Canadian Mint employee accused of smuggling $180K of gold in his rectum

Sperm delivery by mail? There’s an app for that

Riding Roller Coasters Can Help Dislodge Kidney Stones

MIT Researchers developed a device that uses radio waves to detect whether someone is happy, sad, angry or excited.

Why do more men than women commit suicide? The answer could lie in four traits.

Can we form memories when we are very young?

‘Five Second Rule’ for Food on Floor Is Untrue, Study Finds [NYT]

many mathematicians (and quants, economists who analyze market fluctuations using algorithms) have been using “random” models for their predictions

Rats spread disease, decimate crops and very occasionally eat people alive. For centuries, we have struggled to find an effective way of controlling their numbers. Until now …

Uber is researching a new vertical-takeoff ride offering that flies you around

It took a couple decades, but the music business looks like it’s okay again

Before we continue, please note that Japanese cooking does not really use what we Westerners would call sauces.

Mushroom Suit Absorbs Your Body After You Die

Pen Pineapple Apple Pen

Recently, experimental psychologists at Oxford University explored the function of kissing in romantic relationships.

Surprise! It’s complicated.

After conducting an online survey with 308 men and 594 women, mostly from North America and Europe, who ranged in age from 18 to 63, the researchers have concluded that kissing may help people assess potential mates and then maintain those relationships.

“The repurposing of the behavior is very efficient,” said Rafael Wlodarski, a doctoral candidate and lead author of the study, published in Archives of Sexual Behavior.

But another hypothesis about kissing — that its function is to elevate sexual arousal and ready a couple for coitus — didn’t hold up. While that might be an outcome, researchers did not find sexual arousal to be the primary driver for kissing. […]

The participants generally rated kissing in casual relationships as most important before sex, less important during sex, even less important after sex and least important “at other times.” (To clarify: researchers defined kissing as “on the lips or open-mouth (French).”)

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

When used in speech, hesitancies can indicate a pause for thought, when read in a transcript they indicate uncertainty. In a series of experiments the perceived uncertainty of the transcript was shown to be higher than the perceived uncertainty of the spoken version with almost no overlap for any respondent.

{ arXiv | Continue reading }

art { Paul Klee, After the drawing 19/75, 1919 }

In early 2015, near the end of my MFA in Fine Arts at Parsons, I set out on a project to create a celebrity by 2020—entirely via the internet—as an art practice. The celebrity I began to create was a hyper sexy, cyber savvy, female rock star named Ona.

Without a large budget or industry connections, I knew that major social media growth would be an important factor. I started by employing some of the usual tactics I’d used in the past for other projects—a press release, an article in Thought Catalog, soliciting articles from journalists. Nothing much came of it.

So I tried a different tack, working with what I already had: two Instagram accounts, each with a couple hundred followers—one for my art practice as a whole (@leahschrager) and one specifically for selfies and modeling (@onaartist). It was immediately clear that the selfies I posted on @onaartist got more likes and the account grew more quickly. I sought out modeling accounts with big follower numbers and I started DMing them, asking the models if I could pay them to talk to me about how they grew. None of them got back to me. I then did some open submissions to @playboy, @arsenicmagazine, and a few others, but I didn’t get picked.

Finally, I DMed a collection page—a page with a large follower count that features photos of various models—and it got back to me. The page was @the.buttblog, and I was told it would cost $200 for a permanent post. I paid its admin to post a photo of me and in 24 hours I gained around 5,000 real followers.

{ Leah Schrager/Rhizome | Continue reading }

marker on inkjet print { Leah Schrager }

In 2012, hedge fund manager and venture capitalist Albert Hu was convicted of a financial fraud that stretched from Silicon Valley to Hong Kong. Today, he is locked up in the minimum security wing of Lompoc federal prison—inmate #131600-111—without access to the Internet. But, somehow, his bogus investment firm has come back to life.

On the surface, Asenqua Ventures appears to be legitimate. It has a website. It has a working voicemail system and lists a Northern California office address. It has distributed multiple press releases via PRNewswire, which were then picked up by reputable media organizations. It is included in financial industry databases like Crunchbase, PitchBook, and S&P Capital IQ. Its senior managers have LinkedIn profiles.

One of those profiles belonged to Stephen Adler, who earlier this week sent out hundreds of new Linkedin “connect” invitations (many of which were accepted). Among the recipients was Marty McMahon, a veteran executive recruiter who just felt that something was a bit off about Adler’s profile. So he did a Google reverse image search on Adler’s profile pic, and quickly learned that the headshot actually belonged to a San Diego real estate agent named Dan Becker.

McMahon called Dan Becker, who he says was stunned to learn that his photo was being used by someone who he didn’t know. Then McMahon did another image search for the LinkedIn profile pic of Adler’s colleague, Michael Reed. This time it led him to Will Fagan, another San Diego realtor who often works with Dan Becker.

{ Fortune | Continue reading }

For hundreds of years, Koreans have used a different method to count age than most of the world. […] A person’s Korean age goes up a year on new year’s day, not on his or her birthday. So when a baby is born on Dec. 31, he or she actually turns two the very next day.

{ Quartz | Continue reading }

{ via A.V. Flox }

{ Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments | PDF }

Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet

Recently, some of the major companies that provide the basic infrastructure that makes the Internet work have seen an increase in DDoS attacks against them. Moreover, they have seen a certain profile of attacks. These attacks are significantly larger than the ones they’re used to seeing. They last longer. They’re more sophisticated. And they look like probing. One week, the attack would start at a particular level of attack and slowly ramp up before stopping. The next week, it would start at that higher point and continue. And so on, along those lines, as if the attacker were looking for the exact point of failure. […]

We don’t know where the attacks come from. The data I see suggests China, an assessment shared by the people I spoke with. On the other hand, it’s possible to disguise the country of origin for these sorts of attacks. The NSA, which has more surveillance in the Internet backbone than everyone else combined, probably has a better idea, but unless the US decides to make an international incident over this, we won’t see any attribution.

{ Bruce Schneier | Continue reading }

polaroid photograph { Andy Warhol, Grapes, 1981 }

‘Smart’ Dildo Company Sued For Tracking Users’ Habits

Is Sex Good for Your Health? A National Study on Partnered Sexuality and Cardiovascular Risk among Older Men and Women

Fetal masturbation

Overall, most U.S. men were satisfied with their genitals

Neither intelligence nor education can stop you from forming prejudiced opinions – but curiosity may help you make wiser judgements

Implicit memory for words heard during sleep

How new experiences boost memory formation

Sugar industry bought off scientists, skewed dietary guidelines for decades [[NYT]] Related: Breakfasts

Which body part hurts the most when stung by a bee? A scientist put himself through a torturous experiment to find out

I have no idea if we’re going to have a quantum computer in every smart phone, or if we’re going to have quantum apps or quapps, that would allow us to communicate securely and find funky stuff using our quantum computers; that’s a tall order. It’s very likely that we’re going to have quantum microprocessors in our computers and smart phones that are performing specific tasks.

Hijacking Banksy: using a contemporary art mystery to increase academic readership

Someone Set Up A Sweet Co-Working Space On A Bridge Over The 5 Freeway

Nihilistic Password Security Questions

The Evolution of Bacteria on a “Mega-Plate” Petri Dish

Brooklyn Bar Menu Generator [Thanks Tim]

Why Scientific Studies Are So Often Wrong: The Streetlight Effect

Researchers tend to look for answers where the looking is good, rather than where the answers are likely to be hiding.

{ Discover | Continue reading }