A Very Serious Place on Twitter - "Conservative boomers always wondering why people don’t step in to help women when they’re being assaulted. Here’s why. Black guy yells at female worker, white guy gets in fight with him to leave the store, black felon grabs gun, gives to gf she kills white man."
A Dying Man’s Lost Recipe Made His Daughter a Multimillionaire - "When Hiroe Tanaka’s father died, he left behind something that would change her life: a recipe for fried meat on a stick. It was an act of love. His daughter adored the Japanese street food known as kushikatsu, and he’d spent endless hours working out how to make it just right. The handwritten memo, which detailed how to cook the seemingly simple dish, helped save a restaurant business from bankruptcy in 2008, elevated Tanaka from part-time employee to vice president of a company named after her, and made her a multimillionaire. The university dropout who once worked as an office lady now sets strategy for the $82 million Kushikatsu Tanaka Co."
We Finally Know Why Stress Turns Your Hair White - "stem cell and regenerative biologists from the United States and Brazil reported that stress can indeed cause hair to lose its pigment—and they identified a cellular pathway by which it can occur. To study this vexing relationship, the researchers created an elaborate animal model, which basically involved trying to turn black-haired rats white with lab-made stressors. They tried three different tactics: restraint stress, chronic unpredictable stress, and nociception-induced stress, which is caused by physical pain (or the threat of it). Each successfully turned the rat’s hair white... “In just a few days, the reservoir of pigment-regenerating stem cells [was] depleted,” Ya-Chieh Hsu, a professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard and the study’s senior author, told PopSci in an email. The loss was permanent. “And once they’re gone, pigment cannot be generated anymore.”... But there are many other ways hair can lose its color. A 2018 paper suggested an overactive immune response can also destroy melanocytes and melanocyte stem cells in rats, bleaching their coat. Certain skin cancer drugs turn some patients’ hair transparent. Doctors think it’s a sign their bodies are responding positively to the drug. Genetic pathways, environmental pathways, and mutations can also play a role, according to Terskikh"
How to Get Rid of Flies Inside and Outside of Your House, According to Insect Experts - "Technically, flies can breed inside your home, but the odds are pretty high that they’re coming in from the outside, says entomologist Roberto M. Pereira, Ph.D., an insect research scientist with the University of Florida. Most commonly, flies will make their way in through torn window screens and open doors, and they love to linger around mulch piles (which they breed in) or garbage cans stored near points of entry. Animal poop can also be an issue... A swatter can be helpful for snagging random flies but there are a few home remedies you can try to catch several of them at once, Pereira says.
✔️Mix apple cider vinegar and dish soap
✔️Try fly paper.
✔️Create a soda bottle trap."
Muslim man 'devastated' after McDonald's served pork sausage breakfast muffin in error - "Although the chain has offered Mr Hussain meal vouchers, he is not happy with the outcome. He said: "I would like an apology and financial compensation. I'm devastated. It's put me off McDonald's and I'm mortified.""
Iranian Hulk deletes ‘photoshopped’ pics after humiliating defeat in the boxing ring where he looked ‘HALF’ the size - "Social media sensation Sajad Gharibi, 30, was barely able to throw a punch in a pitiful display against Kazakh Titan. And fans noticed he cut a sorry figure compared to the muscular giant he appeared to be in Instagram snaps shared with his one million followers. Instead of his famous rippling biceps and six-pack torso, Gharibi looked unfit with a bulging tummy straining under his t-shirt. He also appeared shorter than his claimed 6ft 2in - standing around the same height as 5ft 7in strongman Titan... Gharibi - also known as "the Persian Hercules" - has become famous for his colossal physique. His is known for posting snaps and videos of his strongman antics including breaking concrete in half, punching walls, and pulling cars."
Jon Acuff on Twitter - "Toxic Empathy: When someone I love is headed toward a health, financial or relational train wreck and instead of telling them the bridge is out I encourage or even celebrate the decisions that are slowly destroying them because I want them to like me."
If you don't unconditionally support someone, no matter how silly his idea, you're the toxic one!
27 Things Parents Secretly Hate About Their Kids - "The entitlement mentality. We have five children, and my 18-year-old thinks we should go broke to make sure she can sleep all day and play video games all night. Anytime we talk to her about it, she goes on social media where all these random strangers tell her how wrong her parents are for setting expectations and not respecting her life choices at 18, but she won’t get a job so she can pay for her lifestyle or move out. No one told me that the worst challenge of parenting would be when they reach adult age"
"I dislike him as a person. Period. He is selfish, mean, lazy, a bully, quick to anger, and plays the victim. He can play nice if you are doing something for him, but is dismissive and forgets all about you when you are no longer of use to him. He justifies his negative behavior and never takes responsibility for his own actions. There is always someone else to blame. I really dislike him."
