Russian models Maria Sidorova and Lidia Fetisova pose with a 1,400 pound bear named Stephen as part of an awareness campaign.
Stephen was near dead after an attack from hunters when his current owner rescued and raised him. Now 18, Stephen is a trained movie star and has appeared in a host of Russian blockbuster films.
Produced by Jason Gaines. Video courtesy of Associated Press.
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An iconic American company infuriated even the most loyal of its customers 30 years ago — all in the name of cost-cutting.
Coca-Cola announced on April 23, 1985 that it would discontinue its beloved Coca-Cola in favor of a new product that millions derisively called “New Coke.” The experiment did not last very long.
New Coke was a disaster from the start.
It came across to many as an irrational reaction to the surge in sales of Pepsi-Cola.
Pepsi was enjoying popularity after successful marketing campaigns such as the "taste test challenge" and “Choice of a New Generation” featuring stars like singer Michael Jackson.
Coca-Cola was 99-years-old at the time. The company told the media it was adjusting its formula for modern tastebuds. New Coke beat Pepsi in a battery of taste tests, executives insisted.
Author Constance L. Hays who wrote “The Real Thing: Truth and Power at the Coca-Cola Company,” found what may have been the real motivation behind the change.
“The new formula would save Coke about $50 million per year because it cut back on some of the most costly ingredients,” a group of Pepsi chemists told Hays. “Coke turned its back on the very thing that made it great.”
New Coke was sweeter and lighter, according to a Time magazine review written by food critic Mimi Sheraton.
“New Coke seems to retain the essential character of the original version … It tastes a little like classic Coca-Cola that has been diluted by melting ice,” Sheraton explained.
Late night host David Letterman joked: “Coke’s decided to make their formula sweeter, they’re going to mix it with Pepsi.”
Coke drinkers formed various groups in protest. They called Coca-Cola and sent letters.
“Coke drinkers rose up in righteous indignation, demanding their old soft drink back,” author Hays wrote in her book, which many consider to be the authoritative account of the Coke II/New Coke debacle.
The company to brought back the original Coke less than three months later. News of the about-face came from ABC anchor Peter Jennings, who interrupted the long-running daytime soap opera "General Hospital" to break the story.
Original Coke was called Coca-Cola Classic while New Coke kicked around in various forms, including Coke II, until it was ultimately killed off in 2002.
Coca-Cola’s mistake is still taught in business schools around the country.
Anyone looking to relive it can find it for sale on eBay.
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NOW WATCH: This is what happens when you boil an iPhone 6 in Coke
New York City is at the cusp of global trends, especially when it comes to food.
The latest food trend to hit the Big Apple is uni, or sea urchin, which is popping up in restaurants across the city. Chefs are incorporating uni into Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Mediterranean-style cuisine.
Foursquare helped us find the best restaurants to grab uni in Manhattan. From upscale dining to casual hole-in-the-wall joints, here are the 10 best restaurants to try New York's latest food trend.
Chelsea's Toro combines Spanish influences with local market-fresh ingredients in its tapas dishes.
Try the sea urchin pressed panini sandwich and the Suquet De Mariscos, a traditional Catalan stew with lobster and sea urchin. For a burst of flavor all in one bite, order the erizos con caviar which is caviar, sea urchin, quail egg, and ham all served on a spoon.
Basta Pasta is an Italian restaurant located in NYC's Flatiron District.
Savor the delicious Spaghetti ai Ricci di Mare, which is topped with fresh sea urchin, tomatoes, jalapeños, garlic oil, basil.
Chelsea's Naka-Naka offers an authentic Japanese dining experience, from the origami-inspired decorative accents to the waiters dressed in traditional Japanese garb.
The sea urchin sashimi is so fresh it melts in your mouth.
When photographer James Mollison looked back on his childhood, he was struck by how many of his memories revolved around the school playground. "It had been a space of excitement, games, bullying, laughing, tears, teasing, fun, and fear," Mollison writes in the afterword of his latest book, "Playground."
Mollison traveled all over the world to capture the wildly different school playgrounds. The diversity of children’s experiences fascinated Mollison, and it shows in the photographs, which record playground life with an anthropologist's detail.
Mollison shared photos with us here, and you can check out the rest in the book or at the Aperture Gallery in New York.
SEE ALSO: Here's how school lunch in the US stacks up against what's served in the rest of the world
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You have a closet full of fat, out-of-style neckties. Instead of donating them to the local thrift shop, put them on a diet.
A web service called Skinnyfatties (get it? Skinny Fat-Ties!) does just that for any guy searching for a trendier look than they can get from dad's old hand-me-down Hermes cravats.
The service is pretty simple: you pick a new size online that you want your tie to be and send in your neckties that are just a little too wide to wear in 2015.
Skinnyfatties will let you know when they've received your tie or ties and get to work unsticking, cutting up, and restitching your neckwear by hand. Ties are then shipped back to you, after passing a visual inspection.
Slimming for one tie runs $30, but Skinnyfatties does give bulk discounts, up to $6 a tie.
As is the case in many great entrepreneurial success stories, Skinnyfatties' creator Joshua Adam Brueckner started the service after becoming unemployed.
"In July 2012, I was out of a job and I needed interview clothes, so I learned how to tailor the wide neckties hidden in the back of my closet," he told Business Insider.
"Later, with still no cash flow all thanks to a recovering economy, I decided to take up refashioning wide neckties as a side hobby and see if I could make a little money off of it."
A make a little money Brueckner has! He said he's saved men from buying over $400,000 in new neckwear.
Though Brueckner says he envisioned the service being used by young people mailing in thrifted ties, they aren't his biggest clients. As his business has grown, he's found that his service is mostly used by 30-60-year-old men sending in the old, wide ties that they bought decades ago for hundreds of dollars and can no longer wear due to the current trends.
These gentleman are, in fact, only getting their ties slimmed down to the 2.75-3 inch range, and not the 2 inch or below range that would put a tie in "trendy" territory.
Another way customers are using Skinnyfatties, according to Brueckner, is to finally get ties that fit their body size. Since ties are supposed to match your lapel width and are far from "one size fits all," Brueckner notes in a blog post on his site that the service is a great way to get custom tie sizing.
However, if you don't have a tie worth $100-plus that needs slimming, it might be hard to justify the price tag on a piece of neckwear worth less than that.
