How Brain Scientists Forgot That Brains Have Owners - "they argue that this technological fetish is leading the field astray. “People think technology + big data + machine learning = science,” says Krakauer. “And it’s not.” He and his fellow curmudgeons argue that brains are special because of the behavior they create—everything from a predator’s pounce to a baby’s cry. But the study of such behavior is being de-prioritized, or studied “almost as an afterthought.” Instead, neuroscientists have been focusing on using their new tools to study individual neurons, or networks of neurons. According to Krakauer, the unspoken assumption is that if we collect enough data about the parts, the workings of the whole will become clear... behavior is an emergent property—it arises from large groups of neurons working together, and isn’t apparent from studying any single one... As British neuroscientist David Marr wrote in 1982, “trying to understand perception by understanding neurons is like trying to understand a bird’s flight by studying only feathers. It just cannot be done.” A landmark study, published in 2016, beautifully illustrated his point using, of all things, retro video games. Eric Jonas and Konrad Kording examined the MOS 6502 microchip, which ran classics like Donkey Kong and Space Invaders, in the style of neuroscientists. Using the approaches that are common to brain science, they wondered if they could rediscover what they already knew about the chip—how its transistors and logic gates process information, and how they run simple games. And they utterly failed. “What we extracted was so incredibly superficial,” Jonas told me in 2016. And “in the real world, this would be a millions-of-dollars data set.” If the kind of neuroscience that has come to dominate the field couldn’t explain the workings of a simple, dated microchip, how could it hope to explain the brain—reputedly the most complex object in the universe?
This is like physicists who claim all other sciences can be reduced to physics
Why the French don’t show excitement - "“You Americans,” he said, “live in the faire [to do]. The avoir [to have]. In France, we live in the être [to be].”... I knew before moving that the French word ‘excité’ was verboten. It is one of the first ‘false friends’ that a student of the language becomes aware of. Most French learners can recall the day that a classmate first uttered the phrase ‘Je suis excité’ (which literally translates as ‘I am excited’) only to have their teacher hem and haw uncomfortably before explaining that the word excité doesn’t signal emotional but rather physical excitement. A better translation of the phrase Je suis excité into English would be ‘I am aroused’. French doesn’t have the excited/aroused lexical pair that English does, so one word does both jobs. Excité technically denotes excitement both “objective (a state of stimulation) and subjective (feelings),” according to Olivier Frayssé, professor of American Civilization at Paris-Sorbonne University, but the physical sensation is the one most often implied. “If ‘aroused’ existed, it would be unnecessary to interpret ‘excité’ this way,” he explained... “My students and I often joke that our cooler, calmer, more reticent sides come out when we're speaking French”... This is not, then, a mere question of translation, but rather a question of culture. Like other untranslatable terms like Japan’s shinrin-yoku (the relaxation gained from being around nature) or dadirri (deep, reflective listening) in Australia’s Aboriginal Ngangikurungkurr language, it seems as though the average French person doesn’t need to express excitement on the day to day. For Julie Barlow, Canadian co-author of The Story of French and The Bonjour Effect, this is largely due to the implied enthusiasm in the word ‘excited’, something that’s not sought after in French culture. She notes that Francophone Canadians, culturally North American rather than French, find work-arounds such as ‘Ça m’enthousiasme’ (‘It enthuses me’)... “If you’re too happy in French, we’re kind of wondering what’s wrong with you,” he said. “But in English, that’s not true.” For some, however, it’s not necessarily negativity that the French seek, but reserve. “I think there is something cultural about the greater level of reservation French people tend to show in everyday conversation,” Dr King said. “From my perspective, it doesn't mean they show less enthusiasm, but perhaps less of an emotional investment in things they are enthusiastic about.” Indeed, those who are unable to show the proper emotional detachment within French society can even be perceived as being somehow deranged, something that is exemplified by the pejorative labelling of former President Nicolas Sarkozy as ‘l’excité’, due to the zeal he shows in public appearances. American Matt Jenner lived in France for several years and is bilingual. For him, it is not necessarily a matter of the French not being able to express their excitement, but rather that English speakers – and Americans in particular – tend to go overboard. The American public, he says, has been trained “to have a fake, almost cartoonish view on life, in which superficial excitement and false happiness are the norm.” By comparison, he notes, in France, “excitement is typically shown only when it is truly meant.” Authenticity has been important to the French since the Revolution, according to Brice Couturier at France Culture. “The Ancien Régime, indeed, had cultivated a culture of the court and of salons, based on the art of appearances and pleasing,” he said. “This culture implied a great mastery of the behavioural codes of the time, as well as an ability to conceal one’s true emotions.”... “I feel like I have two worlds in my head, one in French and one in English. I feel like the English world is a lot more fun than the French one.”... “Life in France places you happily in the present tense,” Paris-based author Matthew Fraser told The Local, “unlike in Anglo-Protestant countries where everything is driving madly towards the future.”"
