Emojis are useful for self expression and practical – but this data blows us away
We love emojis is because we react to them like we would while we actually talk to a person. As they have become part of our culture, studies have found they have a complex effect on people. While they effectively convey feelings, the use of them on dating app bios and professional emails doesn’t convey friendliness; most people find them annoying. But, it seems using lots of emojis is a clue for two things. Yes, a pair of studies offer a fresh perspective, claiming their use has been linked with more success in romance.
These two studies looked into attitudes towards emoji use in interpersonal situations and intimate relationships. They were conducted on single people, with the first study finding 30% of participants used emojis consistently while dating. Subjects said emojis are useful for self expression and also practical, since they convey meaning without having to type out an entire message.
“In this emotionally and sensory austere context what tools can daters use to represent themselves and potentially improve their connections?” explains the study.
Participants were right; those who used emojis found more success on dating apps and were more likely to go on first dates than participants who didn’t use emojis. They were also more likely to have sex.
The second study expanded on the first and looked into emoji use in singles, trying to discover if these had any success in developing more intimate connections and obtaining second dates. Participants said emoji use deepened connections made on a first date and opened the door for more sexual behavior.
“Emojis appear to be an important aspect of social behavior in today’s digital world,” concludes the study. “They can be used strategically as affective signals, particularly in the domain of human courtship.”
So who’s right about emojis? Should we or should we not use them in our dating profiles?
As the House of Representative’s struggle to elect a Speaker, what is their stance on marijuana
Kevin McCarthy is not a marijuana fan, but was a politician. While often voting against popular opinion, he understand vote gathering and allowed some thing through Congress. While not a marijuana fan, he did understand its popularity with the general voting public. As the US House of Representative struggles to find a new leader business has come to a halt. Now, a potential new speaker may have emerged, so what is the stance of Rep. Jim Jordan and marijuana.
Jim Jordan was raised in Ohio and represents them in government. Graduating from Graham High School, he was a four-time state champion in wrestling. As a coach, he was involved in a scandal around the sport. Elected in 2007. According to The Dayton Daily News, Jordan “is known for being one of Congress’ most conservative members”.
Jordan was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of the most conservative members of the party established to oust then-House Speaker John Boehner. Know as a firebrand, Jordan is is a bit of a wild card with policy.
Photo by lucky-photographer/Getty Images
Jordan has not be an ally of the cannabis industry or of patients and veterans who use medical marijuana. He has constantly voted no against SAFE Banking, medical marijuana research and the MORE Act.
There is concern under his leadership, policy votes might come to a halt including the upcoming budget discussions. Jordan has shared publicly “I fully support efforts to keep marijuana illegal.”
This could be a rough time for the cannabis industry which is just seeing hope for the business side, consumer use continues to increase. Jordan’s base tends to be older, and the marijuana base tends to be younger.
Kiplinger’s shared “At a minimum, the likelihood of government shutdown in mid-November just went up to 80%, as the House’s inability to do its immediate job of funding the government increases,” Pangea Policy Founder Terry Haines told MarketWatch.
The alcohol industry has a significant stake in the cannabis industry and is a large voice in federal politics. Like marijuana, alcohol executives will be watching the speaker vote closely over the next few days.
While bridal showers sprouted in 16th century Europe, it wasn’t until four decades after the term “bachelor party” was cemented (in a 1922 Scottish magazine) that the “bachelorette party” was born, coinciding with the women’s liberation movement of the ’60s. Since then, women have been living it up with day drinking, gay bar visits and dancing. But as times change and Gen Z drinks less, here is how to have a marijuana bachelorette party!
Before the big show, the sacred act of gathering for hen night is its own important party, and one lots of brides and nontraditional grooms would agree needs a big hit. If you’ve ever gone to a bachelorette or bachelor party of any sort, you know it must have the right crew, the right setting, and the right amount of party fuel to please the guest of honor.
