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My name is Neal, and I’m a marijuana addict. But I’m not a child with intractable epilepsy, or a veteran with PTSD, or a person who just wants to chill a little, or Willie Nelson. Unless you count writing articles about marijuana, I’m not profiting from the industry. I’m just a middle-aged house dad with a substance-abuse problem.
comment posted at 7:35 PM on Oct-10-18
comment posted at 8:13 PM on Oct-10-18

Airbnb and the commodification of home - "What does this to do our relationships with one another? When every interaction becomes a rateable exchange, we can no longer just be two humans holding a conversation: we are conducting a business transaction in which your ‘communication’ will be given a score out of five."
comment posted at 11:17 PM on Oct-10-18

Not A Single Origin takes demographic data from suburbs in Sydney and turns it into chocolate - each box representing the different dominant cultures in each suburb.
comment posted at 10:46 PM on Aug-30-18

Cities of the World Where You Don’t Need AC or Heat - lookup available at Guardian
comment posted at 6:46 PM on Aug-14-18

10 of the best words in the world (that don't translate into English)
comment posted at 7:26 AM on Aug-6-18
comment posted at 7:45 AM on Aug-6-18

Medical university rigged exams against women: Informed sources say Tokyo Medical University has for years rigged entrance exams to limit its intake of women students, slashing their scores by well over 10 percent across-the-board.
comment posted at 8:51 PM on Aug-2-18

U.K. Supreme Court judges "reluctantly" upheld lower court rulings that a joyless marriage is not adequate grounds for divorce without the spouse's consent. Tini Owens has been petitioning for divorce since 2015, but her husband's refusal has prohibited the divorce from going forward. "The appeal of Mrs Owens must be dismissed. She must remain married to Mr Owens for the time being,” the supreme court judge Lord Wilson said in the majority ruling. “Parliament may wish to consider whether to replace a law which denies to Mrs Owens any present entitlement to a divorce in the above circumstances.” The case has brought the lack of "no fault divorce" law into the spotlight.
comment posted at 10:59 PM on Jul-25-18

This week marks the 30th anniversary of Die Hard, arguably the greatest action movie of all time. To celebrate, /Film is exploring the film from every angle with a series of articles.
comment posted at 2:30 AM on Jul-14-18

“It’s the Soho House of dating apps" (SLNYT) “They have the really good-looking guys, the athletes, the actors, the guys that have like 500 followers on Instagram but got accepted because they’re a D.J.”
comment posted at 1:57 AM on Jun-29-18

MeFi's own mhoye has a question: What is the least plausible story about yourself that's true? It has gone viral, with thousands of replies and quote-tweets.
comment posted at 11:47 PM on Jun-26-18
comment posted at 3:21 AM on Jun-27-18

As the body count from school shootings has risen, school officials across the nation have been forced to consider versions of this question. Administrators use detailed protocols and checklists to examine the circumstances of students who may pose risks. The pressure to prevent the worst has grown as students have begged adults to make sure they aren't next to die. In a nation divided over gun control, school threat assessments offer another option: Find a way to control the student. From Targeted: A Family and the Quest to Stop the Next School Shooter by Bethany Barnes in The Oregonian
comment posted at 4:30 AM on Jun-25-18

"When I look back on it now, it’s hard to understand how I, a highly educated feminist, ended up devoting myself to Michael to the detriment of my own productivity and financial security."
comment posted at 3:23 PM on Jun-20-18
comment posted at 4:45 PM on Jun-20-18
comment posted at 6:50 PM on Jun-20-18

A gallery of royalty (not Hollywood Royalty, actual royal family sorts) gathered for a gala of their own set, Prince Frederik of Denmark's 50th birthday party. Not just women, but men... see how actual royals dress when they go out ot party!
comment posted at 3:35 AM on Jun-5-18

Genna Bain tweeted: Rest in Peace my Dearest Love John @Totalbiscuit Bain July 8, 1984 - May 24, 2018
comment posted at 3:03 AM on May-25-18

"I’ve seen what happens when we pretend that these guys can simply disappear once they’ve been pushed out. In my experience, they resurface elsewhere, often to prey on others. That’s especially true of men who aren’t famous enough to make headlines, and whose career moves aren’t subjected to constant scrutiny. And so if we want the #MeToo movement to be about more than just which celebrity will be the next to fall, or whose comeback must be stopped — if we want it to lead to real, lasting and widespread cultural change — we need to talk. About what we do with the bad men."
comment posted at 2:18 AM on Apr-28-18

Men outnumber women by 70 million in China and India. The consequences of having too many men, now coming of age, are far-reaching: Beyond an epidemic of loneliness, the imbalance distorts labor markets, drives up savings rates in China and drives down consumption, artificially inflates certain property values, and parallels increases in violent crime, trafficking or prostitution in a growing number of locations.
comment posted at 11:58 PM on Apr-22-18

