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15 hard truths about adulthood, from a 29-year-old illustrator who tells it like it is

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In September 2015, Mari Andrew decided to start drawing a picture a day.

"I was sort of depressed and found myself going home just to watch Netflix way more often," Andrew told Business Insider in an email. "I wanted a creative hobby, so I thought illustrating would be an easy, enjoyable way to document little moments from my day."

She started posting her drawings to Instagram to hold herself accountable, and soon enough, she started building a following. Today, the 29-year-old has over 14,000 followers on her account, @bymariandrew.

Hi! My beloved friend @susan_alexandra interviewed me on her magical site! ✨ www.susanalexandra.com/friend-zone

A photo posted by Mari Andrew (@bymariandrew) on May 12, 2016 at 9:23am PDT on

"Who knew so many people could relate to my dating woes and existential angst?" she said. "Now that my account is more public and a lot of people see it, my goal is for my audience to feel connected and understood. When you can laugh at the confusion and challenges in your life, you can get through them way more easily. So I try to give people a reason to laugh at themselves and realize that we're all in this together."

Below, see 15 of Andrew's all-too-relatable illustrations about everything from happiness to money to scheduling. For the rest, follow her on Twitter, Instagram, or check out her website.

SEE ALSO: These 16 truths about adulthood drawn on Post-its will make you laugh before you cringe

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I've been on antidepressants for a decade — here's what everyone gets wrong about them

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Pill bottle with pills and medicine spilling out of it

It started with a math test.

I was in the eighth grade, sitting at my assigned seat with a pencil and a green sheet of paper in front of me — it was the class final.

Suddenly, my mind went blank. The words and numbers on the page all blurred together and became meaningless. I froze with fear. My heart raced. What was happening to me?

With all the effort I could muster, I raised a shaky hand to ask for the bathroom pass. As soon as I got there, I started crying uncontrollably. Somewhere between the sobs, I managed to vomit into the toilet.

Although I didn't know it then, what happened that day would be the beginning of a painful and confusing series of severe bouts — "episodes," in psychiatric parlance — of anxiety and depression that would land me in a handful of hospitals and treatment centers.

Eventually, I'd be prescribed antidepressants, the drugs that I'm now convinced saved my life. But the road to medication was rocky. If it weren't for a series of somewhat random events, a handful of truly caring doctors — and, of course, the health insurance that made the drugs affordable — I probably would never have found them.

The odds of me finding these medications were largely against me, as they are for many people who may need them. There's a wide public perception — which I've encountered directly and which Peter D. Kramer, a psychiatrist and Brown University professor, details in his new book, "Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants"— that antidepressants are inherently bad. They're seen either as an easy way out of the "hard work" of dealing with feelings, or as something that can get you high. Some even think they can be manipulated to make you smarter or give you superpowers. This certainly isn't what happened to me. (If it did, I'd be flying around South America in a cape instead of writing this post.)

On the other hand, some people claim that antidepressants work no better than placebos, or sugar pills. And several studies — including one that Kramer directly addresses, which was first published in 1998 and then redone with more information in 2008— seem to back this up. But, as Kramer shows, other studies continue to find the opposite result, that antidepressants work and that they can be life-changing, especially for people whose depression is severe or long-lasting.

For me, what antidepressants did was remarkably simple: They made me feel OK. In the words of Kramer, they made me feel "ordinarily well."

Panic

When my anxiety first started cropping up, my parents wanted me to go a "natural" route — in other words, they wanted me to stick to talk therapy with counselors. They wanted me to avoid medication.

LCHSseniorsinnout

At the time, their choice made sense. Everything from antidepressants to ADHD medications were being prescribed at alarming rates. In 2013, one in 10 Americans took an antidepressant. And many of them likely didn't need it.

A study published that year in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics found that roughly two-thirds of a sample of about 5,000 people with a depression diagnosis in the previous year didn't meet the criteria for a major depressive episode, as defined in the psychiatry handbook known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM.

It seemed as though the vast majority of doctors were merely writing a prescription and raking in money rather than sitting with patients and taking time to talk out their issues using evidence-based methods like cognitive behavioral therapy.

