New Yorkers Have a “Seamless Addiction” and Compare Grocery Shopping to “Hunger Games”
Millennials and Generation Z’ers are shunning the art of cooking and grocery shopping for quick-fix (and more expensive) options such as Seamless and Blue Apron. And New York’s availability of deliverable cuisines from across the world isn’t helping either. [Daily Beast]
FDA Partially Lifts Ban on Blood Donations from Gay Men
Gay men who have not had sex in the past year will now be allowed to donate blood. The FDA modified the decades-old restriction that prohibited any man who had ever had sex with a man from donating blood in an attempt to curb the spread of HIV. The FDA also announced other modifications to the restrictions, including that any woman who’d had sex with a man who has had sex with men should also wait a year before donating blood. While the 12-month delay continues to come under fire from gay rights activists, the FDA said that doing away with it would quadruple patient risk of contracting HIV to 4 in 1.5 million. [NYT]
What Life Is Like for Manicurists, Post-Times Report
After the New York Times’ bombshell report about abuses in the world of nail salons in May, the Columbia Journalism Review set out to find how the story has changed the lives of workers and salon owners interviewed in the original article. The result is yet another fascinating glimpse into the still secretive, and often inaccessible community of women who do nails. [CJR]
How Much Money Does An Internet Celebrity Make?
So how does hundreds of thousands of followers translate into money for the Internet famous? For many, it doesn’t, which leaves them financially and personally insecure. [Fusion]
An NYU Administrator Told a Low-Income Student to Reconsider Applying to the School
A self-identified low-income artist of color asked New York University if the school would waive its application fee for a graduate arts program. Not only did the administrator who responded say the school would not, he also suggested the artist "put off attending graduate school entirely until they could afford to pay it." [Mic]
Ford and Google Reportedly In Talks to Co-Create Self-Driving Cars
Ford and Google may soon announce that they’re teaming up to build the next generation of self-driving cars, according to various auto industry news sources. Google is looking to create a car service like Uber that runs with robot drivers and Ford may be the manufacturer of those cars, according to reports. Leaders at Ford have said they believe self-driving cars will be on the road within four years and that Ford will make them affordable. [Quartz]
Brunei Bans Christmas Celebrations, Warning It Could Damage Muslim Faith
Donning those Santa hats could get you in trouble in Brunei, where the country’s sultan has banned Christmas celebrations. The nation on the island of Borneo has a significant Muslim population, The Telegraph reports, and the country’s leader says the Christmas festivities could “damage the beliefs of the Muslim community.” Some Brunei residents are fighting back against the restrictions with the hashtag, #MyTreedom. [Telegraph]
Vote Whether Cards Against Humanity Should Laser-cut or Donate Picasso Print
Each year, card game company Cards Against Humanity sends odd gifts to its customers for the holidays. This year, the company bought a Picasso print and is asking its customers to vote on whether it should laser-cut the artwork into “150,000 tiny square” pieces and send them out or if it should donate it to the Art Institute of Chicago. Voting begins on Christmas. [The Verge]
Concurrent Surgeries Come Under New Scrutiny
Double-booking surgeries — when surgeons start a second operation before they finish the first one — is not uncommon nationwide, according to a Boston Globe survey of 47 hospitals across the country, which included two NYC institutions. While most surgeries are scheduled to overlap briefly, some surgeons have run simultaneous operations for longer periods and few hospitals require doctors to explicitly tell patients when their surgeries are double-booked, the paper found. [Boston Globe]
Party Like The 1 Percent
Rich people who are too rich to hang out on normal social networks have an exclusive online community called A Small World, and A Small World invited New York magazine writer Maureen O’Connor to come hang out at one of their parties in Gstaad, Switzerland. What follows is a witty glance into how the really, really wealthy get down. [NYMag]
Nicolas Cage is Returning a Stolen Dinosaur Skull to Mongolia
2007 was a big year for Nicolas Cage. His films “Ghost Rider” and “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” both came out, and he also bought a rare Tyrannosaurus skull for $276,000, outbidding fellow thespian Leonardo DiCaprio. However, that skull turned out to have been stolen from Mongolia, so Cage will now return it to the country’s government, and he is not accused of wrongdoing. Hopefully we can all agree it would have been much more surprising if this didn’t happen to him. [Reuters]
This column has been compiled by DNAinfo reporters Lisha Arino, Camille Bautista, Emily Frost, Gwynne Hogan, Noah Hurowitz, Rachel Holliday Smith, Irene Plagianos, Eddie Small, Danielle Tcholakian, Shaye Weaver and Nikhita Venugopal.
