{ Emma Stone by Yorgos Lanthimos for W | full story }

{ Tod Papageorge, “The Beaches, Los Angeles” 1979 - 1982 | more }

{ In the summers of 1983 and 1984, Tod Papageorge, a professor of photography at the Yale University School of Art, adopted a daily ritual in Athens. He would wake up each morning at the Zafolia Hotel and walk up the hill to the Acropolis to spend the day photographing the scene around the ancient citadel, sweating in the sun. | Tod Papageorge, The Acropolis }

{ Ninalee Craig photographed by Ruth Orkin, Florence, 1951 | more }

{ Uta Barth, Peripheral Vision, The J. Paul Getty museum, Los Angeles | more }

{ longtime artist Ladson alleges that his seemingly near-identical painting [right] is not based on Miller’s photograph [left] }

{ Alice Mann }

Eye Contact Marks The Rise And Fall of Shared Attention in Conversation

Conversation is the platform where minds meet —the venue where information is shared, ideas co-created, cultural norms shaped, and social bonds forged. Its frequency and ease belie its complexity.

Every conversation weaves a unique shared narrative from the contributions of independent minds, requiring partners to flexibly move into and out of alignment as needed for conversation to both cohere and evolve. How two minds achieve this coordination is poorly understood.

Here we test whether eye contact, a common feature of conversation, predicts this coordination by measuring dyadic pupillary synchrony (a corollary of shared attention) during natural conversation.

We find that eye contact is positively correlated with synchrony as well as ratings of engagement by conversation partners.

However, rather than elicit synchrony, eye contact commences as synchrony peaks and predicts its immediate and subsequent decline until eye contact breaks. This relationship suggests that eye contact signals when shared attention is high.

Further, we speculate that eye contact may play a corrective role in disrupting shared attention (reducing synchrony) as needed to facilitate independent contributions to conversation.

{ PsyArXiv | Continue reading }

photo { Edward Weston, Flora Chandler Weston, 1909 }

{ Robert Doisneau, Un regard oblique (A Sidelong Glance), 1948 | more}

{ Garry Winogrand, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1957 }

{ Nick Tauro Jr., The same house, 60+ years later }

In the middle of September 1952, Charlie Chaplin came to Richard Avedon’s photo studio. Avedon, then 29, had been chasing him for years, but Chaplin never answered his letters. And then the phone rang. Avedon thought it was a joke and hung up, but Chaplin called back and said he was coming right over. Avedon sent his assistants out of the studio so that there would be no distractions.

At first, Avedon shot a few pictures straight on, “almost as though I was doing a passport picture.” When Avedon thought he had his shot, Chaplin asked, “Now, I could do something for you.” He lowered his head, and came up grinning in extreme closeup, with his fingers forming horns on the side of his head—the great god Pan. […]

It seems that Avedon had a Hi-how-are-you friendship with the man who ran the shoeshine stand in the building that housed Avedon’s studio. One day he asked what Avedon did for a living, and Avedon told him he was a photographer. A year or so later, the shoeshine man told Avedon his daughter was getting married. “I will let you be the photographer,” he told Avedon, undoubtedly thinking he was doing him a favor.

Avedon took his Rolleiflex to Long Island and shot the wedding.


{ Wall Street Journal | Continue reading }

related { Texas Wedding Photographers Have Seen Some $#!+ }

photo { Richard Avedon, Chalrie Chaplin, 1952 }

{ In the book “#nyc,” photographer Jeff Mermelstei presents a series of iPhone photographs that he took over the course of two and a half years, capturing the quotidian dramas taking place on the phone screens of unsuspecting strangers. | New Yorker | full story }

The Justice Department plans to bring an antitrust case against Google as soon as this month […] A coalition of 50 states and territories support antitrust action against Google […]

Alphabet was an obvious antitrust target. Through YouTube, Google search, Google Maps and a suite of online advertising products, consumers interact with the company nearly every time they search for information, watch a video, hail a ride, order delivery in an app or see an ad online. Alphabet then improves its products based on the information it gleans from every user interaction, making its technology even more dominant.

Google controls about 90 percent of web searches globally, and rivals have complained that the company extended its dominance by making its search and browsing tools defaults on phones with its Android operating system. Google also captures about one-third of every dollar spent on online advertising, and its ad tools are used to supply and auction ads that appear across the internet. […]

Makan Delrahim, the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, had pushed the department to investigate Google but was recused from the case because he represented the company in a 2007 acquisition that helped it to dominate the online advertising market.

In an unusual move, Mr. Barr placed the investigation under Jeffrey A. Rosen, the deputy attorney general, whose office would not typically oversee an antitrust case. Mr. Barr and Mr. Delrahim also disagreed on how to approach the investigation, and Mr. Barr had told aides that the antitrust division had been asleep at the switch for decades, particularly in scrutinizing the technology industry.

