We usually see a lot of influencers on Instagram “living” their best lives with vacations, brand partnerships, and  giving tips on how to live “happy” and “fully”. Whether it’s how to achieve a well balanced lifestyle, glass skin, or a great body, we live in an age where we are constantly told how to live. That what the media and society perceives as “living fully” is the only way to live. But what does “living fully” really mean, amid all these standards and expectations? Sara Kubric tells The Guardian that in the age of Instagram, life is often reduced to doing things worth documenting: 

What makes us happy, at its core, is an existential question, according to Sara Kuburic, a psychotherapist and counselor who works with millennials. She believes inspirational tropes are popular because they offer the promise of immediate fulfillment. “I find that people increasingly conceptualize living fully as seizing opportunities, taking risks and exploring the unknown,” she says. “Living fully, in the Instagram age, is often then reduced to doing things that would be worth documenting.”

“We are eager to live our lives fully,” she says. “Yet the pressure to prove this to our ‘friends’ is a major reason why we are not.”

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Hideo Kojima has blessed the Internet with evidence of a visit from none other than Keanu Reeves himself. Kojima (for those who don’t know) is the person behind the Metal Gear Solid franchise, who Reeves visited while he was in Japan, to promote the Japanese premiere of John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum. This meetup might result in something, but only time will tell what that something is.

image credit: Hideo Kojima via Twitter

Every year, we commemorate the 9/11 tragedy, sharing different stories that happened that day. From last calls, messages, to heroic deeds, these memories are remembered to remind the world that the events of 9/11 happened, and that the lives we lost won’t be forgotten. For this year’s 9/11 commemoration, twitter user Clays and Birds decided to focus on the dogs of 9/11:

Appollo was the first dog at ground zero. He arrived on the seen 15 minutes after the attack. He nearly died from falling flames and only survived because he previously fell in water and was still wet. He died in November of 2006 pic.twitter.com/25RQ2lKqH4

— Clays & Birds (@ClaysandBirds) September 11, 2019

image credit: via Clays and Birds

Models pulled up in a yellow school bus outside Bergdof Goodman, a tourist spot near Central Park. The models trotted out in two by twos on the streets, sat by the Pulitzer Fountain to eat and read books. This performance, called The Officepeople was done in celebration of Thom Browne’s womenswear arrival at Bergdof Goodman. The idea came from the designer himself, as Vogue detailed: 

In Thom Browne’s fantasy, everyone walks in a synchronized marching motion with the X-Acto knife precision of an army brigade. Everyone has very clear skin like beautiful, genetically engineered characters plucked from the film Gattaca. Everyone wears their socks pulled up to their perfectly sculpted shins.

 “How could you take the idea of something as mundane as a gray suit and show it interestingly, and even the idea of uniformity and show that in an interesting way?” said Browne. “It is taking those everyday activities but presenting them in a way that is somehow weird and in a way that there is a tension.”

image credit: Cris Maggio for Thom Browne via Vogue

Pizza is a perfect and stable comfort food for anyone, especially for someone whose ideal way to spend the night is watching anime while eating food. Domino’s Pizza in Japan, to cater to the otaku market, is now selling the world’s first Tsundere pizza (tsundere refers to an anime character/personality type of running hot and cold with one’s affections)! Soranews24 details on what makes this pizza tsundere: 

So what makes a pizza tsundere? Well, first you’ve got to have the hateful tsuntsun part. See the massive pile of circular toppings atop the pizza? Those aren’t sliced mushrooms, they’re jalapenos! With the volume of spicy peppers almost equal to that of the entire rest of the pizza, so just like if you’re going to get into a romance with a tsundere, if you’re entering a gastronomic relationship with a Tsundere Pizza, you probably should expect it to hurt.

you can’t have the tsun without the dere. Domino’s Pizza promises that the Tsundere Pizza’s cheese coating will lovingly spare you from the full fire of the triple portion of jalapenos, and that the resulting flavor is “nice and mild,” though we wonder if that’s an assurance we should take at face value or not, given tsunderes’ proclivity for downplaying the sharpness of their tsuntsun actions. 

