The beloved actress and singer Olivia Newton-John recently opened up about her positive usage of medical marijuana. In May of this year, we reported that Newton-John’s breast cancer had returned and she was using medical marijuana ease her symptoms.
This week Newton-John said she is “pain-free” and progressing well in a TV interview with Australia’s Sunrise.
“I’m feeling well. In fact, I just finished a tour on the weekend, so I’ve been working again,” Newton-John said. “And I have no pain and life is wonderful.”
She announced plans of returning to the down-under to celebrate the holidays with her family. Though she’s been out publicly as of late, she revealed that the start of the new year would cause her to slow down for a while.
“I’m going to take a couple of months off in the beginning of the year, and I have a few concerts planned for March,” she said. “But after that, I’m not quite sure what I’m doing, but I’m kind of looking at it, but with a little bit more time off in between.”
In addition she shared about her holistic approach to healing. Newton-John’s husband John Easterling is the founder of the Amazon Herb Company and served as part of the inspiration to include cannabis in her treatments. In addition, the singer’s daughter Chloe Lattanzi is a noted cannabis advocate and entrepreneur. She recently opened her own marijuana farm in Oregon with her husband this year.
“I take a lot of natural herbs and healing remedies and also medicinal cannabis that’s helped me a lot,” Newton-John said. “Initially, I had a lot of pain. I don’t have pain now. I’m so lucky. I’m married to an amazing man who is a plant medicine expert.”
For years, researchers have been collecting data demonstrating that Americans who consume cannabis are substituting the herb for opioids and prescription pharmaceuticals. A new study reveals which kinds of drugs are being replaced by cannabis.
According to Canadian study, here are the substances that are being squeezed out by cannabis:
All prescription drugs: 63 Percent
Pharmaceutical opioids: 30 Percent
Alcohol: 25 Percent
Benzodiazepines: 16 Percent
Antidepressants: 12 Percent
Tobacco: 12 Percent
Illicit drugs: 3 Percent
Of those substituting cannabis, 42 percent admit that they are are acquiring their herb from illegal and unregulated sources.
Last lear, Eaze, a three-year-old California cannabis delivery company, released a survey that showed 82 percent say they drink less alcohol because of their cannabis consumption and 11 percent quite drinking booze altogether because of marijuana.
The Eaze survey also revealed that 95 percent of those medicating with cannabis report using fewer pain pills than they normally would have without cannabis.
Other studies show similar results. A recent University of Michigan study suggested that medical marijuana patients “reported a 64 percent reduction in their use of more traditional prescription pain medications known as opioids.”
There is a growing body of evidence to support the use of medical cannabis as an adjunct to or substitute for prescription opiates in the treatment of chronic pain, the University of Michigan study said. “When used in conjunction with opiates, cannabinoids lead to a greater cumulative relief of pain, resulting in a reduction in the use of opiates (and associated side-effects) by patients in a clinical setting. Additionally, cannabinoids can prevent the development of tolerance to and withdrawal from opiates, and can even rekindle opiate analgesia after a prior dosage has become ineffective. Novel research suggests that cannabis may be useful in the treatment of problematic substance use.”
You’re home for the holidays and immediately regress to your teenage days when mom and dad and the family dog knew what you were up to at all times. All those dirty thoughts? They definitely knew about that, too. Depending on your family dynamic, getting off might be the only thing that gets you through the holidays; a respite at night when you need it most, along with some Netflix binging after your parents go to bed at 9 p.m.
Refinery29did the dirty work and consulted with a sex therapist and sex coach to construct a list of sex toys and techniques to make sure silent night stays that way.
Shower
This may sound like a no-brainer, but there’s nothing suspicious about a long shower. Remember, you have all those creepy relatives to wash off you. Nobody will get suspicious. (Check out the waterproof vibrator recommended if you want a shower buddy.)
https://www.instagram.com/p/v4GWOhEkKv
Read Erotica
Find the filthiest book you can imagine, with an inconspicuous cover, if possible, and go to town. (Here’s a list of free erotic fiction websites). It’s less stressful than trying to control the volume on your laptop. If you need to watch port to get off, make sure to bring your earbuds.
