New Organs, Simulmatics, and Reverse Toonification: Lux Recommends #252
Welcome to Lux Recommends #252, this week’s edition of what we at Lux are reading and thinking about (want to receive this by email? Sign up here).
Articles
Doctors May Have Found Secretive New Organs in the Center of Your Head: “They appear to be a fourth pair of large salivary glands, tucked into the space where the nasal cavity meets the throat.” — Adam K
“Reverse Toonification” of Pixar Characters — Sam
The Family Feud Behind a $32 Million T. Rex Named Stan: “The two rock-star fossil-hunter brothers who dug up the most expensive dinosaur fossil in the world had been locked in a legal battle for years” — Adam K
James Randi, Magician Who Debunked Paranormal Claims, Dies at 92: “Known professionally as the Amazing Randi, he dedicated his life to exposing seers who did not see, healers who did not heal and many others.” — Sam
Computer-generated realities are becoming ubiquitous — friend of Lux Eddie Segal
A Surreal New Bookstore Has Just Opened in China: “Up top, there are mirrored ceilings — while gleaming black tile floors reflect the bookcases for a serious M.C. Escher effect” — Sam
NASA’s SOFIA Discovers Water on Sunlit Surface of Moon — friend of Lux Jeff Cooper
90 Days on the Front Line: “How UW Medicine led the response to the nation’s first COVID-19 outbreak” — friend of Lux Bryan White
The Incredible Story of the Great Cannonball Boom — Adam K
Identical twins sisters married to identical twin brothers announce their pregnancies together — friend of Lux Jeff Cooper
And Unlocking A Post-Covid Startup ‘She-Covery’ by Deena
Books
If Then by Jill Lepore: “The Simulmatics Corporation, launched during the Cold War, mined data, targeted voters, manipulated consumers, destabilized politics, and disordered knowledge―decades before Facebook, Google, and Cambridge Analytica. Jill Lepore, best-selling author of These Truths, came across the company’s papers in MIT’s archives and set out to tell this forgotten history, the long-lost backstory to the methods, and the arrogance, of Silicon Valley.” — Sam
Movies
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan — Adam K
Videos
Fantastic 3-D Animation of How Medieval Bridges Were Built — Sam
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