Les films d’horreur activent notre cerveau primitif

« Dans un film d’horreur, c’est vraiment rare que les gens vont faire autre chose en même temps, a expliqué la professeure Marie-France Marin, du département de psychologie de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. On est complètement absorbés par l’action. Jusqu’à un certain point, tu perds un peu la notion de je suis où, quelle heure il est, quel jour nous sommes, et ça ça fait du bien de temps en temps au cerveau. »

Au fil du temps, et surtout de l’évolution, notre cerveau a appris à consacrer toute son attention au danger auquel il fait face s’il veut survivre. À une certaine époque, c’était le tigre aux dents de sabre qui venait d’apparaître à quelques mètres de là ; aujourd’hui, ce sont Jason et sa machette dégoulinante de sang.

- La Presse

How to deal with toxic people at work

Toxic people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people’s buttons. Either way, they create unnecessary complexity, strife, and worst of all stress.

- World Economic Forum

The Valley of the Cheese of the Dead

IMAGINE SETTING ASIDE A WHEEL of cheese at your wedding. What would it look like if it were served at your funeral?

If you were lucky, it would look like one of the wheels in Jean-Jacques Zufferey’s basement in Grimentz, Switzerland: shriveled and brown, pockmarked from decades of mite and mouse nibbles, and hard as a rock. You’d need an axe to slice it open and strong booze to wash it down. This is the rare cheese you don’t want to cut into when it’s aged to perfection. A fossilized funeral cheese means you lived a long life.

- Atlas Obscura

The Truck Stop Killer

He was methodical, he rode the highways, and he preyed on teenage girls. Girls who'd run away. Girls no one would miss. In the summer of 1985, the author was such a girl. One night on I-95, she hitched a ride from a stranger and endured the most terrifying moments of her life. Now, years later, she returns to the scenes of her fugitive youth looking for clues to that terror—and the girls who lost their lives to it

- GQ

Halloween Stories

Why are Victorians the default haunted house, what do ghosts have to do with the imagination, and why do we like to be scared?

Get into the Halloween spirit with our best stories on the holiday, which include a look into the Salem witch trials and the obsession with Satanism in nineteenth-century France. No tricks, only treats: all stories contain free links to the supporting academic research on JSTOR. Happy Halloween!

- JSTOR Daily

When Americans Dined (and Dated) in Cemeteries

When it comes to green spaces, we’re a bit spoilt in New York City. There are over 1,700 parks (even if it doesn’t always feel that way) for our picnics, parties, and general frolicking to unfold. But 150 years ago, parks were still a privilege for the upper-class in America, if they even existed at all. So folks flocked to the next best thing: the cemetery. There, in the shady knolls of Boston’s Forest Hills Cemetery, or amongst the gothic gates of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, 19th century Americans got to engage in their two favourite pastimes: bonding with the dead, and feeling their pastoral oats. Elaborate walkways, gardens, and follies abounded in the cemeteries – one even had a liquor license – in a way that’s made us wonder why cracking open a cold one with the deceased ever went out of style…

- Messy Nessy Chic

Exploring the changing relationship between sex and drugs

Augmenting sexual experiences with drugs like MDMA, GHB, and cocaine is hardly a fringe activity, but the reasonings are broadening with a new generation of users.

Annie Sprinkle, the sex worker and pornstar turned sex educator and artist, once described a beautiful summer day with a lover, when both found that their “psychedelic door flew open” without having taken any drugs. “Our senses became heightened, time warped, colours were brighter,” she said. “I wondered if people who have never done any psychedelics could ever feel the same way, or if our psychedelic experiences enabled us to enhance and intensify the magical feelings of love.” 

- Dazed

À la recherche du porno perdu

Quel est le tout tout tout premier plan hard filmé avec une caméra ? Diffusé sur OCS ce mardi 17 octobre, un documentaire s’intéresse aux origines des «images suggestives», en une succession de révélations et de rebondissements. Drôle, riche, haletant.

En clin d’oeil au film Les Aventuriers de l’arche perdue (Raiders of the Lost ark), le documentaire s’intitule : Raiders of the first porn. Partant sur les traces du «premier boulard» (film de boules), les réalisateurs français Aurore Aubin et Denis Larzillière posent la question : est-il possible de savoir par qui, où et quand ont été tournées les premières images explicites de l’histoire du cinéma ? 

- Libération

Une pilule pour sauver votre couple ?

L’ecstasy, E ou MD pour les intimes, n’a pas toujours eu la mauvaise réputation qu’on lui connaît. La petite pilule blanche (brune ou rose !), récupérée par les fêtards et autres amateurs de musique techno, a jadis été utilisée en thérapie. Pas n’importe laquelle : en thérapie de couple. Et ici et là, des voix se lèvent aujourd’hui pour la réhabiliter. Témoignages, explications et mises en garde.