But eventually, despite weekly sessions of therapy, my panic attacks got so bad that I couldn't sleep or go to school. I had nightmares. I thought of every single worst-case scenario that could happen and I lived as if they were imminent. I started obsessing about everything, from the tests I might fail, to the friends who might abandon me, to the food that might make me fat. I contemplated suicide. My weight dropped to 90 pounds.

Concerned, my parents took me to dozens of doctors, who tested me for everything. When no results turned up, my mom took me to see a psychiatrist. The drive was four hours round trip, but somehow one of my working parents managed to squeeze it into their schedule every few weeks.

After two or three 45-minute sessions with the psychiatrist, I was diagnosed as anorexic "with panic" and given a prescription for a tiny orange tablet called Klonopin.

Klonopin is not an antidepressant. It's a tranquilizer. It's typically used to treat seizures, but it's prescribed for panic disorder as well. I was supposed to take it whenever I felt panicky, which sounded like a bit of a slippery slope to me. Didn't I always feel a little bit panicky? How would I know when I really needed it and when I was just trying to avoid my feelings? So I reserved it only for when I was in the throes of a full-blown attack.

It "worked," if you'd call feeling like your mind has been wiped blank working. Klonopin made me numb.

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Starting over

One day, I refused to go to my appointment. I cried and told my mom that there was no point in trying anymore, that I was broken and there was nothing that could be done for me. For some reason, she didn't believe me.

So we started over. I stopped seeing the psychiatrist who gave me Klonopin and began seeing other doctors. I saw an endocrinologist, who specialized in hormones, along with several different therapists.

After weeks of consultation with all of them, the endocrinologist decided to put me on my first antidepressant — a drug called Lexapro. Lexapro belongs to a group of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, which are thought to work by amplifying the activity of the chemical serotonin in the brain.

The way we'd know whether the medication was working, my doctor told me, was if I didn't really notice any big changes in my feelings or my behavior.

That sounded strange to me. Didn't I need a big change? After all, I'd wanted to die. Still, I was ready to try just about anything, and I trusted her. So, I took the medication as directed, and continued to see her and my therapist.

At some point (I can't say exactly when), I started to feel like the world seemed a little less dark. It was as if I'd been seeing everything in front of me with a dark-tinged, heavily vignetted filter for years, and someone had gently peeled it off. I didn't feel like I wanted to die, and I didn't feel numb. Everything was sort of OK, and when my doctor asked how I was doing, that's all I could tell her. "I feel OK," I said. She smiled.

Studies suggest that this can happen for many people with depression and anxiety who are prescribed the right medication and corresponding treatment, as Kramer details. In one chapter, Kramer writes about one of his first patients, a woman named Adele, whom he saw while he was still a medical student at Harvard.

She was a 26-year-old elementary school teacher who suffered from depression and who'd considered suicide. After Adele had been treated for an overactive thyroid, Kramer's supervising doctor placed her on the antidepressant drug imipramine. "Imipramine acted in a fashion I later came to call courteous," Kramer wrote. "It afforded modest but invaluable relief."

That modest but invaluable relief was exactly what I'd experienced on Lexapro.

After the panic attacks had stopped and I gained back some weight, my therapist started suggesting I get back into some types of gentle exercise, like yoga. Slowly but surely, I started to get better.

yoga

I made friends. I started eating real food. I excelled in school. I moved to a different city. I went to college. I developed a support network of people I could trust and talk to about anything. I moved across the country. I went to graduate school. I started a career.

I did absolutely none of it on my own.

I kept working with a therapist who was trained in cognitive behavioral therapy, a type of psychotherapy that involves recognizing negative thought patterns and coming up with solutions to overcome them. I saw a psychiatrist who managed my medication, went to group yoga classes at least a few times a week, and stayed close to the friends and family that had helped me through the bad times.

Research suggests that each of these parts of my recovery can help alleviate the symptoms of depression. Exercise has been linked with a reduction in many depressive symptoms. So have antidepressants, therapy, and steady social support.

