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If You Can't Take a Joke (Then You Were Probably Born in the 21st Century)

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If You Can't Take a Joke (Then You Were Probably Born in the 21st Century)

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Shirahone onsen. Looking down into a ravine through bare branches, at a river.

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Shirahone onsen. Looking down into a ravine through bare branches, at a river.

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Tokyo, Japan 東京

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Tokyo, Japan 東京

The Guardian

Latest news, sport, business, comment, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice

Amateur YouTube detectives’ constant streams put cases in jeopardy: ‘It’s clickbait’

Self-declared sleuths have inserted themselves into the search for Nancy Guthrie, compromising the investigation for views and clicks

On the 10th day of the search for Nancy Guthrie, reporters camped outside of the missing woman’s home noticed a strange man strut right up to the front door. It had been more than a week since the mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie had disappeared, and authorities had just announced they had a new lead from Ring footage of what looked like a “potential subject” attempting to tamper with the doorbell camera on the morning of her disappearance. So now who was this unknown person, clad in a gray top and black pants, carrying a large black bag and striding to the door?

It was a Domino’s delivery driver.

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Are we really overdiagnosing mental illness?

It’s tempting to dismiss the proliferation of labels as a fad, but there’s more to this phenomenon than a simple culture-war reading allows

My psychological research rarely makes good comedy material, but in a standup show in London recently, those two worlds collided. One of the jokes was about how everyone is getting diagnosed with ADHD these days – about the social media videos that encourage viewers to identify common human experiences, like daydreaming or talking a lot, as evidence of the condition. The audience laughed because everyone got it – they’ve all witnessed how common it seems to have become in the last few years. When something becomes this prevalent in society, and this mystifying, it’s no surprise it ends up as a punchline.

Part of my work as an academic involves trying to solve the puzzle of why so many more people, especially young people, are reporting symptoms of mental illness compared to even five or 10 years ago. (ADHD is a form of neurodivergence, rather than a mental illness, but both have seen an increase, so they are related questions.) Whenever I talk about this – to colleagues, school staff, parents – it doesn’t take long until someone brings up that judgment-laden, hot-button word: overdiagnosis.

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‘She would pop up in my sexual fantasies’: what happens when you fancy your therapist?

They’re often compassionate good listeners who focus on their clients’ needs – so is it any wonder many patients find themselves with a crush? A writer, who is in exactly this position, talks to people on both sides of the couch

I was half-watching the latest series of the Netflix romcom Nobody Wants This when suddenly things got interesting. Spoiler alert: it had just been revealed that one of the characters (Morgan) was in a relationship with her newly ex-therapist (Dr Andy). While some of the characters freaked out, declaring the relationship very concerning, I felt a frisson of excitement. Because I, too, have harboured the desire to date my therapist.

As it turns out, this fantasy is neither unusual nor unexpected. “Psychoanalysis almost insists on transference,” explains psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber, using the term coined by Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, in his 1895 work Studies on Hysteria. The basic premise is that the patient projects old feelings, attitudes, desires or fantasies on to their therapist. This can manifest in numerous ways – often at the same time – covering the whole gamut of emotions and relationships, from love to hate, maternal to erotic, and everything in between.

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How loose social ties can help heal political division | Eva M Meyersson Milgrom

Weak connections known as ‘bridge ties’ cross the boundaries that normally structure our lives. We must restore this connective tissue

The first time a woman I’ll call Shoshana went toBrandi Carlile’s music festival, she arrived alone. She had just been through another unsuccessful round of IVF. During one of the songs, about motherhood, she began to cry in the middle of the crowd. Then two women she had never met stepped closer and wordlessly wrapped their arms around her until her breathing slowed.

“That’s when I realized,” Shoshana told me in an interview, “this place isn’t just about music.”

Eva M Meyersson Milgrom is a social scientist and professor emerita from Stanford University, where she was affiliated with the department of sociology, the Institute of Economic Policy, and the Graduate School of Business. She is working on a book on the importance of diversifying our social networks

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Dining across the divide: ‘Universities should be free. We all lose for every bright kid who doesn’t go’

Two south-westerners shared a love of boats, but how would they fare on tuition fees and NHS funding?

