Twenty-five percent of all champagne bottles sold in the US are purchased in the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. So there’s a good chance you’ll be confronted with a glass of bubbly come Dec. 31.
A Texas grand jury announced yesterday, Dec. 21, that it will not indict any employees of the sheriff’s office or jail associated with the controversial death of Sandra Bland, earlier this year. The jury did not reach a decision regarding Brian Encinia, the officer responsible for Bland’s arrest.
Funny animal pictures are one of the internet’s greatest gifts. They make us laugh as we scroll through headlines announcing global warming and interest rate hikes. They remind us how easy it is to smile. And it’s about time that we recognize them as the art form they are.
There’s no escaping Star Wars, not even in church. According to NBC, at least one congregation this Sunday will be treated to a multimedia sermon inspired by the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opened in theaters around the world today, Dec. 17.
Two thousand people gathered to protest a proposed refugee center in the Dutch town of Geldermalsen last night, Dec. 16, according to Dutch national broadcaster NOS. Protesters tore down fences and threw stones, bottles, and firecrackers at policemen, who responded by firing warning shots to disperse the crowd, reports Agence France-Presse.
The holiday season is also a season of small talk. At Christmas parties and visits to our hometowns, we run into friends of friends, former classmates, and long-lost cousins.
Americans can take solace in the fact that no matter whom they elect next year to lead the country, they will still be allowed to make fun of the person in charge. Not so in Thailand, where insulting the royal family can draw convictions of up to 15 years in prison per infraction under the country’s strict lèse majesté law.
It’s time to rethink armchair activism.
BedEx is back on the market. One lucky tenant can now call this refurbished FedEx van home for only $600 a month—a steal in San Francisco’s bloated housing market, where the average asking rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $3,670, up 9% from last year.
Students at Princeton, the University of Oregon, the University of Maryland and more have demanded the names of racists and slaveholders be wiped from campus buildings and programs. Georgetown recently renamed two buildings after students there made similar demands. And Princeton and Harvard have retired the antebellum-inflected title of “master,” heretofore used to refer to heads of colleges on campus. Yale students have asked for the same.
Remember the leafy garnish on salad bars in the ’90s? That was kale.
Google is going all-out for the upcoming release of the latest Star Wars installment, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Not only can you now join the dark side (or the light side—but come on, live a little), you can also experience the vertiginous excitement of shooting through space by typing “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away” into the search engine.
Members of Congress formed a new task force to combat violence and discrimination against transgender people on Tuesday, Nov. 17, at the first-ever congressional forum dedicated to issues faced by the marginalized population. This comes in the wake of a seeming uptick in violence against transgender people in the US.
In the fall of 2013, Brown University students shouted New York Police Department commissioner Ray Kelly off the stage. Kelly was scheduled to talk about the controversial “stop and frisk” policy he’d introduced to fight crime by targeting people of color in low-income areas of New York City.
Strike while the iron’s hot.
Not long ago, professional photography was an elite club with a high barrier to entry. Between schooling, apprenticeships, and expensive equipment, it was not a career you just jumped into.
This post has been updated.
Since 1971, the only way for Americans, including millions claiming Scottish ancestry, to get their fix of haggis has been to make it at home. The traditional Scottish dish contains sheep lungs, oats and spices, and has been commercially banned in the US for over four decades due to FDA regulations that outlaw the sale of food containing the lungs of livestock. Scottish companies that make the dish have had their eye on the American market since at least 2010, when a bid to overturn the ban failed. Following another unsuccessful bid in 2014, Scotland’s biggest haggis producers are now talking about changing their recipes to get by US regulations.
Strapping your baby to the front of a skateboard may not sound like responsible parenting, but international stroller manufacturer Quinny thinks it could be. In June 2015, Quinny released its “longboard stroller”—basically a child-seat attached to a four-foot-long skateboard—designed in collaboration with Antwerp-based Studio Peter Van Riet.
On Tuesday (Nov. 3), voters in Houston, Texas killed a city ordinance that would have ensured equal rights to a number of minorities in the city in cases of pay, housing, and public utilities. How, in this day and age, could the most diverse metro area in America—a city where constituents have elected a gay mayor, in fact—vote against this legislation? The answer is tied to a seemingly innocuous tenet of American Southern culture.
Forget the hipsters and coffee shops, that’s amateur hour. A huge party in a historically impoverished area of New York City last week was so aggressive in its advocacy for gentrification that the ensuing backlash was a matter of when, not if. Developers sitting on a $58 million dollar piece of land in the South Bronx held a pre-Halloween event in a warehouse in the neighborhood, which they decorated with a crass ‘crime and squalor’ theme they termed “Macabre Suite.”
In the Age of Innovation, Stanford University seems to be the lucky beneficiary of the startup buzz in Silicon Valley. The school attracts top-notch students and faculty with the promise of proximity to the nation’s highest concentration of venture capital, while investors flock to Palo Alto in search of the next big idea. But Stanford isn’t just capitalizing on its prime geographical location. The Silicon Valley we know today was created by Stanford faculty and alumni.
Tinder took a big, clumsy swing at the dating industry three years ago and won, luring millions of new users into the world of online dating. Hearts were broken. Men ran wild. Then, agile, enterprising competitors came in to pick up the pieces. They offer people what Tinder, the “hookup app,” can’t seem to deliver: relationships.
In 2013, Cheerios aired a commercial featuring an interracial couple and their biracial child.
