You're probably already aware that some products and services for ladies are overpriced, or at least priced differently—all it takes is a walk into most hair salons to see that. But the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs just released a big report on gender-based pricing for consumer goods, and it paints a grimmer picture than Francis Bacon ever did. OK, that's hyperbolic. But still:
DCA found that women’s products cost 7 percent more than similar products for men. Specifically:
7 percent more for toys and accessories
4 percent more for children’s clothing
8 percent more for adult clothing
13 percent more for personal care products
8 percent more for senior/home health care products
Yeah, that's right! Screw you old ladies; you gotta pay more! And you too child ladies! And all ladies! You know, ladies—the people who earn less money than men.
The "pink razor tax," as those ads on podcasts like calling it, has been around for a long time. Companies give several reasons for pricing ladies' products higher, including that the companies sometimes consider the girly versions to be "specialty" products. But others suspect that the prices are higher just because people think they can get women to pay more for the same products. The Washington Post's Wonkblog points out a 1991 study that found out white women paid 40% more than white men for cars at the same dealership.
The solution, other than just complaining? Make sure you negotiate your prices and buy dude stuff. You don't need to be a man to smell like a cheap Irish Spring.
In episode 11 of truTV's Adam Ruins Everything, the obnoxious (but lovable crusader for truth, I guess?) Adam Conover ruins something that already sucks: funerals. As it turns out, nearly everything people do for their dead loved ones is kind of a waste of money! Embalming is pointless — did you know that dead bodies pose no health risk and refrigeration is cheaper and just as effective? And that coffins can cost up to $10,000? And that many funeral homes are owned by a giant conglomerate?
Bill Fink of Belleville, Illinois, passed away last Wednesday, and his poignant, funny obituarypaints a picture of who he was. The obit has gone viral after a photo of it was posted on Reddit by Redditor ChezTheHero, who claims his mother-in-law saw it and was confused by what it meant. After she read it aloud to him, he had to share. Fink was a computer programmer and the story of his life is somewhat in code:
It reads:
Let it be known that on this cycle, program William Ralph “Bill” Fink, 46, of Belleville, IL, born July 28, 1969, in Belleville, IL, encountered an unhandled exception in his core operating system, which prematurely triggered a critical STOP condition on Wednesday, December 16, 2015. Bill was an avid technophile, program developer, and educator, whose master functions were harnessed by Microsoft Corp. as a technical evangelist. Some of Bill’s most impactful component subroutines centered around video games, coaching youth sports, building elaborate displays for Halloween, and spending time with family...
Diagnostics indicated multiple cascading hard-ware failures at the root problem. Though his hardware has been decommissioned, Bill’s application has been migrated to the Cloud and has been repurposed to run in a virtual machine on an infinite loop. <END OF LINE>
<END OF LINE> is about the saddest, sweetest thing you can write at the end of a programmer's life.
Lots of commenters were amused and touched by the obit, but the best comment was from the person who claims to have written it in honor of their brother.
The thread is full of posts from people who knew Bill Fink and they all appreciate the appropriate tribute to him. And yes, lots of people made this joke:
Kylie Jenner clarified that she didn't comment on Instagram, "I support blacklivesmatter," despite a photo seeming to show that she did. Apparently the photo is doctored, and evil trolls were trying to purport that Jenner was advocating for social justice. How dare strangers on the Internet try to infer that a young celebrity is using her spotlight to bring attention to an important cause!
Jenner tweeted a screenshot of the fake comment and wrote "Btw.. This is fake." She would never do something like that.
Later, she clarified her stance with a confusing double negative, tweeting "Not saying that's what I don't support.. It's just fake."
An image of a hidden panda chilling with a crew of snowmen has gone viral for its semi-difficulty. Drawn by Hungarian artist Dudolf, the picture is circulating on Facebook as people challenge their friends to see if they can spot the panda. All of a sudden, everyone cares about finding this endangered species.
It's kind of like "Where's Waldo?" if all the other people in the picture were wearing similarly striped sweaters.
Vanessa Kasten Urangois a mom of a 4-month-old and a 3-year-old from Texas. She was away on business for eighteen days, and pumped at least 4 times a day in order to maintain the supply necessary for her young daughter.
"I contacted [Delta] customer service department via phone to find out how to transport the frozen breast milk home to my infant. I was told to pack it with dry ice in a cooler and check it at baggage claim," she writes, "Long story short, they told me I could not take the breast milk on the plane because they couldn't weigh the dry ice (just curious how they would ever weigh dry ice??) and because I didn't have the proper sticker on it to show it contained dry ice."
