Recommended Links of the Week (No. 715)

They Live, Tura Satana, AI Furby, the Garden City and the invention of barcodes, among many more things, each more interesting than the last, only for those who dare to dive into the spine-chilling depths of the Week's Recommended Links. Enjoy!

John Carpenter's They Live: "In 1988, filmmaker John Carpenter released They Live, the most politically charged film of his career. In it, he shows us an alien invasion that controls us with subliminal messages. Carpenter exposes, in his own particular way, a critique of the Reaganism of those years, of the capitalist system, and of the pollution of the media by large corporations for their own benefit."

Tura Satana, the wildest actress of the sixties who demanded sex once a day during shoots: "No fucking here." That was the first rule Russ Meyer set for the filming of his movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! But Tura Satana angrily protested: "If I don't make love once a day, I'll be in a bad mood and won't act well." Meyer offered himself to calm the actress's uterine fury, but she preferred a camera assistant.

A Furby with a Raspberry Pi and ChatGPT AI plans to take over the world: "We have seen artificial intelligence in society in many works of fiction and movies as an entity that seeks to subjugate humans. With the recent arrival of GPT-4, even its creators put it to the test to see if it was a risk to humanity. ChatGPT AI alone is impressive in what it can do, so imagine if we implement it in a Furby that has a plan to dominate the world."

Coca-Cola produces up to 2,000 kilos of cocaine a year as a byproduct of the drink: "The Coca-Cola company, maker of the most famous commercial soft drink on Earth, has been producing cocaine as a byproduct of making its beverage for over a century. And it does so legally thanks to a unique agreement with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), one that no other US company has, which allows it to import tons of coca leaves and produce hundreds or thousands of kilos of cocaine that it then sells to a laboratory."

Repeated radio signals detected from an exoplanet like Earth: "A team of astronomers has detected a repetitive radio signal that led them to a planet similar to ours located 12 light-years from Earth. That signal, the researchers say, suggests the planet may have both an atmosphere and its own magnetic field, something not previously detected in planets similar to ours and that could help us detect them in the future."

Matsumoto Leiji, the unique vision of a mangaka who combined science fiction and the flavor of the Showa era: "It is well known that Matsumoto's works have two clear sides: his science-fiction worlds of fantastic beauty set in outer space, and another world of "four and a half tatami mats" (the tatami is a straw mat commonly used as a measure of living space), where mushrooms grow on the underwear piled up in the room."

The original model of the garden city (Garden City): "Ebenezer Howard presented his idea of the garden city in 1898. In it, he drew on part of the English residential tradition to establish an urban and territorial model for the future of cities, although his main goal was the reform of society. Howard, who was not an architect, advocated a new social organization, proposed diagrams and distributions, suggested management and financing formulas, and defined an implementation strategy."

What goes through climbers' heads? Probably nothing: "It is a very common fear due to the dynamic and unnatural nature of falls, in which one feels a loss of control. The fear of falling can greatly affect a climber's concentration, so it must be trained and worked on. To do this, it is necessary to condition the body and get used to falls."

What happened to AltaVista, the emblematic 90s search engine that missed the chance to become Google: "Whether you're from the 80s and got your start in the world of search engines with it, or its name sounds like Mandarin to you, it's interesting to remember what AltaVista was and its story: how it went from nearly 300,000 visits in its early days to 80 million just two years later, and barely a few dozen daily searches in 2013, when its then-owner decided to shut it down."

Barcode: 50 years of the revolution that transformed the economy: "That date marks the birth of the barcode, an innovation valued by the BBC as "one of the 50 inventions that have created the contemporary economy" and which today is more relevant than ever: the barcode is present on 1 billion products worldwide, is scanned more than 6 billion times a day, and is used by more than 2 million companies."

Steel head, the secret of TinTin's eternal youth: "Tintin began his adventures in 1929 at about 14 or 15 years old, and despite ending his adventures in 1975, the beardless journalist neither grew nor showed any signs of aging, although some experts point out that he aged three years during his adventures. Although his family and perinatal history is unknown, we can observe in his adventures the possible cause of this abnormal development: concussions."

The oldest shoes in the world: "A pair of shoes can change your life" and if not, ask Cinderella. Today we're going to talk about them, specifically the oldest ones found to date, like the one I show you in the image. It may not have the glamour of many we can find in any store, but you can't deny that the person who made it had great imagination and at the same time a revolutionary idea.

Videos: Hen needs help laying an egg, Japanese Spider-Man out of context, 64,000 sea turtles seen from above, the Azeron Cyborg peripheral, AI creates a human skull, kitten lit up from inside, how much pressure water you need to fly, 60 tennis balls = 2 bicycle tires, young people try Windows 98, the fastest train in the world, 80-year-olds share their biggest mistakes, he turned into a keyboard, how a 100-year-old film is restored, "Don't tell your wife about this game", the extinction of the dodo, can a PC survive at the North Pole?, the tongue of giraffes, comparison of primate sizes, comparison of flying creatures, the most popular songs of the month since 1980, the fish found at the greatest depth, found his reflex point, Playground.

Galleries: Instagram vs Reality, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, horrible Shrek cakes,, the Japanese cyclops, (NSFW) winners of the 2023 Birth Photography Competition (NSFW), the first photographs in history, crocheted dolls, Jules Cheret's advertising, brand logos reimagined by AI, dog takes photos, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump of the Week.

Well, I hope your long weekend was, or is being, very nice and that you did everything you wanted. A hug and see you next time.