Mr. Rosen does have a tech background: He was the lead counsel for Netscape Communications when it filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft in 2002.

In October, Mr. Rosen hired Ryan Shores, a veteran antitrust lawyer, to lead the review and vowed to “vigorously seek to remedy any violations of law, if any are found.”

Mr. Barr also had a counselor from his own office, Lauren Willard, join the team as his liaison. She met with staff members and requested information about the investigation. She also issued directives and made proposals about next steps.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

platinum print { Robert Mapplethorpe, Coral Sea, 1983 }

{ Aron Klein, Bulgarian demon chasers | more }

{ Marilyn Monroe poses naked in bed for photographer Douglas Kirkland on the evening of November 17th 1961 in Los Angeles | more }

Emerging findings suggest that decision-making competence may tap not only into fluid intelligence but also into motivation, emotion regulation, and experience (or crystallized intelligence). Although fluid intelligence tends to decline with age, older adults may be able to maintain decision-making competence by leveraging age-related improvements in these other skills.

{ SAGE | Continue reading }

photo { Stephen Shore. Image from “Transparencies, Small Camera Works 1971-1979 }

{ Ormond Gigli, Girls in the Windows, New York, 1960 |Jean-Paul Goude, Chanel Egoiste commercial, 1990 }

The toilet manufacturer Toot Ltd. unveiled the “mobile toilet concept” at the CES tech show held in Las Vegas in early January. The company intends to develop an exclusive app that brings a portable restroom trailer to a spot near the location the call is made.

The concept envisions a small trailer converted into a “private bathroom” pulled by a car to a designated spot.

{ Asahi Shimbun | Continue reading }

photo { Stephen Shore, New York, New York, September-October 1972 }

ExxonMobil, Shell, and Saudi Aramco are ramping up output of plastic—which is made from oil and gas, and their byproducts—to hedge against the possibility that a serious global response to climate change might reduce demand for their fuels, analysts say. Petrochemicals, the category that includes plastic, now account for 14 percent of oil use and are expected to drive half of oil demand growth between now and 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says. The World Economic Forum predicts plastic production will double in the next 20 years.

{ Wired | Continue reading | Thanks Tim }

previously { The missing 99%: why can’t we find the vast majority of ocean plastic? }

photo { Kate Ballis }

He had diabetes, and he had signed up for a study to see if taking a “statin” – a kind of cholesterol-lowering drug – might help. So far, so normal.

But soon after he began the treatment, his wife began to notice a sinister transformation. A previously reasonable man, he became explosively angry and – out of nowhere – developed a tendency for road rage. During one memorable episode, he warned his family to keep away, lest he put them in hospital. […]

In 2018, a study uncovered the same effect in fish. Giving statins to Nile tilapia made them more confrontational and – crucially – altered the levels of serotonin in their brains. This suggests that the mechanism that links cholesterol and violence may have been around for millions of years.

Golomb remains convinced that lower cholesterol, and, by extension, statins, can cause behavioural changes in both men and women, though the strength of the effect varies drastically from person to person. […]

The world is in the midst of a crisis of over-medication, with the US alone buying up 49,000 tonnes of paracetamol every year – equivalent to about 298 paracetamol tablets per person. [..]

Mischkowski’s own research has uncovered a sinister side-effect of paracetamol. For a long time, scientists have known that the drug blunts physical pain by reducing activity in certain brain areas, such as the insular cortex, which plays an important role in our emotions. These areas are involved in our experience of social pain, too – and intriguingly, paracetamol can make us feel better after a rejection.

And recent research has revealed that this patch of cerebral real-estate is more crowded than anyone previously thought, because it turns out the brain’s pain centres also share their home with empathy. […] results revealed that paracetamol significantly reduces our ability to feel positive empathy – a result with implications for how the drug is shaping the social relationships of millions of people every day. […] Technically, paracetamol isn’t changing our personalities, because the effects only last a few hours and few of us take it continuously.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

photo { Logan White }

“Financial machine learning creates a number of challenges for the 6.14 million people employed in the finance and insurance industry, many of whom will lose their jobs — not necessarily because they are replaced by machines, but because they are not trained to work alongside algorithms,” said Marcos Lopez de Prado, a Cornell University professor. […]

Nasdaq runs more than 40 different algorithms, using about 35,000 parameters, to look for market abuse and manipulation in real time.

{ Bloomberg | Continue reading }

related { 90% of high-tech job growth concentrated in just 5 cities: Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and San Diego }

photo { Matthew Reamer }