In 2016, the technology startup VidAngel offered a movie streaming service that empowered users to mute potentially offensive audio and cut potentially offensive video from Hollywood films. Copyright litigation forced VidAngel’s service offline in December of that year. But, in the preceding eleven-and-a-half months, VidAngel managed to transmit roughly four million filtered streams and, for each of them, to record not only which filters were applied, but also how many minutes of the resulting film each user then watched.

[W]e use the VidAngel data to study the market for filtered motion picture content. Among our findings are that video filters are primarily used to filter scenes involving intimacy, rather than those related to violence; and that, while the most common filtered audio is the word “f*ck,” users are even more likely to mute the words “Christ” and “dink.”

{ UCLA School of Law, Law and Economics Research Paper Series | Continue reading }

Air Guitarists Compete At World Championships

For $450, This Japanese Company Will Quit Your Job For You

Google and Mastercard Cut a Secret Ad Deal to Track Retail Sales

The present research examined ‘creepiness,’ a commonly referenced but little understood construct

people routinely find themselves on the receiving end of others’ memory failures; that is, people sometimes find themselves forgotten

Researchers find evidence that neural systems actively remove memories, which suggests that forgetting may be the default mode of the brain

relation between the gray matter volume of the amygdala and procrastination

Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015 [PDF]

I argue that the object that is universally lost in all break-ups is a person with certain intrinsic qualities, who is in a relationship characterised by certain shared activities and recognized as romantic. That means that, at least in romantic terminations, the beloved and the relationship are not independent objects of grief. The Break-Up Check: Exploring Romantic Love through Relationship Terminations. [last week: How to Recover from Romantic Heartbreak + previously: The scientific study of heartbreak is extremely new, with nearly all articles on the matter appearing in the last 10-15 years]

Pet Phone: Using Apologies to Enhance User-Smartphone Attachment [PDF]

Pink for Girls, Red for Boys, and Blue for Both Genders: Colour Preferences in Children and Adults

“Google, but for colors”

“I think [Warhol’s] most interesting work is actually the way he created something that he called business-art”

How Two Thieves Stole Thousands of Prints From University Libraries

Scientists have shown that water is likely to be a major component of those exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars) which are between two to four times the size of Earth.

Any contact with water whatsoever – even her own sweat – leaves Rachel with a painful, swollen and intensely itchy rash which can last for several hours The woman who is allergic to water

People are having trouble telling the difference between real videos and the deepfake videos

Healthy adult humans blink somewhere between every 2 and 10 seconds, and a single blink takes between one-tenth and four-tenths of a second. That’s what would be normal to see in a video of a person talking. But it’s not what happens in many deepfake videos.

Conditional video synthesis from Berkeley [Thanks Tim]

The value of the art market, which actually hasn’t changed that much over the past 10 years or so, is in the region of $60 billion a year, which sounds like a lot, but actually compared to other industries is not that huge. It hasn’t shifted very much in the last 10 years, but what has changed is the composition of the figure, with the top end much stronger and the middle weaker. […]

There is a concentration on about 25 artists in the art market. Studies (which I cite in my book) have shown that whether we are talking about the impressionists, postwar and contemporary art sales, the highest prices are concentrated on just a few artists. […]

you need to distinguish here between private museums that belong to a very rich person, a billionaire generally these days, and a state museum. In America, a museum like MOCA or LACMA is, in theory, a private museum, and they get their funding from donors on the whole, although they sometimes get it from the local municipality as well, so it’s not a hard and fast distinction, but it’s still worth considering who is behind a given institution.

What has definitely driven the contemporary art market has been the phenomenal growth of private museums who all concentrate on the same contemporary art basically.

{ Five Books | Continue reading }

oilstick on paper { Jean-Michel Basquiat, Action comics, 1986–1987 }

In 1905 about half of the world’s oil was produced in or near Baku. […] Baku is reputed to be the world’s lowest capital city, standing about 28 meters below sea level. […] It is the first Shiite country I have visited, and it seems less conservative than say the Turkey of ten years ago. […] Baku has three working synagogues, and, unlike in almost every other country in the world, they do not require police protection.  It is a remarkably safe city.

