COVID-19 RESOURCES
LIT CAMS (200 Free Tokens)ADULT TOYSVOD MOVIES

Good Reads

Laurel said:
58192_web.jpg


The next time you’re getting ready to eat, think carefully about what utensil you choose to dig into that tasty morsel. Researchers, publishing in the journal Flavour, showed that how we perceive food and even how we taste it, can be affected by the type of cutlery we use.

One of the food stuffs that researchers from the University of Oxford took as a subject was yogurt. And they came up with some bizarre results. For example: yogurt was perceived to be denser and more expensive when eaten from a light plastic spoon, as opposed to a weighted plastic spoon.​
- read the full article Your Choice of Spoon Changes the Taste of Your Food (from Smithosonian Magazine)​
Click to expand...

What if we eat with our fingers?
 
Laurel said:


“I was really torqued,” Stealey says today. This guy outflew an Air Force pilot? He turned to the programmer. “Sid, how did you do that?”

“Well,” Meier said. “While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.”​
- read the full article The Father of Civilization (from Kotaku)​
Click to expand...

tweeeet linky no worky
 
ku-xlarge.png


Humans can have sex anytime we damn well please – so why do we mostly do it in the dark? Here's what science has to say about our preference for nighttime hookups.

Lots of studies have looked at the timing and frequency at which humans tend to have sex, over a range of cycling time windows. For the sake of simplicity, we're going to focus on the daily and weekly rhythms observed in two such studies.

The first was conducted by researchers John Palmer, Richard Udry and Naomi Morris, and published in a 1982 issue of Human Biology. Palmer and his colleagues analyzed the sexual activity of 78 young, married couples over a 12 month period, and observed a distinct weekly rhythm to sexual activity, which the authors note is characterized by "a rather constant copulatory rate during weekdays, with a large increase on weekends."​
- read the full article Why do we have sex at night? (from io9)​
 
If every mail from/to consisted of one sheet of paper, that would be seven pallets of 200 packages of printing paper every month—and that’s even only assuming emails without attachments.

Imagine that every incoming email read by ‘someone’ took 60 seconds: That would quickly add up to as much as 12-1/2 hours per month. Every month that’s about 8 FTEs, in other words 96 people per year, mind you: one minute a mail for one person! Imagine if we could use that time instead to spend with patients and their family.​
- read the full article Why I quit email—and you should, too (from Quartz)​
 
feature_bankrobbery17__01__inline304.jpg


In a white-walled interrogation room in a small Virginia police station last June, two detectives were trying to get Herson Torres to crack. Surveillance video tied him to two attempted bank robberies in the area during the past week. The skinny 21-year-old didn’t have a criminal record and seemed nervous, but he wasn’t talking. The detectives showed him pictures of his brother and father. They told Torres he could be sent to prison for as many as 25 years.

“If I tell you, you’re not going to believe me,” Torres said. He was crying as he told them an incredible story about being recruited by the Defense Intelligence Agency to participate in a secret operation testing the security of Washington-area banks. He said he’d been assigned to rob a half-dozen banks over four days. And he told them about Theo, the man who hired him and gave all the orders—even though Torres had never met him.

Angry, his interrogators accused him of making up a ridiculous story. Still, Torres persuaded them to look at the text and e-mail messages on his cell phone; he also gave them the password to his Facebook (FB) account and urged them to retrieve a copy of the Defense Intelligence Agency immunity letter from his glove compartment. The police locked up Torres on a charge of attempted robbery and examined the evidence. By the end of the night, they weren’t sure what was going on, but they suspected Torres might be telling the truth.​
- read the full article In Virginia's Fairfax County, Robbing Banks for the CIA (from Business Week)​
 
OSLO-1-articleLarge.jpg


This is a city that imports garbage. Some comes from England, some from Ireland. Some is from neighboring Sweden. It even has designs on the American market.

“I’d like to take some from the United States,” said Pal Mikkelsen, in his office at a huge plant on the edge of town that turns garbage into heat and electricity. “Sea transport is cheap.”

Oslo, a recycling-friendly place where roughly half the city and most of its schools are heated by burning garbage — household trash, industrial waste, even toxic and dangerous waste from hospitals and drug arrests — has a problem: it has literally run out of garbage to burn.​
- read the full article A City That Turns Garbage Into Energy Copes With a Shortage (from The New York Times)​
 
It's a landmark birthday, the perfect time to take stock of one's life so far. So what has The Thick Of It writer Ian Martin discovered now he has entered his seventh decade?

Ian-Martin-at-60-010.jpg


1. People who "hate getting old" are idiots. Every year is a privilege. Let me tell you, callow miserabilists: getting to 60 feels like a triumph. I have no idea how I made it this far, but I am very grateful.