Workers must have a right to free speech - "A Darlington classic-car dealer had a blazing row with his employee, Michael Austin, a paint-sprayer, over the way the business was run. Austin mentioned the spat on his Facebook page and complained of feeling low as a result of it. Numerous Facebook friends rallied round – all too enthusiastically, as it turned out. One suggested that Austin should punch his employer’s face. Another, knowing the employer to be gay, called him all sorts of uncomplimentary names, including ‘shirtlifter’. Despite having made no comment on any of these unedifying posts, Austin found himself unceremoniously sacked, apparently on the basis that he had broken his employer’s policy on social-media posts and had brought the business into disrepute. Austin went to the employment tribunal, and (for once in a freedom-of-speech case) won, taking away nearly £30,000... Austin was sacked for a private posting on a private account in a private capacity – and not even for anything he said. The alleged sackable offence was, as far as one can see, one of omission – nothing more than failure to contradict what his friends said. Things are coming to a pretty pass when employees are at risk from what they don’t say as much as from what they do. Whatever the ultimate result in court, no decent employer should even think of disciplining their workers in cases like this... Some European countries, such as France, regard it as beyond question that a person’s right to freedom of speech – however defined – applies as much against his employer as it does against the state. (Indeed, the French courts are also, as a rule, pretty generous to the employee in this respect.)"
Commentary: Why 40°C is bearable in a desert but lethal in the tropics - "Heat stress is mostly caused by temperature, but other weather-related factors such as humidity, radiation and wind are also important... most heat is lost through sweating, as when the sweat on the surface of our skin evaporates it takes in energy from our skin and the air around us in the form of latent heat. Meteorological factors affect all this. For example, being deprived of shade exposes the body to heat from direct sunlight, while higher humidity means that the rate of evaporation from our skin will decrease. It’s this humidity that meant the recent heatwave in Southeast Asia was so dangerous, as it’s already an extremely humid part of the world. Underlying health conditions and other personal circumstances can lead to some people being more vulnerable to heat stress. Yet heat stress can reach a limit above which all humans, even those who are not obviously vulnerable to heat risk - that is, people who are fit, healthy and well acclimatised - simply cannot survive even at a moderate level of exertion. One way to assess heat stress is the so-called Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT). In full sun conditions, that is approximately equivalent to 39 degrees Celsius in temperature combined with 50 per cent relative humidity. This limit will likely have been exceeded in some places in the recent heatwave across Southeast Asia. In less humid places far from the tropics, the humidity and thus the wet bulb temperature and danger will be much lower. Spain’s heatwave in April with maximum temperatures of 38.8 degrees Celsius had WBGT values of “only” around 30 degrees Celsius, the 2022 heatwave in the United Kingdom, when temperatures exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, had a humidity of less than 20 per cent and WBGT values of around 32 degrees Celsius."
49% Japanese Company Have Good For Nothing Managers - "According to a recent survey, 49% of corporate companies in Japan reported having a member who did nothing. According to the survey results, those good-for-nothing people often occupy the offices of managers or CEOs... A manager explained about his frustration as the rumour that “49% companies have an old man who does nothing” circulated on the internet."