image credit: Domino's Pizza via Soranews24

In an age when technology can make information easily and readily available for users, along with the age of an “information cornucopia”, one of the main problems the world has faced is the emergence of fake news. No matter how hard the media, the government, and academia tell users how to discern whether the information they retrieve is legitimate or not, there are cases where users decide wrongly. But why are we susceptible to fake information? It might be because of an information storm, BBC’s Tom Chatfield detailed:

the information suffusion of digital culture has introduced something new into this ancient psychological equation: a whole new level of reliance upon social information; and a whole new set of hazards and anxieties around errors, manipulation and cascades of influence.

Danish researchers Vincent F Hendricks and Pelle G Hansen give these tumultuous processes a name – an “information storm”, or infostorm, in the sense of a sudden and tempestuous flow of social information – and suggest an intriguing alternative to the narratives of human folly and unreason so often applied to fake news and tribal divisions online. 

“when you don’t possess sufficient information to solve a given problem, or if you just don’t want to or have the time for processing it, then it can be rational to imitate others by way of social proof”. When we either know very little about something, or the information surrounding it is overwhelming, it makes excellent sense to look to others’ apparent beliefs as an indication of what is going on. In fact, this is often the most reasonable response, so long as we have good reason to believe that others have access to accurate information; and that what they seem to think and what they actually believe are the same.

image credit: Unsplash via wikimedia commons

PlayStation players, here’s a revelation for you: your heavily-used X button should not be called the “X” button. According to a tweet from PlayStation UK, it’s supposed to be referred to as the “cross” button. However, this might just be a UK thing, where they say “cross” instead of “X”. 

The main PlayStation account has not weighed in on this situation but instead posted a Twitter poll on what people should call the “cross” button, with 81 percent of respondents choosing “X” button.  At the end of the day, it’s up to you on what to call the “X” or “cross” button. 

(via The Verge)

image credit: via wikimedia commons

A fourth-grader was bullied for wearing a handmade University of Tennessee shirt, an orange t-shirt pinned with a hand-drawn “U.T.” label. The elementary student, who wore the shirt to a College Colors Day at Altamonte Elementary School in Florida to represent their favourite university, returned to Laura Snyder’s classroom in tears. Snyder shared this heartbreaking event on Facebook, as Buzzfeed detailed: 

"He was DEVASTATED. I know kids can be cruel, I am aware that it’s not the fanciest sign, BUT this kid used the resources he had available to him to participate in a spirit day."

Snyder wrote that she was going to buy her student an official UT shirt, and ended the post by asking if any of her Facebook friends had any connections to the school so she could "make it a little extra special for him."

The university store's official Twitter account shared a picture of the pack's contents Thursday afternoon, which included jerseys, hats, notes from school officials, and a football signed by head coach Jeremy Pruitt for the student himself, along with items like notebooks, pens, and water bottles for Snyder's entire class.

The university announced Friday that they would be making the student's hand-drawn design into an official T-shirt and donating a portion of the proceeds to an anti-bullying foundation.

image credit: via Buzzfeed

There are days where we have the strong urge to laze around and do nothing. Doing nothing might consist of you lying around until the late afternoon, or just browsing on the Internet. But is that really doing nothing? By browsing or lying on your bed, that is actually doing something. How can one really do nothing? In a keynote talk at EYEO 2017 in Minneapolis, Jenny Odell shares her thoughts on doing nothing: 

1. making nothing

I want to backtrack a little here just to say that I’ve long had an appreciation of doing nothing — or more properly, making nothing. I’m not lazy, but the most I have ever made or constructed is a new context for, or perspective on, something that already existed.

2. the architecture of nothing

The artist creates a structure — whether that’s a map or a cordoned-off area — that holds open a contemplative space against the pressures of habit and familiarity that constantly threaten to close it. 

