Recommended Links of the Week (No. 733)

Epidemic loneliness, AI girlfriends, wandering in Venice, and the Calutron girls are just a few things you'll find in this week's Recommended Links. They're a bit late, but here they are. Thanks for your patience, and we hope you enjoy them!

The "nuclear backpack" of the ChatGPT creator, a MacBook that can power down AI in case of apocalypse: "If you look up photos of Sam on the internet, you'll see that in more than one he carries a blue backpack. It might seem like any IT worker's bag, but it's not. In fact, the closest comparison would be the US President's nuclear football. It's a briefcase that always accompanies Joe Biden—and previously his predecessors like Donald Trump or Barack Obama—so he can launch an atomic bomb no matter where he is. Well, Sam Altman's famous blue backpack is similar."

The Terminator: Future Shock (1995): "A futuristic, post-apocalyptic first-person shooter based on the fictional universe of the Terminator saga, developed and published by Bethesda Softworks for PC in 1995. Beyond its advanced graphics, Future Shock introduced several innovations to the FPS genre that would soon be used in many other games, such as fully texture-mapped 3D environments and enemies. It was also a pioneer in using the mouse to control the first-person view in all directions."

The 'Tetris' for Mega Drive, a story of patents and rights: "One of those editions was the one developed by Sega for its System 16, an arcade board released in 1985, whose final mission was to finish a title for the Sega Mega Drive, the 16-bit home console created by the Japanese company and successor to the Master System. The intention was to turn the Soviet title into a new global success, especially in the home market, but they ran into significant difficulties."

There's an epidemic of loneliness because we don't have time to meet people and do nothing: "The problem is not just about the U.S.; other regions of the world, like Latin America, are also affected by loneliness. For example, an Ipsos survey conducted in 2020, in which the company randomly selected five Latin American countries and interviewed more than 15,000 people, revealed that in Brazil 36% of respondents said they felt lonely heading into 2021, in Peru 32%, in Chile 30%, while in Mexico and Argentina 25%."

Why millions of people hate their jobs?: "It's paradoxical that in the era of 5G, space travel, the metaverse, and artificial intelligence, organizations are still structured under the principles of Henri Fayol's classical management theory and Taylorism—by Frederick Taylor—both theories from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Under this scheme, a few think and give orders while the rest—the vast majority—execute them. Over 100 years ago these methods made perfect sense because knowledge was scarce and in the hands of a minority. But does it still make sense today?"

Walking without direction - Venetian sunset: "Walking is an art. Wandering aimlessly, simply enjoying the experience. The idle stroll was born with the modern city, a couple of centuries ago. In romantic Paris, indolent walkers were called flâneurs, types who roamed the urban geography, dropping by cafés, parks, or boulevards, simply watching the city pass by. Venice lends itself to flânerie like no other city on Earth."

Fifty years after its publication, from 'Momo' with love: "Momo is a fairy tale. It tells the story of a girl who knows how to listen, Momo, who, along with the tortoise Cassiopeia and the street sweeper Beppo, must save the world from the gray men who want to steal time from humanity. Through the figure of Beppo, Ende highlights values like contemplation, meditation, and philosophy. Beppo is the symbol of the value of inner life, which contrasts with the vanity and absurdity of materialistic society."

More and more people are choosing AIs as partners, the idea is already having terrible consequences: "Interpersonal relationships are always very complicated. For many people, finding a partner is very difficult because they feel unable to find someone who complements them. With the explosion of AIs for creating images and conversational AIs like ChatGPT or Google's AI called Bard, it was to be expected that sooner or later AIs that act as if they were our partners would emerge. That moment has arrived, and it seems the boom has come with apps that act as girlfriends for men who buy or freely download these applications."

The fashion of armadillo baskets: "Around 1900 a new industry emerged around armadillos: making baskets that were sold as 'curiosities' and circulated around the world. The business was started by European immigrants familiar with making baskets or hides, seeking to apply their skills to the raw materials they found in America, perhaps inspired by indigenous artifacts. (...) Apelt opened an armadillo basket factory in 1898, selling more than 40,000 baskets in its first 6 years in the United States and other parts of the world."

Chimerism: the strange case in which two beings inhabit the same body: "The name 'chimerism' comes from the mythological chimera of Greece. This beast, daughter of Typhon and Echidna, roamed the regions of Asia Minor, causing panic among populations and devouring domestic animals. It was recognized by its hybrid appearance between a lion, a goat, and a serpent or dragon. But chimerism is not exclusive to mythology and is more real than we think, although many experts are not sure how many human cases exist in the world. The only certainty is that it is a very unusual case."

Why can't AI draw hands?: "We must remember that artificial intelligences are trained with a large number of examples, and in this case, to represent hands correctly they will need to have seen enough of them. The fact is that there are far fewer images where hands are clearly visible than where faces are. Even in those where hands appear, they are usually small details in larger images. To this we must add that, in general, it seems that images of hands are 'badly' labeled."

The 'Calutron girls', the thousands of women who unknowingly prepared the uranium used in the Hiroshima atomic bomb: "Although Ruth and her father did not know it, they were working for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a key part of the secret U.S. plan to build an atomic bomb in the famous Manhattan Project, which is the focus of the recently released popular film Oppenheimer, dedicated to the physicist who managed to create the first nuclear weapon. Being just a teenager, Ruth began working at one of the Oak Ridge plants called Y-12 as a 'cubicle operator.' 'We called it that, but nowadays they call us the Calutron girls.'"

Videos: The five mass extinctions that almost wiped out Earth, inside a giant cave, the second deadliest virus, The Science of Love (Queen parody), the girl who holds the record for the loudest burp, a giant slide for their backyard, skating on ice with "Nothing Else Matters", Nirvana in 1992 in 4K and 60 FPS, Ameca chatting with GPT-3, "I'm a Barbie girl" in six classic styles, Frank Sinatra sings the Dragon Ball Z theme, a squirrel to charge your phone, fire tuba, relaxing jazz-style medley of Super Mario Bros., "When the Wind Blows" - Living in a nuclear hell, 'Kedi: Cats of Istanbul' (Documentary) and artisanal oil production.

Galleries: Classic 3D art, cursed AI photos, winners of Funny Pet Photo Contest, the 3D art of Alexandre Mougenot, tree camouflage in World War I, the comedy and beauty of architecture, the best photos from ITAP (I Took A Picture), visions of the future from 1958, Nature inFocus 2023 Awards, driftwood sculptures, giant cake-shaped building, cities in the desert, microscope photo awards, bus rollover tests, Weekly Animated Dump and the Visual Dump.

That's it! Sorry for the delay in delivering this week's links. It just so happens I'm trying to quit smoking and I'm going crazy with insomnia. Yesterday I was literally a zombie (well, not that literally) and I had to try to rest. Luckily, I got some sleep. That's the story. Wish me luck and see you in a few days.