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The NYC blizzard is getting so crazy, people are skiing and snowboarding in the streets

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winter storm jonas

New York City is getting walloped with snow — and that's making a select few skiers and snowboarders happy.

Winter storm Jonas unloaded over 16 inches of snow in the city as of 2 p.m. Saturday afternoon, according to The Weather Channel.

Forecasters expect the storm to dump over 25 inches of snow before it dissipates during the early-morning hours on Sunday, Reuters reports.

The blizzard is expected to be one of the top-five worst ever to hit New York since record-keeping began in 1869, according to the New York Daily News.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a travel ban at 2:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon restricting all non-emergency vehicles from the city's roads until at least Sunday morning. All MTA buses stopped operating at noon.

"I know that New Yorkers, we think we're tough, we think we can handle anything ... but the roads are truly, truly dangerous," Cuomo said at a press conference.

But that's not stopping the intrepid powderhounds who are trying to make the most of the snowfall in what has been an unusually warm winter.

When you can't leave the city to ski, you just need to find skiing within the city. #williamsburgbridge #brooklyn PC: @nicolelaguardia

A photo posted by Dan Reilly (@dreilly1313) on Jan 23, 2016 at 11:25am PST on

The famous ski slopes of Crown Heights...#urbanskiing #nycblizzard #snowmageddon

A photo posted by @srnyc10001 on Jan 23, 2016 at 1:34pm PST on

Making the best of snowy day in NYC. #nycsnowday #skiingnyc

A video posted by Ruthie Levy (@ruffusl) on Jan 23, 2016 at 12:57pm PST on

A couple of guys from New York's Nolita neighborhood found a place to ski — on the Williamsburg Bridge:

winter storm Jonas

Brett Van Dyke, 26, and Tom Wilson, 26, hit the snow-covered pavement leading into Manhattan on Saturday.

winter storm Jonas

Some people chose to walk, but these guys had other plans.

winter storm JonasThe weather advisories grew increasingly dire into the weekend, and most of the tens of millions of people up and down the East Coast heeded warnings to stay indoors.

Ryan Maue, a meteorologist for WeatherBell Analytics, said "This is going to be one of those generational events, where your parents talk about how bad it was."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch 13 hours of superstorm Jonas in one minute


Walking the streets of New York City on day 1 of Winter Storm Jonas

Use this clever trick to see your iPhone's true signal strength

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Ever find yourself questioning how accurate those little signal strength dots are on your iPhone?

Luckily, there's a trick to reveal your iPhone's true signal strength, and it takes less than a minute to enable.

First, you'll need to access a hidden app on your phone called Field Test Mode. To do this, you'll need to open up your Phone app and dial the following number, *3001#12345#* , including the asterisks and hashtag, and tap "Call."

This opens up Field Test Mode, which is mostly filled with menus of cell signal jargon that you don't need to worry about. What you're interested in is the tiny number in the upper left-hand corner of your iPhone likely hidden behind the text "Back to Phone" if you're using iOS 8 or iOS 9  which is your iPhone's true signal strength.

Field Test app

Here, for example, my old iPhone 5 that's still running iOS 7 is showing my cell signal to be -59. To exit Field Test Mode, you can simply tap the home button and you'll be brought back to your iPhone's home screen, no harm done.

While that number can vary anywhere from -40 to -130, it will always be negative, and the closer that number is to zero, the better your cell signal, according to OSX Daily. The best signal you can get would be -40, and no signal at all would be -130.

If your iPhone is running iOS 8 or iOS 9 and you can't see the number because of Apple's new "Back-to-last-app" feature that creates a link to the last app you were using in the same corner of your screen, don't worry. There's still another way to display your true signal strength. This method allows you to always have easy access to that number without going through the hassle of dialing out to the Field Test App, enabling your iPhone to display both numbers so you just tap the signal dots in the future to check.

To enable this, return to your phone and dial *3001#12345#* and tap "Call," like before.