At some point though, despite all of it, I hit a bit of a lull. Some of my problematic behaviors started to creep back in. My psychiatrist recommended trying a new medication. I was hesitant, but again, I trusted her. She wrote me a prescription for Prozac, and I stopped the Lexapro.

The transition was a little rocky, but eventually I felt OK again. I continued doing yoga several times a week, connecting with my friends and family, and going to therapy.

For me, antidepressants were a tool. They enabled me to start feeling OK, to start reaching out to others for help, and to start doing things that I enjoyed doing and that made me feel good. They lifted a heavy blanket of depression that had previously made all of these things sound like impossible chores.

I don't think they're a panacea, and they're certainly not for everyone. But they worked for me. They helped me find normal. And without them, I don't think I'd ever know what that feels like.

SEE ALSO: We're on the cusp of an explosive change in how we treat one of America's most ignored health problems

DON'T MISS: The foremost authority on drugs in the US just smashed a huge misconception about addiction

Join the conversation about this story »

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How quickly food goes bad, according to the USDA

Take a tour of the Mars Chocolate office, where life-size M&M's greet you at the door with free candy

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Mars, chocolate, M&Ms, office space

Working for a candy company can be pretty sweet— especially if your employer is Mars.

According to employees at Mars Chocolate — a segment of the $33 billion Mars candy, pet care, and beverage company — the free Snickers and M&Ms aren't even the best part of their job.

"Mars Chocolate is a truly unique place to work," one associate told Business Insider during a recent visit to the Hackettstown, New Jersey, office. "Everyone is passionate about the work they are doing — and the people are incredible. We are one big family and that's not something you get everywhere."

Mars — which was ranked on Fortune's "100 Best Companies To Work For" list in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 — employs 72,000 people (who they call "associates") worldwide and over 25,000 in the US. About 16,000 of those global associates work for Mars Chocolate.

Here are some photos from our tour of the Mars Chocolate North America office in Hackettstown:

SEE ALSO: Meet the woman who makes a living taste-testing chocolate for a $33 billion candy company

Four friendly M&Ms greet you at the main entrance of the building.



Of the 16,000 Mars Chocolate associates around the globe, about 1,200 of them are in Hackettstown.



Mars Chocolate produces 29 candy brands in total, including the billion-dollar global brands M&M's, Snickers, Dove, Milky Way, and Twix. The Mars Chocolate North America campus is also home to the M&M's factory, where 50% of all M&M's sold in the US are made. When you walk through the front doors of the office building, giant M&M's greet you with bins of complimentary candy.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

This startup is taking on Airbnb and Hotel Tonight by letting you find a place to crash at the last minute

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Overnight Founders

When home-sharing app Overnight made its Austin debut before South by Southwest this past March, the company's founders weren't sure what to expect. 

Overnight had already launched in Los Angeles, so Austin was its second city-wide roll-out. 

The launch was a success for the company, which offers users on-demand booking of short-term rentals. Think Airbnb meets Hotel Tonight. Overnight's rentals were cheap — private rooms were going for $70 or $80 and entire homes were available for $150 — and users could find accommodations in 10 minutes or less. 

But something even more important happened that week, something that founder and CEO Asher Hunt is incredibly proud of. Hunt said he received an email during the festival from someone who had booked their stay on Overnight and had a great experience. Here's how Hunt tells it:

"There was a guy who requested at 1:30 in the morning in Austin. He was tattooed and so easily could have been profiled, and he booked with a woman who was 65 years old. The next day, it was her birthday. He’s like a 21-year-old rapper, fashion designer, and athlete and it’s him, the 65-year-old woman, and her housekeeper, and they’re singing happy birthday to her and drinking coffee on the terrace."

It's interactions like that that separate Overnight from other home-sharing apps and other startups in general, Hunt says. The goal of Overnight is to create a community of hosts who not only offer a reliable travel option last-minute, but are clued into what's interesting, cool, and exciting in their city, and are willing to point their guests in the direction of great bars, restaurants, and activities.

OvernighttaxiOvernight also aims to be a self-selecting community of forward-thinking, open-minded users, Hunt said.

