Pew Research: Americans’ Social Media Use 2025
Polls like this are interesting because social media keeps changing, and most of use don’t want to join everything to figure out which ones are worthwhile.
Category: Culture (Page 1 of 20)
For decades, every Thanksgiving, one of NPR’s founding mothers, Susan Stamberg, would give her “Mama Stamberg’s Cranberry Relish” recipe. It wasn’t interesting, but like a batty aunt telling a boring story about the time her husband wore bowling shoes to Christmas mass, she retells the story every year. Everybody feigns interest, and nobody complains, because it’s your batty aunt, and she’s earned the privilege
Two things have changed since last year.
Time: Court Filings Allege Meta Downplayed Risks to Children and Misled the Public
“Meta has designed social media products and platforms that it is aware are addictive to kids, and they’re aware that those addictions lead to a whole host of serious mental health issues,” says Previn Warren, the co-lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the case.
That’s really bad, but everybody knew this. It’s not like anyone cares about kids.
“I’m alarmed enough when I see a woman with her dangling boobies.
“This is nothing against trans anybody. What it’s saying is if I turn around and I see a pee pee — a penis — in front of me inside of the room, I would probably go to management and say, ‘Wait a minute. Why is there somebody a naked man in this room?’ Because… just from a safety standpoint and just from a, you know, from a privacy standpoint, I would so I can see why she would have gone and reported to management.
Black women can’t swim because of societal expectations’: Michelle Obama’s claims spark controversy.
Michelle Obama makes racist remarks to offend everyone.
“Let me explain something to white people. Our hair comes out CURLY. When we straighten it to follow YOUR beauty standards, we are TRAPPED by the straightness! That’s why so many of us can’t swim, won’t go to the gym because we’re trying to keep our hair straight for y’all!”
Let me explain something to Black people.
WSJ: Old Age Will Be Different in the Robotic Age
WSJ: Old Age Will Be Different in the Robotic Age
Machines could soon help elders get out of bed, bathe them, even provide them with emotional support.
I always figured this problem would be solved by the Japanese inventing competent Elder-bots, the Chinese making cheap knock-offs and an American start-up company offering free robots that tended to the feeble as it harvested confidential medical information to defraud Medicaid. That won’t happen.
WSJ: Why Every Family Needs a Code Word
WSJ: Why Every Family Needs a Code Word
If you receive a call from someone who sounds just like your grandson and says he needs money or a gift card, the best thing to do is hang up and call your grandson. But if the voice is so convincing that you can’t bear to do that, ask for your family code word.
This happened to my mother. She got a call from somebody who identified himself as her grandson, and needed money to get out of jail. The same thing has happened to the elderly parents of several of my friends.
RCI: Americans Are Increasingly Alone, But Are They Really Lonely?
In 2023, then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a bombshell report, “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” that painted a bleak picture of citizens feeling “isolated, invisible, and insignificant.” Most provocatively, it stated that perhaps half of Americans face a personal crisis of aloneness that poses health risks “similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.”
The “Crisis of Loneliness” issue has been in the news for over a decade. It has always sounded phony to me. How does anyone gauge the loneliness of others?
Fetishists infiltrate group promoting barefoot living
The largest group dedicated to “barefoot living” in the UK has been forced to bring in strict rules after being infiltrated by people with a sexual “foot fetish”.
The largest group? That means there are several groups in the UK for people who don’t wear shoes. I hope at least one group has a hobbit theme.
I don’t follow pop culture, but it must mean something that for the first time in a few decades, there are no rap songs amongst the Top 40.