The human eye boasts a riveting evolutionary journey. Ninety-five percent of all living organisms possess the ability of sight, though not a single pair perceives the world the same. For the developed beasts, vision funds everything from poetry to judicious engagement. At one time, brown eyes were the human default, but a chain of mutations has authored varying shades of blue, green and even gray. You’ve likely read poesy dedicated to the each, but what real-world associations does eye color submit?
Thankfully, the authors over at 1-800 contact have done the leg work for us, surveying 1,000 people in regards to the practical perception of “peepers”.
Anastasia is expecting her boyfriend Sergei to be waiting for her when her flight arrives at St Petersburg airport.
But as she lands he texts to say that, due to unforeseen work commitments, a friend will be picking her up instead.
So far, so normal.
Later, as Anastasia is approaching her apartment building in the friend’s car, a minibus with blacked-out windows screeches into their path. Armed men in masks jump out and take her driver friend away.
Anastasia is led to the back of the car she was travelling in. The men begin rifling through her things in the boot and discover a small packet full of white powder.
Surrounded by men clad in black special ops uniforms, a female plain-clothes detective turns to her: “You’re suspected of supplying banned substances.”
The colour in Anastasia’s face swiftly drains away.
“You must be mistaken. That’s not mine,” she says, smiling nervously.
“Then whose is it? Enough of the games!” a man barks.
The questions continue, until the man opens the packet to reveal a small pink box.
“And what’s this?” he asks.
“No idea!” she replies, her voice breaking.
Suddenly the man gets down on one knee, rips off his mask and shouts: “Marry me!”
It’s Sergei, and it turns out he’s the only one here who actually works in law enforcement. The others work for an “extreme proposal” service – part of an industry established in Russia in recent years.
The gender gap is a big problem in the Middle Kingdom – and its ‘leftover men’ are going to great lengths to find a wife.
In China, there is a name for unmarried men over 30. Shengnan, meaning “leftover men” have yet to find a wife – and in a country with a growing gender gap, that’s a big problem.
By 2020, it’s estimated there will be 30 million more men than women looking for a partner
China has many millions more men than women, a hangover of the country’s one-child policy, which was overturned in 2015, though its effects will last decades more. The gender imbalance is making it hard for many men to find a partner – and the gap is likely to widen. By 2020, it’s estimated there will be 30 million more men than women looking for a partner. In his book, The Demographic Future, American political economist Nicholas Eberstadt cites projections that by 2030, more than a quarter of Chinese men in their 30s will not have married.
Demand for exotic pets and collectors’ items drives a flourishing illegal trade in beetles, spiders, and more.
SPECIAL AGENT RYAN Bessey was in his office at the New Jersey branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in Galloway, on September 23, 2015, when he took a call from a colleague in the intelligence unit. The analyst told him that French customs officers had seized 115 emperor scorpions in two shipments from Cameroon. They were addressed to a man in Metuchen, New Jersey, named Wlodzimie Lapkiewicz.
If French authorities considered the bust important enough to tell the U.S. about it, Lapkiewicz was worth looking into, Bessey thought. He began to do some digging.
Where did you find your last boyfriend or girlfriend, and the one behind that? Did they catch your eye while strolling through a park? Or did you find them perched on the edge of a barstool, sipping a Manhattan? Were you introduced through friends? Or was it a meet-cute situation?
Yeah, right. You know you totally met them online – on a dating website after filling out a meticulous profile, or just swiping right. A new study from Stanford sociologist and lead author Michael Rosenfeld shows that most heterosexual couples today meet on the internet (or smartphone). His research was just published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the summer of 2016 I was very unhappy. I was coming up on my year anniversary of living in London, where we had moved from Brooklyn for my husband’s job, but I still felt pitifully lonely and poorly adjusted to the culture. I reentered therapy, tried to socialize often, started volunteering, and focused on doing things for pleasure rather than out of obligation.
But there was one thing that alleviated my sadness more than others: I learned to drive a stick shift.
In Europe, automatics were more expensive to rent, so it was in my best interest to try to overcome any manual driving anxiety head-on. My husband and I decided to spend two weeks in France, and I spent much of that vacation stalling out on country roads, navigating dreaded traffic circles, and ultimately speeding down the highways. When I returned to London I told people about the beaches and baguettes in France, but I mostly wanted to talk about how I could now officially drive stick.
I had discovered the beauty of “micromastery”: working to develop competence in a single, concrete skill. The term was coined by the writers Tahir Shah and Robert Twigger; Twigger later published his 2017 book, Micromastery: Learn Small, Learn Fast, and Unlock Your Potential to Achieve Anything, which contains instructions for laying a brick wall, making sushi, and brewing beer. In the introduction, Twigger writes that he was stymied by the idea that he had to work for years to acquire any truly valuable skill, but that he still wanted to learn and create, so he decided to focus on making the perfect omelet: his first micromastery.
New research shows that one in 10 of them over 65 engages in college-style drinking behavior
Binge drinking is often portrayed as a college thing. But this risky form of imbibing actually declined among U.S. university students from 2005 to 2014. It is now most prevalent among people from 25 to 34 and is increasing among people over 50. And new research finds that 10.6% of seniors 65 and older are binge drinkers — though the actual total is almost surely higher.
Kimchi, K-pop, and K-dramas. Welcome to Hallyu 2.0, in which everyone in the West is losing their minds over all things Korean.
Playing a starring role is a glorious onslaught of Korean beauty products, with the K-Beauty market now valued at over $13 billion, and $7.2 billion of which is from facial skin care alone. Serums, acids, oils, cushion compacts, CC creams, BB creams, masks that bubble on your face, masks to sleep in, volcanic clay, and snail slime are seeing improbably explosive popularity, and they’ve done so with accessible pricing and cute packaging that has grown women reaching for panda face masks.
“What people don’t see is the amount of government support and PR that drives interest.”
Jude Chao, director of marketing for BeautyTap and somewhat of an oracle on K-Beauty (who also happens to have excellent skin) believes in empowering the masses with education on K-Beauty ingredients. (Her blog, Fifty Shades of Snail, is a solid starting point if you’re overwhelmed by the 12,000 active brands on the market, the proliferation of which Chao believes is no coincidence.)
“Robots And Racism,” a study conducted by the Human Interface Technology Laboratory in New Zealand and published by the country’s University of Canterbury, suggests people perceive physically human-like robots to have a race and therefore apply racial stereotypes to white and black robots.
Have you ever noticed the popularity of white robots?
You see them in films like Will Smith’s “I, Robot” and Eve from “Wall-E.” Real-life examples include Honda’s Asimo, UBTECH’s Walker, Boston Dynamics’ Atlas, and even NASA’s Valkyrie robot. All made of shiny white material. And some real-life humanoid robots are modeled after white celebrities, such as Audrey Hepburn and Scarlett Johansson.
The reason for these shades of technological white may be racism, according to new research.
Scientists are debunking the link to hyperactivity
Contrary to decades of popular belief (and anecdotal evidence from generations of parents), a new study has found that there is no such thing as a sugar rush. That’s right. The sugar rush is a myth. Rather than making people feel energized and hyped, the new research suggests eating sweet foods actually causes people to experience the opposite: fatigue and a lack of alertness.
The results — which were published in June in the journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews — come from a meta-analysis of 31 published studies involving almost 1,300 people. A team of European researchers sought to understand the effect of sugar on people’s moods, including anger, alertness, depression, and fatigue. Overall, they wanted to know how does this carbohydrate impact both the way people feel in terms of pleasure, as well as cognitive ability and sharpness.