- La Presse

The bizarre 77,000-year history of beds

Groucho Marx once joked, “Anything that can’t be done in bed isn’t worth doing at all.” You might think he was referring to sleeping and sex. But humans, at one time or another, have done just about everything in bed.

- Quartz

Threesome Blowjob Scene on Giant Highway Billboard Could Have Caused an Accident, Police Say

Just before midnight on Saturday, emergency lines in Auburn Hills, Michigan started ringing. Drivers were calling from the interstate to report an electronic billboard was suddenly playing porn.

- Vice

Sur les traces de Kerouac à Lowell

Jack Kerouac est mort il y a 50 ans, le 21 octobre 1969. Il n’avait que 47 ans. Il a vécu les derniers mois de sa vie dans un modeste bungalow de St. Petersburg, en Floride, en compagnie de sa mère Gabrielle-Ange, qu’il appelait affectueusement « mémère », avec qui il aura conversé toute sa vie en français. Ruiné, méprisé par les critiques, boudé depuis quelques années par les lecteurs, il n’était plus l’ombre de lui-même, plombé par des années d’alcoolisme et de fuite en avant.

Pape de la Beat Generation, l’écrivain sera à jamais associé à l’un des romans les plus importants du XXe siècle, On the Road (Sur la route), qui aura profondément marqué son époque et inspiré des générations d’artistes. Publié en 1957, ce livre poussera des milliers de jeunes Américains à prendre d’assaut les routes du pays, les pouces bien levés, pour y multiplier les expériences et s’emplir les yeux de nouveaux paysages.

Cet anniversaire est l’occasion rêvée d’explorer un côté beaucoup moins connu de Kerouac, à peine mentionné dans la plupart des biographies américaines du beatnik : ses origines québécoises et l’importance qu’elles ont eue dans son cheminement et son écriture.

- Le Devoir

THE HUSTLERS AT SCORES

Here’s a modern Robin Hood story for you: a few strippers who stole from (mostly) rich, (usually) disgusting, (in their minds) pathetic men and gave to, well, themselves.

In another life, Roselyn Keo might have liked to work on Wall Street. “I’m smart enough, I know,” she told me, sitting in the immaculate white kitchen of her suburban home. She’s organized, she pointed out, and good at math, and there is little doubt she has an entrepreneurial streak. As a kid, she said, she used to buy candy in bulk and sell it at school for a profit, which I later remembered is the same story hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson tells about himself. But John Paulson was born into his body and Roselyn Keo was born into hers, which happens to be a rather more overtly sexy shape, with the sort of waist-to-hip ratio scientists have concluded affects men like a drug. It’s the kind of body that, as they used to say, could get a girl in trouble, though getting into trouble was something Rosie was plenty capable of all by herself.

- The Cut

DAVID LACHAPELLE (THE AMERICANS)

DAVID LACHAPELLE (THE AMERICANS)

- Camara Democratica

Cop Diary

As we were putting together this month’s issue, The Sun’s editor, Sy Safransky, recalled an article he’d come across years ago. He couldn’t remember the name of the author or when the piece had been published, only that it was the best writing he’d ever read about being a policeman.

Fortunately we were able to track down the author, Edward Conlon, a Harvard-educated New York City police officer who wrote for The New Yorker in the late 1990s. Conlon used a pen name, Marcus Laffey, because he was still on the force back then and thought higher-ups in the police department might not like his unvarnished description of police work.

“Cop Diary” was originally published in The New Yorker in 1997. Conlon went on to write the best seller Blue Blood and is now back working for the NYPD, as communications director for the commissioner.


- The sun

WHAT’S OUR LEGAL BEEF WITH TOPLESS WOMEN?

In short: Their nipples harm children, public peace and traffic.

There’s a famous Seinfeld episode where Elaine runs into an old frenemy named Sue Ellen Mischke, notable for her tall stature and enormous boobs, which she dares not to ever strap in with a bra. As a gesture that heavily hints at Sue Ellen to rein in those puppies, Elaine gifts her a bra, which Sue Ellen then proudly wears as a top — in public. “A woman walking around in broad daylight with nothing but a bra on?” Elaine declares during a pearl-clutching session at Jerry’s apartment after seeing the new fashion statement. “She’s a menace to society!”

- MEL

Drive-thru brothels: why cities are building 'sexual infrastructure'

Nicole Schulze was 24 years old and €40,000 (£36,6616) in debt when she decided to become a prostitute. It was 2004 and she was living in Cologne. Two years earlier prostitution had been legalised across Germany, and the city of Cologne quickly distinguished itself: it made sex work a major part of its urban policy.