Chose Your Sex Toys Wisely
Pack some that don’t look like straight-up sex toys. Skip the handcuffs and leather whip and bring some toys that mimic regular travel items, like a lipstick and necklace-shaped vibrator.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BaNQOlkBydG
Sext
Of course, there’s always the tried and true way of sexting your partner, whether or not they’re traveling with you. Are they sitting next to you? In the next room? Getting busy by themselves in the bedroom? Hundreds of miles away? Going on a coffee run? This way of getting off can be done anywhere and anytime. Plus, you can swap naughty pics. Just make sure you don’t accidentally send that nude to the wrong person. That is the type of Christmas present that needs to come with a warning.
Cardi B is undeniable. Part of it’s the unapologetic authenticity, part of it’s the petty jokes, but whatever you think of her, you can’t ignore Cardi B.
And why the hell would you want to? Her Instagram feed is always filled with the rapper keeping it real in ways most didn’t even know was possible to keep it real. Perhaps that’s why Steve Madden employed her in their year-end marketing campaign to deliver Daily Tips with Cardi B.
Be warned, these tips are at the very least PG-13 rated. Alright, motherf–kers,” she greets in the very first video. She delivers advice like “Every woman need to have a pointy shoe” and “Alright if I button this shirt, I can go to a business meeting but I can where this to da club.”
The campaign’s intention is for Cardi B to select her five favorite Steven Madden style and deliver improvised tips on how best to wear them. She tells you about glittery shoes she calls the “wifey” (because you can still attend brunch in them without drawing side eye) and why white boots are her current move (they’re sexy).
After subjecting our eyes to Beardaments and Christmas tree eyebrows this season, it’s refreshing to be introduced to a trend that’s actually…cute. Unlike beard glitter and over-waxed eyebrows, ugly Christmas sweater nails are incredibly flattering on just about anyone (anyone with good nails!). It’s amazing how fashionable ugly sweater prints become when you put them on a different part of your body.
Don’t be fooled by their name. Ugly Christmas sweater nails don’t necessarily have to look like ugly sweaters at all. Some of them simply have seasonal prints, while others look like wrapping paper and ornaments.
This trend isn’t new, but this year it’s certainly taking off on social media, as most fashion does. It’s a great visual! Here are 12 of our favorite looks, in no particular order.
Anecdotally we have seen the medicinal effects of marijuana. But the most of the science behind marijuana’s relationship to the human body remains a mystery, thanks to the Drug Enforcement Agency’s classifying cannabis as a Schedule I Drug. That means the DEA thinks cannabis, as well as CBD products like oils and extracts, hold no therapeutic benefits and are actively harmful, holding a high potential for abuse.
Doctors and medical professionals alike have urged the DEA to remove the Schedule I label on marijuana so that they may study the drug properly and report hard evidence on what cannabis does and doesn’t do to our bodies as a medicine.
But a recent Cannabiz Daily report reveals that now a different kind of doctor is joining the conversation—veterinarians. Though the research is more limited on how marijuana or CBD affect pets’ health, many pet owners have in fact be turning to the drug as a form of treatment. However, the US Food and Drug Administration handed down a verdict recently that companies selling cannabis products are in violation of the law. The USDA has also threatened legal action if these companies continue selling their products.
This new USDA policy caused the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine to halt a study on how CBD affects dogs ailed by pruritis and osteoarthritis. In addition, Auburn vet Dawn Booth is waiting for federal approval to conduct a study on marijuana’s effects on dogs with epilepsy. Boothe claims everything is prepared for her to begin early next year but can’t thanks to bureaucratic roadblocks.
This inability to study cannabis and its effects have caused veterinarians to fight back.
The policy-making body of the American Veterinary Medical Association stated that it wants marijuana declassified in order to facilitate opportunities for research on the substance’s human and veterinary medical uses. It also asked the organization’s board to explore coordinating with other stakeholders toward meeting this goal. The board is just waiting for a recommendation from two group councils.
According to the board’s chairman, Michael Whitehair, their main concern is about pet owners extrapolating dosages on their own and medicating their pets without proper guidance from a medical professional. This, he said, is an important reason why research should be continued.
