There’s a freaky make up tutorial video making the rounds that shows girls how to look like the Peppa Pig cartoon character.
There’s something about Peppa Pig that stresses the world out. Maybe it’s the panic she ensues with her disturbing enormous height (it’s rumored she’s over 7-feet tall) or the fact that she causes little kids to talk with a British accent. Whatever the reason, she remains one of the most controversial cartoon characters in a long time.
Now, there’s a bizarre make up tutorial that’s bringing Peppa back into the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The video, which claims to be family friendly (lies!), shows YouTuber Jody Steel doing an elaborate make up routine that makes her look like Peppa, although she also looks like something out of “American Horror Story.” The creepy kids’ music and pitch black background isn’t helping either.
Steel is a very talented make up artist, having similarly strange videos on her channel that show different make up routines for characters like Detective Pikachu, Forky from “Toy Story 4”, a shark and some monsters from the anime series “Attack on Titan.” Steel appears to enjoy the challenge of creating realistic make up renditions of complex subjects like animation and, well, a shark.
She should own her weirdness because these make up tutorials are freaky and super easy to watch.
While dating apps give you the chance to meet hundreds of people, a sex expert says that once you’ve passed a certain number of options your odds of making choices and dating will be affected.
With so many dating apps out there’s never been a better time to date as many people as you want. However, a sex expert says that this phenomenon leads to too many choices, something that makes your brain feel very scrambled.
Helen Fisher, a sex expert and scientific consultant for Match.com, says that brains aren’t equipped to have so many options. “The problem is, the human brain is not built to even cope with so many choices. The brain has a sweet spot, apparently between five and nine alternatives, and after that, you don’t choose any,” she says on the podcast Sex with Emily.
Photo by rawpixel.com
Fisher recommends that after chatting with the 9th person you should stop and get to know at least one of them more. “The more you get to know somebody, the more you like them, and the more that you think that they like you,” she says.
Another recommendation she gives out is to remain positive on first dates, ignoring minor quibbles such as mismatched shoes, a photo with a bad angle on their profile, or someone who doesn’t dress according to your tastes.
While we tend to be negative about these issues, there’s no way of knowing if this person is right for you on a first date, and they might surprise you as you grow more comfortable with each other and get to know them more. “If it is a maybe, go out again,” she suggests.
This week’s column features an unlikely trio of animal friends, a crazy puppy, a dog and a pool, cats on a hammock and a dog drinking wine.
There’s no better pick-me-up than the one you get when you see a clip of an animal acting silly, which is why we’ve compiled this weekly column. These short videos feature all sorts of animals, providing you with that much needed mid-week rush of endorphins.
This week’s column features several animals, ranging from the standard crazy puppy to an unlikely trio of friends made up of a cat, a dog and a duck. There’s also a a dog retrieving a ball from a pool, two cats on a hammock and a big dog having wine. Check them out:
Friendships between cats and dogs are uncommon, but they happen. Friendships between cats, dogs and ducks though? That’s something I hadn’t seen that until today. There’s also a chicken in the background that doesn’t seem to be a part of this friend group and who’s just hanging out and walking around.
A crazy puppy
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1Ir4KIlB84/
Puppies are all crazy and relatively the same. That doesn’t make them any less cute or watchable.
The minute the video started playing we all knew what was going to happen. Still, this dog is so dumb and tries so hard that the video remains entertaining until the predictable and amazing end.
Not much happens on this video. There’s two cats chilling on a hammock until one falls in a very ungraceful way. This cat also has a big and cute belly.
A dog having wine
https://www.instagram.com/p/B1JbxmphFiM/
Big dogs don’t understand their size and want to still be a part of everything, like having wine from your glass or sleeping on the same bed as you. Maybe they know their size and they just don’t care.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge reportedly delay trip to Queen’s summer home to avoid Harry and Meghan; and we now know why it took a year for Gwyneth to move in with her husband.
Speaking with WSJ Magazine in a new interview, Falchuk explained that the duo’s decision to hold off on living together basically boiled down to one major factor: their kids. Paltrow shares daughter Apple, 15, and son Moses, 13, with her ex-husband, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin.
Falchuk shares daughter Isabella and son Brody with ex-wife Suzanne Falchuk. So, they wanted to ensure they held space for everyone to adjust in their own time. “I’m moving in September. We’ve just done it slowly,” Falchuk said, elaborating, “Divorce is terrible, even when it’s the right thing to do. And it’s really hard on kids. Come September, we’re all gonna Brady Bunch it up, and it’ll be great.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/ByOiU4eFCGm
When that time does finally come, Falchuk insists it will look a lot like any other blended family, saying, “There’s a media version of her and me, but we’re just home cooking dinner. Or she’s just cooking me breakfast. That’s all. We could not be a more normal couple.”
