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It's Twice The Size Of Alaska And Might Hold The Cure For Cancer. So Why Are We Destroying It?

My mom taught me something very important: Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Unfortunately, we're doing just that with the one forest that could possibly hold the medical magic to get rid of cancer. It's gotten better in recent years, but there's still so many more ways we could be protecting it.

FACT CHECK TIME!

Our fact-checkers would like to note that if Amazonia were a country, it looks like it would fall in seventh place, between Australia and India, not ninth place.

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Public speaking expert shares the 3 'magic' phrases that instantly make you more likable

It's all about being genuinely open and curious.

party, chatting, likable, drinks small talk, men and women
via Canva/Photos

A woman speaking with two men at a party.

When we think of someone likable, we often imagine a person with a big personality who's the life of the party. We conjure up images of social butterflies and people who keep everyone at the dinner party glued to their every word when they tell a story. The funny thing is, according to research, that's not really the case.

Studies show that the easiest way to make someone like you is to show interest by asking questions during the conversation and making it clear that you like them. People also really love those who come off as genuine.

Michael Gendler, a co-founder of Ultraspeaking, a platform that helps people master the art of public speaking, recently shared three "magic" phrases that make you more likable, all of which align with what science tells us.

Three phrases that make you more likable

Phrase 1: "Here's what really scares me..."

This phrase resonates with people because it shows you're genuine by admitting your vulnerability. "Man, talk about your feats, real fears, not like 'Oh, I'm scared I'm going to be too successful.' Tell us about something that actually scares you. Don't be guarded. Be open, and other people will appreciate that," Gendler says.

Phrase 2: "You know what I really like about you?"

This phrase makes people like you because it counters a psychological phenomenon known as signal amplification bias, which suggests we tend to overestimate how clearly we express our feelings to others. This means that, many times, when we think others know we like them, they may not be so sure. So a little assurance goes a long way toward showing them the feeling is mutual. "People love being complimented as long as it is genuine," Gendler says.


Phrase 3: "Tell me more"

As Dale Carnegie wrote in How to Make Friends and Influence People, the key to interacting with others is focusing on being interested in them rather than trying to impress them by being interesting. "Be interested, not interesting," Carnegie writes.

A Harvard study supports this, showing that when you first start speaking with someone, you should follow your first question with two more. People who do this are rated as much more likable than those who, after one question, shift the conversation to themselves. "People love feeling like what they're saying is interesting. So invite them to speak more," Gendler continues.


Don't forget to be genuine

Ultraspeaking's post is a breath of fresh air for those who aren't comfortable trying to impress others at parties, on dates, or in the office. The video shows that if you make people feel important, they're much more likely to like you in return. The key is that it has to come from the heart.

"Remember, don't just use these phrases and expect them to work," Gendler says. "They have to be genuine and open. That's what makes people likable."

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Linguists explain why people often say 'is is' even though we'd never write it that way

This is very clear and actually helpful.

is is, linguistics, english language, language quirks, linguists, grammar
Photo credit: Canva, Africa images (left, cropped) / Khosro (right, cropped) / SkaHero42 from pixabay (text box)

Linguists break down why so many people say "is is."

The English language is bizarre, littered with inconsistent rules, surprising pronunciations and subtle quirks in phrasing that we often overlook. With that in mind, what is "is is"? For starters, it’s a pretty common grammatical pet peeve. Beyond that, it’s also a strange repetition that you might find yourself saying out loud even though you’d never write it.

Before we go any further, let’s give some examples. You might encounter "is is" in sentences like "The problem is, is that we don’t have time for dinner" or "My point is, is that rock music is best experienced on headphones." You might read both of those sentences and think, "I’d never say that." But read them out loud, using those commas for intentional pauses, and the concept should crystalize. (Next time you listen to your favorite podcast, keep this front of mind—it might now become your pet peeve. You’re welcome.)

