{ Magyar was immersed in a long-running techno-art project called Stainless, creating high-resolution images of speeding subway trains and their passengers, using sophisticated software he created and hardware that he retrofitted himself. | full story }
Being bored has just become a little more nuanced, with the addition of a fifth type of boredom by which to describe this emotion. […]
The study builds on preliminary research done by Goetz and colleague Anne Frenzel in 2006 in which they differentiated between four types of boredom according to the levels of arousal (ranging from calm to fidgety) and how positive or negative boredom is experienced (so-called valence). These were indifferent boredom (relaxed, withdrawn, indifferent), calibrating boredom (uncertain, receptive to change/distraction), searching boredom (restless, active pursuit of change/distraction) and reactant boredom (high reactant, motivated to leave a situation for specific alternatives).
The researchers have now identified another boredom subtype, namely apathetic boredom, an especially unpleasant form that resembles learned helplessness or depression. It is associated with low arousal levels and high levels of aversion.
photo { Robert Carrithers }
The explosion in music consumption over the last century has made ‘what you listen to’ an important personality construct – as well as the root of many social and cultural tribes – and, for many people, their self-perception is closely associated with musical preference. We would perhaps be reluctant to admit that our taste in music alters - softens even - as we get older.
Now, a new study suggests that - while our engagement with it may decline - music stays important to us as we get older, but the music we like adapts to the particular ‘life challenges’ we face at different stages of our lives.
It would seem that, unless you die before you get old, your taste in music will probably change to meet social and psychological needs.
One theory put forward by researchers, based on the study, is that we come to music to experiment with identity and define ourselves, and then use it as a social vehicle to establish our group and find a mate, and later as a more solitary expression of our intellect, status and greater emotional understanding.
photo { Olivia Locher }
Animals living in marine environments keep to their schedules with the aid of multiple independent—and, in at least some cases, interacting—internal clocks. […] Multiple clocks—not just the familiar, 24-hour circadian clock—might even be standard operating equipment in animals.
photo { Thomas Prior }
Singapore is inequality on steroids, as you might expect from a high human capital, high information tech, growing financial center.
Seventeen percent of the population are millionaires, and that is not counting real estate wealth, which is substantial.
The H&M in the shopping district is closing, because the rent was doubled and it is being replaced by luxury retailers.
photo { Thomas Prior }
{ Robin Black }
{ Nicolas Menu }
As newborns, we encounter our first microbes as we pass through the birth canal. Until that moment, we are 100 percent human.
Thereafter, we are, numerically speaking, 10 percent human, and 90 percent microbe.
Our microbiome contains at least 150 times more genes, collectively, than our human genome.
{ Mother Jones | Continue reading | via Sunday Reading/TNI }
photo { Matthu Placek }
By exploiting some exotic acoustic techniques, researchers have built a window that allows the passage of air but not sound.
photo { David Slijper }
“You know in a mental institution they sometimes give a person some clay or some basket weaving?” he said. “It’s the therapy of moviemaking that has been good in my life. If you don’t work, it’s unhealthy—for me, particularly unhealthy. I could sit here suffering from morbid introspection, ruing my mortality, being anxious. But it’s very therapeutic to get up and think, Can I get this actor; does my third act work? All these solvable problems that are delightful puzzles, as opposed to the great puzzles of life that are unsolvable, or that have very bad solutions. So I get pleasure from doing this. It’s my version of basket weaving.”
photo { Lonneke van der Palen }
If there are negative feelings gnawing at you, do you know the cause, and is there anything you could do right away to solve the problem? If it’s just a negativity bias kicking in, try the exercise that worked so well for me. Get a piece of paper and spend two or three of minutes writing down anything you’re especially grateful for in that moment. See what effect it has on how you’re feeling. […]
Here’s the paradox: The more you’re able to move your attention to what makes you feel good, the more capacity you’ll have to manage whatever was making you feel bad in the first place. Emotions are contagious, for better or worse. It’s your choice.
photos { Edward Steichen, Landon Rives as Melpomene, 1904 | Studio Manasse, Woman Smoking, 1928 }
Risk compensation is an interesting effect where increasing safety measures will lead people to engage in more risky behaviors.
For example, sailors wearing life jackets may try more risky maneuvers as they feel ‘safer’ if they get into trouble. If they weren’t wearing life jackets, they might not even try. So despite the ‘safety measures’ the overall level of risk remains the same due to behavioral change.
This happens in other areas of life.
photo { Gert Jochems }
sonder.— n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own
adronitis.— n. frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone
photo { James P. Blair }
photos { Hank Willis Thomas | Guy Bourdin }
{ Miroslav Tichý, The City of Women Series | Tichý had been taking pictures of women furtively in his Czech hometown of Kyjov since the 1960s, with cameras he built himself | Wikipedia }
{ A new invention aims to foil paparazzi who try to photograph people who do not wish to be photographed. Celebs are equipped with a flashgun that fires automatically the instant another flashgun fires nearby. | Improbable | full story }
Big news from the annals of science last week. A British newspaper reports that the mysteries of the universe may have been solved by a hedge-fund economist who left academia 20 years ago. Eric Weinstein’s theory – he calls it geometric unity – posits a 14-dimensional “observerse”, which contains our work-a-day, four-dimensional, space-time universe.
{ The National | Continue reading | More: Guardian }
photo { Alessandra Celauro }
