Mauro Habacuc Avendaño Luis, one of the craftsmen, was the first to wade to shore. With an agility belying his age, he struck out over the boulders exposed by low tide. Crouching on a slippery ledge pounded by surf, he reached inside a crevice between two rocks. There, lodged among the urchins, was a snail with a knobby gray shell the size of a walnut. The sight might not dazzle tourists who travel here to see humpback whales, but for Mr. Avendaño, 85, these drab little mollusks represent a way of life.

Marine snails in the genus Plicopurpura are sacred to the Mixtec people of Pinotepa de Don Luis, a small town in southwestern Oaxaca. Men like Mr. Avendaño have been sustainably “milking” them for radiant purple dye for at least 1,500 years. The color suffuses Mixtec textiles and spiritual beliefs. Called tixinda, it symbolizes fertility and death, as well as mythic ties between lunar cycles, women and the sea.

The future of these traditions — and the fate of the snails — are uncertain. The mollusks are subject to intense poaching pressure despite federal protections intended to protect them. Fishermen break them (and the other mollusks they eat) open and sell the meat to local restaurants. Tourists who comb the beaches pluck snails off the rocks and toss them aside.

A severe earthquake in 2020 thrust formerly submerged parts of their habitat above sea level, fatally tossing other mollusks in the snail’s food web to the air, and making once inaccessible places more available to poachers.

Decades ago, dense clusters of snails the size of doorknobs were easy to find, according to Mr. Avendaño. “Full of snails,” he said, sweeping a calloused, violet-stained hand across the coves. Now, most of the snails he finds are small, just over an inch, and yield only a few milliliters of dye.

The snail populations crashed during the 1980s, when a Japanese textile company hired local fishermen to dye bolts of kimono silk. The Mixtecs collect dye a few months a year (not during the summer when the snails are breeding) and return the snails to the rocks, holding them in place until they reattach. But the fishermen extracted dye year-round and left the snails to bake in the sun or chucked them into open water.

“The snails don’t wash back up and then attach,” said Marta Turok, an anthropologist and expert in Mexican craft traditions. “They sink down and die.”

Generations of Mixtec women have woven the amethyst thread into elaborate wrap skirts in which they are married and, ultimately, buried. When Ms. Turok learned these textiles were on track to disappear with the snails, she connected the tintoreros (as the dyers are known in Spanish) to biologists who could collect data proving the mollusks were in steep decline.

“My work, and that of my colleagues, was to demonstrate scientifically that the tintoreros were right,” said Javier Acevedo García, one of those biologists. He found that the devastation — especially the disappearance of the largest snails that were about 40 years old — was accurate. Without interference from fishermen, it would take roughly 20 years for these populations to rebound to their former levels, according to his research.

Getting the authorities to act wasn’t easy, according to Ms. Turok, who worked for the government at the time. “Environment was not on the agenda,” she said. After years of campaigning, the tintoreros and their allies succeeded in securing federal protections for the snails known scientifically as Plicopurpura pansa in 1988.

But now it seems as though the species that the group labored to save may not be a species at all. Scientific studies have since suggested that the dye-producing snails might be members of P. columellaris, a different, unprotected species found in the same coastal habitats. The editors of the World Register of Marine Species, an online database maintained by an international group of specialists, have determined that the name Plicopurpura pansa is invalid.

The Mixtecs see two distinct groups of snails. The mollusks they use secrete more dye, and their shells aren’t as thick. Biologists have observed variations in the snails’ internal anatomy as well, such as the number and placement of microscopic teeth on the radula, a long, ribbonlike feeding organ the snails use like cheese graters to penetrate the shells of other mollusks.

Physical diversity, however, doesn’t always signal species-level divides.

“People repeatedly ‘discover’ snails in this group and give them names,” said Martine Claremont, who wrote her dissertation on Rapaninae, the subfamily to which the Oaxacan snails belong. Over the past couple centuries, she explained, gung-ho scientists have christened new species based on distinctive individuals, leading to multiple overlapping names.

When scientists identify redundancies, the earliest name — in this case P. columellaris — takes precedent.

At first glance, these classifications might seem like biological inside baseball. What difference does a bit of Latin nomenclature make? Changes to scientific names can have consequences for animals and the conservationists who defend them.

“The law is protecting a species that is not recognized by the scientific community,” said Sonia Hernandez, a biologist at Olive-Harvey College in Chicago. “Therefore, somebody could potentially harvest the mollusk and not be punished by any enforcement. They wouldn’t be breaking any law.”

Although Dr. Hernandez and other scientists say more research is necessary to clarify the relationship between the snails, they worry the uncertainty could create loopholes for a company to harvest the remaining snails — and that an ancient Mixtec tradition could vanish with them.

Cultures throughout Central America once collected dye from the snails, but now, in a world of cheap synthetic pigments, Mr. Avendaño and his family are among the few people keeping the practice alive. To collect the dye, they detach the mollusks from the rocks and press their rubbery feet until a creamy fluid wells up inside their shells. Then, they tip the liquid onto skeins of cotton yarn wrapped around their wrists. Exposed to air and sunlight, the fibers transform. Lichen yellow becomes peacock green and, finally, brilliant shades of purple.

Dyeing the thread is dangerous work. “We sometimes risk our lives to be able to bring that color home,” Mr. Avendaño’s son, Rafael Avendaño Lopez, said. The Avendaños have lost relatives who slipped on the rocks and drowned in the unpredictable surf. Preserving ancestral traditions, they say, is worth the danger.

In December, the Mixtec dyers, or tintoreros, and scientists invited Dr. Hernandez and Oscar Pineda-Catalan, a conservation biologist at the University of Chicago, to perform an anatomical and genetic analysis to answer the species question once and for all. The husband and wife team say previous studies have not been detailed enough to be conclusive.

“It’s really important that a comprehensive, rigorous description of the species incorporate both morphological and molecular data,” Dr. Pineda-Catalan said. He noted that previous researchers have based their conclusions on just one or the other. “We need a little bit more information,” he said.

When Drs. Hernandez and Pineda-Catalan ran the experiment, they set up a makeshift laboratory in a rural Airbnb near Bahías de Huatulco to give their Mixtec collaborators access. The biologists said they wanted to avoid the long history of researchers swooping in, taking samples and whisking them away to inaccessible facilities.

“The traditional laboratory is people wearing lab coats, and the nonscientists are outside, and the scientists are inside, and they are the only ones who possess the knowledge and skills,” Dr. Hernandez said. This system has tended to exclude Native communities.

“It was important to be there,” the younger Mr. Avendaño said.

“We know everything about the field. No one can teach us what we already know there,” he said. “That’s ancestral knowledge passed down by our forebears. But in scientific and biological terms, we don’t have that knowledge or the tools to determine what type of blood or DNA it has.”

The conditions in the rustic cabana required the scientists to improvise. The lights in the cabana were dim, the space was hardly sterile and the presence of other invertebrates threatened to ruin the samples. “We found a scorpion in our sheets last night,” Dr. Hernandez said as she sat down at a dissection microscope poised on a rickety table in the kitchen turned laboratory. Still, they were able to successfully run the experiment.

After measuring, photographing and dissecting snails, the scientists took biopsies, and extracted and purified the DNA. They then ran a polymerase chain reaction, a process sometimes called molecular photocopying, which generates millions of copies of relevant genes. With enough copies, scientists can sequence and compare the DNA of different specimens. The more similar two sequences are, the more likely it is that the specimens belong to the same species.

The scientists and tintoreros, who sent the DNA to the National Institute of Genomic Medicine in Mexico City for processing, are now waiting for the sequences.

Rafael Avendaño Lopez said he wasn’t nervous about the results. No matter what species the snails are, he said, “we’ll continue fighting to protect them.”

The post What’s in a Name? For These Snails, Legal Protection appeared first on New York Times.

“I thought you were the one that was supposed be in our lives forever. when i think of my childhood i think of you pat, and it’s gonna be so weird to go on without you in our lives,” Sheen wrote via Instagram Monday.

“You were such a huge part of our family and life will never feel the same, but that’s just because of how much you impacted us. thank you for showing everyone around you how to be alive,” she continued.

The 20-year-old reminisced about a family trip they took with Muldoon — who remained extremely close with Richards even after their breakup — recalling how he made her “laugh so hard” by singing a song called “Lola.”

“I will really miss hearing my mom laugh on the phone with you. your voice always brightened my day and i’m gonna miss hearing it but i know my mom will more, but we will never stop talking about you,” Sheen continued, thanking the “Melrose Place” alum for being her mom’s “best friend.”

“Thank you for being the one to make her laugh and forget about all she’s going through. that was a gift you had. the bond you two had was something so special, that no one can touch.”

“When i think of my mom i think of you. you guys came as a package and i’m so thankful i got to know you and witness a friendship so pure and special in front of my eyes.”

At the conclusion of the touching tribute, Lola — whose father is Richards’ ex-husband Charlie Sheen — revealed that it was Muldoon whom she always imagined her mom ending up with.

“I always begged my mom i’m sure she told you that you guys would end up back together haha, but i guess staying best friends was better anyways you really were a rockstar pat, and forever will be. have fun up there i know you will. love you.”