@wordsatwork

When it comes to English grammar, the weird thing is is that we can use "is" two times in a row - but how? And why? Let's talk about it! #language #linguistics #english #grammar #learnontiktok #education #fyp

You might call it the "is-is hiccup"

This isn’t just the stuff of online griping—linguists do have technical names for it. One common term is a "double copula," and an excellent article from the website GrammarBook.com uses the way catchier and more accessible "is-is hiccup." "Often these are statements made by sophisticated and qualified spokespersons," their author writes, distinguishing between real examples of this verbal flub ("The fact of the matter is, is that…") and others that are clunky and unorthodox but are technically correct ("[A] comedian from North Carolina named Andy Griffith once made America laugh with 'What It Was, Was Football,' his monologue about college football from a country boy’s perspective.")

So, why do we do this anyway? In 2013, Slate's Alyssa Pelish spoke to linguists and presented an educated guess. At one point, they ask readers to consider the following sentence as spoken out loud: "The thing is we are all out of pickles." They explain, "If the speaker places a definite stress on is, the rest of the sentence is likely to be followed by a pause, no? Linguists like Patrick McConvell at Australian National University and Laura Michaelis-Cummings at the University of Colorado have found that the stressed is, coupled with the break immediately after, sounds awkward to speakers’ ears, since it’s unlike the general patterns that stresses and pauses typically follow in English." The resulting "is is," according to Michaelis-Cummings, is something of a "workaround."

Teachers explain grammatical rules. Photo credit: Canva, Pressmaster (left, cropped) / pixelshot (right, cropped)

If you say "is is," you probably have good intentions

In other words, you’re probably using "is is" for the sake of clarity—even if some find it annoying. Speaking of which: One user created a thread about this topic in the r/grammar subreddit, and multiple people replied by theorizing about the concept. "The unnecessary 'is' comes from the fact that people often don't speak grammatically, but often speak in sentence fragments, especially when they're still figuring out what they want to say," one Redditor suggested. "I used to have to transcribe recordings of conversations, and it really struck me just how much people tend to stammer, use filler words, or change tacks in mid-sentence."

Others chimed in while also playfully using "is is." This comment wins the thread: "What the meaning of 'is is' is is not so clear." In response to one breakdown, someone replied, "This is very clear and actually helpful," highlighting the key difference between the written and spoken word. (But as another person noted, some examples in the thread are grammatically correct, and others aren’t. Confusing stuff!)

In summary: The thing is, is that words are weird.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

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People born before 1970 share what they ate for dinner growing up, and it's a blast from the past

So much meatloaf and Shake 'n Bake.

1970s, '70s, generations, food, meals
Photo credit: Canva

Kids in the 1970s pretending to cook

"What's for dinner?" has been asked by kids for millennia, probably, and the most common answers depend on both where and at what time in history it was asked. In ancient times, people were limited to what they could hunt or gather. Medieval recipes look different than what people ate in the 19th century. And what our grandparents ate when they were children was different from what our kids eat today.

Obviously, people couldn't DoorDash Chipotle in the '70s, but when someone on Reddit asked people born before 1970 what they ate for dinner most weeks, there were some standard meals a lot of Americans clearly ate regularly growing up. Lots of meatloaf and beef stroganoff. Pork chops and chop suey. Convenient assistance from Shake n' Bake, Hamburger Helper and TV dinners. Canned fruits and veggies. So much Jell-O.

Here are some of the most popular responses:

"Overcooked pork chop, minute rice, canned green beans, canned fruit cocktail

Spaghetti with ground beef and sauce made from a packet (Durkee?)

Pot roast (whatever cut of meat was on sale) cooked with Lipton onion soup mix. Frozen peas. Canned peaches.

Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and canned green beans. Canned pears

Shake n bake chicken and scalloped potatoes from a box. Canned fruit of some kind.

On awesome days Chef Boyardee pizza mix from a box.

I liked LaChoy chop suey.

Always with a jug of milk on the table."