The whole journey was filled will rude customer service people and bureaucratic nonsense. In other words, Delta Airlines being Delta Airlines. She recounted the whole saga on Facebook:
Dear Delta,
I am a mother to a four month and a three year old daughter. I spent the last eighteen days away from my children and husband for work. During this time, I had to pump at least four times per day to maintain a breast milk supply for my infant daughter and kept this supply in a freezer. One week before my scheduled departure, I contacted your customer service department via phone to find out how to transport the frozen breast milk home to my infant. I was told to pack it with dry ice in a cooler and check it at baggage claim. The dry ice content had to be under 5.5 lbs and the outside of the container had to be labeled. Because of this, I made a special trip to a local Target ($25 round trip Uber ride) to purchase a cooler and packing tape/markers to label the cooler. On the day of my departure (today) I woke up at 5:30 am to go to a dry ice vendor ($35 round trip Uber). I packed it all up and waited until I arrived at the airport to tape it up and label it, just in case it needed to be opened and to verify how it should be labeled. When I showed up to your ticket counter at EWR, the ticketing agent told me that I would have to pay $150 to check the $25 cooler because I already checked two other bags. In addition to this, he had no idea how to handle my cooler with dry ice. In fact, he acted irritated by it, and got two other agents involved. To say they were rude and completely lacking empathy is an understatement. Long story short, they told me I could not take the breast milk on the plane because they couldn't weigh the dry ice (just curious how they would ever weigh dry ice??) and because I didn't have the proper sticker on it to show it contained dry ice. I asked them where I could find such a sticker, and they just shrugged with complete apathy. I explained that I brought tape and markers specifically for this; I just needed to know how to label it. They had no response. I had no choice but to dispose of the cooler and it's contents, to which they told me I couldn't dispose of it in the airport because of the dry ice. They, of course, offered no suggestions and just left me standing helpless with a cooler full of frozen breast milk and dry ice. Luckily, some very kind and compassionate airport police officers came to my rescue. I cried to them out of complete exhaustion, frustration, and anger, and they helped me figure out a solution which involved tossing the dry ice into a bathroom trash can and taking the cooler with only frozen breast milk as a carry on.
So...here I sit waiting to board your plane...with a cooler of frozen breast milk WITHOUT dry ice. Who knows if it will even still be frozen when I arrive home in 8 hours; which basically means two weeks worth of breast milk will have to be thrown away. I wasted so much time and money for nothing. Thanks so much to your staff for their complete lack of compassion for a tired mom who really just wants to get home to her babies.
After posting the story to Delta's page on December 19th, Urango added a few updates. Once the story got around—all the way to The Today Show—Delta felt motivated to compensate her, in the form of gift cards and reimbursements.
**update***
12/20 7:45pm
Delta just sent me an email apologizing and offering me a $25 gift card as a "goodwill gesture".
**update**
12/21
A Delta rep contacted me via phone and acknowledged that employees should have been aware of Delta's dry ice policy and acted incorrectly. She promised They are going to look into the matter. They are sending me $150...better than nothing but still a long way to go toward making traveling a pleasant, hassle free experience for BF moms and anyone travelling with children. Thanks for all the support..can't believe some of the stories I've read. Hopefully, sharing all these stories is the first step toward change!
On another note...all your posts, shares, and likes caught the attention of some media outlets, and the Today show will be airing the story tomorrow (12/22). Hopefully bringing more attention to this will help Delta see the need for change.'
At last, justice! Outing incompetence via Facebook works, y'all. Celebrate with some dry ice at your next party.
Nicolas Cage returned a rare dinosaur skull to Mongolia after learning it was illegally smuggled out of the country. Cage purchased the skull at a Beverly Hills auction in 2007, outbidding Leonardo DiCaprio with a winning price of $276,000. Apparently you're not an official mogul in Hollywood until you have that skull bling. It makes sense as a benchmark for success, since so many people are obsessed with dinosaurs when they're kids.
The skull was from a Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton, fossils of which have only ever been discovered in Mongolia. The paleontologist responsible for smuggling the skeleton from Mongolia was arrested in 2012, after which he helped authorities track down several fossils he had sold illegally.
The auction gallery in Beverly Hills purchased the skull from the black market paleontologist, though the details of how it was smuggled from Mongolia to California are still unclear. It may have been flown out on a giant plane full of convicts, then driven through Los Angeles in a stolen sports car.
Not many people cared about the Miss Universe pageant until Steve Harvey messed up the crowning ceremony in what is either the most ridiculous mistake on live TV this year, or the most genius PR move in pageant history. But before that went down, someone was promoting the show on Sunday with the hashtag #ConfidentlyBeautiful, for viewers to share no makeup selfies.
Of course, what folks really wanted to see was the pageant queens without their faces on. Not all the contestants participated (ahem, Miss USA), but the ones that did revealed something very important. Every woman trying to snag that title is incredibly beautiful without makeup. Unbelievable, but true. Below are their selfies, along with the official Miss Universe promo photos, in which they all appear to be auditioning to play the next Bond girl. Work that clutch purse, ladies!
At a Monday night rally, Donald Trump criticized Hillary Clinton's 2008 loss to Barack Obama in vulgar terms, saying she got "schlonged." The word "schlong," if you didn't know, is Yiddish slang for "penis." It's not commonly used as a verb, but that's OK, because Trump's supporters have the worst grammar of any candidate and they probably didn't notice.