The “Days of Our Lives” alum died on Sunday following a sudden heart attack. He was 57.

He spent his final morning with his partner, Miriam Rothbart, who heartbreakingly found him unconscious on the bathroom floor, per TMZ.

Though paramedics were called, Muldoon was pronounced dead on the scene.

Muldoon and Richards, 55, shared such a “deep friendship,” that the latter felt obligated to cut him out of her life during her tumultuous marriage to Sheen.

“I did not speak to Pat when I was married to Charlie,” Richards said on a 2025 episode of her reality show “Denise Richards & Her Wild Things.”

“It was hard because I didn’t want to lose him as a ‘friend’ friend. But, towards the end of the marriage, I talked to him all the time about him,” she explained, adding Sheen had a “hard time” dealing with her and Muldoon’s relationship.

She married Sheen, 60, in 2002 and parted ways in 2006 after welcoming daughters Sami, 21, and Lola.

During that same episode, Sami even claimed there were still sparks between Muldoon and Richards when the exes reconnected on the set of Richards’ music video — though the “Wild Things” star was with estranged husband, Aaron Phypers, at the time.

“I don’t want to get him in trouble, but I feel like he might still have feelings for my mom,” she teased while hanging out on the set of the video, noting they “have like 30 years of history.”

Richards has yet to publicly speak out on Muldoon’s passing.

The post Lola Sheen says she ‘begged’ mom Denise Richards to ‘end up’ with ex Patrick Muldoon in touching tribute to late actor  appeared first on Page Six.

According to research published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, Americans between 50 and 65 are getting lonelier, more depressed, and physically weaker. They’re even showing worse memory than previous generations, and they’re all much worse off than their peers in other wealthy countries.

This is measurable and based on decades of international data. Taken together, the findings indicate that Americans are trending downward across multiple indicators. Middle-aged Americans were lonelier, more depressive, had worse memories, and had far weaker grip strength than middle-aged people in, for instance, northern Europe. Even the lives of middle-aged people in countries like England and Mexico are steadily improving, while American middle-aged folks are falling precipitously.

If you guessed that literally everything about the United States is the problem here, you are correct.

Americans Experience Middle Age Differently Than the Rest of the World

The researchers say that, compared to other wealthy nations, the United States has weaker social safety nets, higher income inequality, and less investment and family support systems. Places like Germany and Sweden offer childcare subsidies, parental leave, and direct financial support from the government. Meanwhile, the United States has an “every man for himself” philosophy that hurts everyone and helps no one.

There is also the matter of healthcare. Where all these other countries have some form of public health insurance that covers most, if not all, of their citizens, the United States has a bizarre, Byzantine patchwork of wildly expensive, inconsistent private insurance systems with a few woefully underfunded public systems mixed in. There’s also the pesky little fact that so much of American insurance is tied to employment, and that many Americans who are functionally employed full-time are considered contract workers and therefore cannot get insurance through the company that is ostensibly their employer.

There are other factors at play, such as the fact that middle-aged people in other wealthy countries don’t move as often as Americans do, which prevents Americans from forming long-term ties to their local communities. And then there’s the fact that, since the US economy and job market have been hitting younger Americans especially hard, middle-aged Americans have to financially support them while also caring for their own elderly parents. Add all sorts of negative economic factors like the rising cost of housing and stagnant wages, and you’ve got a generation of middle-aged Americans who are falling apart at the seams in every conceivable way.

When you read stuff like this, it’s good to keep in mind that all of this is a choice. If it’s happening in one place and not happening in a bunch of other places, those other places clearly chose to ensure that this kind of thing cannot and should not happen on their turf. Sadly, and unfortunately, in the United States, our leaders are dead set on ensuring that it absolutely does and will continue to happen for as long as they are in control.

The post Why Being Middle-Aged Sucks So Much for Americans (and No One Else) appeared first on VICE.

Lisa Blatt has argued more cases before the Supreme Court than any other woman in American legal history. On Monday she was back at the podium, this time defending a Maryland hospital system in a dry but consequential fight over the boundaries of federal court power.

The dispute centered on whether to expand or discard the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, a legal principle that limits federal courts from second-guessing state court decisions. Justice Neil Gorsuch pressed opposing counsel Elizabeth Prelogar to make the case for scrapping it entirely, asking her to “sing a few bars for me.”

Prelogar, the former top government lawyer who once argued — and lost — the case that ended federal abortion rights, obliged. But when the argument turned to whether the doctrine could realistically be overturned, Blatt stepped in with a verdict of her own.

“Not in an April case,” she told the justices. “Not happening.” Laughter rippled through the courtroom.

Justice Samuel Alito, appointed by George W. Bush, was unmoved.

“Don’t dare my colleagues,” he said flatly.

Justice Elena Kagan had already signaled skepticism toward Blatt’s position, warning that a ruling in her favor would effectively tell lower courts that the doctrine was “alive and well” — a message she called “very odd.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed Prelogar from the other direction, worrying that her proposed rule would give state court losers little incentive to exhaust their appeals before running to federal court.

Together Blatt and Prelogar have racked up nearly a century’s worth of Supreme Court appearances between them. When the sparring was finally over, they hugged.

The post ‘Don’t dare my colleagues’: Alito kills the laughter after lawyer’s Supreme Court quip appeared first on Raw Story.

In a new episode, Shant Karnikian, a lawyer and co-host of the “Civil Unrest” podcast, discussed the Trump DOJ’s civil rights probe into Cassidy Hutchinson, a former Trump administration staffer who testified against the president during the inquiry into the Jan. 6 insurrection. On April 7, the New York Times reported that the DOJ is investigating whether Hutchinson lied to Congress.

“This is political retribution at its worst,” Karnikian said.

Karnikian noted that the probe appeared to focus on a couple of statements. In one, Hutchinson claimed that President Donald Trump reached out and tried to grab the steering wheel of “The Beast,” the president’s car, on January 6 to return to the Capitol. She also testified that Trump did not do anything to protect former Vice President Mike Pence during the insurrection.

Karnikian also recalled Hutchinson testifying that she was coached by Trump’s ethics lawyers ahead of her testimony. Hutchinson said she felt pressured to tell the court that she “didn’t recall” certain details.

“That’s despicable stuff,” Karnikian said.

The post ‘Retribution at its worst’: Lawyer stunned by Trump DOJ’s new probe appeared first on Raw Story.

The global member’s only club has officially announced the “Soho Desert House Palm Springs,” a seven-acre wellness retreat set in California’s Coachella Valley with sweeping views of the San Jacinto Mountains. The property will feature club spaces, 17 bedrooms and a sprawling 185-foot pool, along with its signature “Soho Health Club” wellness offerings.  

On paper, it’s classic Soho House: exclusive, design-forward and tailor-made for the influencer set. But behind the glossy rollout lies a brand grappling with a very-unglamorous reality — declining cachet, sup-par service and food, internal shakeups and growing complaints that the once coveted club just isn’t that cool anymore.

Slated for a full opening in 2027, the property is a re-imagining of a 1920’s estate originally built as an artists’ colony. But as the brand prepares to offer hyberbaric oxygen therapy and cold plunges to the Coachella crowd, the company itself is the one gasping for air.

The Palm Springs project marks a renewed push into the desert after Soho House abruptly scrapped earlier plans for a members-only club in 2023, and is part of a broader expansion push that includes new houses in Tokyo, New York and Los Cabos.  

Industry insiders note the move feels more like a push for retention rather than expansion, and “teasing” the new houses “may aim to stem cancellations among West Coast members, leveraging the ‘promise’ of future relief to maintain revenue streams,” according to Soho House Insider.

Once the ultimate status symbol for creatives and celebrities, Soho House now finds itself facing a very modern problem: too many members, not enough mystique.

With almost 50 houses around the world, the brand has ballooned with reportedly more than 200,000 members across its locations—but insiders say growth has diluted the exclusivity that attracted them to begin with.

Complaints about overcrowding, long wait, and slipping service have become increasingly common, with some likening the experience to a “WeWork with better cocktails.”

The struggles aren’t just cultural—they’re financial.

Despite membership revenue, Soho House has reportedly struggled to turn consistent profits since going public in 2021. That turbulence culminated earlier this year in a $2.7 billion deal to take the company private again.

As part of that overhaul, the company has already begun tightening its membership base—reportedly cutting hundreds of members in cities like New York, Miami and Los Angeles.

At the same time, Soho House is facing stiff competition from never, more exclusive clubs like San Vicente Bungalows (SVB) in LA and Casa Cipriani in New York–both of why have managed to maintain a tighter grip on their guest list.

“It’s not nearly as exclusive as it once was, the prestige isn’t there,” one Soho member wrote on Reddit.

“SVB is definitely better now (i have never been bc im a pleb but from what i hear),” another user chimed in.

Membership has become easier to obtain, prices have climbed into the thousands per year, and the once-elusive vibe now feels mass market.  

The Palm Springs location seems designed to rebrand Soho House as a destination experience—less overcrowded, more curated. But whether a desert outpost can restore its fading allure remains to be seen.

The post Fallen-on-hard-times members club seeks new relevance with upcoming LA-area opening appeared first on New York Post.