{ Marginal Revolution | Continue reading }

related { Baku, most polluted city in the world, 2008 }

Two years ago a New Scientist headline announced the “world’s first baby born with new ‘3 parent’ technique.” Whereas an embryo is usually produced by one sperm and one egg, this technique uses genetic material from three separate people. First performed by a New York fertility clinic in Mexico to evade US legal restrictions, the procedure has now been replicated several times. […]

Two cases in the UK and Mexico involve a woman who carries a rare disease of her mitochondria, the cellular structures that produce energy in our cells. Mitochondria have their own DNA and can harbor their own genetic diseases. These are passed on solely through the maternal line, because mitochondria are found in eggs but not in sperm. One approach to blocking transmission of these illnesses involves inserting the DNA-filled nucleus from the egg of the woman into a donor egg full of healthy mitochondria but stripped of its own nucleus. Fertilize that hybrid egg with a sperm, and presto! A child could be born nine months later with DNA from three people and without a catastrophic mitochondrial disorder. […] Children conceived with a third person’s mitochondria are, it follows, the offspring of three parents. […]

Mitochondria, it turns out, were originally bacteria; their free-wheeling existence came to an end one day deep in evolutionary history when they entered another single-celled organism and started a new life inside. […]

This is not what we think of as Darwinian evolution, the transmission of genes and traits down the family line. DNA, it turns out, can also be passed laterally, between individuals, including those of different species. […] We may like to think of DNA as the neat bequest of our parents, the fusion of two unique, circumscribed human lineages.  Yet it is—and we are—something more: short strands within a vast interwoven genetic web, stretching back to the earth’s earliest days, linking all living things. 

{ New Republic | Continue reading }

Police bodycams can be hacked to doctor footage

The effects of emotional disclosure were equivalent whether participants thought they were disclosing to a chatbot or to a person.

Here I report a case of “masturbation” with a tool by a wild infant chimpanzee. The observed “masturbation” did not involve ejaculation, because infant chimpanzees are unable to ejaculate.

Tokyo University manipulated test scores for more than a decade to ensure more men became doctors

Among the most frequent reasons that men indicated for being single included poor flirting skills, low self-confidence, poor looks, shyness, low effort, and bad experience from previous relationships.

How to Recover from Romantic Heartbreak. Use “negative reappraisal,” and understand you have work to do—time alone may not be enough.

The strongest positive correlates of narcissism were: using words related to sports, second-person pronouns, and swear words.

observation of the eyes and ocular regions of normal control individuals, and of serial killers, enabled average respondents to distinguish these individuals clearly in terms of trustworthiness, likability, and general “goodness.”

Chemists discover how blue light (from digital devices and the sun ) speeds blindness

Lip-reading artificial intelligence could help the deaf—or spies

It’s nearly impossible to break a dry spaghetti noodle into only two pieces. A new MIT study shows how and why it can be done. [more]

Obesity has reached alarming levels in Thailand, which ranks as the second- heaviest nation in Asia, after Malaysia. One in three Thai men are obese, while more than 40 percent of women are significantly overweight. [NY Times]

When presented with two vendors selling effectively identical products, the Japanese choose whichever one has the longer line in front of it

An errant fly ruined a world record domino attempt in Germany

Man falls into Anish Kapoor’s artwork, ends up at hospital

Adam is the founder of Dick At Your Door

“What are the odds, if everything is random?” Wang wondered.

In a new paper, Wang investigates whether “hot-streak” periods are more than just a lucky coincidence. […]

Looking at the career histories of thousands of scientists, artists, and film directors, the team found evidence that hot streaks are both real and ubiquitous, with virtually everyone experiencing one at some point in their career. While the timing of an individual’s greatest successes is indeed random, their top hits are highly likely to appear in close proximity. […]

“If we know where your best work is, then we know very well where your second-best work is, and your third,” he says, “because they’re just around the corner.”

{ Kellogg School of Management | Continue reading }

Human memory systems are subject to many imperfections, including memory distortions and the creation of false memories. Here, we demonstrate a case where memory distortion is adaptive, increasing the overall accuracy of memories. […]

Although participants’ memories were systematically distorted, they were distorted in a way that is consistent with minimizing their average error […]

Thus, memory distortion may not always be maladaptive: in some cases, distortion can result from a memory system that optimally combines information in the service of the broader goals of the person. Furthermore, this framework for thinking about memory distortion suggests that false memory can be thought of on a continuum with true memory: the greater uncertainty participants have about an individual item memory, the more they weight their gist memory [Gist traces are fuzzy representations of a past event]; with no item information, they weight only their gist memory.

{ PsyArXiv | Continue reading }

photo { Ana Mendieta, Untitled, from Silueta Series, Iowa, 1978 }

When scientists began tracking the health of 268 Harvard sophomores in 1938 during the Great Depression, they hoped the longitudinal study would reveal clues to leading healthy and happy lives. […] They eventually expanded their research to include the men’s offspring, who now number 1,300 and are in their 50s and 60s, to find out how early-life experiences affect health and aging over time. […]

Over the years, researchers have studied the participants’ health trajectories and their broader lives, including their triumphs and failures in careers and marriage. […]

“The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” said Robert Waldinger, director of the study. […] Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives, the study revealed. […] Those who kept warm relationships got to live longer and happier, said Waldinger, and the loners often died earlier. “Loneliness kills,” he said. “It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.” […]

The study showed that the role of genetics and long-lived ancestors proved less important to longevity than the level of satisfaction with relationships in midlife.

