There’s a serious epidemic that spreads faster among girls my age than any flu I have ever heard of.. it’s a brainwashing addiction of reading fashion blogs and their frenetic “this is what I’m currently doing” updates. I hate to admit that I also tend to have a look at what Kenza has been up to or what Dani’s new fantastic lips look like. But it’s entertainment, they do their job, and we do ours by following their lives when we have nothing better to do.. however you would want to put it, it’s not very stimulating and after half an hour of looking at Lookbook I feel as if I am really becoming stupid.

However, as “blog” to many people out there means just the above mentioned, I need to tell you that there is an alternative way of spending time on the internet. I am using google reader for my blog reading, which is great, and I am reading a whole lot of blogs that I have collected over a period of time and that are worth a whole lot more in terms of mindfood. They are my little gemstones that make fashion-blog-following somehow worthwhile and excusable and I thought I should share them with you before we all become braindead zombies spending too much money on clothes. Here’s the list, happy reading!

Barking up the wrong tree is a science/psychology blog that I found just three days ago.. summarizing scientific reports and a whole lot of sex, relationship and other life-related stuff makes it really, really great – not just for psychology students!

Nonicoclolasos is a much alike blog, however focusing more on politics, economy and philosophy.. this one is in Swedish.

PsyBlog is another psychology blog.. in english! I can’t get enough of psychology science reports.. they rock my world.

Henrik Alexandersson is a Libertarian blogger that writes about politics in Swedish.

Liberalism-Capitalism-Globalisation is Johan Norbergs blog, and yeah, the title is kind of a spoiler..

Then.. well.. here’s some procrastination helpers that entertain in an exceptionally time-consuming way.. enjoy!

Geekologie – it’s geekologie.. you probably have to be a geek to love it as much as I do.

Wall Street Photo Journal – Pictures of the week, pictures of the day.. and it’s not just any pictures.. it’s fantastic high end photography that will blow your mind and I can look at some of these shots forever.

IDG.se Swedish IT magazine.. real gadgets, always gadgets!

And then there’s comics, some of them extremely weird.. but you just have to love them.

XKCD, Space Avalanche, PHD Comics, Jesus & Mo, AmazingSuperPowers

Okay, that should be it for today. Of course, this is just a selection of what I am following, but if you think there’s anything great I’m missing out on, please do tell me.

Goodnight :)

or as they prefer to call it themselves, “The Golden Shield”.. You know, “Shield” as in “Protection-Shield”.

No matter if you feel the need to be protected or not, if you are going to China you can expect to encounter a lot of difficulties when browsing the web..

Facebook wont work, Youtube wont work, WordPress, Blogspot, Twitter, Amnesty International..  icanhascheezburger.com.. (eh?)

Having the luxury of carrying my own laptop when in China I could install Tor. For all of you others going there or already hanging around, there’s hidemyass.com, haven’t tried it, but it should work at least for the standard user. Any other advice?

I know this simple trick, many people do, but some don’t at all. & that’s the sad part about restraining people’s rights. There are always ways to get around obstacles that are in your way if you have the time and motivation to do it. Still, in many cases, big corporations and sometimes even governments will want to restrain your rights mostly because of the simple fact that too much freedom and knowledge might be in conflict with them being in power.

And they know that no matter how simple the restriction is to get around, there will always be a big part of the society that wont have the time or interest to climb any mountains in their way and just let go, continuing their daily lives following the absurd rules presented to them, because who needs Facebook anyway? Let them protect us from those bad western values and all that porn and violence with their golden shield that everybody talk so nicely about.

“There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

George Orwell – 1984

And the evil governments and the big corporations rub their hands, and Steve Jobs points at my phone hysterically laughing and screaming: “either you move to the States and get yourself an AT&T card, or you will be stuck with that giant ugly iPod touch!” And me, lacking the time and knowledge to invent my own unlocking tool will kindly have to google around, waiting for a hacker to release an unlock for the new baseband that iTunes updated my iPhone to without even asking, it just did what it wanted to and locked the hell out of it. I f* paid for this thing. It’s my property, let me use it the way I want to!!

“You don’t understand, you’re supposed to thank us! It’s all just for your protection.”

Goodnight :)

(..will they block my webpage now?)

Oh wow, this is me!

Delayed sleep phase syndrome results when the patient’s internal biological clock does not match his or her external environment (called desynchronization). Unlike jet lag, this desynchronization is not activated by travel or a change in external environment. Rather, the patient’s propensity to fall asleep is simply “delayed” in relation to other people’s. Subsequently, a patient with DSPS is desynchronized with the routine that governs most of his or her life.

Patients with delayed sleep phase syndrome typically are unable to fall asleep before 2 a.m. and have extreme difficulty waking early (e.g., by 7 a.m.). People who have DSPS are sometimes called “night owls” or are described as not being “morning people.” If they are able to sleep a full 7 to 8 hours (e.g., until 10 a.m.), they feel rested and function normally.

Well, extreme difficulty waking early might be a bit over the top.. but I’m very sure I extremely dislike it. And that I love nighttime.

Isn’t this the best excuse ever?

“Sorry, 8 o’clock is a no-no for me, I have DSPS.”

according to the philosopher David Brax from Lund University, pleasure is the answer.

Hedonism as the Explanation of Value