2. Memory is a fickle friend, it something something in the end.

3. I mean, I know all the words to (I've Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo (1942). And the Nicene creed from the Book of Common Prayer (1662). Yet, oddly, I can't remember the lyrics to any of those profound, politically charged power-pop songs I wrote to shame the world into becoming a better place (1980s).

4. For instance. It was 1968. Early summer evening, a Saturday. My mate and I were hitching home in the Essex countryside. We got a lift from a happy couple in a boaty car that smelled of leather and engine oil. We were 15, they were proper old, 20-ish. Relaxed and so very much in love. They treated us as equals, laughed at our jokes, we smoked their cigarettes. Walk Away Renee by the Four Tops came on the radio. We all sang along to the chorus. I felt a blissful certainty that life as an adult might genuinely be a laugh. The entire encounter lasted no more than 10 minutes. I have thought about that couple every day since. Every day, for 45 years. Imagine that. A Belisha Beacon of kindness pulsing through the murk of a whole life.

5. I am full of admiration for the human race and its capacity for kindness. So it can have another observation all to itself. Kindness kindness something blindness, I'll come back to this later.​
- read the full article 60 thoughts about turning 60 (from The Guardian)​
 
_68112935_sandomino_thinkstock.jpg


Seventy-five years ago in Fascist Italy, a group of gay men were labelled "degenerate", expelled from their homes and interned on an island. They were held under a prison regime - but some found life in the country's first openly gay community a liberating experience.​
- read the full article A gay island community created by Italy's Fascists (from the BBC)​
 
Lego-faces-are-becoming-m-008.jpg


The number of happy faces on Lego toy mini-figures has been decreasing since the 1990s, and the number of angry faces has increased, giving rise to concerns that children could be affected by the negativity of the toys.

In a study of 3,655 figures produced between 1975 and 2010, Dr Christoph Bartneck, a robot expert at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, said the manufacturer appeared to be moving towards more conflict-based themes in its toys. Bartneck's study considered the range of facial expressions across various Lego sets – now often in themes such as Star Wars, pirates or Harry Potter.​
- read the full article Lego faces are getting angrier, study finds (from The Guardian)​
 
prison.jpg


Lawyer Robert Miller has visited five prisons and 17 jails in his lifetime, but he has reviewed only three of them on Yelp. One he found “average,” with inexperienced and power-hungry officers. Another he faulted for its “kind of very firmly rude staff.” His most recent review, a January critique of Theo Lacy jail in Orange County, Calif., lauds the cleanliness, urban setting and “very nice” deputies.

Miller gave it five out of five stars.​
- read the full article With few other outlets, inmates review prisons on Yelp (from the Washington Post)​
 
Laurel said:
130107_r23011_p465.jpg


A few years ago, at a Las Vegas convention for magicians, Penn Jillette, of the act Penn and Teller, was introduced to a soft-spoken young man named Apollo Robbins, who has a reputation as a pickpocket of almost supernatural ability. Jillette, who ranks pickpockets, he says, “a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole,” was holding court at a table of colleagues, and he asked Robbins for a demonstration, ready to be unimpressed. Robbins demurred, claiming that he felt uncomfortable working in front of other magicians. He pointed out that, since Jillette was wearing only shorts and a sports shirt, he wouldn’t have much to work with.

“Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.”

Again, Robbins begged off, but he offered to do a trick instead. He instructed Jillette to place a ring that he was wearing on a piece of paper and trace its outline with a pen. By now, a small crowd had gathered. Jillette removed his ring, put it down on the paper, unclipped a pen from his shirt, and leaned forward, preparing to draw. After a moment, he froze and looked up. His face was pale.

“Fuck. You,” he said, and slumped into a chair.
...
The spectacular thefts of Apollo Robbins. In magic circles, Robbins is regarded as a kind of legend. Psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and the military study his methods for what they reveal about the nature of human attention.​
- read the full article A Pickpocket’s Tale (from The New Yorker)​
Click to expand...

I saw this guy on a Nova special about how the brain works. He was amazing. He'd tell you exactly what he was doing, then do it, and you'd never notice a thing. The same special had Penn and Teller doing the cup and balls trick with clear fucking cups, and still making it work.
 
gravyrug said:
I saw this guy on a Nova special about how the brain works. He was amazing. He'd tell you exactly what he was doing, then do it, and you'd never notice a thing. The same special had Penn and Teller doing the cup and balls trick with clear fucking cups, and still making it work.
Click to expand...

That sort of stuff absolutely thrills me. I'll look up the Nova special.
 
