Modern tech like AI has made it easy, nearly effortless, to scam people. Some of the most vulnerable Americans who are 60 and older become easy prey for scammers using a range of techniques, including romance scams and celebrity scams, wherein a con artist digitally masks themselves as someone else entirely to trick someone into thinking they need money.
A new Federal Trade Commission report digs into the numbers and found that fraud targeting older adults blew up from $600 million in 2020 to a massive $3 billion reported in 2025, with total unrecorded damages potentially reaching $119.5 billion.
Older Americans are an easy target because of unfamiliarity with modern tech and the sophistication of modern scams. That, combined with the vast majority of American wealth tied up among the baby boomers and members of the silent generation, and you’ve got a demographic right before scams.
Scammers Stole $3 Billion From Older Americans in 2025, New FTC Report Reveals
Investment scams topped the chart with over $1 billion swiped, more often than not initiated through social media traps. But good old-fashioned phone calls yielded some of the highest individual losses. Older consumers were “over four times (324%) more likely than younger people to report losing money on a tech support scam; (2) over two times (112%) more likely to report a loss on a prize,” according to the report.
Bank transfers served as the primary pipeline for high-dollar thefts, though credit cards were the most frequent payment method overall. The FTC report doesn’t quantify how much of this is happening through AI, but given how rapidly the tech has infiltrated modern society, one could assume AI is used frequently, making digital extortion schemes harder to spot.
The world has changed. Everything we know is backwards now that women are getting arrested for traditionally male crimes.
According to local reporting from ABC4 Utah, 44-year-old Christine Chao of Rosemead, California, has been charged with automobile homicide while allegedly using a handheld device to watch porn, causing a fatal three-car wreck on Interstate 15 in Juab County, Utah.
Construction slowed traffic near Levan. Chao, driving a blue SUV, allegedly failed to hit the brakes, slamming directly into the back of a white sedan, shoving it into a black SUV. The impact forced all three vehicles off the highway. The passenger in the white sedan suffered a severe head injury and died at the scene despite a medical helicopter landing to deliver emergency care.
Woman Accused of Watching Porn While Driving, Causing Fatal Three-Car Crash
When Utah Highway Patrol troopers investigated the crash site, they noticed something was missing: brake marks on the asphalt that would’ve suggested that Chao hit the brakes. No marks meant she plowed straight into the white sedan at full speed. She admitted it to first responders, prompting investigators to check her phone.
A search warrant that pried open her phone records showed that she was actively browsing a porn video site less than two minutes before the crash. Chao is now facing a second-degree felony charge.
A raise feels great for a paycheck or two. Then it becomes your regular salary, and somehow you can’t imagine surviving on what you made six months ago.
Your personality might change a little, too. In a new study, researchers led by Wen-Dong Li of the Chinese University of Hong Kong analyzed data from 11 long-term studies involving up to 134,515 working adults across five countries. They examined how people’s incomes and personalities changed over periods ranging from four to 20 years.
People who started earning more money generally became a little more conscientious and emotionally stable afterward. They were also slightly less agreeable and less outgoing. In other words, a bigger paycheck might help you get your sh*t together while making you a little less interested in everyone else’s.
A New Study Suggests Getting Richer Might Change Your Personality in Unexpected Ways
There are a few possible explanations. Higher-paying positions typically come with greater responsibility, so people have to become more organized and better at handling stress. At the same time, demanding jobs can eat into your social life, and having more authority might make you less concerned about what other people think.
Psychologist Paul Piff has explored how money influences behavior, including an experiment involving a rigged game of Monopoly. One player started with twice the money, and the wealthier players became increasingly pushy as the game went on. Even better, they started crediting their success to their own abilities, despite having an unfair advantage from the beginning.
Piff’s research has also found that drivers of more expensive cars were more likely to cut off pedestrians at crosswalks. “The more wealth you have, the less attentive to other people you become,” he told Marketplace.
The relationship between income and personality also goes the other way. People who became more conscientious and emotionally stable were also more likely to earn higher salaries down the road. Oddly enough, becoming more outgoing was associated with slightly lower future income, although Li suggested that could depend on how much social interaction someone’s job requires. The strongest associations appeared a little over a year after a change and weakened over time.
The effects were small, and the researchers relied on self-reported surveys, so they couldn’t establish that earning more actually caused the personality changes. Still, Li told PsyPost that “personality traits are not set in stone.”
By all means, ask for that raise. Just remember to be nice to the people who knew you when you were broke.
Getting ghosted used to be the worst thing that could happen after a decent first date. The bar has dropped since then.
And dating wasn’t exactly going great to begin with. A 2023 Pew Research Center report found that 46% of Americans who had used dating apps or websites described their experiences as negative. Between people disappearing without explanation and others keeping you interested with absolutely no intention of dating you, it’s easy to see why. Here are six dating behaviors you might recognize, even if you’ve never heard their ridiculous names.
1. Breadcrumbing
A breadcrumber gives you just enough attention to keep you interested, usually a random “hey stranger” or an Instagram like at a questionable hour, without ever making actual plans.
In a study of 626 adults, researchers found that people who’d been breadcrumbed reported greater loneliness and lower life satisfaction. Ghosting, meanwhile, had no statistically significant association with those outcomes. At least when someone disappears, you eventually stop expecting a text.
2. Monkey Branching
Monkey branching is when someone starts pursuing their next relationship before ending the one they’re already in. They want another person lined up before breaking things off, presumably because spending a few Friday nights by themselves is simply too much to ask.
Dyllan Watkins, a Neuroscience BSc holder, in collaboration with poly dating platform Sister Wives, told Body+Soul that this behavior “could stem from an insecurity around trust or fear of abandonment.” Unfortunately, the person they’re currently dating gets to deal with the consequences.
3. Phubbing
Phubbing is short for phone snubbing, and it’s when someone scrolls through their phone while you’re attempting to have a conversation.
Baylor University researcher James Roberts found that people who experienced more phubbing from their partners reported greater conflict and lower relationship satisfaction. It’s hard to feel appreciated when you’re competing with someone’s Instagram feed or fantasy football league.
4. Floodlighting
Floodlighting is when someone unloads deeply personal information before you’ve had hardly any time to get to know each other. You’re 20 minutes into a first date and already know all about their childhood trauma and the ex who ruined their life.
Brené Brown has described this behavior as a way of protecting yourself from vulnerability. If the other person backs away, the floodlighter can convince themselves that opening up was a mistake.
5. Orbiting
Orbiting is when someone stops texting you but continues watching everything you post on social media. They might even like a photo once in a while. You haven’t had an actual conversation in weeks, but they’re still keeping up with your life on Instagram.
6. Cloaking
Cloaking takes ghosting a step further. Someone you’ve been talking to or dating disappears and blocks you everywhere, including the dating app where you originally matched. They’ve cut off every possible way to contact them, leaving you with no explanation and no opportunity to even ask what happened.
It’s pretty incredible how much effort some people will put into avoiding a conversation that could be over in two minutes.
The neck doesn’t get much credit as a sexy body part. It probably should.