Grant, 61, Yelverton, Devon

Occupation Retired: restored properties

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Myth, monsters and making sense of a disenchanted world: why everyone is reading fantasy

I have made the leap from literary fiction to fantasy – for those who think it’s mere wish-fulfilment, here’s why we need that thing with the dragons

Fantasy doesn’t need defending. It is one of the great cultural forms at the moment, all-pervading, ubiquitous. Maybe even the dominant form of writing just now, in line with the bookseller’s joke that contemporary publishing divides into A: romantasy and B: everything else.

But it might need explaining a little bit, for those who don’t get its pleasures; who still see it as wish-fulfilment, or as a low form that literary fiction gets to look down upon or direct a puzzled tolerance towards. As a writer of literary fiction who has borrowed and rejoiced in fantasy tropes for years, and has now himself written an out-and-out fantasy, I’m beyond embarrassment. I’ve been reading and loving fantasy all my life, and for me its best creators stand comfortably alongside the greats of any genre. And yet, I’m still encountering a faint sense that there is something to be accounted for in writing fantasy. That I ought to have reasons for wanting to do that thing with the dragons, no matter how culturally pervasive it is.

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Trump’s trade war risks undermining his hopes of hefty US interest rate cuts | Graeme Wearden

Upping tariffs may have lifted the president’s mood but it is a headache for the Federal Reserve and its next chair

Donald Trump and Denis Healey don’t have much in common. One of the greatest prime ministers Britain never had shares little of his famous hinterland with what some historians see as one of the worst occupants of the White House.

But Trump would be well advised to remember Healey’s first law of holes – when you’re in one, stop digging

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VK: Voorpagina

Volkskrant.nl biedt het laatste nieuws, opinie en achtergronden

Hooggerechtshof ontketent het gevecht over de grenzen van Trumps macht

Een demonstratie onder hoogspanning in het Lyon van extremen

Met Quentins dood draait het vizier van radi­caal-rechts weg naar radi­caal-links als het ‘grote gevaar’

MetaFilter

The past 24 hours of MetaFilter

"An experiment in language change"

How far back in time can you understand English? is a story by Colin Gorrie, where every section is written according to the grammar, vocabulary and orthography of a previous century. The story starts in the year 2000 and ends in the year 1000, and different readers stop understanding at different points. Gorrie writes a newsletter about the history of English called the Dead Language Society.

Wel.nl

Minder lezen, Meer weten.

Politiek en mediawereld reageren bedroefd op overlijden Postema

HILVERSUM (ANP) - Het overlijden van Koos Postema heeft tot veel reacties geleid uit media en politiek. Zondag werd bekend dat de radio- en tv-presentator op 93-jarige leeftijd is overleden.

RTL gedenkt de oud-presentator als een "betrokken en bedreven radio- en televisiemaker, die van grote betekenis is geweest voor Nederland". Met het programma Klasgenoten sprak hij een breed publiek aan. Postema zette zich volgens RTL ook in voor maatschappelijke televisie. Hij deed dat onder meer met Kans voor een Kind en bij de nationale tv-actie rond de dreigende watersnood in 1995.

Aankomend premier Rob Jetten schrijft op X over "verdrietig nieuws". Jetten noemt Postema een "icoon van de Nederlandse radio en tv" en prijst hem om de manier waarop hij maatschappelijke kwesties onder de aandacht bracht. Ook presentator Henny Huisman spreekt op X over het verlies van een icoon. "Een geweldige vakman en mooie verteller van interessante verhalen. Én veel humor."


Rijnmond - Nieuws

Het laatste nieuws van vandaag over Rotterdam, Feyenoord, het verkeer en het weer in de regio Rijnmond

Rotterdam was belangrijk voor 'nationale schoolmeester' Koos Postema

Televisiepersoonlijkheid Koos Postema is gisteren in het bijzijn van zijn twee dochters overleden in zijn woonplaats Soest. Postema, een geboren Rotterdammer, is 93 jaar geworden.