Click the link below the picture

.

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

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

.

Mark Peterson for The New York Times

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

When you win drop me a million, it will be greatly appreciated!

 

Another Mega Millions drawing, another night without a big winner.

No one hit all six numbers and won the estimated $940 million jackpot, pushing the lottery prize to an estimated $1.1 billion ahead of the next drawing Tuesday night.

The prize is now the third-largest in U.S. history.

The numbers drawn late Friday were: 3, 20, 46, 59, 63 and gold Mega Ball 13.

There have been 24 drawings without a jackpot winner, stretching back for more than two months. The winless streak is largely due to the game’s long odds of 1 in 302.6 million.

he new estimated prize of $1.1 billion is for a winner who chooses an annuity paid annually over 29 years. Grand prize winners usually take the cash option, which for Tuesday night’s drawing will be an estimated $568.7 million.

“Mega Millions has just reached the $1 billion mark again. It’s especially nice to see the jackpot grow throughout the holidays and into the new year,” Pat McDonald, the Ohio lottery director and lead director of the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement early Saturday. “As the jackpot grows, we encourage our players to keep within their entertainment budget and enjoy this jackpot run right along with us.”

The only Mega Millions jackpots larger than the estimated $1.1 billion opportunity on Tuesday have been the $1.53 billion won in South Carolina in 2018 and $1.33 billion winning ticket in Illinois in July, Mega Millions said in the statement.

.

Mega Millions jackpot rises to $1.1 billion after no winner

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

If you are driving home from work along a road you’ve traveled numerous times before, your mind is likely to wander. You might become absorbed by a great conversation on the radio, or start rehearsing for an important meeting the next day. You steer your car down your usual route in a largely automatic way, without having to pay deliberate attention to the steering wheel, the subtle movements of your feet on the pedals, or the ever-changing traffic conditions around you. Yet if you encounter a sudden cognitive challenge, such as an unexpected road closure, you are quickly able to shift gears, identifying a new route home via a side street that you rarely use.

This kind of shift toward more deliberate thinking happens in a variety of different situations: for instance, when you have to carefully search for the solution to an especially tricky crossword clue, or think of a new way to frame an argument to change a stubborn friend’s mind. How the brain balances between the cognitive modes involved in these scenarios – relatively automatic processing and more deliberate processing – remains poorly understood, which suggests we need new ways of thinking about it.

It’s instructive to start by considering the kinds of features in our brains that might help us handle challenging multitasking situations. Firstly, we need to be able to learn all the ins and outs of a particular challenge – otherwise, how might we anticipate the next step in a complex sequence, like driving along a road occupied by other cars and pedestrians? We also need to be able to process all the information related to the task at hand, without it seeping over into another process we’d like to run in parallel – otherwise, we might allow a crescendo on the stereo to affect whether we swerve our car’s steering wheel into oncoming traffic. In addition, we’d like to be alerted when any process we’re allowing to run on its own goes awry. Deprived of this control, we’d plow right through a red light or fail to notice a pesky detour sign.

.

A 3D CT scan of the gut. Photo by Callista Images/Getty

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Credit where credit is due: Make America Great Again was a brilliant slogan, precisely because nobody knew what it meant. Was it about bringing back jobs in manufacturing? Was it about restoring straight, white, Christian men to what some of them thought was their natural position of social dominance? MAGA became an all-purpose code for reversing whatever was bugging you about 21st-century America.

And one important strain of MAGAism was and is the belief that wokeness is making America militarily weak. Back in 2021 Senator Ted Cruz famously shared a video comparing Russian military ads, which feature manly men doing manly things, with a U.S. ad telling the story of a female recruit raised by two mothers. “Perhaps a weak, emasculated military is not the best idea,” Cruz declared.

Remarkably, the idea that wokeness makes us weak has persisted despite the failures of the decidedly un-woke Russian military in Ukraine. Senator Tom Cotton, who has published a book titled “Only the Strong: Reversing the Left’s Plot to Sabotage American Power,” recently declared that “soldiers join the army to kill the bad guys — not to learn to speak like they’re in a faculty lounge.”

.

Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times; photographs by Ralf Geithe and Image Source, via Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

Everyone has at least one habit they’d love to shed, and at least a dozen they dream of picking up. But what is it that makes nail-biting so irresistible—or daily exercise so elusive? While there’s an entire subsection of the internet devoted to figuring it out, it’s easy to find oneself surrounded by information and advice but unable to put anything into action.

Enter Nir Eyal. His site, NirandFar, explores some of the best ways to tackle habits (both good and bad), as well as the psychology behind our relationship with them. He also ties those very concepts in with personal development and business strategy in his books Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life and Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.

.

Image by Mykyta Dolmatov/Getty Images

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

My mom’s choir was halfway through its carol concert when I realized that her name was missing from the program. I knew she wouldn’t be too broken up about it — she’d say “No need to go into a swivet” — but I was incensed. The oversight instantly became a referendum on everything we’d lost that year.

This was my mom’s choir debut, and her long white hair glowed beatifically as she belted “We Three Kings” on a riser beneath the pulpit where, 10 months before, my sister and I had eulogized our 59-year-old dad. The concert was the first event she’d been excited about since then. She’d reminded me of the date and time on multiple occasions, assuring me and my husband that nobody would care if our toddlers made a ruckus.

Now, sitting in a pew my kids had decorated with stickers, I thought of my mom’s calls after Thursday night rehearsals — her excitement about difficult hymns and new friends. “They’re really kicking my butt,” she said as if she’d joined the Olympic gymnastics team. I pictured the piles of sheet music spread across her dining room table; the stream of choral classics pouring from her record player; and her first solo Christmas tree, waiting to be decorated after the concert. How proud she was that she’d put up the lights alone.

.

Maria Medem

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

https://www.nytimes.com

.

__________________________________________

Click the link below the picture

.

We often think about how the foods we eat affect our hearts, waistlines, and even the environment. But they also have a major impact on our brains.

As a nutritional psychiatrist, I study how dietary changes can lead to meaningful improvements in our mood and mental well-being.

Foods like leafy greens, colorful fruits and vegetables, seafood, and nuts, beans, and seeds all promote brain health.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________