"Missing brains mystery solved at the University of Texas"

"After several news stories appeared Wednesday about 100 brains vanishing from the college, someone called from the University of Texas in San Antonio to say the 100 specimens in glass jars full of formaldehyde were just fine, and they'd been at the school for years."

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/100-missing-brains-found-san-antonio-article-1.2031727

I love this because it demonstrates how fundamentally disorganized and arbitrary the world can be when we don’t have records of why and how and who. Those brains were there, so everyone assumed that they were just sort of supposed to be there, and in the building where the brains were missing people probably just thought there were only supposed to be 100 brains or whatever, because if you take a slice in time without any knowledge of what happened before then there is no reason to assume that anything is wrong.

"The Mathematical Reason All Hipsters Look the Same"

"According to Toubol's findings, a group of interacting individuals that attempts to counter the majority ends up doing the same thing because there's not enough time to forecast what everyone else is going to do to be "different.""

http://mic.com/articles/103172/the-scientific-reason-all-hipsters-look-the-same

"Episode 145: Octothorpe"

"In our current digital age, the hashtag identifies movements, events, happenings, brands—topics of all kinds. The “#” didn’t always have this meaning, though.

It’s had a few different lives.

The hashtag, as we know it, was born one day in 2007."

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/octothorpe/

This was great great - and I love where it gets at the end about language and technology. Lols, Octothorpe.

"Polone: Three Actors Reveal the Awkward Truth of Shooting Sex Scenes"

" Have you or the person with whom you’ve been doing a scene ever become, uh, aroused?

Betty: Not to mention any names, but one actor came on me during the take. I had to surreptitiously wipe myself off with the sheet. Fortunately, I liked the guy. I found it a little flattering and a little creepy. We never talked about it, so I can't tell you if it was Method acting on his part or if he just found me pretty, but I suspect I'm not the only actress who's had this experience. But I can tell you that twenty years later, when I run into him, my first thought is, There's the guy that had on-camera sex with my abdomen."
http://www.vulture.com/m/2012/03/shooting-a-sex-scene-polone.html

I have often wondered about this, and this article confirms all my suspicions about the awkward.

"Washington's Beautiful, Illegal Tiny Houses"

"Ranging in price from $10,000 to $50,000, tiny homes like The Matchbox could help to ease the shortage of affordable housing in the capital city, where the median price per square foot has climbed to a staggering $450. Heating and cooling costs are negligible. Rainwater catchment systems help to make the homes self-sustaining. They're an attractive option to the very sort of residents whom the city attracts in abundance: single, young professionals without a lot of stuff, who aren't ready to take on a large mortgage."

http://reason.com/archives/2014/11/16/washingtons-beautiful-illegal

"I can't stop reading these Dadaist jokes written by children"

"A lot of the jokes concern sports or other competitions, such as ham contests:

if you go to the ham contest wat will the man say

you won last year you are not alowed

Or bowling:

why did the skittle go bowling?

because he is part of bowling."
http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/15/7222649/bad-kids-jokes-tumblr

These  are wonderful. Wonderful.

"Teacher to parents: About THAT kid (the one who hits, disrupts and influences YOUR kid)"

"I want to talk about THAT child, too, but there are so many things I can’t tell you.

I can’t tell you that she was adopted from an orphanage at 18 months.

I can’t tell you that he is on an elimination diet for possible food allergies, and that he is therefore hungry ALL. THE. TIME.

I can’t tell you that her parents are in the middle of a horrendous divorce, and she has been staying with her grandma.

I can’t tell you that I’m starting to worry that grandma drinks…

The thing is, there are SO MANY THINGS I can’t tell you about That Child. I can’t even tell you the good stuff."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/11/14/teacher-to-parents-about-that-kid-the-one-who-hits-disrupts-and-influences-your-kid/

"Are You Important?"

"According to Jackson, "Random occurrences can start links growing and lead to a person becoming important in a network: People like to connect to more popular people, and so it can snowball. "

The chance grouping of a few kids in homeroom can lead to a clique that might end up dominating a social network.

"If you rebooted the network" — meaning if everything were to be played out again — "you might get a totally different structure," Jackson says.""
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/11/11/363255882/are-you-important

"How a password changed my life."

"Of course, there were clear indicators of what I needed to do -or what I had to achieve- in order to regain control of my life, but we often don’t pay attention to these clues.

