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What It’s Like Living In Boston Right Now
comment posted at 7:13 PM on Feb-12-15

A very basic white chicken stock is a pretty simple affair: It's made with water, chicken, aromatic vegetables like onion, carrot, and garlic, and then herbs.
comment posted at 3:26 PM on Jan-12-15

And if you're traveling with small children, we're sorry. Flight attendant gives the obligatory safety talk, with a twist.
comment posted at 7:04 AM on Jan-6-15

Global news sources are reporting a what appears to be a hostage taking at the Lindt Chocolate Café in Martin Place, Sydney, also home to the Reserve Bank of Australia.
comment posted at 12:51 AM on Dec-15-14
comment posted at 2:08 PM on Dec-15-14

T-shirt company Threadless have been running an annual cake competition to bake a cake based on one of their t-shirt designs since 2009. The standard has been very high in all years, but perhaps these are all a little unscientific for you. Fear not: one of this year's entries dissects the biology of one of the gentlest inhabitants of America's three-fingered parallel universe, Springfield. Detailing ribs, muscle fibre, brain and bowel, this anatomical cutout of Ralph Wiggum has come far from red velvet cake and swiss meringue buttercream it's made from.
comment posted at 3:49 AM on Nov-8-14

The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare. "Meet the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking."
comment posted at 3:55 AM on Nov-8-14

Gough Whitlam, the progressive Labor prime minister of Australia from 1972 to 1975, has died aged 98.
comment posted at 8:07 PM on Oct-20-14

Singaporean student Agatha Tan wrote an open letter to her principal after noticing major flaws with a sex ed program at her junior college. Specifically, the Focus on the Family-created program posited relationship advice for "guys" and "gals" and what they really think that seem to be directly cribbed from a joke book. Focus on the Family claimed that it wasn't designed as sex ed but as a "relationship education" program (here's Singapore's actual sex ed curriculum) and that it was supposedly based on research studies about the neurological differences between men and women. The principal says that the facilitators were "ineffective", and the Ministry of Education says that they will cease their working relationship with FotF soon.
comment posted at 5:17 PM on Oct-11-14

A Catholic woman grapples with the death of her sister's newborn baby.
comment posted at 9:12 PM on Sep-15-14

Why are lawyers so unhappy? One attorney by way of explanation demonstrates exactly what his days are like in an answer pulled out and published from a larger Quora thread.
comment posted at 9:59 PM on Aug-22-14

Michael Kors has been causing a bit of a sensation in the fashion world recently, as the popularity of the designer's handbags, and in particular, one handbag—called "the Selma"—threatens to dethrone Coach as the luxury brand to buy (some say it already has). The Guardian notes that in the Kors line of handbags, "The details are right: the gold studs on the base, a practical touch so that you can rest the bag on the floor; a printed silk lining; a phone pocket. But the most important detail is very, very simple: the magic £300 price tag." Obsessions and the internet go hand in hand, so here are some of the best reviews of Selma handbags from bloggers who want to share their knowledge with other handbag enthusiasts.
comment posted at 8:47 PM on Jul-22-14
comment posted at 10:31 PM on Jul-24-14

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
comment posted at 6:14 PM on Jul-14-14

The loaded meaning behind 'What do you do?': [Deb] Fallows says the questions are meant to tease out socioeconomic status, political viewpoints, and cultural background. “You know that somebody’s kind of digging for information to put you into their world – how do you fit into my world?”
comment posted at 10:01 PM on Jul-7-14

A short, bittersweet comic about a good dog and his brother, slightly less good because he jumps on things.
comment posted at 4:51 AM on Jun-24-14

hit by a car, an emergency doctor experiences firsthand the shortcomings in ER care
comment posted at 9:49 PM on Jun-13-14

We’re all familiar with the stories of Russian oligarchs buying up mansions in London, but this is a much broader phenomenon. A torrent of capital from wealthy people in emerging markets—from China, above all, but also from Latin America, Russia, and the Middle East—has flowed into the real-estate markets of big cities in other countries, driving up prices and causing a luxury-construction boom. ... The globalization of real estate upends some of our basic assumptions about housing prices. We expect them to reflect local fundamentals—above all, how much people earn. In a truly global market, that may not be the case.