{ Harvard Gazette | Continue reading }

The Grim Reaper, the personification of death, is a well known mythological and literary figure. Reported characteristics include a black cloak with cowl, a scythe, and cachexia. High quality scientific research linking the Grim Reaper to mortality has been scarce, despite extensive anecdotes.

Walking speed is a commonly used objective measure of physical capability in older people, predicting survival in several cohort studies. A recent meta-analysis found that being in the lowest fourth of walking speed compared with the highest was associated with a threefold increased risk of mortality. Moreover, the association between slow walking speed and mortality seems consistent across several ethnic groups and shows a dose-response relation. Although the association between walking speed and mortality has been well documented, the plausible biological relation between the two remains unclear.

We assessed whether the relation between slow walking speed and mortality results from the increased likelihood of being caught by Death. By assessing this relation using receiver operating characteristics curve analysis, we hypothesised we would be able to determine the walking speed of the Grim Reaper—information of importance to public health. […]

[1705] men have been followed for a mean of 59.3 months. Walking speed at baseline was not available in 77 men, mostly through inability to complete the test. A total of 266 deaths occurred during follow-up. […]

Based on receiver operating characteristics analysis and estimation of the Youden index, a walking speed of 0.82 m/s (2 miles (about 3 km) per hour) was most predictive of mortality. Therefore, we predict that this is the likely speed at which the Grim Reaper prefers to ambulate under working conditions. Older men who walked at speeds greater than 0.82 m/s were 1.23 times less likely to encounter Death. In addition, no men walking at speeds of 1.36 m/s (3 miles (about 5 km) per hour) or above were caught by Death (n=22, 1.4%). This supports our hypothesis that faster speeds are protective against mortality because fast walkers can maintain a safe distance from the Grim Reaper. Interestingly, the predicted walking speed of Death estimated in the present study is virtually identical to the gait speed (0.80 m/s) associated with median life expectancy at most ages and for both sexes in a recent meta-analysis of gait speed and mortality using data from diverse populations. This indicates that the preferred walking speed of the Grim Reaper while collecting souls is relatively constant irrespective of people’s geographical location, sex, or ethnic background.

{ British Medical Journal | PDF }

“Modern” Homo sapiens (that is, people who were roughly like we are now) first walked the Earth about 50,000 years ago. Since then, more than 108 billion members of our species have ever been born, according to estimates by Population Reference Bureau (PRB). Given the current global population of about 7.5 billion (based on our most recent estimate as of mid-2017), that means those of us currently alive represent about 7 percent of the total number of humans who have ever lived.

{ Population Reference Bureau | Continue reading }

photo { Edward Weston, Death Valley, 1947 }

This paper examines the association between television ownership and coital frequency using data from nearly 4 million individuals in national household surveys in 80 countries from 5 continents. […]

Under our most conservative estimate, we find that television ownership is associated with approximately a 6% reduction in the likelihood of having had sex in the past week,

{ National Bureau of Economic Research | Continue reading }

photo { Matthew Casteel }

The new “eyes wide shut” illusion uses a standard enlarging (shaving or makeup) mirror. Close one eye and look at the closed eye in the mirror; the eye should take up most of the mirror. Switch eyes to see the other closed eye. Switch back-and-forth a few times, then open both eyes. You see an open eye. Which eye is it? To find out, close one eye. Whichever you close, that’s the eye you see. How can this be possible? The brain is fusing two images of the two eyes.

{ Perception | Continue reading | Thanks Brad! }

However, no one has hitherto laid down the limits to the powers of the body, that is, no one has as yet been taught by experience what the body can accomplish solely by the laws of nature, in so far as she is regarded as extension. No one hitherto has gained such an accurate knowledge of the bodily mechanism, that he can explain all its functions; nor need I call attention to the fact that many actions are observed in the lower animals, which far transcend human sagacity, and that somnambulists do many things in their sleep, which they would not venture to do when awake: these instances are enough to show, that the body can by the sole laws of its nature do many things which the mind wonders at.

Again, no one knows how or by what means the mind moves the body, nor how many various degrees of motion it can impart to the body, nor how quickly it can move it.

{ Spinoza, Ethics, III, Proposition II, Scholium | Continue reading }

unrelated { eye colour may not be a priority when choosing a partner }

The familiarity of the phrase ‘much ado about nothing’ belies its complexity. In Shakespeare’s day ‘nothing’ was pronounced the same as ‘noting’, and the play contains numerous punning references to ‘noting’, both in the sense of observation and in the sense of ‘notes’ or messages. […]

‘Nothing’ was Elizabethan slang for the vagina (a vacancy, ‘no-thing’ or ‘O thing’). Virginity — a state of potentiality rather than actuality — is also much discussed in the play, and it is these twin absences — the vagina and virginity — that lead, in plot terms, to the ‘much ado’ of the title.

