“Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people,” she writes in her book. “We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people.”
People who are introverted tend to prefer substantial conversations about philosophy and ideas rather than chit-chat. In fact, introverts can get easily intimidated, bored or exhausted by small talk. They’d much rather be real with someone and talk about more weighty topics.
Besides feeling fake and pointless, small talk drains an introvert’s limited people-energy. If you look at the energy supply that introverts have for social interaction as a battery, their battery gains or loses energy depending on the social interaction.
[…]
Unfortunately, to succeed in the world you need to be able to make small talk without feeling like you need to retire to a cave for a few months. The key to surviving making small talk tolerable and less draining is to take control of the conversation and steer it toward topics that are actually interesting.
In international surveys, people consistently rank music as one of life’s supreme sources of pleasure and emotional power. We marry to music, graduate to music, mourn to music. Every culture ever studied has been found to make music […]
Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised a radical new approach to brain imaging that reveals what past studies had missed. By mathematically analyzing scans of the auditory cortex and grouping clusters of brain cells with similar activation patterns, the scientists have identified neural pathways that react almost exclusively to the sound of music — any music. […] When a musical passage is played, a distinct set of neurons tucked inside a furrow of a listener’s auditory cortex will fire in response.
[…]
“Why do we have music?” Dr. Kanwisher said in an interview. “Why do we enjoy it so much and want to dance when we hear it? How early in development can we see this sensitivity to music, and is it tunable with experience? These are the really cool first-order questions we can begin to address.”
[…]
The researchers have yet to determine exactly which acoustic features of music stimulate its dedicated pathway. The relative constancy of a musical note’s pitch? Its harmonic overlays? Even saying what music is can be tricky.
Borderline, Frontiers of Peace
Borderline, the Frontiers of Peace strives to show the results of a historical change that has taken place over the last decades in Europe. Since the signature of the Schengen Agreements in 1985, the borders of most of the European continent have been erased little by little from the landscapes and people’s imaginations.
These Agreements are a giant leap in the progressive unification of Europe and the emergence of a European conscience.
[…]
With the help of a GPS and detailed maps, I have conducted many trips along these “erased” borderlines, with the intention of capturing the essence of these now-peaceful crossings.
Punctuation in novels
When we think of novels, of newspapers and blogs, we think of words. We easily forget the little suggestions pushed in between: the punctuation. But how can we be so cruel to such a fundamental part of writing?
Inspired by a series of posters, I wondered what did my favorite books look like without words. Can you tell them apart or are they all a-mush? In fact, they can be quite distinct. Take my all-time favorite book, Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner. It is dense prose stuffed with parentheticals. When placed next to a novel with more simplified prose — Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy — it is a stark difference …
“Free smart phone apps are not really free,” says Wei Meng, lead researcher and a graduate student studying computer science. “Apps – especially malicious apps – can be used to collect potentially sensitive information about someone simply by hosting ads in the app and observing what is received by a user. Mobile, personalized in-app ads absolutely present a new privacy threat.”
The Chemistry of Matches (In Super Slow Motion)
To fire up the grill or the gas stove, we often reach for a match. It turns out there’s a lot of chemistry going on to make those little wooden wonders work. The best way to find out about the chemistry of burning matches is to watch it in ultra-slow motion.
“Winter is Trumping”
Armed with a Valyrian steel sword named Deal-Maker, Donald Trump embarks on a quest through Westeros to take care its border policies.
Huw Parkinson creates amusing video mashups combining current politics with pop culture references. His work can be seen on the Australian ABC (Insiders and replayed elsewhere). 2016 kicks off with Donald Trump’s quest to win the Game of Thrones, in “Winter is Trumping”
Selected highlights from last year:
Google does not respect privacy
I logged into a Google account today and was asked to verify my phone number. Strangely, I don’t ever remember giving Google my phone number, ever. I use an iPhone and limit my use of Google services because, to be honest, I don’t trust Google.
Turns out, there’s a clause in Google’s “privacy” policy which blatantly declares its right to collect information, without my explicit consent:
Device information
We collect device-specific information (such as your hardware model, operating system version, _ unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number _ [my emphasis]). Google may associate your device identifiers or phone number with your Google Account.
Wow! This is new, and I don’t remember agreeing to this when I naively setup my first Google account in the late 1990s. I certainly don’t accept this now.
My already diminished trust in Google has reached an all time low.
A 3D Printed Sundial Displays Time Like a Digital Clock
Using a clever mix of 3D printing and a few well-placed shadows, this sundial designed by Mojoptix projects the actual time as if displayed on a digital clock. The plastic component that casts the shadow—called a gnomon— is printed with extremely tiny holes that create pinpoint dots of light in the form of digits as the sun shines through during the day.
Cymatics
Sound waves on the surface of water