Men on Reddit have been discussing this for years. In an r/AskMen thread, guys admitted there’s something incredibly attractive about a woman putting her hair up or sweeping it over one shoulder to expose her neck. One called the move “so f***ing attractive,” while another described the neck as “a really intimate spot on the body.” A third guy said he liked it because it’s “right above the boobs.” Okay, Beavis.
There’s some research to back up the neck’s reputation as an erogenous zone. Bangor University neuroscientist Oliver Turnbull and his colleagues asked nearly 800 people to rate 41 body areas according to how sexually stimulating they found them. The neck ranked near the top, with women rating it slightly higher than men. Feet didn’t get much love.
Men Say This Overlooked Female Body Part Is Incredibly Attractive
Turnbull was interested in why certain places feel good when touched sexually, while others…not so much. After all, your neck and forehead both contain sensory receptors, but most people would probably prefer a kiss on the neck.
There’s also something intimate about letting another person get that close. “Letting someone touch the neck is a major act of trust, so, understandably, some people hate it,” sex and relationship therapist Cate Campbell told Metro. Some people love having their neck kissed, while others would prefer their partner keep their mouth elsewhere.
And there’s an important difference between kissing someone’s neck and putting pressure on it. Sexual choking has become increasingly common, especially among younger adults, and Indiana University sex researcher Debby Herbenick has spent years studying the risks.
“There is truly no safe way to choke someone,” she told Savage Love. Even relatively light pressure can restrict blood flow to the brain, with potentially serious consequences. Her research has also raised concerns about people experiencing choking during otherwise consensual sex without being asked first.
If you happen to find someone’s neck incredibly attractive, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to give it some attention. Just make sure they’re interested in that attention, too. And keep your hands away from their throat.
True crime fans know all about the love letters Ted Bundy received while sitting in prison. It’s a bizarre piece of history, especially considering the man was responsible for murdering numerous young women. And somehow, he still had women lining up to date him.
Bundy even married Carole Ann Boone during his murder trial. But forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland told HuffPost that these women aren’t necessarily attracted to the crimes themselves. For some, a man serving a life sentence can be “the perfect boyfriend”—after all, you know exactly where he is at all times.
The fascination with Bundy got University of São Paulo researcher Katharina da Silva wondering what draws people to partners with less-than-lovely personalities. Is there something about certain people that makes narcissism or manipulation attractive, even when everyone else can see the warning signs? To investigate, she and her colleagues surveyed 400 Brazilian adults for a study examining personality traits and romantic preferences.
Scientists Found Something Interesting About People Who Date Manipulative Partners
Participants answered questions about their own levels of narcissism, manipulation, and psychopathy, collectively known as the Dark Triad. They also rated how attractive they found those qualities in a potential partner. According to PsyPost, people who scored higher in these traits were generally more interested in dating someone similar. Narcissists preferred narcissists, and manipulators were drawn to other manipulators.
The researchers also asked participants to rate hypothetical partners on a scale of 1 to 7, and the difference was quite substantial. A kind, considerate person scored nearly 6, while someone described as calculating and willing to do whatever it takes scored about 2.4. Add a history of physical assault, and that number dropped to 1.5.
And money couldn’t save them either. Neither could fame or being ridiculously good-looking. Even when researchers gave the violent hypothetical partner a fortune, celebrity status or an attractive appearance, people still weren’t interested. Da Silva suspects the assault was enough to put people off, regardless of the other qualities.
“Prosociality still remains a far more desirable trait in the context of mate choice,” she told PsyPost.
There are limitations, of course. The partners were fictional descriptions without photos, and the participants were mostly educated adults recruited online. Since every hypothetical partner with appealing qualities also had a history of violence, the researchers couldn’t determine how people might respond to a wealthy, attractive manipulator without an assault charge.
So if a friend’s exes all seem cut from the same cloth, the common thread might be the friend.
In the late-night/early-morning hours of Monday, October 26, October’s full moon will peak at 12:12 a.m. EDT. Known as the Hunter’s Moon, it will appear bright and nearly full in the sky for the day or two before and after its peak. The best time to spot it in all its glory is Sunday evening, weather permitting.
Here’s what you should know about the Hunter’s Moon, including its historical context and spiritual meaning.
What Is the Hunter’s Moon?
According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, “October’s Full Moon is traditionally known as the Hunter’s Moon—a name that reflects the seasonal shift from gathering crops to preparing meat for winter. Following the Harvest Moon, fields are typically cleared, leaves have fallen, and animals are easier to spot in open landscapes. At the same time, game such as deer and other wildlife have fattened up over the summer and early fall, making this an ideal time for hunting.”
Historically, moonlight has helped hunters spot wildlife during the autumn season.
“The bright Moon rising soon after sunset provided extra evening light, allowing hunters to track game longer into the night,” The Old Farmer’s Almanac states on its website. “For generations, this was the season to hunt, preserve meat, and lay in a store of provisions to sustain families through the long winter months ahead.”
According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, some alternative names for this full moon include: Drying Rice Moon, Falling Leaves Moon, Freezing Moon, Ice Moon, and Migrating Moon.
Spiritual Meaning of Hunter’s Moon
The Hunter’s Moon holds deep spiritual symbolism, representing the following themes:
Introspection
Both autumn and full moons mark wonderful times to reflect and dig deeper within ourselves. As the Hunter’s Moon sheds light for hunters to track their game, it might also highlight ways you can improve yourself or your life. Don’t be afraid of the personal truths you uncover during this full moon.
Release
Most full moons are associated with release, and the Hunter’s Moon is no different. Just as the trees shed their dead leaves during this month, you too must let go of what no longer serves you.
Many people engage in releasing rituals during the Hunter’s Moon, writing down their insecurities or fears and safely burning or ripping up the paper. Follow what feels right to you.
Action
Autumn is associated with both endings and beginnings, and many view October as a time to take action on your goals. If you feel inspired during the Hunter’s Moon, allow that energy to guide your progress. Don’t delay your plans or contemplate the best course of action; rather, take the appropriate steps toward your dreams and watch them flourish.
Connection to the Divine
This time of year is associated with a thin veil between the physical world and the spiritual realm. As a result, many view the Hunter’s Moon as highly spiritual. Some use it as a time to connect with their loved ones or ancestors who’ve passed, while others feel closer to God or whatever higher power they believe in.
If spirituality is important to you, find ways to connect with yours during this full moon, whether through prayer, meditation, or another personal practice.
Elder millennials were technically alive the last time Halley’s Comet came around, though most of us were still learning to walk. And it won’t officially be back until 2061.
But there’s a way to see pieces of it this week. NASA meteor expert Bill Cooke suggested something for anyone who doesn’t want to wait another 35 years. “For those who haven’t seen Comet Halley, if you don’t want to wait for its return, you can at least go out and see the Orionids,” he told CNN. This year’s Orionid meteor shower peaks tonight, Wednesday, Oct. 21, into Thursday morning.
Every October, Earth passes through a trail of dust and rock left behind by Halley’s Comet. Those particles burn up in our atmosphere, giving us the Orionids. The same comet debris also produces the Eta Aquariids meteor shower in May. Meanwhile, Halley’s Comet is out near Neptune’s orbit, absolutely nowhere near us.
