• Videogrep: Automatic Supercuts with Python by Sam Lavigne

    “As I final experiment, I wrote a complimentary script that finds dialog-free sections of videos. Here, for example, is ‘Total Silence’: all the one to two second silences in the movie Total Recall.”

  • How to skoal with style

    “Swedish film star Max von Sydow engages his drinking partner’s gaze…”

  • If you think therapy might help, therapists (particularly on university campuses) will have dealt with philosophy-induced existential depression before. Although there isn’t a therapy that works particularly well for existential depression, talking it out with a professional will also help you recalibrate.

    —Roko’s basilisk - RationalWiki

  • This is like when that weird-looking National Review gnome appeared a few days ago to declare that Laverne Cox is biologically not a woman and the Internet bravely rushed in to declare that scientifically she is. “He doesn’t understand the complexity …” And we were all treated to a series of semi-coherent expostulations on various human intersex conditions, as if that has anything to do with the social right of an autonomous human individual to decide whether she wants to live her life as a man or a woman or both or neither, less yet to determine against which physical expression of our species rather aesthetically unfortunate genital she wishes to press her own. If we make the concretized and inevitably temporary axioms of popular (I emphasize) science the preconditions of moral acceptability, then we are in big trouble, people. If Laverne Cox decides tomorrow that she wishes to be referred to by the pronoun Qfwfq and that her gender is henceforth Parthogenetic Quintsexual Proteus Universal then it’s still no skin off my ass, whether ratified by double-blind or by dungeon-master.

    —[Goodbye Normal Genes Jacob Bacharach](http://jacobbacharach.com/2014/06/05/goodbye-normal-genes/)

  • Food doesn’t taste better or worse when documented by Instagram. Laughter is as genuine over Skype as it would be sharing a sofa. Pay attention. Take in nature, hold someone’s hand, read a book. But don’t ever apologize for snapping a photo of a sunrise after a hike, or blogging about the excitement of having a crush, or updating your goodreads account. All of these things are good and should be celebrated. Smile at strangers on the sidewalk and like your friends’ selfies. It’s all good for the human spirit.

    —cogitoergoblog on Facebook  (via fawun)