What Happened To Our Villains? - YouTube - "They all serve the same basic purpose. They're an obstacle for the protagonists to overcome something that can challenge them to become better and stronger than they were before. They're basically the driving force behind the Hero's Journey. But it's more than just that. A good villain can challenge the very nature of who and what a hero is and what the audience believes them to be. They can have justifiable motivations and complex personalities all of their own. The best ones can even make the audience question just who exactly the real villain is. In fact the villains are often cooler and more memorable than the hero themselves. Why? Because unlike the hero, writers don't have to worry about making their villains likeable and relatable, so they can afford to take risks with them... the problem is that good villains seem to be a dying breed these days... The [Star Wars Sequel Triology] script doesn't even have the decency to produce competent villains. Not only are these guys evil but they're evil and inept. You're not supposed to fear them, you're supposed to laugh at them... All of these characters make for shitty villains, either because they lack the self-control, fighting ability, intelligence or sheer physical strength to be genuinely intimidating. They never present a tangible threat to the hero. In fact, they're basically treated as weak pathetic straw men that can be easily brushed aside once the script decides it's time for them to lose. The writers in this case lack the one thing that every creator should have for their antagonist and that's respect for their creations... the writers were smart enough to build their antagonists up so they became a genuine threat for the hero to overcome instead of trying to break them down and belittle them right from the beginning. Now the thing you might rightly be wondering is why?... there are pretty strict rules around what you can and can't show in mainstream movies and I'm not talking about boobs and violence like in the old days. I'm talking about the unwritten rules behind the scenes that basically exist to make sure their movies don't incur the wrath of journalists, the news media or the endless twitter mobs just waiting for the next thing to get offended about. In this case one of the golden rules is that women are never allowed to lose to men at anything for any reason, whether it's a physical fight, a test of skill or intelligence or even a simple argument. Pick basically any scenario where a woman gets pitted against a man and I can pretty much guarantee you the woman will come out on top. She'll either outsmart the man in a battle of wits or get the last word in in an argument or kick his ass in a fight regardless of their relative size and strength whatever it might be. The rules dictate that no man can beat a woman in a balanced engagement because the natural implication would be that men are smarter or stronger or generally better than women and we certainly can't have that. Now this is all well and good but it creates a very obvious problem when your hero happens to be female and your villain male. Traditional storytelling requires the antagonist to start out stronger and more dangerous than the hero forcing them to grow and improve themselves in some way before finally prevailing at the end but naturally this process requires the man to be dominant in the early stages and as we've already discussed that's not allowed to happen anymore even if it's just a temporary thing. So how exactly do you get around it? Well if you happen to write for Disney, Marvel, DC or Lucasfilm you don't. Instead you're forced to make your villains weak and pathetic, either unfairly elevated beyond their abilities or jealous and envious of the hero's success. It's basically a form of projection allowing the writers to vent their frustrations about imagined enemies and rivals onto a weak straw man that can be easily swept aside by an all-conquering heroine. Unfortunately this whole mindset creates more problems than it solves. Weak villains make for weak stories because they rob the narrative of its tension and drama. Even worse, it actually undermines the hero themselves because if they're never really tested by a worthy opponent then they haven't really achieved anything. A hero is only ever as strong as the villain they defeat and what's really interesting is that the problem still exists even if you reverse the rules. Take Thor Ragnarok for example. The villain in that movie is a woman which is perfectly fine at the beginning when she gets to kick Thor's ass but it becomes a real problem near the finale when it's time for him to win. You definitely can't show Thor hammering a woman into the ground because that brings up all kinds of unpleasant accusations of glorifying violence against women so instead the movie takes the best alternative and has a third party step in to win the battle for him. Notice how they carefully managed to sidestep the uncomfortable issue of Thor defeating her in a fair fight... the reason people didn't warm to characters like Rey or Captain Marvel isn't because of their gender. It's because everything's made so fucking easy for them that it's basically impossible to feel any empathy. It's the same exact problem with Ghostbusters or Harley Quinn or Charlie's Angels... you'll never get your audience to care about their struggle because they don't fucking have one"