And these things freaking move. Orionid meteors enter Earth’s atmosphere at around 41 miles per second, making them some of the fastest meteors we can see. They can produce bright streaks, the occasional fireball, and glowing trails that hang around for a few seconds afterward.
A Meteor Shower Made From Halley’s Comet Is Peaking Tonight. Here’s When to Look Up.
Unfortunately, the moon isn’t doing anyone any favors this year. A bright waxing gibbous moon will wash out many fainter meteors on Wednesday night. According to NASA, your best chance comes after it sets around 3 a.m. local time. Under ideal conditions, the Orionids can produce 10 to 20 meteors per hour, although people in suburban areas will probably see closer to three to six.
If you’re going to watch, find somewhere away from city lights and give your eyes time to adjust. Bring a blanket and something comfy to sit on, especially if you’ll be out there a while. You won’t need a telescope, and there’s no reason to stare directly at Orion. The meteors can appear anywhere in the sky.
Fun fact: Mark Twain had an interesting connection to Halley’s Comet. He was born in 1835, the year it passed, and predicted he’d die when it returned. In 1909, he wrote, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.” He died on April 21, 1910, one day after the comet reached its closest point to the Sun.
If you’re willing to get out of bed at 3 a.m., you might catch a few pieces of the same comet. At least you won’t have to wait another 35 years.
Another needless, endless war. Rising living costs and gas prices. The fact that the richest 1 percent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 percent combined, or the straight-up corruption happening in the White House. As the old saying goes, if you’re not mad, you’re not paying attention.
But what does spirituality teach us about how to respond to our anger? Is it wise to try to let it go? Should we practice imagining clouds floating gently by and take a deep breath?
I don’t think so. For one, it’s not that simple! There’s way too much happening inside my heart when I’m pissed off to pretend that I’m full of calm and kindness. Plus, this kind of spiritual bypassing is as insulting as it is ineffective. When we try to force a feeling, we fundamentally misunderstand the gift that anger has to give us: a deeper insight into our pain and a genuine compassion that enables wise action for justice.
That said, I don’t want to walk around like a fire-breathing dragon or endlessly stew in my resentment either. So I reached out to some trustworthy religious voices to see what spiritual traditions can teach us about effective responses to our rage — and how it can give us insight without overwhelming us.
Underneath your anger is a broken heart
Lama Rod Owens is a Buddhist teacher in Atlanta and the author of Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger. The first thing he tells me is that we have to acknowledge our anger. “A lot of us actually don’t know what anger feels like. We’re just reacting to it,” he says. And that rings true. I’m still learning to notice the physical signs of rage: My head gets hot; my stomach tight; my throat fills with the scream that I’m only just able to contain.
That physicality is central to Owens’s definition of anger: The mental and physical tension out of which aggression arises. And that aggressive response is what gets me into trouble — when I snap at my husband or give demon eyes at those who surely have headphones but are choosing not to use them. If I’m not careful, I won’t even notice how rageful I am until my simmering pot of fury suddenly comes to a boil.
Noticing that tension can be tricky, Owens says, because “a lot of people get gaslit around their anger, particularly women and femme folks.” It can be radical to simply admit that anger is arising in you. Owens is very careful with language here. Instead of saying that we are angry, he encourages us to say that we feel angry. “I know it’s very nuanced,” he explains, “but when people start thinking about an experience rather than being something, it really opens up space.”
And that space gives us what we need to take the next step. Which, surely, is to move past our anger?
No, he argues. The path of liberation is through anger — not to “get over it.” Owens learned this through personal experience, as well as through the wisdom teachings of his Buddhist lineage. As a Black, queer man living in America, he’s had plenty to be angry about (while also having to navigate the harmful stereotype that as a Black man he’s inherently angry). But, he writes in his book, “I wasn’t pissed off because of racism or homophobia or something else. I was actually deeply, deeply hurt.” Through disciplined meditation, Owens realized that his anger was a secondary emotion. Meaning, there was a primary experience that sat underneath the anger. And that primary experience was pain and sadness and a deeper sense of heartbrokenness.
“It’s like you’re not just angry, experiencing anger about the world. You’re hurt by the world, you’re saddened by the world, you’re grieving the world,” he says.
Learning to sit with that anger shifted things over time. As Owens practiced noticing and naming his rage instead of trying to push it away or acting out in aggression, he found a way to be with it instead.
His Buddhist lineage taught him to think of anger simply as energy. And like any energy, he learned to experience it rather than to react to it: “In Buddhism, we would consider the essence [of anger] to be empty…it’s just energy that can be shaped or misunderstood by consciousness.”
To be clear, he says, “It’s not like the anger disappeared,” but rather that Owens experienced enough space around the anger that allowed him to name the heartbreak that was underneath it.
And once he could do that, he noticed a completely different feeling flooding in.
Moving through anger to tender compassion
Nate DeGroot has seen the same connection. DeGroot is a rabbi based in Detroit and the director of the Shalom Center. In his Jewish tradition, anger isn’t just something only humans experience — God gets angry, too. Think of the flood sent to punish humankind that Noah avoids by building the ark, for example. But, DeGroot explains, God’s anger only lasts a moment.
In fact, in Jewish tradition, the Talmud records people questioning exactly how long God’s anger lasts — with some claiming that it remains only for a 15,888th of an hour (which comes to just under half a second), and others saying God’s wrath lasts as long as it takes to say the word “moment” in Hebrew, a word with two syllables. Either way, it only lasts a short while, because a deeper, more enduring compassion quickly emanates from God’s being.
As the parent of two small kids, DeGroot empathizes with both God’s anger — and the love that supersedes it. When his kids mess around, he says, “I’m frustrated!…why did they fling the blue toothpaste on the white shade in the bathroom and now it’s forever stained? I’ve got to bring the rug into the rug cleaner for the fifth time in two years because they peed on it in the middle of the night!” he says, laughing. But those temporary flares of frustration sit within a wider circle of parental care. “I really relate to… this notion of the moment of anger [being] situated within a broader, more expansive, everlasting love,” he tells me.
Once we’ve properly noticed our anger and named the heartbreak it masks, what will (hopefully!) follow is waves of compassion for ourselves and everyone else that is hurting. And it is from that place that you can actually take action.
From compassion comes a community for justice
Najeeba Syeed is the executive director of Interfaith at Augsburg in Minneapolis and has a long history of doing conflict resolution work. She explains that in Islam, too, the Prophet Muhammad experiences anger. Early in his mission as he travels from one place to another, he’s stoned by angry villagers who reject him. “He was given a choice,” she tells Vox. “Should the divine force go and destroy this community, or should this community have reprieve for what they’ve done?”
The Prophet Muhammad chooses forgiveness over revenge. But there’s both spiritual wisdom and strategy at play in that choice: Anger can separate us from the very people we need to be connected to when seeking justice, Syeed says. “It makes us incapable of seeing the experience of others,” she says. And it is precisely the experience of other people we need to be aware of when building coalitions that will be able to solve the problems that make us angry. Inequality and corruption and rising health care costs are not going to change if we remain atomized and mad. We have to work together.
