Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are

Fake it till you make it.

Act like a boss, become a boss. Sounds too simple? The science of body language begs to disagree. You've heard it before: by pretending we are something, we eventually become it. Now, I don't mean literally by pretending I'm the president I'll find myself in the Oval Office soon enough, that's called a schizophrenic delusion. However, if you are an introvert, by acting like an extrovert you actually become more like one and the same logic applies to a number of other dimensions of our personality. The intersection between biology and psychology is really interesting here and this is a prime example of just how intimately connected the our psychological experiences are with our biology. You can consciously change the way you think, but did you know you can also change the chemical composition of your brain? Without giving away the brilliant results Amy Cuddy, a social psychologist, will reveal in this TEDtalk, I will only note this: the way others perceive a person is not key, how that person perceives themselves is what makes a world of difference. Amy Cuddy is not only terrifically insightful, she is also someone you can relate to, the prefect person to give this talk.

My Mother Told Me I Had A Chameleon Soul

To those who wonder, but are not lost.

Press play.


"I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer.

At night I fell asleep with visions of myself, dancing and laughing and crying with them.

Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour, and my memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times.

I was a singer - not a very popular one,
I once had a dreams of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events some of those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken.

But I didn't really mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is.

When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I'd been living, they asked me why - but there's no use in talking to people who have home.

They have no idea what it's like to seek safety in other people - for home to be wherever you lay your head.
I was always an unusual girl.

My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean...

And if I said I didn't plan for it to turn out this way I'd be lying...

Because I was born to be the other woman.

I belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone.

Who had nothing, who wanted everything, with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn't even talk about it, and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me."

An Open Letter to Skinny Bitches

Ever have one of those days you realize if you spend your entire life worrying about your weight, you’re not going to achieve much more? No? In that case why don’t you sit your skinny ass down and take notes. Let that day be today. You are successfully wasting the potential of nature’s most intricate and beautiful device. Every second you spend worrying about being fat: you’re wasting your brain. The brain has the capacity to imagine things and the human body can make them come true. A brain imagined flying. Now we fly. A brain imagined portable fire. Now we use matches. A brain imagined a telescope, the iPhone, a space shuttle, ice cream. Freakin ice cream. A brain can imagine a solution to any problem you have ever had. And you're using yours to come up with ways to become skinnier.

20,864.

That’s the total number of people who died of hunger today. 98% of them were born and died in developing countries. According to World Food Programme there are 870 million hungry people in the world who rarely make the headlines. This group mostly consists of women, children and orphans. These people are not dying to be thin, they are dying because they are too thin. 

So start a revolution, instead hating your body: use it to do something worth remembering.
Make this world better. 

How To Spot A Liar

How To Spot a Lie By Pamela Meyer, a Tedtalk:

Everyone lies. According to research, on any given day we are told a lie anywhere between 10 to 200 times. Now, some lies are harmless. White lies.

Some are significant and destructive.

How do we know when a person is lying? Not as challenging as one might expect. The above video features some nearly fool-proof and eye-opening lie spotting techniques that catch a lie accurately over 90 % of the time. Pamela Meyer, CEO of Simpatico, worked for several years with leading researchers of deception in the military, psychology, espionage and law-enforcement and is trained in interpreting behavior and body language, interrogation, microexpressions and statement analysis. 

                 

Angry Birds

Because let's face it, ignorance is bliss.

In the age of information ignorance is also a conscious choice.

Join the solution and calculate your carbon footprint here.

How Man Became God

Technology is psychedelic and psychedelic = manifestation of the mind

Richard Dawkin's idea of memes, self replicating units of knowledge that have DNA-like abilities is one of the most fascinating cognitive philosophic ideas possibly ever articulated  Essentially all information are memes. Why are memes important? Because of them we are on the fast track to becoming Gods. In this video Jason Silva explores in a conference titled "Dangerous Ideas" the evolution of humanity, existence and nature of information and the infinity of possibilities that can and have manifested from our minds. The ways in which we extend ourselves makes man a bridge and the latter to the skies, literally and metaphorically

Man can create life.

Everything man has created is  the epiphenomenon of the human mind, the non-physical creating physical, virtually something out of nothing.

A Beautiful Mind

AWE.

noun

1. an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand,sublime, extremely powerful, or the like: in awe of God; in awe of great beauty.

2. Archaic. power to inspire fear or reverence.

3.Obsolete . fear or dread.

Youtube channel by Jason Silva: Shots of Awe. The above is the first video of a series which chases awe inducing experiences from complex systems of society, existential jazz to human existence, truth and beauty...

