folk song: the Säkkijärven polkka.

They discover a strange object never seen in the Universe: An international team of astronomers has detected a completely unknown astronomical object because it has an ultra-powerful magnetic field. It could be a new type of neutron star or a white dwarf, that is, the collapsed core of a star. For now, astronomers lean toward the first option: a type of neutron star called an "Ultra-Long Period Magnetar". What is already known is that it is smaller than our sun and is located about 4,000 light years from Earth.

Videos

Terrifying abandoned statue park, the bottom of the Mariana Trench, little foxes playing in the snow, FPGA vs. emulator, full Hitchcock interview (subtitled in Spanish), how he recovered two million dollars from a bitcoin wallet, penguins hunting underwater, bad luck, rat fantascope from 1833, the most beautiful songs according to Reddit, LIVE @ cyber dimension, running every day for two years, canine machine, macro art with spores and M&M, Mario Kart only with voice commands, Miami Airshow - F-16 Demo, old cars vs new cars, what's inside a Rubik's cube, the short films Wake (science fiction) and Ties (3D printed), "Leftover women" (the documentary subtitled in Spanish) and the first and second season of "Los Simuladores" with AI-enhanced quality. All very good!

Galleries

Deep ocean creatures, Zumi's beautiful women, abstract animal sculptures, softening marble, race car photos with a Game Boy camera, video game girl illustrations, life in the Soviet Union, fragile ecologies in wool, Russian women in prison, Victorian erotic toys, Concorde manufacturing, vintage magic posters, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the Week.

If you got this far, you deserve a prize.

THANKS FOR YOUR VISIT!