“Okay, you’re angry,” Syeed affirms, “But who is the you? Who is in the collective? Who is impacted? If we don’t have a larger identity than our political affiliation — by that I mean the neighborliness, some sense of community that transcends that identitarian political affiliation alone — then we may actually destroy ourselves in the process.”
“If you [take action] by yourself, is it really going to change at the social level?” she asks. “You still have to be able to build allies, and you still have to be able to build connection.”
That’s what the Prophet Muhammad was doing in exhibiting restraint with the angry villagers. In leaving them unpunished, he was later able to build an alliance with them in his campaign to spread his message through the region.
In the Muslim tradition, a judge is forbidden from making a ruling when angry because it is understood that justice cannot come from rage. Anger helps us cut through distractions and focus on the work that needs to be done — but that work for justice must come from a deeper place of love.
So, how should we think of anger? Not as something to indulge — but nor should we try to avoid it. Anger is like an alarm bell, telling us something is wrong. When we notice it arising, we must inspect the heartbreak that lies underneath and allow for our innate compassion to emerge. And then guided by that love — and a dash of strategy — we can decide how to act.
And act we should! Syeed shares a popular saying in the Islamic world: One must tie their own camel. It means that we humans have to intervene in the world; it isn’t just up to the divine to act for us. So: Have hard conversations guided by your morals! Vote in the midterms and in local elections! Call your electeds! Organize your neighbors and your workplace! But do it out of that deeper compassion that guides wise decision-making.
Due to a series of unforced errors on the part of certain leaders in the federal government, gas prices have gone absolutely bonkers. Where about a year and a half ago I was paying around $2.90 a gallon in my neck of the woods, last night I paid $4.50 a gallon to fill up. It’s madness. If you see anything sub four dollars, it feels like you’re having a hallucination. Now imagine what it must have been like for folks at one Georgia intersection who saw gas at 97 cents a gallon.
According to reports from WJCL-22, a grudge match erupted on Marietta Street in Powder Springs between rival Amoco and Sunoco gas stations. Amoco management followed a strict policy of keeping its fuel five cents cheaper than the competition. Sunoco matched every price cut.
Drivers Went Wild After a Gas Station Price War Sent Prices Below $1
What followed was a petty race to the bottom that represents the true promise of American capitalism, the one that never quite came to fruition. People formed huge lines at both stations as prices went from $2.54 to $1.44 to $1.39 to eventually below a dollar, bottoming out at $0.97 per gallon. For context, Georgia state average gas price is somewhere at $3.77, while the national average, according to AAA at the time of writing, is $4.27 a gallon.
Word quickly spread, and people from all around made the trek to the rival stations. One truck driver interviewed said he normally drops $90 to fill his tank, but drove off having spent only $15.
The frenzy was so wild, both stations were so crammed with cars, that local cops had to step in and block access to the pumps to let the congestion clear. Once things died down a bit, motorists who lingered around the area came rushing back to grab gas at $1.14 a gallon. Both stations eventually ended their weird price-dropping standoff and eventually reverted to normal prices the next day.
We all need a place to ourselves where we can just let it all out. Usually, that means venting deep-seated emotional baggage, but let’s be honest: some of us just need a designated safe zone to unleash our horrid, rancid farts.
A woman who owns a hotel in Shanklin on the Isle of Wight, England, is providing just such a sanctuary, where those of us who are prone to wild fits of gastrointestinal distress can freely express ourselves. According to the Isle of Wight County Press, the Fig Tree Hotel hosted a sanctuary called “The Art of Letting Go,” tailored specifically for those cursed with the winds. From October 1 to the 5th, the retreat invited guests to stop forcing silence upon their gastrointestinal systems and to instead release the screams within.
The event was co-facilitated by yoga therapist and energy psychologist Marion Bevington, an IBS sufferer who literally wrote the book on flatulence, a book called Afraid to Fart – And the art of following through, featuring what appears to be an AI cover of a sheep and wool clothing among angry wolves who, given the book’s subject matter, are likely more angry at the sheep for farting than they are for its devious infiltration of the pack.
People Actually Paid to Attend a Wellness Retreat Where Farting Was Encouraged
When attracting such flatulent customers, one would wonder if exhibiting that flatulence would get one booted off the premises. Bevington assured attendees that nobody would be kicked out, blacklisted, or face any consequences for stinking up the joint.
Ultimately, the core philosophy is to get over the shame of flatulence and know how to gracefully excuse yourself from a social situation when you’re about to drop a big one. A valuable lesson we should all be so privileged to learn.
Yes, the event is long over by now, but maybe the viral spread of this story will encourage Bevington and the gang to make the Fart Retreat a regular thing and possibly become the fart hotspot of the world.
Earth’s core is leaking, and it has been for a long time.
Earth’s core, frankly, sounds insane. It’s a molten ball covered in a lava ocean that spews lethal gases and occasionally ejects some of itself through volcanoes. It used to be so wild that the planet was uninhabitable, but it eventually settled down enough for humans to exist on it.
According to a study in Science Advances by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China, that core is constantly oozing chemical leftovers from the birth of our Solar System. For years, scientists have debated whether these weird deep-Earth ingredients get trapped in the mantle when the planet first cooled, or whether Earth’s core is slowly leaking material into the outer layers.
The Center of Earth Is Leaking Ancient Material, and Scientists Are Trying to Understand Why
To figure it out, scientists used computer simulations to model how hydrogen moves. Like sodas or cigarettes, hydrogen comes in a “light” version and a “heavy” version. The heavy one is called deuterium. If early Earth froze, the heavy and light versions would be mixed pretty evenly everywhere. But when scientists look at lava from volcanic hotspots in Iceland and Baffin Island, they find way more of the superlight version of hydrogen.
This means that the original cooling process couldn’t have caused this current setup. Instead, light hydrogen trapped in the planet’s metal core billions of years ago, when the Sun was forming, is actively leaking into the mantle like air from a punctured tire.
This light hydrogen, along with ancient helium and tungsten, rides hot lava streams to the planet’s surface, meaning that for the past several billion years ancient gases trapped in Earth’s core have been slowly burping their way out.
The plaintiffs in the case K.M.K. v. Washington Interscholastic Activities Association effectively want the Supreme Court to bar trans women from women’s sports teams at high schools and universities. | Heather Diehl/Getty Images
One of the last decade’s most consequential changes to how the Supreme Court operates is the growth of the so-called shadow docket — a process that allows the justices to decide cases unusually quickly, and often without full briefing or oral argument.
Historically, the Court would typically allow contentious legal issues to percolate in the lower courts for months or even years before the justices agreed to decide one of those issues. Then they’d spend months reading briefs, hearing arguments, and debating the case amongst themselves before they finally issued an opinion. This slow process existed because the Supreme Court is the final word on many legal questions — the Court can even override Congress if it claims a law is unconstitutional — and so it should be cautious before it hands down a decision that cannot easily be displaced.