"My oldest (20) is so sensitive that if I at all imply something could be done better or if I’m on my phone too much, she will shut down, leave, and send long texts about how I don’t love her — which ironically makes me NOT want to be loving."
"She is a pathological liar. It started when she was young, just little lies about little things. It was cute, always innocent, but we did correct her. As she got older, her lies got bigger. Again, we let her know that we knew she was lying and tried to correct the behavior, but apparently, she continued to lie about my husband and I, which has TWICE resulted in the police wrongly being contacted."
Damn toxic parents! When their children never see them after they grow up, they'll only have themselves to blame!
When kids don't turn out well, the parents are always to blame!
Woman gets compensation after being sandwiched between two obese people on flight - "Australian-American woman Dr Sydney Watson complained about the inconvenience of being stuck between two overweight passengers on a three-hour American Airlines flight. She was eventually given ($150) £130 in flight credits as compensation by the airline, after the airline insisted that their passengers "come in all shapes and sizes"."
TikTok fined £12.7m for misusing children's data and allowing under-13s to create accounts - "TikTok has been fined £12.7 million for a number of data protection law breaches, including failing to use children's personal data lawfully, the Information Commissioner's Office said. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) estimates that TikTok allowed up to 1.4 million UK children under 13 to use its platform in 2020 - in breach of its own rules that bar children from creating an account."
How Americans at Different Income Levels Socialize - The Atlantic - "according to a new study in Social Psychological and Personality Science, it may actually be high earnings that bestow Americans with the ability to spend more time with friends... while Americans with higher incomes tend to spend more time alone, when they do socialize, they do so more with their friends. Meanwhile, the social interactions of those from lower-income households tend to revolve around family members and neighbors... this dynamic could lead to a decline in civic engagement"
'I am a grotesque subhuman': Incels use inferiority to justify misogyny - "the incel community has been taken over by extremists who gather online to discuss their hatred of women. These forums — mostly populated by white, heterosexual men who perceive themselves as “ugly, genetic trash” dominated by other men and rejected by women — are characterized by self-loathing, anger and misogyny... Incels use emasculating language to describe their poor self-image: “Manlets” for feminine, shorter men; “jawlets” for those with weak jawlines; “wristlets” for those with small wrists; “lanklets” for tall with thin frames."
New UT study reveals the mental health realities of incels - "involuntary celibates, colloqiually known as incels, are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, loneliness and poor mental health... “As a group, they are not unusually right-wing,” Costello said in an email. “Compared to non-incels, however, they are lonelier, less likely to have social support, more likely to be suffering from anxiety and depression, less likely to be employed or in school, more likely to ruminate on past experiences of victimization and more likely to be living with their parents.” Vania Rolon, co-author and statistics analyzer, said the research team found incels score a higher tendency for interpersonal victimhood... the findings suggest incels are as much a threat to themselves as others. “Some would find it an odd idea to want to help a group they see as a threat,” Thomas said. “However, to those concerned about the harm that incels might do to society, trying to alleviate incel suffering by improving their mental health would be a good route to reducing their chances of harming themselves and others.”"
Of course, feminists just mock them instead and call everyone who disagrees with them an incel. So much for feminism being for men too
Van attack killer told doctor anxiety over job, not 'incel' ideology, was his real motivation, trial hears - "Toronto van attack killer Alek Minassian told a forensic psychiatrist he exaggerated his devotion to incel ideology because he didn’t want people to know his true motivation: anxiety over starting a new job. “I don’t mind being labeled as an incel,” Minassian told an examining psychiatrist after the attack, court heard. Minassian would rather be seen as an incel than be labeled extremely anxious about job failure. “He denies being radicalized by the movement. He maintains his principal motivation is the fear of failing at his job,” a computer programming position, which he was due to start a week after the attack, says a doctor’s notes about interviews with Minassian. The comments are in dramatic contrast with a detailed account of radicalization in the subculture of incel — short for “involuntarily celibate” — Minassian made to police after his arrest, and what he told another psychiatrist... Rinaldi, in his cross examination of Chauhan, downplayed Minassian’s interest or obsession with incels, noting Minassian’s interest in mass murder went far beyond that particular ideology. Court heard Minassian had a long and deep fascination with mass murderers, school shooters and how many people they killed. In high school, he would routinely search the internet for information on killers and, when feeling lonely, fantasize about being a mass murderer, court heard."