Cook Is Leaving on His Terms — and Apple Has Never Been Stronger

As Wedbush analyst Dan Ives commented on CNBC immediately after Apple’s announcement, Cook would not be leaving unless he felt confident about the hand he is passing to his successor—and what a hand it is.

Despite some analyst handwringing that misguidedly portrays Apple as a laggard in adopting AI based on a few well-documented false starts, Apple retains the pole position in distributing AI to its approximately 2 billion consumers worldwide, as we presciently said in Fortune last year. When it comes to the consumer adoption of artificial intelligence, all roads still run through Apple as the singular gatekeeper to an unparalleled user base.

This playbook has been a winning recipe for Apple time and time again, as Apple is never the first, but it is always the best. The fallacy of first is demonstrated by the Netscape, Napster, Sony’s Betamax, GM’s EV1 electric vehicle, Kodak’s first digital camera in 1975, and UPS’ launch of an overnight delivery service in 1929 as potent reminders that being first is not the winning formula; being the best is. Just as Apple never had the first personal computer or the first smartphone, but they ended up having the best; similarly, although Apple has long been criticized for not spending enough on AI; Apple is now perfectly positioned to pick AI winners and losers given their control of physical hardware.

This year is already poised to be transformational for Apple’s AI ecosystem. The pipeline ranges from the launch of an enhanced Siri powered by Gemini AI, to exciting developments in proprietary infrastructure—including in-house AI servers and custom silicon chips—alongside the highly anticipated launch of a foldable iPhone this fall.

Ternus Built the Hardware That Will Win the AI Era

Cook has chosen to leave at the top of his game as the culmination of a planned, deliberate succession process. The company has clearly signaled this transition over the last few months as John Ternus emerged publicly as the designated heir apparent.

A proven product architect and an engineer to his core, John Ternus is the right person at the right time. His fingerprints are on almost every major Apple hardware success over the past two decades. Ternus has been a driving force behind the transition from Intel processors to Apple’s proprietary custom silicon chips—the foundation of Apple’s AI efforts. Furthermore, he has been instrumental in the development of virtually every core product line, including AirPods and iPads, while revitalizing the entire Mac lineup.

Ternus’s hardware prowess is vital to Apple’s AI future. While AI models provide raw intelligence, Apple’s hardware acts as the ultimate gatekeeper to consumer/user adoption of AI. By elevating a master product architect, Apple is betting that the ultimate victor of the AI age will be the company that owns the final, most valuable mile of the consumer experience. Ternus has the clear mandate to leverage Apple’s unparalleled hardware footprint—controlling over 2 billion physical devices—to build the indispensable chassis for the consumer AI era.

Apple Has Always Been Bigger Than Any One CEO

Thirty-eight years ago, the first author’s bestseller The Hero’s Farewell (Oxford) broke new ground describing the challenges of following founders given the shadows of legendary entrepreneurs. Years later, Steve Jobs drew on this book when he personally complained to the first author about his own failed successors, Gil Amelio and John Sculley, insisting that they lacked commercial mastery over the technology that Jobs had advanced. When it came to Tim Cook, however, Jobs twice gave him the functioning CEO position without eagerly or formally surrendering the title, trusting Cook to never undermine him—even in his own moments of weakness amidst frail health and unclear corporate messaging.

After Jobs passed, many analysts were skeptical about Cook’s prospects of succeeding a larger-than-life legendary founder. One board member even suggested that the first author sell his Apple stock. Yet Cook immediately assumed the reins with a rare blend of energy and humility. He inspired others to innovate without any personal grandiosity, curtailed some of Jobs’s excesses, and transformed Apple into the world’s most valuable company along the way.

Jobs fully trusted Tim Cook to reengineer Apple’s global production process and supply chain. Consequently, Cook became the ideal leader to revisit that very process when geopolitics necessitated repatriating some businesses and friendshoring others. As the architect of this operational machine, Cook possessed the unique authority and insight required to overhaul it.

But Cook’s legacy extends far beyond his supply chain accomplishments. While Steve Jobs is rightly celebrated as the visionary behind Apple’s original success, it was early pioneers like Lee Felsenstein who engineered the first personal computers; Jobs simply possessed the genius to commercialize them. A similar dynamic defines Tim Cook’s legacy. He may have inherited the iPhone from Jobs, but it was Cook who scaled it into the most indispensable device on earth, transforming it into the singular hardware hub around which billions of people organize their daily lives. It is easy to forget that when Cook assumed the CEO role, the iPhone had less than a quarter of the US smartphone market, facing potent competitors like BlackBerry, Samsung, Motorola, and Nokia. That was a far cry from the iPhone’s dominant position today, capturing a third of the global market and nearly two-thirds of the US, which is a testament to Tim Cook’s commercial genius.

In a 1983 internal speech, Steve Jobs, the notorious perfectionist, complained about the speed of the Macintosh’s completion, quipping: “Real artists don’t hang on to their creations. Real artists ship. Matisse shipped. Picasso shipped.”

Jobs never got to see the full arc of Cook’s tenure, but the record speaks for itself: Tim Cook shipped. Cook moved past the navel-gazing of perfectionist designers to get the product out the door, scaling with unprecedented success. Creative ideas are only useful when they are implemented. Too often in technology, great products remain trapped in unfinished states—pitfalls Cook avoided with aplomb. His legacy as a visionary tech leader with unsurpassed skills in execution is indisputable, with his model succession handoff to his hand-picked protégé, John Ternus, reflecting the fact that Apple’s best days are still ahead.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

The post This Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: Tim Cook is leaving at a peak and John Ternus is exactly the right CEO for the AI era appeared first on Fortune.

Here are seven unusual reasons you’re not sleeping. (This time, we’re not blaming the darn phone.)

1. Seasonal Allergies

I don’t know about you, but my seasonal allergies on the East Coast have been brutal lately. In fact, it’s been weeks since I’ve slept a full night.

“For many people, hay fever is seen as a daytime issue, from itchy eyes to sneezing to congestion. But its impact at night is usually overlooked,” says Dr. Sunny Nayee, medical director at Medicann. “When pollen levels rise, your airways can become inflamed, particularly when lying flat.”

According to Dr. Nayee, common symptoms of pollen allergies include mouth breathing, shallow breathing, and small nighttime awakenings.

“Even if you don’t wake up fully, these ‘micro-arousals’ interfere with sleep cycles, reducing sleep and REM sleep,” he adds. “These stages are key for memory processing and restoration. It’s common to think you have slept for eight hours, but the quality of that sleep can actually be reduced.”

2. Disrupted Circadian Rhythm

As the days grow longer, our internal clocks might need time to adjust to the changes in daylight.

“Spring brings a rapid rise in daylight hours, which directly affects your internal body clock,” says Nayee. “Your circadian rhythm depends heavily on light exposure to regulate melatonin, the hormone that triggers sleep. When daylight extends into the evening, melatonin is then delayed.”

As a result, you might feel less tired around your usual bedtime, he says. When this occurs, your body often plays “catch-up” to make up for lost sleep.

“Over time, this creates a ‘social jet lag’ effect, where your body clock is misaligned with your schedule.”

3. Revenge Bedtime Procrastination

As the days get longer, we might crave later bedtimes or more socialization.

“Even without screens, behavior plays a huge role in sleep disruption, especially in spring,” says Nayee. “Brighter, longer evenings can psychologically trick us into feeling like we have more time in the day.”

As a result, we might stay up later to “reclaim” our free time—you know, the time we have off from work or other obligations, which isn’t much for most of us.

“The behavior, known as revenge bedtime procrastination, is usually subconscious, but its impact is progressive,” Nayee explains. “It’s not one late night that causes the issues; it’s the repeated pattern of pushing sleep back by 30-60 minutes that creates sleep debt over time.”

4. Seasonal Hormone Shifts

According to Nayee, our hormones shift along with the seasons. Naturally, this can impact the quality and quantity of our sleep.

“In spring, increased sunlight can alter melatonin (the sleep hormone), serotonin (mood and wakefulness), and cortisol (stress and alertness),” he explains. “This shift can make sleep feel more fragmented and lighter.”

5. Temperature Fluctuations

If your room temperature fluctuates throughout the night, it might disturb your sleep.

“Your body needs to cool down by around 1-2°C to start and maintain sleep, but spring’s inconsistent temperatures can interfere with this process,” Nayee says. “One of the most overlooked sleep disruptors is temperature rising and falling.”

6. Lifestyle Shifts

With the change in seasons comes a change in lifestyle habits. For example, most of us become more active as the temperatures rise and the sun sets later.

“Spring usually changes daily habits, and while they can feel positive, they can silently affect sleep,” Nayee explains. “People become more social, spend longer outdoors, and often eat and drink later.”

7. The Pressure to ‘Feel Better’

I think I can speak for most of us when I say that spring fever is a real phenomenon. After being cooped up indoors all dreary winter, it’s normal to crave sunshine and socialization. However, with this desire often comes the expectation of feeling better, whether physically or emotionally, once the seasons change.