A new case, which recently arrived on the Court’s shadow docket, embodies all the reasons why America’s highest Court should act carefully and slowly. K.M.K. v. Washington Interscholastic Activities Association involves a highly contentious issue — the plaintiffs in the case effectively want the Supreme Court to bar transgender women from women’s sports teams at high schools and universities, even in states that support trans inclusion in sports.
It also involves an appalling sexual assault allegation. One of the plaintiffs in the case is a high school women’s team wrestler who is identified only by her initials because she is a minor. She claims that one of her wrestling opponents, who is transgender, “forcefully” penetrated the plaintiff’s vagina with her fingers during a match.
As a memo from the local prosecutor’s office points out, if these allegations are true then K.M.K. is the victim of a very serious crime — rape in the third degree. The prosecutor’s office, however, decided not to prosecute because it concluded that it could not prove that a sex crime was committed beyond a reasonable doubt. Among other things, prosecutors spoke to the referee who officiated the match, and he said that “nothing stood out to him during the match” and that “after watching the video of the match, he could not say that the suspect’s hand placement was ‘anything out of the ordinary.’”
The school district, meanwhile, says that it has reviewed video of the match, interviewed both competitors, and that its investigation into the allegation is “still ongoing.”
K.M.K., in other words, is exactly the sort of case that the justices should step away from, sending it back down to the lower courts to gather more information and to fully think through the difficult legal issues presented by the case. Setting aside the horrifying allegations against her one-time opponent, K.M.K.’s lawyers — most of whom work for a Christian right law firm, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) — make novel legal arguments that ask the Court to make broad pronouncements that go far beyond its previous precedents.
One of their arguments, if taken seriously by the justices, could potentially make it impossible for any school athletes, whether cis or trans, to participate in competitive sports of any kind.
There is a very real risk, in other words, that the Supreme Court will, if it moves too quickly in this case, harm millions of school athletes throughout the country. The factual question of whether a particular wrestler committed a crime is separate from the legal question of whether federal law strips states of their authority over trans participation in women’s sports. And this legal question deserves more deliberation than the Court can give it if it decides this case on the shadow docket.
So what are the actual legal issues in K.M.K.?
In West Virginia v. B.P.J. (2026), the Supreme Court warned that judges should not be given the power to decide which athletes may compete on a women’s sports team. “The legislatures and the schools are better equipped — and under the Constitution, are the more appropriate entities,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for his Court, “to assess the competing medical and scientific considerations and draw appropriate lines.”
B.P.J., of course, was a loss for transgender rights. The Court rejected a constitutional challenge to state laws that forbid trans women from playing on school sports teams within that state. But the legal question in B.P.J. was whether laws barring trans women from women’s sports are allowed — a question that the Court’s Republican majority answered in the affirmative. A victory for the plaintiffs in K.M.K., by contrast, would likely establish that no state may permit trans women to compete on women’s sports teams, regardless of what the people of that state want.
This Court is often skeptical of claims by trans rights advocates, and it almost always resolves disputes between cultural liberals and religious conservatives in favor of the religious right. That said, this Court has thus far respected states’ rights on another contentious issue that is a high priority for the religious right: abortion. Although the Court’s Republican majority overruled Roe v. Wade and eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, it has rejected some attempts to restrict abortion in blue states — including by repeatedly ruling against litigants who seek to ban the abortion medication mifepristone.
So it is, at least, possible that this Court will follow a similar path in K.M.K. and conclude that the question of which team trans women should play on should be answered by the states and not the Supreme Court.
Broadly speaking, ADF raises two legal arguments against Washington state’s policy allowing trans women to play on women’s sports teams. It claims that Title IX, a federal law that bars “sex” discrimination by most schools, implicitly requires those schools to have sports teams that only cisgender women may play on. It also claims that the Court’s recent decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta (2026), which requires public schools to out trans students to their parents even if the students wish to keep their gender identity secret, also requires those schools to exclude trans women from women’s sports.
There’s no reason for the Supreme Court to decide either of these questions now, however. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in Lux v. Rodrigues (2010), when a party that lost in the lower courts seeks an injunction from a Supreme Court justice before their case is fully litigated in those lower courts, they must demonstrate that “the legal rights at issue are ‘indisputably clear.’” This rule, like many old rules disfavoring shadow docket decisions, exists to prevent the justices from rushing into a decision that may later prove unwise.
There is no plausible argument that Title IX “indisputably” bars trans women from women’s sports. That’s because, just a few months ago in B.P.J., the Court held that it was not deciding the question of “whether, under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, schools may allow biological males who identify as female to participate on girls’ and women’s sports teams.” So that’s a recent Supreme Court precedent holding that the answer to this legal question remains open.
Moreover, as the school district points out in its brief, the Court has never held that a parent’s right to direct the upbringing of their child includes a right to dictate which rules will be used by school sports teams. If such a right existed, a parent might insist that a school bar players of a particular race. Or they might demand that their child be allowed to play football without being tackled.
Competitive team sports simply cannot exist if one player’s mother is allowed to demand changes to the rules that neither the league nor the other players support.
In any event, at this stage in the litigation it should be enough for the Court to say that the unique right claimed by K.M.K.’s mother — the right to dictate which rules a multischool competitive sports league will use — is not “indisputably clear” under current law.
What should happen when the Court eventually decides whether blue states may allow trans women to play on women’s teams?
It is, to borrow from Lux, indisputably clear that the Court should not give the K.M.K. plaintiffs the sweeping policy change that they seek in a shadow docket ruling. But the justices cannot avoid, forever, the question of whether federal law forbids trans women from playing on women’s teams. So how should they resolve this question when it is more properly presented to them?
Let’s dispose of the plaintiffs’ Mirabelli argument first. While the Court has held that parents have some right to direct the education of their children, prior to Mirabelli, this right was construed narrowly. One older case held that states may not forbid parents from sending their children to private schools. Another held that the government may not bar teachers at these schools from teaching the German language.
Prior to the Court’s barely explained decision in Mirabelli, however, the Court had never held that parents may dictate how public schools operate, and the school district’s brief in K.M.K. cites several court decisions warning against giving parents too much authority over public schools. (The Court did hold, in Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), that parents who object to a school’s curriculum on religious grounds may opt their children out of certain lessons. But the K.M.K. plaintiffs do not raise a religious objection.) As the Supreme Court said in Prince v. Massachusetts (1944), states may “restrict the parent’s control by requiring school attendance, regulating or prohibiting the child’s labor and in many other ways.”
It’s clear from Mirabelli that the Court’s Republicans do not share this caution about judicial control over public schools. But, because Mirabelli was so thinly reasoned, it’s also impossible for outside observers to determine why these justices want an unprecedented amount of control over public schooling, or whether they have good reasons for asserting this new power.
I will simply reiterate the school district’s objection that, once the Supreme Court opens the door to parents dictating which rules will be used in school sporting competitions, the lawsuits will not end with parents seeking to kick trans women out of women’s sports. The next parent may object to their child wrestling Black people. Or they may demand that their child be given protective gear that gives them a competitive advantage. Some parents may also demand rules changes that conflict with changes demanded by other parents. And there is no principled way to distinguish these requests from a request to exclude trans women.
