Recommended Links of the Week (No. 678)

Strange beings that have inhabited the Earth, tearing off their nails before going into space, the Moonies, new luxury beliefs and Japanese science fiction. A luxury menu with everything you need to have a good time without losing too many neurons. Enjoy!

Fountain of Dreams, the Post-Apocalyptic RPG as Unofficial Sequel to Wasteland: "50 years after the events known as "The Change", life on the island of Florida is constantly threatened by mutations due to residual ionizing radiation. To this threat are added the deranged and heavily armed Killer Clowns, as well as other organized crime factions: the DeSoto Family, the Obeah Order, and the Bay Mafia. In this post-apocalyptic future our adventure begins, where we control a small group of adventurers who set out in search of the purifying waters of the legendary "Fountain of Dreams".

Some of the Strangest Beings That Have Inhabited Earth: These considerations led paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson to affirm that "the hunt for fossils carries the uncertainty and excitement of resurrecting a creature never before seen by human eyes, making us reflect on the enigmas of the meaning and nature of life and man". In the fossil record there are many examples of organisms whose existence we could never imagine, opening a window to earlier worlds.

The Man Who Could Have Prevented World War II: "Before even the annexation of Czechoslovakia to Germany in 1938, and at a time when Hitler had been proposed for the Nobel Peace Prize, after the signing of a peace agreement with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier of France, before Benito Mussolini. And even before January 1939, when the American magazine TIME named Hitler "Man of the Year 1938" (not necessarily the best of the year, but the most transcendent), Ivan Maisky, ambassador to the United Kingdom of the Soviet Union from 1932 to 1943, proposed a common front against the threat of Hitler in Europe."

Why Do Some Astronauts Pull Out Their Nails Before Traveling to Space?: "After a trip to space, astronauts can suffer all kinds of effects on their health, from loss of bone and muscle mass to headaches, including vision problems or kidney stones. They can even see effects as rare as a lengthening of the spine that makes them grow a few centimeters. These are some known consequences, but there are others quite rarer, such as the loss of fingernails."

Lissajous, Tuner of Tuners: "This was proposed by Jules Lissajous, when in 1854 he developed a new method to compare the tuning of tuning forks. His idea was simple, elegant and, why not say it, of great beauty. It consisted of visualizing the vibrations of the instrument's arms by optical methods. Until then, tuning forks had been tuned simply "by ear". Each new instrument was compared with a reference one, already tuned, and its arms were polished until the frequency of the sound coincided."

We Live a Miracle Every Month Because We Understand Almost Nothing: "A miracle is only a measure of our ignorance. It is something we don't understand. And unfortunately, there are too many things we still can't explain. Surely there is more than one thing a month. Even there are things that perhaps exist and we have mistakenly assumed they don't. Like Santa Claus. Or gnomes. Or that we live in the Matrix. For that reason, when it is scientifically affirmed that something does not exist, it is not implicitly suggesting that we have total certainty. Nor that we understand the whole universe. How can we understand it if miracles happen every month?"

Code of Ur-Nammu, the Oldest Law in History: "The code begins with a prologue detailing how the moon god Nanna chose Ur-Nammu as king of Ur, helped him defeat the city of Larsa, and endowed him with laws according to which all subjects were considered equal regardless of their social status, so that the orphan would not be prey to the rich, the widow would not be prey to the powerful, the man of one shekel would not be prey to the man of sixty shekels."

‘Moonies’, the Christian Sect That Venerates a Golden Rifle and Wants to Destroy Communism: "Imagine that when you are 16 years old, Jesus Christ appears in your bedroom and tells you that you are the chosen one on Earth to finish his unfinished work. Imagine that you not only believe it but get carried away and propose to unify all the Christian churches in the world, overthrow communism/satanism by manufacturing your own M16 rifles and make "presidents and kings bow down" at your feet. This is, more or less, what happened to the young Sun Myung Moon in his home in Korea back in 1936."

Eroguro - Grotesque, Wonderful, Misunderstood: "For it seemed that Ero-guro was destined from the beginning to degenerate, to rot for its own satisfaction, to be misunderstood. For the Taisho era and the Showa era that followed were marked by both world wars, along with the silent and stinging feeling of shame of a defeated and nuclear-burned nation. Nihilists, they rose up defying all logic, false prophets full of alcohol proclaimed eternal gods among their ranks, failed poets cursed by impure and unethical loves defiled the pure and unblemished paper of their letters with unhealthy confessions."

The First Photograph in History May Stop Being So at Any Moment: A Look at Niepce's Window: "History always tries to find origins. The first human, the first book... in the history of photography they found it in 1952: 'View from the Window at Le Gras'. The Gernsheim couple bought the philosopher's stone and shared it with the rest of the world. But the first step was taken in 2019 when the Ransom Center museum, where it is kept, stopped considering it as such."

The Elites and (New) Luxury Beliefs: "Luxury beliefs are ideas that the elite forge and spread to increase their social status. Henderson points out that this practice is a consequence of consumer goods having lost the differentiating role they once had: the masses can access fashion designs, travel by plane, or carry a high-end phone in their pocket. This, added to the fact that material ostentation has become a bad-taste habit, has provoked the fever of moral exhibitionism we are witnessing."

‘Ooku’, by Yoshinaga Fumi; a masterpiece of Japanese science fiction: "In the Edo period (1603-1868), during the regency of Iemitsu, the third shogun, an epidemic of the so-called "red-face smallpox", which affects only men, eliminates a large part of the male population, and most families of farmers, merchants and even warriors lose their heirs. Iemitsu himself succumbs to the plague, and is secretly replaced by one of his illegitimate daughters. Society naturally transforms into a system in which the positions of men and women are inverted."

Videos

the new Testament music video, against Nintendo, beating Elden Ring with a piano, the real Eye of Sauron, Hey Jude with forty fingers, without caffeine for thirty days, Alfa Romeo in Unreal Engine 5, stealing a Tesla with $20, eight types of Japanese candies, star airplane because of kids, wrapping a sandwich, bass solo with 69 strings, the largest spider in the world, "Dolly Parton: All Shook Up" as Elvis, how does SEGA's SUPER SCALER work?, Lindsey Stirling - Love Goes On, excellent military sonata, transporting the most valuable object, artificial intelligence explains the life of ants, world record speed on a bicycle (272km/h), and a very good Lovecraftian short film called "Eldritch Code"

Galleries

The first images of James Webb, photos of drunks from 1860, summers in late-century Massachusetts, ancient illustrations of jellyfish, portraits of prostitutes from the early 20th century, covers of Canadian architects' magazines, Game Boy Pocket camera made mirrorless, portraits of cats, explore video game maps, best Astronomy photos of 2022, circuses of 1940, Weekly Animated Dump and the Visual Dump.

Hey, thanks for stopping by. I hope you had a good time.