As per usual, interesting links from the depths of the internets:
- The Uber for Gentleman Companions by By Julieanne Smolinski – As with everything Julieanne writes, you should read this. It’s about a service that provides male companions that are totally not whores. Sample awesome:
You can also give him whatever name you want, and enumerate any crazy things you might want him to do via a special requests section.
Don’t get too excited, though, as suggested special requests include “feeds you grapes while fanning you,” and not, say, “defecates on a glass coffee table while you lie underneath furiously masturbating.”
Umm, slightly NSFW, I guess. But brilliant and hilarious.
- These previously unseen Star Wars posters look absolutely awesome – Indeed they do.
- Ask Andrew W.K.: Pizza Is Healthy – “Pizza is more than just food; it’s a genuine physical and spiritual pleasure. Anyone who says that money cannot buy happiness has clearly never spent their money on pizza.”
- How facts backfire – This is mildly disturbing, but also gives credence to the notion that politics are to be avoided:
Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
(emphasis mine) If you ever wonder why people decry the inclusion of politics into previously serene areas of culture (recent examples include the SF community and nerdy communities in general), this is why. Politics engender misunderstanding in even the most benign situations, and at worst, creates a toxic environment.
- An Easy Choice? Dream On – On the perils of buying a mattress:
Is there any home purchase more confusing and fraught with anxiety than buying a mattress? Study after study points to sleep being vitally important to our health and happiness, and it stands to reason that a mattress is a foundational component of a good night’s rest. And yet to choose the right one, shoppers must navigate a Kafkaesque maze.
Heh.
And that’s all for now. Party on.