"There are a lot of conversations right now about racism on short-term housing platforms, or really any of these platforms," Hunt said. "It exists on all these things when you’re facing a one-on-one interaction with somebody. If we look at how we avoid these kinds of things, it’s community, it’s education, and it's saying, these are the things we support and these are the kinds of things that we absolutely do not support." 

Hunt said the company has heard of stories of racism among some users of sites like Airbnb or Uber, and is working to apply what it's learned to Overnight. The goal, he said, is to combine technology, community-building, and an ethos of respect throughout the company. 

Next stop: going international

After its success in Austin, Overnight launched in San Francisco and, now, New York City. The app made its NYC debut on Thursday, and the company says it already has 400 hosts on the app in New York (and has 3,500 nationwide). The company also launched a new version of the app, which allows for faster, more simplified booking than the previous version, and also allows users to book multiple nights with the same host, which was not a feature before now.

Here's how it works:

  • Guests can scroll through bookings within the app, similarly to how it works on Airbnb. The app shows available homes near your current location — which means it really is designed for those who come to town and haven't booked a place to stay yet.
  • Guests can choose from a shared accommodation — like a couch — or a private bedroom or an entire home
  • The app lets you know if you're connected with someone in real life, showing mutual Facebook friends if you have any
  • Hosts have 10 minutes to respond to a request. If they don't respond or decline, the next available listing is offered up. Much like ride-hailing apps, hosts' rating go down slightly if they don't respond to a request
  • Guests can pay within the app and rate their experience after the fact
  • Hosts are also verified by Overnight, which conducts background checks and requires a Facebook login, phone number, government-issued ID and credit card on file. 

Even before Overnight's official launch in New York, hosts were already using the platform — Hunt himself stayed with an Overnight host on his most recent trip to New York. 

"We’ve seen organic growth in Williamsburg and Brooklyn and we see demand in the core of the city," Hunt said. "This is the most practical step to prepare us to go international, which is going to happen, conservatively, in the next six months to a year."

The obvious question about Overnight is how it's different from Airbnb or from Hotel Tonight, and Hunt doesn't shy away from the comparison to Overnight's home-sharing predecessor. For Hunt, the structure of Airbnb was too rigid for him as a host and the on-demand booking didn't quite work for him as a guest. He thinks Overnight can step in to solve those issues. 

"[Airbnb is] building an incredible business with what they’re doing, but they’re not solving it properly," Hunt said. "I think that last-minute booking really is a problem, and it’s a growing problem, and it’s a growing behavior, too, among millennials. People are not spending more time planning, they’re spending less."

 

SEE ALSO: There's an iPhone in this photo. Do you see it?

Join the conversation about this story »

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These Google Food employees are using high-tech, dirt-free shipping containers to grow organic herbs

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Google Green Machine   3

Google's Mountain View Googleplex headquarters is famous for feeding its nearly 20,000 employees free breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Feeding a small city of employees is a huge undertaking. There's an entire "Google Food" team that staffs more than 185 cafes globally and serves over 108,000 meals each day, with about 30 cafes at the Mountain View Googleplex headquarters alone.

The idea is to nourish employees with food that energize them, not carby low-nutrition foods that bring on afternoon lethargy.

And, because this is Google, the Food Team doesn't just buy and cook the food. They also run programs to grow food in sustainable, high-tech ways. Which means that Google has on its payroll all kinds of people involved with the cutting edge of organic gardening and food. 

One such program is called "Farm to Table." Google has a lot of gardens, but this program looks for ways to educate people about the food industry.  One highlight of that program is a shipping container at the Googleplex called the Leafy Green Machine. Take a look:

Meet Christa Essig, global program manager of Google's Farm to Table program (pictured right) and Ben Kutchur, a sustainable horticulture specialist at Google and organic gardener. Before Google, Essig worked at the CDD, crafted food policy for public health organizations, and has a background in nutrition. Kutcher was a student and organic gardener.



