This Week's Recommended Links (No. 475): Curious Stories, Videos and Galleries

Wasting your life, the horrors of nature, photos from the history of science, and the story of the man who feared to die. More? The history of Minitel, yokai in danger of extinction, and much, much more. The usual in these links: curious things to waste time without wasting it, and to feel like you've done something with your time, even though you haven't done anything at all.

How we waste our lives, how we've turned free time into another job: "It happens to couples when they move in together. It's easy to live a busy life between drinks, parties, nights and the like, but the difficulty arises when you get up every morning next to the same person. That moment when you sit next to each other on the couch and realize you have nothing left to tell each other is a fire test that many do not pass. The crux of the matter lies in embracing that void and understanding that, contrary to what one might think, taking out your phone to glance at Instagram is not a betrayal."

Nature is dark and full of horrors, these photos prove it: "It is a hostile, sinister and terrifying world, where creatures live that are neither as kind nor as adorable as that French bulldog snoring at your feet. Not everything is as pretty as they want us to believe, and the proof is this Twitter account, Nature is Scary (@TheScaryNature), which collects spectacular and grim photos of nature in its true state."

How they fixed noses when plastic surgery was in its infancy: "All gentlemen carried swords, and although it was not always legal, they often settled their differences with a duel... and those parts of the body frequently suffered in defense of honor. The eccentric astronomer of Denmark Tycho Brahe, for example, wore a prosthetic nose made of copper in place of the one he lost when he was 20 in a duel with another Danish nobleman over a disagreement about mathematics."

Humans pretending to be sheep

Ten great photos from the history of science: "Many of the great scientific milestones of the last two centuries were carried out practically in the shadows, with no kind of graphic document to attest to them. It was as the 20th century progressed that photography also became part of science. While astronomers could record some of their findings through the telescope, biologists turned microbes and cells into visible objects through the camera. In general, any person linked to science could record their work on photographic paper."

Gilgamesh, the hero who feared death: "Something similar can be said of the story of Gilgamesh, one of the great mythological tales of humanity, but preserved in fragmentary and reconstructed versions, written over millennia in different lands and languages; texts that must be fitted together like a puzzle to try to reach an understanding of the original. To make matters worse, following the metaphor, it is a still incomplete puzzle, or even better, pieces of a hundred different incomplete puzzles that, although they show essentially the same scene, do so with different styles, points of view and forms."

Minitel, the only pre-Internet network that worked commercially: "Long before the Internet there were other types of networks, but of all of them one was very successful: Minitel. This was a development of France Telecom, the main telecommunications monopoly in France, which in 1978 began to design a network. But it should be noted, these networks were not open, this is where the radical difference of the Internet with all other networks lies; Minitel was a closed Telecom network and, therefore, everything passed through and was controlled by them. Even so, it was extremely successful on French soil and this, some say, is what delayed the adoption of the Internet in that country."

https://www.youtube.com/embed/JzTq1thMjWQ

Hamster yawn

The tsukumogami, yokai in danger of extinction: "The yokai function as warnings, restrictions or lessons for life: it is better not to bathe in a certain part of the river because there is a 'Kappa' (river child), or if you don't clean the toilet, the 'Akaname' (dirt licker) comes. The 'Keukegen', or fluff, is also attracted to dirt, and warns us to keep the house aired and avoid dampness. The 'Yukionna', or snow woman, for her part, would be 'a warning for children who on moonlit nights would stay out playing later than normal, taking advantage of the clarity of winter nights'. There is even a yokai, the pillow flipper 'Makuragaeshi', that recommends we maintain the sacredness of sleep or it will bring us misfortune. And he is the culprit that in the mornings we find the position of the pillow changed."

Imagining the animals of the future, a brief history of speculative zoology: "Let us imagine that the human being disappears from the Earth within a few (hopefully several million) years. Now let's turn the clock even further forward, when almost every trace of our presence has been erased. How will animal and plant life develop without human pressure? What new mechanisms will natural selection bring into play to change some species as common as rabbits, the smallest invertebrates or marine fauna? This intriguing premise is what crossed the mind of Dougal Dixon (Scotland, 1947) when he published in 1981 the first of his book series: After Man."

Lovecraftian and Cthulhoid miscellany - The Last Feast of Harlequin, by Thomas Ligotti: "Because Ligotti is a clearly Lovecraftian author at many moments, both for his themes and for part of his style. His writing is dense, full of soliloquies and prone to an excessive preciosity that some might relate to Lovecraft's taste for the most obscure adjectives in English. However, that is usually accompanied by an absence of real action that reminds us that the need to write for pulp magazines made Lovecraft always have to add some touch of action or some unexpected novelty to bring his work to life."

The Virus - Animator vs. Animation

'The Invaders' (Los invasores): "'The Invaders', created by Larry Cohen before he tried his luck in the world of horror cinema, sought to be the replacement for the success of 'The Fugitive', or at least that was what its producer, Quinn Martin, wished. Taking a classic science fiction plot and turned into an archetype by 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' (1950), 'The Invaders' tried to serialize that hidden alien attack on Earth."

Gichin Funakoshi and the origins of modern karate: "The Meiji Restoration marked a before and after in the history of Japan. It was that year, the starting point of a dizzying process of modernization by which the country abandoned its traditional feudal structure in pursuit of its equivalence with the great industrial powers of the time. At this crossroads, Gichin Funakoshi (who died in 1957) was born in the city of Shuri (Okinawa), capital of Ryūkyū, into a samurai clan of the shizoku class."

Why does 'inflammable' mean flammable?: "First of all, although in Spanish the joke is perfectly understood, the word 'flamable' doesn't exist in our language, so there is no doubt about the meaning of 'inflammable'. However, in English both exist (flammable and inflammable) with the same meaning. Inflammable arrived in English in the early 17th century. It came from Latin inflammare, which combined flammare ('to set fire to') and the prefix in- ('to cause'). Therefore, to begin with, this prefix is not always negative. An example of this is the word irradiate or the English words indoctrinate or incantation."