Good News! 5 Things to Be Grateful For This Thanksgiving

It's been a dismal month, but you can give thanks for these tidbits of good news

 

 

 

This November has been a serious bummer. The midterm elections were a depressing snoozefest. The sexual assault allegations against Bill Cosby have made‘America’s Dad‘ seem more like a creepy uncle. Protestshave erupted across the country after a grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown. American aid worker Peter Kassig was beheaded by ISIS. We lost Mike Nichols.

 

 

With all that bad news, it’s hard to find anything to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. But you better come up with something quick, because sooner or later somebody is going to ask, “so what are you grateful for?” with a schmaltzy smirk. So here are five pieces of good news to celebrate as you make small talk with your aunt’s new weirdo boyfriend.

1) The baby panda triplets in China have stayed alive for100 days: The “miracle” panda cubs were born in August, and they’ve all survived longer than zookeepers anticipated. Now they’rereportedly healthy enough that visitors can see them. Who to tell:Your niece (but leave out the fact that they’re in China.)

2) The human race has issues, but we landed a probe on a comet this month: On Nov. 13, the European Space Agency’s Philae lander touched down on a comet after a 10-year, 4-billion mile journey. Since comets are made of space’s most primitive materials, scientists hope that the probe will collect valuable information that could help explain the origins of our solar system. Who to tell: Your grandparents who watched the Moon Landing (don’t mention the Virgin Galactic crash.)

Surgeons remove three inch parasitic worm from 11-year-old boy's brain after discovering it had been moving around in his skull

 This is the worm-like creature which turned out to be a three inch parasite that had been living and moving around in the brain of an 11-year-old boy.

Liang Liao had been repeatedly complaining of headaches and started to suffer seizures and was taken to the Xinhua Hospital in Shanghai, eastern China.

After being admitted, surgeons started tests and carried out x-rays.

It was then that they discovered the live parasite, which measured 8cm, moving around inside the boy's skull and they immediately operated to remove it.

His father Liang Chao said that his son had always been buying snacks from street traders and rarely ate home cooked meals.

He added that he suspects that it was the street food, which was contaminated and caused the infection.

 The 42-year-old said: 'I don't know why he ate that disgusting stuff, he once told me he had eaten grilled snake of all things.

'And I doubt that many of the other things they claimed to be serving him really what they seem to be.

'He is only 11, he wouldn't have known the difference.'

Doctors eventually identified the parasite as a sparganosis, which can occur in humans who consume infected meat from frogs, snakes or other small mammals that have not been properly cooked.

In some cases humans can be infected through eating raw pork.

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The boy was taken to the Xinhua Hospital in Shanghai, eastern China, pictured, where they discovered the parasite after he complained of headaches and suffered seizures 

The parasite enters the body through the digestive tract and targets the brain and sometimes the eye.

It can often lead to extensive brain damage or even death if it isn't caught early enough.

The infection usually only infects dogs and cats, although very occasionally humans can be affected.

The case comes just days after a man in Britain became the first person in the UK to be infected by the parasite.

Surgeons at the Addenbroke's Hospital in Cambridge removed the worm and warned had if it been a more aggressive species, it could have laid eggs, which then feed off the brain as they grow.

The worm which originates in the Far East, is extremely rare, with just 300 cases recorded worldwide since 1953.

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8 Lucrative Jobs You Don’t Need a Degree for

 

Society has conditioned us to believe that professional success is directly proportionate to the number of degrees, certificates, and diplomas we receive. Graduating high school is a reasonable starting point for most people, but a high school diploma alone isn’t usually enough to make you a millionaire. If your goal is to make something of yourself and land that six-figure salary, society tells you that you need some sort of tertiary education. However, is society right?

Even in the wake of society’s high-educational standards, bachelor degrees are a dime a dozen. Most undergraduate degrees aren’t much more than a piece of paper sufficient enough to (maybe) win you an interview. If you have your sights set on success and six-figures, look beyond the undergraduate studies and go to graduate school. However, even then, you run the risk of not being able to get a job right away and you end up being stuck with a ton of student loan debt. Have the rules of success changed that much?

The truth is that the basic rules of success haven’t changed at all. In fact, there are eight degree-not-required jobs that come with enormous earning potential and prove that you can be a success with a little hard work and without a four-year education, assuming that you can be the best in your field, of course. Don’t get me wrong, I highly appreciate people who have an opportunity to go to a university. But if you can’t afford to study, it’s doesn’t mean that you are an uneducated person who doesn’t deserve a well-paid job. Here are 8 wonderful yet lucrative jobs you don’t need a degree for.