You'll be brought to the Field Test App again, but instead of using the home button to exit, hold down your iPhone's power/sleep button until it shows the "Slide to power off" screen and then hold the down your iPhone's home button, which will force quit Field Test App.

You'll be back to your iPhone's homescreen, but this time you should notice that your signal strength number has replaced your signal strength dots.

Field Test mode

If you tap that number, you can switch between the two as you see fit.

To undo any changes you made, simply repeat the steps to get into Field Test Mode and tap the Home button to exit the app, and everything will revert back to normal.

 

SEE ALSO: Use This Trick To See A Map Of Everywhere Google Knows You've Been

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This guy used the blizzard as an opportunity to go snowboarding behind a Jeep through the empty streets of New York City

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Casey Neistat snowboarding through nyc streets

YouTuber Casey Neistat is no stranger to creating viral videos, but his latest might just be his best.

Like most New Yorkers this weekend, Neistat found himself trapped in the city during the big snowstorm. With an official travel ban in effect, the streets were mostly empty. But instead of staying indoors, Neistat grabbed his snowboard and some friends to film what it would be like to go snowboarding through the empty streets towed behind a Jeep Wrangler, of course.

Even the NYPD shows up to say a few words, though it looks like they didn't mind the stunt. You can watch the full video below.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Walking the streets of New York City on day 1 of Winter Storm Jonas

How to make a 'flat white' — the Australian coffee drink that has Americans all confused

One couple fed themselves for 6 months on less than $200 by eating the food no one else wanted

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unspecified 1

Collectively, people waste nearly 50% of global food— and in the US and Canada alone, we're wasting $6,000 worth of food every second.

Canada-based filmmakers Grant Baldwin and Jen Rustemeyer wanted to find out how much of that food is still good, and if they could eat it, so they came up with a challenge: to survive on food waste for six months.

"We went cold-turkey," they told NPR on a recent podcast. "We said we're going to consume only food that is destined for the trash or already in it. So we could pay for it, but we found that most places would not sell us dated food."

After six months of dumpster diving and searching behind wholesale warehouses, they managed to rescue over $20,000 worth of food — and spent a scant $200 on groceries.

To see how they did it, we checked out their documentary on the project, "Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story," which featured interviews with authors Tristram Stuart and Jonathan Bloom, and the Natural Resources Defense Council project scientist, Dana Gunders:

SEE ALSO: I compared the price of organic and regular items at Whole Foods — here's what I found

Baldwin and Rustemeyer hashed out the rules for the six month challenge over their "last supper": an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

1. They must eat only discarded food — anything expired or already wasted.
2. They could eat what friends and family serve, "to alleviate the stress of making everyone feel uncomfortable," Rustemeyer explained in "Just Eat It."



Most supermarkets wouldn't sell them dated food, so they often resorted to dumpsters. "We found 18-foot dumpsters all the time filled with food," they told NPR. "And the majority of that was because it was near the date label, but rarely past it."



The most food waste comes from households, in part because of the confusing nature of date labels.

There are 'sell by' and 'best by' dates on food products, and the customer should really only see the latter, explained Stuart: "The 'sell by' date shouldn't appear visibly. It should be encoded so that only staff understand it because it confuses people. They say 'display until,' customers see it, and they think, 'Oh, I can't eat it after that day.'"



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

12 things every guy should have in his living room

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living room

A living room needs to be livable. It's obvious in the name.

Unfortunately, too many guys treat their living rooms as afterthoughts, stuffing them with futons and not putting the proper care into making it a space worthy of spending such a large amount of time in.

Make sure that's not the case for your living room by ensuring you have all of these 12 essentials.

SEE ALSO: 10 things every guy should have in his bedroom

DON'T FORGET: Follow Business Insider's lifestyle page on Facebook!

A real, authentic, honest-to-goodness sofa.