Take a look below at some of the before and after photos of the tie slimming (provided by Skinnyfatties):
SEE ALSO: 18 things every modern gentleman should have in his closet
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Honda, a company most famous for its award-winning line of automobiles, motorcycles, and home improvement equipment, is entering into some very unfamiliar territory — private jets.
After nearly 30 years of development, the HondaJet marks the company's entry into the $23 billion-a-year general aviation industry.
When it enters service, the $4.5 million North Carolina-produced HondaJet will compete in the very light jet segment of the market against already-established models, such as Embraer's Phenom 100 and Cessna's Citation Mustang.
According to the AP's Yuri Kageyama, Honda already has 100 orders for the jet — on sale now in the US and Europe — with deliveries set to begin later this year.
To show off its latest mobility offering, Honda is taking the jet on a world tour that kicked off this week with a ceremony at Tokyo's Haneda Airport.
"To offer personal mobility in the skies was the dream of Soichiro Honda and the dream of us Honda men," Honda president Takanobu Ito told the press in Tokyo. "Today is a symbolic day."
Honda Aircraft CEO Michimasa Fujino revealed a truly fascinating tidbit of information at the ceremony — the nose design of the jet was inspired by a pair of Salvatore Ferragamo high heels he encountered at a duty free shop while on vacation in Hawaii.
According the Wall Street Journal, Fujino told the press that he was inspired by the designer footwear because it represented beauty, comfort, and functionality.
Designer heels aside, it will also feature one of the most unique engine layouts in civil aviation, with two GE Honda HF120 turbofans mounted on top of its wings. This design eschews the conventional business jet layout that calls for engines to be mounted at the rear of the fuselage.
By dispersing much of the engine's noise away from the fuselage, the jet will save passengers from suffering the same ear-shattering din as those unfortunate enough to be seated in the last few rows of other rear-engined aircraft.
According to the company, the over-wing engine design also gives the cabin greater usable space by removing the interior superstructure needed to support the engines.
The aircraft's HF120 turbofans will power the six-passenger HondaJet to a top speed of 483 mph and a maximum range of over 1,300 miles. Honda's technical wizardry also shows up in the jet's interior, with a state-of-the-art cockpit packed with features like touchscreen controls, a trio of 14-inch displays, and Garmin's G3000 avionics suite.
Have a closer look at Honda's new HondaJet:
SEE ALSO: Boeing just patented a bizarre 'cuddle chair' that could revolutionize how we sleep on airplanes
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Have you ever seen a baby-sitter yelling at a child in public and wished there was something you could do to tell the parents? Thanks to Lesley Kring, a thriving social network for nannies and those who employ them will let you do just that — and anonymously, too.
Lesley Kring worked as a nanny for the same family for years in Rye, N.Y. She became so close with the parents, they promoted her to act as a personal assistant for the family. In that role, she was tasked with hiring "weekend nannies, overnight nannies, baby nurses" and more.
"I loved the kids like my own," she told Business Insider.
She performed thorough background checks on all of her new hires, she said — but "people were good at being deceitful about their backgrounds."
When one nanny grabbed one of the children and bruised her arm, Kring was left heartbroken, she said.
"One of the girls who I was with since she was one year old said, 'Sometimes, people are one way and then they're another way when the adults aren't around,'" she said. "That was a hard, sad lesson to be hearing from a six-year-old."
Later, Kring was working with someone who ran an agency that staffed households similar to the one where she'd worked. Kring realized that in order to place more of her clients (and collect the $3,500 commission that came with each placement), the woman was tampering with nannies' answers to questions about how to handle certain childcare issues, like tantrums. She also hid candidates' controversial pasts.
"That was in 2006," she said. "That was when I started the website."
When ISawYourNanny.blogspot.com began, it mostly functioned as a forum for parents and other nannies to anonymously report caretakers who they saw mistreating children.
For example, Kring recalls one incident where a nanny was seen pulling up to the park with her charge, then rubbing wood chips on the child's clothes and hair before pulling away to a new location. She apparently wanted to make it look like the child had played in the park, although he would actually be spending the day wherever she was taking him.
In another entry, a woman reported seeing a nanny take a child into a seedy motel along with a man who didn't appear to know the child.
"That totally shocked me," Kring said. "This is what she was doing? It really disturbed me."
Kring was surprised by the initial success of the website. Now, it receives 10,000 to 50,000 hits per day and functions as a social network for nannies and employers alike. Kring chalks this up to the "mystique" that surrounds employer-nanny relationships, which she noticed when she herself was a nanny.
"People were amazed that I lived with this family," she said. "It's an intimate relationship. You're in the house, you're raising the children. You know all their secrets."
She also started a Facebook page, where she not only shares content from ISYN, but also posts disturbing news about nannies and childcare from around the world.
After a while, Kring started receiving hate-mail from readers who felt her site was biased against nannies. So she opened it up and let nannies tell their side of the story, too. And now, the posts in which nannies complain about overly demanding bosses perform even better than the standard "I Saw Your Nanny" anonymous reports do.
One nanny shared her daily routine and let slip that she preferred spraying Febreze on the sheets rather than washing them, and that part of her day consisted of imbibing one of the kids' Adderall pills:
I give the oldest a cup of coffee to replace the Adderall that I picked from his bottle today. I give him a B12, a multi and his anxiety medicine. The youngest is usually off the rails so I give him his Concerta and Straterra,Don't rage against me now, Mom and Dad don't give it to him consistently either, mostly because they don't think he needs to focus weekends and holidays.
Readers called for that nanny's head, Kring recalls.
In another post, a nanny revealed the contract she had to sign, which stipulated that she was only allowed to listen to classical music and she had to check her charge's pockets for sugar every time he came into the house. That post went viral, Kring said.
For the most part, though, nannies who seek advice or want to vent on ISYN report that they're being taken advantage of by employers who want them to take care of housekeeping duties in addition to watching the children — which is not part of the deal.
For example, in a post from today, a nanny says that her employer is expecting her to house-sit while the family goes on vacation for four days. The nanny is allowed to bring her three-year-old son, but the child's father is not invited — and the nanny isn't being paid extra for overtime or for overseeing the "grounds crew" and taking care of the dog. Yikes.
It's not all bad, though. Nannies and employers also post positive reviews of each other and their jobs on ISYN. In a post from April 20, a bystander in Wisconsin describes a nanny who she found to be "fantastic."
"She engaged Max in play and allowed him to explore without being harsh," she wrote. "I was very happy to see an active nanny who really loves her job, and it was evident by how she interacted with these children how much she loves her work."