1. Nanny

Being responsible for other people’s children can be a difficult task and is not for the faint of heart, but for a potential $180,000 a year the problem can be easily overlooked for some people. And while $180,000 a year isn’t an average nanny’s salary, an average nanny can make a fabulous living at her craft, plus perks. However, this job takes endurance, dedication, patience and the desire to care for other people’s kids. So if you love kids, why not choose it as your career path? You can even work on a live-in basis, if needed.

5 Ways Your Thank You Note Could Lose You the Job

You might think that going through the motions and sending a generic thank you note is better than sending nothing, but you’d be wrong

  

This post is in partnership with The Muse. Thearticle below was originally published on The Muse.

Let’s be honest: When it comes to applying for jobs, the “it can’t hurt” benchmark is often the deciding factor over whether or not to do something. Sending a cover letter? It can’t hurt. Finding your interviewer on LinkedIn? It can’t hurt. Sending a thank you note? It can’t hurt.

Or can it?  

Actually, yes, it absolutely can. Here are just a few scenarios in which sending a thank you note might hurt your chances of landing the job.

1. It’s Full of Typos

If you’re really serious about a job, you probably had your resumeand cover letter reviewed by a couple other people before you hit submit. But, even the most careful job seeker can make mistakes during the high that comes after a successful interview. Don’t blow your carefully crafted image, and double check to make sure that your thank you note is typo-free. (Here are a few tips for editing your own work.)

2. It’s a Week Late

Another good impression killer is sending your note in late. Thank you notes are the most effective when you send them ASAP or at least within 48 hours of your interview. If you want to leave the impression that you’re only mildly interested in the position, then go ahead and take your time. If not, then send it immediately. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words.

3. It’s Generic

You might think that going through the motions and sending a generic thank you note is better than sending nothing, but you’d be wrong. Hiring managers get excited when they find exceptional candidates who are really excited about the job. And sending a boring thank you note that could have been addressed to anyone? That’s an easy way to shatter your image.

Oh, and don’t think you can just write one spectacular thank you note and send it to all the different people you interacted with during the interview. Many companies request that thank you notes get forwarded to HR so they can be attached to a candidate’s file. Having the same five notes on file probably won’t help you land the job, so take the time to actually personalize some aspects of your message. It’s worth it.

(For a truly exceptional thank you note, check out communication expert Alexandra Franzen’s method.)

4. It’s Just a Way to Talk About Yourself More

Did you forget to mention that one time you did something that was extremely relevant to the job you’re interviewing for now? Think the thank you note is the right place to share this relevant experience? It might be okay to mention it briefly, but it’s definitely a mistake for you to transform your thank you note into a take two of your interview. Thank you notes shouldn’t be long, so you don’t really have a lot of space to, you know, thank your interviewer—let alone share another story. If you must do it, make it brief.

5. It’s Inappropriate

You don’t have the job yet, so don’t get too chummy in your note. No matter how sure you are that you nailed the interview, your best bet is to remain professional throughout the process. (That means no nicknames, no sarcasm, and definitely no cursing.)

–

I’ve gone on and on about the various ways sending a thank you note can hurt your chances of getting the job offer, but naturally the biggest thank you note blunder would be to not send one. So, please send a thank you note after your interview—just make it great.

People with a vagina have needs – but making their baby-cannon smell of fruit is not one of them

Overripe? The instant fascination with Sweet Peach fitted into a long history of men trying to ‘fix’ women’s natural odours. Photograph: Alamy

In the midst of last week’s reports that an Uber executive suggested hiring researchers to invade the privacy of (and potentially blackmail) a female journalist, Silicon Valley was also fielding a secondary, seemingly sillier scandal: a startup called Sweet Peach Probiotics, which aimed, according to reports, to fix women’s gross vaginas by bioengineering them to smell like chemically simulated peaches. Naturally, both stories raised the hackles of feminists and other wild radicals who believe in such controversial women’s rights as “critiquing a popular car service” and “having a vagina-smelling vagina”. It was, I imagine, a discouraging few days for sexism-in-tech denialists. (Good.)

But chin up, tech bros! The PR gods threw you a lucky break this time. Not only did Sweet Peach’s founder clarify that the company has zilch to do with Febrezing anyone’s baby-cannon – it’s actually tailoring microbes to optimise the balance of vaginal flora and fauna, a service that could have a democratising effect on reproductive healthcare for low-income and uninsured women – she’s also a totally 100% legit actual female feminist! PHEW. “I don’t think women should have vaginas that smell like peaches, or anything like that,” she clarified emphatically to Inc.

As it turns out, the claim that Sweet Peach could add an artificial fragrance to one’s biome was made up by guys named Austen Heinz and Gilad Gome, who isn’t involved with the company at all, but has kind of a weird obsession with making women’s vaginas smell like other stuff. In September, according to Vice, Gome said that he hoped one day a woman would be able to “hack into her microbiome and make her vagina smell like roses and taste like diet cola”. (Dude, if you’re going to the trouble of hacking her microbes, could you at least spring for regular? Or maybe Coke Zero?)