1970s, '70s, generations, meals, meatloaf Meatloaf was a staple dinner.Photo credit: Canva

"So I think many of our moms went to the same home ec classes. Our house also had on rotation:

Goulash: It wasn’t what I have come to understand is Hungarian Goulash, but ground beef/spices/tomatoes.

Chicken Diane: Way overcooked chicken with rosemary, thyme and other seasonings.

Meatloaf: Yes, ketchup on top.

And the ever-present rice. Dad bought an aluminum rice cooker from his time in Japan and we had rice (he added soy sauce on top) 3x per week. The other side was baked potatoes.

The big treat!!!??? Chef Boy Ar Dee pizza from a tube on Friday once per month. Mom had a round aluminum baking pan and make dough, spread the included sauce on the dough, add the Parmesan Cheese (in the included packet). That was the biggest treat - and in all honesty I would go back to that day cause I miss my mom. Best pizza ever."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

"Hamburger patty or braised round steak, green salad, canned vegetable (peas, beans, corn, beets). Occasionally a baked potato. Sometimes my mom would toss chicken in a flour/seasoning mix and bake it and we'd have oven fried chicken--maybe once every couple of weeks. We got beef from a cousin so it was cheap, and chicken was expensive.

Mom also made spaghetti with ground beef, and beef stew with the tougher cuts of the cow. Oh--and liver--God how I hated liver night.

We always had cheap grocery store 'ice milk' in the freezer for dessert."

1970s, '70s, generations, food, meals, spaghetti Spaghetti is still a classic.Photo credit: Canva

"Sunday - Spaghetti/macaroni and homemade spaghetti sauce and a salad.

Monday - Roast chicken, a side (potatoes, Rice-a-Roni), and a veg.

Tuesday - Pork chops, a side (potatoes, Rice-a-Roni), and a veg.

Wednesday - Spaghetti/macaroni and homemade spaghetti sauce and a salad.

Thursday - Rump or sirloin steak, a side (potatoes, Rice-a-Roni), and a veg.

Friday - breaded and fried fish (ugh--haddock, halibut, or cod if the latter was on sale), a side (potatoes, Rice-a-Roni), and a veg.

Saturday - Rump or sirloin steak, a side (potatoes, Rice-a-Roni), and a veg.

Dessert would be supermarket ice cream (carton, usually Neopolitan), Jello chocolate pudding, Table Talk pie (usually apple)."

1970s, '70s, generations, food, meals, pork chops Why were pork chops so popular?Photo credit: Canva

"Typical meals: stroganoff made with ground beef and egg noodles. Pot roast. Swiss steak. Chicken cacciatore. Fried chicken. This was in California, but my parents were from the Midwest so pretty meat-and-potatoes. There was always a side vegetable and a starch. Rarely bread or rolls. Occasionally salad but not always until the 1980s. No formal/planned dessert except for special occasions like birthdays and holidays, but sometimes there was ice cream in the freezer or there were cookies (store bought; my mom wasn't a baker). In the late 70s my mom loved Julia Child and started to be more adventurous with cooking; later she took Asian cooking classes too."

"Beef stroganoff, fried bologna, weiners wrapped in bacon and then broiled, baked beans, (from scratch) liver.

Jello 1-2-3 (so space age!) Bundt cake, canned fruit salad, canned pears, canned peaches."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

"When we had some money (early in the pay period):

Spaghetti with sausages and homemade sauce

Liver and onions

Chop suey

Spare ribs and sauerkraut

Pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy

Beef stew

Boeuf bourguignon

Beef stroganoff

When we were short on money:

Spam & scrambled eggs

Homemade macaroni & cheese

Cold cereal

That’s all I can think of right now.

We very rarely ever had dessert and almost never ate out. We never had fast food, the only fast food chain in town was Burger King, and McDonald’s was a town away and only open about six months of the year."

Here's to all the meals that nourished us in every era of our lives.

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People on LinkedIn are inventing nonsense business idioms, and they're too good not to use

"This banana's got no peel to it."

idioms, catchphrases, buzzwords, english language, english, office, workplace, corporate culture
Photo credit: Canva

Business idioms that you can totally use in your real workplace.

