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Charlotte Druckman asks: Are there any words or phrases you really wish people would stop using to describe women chefs (or really, women, period)? The word that emerged as a lightning rod of scorn is one that may surprise readers, given that it is so frequently and proudly slung around by one and all as the ne plus ultra of praise: badass.
comment posted at 6:43 PM on Dec-12-19

New York State is considering barring the practice after T.I.’s comments about his daughter. The rapper T.I. sparked nationwide controversy last month when he said he takes his 18-year-old daughter to the doctor every year to check if she is a virgin. While he later said his comments had been misinterpreted, experts say “virginity testing” is a real thing that happens in the US. Now, one state is taking steps to ban it.
comment posted at 6:23 PM on Dec-7-19

The E.T. sequel finally happened ... in the form of a commercial [YouTube] “Thirty-seven years after Elliot (Henry Thomas) made contact with an extraterrestrial, took a magical bike ride through the skies, then sent the otherworldly being back on his way home, “E.T.” returns to Earth in a brand new sequel to Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film. [...] In the four-minute short, E.T. drops down in grown-up Elliot’s backyard and befriends his old pal’s kids just in time for Christmas. As a found family, they have dinner, resurrect dead plants, have snowball fights, play with the family VR headset — it’s 2019! — and introduce E.T. to the wonders of the internet. Specifically, Xfinity high-speed internet. Which kids love.” [via: Polygon]
comment posted at 9:18 PM on Nov-28-19

I don't want to pretend that I like Christmas. I don't want to pretend to enjoy my family's company. I want to be alone and that is perfectly acceptable. [CW: death, depression]
comment posted at 9:15 PM on Nov-22-19

John Farnham is an Australian institution, who's widely considered to be one of the country’s greatest singers. ‘The only Australian artist to have a number-one record in five consecutive decades’, he’s been crowned King of Pop (1969-1973), King of Moomba (1972), Australian of the Year (1987), made an Officer of the Order of Australia (1996), inducted in to the Australian Recording Industry Association’s Hall of Fame (2003), and holds the record for the highest selling Australian album of all time (24x platinum for 1986's Whispering Jack).
comment posted at 12:46 AM on Nov-19-19

She Defied Centuries Of Catholic Tradition Elsie McGrath never thought of herself as a rulebreaker. But in 2007, she broke one of the most fundamental rules in Roman Catholicism when she became an ordained priest.
comment posted at 6:12 PM on Nov-15-19

EVERY YEAR WE GET TOGETHER AND MAKE SALMON FOR TOAST, EVERY YEAR WE GET A CROCKETY BLOAT, EVERY YEAR WE GET DRUNK ON THE DOCKS, AND EVERY YEAR WE HAVE SEX WITH OUR CAPS LOCKS!!!!
comment posted at 1:28 AM on Oct-22-19

Can you draw a perfect circle?
comment posted at 11:44 PM on Oct-11-19

Experiments like this one have given social engineering a bad name. Nevertheless, Americans are imposing a kind of nepreryvka on ourselves - not because a Communist tyrant thinks it’s a good idea but because the contemporary economy demands it. The hours in which we work, rest, and socialize are becoming ever more desynchronized. Why you never see your friends anymore: Our unpredictable and overburdened schedules are taking a dire toll on American society.
comment posted at 4:22 PM on Oct-11-19

Artist Myfanwy Tristram was irritated by her teenage daughter’s extreme fashions — until she took an illustrated journey into their origins. Her influences come from the internet, from fast-spreading pictures on Instagram, from crazy hairstyles on TikTok. Teens’ fashion inspiration is now global, grassroots led, with the commercial interests falling over themselves to catch up... We scroll through her favorite accounts, and I meet the strangers whose fashion tips and product endorsements indirectly result in those Band-Aids in my bed.
comment posted at 5:27 PM on Sep-28-19

The two marquee college sports - football and men's basketball - see major revenues created on the labor of a significant population of black athletes - revenue that then goes to colleges that are predominantly white. Jemele Hill, writing in The Atlantic, argues that black athletes should be making the decision to play for historically black colleges and universities, bringing that money and exposure back to the black community. (SLAtlantic)
comment posted at 3:51 PM on Sep-16-19