“Spring is often linked with positivity, productivity, and renewal, but this expectation can have unintended effects,” says Nayee. “There’s a known narrative that spring should make you feel motivated and energized. If reality doesn’t match these expectations, it can cause restlessness at night, low-level anxiety, or overthinking before sleep. That small pressure can trigger the stress response, keeping your mind awake when it should be relaxing.”

The post 7 Sneaky Reasons You’re Not Sleeping (No, It’s Not the Phone) appeared first on VICE.

• A California judge accused Amazon of price-fixing and contributing to the affordability crisis in the US.
• Attorney General Rob Bonta said Amazon asked vendors like Levi’s to pressure Walmart into raising prices.
• The case will go into trial in January 2027.

A California prosecutor is accusing Amazon of illegally raising prices for Americans.

In a press release on Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said that Amazon is price fixing and colluding with vendors and retailers to raise costs for Americans beyond what the market requires.

“Amid a crisis of affordability, Amazon is illegally working to rake in profits by making sure consumers have nowhere else to turn to for lower prices,” Bonta said. “We’ll see them in court.”

In the press release, he said he had publicly released evidence of Amazon’s price-fixing, linking to a 19-page memo. Among many other examples in the memo, Bonta wrote that Amazon asked the apparel brand Levi’s to pressure Walmart into raising the price of a pair of its khaki pants from about $25 to $29 to match Amazon’s listing price.

Other companies mentioned in the filing include Home Depot, Target, Best Buy, clothing brand Hanes, and pet product brand Chewy.

Bonta asked the court to take action against Amazon for price fixing while the case proceeds and to require Amazon to stop “coercing its vendors to serve as the go-between with its competitors.” The case will go to trial in January 2027.

In response to a request for comment, an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the motion is a “transparent attempt to distract from the weakness of its case.”

The spokesperson added that Bonta filed the motion more than three years after filing his original complaint. In 2022, Bonta said in the lawsuit that Amazon coerced sellers into signing agreements stating they would not sell their goods at a lower price to other retailers.

“Amazon is consistently identified as America’s lowest-priced online retailer, and we’re proud of the low prices customers find when shopping in our store,” the Amazon spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, spokespersons for Levi’s and Walmart declined to comment, both saying they were not parties to the litigation.

Amazon’s stock price is up about 43% in the past year.

Read the original article on Business Insider

The post California says Amazon coerced companies like Walmart and Levi’s into illegally raising prices appeared first on Business Insider.

Morante de la Puebla, best known as the “King of Bullfighters,” was gored up his rectum during a performance gone wrong at the packed Maestranza arena in Seville, Spain, on Monday, local outlet El Mundo reported.

Puebla, 46, easily cleared the first three bulls, just as he had hundreds of times before. The fourth, though, bested him.

The daring bull situated itself near the arena’s irrigation ditch, a shallow cavity where the beast has a rare upper hand against the tantalizing matadors.

Then, the bull charged. Puebla attempted to sidestep, but ran into trouble.

He abandoned his cape, which is typically used to draw the bull, and made a break for it.

The bull wasn’t about to let him go so easily. While Puebla bolted with his back to the bull, the bovine rushed at him again — and plowed the tip of its curved horn right into the matador’s rectum.

The penetration perforated Puebla’s rectum and left 4-inch injury, the outlet reported. Puebla was seen staggering away while clinging to his bottom and was eventually carried off the pitch by four other matadors.

He underwent an hours-long surgical procedure at a nearby medical center, whose staff confirmed that his rectum was completely severed. He required extensive repair to the rectal wall and sphincter apparatus, the outlet reported.

It’s not immediately clear when, or if, Puebla will return to the ring.

The post Famed Spanish matador suffers humiliating injury in bullfight blunder appeared first on New York Post.

Bob Davis, co-author of a book on Trump’s trade policies with China, argued in a new guest essay for The New York Times that Trump’s push to deport illegal immigrants and upend trade relations with China has caused severe economic harm to rural cities like Hickory, North Carolina. In turn, local advocates say there is growing resistance to the Trump administration among youth, a demographic that Trump did well with in the 2024 election.

“President Trump has held up these towns as a symbol of all that’s gone wrong with the American economy,” Davis wrote. “His attacks on globalization and on China, in particular, resonate with voters and power his ‘America first’ agenda. The president has sought to restore American manufacturing by imposing sky-high tariffs and empowering an aggressive deportation force. But if you spend any time in Hickory, you can see how counterproductive these policies are.”

Davis spoke with Ginny Romero, the executive director of Centro Latino, who said she has never seen local youths so energized to vote in November.

“I have never seen youths so ready to vote, and not just youths — every age group, every generation,” she said.

The post Trump’s ‘counterproductive’ chaos turbocharging resistance in his own base: analysis appeared first on Raw Story.

With the 14-day ceasefire to expire Wednesday, Trump whipsawed in telephone interviews and social media posts between measured optimism that a deal could soon be reached and warning that “lots of bombs” will “start going off” if there’s no agreement before the ceasefire deadline.

Trump indicated that he still expects to dispatch his negotiating team, led by Vice President JD Vance, to Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad for a second round of talks, even as Iran insisted it would not take part until Trump dialed back his demands.

Iran’s chief negotiator and parliament speaker, Mohammed Bagher Qalibaf, accused the United States of wanting Iran to surrender and added that on the contrary, Iran has been preparing “to reveal new cards on the battlefield.”

“We do not accept negotiations under the shadow of threats,” Qalibaf wrote in a post on X early Tuesday.

Trump insisted he feels no pressure to end the war until Iran agrees to his terms.

“I am under no pressure whatsoever,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform, “although, it will all happen, relatively quickly!”

Pakistani officials moved ahead with preparations for a new round of talks between the U.S. and Iran as the tenuous ceasefire was further strained over the weekend by renewed conflict around the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump told Bloomberg News he was “highly unlikely” to renew the ceasefire.

Iran holds out on resuming negotiations

Tensions flared after the U.S. Navy attacked and seized a ship on Sunday that it said was trying to evade its blockade of Iranian ports. On Saturday, Iran fired at vessels and abruptly stopped traffic in the strait, abandoning its promise to allow some ships to pass and claiming the U.S. was not holding up its side of the ceasefire.

The U.S. actions are “incompatible with the claim of diplomacy,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Monday in a social media post.

He gave no indication what Iran will do after the ceasefire expires or whether Iran will return to a second round of negotiations with the U.S.

Over the weekend, Iran said it had received new proposals from the U.S. but suggested that a wide gap remains between the sides. Issues that derailed the last round of negotiations included Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, its regional proxies and the strait.

Iran has throttled traffic through the strait, which connects the Persian Gulf to the open seas, since shortly after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28 to start the war. The U.S. has also instituted a blockade of Iranian ports. Roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil trade normally passes through the strait.

Trump swipes at war critics, seeks to calm investors

The U.S. president lashed out at war critics at home who are urging him to wrap up the conflict that began more than seven weeks ago.

“How bad is it that when you are in the middle of negotiations and you have got the Iranians in a perfect position, including being militarily defeated, and you have Democrats and some Republicans asking to settle it now?” Trump told the New York Post.

Even as Trump bristled at his detractors, he sought to soothe jittery investors as U.S. stocks slipped modestly Monday, following the chaotic weekend in the Persian Gulf.

The president found himself remonstrating his energy secretary, Chris Wright, who on Sunday said American motorists might not see gas prices fall back into the $3 per gallon range until late this year or next year.

“I disagree with him totally. I think it’ll come roaring down if it ends,” Trump told PBS. “If we end it, if Iran does what they should do, it will come roaring down.”

Israel-Lebanon talks to resume, official says

Meanwhile, historic diplomatic talks between Israel and Lebanon were set to resume Thursday in Washington, an Israeli, a Lebanese and a U.S. official said. All three spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the behind-the-scenes negotiations.

The Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors met last week for the first direct diplomatic talks in decades. Israel says the talks are aimed at disarming Hezbollah and reaching a peace agreement with Lebanon.

A 10-day ceasefire began Friday in Lebanon, where fighting between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants broke out two days after the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran. Fighting in Lebanon has killed more than 2,290 people.

In two separate encounters on Monday, the Israeli air force struck and killed Hezbollah militants that the military said approached its troops in a threatening way. Israel has carried out several airstrikes since the ceasefire went into effect.

Hezbollah said it detonated explosives Sunday in an Israeli convoy inside Lebanon.

Iran says more than 3,000 have been killed in the country so far

Since the war started, at least 3,375 people have been killed in Iran, according to a new toll released Monday in official Iranian media by Abbas Masjedi, the head of Iran’s Legal Medicine Organization.

He did not break down casualties among civilians and security forces, saying instead that 2,875 were male and 496 were female. Masjedi said 383 of the dead were children 18 years old and younger.

Additionally, 23 people have died in Israel and more than a dozen in Gulf Arab states. Fifteen Israeli soldiers in Lebanon and 13 U.S. service members throughout the region have been killed.

Oil prices on the rise again after renewed conflict in Strait of Hormuz

Iran’s grip on the strait has sent oil prices skyrocketing and given rise to one of the worst global energy crises in decades.

Oil prices were up again Monday, with Brent crude, the international standard, at just over $95 a barrel — up from about $70 a barrel before the war started.

