In the stillness of remembering what you had, and what you lost
Heterosexual men were most likely to say they usually-always orgasmed when sexually intimate (95%), followed by gay men (89%), bisexual men (88%), lesbian women (86%), bisexual women (66%), and heterosexual women (65%).
Compared to women who orgasmed less frequently, women who orgasmed more frequently were more likely to: receive more oral sex, have longer duration of last sex, be more satisfied with their relationship, ask for what they want in bed, praise their partner for something they did in bed, call/email to tease about doing something sexual, wear sexy lingerie, try new sexual positions, anal stimulation, act out fantasies, incorporate sexy talk, and express love during sex.
Women were more likely to orgasm if their last sexual encounter included deep kissing, manual genital stimulation, and/or oral sex in addition to vaginal intercourse.
pocelain, china paint and luster { Jessica Stoller, Untitled (frosted bust), 2012 }
Every day, the same, again
Women are getting freckles tattooed on their faces
Man wins back girlfriend’s love after she forgets him due to amnesia
The Science of the Rorschach Blots
Minnesota’s Mall Of America is holding a contest to find a “Writer-In-Residence” who can spend five days “deeply immersed” in the mall “while writing on-the-fly impressions” of the whole experience. [Thanks Tim]
A Virtual Look Into Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House
somebody modeled the trump handshake [Thanks Tim]
A coffee machine that turns selfies & photos into latte art [Thanks Tim]
La nuit déjà nous fait méconnaissables
Whereas women of all ages prefer slightly older sexual partners, men—regardless of their age—have a preference for women in their 20s. Earlier research has suggested that this difference between the sexes’ age preferences is resolved according to women’s preferences. This research has not, however, sufficiently considered that the age range of considered partners might change over the life span.
Here we investigated the age limits (youngest and oldest) of considered and actual sex partners in a population-based sample of 2,655 adults (aged 18-50 years). Over the investigated age span, women reported a narrower age range than men and women tended to prefer slightly older men. We also show that men’s age range widens as they get older: While they continue to consider sex with young women, men also consider sex with women of their own age or older.
Contrary to earlier suggestions, men’s sexual activity thus reflects also their own age range, although their potential interest in younger women is not likely converted into sexual activity. Homosexual men are more likely than heterosexual men to convert a preference for young individuals into actual sexual behavior, supporting female-choice theory.
related { Longest ever personality study finds no correlation between measures taken at age 14 and age 77 }
photo { Joan Crawford photographed by George Hurrell, 1932 }
No more coats and no more home
Postmodernism has, to a large extent, run its course [despite having made the considerable innovation of presenting] the first text that was highly self-conscious, self-conscious of itself as text, self-conscious of the writer as persona, self-conscious about the effects that narrative had on readers and the fact that the readers probably knew that. […] A lot of the schticks of post-modernism — irony, cynicism, irreverence — are now part of whatever it is that’s enervating in the culture itself.
photo { Francesca Woodman, Self-portrait at 13, Boulder, Colorado, 1972 | Photography tends not to have prodigies. Woodman, who committed suicide in 1981 at age 22, is considered a rare exception. | NY Review of Books | full story }
The world’s current hottest pepper, the Carolina Reaper
Our objective was to analyze the association between consumption of hot red chili peppers and mortality. […] The frequency of hot red chili pepper consumption was measured in 16,179 participants at least 18 years of age. […]
Consumption of hot red chili peppers was associated with a 13% reduction in the instantaneous hazard of death. Similar, but statistically nonsignificant trends were seen for deaths from vascular disease, but not from other causes. In this large population-based prospective study, the consumption of hot red chili pepper was associated with reduced mortality.
Every day, the same, again
Ransomware completely shuts down Ohio town government
Netflix engineers developed a hack that turns your mind into a remote control
Explaining the emotion of regret in the domain of casual sex
Where does innate fear come from?
Bottle-cork injury to the eye: a review of 13 cases [PDF]
Countries that added the most skyscrapers in 2016 (China, 84; US, 7; South Korea, 6…)
Leaked video shows new ‘nightmare-inducing’ wheeled robot from Boston Dynamics
No one speaks English, and everything’s broken
As men are generally more short-term oriented in their sexuality than women, and given that cigarette and alcohol use are still considered masculine behaviors, we explored if female smoking and drinking can function as a short-term mating strategy. […]
The experiment showed that young men perceive women who use cigarettes and alcohol as being more sexually unrestricted. Furthermore, tobacco and (especially) alcohol use brought some short-term attractiveness benefits to women. In short-term mating contexts, drinking enhanced women’s attractiveness, whereas occasional smoking was found equally desirable as not smoking. However, in long-term mating contexts, frequent drinking and all smoking behavior harmed women’s desirability.
Your air in my lungs
People are often the most aggressive against the people to whom they are closest—intimate partners. Intimate partner violence might be partly a result of poor self-control. Self-control of aggressive impulses requires energy, and much of this energy is provided by glucose derived from the food we eat. We measured glucose levels in 107 married couples over 21 days. To measure aggressive impulses, participants stuck 0–51 pins into a voodoo doll that represented their spouse each night, depending how angry they were with their spouse. To measure aggression, participants blasted their spouse with loud noise through headphones. Participants who had lower glucose levels stuck more pins into the voodoo doll and blasted their spouse with louder and longer noise blasts.
