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I compared America's gun laws to laws in 5 other countries. This is what I learned.

In 1996, Australia initiated the most successful gun intervention to date. Here's what we can learn from it.

In 1996, a mass shooting took 35 lives in Australia. Immediately after, newly elected Prime Minister John Howard decided that something needed to change.

A mere 12 days after the tragedy, the government drafted and agreed on the legislation. This led to the National Firearms Programme Implementation Act of 1996.

The new act was fairly intense. It restricted the private ownership of high-capacity semi-automatic shotguns, semi-automatic rifles, and pump-action shotguns. While guns were certainly a part of the culture (and Howard's plan was met with some objection), most Australians were actually for the legislation because they were so horrified at the loss of innocent lives.

Howard didn't just disrupt the overarching gun laws, though. He also confiscated private weapons. Citizens took part in voluntary surrender and mandatory buyback programs. Essentially, the government paid citizens to give them their illegal firearms, and the guns were then destroyed.

This is arguably the most successful gun intervention implemented to date, and there hasn’t been a mass shooting in Australia since then.

Compare this to America, where people are 10 times more likely to be killed by guns than people in other developed countries.

Graph by Erin Grinshteyn/David Hemenway/The American Journal of Medicine. Image used with permission.

A mass shooting (typically defined as four or more people shot in a single incident) occurs, on average, almost daily in the U.S.

Solutions to this problem can get really political, though.

We don't have much research on gun deaths in the U.S. (which is a whole other issue), but we do know that violence is determined by a variety of factors, such as population and gun culture within a society.

Lots of other countries allow their citizens access to guns — but America's gun problems are far worse than many other countries, and the comparison is especially stark with other developed countries.

After reading about Australia, I wondered: What makes America different, really? And what's working elsewhere?

Today, Australian applicants are required to give a "legitimate reason" to apply for a firearm license.

Personal protection doesn't qualify as a genuine reason either. And background checks — such as criminal, mental health, physical, addiction, and domestic violence checks — are mandatory to obtain a license. Generally, a firearm safety and law course is required. License terms can vary depending on the license, and there's a limit on how many firearms and how much ammunition a person can own.

While buying back guns from people who already own them probably won't happen in the U.S., we can certainly take notes from Australia's banning of assault weapons.

And we can hold our government accountable for not making swift and comprehensive legislative decisions that protect the vast majority of Americans.

Mourners gather to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre in Australia. Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images.

In France, the amount of ammunition allowed in a person's home is pretty limited.

If you live in France, you must have a hunting license or a shooting sport license if you want to buy a gun.

The country also has restrictions on the amount of ammunition that can be kept at home and the total number of firearms owned by an individual.

By comparison, there are no set federal restrictions on how much ammunition a person can keep in the U.S. In fact, after a mass shooting, folks often buy more guns and rounds, despite cries for regulating how many rounds a person can own.

It's also worth noting that France has experienced an unusual number of mass shootings in recent years. That said, in Europe’s worst terrorist attack in 11 years, 130 people were killed at a concert, which is almost as many people as those who die from gun homicides in all of France in an average year.

But even if France had a mass shooting as lethal as the Paris attack every month, the annual rate of gun homicide death per capita in France would still be lower than the United States. We could follow France's example by making ammunition ownership a permit-based privilege, rather than an assumed right.

In Japan, gun ownership is discouraged altogether.

Japan's gun laws are incredibly restrictive, and obtaining a gun involves an arduous process. Gun owners must have a license, and the National Police Agency heavily regulates gun ownership. Handguns are banned in Japan, and firearms are extremely rare. Penalties for disobeying gun laws (which include a prison sentence) seem to discourage the use of guns overall.

Despite Japan's sizable population of 130 million, these rules seem to be working: gun homicides in Japan averaged around 33 per year from 1995 to 2011.

In Spain, applicants must go through a variety of tests and background checks if they want to buy a gun.

Spain has a variety of requirements for various forms of gun ownership. Exams are sometimes required, depending on the type of license, and the length of each license can vary. In most cases, to obtain the license, applicants must have a stated reason, criminal background check, mental health check, and a check into domestic violence records. Police also may inspect firearms at any time.

Spain's most recent massacre was in 1990 in the village of Puerto Hurraco, where nine people were killed. In 2007, 90 people were killed with guns, making their homicide-by-firearm rate 0.2% per 100,000 citizens.

