I can’t be the only one fond of saying how rarely the math I “learned” in school applies in my daily adult life. Yet there’s a nagging problem it feels like I need differential calculus to solve, and I sort of can’t stop obsessing over it: How...
The most withering personal critique I’ve ever received was when a female roommate told me I was “tidy, but not clean.” For years, I’d been operating under the delusion that I was a Clean Person, and a rare exception to the (mostly true) stereotype of the “adult...
A smear of lipstick from a goodnight kiss is the traditional mark of a successful first date. Lipstick on the collar, meanwhile, is the classic telltale sign of an unfaithful partner. Either way, a makeup stain is almost always a sign of intimacy — not counting enthusiastic hugs from...
Dating is impossibly difficult. Living under your parents’ roof past age 18 is even more difficult. Put the two together and you come away with an awkwardness cocktail that smacks of basement must and secondhand embarrassment. In 2016, a Pew Research Center analysis found that living at...
A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to sit in her house and watch her dog for a few days while she went away. In most cases, this would sound like a pain in the butt, but this was a request from a close friend — plus, her...
All too often, it feels like our lives are slipping out of our control: Unopened mail piling up, deadlines looming, home a mess. “If I could just get all this trivial day-to-day stuff running smoothly,” we tell ourselves, “All the big stuff would fall into place!” But...
While many Christmas trees end up quietly decomposing in a landfill once the holiday season ends, others go on to lead rich, fulfilling, uh, deaths. Here are just some of the things your tree can get up to when you’re done using it as a place to...
To keep your Christmas guests impressed and/or safe this year, we reached out to three fire experts: Captain Mikel Hawke, a Green Beret and Extreme Adventure Instructor; Buck Tilton, a wilderness medicine expert and author of 40 books on the subject; and Mark, a father of five from a family obsessed with perfect fire-lighting. Here’s their...
So you’ve got your apartment reasonably clean, snacks on hand and a spare toothbrush ready to go? Congratulations, you’re most of the way to doing a good job of entertaining a lady at home. But there’s still one key area that should give you pause: your bed....
Let’s get one thing straight: Sweat doesn’t cause those gross yellow stains on your nice white shirt. The culprit behind those jaundiced splotches is aluminum, the active ingredient in most antiperspirants — and some deodorants — that chemically reacts with the protein in sweat to cause underarm yellowing. (It’s this same...
We tend to think about personal finance as an exercise in discipline when it comes to reining in your spending. But often personal finance is just a matter of how much boredom you’re willing to endure. Case in point: If you really want to save money with...
Few things are more human than our collective yearning for absolutes. Which is why everyone loves antibacterial cleaning products that claim to kill 99.9 percent of bacteria. And it’s actually even better than that. According to Charles Gerba, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona whose research...