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June 27 2010

snej
05:41

Tarot Card Generator [Chaotic Shiny]

Generates random names and descriptions of divinatory cards. For example:
"The Eight of Chalices: The card depicts a famous girl with a jagged scar involved in a fight. It is associated with opportunity, a recovery, and protection. Inverted, it represents a discovery, feminity, peace, imagination, and fortitude. The card is curling at the edges. The back is dark bronze with a tree and a human arm."
Tags: games psychology
snej
05:41

Tarot Card Generator [Chaotic Shiny]

Generates random names and descriptions of divinatory cards. For example:
"The Eight of Chalices: The card depicts a famous girl with a jagged scar involved in a fight. It is associated with opportunity, a recovery, and protection. Inverted, it represents a discovery, feminity, peace, imagination, and fortitude. The card is curling at the edges. The back is dark bronze with a tree and a human arm."
Tags: games psychology

June 17 2010

snej
17:57

Mind Hacks: Headache pill reduces the pain of social rejection

"Over-the-counter headache pill paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, reduces the pain of social rejection according to a new study just published in Psychological Science. ... suggests that a common and cheap painkiller might be useful in reducing feelings of social rejection which can feature prominently in conditions like depression and borderline personality disorder.
"If this was a brand new drug, you can bet the pharmaceutical industry would be jumping up and down with glee at these findings and would already be planning trials to see if it works as a useful treatment. But because paracetamol is so old it can't be patented and so there is virtually no profit to be made from it."
Tags: science psychology
snej
17:57

Mind Hacks: Headache pill reduces the pain of social rejection

"Over-the-counter headache pill paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, reduces the pain of social rejection according to a new study just published in Psychological Science. ... suggests that a common and cheap painkiller might be useful in reducing feelings of social rejection which can feature prominently in conditions like depression and borderline personality disorder.
"If this was a brand new drug, you can bet the pharmaceutical industry would be jumping up and down with glee at these findings and would already be planning trials to see if it works as a useful treatment. But because paracetamol is so old it can't be patented and so there is virtually no profit to be made from it."
Tags: science psychology

February 04 2010

snej
16:19

Wild things: 16 films featuring Manic Pixie Dream Girls [A.V. Club]

"Ah, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, that sentient ray of sunshine sent from heaven to warm the heart and readjust the attitude of even the broodiest, most uptight male protagonist. In his My Year Of Flops entry on Elizabethtown, Nathan Rabin coined the phrase 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl' to describe that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that 'exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.'"
Tags: film psychology

January 29 2010

snej
01:22

Geek behaviors present during conversations [Philip Guo]

"This article presents some common behaviors I've observed from my past few years of interactions with geeks, nerds, and other highly-smart technical people. ... I don't mean to pass any value judgments on people who exhibit such behaviors; these are simply my observations and personal theories for why these behaviors occur."
Tags: psychology

January 03 2010

snej
17:52

Five Geek Social Fallacies

"Within the constellation of allied hobbies and subcultures collectively known as geekdom, one finds many social groups bent under a crushing burden of dysfunction, social drama, and general interpersonal wack-ness. It is my opinion that many of these never-ending crises are sparked off by an assortment of pernicious social fallacies -- ideas about human interaction which spur their holders to do terrible and stupid things to themselves and to each other."
Tags: social psychology

September 22 2009

snej
04:07

Randomness: Blight Or Bane?

Text & slides of game designer Greg Costikyan's speech at GDC Austin '09. "In general, we tend to think of randomness in games as a bad thing. Our sense of fiero or accomplishment at winning a game depends on the feeling that we have, in some sense, mastered it, and either that we out-played our opponents, or at least, in a soloplay game, overcame the challenges it posed by dint of hard work and skill. If, instead, we feel that we just got lucky -- or, worse, that someone else won even though we were obviously the smarter player, because they just got lucky -- we're likely to think less of the game. But clearly many, many games have some random elements, and some are highly luck-dependent, and yet people continue to play them. What really is the role of randomness in games, and how can designers work to harness it to beneficial effect?"
Tags: games psychology

July 01 2009

snej
16:15

Security, Group Size, and the Human Brain [Bruce Schneier]

“150 is the cognitive limit to the number of people a human brain can maintain a coherent social relationship with. ... This number appears regularly in human society; it's the estimated size of a Neolithic farming village, the size at which Hittite settlements split, and the basic unit in professional armies from Roman times to the present day. Larger group sizes aren't as stable because their members don't know each other well enough. “...More generally, there are several layers of natural human group size that increase with a ratio of approximately three: 5, 15, 50, 150, 500, and 1500 -- although, really, the numbers aren't as precise as all that, and groups that are less focused on survival tend to be smaller. The layers relate to both the intensity and intimacy of relationship and the frequency of contact.”
Tags: security psychology history

March 14 2009

snej
03:31

Horror vacui [Wikipedia]

“In visual art, horror vacui (literally: fear of empty spaces, also known as cenophobia) is the filling of the entire surface of an artwork with detail. The term is associated with the Italian critic and scholar Mario Praz, who used it to describe the suffocating atmosphere and clutter of interior design in the Victorian age. ... Many examples of horror vacui in art come from, or are influenced by, the mentally unstable and inmates of psychiatric hospitals, and fall under the category of Outsider Art. ... The entheogen-inspired visionary art of certain indigenous peoples, such as the Huichol yarn paintings and the ayahuasca-inspired art of Pablo Amaringo, often exhibits this style, as does the psychedelic art movement of the 1960s counterculture. The artwork in the Where's Waldo series of children's books is a commonly-known example of horror vacui.”
Tags: art philosophy psychology design surrealism horror
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