Spain's various tests to get a gun are certainly extensive and much more detailed than America's processes, which can vary by state. By taking more time to examine folks who want to purchase a gun, though, many people argue that we could prevent mass shootings.

Image via iStock.

In an effort to curb gun violence, Canada recently added restrictions on owning a gun too.

Because target shooting and hunting are so popular in Canada, owning a rifle or shotgun is pretty common, but obtaining handguns and semi-automatic rifles is now a restricted process.

An applicant for a firearm license in Canada has to pass an extensive background check, including criminal, mental health, addiction, and domestic violence. Applications also require a third-party reference.

Licensing authorities also conduct interviews with or advise spouses, partners, or next of kin when someone is obtaining a license. A theoretical and practical training course is required, and a license lasts for five years.

Can we implement some of these strategies in the U.S.? Maybe.

The U.S. Constitution protects the right to own a gun. And right now, there are more guns than there are people in the U.S. A Pew Research Center study from 2014 shows a gun homicide rate of 3.4 per 100,000 people in the U.S.

To purchase a gun, American buyers must go through a background check, but several groups (fugitives, those with severe mental illness, and those convicted of domestic violence) are prohibited from buying guns (though many still get ahold of them). And while we have restrictions on buying guns, there are many loopholes in place that make obtaining a gun pretty easy.

The Pulse shooting in Orlando left 49 people dead. Image via iStock.

What are our options?

We can ban assault weapons like Australia. We can reduce the number of rounds people can have on hand like France. We can do research when we see a problem like Japan. We can raise our standards for who can own a gun like Spain. And we could even add new restrictions on gun ownership like our friends in Canada.

It's not likely that we'll find a solution in the U.S. by making ultimatums though. Banning all firearms is not a likely scenario, nor is it something that works anywhere else.

But looking at these other countries gives me hope that we can find reasonable solutions for reducing gun violence while maintaining Second Amendment rights as well.

Image via iStock.

Of course, adjusting our gun laws won't solve everything. Criminals will still find ways to circumvent the law, and bad things happening are simply a fact of life.

My biggest learning here is that we do, inarguably, need to update our policies to mirror changes to the political and cultural climate.

The U.S. Constitution is great and unique, but it has historically been flawed and has required several amendments. Reexamining former laws and implementing ways to make them better as society changes helps the Constitution to be a living document.

By moving forward with caution and thought, we can create an American society that is better, and safer, for everyone.

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Heroes

Man finds genius loophole to beat squatters at their own game. Homeowners say he's a hero.

"All I'm doing is becoming a squatter and flipping this process on them."

Canva Photos

Flash Shelton has been nicknamed the "Squatter Hunter" and helps people take their homes back.

Squatters' rights laws are some of the most bizarrely misused legal realities we have, and something no one seems to have a good answer for. Most of us have heard stories of someone moving into a vacant home and just living there, without anyone's permission and without paying rent, and somehow this is a legal question mark until the courts sort it out.

According to The National Desk, squatters' rights are a carryover from British property law and were created to ensure that abandoned property could be used and to protect occupants from being kicked out without proper notice. The argument is that it's better to have someone openly living in a home and taking care of it, properly maintaining it, versus it laying abandoned and rotting away. Families and residents add value to a community, and those residents should have rights — or so the reasoning goes.

It should go without saying that squatter law isn't meant to allow someone to just take over someone else's property, but sometimes that's exactly what happens.

A squatter takeover is exactly what happened to Flash Shelton's mother when she put her house up for rent after her husband passed away.


A woman contacted her with interest in the property, only she wanted to do repairs and look after the home instead of paying rent. Before anyone knew it, she had furniture delivered (which she later said was accidental) and set up camp, despite Shelton's mom not agreeing to the arrangement.

But since the woman had expressed her intention and already moved in, the matter was out of police hands, as Shelton found out when he tried to contact the local sheriff. If that sounds like trespassing to you, well, join the club.

“They said, ‘I’m sorry but we can’t enter the house, and it looks like they’re living there, so you need to go through the courts',” he shared in a YouTube video.


Shelton rightfully didn't want the expense of a court battle, so he took matters into his own hands—not with violence, but with logic. He had his mom lease the home to him, and then told the squatter that she had to move everything out because he was moving things in.


squatters, homeowners, criminals, trespassing, law, property law, viral videos, youtube, squatter hunter How exactly is squatting not trespassing? It's complicated, for some reason. Giphy

“If they can take a house, I can take a house," he said.