It seems that the higher up you ascend in your career, the more you grow to love a good business catchphrase, buzzword, or idiom. Working in an office will have you saying things like "let's kick this off," "let's circle back on this," and "let's not boil the ocean here" in no time.

Idioms, while they can get annoying when overused (especially in the workplace), do serve a helpful purpose. They're a sort of fun shorthand, conveying a lot of meaning in a few words. While idioms act as analogies or metaphors that give more context to a situation, they also come with a lot of history: when you hear one, you remember all the times you've heard it before or even used it yourself. It instantly contextualizes what's going on and quickly helps us understand what someone may be communicating.

However, run-of-the-mill workplace idioms have gotten a little stale, to the point that many of them have become meaningless cliches. We could all use some new ones, and luckily, folks on social media are chiming in with some ridiculous creations of their own.

It all started when an X user named Tomie shared what would go on to become a hugely viral post: "I've started saying nonsense phrases at work like 'that's neither cheese nor cheddar' just to see my coworkers nod seriously like they understand."

Tomie added in another post, "Like woah there, pause the pineapples."

The post received nearly 2 million views and hundreds of comments on X. Soon, it made its way to the professional crowd on LinkedIn, where people began building on Tomie's original suggestions.

Daniel Berk added a few of his own:

"Let's not microwave the lasagna on this one."

"We might be polishing the doorknob instead of opening the door."

"This feels like we're alphabetizing water."

"Let's not put racing stripes on a parked car."

"That's a lot of garnish for no entrée."

"We're measuring the shadow, not the object."


Noah Latner chimed in with:

"Let's not settle in before we buy the house."

"That lollipop isn't worth the lick."

"You've got to put the patty on the grill before it sizzles."

"This banana's got no peel to it."

"Don't juice a pickle and tell me it's matcha."

Sally Thomas writes, "One of my finest achievements was in a previous company where the manager was full of buzzwords. I got him to adopt 'It depends how you fold your napkin' as a favourite saying."

Jennifer Connelly suggested: "Let's sauce these nugs later!"

Cameron Gibbons said, "I'm not sure where it started, but one exec at Google said 'let's double click into that' and it spread like wildfire through the org."

idioms, catchphrases, buzzwords, english language, english, office, workplace, corporate culture "That banana's got no peel to it." Giphy

Liora Kern cooked up a few idioms that paid homage to different languages and cultures:

"Dutch version:
1. That's a lot of hagelslag on a very thin slice of bread.
2. It's a three bicycles beat one car type of thing.

Belgian version:
1. We're agreeing on the fries because agreeing on the sauces is harder.
2. We're arguing over the glass instead of the beer."

idioms, catchphrases, buzzwords, english language, english, office, workplace, corporate culture "We’re arguing over the glass instead of the beer." Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Here are a few more from the creative minds on X:

"The last nail is the rustiest one."

"Two claps and the goat's up the hill"

"Let's toss this idea into the piranha bin."

"I'm pulling the porcupine here."

"This is all bags and boxes."

"The proof is in the parmesan."

"There's a rock behind every bush."

"There's more to being a dog than sleeping under the porch."

The funniest part about these made-up, nonsense idioms is that they kind of make sense.

Some of the idioms brainstormed by random commenters are variations of existing catchphrases, or combinations of multiple different ones ("It's not exactly rocket surgery."). But many are complete gibberish, and yet our brains still seek out and manage to find some semblance of meaning in them.

YouTube English teacher Aly says that "corporate English" is like its own language. Speaking the secret code with confidence, and pretending to understand it even when you don't, are key to success. In fact, one recent study found that more than half of employees regularly "pretend" to be working. So if you've ever felt self-conscious because you were in over your head at work or didn't know what the higher-ups were talking about, rest assured there's a good chance they were faking it, too.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

One commenter on Tomie's original post summed it up perfectly: "Office culture accepts nonsense when said confidently and calmly."

