The Quest for a Floating Utopia

Can casting away from established society to inhabit sea-based colonies save us from the problems of modern life—or are we bound to repeat our mistakes?

- Hakai Magazine

 

Friends by Robin Dunbar review – how important are your pals?

The psychologist’s fascinating study of friendship finds that the quality of our relationships determines our health, happiness and chance of a long life.

- The Guardian

Khruangbin - Connaissais de Face

 

THE MOMS AND DADS OF ONLYFANS RISKING EVERYTHING TO MAKE ENDS MEET

Far too many people think sex worker parents are unfit to raise kids. But OnlyFans is helping these performers grow as moms and dads — even with their future at stake

- MEL Magazine

 

'Joy every day': New Yorkers reveal their fabulous apartments – in pictures

Sally Davies’s portraits of larger than life characters in their equally colourful homes offer a glimpse into the grit, elegance, poverty and humanity of an ever-changing city.

- The Guardian

 

WeedFeed: The Creative Content Platform Inspiring The Cannabis World

“In many ways, WeedFeed is my baby,” shares Ben Kraim, the creative mind behind some of today’s most popular Instagram accounts, both in and beyond the cannabis world.

- Forbes

 

How to think about your own mortality (without getting depressed)

When he was 19, B. J. Miller, a Princeton student at the time, was on the way to a Wawa with friends when he decided to climb a commuter train near campus. “Just out on the town horsing around, doing nothing particularly crazy,” he says. “We had done crazier things.” This time, though, was different: Miller was electrocuted when electricity from the overhead wires jumped to his wristwatch. The electrical burns were so severe that he ended up losing three of his limbs. It was that harrowing, near-fatal accident that drove him to go into medicine and, ultimately, palliative care, working often with terminally ill patients. Now, nearly 30 years later, he’s co-written (with Shoshana Berger) a book called A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death. 

- GQ

 

How ‘Lolita’ Escaped Obscenity Laws and Cancel Culture

My father, John Mortimer, brought me up to believe that you can be a good person and kill someone and a perfectly awful person who never gets so much as a parking ticket your whole life. It’s an education I’m proud of. He was an author and a criminal defense barrister — in his words, “the only playwright ever to have defended a murderer in the central criminal court at the Old Bailey” — and his prowess in both professions rode on his ability to see past easy morality and to respect the fact that the truth is never one-sided and therefore art should not be, either.

- NY Times

 

Sex Tapes, Hush Money, and Hollywood’s Economy of Secrets

Meet Kevin Blatt, the celebrity fixer who’s a master at shepherding compromising material off the internet—or into the hands of the highest bidder.

In 2018, Amber landed a job at Public Storage. The gig involved overseeing auctions for the stuff left behind in unpaid storage units. Speculators could, if lucky, quadruple their money by flipping the contents. Two months into lockdown, Vinson was combing through stuff he’d bought in previous auctions and hadn’t sold yet. He found an old Blackberry and fired it up. There, he saw photos of an engagement ring, then a funeral, and then, was that a naked woman? He looked closer. Yes, it was a naked woman; it was a famous naked woman, strutting around, and giving a blow job to a famous naked man, in a series of short video clips.

- Wired

Forbidden and Filthy Love Letters of Yore

The chances of most of us receiving an actual love letter this year are slim to none. These days, text messaging and multiple social media platforms have seen to it that emojis come before real emotions, but today we’d like to pay tribute to hand-written romance as it becomes increasingly rare. With any luck, it might just inspire some of us to put pen to paper. From the forbidden to the filthy, these are best of a lost art…

- Messy Nessy Chic

 

This hanging hotel in Peru isn't for the faint-hearted

Vertigo alert! This hanging lodge hotel, Natura Vive Skylodge, located in the Cusco region of Peru, offers incredible views over the valley below. You can only reach the accommodation by climbing, hiking and zip wire, but it's definitely worth the effort.

- euronews

These Jell-O molds are actually LAMPS!!!

Elrod’s Mexakitsch art may look like dishes from another era but don’t try to eat them, because they’re really centerpieces that LIGHT UP!! She uses resin, glitter, and fake foods to create these absolutely stunning midcentury-inspired masterpieces!!

- Peewee.com

 

Awesome NYC Subway Photos from the 70s & 80s

Awesome NYC Subway Photos from the 70s & 80s.

- imgur

 

People Literally Don’t Know When to Shut Up—or Keep Talking—Science Confirms

We are really bad at navigating a key transition point during one of the most basic social interactions. 

One evening Adam Mastroianni was reluctantly putting on his bow tie for yet another black-tie party at the University of Oxford that he had no interest in attending. Inevitably, Mastroianni, then a master’s student in psychology at the university, knew that he would wind up stuck in some endless conversation that he did not want with no way to politely extricate himself. Even worse, he suddenly realized, he might unknowingly be the one to perpetuate unwanted conversation traps for others. “What if both people are thinking exactly the same thing, but we’re both stuck because we can’t move on when we’re really done?” he wondered.

- Scientific American