Kring's website is not the only type of technology that has revolutionized the nanny-employer relationship. In addition to scanning ISawYourNanny.com, many employers now use hidden cameras to keep tabs on what's going on at home all day.
When asked whether nannies find this to be an invasion of privacy or even just an annoyance, Kring said most fall into two camps.
"There is a division between ... those who think it's horrible that they should be on a nanny cam, and those who say, 'What do you care? You should be doing things right anyway.'"
The right kind of nanny will "relish" the surveillance because "they live to be good at what they do," Kring added.
There is one way technology has made watching children easier, in a sense — iPads and video games can act as temporary baby-sitters, especially for the most unruly kids. So has Kring noticed that limiting screen time is tough for nannies, especially since it's so tempting to keep kids quiet using tech?
As is the case with most issues, it depends on the nanny, she said.
"The better nannies know that they are part of a team that's helping to raise the child, and they're going to defer to the parent and adhere to whatever restrictions parents put on technology," she said. "But if you have a lazy nanny, she's going to use those baby-sitting tools more often. And how would the parent really know?"
SEE ALSO: Upper East Siders are sending their nannies to a 'boot camp' where they learn how to use Uber
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On Wednesday, parents in Manchester, UK were alerted about a “Dangerous New Craze” in their playgrounds.
According to the Manchester Police Facebook post, a new school yard game known as “sleeper” had caused one child to be hospitalized.
Older children are covering the mouths and noses of younger children and causing them to pass out from lack of oxygen or “go to sleep,” according to law enforcement.
The Manchester Evening News reports that police were alerted after a local school teacher in the Collyhurst neighborhood informed them to the so-called schoolyard prank.
The full statement reads:
Dangerous New Craze Warning
Attention all parents/guardians...
We have received reports of a new craze called 'Sleeper' This involves children completely covering the mouth and noses of younger children until they completely pass out
This is extremely dangerous, a child is currently in hospital being treated after falling victim to this game. Please advise every child you know and warn them of the dangers, this could easily lead to concussion or even death.
Parents are being encouraged to warn their children about the game.
And while many parents were scandalized by what some were insisting was “attempted murder,” others were quick to point out that this is not a new “prank,” simply an old activity for a new generation:
@itvnews I recall this being a daily 'thing' when a kid at school both primary & secondary !
— Uncanny Annie (@rumdu2) April 16, 2015@itvnews so that would have been in the 80s !!
— Uncanny Annie (@rumdu2) April 16, 2015@MENnewsdesk This was happening when I was in primary school ~15 years ago. This isn't a "new craze" by any means.
— Dan (@dev_meltus) April 16, 2015"Sleeper" is similar to other pass out games that teens and children have long played with one another.
In 2005, an asphyxiation game went viral in the US where middle schoolers were choking themselves or their friends to feel the euphoric high of oxygen returning to their brains. Whether it was at the hands of their classmates or with belts, ropes, and even bicycle locks, the game ended up causing the deaths of three teens in 2005, according to TODAY.
Pass out games again gained national attention after two Chicago teens accidentally killed themselves while attempting to feel a high in 2010, as did a California-based teen in 2012.
And just last year there were parents and doctors concerned about an asphyxiation game going viral in Florida.
At the time of the post, the condition for the child who was hospitalized for playing the "sleeper" game has not been released. Business Insider has reached out to the Manchester Police and will update if we hear back.
SEE ALSO: People are outraged and sending death threats after this hunter posted a picture with a dead giraffe
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NOW WATCH: You've been loading your dishwasher all wrong
In 2010, Courtney Carver realized she simply had too many clothes.
“I remember thinking, ‘we have to do something about this closet,’” she told Business Insider. “I was decluttering my entire life and documenting it on my website Be More With Less, and my closet seemed to be a hotspot. It really started as a personal challenge — with all the clutter in the closet, I had no idea even what my style was.”
But instead of selling or donating just a few items, Carver decided she would do a complete overhaul and only allow herself to keep 33 clothing items for an entire three-month season.
That included shoes, outerwear, clothing, accessories, and jewelry.
“I did a rough count of 33 items — it would cover four pairs of shoes, and this many shirts, this many pants, etc.,” explained Carver. She kept her favorite pieces that were flattering and fit her best, and decided she would not allow herself to shop or buy new clothes for three months unless she switched an item out with something else: If she bought a new shirt, she’d have to get rid of another one.
She began to document the process on a new website she called Project 333— 33 items of clothing for three months. Carver called it her “capsule wardrobe.”
Since then, capsule wardrobes have spread across America and around the world. “There are people in almost every state in the US and in many, many other countries making capsule wardrobes,” Carver said. “It’s interesting to see that over-shopping is a problem for us here, but it’s also an international issue.”
One capsule wardrobe convert is blogger Laura Blanton of The Lovely Laura Life who’s based in southwest Ohio. She was inspired to start a capsule wardrobe after coming across Project 333 as well as another popular capsule wardrobe blog called Un-Fancy by Caroline Joy Rector.
“I liked the idea of minimizing my wardrobe, especially because I didn’t like my spending habits,” Blanton told Business Insider. “I had no idea how much I was spending on clothes, but I knew it was definitely too much and didn’t line up with priorities in my life.”
But Blanton’s capsule wardrobe hit a snag a month later.
“After I started, I found out I was pregnant,” Blanton told us. “So I was building these seasonal maternity capsules and it was like the three different phases of pregnancy."
Though it was intimidating, Blanton stuck with her capsule wardrobe through all phases of her pregnancy. She is even planning to expand the idea to a yearly capsule wardrobe of 75 pieces (or less) because of the unpredictability of Midwest seasons. “I’m still in the building phase and I have a master list of what I want to attain to keep me focused,” she said.
The capsule wardrobe movement can be tied to a growing minimalistic trend in the fashion community.
Take for instance Marie Kondo and her wildly popular book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” A celebrity in Japan, Kondo’s entire premise is similar to the capsule wardrobe, but on a macro scale — only surround yourself by the things that bring you joy or make you the happiest, whether that’s your clothing or household mementos.
Carver even wrote a blog post on Project 333 about "Kondo-ing" her capsule wardrobe.
Then there’s Matilda Kahl, a 27-year-old art director in New York, who has gone viral after sharing her story about wearing the same outfit to work for three years.
“I have realized how much more efficient, productive, and happy I can be when I don’t let myself get distracted by the small things in life,” Kahl told Business Insider. “The uniform has become a great everyday reminder that I (and only I) decide what is important.”
