Welcome to the Recommended Links of the Week! This edition is full of information, videos, and galleries. All for champions of life.
Cubiculum, Bedroom in Ancient Rome: "Cubiculum is the word most frequently used to refer to the room of a Roman domus where its inhabitants slept. At first, due to its private use, it was not considered an important room of the house, so it was located in a separate place, with little space, no decoration, and no natural lighting. When houses incorporated the central peristyle, the nocturnal cubiculum gained greater importance in the spatial distribution of the domus."
What are variable-geometry wings and why did they become obsolete?: "The first records of an aircraft with variable-geometry wings appeared in the 1930s, although it wasn't until after World War II that this option began to be studied more seriously. The first mass-produced aircraft that included this feature didn't arrive until the sixties, but the flame lasted less than expected. Despite its many virtues, the technology also had several drawbacks."
1982: The Year of Fantastic Masterpieces: "The 80s were years of change in general, but they were also so specifically in the film world. New and young directors appeared, such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, among others, who had come to the guild not only to transform it, but to stay and give it fresh air, particularly to fantasy and science fiction films. Changes were coming in filmmaking techniques, special effects, and the way stories were told."
The "Schrödinger's galaxy": "The mystery of the galaxy in two places. Naidu and his team have reported the discovery of this galaxy in an article published on the ArXiv repository. It is a preprint, and has not been peer-reviewed, but in it they detail their research. They find evidence that the galaxy could have existed 220 million years after the Big Bang, about 13.6 billion years ago."
Helmholtz, the physicist who taught tuning forks to speak: "In order to clarify this dispute, in 1778 the Russian Academy of Sciences launched a competition aimed at the scientific community. The prize would go to the person able to explain the mechanics of human vowels. Two years later, Professor Christian Kratzenstein was announced as the winner. Not only had he managed to explain for the first time the acoustic differences between the sounds A E I O U, but he had also built a machine capable of producing them artificially."
The thorium deception: "The truth is that thorium is not a naturally fissile material. It is necessary to mix thorium with enriched uranium-235 (up to 20% enrichment) or plutonium. Both are intrinsically fissile, which initiates the whole process. While uranium enrichment is already quite expensive, reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from uranium reactors is incredibly costly and very dangerous for workers, who are exposed to toxic radioactive isotopes during the process."
Eratosthenes's tuner: "One of the most used tunings and the one that has generated the most literature is Pythagorean tuning. Beyond the legends and stories that have been spread over the years thanks to philosophers like Boethius, musical discoveries related to mathematics that imply the beginning of harmonic science are attributed to the figure of Pythagoras. These discoveries, supposedly through experiments with water glasses, weights, or flutes, are clearly exemplified in the monochord."
Let me live in my comfort zone: "That is, the economistic language has taken over the private sphere: \"be your best self\", \"make your relationships and emotions profitable\", \"get the most out of yourself\", \"take advantage of the opportunities of crises\", etc. However, as critical readers, we should ask ourselves what it means that this type of literature, under a skillful layer of varnish that adorns everything with the omen of future success, treats individuals as small companies from which you have to extract as much yield as possible in any area of life."
Did you know only one Hyophorbe amaricaulis palm remains?: "In its last attempt, neither the ten seeds that Viswambharan Sarasan took to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (United Kingdom) nor those that remained in Curepipe germinated. And all attempts carried out since the 80s to date have been fruitless. The fact that male flowers bloom at a different time than female ones may make it impossible for it not to become extinct."
When obesity became something worth exhibiting: "With his more than 300 kilos, Daniel Lambert held the title of being the most obese man in all of England during the early 19th century and, as far as is known, he is the first who at some point made a living exhibiting his weight. Born on March 13, 1770 in Leicester, Lambert grew much more than other children. His weight increased steadily as he grew. At age 23 he weighed more than 200 kilos."
Zombie diet – Ten real cases of human cannibalism: "In every horrifying zombie story, the undead roam the world in search of human flesh. Now, we know perfectly well that zombies are not real, but what is far from being fiction is human cannibalism. In this article we have compiled 10 real-life cases of humans who eat human flesh that are as chilling as zombies."
How the ancient Egyptians changed from a lunar to a solar calendar: "The measurement of time was an object of human attention since prehistory, with pioneering steps in the Mesolithic, although calendars proper appeared in the Bronze Age. It was in Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilizations, and more specifically in Sumer, where writing was also eventually born. But all the cultures of the Fertile Crescent regulated time in their own way, though with the common element of being based on the Moon."
Videos
Men in their leisure time, the 'making of' DOOM on SNES, Star Trek convention in 1994, a bullet at 300,000 FPS, hamster escapes from Super Mario maze, the Blue Origin crash, the dance scene from Metropolis in 60 FPS and colored, eleven cameras in New York kitchens, a streamer that is an AI and comments on games, excellent Disney medley, D-Day from the German perspective, designing without a computer, exploring an abandoned country house from 1790, needle nails, Interstellar - Hans Zimmer (on a 20-string harp guitar), disguises as bird poop, how to grab extra, the little noise the fox makes, how much helium is needed to lift a person and the disturbing shorts: Roger the Rat (2020) and Pizza Monster.
Galleries
The Lord of the Rings characters by an AI, old photos of female samurai, hyper-realistic embroidery cakes, the best drone photos of 2022, the best photographs from the Ethical Photography Festival, aquatic minimalism, a cardboard robot, more photos of Gloria Paul, Animated Dump and the Visual Dump.
Bright and early, eh? Ideal if you stayed in on Friday night. See you next time!