3. the precarity of nothing

There’s an obvious critique of all of this, and that’s that it comes from a place of privilege. It’s possible to understand the practice of doing nothing solely as a self-indulgent luxury, the equivalent of taking a mental health day if you’re lucky enough to work at a place that has those.

4. nothing for something

That’s a strategic function of nothing, and in that sense, you simply could file my talk simply under the heading of self care. But if you do, make it “self care” in the activist sense that Audre Lorde meant it in the 1980s — self preservation as an act of political warfare – and not what it means when it’s been appropriated for commercial ends. As Gabrielle Moss, author of Glop (a Goop parody book) put it, self care “is poised to be wrenched away from activists and turned into an excuse to buy an expensive bath oil.”

image credit: Rembrandt via wikimedia commons

Airbnb now caters to the world’s one-percent with Airbnb Luxe, a new vacation rental service specifically for them. One of the rentals the luxury rental service offers is an actual island in French Polynesia for $1 million a week. This jaw-dropping million-dollar Nukutepipi island accommodation can entertain 52 people in 21 bedrooms and 25 bathrooms, as W magazine details: 

Included in its initial offerings is 2,000 properties culled from Luxury Retreats, a different vacation rental company that Airbnb purchased in 2017. One of those happens to be an actual island in French Polynesia that you can rent for $1 million a week. As steep as that price tag is, the Nukutepipi island accommodates 52 people among 21 bedrooms and 25 bathrooms so you can bring your whole social network there. The other listings, meanwhile, are relatively a bargain at $1,500 to $2,000 a night. Of course, that's still an incredible leap from Airbnb's recently launched Plus tier, which begins at $150 per night.

Airbnb Luxe isn't just about dwellings; it's also about your entire journey as the program comes with access to a "dedicated trip designer" "who’s there to craft your five-star stay, even down to securing a table at a Michelin-starred restaurant," according to the website. These "designers" handle everything from your transportation to and from the properties, which can be tailored to include "private airport pick-up, an in-person welcome, and a home stocked with your must-haves," to services, "from personal chefs to massage therapists," as well as "childcare, to private chefs to personal training sessions in your own private gym."

This million-dollar rental is a dream for those who don’t want to share their accommodation with random guests, and will stay a dream for a broke person like me. If you have the money to spare, give it a try! 

image credit: via W magazine

In a new study by researchers from the University of South Carolina, bots have evolving to better mimic humans during elections. Bots or fake accounts (controlled by artificial intelligence) can copy human behaviours better to avoid detection, establishing an arms race between bots and detection as lead researcher Emilio Ferrara details: 

Lead author, Emilio Ferrara, noted, "Our study further corroborates this idea that there is an arms race between bots and detection algorithms. As social media companies put more efforts to mitigate abuse and stifle automated accounts, bots evolve to mimic human strategies. Advancements in AI enable bots producing more human-like content. We need to devote more efforts to understand how bots evolve and how more sophisticated ones can be detected. With the upcoming 2020 US elections, the integrity of social media discourse is of paramount importance to allow a democratic process free of external influences."

Bots, the researchers discovered, were more likely to employ a multi-bot approach as if to mimic authentic human engagement around an idea. Also, during the 2018 elections, as humans were much more likely to try to engage through replies, bots tried to establish voice and add to dialogue and engage through the use of polls, a strategy typical of reputable news agencies and pollsters, possibly aiming at lending legitimacy to these accounts.

image credit: wikimedia commons

The Arctic is part of a global cooling system. With the rapid change in climate, along with sea ice slowly melting down, that system is breaking down. That situation prompts researchers to gather data from the ice, sea, and atmosphere to measure changes over time that scientists hope will help them predict the planet’s future. In a Greenland Arctic base, researchers from around the world gather data about the warming arctic, but they are far from lonely with their work. National Geographic shares details on the scientists’ daily life: 

One person is playing the guitar, another is reading. There’s a relaxed, vacation vibe despite the location: 575 miles from the North Pole at a Danish military outpost in northeastern Greenland called Station Nord. The generator hums in the distance, and occasionally the two Greenland dogs begin to bark. The sun circles the Arctic sky.