Iran said it had reopened the strait to ships Friday, but traffic halted after Trump refused to lift the U.S. blockade.

Sunday’s U.S. seizure of the Iranian cargo was the first such interception under the blockade. Iran’s joint military command called the armed boarding an act of piracy and a ceasefire violation.

Trump said the blockade will remain “in full force” until Tehran agrees to a deal. The U.S. military said on Monday that it has directed 27 ships to return to Iranian ports since the blockade began last week.

___

Ahmed reported from Islamabad, and Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press journalists Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; David Rising in Bangkok; Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel; Josef Federman in Jerusalem; Joshua Boak and Matthew Lee in Washington; and Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

The post Trump insists there’s no pressure to end the war in Iran that he started, but ‘it will all happen, relatively quickly!’ appeared first on Fortune.

Muldoon died on Sunday following a sudden heart attack. He was 57 years old.

Richards, who dated the actor for nearly five years in the late ’90s but knew him since she was a teenager, is “inconsolable,” the Daily Mail reported.

“She’s devastated. Really, really sad,” a source close to the actress told the outlet. “I’d even call her inconsolable. She can’t stop crying.”

Richards, 55, met Muldoon when she was 19 years old and he was 21 in an acting class. They remained close friends until his death.

“Patrick is the ex that she had the best relationship with,” the source said of the exes. “There was a ton of respect on both sides.”

“It was so amicable that they were better friends than lovers and they remained in constant contact. She was his biggest supporter, he was hers.”

Page Six reached out to Richards’ rep for comment, but didn’t receive an immediate response.

Muldoon spoke about his close friendship with Richards — whom he starred in 1997’s “Starship Troopers” with — during his appearance on Tori Spelling’s “MisSPELLING” podcast in October 2025.

“We both don’t come from entertainment families, and our families got to know each other over the years and kind of checked in with each other on navigating the crazy stuff that we all go through,” he said.

He shared that despite the two not ending up together romantically after an “on and off” relationship, he was still close with Richards’ kids with Charlie Sheen — daughters Lola, 20, and Sami, 22.

“I have a good relationship with both Lola and Sami,” he said. “I’ve known them since they were first born, and so I have a good relationship with both.”

Lola paid tribute to Muldoon on Instagram Monday, revealing that she “begged” her mom to get back together with him.

“i thought you were the one that was supposed be in our lives forever,” she wrote in an emotional tribute to the “Days of Our Lives” alum.

“i will really miss hearing my mom laugh on the phone with you. your voice always brightened my day and i’m gonna miss hearing it but i know my mom will more, but we will never stop talking about you,” she also shared.

Lola thanked Muldoon for being her mom’s best friend.

“the bond you two had was something so special, that no one can touch,” she wrote. “when i think of my mom i think of you. you guys came as a package and i’m so thankful i got to know you and witness a friendship so pure and special in front of my eyes.”

The post Denise Richards is ‘devastated,’ ‘can’t stop crying’ following death of ex Patrick Muldoon: report appeared first on Page Six.

It’s no shock that stress impacts our libido—regardless of your gender or sex. When stuck in survival mode, many people struggle to feel aroused. Even if you’re craving closeness, your body might not cooperate. For example, men often suffer from stress-induced erectile dysfunction.

Wondering how, exactly, stress impacts our desire and ability to have sex? We spoke with a sex and relationship coach to explore ways to break the “sex stress” cycle.

How Stress Impacts Arousal

As mentioned above, stress can wreak havoc on our bodies. When your body isn’t cooperating with you, it isn’t in the best place for arousal.

Specifically, stress can cause cortisol spikes and other hormonal disruptions, which can then suppress the Sexual Excitement System and trigger the Sexual Inhibition System, explains Gemma Nice, sex and relationship coach at condoms.uk.

“Even when you mentally want sex, your body may freeze,” she says. “It’s not a failure. It’s your biology doing its job.”

Nice explains that stress can direct blood to the heart, lungs, and brain rather than the genitals. In men, this often impacts their ability to “get it up.”

“Men often feel pressure to ‘perform,’” she says. “If your body is in fight-or-flight mode, desire alone isn’t enough—your nervous system literally prioritizes survival over sexual function.”

You don’t need to be enduring a challenging time or period of transition to experience these changes, either. Oftentimes, everyday stress is the culprit.

“Work, parenting, and household responsibilities can leave men exhausted and disconnected from their bodies,” says Nice. “The pressure to perform can actually make anxiety worse, which tightens the ‘brakes’ even further.”

Breaking the ‘Sex Stress’ Cycle

For anyone, regardless of gender, one of the most important tips is to eliminate the pressure to perform. Often, we get so trapped in our partner’s (or our own!) expectations of us that we aren’t actually present. In which case, it’s important to discuss your insecurities with your partner to quiet the noise.

Additionally, find simple, low-pressure ways to connect through intimacy. This might look like a gentle touch, eye contact, or even a long hug to calm the nervous system. Safety is a crucial element of arousal.

“Desire isn’t something you make happen—it’s something you allow once the body feels safe,” Nice explains. “Pressure creates performance. Safety creates connection.”

The post This Common Issue Is Quietly Killing Your Sex Drive appeared first on VICE.

• Male K-pop stars with Korean citizenship must fulfill mandatory military service.
• For most idols, that translates to around two years of hiatus-style career obsolescence.
• Not so for Seventeen’s Hoshi.

Welcome to the Hoshiverse, where one 29-year-old man can’t stop, won’t stop working.

Hoshi is one of the 13 members of the K-pop supergroup Seventeen. Since his teen years, he’s been better known by his stage name and the tiger paw symbol he throws up whenever he spots fans.

Now he’s known as Kwon Soonyoung, a soldier in the Korean army.

Kwon is undergoing a mandated hiatus as part of his years-long military service, which often results in a long work lull for most male idols.

Kwon enlisted in September for full-time military service.

Through some sheer force of will or extreme hustle, Kwon prepared multiple releases to roll out during his time away. That was on top of Seventeen’s regular activities — touring, producing their 10th anniversary album, and filming their variety show, “Going Seventeen.”

Here’s what’s been on his slate:

• One video every Monday morning, shot TikTok-style, in which he greets fans as they start their workweeks.
• “Hoshi TamTam” vlogs, filmed months in advance and rolling out now.
• Dance challenges and photo carousels are uploaded to his personal Instagram account about once every two weeks.
• Regular social media posts on Weverse, the platform that idols like Seventeen and BTS use to communicate with fans.
• A comic art-inspired photo book, “Hoshiverse,” has sold out its preorders.
• Three singles since he enlisted: “Take A Shot,” “Fallen Superstar,” and “Baby Honey.”

What he’s released in the eight months he’s been away could be what an active K-pop star releases in two to three years of work. He’s able to do this because he’s not technically working as an idol now — he just has a seemingly never-ending backlog of content for when he’s in the military.

On top of his assigned military duties, Kwon also somehow found his way into performing live, this time as part of the ROK Army Taekwondo Demonstration Team.

On April 16, he went to Norfolk, Virginia, with a South Korean contingent for a taekwondo performance at the Virginia International Tattoo.

He’s been a star member of multiple public taekwondo demonstrations since he enlisted — and a mascot-like figure on the troupe’s Instagram.

Other members of Seventeen have released projects during their military tenure, albeit at a less intense cadence. The band’s eldest member, Yoon Jeonghan, who’s wrapping up his military service in June, released a photobook, “Wanderlust,” and a Japanese single, “Better Half.”

Jeon Wonwoo, who enlisted last April, released “Gogae,” a Korean ballad, on his birthday in 2025. Both members also filmed vlogs to be released in their absence: “I-GOYA,” for Yoon, and “Every Wonwoo,” for Jeon.

Back when Kwon was actively promoting with Seventeen, he led the group’s dance team and was known for his flashy, fluid dance moves. In his absence, the band has wrapped its last big tour for the foreseeable future, “NEW_” — a 31-show, 14-city run that took the group’s nine active members through Asia and four US cities.

And while Kwon wasn’t there for that tour, which saw the group performing to close to a million people online and offline, he’s not going anywhere.

Seventeen remains one of the mega company Hybe’s top-selling groups. Its album, “FML,” holds the record it set in 2023 for first-day sales for a K-pop album, notching more than 6.4 million copies sold overall.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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The major difference between the TV show and the Broadway musical is that one appears on a small screen and the other has live actors. Less significant, Christopher Gattelli replaces Barry Sonnenfeld as director, although the former remains on board as choreographer. 

In 2024, Gattelli successfully revamped “Death Becomes Her” for the stage, with help from book writer Marco Pennette and songwriters Julia Mattison and Noel Carey — none of whom had anything to do with the 1992 film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by David Koepp and Martin Donovan.

“Schmigadoon!” on stage is no “Death Becomes Her.” It is a photo-copy replica of the TV show’s first season, in which two doctors from New York go on a camping trip in the Catskills, only to end up in a musical comprised of songs and plot points from famous shows of the 1940s and ’50s, most specifically “Carousel,” “The Music Man” and, of course, “Brigadoon.” The running joke is that while Dr. Melissa Gimble likes musicals, Dr. Josh Skinner can’t stand them and has to roll his eyes and make snide comments whenever anyone dances or breaks into song, which is often.