Whispers of a royal feud between the Royal Fab Four are back. While it seemed like everything was hunky-dory between Prince William, Kate Middleton, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle recently, things have reportedly taken a turn following the release of British Vogue’s September Issue. In case your forgot: the Duchess of Sussex guest-edited the September Issue and apparently offended her in-laws in the process. As a result, Kate and William are reportedly delaying the family trip to Queen Elizabeth’s summer home in Scotland, Balmoral Castle, in order to avoid running into Harry and Meghan. Awkward!
So, what upset the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge so much? Well, according to the Daily Mail’s senior royal expert Robert Jobson, something Prince Harry said while interviewing Jane Goodall for Meghan’s Vogue issue “irked” his older brother. “It is understood William and his wife Kate may delay their trip until Harry and Meghan have returned to Windsor,” Jobson alleges. All this animosity stems from Harry vowing only to have two children “maximum” in order to help save the environment. This pledge “may well have irked the Cambridges, who already have three,” says Jobson.
Jobson also believes Meghan offended the Cambridges, as well, by turning down the opportunity to be on the cover of British Vogue. The publication’s editor-in-chief Edward Enninful explained why the Duchess didn’t want to appear as the issue’s cover star, saying “in the end, she felt that it would be in some ways a ‘boastful’ thing to do for this particular project. She wanted, instead, to focus on the women she admires.” Considering Kate posed for the cover of Vogue a few years back, this statement may have been taken the wrong way.
Of course, it’s important to take all these rumors with a grain of salt. Meghan has faced a lot of backlash because of her “Hollywood” background since joining the royal family, so, it makes sense for the Duchess to be cautious about inviting that kind of criticism into her life. Hopefully all is well between the royal in-laws, but we’ll just have to wait and see if the Cambridges join the Sussexes in Scotland.
It’s been scientifically proven that social media breaks can decrease your anxiety levels and increase your overall happiness.
Most of us have experienced some of the negative side effects of social media and can even name a handful of smartphone addicts or people whose self esteem is directly influenced by their Instagram feeds.
While moderate social media use does no harm, bringing people together and maintaining relationships across countries, people who spend large chunks of their time on these apps tend to experience anxiety and sadness. One day we might feel like underachievers and the next we might be convinced that everyone else is leading better and more fulfilling lives.
If you feel like social media has too much of an influence on your daily life, Bustle spoke with some experts and compiled a list of benefits from a month long break. Here are 5 of our favorites:
A new perspective on social media
Taking as little as one day each week to ignore social media will give you time to focus on your hobbies (i.e. real life), while also giving you some much needed time to examine your relationship with these online spaces. If you’ve found yourself arguing with strangers or friends on Twitter and Facebook, stressing out over Instagram post “likes”, a break might be just what you need. Once you get back online you’ll have a cool head and will be able to examine your behavior and the behaviors of others with less odds of feeling bad.
A study on Facebook deactivation found that, on average, people who dropped the social media platform for an entire month were happier and less anxious. Although these results were small, lead author Sarah Eichmeyer said that she was still surprised to discover that there was a link between the site and our overall happiness. “Our study shows that deactivating Facebook indeed causes people to be happier — although not by as much as correlational research might have suggested.”
A break from your obsession with the past
While social media connects us with tons of people who provide good things for our lives, it’s also a direct link to our past, which can be reactivated with a few taps of our cellphones. This, in times of a tough breakup or stress in general, can transform into a sure (and quick) way to feel depressed and to start ruminating about things that happened years ago.
It’s very common for people to check their phones before going to bed and the minute when they wake up. This influences your sleep and the rest of your day in several ways; for example, if you wake up and read a very annoying tweet, this content will stay in your head all through your morning. The same thing happens when you check your smartphone before sleeping at night. An easy fix for this is to prevent yourself from using your phone in bed, purchasing an alarm clock so there’s no temptation.
A reduction of negative self-talk
Social media tends to have an influence on how we perceive ourselves, highlighting all that we’re not doing or all the things we’re bad at. Young people are especially prone to these behaviors. Some time off from your preferred social media site can reduce your need for validation and the stress you feel when you see people doing fun things that you wish you were doing.
Researchers found that a warm bath or shower, for as little as 10 minutes before bed, can significantly improve overall sleep efficiency.
Do you struggle trying to fall asleep? Do you feel you don’t get enough sleep and you feel sleepy during the day? You are not alone. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has found that one in three American adults have symptoms of insomnia. Data show there are about 100,000 crashes each year related to drowsy driving which results in 1,550 fatalities and 71,000 injuries. The Institute of Medicine reported that the long-term effects of sleep deprivation can cause serious health consequences such as hypertension, diabetes, heart attack, stroke and depression.
Many people try over-the-counter or prescribed sleep aids. But is there any way to fall asleep faster and get better sleep without medication?
