Linkdump #79

If you love playing with online music toys, come create some disco jams with Superlooper: https://tinyurl.com/lyre6v6

Ever feel like you just need to let out a scream? In Iceland? But you can’t afford the airfare? GOOD NEWS! (You’ll need to use a computer/device with a microphone): https://tinyurl.com/y62lqe2y

Atlas Obscura presents 10 mythical monsters from around the world: https://tinyurl.com/y6gqlgzy

More news in the ongoing search for knowledge about when and how humans and dogs first started hanging out together: https://tinyurl.com/y6pwyedd

AI tries to create high-visibility Halloween costumes: https://tinyurl.com/y4j4n3c7

California writers have created a rich tradition of social protest novels: https://tinyurl.com/yy3h8uwd

Turns out the Maya had sophisticated water filtration systems long before Europe did: https://tinyurl.com/y2ohq4fg

Some images and stories of the 1906 San Francisco quake that I hadn’t seen before: https://tinyurl.com/y2btfy86

Cyriak’s dancing skeletons, just in time for spooky season: https://tinyurl.com/y2qgpo47

Japanese artist, Kitao Masayoshi (1764-1824) had a unique, almost modern style: https://tinyurl.com/y2k2zvwv

Manual Student journalists obtained a PowerPoint used in Kentucky State police training. These slides quote historical figures such as Hitler and Robert E. Lee and encourage police to be “ruthless killer[s].” Because that’s toooootally normal and fine: https://tinyurl.com/y5odg2ft

Shoppers at a new Lidl store in Dublin will get a unique insight into the city’s medieval past. The remains of an 11th century house are clearly visible beneath a glass section of the floor of the store on Aungier Street in the city centre: https://tinyurl.com/y39lywnf

A breakdown of 11 influential vacuum tubes: https://tinyurl.com/y235hzo3

A short video from a highly significant archaeological site in South Africa: https://tinyurl.com/yygc7sqe

What would your city skyline look like if there was no light pollution?: https://tinyurl.com/yytssm5n

In this special animation video essay, we take a deep dive on the technical and creative aspects of 1988’s anime masterpiece, “Akira”: https://tinyurl.com/y2bhh4c9

If videos of people cleaning/restoring things is your jam, you might enjoy this YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/y4rkmyq4

The weird & wonderful nature-inspired ceramic sculptures of Kate Macdowell: https://tinyurl.com/ycytxq5

Dang, that’s a LOT of mines: https://tinyurl.com/y3q7c987

“We’re the office that handles the paperwork for the graffiti artist Banksy.”: https://tinyurl.com/yxk6brqe

(NSFW) Wang Saen Suk Monastery Garden (also known as Wang Saen Suk Hell Garden and Thailand Hell Horror Park) is a Buddhist temple located in Bang Saen city, Thailand. A popular tourist attraction, it is meant to describe and depict Naraka (Buddhist hell): https://tinyurl.com/yx98k4t2

Take a peek at some of the skeletal wonders in the collection of Steve Huskey, biologist and associate professor of functional morphology at Western Kentucky University: https://tinyurl.com/y2ejaelo

Smells Like Teen Spirit in Classical Latin, perfect for your next socially distanced historian house party: https://tinyurl.com/y5uyzjp6

The Lost Media Wiki is a heck of a rabbit hole: https://tinyurl.com/ybgc736c

Astrophysicists try to imagine what dark matter would look like: https://tinyurl.com/y33lt8hn

Linkdump #78

Before it was a movie, Mars Attacks was a set of 55 narrative trading cards, depicting the brutal invasion of Earth by aliens and the equally vicious Earthman reprisal: https://tinyurl.com/y6dhnlto

Storylords is a 1984 low-budget live-action instructional television series shown on educational and PBS member stations in the United States, often during instructional television blocks. It was produced at the University of Wisconsin-Stout for the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board: https://tinyurl.com/y358hkjw

A really interesting short video out of Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese with English subtitles), talking about a particular dinosaur showing clear signs of a disease process on its bones, and how scientists discovered that it’s in infection that still affect humans and animals to this day: https://tinyurl.com/y576rfhr

The Media Manipulation Casebook is a research platform that advances knowledge of misinformation and disinformation and their threats to democracy, public health, and security: https://tinyurl.com/y59ctg7q

Impressive needle felting skills: https://tinyurl.com/y67fz5mv

How Venus flytraps remember: https://tinyurl.com/y2y4zlbf

It’s the Sing Along With Krushchov coloring book! (Pdf link in article): https://tinyurl.com/yxu7vudp

