Emer-ism

kingsgrave: Pffft. Bitch, I’ve got a Horcrux, AND a Tesseract,...

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 21:28:37 -0400

Pffft. Bitch, I’ve got a Horcrux, AND a Tesseract, and my name ain’t Uncle Ben! I ain’t fussed.

"Are you uncomfortable with ambiguity? It’s a common condition, but a highly problematic one. The..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:17:04 -0400

“

Are you uncomfortable with ambiguity? It’s a common condition, but a highly problematic one. The compulsion to quell that unease can inspire snap judgments, rigid thinking, and bad decision-making.

Fortunately, new research suggests a simple antidote for this affliction: Read more literary fiction.

A trio of University of Toronto scholars, led by psychologist Maja Djikic, report that people who have just read a short story have less need for what psychologists call “cognitive closure.” Compared with peers who have just read an essay, they expressed more comfort with disorder and uncertainty—attitudes that allow for both sophisticated thinking and greater creativity.

”

- Study finds reading literary fiction makes people comfortable with ambiguity. Also see Anaïs Nin on how inviting the unknown helps us know life more richly and John Keats on the art of “negative capability.” (via explore-blog)

"When I see on Twitter that someone with an egg avatar and two followers has gotten a writer I know..."

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:02:08 -0400

“When I see on Twitter that someone with an egg avatar and two followers has gotten a writer I know to spend ages arguing back and forth about nothing, there is part of me that thinks, “Why bother? The world is full of awfulness; you will never beat back all of it.” We all ignore things all day long; if we didn’t, we’d never get anything done.”

-
Linda Holmes in “Bait And Twitch: Vice Magazine, Suicide Glamour, And Not Staying Quiet” (via npr)

“It’s insidious and frustrating, the idea that the more blatant an effort to offend for attention, the more the offended are to blame if they react. It imposes a sort of duty of measured inertness, as if you owe it to the greater good not to challenge something if the people who dumped it out into the world don’t really believe in it but only want a reaction. It rewards anything you believe to be craven exploitation by suggesting that the more you believe it’s just craven exploitation, the more you owe it to the world to sit silently, roll your eyes, and be quiet. It makes craven exploitation bulletproof.”

latentpower: awkwardsituationist: cambridge university...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:36:48 -0400

latentpower:

awkwardsituationist:

cambridge university students were asked on campus why they needed feminism. here are 60 answers. click the link for over about 600 more.

This is amazing

explore-blog: High-wire artist Philippe Petit, who notoriously...

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:55:04 -0400

explore-blog:

High-wire artist Philippe Petit, who notoriously walked between the World Trade Center twin towers in 1974 and whose Cheating the Impossible is a must-read, explores the art of making knots in Why Knot? How to Tie More Than Sixty Ingenious, Useful, Beautiful, Lifesaving and Secure Knots.

(↬ CoDesign)

dear people who keep making bad superman movies:

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:53:05 -0400

kingsgrave:

gyzym:

look, i get it: superman as a character can be pretty hard to make an audience relate to because he’s, you know, a super man! he has the powers, we know not of them, and while the interesting angle on superman is definitely his humanity y’all keep getting that really wrong, like shamefully wrong, but it’s okay, i understand, it’s hard to write, the shadow of the great christopher reeve movies, shhh, shhh. it’s gonna be okay, let me explain you a thing, there’s an easy solution, you just make this movie:

we open on a twelve year old lois lane in the aftermath of a FUCKSHIT CATASTROPHE. something disastrous has gone down — maybe it’s a massive oil spill, maybe it’s a situation reminiscent of the erin brockovich scandal, this is just a vague concept sketch, fill in what you want. the important part is: it’s a big bad corporate fuckup of the sort that we’re all too familiar with these days, and it’s got lexcorp written all over it. our first introduction to lois is watching her get approached by a patronizing, downtalking reporter and, all of twelve years old, step up to the fucking plate and take him and the company to task in the public eye. she’s the most poised and professional and pissed as fuck twelve year old you’ve ever seen, and she knows her facts, too. the reporter is impressed, but not as impressed as we, the audience, are as we watch her reign back her fear and do whatever she can to help her family, friends, and community.

sharpcut to a guy in a dead run down a back alley; he’s sweating and looking over his shoulder, clearly being chased. the camera pans out to reveal a daily planet logo — because, hey guys, the year is 2013, so the planet’s a 24 hour news network* now. you can argue new york times parallels all you want but the truth is that if superman’s looking for a job where he can a) be apprised of what’s going down with maximum speed and b) have an excuse to be on the scene immediately? then in this day and age he sure as shit ain’t working for print media; fight me. and you know what else, maybe clark’s a fucking camera man because he’s not actually great at reading or writing news because YOU KNOW WHAT MAKES CHARACTERS RELATABLE AND INTERESTING TO HUMAN BEINGS IS FLAWS, F L A W S, THAT IS THE THING YOU KEEP FORGETTING AND IT’S WHY SUPERMAN MOVIES KEEP BEING PAINFULLY BORING, ugh, whatever, moving forward.

Read More

You know, I haven’t even SEEN the movie yet, and this pretty much summs up my entire problem with pretty much every Superman movie or tv franchise ever. And it’s why I never got into Supes as a comic book, either. He’s not human, he’s not even metahuman, idealized human, or human-mutation. How can I relate to a guy who will NEVER be concerned with the things I struggle to overcome on a daily basis? Nah.