He was calm and clear about her having to get everything out within the day or he would have people come and take it, and thankfully, she didn't put up a big fight.

That experience made him realize how squatter law can be abused, but that there's a faster system for removing a squatter than to go through the court system. If a squatter can move in and force a homeowner to take them to court to prove they are living there illegally, then he could simply move in alongside the squatter, putting the squatter in the position of having to take the homeowner to court instead.

"The legal process is so slow, and at some point when they're in there, you're going to feel like they have more rights than you do and that's how you're going to be treated. So even though you it's your house and you're paying the mortgage or whatever, at some point squatters feel like they have more rights than you, so they don't have an incentive to leave until a judge tells them to, until they're actually ordered to, and that could take months."

After successfully removing the squatters in his mother's house, Shelton has been tackling similar squatter situations for other homeowners in California, earning him the nickname "The Squatter Hunter."

"All I'm doing is becoming a squatter and flipping this process on them," Shelton told CBS News. "I figured if they could take a house, I could take a house."

According to CBS, he's successfully removed a dozen squatters in the past year. ""I'm not going in and I'm not hurting anyone," he said. "I'm not kicking them out, I'm not throwing them out." He's literally just moving in himself, setting up cameras, and then creating small annoyances until the squatters get fed up enough to move out; like making uncomfortable alterations to the home or making a ton of noise at inopportune hours.

Shelton parlayed his success into a reality show on A&E called, fittingly, Squatters. It premiered in July of 2025. To put it lightly, it looks intense! Clips posted on Shelton's social media show hostile standoffs with angry squatters and even he and his team causing damage to the home or creating nuisances to help drive the squatters out.

California isn't the only state that has seen issues with squatters. There are squatter stories from all over the U.S. of people moving into a property and refusing to leave without a court order, tying owners up in lengthy, expensive legal battles.

Though squatting is relatively rare overall, some areas of the country have more issues than others. California, Texas, Georgia, and Florida are areas, in particular, that struggle with squatters and abandoned properties.

Shelton even has a Change.org petition to try to get squatter laws changed to "make squatting in residential maintained homes criminal." Making squatting illegal "will shift the burden of proof onto the squatter and make the crime punishable with restitution an option for damages," the the petition states.

Not all homeowners will have access to someone like Shelton and his team to fight back against squatters. But until the laws change, he's doing as much as he can.

Watch Shelton share his personal story:

- YouTube www.youtube.com

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.


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Modern Families

Grandma realized her granddaughter didn't look like her siblings so she got secret DNA test

It was a shocking decision but people are saying she was right to do it.

via Christian Buehner/Unsplash and Warren Umoh/Unsplash

The grandmother was suspicious.

A grandmother always felt her middle granddaughter Lindsay, 15, looked slightly different from the rest of the family because she had blonde, curly hair, while the rest of her siblings’ hair was dark “I thought genetics was being weird and I love her,” she wrote.

But things became serious after Linday’s parents “banned” her from taking things a step further and getting a DNA test. If the family was sure their daughter was theirs, why would they forbid her from seeking clarity in the situation? After the parents laid down the law, the situation started to seem a little suspicious. “I told my son and [daughter-in-law] that there was something fishy around her birth she needed to know. They denied it and told me to leave it alone,” the grandma wrote.

Lindsay wouldn’t give up her quest. She approached her biology teacher, who admitted that it was “odd” for her to have such different traits. This confusion was too much for Lindsay, so she went to her grandmother for help. “She came to me distressed, asking me to buy a DNA test since she needs to know,” the grandmother wrote.

DNA test, medical lab, grandparents The grandmother's post about her secret DNA test went viralImage via Canva

The grandmother purchased a DNA test and it proved their suspicions. “Long story short, she is not her mother's kid,” the grandmother wrote. “My son got someone else pregnant and her bio mom gave her up.”

The interesting thing was that Lindsay was a middle child. So, the dad had a baby with another woman while he was with his wife. This revelation begs the question: How did the family suddenly have a baby out of nowhere without people being suspicious?

