Facebook Has 50 Minutes of Your Time Each Day. It Wants More

Facebook reported dazzling first quarter results last week: Net income nearly tripled to $1.5 billion, and monthly active users hit a record 1.65 billion. But it’s a much smaller number that leapt out at me.

Fifty minutes. That’s the average amount of time, the company said, that users spend each day on its Facebook, Instagram and Messenger platforms (and that’s not counting the popular messaging app WhatsApp). Maybe that doesn’t sound like so much. But there are only 24 hours in a day, and the average person sleeps for 8.8 of them. That means more than one-sixteenth of the average user’s waking time is spent on Facebook.

-NY Times

Why the yakuza are not illegal

THE Yamaguchi-Gumi, one of the world's largest and most ferocious gangs, is estimated to earn over $6 billion a year from drugs, protection, loan-sharking, real-estate rackets and even, it is said, Japan’s stock exchange. This year, the organisation's 100th, over 2,000 of its 23,400 members split away, leaving police nervous about what fallout might follow; a war between rival gangs in the mid-1980s claimed over two dozen lives. And yet membership of the yakuza—as Japan's crime syndicates are known—is not technically illegal. Finding a mob hangout requires little more than a telephone book. Tokyo’s richest crime group has an office tucked off the back streets of the glitzy Ginza shopping district. A bronze nameplate on the door helpfully identifies the Sumiyoshi-kai, another large criminal organisation. Full gang members carry business cards and register with the police. Some have pension plans.

-The Economist

This feature documentary is a candid journey into the world of 4 young Canadian women who work as well-paid hostesses in exclusive Japanese nightclubs. Lured by adventure and easy money, these modern-day geisha find themselves caught up in the mizu shobai - the complex "floating water world" of Tokyo clubs and bars. Drawn by fast money, some women become consumed by the lavish lifestyle and forget why they came. One hostess calls it "losing the plot." With a pulsating visual style, Tokyo Girls captures the raw energy of urban Japan and its fascination with the new.

Wedding Night Games Are Awkward All Around the World

While weddings are full of happenings and rituals, a wedding night usually only has one connotation. But some cultures partake in wedding night activities that involve many more participants than just the bride and the groom. Here are some of the most awkward, funny and downright weird wedding night traditions.

-Atlas Obscura

A Bumpy History of the Baby on Board Sign

From the mid to late 1980s, the most ubiquitous road sign didn’t advise you to stop, obey the speed limit, or be mindful of crossing deer. Instead, it was diamond-shaped, used a black-on-yellow color scheme, and came with a stern warning for nearby drivers: There was a baby on board.

-mental_floss

Dads around the internet are trying to stack as many Cheerios as they can on their babies

A fierce battle is being waged by dads across the Internet. Called the Cheerio Challenge, this competition involves two things every parent has in their home: A kid, and a box Cheerios. To play, simply grab the yellow box, find your sleepy toddler and begin vertically stacking the little O's on your little one's head.

-Mashable

Dive Into the Most Vibrant Reef on Earth in Virtual Reality

Nestled around the remote coastline of West Papua, Indonesia, thrives the most biodiverse reef on the planet. Concentrations of species richness unseen anywhere else in the ocean have caused many marine scientists to call this place a “cauldron of evolution.” And now, for the first time ever, virtual reality technology is allowing people all over the world to dive into its teeming, crystal clear waters.

-Motherboard

Sharks Finally Get the Glamour Shots They Deserve

Michael Muller had spent decades photographing the world’s most recognizable celebrities when, in 2007, his wife booked them a trip to Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, and he finally got the chance to photograph his dream subject: sharks. “The first time I locked eyes with that first great white, I was hooked,” Muller said.

-Slate

5 Easy Tips For Happy Life

Many of us believe that it’s the money that brings happiness. But it is far from truth and even research has proved it. It’s the simple pleasure in life that brings real happiness. Let’s look at some of those. YourDost team have created illustration of pointers.

-design you trust

How to Tell If Someone Is Lying

According to eminent psychologist and emotion researcher Dr. Paul Ekman, lying comes in two flavors. First are “low stakes lies,” which almost all of us engage in; these are lies like, “Oh no, I never got your message,” or “So sorry I’ll be out today—it must have been something I ate.” By contrast, “high stakes lies”—”I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” or “I’m not in love with David Patraeus"—are, thankfully, less common. 

-Scientific American

Lost in the Waves

The ocean at night is a terrible dream. There is nothing beyond the water except the profound discouragement of the sky, every black wave another singular misfortune. Walt Marino has been floating on his back for hours, the ocean on his skin, his mouth, soaking the curls of his graying hair. The water has cracked his lips, has formed a slippery glaze on his shoulders and arms. The salt has stuck to his contact lenses, burning the edges of his eyes. A small silver pendant of the Virgin Mary sticks to his collarbone on a link chain. He can no longer see the car key floating below his stomach, tied to the string of his floral swim trunks. The water licks against his ears. Every familiar sound is gone.

-Men's Journal

Pool Postcards

Pool Postcards on Flickr.


-Flickr

The Hidden Social Forces That Guide Your Decisions

To live life is to make decisions, yet who actually makes the choices? Everyone makes their own, is the obvious response. And yet this is not quite right. In “Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior,” Jonah Berger traces the myriad ways that social queues guide us, often without our knowledge. Berger, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of Business, is the author of the 2013 bestseller “Contagious: Why Things Catch On.” His new book is a logical extension of that project, zeroing in on the individual decisions that, in the aggregate, make our society what it is.

-Scientific American

The Curious Case of Mr. Nobody

Is he a victim of amnesia? A con artist? The curious case of… Mr. Nobody.
 
He could have been anyone, standing in that Lisbon hotel lobby. He wore a black suit and black tie with black shoes. His hair was jet-black. His eyes from a distance seemed black, too, but perhaps it was merely the reflection off the glossy grand piano near which he stood. He could have easily passed as a financier or a diplomat waiting to take an important meeting, to report back to a man in a glass office in one of the other European capitals, someone of equal breeding and power, who might then direct this man here to enjoy a night in Lisbon and carry on in the morning to Brussels, Berlin, or Geneva, to the next high-level meeting for whatever concern they mutually held at stake.

-GQ

When NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked details of massive government surveillance programs in 2013, he ignited a raging debate over digital privacy and security. That debate came to a head this year, when Apple refused an FBI court order to access the iPhone of alleged San Bernardino Terrorist Syed Farook. Meanwhile, journalists and activists are under increasing attack from foreign agents. To find out the government's real capabilities, and whether any of us can truly protect our sensitive information, VICE founder Shane Smith heads to Moscow to meet the man who started the conversation, Edward Snowden.

What Happened to 'The Most Liberated Woman in America'?

Barbara Williamson co-founded one of the most famous radical sex experiments of the 1970s. Then she got wild. I am standing in the living room of a wood-paneled modular house out in the Nevada desert. Alongside me is Barbara Williamson, once called “the most liberated woman in America”; and slinking toward us, across the grayed-out carpeting, is a large, muscular, wild animal.

-Atlas Obscura

The Surprising But Logical Reason So Many Straight Women Are Into Gay Porn

Porn has a relatively well-deserved reputation for misogyny and the overall objectification of women, both in terms of the abuse female porn stars face from within the industry, and the shame and stigma society heaps on them for what they (for the most part) choose to do. And the internet-at-large might be a cesspool for a wide range of genres of porn to suit every taste and fetish, but there isn’t a whole lot of choice when it comes to porn that features sexually empowered women.

-Alternet