James Surowiecki writing in the New Yorker on the rise of a truly global market in real estate.
comment posted at 8:06 PM on May-26-14

Camille Lepage, a 26 year old photojournalist who dedicated her burgeoning career to reporting what the media seemed to ignore, was killed Tuesday while on assignment documenting the conflict in Central African Republic. As well as some amazing photography from her most recent work in CAR, Lepage worked in South Sudan on stories about young men drawn into the war, birth in a refugee camp, and less formal photography on instagram.
comment posted at 8:05 PM on May-19-14

Two seniors at the Columbus College of Art and Design have been sneaking into classrooms one night per week and creating incredible chalkboard art featuring famous quotations. Going by the moniker Dangerdust, they can be found on Twitter, Instagram, tumblr, and behance.
comment posted at 2:50 AM on May-11-14

The I Touch Myself Project uses the Divinyls' iconic song to encourage breast self-examination.
comment posted at 5:33 AM on Apr-14-14

The Most Trafficked Mammal You've Never Heard Of
comment posted at 8:51 PM on Apr-9-14

This site has the aim of encouraging a wider reading of all types of literature, through a series of recipes inspired (directly or indirectly), by those works. It explores the ways in which descriptions of food are used to elicit meaning for a character trait, a foreign country, or social etiquette.
comment posted at 12:53 PM on Mar-8-14

OnlyTheBestRecipes.com : The top 1% of recipes from sites like allrecipes, food.com, epicurious, and foodnetwork. [via mefi projects]
comment posted at 12:11 AM on Feb-4-14

Michelangelo's Grocery List : written for an illiterate servant.
comment posted at 2:03 PM on Dec-28-13

"On a sunny day in 1998, Maura Gillison was walking across the campus of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, thinking about a virus. The young oncologist bumped into the director of the university's cancer centre, who asked politely about her work. Gillison described her discovery of early evidence that human papillomavirus (HPV) — a ubiquitous pathogen that infects nearly every human at some point in their lives — could be causing tens of thousands of cases of throat cancer each year in the United States. The senior doctor stared down at Gillison, not saying a word. “That was the first clue that what I was doing was interesting to others and had potential significance,” recalls Gillison."

Human papillomavirus is causing a new form of head and neck cancer— leaving researchers scrambling to understand risk factors, tests and treatments.

comment posted at 12:22 PM on Nov-23-13

Facebook just got less private. Now anyone one can find you. Facebook has eliminated a setting that controls whether users could be found when people type their name into the website's search bar.
comment posted at 2:54 AM on Oct-12-13

A growing number of Americans is realizing that “good jobs” aren’t coming back, and that for things to get better, they’re going to have to fight to turn their McJobs into something better. (Via Jacobin)
comment posted at 6:37 PM on Oct-5-13
comment posted at 6:48 PM on Oct-5-13

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer discusses how she redesigned the new Yahoo! logo over a weekend.
comment posted at 12:49 AM on Sep-6-13

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
comment posted at 3:21 PM on Jul-14-13

Here's that bad advice you were hoping for is a Tumblr featuring carefully curated scathing advice column responses.
comment posted at 2:24 AM on May-29-13

Angelina Jolie describes having a preventive double mastectomy in a NY Times op-ed. Her mother, actress Marcheline Bertrand, died of ovarian cancer at age 56, and Jolie inherited the BRCA1 gene, which carries a vastly higher risk of breast and ovarian cancers.
comment posted at 10:31 PM on May-13-13

Divinyls singer Chrissy Amphlett dies.
comment posted at 2:15 AM on Apr-22-13

Why the Mantis Shrimp is my new favorite animal
comment posted at 4:32 PM on Apr-10-13

How many people do you know who have been shot?
comment posted at 10:39 PM on Mar-8-13

Callie Mitchell, a 25-year-old student and photographer, documented her pregnancy and decision to place her child for adoption. Photographs.
comment posted at 2:22 AM on Feb-27-13

Without visual effects the average blockbuster movie would look like this. However as Hollywood comes under financial pressure they are putting the squeeze on the VFX industry that they rely on, who are in turn passing the pressure onto workers. Now VFX workers are organizing a protest in time for the Oscars, which will be celebrating visual effects as the companies responsible for them close down.
comment posted at 9:13 PM on Feb-24-13

Richard Briers, TV, radio, movie and stage actor, died yesterday aged 79. Richard was most well-known for playing Tom, who gives up his 9 to 5 job to attempt a sustainable lifestyle, much to the horror of his posh neighbor Margo, in The Good Life (1975-78).
comment posted at 4:53 PM on Feb-18-13