“They were on the other side of the country when she was born, and I met Lindsey when she was about 6 months old. Really not hard to hide the whole thing,” the grandmother wrote. “Our family has a history of miscarriages, so it’s common to drop news about a baby late in the pregnancy. They did the same with their oldest and didn't think anything about it.”

grandparents, DNA test, secret DNA test The grandmothers secret DNA test sparked a debateImage via Canva

The big revelation has caused friction in the family. The family no longer talks to the grandmother, which makes Lindsay even more furious about the situation.Should the grandmother have taken such drastic steps if she knew what could happen if her suspicions were true? The commenters on Reddit overwhelmingly supported the grandmother’s decision. The big reason was that Lindsay needed to know her family history for medical reasons.

"Your son and his wife suck for lying to her until she is 15 about something so important and trying to keep lying to her even after she obviously started to question things. There are medical reasons a person might need to know what their genetics are/are not, and if you hadn’t helped her, she would have found out some other way," Shake_Speare423 wrote.

Another commenter noted that protecting the parents’ lie wasn’t nearly as important as Lindsay’s mental health.

"People have a right to know their genetic heritage. Lying about adoption is linked to increased suicidal ideation, anxiety, and depression. You put her safety and comfort ahead of your son’s preferences. Parental rights do not have greater value than a child’s right to access comprehensive medical care, and hiding an adoption does precisely that. Maybe some things, like a child staying healthy, should matter more than a parent's right to lie, gaslight and manipulate their child as they see fit," RemembrancerLirael added.


- YouTubewww.youtube.com

The commenters overwhelmingly supported the grandma for putting herself into an uncomfortable situation to protect her granddaughter’s mental and physical health. However, one commenter noted that she could have gone about it in a less polarizing way.

“Bit out of the norm for the responses here, but you should have gone through your son [and daughter-in-law] and convinced them. Told them that the biology teacher had highlighted that she had traits that didn't make sense, etc. and convinced them that Lindsey would find out either way,” PhilMcGraw wrote. “It would have allowed them to find a way to tell her without it being forced on them angrily. A DNA test is the absolute worst way to be told. I'm sure they would have much rather told her than let her find out by a DNA test if that is what was coming.”

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Culture

Retired teachers in their 30s live on cruise ships full-time for a little over $10K a year

“It sounds mad, but the numbers made sense."

via Matthew Barra/Pexels

A cruise ship could be your home for a way lower price than you'd expect.

You know that feeling toward the end of a great vacation when you stop and think: I wish I could stay here forever. It might be an all-inclusive resort, a secluded beach, or a fun-filled cruise on the high seas that you just don't want to leave. Of course, for most people, it's a fantasy. You can't just quit your job and live a permanent vacation. But what if you could?

Giving it all up and retiring to live on a cruise ship at 32 seems like a lifestyle choice only available to the ultra-wealthy. However, two financially savvy retired school teachers from Tennessee have managed to do just that, spending under $10,000 for the first eight months at sea.

Monica Brzoska, 32, and Jorrell Conley, 36, met in 2015 while teaching in Memphis, Tennessee. The following year, they booked a week-long cruise to Mexico, Belize, and Grand Cayman. After that, they were hooked on cruising together.

Eight years later, in March 2023, they booked a week-long Caribbean cruise and had the time of their lives. When it was over, instead of returning home to Memphis, they had a wild idea: Why not continue to book consecutive cruises? So, they did just that.

Monica was inspired to start living the life she always wanted after her father fell ill and her mother told her: "Don't wait for retirement. Follow your dreams."

The couple crunched the numbers and found that if they chose the cheapest cabins and used the deals and promotions they’d received from Carnival Cruises, they could book the first 8 months for just under $10,000.

That's not per month. That's the total, coming out to around $1250 per month. Not a bad deal whatsoever. Plus, the more cruises they book, the more perks and deals they get.

“It sounds mad, but the numbers made sense. Accommodation, food and entertainment would be included – we’d only need spending money,” Brzoska told The Sun. “And because we’d been on so many Carnival cruises, we’d earned access to some amazing offers.”

Hopping from ship to ship isn’t difficult for the couple because many disembark from the same ports. But they sometimes have to fly when they can’t walk to the next ocean liner.

The couple then quit their jobs, sold their possessions, and started a new life on the high seas. They rent out their 3-bedroom home in Memphis to maintain steady cash flow. The average 3-bedroom home in the area rents somewhere between $1200 to $1900 a month.

Over the first year of their new life, the couple completed 36 consecutive cruises.