Cinco Paul hasn’t so much parodied Meredith Willson, Lerner & Loewe and Rodgers & Hammerstein. He has copied them. The humor comes from our recognizing the matchup. Gee, doesn’t “Tribulation” from “Schmigadoon!” sound just like “Trouble” from “The Music Man”? After that singular thrill has quickly evaporated, there is the two doctors’ spoken commentary about the absurdity of people singing on stage when people in real life never do that. In other words, theatergoers are being asked to pay multiple times their monthly Apple subscription to enjoy that joke live. Repeatedly.

Playing the doctors, Alex Brightman and Sara Chase are a marginal improvement on their TV doppelgängers; they bring a nice, relaxed quality to a show that is otherwise hyper without being rousing.

A couple of featured actors also manage to charm. Maulik Pancholy delivers an absolutely adorable Reverend Layton. The best performance comes late in the show; Afra Hines plays Countess Gabriele Von Blerkom, a character who is supposed to be the baroness from “The Sound of Music.” Rather than replicating Eleanor Parker’s performance from the 1965 movie, Hines does a spot-on impersonation of Carrie Coon’s nouveau-riche bitch from “The Gilded Age.”

The post ‘Schmigadoon!’ Broadway Review: Lorne Michaels and Cinco Paul Recycle Their Apple TV Show appeared first on TheWrap.

Democrats sometimes win the battle of ideas with big promises of what government should do. They lose the war when we see what it actually does.

One of the GOP’s core principles is: The government can’t be trusted with your money. Even when it’s doing the jobs only the government can do, like the military or the police, there’s always waste and people gaming the system, from $900 hammers to excessive overtime.

It gets so much worse when you make the government bigger and design it around giving people free stuff and building things the market wouldn’t buy.

Democrats get electedpromising this, then keep reminding us why they can’t be trusted.

Millions & billions

The latest example comes from former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s universal preschool program. As The Post has reported,the city has doled out $99.3 million and counting to rent 28 buildings for new preschools. Half a decade and two mayors later, none of them opened.

It’s easy to blame this on de Blasio. But it’s a nationwide pattern, especially in deep-blue cities and states where voters don’t punish incompetence and politicians get rewarded for letting their friends raid the public treasury.

California spent $37 billion to solve homelessness, and the problem got worse. Nobody knows where all the money went. The state has spent over $14 billion since 2008 building high-speed rail, and has yet to lay a single mile of track; passenger service is still at least five years away, while the projected cost has quadrupled from original estimates.

In Minnesota, on Tim Walz’s watch, the state drowned in fraud: Feeding Our Future, a nonprofit that stole most of the money earmarked for school lunches, phony day care centers with no kids, and more than $1 billion in fraud in housing subsidies, Medicaid and autism services, leading to dozens of federal indictments.

Walz responded by trying to expand every program that was bleeding phony dollars — including money scammed by Somalis who were sending it back home to finance terrorist groups.

A 2023 Associated Press analysis found more than $200 billion in theft and fraud from COVID-era relief, and that’s not even counting money that was just wasted when local governments figured out that they’d rather spend leftover federal money than give it back. State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds totaling $350 billion were doled out under Joe Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, and a GAO report found that blue states burned through the money faster than red states.

House Speaker Mike Johnsonhas estimated that the Medicaid program spends $50 billion a year in fraudulent or misdirected payments.

More tax, more fraud

Our money leaks out of the system in numerous ways. Government programs that make legal promises of payment are bad at sniffing out fraud, and the bigger the program, the harder it is to look at any given expense.

Unionized government workers get overpaid, and privatizing their jobs without shrinking the program often just means shifting the boondoggles to contractors and other non-governmental organizations — all of whom contribute to the campaigns of the people who vote them money.

Meanwhile, red tape ties up actually building or accomplishing anything, and there’s too little incentive to change that when people get paid to be on a project, not to finish it.

Now, we have Democrats arguing for a “wealth tax” to pay for programs and prevent rich people from just wasting the money. But why should we keep shoveling more money into the same old holes in the ground, knowing we’ll learn a few years later that so much of it has just vanished or been used to do nothing?

Given more of other people’s money, Democrats will just waste more of it — or let it get stolen by their friends.

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review. X: @BaseballCrank

The post Why give Democrats more tax money to burn? They’ll just waste it again or let their friends steal it appeared first on New York Post.

Jen Billock is a Chicago-based travel writer and self-described “Cheese Witch” who reads fortunes in dairy—a practice known as tyromancy, which dates back to the second century and was used in medieval England to determine criminal guilt and predict harvest seasons. Billock came to it the way many people stumbled into new hobbies during the pandemic: out of boredom and a very specific Google search.

“During Covid, I Googled ‘weird ways to tell fortunes with food,’ and I found cheese, and it was the start of this little love affair,” she told the New York Post. Billock had already spent years studying tarot, so adapting that framework to fromage wasn’t as big a leap as it sounds. “I figured out how to adapt what I was already doing divination-wise into cheese,” she said.

This Fortune Teller Uses Cheese Instead of Crystal Balls. Here’s How It Works.

A reading involves four pieces of cheese, selected by the client. The first three cover the past, present, and future, structured like a three-card tarot spread. The fourth addresses a specific question. Billock says the client’s involvement in choosing the cheese matters. The connection between the selector and the selected is part of the process. “The cheese is just a vehicle,” she explained. “It acts as the connection between the person that I’m reading and me.”

Once she’s focused on the cheese, the messages quickly arrive. “I will focus solely on the cheese, and then things start coming in as ‘you need to say this, you need to say this, you need to say this,’” she said. “Whatever I’m hearing in my head is the message. It’s always loud, and it always knows what it’s doing.”

The type of cheese, she notes, affects the quality of the signal. Blue cheese gets noisy and distracting. A plain cheddar or a Kraft single runs cleaner. “The message is clearer,” she said. And before anyone assumes this is a luxury service for people who shop at Whole Foods, Billock is quick to point out that government cheese works just as well as cave-aged Gruyere.

She also reads tarot, rune stones, wedge salads, croissants, beer, wine, and curry. “If you have to have all your food blended and fed to you through a feeding tube, I can read the blend,” she said, which is either the most inclusive or the most unhinged thing anyone has ever offered as a professional service.

Billock is currently writing a book on tyromancy and offers readings both in person and online. As for her own cheese, she prefers to stay out of it. “I just want to continue to eat it happily and not worry about what it has to say to me.” Fair enough.

The post The ‘Cheese Witch’ Who Uses Dairy to Read Your Future appeared first on VICE.

• Anne Hathaway says turning 40 made her less hard on herself.
• She said that when she was younger, “every high was so high, every low was so low.”
• These days, Hathaway says she no longer gets “so swept up in things anymore.”

Anne Hathaway says turning 40 helped her loosen up and enjoy herself more.

“When I started out, I thought I’d be a better artist if I was really hard on myself,” Hathaway, 43, told People in an interview published on Monday. “And then turning 40, I just kind of found a different gear, and I was no longer interested in living an awkward life. I was just interested in getting to the fun part.”

Hitting that milestone has also made her think more carefully about the choices she makes.

“You have to be more serious about how you take care of yourself. I just think that when you’re in your 40s, you’ve had the opportunity to see how certain decisions bore fruit over time. And so you can assess if you want to continue making those decisions or if you want to make new ones,” she said.

Hathaway said one of the things she appreciates most about being in her 40s is that she no longer gets “so swept up in things anymore.”

“I used to really not understand that phrase, ‘Take it with a grain of salt.’ There’s no salt. Every high was so high, every low was so low. And now I really value the chill,” she said.

These days, Hathaway is embracing the uncertainty that comes with getting older.

“I’ve never been this age. So let’s just like, you know, figure it out. You still never know what’s coming around the corner,” she said.

But there’s already plenty ahead for her to look forward to. The actor has five films scheduled for release this year, including “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”

Hathaway is not alone. Many celebrities have said turning 40 shifted how they see and approach their lives.

In December, “Big Bang Theory” star Kaley Cuoco says turning 40 made her more empathetic and less judgmental.

It’s very cheesy and corny, but it’s true — you don’t know until you’ve lived it. You see things differently, and you understand people in a way you can’t when you’re 20 or 30,” Cuoco said.

In March, Chelsea Handler said she moved away from conventional dating expectations in her 40s, choosing to date younger men after years of dating older partners.

“Like, I’ve got to flip it and reverse it, you know? So, now I’m heading in the opposite direction because I’m too hot to be dating a 65-year-old. Let’s be honest,” Handler said.

Turning 40 is a milestone that can prompt reflection and anxiety. It ushers in midlife — a period during which research suggests life satisfaction dips.

Hannes Schwandt, an associate professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, told Business Insider in 2024 that this midlife dip is often tied to unmet expectations that feel especially disappointing at the time, although they tend to matter less later in life.

Still, not everyone views this period as a low point.

Several women who switched careers in their 40s told Business Insider that they saw it as a chance to rebrand. Executive coach Monique Shields said it’s because many people reach a stage where “achievement is no longer the goal.”

“You’ve done all the striving,” she said, “and now, the questions become more about well-being and legacy.”

