IKEA Monkey

It doesn’t matter how late you stay at the office . Your manager is going to appreciate it you arrive early more, a recent study from the University of Washington concluded.

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Today in Nature Is Fucking Terrifying: a colossal swarm of bees descended upon a family reunion in Cerritos, California, stinging over 20 people. Three were hospitalized as a result of the attack.

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From Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence, a reminder of the rules of adjective order that fluent English speakers follow without quite knowing why.

…adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.

The Cambridge Dictionary lists a slightly different order: opinion, size, physical quality, shape, age, colour, origin, material, type, purpose. A poem by Alexandra Teague explores the topic in a creative way:

That summer, she had a student who was obsessed
with the order of adjectives. A soldier in the South
Vietnamese army, he had been taken prisoner when

Saigon fell. He wanted to know why the order
could not be altered. The sweltering city streets shook
with rockets and helicopters. The city sweltering

streets.

Did anyone learn this in school? I sure didn’t. How do we all know then? My daughter’s kindergarten teacher had a great phrase she used when things got a bit tricky as her students learned to read: “the English language is a rascal”. (via @MattAndersonBBC)

Update: Language Log’s post on adjective order is worth reading. (thx, stephen & margaret)

Tags: Alexandra Teague   language   Mark Forsyth   poetry

Heh.

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Every time that there’s a sale at Madewell, it’s hard to resist not putting 17 things into my cart. I need everything in the picture above, and you should spend the day shopping, because with the code DOUBLEUP, you’ll not only get 30% off select “Right-Now Picks,”, you’ll get an extra 30% off really pretty sale styles. Double up or double down, just double shop.

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Joy Reid talks to Marco Gutierrez, founder of the group Latinos for Trump.

After more than half a decade of various proposals, investigations, and dithering, the FDA today has announced that it’s changing the rules. 19 active ingredients in your hand soap — most notably including triclosan, until recently very common — are going to be heading off the market.

Starting next Tuesday, a whole bunch of stuff is losing its designation of Generally Recognized As Safe and Effective (sound familiar?) and can no longer be marketed to you, the FDA announced today.

The rule specifically pertains to soap — products “intended for use with water, and rinsed off after use.” That means it doesn’t apply to hand sanitizers, wipes, or other products (like toothpaste). It also doesn’t apply to industrial-strength, commercial products used in health care settings.

“Consumers may think antibacterial washes are more effective at preventing the spread of germs, but we have no scientific evidence that they are any better than plain soap and water,” said Janet Woodcock, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). “In fact, some data suggests that antibacterial ingredients may do more harm than good over the long-term.”

The wheels on this one have been turning for many years, but not exactly quickly.

It’s been six years since the FDA’s 2010 determination that there was no actual evidence proving triclosan actually made your bathroom hand soap any more effective.

After that it was another three years before the FDA announced in 2013 that it was going to review triclosan and find out if it was at all safe or effective.

When the FDA first started actually looking into it back in 2013, the agency gave the manufacturers of antibacterial hand soaps one year to provide data on both the safety and effectiveness of the ingredients they were using. And for all 19 ingredients now nixed after today’s rule, the data just… wasn’t there. Either it wasn’t submitted at all or what did come in wasn’t sufficient to show that the ingredients were useful.

Meanwhile, evidence pointing the other way continued to mount. For example: while the FDA review was underway, one study found that triclosan — increasingly associated with risks to fetal development — was found in 100% of the pregnant women who participated in the study. Yes, literally all of them.

Manufacturers have, meanwhile, been moving much faster than the feds. Perhaps sensing the writing on the wall, many have long since taken action to cut triclosan from their products. A sampling of recent anti-triclosan moves includes:

• Avon phased it out of all its products starting in 2014
• Bath and Body Works quietly phased out triclosan from its line of soaps with a 2014 relaunch
• Also in 2014, Minnesota passed a law banning triclosan as of 01/01/2017
• In July of this year, Walmart asked all its suppliers to stop using it
• Procter & Gamble has removed triclosan from more than 99% of its products

The full list of active ingredients no longer considered safe and effective, and therefore no longer allowed in your soap, include:

• Triclosan
• Triclocarban
• Fluorosalan
• Hexachlorophene
• Hexylresorcinol
• Iodophors (Iodine-containing ingredients)
• Iodine complex (ammonium ether sulfate and polyoxyethylene sorbitan monolaurate)
• Iodine complex (phosphate ester of alkylaryloxy polyethylene glycol)
• Nonylphenoxypoly (ethyleneoxy) ethanoliodine
• Poloxamer–iodine complex
• Povidone-iodine 5 to 10 percent
• Undecoylium chloride iodine complex
• Methylbenzethonium chloride
• Phenol (greater than 1.5 percent)
• Phenol (less than 1.5 percent)
• Secondary amyltricresols
• Sodium oxychlorosene
• Tribromsalan
• Triple dye

The rule will become effective when it is officially published in the Federal Register after Labor Day weekend.

For about as long as mobile phones have existed, traffic authorities have been on a campaign to get drivers to stop using them in our cars. The rise of texting over talking has made the problem even more hazardous, as communication requires at least one hand free and one eye on the screen. Cops are resorting to new tactics to catch and ticket texters, and they still aren’t deterring us.

