Feel free to rag on the non-mission blue La-z-Boy defiling the room. There’s a tear in the back that I mean to ironically patch with duct tape.

Live November 23rd – November 30th

accidentallydomesticated this smoothie’s for you.

I am looking at a screen with the profile photos of many of my male friends. There’s a married guy who has his 2-year-old son as his main photo, right next to a stranger I’ve never seen before who I am not friends with on Facebook and the guy who sang loudest in high school choir. Oh, there’s my married brother. Their full names are there, along with a numbered rating from female reviewers.

You might’ve heard about the Lulu app from a New York Times piece about the company a few weeks back. I heard about it only recently from a friend who downloaded it out of curiosity and lo and behold, there was her boyfriend’s face with three reviews. She deleted it immediately instead of reading what his exes had to say about him.

Here’s how the company says it’s supposed to work, as a tool to help women have a bit of background about a guy before they go out with them: You sign in using your Facebook account but you get to stay anonymous (unlike the fellas) when you’re reviewing your past experience with the men whose faces show up on the site, whether you just had a crush or are an ex-girlfriend who wants to let the world know her heart was irrevocably broken.

It’s not quite like a Yelp for dating because reviewers can’t write whatever they want and are instead kept to a certain set of hashtags like #SweetToMom or #RudeToWaiters. The app guides you through a few sections like “appearance” “The Good” and “The Bad” and then comes up with a rating between 1 and 10 somehow at the end.

The app’s FAQ says: “Lulu is friends only. Girls can only see and review their friends. Guys can only be seen and reviewed by their friends.” (Side note: What does this accomplish then, unless you only want to date your FB friends?)

But the fact remains that I am seeing a whole lot of strangers who are most definitely not my Facebook friends. I’m seeing what their past crushes felt about them, whether they like to snuggle or got an “A in anatomy” (eww, when your family members are on there) and again, their full names.

As another friend related anecdotally, it seems that strangers can see whichever guy happens to be nearby.

“A friend of mine was at an art gallery about a month ago, chatting up a young lady, and she pulled out her phone right in front of him and looked him up on it while he was standing right there,” she says. “He said it felt supremely creepy.”

And the founder even seems to imply in the NYT piece that Lulu is meant to shed light on strangers, specifically: ”When you Google a guy, you don’t want to know if he voted Republican or what he wrote a paper about in college.” she said. “You want to know if mothers like him. Does he have good manners? Is he sweet?”

If you’re already Facebook friends with the guy, why would you need to Google him?

Consumerist reached out to Lulu to address what would appear to be a privacy loophole — sure, the terms of use and privacy policy explain how the app needs to access your Facebook information, but I highly doubt every male I’m friends with would grant the use of his image and name just by the fact that we’re friends.

There is this on the FAQ: “If guys don’t want to be reviewed by their friends on Lulu, we take them off immediately.”

But again, the guy would have to be aware of such an app in the first place in order to request they be removed, and that might not be the case.

On the one hand, this could be seen as empowering — men are far from innocent when it comes to their treatment of women. But also? It’s kind of icky. Or is it? As a male friend of mine said when I asked, “Dudes just don’t really care.” Tell us if you care, dudes. And gals.

Take Our Poll

What’s He Really Like? Check the Lulu App [New York Times]

There are millions of Americans who regularly take prescription proton pump inhibitor (PPI) medications to treat heartburn and ulcers, but researchers claim to have found a link between prolonged use of these drugs and a vitamin deficiency that could increase the risk of dementia, nerve damage, anemia, and other medical complications.

Some of the popular brands of PPI include Prevacid (Lansoprazole), Nexium (Esomeprazole), AcipHex (Rabeprazole), and Prilosec (Omeprazole). These and other PPI meds are responsible for nearly 160 million prescriptions a year in the U.S. alone. Some of these drugs are sold in both over-the-counter and prescription strengths.

According to the report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Kaiser Permanente researchers, it’s not some chemical in these drugs that is directly resulting in B12 deficiency. Rather, it’s the fact that stomach acids aid in the absorption of B12 and the repeated suppression of these acids means the body may be getting less B12 than it would without the meds.

Researchers looked at records for thousands of patients, both with and without B12 deficiency to determine if patients who had taken PPIs regularly for at least two years had increased odds of being vitamin B12 deficient.

“Patients who took PPI medications for more than two years had a 65% increase in their risk of B12 deficiency,” says researcher and gastroenterologist Dr. Douglas A. Corley. “Higher doses also were associated with an increased risk, compared with lower doses.”

In fact, the study found that higher doses of PPI meds nearly doubled the odds of being B12-deficient.

The researchers also looked at the odds of B12 deficiency for a related class of medications, histamine-2-receptor agonists, known as H2RAs that are widely available as over-the-counter meds. Some of the more popular brands are Pepcid (Famotidine), and Zantac (Ranitidine).

