Life with purpose

The crucial point of all this is that agency – like consciousness, and indeed life itself – isn’t just something you can perceive by squinting at the fine details. Nor is it some second-order effect, with particles behaving ‘as if’ they’re agents, perhaps even conscious agents, when enough of them get together. Agents are genuine causes in their own right, and don’t deserve to be relegated to scare quotes. Those who object can do so only because we’ve so far failed to find adequate theories to explain how agency comes about. But maybe that’s just because we’ve failed to seek them in the right places – until now.

by (https://aeon.co/essays/the-biological-research-putting-purpose-back-into-life)

Century of Global Warming

Created by Antti Lipponen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the video uses temperature anomaly data from NASA to show that despite year-to-year variations, communities across the globe are experiencing significantly warmer temperatures since the early 20th century, reported Vox.

by (http://e360.yale.edu/digest/new-video-visualizes-a-century-of-global-warming-in-just-35-seconds)

Programming language for novel biological circuits

"It is literally a programming language for bacteria," says Christopher Voigt, an MIT professor of biological engineering. "You use a text-based language, just like you're programming a computer. Then you take that text and you compile it and it turns it into a DNA sequence that you put into the cell, and the circuit runs inside the cell."

by (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160331154001.htm)

David Bowie

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/01/50-years-of-david-bowies-hairstyles-in-a-single-gif/
http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/jan/11/david-bowie-life-in-quotes
http://www.superstarmagazine.com/how-under-pressure-sounds-without-music-freddie-mercury-and-david-bowie-a-cappella/

On Self-Respect: Joan Didion

To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notion of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gist for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan; no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meting the next demand made upon us.

by (http://www.vogue.com/3241115/joan-didion-self-respect-essay-1961/
https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/05/21/joan-didion-on-self-respect/
http://webstage.bg/filosofiya-i-psihologiya/2360-volyata-da-poemesh-otgovornost-za-sobstveniya-si-zhivot-e-iztochnikat-ot-koyto-proizliza-samouvazhenieto-dzhoan-didion.html)

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(by http://giphy.com/gifs/loop-war-endless-3o85xtmAsxlSwI6XTO)

The Death Of Conversation by Babycakes Romero

by (http://webstage.bg/socialni-temi/1044-ulichni-fotografii-ulavyat-smartta-v-obshtuvaneto-mezhdu-horata.html)

Classroom portraits by Julian Germain

This ongoing series began in schools in North East England in 2004 and was extended to schools throughout the UK the following year. Since 2005 the archive has grown to include schools from North and South America, Europe and the Middle East.

by (http://fishki.net/1233080-kak-vygljadjat-ucheniki-i-ih-klassy-v-raznyh-stranah.html, http://www.juliangermain.com/projects/classrooms.php)

Mike Rowe’s must-read response to an Alabamian who asked why he shouldn’t follow his passion

That’s why I would never advise anyone to “follow their passion” until I understand who they are, what they want, and why they want it. Even then, I’d be cautious. Passion is too important to be without, but too fickle to be guided by. Which is why I’m more inclined to say, “Don’t Follow Your Passion, But Always Bring it With You.”

by (http://yellowhammernews.com/faithandculture/alabamian-gets-schooled-mike-rowe-dirty-jobs/)

Save The Humans

It takes around 15 pounds of grain to make one pound of beef - which can feed a couple people for a few hours. In comparison, 13 pounds of grain fed to humans directly can feed 13 people for most of the day. ... a long shower uses around 40 gallons of water. Whereas it takes 4,000 to 18,000 gallons of water to create a 1/3 lb hamburger. ... Let's put this in perspective: the good people of Philadelphia create roughly 1,000,000 tons of urine and feces per year. And one, only one, large pig farm will produce roughly 1,600,000 tons of urine and feces per year. ...

by (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/moby/moby-meat_b_5889850.html)

Europe (timelapse map)

by (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1sjHGODFHg)

A Toast Story

How did toast become the latest artisanal food craze? Ask a trivial question, get a profound, heartbreaking answer.

The menu also features a go-for-broke option called “Build Your Own Damn House,” which consists of a coffee, a coconut, and a piece of cinnamon toast. Hanging in the door is a manifesto that covers a green chalkboard. “We are local people with useful skills in tangible situations,” it says, among other things. “Drink a cup of Trouble. Eat a coconut. And learn to build your own damn house. We will help. We are building a network.”

At first, Carrelli explained Trouble as a kind of sociological experiment in engineering spontaneous communication between strangers. She even conducted field research, she says, before opening the shop. “I did a study in New York and San Francisco, standing on the street holding a sandwich, saying hello to people. No one would talk to me. But if I stayed at that same street corner and I was holding a coconut? People would engage,” she said. “I wrote down exactly how many people talked to me.”

If the spread of toast is a social contagion, then Carrelli was its perfect vector. Most of us dedicate the bulk of our attention to a handful of relationships: with a significant other, children, parents, a few close friends. Social scientists call these “strong ties.” But Carrelli can’t rely on such a small set of intimates. Strong ties have a history of failing her, of buckling under the weight of her illness. So she has adapted by forming as many relationships—as many weak ties—as she possibly can. And webs of weak ties are what allow ideas to spread.

by (http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/toast-story-latest-artisanal-food-craze-72676/; http://www.psmag.com/magazines/magazine-feature-story-magazines/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/)

Knowledge-based Programming

“The knowledge graph is a vastly less ambitious project than what we’ve been doing at Wolfram Alpha,” he told VentureBeat when we asked him about its relation to Google’ knowledge projects. “Making the world computable is a much higher bar than being able to generate Wikipedia-style information … a very different thing. What we’ve tried to do is insanely more ambitious.”

by (http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/24/knowledge-based-programming-wolfram-releases-first-demo-of-new-language-30-years-in-the-making/, http://reference.wolfram.com/language/)

BitTorrent Serverlerss Chat

BitTorrent wrote. "With Chat, we are expanding on what we can use the DHT for. We have updated our DHT protocol to support encryption. The new DHT protocol enables users to find each other securely and privately."

by Jon Brodkin (http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/bittorrent-serverless-chat-replaces-usernames-with-crypto-keys/)

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Russell Brand May Have Started a Revolution

"I don't get my authority from this preexisting paradigm which is quite narrow and only serves a few people," Russell responded. "I look elsewhere for alternatives that might be of service to humanity."

by (http://gawker.com/russell-brand-may-have-started-a-revolution-last-night-1451318185)

Is hydrogen the car fuel of the future?

Daimler, Honda, Toyota, General Motors and Hyundai among others are committed to putting hydrogen-fuelled fuel-cell cars on limited sale in Europe by 2015 and the recent partnership between leading fuel-cell proponents General Motors and Honda, as well as the similar two-year-old deal between Toyota and BMW shows that car makers, if not analysts and the press, are taking this zero-tail-pipe emissions technology seriously.

by (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/10372670/Is-hydrogen-the-car-fuel-of-the-future.html)

A New Programming Language That Can Shape Our DNA

Scientists have studied the behavior of complex biological molecules such as DNA for decades. Now they are moving to being able to control that behavior in test tubes and inside cells.

by (http://www.fastcoexist.com/3019370/futurist-forum/a-new-programming-language-that-can-shape-our-dna)

Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy

It's pretty straightforward -- when the reality of someone's life is better than they had expected, they're happy. When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they're unhappy.

by (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html)