It’s long. But you’re gonna learn so much about moose.
Find your Pawnee drinking buddy.
Yes, we are already at this level. Warning: mild spoilers for the Season 6 premiere.
HBO
HBO
WHAT DOES IT MEAN???
HBO
You can keep your vegan organic genderless gingerbread figures.
~All I Ask~ is that you take the quiz.
There are more than 60 confirmed cameos in this film. SIXTY.
The basic premise of the plot from the trailer: Edina (Jennifer Saunders) and Patsy (Joanna Lumley) flee the country after accidentally killing Kate Moss. The film also stars Saffy (Julia Sawalha), Bubble (Jane Horrocks) and Mother (June Whitfield).
BBC Films / youtube.com
BBC Films / youtube.com
BBC Films / youtube.com
Your parents are almost definitely not trying to ruin your life.
Look, I get it: You often feel isolated and alienated from everyone around you, even your close friends. While everyone else is happily living their lives and enjoying things you don't really understand, you seem to be the only one faking it. And since you feel like the sole person going through this, it's easy to think that your maturity is miles ahead of the "typical" teenagers you know. I was exactly like this in high school — I was convinced I was the only really mature person and I was surrounded by idiots who just didn't get it.
But here's the big secret: Every single teenager you know feels that way. Although your feelings seem so unique and specific to you, everyone you know is going through their own version of that. Everyone has their own mask to hide how they're really feeling, but they all feel something-or-other of the same thing: Alone. They all think that nobody understands them, and that they're secretly way more mature than everyone else.
And that means you're exactly as mature as everyone else your age, whether you realize it or not. But instead of focusing on all the ways you feel separated from them, use this newfound knowledge to empathize and connect with them. You're all a little lost, and you're all trying to find a way through adolescence. And it'll be a lot easier if you try to make it through together instead of alone.
TLC / Via octopussoir-.tumblr.com
It's so difficult to accept this. People tell you all the time that you should love yourself, but when you're in high school, it's so hard see anything about yourself to love. If you could just find someone else to love you, maybe you'd finally see all the things that make you lovable, too. Other people telling you how great you are is so nice sometimes.
But take it from me: Dating someone just because they like you is not the path to happiness. The attention is nice, but you'll be so aware that something is missing. The longer you stay in a relationship that's not right, the longer it will take you to find the right person. And it's not fair to the un-right person you're dating to use them for their affection. You should both want a good relationship, not just any relationship.
Don't just look for someone who will love you. Look for someone you will love back.
FOX
When I was 17, a 25-year-old guy started showing interest in me, and I thought it must be because I was so mature for my age (see point number one on this list). But once I reached my twenties, I realized that I hadn't been an especially cool 17-year-old. No, that older guy was just a creep.
Think about the kids who are currently several years younger than you. Would you have any interest in dating them? Of course not. The same is true for people in their twenties: They shouldn't want to date high schoolers, no matter how cool that high schooler is. Someone older who does show interest in a teenager is probably looking for someone they can control.
And yes, once you turn 18, you can legally date anyone you want, and it can be extremely tempting to go for someone well into their adult years (especially if you're guilty of the "I'm mature for my age" fallacy previously mentioned). But a lot of the maturity required for a healthy relationship can only be found through time and experience, which are both things you haven't had a lot of yet. There are people who will take advantage of that, and you.
Of course not all relationships that feature large age gaps are bad. But before you embark on this kind of relationship, take a long, honest look at how this person treats the other people in their life. Who else have they dated? How do they speak about their exes? Are many (or all) of their exes supposedly "crazy?" Do they push you to do things you’re not entirely comfortable with? Do they make you feel guilty for setting your own personal boundaries? You deserve to be with someone who makes you feel safe and appreciated, not just someone who makes you feel "cool."
NBC
I know that it feels like they are. They grew up in a different time and they don't get what being a teenager is like today, so they keep making rules and decisions that are based on a reality that doesn't even exist anymore. They mean well, but they just don't understand you.
And you know what? Some of that might be true. But here's the thing: They want to understand you. They want to have a good relationship with you. And the only way you'll ensure that they never do is to shut them out completely. Sometimes they'll make mistakes, but so will you. Cut your parents some slack, and give them the chance to get to know you. And, at the same time, allow for the possibility that while you have a view of the world that they don't, they also have a unique understanding that you don't, so they'll sometimes make decisions that you vehemently disagree with.
"But how can they just do that? I'm practically an adult!" you're probably saying.
