Why do girls check out other girls?

Admit it, many straight women spend more time checking each other out than they do the opposite sex. Julia Oliphant asks why we're so obsessed with analysing what she wears, how she dances, what she eats ... (the list could go on).


-The Telegraph

Why He Can’t Keep It in His Pants

Researchers, divorce attorneys, and stand-up comedians agree: Guys have a harder time resisting sexual temptation. Studies suggest married men are more likely than women to have extramarital affairs, as well as to seduce someone else’s partner.


But why, exactly, do they engage in such behavior—which is often self-destructive, and almost always hurtful to those they love? New research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin provides a possible answer.

-Pacific Standard

Habitat groupé : une « vie de village »

Au sommet d’une colline, un hameau en bois baptisé Habiterre fait face aux vertes montagnes du parc naturel du Vercors. C’est ici, sur les hauteurs de Die, dans la Drôme, qu’une dizaine de foyers, qui pour la plupart ne se connaissaient pas, ont décidé de concrétiser leur envie de vivre autrement.

Depuis mai 2011, ils sont une trentaine, du retraité au nouveau-né en passant par l’adolescent, à cultiver le vivre-ensemble, et l’entraide dans ce que l’on appelle un habitat groupé.

-Rue 89

I Forgot My Phone : une vidéo qui nous fait réfléchir sur l'usage des smartphones

On est tous allé à un souper avec quelqu'un qui ne cessait de pitonner, texter et tweeter sans se soucier des gens qui se trouvaient dans le contexte immédiat. C'est un peu ça qu'essaie de souligner l'auteur: on cesse de vivre dans le moment présent et on se soucie plutôt des likes, commentaires et retweets qu'une photo/vidéo/statut va engendrer.

-Night Life

Pour avoir peint Poutine en nuisette, un artiste russe doit s’enfuir en France

L’œuvre n’était pas particulièrement subtile – Vladimir Poutine et Dimitri Medvedev en sous-vêtements féminins –, mais elle aura eu des conséquences sérieuses pour son auteur : l’artiste Konstantin Altounine a choisi de quitter la Russie et de se réfugier en France après la saisie de sa toile et la fermeture d’un musée de Saint-Petersbourg.

Selon l’AFP, la peinture de Konstantin Altounine est passible de poursuites en vertu de la loi controversée punissant toute propagande homosexuelle.

-Rue 89

China’s German Ghost City

It was a German town, designed by German architects next to a Volkswagen factory on the outskirts of Shanghai. The place had everything: housing, parks, canal-side promenades, benches, fences, shops, roads, town squares, statues, office blocks, even a church, but it lacked the one ingredient that makes a city: humans. My species seemed out of place in our own creation here, I felt like an intruder tramping upon a 1:1 scale Teutonic themed still life. Besides a stray car or motorcycle passing by every five minutes or so and an older guy pushing a baby in a stroller three blocks back, I felt all alone while walking through Anting New Town.

-The China Chronicle

The Trickle-Down Economics of Nicaragua’s Drug Trade

 
Bluefields, the largest port on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, is in many ways a typical small coastal Central American city—bustling but poor, a natural center for all kinds of commerce, legal and illegal. If you hang out by the bay you’ll see cargo ships come in and passenger boats ferry people to and from the surrounding towns, some of which aren’t reachable by overland routes. By day, the streets are filled with garishly decorated taxis, starving stray dogs, and people selling mangos and pineapples. At night, a few downtown bars stay open late to serve beer and play reggae, bachata, and country music.

The majority of the men who aren’t cops or store owners work on boats, while women often turn their living rooms into sit-down restaurants or sell grilled meat and tortillas outside their homes. There aren’t many more options for the mostly black and indigenous population of 90,000—there’s no highway connecting Bluefields with the wealthier western part of the country, and without infrastructure there’s little prospect of outside investment.

Just about the only industry that’s pumped outside money into the local economy is drug trafficking.

-Vice

The Multiplicity of Desire

As soon as the elevator doors open in the mid-rise apartment building in Hell’s Kitchen, the host is there, in the doorway directly across from me, clipboard in hand. He is round, probably in his early forties, in a gray tank top, with close-cropped, thinning, graying hair and goatee; long, coarse hairs sprout from his shoulders and flabby upper arms as well. I follow him inside, past a dark sheet draped straight across the entryway and into a tiny, dirty kitchen to the left. He asks my name. I say, “Dan.” Immediately I say, “Shit.”


As has become a norm and especially in these situations, we’d made our acquaintance first virtually; I’d found his “party” via a Google search, which precipitated a brief e-mail exchange. Over the span of three Saturday nights, I’ve been sent out across New York in pursuit of some of the ways its 8.5 million inhabitants pursue each other. Of course, I cannot tell him this.

-NY Mag

« Jeune & salope », remake rohmérien de « Jeune & jolie »

Faire l’amour à une seule personne, quel ennui ! La solution, c’est de Matt, un « ami » (idem) qu’elle va venir. Miracle ! La belle passera les 20 minutes suivantes à satisfaire les deux « amis » dans la chambre de ses parents.