They have already visited countless destinations across the globe, but they can’t choose a favorite. "For a cultural experience, we loved Japan," Brzoska told a Carnival Cruise director on Instagram. The couple also loved Greece for its “history” and Iceland because it was the "closest to being on Mars."

More recently, they've spent time in Amsterdam, the UK, Germany, Belgium, and more. What an amazing adventure.

One of the most incredible benefits of loving on a cruise ship is that so many things are taken care of for you. The couple never has to cook any meals, do any laundry, or drive. Every night, there is something to do, whether it’s checking out a comedy show or enjoying drinks and dancing in the nightclub. Plus, there are always new friends to meet on board with every new cruise.

Plus, on cruises, just about all the costs are covered, so you rarely have to open your wallet. It’s a stress-free, all-inclusive lifestyle. Brzoska says that when you remove the everyday stresses from life, it’s great for your marriage. “Without the daily stresses of life, we rarely argued, but always told each other if we needed space or more time together,” she said.

Brzoska and Conley were one of the first high-profile couples to get attention, followers, and media coverage for the permanent cruising lifestyle, but they're definitely not the only ones. It's an especially popular choice for retired adults and seniors, who find it cheaper and way more fun than living in a retirement community or nursing home. It's also a great choice for people who can work remotely and flexibly, or who own their own digital-nomad-friendly businesses.

The couple also makes sure to have one date night a week, during which they dress up and have a nice meal together.

As of this writing, the couple has been cruising full-time for over two years, or 916 days to be exact. They've been on 106 cruises and visited over 45 countries together. Absolutely unreal.

Most people may be unable to give it all up and live their lives hopping from ocean liner to ocean liner. But there’s a great lesson in the story of Brzoska and Conley: You never know how much time you have left, so don’t wait for retirement to live the life of your dreams.

This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.


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Adults who lived through the 80s share 15 things pop culture gets wrong about that time

"Pop culture acts like the '80s were just a sea of nothing but neon for 10 years."

Image via Canva

A woman dressed in 80's styled workout clothes

Judging by Gen Z’s Y2K-inspired fashion trends, you’d think the 2000s were nothing but people walking around the mall in pleated miniskirts and bucket hats. We can mostly chalk this up to the depiction of the era in movies like “Clueless” and “13 Going on 30.” Anyone born before the 90s can tell you that life was definitely not like that. But hey, sometimes fantasy is more fun.

Same goes for other time periods as well. For those of us without a degree in history, much of how we picture other eras is influenced by pop culture. Like how we think of Victorian women being obsessed with waist cinching thanks to almost every Hollywood movie showing a woman getting bound by an excruciating tight corset. Yep, that was previously debunked.

And sure, some movies and TV series, like “Mad Men” or “Schindler’s List,” make painstaking efforts to achieve historical accuracy. But often, they are works of fiction, and creative liberties are taken. And those liberties create the world for those who did not live in it.

That can even be said of the 80s, rife with Cold War threats and colorful leggings. Or…was it? Recently, user Jerswar asked Reddit: "People who were adults in the 1980s: What does pop culture tend to leave out?" Here are the raddest, gnarliest, most tubular response people gave.


smoking, cigarettes, 1980s, 80s, health A man smokes while sitting on a boatImage via Canva

1."The insane amounts of smoking inside. Especially in restaurants."

"When I worked in a restaurant, the smokers (backroom dishwashers/cooks) got more chances to sit around and take breaks to smoke. Then, when I got an office job, people had ashtrays at their desks. Often, the ashtrays were hand-made by a young relative in an elementary school class."


- YouTube www.youtube.com

2." Anything we wore that wasn't neon. Pop culture acts like the '80s were just a sea of nothing but neon for 10 years."

“And as if every girl and woman was dressed up in tulle tutus with off-the-shoulder lace shirts and a giant bow tied atop our heads.Not all of us were lucky enough to have our parents buy us new outfits like that. My wardrobe was full of old hand-me-downs. No neon, lace or tulle in the bunch."

"I graduated high school in 1984, and never dressed like Madonna or wore neon anything. We were poor, so it was crappy jeans that never got soft and T-shirts until I got a job. Even after that, I wore cords and overalls and sweaters from Chess King."