Despite Essig's impressive credentials, it still took five interviews before she landed the job at Google. It's a big job. "The Farm to Table program at Google is about engaging Googlers and our partners about where food comes from, how it's grown and why that matters," she says. The goal is to have people learn about "growing food, or technology and food, or innovations in food." They are standing in front of one of those technologies, the "Leafy Green Machine," a hydroponic garden in a shipping container made by Freight Farms.

Freight Farms is based in Boston.



The idea for food education and technology programs at Google came from several people. Michiel Bakker, who heads the Global Food team, was one of them. He came to Google in 2012 from the hospitality industry.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Here's what those sticker codes on fruits and vegetables mean

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If you're like me, you have probably picked up a fruit or vegetable at the supermarket and wondered what the code on the little stickers mean. These sticker codes carry a lot of useful information about the product.

Apart from telling the cashier how much the product costs, they distinguish products that were produced organically from products that were produced conventionally.

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What Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and 24 other business visionaries were doing in their 20s

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Reed Hastings

Where some might see failure, others might see opportunity for success — and when you're in your twenties, it can be hard to distinguish which is which. 

Salesforce founder Marc Benioff made his first $1 million at 25. At the same age, Spanx founder Sara Blakely was a door-to-door office supply salesman. 

Both entrepreneurs are now billionaires running game-changing companies that are featured on our first ever edition of the Business Insider 100: The Creators —  a nod to some of the most successful and visionary business leaders who are changing the world for the better. 

To show that no two success stories are alike, we put together 25 stories of what people from our Creators ranking were doing in their twenties. 

SEE ALSO: BI 100: The Creators

DON'T MISS: Interview with TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie

Salman Khan was in business school

By the time Khan graduated the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998, he had three degrees under his belt — two bachelors in mathematics and computer science and a masters in engineering. When he was 25, he was pursuing an MBA at Harvard Business School.

Khan spent the following years as a hedge fund analyst, and it wasn't until he started tutoring his cousin in 2004 that the idea for Khan Academy: online videos aimed to help provide low-income students with free tutoring and test preparation.



Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook was cash positive for the first time and hit 300 million users.

Zuckerberg had been hard at work on Facebook for five years by the time he hit age 25. In that year — 2009 — the company turned cash positive for the first time and hit 300 million users. He was excited at the time, but said it was just the start, writing on Facebook that "the way we think about this is that we're just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone." The next year, he was named "Person of the Year" by Time magazine. 



John Lasseter was a newly hired animator at Disney

Right before Pixar was created, Lasseter was a graduate fresh out of the California Institute of Arts. In 1979, when he was 22, he immediately landed a job as an animator for Walt Disney Feature Animation. After a couple of years, he was fired from the company because he, "felt so strongly about computer animation and wouldn't take no for an answer."

Luckily in 1983, he was hired by George Lucas for the Lucasfilm Computer Division. Three years later, the group eventually turned into Pixar when it was purchased by Steve Jobs.



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America’s diet has changed drastically since 1975 — and we’re eating way less of one unhealthy food

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4x3 the changing american diet

Our parents' diets were drastically different from ours.

For one thing, their portion sizes were likely far smaller. For another, they were eating way more red meat.

Things like beef and lamb surged in popularity in the mid 1970s, but they are less common in today's restaurants and grocery stores, thanks to a hefty amount of research, which first emerged in the 1980s and '90s, connecting those products to unhealthy outcomes, such as cancer and heart disease.

We've also started eating more dark green, leafy vegetables, as scientists have begun learning about their protective benefits against chronic disease — something that's earned many of these veggies nicknames like "superfood" or "powerhouse food."

Changes in our understanding of fat and dairy are also reflected in our eating habits, as the consumption of things like whole milk plummeted in the 1990s to be replaced by low-fat or nonfat alternatives. Take a look at the rest of the ways Americans' eating habits have changed.

SEE ALSO: 25 'superfoods' you should be eating more of right now

DON'T MISS: Something we have no control over could have a huge role in weight gain

Meat





Vegetables



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7 ways being married makes you more successful

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couple bride groom wedding

If you're enjoying a life of wedded bliss, congratulations on beating some impressive odds.

According to Bloomberg, married Americans are now the minority.

In the US, fewer people are getting hitched than before, and young Americans are putting off marriage for longer than ever before.

