Cultureplaces

  Troy Farah  | July 26, 2018 5:05 pm 09 This response to antisocial behavior shows the most promise.  Talk therapy plays a supportive role. A neuroscientist and a marine biologist got together and decided to give octopuses MDMA. It sounds like a joke, but it really happened, and the results reveal something unique about our neurocircuitry and human evolution Eric Edsinger is an octopus researcher at the University of Chicago who recently helped  sequence  the genome of  Octopus bimaculoides —the California two-spot octopus. Like most octopuses, this color-changing cephalopod is asocial, meaning it likes to be alone most of the time, unless it’s trying to mate. But when given MDMA, a drug well known for  boosting  emotional empathy and prosocial behavior in humans (i.e. making you really, really want to fraternize), these octopuses also seemed to want to hang out with each other, even if they weren’t trying to find a mate. T...

Acknowledging the role of luck is the secular equivalent of religious awakening. By  David Roberts   @drvox   david@vox.com     Aug 21, 2018 Christina Animashaun/Vox Recently, there was a  minor uproar  when Kardashian scion Kylie Jenner, who is all of 21, appeared on the cover of Forbes’s  60 richest self-made women issue . As many people pointed out, Jenner’s success would have been impossible if she hadn’t been born white, healthy, rich, and famous. She built a successful cosmetics company not just with hard work but on a towering foundation of good luck. Around the same time, there was  another minor uproar  when Refinery29 published “ A Week in New York City on $25/Hour ,” an online diary by someone whose rent and bills are paid for by her parents. It turns out $25 an hour goes a lot further if you have no expenses! These episodes illustrate what seems to be one of the enduring themes of our age: socia...