And to that I say: Please refer back to item one on this list. No, you're not. Please keep reminding yourself of that.
Walt Disney Pictures
These tricks change everything.
I Cook / youtube.com
I cook / youtube.com
You'll never burn your fingers again! See how here.
Eoin Blackwell / AAP
On Tuesday, the five-judge bench of the Papua New Guinea Supreme Court ruled the Australian offshore detention centre unconstitutional on the basis that it breaches individual human rights.
Prime minister Peter O’Neill issued a statement Wednesday asking the Australian government to “make alternative arrangements” for the 850 asylum seekers being held in the centre.
Handout / Getty Images
“This day was my big dream during the last three years,” Boochani said. “I can feel freedom, it is a really amazing day for me and all prisoners in Manus. I’m happy that eventually the justice smiled to our faces.”
Boochani said the celebrations were stilted at first, as the detainees are used to hearing positive news that doesn’t eventuate.
However, after PNG immigration officials visited the centre on Wednesday to read out the court order, and O’Neill issued the directive for the centre to close, detainees hugged one another, danced, sung and shouted “Freedom!”.
“This time, they trust in this positive news,” said Boochani. “They can feel freedom by this news and we will have celebrations. Today people were happy and not scared to show their happiness.”
Eoin Blackwell / AAP
Refugee advocates are pushing hard for the men to be brought to Australia. Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition told BuzzFeed News earlier this week the “ball is in the government’s court” to bring the men on Manus to Australia.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young also called on prime minister Turnbull to “end the farce” and bring detainees to Australia.
“There is nowhere else for people to go,” she told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday.
However, immigration minister Peter Dutton has said repeatedly that people who came to Australia by boat will never be settled in the country.
“The government has not resiled from its position that people who attempted to come illegally by boat to Australia and who are now in the Manus facility will not be settled in Australia,” he said in a statement following O’Neill’s announcement.
The men found to be refugees could be resettled in Papua New Guinea, Dutton said.
Peter Parks / AFP / Getty Images
"It is clear that several of these refugees do not want to settle in Papua New Guinea and that is their decision,” he said.
Boochani told BuzzFeed News detainees thought PNG was an "unsafe country".
“Nobody wants to live in PNG because they exiled us to this remote island by force,” he said.
“I protested on top of a tree a few days ago and read a political statement, saying that I have respect to PNG but I don’t want to live here.”
“Gay people are under such pressure, more than other people, because they wanted to settle them in a country where being homosexual is a crime,” Boochani said.
Boochani has interviewed some of the gay men on Manus and said they “worry more than other detainees”.
“Really PNG is a most dangerous place for gay people, and they are always scared of PNG police,” he said. “I have not see any gay person who would even think about living in PNG.”
BuzzFeed News has previously reported on the gay and bisexual refugees on Manus Island, who live in fear of being assaulted over their sexuality and of the country's harsh laws around homosexuality.
“This place is no better than Iran,” one refugee told BuzzFeed News. “I wish I had died on that boat 100 times a day.”
“I myself am sure that I will go to Australia, because Australia must take us from here and you know that you cannot find a country that will accept us," he said.
Dutton said he would continue working with PNG to resolve the issues raised by the Supreme Court.
Kelly has no time for tea.
WGN-TV / Via wgntv.com
WGN-TV / Via wgntv.com
Taste the rainbow.
These pictures will make you feel sticky.
Toby Canham / Getty Images
Ethan Miller / Getty Images
Confusing.
Ethan Miller / Getty Images
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Let’s see if you know your Durarara!! from your Death Parade.
It can always been worse.
Via buzzlamp.com
Via buzzlamp.com
Who should you really be using that filter on?
Beyoncé’s latest album truly is the gift that keeps on giving.
A representation of how the brain encodes language. Green words represent mostly visual/tactile concepts, red words mostly social ones.
James Gao / Mark Lescroart / Alexander Huth / Nature
The team, working at the University of California in Berkeley, used "functional magnetic resonance imaging" (fMRI) scanners to study blood flow in the brains of seven volunteers as they listened to two hours of the Moth Radio Hour podcast. They found that as the subjects heard certain words, activity in parts of their brains grew stronger. And they were able to predict which parts of the brain would light up when certain types of words were heard.
The study was published today in Nature magazine.
James Gao / Mark Lescroart / Alexander Huth / Nature
The particular areas that lit up tended to be the same in all the volunteers. "We’re finding places in the brain where certain words or phrases are likely to elicit a response, consistently," Dr Alex Huth, one of the Berkeley researchers, told BuzzFeed News. "You could say that's where they're encoded."
