American Wealth Gone Wild: A Blistering Takedown of Greedy Kardashian Culture

In Generation Wealth, Lauren Greenfield’s latest, the documentarian and photographer behind 2012’s award-winning Queen of Versailles lets her ambition run wild.

In many ways, Wealth is a natural extension of Versailles, a cautionary tale about one family’s efforts to build the largest home in America. This newest documentary widens the scope, taking on a world made sick with overconsumption—but that’s an oversimplification given how much Greenfield takes on in this 106-minute manifesto and career retrospective. The film is, at once, a look back on 25 years’ worth of Greenfield’s work, a deep dive into the lives of her subjects, captured over decades, and a meditation on consumerism, Kardashian culture, and the rise and fall of the American empire.

American Wealth Gone Wild: A Blistering Takedown of Greedy Kardashian Culture

How Cheese, Wheat and Alcohol Shaped Human Evolution | Science | Smithsonian

You aren’t what you eat, exactly. But over many generations, what we eat does shape our evolutionary path. “Diet,” says anthropologist John Hawks, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, “has been a fundamental story throughout our evolutionary history. Over the last million years there have been changes in human anatomy, teeth and the skull, that we think are probably related to changes in diet.”

As our evolution continues, the crucial role of diet hasn’t gone away. Genetic studies show that humans are still evolving, with evidence of natural selection pressures on genes impacting everything from Alzheimer’s disease to skin color to menstruation age. And what we eat today will influence the direction we will take tomorrow.

How Cheese, Wheat and Alcohol Shaped Human Evolution | Science | Smithsonian

Sex with robots is on the cusp of becoming a worrying reality, warns a robot ethicist — Quartz

If you could construct a sexual partner that was faithful, beautiful, and responsive to your every wish, would you?
It’s a question Aimee van Wynsberghe, co-founder of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, thinks a lot about. In July 2017, she and fellow ethicist Noel Sharkey published a report (pdf), Our Sexual Future with Robots, that delved into the state of the robot sex industry and its future.

Quartz met van Wynsberghe, a professor of robotics and ethics at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, on a trip to London in a busy café, just before she headed to the Science Museum’s Robots exhibition, to discuss how close humanity is to sex and even love with robots, and the risks involved. The interview is edited and condensed for clarity.

Sex with robots is on the cusp of becoming a worrying reality, warns a robot ethicist — Quartz

Yes, self-driving cars will kill people. Here’s how they’ll decide who to save.

We’re on the brink of a new era of transportation, with self-driving cars making decisions as we take the back seat. One analyst recently made a “conservative” estimate that 10 million autonomous vehicles would be on the road by 2020. But this future also forces us to confront an ugly question: If an autonomous vehicle has to suddenly choose between killing two people, whom should it choose?

What would a human do?
A recent study from the University of Osnabruck in Germany examined how human drivers would react to a sudden ultimatum. Scientists put study participants in virtual reality driving scenarios and forced them to make a choice between hitting one virtual object and another. While “driving,” the study participants would suddenly be confronted with a split-second moral decision — if they swerved left, they might hit and kill a virtual man walking his dog, for example. If they swerved right, they might kill a virtual woman walking alone.

“The truth is, humans put a price tag on each and every thing. There’s a price tag on the left lane and a price tag on the right lane,” Peter König, a professor at the University of Osnabruck’s Institute of Cognitive Science, said in a phone call. “Autonomous [vehicles] will decide as a consequence of their construction.”

Yes, self-driving cars will kill people. Here’s how they’ll decide who to save.

What Bullets Do to Bodies – Highline

The first thing Dr. Amy Goldberg told me is that this article would be pointless. She said this on a phone call last summer, well before the election, before a tangible sensation that facts were futile became a broader American phenomenon. I was interested in Goldberg because she has spent 30 years as a trauma surgeon, almost all of that at the same hospital, Temple University Hospital in North Philadelphia, which treats more gunshot victims than any other in the state and is located in what was, according to one analysis, the deadliest of the 10 largest cities in the country until last year, with a homicide rate of 17.8 murders per 100,000 residents in 2015.

Over my years of reporting here, I had heard stories about Temple’s trauma team. A city prosecutor who handled shooting investigations once told me that the surgeons were able to piece people back together after the most horrific acts of violence. People went into the hospital damaged beyond belief and came walking out.
That stuck with me. I wondered what surgeons know about gun violence that the rest of us don’t. We are inundated with news about shootings. Fourteen dead in San Bernardino, six in Michigan, 11 over one weekend in Chicago. We get names, places, anguished Facebook posts, wonky articles full of statistics on crime rates and risk, Twitter arguments about the Second Amendment—everything except the blood, the pictures of bodies torn by bullets. That part is concealed, sanitized. More than 30,000 people die of gunshot wounds each year in America, around 75,000 more are injured, and we have no visceral sense of what physically happens inside a person when he’s shot. Goldberg does.

What Bullets Do to Bodies – Highline

What Happens to Those Who Survive School Shootings?