There are myriad problems, meanwhile, with the K.M.K. plaintiffs’ Title IX argument. That statute provides that schools that receive “Federal financial assistance” may not exclude individuals from “any education program” on “the basis of sex.” This statute has long been read to require equal treatment of men’s and women’s sports by schools that receive federal funds.
But, as the school district argues in its brief, Washington schools do not discriminate on the basis of “sex” — which the Court has defined to mean sex assigned at birth in this context. Instead, they classify athletes on the basis of gender identity. There is one team for all people who identify as male, whether trans or cis, and another team for all people who identify as female. Social conservatives may object to this arrangement, but it does not classify students based on their sex assigned at birth at all.
The K.M.K. plaintiffs’ argument is also undermined by federal regulations implementing Title IX. Those regulations provide that schools generally should not separate women and men in sports, but that they “may operate or sponsor separate teams for members of each sex where selection for such teams is based upon competitive skill or the activity involved is a contact sport.” It is quite a stretch to read regulations saying that schools “may” have sex-segregated teams to say that schools must ensure that their teams are strictly sex segregated.
Finally, recall that Title IX only applies to schools that accept federal funding — schools have the option of rejecting Title IX’s requirements if they also forego federal grants. This matters because, as the Court recently held in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections (2026), “Congress must clearly and unambiguously alert a grant recipient to any condition on federal funds.”
Thus, if there is any ambiguity about whether Title IX requires schools to exclude trans women from women’s sports, that ambiguity must be resolved against imposing any requirements on public schools. Title IX may only be read to ban trans women from women’s sports if it “clearly and unambiguously” does so.
Again, there’s no reason for the justices to resolve either of these questions because, at this early stage in the litigation, the Supreme Court should simply decline to decide K.M.K. because the plaintiffs’ legal rights are not “indisputably clear.” But this Court is often impatient, especially in cases involving culture war issues. Mirabelli was also a shadow docket case, but that didn’t stop the Court’s Republicans from inventing a new legal rule compelling teachers to out their trans students.
There’s a serious risk, in other words, that this Court will rush to decide K.M.K. before it fully considers the legal arguments on either side, or even learns whether the genuinely shocking allegations raised by the plaintiffs have merit.
This feature is from THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE of VICE magazine. Find it in a store near you, or get 4 issues each year sent straight to your door, by subscribing.
SHIBARI
What goes through your head when the dirty-fingernailed warehouse dwellers pull your hogtied body up from the floor with a butt load of Japanese kink rope? Obviously we’re sex positive here at VICE, but who else is going to warn you that some things just can’t be enjoyed in a vacuum? First it’s the kink rope, then it’s the property-guardian polycule, and before you know it the most important knot in your life is leashed around a maudlin three-legged staffy named Swampy. Mark our words: it’ll be your neck next.
MIND-ALTERING PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCES VIA APP
The tripsitter you found on TikTok. The ayahuasca “shaman” you can only book through Telegram. The DMT amuse-bouche on your neighborhood coke dealer’s WhatsApp menu pdf. Is it good that you can acquire a mind-altering psychedelic experience the same way you’d order Chinese take-out? It’s not an age-old question, is it? And therein lies your answer. Communing with the hidden mechanisms that create our shared reality via gas-station vape pen makes the machine elves sad and angry.
REWILDING YOURSELF
As with most things in life, there’s the question of how far you should take it. Tell your friends you’ve “gone paleo” and they’ll still be there when you admit you dropped it after three agonizing days of total bowel paralysis. They might not be, though, when you return from that meet-up with the prominent “barefooting” influencer having been brutally feral-mogged by the lad who’s spent six months full quadrupedal. He calls it “gorilla mode.” Why the fuck didn’t you think of gorilla mode?
ILLUSTRATION BY JOHNNY RYAN
REFERRING TO ANY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE AS A ‘PROTOCOL’
Wiping your sweaty forehead with a beer-soaked sleeve as you feel your teeth go numb from the bump you just did in the toilets. Smoking cigarette upon cigarette, pulsating with the knowledge that you and the man you just met will go home and fuck. Turning the sand-crusted page of some shit thriller, gazing out at the Aegean, before summoning the tanned waiter for another beer. It all sounds lovely, doesn’t it? It’s called “life,” and you can forget about having one if you refer to any aspect of it as a “protocol.” Bryan Johnson might have the vascular function of a teenager, but is he happy? What does he seem more like, a credible person or a husk? Handing your soul over to “metrics” is the first step on the road to measuring your son’s erections every night. There shouldn’t be any steps on that road.
POLYAMORY
Like communism and movies starring Jacob Elordi, polyamory is a nice idea in theory. A quest to blow clean through the glass ceiling of monogamy by fucking and love-bombing a bunch of people at once with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved? ‘Awesome,’ you might think. ‘Tell me more.’ Well, the catch is that it actually takes quite a lot of admin to tend diligently to one relationship, let alone five. Whether you genuinely believe the cadre of farmers’ market enthusiasts unbuttoning their Lucy & Yak dungarees to finger each other senseless after a crazy night of tabletop board games are your soulmates, or simply see yourself as a conniving Don Draper type on the make, is irrelevant. Ultimately, you will end up in a group chat arranging “radical honesty” sessions whenever someone leaves the toilet seat up and an org chart for everyone’s alternative milk preferences.
Before parasocial relationships, ADHD hyperfixations, and autistic special interests, I had what we used to call an “obsession” with @PissPigGranddad—a Twitter leftist who left America to fight ISIS. I was working a desk job in a government office and passed the time cheering for Brace Belden (aka LeninLover69) as he advanced on Raqqa. At the time, my idea of a struggle was getting the office printer to work—and here was a punk musician from San Francisco battling Islamofascism. I followed with religious devotion as Brace, and the other international volunteers, faced down an army of jihadi chauvinists who had fled lives of comfortable humiliation in Europe and the United States to establish some kind of video-game caliphate in Syria and Iraq. These opposing militias represented two sides in an epic battle of good against evil, which felt more real than the mindless, repetitive activities that made up my days. I looked at photographs of Brace posing with stray puppies and an AK-47 and thought, ‘This is what I would do if I wasn’t too much of a coward to even quit this job I hate.’ We’ve always needed militants to provide us with a little perspective; while you’re agonizing over which electric toothbrush to buy, they’re fighting for a socialist revolution; while you’re hanging out the washing, they’re strapping themselves to C4 and getting ready to do a human-rights violation. And perspective is useful, to everyone who isn’t dead.
