Recommended Links of the Week (No. 670)

Lab-made black holes, work as a nightmare, Czechoslovak futuristic dystopia, the Hindsgavl dagger, Clearbot, and much, much more. This week's Recommended Links: a place, many sensations. Enjoy!

Can you destroy Earth with a laboratory black hole? - "Since it began operating in 2008, some members of the scientific community and other curious people have wondered whether it could open microscopic black holes. After it was turned on, NASA released a report that directly attacked sensationalist news claiming that turning on the Large Hadron Collider would be the end of Earth and humanity. However, the chances that the Large Hadron Collider creates microscopic black holes are not zero."

What the big oil companies knew about climate change, in their own words - "Four years ago I traveled through America, visiting historical archives. I was looking for documents that could reveal the hidden history of climate change and, in particular, when the main coal, oil, and gas companies realized the problem and what they knew about it. I studied boxes of papers, thousands of pages. I began to recognize the sources of typewriters from the 1960s and 1970s and marveled at the legibility of past handwriting, and I got used to squinting when it wasn't so clear."

Tarkovsky in science-fiction mode, the film that anticipated Chernobyl - "In 1979, Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky released what is considered one of his culminating works and one of the 30 best films in history, according to the British Film Institute: Stalker. A film that, almost prophetically, anticipated the atmosphere and even the anguish that would surround the events of Chernobyl years later, to the point that even the popular term for the exclusion zone created by the Soviet authorities, 'The Zone', was taken from the film and the guides who venture into the territory are known as stalkers."

Original color and new inscriptions revealed at the Temple of Esna in Egypt - "The joint Egyptian-German archaeological mission working at the Temple of Esna managed to reveal the inscriptions, images, and colors on the ceilings and walls of the temple, after completing its cleaning work within the temple restoration project. Mustafa Waziri, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, explained that the work resulted in the recovery of the original bright inscriptions and colors of the decoration located under the middle ceiling above the temple entrance, at a height of about 14 meters."

What 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' shows us about human-caused landscape changes - "Almost imperceptibly, we witness day by day a new revolution in the landscape: the natural recovery and spontaneous colonization of the forest, which gradually regains spaces that man once took from it. The sources for documenting landscape changes are very varied: written documentation, images (paintings and photographs), analysis of pollen stored in the soil (paleobotany), analysis of tree ring growth (dendrochronology), historical cartography and inventories, archaeology, and cinematography."

Severance - When work is a nightmare - "Imagine spending your hours inside an office, all the hours you are conscious, and knowing nothing beyond the hallways of the company you work for. When it's time to go home, you get in the elevator and your mind disconnects; what happens outside the office will not be recorded in that part of your memory. Rest and free time will pass beyond the reach of your consciousness: when you return to the office, those rest hours will simply seem not to have existed and you will find yourself about to start a new workday. Your whole world is an endless workday."

Clearbot, the aquatic drone governed by Artificial Intelligence capable of collecting a ton of plastic daily - "Every year that passes, millions of tons of plastic waste float in rivers, waterways, and oceans. This fact, instead of declining, is constantly increasing. It is estimated that by 2040, if everything continues as is, the volume of plastic garbage will triple in the oceans until reaching 50 kilos per meter of coastline. To try to solve this situation, Open Ocean Engineering, a startup operating in Hong Kong, has developed Clearbot Neo. It is an aquatic drone governed by artificial intelligence that is responsible for collecting tons of floating garbage in the water."

The 'door' on Mars: the explanation for the mysterious formation in a photo of the red planet - "With a striking rectangular shape and a smooth cut that contrasts with the rough rock around it, a geological formation on Mars has generated questions for several days. Some have found it to look like a 'door' and others have ventured theories about whether an extraterrestrial civilization could have created a 'passage' on the neighboring planet. But what the photo taken by the robot Curiosity, which has been sending information from Mars since 2012, shows has a more logical explanation. According to NASA, it's all a matter of perspective."

The Hindsgavl dagger, a surprising prehistoric flint object inspired by bronze designs - "Humans created flint tools from the Paleolithic over 10,000 years ago until the end of the Neolithic, when the technical level was already very high, and just when the spread of metallurgy and bronze work was beginning to spread. The Bronze Age, which begins in Asia Minor around 3300 BC, would still take about 1,500 years to reach present-day Denmark. By the year the Hindsgavl Dagger is dated, the first imported bronze daggers were already beginning to appear, and the artisan who made it in flint tried to imitate its shape."

This store is located on a cliff and hangs at 120 meters high - Nothing can surpass the small shop located on the wall of a mountain in the Shiniuzhai National Geological Park in Hunan Province. As you might imagine, its location gives the main clue to its existence: the shop run by intrepid workers serves to offer supplies to climbers. And the place hangs from the side of a cliff at a height of 120 meters. Such a unique location that gives meaning to its function, since its owner offers all kinds of refreshments, such as drinks and sandwiches, while the 'customers' climb the wall in the Shiniuzhai National Geological Park in Hunan Province.

'RUR', the Czechoslovak futuristic dystopia in which the term 'robot' was first used - "Considered by the Gestapo as the 'public enemy number two', the Czech writer Karel Capel wrote RUR in 1920, a play that introduced and popularized the term robot, which came from the word for servitude in Slavic languages. The story told of life in a robot factory designed as an advanced proletariat, cheaper and more docile. The dystopia was the usual one: at some point, they ended up rebelling. Now, a Czech graphic novel has rescued this work on its centenary."

Minuet to a pixelated castle - 25 years of Castlevania Symphony of the Night - Perhaps the greatest legacy of Symphony... are its sequels on handheld consoles, Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS, which were bestsellers and produced on a very low budget. Furthermore, between the celebrated Super Metroid and this Konami title, the 'Metroidvania' genre would be consolidated, which has given rise to dozens of Western games where platforms and adventure are combined with the same ambition. These combined elements, which tempered the excesses of one genre or another, made many people play through the title and remember it with true fervor.

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Did you enjoy it? I hope so!