‘Brainrot’ Is the New Online Affliction

If you or someone you love speaks almost exclusively in internet references — “It’s giving golden retriever boyfriend energy” or “Show it to me Rachel” — they may be suffering from a condition known as “brainrot.” The term refers primarily to low-value internet content and the effects caused by spending too much time consuming it….

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The Sweet Rewards of Bitter Melon

On broad banana leaves, dishes of sweet soy dipping sauce, a creamy pork liver sauce, a bubbling pinakbet, some sticky rice and a raw salad of slivered bitter melon and red onion flank a crackling lechon like planets orbiting the sun. This is the final savory course of the kamayan dinner, a Filipino family-style meal,…

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The Disturbing Truth About Hair Relaxers

Even as Black hair was becoming increasingly political, many Black consumers continued using relaxers and began complaining that their scalps were being burned and their hair was thinning and breaking because of the harshness of lye-based relaxers. In 1975, the Federal Trade Commission demanded that Johnson put warning labels on lye-based products. By the mid-1980s,…

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