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Read more about the article What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse
What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse

What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse

What if marriage is not the social good that so many believe and want it to be? Story by Mandy Len Catron In America today, it’s easy to believe that marriage is a social good—that our lives and our communities are better when more people get and stay married. There have, of course, been massive changes to the institution over the past few generations, leading the occasional cultural critic to ask: Is marriage becoming obsolete? But few of these people seem genuinely interested in the answer. More often the question functions as a kind of rhetorical sleight of hand, a way of stirring up moral panic about changing family values or speculating about whether society has become too cynical for love. In popular culture, the sentiment still prevails that marriage makes us happy and divorce leaves us lonely, and that never getting married at all is a fundamental failure of…

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That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief

That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief by Scott Berinato HBR Staff/d3sign/Getty Images We’ve made our coronavirus coverage free for all readers. To get all of HBR’s content delivered to your inbox, sign up for the Daily Alert newsletter. Some of the HBR edit staff met virtually the other day — a screen full of faces in a scene becoming more common everywhere. We talked about the content we’re commissioning in this harrowing time of a pandemic and how we can help people. But we also talked about how we were feeling. One colleague mentioned that what she felt was grief. Heads nodded in all the panes. If we can name it, perhaps we can manage it. We turned to David Kessler for ideas on how to do that. Kessler is the world’s foremost expert on grief. He co-wrote with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief…

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Read more about the article The Lunatic Farmer – Loneliness
The Lunatic Farmer

The Lunatic Farmer – Loneliness

January 31, 2020             A new study highlighted in the Wall Street Journal says loneliness is up:  61 percent of Americans say they're lonely.              Additionally, the study found a direct relationship between social media and loneliness.  The more social media usage, the higher the loneliness.              But I thought we were better connected through our devices.  These kinds of findings make me shake my head and marvel.  In case you're just tuning in, Teresa and I have no TV in our house.  Neither of us has a smart phone.  We have flip phones.  I don't do texting--at all.  My cell phone does not work in our house.  Even cordless landlines are dicey in our house.              I'm not lonely.  Is it possible to have device addiction?  Or to have interest addiction--like if someone doesn't express interest in me every 30 minutes, then apparently the world doesn't think I'm worth attention?             …

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Read more about the article ‘It makes me enjoy playing with the kids’: is microdosing mushrooms going mainstream?
Post Image Mushrooms Going Main Stream

‘It makes me enjoy playing with the kids’: is microdosing mushrooms going mainstream?

Before the school run, or commuting to work, increasing numbers are taking tiny doses of psychedelic drugs in the UK. Why? Rosie has just returned from the school run. She drops a bag of groceries on to her kitchen table, and reaches for a clear plastic cup, covered by a white hanky and sealed with a hairband. Inside is a grey powder; her finely ground homegrown magic mushrooms. “I’ll take a very small dose, every three or four days,” she says, weighing out a thumbnail of powder on digital jewellery scales, purchased for their precision. “People take well over a gram recreationally. I weigh out about 0.12g and then just swallow it, like any food. It gives me an alertness, an assurance. I move from a place of anxiety to a normal state of confidence, not overconfidence.” Over the last 12 months, I have been hearing the same story from…

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Drink to Your Health

Kombucha's unlikely rise from Soviet elixir to modern-day miracle drink. In May of 1995, Ruth Patras realized that something was wrong with her 5-week-old daughter, Ciara. Initially happy and healthy, about a month after Ciara was born, the whites of her eyes started to turn yellow. Over the next few days, the color deepened, and her appetite diminished. Patras took Ciara to her pediatrician, who sent the family to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Tests revealed that Ciara had biliary atresias, a rare liver disease in which the ducts that pass bile from the liver to the gallbladder and the first section of the small intestine become blocked. Bile serves two functions in the body, helping to digest fat and carry waste out of the liver. When trapped, the excess bile damages liver cells, eventually leading to liver failure. Doctors told Patras that the only hope for Ciara was a complex…