Breathing just a little and calling it a life?

If you're having one of those days, when you just want to tuck in and stay home, this is for you. If you feel like you're dreams are just too far away. If you you're not sure you passed your semester exams. If you have a hangover. If you're lonely. If you don't know what to do with your life. This is for you.

This kid just passed away on May 20th. That was yesterday.

What he has left behind is something so beautiful and important my words can't do it justice.

His family has requested that anyone interested in helping change the future for those like Zach donate to the research fund set up on his behalf. Click here to donate or get more information about Children's Cancer Research.

Black Doll, White Doll, Which one is the nice doll?

We are all aware of the history of racism in America. However when it comes to present day racism, there is whole a different narrative. The following video is a study about race that will make your jaw drop:

Doll test originally by psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark:

 In the 21st century US, white skin is associated with a myriad of positive characteristics and adjectives. The halo effect of light skin tone is so bright and blatant that children as young as age four have internalized the connections. The halo effect is a kind of cognitive bias, where our overall impression, or what we perceive as the sum up of this impression (attractive / smart / agreeable / unintelligent) of a person influences how we judge their character. If we perceive a person to be attractive, ironically, we also assume them to be intelligent, kind and generally likable. When definitions of physical attractiveness are altered, consequently the definitions of the good, the bad and the ugly change as well. It is naturally impossible to clearly define the point at which the Western society decided that white is beautiful, as the issue is better understood as a long historical process of all encompassing politics of domination and persistent hierarchies. In the modern and past US, power, physical attractiveness and intelligence have always gone hand in hand and continue to do so. One need only possess one or two of the attributes, to be all three. While it may appear obvious that intelligent people can be unattractive and powerful people are not always intelligent, however, our social reality and the definitions of its aspects need not have anything to do with reality yet everything to do with our constructed social realities. 

It is heartbreaking to consider that even children believe this social reality to be unchangeable and take it for granted. What is crucial  here is to be aware of the halo effect and to understand that it comes from our primitive emotional brain. Moreover, beauty, among other positive traits which create a halo, is nothing but what the general public believes it to be. 

“Standing still is never an option so long as inequities remain embedded in the very fabric of the culture.” 
-Tim Wise

Our Century's Greatest Injustice

In the last half century more girls were discriminated to death than all the people killed in all the battle fields in the 20th century.

The issue that rarely makes the front page is gender inequality. The single most essential and linear way to lift up entire communities out of poverty is by educating women, a fact that is over and over again ignored. This TEDtalk held by Sheryl WuDunn, the author of "Half the Sky" raises some painful statistics about women's oppression across the globe and demonstrates the magnificent difference educating women particularly in developing countries makes. Only when women are educated and brought into the formal labor system, will we be using all of our human resources to defeat the intimate social and physical violence that marks female bodies, and to overcome global challenges regarding poverty and politics of oppression.

Sheryl WuDunn: Our century's greatest injustice:

“Do I love you because you're beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?”

Roald Dahl, The Twits

“For Attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. 
People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself and the other for helping others.” 
― Sam Levenson

Girl Power?

How movies teach manhood, TEDtalk: 

Women are not making it to the top of any profession, anywhere in the world.

A brilliant and insightful TED talk about why women't don't sit at the table or raise their hand and what are the consequences of these seemingly small differences.

"Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders" by Sheryl Sandberg

To watch more TED talks: http://www.ted.com/talks

Good Fucking Advice

Things that matter, Pass 'em on.

Upworthy: Anyone who has not yet come across this brilliant site is missing out. Upworthy shares photos, posts, videos, anything floating across cyber-space that is actually worth catching. Like Ted talks, Upworthy's content ranges from poverty, education, and global politics to grassroots issues bullying. This site is golden. The site describes itself as:

"a social-native, mission-driven media startup setting out to make important issues go as viral as a video of some idiot surfing off his roof."

They also happen to be hiring at the moment: click here to check out their recruitment.

A Pep Talk

From Kid President.
Feeling down? Crushed by the inadequacy of your leaders? By the pressure of essays, exams and deadlines? Some words of wisdom:

Faith in humanity, restored.

The Kids Are Not Alright

The Question is: What can we do about it?

Abercombie & Fitch for the Homeless

A man sets out on a mission to destroy the image of A&F, the "cool kids" clothing line which doesn't hire ugly people. Whenever you're done ogling at the photo above;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O95DBxnXiSo

"People in rich nations are generally poor."

It's all relative.