"When I was a sophomore in college, I took a creative-nonfiction workshop and met a girl who was everything I wasn’t. The point of the class was to learn to write your own story, but from the moment we met, I focused instead on helping her tell her own, first in notes after workshop, then later editing her Instagram captions and co-writing a book proposal she sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It seems obvious now, the way the story would end, but when I first met Caroline Calloway, all I saw was the beginning of something extraordinary." I Was Caroline Calloway
comment posted at 5:13 AM on Sep-11-19

They're small, they're furry, and they can glide from tree to tree at distances of 50 meters or more thanks to patagium, the same connective tissue structure that allows bats to fly. Yes, it's the sugar glider! Using its patagium as a parachute, the sugar glider will coast through the air from tree to tree, using its tail as an adorable rudder. "But wait," you say, "isn't that a flying squirrel?" While similar, sugar gliders evolved independently and are more closely related to their fellow marsupials (such as possums) than to placental mammals--an example of convergent evolution at work. Want more convergent evolution? Past FPPs include the hummingbird hawk-moth, often mistaken for its avian namesake, and the thylacine, an extinct marsupial with a strikingly canine bone structure. Bonus sugar glider content: a 19-second slo-mo gliding video.
comment posted at 7:51 PM on Sep-5-19

We asked Angelo to illustrate and describe the many incredible inventions made by prisoners that he had made, seen, or heard about over the years. These inventions are attempts to fill needs that the restrictive environment of the prison tries to suppress. The inventions cover everything from homemade sex dolls, condoms, salt and pepper shakers to chess sets, privacy curtains and ways of communicating between cells.
comment posted at 4:34 PM on Aug-25-19

How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition: Piece in the Atlantic on the psychic cost of constructing a meritocracy. "A person whose wealth and status depend on her human capital simply cannot afford to consult her own interests or passions in choosing her job. Instead, she must approach work as an opportunity to extract value from her human capital, especially if she wants an income sufficient to buy her children the type of schooling that secured her own eliteness. She must devote herself to a narrowly restricted class of high-paying jobs, concentrated in finance, management, law, and medicine. Whereas aristocrats once considered themselves a leisure class, meritocrats work with unprecedented intensity."
comment posted at 6:48 PM on Aug-20-19
comment posted at 9:20 PM on Aug-20-19

New York Magazine's "I Think About This A Lot" is dedicated to those little private fixations that play forever in our minds. In this case, about Dana Schwartz's fascination with that time Robert Pattinson made up a story on the Today show about watching a clown explode.
comment posted at 7:03 PM on Aug-20-19

My In-Laws Are Careless About My Deadly Food Allergy! Ask Polly (Heather Havrilesky) goes off on what she dubs the worst in-laws ever.
comment posted at 4:36 PM on Aug-7-19
comment posted at 4:48 PM on Aug-7-19

Fossil of ancient four-legged whale with hooves discovered. The giant 42.6m-year-old fossil, discovered in marine sediments along the coast of Peru, appears to have been adapted for a semi-aquatic lifestyle. Its hoofed feet and the shape of its legs suggest it would have been capable of bearing the weight of its bulky four metre long body and walking on land. Other anatomical features, including a powerful tail and webbed feet similar to an otter suggest it was also a strong swimmer.
comment posted at 10:35 PM on Jul-8-19

The problem with "most livable" city rankings is they all look pretty similar, from Monocle's top 25 and Mercer Mobility Exchange's top 10 for 2019, or Economist Intelligence Unit top 50 for 2018 (via Business Insider) -- they're very white, and very western. City rankings are a window onto the projected tastes of a highly specific elite... it’s hard not to wonder why these rankings tend to tap wealthy, smaller cities when larger, less wealthy ones may be making more radical, transformative improvements in life quality. (Citylab)
comment posted at 12:06 AM on Jul-7-19

The terrifying unknowns of an exotic invasive tick. Last summer, in a town just outside New York City, a tick bit a man. This ought to sound unexceptional.
comment posted at 5:12 PM on Jul-1-19