Too bad the misinformation has become entrenched
Male Sexlessness is Rising But Not for the Reasons Incels Claim - "Most groups of people age 22-35 have broadly similar amounts of sex; probably something like 60-100 sexual encounters per year. Never-married people have the least sex, about 60-80 encounters per year, while ever-married people have more sex, about 70-110 encounters per year, on average. Historically, never-married men have reported higher sexual frequency than never-married women. However, in the 2014 and 2016 GSS samples, that changed: never-married men now report slightly lower sexual frequency than never-married women. This is mostly because men are reporting less sex, not that women are reporting more sex. Female sexual frequency is essentially unchanged since 2000. In other words, a key piece of the incel story about rising female promiscuity just isn’t there. But sexual frequency may be dominated by “Chads” and “Stacies.” What we really want to know is what share of these men and women have not had any sex. The graph below shows what share of these young men and women had not had sex at all in the last 12 months, by their sex and marital status. The share of people of each status who report not having had sex in the past year shows interesting trends that seem to support the basic incel account of changes in mating markets. Recent years have seen increasing sexlessness for never-married men. Celibacy is approximately stable among women. Notably, male sexlessness is also rising among married men. On the one hand, the incel story of rising male celibacy seems confirmed here; more and more never-married young men are experiencing long sexual droughts. But on the other hand, incels are basically wrong in suggesting that virtually all women are promiscuous: female sexlessness has been roughly stable over time and indeed has actually risen since the period from 2005-2010. However, two other large surveys, the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFfG), and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), also ask about sexual behavior. Their results do not confirm the trends seen in the GSS. However, they also have slightly different questions and slightly different survey populations, so they may not be directly comparable. The NSFG, for example, shows a far higher rate of sexlessness to begin with... The incel account of events thus far is maybe true in the GSS, but faced strong rebuttals from the NHANES and NSFG data. Not a glowing endorsement of the incel narrative! But even assuming the GSS data is correct, we can ask if another piece of the incel narrative is true. Do a few Chads and Stacies really monopolize the market for sex? Many incels quote a rule of thumb that 20% of men have 80% of the sex. Is this true? It turns out, the answer is no. And of course, it isn’t! Imagine how much sex those 20% of men would have to be having! A substantial share would need to be doing two-a-days on a regular basis to maintain that kind of share. In reality, according to the GSS, the top 20% of the most sexually active never-married young men have about 50-60% of the sex. It’s about the same for women, and these shares are basically stable over time. Measuring the number of partners instead of sexual frequency, the top 20% most promiscuous men account for about 60% of male sexual partnerings, and the trend is, again, quite stable over time. Thus, whatever the change in total sexlessness, there’s no appreciable change in the concentration of sex among never-married young men and women. The core incel story about what’s going on here—that a few Chads are hoarding a growing share of Stacies, depriving incels of mates—just doesn’t hold up. The top 20% of unmarried men are having about the same share of total sexual activity or sexual partnerings as has been the case for decades. And of those very promiscuous men, a small share actually report having paid for or being paid for sex. That is, a few of these men whom incels might think are Chads based on the data actually have their high sexual frequency not due to being so desirable, but due to hiring prostitutes, or themselves being male sex workers. So if it’s not rakish Chads hoarding all the women, what’s going on?... The share of men aged 22-35 who have never been married is higher today than at any time since the first data we have, going back to 1880. The married share for these men is far lower than the historic norm. Unmarried people have less sex in general, so even if celibacy rates within marital status are the same, the sexless population grows. But how much of this is really about involuntary celibacy? Interestingly, the NSFG (which has about 1,000 never-married men ages 22-35 in each sample period)also asks men who have never had sex (about half to two-thirds of the men who haven’t had sex in the last year) why they are still virgins... This hard-core incel group is indeed growing as a share of the male population... the 68% increase from 2002 to 2015 in the incel share of the male, never-married, 22-35-year-old population is mostly due to a decline in marriage, not never-married men having less sex... virginity is somewhat more common among more educated young men... virginity, both voluntary and involuntary, is higher among men living with their parents... It’s mostly about people spending more years in school and spending more years living at home. But that’s not actually a story about some change in sexual politics; instead, it’s a story about the modern knowledge economy, and to some extent exorbitant housing costs. As such, it’s no surprise that rising sexlessness is being observed in many countries. This, in turn, suggests that finding a solution to help young people pair up may not be as easy."