My password became the indicator. My password reminded me that I shouldn’t let myself be victim of my recent break up, and that I’m strong enough to do something about it.

My password became: “Forgive@h3r”"
https://medium.com/@manicho/how-a-password-changed-my-life-7af5d5f28038

I have to reset my password at work soon, and I am so glad that I read this article first :) it's such a constant part of our lives, I am almost surprised that using passwords as positive reminders hadn't already happened. 

Now what other annoying but necessary things can be made productive? Maybe like, every time I do the laundry I will think about washing away something stressful. Every time I finally get around to folding my clothes and putting them away I could hide an encouraging note to myself for a surprise later. 

"Why I Am Teaching a Course Called “Wasting Time on the Internet”"

"It seems that the Surrealist vision of a dream culture has been fully realized in today’s technologies. We are awash in a new, electronic collective unconscious; strapped to several devices, we’re half awake, half asleep. We speak on the phone while surfing the Web, partially hearing what’s being said to us while simultaneously answering e-mails and checking status updates. We’ve become very good at being distracted. From a creative point of view, this is reason to celebrate. The vast amount of the Web’s language is perfect raw material for literature. Disjunctive, compressed, decontextualized, and, most important, cut-and-pastable, it’s easily reassembled into works of art."

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/wasting-time-on-the-internet

I really, really enjoy this

"How Facebook Is Changing the Way Its Users Consume Journalism"

"The shift raises questions about the ability of computers to curate news, a role traditionally played by editors. It also has broader implications for the way people consume information, and thus how they see the world.

In an interview at Facebook’s sprawling headquarters here, which has a giant, self-driving golf cart that takes workers between buildings, Mr. Marra said he did not think too much about his impact on journalism."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/business/media/how-facebook-is-changing-the-way-its-users-consume-journalism.html

THINK ABOUT YOUR IMPACT ON JOURNALISM, FACEBOOK. What?? How are they being this willfully unaware of their impact on the world?? They need mandatory sociology courses on power and privilege.

"Weingarten: D.C. isn’t the second-snobbiest city in America; it’s the snobbiest"

"I’m sure you used advanced metrics to arrive at your rankings, but believe me, statistics alone cannot adequately measure snobbery. Sure, both cities are going to rank pretty high in, say, the number of dog psychiatrists per capita or the percentage of coffeehouses that offer foam-infused espresso made from Kona beans excreted by Namibian marmosets, but I contend you have to be prepared to drill down deeper. Literally. Washington invented the term “drill down deeper,” which is part of the pretentious lingua franca of Sunday morning TV talk shows, a means of entertainment we also invented because we in Washington simply take it for granted that the entire country hungers to watch sexy, A-list D.C. celebrities like Timothy Geithner and Janet Yellen earnestly debate exogenous horizontal equity integration."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/weingarten-dc-isnt-the-second-snobbiest-city-in-america-its-the-snobbiest/2014/09/24/dff9fb78-3776-11e4-bdfb-de4104544a37_story.html

YES. I love DC, but people take themselves so ridiculously seriously. I had been thinking about this, but I didn't realize quite how true this was until a friend of mine from home came to visit and tried to casually joke with people and they all took her slightly too literally. Like, she stopped to pet a pug puppy and jokingly asked "Is he going to grow into these wrinkles?" and his owner said very seriously "well, he is probably going to grow a little more, so he might" because in DC if you think a dog is cute you say "this dog is cute", you don't quirkily appreciate his wrinkliness.

(There have been so many small, awkward pauses in my life as a result of the gap between Californian social norms and DC social norms)

"NYC's Ebola Patient Went Bowling. Why Don't Americans Just Stay Home When They're Sick?"

"This is something my Soviet family and I could never get used to in the States, the stubbornness with which Americans trudge to work or school with triple-digit fevers or noses like spigots, the obliviousness with which an American will greet you with a hug and then say, “I’m sick!,” or reach to try your drink while hacking up a lung. Come to think of it—why are they even at the bar with you? Or the way Americans cough with childlike abandon, like a sprinkler. Or sneeze like no one is watching."

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119969/new-york-city-ebola-case-why-did-dr-craig-spencer-go-bowling

This is interesting (beyond the individualism, I think that a lot has to do with not wanting to have to take sick days. There really should be unlimited sick days). I also want to talk about how he is being treated so much differently from that person at the bar who is just sneezing everywhere and people are joking that he has the flu and if we get the flu from him we will be a little irritated maybe but won't question his basic moral character.