To write this piece, we cataloged over 7,000 photographs on OkCupid.com, analyzing three primary things (Facial Attitude, Photo Context, Skin). We discovered much of the collective wisdom about profile pictures was wrong.

The Rumpus: Do you save everything ever entered into Facebook at any time, whether or not it’s been deleted, untagged, and so forth?
Facebook Employee: That is essentially correct at this moment.
Rumpus: When you say “click on somebody’s profile,” you mean you save our viewing history?
Employee: That’s right.

Every day the same dream

"Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month."

In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Photos from Google Street View by artist Jon Rafman

The creator of a bestselling comic designed to show the world the tolerant and peaceful face of Islam has written an open letter to his young sons explaining how the project grew out of 9/11.

It seems to have passed without huge fanfare, but on April 20th 2006, the Alexa rankings for tech sites around the globe suddenly doubled, literally overnight.

For over twenty five years Phil Borges has lived with and documented indigenous and tribal cultures around the world. Through his work, he strives to create a heightened understanding of the issues faced by people in the developing world. Through his exhibits and award-winning books, Phil attempts to create a relationship between the audience and his photographic subjects. “I want the viewer to see these people as individuals, to know their names and a bit of their history, not just to view them as an anonymous part of some remote ethnic or tribal group.”

"Not only has the poll been swamped to promote Moot (the pseudonym of the creator of 4chan, an image board and the birthplace for many internet memes) as the most influential of people, the poll crashers have manipulated the order of all the other nominees so that the first letter of each line spells out ‘marble cake, also the game’ (marble cake is not really a kind of cake btw). This is pretty phenomenal, precision hacking. Precision hacking of an extremely high profile poll run by a top notch media company. Now, imagine if the same energy was put into getting that latest Lordi album to the top of the pop 100 charts. I’m sure it could be done (and I’m already wondering if perhaps it has already been done, and we just don’t know it)."

RFE/RL journalists report the news in 20 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established. We provide what many people cannot get locally: uncensored news, responsible discussion, and open debate.

Just Bento is dedicated to the subject of healthy, simple bento lunches, some traditionally Japanese, some not so traditional. The focus is on bentos for health and weight-conscious adults, but many of the recipes and methods are applicable to bentos for all ages. The site was established in October 2007, and has rapidly grown to be one of the top destinations for people interested in bentos or obentos (お弁当) in English.

Documentary by Gary Hustwit. "It’s impossible to cram a full film’s worth of people, ideas, and images into a 90-second trailer… so think of this as a small taste"

Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google. Search tip: Add "source:life" to any Google image search and search only the LIFE photo archive. For example: computer source:life