CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Image via Medium.

Misfit advocate, events-goer amish, wisdom hacker, economist historian and writer Alexa Clay, is woman with multiple personae, that is probably why she wrote a very interesting piece in Medium about the power of alter-egos. "The fun of alter egos is that you get to un-brand or re-mix yourself. We are constantly living in a world with self-commodifying pressures, from the social media sites where we package ourselves to the practice of resumé creation or networks like LinkedIn that ask us to serve up cohesive and linear narratives of our functional time spent on earth. The radical idea that we are living in a constant ebb and flow or that ‘self’ might be an illusion altogether goes against the mechanics of our age where individualism has become the primary interface for interaction — and where homo economicus (the rational, utility-maximizing agent) pre-supposes an atomized ‘I’ for engaging in our economic systems." Read full article in Medium. E.T.P. 5'

Photo The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Maria Povova in her lovely Brain Pickings talks about melancholy and how deeper and darker emotions can empower us creatively. "For one am afraid that our American culture’s overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. I further am wary in the face of this possibility: to desire only happiness in a world undoubtedly tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful over our society’s efforts to expunge melancholia from the system. Without the agitations of the soul, would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple? Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?" Read full article in Brain Pickings. E.T.P 3'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Photo via Dazed.

So, Miranda July just released a very Miranda July App called "Somebody". This is how it is described in Dazed Magazine: "Ever wished a stranger could break up with someone for you? Ever needed to tell your platonic friend that you're completely in love with them but can't bring yourself to do it? Artist/actress/writer Miranda July's new app "Somebody" lets strangers deliver messages verbally, meaning that you can legitimately say "At least I broke up with you face to face". The app works by sending a message intended for you to the nearest Somebody user, who then has to track you down to deliver the information." You can chose who is going to deliver your message, and when you receive one, rate the deliverer. This video directed for July and produced by MiuMiu explains everything better.

I already have the app and sent a message, hope it's delivered soon. If you still don't have it, go ahead, it sounds like a fun/weird (aka Miranda July) technological-art-experiment. Read full article in Dazed Magazine. E.T.P. (with video): 12'

Photo via Brain Pickings.

A very nice post by Maria Popova in Brain Pickings: Anaïs Nin on Writing, the Future of the Novel, and How Keeping a Diary Enhances Creativity: Wisdom from a Rare 1947 Chapbook. "In December of 1946, Anaïs Nin was invited to give a lecture on writing at Dartmouth, which received an overwhelming response. The following summer, after receiving countless requests, Nin adapted the talk in chapbook titled On Writing, which she printed at her own Gremor Press — the small publishing house Nin founded in 1942 out of disillusionment with mainstream publishing, which led her to teach herself letterpress and self-publish a handful of elegant manually typeset books with gorgeous engravings by her husband. On Writing, in which Nin considers the future of the novel and reflects on what keeping her famous diaries since the age of eleven taught her about writing, was published in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, 750 of which were for sale. Only a few are known to survive." Read full article in Brain Pickings. E.T.P. 7'

CULTURE & ENTERTAINMENT

Illustration via Brain Pickings (fragment).

Brain Pickings' Maria Popova researched all sorts of documents, biographies and interviews of some of our favorite writers to find out their sleep/work patterns, and then correlated that data with the number of books published and major awards received. The results are inconclusive, of course, there is not ONE way to write. There are some Murakami-style early bird writers, but there is also Bukowski who woke up at noon and was equally a genius. The infographic and the illustrations are really nice though. Have a look here. E.T.P. 5' (Via Short List).

Photo via The Guardian.

And speaking of writers, I just recently read in Paris Review an interview that Susannah Hunnewell made to Michel Houellebecq. Wow, he really is a controversial man and anything I can say about the interview or him will be definitely an understatement or an insufficiently articulated personal opinion. So if like me, you read The Elemmentary Particles and didn't know much about Houellebecq, and you're interested in getting to know better (or worst) one really interesting character, please go ahead and read this interview in Paris Review. E.T.P. 18'

Image via Dazed Digital.

Finally, Dazed Magazine couldn't have said it better, so I will just quote here: "Is there a way to be a bad feminist? How do you survive in the male art world? What does it mean to be a female writer? In conjunction with our Girls Rule issue, some of our favourite writers, activists and artists will be musing on these questions for Girl Guides, a series of how-tos and thinkpieces on the state of modern womanhood. Here, Dazed writer Steph Kretowicz unpicks the neverending toxic cycle of advertising, body issues and inequality." Full article in Dazed Digital. E.T.P. 10'     

SCIENCE

Image: A graphical representation of one person’s network neighborhood on Facebook.
Cameron Marlow/Facebookvia New York Times.

So, love is not written in the stars but in your Facebook profile. Or at least that's what Cornell University's computer scientist Jon Kleinberg, and senior engineer at Facebook, Lars Backstrom, argue to have found. According to the New York Times "the pair used a hefty data set from Facebook as their lab: 1.3 million Facebook users, selected randomly from among all users who are at least 20 years old, with from 50 to 2,000 friends, who list a spouse or relationship partner in their profile. That makes for a lot of social connections to analyze, roughly 379 million nodes and 8.6 billion links. The data was used anonymously." Read full article here. E.T.P.: 3'20''

Photo: The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Memory is tricky. Most of us probably already experience that feeling of remembering something vividly but being unable to distinguish if that something is an actual memory or a dream. Well that happens to me, I always hoped it happens to someone else, and apparently so it is. Maria Popova recollects in a Brain Pickings' article some interesting reflections about memory, forgetting, plagiarism and creativity made by neurologist Oliver Sacks: "It is startling to realize that some of our most cherished memories may never have happened — or may have happened to someone else. I suspect that many of my enthusiasms and impulses, which seem entirely my own, have arisen from others’ suggestions, which have powerfully influenced me, consciously or unconsciously, and then been forgotten." Read full article here. E.T.P.: 8'.

SCIENCE

Photo via Spacetoday.org

Little Spacecraft That Could. On Thursday, scientists declared the Voyager spacecraft had become the first man-made object to exit the solar system, a breathtaking achievement that NASA could only fantasize about back when it was launched in 1977. Since its launch Voyager 1 has traveled over 11.7 billion miles, that is equivalent to traveling to the moon and back almost 25,000 times. Read more about it in The Independent.

Illustration: What is the 'god' particle? By Jordin Isip. Via Brainpickings.

Maria Popova of Brain Pickings proudly recommends the book: The Where, they Why and the How: 75 Artists Illustrate Wondrous Mysteries of Science, one of those amazing intersection of art and science. The guys behind Also Online "invited some of today’s most celebrated artists to create scientific illustrations and charts to accompany short essays about the most fascinating unanswered questions on the minds of contemporary scientists across biology, astrophysics, chemistry, quantum mechanics, anthropology, and more". More info and a short video in Brain Pickings.


Looking for a Plan B. Alok Jha, The Guardian's scientific correspondent writes about some of the measures that should be taken by world leaders if the rise in carbon emissions is not curbed within a couple of decade. Launching mirrors into space, triggering algal blooms in the oceans and seeding clouds are among experimental "Plan B" schemes. This is what astronomer royal Lord Rees calls: hacking the planet's climate through geoengineering. Read more in The Guardian.