Some betrothed love an intimate gathering, no friends of the partner allowed, others thrive on huge co-ed bashes, and still more go for a destination vibe. When you’re involving cannabis in the mix, it takes a little bit more planning, but once you’ve got the vibe right, you’re all set to take any journey.
You may be wondering if anyone who doesn’t partake of the herb should come to a cannabis hen night, but just like those who don’t drink can hang around with the imbibers among us, it’s OK not to be a fan. Provide and clearly label non-infused goods so guests don’t have to wonder all night what is safe to eat. In some cases, it’s best to keep anything infused in a closed or sealed container is also labeled, so less mindless accidental grazing occurs.
Cannabis Tours President Heidi Keyes knows how to throw a great party for people with unique tolerances. She tells The Fresh Toast, “Please remember that your crew are all going to have different levels of comfortable highs and varying consumption experience, so don’t assume that all products are one-size fit all.”
For the pros in the group, taking extra care to let them know where they can find any infused products you’re serving as well as providing clear instructions on suitable smoke spots will save lots of time and stress for the host.
What
No one wants to have a subpar or stingy bag to kick off their friend’s “last night” as a single. If your group is about quantity, make sure to get extra flower and plenty of papers, vape bags, lighters, pieces, or needed accoutrement. If there is more intention put to quality, or you have a bunch of lightweights, consider going with less product of a much higher caliber.
Fancy joints and blunts can cost a pretty penny, but if the group isn’t taking them to the face, they should last all night. Know your audience and even ask for preferences, people are happy to share their favorite strains and products.
Where
Planning a party of this scope requires that you either live in a legal state or have a really good plug. If you’re in a prohibition state, consider a destination party. Places like Las Vegas and Palm Springs are primed and ready for you with legal cannabis, pool parties, and glamorous accommodations.
This can really complete the mood, and when everyone feels at ease, the most fun can happen.
“Whether you’re in the mountains of CO, on a beach in Jamaica, or anywhere from coast to coast, if you’re taking a cannabis vacation, the most important thing is that you know the legalities of where you’re visiting and you have access to safe, legal product and safe, legal events,” Keyes says.
Photo by Fernanda Prado via Unsplash
When…to say No
Keyes stresses pacing yourself for any weed celebration, “Let everyone in your party know that it’s always ok to pass— you can say no to a joint, an edible, a drink, or anything else, because everyone has different levels of consumption experience and different tolerances, and there is no shame in that!”
It’s more fun to be present and laughing than zonked out and paranoid, so going slow will always be the best strategy. Keep plenty of CBD-only options around for anyone needing to balance out a THC overindulgence.
Keyes leaves us with the golden rule of weed indulgence: “Make sure everyone is staying hydrated, and even though it’s a party, be aware that mixing cannabis and alcohol increases the effects of both.”
Studies report marijuana can reduce headache and migraine severity, but exact doses currently remain unknown.
Unless you experience a headache, and especially a migraine, you have no idea how disabling they can be. The throbbing pain, the nausea, the zap of all energy and, most of all, the constant pain, makes your life miserable. Science has yet to understand fully why they happen and the best way to treat them. So can marijuana help treat headaches?
In 2022, data was released from a study regarding helping suffered. Medical marijuana results in long-term reduction of migraine frequency in by 60% of treated patients and is associated with less disability and lower anti-migraine medication. Additionally, 94% of users experienced symptom relief within 2 hours of observation window. Males had greater relief than female.
Recent research indicates marijuana could become a new option for patients. A 2017 published review found, “headache disorders are common, debilitating, and, in many cases, inadequately managed by existing treatments.” Before cannabis was made illegal in the early 1900s, the review notes, notable physicians at the time praised using cannabis to treat headache disorders. Doses at the time were typically administered two to three times a day orally while trying to minimize intoxication.
The review added “it appears likely cannabis will emerge as a potential treatment for some headache sufferers.”