She said wearing the same outfit keeps her from having creative fatigue when she’s working during the week — something Carver agreed with strongly.
“It’s becoming more and more mainstream,” Carver said of minimalistic wardrobes. “All creatives like to express themselves through what they wear, but they’re finding they are better able to focus their creative energies when they’re not thinking about how to create the perfect look.”
Ultimately, making a capsule wardrobe is about finding clarity in your style and life in general. Both Blanton and Carver said that it has helped them stop impulse shopping and uncovered their own personal sense of fashion.
“I don’t have to give a lot of attention to what I’m going to wear,” Carver said. “I’m saving time and money, and I find that with dressing with less, I get to wear my favorite things every day.”
1. Start by getting rid of everything you don’t love
“I think we all need to figure out what works best for us,” Carver said. “Get rid of the excess and start with the bare bones.”
Put the clothes that don’t fit you, you haven't worn in a while, or that you know you don't love into a separate box and store them away for the first three months of your capsule wardrobe.
When you pull them out later on, chances are you’ll realize that they don’t fit your style or body type, and you’ll wonder why you were holding onto them in the first place.
2. Create a master list of things you need
Look at what’s left in your closet after you purge, and then make a list of everything you need to buy, finding inspiration on Pinterest or blogs. Try and think about dual-purpose clothing items that you can layer in the fall and winter or wear alone in the summer.
“Some seasons I’ll have less than 33 items,” Carver told us. “Especially in the summer when I don’t need to count extra outerwear like hat, gloves, and things like that.”
3. Try to do all your shopping at once
Once you have your master list, do all of your shopping at once to fill the gaps and missing pieces — this will negate the need to impulse shop because you’ll know you’re simply not allowed to buy something new for the next three months.
If this doesn’t seem doable or you love thrifting, Blanton suggested giving yourself a one-week rule. “I force myself to at least wait one week before I think about it again,” she said. “If you avoid it long enough, there’s not such a strong desire and you can be more logical."
4. Be lenient with yourself
Some people like to follow rules for their capsule wardrobe like Carver to prove to themselves they can do it. Others like Blanton prefer to not be so strict with her wardrobe.
“All three of my capsules were different numbers,” she said. “I started out with 50 because I differentiated between my work wardrobe and my everyday wardrobe. But after I did that first wardrobe I realized it was way more than it needed to be so I downsized to around 35.”
Ultimately, the goal of a capsule wardrobe is not to follow a set of arbitrary rules, but to be more intentional with your life.
5. Jump right in — the hardest part is the fear of starting
“The biggest struggle was before I started and it was the fear of not having enough,” Carver said. “But all of these imaginary things I worried about like running out of clothes or people at work noticing, none of them happened.”
The hardest part is always getting started. If you want to build a capsule wardrobe, just do it.
SEE ALSO: A simple method for making sure your clothes match
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For the billionaire buying a guard dog, why go with a standard pup when you can get one that's trained in three different languages?
It only costs $230,000.
CNBC visited the Harrison K-9 facility, a South Carolina-based dog training company that only sells the most highly trained and intelligent German Shepherds to executives and celebrities.
Harrison K-9 has been in business since the 1970s when founder Harrison Prather began training dogs for law enforcement and the US government. Not long after, he learned there was a market for the über wealthy to have not only a guard dog, but a companion as well.
He started an intense training course that taught the dogs to not only attack aggressors and protect their owners, but also be good with children and other animals. The goal was to create sweet and loving companion dogs that could — if the situation arose — snap into action.
The elite dogs are imported from Germany and taught multiple commands such as “come, heel, sit, down, or stay” in both English and German as well as through special hand signals. They are trained in a variety of places such as office buildings, city streets, parks, vehicles, and even yachts so they won’t become distracted or disoriented in a new environment.
The 25-acre Harrison K-9 training facility has obstacle courses where they teach the dogs to do perimeter searches for the home, bite and hold onto aggressors, and complete agility courses.
To get one of these sweet pups, prices start at $35,000 and average between $40,000 and $50,000. CNBC points out that some of the more top-of-the-line dogs run over $80,000. They are sold when they’re around two-years-old to make sure they’re mature enough for the field and highly trained.
The most expensive dog Harrison K-9 ever sold was a dog named Julia for $230,000 to a businessman in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Julia was so smart that the head trainer told The New York Times she was almost like a person. “If my daughter Kailee was outside in the woods, I’d say, ‘Julia, where’s Kailee?’, and she’d go out and find her,” she told The Times.
One thing's for sure — they're loyal. Plus, the company says on its website that having a dog will intimidate criminals far more than security systems and human guards would thanks to its sharp teeth and lack of hesitation to attack.
You can see the current guard dogs that Harrison K-9 is training here. In addition to being extremely expensive, they're also adorable.
SEE ALSO: 14 Services For The Super Rich You Never Knew Existed
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When life gives you lemons, it’s time to read this list.
We researched all of the miraculous things you can do with lemons, from the juice to the peel. Uses include making you healthier, more beautiful, cleaner, and a better cook (obviously), plus so much more.
Here are 66 things you can do with a lemon:
Clean the garbage disposal: Freeze lemon slices in plastic ice cube trays with vinegar. Once frozen, you can place a few cubes down the disposal, turn on the water, and run it for 30 seconds to clean and deodorize.
Freshen your fridge: Soak a cotton ball or sponge in lemon juice and leave it in the fridge for a few hours — your fridge will smell so much better, and it works even better than baking soda.
Make a DIY room freshener: Throw lemon peels, cloves, and cinnamon sticks into a pot of simmering water. It will make your whole house smell amazing, get rid of odors, and humidify the air, too.
Deodorize the humidifier: Pour in lemon juice with the humidifier water. Turn it on and let it run — the lemon juice will naturally deodorize the machine plus make the room smell fantastic.
Make your breath smell better: Drinking lemon water and combat the bacteria in your mouth. Just make sure to rinse with water afterwards since lemon juice can erode your teeth.
Deodorize trash cans: Throw a few peels into the trash can to keep everything smelling as fresh as possible.
Make the fireplace smell amazing: Use dried citrus peels like lemon and orange as kindling — to prepare, let them sit out on the counter for a few days so they can fully dry. They’ll act as a flame starter and will make the fire extremely aromatic.
Remove odors from hands: Whether it’s garlic or fish, cooking can make your hands smell horrible. Wash them with lemon juice and some soap to eliminate unwanted odors.
