That color palette!

I just finished addressing my Valentimes cards for the year. Here in the PNW, the entire winter decided to dispense in one size-large serving, it’s been extra cold and snowy around these parts (my pipes even froze last week!). A spot of cheesy Valentines goodness warms my heart. I hope it will warm the hearts of my friends and family, too.

 

» Reality matters. Mindset matters, too. Possibly even more—these researchers found that belief trumps genetics.

In fact, it turned out that the physical impacts on endurance and fullness were often more substantial among the volunteers who believed they had the gene variant and did not than among those who actually harbored it.

These findings suggest that “people tend to attribute more power to genes than they probably should,” says Bradley Turnwald, a doctoral student at Stanford who conducted the study with the senior author, Alia Crum, and others.

Our mind-sets, or mental expectations about ourselves, seem to play an equal or even greater role than does our DNA in shaping some of our bodies’ reactions to diet and exercise, Mr. Turnwald says.

 

» Journalism Isn’t Dying. It’s Returning to Its Roots. I think we’d all be better off to openly declare our biases. The media culture of the Founding Fathers is fascinating, simply because it was so openly partisan.
» The Cul+++ure website is now open for business.

» How Fashion Lost its Meaning:

Style and fashion have collapsed into each other. But being stylish and being fashionable used to mean two different things. One did not require having money to buy designer clothes; the other did. One required a certain sensibility; the other one did not. That’s why you could be called a “fashion victim,” but no one would call you a style victim.

The signs that we are in a postmodernist era of fashion — where fashion has become unmoored and lost its original meaning — are everywhere: the rise of streetwear, a tsunami of product collaborations, normcore, dad sneakers, the ugly-made-pretty aesthetic, the erasure of concern for the quality of both materials and construction.

» YA Fiction’s Online Commissars 

» Inside the Secret Facebook War for Mormon Hearts and Minds. It’s a battle, and it’s really, really difficult to get through to people who want to believe something else.

» In that vein—if you’re ready to have your worldview challenged, watch Hoaxed.