1. Watch out friends, “that’s ambiguous news!” might be my new favorite exclamation. Leah on the Congressional Budget Office.
2. I’ve a hunch that this exchange (excerpted at right) from A Moment of Innocence will make some large portion of my readers go all starry-eyed.
3. The What Happens After Game, a coping strategy via Mitchell.
4. A list of weird psych experiments. I’m pretty unnerved by what the footsie experiment implies…and unnerved that I can say “unnerving footsie experiment” and mean it.
5. Today in catering to my exact interests, someone’s made a map of coffee shops by their proximity to Chicago’s public transportation. I can personally vouch for everything off the Purple Line.
6. A thoughtful discussion of owning and pets and pet diets for vegans and vegetarians.
7. Open adoption is the most common standard in adoption services now. (The author claims 95%, when I worked in adoption services I was told around 85%). This piece from The Atlantic is a warm story of what that can look like.
8. A self-experiment in noticing confusion. Linking to this not because it was new to me, but because it’s the sort of psych-ish-somewhat-related-articles I enjoy finding on Less Wrong.
9. This is a well written article on eating disorders and relationships. I wish I didn’t have an instinctive recognition for this excerpt:
The authors also highlight literature arguing that women with eating disorders may also avoid sexual encounters due to psycho-social factors including self-consciousness and/or anxiety, body shame, and low sexual satisfaction. Perceptions of sexual intimacy may be lower for women with anorexia and bulimia, and while this may improve with recovery, sexual difficulties may persist.
10. Punning fuckery, biology edition.
From entry 4:
Extra Credits had an interesting idea on how this creepiness worked. They say it comes from the disconnect from what we perceive and what we expect to perceive. When something has human-like proportions and behaviour, we expect a human. Seeing a robot where we expect to see another person unnerves us. A bunch of wires doesn’t look human, so there’s no expectation, and consequently no creepiness.
Kate,
There is a recent piece in the Guardian that might be part of a future Monday Miscellany. I thought you might be interested in it, seeing as how it relates to academia and psychology.
Dark thoughts: why mental illness is on the rise in academia
[British] University staff battling anxiety, poor work-life balance and isolation aren’t finding the support they need
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2014/mar/06/mental-health-academics-growing-problem-pressure-university