A terrifying AI, the theory of relativity explained, 10 habitable planets and sex in Hollywood, among many other things, in this weekly gathering we call Recommended Links of the Week. And much more! Enjoy!

Recommended Links of the Week (No. 709)
Famke Janssen

You have no idea what the theory of relativity is, keys to stop having a poker face: "People tend to talk about physics, and especially the theory of relativity, with extraordinary lightness. It is treated with unrefined clichés like "no, it's just that if you go fast time passes slowly", or "yes, that's like E=mc2". All of this, moreover, ignores the fact that there are two theories of relativity, independent of each other, the general and the special (or specific, depending on the sources), but in a casual environment we tend to treat them the same. It's like calling everything that has wings a bird, from blackbirds to flying cockroaches."

90 years since the release of "Freaks", the movie that made Hollywood sick: "The always peaceful community of Tinseltown was not prepared to see such a ruthless portrait of the human condition, starring the members of a circus company, most of them disabled and with severe deformities. Tod Browning, one of the directors who drove horror cinema, saw his film torn apart by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, banned in many territories, and his career barely recovered after the scandal."

The scariest abandoned cities in the world: "A desert ball (or a tumbleweed) crosses from side to side before our eyes. The city streets are completely empty and the buildings abandoned. The echo of a distant noise resonates in the mountains and our presence is the only sign of life we can perceive. Faced with such a scene, it can be said that we are in a true ghost town. Victims of history or of nature, abandoned cities are a window into the past of their inhabitants."

Automatic wok

Graphics cards are going through an unprecedented crisis: "Although the boom of these devices began in 2019, it wasn't until 2020 (in the middle of the pandemic) that they reached exorbitant prices both for sale and purchase. Thus, phenomena such as teleworking or cryptocurrency mining caused millions of users around the world to demand these products. And, after the situation calmed down, this has led to an unprecedented scenario that few companies in the sector could imagine: demand has dropped almost 50%."

The creator of ChatGPT warns: "A terrifying AI could arrive soon": "It is impressive how quickly artificial intelligence is advancing to be used in everyday programs and activities. When Microsoft began investing billions in OpenAI and put all its effort into implementing ChatGPT AI in Bing, we already knew it was going to be a huge success. However, all power comes with responsibility, and in the case of AIs, perhaps it's time to consider not leaving them completely free, for fear of what might happen."

59 exoplanets discovered, at least 10 of which could be habitable: "After four years of searching, more than 20,000 observations made and hundreds of stars analyzed under a magnifying glass, a team of Spanish scientists announces the discovery of 59 new exoplanets in our stellar neighborhood. These are previously unknown worlds that orbit other neighboring stars and that, according to analyzes carried out to date, in at least a dozen cases could be potentially habitable. That is, they meet the conditions to harbor life."

Superman Awakens (fan-made short)

HeroQuest: the gateway to role-playing, wargames, and modeling for a whole generation: "HeroQuest is the dungeon crawler par excellence, no matter how you look at it. Obviously, the dungeon that endures in the popular imagination has been built from what Dungeons & Dragons established since contemporary role-playing began to take off in the late 70s (...) What is clear is that the game served so that finally, niche hobbies such as role-playing, wargames or modeling were discovered and appreciated by a whole generation of kids eager for new experiences."

In the name of Cthulhu - How the Necronomicon appeared in Brooklyn: "At first glance it is a collection of magical rituals and spells of Sumerian descent; mostly protective spells and calls for help expressed in terms archaic enough to endorse the process of Romanization that the original text would have undergone in its successive translations over the centuries. A palimpsest in vernacular language that syncretizes different occult currents, from Arabic to Latin and through Greek, to which it owes the etymological root of its title: Necronomicon."

Héctor Germán Oesterheld - An inner adventure: Due to the importance of this document (where Oesterheld talks about the comics of his land, about Abril, about Pratt, about Hora Cero, about Salgari, about war and repression, about El Eternauta... about himself and his technique) we have considered it convenient to rescue it here too, in Tebeosfera, with the consent of its authors, who now serve it with some corrections. This version, offered here without any retouching as Carlos Trillo gave it to us, is the most complete of that work on Oesterheld produced by two of the greatest historians of Argentine comics.

Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney - Destino

History of the can opener, origin and inventor: "There is no doubt that being able to preserve food in cans for a long time was a great invention for humanity. But you should know that before the can opener, they had to open them with machetes, knives, and even... with gunshots! When at the beginning of the 19th century William Underwood established the first canning factory in New Orleans, Louisiana, he did not consider it important to create an instrument to open the cans, which left it to the consumer's discretion, who could resort to any object they had at home."

10 curiosities about how sex scenes are filmed in Hollywood: Although there are actors who don't mind shooting nude, the costume designers prefer to be careful. "In our kit, we never lack socks to cover the penis and patches for the vagina" (...) "The sock –they explain– is flesh-colored and has a cord to adjust. You have to put everything inside and make a double knot." With actresses something similar happens: "The patches are fixed with double-sided tape or a product called Bikini Bite that is waterproof."

How exactly does a carnivorous plant feed?: "All plants have motor capacity, even if only to orient their leaves in the best position with respect to light, and therefore, acquiring adaptations that exaggerate or accelerate such a process does not imply the effort of 'starting from scratch', but rather there is already a base on which to accumulate adaptations. But when a plant captures an insect, a crustacean or a protozoan, it then needs to assimilate its nutrients, and in that sense, the digestion process is not so simple."

Eat your carrots (Stop-Motion)

Videos

Velma meets the original Velma

Galleries

Gallery: The art of LSD, famous characters as babies, street gangs in 19th century New York, the beauty of circuits, Futuramic ads, the original Batgirl, sleeping Japanese workers, superstition beauty contests, modernist socialist architecture, mini crochet toys, the Harry Potter characters as described in the book, what the children of these fictional couples would look like, (NSFW) fashion show in hell (NSFW), the best photos of "Concrete in Life", complete collection of Micromanía Second Era (and while we're at it all the Xtreme PC and Next Level, magazines I worked on for a long time), this that incredibly remains online, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the Week to finish. Enjoy!

https://old.neoteo.com/tormenta-solar-de-1859/

Thanks, pal, for your visit! A hug and we'll read each other in a few days.