I am sleep researcher and graduate student in biomedical engineering at the University of Texas. In a recently published study in collaboration with the UT Health Science Center at Houston and the University of Southern California, colleagues and I showed that a warm bath or shower one to two hours before bedtime can significantly improve your sleep.
Like so many people, I had sleep problems. I struggled falling asleep, I would wake up in the middle of the night, restless and would wake up not feeling rested. I didn’t have a sleep schedule. After I started looking into the data, I realized how many people live their lives in a sleep deprived state. I was not interested in taking drugs, so that made me interested in studying about non-pharmacological methods to help improve sleep.
My team and I reviewed more than 5,000 studies related to bathing and sleep. Seventeen of these studies met our study criteria to explore the effects of warm bath or shower on sleep. We used a statistical procedure for combining data from multiple studies and to find the optimal timing for the bath.
We found that a warm bath, of around 104 and 109 degrees Fahrenheit, for as little as 10 minutes can significantly improve overall sleep efficiency. In other words, a warm bath led to more time spent in actual sleep rather than turning or tossing and trying to fall asleep, compared to usual sleep without taking bath. When scheduled one to two hours before bedtime, a warm bath can also hasten the speed of falling asleep by about 36%.
We also found that whether people reported feeling rested and like they had a great night’s sleep improved by a warm bath or shower, in most of the studies.
Why does the warm bath or shower help? There is science behind it. Our body temperature is not constant during 24 hours. It is higher in the morning and evening, and it is lowest during nighttime sleep. The body temperature needs to drop to initiate good sleep. When we take a warm bath or shower, the body brings large amount of blood flow to the surface, especially hands and feet. This blood flow brings the heat from the core to the surface and rejects the heat to the environment and causes a drop in body temperature. Therefore, if you take a warm bath/shower at the right biological time – one to two hours before bedtime – it will aid your natural circadian process and improve your sleep.
As a next step, we are now working to design a commercially viable bed system with technology that mimics the effect of warm bath. The bed of the future!
Different terpenes attract us for different reasons and one person’s bedtime medication is another person’s panic attack.
Sativa versus indica is a conversation that’s been going on for a long time. And it’s certainly risen up to the realm of cannabis common knowledge that if you want to experience the munchies, a mellow night in, and a good night’s sleep you pick an indica. If you need to get things done and be creative, you go with the sativa. And if you’re looking for the middle ground, hundreds upon hundreds of hybrids await.
But not everyone falls into the same category when it comes to the effects of cannabis. No one is a cookie cutter person and neither are our pallets when it comes to pot. Different terpenes attract us for different reasons and one person’s bedtime medication is another person’s panic attack.
The biggest reason that people find indicas disconcerting rather than calming is that a heavy hitter can have someone deep inside their head with no way out imaginable. When we get too far inside our heads, it can bring about a host of emotions, some of which we may not be ready to deal with. This can cause anxiety and the addition of not feeling in control of one’s thoughts just adds to the state of panic.
Pure indicas are truly medicine and should not be discredited in any way, shape or form, but they’re not for everybody. Many people find that the cerebral, yet clear headed feeling of a high flying sativa gives them a mental boost, calms anxiety revolving around immediate circumstances and gets them in the mood to be more social, get some cleaning done or simply be.
The solution for most will be somewhere in the middle, though. Breeders around the world have gone to painstaking lengths to create cultivars that take the best attributes from indicas, sativas and mother and father plants to quell anxiety for the masses, much in the vein of benzo-based pharmaceuticals working for most people experiencing panic or the feeling of being anxious.
When it’s that intricate, often you’ll wind up with a hybrid that either leans toward sativa or indica. Experiment with different strains that have different attributes until you find a few that work well for you. And even if the budtenders at your local dispensaries aren’t mind and soul readers, they can point you in directions you may otherwise not have taken, like a sativa heavy hybrid for anxiety that might just do the trick.
Human technology and drug-sniffing canines have hamstrung prosecutors’ ability to pursue marijuana convictions.
In the rush to legalize hemp production across the country, states didn’t anticipate the effect it’d have on prosecuting marijuana convictions. Texas, Florida, and Ohio have struggled whether they accidentally decriminalized cannabis, as limited technology prohibits their ability to quickly and effectively identify between cannabis and hemp flower. This is why various state and county prosecutors in these states have announced they’ll no longer pursue low-level marijuana possession cases.
But humans aren’t the only ones unable to differentiate between marijuana and hemp. Drug-sniffing dogs have also struggled to find their roles following the new laws. Not only are marijuana and hemp plants visually similar, they also produce comparable smells. This proves difficult for dogs, as they can’t distinguish between the two plants, eliminating the use of “probable cause” for extensive drug searches.