Another added, "The only way to survive corporate America is to understand its 90% make believe."

Delivering a totally made-up, nonsense business idiom with full confidence is one sure way to make people perk up and take notice of how brilliant you are.

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Millennials are hilariously bonding over their '90s obsession with 'psychic' Sylvia Browne

"If Sylvia was on, I skipped school."

Sylvia Browne, Montel Williams, laughing, psychic, viral videos
Photo Credit: Canva, The Montel Williams Show

People laugh while scrolling their phone. Sylvia Browne looks concerned.

If you lived through the '90s and early aughts and happened to watch The Montel Williams Show or Larry King Live, you probably remember their "resident psychic," Sylvia Browne. With her flaxen blonde hair and very short bangs, Browne claimed to be a medium for "angels" and purported to be clairvoyant when audience members asked her questions.

Of course, it wasn't just Millennials watching. Many members of previous generations would, often secretly, enjoy her segments with abandon like a sci-fi zombie B-movie. It wasn't until we had a little hindsight that we could measure her extremely confident-sounding statements and understand that...many of them simply were not true.

Near the end of last year, people who grew up in this era began making compilations of some of Browne's most outrageous, inappropriate, and often laughably wrong predictions. The trend went so incredibly viral that it has picked up steam again, and these clips continue making the rounds.

In one montage of clips, we see person after person bravely stand up and ask Sylvia questions. Often they'll ask about someone who has gone missing. Browne's answers are curt and to the point. "He drowned" seems to be a big one. To one woman who asked about her father, Sylvia matter-of-factly states, "He's alive. He's in Florida."

A common question Montel often asked after Browne's declarations was, "Does that make sense?" Usually the answer was, "No, but thank you," as the audience member gingerly took their seat.

The best part of watching these clips continue to go viral is the communal joy it's bringing to the comment sections (not to mention the nostalgia and the jokes). One person writes that their life schedule was dependent on whether or not Browne was booked as a guest that day. "If Sylvia was on, I'd skip school."

psychic, Sylvia Browne, Montel Williams., Larry King, Mean Girls Amanda Seyfried in a scene from the movie Mean Girls. Giphy, Paramount Pictures

This person jokes after seeing the woman who was told her father has been in Florida for decades: "Her dad in Florida watching this: Darn it!"

Another acknowledges Browne's go-to answer. "Sylvia, I forgot my middle name…." "It drowned." "Okay, thank you."

And here's another spin on it: "5 years ago my father went missing while climbing Mount Everest I was wonde....." "He drowned in the Titanic." "Thank you."

Over on Threads, @Robbylernan posted quite a few Browne clips, claiming, "I went down a Sylvia Browne rabbit hole last night and I laughed my a-- off for an hour."

One person on the thread reminisces about their favorite Browne moment: "The best one was when she told that reporter that the girl in the picture was kidnapped and dead and the reporter said, 'That picture is me.' And she looked at the woman and said, 'You weren't kidnapped?' BRUHHH."

Note: Her predictions weren't all completely wrong. In fact, The Daily Mail recently shared a Browne prediction that went viral during the COVID-19 pandemic. Browne reportedly stated, "In around 2020, a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments."

That said, skeptics debunked her claims for years. In a piece for TV Insider, freelance entertainment Martin Holmes reminds readers of the time "Browne told Louwanna Miller her missing daughter, Amanda Berry, was 'not alive,' explaining to the distraught mother, 'Your daughter's not the kind who wouldn't call.'" Holmes adds, "Berry was found alive in 2013 after she escaped years of captivity."

In 2010, Skeptical Inquirer Magazine noted, "Despite her repeated claims to be more than 85 percent correct," a study reported that "Browne has not even been mostly correct in a single case."

Wrong or right, it's the wrongness that seems to bring the most delight to those who are dipping into the nostalgia. Even Saturday Night Live got in on the fun.

Amy Poehler spoofs Sylvia Browne on SNL. www.youtube.com, Saturday Night Live, NBC Universal

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