AEON

Øystein Sture Aspelund

Reading Lounge

1. Shiki Taira - Japanese painting

2. and here

3. "In virtue of this privilege, in testimony of my affectionate respect for a revered chief […] I have determined to name this noble peak of the Himalayas Mont [sic] Everest.”

4. Bad news from Apple? Residual Seasonality

5. Nude modelling in old age

6. The audience fainted, “dropping off their seats one by one like ripe plums.” - not for the faint-hearted!

7. Steady supply of cocaine reduces violence - country-specific

Reading Lounge

1. The life and times of Arniko

2. Robert Dawson’s Trompe L’œil Ceramic Works

3. Car eye candy

4. The Triple Jeopardy of a Chinese Math Prodigy - Thriller

5. Plausible Disavowal

6. The million-dollar drug

7. That Andaman island thread

Reading Lounge

1. JIM CARREY - IndigNATION

2. China's Social Media App WeChat Demands More Info From Users

3. Norway has saved too much of its oil revenues

4. Clergy sex abuse on the rise again

5. Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

6. The Geopolitics of Language in the Himalayas - highly recommended

7. Preston Porter Jr.

8. Maximum City

Reading Lounge

1. The Philosophy of Hayao Miyazaki: A Video Essay on How the Traditional Japanese Religion Shinto Suffuses Miyazaki’s Films

2. The Beginning of a New Era in the Online Degree Market

3. Sugar daddy: human capital investment and the university-based supply of ‘romantic arrangements’

4. She started her own archive of smells: 7,000 vacuum-sealed steel cans arranged in rows, containing cake, dirty socks and ice cubes.

5. China's thirst for sand

6. Building the World’s Art Factory

Reading Lounge

1. Train trip in Norway

2. Ugliness Is Underrated

3. A Well-Behaved Woman

4. We make street food, at home

 5. Taleb: Those Idiots Who Emphatically Told Me "He Will Last 3 Months At Best"

6. The Truth About Algorithms

7. Twitter Should Kill the Retweet

Reading Lounge

1. Match made in haven

2. Hilma af Klint

3. Biohackers Are Implanting Everything From Magnets to Sex Toys

4. The first perfume created by artificial intelligence

5. This is guichu

Reading Lounge

1. Architectural eye candy

2. Former CIA Chief Explains How Spies Use Disguises

3. When Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, they pioneered a new kind of physical listening experience and changed music forever.

4. Universities: Is free speech under threat?

5. Signaling, Shame, and Silence in Social Learning

Reading Lounge

1. Has eaten at more than 7,300 Chinese restaurants, but can’t use chopsticks and doesn’t care for food

2. This trash company called "Grabb-It" is parking running cars with video ads in the window facing the sidewalk

3. Instagram and poetry

4. Geometric Sculptures Give the Boston Seaport a Colorful Makeover

5. Norwegian hero Roenneberg who blew up Nazi plant dies at 99

6. Hayao Miyazaki’s Cursed Worlds

Reading Lounge

1. Meanwhile in the EU - Malta, A Modern Smugglers’ Hideout

2. I've seen the future of consumer AI, and it doesn't have one

3. Your First Ninety Days in Hell

4. 130,000 Photographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Available Online, Courtesy of Stanford University

Reading Lounge

1. You have to apply to buy Wone’s $320 leggings, and you can bet founder Kristin Hildebrand will Google you first.

2. Academically conned

3. To Heil, or Not To Heil, When Traveling in the Third Reich

4. Why Do Some People Have Curly Hair and Others Straight?

5. The First Abstract Painter Was a Woman

6. Trolling Nazis (and the world) with Forged Art

7. The first Mechanical massage chair

8. Revisiting Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

The Banksy/Sotheby's (stunt) Redux

You heard about the Banksy (stunt) at Sotheby's. It is certainly not new. There is Dadaism and the auto-destructive art.

   

 "It's not a negation. It's a celebration!"

