If you are parenting your way through the first part of the 21st century in America, you may regularly tap into an always humming and sometimes throbbing collective anxiety. There’s political anxiety about anti-democratic forces, insurrectionists, losing civil rights, and a future of more ugly and divisive politics. There’s economic anxiety about child care, health care, inequality, and the ballooning costs of college and student debt. And there is our anxiety about physical safety — we’re emerging from a public health disaster that’s killed over 1 million Americans and we must face our country’s other ongoing sicknesses, like racism, anti-Semitism, and gun violence.
There’s no country on Earth without its problems, but perhaps what continues to fuel our collective American parental anxiety is a general feeling that nothing is changing — and that our country is not headed in a better direction for our kids’ future. There is a unique horror to how we’ve normalized some of America’s woes. “When you’re reading the news [of the latest mass shooting] and then you have Facebook ads targeted to you for bulletproof backpacks, it is just really too much,” says Dana Publicover, an American mom of two now living in Germany. “You see that this country’s doing absolutely nothing to stop these things. Other countries have tried and succeeded.”
Beyond anecdotal chatter, it appears more and more Americans are ready to make a big change: They are ready to move abroad. InternationalLiving.com, a resource hub for people interested in moving abroad, reports that during the period between June 2020 and May 2021, it experienced a surge in traffic to content relating to leaving the United States — a 158% growth over the previous 12 months. They cite the build-up to the U.S. elections, the Capitol riot, and general unrest as driving factors. After the official Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, traffic ballooned 4,000% over the previous week, with pages about moving and LGBTQ-friendly lists getting the most attention, as people began to question if same-sex marriage would be the next right to go.
People love to hate on pigeons for the way they foul up parked cars or flock to food scraps on the sidewalk. But with more than 300 species of wild pigeon found on Earth—many of them stunning—it’s past time the lowly pigeon gets its coo.
“Pigeons are biological marvels,” says Rosemary Mosco, author of A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching.
“They make milk for their young. They can take off almost vertically. They see colors we can’t, hear sounds we can’t, and find their way across hundreds of miles using mechanisms we don’t fully understand,” she says. “They’re the world’s most overlooked birds.”
Interestingly, there’s no scientific difference between pigeons and the much more beloved doves. Both birds are members of the Columbidae family, and while the term ‘pigeon’ tends to be applied to larger species and ‘dove’ to smaller ones, Mosco notes in her illustrated field guide that there is actually no scientific or evolutionary distinction to either group.
What’s more, the ubiquitous pigeon found in cities worldwide descends from a bird known as the rock dove, which people long ago domesticated. (Read how pigeons first landed in cities.)
.
A green imperial pigeon, Ducula aenea, flaps its wings at Kamla Nehru Zoological Garden in Ahmedabad, India.
Exploring the ‘dark side’ may be a psychological need that’s met when the scare is actually over.
Virtually everyone knows what it’s like to feel really scared: A pounding heartbeat. Faster breathing. Nervous perspiration. Butterflies in the stomach.
But whether that fright is caused by watching a nail-biting horror movie, listening to a spine-chilling story, or prowling through a dark-as-night haunted house on Halloween, some people actually revel in feeling frightened. They thrive on the latest Friday the 13th movie or Stephen King novel. They relish roller coasters, perhaps even sky diving. They crave having the bejesus scared right out of them.
Of course, for the mere mortals among us who feel that we’re liable to lose our lunch after just a glimpse of a slasher movie, it may seem unimaginable that others actually enjoy panic-button experiences. But experts believe that it’s not uncommon for individuals to push the envelope, seeing how much fear they can tolerate, and ultimately feeling a sense of satisfaction when they’re able to endure the anxiety.
Clint Kugler felt it while climbing 18,000 feet up the side of Volcan Cayambe in Ecuador. Zach Fackrell recognized it as he came face-to-face with a 19-foot shark off the coast of Fiji. It struck Neil Shea as he interviewed a traditional healer in a remote region of Africa, and James Lee is trying to get back to it by wakeboarding at 40 miles an hour. Though recognized in wildly different settings, the feeling was always the same: the pay-off of a thrill.