Thomas Love Peacock

MR. PANSCOPE. (suddenly emerging from a deep reverie.) I have heard, with the most profound attention, everything which the gentleman on the other side of the table has thought proper to advance on the subject of human deterioration; and I must take the liberty to remark, that it augurs a very considerable degree of presumption in any individual, to set himself up against the authority of so many great men, as may be marshalled in metaphysical phalanx under the opposite banners of the controversy; such as Aristotle, Plato, the scholiast on Aristophanes, St Chrysostom, St Jerome, St Athanasius, Orpheus, Pindar, Simonides, Gronovius, Hemsterhusius, Longinus, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Paine, Doctor Paley, the King of Prussia, the King of Poland, Cicero, Monsieur Gautier, Hippocrates, Machiavelli, Milton, Colley Cibber, Bojardo, Gregory Nazianzenus, Locke, D'Alembert, Boccaccio, Daniel Defoe, Erasmus, Doctor Smollett, Zimmermann, Solomon, Confucius, Zoroaster, and Thomas-a-Kempis.
MR. ESCOT. I presume, sir, you are one of those who value an authority more than a reason.
MR. PANSCOPE. The authority, sir, of all these great men, whose works, as well as the whole of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Classics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes, with irrefragable refutation, against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous, by the futile process of analytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition, and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categorically certain, and syllogistically demonstrable.
SQUIRE HEADLONG. Bravo! Pass the bottle. The very best speech that ever was made.
MR. ESCOT. It has only the slight disadvantage of being unintelligible.
MR. PANSCOPE. I am not obliged, Sir, as Dr Johnson remarked on a similar occasion, to furnish you with an understanding.
MR. ESCOT. I fear, Sir, you would have some difficulty in furnishing me with such an article from your own stock.
MR. PANSCOPE. 'Sdeath, Sir, do you question my understanding?
MR. ESCOT. I only question, Sir, where I expect a reply, which from what manifestly has no existence, I am not visionary enough to anticipate.
MR. PANSCOPE. I beg leave to observe, sir, that my language was perfectly perspicuous, and etymologically correct; and, I conceive, I have demonstrated what I shall now take the liberty to say in plain terms, that all your opinions are extremely absurd.
MR. ESCOT. I should be sorry, sir, to advance any opinion that you would not think absurd.
MR. PANSCOPE. Death and fury, Sir!
MR. ESCOT. Say no more, Sir - that apology is quite sufficient.
MR. PANSCOPE. Apology, Sir?
MR. ESCOT. Even so, Sir. You have lost your temper, which I consider equivalent to a confession that you have the worst of the argument.
MR. PANSCOPE. Lightnings and devils!

Headlong Hall, chapter V (1816)
 
Y-Sub-Happy-articleLarge.jpg


The filmmaker, Jennifer Nelson, was producing a documentary movie, tentatively titled “Happy Birthday,” about the song, the lawsuit said. In one proposed scene, the song was to be performed.

But to use it in the film, she was told she would have to pay $1,500 and enter into a licensing agreement with Warner/Chappell, the publishing arm of the Warner Music Group. Ms. Nelson’s company, Good Morning to You Productions, paid the fee and entered into the agreement, the suit says.
...
“It’s a song created by the public, it belongs to the public, and it needs to go back to the public,” Mr. Rifkin said.

A spokesman for Warner/Chappell declined to comment on the suit. The company paid $25 million in 1988 to acquire Birchtree Ltd., a small company whose musical holdings included the birthday song.

​
- read the full article Birthday Song’s Copyright Leads to a Lawsuit for the Ages (from The New York Times)​
 
Note to self: Do NOT even peep into this thread until after the day's chores have been accomplished.
 
27pitch-1-articleLarge-v2.jpg


No one knows whether Homo erectus, the early ancestor of both the Yankees and the Red Sox, threw the split-finger fastball.

But he could have, according to a group of scientists who offer new evidence that the classic overhand throw used by baseball players at all positions, and by snowball, rock and tomato hurlers of all ages, is an evolutionary adaptation dependent on several changes in anatomy. They first appeared, the researchers say, around 1.8 million years ago, when humans were most likely beginning to hunt big game and needed to throw sharp objects hard and fast.

No other primate throws with anything comparable to human force. Chimpanzees, who are much, much stronger, pound for pound, than human beings, can throw, as any zoo visitor knows. But the best an adult male can do is about 20 miles per hour. A 12-year-old human pitcher can easily throw three times that fast.​
- read the full article Scientists Unlock Mystery in Evolution of Pitchers (from The New York Times)​
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

F
David Crosby, Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash Co-Founder, Dies at 81
Replies
8
Views
563
BongoGal
BongoGal
HornyHaileyVasquez
Bottomless Sandwich Artist
Replies
8
Views
4K
Shaglus_Ziegler
Shaglus_Ziegler
TwistedManc
An Authors Feedback
Replies
3
Views
752
PastMaster
PastMaster
butters
the good stuff
Replies
12
Views
845
greeneyes666
greeneyes666
G
To be a good man, or to be satisfied.
Replies
10
Views
2K
HealingEnergyWitch
HealingEnergyWitch
Back
Top