A 2019 study by Washington State University researchers provided some data around this potential treatment. Scientists used self-reported data via the Strainprint app to collect information on how patients were using cannabis to treat headaches and migraines. On average, participants reported inhaling marijuana caused headache severity to drop by 47%. Migraine sufferers said their pain severity decreased by almost half.
Photo by Matteo Vistocco via Unsplash
Marijuana use didn’t precipitate an “overuse headache,” in which over-the-counter medications cause headaches to worsen instead of improve. Researchers also found no significant difference in pain reduction depending on the type of marijuana participants smoked. Varying levels of THC and CBD had no significant effect, suggesting other properties or cannabinoids in the marijuana plant (there are more than 100 cannabinoids in cannabis) cause the pain reduction in patients.
In both cases, the studies noted more research is necessary before providing exact advice on using marijuana for headache treatment.
“My hope is this research will motivate researchers to take on the difficult work of conducting placebo-controlled trials,” Carrie Cutter, the 2019 study’s lead author, said in a statement. “In the meantime, this at least gives medical cannabis patients and their doctors a little more information about what they might expect from using cannabis to manage these conditions.”
With marijuana mainstreaming, 90% of people wanting it legal and California sober becoming a thing, maybe it is time to try marijuana. There is a bit of nuance to how to find the best way to use marijuana for you. Without a friend or a guide, most learn by trial and error and with the guidance of a mentor. Makes it tough, so here is the ultimate newbie’s guide to marijuana.
Still, there’s a few basic things you should know about marijuana before taking the plunge, especially if you’re diving into this topic alone and want to be as safe as possible. Luckily for you, there’s never been a better time for learning about the plant’s effects.
Marijuana is like a Swiss Army knife. There’s a lot to it. But really, you just need to know that it is primarily used for two reasons: recreation and medicine.
The plant is used to boost creativity, to ease social anxiety, to relax, to work out and improve focus. These everyday activities receive a boost of intensity and focus that can make your day better and your time much more profitable. Marijuana can also be used to replace habits that harm your body, like alcohol, nicotine, opiates and sleeping pills.
Medical marijuana is a hot topic, earning support from nations and scientists from all over the world. Research has suggested that the plant can be used to tame stress and pain relief, improve appetite, help people cope with ADHD and anxiety, and the list goes on.
It’s important to know that while many patients and doctors swear by marijuana’s effectiveness, there’s not enough research on the matter to prove that these results are definitive. The good news is that marijuana’s negative side effects, such as dry mouth, dizziness and fuzzy brain are temporary.
There are four types of cannabis strains: sativa, indica, hybrid and CBD. Each has its own pros and cons.
Sativa works to stimulate your mind and senses, working best when you want to go for a run, have an engaging conversation, or are looking for an energy boost. Indicas stand on the other end of the spectrum, producing a relaxing effect that will make your mind and body rest while also getting rid of any anxiety. Hybrid strains are a mix of sativa and indica, producing mixed results. Lastly, CBD is the most medicinal one out of all, producing practically no “high” feeling and resulting in long lasting muscle and pain relief.
This is an evolving conversation. While there’s the traditional way of smoking marijuana through pipes, joints and bongs, there’s also tons of other options, like vape pens, edibles, concentrates, and topicals. Let’s go over each:
Vaporizers
These are discreet and comfortable, filled with oil cartridges that vaporize marijuana instead of combusting it like joints and pipes. With a vape pen you won’t have to learn how to roll a joint or how to pack a bowl. They produce immediate effects that will stay in your body for a couple of hours.
Pot brownies, gummies and all sorts of foods enter this category. This method is discreet and takes it’s time to affect you, since the THC is absorbed through the stomach lining and takes longer to reach your blood stream. If you’re a beginner you should start with a low dose since they pack strong effects.
Topicals
All balms, lotions, creams and patches fit this category, producing results that won’t get you “high.” These are great for medical situations, helping with pain relief, post-surgery recovery, and the like.
