Latest on twitter:
"It would hardly be fish who discovered the existence of water."
I have new found respect for this statement. After living outside my homeland [India] from more than 2 years and coming back - I’m surprised by the things I noticed but never cared to articulate.
In two weeks, I’ll fly back to the US and do exactly the same thing. Only difference is, the observations will be entirely new and objective - because as a kid, I have only passively consumed American culture.
Then the same will happen when I troll new subcultures on the web.
The culture of culture is a fascinating thing - irrespective of geography and virtuality.
Neat: Map of Reddit
‘Two Against One’ - visual poetry by Chris Milk and Anthony Shepherd
via John Foster
"It’s the Internet vs the Un-Internet. And the Internet, it seems, always prevails."
"Because secrets do not increase in value if kept in a gore-ian lockbox, because one’s past is either made useful or else mutates and becomes cancerous. We share things for the obvious reasons: it makes us feel un-alone, it spreads the weight over a larger area, it holds the possibility of making our share lighter. And it can work either way - not simply as a pain-relief device, but, in the case of not bad news but good, as a share-the-happy-things-I’ve-seen/lessons-I’ve-learned vehicle. Or as a tool for simple connectivity for its own sake, a testing of waters, a stab at engagement with a mass of strangers."
Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (via planetickets)
(via makingmystery)
Scientists at UC San Diego have made a bioluminescent bacterial billboard. They call it a “living neon sign composed of millions of bacterial cells that periodically fluoresce in unison like blinking light bulbs.” Making it all work “involved attaching a fluorescent protein to the biological clocks of the bacteria, synchronizing the clocks of the thousands of bacteria within a colony, then synchronizing thousands of the blinking bacterial colonies to glow on and off in unison.”
These are referred to as biopixels.
"Write even when the world is chaotic. You don’t need a cigarette, silence, music, a comfortable chair, or inner peace to write. You just need ten minutes and a writing implement."
"Maternal health is seen as an important metric for human development indices. This includes universal access to birth control and safe abortions. The US is a developed country but also a deeply religious one. When rich, white men, specifically politicians make decisions about women’s health, it deeply bothers me. Historically, when rich women (predominantly white in the US) are in any sort of “trouble” they have the resources to take care of it. When lawmakers make abortions illegal, it affects poor women the most. They are the ones who live in unsafe neighborhoods where they are more likely to be raped. they may not be mentally, financially or even physically equipped to deal with unwanted children. Imagine a 14 year old poor, severely anemic girl, raped who finds herself pregnant. What if her rapist was HIV positive. How can a rich white man who has no idea how crushing poverty can be, who does even remotely understand the sort of trauma rape brings without the burden of pregnancy make these decisions.Nobody wants to get an abortion. Other than the emotional trauma it brings with it, after 8 or 9 weeks of pregnancy, abortions are physically not particularly pleasant. Nobody has an abortion just because they can. Children are a joy. They must be brought into a world where they are welcome and protected.
When the Taliban shoves its ideology down everyone’s throats without any compassion, the right in the US is quick to label it as terrorism and calls it morally wrong. How about what they are trying to do to women’s rights in their own country?"