In 1962, half of 21-year-olds and 90% of 30-year-olds had been married at least once. In 2014, only 8% of 21-year-olds and 55% of 30-year-olds had been married.

For those who have beaten the odds, marriage will ultimately impact many facets of your success.

These studies will begin to unpack how that could be a good thing:

SEE ALSO: 9 scientific ways having a child influences your success

SEE ALSO: 7 ways being single makes you more successful

Marrying your best friend makes you really, really happy

A recent study on marital satisfaction released by the National Bureau of Economic Research and previously reported on by Business Insider suggests that the happiest people are those who are married to their best friends.

Controlling for premarital happiness, the study concluded that, overall, marriage leads to increased well-being.

And the study found that those who consider their spouse or partner to be their best friend get about twice as much life satisfaction from marriage as other married people.

The authors concluded that partners can provide each other with a unique kind of social support and help each other overcome some of life's biggest challenges, and people with the most difficult lives — for example, middle-aged people, who often experience a dip in personal well-being — can benefit the most.



Married people get some monetary bonuses

According to two Atlantic writers who crunched some numbers, married women can pay as much as $1 million less than their single counterparts over a lifetime.

The writers looked at the tax penalties and bonuses, as well as living costs like health spending and housing costs.

According to the Tax Policy Center, a married couple suffers a "marriage penalty" if they pay more income tax as a married couple than they would have as two single individuals. A couple receives a "marriage bonus" if they pay less income tax as a married couple than they would have as two single individuals.

When couples combine their incomes, especially when they have similar incomes, this can push them into a higher tax bracket, which would result in a higher tax rate.

In addition to the tax break you receive from filing jointly, couples are more likely to receive a marriage bonus when spouses earn different amounts.

There are a lot of factors affecting marriage penalties and bonuses, but generally, according to the US Department of the Treasury Office of Tax Analysis, more married couples under the age of 65 filing joint tax returns on average see bonuses than penalties.

According to the BLS data the Atlantic writers looked at, couples also spent on average 6.9% of their annual income on their health, while single men spent only 3.9% and single women spent 7.9%.

And when it came to housing, couples spent on average 23.9% of their annual income, compared to single men who spent 30.3% and single women who spend 39.8%.

By combining resources and splitting costs, married people have the edge on all kinds of day-to-day expenses in addition to rent or mortgage: One cable bill, one utilities bill, and shared groceries can all lead to big savings.



Marriage results in a pay premium for men

A recent study conducted by W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, and Robert Lerman, an economics professor at American University, suggests that men see bigger salaries when they're married compared to their single counterparts.

According to the study results, married men between 28 and 30 years old earn around $15,900 more a year in individual income compared to their single counterparts, while married men between 44 and 46 years old make $18,800 more than single men of the same ages.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

No one wants to live on New York City's 'Billionaire's Row'

20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions

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You make thousands of rational decisions every day — or so you think. From what you'll eat throughout the day to whether you should make a big career move, research suggests that there are a number of cognitive stumbling blocks that affect your behavior — and they can prevent you from acting in your own best interests.

Here we've rounded up the most common biases that screw up our decision-making:

BI_graphics_20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions

Gus Lubin and Drake Baer contributed to this article.

SEE ALSO: 15 cognitive biases that screw up your relationships

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The 10 best ice cream shops in the nation, according to travel app Gogobot

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ice cream

Sunday July 17, is National Ice Cream Day. That means that many local ice cream shops will be offering everything from free cones to discounts and deals.

To honor the day, travel app Gogobot combed through the reviews of the 10 million people who use the food and fun travel app and came up with this list of the best-rated ice cream shops in the nation.

SEE ALSO: This is the best pizza place in the country for kids, according to travel app Gogobot

No. 10: Leopold’s Ice Cream, Savannah, GA

Leopold’s has been a Savannah favorite for nearly century. It is credited for creating the original “tutti frutti” flavor, a pink ice cream dotted with candied fruit.

One of the three founding brothers went on to become a Hollywood producer and then filled the cute old-fashioned 50's style parlor with show-biz memorabilia. 

