December 2009
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Put simply, dopamine neurons monitor dopamine, a chemical that accompanies good or pleasurable things — like, say, finding some rare loot in Diablo. Dopamine neurons subsequently try to predict when good things will happen in the future.
The site further notes that dopamine neurons “really go nuts when an unexpected, unpredicted gush of dopamine shows up, giving you an even bigger rush.” In other words, unexpectedly stumbling on that rare item brings even more pleasure and causes the brain to want to repeat the process. To put it even more simply, the site states that the reaction is similar to the one many people get when playing a slot machine. Winning is entirely random, but that doesn’t stop the brain from trying to figure out a pattern.
” —The psychology of a gamer’s search for phat loot
“The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own.”
—George Carlin (via marco)
“High-promiscuity men who looked at photos of eight attractive women … said they would spend more money on items such as designer sunglasses or an elaborate car stereo rather than inconspicuous products such as low-cost jeans or a toaster, … [but] this is only the case when the potential mating situation is a short-term hook-up rather than a long-term relationship. There was no shift for mating-primed low-promiscuity men or for women in either study. … Women rated a man driving a Porsche Boxster as more attractive for a short-term sexual relationship than a man driving a Honda Civic. But the Porsche did not make the man more attractive as a possible marriage partner. Men rating women were uninfluenced by the type of car she drove.”
—Overcoming Bias : Naked Promiscuity
“The average NFL player plays just 3.52 seasons and loses two to three years off his life expectancy for every season played.”
—Overcoming Bias : Football Decimation
“Overall, property crimes fell by 6.1 percent, and violent crimes by 4.4 percent, according to the six-month data collected by the FBI. Crime rates haven’t been this low since the 1960’s, and are nowhere near the peak reached in the early 1990’s.”
—Despite recession, crime keeps falling - Yahoo! News
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Neiman Marcus actually was the first to sell gift cards, in 1994, but because the retailer didn’t quite understand their potential, the cards were kept out of sight and sold only as a novelty item. Blockbuster was the first to display them, starting in 1995, which was the true beginning of the gift card revolution.
Starbucks was the next major innovator, in 2001, with gift cards that worked more than once, so you’d have to keep going back.
” —The Vile History of Gift Cards and How They Came to Destroy Christmas - Presents - Gizmodo
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“And the metaphor of the train cropped up a lot in The Wire, particularly in Season 3, the idea of a slow train coming and how that relates to the idea of reform.”
—HBO: The Wire: Ear to the Streets: Fast Train
“Married women in the U.S. do about 70 to 80 percent of the housework. When women marry, the number of hours they spend on housework increases; for men, it stays the same. When couples have children, her housework increases three times as much as his. Feminist women do less housework than non-feminist women; men married to feminist women do the same amount of housework as men married to non-feminist women.”
—Of Housework And Husbands [via] (via anthropophagous)
“A lot of what The Wire was about sounds cynical to people. I think it’s very cynical about institutions and their ability to reform. I don’t deny that, but I don’t think it’s at all cynical about people.”
—DAVID SIMON - Vice Magazine