Get Your Shit Together helps you do what it says on the tin. After her husband died in a 2009 bike accident, Chanel Reynolds created the site as a step-by-step toolkit to help keep track of important life documents and tasks. Four days after its launch, the New York Times got in on the action.
comment posted at 9:00 PM on Feb-6-13

When 17th-century Dutch captain Willem de Vlamingh encountered what he described as "a kind of rat as big as a common cat" on on island off the western coast of Australia, he quickly dubbed it "Rats' Nest". Despite the insult, these marsupials aren't known to hold a grudge: the Quokkas, native to what is still known as Rottnest Island and nearby isles, are some of the happiest-looking, most inquisitive furry critters around.
comment posted at 5:59 PM on Jan-11-13

How to Buy a Daughter: Choosing the sex of your baby has become a multimillion dollar industry "Gender selection now rakes in revenues of at least $100 million every year. The average cost of a gender selection procedure at high-profile clinics is about $18,000, and an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 procedures are performed every year. Fertility doctors foresee an explosion in sex-selection procedures on the horizon, as couples become accustomed to the idea that they can pay to beget children of the gender they prefer... Much of the evidence that Americans preferentially choose girls is anecdotal, as no larger body tracks gender selection procedures. But data from Google show that “how to have a girl” is searched three times as often in the United States as “how to have a boy.” Many fertility doctors say that girls are the goal for 80 percent of gender selection patients. A study published in 2009 by the online journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online found Caucasian-Americans preferentially select females through PGD 70 percent of the time. Those of Indian or Chinese descent largely chose boys."
comment posted at 12:14 AM on Sep-26-12

Snark is the universal solvent of cultural conversation. Someone mentions Hemingway; you mention cross-dressing, drinking, and short choppy sentences. Not only did you not have to read Hemingway, you have one-upped the other person by not having read it; you know more about it than they do because you know the important thing, that Hemingway doesn't need to be read. Star Wars has a plot straight out of a comic book, the indescribable beauty of an athlete's best moment is just ritualized combat, any given religion is a collection of three or fewer especially silly-sounding superstitions, all academic subjects are useless hazing intended to keep the wrong people from being hired, all peace protestors are just trying to get on television and soldiers are all unemployed hillbillies whose masculinity feels threatened so they've enlisted for a chance to commit war crimes. Occupy Wall Street is rebels without a clue (itself a plagiarized phrase), the Tea Party is scared old people, and nothing in the wide world matters compared to the general wonderfulness of the observer. [Some 3700 words from a science fiction writer deriding and analyzing the emptiness of snark as a rhetorical mode. Might need to click through Blogger's NSFW warning, though it's just text.]
comment posted at 3:02 AM on Sep-1-12

"When the jubilant couple were wed in June, they exchanged personalized vows and titanium rings, cheered the heartfelt toasts and danced themselves breathless. Then, as the evening was winding down, unexpected questions started popping up. One after another, their guests began asking: Are you going to have kids? When are you going to have kids?"
comment posted at 5:22 PM on Aug-11-12

Kirsty Mitchell's late mother Maureen was an English teacher who spent her life inspiring generations of children with imaginative stories and plays. Following Maureen's death from a brain tumour in 2008, Kirsty channelled her grief into her passion for photography. She retreated behind the lens of her camera and created Wonderland, an ethereal fantasy world.
comment posted at 12:49 AM on Jun-23-12

The most recent cover of Time magazine is causing a lot of controversy. The issue explores attachment parenting and its rise in popularity. Some see attachment parents as selfish, while others swear by it. Either way, attachment parenting and extreme breastfeeding are now part of the national conversation. 
comment posted at 12:29 AM on May-16-12

This is apparently a real advertisement [gore warning] for the Central Institute of Technology in Australia. Mind blown. TV in America sucks.
comment posted at 2:59 PM on Feb-17-12

"There was no sleight of hand; each bite was cut open, pushed back together, then dropped on a table. The goal was to see moist white meat when it bounced." Inside the world of tabletop directing - the people whose job it is to make food look delicious.
comment posted at 5:43 AM on Oct-10-11

"Before I let go of my little boy, I needed to spend time with him. So I brought him home, and our journey began."
comment posted at 6:21 AM on Oct-8-11
comment posted at 6:26 AM on Oct-8-11