A plethora of songs sung to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme song: https://tinyurl.com/y65sgfu4

This guy specializes in solving various kinds of puzzles, and this $20,000 puzzle is actually really darned impressive: https://tinyurl.com/y5a9vz4r

An essay about why the noses of Egyptian statues are so often broken: https://tinyurl.com/yya88wcy

A fascinating and disturbing look at the hows and whys of Eva Peron’s lobotomy: https://tinyurl.com/vy2pk4b

A neural network tries its hand at street art with…….interesting results: https://tinyurl.com/y38f6do3

Liza Dietzen has dreamt of competing as a dog sledder since learning about the Iditarod in kindergarten. This video follows Liza and her team’s journey to compete in the UP 200, a qualifying race for the Iditarod: https://tinyurl.com/y67e9emx

Felipe Jacome’s set of photos Amazon: Guardians of Life documents the struggles of indigenous women defending the Ecuadoran Amazon through portraits combined with the powerful written testimonies: https://tinyurl.com/y6zl8fhj

A delightful page where you can watch videos of vintage Parisian flipbooks created by Léon Beaulieu in the 1890s: https://tinyurl.com/yx8rgzhz

Orchid bees are SO BEAUTIFUL: http://gilwizen.com/orchid-bees/

The drama and mystery of loch butter: https://tinyurl.com/y3vta2m7

An inspiring portrait of a Brazillian artist bringing new life to dead trees: https://tinyurl.com/yyywff44

Edward Hopper discusses the slow development of his iconic images, part of the exhibition Hopper Drawing: A Painter’s Process at the Walker Art Center (Mildly NSFW): https://tinyurl.com/y5xff59n

Photographer Gerrard Gethings makes endearing portraits of pets and their owners: https://tinyurl.com/y5trheeu

The weird and fascinating phenomenon known as “Salt glaciers”: https://tinyurl.com/y6ljh29u

In his Shedim photo series, Aaron B. Heimlich alters his photos by substituting people with a funny looking character. According to Heimlich, it’s a Shedim, which is the Hebrew word for benevolent demon: https://tinyurl.com/y5enrv9r

Loads of simple 3D animations covering topics like Engineering, Anatomy, and Geometry: https://tinyurl.com/yc5t38sb

Ze Frank presents True facts about the Ogre-faced Spider: https://tinyurl.com/y452z7t7

In 1972, fascination with American culture spurred an Italian showman to revive a medieval comic tradition: https://tinyurl.com/yytu4ysb

The bizarre life-after-death of Twinkies: https://tinyurl.com/y6eabz3a

If you were hunting for a one-man theremin EDM band to add that final touch to your radical dance mix, you’re in luck!: https://tinyurl.com/y34ykvlo

Linkdump #77

Before we were all introduced to the band Deee-lite, with it’s funky tune “Groove Is in the Heart”, DJ Dmitry created the band Shazork: https://tinyurl.com/y5kpzzqo

Tales from the Tour Bus is a series that turns true adventures of music stars into fun and freaky cartoon episodes. Today we have a story about George Clinton called “Parlia Funkadelic Ment Thang”: https://tinyurl.com/y6dqwot6

First coated in black, the anonymous subjects in Tim Tadder’s portraits are cloaked with hypnotic swirls and thick drips of bright paint: https://tinyurl.com/yyfsc3gt

The Pulp Librarian presents a thread about pulp cover nurses: https://tinyurl.com/yxwps6mn

“Dr. Catherine Wraithdale the Plague Demon of Winchester”: https://tinyurl.com/yxovm5qs

Fantastically creative pie art: https://tinyurl.com/yy2mbemw

For dinosaur fans, young and old: https://tinyurl.com/yxwf824b

Take a trip through the Northern Ireland Game of Thrones Tapestry, a giant, 77 meter long medieval wall hanging, which depicts the whole epic tale of George R. R. Martin’s fantasy novels in tapestry form: https://tinyurl.com/yafzopon

I grew up in a very cold place, but THIS is a whole other level: https://tinyurl.com/yxm9u8x3

The vibrant figurative sculptures of George Lafayette: https://tinyurl.com/y5l227pa

Digging at Armageddon: The tumultuous saga of doomed search for Solomon’s Lost City: https://tinyurl.com/y5m4ebvh

A fascinating fossilized trackway in New Mexico shows a long-ago human journey: https://tinyurl.com/yy9r6nsa

A short animated film about painfully awkward moments: https://tinyurl.com/yypml6l8