Most importantly, it offers a huge variety of delicious flavors.



No. 9: Scoops, Los Angeles

Scoops is famous for coming up with incredible new flavor combos that they think up themselves and get as suggestions from loyal customers.

Two favorites include Brown bread (caramelized Grape Nuts) and dairy-free salted Oreo (one of a number of vegan options) 

And the best part is, "it's cheaper than most fro-yo place," says Gogobot reviewer Molly M. 



No. 8: Little Man Ice Cream, Denver, CO

Little Man makes its ice cream in small batches, serves it in home made cones, and is affordable enough that you won't feel bad about going back the next day for another scoop.

And it gets bonus points for its location: a giant, old-fashioned milk can.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Here's how this little-known soda brand gained a cult following


Try to spot the iPhone hidden in this picture

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iPhone hidden on carpet

There's an iPhone laying on this carpet. Can you see it?

You can't?

Don't worry — you're not alone.

First spotted by Gizmodo, this photo was posted on Facebook by Jeya May Cruz. Cruz swears there's a phone in the photo, but it's nearly impossible to see at first glance.

Cruz's original post has more than 150,000 reactions, 79 comments, and over 20,441 shares. While many of the comments appear to be in Filipino, it seems as though most people are struggling to see it.

Try to spot it on your own first, but the phone really is tough to spot without a few hints. We didn't want to ruin it for you, so we created some helpful visuals to aid you:

SEE ALSO: Google hid an Easter Egg in plain sight

The phone is located on the right side of the photo.



Still can't find it? Here's a narrower search area.



A big clue: The phone is facedown, and there's a case on the back.



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What 20-somethings wish they had known about money before entering the real world after college

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chester races women worried

We don't always make the right choices when we're young.

It's especially true with our money, since we probably don't think about how our split-second decisions can impact our lives later on. 

I am guilty of these kinds of mistakes myself — wasting money on things I had no use for, not taking advantage of all the "free" stuff my school offered, and ultimately not thinking about life after college — which led to some poor habits that kept me from building wealth in the year I've spent post-grad.

But, I'm not alone.

I reached out to my friends to see if they had any money mistakes they wanted to share, and what they would have done differently. Just like me, many of peers weren't always as financially savvy as they wanted to be in the years after college, and have also made some poor money decisions. 

Looking back, here's some advice they would have given their younger selves about money before they entered the real world:

SEE ALSO: 7 things I wish I had known about money before I graduated from college

Be smarter with the college courses you choose

"I wish I took an intro to economics course or a class to familiarize myself with the money market instead of those easy A's in sociology class. Learn about investments, especially retirement, so when you get your first job you know where/how to allocate your money when you're offered a 403b or 401k. You'll get a head start." — Jenny Ha



Don't get ahead of yourself

"Don't let material things, or the lavish lifestyle your peers seem to have, blind you from your ultimate goal.

"Your responsibility right now is to prepare yourself to find a job to make the money that will allow you to enjoy the kind of lifestyle that you want for yourself, not to live it while studying." — Derek Wong



Steer clear of credit cards until you can handle them

"I REALLY wish I had told myself to stay away from credit cards. At the time I thought it was so great ... four years later I still can't get rid of the damn credit balance because I kept paying the minimum for so long.

"And then when I paid some down finally, I had to charge more on the card, so I was back to being super in debt." — Krysten Massa

 



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This casino once hosted glamorous royal parties — but now it sits completely abandoned

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Photographer Roman Robroek has always been drawn to photographing abandoned places, so when he discovered the empty but majestic Casino Constanta on the coast of the Black Sea in Romania, he knew he had to shoot it.

The Art Nouvea-style building was originally commissioned by King Carol I and built around the year 1900, opening to the public as a casino in 1910. "Many wealthy travelers enjoyed their time playing games and dancing in the symbol of the city," Robroek told Business Insider of the building's past.

Unfortunately, in 1990 the building was closed to the public, and it has been left sitting empty, slowly becoming more and more dilapidated. Ahead, 13 of Robroek's photos inside the once gorgeous building. 

