Surely you’ve heard the old axiom that romantic love is nothing more than a series of chemical reactions that take place in our brains. While that’s technically true — humans are made of matter, just about everything we do involves a chemical reaction — there’s a lot more to it than just dopamine and oxytocin release. …
Aphrodisiacs are bullshit, but the search for a magical “insta-horny” potion that makes folks wanna get busy has been going strong for millennia. People want to believe in them so badly that they poison themselves with dried beetles, throw their hard-earned money away on products full of sugar water and useless essential oils and ingest, …
Go on…Aphrodisiacs are bogus. Here are some real ways to improve your sex life
How do I access the version of myself that makes the best decisions? Game theory is a math-related concept that, generally speaking, has nothing to do with “games” or “gaming.” At its core, it uses probabilities and equations to solve challenges involving multiple intelligent bodies. A simple way of looking at it: game theory helps …
A group of researchers at the University of Connecticut recently conducted an experiment wherein they used firefly DNA to light up cannabis cells for study. The purpose of the study — which was funded by the US Department of Agriculture — was to help scientists gain a better understanding of cannabinoid biosynthesis. Cannabinoids are complex compounds …
Go on…Scientists at UConn used firefly genes to make cannabis glow
A team of scientists at the MRC lab in the UK have experimentally confirmed that healthy human brains typically reach temperatures as high as 105 degrees F (40.5 C) throughout the course of a normal day. File under: it’s okay to be a little hot-headed. We’ve all been told that our regular body temperature should …
Go on…Study: Your brain runs as hot as 105 degrees F and that’s just fine
Binaries do not exist in nature. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the universe abhors the binary. Nothing either is or isn’t. If that were the case, if anything simply was or wasn’t, then anyone who’s ever played a game of Go knows that eventually, all things would either be or they …
Approximately 86% of the people who see the above hero image will experience involuntary pupil dilation. No, that’s not a GIF and the image isn’t manipulating your monitor’s refresh rate. If you’re among those who perceive the illusion, your brain is actually being tricked into believing you’re entering a darkened space. Dubbed ‘the expanding hole’ …
Go on…Scientists found a trippy illusion that triggers pupil dilation (in most people)
It doesn’t look like much. An odd-shaped hunk of verdigris-covered metal. On a passing glance, you might mistake it for the handle of an old ship’s door or some other long-forgotten marine junk. But this is no sea garbage. What you see in the image above is the Antikythera mechanism. It is, to the curious …
Go on…The single most important object in all of human history
There’s as much evidence to support the idea of a “gendered brain” as there is for ghosts and a flat Earth. It’s always interesting to see which of those myths people choose to believe, which they vehemently reject, and how rare it is to find someone with an evidence-based view on all three. To be …
Go on…Men are from Earth and so are women because the gendered brain is a myth
Lobotomies were legal in the US as recently as 1967. That might sound like a long time ago, but considering only two years later we’d put humans on the Moon, it doesn’t feel like a practice that should have persisted for so long. And, yet, a cursory review of the most common reasons for lobotomizing …
Go on…Non-pathological hypersexuality for the non-lobotomized