There's nothing more necessary to a living room than a sofa. It's a cornerstone.

And no — a futon doesn't count.



Without accent pillows, your sofa will look pretty boring.

Spice it up with an interesting color combination.

These pillows from One Kings Lane can turn any drab couch inherited from your relatives into something that might actually look like it belongs in your apartment.



A chair to go along with your sofa.

Unless there's actually no extra room, a chair is an absolute necessity to go along with your sofa.

It completes the look of the living room area, and provides a nice L-shape where a rug can sit.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

15 over-the-top homes you can rent with the Airbnb for millionaires


Stop hurting your engine by idling the car when it's cold out

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snow car

Harsh driving conditions in winter are already hard on your car, but you could be making things a lot worse if you're turning your vehicle on in the morning so it can "warm up" before you drive off.

If you're one of the many drivers who thinks it's important to idle your car — turn it on and let it sit — in these frigid winter months to protect the engine, you've likely fallen victim to a myth that may be doing more harm than good.

We spoke with mechanical engineer and former drag racer Stephen Ciatti about the pervasive myth that you need to warm up your car in the winter.

For the last 26 years, Ciatti has worked on combustion engines — engines that generate power from burning fuel, like gasoline — and currently oversees all of the combustion engine work at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

To get straight to the point, Ciatti said that idling your car in the cold not only wastes fuel, but it's also stripping oil from critical components that help your engine run, namely the cylinders and pistons.

How it works

Under normal conditions, your car engine runs on a mixture of air and vaporized fuel, gasoline in this case. When that mixture enters a cylinder, a piston compresses it, which — at the risk of oversimplifying — generates a combustion event, powering the engine.

But when it's cold outside, gasoline is less likely to evaporate. Your car compensates for this initially by adding more gasoline to the air-vapor mixture — what Ciatti calls running "rich" — and that's where the problem begins. Here's an animation that shows how pistons drive the cylinders in your car to generate a combustion event:

pistons

"That's a problem because you're actually putting extra fuel into the combustion chamber to make it burn and some of it can get onto the cylinder walls," Ciatti said. "Gasoline is an outstanding solvent and it can actually wash oil off the walls if you run it in those cold idle conditions for an extended period of time."

Over time, that washing action can "have a detrimental effect on the lubrication and life of things like piston rings and cylinder liners," which are critical to running the cylinders and pistons that breathe life into your engine, Ciatti said.

The bottom line: Contrary to popular belief, idling your car does not prolong the life of your engine; rather it shortens it.

A simple solution

snow covered car bemused driver mountain

Thankfully, your car doesn't run rich the entire winter. It only happens when the gasoline is cold. Once your engine warms up to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the car transfers to normal fuel-consumption rates.

So you might think by idling your car, you're warming it up, which will prevent this problem. But don't confuse warm air coming from your car's radiator with a warm engine. Idling is, in fact, the root of the problem.

"Idling isn't really getting the engine up to temperature, and until that happens the little brain box on the engine is going to keep sending rich-fuel mixture to the cylinders so that it can ensure that enough is evaporated for a consistent combustion event."

The fastest way to warm your engine up is to use it, aka to drive!

Some might tell you that the power-steering fluid — the oil that pushes on pumps enabling you to control the car's wheels — might be too cold to flow properly. To that, Ciatti said no way.

"You will get the oil warmer faster, so that it's flowing exactly the way it's intended, if you drive the car lightly reasonably quickly [after turning it on], within say 30 seconds to a minute," Ciatti said. "The power-steering pump is certainly going to groan a little bit ... but idling the car for five minutes isn't doing a thing for the power-steering fluid. Nothing. You're not making the power-steering fluid do anything because you're not steering and moving the pump."

In the time it takes you to scrape the snow and ice off of your windows, your car will be ready to go.

Don't gun it

car snowBe gentle with the gas pedal at first. It takes time for your engine to warm up once you step on the gas — between five and 15 minutes depending on driving conditions — and you'll put unnecessary stress on it if you go racing down the road immediately after turning your car on.

