Recommended Links of the Week (No. 746)

Fantasy books, Euclid photos, demons, and artificial life in a staggering number of links, and for all tastes. Welcome to the Recommended Links, surely you'll find something to read. Enjoy!

The best fantasy books of all time: from 'The Lord of the Rings' to 'A Sky Beyond the Storm': "Fantasy is a genre that began to become popular relatively recently. It allows us to travel to unique worlds full of fantastical creatures and political plots that seem to speak more about our reality than about their own fiction. Undoubtedly, they have marked the tastes of thousands of readers around the world, as many children and adolescents grew up reading these sagas that, even so, can always be enjoyed by adults. These are the best fantasy books of all time."

Vivaldi's Four Seasons: "The four violin concertos, soloist and orchestra, The Four Seasons are full of sound effects, imitating the sounds of nature and the experiences of each season of the year. Furthermore, each movement is accompanied by a series of texts in which Vivaldi explains exactly what we are listening to, thus complementing the sounds of the instruments with written language, letting us know that at a certain moment the sound we hear is the blowing of the wind, or a bird chirping, or even a storm with its lightning and thunder perfectly imitated by the instruments of the orchestra."

The first color images from the European space telescope Euclid: "Euclid has a primary mirror of 1.2 meters in diameter, large, but considerably smaller than Hubble's —2.4 meters— or JWST's —6.5 meters—, which allows it to obtain, with the help of appropriate optics and instruments, images with a large field of view. This characteristic, which can be a disadvantage for a generalist telescope, is an advantage for a telescope destined to scrutinize a large part of the sky like Euclid. For this reason, the published images can remind some astrophotographers of those obtained by them."

Pioneering Spirit, the world's largest construction vessel, is a hyper-tech colossus for the high seas: "If there were a title of "strongman of the seas," the vessel Pioneering Spirit would be a serious candidate. Serious and hard to beat. The company Allseas claims that its creation is the largest construction vessel in the world, and some go further and point it out as the largest vessel by gross tonnage. It certainly needs size to carry out its task: installing and removing enormous structures in the open sea, such as oil platforms, gas extraction plants, or heavy pipelines."

The pope who freed the demons from hell: "The Renaissance was truly a key moment for the beginning of the age of discovery, the development of cartography, and new astronomical conceptions. The ecumene, the known world, expanded as did human knowledge in all areas, such as the natural sciences. This impulse connected apparently distant disciplines, such as demonology with geography and exploration. It was no longer interesting to learn through demons the secrets of the other world, like Dante or Faust, but rather to discover those of our own. Therefore, it is no coincidence that this interest coincided with the witch hunts."

What is the best duel in film history?: "Is there anything more important in a duel than the cause for which they challenge each other? Sometimes it is just ego. Other times, it is a matter of skirts (most duels, both real and on screen, are led by heterosexual men), but in any case, it has to be a matter of weight. After all, someone is going to die, it has to be for something important. Let's see some of these reasons. Jealousy or toxic love. A unique duel between two who love and hate each other equally."

Hayao Miyazaki worked on these fantastic 4 anime series before founding Studio Ghibli, and they can be watched in full on streaming: "Miyazaki is a heavy weight in the industry and participated in his time in some of the first anime series that arrived in Spain. And they marked the childhood of more than one... or even destroyed it a little with the levels of drama they displayed. And if we still have them pending, or want to take a little nostalgia, luckily we have quite a few of Hayao Miyazaki's best series available on streaming."

Big step towards artificial life, they 'manufacture' a cell with more than half of its synthetic DNA: "A team of scientists based in the United Kingdom has just achieved one of the greatest achievements in the history of artificial biology, by managing to develop for the first time a yeast cell that is capable of surviving and multiplying like natural ones, but with more than half of its genome created in a laboratory. The researchers, who have just published their results in the journal Cell Genomics, have managed to construct one of the 16 chromosomes of the yeast genome and insert it into a natural cell."

"Five more minutes, please": Is it advisable to use the 'snooze' function on the alarm clock?: "The use of the snooze function that many digital alarm clocks have is as common as it is controversial. Although the truth is that there is no solid scientific evidence in this regard, sleep medicine experts have traditionally advocated limiting its use. (...) A recent study published in the Journal of Sleep Research now contradicts this widespread idea."

How Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali discovered the same definitive punch without knowing each other: "It is clear that you will never see on screen the (real) image of what could be the mother of all confrontations, a fight between Bruce Lee himself and the boxing legend, Muhammad Ali. And yet, both deciphered the same definitive punch. First it was Lee who, without knowing it, later transmitted it to Ali. The truth is that Bruce Lee is recognized worldwide for a type of trademark punch, the same one he used to defeat the judoka Jesse Glover in a matter of seconds with an unheard-of succession of blows."

Patagotitan mayorum, the largest land animal in history: "Patagotitan mayorum is the most prominent member of the titanosaurs, a group of sauropods that lived during the Cretaceous period across almost the entire planet. They are usually considered the largest dinosaurs that ever existed, but it was a varied group in which there were also smaller species. One characteristic that distinguished them from other sauropods was their broad pectoral bones, giving them a very robust appearance."

How many countries are there in the world?: "The most honest answer that occurs to me to the question in the title is: How many do you want there to be? The number depends a lot on the definition we use of "country," and also on what we consider, for geographic accounting purposes, as "existing." Is Greenland a country? And Kosovo? Transnistria? The Canary Islands? Antarctica? Let's count countries, tra-la-la. Let's start with the essentials: what is a country?"

Videos: Doll factory in 1968, the best cosplay at New York Comic Con 2023, Wanderlust, algorithms explained in five levels of difficulty, the 386 (1986), Ace of Spades by Compressorhead, "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley (1974), Vincent Price performs the Thriller rap live (1987), unused sequence by Ray Harryhausen from "War of the Worlds", capybara underwater, 4,500 nature videos, You Are The Sunshine on Gayageum by Luna Lee, Cat and domino 2, the best-selling books, 1000 Dubliners sing "Nothing Compares 2 U", candies with vinegar, sugar, and water; Bohemian Rhapsody in 9 different scales, the gecko's atomic grip and the shorts: FROM.BEYOND (the first encounter) and Acid Rain (award-winning animation). Also, do you remember Thumb Wars? Without Warning (1994) (about "War of the Worlds") and 4.5 billion years in one hour

Galleries: Few galleries, but it's what I found. Absurd realism, winners of OnePlus Mobile Photography 2023, Peppa Potter fluffies, paintings on video games, the best-preserved dinosaur embryo, GDT Award, the Animated Dump and Visual Dump.

Well, that's it. A greeting and thanks for all the fish.