These are strong cannabis extracts, the strongest of this bunch, and normally require a dab rig to ingest. They come in the shape of wax, resin and hash and produce effects that last up to six hours.
Some weeks are better than others. Still, there are ways of make them as problem-free as possible. Here’s how.
Mornings are tough. They’re even worse when it’s the start of the week, at least for the majority of people. A rough Monday can have the domino effect on Tuesday and Wednesday – and make you not enjoy Sunday as you are dreading Monday. Here are some hacks to make the week run smoother.
A rough Monday could start a trend. Here are some hacks to make the week run smoother so you can enjoy your weekend!
Still, the start of the week is important since this day is a big influence over the rest of your week. A bad Monday can easily translate into a bad Tuesday, and then you blink and you realize that your entire week ended and that it wasn’t all that productive. Luckily, there are simple ways of curbing this problem, making your weeks easier without much hassle on your part, just a little pre-planning.
Here are 5 things you can do to make your week run smoother:
Schedule your week in advance
Trying to smooth out your week and your Mondays can be helped dramatically by scheduling things in advance during the previous Friday. While you most likely won’t be able to schedule every detail, you can complete a Monday to-do list and include some time constraints in order to help you stay on track. Doing this will only take a couple of minutes and it will help you enter the weekend with a relaxed state of mind.
While the weekend is meant to be enjoyed thoroughly, it could drastically help your upcoming week by have a relaxing Sunday. Try a work out or an early hang with friends, leaving your nights for relaxation and ensuring you have everything ready for Monday.
Try not to work on weekends
While some people have to complete their work on the weekends, especially freelancers, it really helps to block some days off, preferably in succession. This time-off is vital for preventing burnout, helping you relax and contributing to your productivity. Your Mondays can be whenever you want, just make sure you feel rested before you start your week.
Since Mondays tend to be tough, one thing that can help you is to go to bed early. Try working out Sunday evening and going to bed early and tired, ensuring that you’ll get your 8 hours of deep sleep and are able to kick-off the week with the best foot forward.
Do something that makes you laugh
Another thing that can help you start your week right is to access a positive mood. Take an early morning shower, put on some comfy or colorful clothes and listen to some music. Try out a fun podcast, preferably not one that’s about true crime (unless that puts a smile on your face, weirdo). Try out new things and see what makes you feel your best. Whatever you land on is what you should do to kick-start the week.
Peppers can be delicious, but if you’re unlucky and eat that one super spicy pepper, you may need to stop eating and start crying immediately. Eating something that’s too spicy is one of those moments that feels like an out of body experience, like you might legit die without being able to move your pained mouth enough to utter your last words.
There are a lot of myths regarding spicy food and how to control those awful moments. A lot of people mention beer, sugar, soda and water, but if the level of spiciness is real, all of these pseudo prescriptions will just spread the pain around. The Takeout interviewed different experts from companies whose business is to sell peppers and hot sauces, and most of them claimed that fatty foods where the best way to go when it comes to cooling down.
Capsaicin is an oil, so by sipping on milk, the oil binds to the fats and dissipates, depending on how much you are burning, you may have to sip for a while. Water, beer, or soft drinks don’t help, and in fact can move the oil around the mouth making the burn worse. If you’re lactose intolerant and don’t do dairy, then soy milk will do the trick.
The guys behind Heat Hot Sauce in Berkeley, California agree, claiming that fatty foods, specifically milk, work for two reasons, “In terms of the science, there are two reasons milk works well. One is the fat content—capsaicin is soluble in fat but not water, so it can bind to the milk fat. The other is the casein, a milk protein which has a detergent effect that dislodges the capsaicin from your heat receptors.”
Ice cream and yogurt are even better options than milk. So if you eat something spicy, stick around for dessert and you’ll feel much better. According to celebrity chef Rick Bayless, the true cure for a spicy mouth is time. He claims that even though eating ice cream or yogurt works to a certain extent, you’ll mostly be distracting yourself until the burn fades away, which it always does.
