Recommended Links of the Week (No. 661)

The discordization of the Internet, elongated skulls, role-playing games from the past, and spinach in the desert. An ideal selection for the bored or the night owl. That's what this section called the Recommended Links of the Week is about, which, as if that weren't enough, includes viral videos and galleries everywhere.

Help, the Internet has been Discordified: "Discord has taken the metonymy of a pejorative term, but it is not to blame for this phenomenon. Merely becoming important has tolls to pay like this one, and the example of Discord is perfect: communities that share messages and often interesting conversations, which would be useful to many people beyond those also in that server, but where it is almost impossible for outsiders to reach."

This AI found 40,000 possible chemical weapons in just a few hours: "Artificial intelligence has more and more useful applications in medicine. The problem is that a simple change of direction can lead the same algorithms used to do good to achieve the opposite. That is what an international team of scientists has just demonstrated by obtaining more than 40,000 possible chemical weapons with AI initially used for drug discovery."

Elongated skulls: "The practice of artificially deforming the skull is a custom observed in numerous peoples from different parts of the planet, often without geographic or temporal connection. From the Maya or the Paracas in America to Australian Aborigines, these cultures modified their skulls for aesthetic reasons, social status, or tribal affiliation. Artificial cranial deformation is performed by distorting the normal growth of a child's skull (from approximately one month of life for six months) by applying bandages and/or wood."

The other role-playing games (Rolemaster, The Lord of the Rings, Cyberpunk, RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu): "And although in that universe the name Dungeons & Dragons may be the most famous, today I'm going to talk about the 'other' role-playing games, from those that required you to earn a degree to get their 'trick', to those that let you know Gandalf's 'level', including those that informed you that, at some uncertain future moment, Aragon and Catalonia will face each other in a war over water with cyber-psychotic people."

25 years of GoldenEye 007, the turning point for console FPS: "GoldenEye 007 is not simply one of the great N64 classics: it is one of the most influential video games in history. Undoubtedly. The third best-selling cartridge for Nintendo's legendary 64-bit console (mind you, above Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, or Super Smash Bros.) and one of the pillars of modern FPS. And although in terms of content it is based on the Bond universe, its development was a true mission impossible."

The reason for the enormous velociraptors in Jurassic Park: "In Jurassic Park and its sequels, velociraptors stand out for their size, surpassing the waist of humans or being able to look them directly in the face. The reality is that this size would be more typical of a Deinonychus or a Utahraptor, respectively, since Velociraptor barely rises half a meter from the ground. Although Steven Spielberg is usually blamed for this inaccuracy, it precedes both his films and Michael Crichton's books."

William Herschel, the father of Uranus: "In 1781, news shook the scientific world: a musician had discovered a new planet beyond Saturn. For the first time since Antiquity, when only six planets were known, including Earth, the solar system was expanded with a new celestial body, which received the name Uranus. The achiever of the feat was William Herschel (born November 15, 1738), an organist passionate about studying the sky who became one of the greatest astronomers of all time."

Interview with Isaac Asimov about the Bible and science, religion and morality: "I have letters from creationists saying that they do not deny the scientific method, but rather they are trying to examine the irregularities of the evidence presented by evolutionists. However, that would not be the proper task of creationists. What they should do is present tangible evidence in favor of creationism, something they never do. They hide and attack the weaknesses of evolutionary theory, not hesitating to invent those weaknesses through distortion and, in my opinion, premeditated fraud."

Letters from a Dead Man (1986): "In the case of Letters from a Dead Man, the initial spirit that drove its creation was established almost exclusively in the panic of nuclear holocaust, the result of the irrational arms race with which the United States and the Soviet Union were pressuring each other and which threatened to make life on our planet impractical. However, the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident, which occurred five months before the film's release, conditions its final message and part of its argument."

Spinach in the desert, the unexpected benefit of solar panels: "In recent years, many technologies have emerged to convert water vapor in the air into fresh water. Unfortunately, the amount of water that these types of systems can produce per square meter is quite negligible, which limits their applications and also makes the result excessively expensive for them to be practical. Now, a team of scientists from Saudi Arabia has created a solar-powered system that allows successful spinach cultivation using water extracted from the air while producing electricity."

The electric battery of the Ark of the Covenant: "After the creation of the Leyden jar in 1745, the first electrical capacitor, Georg Wilhelm Lichtenberg (1742-1799) tried to answer this last question by pointing out that the Ark of the Covenant had a similar structure, generating electrical discharges, especially between the cherubim. He argued that one cherub was connected to the negative outer gold layer, while the other was connected to the positive inner layer. The charges would have accumulated due to the dry desert environment and static electricity transmitted when moving the wool that covered it."

50 years of 'Pink Flamingos', by John Waters, the most disgusting film that is part of the United States National Film Registry: "When the cult classic Pink Flamingos premiered worldwide at the University of Baltimore in mid-March 1972, many of those who attended the screening were stunned. The level of crudeness, audacity, and perversion that John Waters (director and screenwriter of the film) and the lead actors exhibited in the movie scandalized some. However, it also made the public start talking about it then and encouraged others to go see it."

VIDEOS: Pigs against bear, the Sonic 2 trailer, BELLATRIX (Sébastien Guérive), the temperature spiral from 1880 to 2021, why you don't have a jetpack, 365 days of mushrooms growing, the tallest man in the world, the scammer loses his head, exploding a bubble from the inside in slow motion, the robotic cheetah at super speed, the bloopers of Spider-Man: No Way Home, do Teslas kill cats?, Hot Wheels in the garden water park, Invincible by Eddie Vedder with NASA Artemis footage, if The Witcher were an anime, dart-throwing helmet, cars on Hollywood's Sunset Blvd in the 50s in color and 60fps, Turrican 2 - The Desert Rocks, the difference between Ryu and Ken in all Street Fighter games, the cheapest private room on Japan's sleeper train, Jim Lee drawing Batman, Naruto - Sadness And Sorrow (Gingertail Cover), auroras in 4K, and the short 2002 (YEAR OF THE HORSE).

GALERIES: Those wonderful monumental tourist maps, the beautiful mold of Barry Webb, the funny Japanese grandmother, strange animals, artistic makeup, vintage storefronts, fairies made of insects, monstrous sandwiches, sunrise from the ISS, a contest of men in costume around the world, a new psychedelic fish, fish carved from vegetables, girls from the 40s on bicycles, the animated dump of the week and the visual dump.

I'm tired. It's over. Goodbye and thanks for stopping by.