‘Boda boda Madness’ by Jan Hoek + Bobbin Case captures Nairobi’s eccentric and colorful motortaxi drivers: https://tinyurl.com/y2wpcomj

I couldn’t pick a favorite, so here is a collection of interesting galleries from photographer Uli Westphal: https://tinyurl.com/y3za8yez

This speculative ecology animation imagines what undiscovered deep sea creatures may look like: https://tinyurl.com/y4ld8ydc

Good Chance, the humanitarian theater company founded in 2015 in the unofficial refugee camp in Calais often called “The Jungle”, is behind an ambitious new public art project that will traverse continents and national borders. The Walk will see a 3.5-metre puppet of a nine-year-old girl called Little Amal travel over 8,000 kilometres across Turkey and Europe in search of her mother: https://tinyurl.com/y5ytsrpl

Did you know that ginkgo trees produce motile sperm? Yep: https://tinyurl.com/y5f2tgjz

Building a bridge in the 14th century: https://tinyurl.com/y57c867r
“Created in the 1920s under the shade of a castle in Italy’s Apulia region, burrata was born out of a need to minimise food waste and is a delicious example of human ingenuity”: https://tinyurl.com/y3xnawfl

A time lapse video from the Death Zone on Mt. Everest: https://tinyurl.com/y2xnxfma

The surreal beauty of fungi: https://tinyurl.com/y5hkx89d

“Sara” is a short film that tells the story of the fight against Iran’s oppressive and violent banning of women at sports events: https://tinyurl.com/y2bbucqc

This is how much top 7 music streaming services really pay artists: https://tinyurl.com/y6pxbut3

The remarkable life of a woman who revolutionized the science of airplane bird strikes: https://tinyurl.com/y3tyqg6n

Did you know that clowns have a way to protect and memorialize their personal makeup design? And that it involves eggs?: https://tinyurl.com/y9qrcp35

A creepy & fantastic sci-fi short. C/W contains body horror, torture, gore, bug-like aliens: https://tinyurl.com/y35w43cu

And let’s finish off with a short list of artists I’ve found while wandering the interwebs:

Khoa Le, illustrations: https://tinyurl.com/yxcxrdkw

Vunderkammer, sculptures: https://tinyurl.com/y24ovvvd

Charlie Immer, paintings: https://tinyurl.com/y2pw82md

Travis Louie, paintings, drawings: https://tinyurl.com/y4m4zejn

Antonio Segura aka Dulk, street art: https://tinyurl.com/y2zdtrjs

Zyabra Art, art dolls: https://tinyurl.com/y3hqx29f

Dean Stuart, illustration: https://tinyurl.com/y393hb8l

Linkdump #76

An Indonesian village where Waardenburg Syndrome, a group of rare genetic conditions that can cause symptoms such as incredibly blue eyes, has become common among the villagers: https://tinyurl.com/yytsk9hw

Tracking down the man who made the best Ghostbusters song and then disappeared: https://tinyurl.com/oqakjea

Super cool 3D printing time lapse video: https://tinyurl.com/y5rdloug

A lovely gallery of award-winning drone photography: https://tinyurl.com/y3atbwe5

The weird and wonderful tale of the grapefruit: https://tinyurl.com/y2v6vtt8

Enjoy the gripping “haha holy crap” madness of a Medellin bike race: https://tinyurl.com/y5gccbgx

Using hair as a canvas in intriguing ways: https://tinyurl.com/yyw4peaz

The alluring saga of a remote island that humans have never been able to conquer: https://tinyurl.com/y2efprnu

How a young American Black man became an Indian sensation in Hollywood: https://tinyurl.com/y3dv59nk

Children’s board games reimagined as horror movie posters: https://tinyurl.com/y5fzsx33

A mother tardigrade laying eggs inside of her own recently molted skin: https://tinyurl.com/y2caq34f

Mapping the murals of artist Faith47: https://tinyurl.com/y6qgu6qq

By the way, the Edgar Allan Poe Museum has a sweet YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/yykgjh2t

Richard Elkanah Hoyle was not a famous surgeon. He never invented a new operation, or contributed to a medical journal, or belonged to a learned society. But he was responsible for one of the most unusual tales you’ll ever hear. In May 1845 a local newspaper, the Lincolnshire Chronicle, reported a mystery: https://tinyurl.com/y3mxogv8

Here, have some turtle facts: https://tinyurl.com/y3x5843h

The marquee of the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, California, has long been known for its political messages. Here’s a Flickr stream that documents them: https://tinyurl.com/yxejoqot