Another week, another school shooting. The shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is the eighth school shooting resulting in death or injury this year, yet we have only completed seven weeks. It is, according to the Gun Violence Archive, the 1,607th mass shooting since the rampage of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, widely thought to have been the country’s best hope at changing gun control laws.

It didn’t. And gun violence in schools continues.

But in the midst of the gun control debate, it can be easy to forget that there are humans—often children—who have borne witness to terrifying nightmarish scenes that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. What will happen to them?

While much research has been done into the minds and motives of mass shooters, the psychology of school shooting survivors is in its infancy—though the rate and increasing population of subjects means that it is a burgeoning field. According to The Washington Post, there are more than 150,000 school shooting survivors since the Columbine High School massacre of 1999, considered to be the first of modern school mass shootings.

What Happens to Those Who Survive School Shootings?

Humans breasts are unique to humans – BI

Breasts come in different shapes and sizes. But there’s one thing they all have in common. They are unique to humans. More than 5,000 mammalian species inhabit this planet. Yet, Homo sapiens are the only life forms with permanent breasts. Some may call this human anomaly sexy. But it also begs the question: Why are human breasts so big and were they an evolutionary mistake?

Every other mammal develops temporary breasts during ovulation and/or nursing. Basically, their purpose is to produce milk. So once the milk is gone, the breasts disappear. But this isn’t the case for female humans whose breasts form during puberty, not pregnancy. So at some point in our evolution, something changed … why? For example, in 1987 biologist Tim Caro explored seven existing theories on this subject. One was that breasts allowed newborns to nurse from the hip, giving their mothers more mobility to multitask. But it doesn’t explain why breasts stick around after the nursing stage is over.

Humans breasts are unique to humans – BI

Chew it over: a guide to eating slowly | Life and style | The Guardian

Chew your deep-dish filled-crust pizza slowly. Slurp your thickshake with care. Do not pour cooking oil down your neck to act as a slide for your next Cinnabon.

Eat slowly. Get thin. This is the promise underlined by researchers at Japan’s Kyushu University, who pored over the data of 60,000 Japanese health insurance claimants. Slow eaters were 42% less likely to be overweight or obese than fast eaters. Even normal-speed eaters had a 29% lower risk of being overweight.

“It’s all to do with the signal to the brain,” explains performance nutritionist Elly Rees. “Studies show that it takes up to 20 minutes for us to register that we’re full. So people who overeat tend to eat too quickly.”

That 20-minute gap can be vast. If people eat more slowly they “find that they’re actually full,” Rees says.

Chew it over: a guide to eating slowly | Life and style | The Guardian

After Surgery in Germany, I Wanted Vicodin, Not Herbal Tea – The New York Times

I recently had a hysterectomy here in Munich, where we moved from California four years ago for my husband’s job. Even though his job ended a year ago, we decided to stay while he tries to start a business. Thanks to the German health care system, our insurance remained in force. This, however, is not a story about the benefits of universal health care.

Thanks to modern medicine, my hysterectomy was performed laparoscopically, without an overnight hospital stay. My only concern about this early release was pain management. The fibroids that necessitated the surgery were particularly large and painful, and the procedure would be more complicated.

I brought up the subject of painkillers with my gynecologist weeks before my surgery. She said that I would be given ibuprofen. “Is that it?” I asked. “That’s what I take if I have a headache. The removal of an organ certainly deserves more.”

“That’s all you will need,” she said, with the body confidence that comes from a lifetime of skiing in crisp, Alpine air.

I decided to pursue the topic with the surgeon.

After Surgery in Germany, I Wanted Vicodin, Not Herbal Tea – The New York Times

11 Shocking Things That Happen To Your Brain When You Suffer From Even Mild Anxiety

If you have an anxiety disorder, then you already know how it can impact your brain, cause you to worry, and totally mess with your day. But did you know even mild cases of anxiety can affect you, in much the same way? Chemically speaking, any type of anxiety can alter your brain, in some pretty surprising ways. But it can also affect you psychologically — perhaps more than you’d think.

But it’s important to note how mild anxiety is different from regular nerves. “Anxiety is a natural human response that serves a purpose: to keep us safe. However, sometimes your brain is more sensitive and perceives danger when it does not exist,” licensed psychologist Crystal I. Lee, PsyD tells Bustle. “Your brain mistakenly floods itself with norepinephrine and cortisol, which triggers anxious thoughts and feelings when they’re not useful.”

That’s why you might be sitting at work, and suddenly boom — you’re filled with worry. And thanks to stress chemicals, like cortisol, going haywire in your brain, you might even struggle to think clearly, or make decisions. It can be intense for some people, which is why therapy is always a good idea, as well as taking care of great yourself — by exercising, eating well, and sleeping at least eight hours — so your symptoms can be less intrusive.

Here are a few shocking ways anxiety can affect you, according to experts.

11 Shocking Things That Happen To Your Brain When You Suffer From Even Mild Anxiety