Whiskey is one of my favorite things. I’ll go to lengths to describe the way it makes me feel and especially the way it performs in craft cocktails. What? Whiskey cocktails? Don’t look away; it’s perfectly acceptable to mix cocktails with whiskey. By the way, if you’ve enjoyed a whiskey smash or a mint julep, you’ve had a whiskey cocktail. And if you’ve treated your glass of whiskey to a splash of soda or a muddle of fruit, that is a cocktail too.
Yup, your world just got a bit bigger and you haven’t event gotten to the Manhattan’s or the Rob Roy Cocktails yet!
One such creative cocktail from my recently published book, The Craft Cocktail Compendium is named “A Pleasant Little Gentleman.” It takes a bit of rye whiskey, raw honey simple syrup and whiskey barrel aged bitters and twists them up a bit.
A Pleasant Little Gentleman
2 oz. Fernet Branca
1 oz. rye whiskey
1 oz. raw honey simple syrup (1 cup raw honey to 1 cup hot, but not boiling, water)
2-4 shakes Barrel Aged Bitters
Boiling water for hot tea (Lapsang Souchong)
Boil tea. Add the liquors. Sweeten with raw honey to taste. Add the bitters. Serve
Another little taste of deliciousness is the “Late Summer Fizz.” It includes Pimm’s Cup. Now you know what to do with this cucumber-scented slice of heaven.
Late Summer Fizz
(Pg. 110 of The Craft Cocktail Compendium)
2 oz. rye
½ oz. Pimm’s No.1. Cup
½ oz. apple cider
½ oz. sweet white vermouth (I used Carpano Antica Formula)
¼ oz. allspice dram
Sprinkle of sea salt
Lemon bitters
Splash of club soda
To a Boston Shaker filled ¾ with ice: Add the liquors and the apple cider. Add the dram. Cap and shake hard for 15 seconds. Pour over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Splash club soda. Dot with lemon bitters. Sprinkle sea salt over the top. Serve.
The next one is my take on the classic Old Fashioned. It involves roasted fruit that you split, add light balsamic vinegar or apple cider vinegar and Demerara sugar, roasted, cooled and muddled. Pretty spectacular.
Grilled Peach and Thai Basil Roast
1 oz. roasted peaches (split, sprinkled with sugar and 1 tsp balsamic and roasted for 1 hour at 350 degrees until soft and charred)
1 oz. roasted oranges (split, sprinkled with sugar and 1 tsp balsamic and roasted for 1 hour at 350 degrees until soft and charred
4 oz. bourbon whiskey
1-2 sprigs Thai basil
Muddle the roasted peaches and oranges with Thai basil very lightly, just to release the aromatics adding a bit of bourbon along the way, muddle some more and add more bourbon (I used Barrell Bourbon Batch 11). Strain the mixture into a rocks glass without ice or if you want, with one large cube of ice and a bit of the muddling mixture. Garnish with a sprig of Thai basil.
How can you go through summer without a take on the Moscow Mule, but with whiskey instead of vodka? This one takes a bit of a different tack. It involves making a very quick Shrub — no, not a shrubbery, but a little concoction that adds a bit of apple cider vinegar to the usual ginger beer. Kind of a ginger snap in your mouth!
Son In The Foreign Legion
¼ oz. apple cider vinegar
3 oz. ginger beer (cane sugar-based)
2 oz. blended Scotch whiskey (Like Johnny Walker Red)
4-6 drops Angostura bitters (or like)
To a cocktail mixing glass: Fill ¾ with ice. Add the whiskey. Add the ginger beer. Add the apple cider vinegar. Stir well to chill but not dilute. Pour into 2 coupe glasses. Dot with bitters and serve.