Moreover, because your car is going to run a bit rich before the engine reaches 40 degrees Fahrenheit, you're going to get lower gas mileage than usual.

In fact, your car will be at least 12% less efficient at burning fuel when it's cold, according to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department.

If you put your pedal to the metal straight out of the driveway, you're just wasting gas, MIT mechanical engineer John Heywood told Business Insider.

"[Idling] does of course use fuel, and the bigger the engine, the more fuel," he said.

Roots of the myth

iconic cars janis joplin porscheSome myths die hard, and the notion that you need to idle your car in the cold is no exception. The basis for this thinking extends to an age when car engines relied on carburetors.

Before 1980, carburetors were the heart that kept car engines pumping.

From the 1980s onward, however, electronic fuel injection took over and is still what powers today's car engines.

The key difference is that electronic fuel injection comes with a sensor that feeds the cylinders the right air-fuel mixture to generate a combustion event. Carburetor-run cars lacked this important sensor.

Therefore, if your gasoline was too cold, your car wouldn't run rich, it would simply stall out. In those days, it was important to get the carburetor warm before driving. But those frustrating times met their end long ago, and so too should pointless idling.

Yes, you're going to be cold during the first few minutes it takes your radiator to warm up and start blowing air that feels comfortable. But you'll be saving yourself fuel as well as a lot of time and money.

UP NEXT: The first video footage of SpaceX's rocket-landing attempt reveals how incredibly close it came to success

SEE ALSO: 11 mind-melting photos will make you realize how shockingly small Earth is

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How Google thinks about its iconic 'Doodles' that spruce up its homepage (GOOG)

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Ryan Germick

Ryan Germick loves to shed light on forgotten anniversaries or lesser-known historical figures, and he has an incredibly enormous platform with which to do so: Google's homepage.

For the last five years, he's led the "Doodle Team", a small-but-scrappy group of artists, engineers, and program managers who bring splashes of cleverness and creativity to the search engine's site. 

The now-iconic Doodle tradition started way back in 1998, when Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin put the logo of Burning Man festival behind one of the "O"s as a kind of "away message" for the week they planned to spend in the Nevada dessert. Two years later, the duo asked intern Dennis Hwang to create an illustration for Bastille Day. People loved it so much that they named Hwang "chief Doodler" and gave him reign to sporadically decorate the logo around special events or holidays.   

Today, Doodles are an opportunity for Google to express its values (like technology, innovation, and quirkiness) in a fun, visual way, Germick explains. That rationale has led to creating thousands of incredibly diverse Doodles over the years, like celebrating Sally Ride, honoring the man who invented the Moog Synthesizer, and making a statement about equality right before the Sochi Olympics.

Google Doodle

There's also a much more organized process where Doodlers plan out their artwork for the year at long brainstorming sessions, making sure that they're representing a diverse array of people and events. Although the team works out of Google's Mountain View headquarters, they create country and region-specific artwork too, meaning, for example, that an artist may get matched with a Slovenian Googler to jointly come up with the perfect way to celebrate a nationally beloved poet.

Doodle_team_photo

When he talked to Business Insider, Germick and his team were just preparing to launch a Doodle for Wilbur Scoville, who created the scale to measure the spiciness of peppers. 

"We love knowledge that enriches our lives in some way," he says. "For the Scoville Doodle, we were inspired by an individual’s passion to try to categorize something that wasn’t categorized. In some ways — in the grand scheme of the universe — it wasn’t the biggest thing, but it’s beautiful that he was able to put order to something that wasn’t ordered."

Germick says that the ideal Doodle not only speaks to Google's values, but is educational, immersive, and emotionally resonant for people in some way. 

"Even if it's a one-second smile, spread that across a billion users and that's a billion seconds of smiling," he says.

