I grew up in an evangelical missionary family in which sex was everywhere and nowhere. We talked about purity and temptation, about guarding your heart and asking for forgiveness. What we didn't talk about was curiosity, what it meant, or what to do when it arrived early. Some of my first sexual experiences happened before I understood what they were. I don't remember them clearly, and I don't consciously carry them as trauma. What I do remember is how early sex lodged itself in my head. When I was in elementary school, I was already fixated. Playboy and Penthouse magazines were passed around at school, pages torn out and folded into pockets and hidden under rocks or in drawers. The Internet poured gasoline on everything. Chat rooms. Anonymous role-play. Sex was everywhere, but wanting it made you bad. Indulging in it made you weak. The contradiction was never resolved. |
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Our gadgets define the texture of our lives. We've got tech in our hands, tech over our eyes, tech in our homes, tech on our kitchen counters, and tech in our bedrooms. Hell, even our paper notebooks are tech enabled. It's not going away soon (sorry, Luddites), so you might as well consider some new ones next time you are drawing a blank on a gift. Whether you're shopping for women, shopping for men, or just looking for something with overnight shipping, we've found a piece for you. If you're not as savvy as the person you're buying for, don't worry. It's my job to search for the latest and greatest tech and award the best gadgets every year. I know that another regular pair of wireless earbuds and a portable charger are not standout gifts unless they're the absolute best. That's the promise here. From smart-home devices to revolutionary tablets, this is a list of the best stuff that they probably don't have already. |
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Judge not George Bell. He doesn't need your judgment. Matter of fact, your judgment is about the last thing he needs. George Bell suffered cruel and careless judgment when he was nineteen and without warning the white arm of the law smote him with the shock and force of a lightning strike. That day of judgment could have ended his young life—the prosecutors tried to get him the death penalty. But the truth is, George Bell was judged long before that, just for being a Black kid from the wrong part of Queens. The truth is, George Bell was judged before he was even born. They said he killed two men, one of them an off-duty cop. That's what happened when he was nineteen, a legal adult but still a kid. They said George and two accomplices ambushed the men one cold morning as the stores and businesses on Astoria Boulevard were opening for the day, and shot them both. They arrested George on Christmas Eve, sent him away for life after a trial in which no one seemed much interested in evidence or in whether it was even a Black kid who had done this. |
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"We had known what the final scene was for a while," says Matt Duffer, the brasher and more talkative of the two. "It was a relief that we knew where we were headed. But in terms of the finer details, that took a long time to figure out." The brothers, now forty-one years old, knew they could not mess this up. Stranger Things had provided much more than simple escapism over the past decade. After its debut in 2016, the show delivered regular doses of magic and bravery to a world that desperately needed it. Binge watches amounted to billions of hours viewed, from tens of millions of people around the globe, ranging from old to young and transcending cultural barriers. That weight of expectation, coupled with the all-consuming day-to-day tasks of shooting the early scripts, was only stalling the Duffers as they worked to finish the last one. "We needed to not be in Atlanta, because if we were, it was just going to be a barrage," says Ross, the quieter and more introspective of the two. "It is actually bad creatively to sit around in a sort of analytical way and talk about things to death," adds Matt. "It's just ... you have to go. And you can't think too much." That's why, in the throes of shooting its final season, the creators of Stranger Things up and disappeared. |
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Prior to owning a real coffee grinder, my morning cup of joe was more a routine, a habit, less a ritual. I love making my own coffee, but on the days when I would wake up to see my Cafe Du Monde jar of grounds completely empty, I'd sigh and go to the cafe across the street to pay $4 for a drip coffee. That changed when I got the Breville Smart Grinder Pro. Now it's a ritual, something I love to do, something I have to do. If I lapse and run out of beans, I run out for more beans, not a barista-made coffee. I'm not such a snob that I need a $1,ooo machine, but this Breville has pushed me in that direction. It's an electric coffee grinder that takes the measuring out of process and gives consistent results. It turns coffee beans into grounds quickly and does it exactly how you set it to. And now that I've found my ideal settings for the perfect cup of drip coffee, I just need to fill the basket full of beans and hit go. My tin of pre-ground coffee gets less use, and the barista across the street never sees me. This grinder has turned my morning cup into a ritual. |
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Kumail Nanjiani has night thoughts. You have them, too. They are the things that arrive unbidden in your head in the middle of the night. Do my coworkers like me? Who's my ex seeing now? Whatever happened to my high school varsity jacket? The things that keep you up until 3 am. Kumail Nanjiani gets them too. Naturally, his are funnier than yours. They range from racial double-standards (why do white folks get to have all hair and eye colors naturally?) to what CVS actually stands for. (Consumer Value Store, if you didn't know.) These are the weird questions that ChatGPT can't answer, no matter how much water it guzzles. "As soon as I came up with the term 'night thoughts,' I was like, That's funny and interesting," Nanjiani tells me. "As soon as I say it, people know exactly what I mean. People have them and don't talk about it." Night thoughts are funny and interesting, yes, especially if you are a comedian. Until they turn on you. After spending a year working on a major superhero movie that didn't quite pan out as he'd hoped, Nanjiani's night thoughts began skewing deeper than worrying about people sneaking into his backyard pool. |
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