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What We're Reading: Overeating and Personality, FLOTUS' Potty Mouth

By DNAinfo Staff | March 20, 2015 12:29pm | Updated on March 20, 2015 1:11pm

 Are you extroverted? That might make you eat more! Neurotic? That might make you eat too much!
Are you extroverted? That might make you eat more! Neurotic? That might make you eat too much!
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DNAinfo/Quinn Ford

CHICAGO — We're thanking our lucky stars that it's the East Coast and not us getting hammered with snow today. So, we're powering through work and looking forward to near-60 degree temps. Here's what we're reading while scarfing lunch at our desks.

Your Personality Could Be Making You Fat: Are you extroverted? That might make you eat more! Neurotic? That might make you eat too much! Social media director Jen Sabella says New York magazine breaks down a study from the journal Appetite that pretty much finds all personality traits lead to overeating. The good news? Knowing yourself might help you manage your diet in a more responsible way.

Think Apple Is Recycling Your iPhone?: Chicagoans continue to be confused about what's recycleable and what isn't. Adam Minter, author of "Junkyard Planet," sets the record straight in an illuminating interview with the Chicago Recycling Coalition, says Patty Wetli. Take greasy pizza boxes. A no-no in the U.S., Europe, Australia and Japan but totally acceptable in China, Malaysia and India, where the quality of the resulting recycled product isn't as big a deal.

What about that old iPhone you handed over to Apple to recycle? Minter says more than half of it, particularly the glass and plastic parts, will end up in a landfill. In fact, Minter says, "Recycling is only marginally better than tossing stuff in the landfill."

Of late, he's become a big proponent of repair and lengthening a product's lifespan: "That's what we really need if we're going to continue being a consumption-driven society — longer-lasting goods."

A Summer House in Detroit: A Kentucky powerlifter and her husband have found their summer house in the new wild west of Detroit. Sam Cholke is reading Dana McMahan's essay where she recounts Realtors telling her that one property she was interested in had just burned down and that another was occupied by a woman who uses tires as furniture. But with very little cash, McMahan and her husband have found a second home and a new community in a city where services like police, electricity and water are intermittent.

Oh, fiddlesticks!: "Michelle Obama: A Life," a biography scheduled for release April 7, includes anecdotes from her Chicago childhood. People has culled "10 surprising discoveries" about Obama from the book by Peter Slevin. Senior editor Andrew Herrmann particularly liked this one: When the First Lady was a South Shore ten-year-old she missed out on winning the "best camper" award at a city day camp because of her "salty tongue."

"I was going through my cursing stage," Obama is quoted as saying. "I thought I was being cool."

It might be hereditary. Last year, in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, Obama described how her daughters "want nothing to do with us." Said Obama: "Malia is like, 'god----, please, just don't come to my school.'"

Michelle Obama

Major decisions: Yesterday's college experience was one of exploration, trial and error, and a heavy dose of indecision. But in the post-Recession world, students are declaring their majors earlier, Paul Biasco reads in the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal says that at DePaul University, the percentage of freshmen entering the school with an undecided major was 31 percent seven years ago; today it's 16 percent.

“People don’t go to college anymore to be fulfilled or to gain life perspective; they go to get a great job,” Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president for enrollment and marketing at DePaul, told the Journal. “There’s been a shift from hippie culture to corporate culture.”

Irish T-shirts Returned After St. Patrick's Day: Kevin Westley of Long Island was fed up with T-shirts at several nearby Wal-Mart stores that suggested a connection between Irish heritage and drunkenness. So, Westley bought the shirts - all of them. He then return them AFTER St. Patrick's Day, according to the website IrishCentral. Westley hopes the stores stop stocking the shirts. If not, he promises to be back next year.