In the same vein, Kristopher Hom, another Doodler that Business Insider talked to, says that one of the best parts about his job is creating things that he knows people can bond over and talk about. 

"It's cool to be able to build something that everybody gets to experience together."

SEE ALSO: Play the adorable Google Doodle game celebrating the guy who created a scale for the spiciness of peppers

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How to find Netflix’s secret categories

25 books that every entrepreneur should read

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mark cubanYou are what you read, and if your goal is to build a massively successful company where you call the shots, you might want to start with the following books.

We spoke with wildly successful entrepreneurs and VCs like Mark Cuban and Peter Thiel and pored over years of interviews with star founders to find the books that every aspiring entrepreneur should read.

Here are their top recommendations.

Bianca Male, Aimee Groth, Richard Feloni, Natalie Walters, and Alison Griswold contributed reporting to this article.

SEE ALSO: 33 business books every professional should read before turning 30

"The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand

Self-made billionaire Mark Cuban tells Business Insider that this book is required reading for every entrepreneur.

It's also a favorite of Charlie O'Donnell, a partner at Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. He says:

I don't know any book that sums up the entrepreneurial passion and spirit better than "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand: "The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

Get it here >>



"The Effective Executive" by Peter Drucker

This is one of the three books that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had his senior managers read for a series of all-day book clubs. Drucker helped popularize now commonplace ideas about management. For example, managers and employees should work toward a common set of goals.

"The Effective Executive" explores the time-management and decision-making habits that best equip an executive to be productive and valuable in an organization.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

Get it here >>



"The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen

Bezos also had his executives read "The Innovator's Dilemma," one of the all-time most influential business books and a top pick of several other founders and VCs, whose reviews are below.

Steve Blank, a former serial entrepreneur who now teaches at UC Berkeley and other schools, says of the book:

Why do large companies seem and act like dinosaurs? Christensen finally was able to diagnose why and propose solutions. Entrepreneurs should read these books as "how to books" to beat large companies in their own markets.

Chris Dixon, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz and a former cofounder and CEO of Hunch, notes:

"The Innovator's Dilemma" popularized the (often misused) phrase "disruptive technology," but there's a lot more than that one big idea. Great insights into the "dynamics" (changes over time) of markets.

Get it here >>



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The best way to text with someone you want to date, according to Aziz Ansari

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Woman and Man Texting

Dating in the 21st century is confusing. We have complicated ways of connecting that didn't exist 20 years ago, and much of our conversation with romantic partners happens over text message.

Comedian Aziz Ansari is here to help us out. For his new book, "Modern Romance," Ansari worked with sociologist Eric Klinenberg to explore how we date in the digital age. They talked with hundreds of single people across the world, asking how they connect with romantic partners.

Ansari and Klinenberg discovered the entire culture of finding love has evolved dramatically, fueled in part by the advent of cellphones and the explosion in online dating.

They also found that a lot of people have questions about texting etiquette.

Here are some of their tips.

Don't wait to send that first text.

 RAW Embed

Although the three-day rule has floated around as solid advice for what seems like forever, Ansari and Klinenberg found that's actually a myth.

After you meet someone you like, the best time to send the first text is that same day. It's better to touch base sooner rather than later, because it keeps the romantic momentum going.

That person already gave you their number, so chances are they dig you.



Avoid "heyyy" and make it personal.

RAW Embed

Ansari and Klinenberg found one of women's most common texting peeves was the generic "hello" text. 

"After seeing hundreds and hundreds of messages in womens' phones," Ansari writes, "I can definitively say that most of the texts women receive are, sadly, utterly lacking in either thought or personality."

Instead, reference something you talked about when you first met that person. Show them you actually listen to what they say.



Try to be clever.

RAW Embed

Adding a dose of comedy to your texts can really up your game, Ansari says. It keeps things lighthearted and makes you memorable to the other person.