SYNTHOL
Synthol is one of those great ideas that appears to have emerged directly from the teenage unconscious (see also: “What if having sex could be my job?”). The dubious muscle-boosting serum is made up of oil (often sesame, walnut, or paraffin), the local anesthetic lidocaine, and benzyl alcohol—ingredients that can be found, variously, in vegan protein bars, head lice shampoo, and industrial paint. Maybe there’s some logic here: in a culture of instant gratification, where petrochemicals are used to make clothes, grow food, and produce the microplastics that have turned your balls into bean bags, it makes a certain amount of sense to simply become oil. But while synthol might be a shortcut to a bulkier appearance, it won’t make you any stronger. This modern pursuit is strictly for those who regard their body as a machine that converts vanity into permanent muscle damage. As well as the health risks that come with introducing Diddy party levels of lubrication to your own bloodstream, Synthol also gives you this weird, unnaturally swollen look. There’s a reason why bodybuilders have historically preferred to risk the shrunken testicles and rage fits that come with steroids.
ADOPTING A FLESH-TEARING WILD ANIMAL FOR SOCIAL MEDIA CLOUT
If you’re gonna learn anything from anyone in this world, learn it from someone who got their face ripped clean off by a chimpanzee. The fate of Charla Nash is not one any of us should be forced to endure, yet all over social media, wannabe Dr Dolittles are forcing creatures programmed only to shit, fuck, and kill into difficult choices. The jaguarundi does not want to sit on the couch watching Schitt’s Creek with you; it wants to be nose-deep in 5000 grams of pulsing armadillo flesh somewhere in the jungles of Surinam. The slow loris is not your friend. Pretending so might snag you followers in the short term, but no one’s sticking around for the face transplant recovery journey photos.
ILLUSTRATION BY JOHNNY RYAN
COVETING A LOFT-STYLE APARTMENT
Catch you on the flip, David Mancuso. In 2026 the only people who think living in a loft is cool are spiders and Australians.
GOOD OLD-FASHIONED ALCOHOLISM
Ketamine addiction this, can’t stop tugging it to videos of anime girls’ boobs exploding in size until they bust the windows out of an office block that—why not just hit the bottle? Like a real loser? Alcohol is the highly social, highly charismatic person’s poison of choice. Just look at what the abuse of it has given the world—Tennessee Williams, Marguerite Duras, Robert Downey Jr. in his Natural Born Killers era. Yeah, buddy. You could be the last of the big-time drunks. And the best thing about that would be that there are no other big-time drunks left for you to have to listen to and smell.
This feature is from THE SELF-DESTRUCTION ISSUE of VICE magazine. Find it in a store near you, or get 4 issues each year sent straight to your door, by subscribing.
Ghosting has no winners. The person left on read spends weeks replaying every text, wondering what the hell happened. And according to new research, the person who disappeared might not feel so great about their decision, either.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of California conducted three studies for a paper. They examined people’s past experiences, hypothetical situations, and live online conversations. Their finding? “People who are ghosted underestimate how bad their conversation partners feel about ghosting them,” the authors wrote.
People who ghosted reported feeling guilty afterward, and previous research has associated ghosting with depressive symptoms. Interestingly, the guilt was worse when the ghosting happened accidentally. Maybe you forgot to respond to someone, and by the time you remembered, too much time had passed to reply without feeling awkward. So you just…never did.
Of course, feeling guilty doesn’t help the person on the receiving end. Psychologist Jennice Vilhauer wrote in Psychology Today that ghosting “creates the ultimate scenario of ambiguity,” leaving people wondering whether to worry about someone or accept the relationship is over.
Ghosting Isn’t Just Painful for the Person Left Behind, Scientists Say
Some people are also more inclined to ghost than others. A study led by psychologist Gili Freedman found that people who believe relationships are either destined to work or doomed from the beginning were 31.8% more likely to have ghosted someone. So I guess believing in soulmates can make ignoring someone’s texts a little easier.
The Cambridge researchers found that even a short message, something as basic as “sorry, can’t talk,” helped reduce the misunderstanding. A few words could spare both people unnecessary anguish.
Personally, I think ghosting is a cop-out. You can call it “protecting your peace,” and sometimes that might be true. But if you’re ghosting someone you once had a solid relationship with, I’m sorry, but it’s selfish. It’s just an excuse to avoid a hard or uncomfortable conversation.
I’ve been ghosted by someone I thought would be in my life forever (a friend, not a romantic partner), and I would have much preferred they tell me to “f*ck off” to my face than disappear without a conversation. At least I’d have known where we stood. To this day, thinking about this person is incredibly painful because I have no idea what really happened.
Feeling guilty afterward is fine, I guess. Actually having the conversation would be better.
Being single past 30 comes with a standard set of questions from aunts and coworkers, usually some version of “Are you seeing anyone?” No one ever asks if you’re actually happy.
Researchers at the University of Toronto did. Lead author Elaine Hoan and her team examined 11 years of data on 2,930 never-married Germans for a study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Participants entered the study around ages 18, 26, or 36 and had to report being single at every annual survey to qualify.
Roughly 90% maintained relatively high life satisfaction throughout the study. “Singles’ overall satisfaction with their lives remained remarkably robust,” Hoan told PsyPost. Earlier research using the same data had suggested long-term singles became less satisfied as they aged, partly because it lumped everyone into one average.
Researchers Found That Long-Term Singles Are Happier Than You Might Think
Of course, being happy with your life doesn’t mean you’re thrilled about your dating prospects. About two-thirds of the youngest participants enjoyed being single, while older participants were less enthusiastic. Sexual satisfaction varied, as well. People with higher education levels were more likely to fall into the least sexually satisfied groups. Researchers suggested that demanding academic pursuits could leave less time for sex. So, there’s another thing that isn’t mentioned when you sign up for grad school.
Most participants also expressed moderate to high interest in finding a partner. They could enjoy their lives and still want someone to share them with. The happiest singles generally scored lower in neuroticism and higher in extraversion.
The numbers aren’t much different in the U.S. A 2023 report found that 57% of single adults had no interest in dating or finding a relationship. Single men were more likely to be looking than single women. And when Pew asked singles who weren’t dating why, 72% said they enjoyed being single. That’s a lot of people who are perfectly happy spending their weekends however they damn well please.
Still, people have a hard time believing someone could be happy without a partner. Psychologist Bella DePaulo, author of Single at Heart, has studied this skepticism by asking participants to judge otherwise identical descriptions of single and married people. Even when the single person described a happy life, readers were less inclined to believe it. “If you are already happy, don’t expect marriage to make you even happier,” she wrote in Singled Out, as reported by The Christian Science Monitor.
At the next holiday dinner, “I’m good, thanks” should cover it. Assuming anyone believes you.
TikTok has yet another dating theory people treat like gospel: the 3-6-9 dating rule. This concept breaks the first nine months of dating into three stages, with only the strongest couples surviving…
What Is the 3-6-9 Dating Rule?
According to Susan Trombetti, matchmaker and CEO of Exclusive Matchmaking, the 3-6-9 dating rule is not a new concept, but it is gaining traction for its catchy name. The theory proposes the following three important stages of dating within the first year of a relationship:
0-3 Months: Honeymoon Phase
According to the 3-6-9 dating rule, a couple will remain in the honeymoon phase for the first three months of their relationship.
“The honeymoon phase is when everything is perfect, you get butterflies when you talk to this person, and nothing seems to be wrong,” Trombetti says.
