1. There’s an awful cost to getting a PhD that no one talks about
One night during the third year of my PhD program, I sat on my bed with a packet of tranquilizers and a bottle of vodka. I popped a few pills in my mouth and swigged out of the bottle, feeling them burn down my throat. Moments later, I realized I was making a terrible mistake. I stopped, trembling as I realized what I’d nearly done.
The beginning alone is quite a ride, and it stays grim from there. The article talks about the price of getting a PhD degree: depression, anxiety attacks, and a rate of mental illness far above the population average. The competition is fierce, and no one pities the weak: defend or die.
It’s a good thing I never had the idea of getting a PhD: my psyche is sensitive enough as it is, and an attempt to jump above my own head like that would definitely have killed me.
There’s an article on the same topic about suicides at MIPT in Russian, also interesting.
Science and life: why Phystech students go crazy. Part 1
2. A big Oxxxymiron interview with Andrey Mikheev for keepitreal 19-08-2011
Will be interesting to fans of this musician's work, myself included. For those who haven't heard a single track, here, check this out. The album is conceptual, and this track is about a fan angrily asking his writer-idol why he sold out.
Oxxxymiron [Gorgorod; 2015] - 2. Who you've become.mp3
3. How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution
The topic that has been brought up more and more lately is explored in all its breadth in this article. It is about a scientist who studies bacteria and other critters that live inside humans. More and more data is emerging now that these little devils strongly influence our immunity, and even our mood.
By consuming large quantities of hamburgers and sweets, which humans haven't historically encountered in nature, and also by isolating ourselves from natural sources of microbes: soil and animals, we are ruining the lives of our microbiota, and along with it, our own.
The article is large, but it's worth it: lots of data about isolated tribes, and the diversity of the microbiota, which is critically low in Westerners.
4. This Is a Story About Loss
On losing things, losing people, and finding God at Unclaimed Baggage Center
This Is a Story About Loss - Racked.pdf
About where the things go that passengers lose on transport flights, if they are found, but couldn't be returned. Turns out, they are brought to special centers and sold off. There are some amusing and interesting details.
Here, for example, is a list of what's been found:
A turtle shell;
A xylophone whose black box is marked NEIL DIAMOND in white chalk;
A homemade model of the HMS Surprise;
A pair of giant drumsticks made out of a yard of solid wood;
A helicon tuba, circa 1909;
A leather-bound French newspaper from 1934;
Antique Finnish skis;
A WWII-era Japanese Samurai sword;
A vintage 8mm film collection containing The Dwarves Dilemma, The Jetsons, World Without Sun, and NBA Highlights 1970;
A pair of McDonald's Golden Arches;
A 43-karat raw emerald that appraised at 28,535.76€;
A human-sized papier-mâché Tinkerbell;
A unicycle;
And a live snake, found in the side of a duffel bag
5. Metaphors Are Us
War, murder, music, art. We would have none without metaphor.
An article about metaphorical and symbolic thinking with examples of research. Animals can do a lot of things, but, by the looks of it, only humans are capable of pulling off stuff like this.
For example, it turned out that the threshold of disgust (a rather straightforward biological-evolutionary trait) is directly linked to political preferences: more squeamish people, as a rule, are more conservative.
It also turned out that the same neurons are activated during physical and mental pain, and in general, the brain is bad at distinguishing between literal and figurative meaning (on a physical-emotional level).
And we feel someone else’s pain like no other species. We extend it over distance to help a refugee child on another continent. We extend it over time, feeling the terror of what are now mere human remains at Pompeii. We feel it embodied in words, as we contemplate George’s sadness that Lennie is never going to get his rabbits. (That part of Of Mice and Men never failed to leave me a sopping, tearful mess when I’d reread it obsessively as a kid.) We even feel empathic pain prompted by symbols encompassed in pixels. “Oh no, the poor Na’vi!” we cry, when Home Tree is destroyed in Avatar. Because the anterior cingulate has trouble remembering “it’s only a figure of speech,” it functions as if your heart is literally being torn out.
In general, metaphors are directly related to synesthesia, which I have already written about. It’s all because the same brain and the same neural circuits are used both to analyze visual and auditory information, and to build models. Everything is located close together, and frequently overlaps and interacts. The upside is that it's energetically cheaper this way and art is more interesting. The downside, however, is that we all think sloppily, and those who think precisely, we call autistic. Then again, serves us right, because humans—to speak the language of artificial intelligence courses—are agents with incomplete information, and in that case, thinking accurately all the way through is impossible.
On the other hand, our penchant for metaphors directly influences such phenomena as religiosity, brand loyalty, superstitions, and fanaticism of all stripes. We associate such a beautiful and cute creature as a black cat with misfortune, we forbid burning the national flag, even though it's just a piece of fabric, and we believe that a checkered logo with three letters gives one the right to behave aggressively on the road.
On the same topic, I once watched an interesting TED talk.