via ★gruber

Researchers gave a group of men and women quotes from the British lad mags FHM, Loaded, Nuts and Zoo, as well as excerpts from interviews with actual convicted rapists originally published in the book The Rapist Files. The participants couldn’t reliably identify which statements came from magazines and which from rapists — what’s more, they rated the magazine quotes as slightly more derogatory than the statements made by men serving time for raping women. The researchers also showed both sets of quotes to a separate group of men — the men were more likely to identify with the rapists’ statements than the lad mag excerpts. The only slightly bright spot in the study: when researchers randomly (and sometimes incorrectly) labelled the quotes as coming from either rapists or magazines, the men were more likely to identify with the ones allegedly drawn from mags. At least they didn’t want to agree with rapists.

German political magazine Cicero hired Ragna ReuschKlinkenberg to carve delicate likenesses of political leaders in the graphite tips of pencils. They then sent the pencils as calling cards in the hope of securing interviews. You can watch a douchey promotional video, with a few seconds of the pencils being carved, here.

(via +Tim Carmody)

Greetings, People of Wired! I’ve been asked to write a short post (re)introducing myself to Wired News readers as the newest staff writer covering the technology and media beat here at Epicenter.

Some keen-eyed Wired.com readers might recognize my byline from last fall, when I wrote for our hardware vertical, Gadget Lab. There among the wall-to-wall smartphone and tablet coverage, I regularly drove Wired’s editors slightly batty by writing early and often about e-readers and the publishing industry, game consoles and television programming, materials science and R&D, the DIY hardware hacking community, or long thinkpieces about the future of media.

I wrapped a big rubber band around all this stuff, calling it “the tweed beat” — but really, it was just everything that bubbled up from (but wouldn’t stay in) the gadget news box. It was great fun and good work, but I knew I would regularly hear from our east coast editor, John Abell: “Good story, Tim — but you know, it should probably really be in Epicenter.”

This summer, when he was looking for another writer, John paid me an enormous compliment, saying he was looking for “a Tim Carmody type” who could cover a broad swath of tech news and offer smart angles and idea-driven commentary. “Wait,” I thought when I heard this: “I’m a Tim Carmody type!”

Congratulations, Tim!

My entire life exists on a hard drive and after my death, eventually the hard drive will die. Instead of putting my money into archival prints, I want to put it into these magazines. It will include the work of other photographers whose work won’t get seen elsewhere. Perhaps in editions of 500. The idea that one of these magazines might slip behind a cupboard and gather an inch of dust, but survive is very appealing to me.

Mind-blowing orgasms quickly seemed as boring as corporate-speak about mergers and acquisitions.