Involuntarily Celibate: Explanations and Practical Solutions to a Dangerous Phenomenon - "History suggests that today’s Incels are just the most recent expression of an ancient problem so widespread that psychologists have given it a name: “young male syndrome.” Young men whose circumstances furnish few prospects of finding a partner will risk their lives and futures to improve those prospects by jostling with others for status and respect... Young men, especially ones not born to status, have the least to offer a potential mate. Their vulnerability to remaining involuntarily celibate makes them especially prone to frustration and anger. They have much to gain and little to lose in risky competition for status. How men seek to avoid the Incel fate depends on the avenues open for them to gain status and respect. Some show off with crazy stunts, dangerous driving, or fighting. Others throw themselves into sports or risky jobs. A few gravitate to crime and gangs. And, in the 21st century, some fulminate on social media. Political leaders have long channelled men’s desperation to avoid incelibacy by enlisting them to fight. A man who survives the army emerges with more social and economic capital which improve his mating prospects. From Republican Rome to Napoleon’s conscription machine, military leaders understood the deep incentives that attract new soldiers. Today, Boko Haram and ISIS recruit foot soldiers by promising them the wives they could never otherwise afford to marry. War and conquest tend to keep a lid on a society’s Incel problem. When young men fall in battle, the survivors find it easier to attract mates. In cold economic terms, the supply of potential brides begins to exceed the demand from potential grooms. Other factors feed into this supply-demand scenario. When societies allow some men to marry multiple wives, each wealthy man who marries a second, third, or subsequent bride ensures a poor man won’t get a chance to marry his first. This kind of “polygynous” (from the Greek for “many women”) marriage compounds a society’s Incel problem, especially because the shortage of potential wives means families ask exorbitant bride price payments, taxing poorer young men out of the marriage market. As a result, societies that allow polygynous marriage experience more violence. Young men in those societies are also at greater risk of radicalisation and recruitment to forces like Boko Haram. Economic inequalities affect mating markets, too. Big disparities in the distribution of wealth leave large numbers of poorer, usually younger men, with little to bring, economically, to a relationship. The alienation of poverty gets amplified by the fact that men who offer little prospect of economic mobility, or even stability, tend to become invisible to women. On top of that, increasing women’s employment and diminishing gaps between the incomes of women and men mean that more women can live an economically secure life without having to partner with a man... Incel tweets come mainly from places with high income inequality, low gender inequality, and where men outnumber women... The evidence that large gaps between rich and poor are toxic not only to the poor, but to the vast majority of people in a society, can no longer be ignored. Incels would do well to swallow their wounded masculine pride and to work alongside social and economic justice groups to reverse inequality. Such an approach would demand considerable maturity, but it would likely win Incels some of the sympathy and understanding they crave. Rather than dismissing Incels as pathetic and entitled, we should pay close attention to the suffering of lonely, alienated people of all genders."
What Do Female Incels Really Want? - The Atlantic - "When Amanda talks about the femcel community, she specifically contrasts it with one other option: contemporary liberal feminism, or maybe “girlboss” feminism, as popularized by Millennials and the brands that cater to them. “The liberal-feminist notion of like, supporting all women, feeling positive all the time … it’s disingenuous,” she told me. When she started identifying with the term femcel, it was partly because she felt a resentment toward a style of feminism that challenged traditional beauty standards mostly by asking those who fell short of them to feel beautiful anyway, regardless of their lived experiences. “I’d rather be able to talk about being ugly than just try to convince myself that I’m pretty”"
I was going to try Foreveralonedating, but then I saw this. - "Reminder that r/ForeverAloneWomen went private because its users were receiving too many messages from men wanting to date them"
2 M'sian teens in TikTok vid arrested for mocking S'pore history exam questions - "Two secondary school students from Hulu Selangor in Malaysia were arrested after mocking their school's history exam paper in a TikTok video. According to The Straits Times, the 18-year-olds were arrested after a teacher came across their video and filed a police report. In a statement made by the district police chief Superintendent Suffian Abdullah, the teenagers were “uttering abusive words as they were allegedly dissatisfied” with the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) paper... one boy ranted about the inclusion of Singapore-related questions in the SPM history paper. His spiel was accompanied by swearing and offensive gestures. He said Singapore's history was irrelevant to Malaysians. "Singapore’s nothing but a kampung. They’re so poor even their water comes from Malaysia! Why should it be included into the exam?"... After the teen's transgressions were reported, police raided their homes and tested them for drugs. “A screening test found that both suspects were negative for drugs, in addition to having no previous criminal records”"
Facebook layoffs: Former Meta recruiter claims she got paid $190,000 a year to do ‘nothing’ - "A former Meta recruiter has claimed that she made $190,000 a year for doing “nothing” at her job, amid the company’s recent layoffs. In a recent video posted to TikTok, Maddie, @maddie_macho, reflected on her time working at Meta for six months during 2021... she shared why she got fired from Meta, after she first started working there in September 2021. According to Maddie, when her TikTok video about the company’s benefits package went viral, people who worked at the company reached out to her and said that they loved it. However, Maddie said that Meta wasn’t too pleased about the content on her account, as she claimed that she later got a write-up for posting on her story about how “challenging” her job could be. She claimed that while she stopped talking specifically about Meta, the company later went through “20 of her TikTok” videos and asked her if they thought they were “appropriate”. She said that she then decided to quit, a day before she was fired."