"This year’s Coachella experience was also full of moments I never saw on Instagram: being repeatedly violated by strangers. In the three days I was at Coachella, I only spent a total of 10 hours at the actual festival, where I watched numerous performances and interviewed festivalgoers about their experience with sexual assault and harassment for Teen Vogue. [...] Of the 54 young women who spoke to Teen Vogue for this piece during the weekend-long event, all of them had a story of sexual assault or harassment that occurred this year at Coachella."
comment posted at 4:09 AM on Apr-20-18
comment posted at 5:53 PM on Apr-20-18

"You may have seen the video of Washington Capitals’ Brett Connolly trying to give a little girl a puck, only to be intercepted twice by a man standing behind her. We asked Keelan Moxley for her side of the story."
comment posted at 6:50 PM on Apr-17-18

(The Guardian) When do you know you're old enough to die? [ Barbara] Ehrenreich – who holds a PhD in cellular immunology – casts a skeptical, sometimes witty, and scientifically rigorous eye over the beliefs we hold that we think will give us longevity. She targets the medical examinations, screenings and tests we’re subjected to in older age as well as the multibillion-dollar “wellness” industry, the cult of mindfulness and food fads. These all give us the illusion that we are in control of our bodies...“I’m sorry, I’m not going out of this life without butter on my bread. I’ve had so much grief from people about butter. The most important thing is that food tastes good enough to eat it. I like a glass of wine or a bloody mary, too.”
comment posted at 5:21 PM on Apr-9-18

Interactive, horrifying graphic from Outrider about the effect of a nuclear strike in your location.
comment posted at 3:02 PM on Apr-7-18

A wee old women came in and said "I've a question. Why does page 7 in all the books I take out have the 7 underlined in pen? It seems odd." "What?" I say, thinking she might be a bit off her rocker. She showed me, and they did. (twitter thread)
comment posted at 9:27 PM on Apr-4-18

"After Richard Linklater’s Slacker became an unexpected box-office hit in 1991, every major studio in the United States dropped untold amounts of money trying to clone its success — that is, to duplicate a film that cost $23,000 to make and whose entire raison d’etre was that it did not care about success. Some offerings, such as Cameron Crowe’s Singles (1992), succeeded in spite of their own distributors’ low expectations. Others, such as then “indie comic” (!) Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites, succeeded in spite of, or probably because of, their own craven cynicism. (There was also Threesome, Lord help us all.) These films relied, without exception, on two crucial tropes: the cynical cool of rejecting ambition and popularity, and the mopey, tortured Gen X man-child who embodied that cool." Rebecca Schuman writes for Longreads, You’ve Reached the Winter of Our Discontent: A half-assed elegy for the Cool-Loser Dream Boy of Gen-X cinema.
comment posted at 1:56 PM on Apr-3-18

I started telling stories onstage at The Moth’s story slam in New York City ten years ago this month. I’ve had some successes along the way but like all successes, they’re buttressed by constant, massive failures.[...] The following rules are things I’ve picked up along the way that help me shape and streamline a story for an audience that is hungry for human connection and a bunch of good laughs.

8 Rules for Fascinating Storytelling: a useful and accessible list of lessons learned from 10 years of onstage storytelling, from MeFi's own chinese_fashion. [via mefi projects]
comment posted at 8:50 PM on Mar-20-18

Stephen Hawking, one of the great minds of our age, has passed on to the stars today at the age of 76.
comment posted at 3:21 AM on Mar-14-18

Copywriter Chase Zreet would like to work on advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy's Sprite account. This is his cover letter.
comment posted at 8:56 PM on Mar-9-18

Howard Jones released Dream Into Action in 1985 [CD-based YT playlist, ~55m] and it made quite a splash on both sides of the pond and around the world, with several charting singles and gigantic sales. UK Vinyl Side One: Things Can Only Get Better [video], Life In One Day [video], Dream Into Action, No One Is To Blame [video, completely different version], Look Mama [video], Assault And Battery
comment posted at 7:27 PM on Feb-21-18

The Cut dissects exactly how Woody Allen publicly said terrible things to and about Diane Keaton as part of his presentation of her AFI Life Achievement Award in a way that made it very difficult for the media to call him on it.
comment posted at 3:21 AM on Jan-30-18

A 13-year-old girl managed to become a writer for on-line sports publications. She pretended to be a man and kept up the masquerade for eight years.
comment posted at 7:12 PM on Dec-10-17