 Partly via Ann Althouse

Reading Lounge

Reading Lounge

1. Fun in Saudi Arabia

2. The Splendid History of Gustav Klimt’s Glistening “Golden Phase”

3. The curious case of the burgled professor

4. A table at Disneyland’s 21 Royal commands an elite $15,000 price tag

5. The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus’s Wife

Reading Lounge

1. John Richardson, one of Dalí’s art dealers in the early seventies, refers to Gala as an “ancient harridan,” “an authentically Sadean monster,” a “demonic dominatrix,” a “scarlet woman,” and as having “an appetizing little body, and the libido of an electric eel.”

2. "This is just the start of HTC helping to combat the commoditization of humanity," - it's about a ph, ph, phone

3. Scotland and alcohol-related brain damage

4. Dreamlike Stroll Through the Streets of Paris

5. ANU scientists discover the world’s oldest colours - and it's pink

6. Elements in a strategy for the Left

Reading Lounge

1. Taiwanese Artist Recreates Realistic Japanese Life in the 80’s Miniature Models

2. German ostalgie

3. Incongruant with Christianity

4. Nearly 1,000 Paintings & Drawings by Vincent van Gogh Now Digitized and Put Online

5. the hike that changed pasadena and human knowledge

Reading Lounge

1. Activist Art Exposed as an Elitist Bait and Switch - let's talk about F-Arts

2. MY DAD PAINTED THE ICONIC COVER FOR JETHRO TULL’S ‘AQUALUNG,’ AND IT’S HAUNTED HIM EVER SINCE

3. Does education strengthen the life skills of adolescents?

4. Troxler’s Fading

5. Illustrations of Imaginary Cyberpunk Gadgets

Japanese freelance concept artist's imaginary gadgets.

6. We Don’t Need No Education? - review of Caplan's book

Straight from the Ivory Tower

Reading Lounge

1. The forgotten history of free trade: the Medici dynasty and Livorno

2. Single Woman Surprises Her Ailing Grandfather by Fulfilling a Special Wedding Wish

3. Cambridge Analytica And The Left’s Strange New Respect For The Social Media Menace

4. Guy Takes Giant Telescope Around LA and Shows People the Moon Up Close

5. Finally some Dating advice

6. From the finest news source of Arabia - Regional Banksy Shocks Art Dubai With New Exhibition

Reading Lounge

1. The joy of tutoring kids of the ultra rich.

2. Ban the ban - Working as housemaids in the Gulf

3. How Stephen Hawking communicated

4. Only in Japan - Hello Kitty Shinkansen bullet train to debut in Japan this summer

5. "Once known for trouble, even sticking a piece of chicken into the opening of his penis in a restaurant, for shock value, and getting sued for it, he has visibly mellowed."

6. Where do we get the funds from to pay our taxes and buy government debt?

Stuff to read

1. SATOMASOCHISM: THE SCI-FI EROTICA OF PATER SATO

2. Operation Gunnerside: The Norwegian Attack on Heavy Water That Deprived the Nazis of the Atomic Bomb

This mission failed completely.

3. Grunting's competitive advantage: Considerations of force and distraction

4. Tiny Times - cute

5. Funny wedding names

6. How to address falling student numbers. The luxury edition.

7. Two Central Bankers Walk Into a Restaurant

Stuff to read

1. The Weird True Story of the Rise and Fall of the Waterbed

2. Mysterious sounds in Havanna

3. THE SURREALIST POP ART OF TILL RABUS (NSFW)

4. Heart rate when his wife asked for a divorce

5. The effect of ad blocking on website traffic and quality

Abstract

Ad blocking software allows Internet users to obtain information without generating ad revenue for site owners, potentially undermining investments in content. We explore the impact of site-level ad blocker usage on website quality, as inferred from traffic. We find that each additional percentage point of site visitors blocking ads reduces its traffic by 0.67% over 35 months. Impacted sites provide less content over time, providing corroboration for the mechanism. Effects on revenue are compounded; ad blocking reduces visits, and remaining visitors blocking ads do not generate revenue. We conclude that ad blocking poses a threat to the ad-supported web.