• Psychopaths don’t lack empathy, they just have a switch for it
• Serco: the company that is running Britain
• ‘Rivers’ in air could boost flooding
• Scientists discover what’s killing the bees
• They Finally Tested The ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ On Actual Prisoners — With Unexpected Results
• Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S.
• New app puts idle smartphones to work for science
• 5 thoughts from a month with the Oculus Rift (Christ, I want one)
• More optogenetics: Fake memory implanted in mice with a beam of light
• US government recognizes League of Legends players as pro athletes
• This is what happens when you attempt to take a video of police in Sweden
• Video: Historically Accurate Disney Princess Song
• If Facebook existed during World War II
• Web Game: You Can’t Write Proper English Under Pressure
• To play later: Kanye Quest 3030

Also, these guys made a campfire setup with lazer lights and the visual effect is effin’ awesome.

Asia Associated Press Chief Photographer David Guttenfelder is currently in North Korea covering the 60th anniversary of the country’s armistice with South Korea. As expected when documenting the country’s Mass Games the spectacle is visually incredible, yet subtly disturbing in their homogenous achievement.

Times have collected some of his photos here, whilst AP’s Big Story has got a slightly wider scoped gallery of the country itself here. Of particular interest though is his instagram account that’s got some pretty remarkable images, particularly of aged Korea War veterans, and videos of the countryside and military parades.

Worth mentioning, if not seen yet, is the 2003 documentary A State of Mind where two British filmmakers got then unprecedented access to North Korea and followed two young girls with dreams to train and participate in the Mass Games for their dear leader Kim Jong il. It certainly doesn’t attempt to unmask the horrors of the country’s regime, but it gives a very rare insight into the lives and psychology of some of its inhabitants.

F = m*a

• ‘Yuri Gadyukin’ and The greatest movie that never was
• On Cameron’s audacious ‘porn blocking’ – a survivor’s perspective
• True tales of (mostly) white-hat hacking
• Seeing Photosynthesis from Space: NASA Scientists Use Satellites to Measure Plant Health
• Nano Scientists Reach Holy Grail in Label-Free Cancer Marker Detection: Single Molecules
• Ed Drew’s Afghanastan: the first ‘wet-plate’ conflict photos in 150 years
• 5 People Doing Time-Lapse Photography Right
• Life on The Wire: How Bunk, Kima, Freamon, and McNulty blew off steam in Baltimore
• Revisiting Pharcyde’s ‘Drop’ Music Video
• Through pictures: Star Wars vs. Game of Thrones
• Weirdness: Ultra Business Tycoon III

And like Shiva the destroyer, here is Scientifically Accurate Ducktales

Earth from Saturn’s orbit via Cassini

• Share it like Cicero: How Roman authors used social networking
• The Sun, gravitational lensing and the 70 billion mile telescope
• DNA from a Russian cave: The Case of the Missing Ancestor
• Optogenetics: a new technique to controlling genes with light
• Scientists discover the molecule responsible for causing feelings of depression
• Life Satisfaction Linked to Personality Changes
• The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements
• From the Manson Myth to My Friendship with Charles Manson
• The 11-year-old who ran away so she wouldn’t have to get married
• Six Brain-Damage Scourges That Cripple IQ in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Cool webpage design/animation: Riding the New Silk Road
• Professor E. Paul Zehr on How Wolverine’s Claws Could Work
• 18 obsolete words, which never should have gone out of style
• 50 Great Works of Video Art That You Can Watch Online
• Great re-issue review of (one of) my Mountain Goats favourites: All Hail West Texas

You can change the direction of this train just by looking at it.

Evolution of the alphabet

I really should be posting this stuff more often rather than piling up these posts over the course of days. Well, should…

• So Cool: A surgical knife that diagnoses cancer almost immediately on contact
• Shit. Lack of sleep is key in activating excessive worrying
• Elon Musk wants to get you from NY to LA in 45 minutes
• Curiosity Mars Rover Passes Kilometer of Driving
• Four scientists debate on the origins of mathematics
• Damn, I want to see this chart: Family Tree of Fish Yields Surprises
• 33,000 feet (10 Km) up, is a bubble of bacteria that surrounds the Earth
• When at the ends of the Earth: On getting drunk in Antartica
• How Scientology changed the internet
• Woman’s work: The twisted reality of an Italian freelancer in Syria
• Yes: I Write All My Blog Posts Out Longhand, and You Should Too
• Reuters, deliberately toning down their Climate Change coverage
• Here’s What It Looks Like When You Replace Photographers With iPhone-Wielding Reporters
• Think Your Office Is Soulless? Check Out This Amazon Fulfillment Center
• Woman sues Japan Yamaguchi-gumi crime boss to refund protection money over “employer liability”
• If true, this is a charming twitter story of how Erin Faulk tried to find Matt Damon
• From the master cinematographer: 20 Tips by Roger Deakins
• Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviews Charlie Brooker
• They’re making a Star Wars comic based on the original draft, looks good
• 10 of the most cryptic texts in the world
• Gallery: What does 200 Calories look like?
• Whoa, an augmented reality colouring book: colAR App

This report from PBS takes a look at a Berkeley University study that examines the psychology of wealth and its influence on generosity and altruism. The findings? Yeah, people with more money are jerks. Plenty can attest to that, but this time that person is science!

Still tracking down a copy of the study, but the video documents a good portion of researcher Paul Piff’s methodology and the results, while not very surprising, is still fairly disturbing in its practical implications.

https://img0.liveinternet.ru/images/attach/c/5//3970/3970474_sprite238.swf

I finally had the time to stay in bed all day till 7pm and read a book in one sitting. Good day.

• The story of two Mexican border crosser skeletons found in the Arizona desert
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Designed a Vacuum Cleaner from His CIA Prison
• Some Day Your Passwords Could Be Replaced by a Pill
• Wisconsin man arrested for humping discarded curbside couch
• Stop Frying Eggs on Roadside, Death Valley Officials Say
• Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart, the most interesting man on Wikipedia
• The Stories of Famous Bandmates’ First Meetings
• Illusion of the Week: “U Can’t Parse This” Illusion Dance
• The 50 Books Everyone Needs to Read, 1963-2013
• Total film: 50 Amazing Films You’ve Probably Never Seen