John Woodrow Cox has spent the year reporting for the Washington Post on children affected by gun violence. "Did your father die?" For a 2nd grader, gunfire, lockdowns, then the worst violence of all. Almost two dozen kids are shot every day in the US. This 4-year-old was one of them. Twelve seconds of gunfire: school playground shooting still haunts the first graders who survived. He'd been shot at 15. Now, amid Chicago's relentless gunfire, he had one goal: stay alive. The Las Vegas shooting: six teens and the wounds they carry.
comment posted at 2:31 PM on Dec-2-17

"And so Collin, with his cigarettes and typewriter and goofy smile, continues to share poems on Instagram (at least when you were with me, you were an artist/now you’re just someone’s girlfriend/I’m not sure who that hurt more, goes a recent poem). 'It shouldn’t matter if your ‘poetry’ sucks,” he said. “You wrote it. You created something, you molded words together and it means something personal to you… to me, poetry is simply being pure and honest with yourself.'" A conversation with the most hated poet in Portland.
comment posted at 2:55 AM on Dec-2-17

These are not your friendly neighborhood spiders: scientists have mixed a graphene solution that when fed to spiders allows them to spin super-strong webbing. How strong? Strong enough to carry the weight of a person. And these spiders might soon be enlisted to help manufacture enhanced ropes and cables, possibly even parachutes for skydivers, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

comment posted at 10:19 PM on Nov-29-17

Fifty years ago, Sister Marie Augusta Neal, SND conducted The Sister Survey, a 649-question survey of nearly 140,000 American women in Catholic ministry. It gathered data on sisters' theological beliefs and readiness for social change (and for Vatican II reforms). The dataset's newly available online, and Nicole (@leffel on GitLab) analyzes it to find which question led the most respondents to choose "The statement is so annoying to me that I cannot answer." (The answer: 3702 sisters (3%) chose that response when asked to agree or disagree with: “Christian virginity goes all the way along a road on which marriage stops half way.”)
comment posted at 4:38 AM on Nov-28-17

Die Hard is not a Christmas Movie.
comment posted at 2:11 PM on Nov-22-17

He is known as the abimor and he's the most mysterious killer of all time.
comment posted at 5:22 PM on Nov-17-17

Male Incompentence is a Subtle Form of Misogyny talks about the larger picture of many men's refusals to perform emotional labor in the frame of gender politics.
comment posted at 3:10 PM on Nov-15-17

The Shadow Scholar: The man who writes your students' papers tells his story. Two days had passed since I last heard from the business student. Overnight I had received 14 e-mails from her. She had additional instructions for the assignment, such as "but more again please make sure they are a good link betwee the leticture review and all the chapter and the benfet of my paper. finally do you think the level of this work? how match i can get it?"
comment posted at 3:38 PM on Nov-14-17

George Michael once said that he wanted to be remembered as a great songwriter more than anything else. Here's Coldplay's Chris Martin performing a posthumous duet with Michael: A Different Corner.
comment posted at 5:06 PM on Nov-5-17

It all started with House Hunters, an HGTV franchise where couples, generally in terrible marriages, pretend to look for a new home even though to appear on the show, the participants must have already purchased a new home. When I am sitting on my couch, probably pretending to work, there is something soothing about the implausible yet aspirational sheen of this show where everyone wants an open floorplan and ground-floor master bedroom with en suite bathroom and ceiling fans they can swing from or whatever. Roxane Gay for Curbed.
comment posted at 4:17 AM on Oct-29-17

Hacking the Holocaust: Remembering the data pirates, forgers, and social engineers who saved thousands.

...Adolfo recalls when he stayed awake for two nights straight to fill an enormous rush order. “It’s a simple calculation: In one hour I can make 30 blank documents; if I sleep for an hour, 30 people will die.”

comment posted at 10:07 PM on Oct-28-17

Citizenship Seven: High Court due to decide fate of dual-citizen MPs - Live update. Follow up to The ultimate revenge of Pistol & Boo.
comment posted at 1:39 AM on Oct-27-17

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!!!! RELATED AT LEAST FOR THE FIRST PART
comment posted at 8:12 PM on Oct-22-17

The Rock Test: A Hack for Men Who Don’t Want To Be Accused of Sexual Harassment | Are you a man confused on how to treat the women you work with? Do you feel like if you can’t say or do *anything* you don’t know what to say or do at all? Well stress no more! This life hack will have you treating women like people in no time!!
comment posted at 5:44 PM on Oct-10-17

Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it.
comment posted at 5:59 AM on Oct-4-17

Lolita is the oldest orca in captivity, having lived at the Miami Seaquarium since 1970. As Hurricane Irma blew through southern Florida, she was not transported out of her open tank to a more protected area. In an article in the Miami New Times, former SeaWorld trainer Dr. Jeffrey Ventre calls this "criminal animal negligence or animal cruelty." The Miami Seaquarium did not respond to Dr. Ventre's claims, but after the hurricane they posted a Tweet stating all animals were safe.
comment posted at 1:01 AM on Sep-15-17