Even the Avengers are easier to sympathize with, and they’re like out there, man, like Pluto.

Bingo!

"Background noise creates a distraction, but balance is key. A moderate level of background noise..."

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 08:45:02 -0400

“Background noise creates a distraction, but balance is key. A moderate level of background noise creates just enough distraction to break people out of their patterns of thinking and nudge them to let their imagination wander, while still keeping them from losing their focus on the project all together. This distracted focus helps enhance your creativity. The study’s authors explain that “getting into a relatively noisy environment may trigger the brain to think abstractly, and thus generate creative ideas.””

-
Research suggests the right amount of ambient noise increases creativity – which makes sense, considering the unconscious processing phase of ideation. (via explore-blog)

Putting this to the test this week. Productivity, here I come!

science-is: Every river in the United States. (via Kotke.org)

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 08:00:13 -0400

science-is:

Every river in the United States. (via Kotke.org)

#sunset #portlandmaine #maine #PortlandME

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 09:03:32 -0400

#sunset #portlandmaine #maine #PortlandME

bettersupes: xerxes93: I would just like to show you all the best Cosplay at Emerald City Comicon....

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:18:41 -0400

bettersupes:

xerxes93:

I would just like to show you all the best Cosplay at Emerald City Comicon. All other cosplays can go home.

That’s right, I drew a pic of Power Girl with no tit window AND shirtless ballerina Hulk. DWI

YES.

kcans1: jurassic park logic

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 09:15:21 -0400

kcans1:

jurassic park logic

redscharlach: Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch: A...

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 09:05:38 -0400

redscharlach:

Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch: A Visual Examination.

All otters are from The Daily Otter, for all your ottery Tumblr needs!

cannotunsee: Look-alikes: Game of Thrones character Joffrey...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 11:26:07 -0400

cannotunsee:

Look-alikes: Game of Thrones character Joffrey Baratheon (actor Jack Gleeson) vs. former Roman Emperor Caligula, also known as Gaius.

Well! That explains a lot of things!

latenightjimmy: Another gorgeous clip of Cirque’s Earth Song....

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 08:58:06 -0400

latenightjimmy:

Another gorgeous clip of Cirque’s Earth Song. Thanks Jamie!

Chills.

americastestkitchen: Name That Food: 9 Abstract Photos of Common Items: The photographs that Ajay...

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 13:05:31 -0400

americastestkitchen:

Name That Food: 9 Abstract Photos of Common Items: The photographs that Ajay Malghan takes look like images of supernovas or strange, deep-sea creatures. But all of them are actually of common foods such as carrots, strawberries, and shrimp. Malghan makes these pictures by shining colored lights through thin slices of food onto light-sensitive paper, a method which captures the ethereal image of the item’s shadow.

These pictures are gorgeous.

#poppies #flowers

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 18:14:14 -0400

#poppies #flowers

Pai Men Miyake. My mouth is elated. (at Pai Men Miyake)

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 17:36:33 -0400

Pai Men Miyake. My mouth is elated. (at Pai Men Miyake)

"There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days..."

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 10:03:36 -0400

““There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading – that is a good life. A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one. But who would not call Pasteur’s life a good one, or Thomas Mann’s?””

- Annie Dillard

kingsgrave: Some warning signs might actually be because of...

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 23:13:17 -0400

kingsgrave:

Some warning signs might actually be because of people like me…

…but it’s such a great bludgeoning device!

In honor of National #Donut Day: The Ham-ityville Horror:...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 22:09:16 -0400

In honor of National #Donut Day: The Ham-ityville Horror: Sausage, Tasso Ham, Bacon, Pulled Pork, and a sweet-and-spicy coffee vinegar served between a glazed donut. Out of this world. (at Blue Rooster Food Co.)

*Emer-ism*

kingsgrave: Pffft. Bitch, I’ve got a Horcrux, AND a Tesseract,...

"Are you uncomfortable with ambiguity? It’s a common condition, but a highly problematic one. The..."

"When I see on Twitter that someone with an egg avatar and two followers has gotten a writer I know..."

latentpower: awkwardsituationist: cambridge university...

explore-blog: High-wire artist Philippe Petit, who notoriously...

dear people who keep making bad superman movies:

"Background noise creates a distraction, but balance is key. A moderate level of background noise..."

science-is: Every river in the United States. (via Kotke.org)

#sunset #portlandmaine #maine #PortlandME

bettersupes: xerxes93: I would just like to show you all the best Cosplay at Emerald City Comicon....

kcans1: jurassic park logic

redscharlach: Otters Who Look Like Benedict Cumberbatch: A...

cannotunsee: Look-alikes: Game of Thrones character Joffrey...

latenightjimmy: Another gorgeous clip of Cirque’s Earth Song....

americastestkitchen: Name That Food: 9 Abstract Photos of Common Items: The photographs that Ajay...

#poppies #flowers

Pai Men Miyake. My mouth is elated. (at Pai Men Miyake)

"There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days..."

kingsgrave: Some warning signs might actually be because of...

In honor of National #Donut Day: The Ham-ityville Horror:...

Emer-ism