Why Modern Movies Suck - They Teach Us Awful Lessons - YouTube - "That's not even counting all the other horrendous life lessons to be learned from the new Star Wars movies, such as you should always blindly trust authority figures and do exactly as they command, even if their orders make no sense and run contrary to everything you know to be rights, battles and wars are won by protecting people you care about at all costs even if that means preventing them from sacrificing themselves to save a much larger group of people that you care about, running amok and randomly destroying property for a few minutes is the perfect way to enact meaningful social and political change on a planetary scale... both Wonder Woman and Wandavision whether they intended it or not are teaching their audience some pretty fucking sketchy life lessons. The idea that your own personal happiness is literally more important than other people's freedom well-being and personal integrity. This is the world view of a villain, not a fucking hero... instead of teaching people to be brave, determined and compassionate, to take the harder road and become stronger through adversity, to care for others and respect their freedom to work hard and better themselves, we're instead teaching people to be arrogant, complacent, entitled, narcissistic and selfish. These are shitty lessons designed to produce shitty people that are destined to crash and burn once they get out into the real world. Or even worse, invade it in large enough numbers that they actually start to dilute the culture and make it just as shitty as them"
Why Our Villains Are Different Now (Thanos, The Joker, Killmonger) – Wisecrack Edition - YouTube - "Today’s villains, from Killmonger in Black Panther to Screenslaver in The Incredibles 2 have become weirdly relatable, each equipped with their own cogent critiques of the world.... [In the 1950s and early 1960s] What do all of these naughty dudes have in common? They’re the “other” - an inherent, inexplicable evil that’s stoked on destroying America and our apple pie values... One-dimensional foreign/communist/alien/blob villains took a back seat in the late 60s and 70s as we saw a definitive shift in the portrayal of villains. It was fitting for a time of major social turbulence and soul-searching, as the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam made visible some of the not-so-perfect aspects of America like racism and war... The 1980s backpedaled hard on the anti villain by revelling in more cartoonish villains who directly embodied the biggest threats of the time. Effectively, it ushered back in an “us vs. them” paradigm by tapping into fears surrounding the War on Drugs. Unsurprisingly, villains of the time wanted a piece of that sweet sweet drug money in films like Scarface, To Live & Die in L.A., Beverly Hills Cop and Raw Deal... In the 90s, American cinema swapped out the reds for homegrown terrorist to fit" a decade in which domestic terrorism and “going postal” dominated headlines. Fittingly, in cinema, it was an era of disgruntled middle class dudes and “bombers next door,” a prime-time for complex anti-villains who are fighting small, localized battles by radical means... Sometimes these villains even have genuinely noble causes, as they rail against the systems that have wronged them. Take 1995’s The Rock, in which Ed Harris’s General Hummel, a disgraced USMC brigadier general, who holds the entire city of San Francisco hostage, — “Fifteen vx gas rockets at the heart of San Fran. You’ve got 17 hours to deliver the money.” — demanding that the families of slain Marines be compensated for their deaths. Here, we come to an interesting question of whether noble ends justify violent means. In this way, the film acts as a prelude to the very questions being explored by current-day villains, though usually on a much wider-scale. Movies couldn’t not be changed by an event as pivotal as 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror. With the 2000s, came a new shift in movie villains, as America confronted an existential threat to its sense of safety and power in the world. Fittingly, the first two installments of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy captured the popular imagination in this decade. In 2005’s “Batman Begins,” we see the dangerous metropolis under attack by international terrorist group “The League of Shadows,” and its leader, Raz Al Ghul who in a remarkably-on-the-nose metaphor, wants to blow up Gotham’s tallest skyscraper. Arguably the decade's most salient villain came, of course, with Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker in The Dark Knight. The Joker manifests as “the spirit of terrorism," the embodiment “of anarchy and chaos of a particularly destructive and nihilistic nature,” as critic Douglas Kellner writes in his book Cinema Wars. “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules.” In case the comparison between the Joker and real world terrorism wasn’t clear enough, Kellner notes that the film is bursting with 9/11 iconography"