With ambiguous federal laws and fear of prosecution, veterinarians will remain hog-tied without major change. In other words, they’re just in the dark as other scientific researchers who want to study marijuana and its medicinal effects.
More than perhaps any other franchise, the ranks of Star Wars fans is filled with obsessive nerds. This is not really a bad thing. Nerds are good people because they’re our people.
And if you’re a Star Wars nerd chances are you know about Ralph McQuarrie. The uninitiated might not be aware, but McQuarrie was the concept artist for the original 1977 film. His sketches and paintings would set the tone for perhaps the biggest piece of pop culture we’ve ever witnessed.
Much of McQuarrie’s aesthetic was translated directly by George Lucas for A New Hope. However, there’s a swath of his designs that didn’t make the cut. Han Solo instead having skin with green scales, stormtroopers with light sabers, and Luke Skywalker originally as a female character named Luka Starkiller.
Thanks to the students at the DAVE School of digital animation and visual effects in Orlando, Florida, we can now get a taste of McQuarrie’s original concept. Here you’ll see Luka Starkiller, a shinier C-3PO, a battle-ready R2-D2, and more. For the true Star Wars heads, this is like Christmas coming early.
Special heads up. Watch out for your favorite Wookie character Chewbacca who is more powerful and bestial in McQuarrie’s sketches. To quote Han Solo, let the Wookie win.
Both kids and adults like to believe in superheroes because those mythic figures—whether they come in the form of Wonder Woman or Iron Man—provide hope when life is at it’s bleakest. For young children, superheroes can also help them concentrate through purposely boring 10-minute tasks.
Attempting to identify what keeps kids on task in a world increasingly filled with distractions through technology and media, six researchers designed an experiment to test a child’s level of grit and determination. They called the study “The “Batman Effect”: Improving Perseverance in Young Children,” as published in Child Development.
Researchers tested four- and six-year-olds by giving them a 10-minute dull computer task, while also tempting children with a nearby iPad full of games they could play if they got bored.
The 180 kids were tested in three groups. The first was the control group. They were asked to consider their own thoughts and feelings on the activity as they were working—i.e. “Am I working hard?” The second group were instructed to think of themselves in the third person. So if a boy’s name was Kyle, he was told to think to himself, “Is Kyle working hard?”
In the third condition, the kids were asked to think about someone else who is really good at working hard. They could pick from some well-known superhero types: Batman, Bob the Builder, Rapunzel, and Dora the Explorer. The kids got to dress up as the character they picked and then were asked, “Is Batman working hard?”
For 10 minutes the kids could move between the “work” and iPad. They were reminded every minute, through a loud speaker, of their “condition” (“Is Dora working hard?”). All the kids were told, “This is a very important activity and it would be helpful if you worked hard on this for as long as you could.” Perseverance was measured as time spent on the ‘work’ task.
The iPad proved too tempting a distraction for the kids, as in total the kids spent 37% of the time working on their task and 6#% playing on the iPad.
However, when children pretended to be superheroes, they “worked” harder than the other two groups. In addition, those kids who thought of themselves in the third person—“Is Kyle working hard?”—also “worked better than the kids only thinking of themselves.
“Children who were asked to reflect on the task as if they were another person were less likely to indulge in immediate gratification and more likely to work toward a relatively long-term goal,” the authors wrote in the study.
So just like Ben Wyatt in “Parks & Rec,” you should absolutely buy your children an authentic Batman suit for Christmas. You want them to do well in school, don’t you?
Star Wars is one of those properties that is just in our blood at this point. It’s infected us. We’re exposed to it in every form of media. As a lifelong “Wars” fan I can assure you of one thing, the films will always leave you wanting more.
The Last Jedi will be no exception. You will have strong feelings about it one way or another, but you will want more Wars! Luckily there are enough comic books out there to fill a Star Destroyer, and these are some to get you started.
Quick note: So, the Star Wars canon is kind of dicey. Before Disney bought Lucasfilm, more or less everything produced that had the “Star Wars” name on it was considered canon. But after the Disney buyout, what was once called the Expanded Universe has been deemed non-canon and is now considered and branded as “Star Wars: Legends.” This however does not negate or diminish the quality and impact of these amazing stories.