Prolonged H2RA use showed an increased risk of about 25%, according to the study, which is significant but much less than demonstrated by the PPI results.

“This research raises the question of whether people who are taking acid-depressing medications long term should be screened for vitamin B12 deficiency,” adds Dr. Corley. “It’s a relatively simple blood test, and vitamin supplements are an effective way of managing the vitamin deficiency, if it is found.”

If you have been taking these medications for a long period of time, there probably isn’t any harm in talking to your doctor to see whether you should be tested for B12 deficiency. Patients don’t need to choose between stomach discomfort and vitamin B12, but they should at least know if they’re getting enough of it before it’s too late.

keelo1027:

"Get away from my lamp! It’s fra-gee-lay! And put that gun down. You’ll shoot your eye out!"

outofcharactersuburb:

bestrooftalkever:

BABY HUSKY HOWLING BABY HUSKY HOWLING BABY HUSKY HOWLING BABY HUSKY HOWLING BABY HUSKY HOWLING BABY HUSKY HOWLING BABY HUSKY HOWLING BABY HUSKY HOWLING BABY HUSKY HOWLING BABY HUSKY HOWLING

This almost made me forget what a pain in the ass puppies are. 

They only survive by cuteness, because every other part of pupphood is seriously THE WORST.

aqibrehman:

She texted me: “Your adorable.”

I replied: “No. YOU’RE adorable.”

Now she thinks I like her. All I did was point out her typo. 

Phone-based scammers have traditionally employed techniques that either prey upon a victim’s greed — “You’ve won a new car! Just pay the taxes to us now and it’ll be yours” — or protective instincts — “Your grandson is in a hospital in Belarus and needs money ASAP to get treatment” — but these criminals are increasingly using fear to wring cash out of unsuspecting folks.

A few months ago we told you about scammers calling in bogus bomb threats to retail stores, demanding money to not set the (nonexistent) devices off. Now comes the story of a Pennsylvania woman who was conned out of $1,000 by a caller who claimed he was holding her father hostage.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the 23-year-old woman recently received a call on her cellphone.

“We have your dad hostage,” screamed the voice on the other end of the line. “Leave work right now.”

The caller told her that he and her father had been in a car accident, but that her dad had refused to provide insurance information or be cooperative. And so the caller had taken him hostage and claimed to be holding him hostage at gunpoint until he received $1,000 to pay for damage to his vehicle.

“I had to swear that if I wept or cried or got anyone’s attention, they would come to my house and kill my family,” she recalls. “I had to continue to talk to him.”

She was told to leave work and go to a MoneyGram wire transfer location, where she was to send the money to a woman in Puerto Rico. Not knowing what else to do, she followed their instructions.

After the money had been wired, the caller instructed the woman to go to a nearby hospital and circle around the building without parking. He did not make good on his promise to let her speak to her father, and the illusion of the scam came crashing down when the caller said that her dad had driven away in his truck… because he doesn’t own a truck.

“Now I am thinking, this is a scam,” she tells the Inquirer.

And she was right, as her pops had not been in any sort of auto accident or taken hostage. He’d been safely working away at his job, which she would have found out had the scammers not been so successful in keeping her on the line.

Police believe the same caller recently failed at a similar shakedown attempt with another area woman, and say this type of scam has been popping up all over the region, with some 100+ victims up in the Boston area.

sckrpnch:

How to properly Love someone:

1. Buy them pizza

2. Touch their butt

GPOY Thursday edition.

Last day to get a Gulpo decal!

tastefullyoffensive:

*wink*

mechcanuck:

IT. IS. ON.

vanityfair:

Why Is Potentially Lethal Contraceptive NuvaRing Still on the Market?

Vanity Fair writer-at-large Marie Brenner investigates the birth-control device NuvaRing, which has allegedly caused blood clots in thousands of its users. As NuvaRing’s manufacturer, Merck, which made $623 million in NuvaRing sales in 2012, is facing roughly 3,500 lawsuits against it, Brenner asks why, despite evidence of serious risk, this potentially lethal contraceptive remains on the market.

Would a young woman use NuvaRing, Brenner asks, if she knew that the F.D.A. had determined that there was a 56 percent increased risk of blood clots when it was compared with birth-control pills using earlier forms of progestin? Karen Langhart, the mother of Erika Langhart, a 24-year-old who died of a pulmonary embolism on Thanksgiving Day 2011 after using NuvaRing for approximately four years, tells Brenner, “I want to warn every mother and every daughter: do not use the product that killed my child.”

Read more here. 

ugh are you kidding me?  I finally find a hormonal birth control that doesn’t make me vomit and it’s gonna fucking kill me?  jesus christ.  

le-kif-kif:

The truth in Kanye’s anti-prison rap

The backdrop to Kanye West’s “Saturday Night Live” performance was a lie. Projected behind the rapper, as he let loose with two rage-filled and politically fueled tracks, were the words “Not For Sale.”