Here's what the Donald had to say about Hillary:
Even a race to Obama, she was gonna beat Obama. I don't know who would be worse, I don't know, how could it be worse? But she was going to beat -- she was favored to win -- and she got schlonged, she lost, I mean she lost.
It's unclear how smutty he was trying to be since that's an uncommon usage of "schlong," but using sexist and vulgar language when talking about women has become Trump's specialty.
In the same speech, the candidate lamented how "disgusting" it is that Clinton took a bathroom break during the most recent Democratic debate. Clinton had not yet made it back to the stage when the debate returned from commercial break because the women's room was much further from the stage than the men's. But the mere fact that women pee is disturbing to Trump, who said:
I know where she went, it's disgusting, I don't want to talk about it. No, it's too disgusting. Don't say it, it's disgusting, let's not talk, we want to be very, very straight up.
If Trump is disturbed by the fact that ladies urinate, one of his campaign aids may have to sit down with a few pamphlets and sock puppets to deliver the devastating news about how the female anatomy works. Meanwhile, the GOP establishment will continue to work to make sure he gets schlonged later in the primary.
Looking at the otter mom licking her paws before running her hands over her baby's hair will remind you of your mom doing the same exact thing. It's just a mom thing, no matter what the species.
"Dear Santa, you may think I'm dumb," Ann Upton, of Michigan, wrote. "I'm 84 and live alone. Could it be possible that you would bring me a Chihuahua pet." At this point, she addressed the letter to Santa and put it in the mailbox, which got the letter to Nila Dubas, one of the postal workers who helps answer letters from Santa. Dubas reached out to a foster care group and helped find a Chihuahua for Upton to take in.
Dubas gave Upton the Chihuahua, named "Lady Bug," last week (that is such a great-grandmother name for a dog). And Upton says this experience has taught her something.
"That everybody, somebody is Santa Claus somewhere in the world," she said, adorably. What it might teach you, however, is that you can get free things if you just pretend you still believe in Santa.
Neil deGrasse Tyson loves picking apart movies for faulty science, and he just did it again on Monday for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The astrophysicist has some problems with Episode VII of the beloved sci-fi franchise, and he wasn't afraid to poke the wasp's nest that is Star Wars nerds on Twitter. A very minor spoiler alert for what is to follow.
Remember "Fashion Santa," the Toronto man with a more...attractive...take on the classic mall Santa character? Well he has a new friend. And it's not a bangin' elf or an Instagram-famous reindeer. It's Justin Bieber.
Biebs took a selfie with Fashion Santa, the one and only Sexy St. Nick, the world's hottest Claus. And the photo was tweeted by Yorkdale Shopping Centre, the mall where Fashion Santa (aka former model Paul Mason) works.
This is actually a charitable selfie, because for every person who posts their pic with Fashion Santa on social media using the hashtag #YorkdaleFashionSanta, the mall donates $1 to the SickKids Foundation.
But despite the superstar's $2 donation to SickKids, Santa will still probably be leaving Bieber coal under the tree for many years, thanks to his bratty deposition and horrible Instagramchoices.
2015 saw a lot of celebrity hookups, but even more breakups among Hollywood's A-list couples. The summer was riddled with a seemingly endless barrage of celebrity splits, sparing neither long-term marriages nor recent flings. Poor young Afflecks and Rossdales were left reeling from very public divorces, with only their millions of dollars to comfort them.
Here are the couples Hollywood lost this year, with visions of happier times to remember them by. They may be gone, but are not forgotten.
Forget that movie and all its non-science-based space stuff for a second and check out the actual breakthrough in space travel that happened December 21. SpaceX launched a rocket into space, put 11 satellites into orbit, and then vertically landed the rocket back on earth at Cape Canaveral, FL. As one engineer put it, the insane scale and precision of the operation would be like launching a pencil over the Empire State Building and getting it to land in a shoebox on the other side standing up on its eraser...in a windstorm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B6oiLNyKKI
Listening to the reaction of the engineers at mission control as it lands, you get some idea of how hard this team has been working on it. Here's another view, from a helicopter hovering near the landing pad:
Illustrator Pedro Fequiere imagined where those little rug rats from Nickelodeon's popular cartoon series Rugrats would look like today, and shared them on BuzzFeed. They're all pretty, hip, and successful, because Fequiere's imagination was generous. The much weirder part is that they're all also dating each other. Did none of them go away to college? Except Angelica Pickles, who is a CEO with a daughter who hates her. Guess some people never get past their terrible twos!
1. Kimiko “Kimi” Watanabe-Finster Pickles
2. Tommy Pickles
3. Chuckie Finster
4. Susie Carmichael Finster
5. Angelica Pickles
What an incestuous little friend group! You can see the rest and catch up on their lives here.
Butts: just because they are pinchable doesn't mean you should pinch them. One man whose video has gone viral this week learned when he pinched the bottom of a woman outside a food store in Morocco. She then turned around and clocked him with what appears to be superheroic force, and he reportedly remained out cold for two hours after hitting his head on the ground. This video is a good reminder that if you want a butt to pinch that badly, you should just buy a fake one. Otherwise, butt pinching is just not worth it.