SEE ALSO: Go inside a $2.7 million Los Angeles home with an incredibly chilling past

"Once this was the most glorious building of Romania, but since 1990 it's been abandoned, and slowly but surely falling apart," said Robroek.



"The casino is in Constanta (formerly known as Tomis), Romania, and is now listed as a historic monument by the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs of Romania," he said.



"During the 1914 visit of the Russian Imperial Family, the casino was host to a royal gala," he said.



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25 beautiful US cities to live in if you love spending time outdoors

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It's too often assumed that moving to a big city — like San Francisco, New York, or Boston — means giving up your love for nature. Fortunately, that doesn't always have to be the case.

A recent ranking by Niche, a company that researches and compiles information on cities, revealed the best cities for outdoor activities in America, proving that city life and the great outdoors are not always mutually exclusive.

To compile its ranking, Niche gathered data on 227 US cities including local weather and air quality, access to natural amenities like beaches and state parks (counting those within 100 miles of the city), access to national parks and forests (counting those within 200 miles of the city), and general access to nearby outdoor recreation facilities. (Read the full methodology here.)

The resulting list reveals that some of the best cities to live in if you love spending time outdoors are in the Western US. In fact, 22 of the top 25 cities are in the West, with several located in the Pacific Northwest, specifically.

Below, check out the 25 best cities for outdoor enthusiasts.

DON'T MISS: The 25 safest cities to live in America

25. San Francisco, California

Population: 829,072

Nearby state parks: 20

Nearby beaches: 70

Weather grade: A+

Sitting atop a peninsula flanked by the Pacific Ocean, the City by the Bay is considered one of the most walkable cities in the US. The city's most famous park is the 1,000-plus acre Golden Gate Park, which is home to several, smaller parks and a zoo, botanical garden, and golf course. 



24. Aurora, Colorado

Population: 339,480

Nearby state parks: 4

Nearby beaches: 0

Weather grade: A-

Located just east of Denver, Aurora boasts more than 300 days of sunshine annually, making outdoor activities one of the premier draws for the area. The Aurora Reservoir is a popular destination with plenty of recreation opportunities like fishing, swimming, and boating.



23. Roseville, California

Population124,250

Nearby state parks: 3

Nearby beaches: 2

Weather grade: A+

Roseville is situated just 30 minutes outside of California's state capital and a two-hour drive from scenic South Lake Tahoe. The park-laden city has been honored as a bike-friendly community and has more than 32 miles of off-street bike paths.



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The biggest difference between New York City and San Francisco, according to a tech icon who has run businesses in both

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Moving is always a life change. But moving from San Francisco to New York City? There might be some culture shock involved.

Kevin Rose, a former startup founder and venture capitalist and the current CEO of respected watch blog Hodinkee, recently switched coasts, and he has mostly good things to say about the East.

"It's been a blast," Rose said. "There's a handful of cities that I would consider living in in the US, and obviously New York is one of them."

Rose says the Big Apple has a "faster pace" overall. The biggest change he's noticed? Work culture.

"In San Francisco, the startup environment is one of longer duration of work," Rose said. "We tend to work into the night and be a little bit more hardcore like that, whereas New York seems to be more about hustle and a little faster pace."

As for the startup and tech scene itself, Rose said New York's relative anonymity comes as a welcome relief.

"The nice thing about being in New York is that no one is trying to pitch you their startup," Rose said. "[In San Francisco] there were just entrepreneurs everywhere looking for money and in every coffee shop. Not that that's a bad thing — everyone is trying to build something awesome and succeed — but just as someone who has been doing that for so many years in a row, I think everybody needs a break."

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Rose is staying away from the New York tech scene for now. "I'm not actively doing any angel investing," he said.

Other differences between New York and San Francisco? Well, it's "nice to have actual seasons," and there's "a lot more jeans and T-shirts in San Francisco for sure," Rose says.

One area New York does lack in: the culinary department.

"San Francisco has better produce, better food," Rose said. "My wife and I are huge foodies, so it's been an adjustment."

SEE ALSO: Why this tech icon turned his back on Silicon Valley to run a wristwatch blog in New York City

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