Zhana Vrangalova had hit a problem. On a blustery day in early spring, sitting in a small coffee shop near the campus of New York University, where she is an adjunct professor of psychology, she was unable to load onto her laptop the Web site that we had met to discuss. This was not a technical malfunction on her end; rather, the site had been blocked. Vrangalova, who is thirty-four, with a dynamic face framed by thick-rimmed glasses, has spent the past decade researching human sexuality, and, in particular, the kinds of sexual encounters that occur outside the norms of committed relationships. The Web site she started in 2014, casualsexproject.com, began as a small endeavor fuelled by personal referrals, but has since grown to approximately five thousand visitors a day, most of whom arrive at the site through organic Internet searches or referrals through articles and social media. To date, there have been some twenty-two hundred submissions, about evenly split between genders, each detailing the kinds of habits that, when spelled out, can occasionally alert Internet security filters. The Web site was designed to open up the discussion of one-night stands and other less-than-traditional sexual behaviors. What makes us engage in casual sex? Do we enjoy it? Does it benefit us in any way—or, perhaps, might it harm us? And who, exactly, is “us,” anyway?
Month: June 2016
I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything
HAVE a habit that horrifies most people. I watch television and films in fast forward. This has become increasingly easy to do with computers (I’ll show you how) and the time savings are enormous. Four episodes of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” fit into an hour. An entire season of “Game of Thrones” goes down on the bus ride from D.C. to New York.
I started doing this years ago to make my life more efficient. Between trendy Web shows, auteur cable series, and BBC imports, there’s more to watch than ever before. Some TV execs worry that the industry is outpacing its audience. A record-setting 412 scripted series ran in 2015, nearly double the number in 2009.
“There is simply too much television,” FX Networks CEO John Landgraf said last year. Nonsense, responded Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos, who has been commissioning shows at a startling rate. “There’s no such thing as too much TV,” he said.
So here we are, spending three hours a day on average, scrambling to keep up with the Kardashians, the Starks, the Underwoods, and the dozens of others on the roster of must-watch TV, which has exploded in the age of fragmented audiences. Nowadays, to stay on the same wavelength with your different groups of friends — the ones hating on “Meat Chad” and the ones cooing over Khaleesi — you have to watch in bulk.
The Secret Life of America’s Greatest Swinger
Say you’re a guy who’d like some other guy to bed your wife. No? Well, it happens. And when it does, Dave’s the sort of man you call. He’s a demure doctor from a quiet neighborhood. But thanks to some rare talents and ubiquitous technologies, he’s also a star in the bedrooms of others—and a helpful guide to the joyful, lusty life of the truly modern hedonist.
….
In an era when the Internet and hookup apps customized to every taste are unleashing sexuality in unprecedented ways, Dave usually needs a few hours just to juggle the weekend’s many possibilities. He is in his early 40s, a soft-spoken primary-care doctor, a tall and muscular black man with tattoos and a disarmingly boyish face—all of which has made him particularly sought-after in this wealthy part of Phoenix.
My family was traumatised first by a murder, then by the TV serialisation
After discovering in 2009 that my beautiful mum, who died in 1991, was in fact murdered by my father and the woman he had formerly had an affair with, I was propelled into a new world of trauma.
Loss of any form is distressing. But the intentional and often violent killing of another brings about a complex grieving process that is interrupted, sidelined and trivialised in favour of a criminal investigation. In a 2011 report of 400 families bereaved through homicide, more than 80% were found to suffer from trauma-related symptoms. When dealing with (or often not dealing with) the impact of murder and the sequence of events it brings about, it can result in multiple processes of re-trauma.
We all love a good crime drama. Yet the reality of murder on the families involved is much more sobering, traumatic and, well, messier than is often projected on our screens. Behind the high viewing figures, whether for fiction or the coverage of real crimes, there are people living with murder bereavement on a daily basis. And an intrusive media experience can often compound this original trauma. If deemed “a good enough story”, private grief becomes public property.
News is important, and when handled factually it serves the public interest. But there is a clear distinction between public interest and what is of interest to the public – the latter is problematic.
Poor people pay for parking even when they can’t afford a car
Free parking makes it cheaper to own a car. But, as UCLA economist Donald Shoup has long argued, it makes everything else more expensive. Parking at the supermarket is embedded in the cost of groceries. Parking attached to an apartment building is built into the price of rent.