Neutralize cat-box smells: Make your home smell better by neutralizing the acidic smell of your cat box with a few lemon slices placed nearby in a bowl. It will have the same effect as store-bought air fresheners.
Polish furniture: Make a homemade furniture polish that will smell better and cost less than typical polishes out of lemon oil, squeezed lemon juice, and olive or jojoba oil. Combine the ingredients and buff with a cloth.
Remove food build up from a microwave: Place a bowl of water, lemon juice, and slices of lemon into the microwave. Heat on high for three minutes and remove the bowl. Any leftover food that used to be caked on will wipe right off and your microwave will smell amazingly clean.
Clean windows: Because it's acidic, lemon juice is great at cutting through grease or grime build up on windows and glass. You can also mix it with cornstarch, vinegar, and water for an even better window cleaning treatment.
Remove hard water stains from faucets: Hard water can make your tub dingy and leave you with unsightly stains on faucets and shower heads. Remove build up by taking a cut lemon and rubbing it on your shower fixtures — they’ll look shiny and new when you’re done.
Clean cutting boards: Freshen your dirty, greasy cutting boards with a handful of coarse salt and a cut lemon. Sprinkle salt on the cutting board and then rub it in with the cut side of a lemon. Wipe off the salt or rinse the board in the sink — easy. You can do the same thing with rolling pins and wooden salad bowls.
Revive your old coffee maker: Run your coffee maker through a full water-only cycle. Then, mix a solution of lemon juice and water together and pour it into your coffee maker water tank. Allow it to sit before turning it on and letting it run through the cycle. Make a fresh solution and repeat the process. Run another water cycle and soak the carafe, filter, and coffee reservoir in dish soap and water to remove any lemon taste.
Clean marble: To remove rust stains from marble, sprinkle baking soda on the stain and add some lemon juice. Scrub and add more lemon juice and baking soda as needed. Wipe immediately with a clean, wet rag.
Polish brass and copper: Combine equal parts lemon juice and vinegar and then wipe the mixture on the metal with a paper towel. Polish with a soft cloth until dry. You can also combine lemon juice and baking soda to make a paste and have a similar effect to remove tarnish.
Polish silverware: Mix a tablespoon of lemon juice with 1 1/2 cups of water and 1/2 cup instant dry milk. Let the silverware sit overnight and then rinse and dry. If you’re in a hurry, simply pour some lemon juice on tarnished pieces of silverware and buff with a clean cloth.
Make your dish soap more effective: Add a teaspoon of lemon juice to dish soap to cut through grease on dishes and make your soap even more effective.
Bleach plastic Tupperware: If your Tupperware is soaking up colors from your favorite spaghetti or tomato soup, rub with some lemon juice and let it dry in the sun to bleach away the stains.
Clean the toilet: Pouring in 1/2 cup of lemon juice and letting it sit will make toilet stains easy to tackle with a brush (and make the bathroom smell citrusy). You can also add 1/2 cup of borax for extra stain fighting powers.
Unclog a drain: Pour boiling water down the drain and then half a box of baking soda followed by 8-12 ounces of lemon juice. The lemon juice will react with the baking soda causing it to turn into a foam. Then pour more boiling water down the drain to rinse away the foam and the clog.
Remove water stains on shower doors: Cut a lemon in half and dip one half into baking soda. Rub onto the glass and then rinse and dry.
Create an all-purpose cleaner: Combining water, baking soda, vinegar, lemon, and lemon essential oil will create an amazing all-purpose cleaner for the kitchen or the bathroom. Get directions here.
Clean cheese graters: Instead of ruining your sponge, clean your cheese graters using a half of a lemon instead. It won’t matter if it gets grated a little and the acid in the lemon will cut through the cheese easily.
Polish hardwood floors: Make your own lemon-vinegar floor cleaner to fight mold, bacteria, and germs. It also has the added benefit of being non-toxic and will make your floors look great.
Gently bleach fabrics: Add lemon juice to hot water and soak your white linens. Then rinse and wash as normal. You can also add 1/2 cup of lemon juice to your cycle instead of bleach for similar results.
Spot treat your shirts: Pour lemon juice on the stain and add some table salt. Rub the stain between your fingers and then rinse. This is especially helpful with dark underarm stains, and will be even more effective if you let the clothing dry in the sun.
Get mildew stains out of clothes: Make a paste with lemon juice and salt and rub it into the infected area. Let it dry in the sun, and repeat until the stain is gone.
Remove grease stains: Mix lemon juice with vinegar and apply to the stain. Let it sit and then rinse off.
Whiten tennis shoes: Spray lemon juice on white athletic shoes and let them dry in the sun. It will bleach the fabric and even make them smell better.
Soak fruits and veggies in lemon water to prevent browning: After slicing up your fruit, keep it from oxidizing and turning brown by soaking in a cold bowl of water with lemon juice. Take out produce and pat dry. This works with apples, cauliflower, bananas, pears, potatoes, and avocados.
Revive limp lettuce: When lettuce starts to get soggy, you can soak the leaves in a bowl of cold water with the juice from half a lemon. Refrigerate for an hour and then dry leaves before adding to salads or sandwiches.
Keep rice from clumping: Add a spoonful of lemon juice while rice is cooking so it doesn’t stick together at the end. Let it cool when it’s done and then fluff with a fork.
Upgrade your ice cubes: Freeze lemon slices in ice cube trays (or cupcake trays if you want bigger ice cubes) and use them to add some zest to a standard glass or pitcher of water.
Marinate meats: Lemon juice is a brilliant marinade when added with oils and herbs. The acid in the lemon juice will break down the meat so that the oil and spices can flavor it even better.
Make candied lemon peels: Instead of throwing away your lemon rind, you can make candy out of it that you can put on cakes, into cookies, or just eat as a snack. All you need to do is boil the peels a few times with sugar and coat in sugar.
Keep brown sugar soft: Adding a lemon slice to brown sugar will keep it soft. The moisture from the lemon will keep the sugar from becoming rock hard and unusable.
Boost flavor and reduce salt intake: Studies have shown that if you use lemon juice and lemon zest, you’ll use less salt to boost the flavor of your dishes. It's a healthier alternative instead of constantly reaching for salt and pepper.
Make a buttermilk substitute: If you don’t have buttermilk, add two tablespoons of lemon juice to a 1% or 2% cup of milk. Let it sit so the acid sours the milk for 15 minutes and then add it to the recipe.