Read the original article on Business Insider

The post Anne Hathaway says turning 40 helped her stop ‘living an awkward life’ appeared first on Business Insider.

The hefty sum was boosted by the best March fundraising the NRCC has ever recorded, with $28.1 million in donations capping off the quarter for the House GOP’s campaign arm. 

“This historic fundraising quarter proves House Republicans have a tremendous amount of enthusiasm behind our agenda to lower costs and keep Americans safe,” NRCC Chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC) said in a statement.  

“House Republicans are united, battle-tested, and building the financial firepower to protect our majority and take the fight directly to Democrats’ extreme agenda,” Hudson added. 

The NRCC has raised a total of $164.4 million during the current cycle and has $78.2 million in cash on hand with less than seven months to go until the midterms, according to CBS News. 

Congressional Republicans have now outraised Democrats “on average for five straight quarters,” according to the NRCC.

The group noted this is the first time in a decade that it has outraised House Democrats’ campaign arm in the first year of an election cycle. 

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) ended the first quarter with $45.3 million raised. 

Like the NRCC, the Democratic committee also had its best quarter of the cycle and its largest March ever, with $21.5 million raised for the month.

The haul brings the DCCC total for the 2026 cycle to $160.6 million, with $70 million in cash on hand.

“America is ready for change and the public is souring on House Republicans’ broken promises as life continues to be too expensive for far too many hardworking families. Across the country, we’re seeing overwhelming support for House Democrats and our candidates,” DCCC Chairwoman Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) said in a statement. 

“United behind the leadership of Hakeem Jeffries, House Democrats’ message of lower costs, affordable health care, and reining in the culture of corruption that’s defined Republican rule the last year, we’re seeing a groundswell of support from all corners of the country,” DelBene added. “Democrats have the momentum, message, and resources to take back the majority in November.”

The post House GOP’s campaign arm outraises Dems with record $47 million haul appeared first on New York Post.

The assault happened at around 2:50 a.m. Sunday at Temple University, when the teens chased the student into the Morgan Hall South dorm, according to the Temple University Police Department.

“Once inside, the group struck the student and damaged university property,” police said.

The unidentified student sustained minor injuries in the attack and declined medical treatment at the scene.

The damage caused inside the residence hall by the thugs included a smashed monitor at the security desk, ABC6 reported.

Police released surveillance images showing at least nine male teenagers believed to have been involved in the assault, some wearing hoodies and facial coverings, while others’ faces were visible to the camera.

No arrests have been made.

Investigators are working alongside safety officials from the School District of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Police Department and are urging the public to help identify those involved.

The circumstances that led to the attack at one of the campus’s largest dormitory complexes — which houses more than 1,200 students — remain under investigation.

Temple Police Deputy Chief Gaetano Sava told ABC6 the department takes incidents involving students and outside residents seriously.

“It’s concerning. Whenever our residents, I mean, we’re here for the safety of our residents and our students. So, when anybody is victimized, it’s concerning to us. We take it very seriously,” Sava said.

Investigators have also obtained a cellphone video of the attack, police said.

“Investigation is ongoing from the video, we have some still shots, and we’re hoping the community can help us identify,” Sava said.

Temple University sophomore Emanuel Turner said the attack has put things into “perspective” for him.

“It puts the threat actually into perspective because, especially knowing as a college student, your main priority is education, not really safety, but this happening is a little bit more in the forefront,” he told the outlet.

Police have ramped up patrols in the area following the incident and are urging students to take advantage of campus safety resources.

“We have a TU safety app, which is an app you can install on your telephone and request a walking escort. You can request a flight shuttle to basically give you a ride home,” Sava said.

Temple University sits in the heart of Philadelphia with roughly 30,000 students enrolled throughout the school year, according to its website.

The post Violent teen mob beats Temple University student in dorm in vicious caught-on-video attack appeared first on New York Post.

Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer Seres, the Chongqing-based company behind the Aito SUV line, has been granted a patent for an “in-vehicle toilet”—a compact commode that slides out from beneath a passenger seat either with the push of a button or through voice-activated commands. According to the patent filing, which was approved by China’s National Intellectual Property Administration on April 10, the feature is designed to “satisfy users’ toilet needs on long journeys, while camping or while staying in the car.” So practical.

The design is more considered than it sounds. The toilet sits on a sliding rail system, tucked under the seat until needed. Say “start up toilet function” and out it comes. A fan and an exhaust pipe handle odors. A rotating heating element handles liquid waste and dries everything else. Solid waste goes into a tank that someone—eventually, inevitably—has to empty by hand. That last part will be a fun conversation at the dealership.

Carmakers Apparently Think You Want a Toilet You Can Chat With

Seres has not announced any production vehicles equipped with the feature, and it’s unclear whether any will actually be built. But the patent reflects something real happening in the Chinese EV market. As the BBC reported, automakers there are packing vehicles with increasingly unconventional features—massage seats, karaoke systems, built-in fridges—to stand out in a brutally competitive industry. A toilet is, if nothing else, a conversation starter.

In-vehicle toilets aren’t entirely without precedent, either. A 1950s Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith limousine, which later sold at Sotheby’s, famously featured a toilet beneath the passenger seat alongside a gold-plated champagne cooler and a built-in telephone—the full package for anyone who needed to close a deal and powder their nose simultaneously. Seres’ version is considerably more utilitarian by comparison, though the voice activation does add a certain flair.

Public reaction has been predictably split. One commenter told Digital Trends that prediabetes had already made them “a public-toilet cartographer” and called the invention a lifesaver. Another responded simply with “Never.” Both positions are entirely reasonable.

Seres hasn’t committed to actually building the thing. But anyone who has spent 45 minutes stuck on a highway with no exits and a very full bladder understands the appeal completely.

The post The Future of Driving Apparently Includes a Toilet You Can Talk to appeared first on VICE.

• Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO in September, with John Ternus set to take over.
• Apple’s stock increased by over 2,000% under Tim Cook, making it the first trillion-dollar company.
• Here’s what smart people are saying about Tim Cook’s legacy at Apple.

As Apple prepares to lose its CEO, people in the business and tech world are thinking about what Tim Cook is leaving behind.

Apple announced Monday that Cook would step down in September and that John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, would take his place.

Cook became CEO os Apple in 2011, sparking plenty of questions and genuine doubts about whether the supply chain and operations specialist could fill the very big shoes left behind by founder Steve Jobs.

In Cook’s nearly 15 years as CEO, Apple grew into the world’s first trillion-dollar company and saw its stock price rise by over 2,000%.

Here’s what smart people are saying about Cook’s legacy at Apple.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, wrote his farewell to Cook in a Monday post on X.

“Tim Cook is a legend,” Altman said. “I am very thankful for everything he has done and I am very thankful for Apple.”

Ben Bajarin, CEO at Creative Strategies

Ben Bajarin, CEO at consumer tech research firm Creative Strategies, said Cook will get a lot of credit for helping Apple scale, but that “an equally important part of his legacy is cultural.”

“His job was not only to grow Apple after Steve Jobs,” he wrote on X. “It was to preserve as much of Apple’s core identity, values, and operating culture as possible while leading it through a vastly different era.”

Patrick Moorhead, CEO of Moor Insights & Strategy

Patrick Moorhead, the CEO of Texas-based analytics firm Moor Insights & Strategy, said in an interview with CNBC that Ternus is a “continuity candidate” and not a “risk-taking visionary.”

“What I’m expecting and what the streets should expect is tight operational execution, margin management, and incremental product iteration,” Moorhead said.

He added, “I think that’s what the institutional side of the house really wants, as opposed to swinging around the room AI features, which up to this point, the company hasn’t needed at all.”

Andrés Avila Páez, cofounder of Arturito AI

Andrés Avila Páez, cofounder of Arturito AI, said in a post on X, translated from Spanish, that Cook’s legacy was one of “pure operational engineering.”

“Steve Jobs had the idea and created the iPhone. Tim Cook imagined and designed something even more difficult: the machine that manufactures it 200 million times a year without failing,” he said.

Robert Reich, former US Secretary of Labor

Robert Reich, professor at UC Berkeley and former US Secretary of Labor, took a more critical view of the resignation, urging people to remember Cook’s $1 million contribution to Trump’s inauguration.
“He fawned over Trump and gifted him a 24-karat gold plaque (as Apple lobbied for tariff exemptions),” Reich wrote on X of Cook.

Joseph Carlson, founder of Qualtrim

Joseph Carlson, founder of Qualtrim and host of The Joseph Carlson Show on YouTube, defended Cook against critics who proclaim “Tim Cook didn’t innovate!”

In a post on X, he listed products created at Apple while Cook was CEO, including the Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Pay, Face ID, and more.

“Don’t come at me with this idiotic take that Tim Cook’s Apple didn’t innovate,” he wrote.

Anthony Pompliano, CEO of Professional Capital Management

Tech entrepreneur Anthony Pompliano spotlighted how Apple’s stock has grown during Cook’s 15-year tenure.

In an X post on Monday, the founder and CEO of Professional Capital Management said, “He oversaw more than 2,000% increase in the stock while he was in charge.”