According to the Associated Press, cops in Tennessee patrol in a tractor-trailer hoping to spot people who think they’re hiding their phones successfully, and state troopers in New York state use elevated SUVs for the same purpose.

Bicycle and motorcycle officers are also able to spot what motorists are up to. In Maryland, an officer went undercover as a homeless person and alerted colleagues in a patrol car to phone users spotted from that angle.

While a few hundred people are known to be killed in crashes involving drivers using their phones every year, experts think that the numbers might actually be higher: the problem is that police can’t compel people to hand over their phones without a warrant. The “textalyzer” has not yet been invented.

How bad is the problem? In New York, tickets issued for texting (as opposed to talking on a phone without a hands free device, which is also illegal) increased almost tenfold from 2011 to 2015.

You don’t get a more severe ticket for using two phones at once, but one VA state trooper told the AP that he caught a driver double-texting and driving. The driver had “one in his left hand and one in his right hand, with his wrist on the steering wheel,” the trooper recounted. Hey, maybe that was the guy whose photo we use in texting while driving stories sometimes!

One problem is that officers can’t always prove that a driver was using the phone to type a message or scrolling social media, if the state allows motorists to use their phones to talk.

Meanwhile, the same experts at Harvard’s School of Public Health who helped develop norms that now condemn driving while intoxicated are working to find the right message that will convince Americans to put our phones down.

Police losing battle to get drivers to put down their phones [AP]

I’m dancing in my seat to this reader’s pick:

Wilco’s “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart” is a noisy, distressing indie-rock classic, but in the hands of fellow Chicagoans JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound, it transforms into an exuberant Motown-style pop song. It’s a full-bodied conversion, made even weirder when, two minutes in, the band momentarily switches gears to include a snippet of lyrics taken from “Theologians,” a mid-tempo Wilco song that’s closer to Emily Dickinson than American soul. And yet that embroidery feels seamless, mostly because it extends Wilco’s persistent sense of play, but also because it gets at how so much of rock, soul, and poetry have common roots in gospel music.

Update from the reader, Eric Beltmann, who adds:

Jeff Tweedy, Wilco’s frontman, has endorsed the cover and once surprised the Uptown Sound by joining them onstage at the 2011 Solid Sound Festival.

Watch that moment here.

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Proving she is one of those special artists who’s “bigger in Vatican City,” my Snapchat superstar and host of the upcoming America’s Next Top Model reboot will perform for His Holiness Pope Francis (among others) this weekend “at an event honoring the canonization of Mother Teresa.”

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The bears are on the loose again!!! Here’s a livestream of the bears, who are currently on the loose:

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In today’s Tweet Beat, Gina Rodriguez seems happy, Jenna Fischer is still gunning for a reunion and Kanye West takes a cue from his wife.

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A Noted Kook if ever there was one.

The post Celebrating the Delicious, Wacky Allure of Parker Posey first appeared on Go Fug Yourself.

Ohio's restriction on medication abortion was passed in the name of women's safety. This study found it had the opposite effect.

Donald Trump, the human equivalent to a hideously oppressive smell with no known provenance, has treated the United States to a masterclass in how not to hire a campaign manager. His newest, Kellyanne Conway, showed potential to be the least terrible of the three we’ve seen so far, but that potential has rapidly become dated.

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A Pennsylvania woman was found shot to death in a barn Tuesday night after being kidnapped by her husband, who had a long and documented history of violence towards her. Kevin Ewing was previously charged with kidnapping Tierne Ewing in July, but was able to post bond and get out of jail. He was found alive, with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, in the barn with Tierne’s body.

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It was a wonder that Netflix didn’t renew Stranger Things once the overcrowding of dissections of the show online led to gushing articles about minor characters like Barb, or once any of the five children stars singing pretty much anything would lead to rapturous social media sharing. And then last week, it came out that the series was already Netflix’s third most watched show behind Orange Is the New Black and Fuller House. It seemed inevitable that Stranger Things would be renewed (though the series could work as either a one-off or a multi-season thing), but it was still curious that Netflix wasn’t jumping on it sooner — leading the Duffer brothers to declare some of the things they’d do if they got another season rather than when.

TV Guide, while wondering why it was taking a while, told fans not to worry, because the network had “never not renewed a series” — so it’d certainly be bizarre of them not to renew one that’s so successful. And they, and you, and everyone else, were of course right: because now Stranger Things has officially been renewed, for a second season that’ll stream in 2017. Variety reports that the season will run for nine episodes as opposed to Season 1’s eight. And it seems, based on the fact that this announcement comes with a teaser trailer, that perhaps the company had been strategizing the perfect renewal date to rekindle buzz for season one the second it started quieting. The teaser displays a lot of cryptic phrases (“Madmax,” “The Boy Who Came Back to Life,” “The Pumpkin Patch,” “The Palace,” “The Storm,” “The Pollywog,” “The Secret Cabin,” “The Brain,” “The Lost Brother”) which seem to be episode titles:

Immediately following the announcement, Entertainment Weekly got some quotes from the Duffer Brothers on what they could share about the upcoming season. The brothers already said a while ago that they didn’t want the show to be an anthology, and that they wanted to see many of the same characters return. It appears they’re sticking to that idea: Ross Duffer said, “I think we talked like a larger time jump where the kids are older now and it’s a different decade. That’s something we batted around from the very beginning. But for us, there’s still more story here, there’s still things that are unresolved.” Which means, presumably, that the same preternaturally talented child actors will return. Except, maybe, Eleven.  “We don’t know about Eleven. We leave that up in the air,” said Ross Duffer. Though, really, they probably wouldn’t reveal her presence even if they were certain about bringing her back, as that’s one of the big cliffhangers that’s getting people rabidly interested in a second season.