1970s, 70s, 80s, 1980s, fashion, 70s style, 70s decor A woman lounges in a room full of 1970's decorImage via Canva

3. "How much decor from the '70s and '60s were still in houses and offices throughout the decade."

"This is something that I thought 'Stranger Things' REALLY got right. All the kids' houses look like they were built and decorated in the 1960s–'70s, which is how it really was. Nobody was living in fancy candy-colored Memphis-style apartments except California yuppies."

handicap, parking, 80s, 1980s, accessibility, disability A handicap parking spaceImage via Canva

4. "I was born in the early '80s. I've been totally blind since birth. In the '80s, accessibility was virtually non-existent.That new Nintendo that the kids had? Good luck. Scholastic Book Club? Not in braille or audio. Everything is in print. Nothing to see here for me or mine. Then computers finally got accessible and Windows came out and they had to start all over again. I wouldn't want to go back to the '80s. I now have my phone that I can use to access the world, read what is on my grocery labels, have pictures described to me, and basically know what's going on in the world. In the '80s, so much went by without any context, and that was in the formative years of my childhood."


cereal, cereal box, grocery shopping, groceries, grocery store, 80s, 1980s A woman reads a cereal box inside a grocery storeImage via Canva

5. "Reading everything — literally everything — I could get my hands on. Cereal boxes, newspapers, magazines. Luckily, my library was a bike ride away but carrying those back on my bike was fun."

"OMG, you are so right. That reminds me of things I hadn't thought about in ages.I used to feel so very bored that I'd read anything that had text on it, from cans of food to cereal boxes to whatever books (however insipid) I could lay my hands on. Even the obituary notices in the newspaper were worth a read. The internet really did away with the boredom, didn't it?!"

Speaking of reading…

toilet, bathroom reading, 80s, 1980s A frustrated man sits on the toiletImage via Canva

6. "Trying to find something to read in the bathroom to pass the time. I remember shampoo bottles and the contents of my wallet were my go-to's when a magazine or book was unavailable." "Yes! Shampoo bottles for desperate moments of boredom."

7. "Might be my own bias but being a kid in the '80s there was a lot of casual bullying and conformism. Not that bullying and conformism ever went away, but the '90s was more about counter-culture a bit."


Cyndi Lauper Party GIF Giphy

8. "I was a child in the '80s, but something that I don't think I've ever seen in modern pop culture retellings of '80s life, which I recall witnessing, is this: people think of the weird, wacky, fun colors and hair, etc., of the 1980s — like Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Boy George styles. BUT for many people and mainstream communities, that was considered a 'weird' or 'rock and roll character' kind of presentation. People would often openly stare, laugh at, or disparage people who looked openly unique. It took a lot of courage to go out styled like that. It was acceptable to have a more 'subtle' take on the fun color trends."

"I believe the best real-time representation/evidence of this is in Cyndi Lauper's 'Time After Time' music video, there’s a scene where she sits down in a diner with her boyfriend and his friends. She pulls off her cap to reveal her new hairstyle - half-shaved and dyed bright colors. Her boyfriend's friends start hysterically laughing, the boyfriend is quietly embarrassed, and she runs out of the diner in tears."

tv, 1980s, 80's, 80's TV, sitcoms A retro family watches TV in their living roomImage via Canva

9. "TV was just adult shows for most of the week, especially during summer break. Just soap operas and other boring things." "Staying home sick from school and all there was to watch were game shows and soap operas until the Gilligan's Island reruns came on."


savage reagan GIF Giphy

10. "The sheer sense of doom and pervasive low-key terror of nuclear war. The Soviets' nuclear arsenal pointing at us, and their nihilistic posturing in some ways remind me of the climate change dread we now have. Living with an existential threat is not something new."

"This is so completely underestimated or misunderstood. All through high school, I was convinced that the world would just end one day, and I'd have to figure out how to survive in a post-apocalyptic world afterwards. Yeah, we thought that people would survive an all-out nuclear war."


11. "The homophobia."

"It was casual, rampant, and virtually unquestioned. If you were gay or lesbian, and not living in a major city like New York or San Francisco, you were probably in the closet, at least to everyone but some close friends and (maybe) family. If you were trans, forget about it. Enjoy your life of dysphoria and misery. You don't really see that depicted so much in pop culture now."