Originally published by Dark Horse Comics, this was my introduction to Star Wars comics and it still holds up to this very day. Although now considered non-canon, this series picks up directly after the events of the Battle of Endor and Return of the Jedi.
The series follows Rogue Leader and Rebel hero Wedge Antilles and his wingmen Wes Janson and Tycho Celchu. With loads of space battles and dogfights, this series is action packed, but also character-driven at the same time. (Force Facts: Denis Lawson who plays Wedge Antilles in the Star Wars films is the uncle of Ewan McGregor who went on to play Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Prequel Trilogy)
Star Wars Tales
For those not interested in longform story arcs, this is the book for you. Tales was a quarterly anthology series originally published by Dark Horse. Instead of focusing on any particular character, Tales featured stories for all of them. From Darth Vader to the broken astromech droid that Luke and Uncle Owen almost bought from the Jawas in A New Hope, everyone has a tale to tell and it’s all told in Tales.
Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy
Consisting of 6 issues for each chapter and successfully stealing my heart as a Wars fan, this 18-issue series was (and still is IMO) the gold standard for Star Wars stories taking place after Return of the Jedi. Though it’s no longer canon, for me and many other fans of the expanded universe this is the spiritual successor to the original Star Wars Trilogy.
Star Wars Legacy
Set around 100 years after the events of Return of the Jedi, this series follows the exploits of Cade Skywalker. Cade, a descendant of Luke’s, ignores his Jedi heritage and becomes a space pirate/bounty hunter. Legacy makes for a really cool story about a reluctant hero that can’t escape his destiny.
Darth Vader (2015-2016)
Cover via Marvel
This is the only canon book on this list and oh how I really wanted to dislike it. What I love about Darth Vader is that he’s a mysterious and powerful presence. Then the Prequels came and answered all the questions nobody was asking, like “who was Vader before he was Vader?”… nobody cares.
Thinking this book would paint him to be a standard cartoon villain twirling his mustache as his plans were foiled by those meddling kids and their pet Wookie, I couldn’t have been more wrong. This book lets the supporting cast do most of the talking and let’s Vader be Vader. Throughout the story he’s this unstoppable force of nature. A mysterious and powerful presence throughout this 25-issue run (more if you include the crossover Vader Down, which you should!) Kieron Gillen created an absolute masterpiece with this series.
So, these are some of my favorites. Some are canon while others aren’t, but they’re incredible stories and can transport you back into the Star Wars Universe at lightspeed.
While booze and fitness isn’t the oddest of couplings (who hasn’t gone to the gym after a few drinks?), it’s pretty unconventional to add wine pours to yoga. But it’s a thing in NYC and people are loving it.
Eli Walker teaches a wine and yoga class every Monday night at Grey Lady on the Lower Eastside. She came up with the idea while – are you ready for this? – at a bar. Okay, she used to work there, but still.
She tells INSIDER she was talking to her old bosses one day when she got the idea:
I told them I’m a yoga teacher now and one of them said, ‘Well, I need yoga. You should teach me yoga because I can’t even touch my toes,’ and then he proceeds to touch his toes and said, ‘Well, I guess I can touch my toes when I’m drunk.’ And then in jest I said, ‘Well then maybe we should do drunk yoga.’
At Drunk Yoga class, a short Happy Hour is followed by 45 minutes of yoga, arms stretched out, with glass of wine in hand. Walker intentionally developed a vinyasa sequence that easily incorporates holding a wine glass, so it’s not too difficult. Her goal is to make yoga less intimidating to noobs.
By the end of her class, Walker says everyone’s had between a glass and a glass and a half of wine (they’re told not to fill their glass past the half-way point, but that’s just amateur). She calls it an appropriate amount for the level of fun she’s trying to achieve.
Yoga for me is the physical practice of learning to be happy and healthy. If it takes a couple of glasses of wine for people to get comfortable, then I will pour a couple of glasses of wine.
Walker’s class is $30 and includes all the wine you can hold.