The station, which began primarily as a weather center in 1952, is essentially a small village with its own airport. There are more than 25 buildings, including bunkhouses, workshops, a generator shed, a kitchen, and a community center. Single-purpose structures are spread out as a precaution against fire.

The campus is extensive enough to provide the infrastructure required to produce world-class science in a hazardous—and beautiful—environment. The soldiers clear runways, fuel airplanes, clean barracks, secure food shipped on cargo planes and retrieve water from a glacial lake nearby, and repair equipment. In winter the six of them—eight if you count the dogs—are alone for months, with a satellite connection that allows for basic email and text messages. Everyone gets a monthly call allowance. It’s more work to shut the station completely during winter than to keep a skeleton crew to look after things.

The community has a culture of its own. If you are late for a communal meal, you are expected, at some point, to bake a cake for everyone. Every Saturday night is feast night, with a three-course meal. Everyone must wear a necktie or a skirt, and if you didn’t bring one, as most first timers don’t, you may use the station facilities to make one out of anything you can find, including wood, electrical wire, books, or tea bag wrappers; real examples are exhibited on the kitchen wall.

On Saturdays, soldier Mads Adamsen says, you feel like you’re “coming home to your family from another place.”

image credit: wikimedia commons

One of Instagram’s features is for a user to share daily snippets of their life on their account, making these small updates visible for anyone. In a sister app currently in the works, sharing goes between users and their closer friends. Threads, the application under development is basically Instagram for your closest friends list, Paper Magazine details: 

So it's basically Instagram pared down to your "Closest Friends" list? Yes, with a few additional features. The app will automatically "invite users to... share their location, speed, and battery life with friends," as well as typical memes and story reacts. The messaging app feature is apparently nearly identical to Instagram's current messaging interface.

Thread is all about "constant," aka it's gonna make your co-dependent ass even more terrified of being alone! If you opt in, it'll provide real-time updates about your friend's photos, posts, location and how fast they're moving towards the bar you're at.

image credit: wikimedia commons

In New York’s continuing battle against the rodents that frequent the city, officials reveal the latest machination against the rats. According to New York officials, the scheme involves three things: a machine, a trap door, and a pool full of liquid alcohol. According to Anthony Giaquinto, the president of Rat Trap, who imports the device, rats get knocked out and “drown eventually”  in the liquid pool contained inside a bucket. A month long trial in Brooklyn was held, where 107 rodents were lured and killed, as BBC detailed: 

The rats are attracted with bait by a machine and sent through a trap door straight into a pool of alcohol-based liquid.

it's a bucket which lures rats and then sends them to their death.

The rodent dies in the tank - which can hold up to 80 rat carcasses.

During a demonstration of the machine sanitation workers opened the container, showing several dead rats floating in a green liquid.

image credit: via wikimedia commons

Months after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, a lot of children reported PTSD. One of the ways psychologists and officials decided to help children on their path to recovery was to provide them with art education and workshops. Karen Caraballo, chief executive of Puerto Rico Rise Up and a psychologist, told NBC news about their organization’s efforts and the children’s path to recovery: 

“The kids have learned to identify their feelings, to handle conflict in a healthier way and to express themselves in a way that is nonthreatening through dance, music and painting,” Caraballo said.

Dr. Daniel Martínez Ortíz is one of the clinical psychologists who teaches the music therapy workshops with the help of college students from Carlos Albizu University in San Juan. Ortíz said Puerto Ricans of all ages are experiencing PTSD symptoms, such as high levels of anxiety and depression.

“We are still working with the communities that need help, and it’s never ending," he said. "There are a lot of schools that need help."

image credit: Marcela Valdivia / USC Annenberg via NBC news