That’s right, at long last you can finally read the heroic tale of an American icon, Vanilla Ice: https://tinyurl.com/y699abut

For electronic music fans, here’s an online Roland drum machine and bass simulator you can play with: https://tinyurl.com/y25wmf2q

“I’ve wanted to be a car crash test engineer since I was 10 years old when I saw the first IIHS crash tests on TV,” says IIHS Senior Research Engineer Becky Mueller. “I even used to build Lego cars and crash them into a Lego wall.” Stuck at home during the pandemic, she returned to her old hobby in the evenings. Two months, more than 1,600 Lego pieces and 1,500 photographs later, Becky has shared her first Lego crash test video”: https://tinyurl.com/yxgmnnc8

In 1829 a group of convicts commandeered a brig in Tasmania and set off across the Pacific, hoping to elude their pursuers and win their freedom. In this week’s episode of the Futility Closet podcast we’ll describe the mutineers of the Cyprus and a striking new perspective on their adventure: https://tinyurl.com/y5jta5jp

Step back in time to the first proposal for a “World Wide Web”: https://tinyurl.com/y6gvn66g

If you’ve ever wanted to see what it’s like to hand-start a plane in mid-air, please enjoy!: https://tinyurl.com/y5f48zj3

The interior of a complex cable: https://tinyurl.com/yyo32cvv

So apparently hallucinogenic fish are things that exist: https://tinyurl.com/osepco5

Russian mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev devised this puzzling and rather mesmerizing mechanisms in 1888: https://tinyurl.com/yxkh565j

Enrico Fermi’s eyewitness report on the first detonation of a nuclear device, July 16, 1945: https://tinyurl.com/y6y9evzp

The fascinating and unique Grand Shaft Staircase in Dover: https://tinyurl.com/yxc59jn4

Linkdump #75

The homeland of parkour: https://tinyurl.com/y6qegdsy

Please enjoy this heartfelt rendition of Eye of the Tiger on a dot matrix printer: https://tinyurl.com/y24fvlyu

Beautiful glass microbes by Luke Jerram: https://tinyurl.com/y2ckoqg4

Using preserved seaweed to figure out a marine mystery: https://tinyurl.com/yxfuosw7

Artist Sofia Crespo uses AI to create weird and wonderful diagrams of an imagined nature: https://tinyurl.com/y5fp8wul

An old-timer razor blade sharpener: https://tinyurl.com/y4vnygzb

Seven dressmakers in seven countries talk about the special dresses they make for brides in their communities: https://tinyurl.com/yy8a2kyu

A fascinating glimpse into a collection of more than 1,000 book covers from the Arab world: https://tinyurl.com/y2u2bq5s

DeOldify is an open-source AI tools that allows anyone to restore and colorize old photos and film, and it works pretty well: https://tinyurl.com/y3c2gzqr

For architecture fans, this paper delves into the differences and similarities between the written version of the library in The Name of the Rose, and the cinematic version: https://tinyurl.com/y2ts9c4k

Author, writer, and researcher Edward Brooke-Hitching guides us through some of the world’s strangest books: https://tinyurl.com/yy2mj7e7

SEArch+, NASA, ICON and the BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group announce Project Olympus, construction innovations for space exploration: https://tinyurl.com/y45qucp2

Have you ever heard the sound a maned wolf makes?: https://tinyurl.com/y59jxrnl

We tend to imagine life in New Zealand as endless sunshine amid green valleys and stunning mountains, but the reality is a good deal less glamorous: https://tinyurl.com/yxvkx3jv

“The Western world’s demonisation of women in power can be traced back to Ancient Greece, argues the celebrated UK classicist Mary Beard. For clear evidence of this centuries-long thread, look no further than the online depictions of Hillary Clinton as Medusa, freshly beheaded by a Trumpified Perseus, that made the rounds in the US presidential election in 2016. In this lecture at the British Museum in 2017, Beard contends that this Ancient Greek disdain for female power continues to shape language and attitudes in less obvious, but similarly destructive ways”: https://tinyurl.com/yy5ysotg

An impressively well done wooden cocktail dress: https://tinyurl.com/y6jpwuvp

One of the weirdest flowers you may not have seen: https://tinyurl.com/y3omo6eb

Archaeologists uncover an ancient massacre in Spain: https://tinyurl.com/y4yndrem

Never store your wax models face-down: https://tinyurl.com/y69lpjea

Ever wonder where that “Squatting Slav” meme came from?: https://tinyurl.com/y42b9ljf

“A Book of Beasts”, soon to be a #1 seller I’m sure: https://tinyurl.com/yyhx778x