Make a sour cream substitute: Similar to the buttermilk tip above, lemon juice will sour whipped cream if you let it sit for 30 minutes or so. It will also cut your calories if you’re used to adding a dollop of sour cream to a baked potato.
Make lemonade: You know what they say about life giving you lemons. Add some gin if you want a grown up lemonade.
Lighten your hair: Lemon juice will bleach your hair in the sun. Create your own leave-in hair brightener by combining almond or coconut oil, cinnamon, and chamomile tea with lemon juice. Mix together and spray on your hair before heading outside into the sun. The lemon will lighten strands while the oil will make sure hair doesn’t get too dried out. (Simple lemon juice will also do the trick.)
Fade age spots or freckles: Lemon juice will lighten and brighten skin by reducing freckles as well as fading age spots. Wash you face, pat dry, and then apply lemon juice with a cotton swab.
Make a brightening moisturizer: Mix coconut oil with a few drops of lemon juice to hydrate skin and brighten it at the same time. Since both are anti-fungal, the mixture will also help prevent acne.
Whiten and strengthen nails: Mix lemon juice with olive oil and soak your nails. The lemon juice will brighten the nail while the olive oil will strengthen it.
Fight dandruff: Massage two tablespoons of lemon juice into your scalp and then rinse with lemon water. Repeat until dandruff is gone.
Fight acne: Lemon juice is a natural astringent which will fight the oil and clogged pores that can cause acne. After cleaning your face and patting dry, apply lemon juice to your face. After 10 minutes, rinse off with cool water. Repeat twice daily.
Exfoliate your skin: Combine lemon juice, sugar, olive oil, and honey to create a nourishing scrub for your skin. Apply to your body and face before rinsing off.
Start your day with lemon water: Drinking lemon water will give you a dose of Vitamin C, potassium, and will aid digestion and give your immune system a boost.
Soothe a sore throat: Lemon juice has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties which can help a sore throat. It also has lots of Vitamin C to help boost your immune system.
Treat canker sores: Because lemon is both anti-fungal and antibacterial, it will speed up the recovery time of a canker sore. Simply add lemon juice to a cup of hot water. Let steep, and then gargle with the solution. It will sting, but that means it’s working.
Soothe skin rashes: Soak a cotton ball in lemon juice and apply to the rash. This works especially well with poison ivy.
Stop itchy insect bites: Rubbing a bit of lemon juice on insect bites will relieve the swelling and itching. Just make sure not to go outside with it on since you might attract more bugs.
Reduces phlegm and soothes a cough: Adding a little lemon juice with honey to hot water will reduce mucous build up, which can help you get better faster.
Remove warts: If you don’t want to go to the doctor to treat your wart, try lemon juice as a do-it-yourself option. Dabbing lemon juice on the wart will break it down and it should disappear in two weeks.
Polish leather shoes: DIY your own shoe polish with olive oil and lemon. Combine one part lemon juice with two parts olive oil and let it sink into the leather of your shoes. Wait for 10-15 minutes and then buff with a cloth.
Make invisible ink: Squeeze lemon juice into a bowl of water and then dip a cotton swab into it. Write a message on white paper and then wait for it to dry before heating the paper close to a lamp or light bulb to see the message.
Sanitize jewelry: Add a tablespoon of lemon juice to 1 1/2 cups of water. This is especially good for sanitizing earrings, but should not be used on pearls or gold.
Repel bugs from your home: Mop your floors with lemon juice and water to ward off roaches and flees, and spray concentrated lemon juice on any areas you think bugs like ants may be getting in. Bonus points if you throw some lemon peels outside of entryways.
Remove pet stains from fur: Pinkish-red stains can sometimes form around your pet's eyes and mouth. To remove these stains, combine baking soda and lemon juice and rub it onto fur. Keep it away from your pet's eyes and wait for about 10 minutes before rinsing off. Always check with a vet first to make sure it's safe.
Remove berry stains from your hands: Berries can dye your hands red if you’re not careful, especially if you’re slicing, rinsing, or cooking with them. To get rid of them, make a paste of cornmeal and lemon juice and rub onto hands, let sit, and rinse off.
Kill weeds: Lemon juice will kill any weeds you don’t want growing in your yard or driveway. Fill a spray bottle with the juice and douse the offending plants.
Make your own dog and cat repellent: If neighborhood cats and dogs are using your lawn as a litterbox, combine lemon peels with coffee grounds and place them where the pets usually ‘go’ — they hate the smell and will soon head to other yards.
Save hardened paintbrushes: If your paintbrushes look like there’s no saving them, bring lemon juice and a little water to a boil and throw in the brushes to sit for 15 minutes. Wash them with soap and water afterwards and let dry. Bristles should feel soft again.
Did we miss your favorite thing to do with lemons? Let us know in the comments!
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On Monday, the listing for a $1,795 one-bedroom in Manhattan’s Lower East Side with a shower in the kitchen went viral.
And though not an ideal set up, these apartments with showers or bathtubs in the kitchen are not as uncommon as one might expect.
In fact, Business Insider associate video producer Alex Kuzoian currently lives in a similar set up with two other roommates.
“I never really had a problem with it,” he said of the apartment. “The bizarre-ness of it kind of just fades after awhile.”
Kuzoian has been living in his Hell’s Kitchen home for the past four months where he’s paying significantly less than $1,000 a month — extremely affordable for the Midtown Manhattan location where the average rent for a one bedroom is $3,374, according to Reator.com.
Even though the shower is in the common area, Kuzoian says that the lack of privacy isn’t too much of an issue since all of his roommates are on different schedules.
“The most annoying part is just not having a real bathroom,” he said. “We have one sink (the one in the kitchen) and then just a tiny room with a toilet. It would be nice not to have to brush my teeth, shave, and do the dishes in the same sink.”
It’s the act of shaving that really bothers him.
“I don't like to do it over the kitchen sink — plus theres no mirror there anyway — so I stand in front of the mirror that’s attached to my bedroom door and hold a garbage can under my chin,” he said. “That’s why I only shave like once a week.”
But Kuzoian said because the apartment is so affordable, he really doesn’t mind the set up. Plus, because he knew his roommates before he moved in, everyone is already comfortable with one another.
“We don’t have too many guests, mainly because the place is so small — there’s not a lot of room for them to stay,” he said. “It’s usually just our girlfriends or boyfriends.”
He added, “they’re already kind of used to it.”
