Category: Culture (Page 1 of 20)

Planet Fitness needs to get serious.

January 5, 2026 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

NYT: More People Are Lifting Weights. It’s Changing Gym Culture.

It’s the first week of the year, so corporate media assumes that the holiday season has left everyone fat and ashamed. The New York Times and Planet Fitness both think they are doing something important.

Planet Fitness has a ‘no judgement’ theme, like they are Frankie Avalon pushing back against the muscle-bound bully who kicks sand in the face of a wimp in Beach Blanket Bingo. They have a chip on their shoulder, like somebody at work who is gay or a Christian. Nobody cares.

Classroom Phone Bans Work. So Why Don’t All Schools Do It?

December 27, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

WSJ: Classroom Phone Bans Work. So Why Don’t All Schools Do It?

A large urban district in Florida saw an increase in student test scores. A smaller school district in rural California is experiencing a dramatic decline in student behavioral problems. The reason for both: the absence of smartphones in the classroom.

Public schools are administrated by political animals without the ambition or ability to run for office. Some care about education, but no incentive rewards that.

Parents don’t push for phone bans because they don’t care about their children. A flip phone with no data plan solves all these issues. Parents are so eager to be liked, they willingly put their children in danger.

NPR should spare us the pink nightmare

November 27, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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.

Social media is Pandora’s Box filled with candy.

November 22, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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.

Joy Reid sounds normal.

November 19, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

“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.

Michelle Obama black-splains to White folks.

November 15, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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.

Technology won’t save us from old folks.

November 15, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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.

What’s the code?

November 13, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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.

Being alone isn’t so bad.

November 12, 2025 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

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?