An illustrated video about the largest star in the universe: https://tinyurl.com/y5ewdhnx

The story of how multiple safety hobble Los Alamos National Laboratory’s work on the cores of U.S. nuclear warheads: https://tinyurl.com/yctxhojq

Some Indigenous Americans kept specific breeds of dogs to produce wool: https://tinyurl.com/y2xu4lb4

I’ve you haven’t seen the Nautilus Live video channel, here’s a wonderful video of a Deepstaria jelly looking like a cloud from another world: https://tinyurl.com/y4jwrv5f

Throughout history, women in rural Hunan Province used a coded script to express their most intimate thoughts to one another. Today, this once-“dead” language is making a comeback: https://tinyurl.com/y6h67lkr

Linkdump #74

Behold the horned helmet of Henry VIII, gifted to the monarch by Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in 1514. It’s perhaps the most recognizable helmet in the world, but if you’re wondering why someone would wear a helmet that’s quite this bizarre, you’re not alone: https://tinyurl.com/yb9n2htd

Microbes can do all kinds of weird and amazing things. But can they see? see?: https://tinyurl.com/yajsoocj

Colonial exploitation made the indigenous Aztec people disproportionately vulnerable to epidemics. Indigenous accounts show their perspective: https://tinyurl.com/y2dkmedk

Size comparisons of fictional spaceships (with a few real spaceships for scale): https://tinyurl.com/y8t4uzye

The disturbing and tragic story of Midori Naka, the first person to be officially listed as killed by radiation poisoning: https://tinyurl.com/y7qblgov

Helpful hints for aspiring graverobbers: https://tinyurl.com/y727t5xm

Creedmoor is the largest live-in mental asylum of its kind in New York, as well as its most infamous; it’s where the American singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie died, and where Lou Reed went through electroshock therapy (C/W – descriptions of violence against vulnerable people): https://tinyurl.com/yb523nn5

“With its dreamlike inversions and kaleidoscopic cast of anthropomorphic objects, animals, and plants, the world of French artist J. J. Grandville is at once both delightful and disquieting. Patricia Mainardi explores the unique work of this 19th-century illustrator now recognized as a major precursor and inspiration to the Surrealist movement”: https://tinyurl.com/ycch7pyu

A neat little article about why some tarantulas come in unusual and brilliant colors: https://tinyurl.com/yc8xmr8r

For lovers of street art, enjoy a little peek at Liberty Lane in Dublin, Ireland: https://tinyurl.com/y8metx3s

Do you love finding new sources of artistic gifs? Here are some great suggestions: https://tinyurl.com/yalr9ojq

The wonderfully charismatic dolls of Dashi Namdakov: https://tinyurl.com/y9hzrgc5

An interesting paper about a project to test the authenticity of human remains that are said to belong to saints: https://tinyurl.com/yas2osxc

Nicely done: “This zoom video sequence starts with a broad view of the Milky Way. We then dive into the dusty central region to take a much closer look. There lurks a 4-million solar mass black hole, surrounded by a swarm of stars orbiting rapidly”: https://tinyurl.com/y9gcullr

A darned good and kinda creepy deep fake of Star Trek: The First Generation: https://tinyurl.com/y7j585za

Once considered extinct in the wild after decades of impact by non-native animal species, Bilbies are once again running free in New South Wales: https://tinyurl.com/y8bk7e93

50 one-star reviews of To Kill a Mockingbird: https://tinyurl.com/y8kd7sry

Landsat8.earth is a clever experimental map which allows you to view the latest satellite imagery captured by the Landsat 8 satellite in 3D. The map uses the latest cloudless satellite imagery and WebGL (powered by deck.gl) to show you a 3D map of the Earth: https://tinyurl.com/y9vlu733

The history of how jaywalking became a crime: https://tinyurl.com/ybecfd7v

Following two blacksmiths through The Austin Forging Competition: https://tinyurl.com/y5htebyr

Great little website I found, that gives you an in-depth look at two Seneca (Onöndowa’ga:’) archaeological sites. Start by choosing either White Springs or towny-Read, then scroll down to click on the various types of artifacts and features from that site: https://tinyurl.com/yb29jplh

A charming Edo-period automata: https://tinyurl.com/yaczqmlr

Illustrator Jo Brown makes beautiful drawings of the wildlife found around her home in Devon, UK: https://tinyurl.com/y64cyv8a

Ever wonder what old Charlie Chaplin movies would look like in color?: https://tinyurl.com/y85s444j