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Stop Teaching Your Preschooler How to Read

Michelle Woo12/08/17 4:00pm Photo via Shutterstock My daughter is onto me. As I read bedtime stories to her, sometimes I’ll stop, point to a word, and in my most convincing voice, and say, “Hmm, I don’t know this one. C-A-P? Can you help me?” The almost-five-year-old, not falling for this nonsense at all, will then say to me, “Mom, just read it.” And I’ll keep reading. Like a chump. I am fully confident she will learn to read when she learns to read, but as a parent, I sometimes wonder if I should be trying to speed up the process. I’ve followed the advice of friends and purchased BOB Books for beginning readers, and I often prompt her to sound words out. I can tell that she almost gets it, but I can also tell that I’m not much help. So when Daniel T. Willingham, a professor of psychology at…

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Why You Should Stop Giving Your Kids So Many Toys

Photo by Timm Schamberger/Getty Images In a new study by researchers at the University of Toledo, toddlers who were given fewer toys played more creatively and were more engaged in their play than those who had many toys available. Moms and dads, this might be the time to remove that chicken robot, mustache plushie, emoji bingo set, and Spider-Man drone from your Amazon shopping cart. I’m sorry. Researchers placed 36 children between the ages of 18 and 30 months in different open play sessions, one with four toys in the room and the other with 16 toys. The toys varied—some were battery-operated, some had wheels, and some were made to teach a concept such as shapes or counting. In the environments with four toys, kids engaged with the toys 108% longer, and played with them in a greater number of ways. Their play was deeper, more sophisticated, more imaginative. When…

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Two Artists Set Sail in a Pair of Floating Art and Photography Studios

By Kelly Richman-Abdou on February 15, 2018 Today, many creatives opt to abandon the confines of traditional workspaces in order to produce work on-the-go. From pop-up art studios to portable photography labs, this trend has resulted in both an abundance of experimental spaces and a surge in new technologies. Taking both of these approaches on board, artists Claudius Schulze and Maciej Markowiczhave created 2BOATS, a “floating photographic platform” that puts a creative twist on travel. The 2BOATS project revolves around a unique pair of water vessels. Intended to house the artists as they travel around Europe, each boat is much more than meets the eye. The first was dreamt up by Schulze and resembles a rustic houseboat. It serves as a hammock-equipped hub for artists to discuss “vision, formation, creation and the environment,” hold workshops, and view Schulze’s eclectic body of work. The second boat, Obscuraboat, was designed by Markowicz. Known as a “moving camera,” this…

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We’re Not Gluten Intolerant, We’re Glyphosate Intolerant

Study blames Roundup herbicide for gluten intolerance and celiac disease epidemic “Celiac disease, and, more generally, gluten intolerance, is a growing problem worldwide, but especially in North America and Europe, where an estimated 5% of the population now suffers from it,” researchers wrote in a meta-analysis of nearly 300 studies. “Here, we propose that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide, Roundup®, is the most important causal factor in this epidemic,” they add. The study, published in the journal Interdisciplinary Toxicology in 2013, was completely ignored by the media except for Mother Earth News and The Healthy Home Economist. Now that glyphosate is getting the attention it deserves, being named as the culprit in a $280 million cancer lawsuit and labeled as a carcinogen by the World Health Organization and the state of California, it may be time to look at the chemical’s role in a related disease: The symptoms…

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Doctors Explain How Hiking Can Actually Change Our Brains

While it may seem obvious that a good hike through a forest or up a mountain can cleanse your mind, body, and soul, science is now discovering that hiking can actually change your brain… for the better! Hiking In Nature Can Stop Negative, Obsessive Thoughts Aside from the almost instant feeling of calm and contentment that accompanies time outdoors, hiking in nature can reduce rumination. Many of us often find ourselves consumed by negative thoughts, which takes us out of the enjoyment of the moment at best and leads us down a path to depression and anxiety at worst. But a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that spending time in nature decreases these obsessive, negative thoughts by a significant margin. To conduct this study, researchers compared the reported rumination of participants who hiked through either an urban or a natural environment. They found those who walked for 90 minutes in a…