As for any plus sides of living in an apartment where your shower is in your kitchen, Kuzoian said it’s definitely a “great conversation piece” and that someday he hoped he would be able to look back and get a great story out of his current living situation.
“Being young makes it easier,” he said. “If I were older there's no way I’d tolerate it. But for now, it's just part of the cliche 'NYC experience,’ I guess.”
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When I spoke with Scott Keyes, he was on a 10-hour layover in Dallas kicking back in the Centurion Lounge, where American Express has provided its members with free food and drinks, high-speed Wi-Fi, free spa services, and even its own shower suite.
“It’s just a day in the office in here essentially,” the 28-year-old Keyes told Business Insider. “I’ve got a nice work space, food, drinks, some Wi-Fi. This is like this whole other world.”
Keyes, a reporter for Think Progress, gained access to the lounge as a perk from one of his 25 credit cards. The card, an American Express Platinum, typically has an annual fee of $450, but Keyes managed to get it waived for the first year by taking advantage of an online deal. After that, he’ll either try to get the next year’s fee waived as well, or he’ll simply downgrade the card to something that doesn't carry a fee.
This is nothing new for Keyes, who told us that he uses his massive collection of credit cards to gain points, frequent flyer miles, and plenty of other member perks all the time. He then turns around and uses those perks on vacations like his upcoming trip that will take him20,000 miles on 21 flights— all for free.
This isn't luck. Keyes is somewhat of an expert on traveling for little to no cost, not unlike extreme couponers who put incredible amounts of time, energy, and thought into making sure they never pay a penny more than they have to when making purchases.
After jealous friends kept asking him how he does it, Keyes decided to write his e-books “How To Fly For Free” and “How To Find Cheap Flights.” He even made an email list to send friends updates on any amazing travel deals he comes across on Twitter or his RSS feed.
The epic world trip spans 13 countries — Mexico, Nicaragua, Trinidad, St. Lucia, Grenada, Germany, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Lithuania, and Finland — over the next two months. Total airfare is 136,500 frequent flyer miles plus a few small taxes, such as ‘airport use’ fees, that are all under $20 per flight.
Aside from those taxes, Keyes will be paying exactly $0 for his trip, including his hotel stays (he used credit card reward points that he had saved up for exactly this purpose).
He told Business Insider that it took around 10 to 15 hours to plan his itinerary, including finding flights that will use his miles, choosing between airlines, and avoiding “fuel surcharges” at all costs.
Keyes had been living and working for the past year in Oaxaca, Mexico, but now that he’s returning to the US, he realized it was the perfect opportunity to spend some time traveling before jumping back into a full-time job.
“It’s tough when you have a job and you have to ask your boss for time off,” Keyes told Business Insider. “You only have a limited time off and then you spend a lot of that traveling. I figured while I’m in a position where I don’t have a 9-to-5, I might as well take advantage.”
This is not the first time Keyes has gone on an incredibly cheap getaway for next to nothing. He has flown to Milan for $130, gone to Galapagos for $45, and visited Norway and Belgium for around $350 instead of the typical $1,000.
“It’s not necessarily easy or intuitive for beginners,” he told Business Insider about finding bargain flights. “But the good news is that because if you do a little bit of leg work — learn how to get a few miles and how to use them well — you can start to travel really, really well.”
Keyes has a few methods to procure his frequent flyer miles, including opening new credit cards that award miles or points, letting airlines know when there’s a problem with his flight, and not being afraid to get bumped if a flight is full.
He also uses Award Wallet and a detailed spreadsheet to keep organized so he never misuses his credit cards or loses track of his points and miles. In fact, since he started accruing cards, Keyes insists his credit score has actually increased just by virtue of handling his credit responsibly.
And when it comes to finding cheap trips, Keyes has an RSS reader and Twitter list chock-full of blogs and websites like Airfarewatchdog and The Flight Deal that he skims to see if there are any “mistake fees” or cheap flights available.
The key, he said, is flexibility.
“If your ultimate goal is to be able to find as cheap a flight as possible and go somewhere cool for not much money then starting with an open, blank slate and going wherever there’s a cheap flight right now is going to be your best bet,” he told us.
Since starting his frequent-flyer-mile journey, Keyes has been to 30 countries — this next trip will make that count 42 — and flown 354,000 miles or roughly 14.3 times around the earth.
“The moon is only 250,000 miles away,” Keyes laughed. “I’ve only got 150,000 more to go until I can get back from the moon."
As for his upcoming trip, Keyes said he’s most excited to visit a “beer spa” in Prague.
“I don’t quite understand it because I don’t speak Czech, but my understanding from pictures is that you just go and soak in beer,” he told us. “And who can complain about that?"
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NOW WATCH: We can guess your name based on what state you live in
Many products for women are no different than the same products marketed to men — but women are paying more.
Gender-based pricing, also known as the “woman tax” or “pink tax,” has been an accepted phenomenon since a 1995 California study that revealed women pay $1,351 a year more for the same products as men. This had such an impact that California became the first and only state to ban gender-discriminatory pricing.
In a new video on the YouTube channel The Daily Share, Mike Byhoff and Katie Isaacson tested just how true this remains in the other 49 states today.
First, they compared Schick razors, both the Hydro 5 for men and the Hydro Silk for women. Both are a similar product with five blades and moisturizing strips, but the women’s razor costs $1.41 more than the men’s.
They then did a side-by-side comparison of Neutrogena’s Healthy Skin Anti-Wrinkle Cream for women and Neutrogena Men’s Age Fighter Face moisturizer which use the same ingredients according to the company, but the women’s version costs $1.07 more.
While Schick refused to comment for the video, Neutrogena told the producers that the reason the women’s products were more expensive was “related to a number of factors, including packaging differences, modification of the formulation that impact the manufacturing process, and the discretion of each retailer.”
That was a similar response to what deodorant spokespeople told Consumer Reports in 2010 when the company found that equivalent women-marketed products such as deodorant and shampoo were significantly more expensive.
One product that the team found was unisex pricing were American Apparel’s Oxford shirts— they cost $74.99 for both genders.
Unfortunately, if you were to get these shirts dry cleaned at the same cleaners, you’d find that the “lady-shirt” would cost more than the men’s — in this case, $6 compared to $5.75.
And it’s not just products. Before President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, women were paying a total of $1 billion more than men for heath insurance premiums. The Affordable Care Act banned those gender-based premiums.