The last cocktail is also from my book The Craft Cocktail Compendium. It is simply named “Bill Monroe’s Country Cooler,” paying homage to the master mandolin player himself.
Bill Monroe’s Country Cooler
1 oz. peach nectar
1 oz. apricot nectar
½ oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 oz. sweet iced tea (sugar to your own taste of course!)
2-4 oz. white (un-aged) whiskey
2-5 dashes Angostura bitters
Fresh mint (picked in the shadow of the roots of an ancient oak tree, where sweet branch water bubbles forth in a belly laugh)
Add all the liquid ingredients to a cocktail mixing vessel filled ¾ with ice. Stir well to chill. Strain into ball jars. Dot with bitters. Slap the mint against your palm and garnish. Serve and quickly prepare more! They go down quick!
A study shows not even your porn searches are safe from big corporations. Although we can’t be all that surprised, it still sucks to learn sites like Google and Facebook are able to know the type of porn you’re into, and might even use your preferences as a way of gaining profits.
These results—gathered by a study conducted by Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pennsylvania—state Facebook, Google and Oracle are secretly tracking your porn habits even when using the incognito tab.
The study used a tool called webXray on over 22,484 websites, finding 93% of them sent their numbers to third party sites. “Revelations about such data represent specific threats to personal safety and autonomy in any society polices gender and sexuality,” say the authors of the study.
Photo by Christin Hume via Unsplash
Unsurprisingly, Google had the strongest hold out of the three companies studied, with trackers on 74% of porn sites. Oracle had trackers on 24% of them and lastly, Facebook—a site which does not allow for nudity and porn on their services—had trackers on 10% of them. The study explains these corporations may do whatever they want with this data, selling it, inferring on your sexual preferences by the type of URL you use, and using this information as a way of building a more complete consumer profile of you. With all of this information in their hands, these websites have a more complete picture of who you are and a better grasp on targeted ads.
It seems like we’re all just a few keyboard types away from sextortions and really embarrassing sex scandals. At least we can find some modicum of peace in knowing we’re all kinky and not alone.
One of key arguments opponents of legal marijuana is underage age use going up and it is bad for kids. Everyone is in agreement, but the same can be said of nicotine and alcohol, thus age limits. While increased underage going up argument has been disproven, there still are concerns about the effects of still developing brain. No one in industry is advocating for a 10 year old to vape, just as no one is serving a 10 year old a whiskey sour. But is someone who starts using at 24 years affected, well a study weighs in on cannabis and IQ.
A large study in New Zealand found that persistent marijuana use disorder with frequent use starting in adolescence was associated with a loss of an average of 6 or up to 8 IQ points measured in mid-adulthood.43 Those who used marijuana heavily as teenagers and quit using as adults did not recover the lost IQ points. People who only began using marijuana heavily in adulthood did not lose IQ points.
An earlier study conducted in 2001 and published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry revealed that “the former marihuana smokers did not show any cognitive impairments,” the same as a study published four years later in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology.
A study conducted in 2001 and published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry revealed that “the former marihuana smokers did not show any cognitive impairments,” the same as a study published four years later in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology.
On the other end of the spectrum are studies suggesting the opposite. As a rule, those kinds of studies mainly focus on the long-term outcomes of those who started using marijuana earlier in life, comparing statistically significant changes in cognitive functioning among those who use cannabis and those who don’t.
The New Zealand study followed 1,037 New Zealanders from age 3 to age 45 to determine the effect marijuana has on brain function. Published in The American Journal of Psychiatry, the study found that those who have been using cannabis early and long-term and on a regular basis showed cognitive impairment after all.
Besides a 5.5 points decline in users’ IQs from childhood to midlife, the results confirmed some deficits in learning and processing speed compared to those who are not marijuana users.
One key note is, as with alcohol, long-term cannabis users also developed memory and attention problems, the study found. And like alcohol and nicotine, early age use of marijuana can have long term negative effects. More research needs to be done regarding adult use.
