Every day, the same, again
Austrian man jailed for 19 months after tattooing Nazi symbol on his testicle
The woman who spent lockdown alone in the Arctic
New research published in the journal Psychological Science reveals a pervasive but unfounded stereotype: that women (but not men) who engage in casual sex have low self-esteem
More than 100 million people now have Calm on their smartphone. Calm promises to give the anxious, the depressed, and the isolated—as well as those looking to be a bit more present with their family, or a bit less distracted at work, or a bit more consistent in their personal habits—access to a huge variety of zen content for $15 a month, $70 a year, or $400 for a lifetime. For that, its investors have valued the company at $2 billion—roughly as much as 23andMe, Allbirds, and Oatly—making it one of just 700 private start-ups to hit the 10-digit mark. Now flush with venture capital, Calm is in the midst of becoming a full-fledged wellness empire: It is producing books, films, and streaming series, as well as $10 puzzles, $80 meditation cushions, and $272 weighted blankets.
In 2020 in the U.S., 59% of online recruitment of sex trafficking victims took place on Facebook. […] 65% of identified child sex trafficking victims recruited on social media were recruited through Facebook. [2020 Human Trafficking Report]
Anti-vaxxers are weaponizing Yelp to punish bars that require vaccine proof
last week, YouTube disclosed that it paid music companies, musicians and songwriters more than $4 billion in the prior year […] not far from the $5 billion that the streaming king Spotify pays to music industry participants NY Times]
Maren Altman isn’t a huge fan of TikTok. She’s amassed more than a million followers anyway. […] Her most intriguing videos apply astrology to a particularly daunting realm: cryptocurrency. Anything with a verifiable birthday or creation date has a birth chart that can be read and, according to astrologists, gleaned for predictive information. That means there’s astrology for … bitcoin. In her teenage years […] she started to seriously study astrology, and made a few bucks at parties giving “readings to drunk kids.” She saved that money and used it to invest in crypto. Then, she took her astrology skills to TikTok.
Is there a limit to how much worse variants can get? “The fact it has happened twice in 18 months, two lineages (Alpha and then Delta) each 50% more transmissible is a phenomenal amount of change.” […] The R0 was around 2.5 when the pandemic started in Wuhan and could be as high as 8.0 for the Delta variant […] two lineages (Alpha and then Delta) in 18 months each 50% more transmissible is a phenomenal amount of change. […] Measles is between 14 and 30 depending on who you ask […] Influenza has a much lower R0, barely above 1, but constantly mutates to side-step immunity.
