The Insides of these Abandoned Cooling Towers Look Straight Out of a Sci-Fi Film

In an ongoing series, Belgian photographer Reginald Van de Velde explores the inner workings and mechanisms of cooling towers across Europe. Capturing abandoned ones, active ones, decommissioned ones, towers on maintenance and ones slated for demolition.

-Twisted Sifter

T2 Trainspotting review – choose a sequel that doesn't disappoint

Danny Boyle’s followup to the cult 1996 hit isn’t quite as quick and extraordinary as the original, but it is a funny, moving ode to middle-aged male disillusion whose risks pay off in spades.

-The Guardian

Superintelligence - The Idea That Eats Smart People

Today we're building another world-changing technology, machine intelligence. We know that it will affect the world in profound ways, change how the economy works, and have knock-on effects we can't predict. But there's also the risk of a runaway reaction, where a machine intelligence reaches and exceeds human levels of intelligence in a very short span of time. At that point, social and economic problems would be the least of our worries. Any hyperintelligent machine (the argument goes) would have its own hypergoals, and would work to achieve them by manipulating humans, or simply using their bodies as a handy source of raw materials.

-Idle Words

21 Little Ways To Be Happier In 2017 - We’re guessing you need it after 2016

1. Remove apps from your phone that might be stressing you out.

Seriously. I asked my coworkers at BuzzFeed for one thing they did this year that actually improved their mental health, and about half of them said removing Twitter and Facebook from their phones. Twitter and Facebook might not be your happiness-suck, but chances are, there’s an app that is doing you more harm than good. Try going without it for awhile and see how you feel.

-BuzzFeed

How Not to Die, According to Harvard Researchers

Want to live forever? Science hasn't quite cracked that one yet, but a group of Harvard researchers has figured out how to give you the best possible shot. 

-Thrillist

Fun for Everyone: The Evolving History of Board Games

The delightful hobby of playing games isn't a modern invention. While people in ancient times didn't have Pokemon Go to entertain themselves, they still spent hours of fun games both inside and outside of their households. It is unknown who the innovators were who first started to play games. Perhaps the earliest games were created in prehistoric times, when gaming tools would have been made of wood or bone. It is impossible to conclude which is the oldest game in the world, but discoveries made at archaeological sites in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq have unearthed an ancient game that is still a mystery for archaeologists.

-Ancient Origins

Backgammon Is Having a Resurgence

In the course of its recent resurgence, the ancient game of backgammon has excited all sorts of sporty elites. Prominent fans include the hedge-fund analysts who treat it as a workout for both the mind and the adrenal glands—a speedy way to wager money playing the odds over and over again. (You can play a satisfying match in fewer than 15 minutes.)

-Bloomberg

Will human sexuality ever be free from stone age impulses?

Literature tells us that our desires know no reason. We read Racine’s Phaedra or Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and we see people captured by passion, acting in defiance of all sense or explanation. But science is never satisfied with ineluctable mystery, even in the realm of desire. During the past four decades, researchers into human behaviour have begun to investigate sexual desire. More than anything, they want to know: why is it that we want who we want?

-aeon

‘The 120 Days of Sodom’ – counterculture classic or porn war pariah?

Over the past year, politicians on the right have railed against the supposed tyranny of political correctness. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that as 2016 draws to a close, arguably the most obscene and offensive work of fiction ever written – a work that claims to “say everything” – is going to be sold in America as a mainstream classic for the first time. My new translation of the Marquis de Sade’s “The 120 Days of Sodom” with Thomas Wynn is the first in 60 years. Sade has had a long and colorful history in the United States, and his controversial works were at the center of midcentury debates about censorship. Later, they became a flashpoint in the “porn wars” of the 1970s and 1980s. Now American readers will get to decide whether Sade’s most extreme novel has truly become a literary classic. 

-The Conversation

Le meilleur de Gotlib

La disparition de Marcel Gotlieb, dit Gotlib, dimanche 4 décembre, à l’âge de 82 ans, laisse un vide immense dans le monde de la bande dessinée. Parce que l’humour décapant de ce génie du 9e art n’a pas pris une ride, nous vous proposons de relire une petite sélection de certaines de ses histoires les plus fameuses, avec l’aimable autorisation des éditions Dargaud et Fluide Glacial. L’occasion de redécouvrir des albums cultes comme les Dingodossiers (sur un scénario de René Goscinny) et la Rubrique-à-Brac, ainsi que les personnages les plus emblématiques du dessinateur : Gai-Luron, Superdupont, Hamster Jovial, Pervers Pépère et les policiers Bougret et Charolles (dont l’apparence physique est celle du dessinateur Gébé et de Gotlib lui-même).

-Le Monde

The Man Who Cleans Up After Plane Crashes

Robert Jensen has spent his career restoring order after mass fatalities: identifying remains, caring for families, and recovering personal effects. Here’s how he became the best at the worst job in the world.

-GQ