Also, according to Matt Duffer, they’ll be “ventur[ing] a bit outside of Hawkins” — and the opening scene of the second season won’t actually take place there. Perhaps most exciting is their continued assertion that much more will be revealed about the Upside Down. Ross Duffer said:

We obviously have this gate to another dimension, which is still very much open in the town of Hawkins. And a lot of questions there in terms of, if the Monster is dead, was it a singular monster? What else could be out there? We really don’t go in there much until they go in to find Will at the end. So we’ve opened up this doorway, and to us it’s exciting to talk about, like, what else is behind there? There’s a lot more mystery there to be solved.

 

While attempting to do a commercial for the chicken pot pie at Dysart’s Restaurant in Maine, this gentleman has a little problem with saying his lines. This just gets funnier and funnier as it goes on, and it is imperative that you watch until the very end. This is the hardest I’ve laughed all week.

P.S. If you live in New England, you can get a Dysart’s pie shipped right to your house. Fruit pies only, but they presumably still have that buttery crispy crun- … dammit! (via @heyadamroberts)

Tags: advertising   food   video

A Florida woman doesn't notice approaching bear until it's almost in her lap. WESH's Dave McDaniel reports.

Dolly Parton’s following includes a huge number of LGBT fans. There’s a lot of general talk of tolerance and love at a Dolly Parton concert , but has she ever actually helped a gay person?

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By the Sea director Angelina Jolie and her daughter Shiloh were driving through Toluca Lake, CA on Sunday when they passed two young children trying to sell an enormous stuffed bear named “Big Bear” for $50. So what did Angie do? Angie slammed on the brakes of her off-white Cadillac (unexpected, no?), stepped out, handed fifty bucks to each child, and shoved the dang thing in her trunk.

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Hey, did you have portraits taken to commemorate your final year in high school? If so, was a naked man who may or may not have been named Rick taking his dog who may or may not have been named Pete for a swim in the lake behind you? (Click for the full NSFW view.)

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Bear encounters are less like singing “The Bare Necessities” and more like “oh crap, I hope there aren’t any bear cubs around.” Here’s what you should do if you run into a bear in the wild who isn’t as friendly as Baloo.

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Last week, former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros filed a lawsuit claiming she was shunted off the air for complaining about relentless sexual harassment from Roger Ailes and others. In a response filed Monday, the network calls Tantaros a lying “opportunist” who merely wishes she was sexually harassed.

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I’ll be honest: Mulholland Dr. is my favorite movie ever and has been for years. (My colleagues can attest to the Mulholland Dr. poster pinned inside my cubicle.) So naturally I was excited to see it at the very top of the BBC’s newly released list of the 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century (so far).

The film is filled with unforgettable moments (including that one), but the most heartbreaking and narratively significant is the one that takes place in Club Silencio. After an introduction entirely in Spanish, the singer Rebekah Del Rio takes the stage as if in some kind of trance and begins a gorgeous rendition of “Llorando” before an audience of two.

The scene may be dialogue-free, but it communicates so much—in the tears of its two main characters Betty and Rita, the way they lean on each other for comfort, their look of horror when Del Rio falls to the ground and her disembodied song continues without her. Much like Mulholland Dr. itself, the “Llorando” scene is that much more powerful for operating on a completely different plane of language and emotion than the one we use every day.

And then maybe after you’re done being devastated (it may take years), you can find this funny:

just noticed a *huge* goof in MULHOLLAND DR! in Club Silencio, the song keeps going even after the singer has CLEARLY passed out! Lol 😂🙋🏼💁🏻💀

— david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) August 13, 2016

(Submit a song via hello@. Track of the Day archive here. Pre-Notes archive here.)

Simone Giertz makes terrible robots… on purpose. However, her new Sandwich Robot is, quite possibly, the suckiest robot to ever suck. Watch as the robot’s mechanical arm, with sandwich knife attached, attempts to make a simple peanut butter sandwich. SPOILER ALERT… more peanut butter winds up on Simone and the floor, than on any bread. [link]

Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin is done playing the good wife to Anthony Weiner, announcing Monday she is leaving the serially sexting ex-congressman after he was accused of sending raunchy photos and messages to yet another woman.

Abedin, who as vice chair of Clinton's campaign is destined for...

I’ll make your sneakers look like this for $50. Just give me some sneakers and 45 minutes. Fuck it, 30 minutes. This trend is not new , but it’s still stupid.

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