{ PNAS | PDF }
‘When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.’ –Eric Hoffer
The ability to choose should let people create more enjoyable experiences. However, in a set of 5 studies, people who chose repeatedly during ongoing consumption exhibited a greater drop in enjoyment compared with those who received a series of random selections from the same set of liked stimuli.
related { This questionnaire was designed to test your ability to choose at random }
Every day, the same, again
World’s largest hedge fund to replace managers with artificial intelligence
All signs point to a corporate takeover of the marijuana industry by Bayer, Monsanto
3 Studies Refute Idea that Exposure to Sexy Centerfolds Harms Men’s Relationships
Impact of holding umbrella on uni- and bi-directional pedestrian flow
Living close to heavy traffic was associated with a higher incidence of dementia
Physicist sentenced to 18 months in prison for faking data.
What Happens to Rejected Papers?
The sign, erected in 1923 as an advertisement for a housing development, originally read “Hollywoodland.” On New Year’s Day of 1976, the sign became “HOLLYWeeD” for the first time.
Walk like a penguin to avoid slipping on ice, German doctors advise
When that hark from the air said it was Captain Finsen
The travel booking systems used by millions of people every day are woefully insecure and lack modern authentication methods. This allows attackers to easily modify other people’s reservations, cancel their flights and even use the refunds to book tickets for themselves.
related { By posting a picture of your boarding pass online, you may be giving away more information than you think }
‘Everything has already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again.’ –André Gide
The most difficult part about looking at the future is unlearning what we know. There is so much baked into our generally held assumptions that tend to blind us — all of us.
‘Become such as you are, having learned what that is.’ –Pindar
We use data from the 2002–2013 National Surveys of Family Growth to examine change across U.S. cohorts born between 1966 and 1995 in whether individuals have had sex with same-sex partners only, or with both men and women, and in whether they have a bisexual or gay identity. Adjusted for age, race/ethnicity, immigrant status, and mother’s education, we find increases across cohorts in the proportion of women who report a bisexual identity, who report ever having had sex with both sexes, or who report having had sex with women only. By contrast, we find no cohort trend for men; roughly 5 percent of men in every cohort have ever had sex with a man, and the proportion claiming a gay or bisexual attraction changed little. We speculate that this gender difference is rooted in a broader pattern of asymmetry in gender change in which departures from traditional gender norms are more acceptable for women than men.
photo { Inez Van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin }
Everyday, the same, again
Mobsters ran a fake U.S. Embassy in Ghana for 10 years, flying the flag and issuing visas for $6,000
Ransomware offers decryption keys if you infect two other people
Since the mid-1990s, it’s estimated that at least 100,000 Japanese men and women vanish annually
Encounters with ‘familiar strangers’ play overlooked role in human interactions
Facial and vocal attractiveness were found to positively correlate in women but not in men
Psychiatrists Must Face Possibility That Medications Hurt More Than They Help
Does One Armpit Smell Like the Other? [More: Improbable podcast]
The Heroin Overdose Mystery [PDF]
Most Americans like their choices in today’s information-saturated world, but 20% feel overloaded
The military mobilization that followed came to be known as the Crusades [PDF]
California man spent $1 million playing Game of War
Student Lets Thief Steal His Phone, Spies On Him For Weeks To Make This Documentary [Thanks Tim]
‘The second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.’ –Dostoyevsky
When you’re doing two things at once – like listening to the radio while driving – your brain organizes itself into two, functionally independent networks, almost as if you temporarily have two brains. That’s according to a fascinating new study from University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientists Shuntaro Sasai and colleagues.
art { Harri Peccinotti }
yesterday never comes back
Remembering the past is a complex phenomenon that is subject to error. The malleable nature of human memory has led some researchers to argue that our memory systems are not oriented towards flawlessly preserving our past experiences. Indeed, many researchers now agree that remembering is, to some degree, reconstructive. Current theories propose that our capacity to flexibly recombine remembered information from multiple sources – such as distributed memory records, inferences, and expectations – helps us to solve current problems and anticipate future events. One implication of having a reconstructive and flexible memory system is that people can develop rich and coherent autobiographical memories of entire events that never happened.
In this article, we revisit questions about the conditions under which participants in studies of false autobiographical memory come to believe in and remember fictitious childhood experiences. […]
Approximately one-third of participants showed evidence of a false memory, and more than half showed evidence of believing that the [fictitious] event occurred in the past.
Photo photo { Brooke Nipar }
Every day, the same, again
Nearly 40% of Americans Would Give Up Sex for a Year in Exchange for Better Online Security
Criminals can guess Visa card number and security code in just six seconds, experts find
Paper money and coins as potential vectors of transmissible disease [PDF]
Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off
As transportation industry expert Hubert Horan will demonstrate in his four-part series, Uber has greatly oversold its case [part 1 part 2, part 3, part 4]
When judging other people, first impressions last
Why it’s hard to talk and make eye contact at the same time
Depression in Young People Affects the Stomach, Anxiety the Skin
Portions of the brain fall asleep and wake back up all the time, Stanford researchers find
The purpose of this article is to clarify the distinction between the dying and sick roles
A proposed theory of gravity does away with dark matter
Perspective Distortion in World War I Camouflage
Background notes and full credits for “The One Moment” Video by OK Go.
No pain, no gain
In a mixed-gender group, when women talk 25% of the time or less, it’s seen as being “equally balanced”. If women talk 25–50% of the time, they’re seen as “dominating the conversation”
[…]
A Californian company called Skinny Mirror sells mirrors that make you look thinner. When installed in the changing rooms of clothes shops, they can increase sales by 18%.
[…]
Twitter has enough money in the bank to run for 412 years with current losses.
photo { Blaise Cepis }