In May 1989 The Cure released their eighth studio album Disintegration. To celebrate the 30th anniversary The Cure perform Disintegration at the Sydney Opera House . The Atlantic. NME. ABC podcast.
comment posted at 4:11 AM on May-31-19
comment posted at 5:48 PM on May-31-19

Democracy is hungry work, so democracysausage.org helps Aussies find a polling place to suit their democratic and saturday barbie needs. It's federal election day in Australia.
comment posted at 7:00 PM on May-18-19

Saige Earley was gone in stages. To her mother, Ellen, the 22-year-old grew increasingly detached within weeks of returning from the dentist with a fateful prescription for opioid painkillers. The young woman with long dark hair and a broad toothy smile was gone physically a few months later when she walked out on her young son and left Ellen wondering if her daughter was even alive. Then last September, Saige was gone for good, found dead of a heroin overdose in a toilet stall at Syracuse airport, clutching a plane ticket to drug rehab in California. (Chris McGreal, Guardian)
comment posted at 6:08 PM on Apr-29-19
comment posted at 10:04 PM on Apr-29-19

A preschool teacher installs a "tattle phone" for kids to tattle into, instead of coming to her. A parent who works for This American Life records it (with permission of everyone involved). Transcript
comment posted at 4:33 AM on Apr-28-19

'Decades of denial': major report finds New Zealand's environment is in serious trouble (Eleanor Ainge Roy, Guardian)

A report on the state of New Zealand’s environment has painted a bleak picture of catastrophic biodiversity loss, polluted waterways and the destructive rise of the dairy industry and urban sprawl.

comment posted at 10:13 PM on Apr-17-19

I decided to write down every question that required a decision that my two kids asked me during a single day.
comment posted at 4:37 PM on Mar-31-19

A 6-year-old boy who didn't receive childhood vaccinations nearly died after contracting tetanus in what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is Oregon's first pediatric case But, even after contracting a life-threatening infection that might have been prevented by a vaccine, his family stood firm on their anti-vax stance. "Despite extensive review of the risks and benefits of tetanus vaccination by physicians, the family declined the second dose of DTaP and any other recommended immunizations," the case report states.
comment posted at 8:45 PM on Mar-8-19

How many comments on a story about Africanized bees it would take before they started taking a racist turn?
comment posted at 4:12 PM on Mar-3-19

“Tell me more,” I say, because I sense that the mother is holding something back. She looks down into the baby’s face as she replies, so softly I almost don’t catch it. “I don’t believe it is right to pierce his holy body with a needle,” she says. At that, my heart softens, because this is the kind of objection I feel for. It is not based on risks that science has proven are imaginary, or on false notions of “toxins”, or fear of chemicals that occur naturally in foods and the soil and are added to medicines. This mother’s child is holy, and his body is perfect and we ought to leave it be.
comment posted at 3:26 AM on Feb-22-19

Sam Sanders, host of NPR's It's Been A Minute, addressed his Twitter followers

Tell me your Weirdest eating/drinking habit you had as a kid!

I’ll go first: When I was like 8 years old, I used to carry a little bottle of apple cider vinegar around wherever I went, taking a swig every now and then like a lush w/his flask.

As a child, my brother would eat sticks of butter out of the fridge, under cover of night. We were strange.

comment posted at 12:22 AM on Feb-22-19

"To the robot who turned 90 days into 15 years of exploration: You were, and are, the Opportunity of a lifetime. Rest well, rover. Your mission is complete. (2004-2019)"
Sarah Kaplan, WaPo: Opportunity, NASA’s record-setting Mars rover, is declared dead after 15 years. Opportunity’s mission was planned to last just 90 days, but it worked for 5,000 Martian “sols” and traversed more than 28 treacherous miles — two records for NASA. (Previously, and more at NASA's Mars page.)
comment posted at 3:29 AM on Feb-14-19

Apple and Google have been accused of helping to "enforce gender apartheid" in Saudi Arabia, by offering a sinister app which allows men to track women and stop them leaving the country. Both Google Play and iTunes host Absher, a government web service which allows men to specify when and how women can cross Saudi borders, and to get close to real-time SMS updates when they travel.
comment posted at 12:12 PM on Feb-11-19
comment posted at 1:06 PM on Feb-11-19

