McDonald’s ousted its CEO over a consensual relationship with an employee, just a week after U.S. Rep. Katie Hill stepped down due to a similar allegation. Both McDonald’s and the House of Representatives ban sexual relationships between supervisors and employees. Whether such bans on consensual relationships are really necessary has been debated many times. And...
The Golden State is on fire, which means that an idea of American utopia is on fire, too. Utopias are the good places of our imagination, while dystopias are the places where everything goes terribly wrong, where evil triumphs and nature destroys her own. Frequently utopias and dystopias are the same place, because perfection may...
Ken Loach’s film, Sorry We Missed You, tells the harrowing tale of Ricky, Abby and their family’s attempts to get by in a precarious world of low paid jobs and the so-called “gig economy”. But how realistic is it? Can Loach’s film be accused of undue pessimism? After all, UK government ministers have applauded the...
Amid rising concerns about low public trust in mainstream media institutions, a Rutgers study found that real-life and online social interactions can strongly influence a person’s trust in newspaper, TV and online journalism – but when it comes to online interactions, cynical views are the most influential. The study, published in the Journal of Communication, surveyed...
New York’s newest tourist attraction isn’t a museum, park or art installation. It’s a stairway. Sandwiched between apartment buildings in the Bronx, it’s been dubbed by moviegoers the “Joker Stairs,” earning its name and fame after being featured prominently in “Joker.” Since the film’s release, fans have flocked to the stairs, where they’ve been posing...
Once upon a time you could become drunk and afterward, people might gossip about your oafish escapades but it more or less stopped there, unless you broke a law. Or you got stoned and did clumsy, stupid things, but the news didn’t travel too far. Perhaps a few photographs would be shared, especially if you...
In less than 10 years, Julep raised over $70 million from major venture capital firms and the likes of Jay Z, created a cult following of consumers itching to buy the 300 different beauty products it was introducing each year, launched a monthly subscription beauty box, amassed sales that tripled during some fiscal years, and...
A new group of diamonds stands out as being more perfect than almost all others in the $14 billion diamond market. They are completely colorless – making them, in the eyes of the Gemological Institute of America, among just 2 percent of the diamonds in the world. They are almost or entirely devoid of impurities,...
Zac Posen is shuttering his label, the brand confirmed on Friday. An announcement from the label’s owners, House of Z and Z Spoke that came on Friday evening revealed that the company – which had been in midst of a sale process since this spring with Yucaipa Cos., with the Ron Burkle-led investment firm that...
Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job in television. Steven Spielberg was rejected from film school multiple times, and Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school’s varsity basketball team. Stories like these fuel motivational mantras about learning from failure and coming out stronger on the other side. But little research has been done to...
