Recommended Links of the Week (No. 737)

A little of what you'll find in this week's Recommended Links: the Dunning-Kruger robbery, a hamster wheel to cross the Atlantic, scientific illustration and video game magazines. The rest is below, there's a lot and it's very good. Enjoy!

Neuromancer, the origin of cyberpunk: "Gibson uses a device widely used in science fiction: inventing things and introducing them into the plot without explaining anything. This way, by going along with the context and letting yourself be carried by the action, you don't need to know every detail. It rarely works as well as it does with Neuromancer, perhaps because it never reaches the excesses of other, more modern authors. Moreover, he does it progressively and very well integrated into the narrative. In fact, if you take the first two pages of Neuromancer, what will you see? A dive bar, hookers, scars, alcohol, a cyborg implant, and a cultural mix that serves as glue to unite a park of disparate oddities."

What do scientists answer to the question: are we alone in the galaxy?: "The possibility of life on other planets resonates in our collective mind since we began to observe the cosmos from a scientific point of view. Discovering that we are not alone would be the greatest and most relevant finding in history. For now, we can only speculate about it. Little by little we learn more about our galaxy and about life and its evolution. This knowledge is a guide (albeit very limited) to think about whether there might be life somewhere else, whether we could detect it, or whether extraterrestrial life forms could detect us."

The ridiculous bank robbery that led to the discovery of the Dunning-Kruger effect (which makes us believe we are smarter than we are): "One January day in 1995, a man named McArthur Wheeler, along with an accomplice, robbed two banks in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Although, as expected, there were numerous surveillance cameras and he was not a novice at armed robbery, he seemed to have made no effort to disguise or hide his appearance. Nevertheless, when after being arrested he was told that he had been identified thanks to images captured by the video surveillance, he was stunned. 'But I put lemon juice on me! I put lemon juice on me!', he said perplexed to the even more perplexed detectives."

'Braindead': 25 years since your mother ate my dog: "'Braindead (Your mother has eaten my dog)' is a clear example of this trend. Its sense of humor, its references, its unrestrained taste for blood, its use of the genre's traditional figures and its reflections on love, family and even New Zealand society in the 1950s make it a cult classic that every good 'freak' has among their favorite titles. Peter Jackson directed this delirious story in 1992 in which a rat monkey unleashes terror and the blood is measured in tens of liters. A story whose central elements are death, love and a lawnmower."

Scandal at Rotten Tomatoes: an advertising agency used its checkbook to manipulate the site: "It all started in 2018, when a film called 'Ophelia', starring Daisy Ridley and offering a new version of 'Hamlet', came out with rather deplorable reviews: with thirteen reviews, it had a 46 approval, or, in other words, it had a rotten tomato as its average score. But the film's advertising agency, Bunker 15, began to seek support among critics... by paying for it. Well, paying is a big word: they were paying $50 per positive review."

Peace in cinemas died out with the ushers: "It is not my opinion, you just have to apply the empirical method: there has been no peace in cinemas since the ushers were eliminated from the trenches. How and when did this terrible event happen? In past times, during some vague moment in the early 2000s, and since then, cinemas have become a battlefield for anyone daring enough to attempt the madness of watching a movie without interruptions for the next two hours. In other words, the big chains have managed to impose the ultra-capitalist model that has led to the prostitution of cinemas. Order is dispensed with to cut costs."

Personal growth dumbs us down: "Abundant and insidious are the messages that, daily, whether surreptitiously or explicitly, we receive in our environment inviting us to acquire and develop our subjective autonomy through personal growth exercises, emotional coaching, self-improvement techniques, various self-help methods of dubious substance or, without mincing words, different esoteric or 'healing' paths (astrology, tai chi, flower therapy, energy therapies...) that promise us individual fulfillment in the exclusive scope of our private sphere. The guidelines are syrupy and deceptive, but also mind-numbing."

An AI that promised to generate 3D objects was actually an army of Chinese artists: "A year ago, a UK startup jumped on the artificial intelligence bandwagon by announcing an app that converted 2D images into 3D models. With the help of a tool powered by machine learning algorithms, Kaedim promised to generate three-dimensional content in just 15 minutes. What no one knew was that those 'algorithms' were actually humans in developing countries. An investigation by 404 found that Kaedim used cheap labor from China to generate low-quality models that it sold as if they had been created with artificial intelligence."

Man arrested trying to cross the Atlantic in a 'hamster wheel' from the US: "A man attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Florida waters in a vessel shaped like a 'hamster wheel' was arrested on criminal charges and must appear in a Miami court after several attempts to fulfill what he calls 'a dream', authorities said. Ray Baluchi, alias 'Reza Ray Baluchi', 44, faces federal charges after US Coast Guard officials rescued him 70 miles (112 km) from Tybee Island, a city in Chatham County, Georgia."

Scientific illustration to order the world: "Of course, in the case of natural sciences, the inescapable condition of illustration is that it reflects the archetype, something that no photograph can achieve. 'Scientific drawing abstracts the typical, mature and perfect specimen. For example, a starling cannot be a chick, nor have a damaged leg or a twisted beak, because it must represent the standard specimen,' says Vergés. And he recalls the field guides, which contain photographs and also drawings, because 'to identify a plant or a specimen of an unknown species, one turns to drawing, not photography.'"

The oldest animal in the world reappears: a shark born 500 years ago: "A team of biologists was cataloging tiger sharks off the coast of Belize when they made a surprising discovery. A prehistoric-looking shark that turned out to be one of the oldest animals in the world. It was a Greenland shark, whose birth date is estimated about 500 years ago and which are rarely seen. And much less in the waters of the Caribbean Sea. (...) Greenland sharks are the longest-lived vertebrates on Earth with a life span of between 250 and 500 years. They live in the depths of the ocean in total darkness, so they are rarely seen and, above all, photographed."

Pixelated Nostalgia: video game magazines in Spain in the 90s: "The 90s were a golden age for video games worldwide, but it also hit hard at home, and specialized magazines played a fundamental role in this history. Let's dive into the nostalgia of the iconic magazines of the time that flooded the newsstands. This will be a trip to the past, with the perspective of an adult who never stopped feeling the passion of a child when browsing, opening and enjoying that distinctive smell that those pages full of content gave off, each more interesting than what we had, wanted or was about to arrive at our homes through the game consoles that, not without effort, we managed to get as gifts."

Videos

Here are the recommended videos: Clothes against surveillance cameras, Turrican 2 on banjo, Behind the red door (The IT Crowd), They are not UFOs coming out of the volcano, how to spin a pen, Concorde takeoff and landing from the cockpit, New Orleans in the 1920s in color, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by Putri Ariani, jellyfish returning to the ocean, meteorite in Turkey, 20,000 potatoes in Starfield, tattoo removal, the Galactic Senate of Star Wars with 500,000 LEGO pieces, Over The Garden Wall (fan-made animation), Barbenheimer and the trailer for Miyazaki's next film: The Boy and the Heron.

Galleries

The porno Times Square, best photos from Wildlife Photographer 2023, retro portraits, capturing nature in macro, beautiful public domain photos, crazy photo manipulations, flying saucer service stations, fantasy scenes, the perfect falcon photo, photographic surrealism, reFocus Photo Awards 2023, Creative Photo Awards 2023, more photos of Marilu Henner, Tokyo in the early 80s, the Animated Dump of the Week and the Visual Dump.