And because cities typically require developers to build a minimum amount of parking — say, one spot per bedroom in each housing unit, or two per thousand square feet of commercial space — you may pay for the cost of parking even if you never drive a car.
One analysis in Seattle found, for instance, that overbuilt parking at apartment buildings can drive up rents by nearly $250 a month. In Chicago, a similar recent study concluded that on average a third of costly parking at apartment buildings sits empty overnight. In Los Angeles, Shoup calculates, the mandate to provide minimum parking effectively reduces the number of units in a new apartment by 13 percent. And it can nearly double the cost there of constructing a shopping center if we’re talking underground lots.
I have found a new way to watch TV, and it changes everything
IHAVE a habit that horrifies most people. I watch television and films in fast forward. This has become increasingly easy to do with computers (I’ll show you how) and the time savings are enormous. Four episodes of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” fit into an hour. An entire season of “Game of Thrones” goes down on the bus ride from D.C. to New York.
I started doing this years ago to make my life more efficient. Between trendy Web shows, auteur cable series, and BBC imports, there’s more to watch than ever before. Some TV execs worry that the industry is outpacing its audience. A record-setting 412 scripted series ran in 2015, nearly double the number in 2009.
“There is simply too much television,” FX Networks CEO John Landgraf said last year. Nonsense, responded Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos, who has been commissioning shows at a startling rate. “There’s no such thing as too much TV,” he said.
So here we are, spending three hours a day on average, scrambling to keep up with the Kardashians, the Starks, the Underwoods, and the dozens of others on the roster of must-watch TV, which has exploded in the age of fragmented audiences. Nowadays, to stay on the same wavelength with your different groups of friends — the ones hating on “Meat Chad” and the ones cooing over Khaleesi — you have to watch in bulk.
Early Puberty in Girls Is Becoming Epidemic and Getting Worse
Padded bras for kindergarteners with growing breasts to make them more comfortable? Sixteen percent of U.S. girls experiencing breast development by the age of 7? Thirty percent by the age of 8? Clearly something is affecting the hormones of U.S. girls—a phenomenon also seen in other developed countries. Girls in poorer countries seem to be spared—until they move to developed countries.
No scientists dispute that precocious or early-onset puberty is on the rise but they do not agree on the reasons. Is it bad diets and lack of exercise that cause growing obesity? Is it soft drinks themselves, even when not linked to obesity? Is it the common chemicals known as endocrine disrupters that exert estrogen-like effects (and also cause obesity)? Is it the many legal, unlabeled hormones used in the U.S. to fatten livestock? Some researchers even believe precocious puberty could be triggered by sociological factors like having no father in the home or even stress.
Sick at Work: Staggering Number of Americans Go to Work With Bad Colds or Flu
If there is one type of co-worker Americans dread coming into contact with above all others, it is the sick co-worker—the one who should be home in bed but showed up at work despite incessant coughing and sneezing, a runny nose and a painful sore throat. Unfortunately, going to work sick is all too common in the United States: a survey released by Wakefield Research earlier this year found that 69% of working Americans don’t take sick days, even when they’re genuinely ill, because they feel they can’t afford to miss even a day of work. That is if they even have paid sick days; many American workers don’t. According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, 40 percent of private-sector workers and 80% of low-wage workers do not receive any paid sick leave.
Between job insecurity, rising housing and healthcare costs, wage stagnation, outsourcing to developing countries and the lack of federal legislation mandating sick leave, too many Americans feel compelled to show up at work sick when they should be home recovering, and their co-workers—and sometimes the public—pay the price when they get sick as well.
Dad defends Stanford sex offender
Public outrage over the lenient sentencing of a star Stanford swimmer convicted of sexual assault has been compounded by a controversial letter written by the athlete’s father.
Brock Turner was convicted in March of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman at a fraternity party in January 2015 at the elite university. He faced up to 14 years in prison. Prosecutors asked for six.
Instead, Turner received only six months in jail and three years of probation after a judge worried that a stiffer sentence would have a “severe impact” on the 20-year-old.
The light sentence drew harsh criticism from prosecutors and advocates and prompted widespread fury on social media.