Located on the edge of town, the result is a kind of sex drive-through. Customers drive down a one-way street, into a roughly two-acre open air-space where sex workers can offer their services. Once hired, the sex worker accompanies the customer into a semi-private parking stall. For safety, each stall allows sex workers to easily flee if necessary – the stall is designed so that the driver’s door can’t be opened, but the passenger one can – and there’s an emergency button to call for help. Social workers are present on site and offer a space to rest, stay warm and access services.

- The Guardian

Que signifie se prostituer ?

Dans “La Maison”, l’écrivaine Emma Becker résume deux années de sa vie sexuelle et amoureuse, dans un bordel de Berlin. Elle s’est prostituée parce qu’elle voulait comprendre. Est-ce qu’une “travailleuse” peut jouir ? Qu’est-ce qui attire les hommes ?

Née en 1988 à Fresnes, Emma Becker est longtemps élève dans des institutions catholiques. Vers 14 ans, elle lit en cachette des romans érotiques. A 20 ans, elle a une histoire d’amour avec un chirurgien marié approchant la cinquantaine. Elle en fait la matière de son premier roman : Mr (Denoël). En 2011, son deuxième roman –Alice (Denoël)– en dévoile un peu plus de sa vie intime et intérieure. En 2013, Emma déménage à Berlin, après une rupture amoureuse. C’est là qu’un amant vient la rejoindre et, dans une rue remplie de prostituée, se met à lui dire : «Je ne sais pas combien de temps tu peux être excitée en faisant un boulot pareil.

- Libération

YOUR SELFIES MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE A LONELY LOSER, STUDY FINDS

The next time you’re about to post a selfie to Instagram, consider this: it could make people think you’re a loser.

For a new study published in the Journal of Research in Personality with the awesome/awesomely bad title “Check Your Selfie before You Wreck Your Selfie,” U.S. researchers asked 119 undergraduate students to review the Instagram feeds of 30 undergraduates at a college across the U.S., looking at just the 30 most-recently posted photos.

- Futurism

The History of Beer Is the History of the World

According to Homer Simpson, beer is the cause of, and the solution to, all of life’s problems. Some scientists one-up Homer and claim that beer may be the origin of civilization. 

As any world-history student can tell you, the first civilizations emerged along the great river valleys of the world: the Tigris and Euphrates, the Ganges and Indus, the Yangtze and Yellow.

River valleys provided the fertile soils needed to grow the grains that humans were busy domesticating. The assumption had long been that it was the pursuit of stable food supplies that drove us to forego our hunter-gatherer lifestyles and cultivate those grains along the rivers. But some scientists now say it wasn’t hunger, but thirst, that sparked civilization.

- Outside

Halcyon Barrel House specializes in producing small batches of wild and sour ales, using European-style brewing traditions of mixed fermentation and aging in wood barrels, as well as bottle and keg conditioning.

Halcyon refers to a past that we remember fondly. We are looking back to older, more traditional brewing methods to inspire how and what we brew today.

Halcyon : Denoting a period of time in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.

CHIRAC ET LA BOUFFE : «QUAND J’AI FAIM, JE DEVIENS AGRESSIF»

L'ancien président, adepte aussi bien de plats du terroir français que de nourriture industrielle, aura fait de son rapport au boire et au manger un étendard politique.

Jacques Chirac n’aimait pas les pommes. Ni la tête de veau (il en mangeait sans adorer). Malentendus gourmands et politiques. Guillaume Gomez, l’actuel chef des cuisines de la présidence de la République, racontait en 2017 : «En douze ans d’Elysée, on lui en a servi deux fois [de la tête de veau, ndlr], et la seconde fois il m’a dit : "Chef, c’était très bon, mais c’est plus la peine de m’en faire."» La légende a le cuir dur et ce n’est pas un hasard : un plat peut en dire beaucoup sur un homme ou sur ce qu’il a envie qu’on dise de lui.

- Libération

The Fleshlight Is a Portal to the Future of Sex

The ubiquitous masturbation device marketed to men was ahead of its time—and became the bellwether for a more fluid, inclusive future.

"It's quite possible someone's having sex with me right now and I don't even know it," adult performer and director Stoya told me.

Her vulva is for sale on the internet and in stores. Or rather, a rubbery, lifelike mold of her vulva is, in the form of a Fleshlight. The outside of it looks almost exactly like her actual body. The inside is a labyrinth of corkscrew shapes, nodules, and ridges. It's dubbed "The Destroya," a name that, nine years after the product launched, still makes her laugh.

- Vice