Gome is currently working on a different venture with one of Sweet Peach’s investors to – and I wish I could write a joke this good – make cat and dog faeces come out smelling like bananas. And so he ended up on stage during the Sweet Peach presentation, and got a little carried away with his little making-genitals-smell-like-food pipe dream. There was blowback, there was a correction, it was fine – no harm, no foul.

But the instant, widespread fascination with Sweet Peach, before its true goal was clarified, was telling – as part of a long history of men attempting to “fix” women’s natural odours. (In the 1950s, women were famously told they should douche with Lysol.) It’s dehumanising, to pretend as though men’s squeamishness is a women’s problem, to construe women as merely an extension or a reflection of men, to divorce the vagina so completely from the person (a disconnect echoed in America’s puritanical reproductive health policies, which treat a person’s vagina, uterus, and ovaries differently from the rest of their organs).

The debacle reminded me of a joke by my friend, the comedian Hari Kondabolu: “The other day I went to the supermarket to get some more cocoa butter, when I noticed that the cocoa butter had been moved to the ethnic needs section of my supermarket. And at first, I was happy. I’m like, ‘Ethnic needs! End of police brutality, more access to healthcare, more educational opportunities – finally!’ No, no. Just hair relaxers and cocoa butter, apparently.”

People with vaginas have plenty of needs, but none of them have to do with whether or not men think their genitals smell enough like 99-cent lip gloss. If you’re a twentysomething dude with a few million dollars looking to cash in on women’s needs, I have a few suggestions that might actually be helpful:

• A customisable probiotic that helps women control their own yeast infections (up top, Sweet Peach!).

• A spicy-scented candle that convinces cops to believe rape victims and treat them with compassion.

• A special yoghurt that expands into a sentient blob and provides free childcare for working mothers.

• A soothing herbal tea blend that helps women advance in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

• A line of stuffed penguins that performs safe, legal abortions.

• A clear nail polish for male entrepreneurs that stops them from saying things like “hack into her microbiome and make her vagina smell like roses and taste like diet cola” in interviews, or in private with friends, or inside their own heads, or literally anywhere in the known universe except for on stage at the Creepy Tech Bro Satire Contest.

WATCH: Thanksgiving prank, pregnant turkey

Spending time with family and eating your favorite dishes are what many people look forward to doing on Thanksgiving Day.

However, a Thanksgiving prank by your mother is perhaps something you wouldn't expect, especially one that involved a "pregnant turkey".

Watch this girl freak out as she gets more than a spoonful of stuffing:

6 Things John Green and Taylor Swift Could Have Discussed on the Phone

What are the bestselling author and pop star talking about?

 

 

 

YA literature and pop superstardom collided Monday when John Green and pop (née country) sensation Taylor Swift synced up over the phone. Green took to Twitter, from the set of the film adaptation of his book Paper Towns, to let his 3 million followers know about the exchange.

It’s no secret that the two are fans of each other’s work. When Swift’s album 1989 was released, Green blogged about listening to it when he should have been paying attention in meetings. Swift responded that he was her favorite author. And so began the social media love fest. But what could the two be discussing? Here are some theories:

He’s asking her to contribute to the Paper Townssoundtrack. The film starring Nat Wolff and Cara Delevingne will hit theaters in June of 2015. Acts like British crooner Ed Sheeran and rising pop star Charli XCX contributed to The Fault in Our Starssoundtrack this year, but perhaps Green is hoping to bring some even bigger guns on board this time — like a certain TIME magazine cover star.

They could be interviewing each other. Magazines sometimes put celebrities together to see what happens. That’s basically the whole premise of Interview magazine. The New York Times also just sat down with authors Gillian Flynn and Cheryl Strayed to talk about their books’ film adaptations. Maybe Swift and Green hopped on a call to share their insights on teenagers? With his book sales and her record sales, they certainly know how to tap into America’s youth.

They’re discussing movie roles. Swift likes a challenge, so after dominating the music industry, maybe she’s setting her sights on Hollywood. Paramount has signed actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley to adapt Green’s Looking for Alaska, but no one has been cast as the blonde, beautiful and enigmatic Alaska yet. Or perhaps Green was so impressed with Swift’s brief appearance in The Giver that he’s asking her to make a different cameo in the film.

Taylor wants another friend. The star is famous for making new besties and entertaining them in style. Tavi Gevinson, Emma Stone, Lena Dunham, Selena Gomez, Karlie Koss and even Kendrick Lamar are in Swift’s social circle. So given their mutual admiration, why not add Green to the list? Maybe she invited him over to make pie.