Trees Think, Starfish See: The Most Fascinating Stuff From The Web

A random and fascinating assortment of internet reading today:

Starfish actually have eyes (on the ends of their arms!!), and they can probably see better than you think.

And speaking of ‘think’, it turns out plants can be anesthetised; does that mean they are conscious??

While we’re considering life forms, here are some animals that count (and, interesting to note is the stability even between human cultures of the numbers/words/concepts of one to five). 

Less stable, it will shock no one, are our personalities, but there’s good news here: research has shown that a 30-minute lesson on the malleability of personality can help teens with anxiety.

And lastly, something that tends to cause lots of anxiety, our work – more specifically, this article looks at how we’re (potentially) going to have to stop defining ourselves by our work as robots, machines, and A.I. become a bigger and bigger part of the workforce. Perhaps, it suggests, we should start defining ourselves by our volunteer work (and hobbies?) instead.

Read anything interesting this week? Please share!

(PS If you’re up for a heavy read, this article on what teens are learning from pornography and how “Porn Literacy” classes can help is equal parts fascinating, necessary, and saddening.)