{ The Guardian | Continue reading }

photo { Olivia Rocher, I Fought the Law (Idaho), 2016 }

STUDY: Watching Only Fox News Makes You Less Informed Than Watching No News At All

How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions Jerome Jacobson and his network of mobsters, psychics, strip club owners, and drug traffickers won almost every prize for 12 years, until the FBI launched Operation ‘Final Answer.’

Mountain View’s unusual rule for Facebook: No free food

Hackers break into voting machines within 2 hours at Defcon

A new report debunks the health benefits of taking omega-3 supplements And: Giving children omega-3 fatty acid supplements reduces disruptive behavior, which in turn had a positive effect on their parents, making them less likely to argue with each other and engage in other verbal abuse

Neuroscientists report that they had participants wear a ball gag while watching images of people in pain

People’s eye movements reveal whether they are sociable, conscientious or curious

psychology researchers reveal factors that lead to infidelity, as well as prevent it.

Coupled individuals adjust their ideal mate preferences according to their actual partner

the extraordinary aspects of the human mind are due to our species’ ability to process the relations among three items of information simultaneously

Across six studies, we find that the tendency to experience awe is positively associated with scientific thinking. We show that the disposition to experience awe predicts a more accurate understanding of how science works, rejection of creationism, and rejection of unwarranted teleological explanations more broadly.

Psychologists have proposed an explanation for why Ouija board users feel as though a spirit is moving the planchette

We find that suicide rates rise 0.7% in US counties and 2.1% in Mexican municipalities for a 1 °C increase in monthly average temperature

Nearly 412,000 deaths every year in the US can be attributed to lead contamination

Assassination Markets Let Augur Users Gamble on Trump Murder

Son of Romanian peasants, Constantin Brancusi arrived in Paris around the same time Picasso did, but on foot. Within a few years, he had somehow managed to apprentice with Rodin.

In 1978 a series of small mistakes created some characters out of nothing. The errors went undiscovered just long enough to be set in stone, and now these ghosts are, at least in potential, a part of every computer on the planet

Pianist Plays Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, Ravel & Debussy for Blind Elephants in Thailand

What happens when we unexpectedly see an attractive potential partner? Previous studies in laboratorial settings suggest that the visualization of attractive and unattractive photographs influences time. The major aim of this research is to study time perception and attraction in a realistic social scenario, by investigating if changes in subjective time measured during a speed dating are associated with attraction. […]

When there is a perception of the partner as being physically more attractive, women tend to overestimate the duration of that meeting, whereas men tend to underestimate its duration.

{ University of Minho | Continue reading }

Someone Completely Demolished Trump’s Hollywood Star with a Pickax

This study utilized a sample population of married individuals specifically seeking extramarital sexual encounters (n = 1070) and investigated those factors which influence the individual’s overall perception of life satisfaction before, during, and after their affairs. Findings indicate that while affairs do tend to make respondents happy, a number of factors influence perception of life satisfaction during an affair, including a belief that an outside partner is required to remain in a primary partnership, a desire to remain in the primary partnership, at least biweekly sexual events with the outside partner, a belief that the individual loves their outside partner, and seeking out the partnership due to sexual dissatisfaction within the primary partnership. There was also a gender effect. A surprising finding was that even after the outside partnership ends, respondents reported a higher life satisfaction rating than before the outside partnership.

{ Sexuality & Culture | Continue reading }

Postcoital Dysphoria (PCD) is a counter-intuitive phenomenon characterized by inexplicable feelings of tearfulness, sadness, or irritability following otherwise satisfactory consensual sexual activity. Prevalence of PCD has been reported among females, but not among males. […]

The present study utilized an anonymous online questionnaire to examine the prevalence and correlates of PCD amongst an international sample including 1,208 male participants. Forty one percent reported experiencing PCD in their lifetime and 20% reported experiencing PCD in the previous four weeks. Between 3-4% of the sample reported experiencing PCD on a regular basis.

{ Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy | Continue reading }

The association between alcohol intake and male reproductive function is still controversial. […] we performed a cross‐sectional analysis of semen quality. […]

Moderate alcohol intake appears positively associated to semen quality in male partners of infertile couples undergoing assisted reproductive techniques.

{ Andrology | Continue reading }

The Cynical Genius Illusion

Competent individuals held contingent attitudes and endorsed cynicism only if it was warranted in a given sociocultural environment.

Less competent individuals embraced cynicism unconditionally, suggesting that — at low levels of competence — holding a cynical worldview might represent an adaptive default strategy to avoid the potential costs of falling prey to others’ cunning.

{ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin | Continue reading }

photo { Susan Unterberg, Horse eyes #3, 1999 }