The Culture Of Thailand’s Ladyboys

In Thailand, the term ladyboy is a nickname for transgender women, and they are a population often met with intolerance and prejudice. Their place in society is explored through photographer Soopakorn Srisakul’s series Mistress, in which he captures the daily life of his girlfriend and four other ladyboys. They all work at bars and as call girls in the infamous red-light Nana district in Bangkok.


-Beautiful Decay

Tabatha Cash, mamma porno

Cette héroïne du X des années 90, devenue mère de famille modèle, succède à son mari décédé à la tête de «Hot Vidéo».Dans les rues de Levallois-Perret, des mères cathos aux cheveux bien ordonnés, des nourrices africaines ou des jeunes filles au pair éthérées vont chercher, à la sortie de l’école, des enfants tous plus blonds les uns que les autres. Tout ce petit monde passe à côté d’une lourde porte grise sans se douter qu’à l’intérieur se cache la rédaction de Hot Vidéo, le magazine aux publicités aguicheuses que l’on n’ose jamais acheter. Devant, Tabatha Cash, souriante, veste de tailleur et col roulé, fume une cigarette.

-Libération

If everyone's an idiot, guess who's a jerk?

Picture the world through the eyes of the jerk. The line of people in the post office is a mass of unimportant fools; it’s a felt injustice that you must wait while they bumble with their requests. The flight attendant is not a potentially interesting person with her own cares and struggles but instead the most available face of a corporation that stupidly insists you shut your phone. Custodians and secretaries are lazy complainers who rightly get the scut work. The person who disagrees with you at the staff meeting is an idiot to be shot down. Entering a subway is an exercise in nudging past the dumb schmoes.

-Aeon

The U.S. Government’s Secret Plans to Spy for American Corporations

Throughout the last year, the U.S. government has repeatedly insisted that it does not engage in economic and industrial espionage, in an effort to distinguish its own spying from China’s infiltrations of Google, Nortel, and other corporate targets. So critical is this denial to the U.S. government that last August, an NSA spokesperson emailed The Washington Post to say (emphasis in original): “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.”

-First Look

Bike your way to better sex

One study found that those who bike to work claim to have better sex lives. 89 percent of bikers reported that the time on the pavement allows for the day's stresses to melt away, leading to a better mood, while 66 percent said their relationships improved. 39 percent of the cyclists also said the exercise gives them more energy in the bedroom. Ride on.


-SF Gate

Survival of the Sexiest

In the spring of 1978, a professor at Florida State University gave the students in his seminar on experimental social psychology an unusual assignment. For the next few weeks, they were to approach undergraduates of the opposite sex and compliment them: “I’ve been noticing you around campus lately and find you very attractive.” Then they would ask one of the following questions:

(a) “Would you go out with me tonight?”
(b) “Would you come over to my apartment tonight?”
(c) “Would you go to bed with me tonight?

-The Nation

The Man Who Dissolved His Wife

On Diversey and Hermitage Avenue in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood is an industrial building that was converted to condominiums in the 1990s. Though this building is nondescript today, it was the site of a grisly murder at the end of the 19th century.

-Atlas Obscura

Everything: You're Doing It Wrong

Are you having a good day? Are you feeling rested, and happy, and ready to conquer the week ahead with your signature mixture of aggression and aplomb? Are you on top of your game, and thus on top of the world? Then you might want to get off the Internet. Because the Internet does not agree with your sparkly sense of optimism.

-The Atlantic

The Sand Dunes of Maspalomas

The Dunes of Maspalomas is a spectacular 4 square km field of sand located in the tourist town of Maspalomas in the south of the island of Gran Canaria of Canary Islands. The sand originated from coral reefs crushed into fine golden grains of limestone by the grinding action of glaciers over thousands of years ago.


-Amusing Planet

Restaurant backs off event featuring Death Row inmate's last meals

A pop-up restaurant event was going to feature the last meals eaten by Death Row inmates, the Telegraph reports. The organizers canceled after facing intense backlash on social media.


-SF Gate

An Investigation into the Weirdest Ronald Reagan Photo You’ve Probably Never Seen

I read and re-read many books in my adolescence. The Wanderers, for the sex; The White Hotel, also for the sex; and To Kill A Mockingbird, for the lyricism. Well-thumbed, too, was an anthology of essays, reported stories, interviews and cartoons from The Realist, a funny, scathing counter-culture magazine founded in 1958, by Paul Krassner. I didn't understand a lot of it; the "impolite" interview with Dick Gregory; the parody of William Manchester's biography on the John F. Kennedy assassination, in which LBJ has his way with Kennedy's corpse; the famously dirty Disney cartoon—but I knew, even in my ignorance, that it was funny.

-The Awl

JFA was formed in April 1981, 19 days after the failed attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr. Hinckley, an obsessed fan of Jodie Foster and her portrayal of a teen prostitute in the 1976 Martin Scorsese film Taxi Driver, reportedly attempted to kill the President as a means of impressing the actress. The band's name was thus a dark play on Hinckley's attempt at murdering Reagan — a hated figure in the early 1980s punk rock scene.

Your “weird” turn-ons aren’t as strange as you think

I figuratively rubbed my hands together when I saw that Jezebel was soliciting readers’ “weirdest turn ons.” Snarky, no-shit-taking feminists revealing their deepest darkest fantasies! This should be awesome, I thought. So far, the submissions include quirky things like fake German accents, priest collars, fresh tobacco, alcoholic comedians and “hyperarticulate political shop talk.” One woman copped to really liking her boyfriend’s hands. Another admitted to rape fantasies — dun, dun, dun — after tremendous encouragement from fellow commenters.


-Salon

Pierre Folk Photographs La Petite Ceinture

La Petite Ceinture (known as the Little Belt in English) is a relic of a bygone era. Built in the 1850s and ’60s, it runs nearly 20 miles around the City of Light along the Boulevards des Maréchaux. It carried passengers until 1934, when automobiles and the underground metro system supplanted it as preferred modes of transport.

-Slate

Intimate Portraits of Bees

Researchers take advantage of photography technology developed by the U.S. Army to capture beautiful portraits of bees native to North America.


-National Geographic

Exotic Taxidermied Creatures Land Their Creator in Jail

In Enrique Gomez De Molina’s hands, animals become chimeras—multiple animals blended into one fantasy, nightmare creature. His taxidermied beasts are at once weird and wonderful, absorbing and off-putting. “I guess I like to play God, “ he laughs in a Thrillist interview. Two swan heads share a goat’s body. A nasty little crab/rodent sneers at the camera. Bird’s bills and fur, antlers and insects join seamlessly to make creatures that defy nature.


-Beautiful Decay 

Longleat Hedge Maze : The Longest in The World

Longleat Hedge Maze is located in the garden of the English stately home of Longleat, situated adjacent to the village of Horningsham and near the towns of Warminster in England. Designed and laid out in 1975, the maze has pathway length of 2.72 kilometers, sprawled out over 1.5 acres, and is made up of 16,000 English yews. It is the world's longest hedge maze.


-Amazing Planet