Via dalasverdugo, via dihard:

Pretty interesting article in the WSJ today. Basically says that language profoundly influences how we see the world. Some examples:

• Russian speakers who have more words for light and dark blues are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue.
• An aboriginal community in Australia doesn’t use terms like “left” and “right”, and instead uses north, south, east and west for directions. As a result they have greater spatial orientation.
• People who speak languages that drop the agent of causality, for example “the vase broke itself” versus “John broke the vase,” don’t often associate blame for events.
• One group who uses the words “few” and “many” in favor of actual number words have difficulty keeping track of exact quantities.
• English speakers see time on a horizontal plane, with the best years ahead and the past behind us. Whereas Mandarin speakers see new events emerging like a spring of water, with the past above and the future below.

Here’s a bit more on the research. Pretty interesting! 

(Via strle)

Slate asked their readers to send in their hand-drawn maps of… whatever. Seriously, whatever. They later posted a few of the submissions, and among them was this gem, a “guide to the neighborhoods of Paris, put in terms a young New Yorker can understand. Although the map is simplistic and juvenile, the effort to match Parisian arrondissements with demographically corresponding areas in Brooklyn is a conceptually interesting way to present information about an unfamiliar town.”

Discovered via Boing Boing.

Via comicallyvintage

Obligatory Caturday gif

Patrick Stewart’s Soliloquy on B for Sesame Street

Mad Men meets X-Men! Click here for more.

(I especially like the Paul Kinsey/Beast one.)

A Sisyphean task. Thanks to Zucks, whose day this illustrates.

Via sexartandpolitics:

Buckminster Fuller

Via misstugui:

[s]o[urce]

This has been floating around for a while, but I like it, so here you go.

Via, like, everywhere.

Via misstugui, via ktns311.

I love this woman. Madly.

Discovered via PEG 2.0.

Via don’t touch my moleskine.