"It’s an impressive work," Dr Barry Devereux, a neurolinguist from Cambridge University's Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain who was not involved in the study, told BuzzFeed News. "It uses a lot of information about the speech, and relates it to the fMRI data in a rich and complete way."
The study divided words up into 12 categories: visual, tactile, numeric, locational, abstract, temporal, professional, violent, communal, mental, emotional and social. They found that words in the more human, social categories (such as "social", "violent", "emotional", or "communal") tended to be grouped together. Similarly, words in categories to do with perceptions, numbers, and places were also grouped.
This parcelling up of words into areas is slightly surprising, Devereux said. "There's been a lot of debate about the idea that there are different regions in the brain for different semantic ideas. It's controversial." The alternative possibility is that semantic information is distributed more evenly around the brain, he said, but this study suggests it's not.
"I strongly suspect that it’s universal," said Huth. "The things we see are very universal human things. The separation of words describing people and interactions from words describing visual or tactile properties, I think that’s a very natural distinction. I would think that any neurotypical person would have that distinction.”
Devereux agreed: "We’d hope that these results would generalise."
Some words were represented in more than one brain area.
"One of the cool things," Huth said, "is that we're not seeing a brain area for a word. We’re seeing each brain area representing a bunch of different words, and each word in a bunch of areas."
So as the video above explains, the word "top" stimulates a small area in a part of the brain associated with clothing and appearances. But it also activates another, associated with buildings and places, and another, associated with numbers and measurements.
"One of the most interesting aspects that we take away from these results," said Huth, "is that the amount of brain that’s involved in understanding language is massive." About 20–30% of the cortex, the complex outer layer of the brain, which is uniquely large in humans, is activated at some point or another by speech and language, he said. "And it’s all these areas that are not traditionally thought of as being involved in language."
Alexander Huth / Nature
Previous studies have suggested that most of the brain's language activity goes on in the left hemisphere of the brain. This study found it was "relatively symmetrical" across both hemispheres. The authors suggest it may be that those earlier studies tended to look at shorter words and phrases, and that long narratives such as the one they played their subjects involve the right side more.
"It’s a really good step along the path to being able to decode what someone is hearing from their brain activity," said Huth. "And maybe that’s close enough to what people are thinking to decode thoughts that way." He thinks people with locked-in syndrome or motor neurone disease – the condition Stephen Hawking suffers from – might benefit in future, "but that's a few more stops along the road". At the moment, he said, "lying in an MRI machine every time you want to talk isn’t exactly practical".
Devereux agreed: "I think it’s quite far down the line. What they've done requires over two hours of listening and over 10,000 words of speech. With enough data you could make those sorts of inferences, but the amount of data you'd need would be huge."
Before that, Huth said, an interesting next step would be to look at atypical groups to see if they’re different – for instance, seeing whether the social aspect is less clear in people with autistic spectrum disorder.
“YouTube is giving us a platform to express ourselves.”
Illustration: Rebecca Hendin / BuzzFeed News
When Al-Juhara Sajer first began posting videos on YouTube, the response from girls and young women in the Arab world was incredibly positive. "Finally an Arab girl is doing videos on the internet," her fans wrote on her YouTube page.
In the past five years, a growing number of women in the Middle East have been making waves on YouTube. Between 2014 and 2015, the top four YouTube channels led by women in Saudi Arabia saw an increase in subscribers of more than 200%, according to numbers provided by YouTube. Across the Middle East and North Africa, content related to women has seen a 50% year-on-year growth — after Saudi Arabia, the countries within the region with most female-led channels are Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq.
BuzzFeed News spoke to Sajer and three other Arab women who are using YouTube to break down stereotypes.
Al-Juhara Sajer
When Sajer, who uses the nickname Jay online, started watching YouTube four years ago, she quickly became frustrated because she could not find any Arabic-speaking women from the Middle East. The women she found on YouTube, while fun and interesting, discussed a life that was unfamiliar to her. So she started her own beauty channel.
"A lot of girls told me they could relate to my videos," she said in a Skype interview with BuzzFeed News. "I made them feel less alone because I was talking about a lifestyle they understood in their own language."
But Sajer said she also had a lot of men telling her to quit because YouTube wasn't "the place for a girl." "They said I should be focusing on being a housewife," she said. "I don't want that life."
If you get all of these right, you are a fast food wizard!