A History of Cyborg Sex, 2018–73 - "Sex with robots was much safer than sex with actual men—and better than anything women had previously experienced."
comment posted at 5:20 PM on Feb-2-19

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is the Avocado Toast Whisperer, her former makeup artist Daniel Martin revealed on Instagram. Daily Mail was quick to point out how problematic her choice of sandwich spread is, and the internet had a field day with it. At the same time, across the pond, sports fans fear the worst as the Mexican fuel shortage threatens the supply chain of the staple snack of the sporting competition Super Bowl – but the Association of Producers, Exporters and Packers of Avocados from Mexico assures exports will not be affected. Even further west, one really big avocado causes excitement, dispelling the rumor that avocados are not a thing anymore.
comment posted at 10:30 PM on Jan-28-19

"As he’s fond of saying, he has no interest in being average. [Dave] Asprey, who is 45, has made the widely publicized claim that he expects to live to 180. To that end, he plans to get his own stem cells injected into him every six months, take 100 supplements a day, follow a strict diet, bathe in infrared light, hang out in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and wear goofy yellow-lensed glasses every time he gets on an airplane. So far, Asprey says he’s spent at least a million dollars hacking his own biology, and making it to 2153 will certainly take several million more."
comment posted at 11:07 PM on Jan-25-19

A Student Ate 5 Day Old Pasta For Lunch. This Is How His Liver Shut Down.
comment posted at 12:49 AM on Jan-22-19

“Maybe it’s just a moment and the [housing] market will rebound again like it has in the past, but maybe this is finally the perfect storm,” says Steve Saretsky, a Vancouver real estate agent. “I think we’re seeing the catalyst for a correction that everyone’s been talking about for 10 years.”
comment posted at 6:39 PM on Jan-9-19

We talk a lot about the many shapes families take. So, what about those of us who choose not to parent?
comment posted at 5:57 PM on Jan-3-19

Guardian journalist and all-round awesome Twitter egg, Simon Ricketts, has died from cancer, less than a month after announcing in a typically beautiful and unself-pitying article that he would soon be gone.
comment posted at 4:23 AM on Dec-30-18

“Ruth Coker Burks cared for hundreds of dying people, many of them gay men who had been abandoned by their families. She buried more than three dozen of them herself, after their families refused to claim their bodies. For many of those people, she is now the only person who knows the location of their graves.” From OUT
comment posted at 8:50 PM on Dec-28-18

CW for new parents of >1: Three Australian researchers find that yes, having a second child is much, much harder than just having one. Depressing conclusions include mental health - especially for mothers - and more entrenched gender roles.
comment posted at 8:27 PM on Dec-18-18

In a league of her own. RIP Hollywood trail blazer Penny Marshall, 75, due to complications from diabetes. While hosting legendary joint birthday parties with best friend Carrie Fisher, she was the first woman to direct a movie that grossed $100 million. With Big, A League of Their Own, and Awakenings, Marshall blazed a trail for women directors: Penny Marshall’s groundbreaking directing career, explained in 3 movies. Also: she wrote a 2012 memoir My Mother Was Nuts. Her mother wanted her to be a dancer, which "didn't take," and yet what can I say about her dancing here, here, and here. And despite physical comedy being mostly male, she was brilliant at that too! The top 5 Laverne & Shirley physical comedy moments. Also: Penny on her famous brother Garry. The Hollywood tributes are pouring in.
comment posted at 8:35 PM on Dec-18-18

"If you are divorced, widowed or never married and develop cancer, watch out. You may get less aggressive treatment than your married friends." Joan DelFattore on how the medical system quietly shortchanges single patients.
comment posted at 3:01 PM on Dec-1-18

"I spent up to 12 hours a day grinding and sanding the shells." Artist Gillian Genser writes about art, shells, death and heavy metal poisoning. (SL Toronto Life)
comment posted at 4:06 PM on Dec-1-18

Debt: A Love Story. In exchange for anonymity, one couple lays out the brutal details of their life in the grip of an epic cycle of debt. Reactions are...mixed.
comment posted at 8:07 PM on Nov-21-18