The Cowardice of 'Cruella' - The Atlantic - "the young Cruella is a hustler, a skilled self-promoter, and an influencer. She is not evil; she is merely complicated. She is a creature of 2020s America who happens to reside in 1970s London. Cruella is the latest entry in the thriving genre of villain revisionism. The field includes lightly fictionalized reconsiderations of nonfictional events (works such as Confirmation and The People v. O. J. Simpson); documentaries such as The Clinton Affair, Lorena, and Framing Britney Spears; and retellings of old tales (Wicked, Maleficent) from the villain’s point of view. The genre is not new, but it is flourishing in an age shaped by the internet and fluent in the language of postmodernism: It tells the story about the story. It is deeply concerned with the totalizing power of authorship. It understands that villainy, as a category, is imposed—and that, in a culture that tends to prioritize reductive myths over complicated truths, the label can be its own kind of injustice. Disney’s latest film is both an apotheosis and a nadir of the form. It goes out of its way to complicate, to relate, to correct. It takes a character so evil—so delightfully depraved—that she is named after the devil himself, and promises that she, too, can be rehabilitated. Its impulse toward retrospective empathy, however, strains credulity. (When a reassessment depends on the murderous capabilities of a dalmatian named Genghis, perhaps it has gone too far.) The Cruella you might know from earlier iterations is all but unrecognizable. Her defining cruelty has been switched out for the demands of glossy, girlboss feminism. Cruella is often fun to watch—it features some fantastic performances, some excellent lines, and some dazzling clothes—but its cavalier reversal of its core character cheapens the very idea of a corrective narrative. It takes a quintessential villain and nuances her character into oblivion. Here is one simple way to render your villain instantly sympathetic: You make her the victim of trauma... The film’s efforts to frame its protagonist as a feminist antihero take the form of easy currency. Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” is referenced unironically. In one scene, the Baroness utters the line “I choose me.” The whole thing can read, at times, as a game of corporate-feminist Mad Libs made corporeal... Disney has given us an allegedly punk antihero whose defining goal is to be respected within the establishment... The film embraces the glib condescension of the idea that every villain must be, somehow, misunderstood—that a woman can’t be purely evil, that she must have a softer side, that her currency is her beguiling relatability. Watching this sumptuous revision, I longed for the classic Cruella: vain, vapid, willing to kill puppies, and never feeling the need to explain herself."
Meme - Portioned-Porcupine: "Would you like a dick pic?"
Fun_Solution_3276: "how does ur account have no karma but is a year old"
Portioned-Porcupine: "who knows"
Fun_Solution_3276: "who are you my guy"
Portioned-Porcupine: "who fucking knows
certainly not me
i mean what went wrong in my life that im asking girls on reddit to look at my dick"
Fun_Solution_3276: "idk bro
need therapy?
can i post this on the sub lol"
Meme - "I'm playing both sides, so that I always come out on top"
"He's both pro-life (left. Blue bandana. Sticker says "don't kill me) and pro-choice (right. Green bandana)"
"The Only Rule that Governs the Confirmation Process Is the Law of the Jungle" - "In February 2016, after the tragic death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Benjamin Wittes and Miguel Estrada wrote on the demise of judicial confirmation norms in the Washington Post. The advice they offered then, remains relevant today: "Assume that anyone who claims to be acting out of a pristine sense of civic principle is being dishonest." This may have been a cynical take, but it's hard to argue against... I would prefer the Senate to focus on the objective qualifications of nominees, and not on whether Senators believe a judge embraces the proper judicial philosophy. Although this is not constitutionally required, I have long believed such a standard is implied because the Constitution does not distinguish between judicial nominations and other presidential nominations... Such a norm is what allowed for the unanimous confirmation of Justice Antonin Scalia, and near-unanimous confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, despite the fact that many Senators disagreed with them on many issues. (Consider: If pro-choice Senators should vote against a nominee who is skeptical of Roe, pro-life Senators should have voted against Ginsburg, who was replacing the reliably anti-Roe justice, Byron White.). As Wittes and Estrada noted in 2016, however, this norm of largely deferring to the President's nominees did not last very long. Indeed, some Senators actively sought to destroy it, finding other ways to obstruct nominees (as the Washington Post reported on Nov. 12, 1985) and eventually arguing that ideology alone was sufficient reason to oppose a judge's confirmation (which was the point of a set of hearings held in 2001). Senators hold grudges, and unilateral disarmament is not a viable strategy, so the result was an escalating game of tit-for-tat. It may have begun in the 1980s, when the confirmation of judicial nominees was held up in election years, but rapidly metastasized, producing serious consequences. As Wittes and Estrada noted, the back-and-forth has gone on long enough, that neither side can escape blame... Like Wittes, I spent years arguing for various de-escalatory reforms, but neither side was interested. True de-escalation requires sacrifice—a willingness not to take advantage of the upper hand—and that's not a language today's politicians understand. President George W. Bush re-nominated one of Clinton's failed appellate nominees (Roger Gregory), over the objections of Republican Senators. This minor gesture was never reciprocated, nor repeated. The lesson learned was seems to have been that de-escalation is for suckers."