It’s Not a Snake, but Beware of Its Venomous Bite - The New York Times - "If a worm and a snake had a slimy, scandalous love child, it might look something like a caecilian: a legless creature that’s actually neither worm nor snake, but a soil-dwelling amphibian found in tropics across the globe... caecilians’ mouths might be rimmed by venom-tipped teeth, not unlike those found in some snakes. The discovery would mark the first time venom glands have been found in the mouth of an amphibian — one whose evolutionary history predates the appearance of snakes by more than 100 million years. That could make little-known caecilians among the oldest venomous biters on Earth."
Meme - "One time I perpetrated a reality glitch on my gf.
>Be in college
>Walk gf to bus stop that takes her to the building her classroom is in. (It's a big college.)
>She gets on bus
>I start sprinting towards a bike I had placed hours earlier at a bike rack.
>Look behind me as I ride away, bus doesn't leave until about 30 seconds after I take off.
>Make it to the building (1 mile from where I started)
>Quickly lock bike up and go just inside the doorway of the building
>See bus approaching.
>Walk outside
>Just happen to run into gf
>Say hey, what's up?
>She is visibly shaken, and asks how I got here.
>I explain that I had to use the building's computer lab after class and was just leaving
>She says she was just talking to me 3 minutes ago.
>I just roll my eyes, chuckle and walk away.
>Later learn she had a panic attack and threw up in the bathroom.
>I haven't told her what really happened to this day."
Marie Kondo admits she’s ‘kind of given up’ on tidying up after having 3 kids - "If you’ve fallen off the KonMari decluttering method, don’t worry — so has Marie Kondo, herself... after having her third child, her hands have been too full to tidy things up as much as she used to"
For the Children of Refugees, Marie Kondo's 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' Reveals the Privilege of Clutter - The Atlantic - "A full pantry, a house stocked with usable objects, is the ultimate expression of love. As a girl growing up in the U.S., I was often exhausted by this proliferation of items—by what seemed to me to be an old-world expression of maternal love. Like many who are privileged enough to not have to worry about having basic things, I tend to idolize the opposite—the empty spaces of yoga studios, the delightful feeling of sorting through a pile of stuff that I can discard... At its heart, the KonMari method is a quest for purity... Kondo seems suspicious of the idea that our relationship with items might change over time. She instructs her readers to get rid of books we never finished, and clothes we only wore once or twice. She warns us not to give our precious things to our family and friends, unless they expressly ask for them. She’s especially skeptical of items that have sentimental value... For affluent Americans who’ve never wanted for anything, Kondo sells an elegant fantasy of paring back and scaling down at a time when simplicity is a hot trend. The tiny-house movement, for example, urges consumers to eschew McMansion- style houses for the adorably twee simplicity of a 250-square-foot home. Of course, in order to feel comfortable throwing out all your old socks and handbags, you have to feel pretty confident that you can easily get new ones. Embracing a minimalist lifestyle is an act of trust. For a refugee, that trust has not yet been earned... For my grandparents, the question wasn’t whether an item sparked joy, but whether it was necessary for their survival. In America, that obsession transformed into a love for all items, whether or not they were valuable in a financial or emotional sense. If our life is made from the objects we collect over time, then surely our very sense of who we are is dependent upon the things we carry... For a project titled “The Most Important Thing,” the photographer Brian Sokol asks refugees to show him the most important thing they kept from the place they left behind. The items they proffer range from the necessary (crutches), to the practical (a sewing machine), to the deeply sentimental (photographs of someone deeply loved, treasured instruments, family pets). Against this backdrop, Kondo’s advice to live in the moment and discard the things you don’t need seems to ignore some important truths about what it means to be human. It’s easy to see the items we own as oppressive when we can so easily buy new ones"
