Choosing a safe but effective sunscreen is becoming a pain in the brain.
While we spent decades happily applying the sunscreen of our choice, the chemical ingredients that manufacturers used to fight the sun have been under attack. The latest salvo: a study by the US Food and Drug Administration showing that we can absorb high levels of four of those chemicals into our bloodstream after just one day of sunblock use.
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Is that a problem for our health? No one knows. In February, the FDA reiterated its call for manufacturers to do safety investigations of 12 of the sunscreen chemicals most commonly used in the United States. Those tests could take months or even years.
By now, you’ve probably been taught to gird your sun-starved skin for battle with cancer-causing cosmic rays every time you go outside. Choose a spray, choose a lotion, but by heavens, choose something! Legions of doctors, parents, and YouTube beauty influencers are unanimous on this point. But with sunscreen application evolving from a week or two at the beach every year to a constant daily slather, US health regulators want to know more about how all those photoprotective chemicals interact with people’s skin.
If they sink into tissues and get absorbed into the bloodstream, that could be a problem. Then, like other over-the-counter drugs the Food and Drug Administration oversees, sunscreens should be studied to make sure they don’t mess up people’s hormones, affect their reproductive systems, or cause cancer. Such safety testing has never been done on the active ingredients in sunscreen, because those chemicals were approved decades ago, before anyone suspected they could be absorbed into the body. Now we know it’s more than just a suspicion.
Around two or three times a week, in a small open-plan office in London, Lilith* worked with a computer in her lap, crouching underneath her desk—a rectangular table that six people shared, with short dividers between each station.
“I get easily overwhelmed with noise or an excessive amount of people around,” she said. “People working with me mostly found it funny, if not a little odd, but they were polite about it.”
There is a gut doctor, and he begs Americans: “Throw out this vegetable now.” This news is accompanied by a different image nearly every time. This morning, the plea appeared at the bottom of an article on Vox next to a photo of a hand chopping up what appears to be a pile of green apples. At other times, it has been paired with a picture of a petri dish with a worm in it. Other times, gut bacteria giving off electricity. The inside of a lotus root. An illustrated rendering of roundworms.
The gut doctor’s desperation pops up over and over, on websites like CNN and the Atlantic (and as I said, this one), in what are known colloquially as “chumboxes.” These are the boxes at the bottom of the page that have several pieces of clickbaity “sponsored content” or “suggested reading.” They’re generated by a variety of companies, but the largest two are Taboola ($160 million in funding) and Outbrain ($194 million in funding), both founded in Israel in the mid-aughts.
A nisse (Danish: and Norwegian: , tomte (Swedish:, tomtenisse, or tonttu (Finnish: is a mythological creature from Nordic folklore today typically associated with the winter solstice and the Christmas season. It is generally described as being no taller than 90 cm (3 ft), having a long white beard, and wearing a conical or knit cap in red or some other bright colour. They often have an appearance somewhat similar to that of a garden gnome (which are also called trädgårdstomte in Swedish, havenisse in Danish, hagenisse in Norwegian and puutarhatonttu in Finnish).
The nisse is one of the most familiar creatures of Scandinavian folklore, and he has appeared in many works of Scandinavian literature. With the romanticisation and collection of folklore during the 19th century, the nisse would gain popularity. In the English editions of the fairy tales of H. C. Andersen the word nisse has been inaccurately translated as goblin (a more accurate translation is brownie or hob).
The Kentucky Horse Racing Commission on Monday denied an appeal from the owner of Maximum Security, the horse that made history by being disqualified from Saturday’s Kentucky Derby for a rules infraction.
Maximum Security, who led the Derby from wire to wire and crossed the finish line 1 3/4 lengths ahead of Country House, was disqualified for interference while turning for home. Officials decided that Maximum Security impacted the progress of War of Will, which in turn interfered with Long Range Toddy and Bodexpress. Country House was declared the winner. The stewards who made the ruling did not take questions, electing to read a prepared statement with the explanation.
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Lexington, Kentucky, attorney D. Barry Stilz on Monday filed the appeal with the commission on behalf of owner Gary West.
San Francisco took a step on Monday toward banning the use of facial recognition technology by city agencies, including law enforcement.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ rules committee voted unanimously to pass an ordinance that would ban any city department from using facial recognition technology or any information obtained from it. It would also require city departments to get approval from the Board of Supervisors before purchasing other surveillance technology ― including license plate readers, body cameras and biometrics technology, among other items.
If passed, San Francisco would be the first city in the nation to ban facial recognition. The full Board of Supervisors will take a final vote on the ordinance next week. And nearby Oakland will vote on a similar rule later this month.
In a long alleyway in Red Hook, Brooklyn, not far from the East River, Tracy Morgan sat on a director’s chair, his feet dangling high off the ground. He was surrounded by a languid swarm of crew members, who brought him water, fussed over the orange jumpsuit that was his costume for the day, and kept him shaded from the sun. Morgan has a plush love seat for a nose and a protrusive mouth that tugs the rest of his face forward, but his eyes are the key to his knack for physical comedy—he controls their focus with gonzo precision. Sometimes he looks upward and grins, mimicking the innocent gaze of a child; at other times, he tucks in his chin and offers a stare that lands about a yard beyond the ostensible object of his attention. Now he looked restless.
It was a September scorcher, cloudless at noon, and Morgan was working himself into a muddled but intense emotional state—jokey, sentimental, triumphant, pissed—in order to film a climactic scene from the second-season finale of his TBS sitcom, “The Last O.G.” (Season 2 premièred in April.) Morgan plays Tray Barker, a man who has returned to his old neighborhood in Brooklyn after fifteen years in prison on a drug charge. Just before his arrest, Tray unknowingly impregnated his girlfriend, Shay, played by Tiffany Haddish, best known for the torrent of ribaldry that she brought to the movie “Girls Trip.” With Tray out of her life, Shay became a successful designer and married a white man, with whom she is raising Tray’s twins. In the first season, Tray, desperate to earn a place in his children’s lives, takes a job at a Starbucks-like coffee shop, one of many signs of local gentrification. In the second season, he tries to launch a business venture that draws on his experience and also suits the neighborhood’s changing demographics: a prison-themed food truck.
One 18-year-old student was killed and eight others were injured after two shooters opened fire on a science and technology school in the Denver area on Tuesday.
The gunmen entered two classrooms in different locations “deep” inside STEM School Highlands Ranch and began shooting at students, Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said at a press conference.
Deputies responded to the scene two minutes after receiving reports of shots fired within the school shortly before 2 p.m.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.