But women still pay more for long-term care insurance. Women can expect to be charged a full 13% more simply because they’re expected to live longer, according to The Daily Share producers.
Maybe it’s time to start buying men’s product instead if they’re cheaper and fit your needs. No need to always reach for the pink if that choice will cost you.
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New York residents may have noticed new billboards throughout the city encouraging them to move to Detroit.
There’s one in SoHo, another at the Ace Hotel in Midtown, and the other two billboards are in Bushwick. One example reads, “Detroit: Just west of Bushwick” while another says, “Detroit: Be left alone” below a rainbow.
“I think Detroit is a compelling place for people to be moving,” explained Philip Kafka of Prince Media Co., the boutique billboard company behind the campaign, to Business Insider. “I can do things there as a young guy that I could never imagine doing in New York or any other major market in the US.”
Kafka is currently opening a Thai restaurant along with a few partners in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood which will be called KATOI, and is trying to get people to work there. “We plan to hire between 15 and 20 people,” one of the co-partners in KATOI, Courtney Henriette, told Metro Times. “We are looking for general kitchen and service staff.”
And while part of the campaign is to drum up awareness for the upcoming restaurant, New York-based Kafka said another, separate campaign is to encourage people — particularly artists and young creatives — to move to the financially troubled city. Kafka himself owns property in Detroit, and believes it is on the rise.
“Every time people find a neighborhood in New York, ‘the man’ moves there,” he told us. “You always have to keep moving east or west. Bushwick was east of Williamsburg, which was east of the Lower East Side, and so on.”
Detroit, he says, is merely going a little west instead. Kafka also insists that the scene is becoming more hip and appealing to millennials.
“Detroit is a lot more spread out than New York, so it’s hard to see what’s happening,” he said. “But once it’s connected and people see what Detroit is about, it’s new and unexpected.”
“It also has a great history, and we can never ignore that,” Kafka added.
Henriette agrees, and told Metro News that the right kind of New Yorkers will “recognize the value in Detroit.”
Time will tell whether the romantic billboards will encourage a new wave of residents to uproot from their tiny, overpriced apartments and make their way to Detroit, but for now at least it has it’s own hashtag #movetodetroit.
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Eleven Madison Park was just named the best restaurant in America, and we can see why. With Michelin-starred chef Daniel Humm at the helm, the French-influenced bistro serves exceptional greenmarket cuisine that surprises and delights.
Food blogger Julian Fang captured the experience of dining at Eleven Madison Park in spring 2011, for his website Jewelz. He opted for the 11-course tasting menu, which today runs three and a half hours long and costs $225 per person.
While the menu has changed, the decadence remains. We've shared a selection of Fang's photos with permission.
Scott Barry Kaufman, the Scientific Director of the Imagination Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, stopped by Business Insider to explain the results of a recent study he and a group of colleagues conducted about what types of traits people find most and least attractive.
Produced by Alana Kakoyiannis. Camera by Jason Gaines.
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If you're looking for a massage tool, we recommend checking out this one.
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In America, high school is supposed to be about learning.
But as historian and cultural critic Rebecca Solnit argues in an article titled "Abolish High School" in the April issue of Harpers, it's mostly an education in status issues and gender norms.
"You get acculturated that it’s terrible to be gay," she tells Business Insider, "that it's important for girls to be popular with boys, that it's important for boys to be masculine according to certain rules, that being good at athletic things greatly increases your social standing, that being good at academic things may in fact decrease your social standing."
In her piece, Solnit argues that in many high schools, life is often a"parade of clichés" — jocks and cheerleaders stand in the popular center of student life, with anyone queer, artistic, or otherwise exile-able pushed to the periphery.
It's an argument worth looking into.
Especially in regards to teen depression and suicide:
• According to the National Insitute of Mental Health, 11% of adolescents have a depressive disorder by age 18.
• According to the American Psychological Association, 20% of high school students consider suicide every year, with 8% making a suicide attempt every year.
• According to the American Psychological Association, about 1,700 teens die to suicide every year.
• According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the rate of teen suicide tripled between 1950 and 1980
While it's easy to blow that statistic off with a swift 'whelp, the teen years are hard!', it would be more responsible to see if American high schools are especially — and unnecessarily — rough on students' well-being.
In a telling 2011 paper titled "Back to school blues: Seasonality of youth suicide and the academic calendar," economists Benjamin Hansen and Matthew Lang tracked state suicide rates among teens from 1980 to 2004.
They found that teen suicide rates go up during the school year — and fall off during the summer.
But that trend doesn't hold for adults.
The cause?
Hansen and Lang reason that the "negative social interactions" (ie, bullying) drop off during the summer.
"If negative social interactions are more likely when school is in session, then summer break could lead to a time period in which we expect the frequency of total negative social interactions to decline," they write. "This is in part because total social interactions are likely lower in summer months, and because youth have more latitude during the summer to select the peers with whom they spend their vacation months."
Bullying — a part of high school life made light of in shows like "The Simpsons" — is more prevalant than you might think. Solnit reports that 28% of public high schoolers report being bullied and 21% of private schoolers, with the numbers going up in nonurban areas.
The bullying has real effects on mental well-being. According to a 2008 Yale meta-analysis of the psychological research on bullying, children who have been bullied are "two to nine times more likely to report suicidal thoughts than other children were."
Kids who are bullied aren't just affected in high school. In a 2013 study, researchers tracked 1,273 people every year from ages 11 to 13 to age 16, then again from ages 19 to 26. The kids who were chronically bullied in childhood were poorer, less educated, and felt more socially isolated as young adults.
What makes American high schools such fertile ground for toxic behavior?
To Solnit, it's that for American teens, high school is so all-encompassing — sports, theater, all these things happen at school, making one's social standing there an incredibly high stakes game.
There are other models than the American system. In Europe, for instance, sports happen in a club system, so they're not so closely associated with schools, and the accompanying status symbols of pep rallies and trophy cases are kept out. While they have their own problems, schooling in other advanced economies tends to be more about learning intellectual skills that will serve students later in their lives.
Whereas in the States, high school is largely a matter of learning and mandating norms.
Solnit quotes Rutgers education scholar Catherine Lugg, who argues that American public high schools have historically had the role of "enforcer of expected norms regarding gender, heteronormativity, and homophobia."
As America becomes more demographically diverse both ethnically and sexually, high school is a system that will have to change, or we'll risk psychologically wounding our increasingly kaleidoscopic population of young people — for the rest of their lives.
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