"AIDS and '80s homophobia went hand in hand, and it's hard to overstate how much AIDS destroyed the gay community and how the dominant culture thought that was a good thing."

latchkey kids, 80s, 1980s, children, child safety A child opens a door to their homeImage via Canva

12. "Being a latchkey kid it was no frequent communication with your parents. I can't tell you how many times I stayed out all night as an 18-year-old and no one but who I was with knew where I was or what I was doing. My parents didn't know what I was doing all day as a 12–17-year-old, either! You only called your parents at work only if it was an emergency."

"Yes. It's almost like a 'parents didn't care' attitude that would be ascribed to that behavior now (but that wasn't right). Ma needed to work and that she didn't get home until 7 p.m. was just a reality. Oftentimes, she was gone when I got up and we had zero communication until she got home. I was just responsible for the whole shpiel of keeping myself alive."

1950s, 1980s, 80s, 50s, nostalgia A 1950s familyImage via Canva

13.The obsession people/media had about the '50s and '60s.”

“Part of it was stuff like 'Back to the Future,' '50s-themed diners and baseball jackets being popular, then there was the 20th anniversary of things, like various Beatles albums. I think the boomers at that point were in positions of influence and were looking back on their teens and twenties with rose-tinted glasses, so the rest of us had to suffer these cultural echoes from the generation before."

14."Cruising. Before social media, we would drive up and down the street, see and be seen. Stop at different businesses, the cool kids hung out at the Walgreens parking lot, the jocks at the McDonald's. But it was a small town so we would stop at all of them during the evening. That was our social world along with keggers in the desert all through high school and for folks that stayed in town for years after high school.

"It was like a social network but with your car."

And lastly…

15. "What a mess it was to get cleaned up!”

“That sparkle-blue eye shadow didn't come off easily and if it got in your eyes it was torture! That red lip gloss ran all over. And shampooing your hair three times to get out all the hairspray and the mousse. I loved the '80s and I had a marvelous time. But it was messy... but way worth it!"

This article originally appeared last year.

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Bizarre photo of Adele's face explains the viral phenomenon called the Thatcher effect

The 45-year-old optical illusion is still astounding people.

Credit: Condé Nast (through Vogue Taiwan)

Prepare to get Thatcherized.

Adele has a face that is chiseled into the public's mind. She's been a global icon for two decades with a number of mega hit albums and songs. But this photo might be the most unforgettable of all. Perhaps you’ve seen the image in question previously (it seems to make the rounds every couple of years). But in case you missed it—it’s Adele’s face. Normal, just upside down.

Only it’s not normal. In fact, when you turn Adele’s face right side up, what you notice is that her eyes and mouth were actually right-side up THE ENTIRE TIME, even though the entire head was upside down. So when you turn the head right side up, the eyes and mouth are now UPSIDE-DOWN—and you can’t unsee it. Do you feel like you're Alice in Wonderland yet?

Just wait. Things get even more fascinating. Especially because this optical illusion is over 40 years in the making.

Below you’ll find the Adele photo in question. Go ahead. Take a look at it. Then turn the image upside down.


adele, thatcher effect, psychology Can't. Unsee.scontent-lax3-2.xx.fbcdn.net

Crazy right? And just a little terrifying?

As the Facebook post explains, this mind-boggling image highlights a phenomenon known as the Thatcher effect. Our brains, so much more used to recognizing faces that are right-side up, have difficulty detecting specific changes once a face is upside down.

margaret thatcher, colleage of thatcher photos, thatcher effect Image manipulation illustrating the Thatcher effect. Rob Bogaerts Image manipulation: Phonebox

Seeing that everything is more or less where it should be, our brains don’t notice anything out of the ordinary in Adele’s face until we turn her face back to a normal position.

The Thatcher effect got its name from British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, on whose photograph it was first demonstrated back in 1980 by Peter Thompson, Professor of Psychology at York University.

This demonstration was one of the first to explore just how facial recognition works, and certainly the first to suggest that humans (and monkeys, it turns out) process faces on a more holistic level, rather than by individual components like lips and eyes. There's even evidence that rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees experience the Thatcher effect, meaning it may have deep roots in the evolutionary biology of mammals.

Since its publication, there has been a wealth of research exploring how our brain takes in both subtle and striking facial configurations.


- YouTube www.youtube.com


Funny enough, it was once believed that this illusion only worked on the Prime Minister’s face. But as Adele has proven, anyone can be Thatcherized.

This article originally appeared two years ago.

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