Recommended Links of the Week (No. 681)

Spanish role-playing games, ancestral mathematics, contaminated crime scenes, Sumerian benders and much more, of course. I don't even know why I write this, since you already know the Recommended Links of the Week are full of nice or at least interesting stuff. Enjoy!

Recommended reading

History, boobs, penises and other 'necessary things' (Spanish role-playing games up to the mid-90s): "We'll start with perhaps the flagship of Spanish role-playing games, Aquelarre, created by Ricard Ibáñez and published in 1990 by the dominant publisher of the time: Joc Internacional. From its very beginnings, this work has exactly the three ingredients: history (in its first edition it focused on the 13th to 15th centuries or the Late Middle Ages), boobs and penises, something that did not go unnoticed by American critics." And also, the download of the first volume of "Mundo Fantástico".

Conan and the games of heroic fantasy: "Today there are countless games, be they strategy, card, computer, console or role-playing, that enjoy great followings. Many of these games are related to fantasy worlds, and there are quite a few of heroic fantasy. A handful of video games and some strategy and role-playing games have been created based on Conan, developed especially in recent years. What not everyone knows is that Hyboria was one of the first settings chosen in the primitive strategy games."

The awalé, an ancestral game: "In awalé and in most mancala games, the rules to start playing are very simple and can be learned in 5 minutes. After that time, the fun begins. The simplicity of its rules makes it suitable for all ages (children can start playing from age 5 or 6). In this game, counting is practiced and strategic reasoning and global thinking are tested, because to win we must not only seek victory but also respect that the opponent 'does not lose'."

The Spanish donkey - The most horrible torture method in medieval history: "The wooden horse, chevalet or Spanish donkey was an extremely painful and horrible medieval torture device. It was first used by the Holy Inquisition in France and later in Spain and Germany, and then migrated to the Americas, gaining prominence there during the colonial period. The main design was the same wherever it was used. It was a triangular wooden box with a very sharp top edge (that is, where the horse's spine would be)."

Einstein and Philipp Lénárd: "At first this united the two scientists. Einstein and Lénárd wrote letters to each other to follow their respective investigations, showing great admiration for one another. In one letter, Einstein called Lénárd a 'great master' and a 'genius'. Lénárd, in turn, campaigned to appoint Einstein as a professor in Heidelberg and once described him as a 'profound and transcendental thinker'. But their relationship changed radically in five years."

Los Amantes (1961) - Philip Jose Farmer: "Philip Jose Farmer, a disruptor of pulp heroes, witty, irreverent, satirical and intelligent, was the first of the new generation of North American sci-fi writers who revitalized the genre in the 50s and 60s of the last century, being more interested in people and sociology than in technology and engineering. He was a writer of ideas and was never short of them. He imagined concepts, premises and situations as impossible as they were original, daring and brilliant, presenting them according to the genre's parameters."

The woman who unknowingly contaminated the scenes of dozens of crimes with her DNA: "A little over a decade ago, the National Forensic Academy (located in Tennessee, United States) published an interesting and curious report offering data and statistics on the work carried out by investigators and forensic scientists, which indicated that the object most frequently found at a crime scene was a cigarette butt, the most astonishing part being that up to 30% of those butts belonged to police officers or other people who had visited those places during investigations."

Sin and expiation in the year 1000: the comical side of the Middle Ages: "The matter of saints' relics around the 11th century must have been a more robust and lucrative market than that of articulated figures from a Pixar franchise, or the merchandising of a U2 world tour. Not to mention the pacifying effect that all that dismembered martyrs' offal had on the starving masses. 'On the respect that [the relics] inspire rests, in fact, the entire social order; since all the oaths that try to discipline the feudal tumult are indeed taken with a hand on a reliquary.'"

Why 'body positive' is a great rip-off: "The slogan of this global self-acceptance movement could not be more comforting and inspiring. It invites us to stand before the magic mirror to tell ourselves that neither wrinkles, nor love handles, nor under-eye bags, nor cellulite cloud our beauty one bit. That we are all beautiful, regardless of our age, our measurements, our kilos or the quality of our skin, and that we go through life, as Sabina says, 'with our heads held high...'"

They manage to break an encryption algorithm 'proof against quantum computers' with a cheap PC: "It turns out that cracking an encryption algorithm designed to withstand the most powerful cyber attacks imaginable might not be as difficult as we were led to believe. In a study published this weekend, researchers showed that a PC with a single-core processor (cheaper than a decent laptop) could break in just one hour a 'post-quantum' algorithm that had been a candidate for a reference standard."

The scam at the FNMT in the 80s and the gold 50-cent piece: "Last June 15, the Soler y Llach house put up for auction a coin that left all of us interested in Francoist numismatics speechless: a gold proof of the 50 céntimos de 1949 *51 with Inverted Arrows. Upon seeing it, I talked about it on our Telegram Miniblog and on our Facebook. But, to my surprise, some questioned its authenticity, even assuring that it must have come from the scam that took place at the FNMT in the early 1980s."

Dances, binges and a lot of blood: this is how the Sumerians had fun: "In ancient Sumeria five thousand years ago, there was also alcohol, feasting and well-dressed people. As in the burials of the kings of Ur, which, if they would seem like a bacchanal to us, for the Sumerians were the best way to honor their dead. In 1926, while excavating in the royal cemetery of that city, British archaeologist Leonard Woolley made a horrifying discovery. Before anything else, let's see what the Sumerians celebrated and how they did it."

Videos

He asks for expensive upgrades for a cheap bike, Indiana Jones and the Elden Ring, how to separate conjoined twins, comparison of versions of 'Blade Runner', live volcano, strange jellyfish, The Hot Violinist (the origin), Adventure Island: Origins and Golden Age, a sad but inspiring story, the 'making of...' of Daft Punk - Around The World, it's the bilingual, remembering Nichelle Nichols, the Apollo disaster, Thomas & Friends (a cappella), The Ramones live in 1978, Westward Wings and all episodes of American Gladiators.

Galleries

Galleries: Soviet swimwear, actors with makeup that makes them unrecognizable, illuminated jewels, terror created by artificial intelligence, best portrait photos, a very ancient diva, heavy metal fans, ghostly photos, yokai mythological monsters, excellent embroidery, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the Week.

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