Yeezy wouldn’t have graced the set if he wasn’t hawking a soon-to-be released LP. But his incendiary performance was peppered with damning truths: Angry and pointed condemnations of institutional racism and the prison industrial complex, which disproportionately jails young men of color to fill state budget holes and enrich private corporations.

In the final verse of “New Slaves,” a track released Friday with the coordinated projection of a video on 66 buildings worldwide, and the second performance in his “SNL” set, West raps:

Meanwhile the DEA
Teamed up with the CCA
They tryn’a lock niggas up
They tryn’a make new slaves
See that’s that private owned prison
Get your piece today

Condensed and reduced to flow in rhyming verse, West’s lyrics smack of the conspiratorial. But he is correct: The War on Drugs, abetted by and fueling the private prison industry, currently serves to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of black men in the United States, who provide dirt-cheap labor. Various industries — from call centers to weapons manufacturers to retail companies — rely on prison labor. Private prisons pay inmate workers as little as 25 cents an hour; prisoners who refuse to work are regularly held in isolation. These are the de facto “new slaves” of the prison industrial complex. The CCA (the Corrections Corp of America) is one of two major private prison corporations (along with the GEO Group) that share in a market worth $70 billion.

And West’s implication that the CCA and the DEA are “tryn’a” lock up black people, leaving racist intentionality aside, is supported by troubling statistics. While the entire U.S. population is only 13.6 percent black, 40 percent of its vast prison population (over 2.5 million) is black. In 2010, black males were incarcerated at the rate of 4,347 inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents of the same race and gender, compared to 678 inmates per 100,000 for white males. The disparities are striking, especially when the majority of those held in U.S. prisons are guilty of minor drug offenses. This brings us to Kanye’s reference to the DEA.

As attorney and author John W. Whitehead pointed out in a HuffPo comment piece last year, states specifically opted to make sentencing laws for minor drug offenses harsh in order to fill private prisons — prisons which promised to fill gaping holes in state budgets:

[W]ith an eye toward increasing its bottom line, CCA has floated a proposal to prison officials in 48 states offering to buy and manage public prisons at a substantial cost savings to the states. In exchange, and here’s the kicker, the prisons would have to contain at least 1,000 beds and states would have agree to maintain a 90 percent occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years. The problem with this scenario, as Roger Werholtz, former Kansas secretary of corrections, recognizes is that while states may be tempted by the quick infusion of cash, they “would be obligated to maintain these (occupancy) rates and subtle pressure would be applied to make sentencing laws more severe with a clear intent to drive up the population.” Unfortunately, that’s exactly what has happened. Among the laws aimed at increasing the prison population and growing the profit margins of special interest corporations like CCA are three-strike laws (mandating sentences of 25 years to life for multiple felony convictions) and “truth-in-sentencing” legislation (mandating that those sentenced to prison serve most or all of their time).

As has been well-documented, young black men are disproportionately targeted by police for marijuana arrests. In New York City, for example, nearly 90 percent of the people arrested for marijuana possession are blacks and Latinos. The logic is simple: If states rely on minor drug arrests to fill privately run prisons, and young black men are targeted in minor drug arrests, then states rely on young black men to fill private prisons.

Or, as Yeezy put it: “See that’s that private owned prison/Get your piece today.”

Fracking — the process of obtaining natural gas and other resources through the use of hydraulic fracturing — is a controversial and divisive issue, with proponents claiming it is a clean and safe way to tap needed fuel sources while opponents say fracking wreaks havoc on the environment and ecosystem. In Germany, some of the biggest names in beer have joined together to ask the German government to stop fracking there until it can be proven that it won’t taint the groundwater — and by extension, German beer.

“We are concerned that fracking endangers the brewing water that more than half of Germany’s breweries take from private wells,” a spokesman for the Association of German Breweries, a trade group which includes beer biggie Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bitburger, and Radeberger as members, tells Bloomberg. “And that it threatens our absolutely pure beer.”

To back up its position, the group points to the Reinheitsgebot a 497-year-old purity guidelines that declare what ingredients German brewers can use in the making of beer. The Association says it “guarantees a workable form of consumer protection at a time in which other foodstuffs often make negative headlines.”

The beer industry’s push against fracking, which employees around 25,000 people in Germany and brings in around $10 billion a year, may be working.

“Fracking is not yet a technology that we can use in Germany,” the country’s Environment Minister Peter Altmaier said in a radio interview last week, in response to a push from the European Union for member nations to increase fracking integration. “I want the related decisions to be made locally, where one knows the circumstances, and not somewhere in Brussels.”

Altmaier says that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has agreed to draft legislation that would prohibit fracking in certain areas of the country.