“It’s like having superpowers for a very brief time,” says Margaret King, Ph.D., director of the Center for Cultural Studies & Analysis in Philadelphia.The rush starts in the amygdala, a bundle of neurons at the base of the brain responsible for assessing the unknown. In a thrill-seeking situation—which almost always poses some kind of risk, whether perceived or real—the amygdala registers that risk, then releases a combination of dopamine, adrenaline, endorphins, and other chemicals in order to protect the body against it. How much of each is released depends on the perceived level of risk. At the peak, every bodily function, chemical brain reaction, and sensory input is hyper-focused on the experience.
Every person’s brain assesses unknown situations differently: Those with thinner sections of gray matter, for example, tend to perceive less of a threat and therefore seek greater thrills. No matter what type of thrill a person is seeking, the reaction triggers an increase in testosterone. Vision narrows. Adrenaline shoots into the body, which increases heart rate. With the heart beating faster, we get more oxygen. The body redirects oxygen to the brain as fast as it can. The feeling often lasts less than 60 seconds, and the immediate aftermath is another flood of mood-boosting chemicals. This is what leads thrill-seekers to chase the process again and again.
It’s cuffing season — that time of year when single people are ready to stop serial swiping and find the one to stick with. Yet finding a new bae can be easier said than done; dating, especially in this uniquely interesting time, can really suck. Of course, people use all kinds of techniques and tactics to find a new boo: apps, going to clubs and bars, matchmakers, asking friends — you name it. Yet there’s another simple but somewhat unorthodox method people use to nab The One: literally thinking them up, or in more formal language, manifesting them.
“Through manifesting and tapping into your own energy, you can find what you want,” says Lisa Stardust, the renowned astrologer who recently released The Love Deck: 70 Cards to Ignite Attraction, Passion, and Romance, a deck of beautifully illustrated cards that guide users through attracting love (and keeping it). “It’s about putting the energy out there.”
The idea of manifesting a partner or romantic relationship merely through the power of one’s own thoughts might sound out there or woo-woo, but manifesting, as a broader concept, is an age-old practice stretching back for generations, if not millennia. It’s the fundamental idea in the best-selling book The Secret, and popular ideas like the “law of attraction” have become so mainstream, they’re understood without much explanation.
Oklahoma executed a man Thursday who was convicted of killing an elderly couple and committing other crimes 20 years ago before authorities caught up to him in Texas after a manhunt.
Scott James Eizember, 62, received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was pronounced dead at 10:15 a.m.
“I’m at peace,” Eizember said, strapped to a gurney with an intravenous line in his left arm. “My conscience is clear, completely. I love my children.”
Once the lethal drugs began to flow, Eizember, who had a close-cropped beard, could be seen chatting with his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeffrey Hood, who was inside the execution chamber with him. He lifted his head at one point and mouthed the words, “I love you,” toward his daughter and attorneys who were among 17 people seated in the witness room.
Eizember’s breathing became labored and he was declared unconscious at 10:07 a.m. He appeared to stop breathing at 10:10 a.m. He was pronounced dead at 10:15 a.m.
Eizember’s attorneys did not deny he killed A.J. Cantrell, 76, and his wife, Patsy Cantrell, 70, on Oct. 18, 2003. But they told the state’s Pardon and Parole Board last month that the killings were unplanned and spontaneous, and his life still had value.
Much like shopping for secondhand clothes, buying old books at stoop sales, online, or at used bookstores brings its own brand of excitement. There’s the thrill of happening upon a book that you’ve been wanting to read or letting spontaneity take over, choosing whatever calls to you. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that it saves money and a perfectly readable tome from ending up in a landfill. The one thing you might have to contend with is removing the dust, dirt, and grime that has built up on the covers and between the pages of an old book. Fortunately, learning how to clean old books is often easier than removing the inscriptions left behind by previous readers.
How to clean old books to get rid of dust, dirt, and grime
“To remove dust, dirt, or grime, my best advice is to use a paper towel,” says James Fraser, manager of The Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Boston. Alternatively, you can opt to use a microfiber cloth to dust off books. This method should work when you want to clean old paperback and hardbound books.
1. Wipe down the whole book, cover to cover, being careful when you clean the book’s pages.
2. If there are stubborn smudges and stains on the cover of the book, wet the paper towel or microfiber cloth with a little water and revisit those bits. Bear in the mind that books—particularly old books—can be fragile. “Any attempt to fix past wrongs may end up damaging the book even more,” says Fraser.