At the same time, try not to overdo it, because sometimes sarcasm or offbeat humor can be a little hard to decipher over text.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Chelsea Handler's new app will get you out of bad dates and awkward meetings

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chelsea does

In an episode of her new Netflix documentary series, "Chelsea Does," comedian Chelsea Handler works through her frustrations around technology. She even helped create her own app, called Gotta Go.

Designed in partnership with app developer Yeti, Gotta Go has one simple function: to get you out of unwanted situations.  

All you have to do is create an excuse (i.e. aliens are abducting me, my house was just burglarized), assign it to a phone contact who will be the one to fake-text or call you, attach an emoji so you can remember it later on, and set an alarm when you want the excuse to pop up.

When you're in that boring dinner later in the evening, you'll get the text you created earlier, or if you so choose, a phone call with a pre-recorded message from Handler.  

Handler's initial conversations with Yeti began nearly a year ago. While Yeti did much of the app design, she arrived with ideas about what the app should look like. Originally, she wanted to make an app to get people out of bad dates. The concept soon evolved, according to Yeti president Tony Scherba.   

"We wanted to pick a problem that she could really relate to, like getting out of sticky situations," he tells Tech Insider. "Getting out of awkward and bad dates was something Chelsea brought up, and we started thinking of other situations where people would want an eject button."

The app itself is uncluttered and easy to use. It has one function and does it well. I could imagine using it once in awhile, though probably not on an everyday basis.

Gotta Go

Later in the documentary episode, Handler pitches the app to VCs at Foundation Capital, a respected venture capital firm in the Bay Area. 

"Chelsea's pitch was as entertaining and unique as you could imagine. It's not everyday that we get a Hollywood A-lister pitching an app to us," Paul Holland, a general partner at Foundation Capital, tells Tech Insider.

He had concerns about the "stickiness" of the app (that is, whether people would keep using it over time), but noted that the dating app space is a large and profitable one. Want to know whether Foundation Capital invested? You'll have to watch.

Regardless, if there's enough interest, Yeti plans to keep the app updated. "If people like it, we'll try to keep it going as long as possible," says Scherba.

Join the conversation about this story »

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5 reasons not to go gluten free

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bread

Gluten-free diets are all the rage.

But is eating gluten, the protein found in wheat that gives our bread dough that stretchy feeling, really making us any less healthy?

For a little less than the 1% of the population who have celiac disease, an underdiagnosed autoimmune disorder where eating gluten damages the small intestine, ditching gluten is necessary.

Another 0.63% to 6% of people may be sensitive to gluten without having celiac, meaning that when they eat gluten, they get many of the symptoms that people with celiac disease do. (This condition, called non-celiac gluten sensitivity, is a bit controversial, however, with severalstudies suggesting it's either overblown or doesn't exist.)

If you're considering going gluten-free and not changing any other dietary habits because it seems like the best way to lose a few pounds, here's why that really isn't the best idea:

1. It's in lots of the foods you eat.

Soy sauce To be truly gluten-free requires a lot more than taking the buns off your burger.

Gluten is found in lots of things, from salad dressings and creamy soups (where it's used as a thickening agent) to soy sauce. And, of course, beer has gluten because it's made with wheat or barley.

2. Foods with gluten are also often rich in other nutrients.

If you quit gluten without changing any other aspects of your diet, you may be at risk of not getting enough of two key ingredients: fiber and vitamin B.

 The eight B vitamins assist our bodies in siphoning energy from our food we eat. They also help us make red blood cells, which deliver oxygen. One in particular, called folic acid, is important for pregnant women because it helps prevent birth defects. While vitamin B is plentiful in lots of other types of food, from fish, meat, eggs, and dairy products to leafy greens, peas, and beans, it's also found in a lot of cereals and bread products. If your diet is already lacking in these areas and you go gluten-free, you could be at risk of a deficiency.

Fiber, another ingredient that's prevalent in bread and grains, is important for helping us control blood sugar levels, keep us feeling full after a meal, and regulating our bowel movements.