As a result, the Ohio Highway Patrol and the Columbus Division of Police told the The Columbus Dispatch they are hereby suspending marijuana-detection training for drug-sniffing canines. This should eliminate any complications of “probable cause” for prosecutors pursuing drug convictions outside of marijuana.
But the problem still remains for current dogs, as police can’t train them to unlearn reacting to a drug once it’s become a developed behavior. Because these canines deliver the same reactions when detecting any drug—regardless if it’s cocaine or cannabis—Highway Patrol “are evaluating what impact the hemp legislation may have” on the 31 active narcotic-detection canines.
“It’s very problematic for probable cause,” Dan Sabol, a Columbus criminal-defense lawyer, told the Dispatch.
“From a practical standpoint, [marijuana] is the vast majority of hits,” he added. “That’s the most commonly used drug of abuse—or maybe not of ‘abuse,’ depending on the circumstances now.”
A similar pattern has evolved in New York, where state police revealed earlier this year they too have stopped training dogs to detect marijuana. They did so in anticipation of the state’s eventual decriminalization of marijuana in June. In states like Colorado and Oregon, legalization has forced these drug-sniffing canines to retire early. Maybe Fido can earn a CBD dog treat for all the good work he’s done.
A New York nutritionist says while pizza is a healthier breakfast alternative to cereal, it’s not that simple.
Pizza is an infamous breakfast option, associated with days where you wake up late, walk through your home like a zombie and pull out a slice straight out of the fridge. This delicious breakfast — a staple of feeling lazy or hangover — is, according to one expert, a healthier option than your average bowl of cereal.
While that opinion might be a little bit controversial, New York-based nutritionist Chelsey Amer says that breakfast cereals tend to be “nutritionally bleak.” She admits that while pizza isn’t the healthiest of options it contains less sugar and packs a lot of calories and carbs, maybe even a vegetable or two, making it a filling breakfast that leaves you ready to take on the day.
“You may be surprised to find out that an average slice of pizza and a bowl of cereal with whole milk contain nearly the same amount of calories,” Amer said to The Daily Meal.“However, pizza packs a much larger protein punch, which will keep you full and boost satiety throughout the morning.”
Photo by Flickr user Jenn Durfey.
While the word “healthy” is a tricky one in this scenario (you really can’t call a slice of pepperoni and cheese healthy) cereals are not the super breakfast food that people paint them to be, at least, not the sugary ones. These kinds are made from super processed grains, lead to sugar crashes and open the door for more sweets and calories to be consumed through the day.
If there’s one thing we can all agree on is that both of these options make for a pretty delicious yet unhealthy breakfast. If you’re interested in staying fit, you might want to try other cereals. If you really want to foster your pizza for breakfast habit try out other kinds with different breads and toppings. They might not be as good but at least you’ll fulfill your craving. Sort of.
Young people who vape are more likely to consume cannabis, as well as engage in other addictive behaviors, according to a new study.
Replacing cigarettes with vaping nicotine was supposed to disrupt the addictive and destructive patterns caused by mass tobacco consumption. But early research into the Juuling and e-cigarette phenomenon indicates that young people who vape are more likely to consume cannabis, as well as engage in other addictive behaviors. According to a study published Monday in the JAMA Pediatrics, ingesting nicotine at an early age interrupts brain development in adolescents and should be discouraged.
“We can’t think of e-cigarettes as a less-harmful alternative to cigarettes with adolescents,” Dr. Nicholas Chadi, lead author of the study, told CNN. He added that, “just like cigarettes, e-cigarettes increase your risk of using marijuana, and marijuana, we know, has several implications and negative health consequences in adolescents.”
Published in the JAMA Pediatrics journal, Chadi and his team analyzed over 20 previous studies that examined the relationship between teenage vaping and cannabis use. They found consuming nicotine at an early age led someone to be 3.5 times more likely to later smoke marijuana. That relationship was stronger amongst those aged 17 years and younger, compared to those between 18 to 24. Chadi says this is because “a younger brain is more vulnerable to the effects of substances in general.”
Photo by Vaping 360 via Flickr
He added that, “you would expect that there would be a higher risk of them using marijuana, versus an older adolescent or young adult who might have a more developed brain and might not be as sensitive to the negative effects of nicotine.”
Chadi emphasized this meta-analysis focused on correlation, not causation. This research does not prove early-age vaping leads to teenage marijuana use. But where there’s smoke, there’s fire. “A reasonable hypothesis is that e-cigarette use might cause at least a part of that increased risk of using marijuana,” Chadi said.
In addition, this is not the first research to pinpoint such a correlation. A 2018 Pediatrics study found that teenagers vaping and smoking hookah were up to four times more likely to consume marijuana.
“The association between tobacco use and subsequent marijuana use across adolescence extends to multiple tobacco products,” the researchers of the study concluded.
