Recommended Links of the Week (No. 727)

An exquisite dish of river stones, an alien man, China has no dragons, the empty Flatiron, and the sword of justice peek in to encourage you to keep reading and dive into another selection of Recommended Links of the Week, also with plenty of videos and galleries to browse. Enjoy!

Suodio, the traditional Chinese dish that consists of stir-fried river stones: “The most traditional Chinese cuisine, the real one, is said not to be made for the less daring Western palate, and there is one particular dish that not even the Chinese themselves can chew or swallow. Unless they suffer from lithophagia, of course. It is called suodiu (??) and its meaning would be translated as something like 'suck and discard', because the main ingredient is stones.”

Atram Morten, a sword of justice: “It is a sword designed specifically for the decapitation of condemned prisoners. Designed to be used with two hands, they lacked a point, so the total length of the blade was typically that of a one-handed sword. The quillons were generally short and straight, and the pommel often had a pear-shaped or faceted form. In the Middle Ages, initially executions were carried out with any sword.”

A walk through the history of CASIO at the Kashio Toshio Invention Memorial Museum: “Toshio invented many other innovative products such as compact electric calculators and electronic musical keyboards capable of reproducing the sound of many instruments. Furthermore, he laid the foundations of CASIO COMPUTER as a global company. The house that saw the birth of all these inventions is located in the Seijo area and is now open to the public as the Kashio Toshio Invention Memorial Museum.”

Deepsea Challenger, the amazing submarine with which James Cameron descended to the deepest point of the ocean: “Unlike other types of submarines, the Deepsea Challenger, says Cameron, moved “like a seahorse”, that is, vertically. It was equipped with over 180 onboard systems including life support systems, 3D cameras, controls, touch screens, and a set of 40 LED lights to illuminate the adventure.”

Black Alien: “I was destined to become what I am now. Sometimes I ask myself why, but it makes no sense”: “Outer space and life beyond our planet are some of the greatest unknowns surrounding human existence. Both generate a curiosity for the unknown that awakens an inexplicable attraction in society, reflected in the figure of Anthony Loffredo, the man known as the Black Alien.”

Words that sound the same in Japanese and Spanish but have different meanings: “Japanese might be one of the most difficult languages for a Spanish speaker to learn. Well, for a Spanish speaker or anyone else, given its grammatical complexity and its three alphabets (the third, imported from Chinese with Chinese and Japanese pronunciation). But there is something that unites us: phonetics, because both languages are read and pronounced exactly as they are written. P with a, pa.”

Why the Flatiron is empty, the oldest icon of New York: “Built in 1902, it immediately became an icon of the city not only among architects but also for the general public; for the next 117 years it remained one of the most recognizable images of the Big Apple, but in the last four years the building has been covered in scaffolding on the outside, and completely empty inside. Why? We'll get to that.”

Astronomers find the first evidence of a new type of gravitational waves that could reveal the origin of the Universe: “A European team in which the Max Planck Institutes for Gravitational Physics and Radio Astronomy participate, together with Indian and Japanese astronomers, has discovered the first evidence of a gravitational wave background originating in the formation and evolution of the Universe and its galaxies. The team used the European Pulsar Timing Array and the Indian Pulsar Timing Array.”

China has no dragons: “The dragon is the symbol of China and Bhutan but, at the same time, neither has dragons. Of course, I'm not referring to the physical presence of dragons, but to the limits of the term dragon itself. While the word, and by extension European dragons, started as generic snakes, expanding to a diverse range of dangerous reptiles, the inclusion of Eastern dragons blurred their peculiarities and turned the word into a catch-all.”

2022- Cyberpunk: Edgerunners: “The series knows how to convey the psychological terror of living in Night City, of risking your sanity by incorporating prosthetic enhancements into the body to gain advantages over other cyberpunk gangs. The violence and commodification of the environment, the chaos, the inhumanity and ugliness suggest a cynical vision of the future and of society until it almost borders on the ridiculous. At the same time, the story retains a certain degree of romanticism – tinged with blood, it's true – in David's professional and emotional journey and his descent into hell.”

The troubled history of the De Havilland Comet, the first commercial jet airliner: “It was the final leg of a new passenger flight between London and Johannesburg operated by British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). Some 36 hours later, with a new crew on board, the aircraft that would change the future of aviation began the second stage of its journey back to South Africa. Taking off from a stopover in Rome and shortly after passing by Naples, flying over the island of Stromboli at the southern tip of Italy, the plane disintegrated.”

The Cthulhu Myths: Alberto Breccia darker than ever: “The narratives of American writer H. P. Lovecraft (where horror is never explicitly shown and the reader constantly feels they receive less information than they need to understand what is really happening, because everything is suggested) were the ideal material for a Breccia determined to impose his personal and artistic obsessions on the adaptations he made, creating an original work from someone else's text.”

Videos

For more videos: Wolf puppies learning to howl, Fall Out Boy - We Didn't Start the Fire (updated version), custom keyboard for playing Diablo 3, baby versus kiwi, a summer in Copenhagen in 1935 (remastered with sound), Elvis sings "Baby Got Back" (by AI), the most dangerous rock in the world, insects, Arnold Schwarzenegger Vs Mike Tyson play chess, the fight between Musk and Zuckerberg, the difficulty of eradicating cancer, 'Peaches' live, Take Me Home, Country Roads (rock version), stung by a stonefish, the artificial intelligence of The Sims, throwing a rock into a 182-meter deep hole, card "magic", bicycle without wheels, delivering pizzas with a jet pack, rescuing a turtle, Cotonou in a time lapse, kittens that love water, glass squid, and a bunch of audiobooks of classic movies and video games.

Galleries

The best natural photography of BigPicture 2023, a new species found by a macro photographer, the complex doodles of Visoth Kakvei, the horror and fantasy of Ed Binkley, a dirigible over Giza, cyberpunk NSFW, medieval insults, real landscapes that don't look real, the best astronomy photos of 2023, actors drawn with a single line, art with apples, the light painting of Hannu Huhtamo, celebrity twins, the first deep-sea submarine of 1930, the tourist embroideries of María Zamyatina, the Animated Dump and the Visual Dump.

Done! Thanks for stopping by!