Jennifer Szalai explains why she despises the term “guilty pleasure”: http://nyr.kr/1gWx5o5
“The guilty pleasure seems to me the distillation of all the worst qualities of the middlebrow—the condescension of the highbrow without the expenditure of effort, along with mass culture’s pleasure-seeking without the unequivocal enjoyment. If you want to listen to Rihanna while reading the latest from Dean Koontz, just go ahead and do it. Don’t try to suggest you know better.”
Illustration by Hannah K. Lee.
(Source: newyorker.com, via newyorker)
life:
Did you know today is Go Skateboarding Day?
Reminisce with us on the early, thrilling days of skateboarding.
(Bill Eppridge—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Sick
Underwater explosions are, in general, much more dangerous than those in air. This video shows an underwater blast at 30,000 fps. During the initial blast, a hot sphere of gas expands outward in a shock wave. In air, some of the energy of this pressure wave would be dissipated by compressing the air. Since water is incompressible, however, the blast instead moves water aside as the bubble expands. Eventually, the bubble expands to the point where its pressure is less than that of the water around it, which causes the bubble to collapse. But the collapse increases the gas pressure once more, kicking off a series of expansions and collapses. Each bubble contains less energy than the previous, thanks to the loss of pushing the water aside. (Video credit: K. Kitagawa)
If you needed something to make a science GIF out of this weekend, here’s a good subject.
Whoa.
(via itsokaytobesmart)
(via ford-deactivated20170110)
What Pangea would look like mapped with modern political borders – a modern mashup reflecting cartography’s long history as power, propaganda, and art.
(via explore-blog)
“Now, for the first time in its billions of years of history, our planet is protected by far-seeing sentinels, able to anticipate danger from the distant future–a comet on a collision course, or global warming–and devise schemes for doing something about it. The planet has finally grown its own nervous system: us.”
So I suppose the question is this: do you want to be merely a sensory neuron or can you rise to become a motor neuron?
(via itsokaytobesmart)
Part modern art, part science – mesmerizing gallery of Saturn GIFs captured by the Cassini spacecraft. Pair with these stunning technicolor images of Saturn.
(via explore-blog)