Lindsey Konchar has known her best friend, Caroline since Caroline was born. Their mothers have been best friends since the seventh grade, so even though Konchar is two years older than Caroline, and the two attended different schools in their hometown of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, there was no escaping each other. “We were quite literally forced to be friends,” Konchar told me. But even after they moved out of their mothers’ homes, the friendship continued.
Konchar stayed in Minnesota for college, while Caroline attended school in Boston and then moved to New York City, where she started dating someone. (Caroline is being identified by a pseudonym to protect her privacy.) At first, the new relationship seemed marvelous, “all butterflies and roses,” Konchar recalled. But over time, Caroline’s updates on the relationship grew less cheerful and more vague. To Konchar, a social worker, something seemed off, and a visit to NYC only solidified her concerns that Caroline’s partner wasn’t treating her well. “She wasn’t her happy-go-lucky self,” Konchar recalled. On the final day of her visit, Konchar decided to express her concerns about the relationship. She chose her words carefully, making sure to cite specific examples, use “I” statements, and clarify that she was speaking up only because she was worried about her friend’s safety. But Konchar could tell that Caroline wasn’t having it. “Her walls went up,” Konchar told me. “We didn’t talk for a long time.”
The dilemma that Konchar faced—whether to say something or bite her tongue—gets at a long-running debate about what it means to be a good friend. Is it appropriate to tell a friend when you think they’re making a bad decision? Or is a friend’s role to offer steadfast and unconditional support, and leave the unsolicited advice to parents, spouses, or siblings? Those parties may feel more entitled or obligated to speak up because their relationships are better defined and more formalized. But it’s difficult to speak about authority or obligation in friendship, which is to some extent defined by what it’s not: Friends are those who choose to be in one another’s lives although they don’t fulfill a specific role. Even between close friends, it can be tricky to pin down exactly what, if anything, two people owe each other.
The world’s tiniest rabbit is roughly the size of a softball—a very, very soft softball. An adult weighs less than a pound.
These little bunnies abound in the scrublands of the American West, but one population, known as the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit, long ago colonized what is now central Washington, happily munching away at a smallish patch of fragrant sagebrush steppe for thousands of years.
Every last inch of a pygmy rabbit is built for sagebrush. The enzymes in its gut evolved to neutralize the plant’s toxins and maximize digestion, and it tunnels elaborately beneath the sagebrush’s roots. It even forfeited its archetypal cotton tail, and thus blends in with the gray-green bushes.
But in the last century or so, about 80 percent of the wild “sagebrush sea” of the Columbia Basin was converted into farms and ranchland. By the early 2000s, the genetically distinct Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit population had dwindled to just a few animals. Scientists crossbred survivors with pygmy rabbits from Idaho; reared in protected paddocks, the offspring retained at least three-quarters of their unique Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit DNA. Today only a few hundred of the rabbits remain, living in semi-captivity and in the wild.
.
The Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit relies on sagebrush for food and shelter, but the shrub has nearly disappeared. It’s also slow to regrow: it takes about two decades or ten pygmy rabbit lifetimes. Morgan Heim
When I was younger, I would wander around the pre-teen jewelry store Claire’s imagining myself decked out in its wares. I often came across dual necklaces, each with a broken half of a heart with the inscription “best friends.”
I never bought these necklaces out of fear that whomever I considered my best friend at the time would not reciprocate this label, and just the thought of that rejection crushed me into inaction.
Even in adulthood, I hear stories of uneven friendship “levels” and the negative spiral it induces. If your best friend has ever implied that you’re not theirs, it can indeed be crushing. Why might this be, and what should you do about it? Communication and friend experts tell Mashable that everyone has their own individual measures — and that labels aren’t the most important part of friendship, anyway.
.
Realizing your best friend doesn’t think of you the same way can feel like a rejection.Credit: Bob Al-Greene / Mashable
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.
Leaving
Photo: Stocksy / Lauren Lee
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/32/2c/322c5bcc-3128-4006-a954-2e0c66f66fc8/janfeb2023_d01_endangeredpygmyrabbit_copy.jpg)
James' World 2 