This is Why European Food Tastes Better: A Healthy Comparison - "Americans focus on portion sizes and longevity.
Most American farmers concern themselves with meeting government regulations rather than producing quality tasting foods packed with nutrients. This means farmers inject chemicals and blast pesticides to create oversized crops and livestock to meet growing consumer demands. As many farmers straddle federal regulations, they don’t monitor for nutritional value. Consequently, today’s produce contains less nutrition per calorie consumed, meaning Americans need to eat more than their ancestors did to gain the same amount of nutritional value. When these foods also contain higher amounts of sugars and trans fats, you can see how obesity is an increasing problem in the U.S.
Americans favor convenience over seasonality.
When Americans want a watermelon, they want a watermelon–regardless of seasonality. Americans are bred on convenience. This conditions them to buy what’s available rather than waiting for the optimal harvest season to grow the best produce.
Americans eat processed foods...
Europeans focus on quality.
Europeans won’t tolerate poor, tasteless products. This is evident in where and when they grocery shop"
Too bad there's FUD about GMOs
Disbelief as Paris councillor claims rats plaguing the city are the victims of PREJUDICE - "A Parisian public official has declared the city's vast rat population is the subject of prejudice and said the animal must be renamed to prevent people killing them. Douchka Markovic, a supporter of the leftist mayor Anne Hidalgo and co-president of the animal right-touting Animalist Party, recently told a council meeting the term 'rat' encourages violence. 'I prefer to call them surmulots (which loosely translates as 'oversized field mouse') as it carries less negative connotations,' Markovic said as she rebuked the questions of centre-right councillor Paul Hatte on the need for increased pest control and extermination efforts. French ranking site Topito earlier this year declared Paris the fourth most rat infested city in the world, and the astounding population of the rodents is earning a reputation despised by the city's tourism chiefs. France's National Academy of Medicine meanwhile said the growing number of rats is a 'threat to human health because of the numerous diseases they spread through parasites, excrement, bites and scratches'. But Markovic, who is tasked with overseeing animal welfare in the French capital's 18th arrondissement, said the rats have become a natural cleanser of the city's sewers, are instrumental in helping to clear rubbish and that they must be contained in ethical, non-lethal ways. '[They are] our waste control assistants. We must firstly note the role played by the animals on a daily basis in the sewers, with the evacuation of several hundred tons of waste and the unblocking of pipes,' the councillor insisted. It comes as mayor Hidalgo faces staunch opposition for what many believe is her culpability in the decline of France's largest city amid social media campaigns drawing attention to the increase in rubbish and violence on the streets."
Meme - "How do you view Lesbian Relationships?"
"Full HD."
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Song of Roland - "‘How does the poem present Muslims here?’
‘The foe at the initial Battle of Roncevaux were not Muslims, they were Basques… this change of foe really then makes Charlemagne into not just a defender of France um but a defender of Christianity... Saracens which is the term that's used in the poem to talk about this collection of foes is a term which actually has nothing at all to do with medieval or modern Islam. It's, it's a fiction, it's a fabricated label for a group of people who are loosely understood not to be Christian and even more loosely understood to be Muslim but the way in which they're depicted is really blasphemous and actually the Saracens are imagined as a distorted image of Christianity. So for instance they're depicted worshiping three gods in a kind of warped version of the Trinity and they're also depicted as worshiping Idols which of course is entirely counter to any practice of Islam... some of them are extremely handsome and chivalrous and the narrator says things like what a shame that he wasn't a Frank, he would have been a great Baron if only he was a Christian… we have other pagans who are depicted in terms which are reminiscent of animals or demons. There's one that lives in a land where the Sun never shines and and a lot of them, I mean it's not very subtle the way they're depicted, a lot of them have names which start with the prefix Mal or bad’"