3. The gluten-free craze could be making it harder for people who truly can't eat it.

Compared with people who have celiac disease or a gluten allergy, people who shun gluten for "health reasons" get to be a little more relaxed about what counts as going gluten free. For example, they don't have to worry about cross-contamination (when gluten-full products touch gluten-free foods), and the occasional "cheat day" is permissible.

But many who actually can't eat gluten say the craze has created an unwanted stigma around their very real health problem. "Waiters, thinking I am just another ankle-boot wearing Gwyneth wannabe, no longer take me seriously," writes Elissa Strauss, who has celiac disease, in Jezebel. "It is actually harder for me to eat out now than it was a few years ago because a little dusting of flour on a piece of flounder equals a few days in bed for me."

junk food4. Gluten likely isn't the culprit of your tummy troubles.

When you cut out gluten, you cut out a lot of junk food, which research suggests could be the real reason some people suddenly feel better when they go gluten-free.

Instead of cutting gluten, try just cutting junk food instead. 

5. Going gluten-free before you consult your doctor can make things trickier.

The only way to test for celiac is when you have gluten in your system. So, if you think you might have a sensitivity or even celiac, it's best to go to the doctor before changing your eating habits. That way, they can run the tests and let you know for sure exactly what's making you feel funky.

The moral of the story? We've been eating gluten for at least 10,000 years. For the vast majority of us, cutting it out now — unless medically necessary — isn't our best bet for a healthy lifestyle.

READ NEXT: A massive misconception is wreaking havoc on how we think about food

CHECK OUT: A basic principle explains why doing a 'detox' is utterly useless

Join the conversation about this story »

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One of the biggest travel Instagram accounts out there shares how they got more than 5 million followers


What it's like to ski at the biggest resort in the Middle East

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Skiing in Iran

When it comes to hitting the slopes, Iran is probably not the first place you'd think of. But at Dizin ski resort, located about two hours north of Tehran by car, you'll find some of the highest quality snow in the Middle East. 

Tourists and locals are welcome to ski all season, which runs from late November to late May.

The ski season is longer than the average American and European season because the base of the mountains sits at 9,000 feet above sea level, with lifts running as high as 12,000 feet.

SEE ALSO: 15 US ski resorts that are actually affordable

Ticket prices run from $20 to $25 per day.



Because of the high altitude, it snows regularly throughout ski season — creating the perfect powder conditions.



Dizin is ranked among the 40 highest ski resorts in the world. To get there, tourists can drive north from Tehran — it's a 74-mile journey through steep hills.

Source: Skiresort.info



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

The secrets to living longer

If your password is on this list, you should change it immediately

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ipad, typing, mobile advertising conference, june 2012, bi, dngOn Tuesday, the password-management company SplashData released its annual list of the most popular passwords of the past year.

SplashData took a look at the more than 2 million passwords that got leaked last year, analyzing the most commonly leaked passwords and those that were least secure.

Most of the passwords on SplashData's list come from Western European and North American users.

Unsurprisingly, "123456" and "password" topped the list, but phrases like "monkey," "dragon," and "princess" also placed in the top 25. The password "starwars" also entered the top 25 in 2015.

To keep your passwords secure, you definitely shouldn't use any of the phrases on SplashData's list.

SplashData recommends using passwords that are eight digits or longer with different types of characters (letters, numbers, and symbols); using different username and password combinations for different websites; and using a password manager to protect your passwords and help you generate passwords that are random and thus more difficult for others to guess correctly.

Here's SplashData's full list. If your password is on here, think about changing it.

1. 123456

2. password

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A luxurious Miami mansion built by the 'The King of Cocaine' is no more

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escobar home

A vestige of the drug wars that made Miami notorious for violence and smuggling in the 1980s is being razed, with the new owners of what was once Pablo Escobar's property anxiously sifting through the wreckage for any last traces of the reign of "the King of Cocaine."