3-6 Months: Conflict Stage
The 3-6-9 dating rule suggests the honeymoon phase ends after three months, starting the conflict stage. You might start to take your partner off a pedestal and acknowledge their humanness—and vice versa. This can reveal minor annoyances and potential incompatibilities. No relationship is perfect, and you’ll have arguments from time to time. But if you can learn to navigate conflict as a unit, you’ll likely survive this phase.
“The conflict stage is when you most likely will have an actual disagreement on something. Think of this as your first real fight,” Trombetti states. “This will show the other person how you communicate during conflict and how you will resolve it.”
6-9 Months: Long-Term Decision-Making Phase
By months 6-9, you should be assessing your long-term compatibility with your partner. If you have doubts, you might decide against wasting more time.
“Then the long-term decision-making stage is when you are actually deciding: Is this my person? Do I really see myself with them forever?” Trombetti explains. “This is when you start to really know if they are potentially the ‘one’ and worth pouring your time and heart into.”
Is the 3-6-9 Rule Credible?
According to Trombetti, the timing of the 3-6-9 rule does seem natural. However, she typically recommends waiting for three months before actually committing to someone, which she notes could delay the honeymoon phase.
“I do agree we typically see around 3 months to 6 months of larger conflict, and that really does show you a lot about the person,” she adds. “For 6-9 months, yes, you should know if you want to pursue someone long term, but this could happen earlier potentially if you knew the person prior or are working with someone like a matchmaker/dating coach. Timelines are relative depending on the work you have done on yourself. “
While this dating rule works in many relationships, it shouldn’t be treated as the end-all, be-all of dating advice.
“I would suggest using the timeline to your advantage as more of a check-in point for yourself,” Trombetti recommends. “For instance, I really like the 6-9 months time frame because at that stage you should start to really know if this is something you want to pursue long term. I am not saying get married right there and then, but I am saying it is a good time to recognize: Are there any red flags? Do I want this? And if you are not sure, that might be your answer right there.”
Mouth-breathing and constant sniffles don’t exactly scream “sexy time,” but you might want to reconsider. Some researchers think sex could help clear a stuffy nose for about an hour.
The research has been making the rounds again, although it was first published in the Ear, Nose & Throat Journal in 2021. It even won an Ig Nobel Prize, which recognizes scientific research that makes people laugh and then think. Researchers led by German ear, nose and throat doctor Olcay Cem Bulut recruited 18 heterosexual couples to measure their nasal breathing before and after sex. They repeated the experiment the next day using a decongestant nasal spray.
For the first hour after sex, participants experienced about the same relief they’d gotten from the nasal spray. Airflow increased by 214 milliliters per second immediately after sex, compared with 235 from the spray. Three hours later, however, their congestion had returned. The spray lasted longer, and the improvement after sex was limited to participants who were already significantly congested.
Bulut came up with the idea after noticing the effect himself. He told Insider that arousal, physical activity, and “the climax at the end can possibly help to improve nasal breathing.”
A Study Found That Having Sex Can Relieve a Stuffy Nose for Up to an Hour
There are some limitations, though. The study involved only 36 people, and researchers had usable airflow measurements from 16. Everyone also had an orgasm, so there’s no way to know if sex without one would have produced similar results.
Sex can also make a stuffy nose worse, depending on the person. There’s a condition called honeymoon rhinitis that causes people to sneeze or get a runny nose when they’re sexually aroused. Doctors have known about it since at least 1875, when one reported a patient who couldn’t think about sex without sneezing. Imagine having to explain that to someone you’re dating.
Decongestant sprays have their drawbacks, too. Don’t use products containing oxymetazoline for more than three days because they can actually make congestion worse. The researchers also suggested masturbation might produce similar relief, although they didn’t test that theory.
An orgasm and an hour of nasal relief? There are worse ways to deal with a cold.
Other than having a living plesiosaur in front of you, you probably won’t get much closer to the creature than by finding some of its bones, but maybe some of its bodily excretions would help you learn what was going on in its now-missing digestive tract. But how do you even come across the, let’s say, puke of a creature that’s been dead for tens of millions of years?
According to new research published in Geological Magazine by geologist Dirk Knaust, oil crews drilling off the Norwegian coast accidentally hauled up 160-million-year-old plesiosaur puke from deep underwater rock cores dating to the Jurassic period.
Samples range from walnut-sized to mango-sized, just in case you never want to look at those foods in the same way again.
160-Million-Year-Old Vomit Could Reveal How Prehistoric Sea Monsters Ate
Plesiosaurs were long-necked aquatic sea monsters that measured 13 to 26 feet long and looked almost exactly like you’d imagine the Loch Ness monster. When the researchers found the fossilized vomit, I didn’t immediately assume it belonged to a Jurassic creature. It could’ve been fossilized poop or maybe storm debris. Maybe it belonged to a fish or squid? But no, because they can’t cough up chunks this big.
If it was a prehistoric shark or a crocodile, they probably would’ve found some fish in there. With all other possibilities ruled out, Cryptoclididae plesiosaurs were the last possibility remaining.
These massive reptiles moved along the deep seafloor using their long necks like vacuum cleaners to scoop up bottom-dwelling invertebrates. Their teeth weren’t strong enough to grind shells, so their stomachs compacted the indigestible stuff into gross pellets they later vomited up.
But what I find most interesting is that plesiosaurs didn’t just puke wherever they swam. Scientists found the items they barfed up in what used to be shallow ancient river deltas. So, like fur seals or marine crocodiles after a big meal, these ancient aquatic beasts probably swam into safe coastal waters to chill out for a bit, eventually puking their meals into the mud before napping and heading back out to sea.
In 1873, an Argentine sailor named Luis Piedra Buena loaded a crew onto a ship called the Espora and headed toward the Strait of Le Maire, a rough stretch of ocean near Patagonia known for tearing hulls to smithereens. He risked his crew’s lives for the noble quest of murdering a bunch of penguins to harvest their grease for oil.
Somewhere along the way, the ship wrecked near Isla de los Estados. Piedra Buena and his crew suddenly became castaways, struggling to survive on unfamiliar shores. The Penguins, having no idea they came this close to being scooped up and turned into lamp oil or whatever, still don’t care about humanity’s plight.
Eventually, the crew slapped together a makeshift sailboat and made it to Chile. The penguins kept on doing their thing.
Archaeologists May Have Found the Lost Shipwreck of 19th-Century Penguin Hunters
Now, according to a study published in the journal Antiquity and reported by IFLScience, archaeologists searching around Franklin Bay have uncovered the ruined wooden ribs of a 19th-century ship, along with a crude castaway camp on a nearby hillside.
The researchers dug up salvaged ship parts, including whole timbers and a deck prism, and found a smattering of distinctly human clutter—glass bottles, buttons, beads, and tools. While this belongs to Piedra Buena and his crew, the most logical explanation, the researchers aren’t claiming that just yet, just to be safe.
There’s more testing to be done, but it’s hard to deny that the location and all the artifacts combined heavily suggest that there may have been a bunch of stranded penguin hunters who may have ripped their ship to shreds to fashion it into an improvised boat that could possibly,maybe, get them to Chile.
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