Michael Antonelli, market strategist at Baird

Michael Antonelli, a market strategist at Baird, praised Cook for the value of Apple’s stock surging 2,300% under his tenure.

“That’s INSANE. Incredible stewardship,” he wrote on X, adding, “Tim Cook probably turned more normal people into millionaires than 99% of CEOs.”

Sawyer Merritt, Tech content creator

Sawyer Merritt, a tech and EV enthusiast on X, said that he hoped Apple would take more risks under Ternus’ tenure as CEO.

“No-one can deny that Tim was an incredible operations guy,” Merritt said in a Monday X post. “Apple stock went up ~2,000% during his 15 years as CEO, but John being an actual engineer I think is what Apple needs at this stage.”

He said Apple has a lot of “catching up to do on the AI front,” and he hoped Ternus would bring that to the company.

Read the original article on Business Insider

The post What smart people are saying about Tim Cook’s legacy at Apple appeared first on Business Insider.

In a new interview with the New Yorker, published on Monday, Fuqua confirmed that he initially planned to touch on Jackson’s 2003 arrest, sharing, “I shot [Michael] being stripped naked, treated like an animal, a monster.”

Per the outlet, Fuqua had initially “envisioned a film that might have read as a provocative defense of its subject,” before an agreement in Michael Jackson’s settlement with the Chandler family — who accused the singer of sexually abusing their 13-year-old son, something Jackson denied — derailed this plan. Namely, the $23 million settlement forbade the Jackson estate from participating in depictions of events tied the allegation — which meant it couldn’t be included in the film.

While Fuqua was forced to pivot and ultimately reshoot parts of the movie, the outlet noted that the director found a new way to defend the deceased singer: By reminding audiences of Jackson’s tumultuous journey from child star to global icon.

And though Fuqua was unable to address the allegations in “Michael,” he did question them in his interview with the New Yorker. According to the outlet, the director was “not convinced that Jackson did what he is accused of doing.”

“When I hear things about us—Black people in particular, especially in a certain position—there’s always pause,” Fuqua said, before citing Elvis Presley as a double standard. (The late King of Rock infamously met his wife, Priscilla Presley, when was just 14, moving her into Graceland at 17.)

Specifically, the outlet said Fuqua was “skeptical” of the Chandler patriarch, Evan, who had been recorded while threatening to see Jackson “humiliated beyond belief.” He died in 2009 by suicide shortly after Jackson.

While Fuqua made it clear that he doesn’t know the truth surrounding the highly-publicized accusations against Jackson, he noted, “Sometimes people do some nasty things for some money.”

The singer faced 10 charges in 2005 tied to the alleged sexual abuse of a different 13-year-old. After denying all of the allegations against him and participating in a 14-week trial, Jackson was acquitted on all counts. However, the controversy resurfaced in 2019 when a documentary, titled “Leaving Neverland,” brought about new allegations from two of Jackson’s alleged victims.

“Michael,” which stars Jaafar Jackson as the titular pop star, arrives in theaters on Friday.

The post ‘Michael’ Director Has Some ‘Pause’ Over Jackson Abuse Allegations: ‘People Do Some Nasty Things for Money’ appeared first on TheWrap.

If Kevin Warsh is confirmed by the Senate to chair the Federal Reserve, he will be judged by those tests and by one more: the Powell Standard.

The current Fed chair, Jerome Powell, has set a stiff precedent by defending the Fed’s independence — a principle that is essential to the central bank’s ability to control inflation — against endless rhetorical and legal attacks from the president of the United States.

With inflation persistently above the Fed’s 2 percent target and other policymakers reluctant to cut rates, Mr. Warsh is unlikely to deliver what President Trump so badly wants, which is lower rates. Days before the March meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the president said on Truth Social, “Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell … should be dropping Interest Rates, IMMEDIATELY, not waiting for the next meeting!” The committee voted 11 to 1 to hold rates unchanged.

So if Mr. Warsh can’t satisfy Mr. Trump, how long will it be before the president lashes out at his new appointee? And if he does, how will the new chairman’s responses compare with his predecessor’s? The stability of the U.S. economy and financial markets depends on the answer.

Mr. Warsh’s confirmation hearings start today, although the path from there to the Fed is littered with obstacles. Two Republican senators have vowed not to confirm any successor to Mr. Powell until the Justice Department ends its investigation into him and his handling of the Fed’s headquarters renovation — one element of the president’s pressure campaign. How this gets resolved is not at all clear.

As Mr. Warsh observes frequently, the Powell Fed has made a few monetary-policy missteps. Notably, it was slow to recognize the severity of Covid-era inflation, though once it did, it raised interest rates aggressively.

But Mr. Powell’s legacy will be defined by how he stood up to Mr. Trump. For months, when asked about the president, the Fed chair responded tersely. Asked about Mr. Trump’s call for lower interest rates last January, Mr. Powell replied: “I’m not going to have any, any response or comment whatsoever on, on what the president’s said.” Asked about Fed independence in April 2025, Mr. Powell said, “We’re never going to be influenced by any political pressure.” As the president kept pressing, Mr. Powell kept repeating his mantra. In May 2025, he said: “It doesn’t affect our doing our job at all.”

The vibe shifted in July when Mr. Trump made a high-profile visit to the construction site of the Fed’s over-budget, behind-schedule headquarters. With Mr. Powell standing beside him, the president read from a sheet of paper that put an inflated price tag on the project. Mr. Powell pulled reading glasses from his pocket, scanned the paper and told Mr. Trump he was wrong, on live TV.

Then in January, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia subpoenaed the Fed in a criminal inquiry into whether Mr. Powell lied to Congress about the project. In response, Mr. Powell did what none of his predecessors had done. He addressed the president directly in a video posted on the Fed’s website, and in pointed language turned public focus from the building project to his battle to defend the Fed.

“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” he said. A federal judge agreed with that assertion and quashed the subpoenas.

Since then, Mr. Powell has been lionized. Last month, he was praised as “a paragon of integrity in public service” by a nonprofit founded by Paul Volcker, a former Fed chair. In May, Mr. Powell will be given the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award by Kennedy’s daughter and grandson.

It’s a tough act to follow.

Mr. Warsh has been harshly critical of the Powell Fed’s policies and the “deadwood” on its staff. He has repeatedly called for “regime change” at the central bank. Still, he has the personality, experience — five years as a Fed governor — and good sense to move slowly if he is confirmed. Other Fed policymakers and top Fed staff, deeply loyal to the institution, will want him to be successful.

Both as a Fed governor and in the 15 years since, Mr. Warsh has emphasized the importance of maintaining the Fed’s ability to set interest rates free from interference from elected politicians. In 2010, Mr. Warsh, then a Fed governor, gave a speech, “An Ode to Independence,” in which he called for “fierce independence from the whims of Washington and the wants of Wall Street, and from a pernicious short-termism that can undermine the proper conduct of policy.” (He also warned the Fed against lowering rates to make U.S. Treasury borrowing less expensive, something Mr. Trump has sought.)

As Mr. Warsh campaigned for the Fed job, his tone shifted, a worrisome hint of how he may handle the role. “I’ve got some sympathy with the president’s frustrations,” he told Fox Business in July 2025. “Economic growth in the U.S. is poised to boom, but it’s being held down by bad economic policies coming from the central bank.” And on Fox in October 2025: “The real reason we’ve had progress on the inflation front isn’t because of the Federal Reserve … it’s because of the president’s policies.”

Other presidents have complained about the Fed, albeit not as caustically as Mr. Trump. None have attempted to fire a governor, applauded as the Justice Department investigated the chair or vowed to replace sitting governors so his appointees would make up a majority of the seven-member board.

Central bankers often say their most important asset is credibility — their ability to convince financial markets, businesses and consumers that they will use their best judgment to steer the economy and not succumb to politicians’ whims. As Mr. Warsh observed in that 2010 speech: “Credibility anchors inflation expectations, which in turn allows the central bank to keep actual inflation in check.” Once lost, credibility is hard to regain.

If Mr. Trump grows impatient at the pace of Fed rate cuts and criticizes Mr. Warsh — or, as some Fed insiders speculate, presses the Fed board in Washington to fire some of the 12 regional Fed bank presidents — Mr. Warsh’s responses will be closely scrutinized by markets, Fed watchers and members of Congress, all of whom will wonder what he said to the president to get the job.

A decisive turn in the economy toward recession, though unwelcome, would make Mr. Warsh’s assignment to persuade other Fed policymakers to cut interest rates easier to accomplish. Barring that, Mr. Warsh, who has had the luxury of sniping at the Fed from the sidelines, will be tested every time he steps to the podium at a news conference or testifies before Congress.

If squeezed between the president and the Federal Open Market Committee, finding words that reassure both financial markets and placate Mr. Trump will be tough. In the end, the only way to preserve the Fed’s credibility will be for Mr. Warsh to emulate his resolute predecessor.

David Wessel is the director of the Hutchins Center on fiscal and monetary policy at the Brookings Institution. He is a former economics correspondent and the author of “In Fed We Trust,” a book about the central bank’s response to the 2008 financial crisis.

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The post Jerome Powell Stood Up to Trump. Will the Next Guy? appeared first on New York Times.