Demolition began Tuesday on a pink waterfront mansion located on 5860 North Bay Road in Miami. The estate was one of many belonging to the Colombian drug lord before it was seized by the US government.

Escobardied in a shootout with Colombian National Police in 1993.

escobar death

Christian de Berdouare escobar"I'm very excited to see the house of the devil disappearing right before our eyes," said the property's new owner, Christian de Berdouare, who owns the Chicken Kitchen fast-food chain.

"This was the biggest criminal in the history of the world. I would like to be associated with something more uplifting, but nevertheless, it is a part of the city," he said.

Though the mansion was listed under Escobar's own name, it's unclear whether he ever spent any time in Miami Beach.

escobar miamiEscobar was the son of a poor Colombian farmer, but by the time he was 35, he was one of the world's wealthiest men.

Despite his humble origins, Escobar became the leader of the Medellín cartel, which was responsible for 80% of the global cocaine market in the 1980s.

escobar plane"El Patron" brought in an estimated $420 million a week in revenue, making him one of the wealthiest drug lords ever.

While verifying Escobar's wealth is impossible because of the nature of drug money, estimates of his net worth run as high as $30 billion at his peak.

At roughly 6,500 square feet, the four-bedroom mansion built in 1948 would have been modest for the "King of Cocaine," who was known for garish homes and lavish spending.

The palm-lined neighborhood is now home to Bee Gees singer Barry Gibb and other celebrities who have built massive homes behind tall hedges and gated driveways.

The house has unfettered access to Biscayne Bay, with Miami's skyline glittering nearby. A former neighbor told de Berdouare that he remembered seeing cigarette boats regularly coming and going in the water outside the house.

escobar miami mansion

He also remembered loud parties and a mustachioed man who traveled with a fleet of vehicles and armed men.

"I think they used the cover of a very residential neighborhood in order to conduct their illicit trade," de Berdouare said.

Unaware of its history before he bought it from a private owner in May 2014 for $9.65 million, de Berdouare's wife insisted on having a Roman Catholic monsignor bless the property before they commenced plans for a modern home there.

"A lot of people forget what life was like in Miami in the 1980s, when people were literally doing cocaine out in the open in bars and no one wanted go to South Beach at all and there were shootouts in the street," said de Berdouare's wife, journalist Jennifer Valoppi.

escobar mansionThe couple hired professional treasure hunters and a documentary film crew to comb through the structure before and after demolition for ties to Escobar's cartel.

Unusual holes have been found in floors and walls, along with a safe that was stolen from its hole in the marble flooring before it could be properly excavated, Valoppi said.

Valoppi said former federal law-enforcement officials warned the couple that people who knew Escobar's crew might return to the house to steal whatever might remain from the cartel's heyday. The mansion had been damaged by fire and was prone to break-ins as it sat empty after its 2014 sale.

miami escobar

The seizure of Escobar's property marked in a turning point in the US government's efforts to stop the drug smuggling, said Mark Schnapp, who was an assistant US attorney from 1982 to 1989 and one of the lawyers who wrote the 1986 federal indictment in Miami that recognized Escobar's Medellín cartel as an organized business enterprise.

"One of things we discovered in 1987 was the Medellín cartel members actually had (Florida) property in their own names, which was a big surprise," Schnapp said.

The seizure of civil assets that began in the 1980s helped finance law-enforcement actions against the cartels, in cases that eventually led to, for example, the Miami indictment of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega on drug-trafficking charges, he said.

"In a sense it's kind of the end of an era," Schnapp said, watching an excavator tear into the garage roof, "but there's still a lot of drugs that come through Miami."

SEE ALSO: This dilapidated villa once served as a Caribbean getaway for drug-kingpin Pablo Escobar

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NOW WATCH: Pablo Escobar: The life and death of one of the biggest cocaine kingpins in history

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