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Doing Dishes Is the Worst

Photo by: Mardis Coers / Getty Every day, they slowly accumulate. Plates covered in sauces and crumbs. Bowls with a fine layer of sticky who-knows-what. Forks, knives, and spoons all gummed with bits of this and that. At the end of a long day of work, cooking, cleaning, and, for many, negotiating with small children, a couple has to face the big question: Who is going to do the dishes? A report from the Council of Contemporary Families (CCF), a nonprofit that studies family dynamics, suggests that the answer to that question can have a significant impact on the health and longevity of a relationship. The study examined a variety of different household tasks—including shopping, laundry, and housecleaning, and found that, for women in heterosexual relationships, it’s more important to share the responsibility of doing the dishes than any other chore. Women who wash the vast majority of the dishes…

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Billionaire Musk releases all Tesla patents to help save the Earth

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Shanghai's Mayor Ying Yong attend the Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory groundbreaking ceremony in Shanghai, China Jan. 7, 2019. Aly Song, Reuters SAN FRANCISCO - Elon Musk announced Thursday he had released all of the electric carmaker Tesla's patents, as part of an effort to fight climate change. In a blog post, the colorful billionaire founder of Tesla promised the company "will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology." It was a remarkable move in an industry where the smallest idea or seed of invention is carefully guarded to protect its monetary value.  And it in fact came on the same day US prosecutors charged a Chinese national with stealing secrets from Apple's self-driving vehicle project. "Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport," Musk said. "If we clear a path to the creation of compelling…

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Smartphone screens find their size sweet spot

Natasha Lomas@riptari / 2 years ago The joke in the smartphone space in years past was how screens just kept getting bigger — stretching palms and making you look ridiculous when held up to the head to talk. How times change. Talking into phones? Why, how 2005 of you! Phablets have long been the new normal as the telephone icon lost out in the war to capture our attention via finger-flicking touchscreen fun — losing out to all the other apps offering more visual ways to be entertained and/or communicate, be it by text, selfie lens or silly GIF. Apple, a laggard at inflating smartphone screen size, has remained something of a reluctant participant in this ‘bigger is better’ logic. Evident in its tortured sloganizing for its very first phablet, the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus — which it launched in 2014 and stuck next to the words: “bigger than bigger”. The…

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Growing Food in Wet Climates

​So I’ve shifted from a hot, dry climate to a cooler, wet one. And it’s a radically different ball game. Slugs replace aphids. Mould occludes drought issues. I’m once again swatted by the importance of climate-specific information. But where to find it?As you’ve probably worked out by now, I take most advice with a shedload of salt. If you can’t show me hard evidence of success, take cover. But, when it comes to a burgeoning garden in a wet climate, I know a woman who knows. Let me hand over to the eloquent Kristen Krash of Sueño de Vida in Ecuador for her hard-won tips. Sueño de Vida is a naturally-built haven in Ecuador. I Imagined Endless Crops - I Was WrongWhen I first landed at my new home on seven acres of sub-tropical cloud forest, I was ecstatic. It was dry August and the sun shone in the bright…

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D.C. Council gives final approval to Airbnb regulations

Property owners won’t be able to use secondary homes for short-term rentals under the new rules By Andrew Giambrone Nov 15, 2018, 11:54am EST D.C. residents who use Airbnb or similar booking services to rent out their homes will likely have to abide by new regulations starting next October, when they are set to go into effect. The policies represent the first time the city has charted comprehensive laws for short-term rental units—an effort that has sparked a fierce debate spanning roughly the past two years. District lawmakers on Tuesday unanimously green-lit rules for short-term rentals, after they had delayed a final vote on the rules last month. The legislation bans property owners from renting out any homes other than their primary residences for fewer than 30 days at a time, commonly done through platforms such as Airbnb and VRBO. It also restricts to 90 the total number of days…

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