C’est là que la référence à Ozon est la plus prégnante – faut avouer qu’avant, on avait du mal à la percevoir. C’est dans cette perversion, cet inceste par procuration que le réalisateur nous reconnecte à son sujet premier. Car Marina Vacth, dans « Jeune & jolie », est ce personnage en mal d’amour parental. C’est même là le seul semblant de réponse amené par Ozon à la problématique qu’il pose : « Pourquoi cette jeune fille se prostitue-t-elle ? »

Dans « Jeune & salope », donc, on souille le lit conjugal de papa et maman, et, dans la scène suivante, lorsqu’un des souilleurs en vient à s’inquiéter pour l’état des draps, la belle ne savoir répondre que « c’était excitant ». Là, cette jouissance sans souci du lendemain, qu’y voir d’autre que cette parabole du rapport tarifé insécurisé ? Moins gros sabots qu’Ozon et son décès d’homme âgé pendant l’acte, le réalisateur de « Jeune & salope », Max Antoine, invite le spectateur à assister à la débauche insouciante, à cette quête du plaisir coûte que coûte de la jeunesse du XXIe siècle.

-Rue 89

The Economist explains: How can you buy illegal drugs online?

“I’M WAITING for my man / Twenty-six dollars in my hand / Up to Lexington, 125 / Feeling sick and dirty, more dead than alive.” So sang Lou Reed in 1967, about visiting Harlem to buy heroin. Getting hold of drugs has never been all that easy. Scoring has long meant hanging around scary street corners or dealing with thuggish bouncers at nightclubs, with a high chance of being beaten up or arrested. And if you are successful in buying something, the product may not be what you think it is. Heroin is “stamped on” with baking soda; cocaine is cut with extras such as cattle deworming tablets; ecstasy pills may well turn out to be something more dangerous. Imagine, then, if there were an Amazon.com for drugs. That, roughly, is what the Silk Road, a mail-order drugs service hidden in the dark parts of the internet, tries to be. How does it work?


-The Economist

Propaganda Pictures Depicting Women's Role in World War II

During World War II, the American government made a conscious effort to include women in the war effort using a vast array of media to urge the public. Large scale campaigns were launched to encourage women to enter the work force and fill places that were previously held by men, as they went off to fight a worldwide war across the Atlantic and the Pacific. The military for the first time in history set out deliberately to recruit large numbers of women to fill not only essential nursing positions, but to meet military requirements across a vast array of officer and enlisted skills. Women were called upon to work in factories making bombs and aircraft parts, as air raid wardens, driving tanks, building shops and so on.

-Amusing Planet

Adultery website is about to enter china where demand is already huge

The founder of a dating service promoting adultery is setting his sights on China's cheating hearts after a controversial launch in Hong Kong.
"It is a reality of life, we are an unfaithful society," said Noel Biderman, the founder of the Ashley Madison "married dating" service.

-Business Insider

The Suspects Wore Louboutins

Between October of 2008 and August of 2009, the alleged members of the Bling Ring collectively stole more than $3 million in jewelry and high-end designer goods from a number of Young Hollywood players: Hilton, Lohan, Patridge (a regular on the reality show The Hills), Bilson (former star of The O.C.), original Beverly Hills 90210 cast member Brian Austin Green and his girlfriend, actress Megan Fox. They are said to have tried to rob High School Musical’s Ashley Tisdale too, but fled when discovered by a female houseguest. The thieves apparently had a taste for luxury brands: Chanel, Gucci, Tiffany, Cartier, Prada, Marc Jacobs, Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry, Yves Saint Laurent. They allegedly stole clothes, shoes, handbags, makeup, perfume, underwear. They also took Green’s Sig Sauer .380 semi-automatic handgun.

-Vanity Fair

The TaskRabbits Of Burning Man

The tenets of Burning Man are community, participation, self-expression, and self-reliance. It is anti-capitalism: At “La Playa” you can only barter; no cash allowed. Dedicated Burners spend all year building their elaborate costumes, art cars, and structures, ranging from simple yurts to gigantic pirate ships.

But each year, there are increasing complaints about yuppie “weekender” partiers who just don’t get what the “Playa” is all about. People have started purchasing fully equipped luxury RVs instead of building camps. Techies are using it as a networking event. Last year Mark Zuckerberg infamously flew in on a helicopter.

Following that spirit, some are even hiring people on TaskRabbit (or getting their assistant to hire people) to take on the DIY preparation for them — or even just pack their bags.

-BuzzFeed

10 Fascinating Skybridges

A skybridge is a type of pedway consisting of an enclosed or covered bridge between two buildings. This protects pedestrians from the weather. However, with the development of architecture and construction in the past few decades, the look and purpose of the skybridges are to some extent changed. So today we can see that in addition to the basic functions it perform, these unusual constructions serve, also, as a observation platforms, luxury hospitality facilities, and works of art.

-The World Geography

Difference Engine: Crash program?

ONE day in the not too distant future, so the hoary old story goes, airliners will have only two crew members on the flight deck—a pilot and a dog. The pilot’s job will be to feed the dog. The dog’s job will be to bite the pilot if he touches the controls. Despite all the talk about drone-like autonomous passenger planes, cockpit automation is nowhere near capable enough to manage without human pilots on the flight deck. It is doubtful whether the technology—at least, as it is currently configured—will ever let that happen.

-The Economist

The Secret Lives of Erotica Writers

Who are the people behind erotic fiction, those accounts of racy affairs and clandestine romances so often stashed away in secret, read in the privacy of one’s home? “Easy to imagine they would be foxy, leather-clad mistresses, whip in one hand, the other on the keyboard. I knew the reality would be very different. I wanted to see behind their pseudonyms and secret lives,” Woolfall said in a statement.


-Slate

Kodachrome’s Lasting Color, and Memory

On D-Day 1972, fresh and ready to begin a photo internship at National Geographic, Nathan Benn, hitherto a black-and-white photographer, was delivered his marching orders: You shoot Kodachrome now.

-The New York Times