The IRS requires criminals to report and pay taxes on their illegal income. Yes, seriously.
You know how sometimes you see something come through your social media feed and you think, “There’s no way that’s real,” only to then have your mind blown when you find out it actually is real? This is one of those times. Twitter user @litcapital shared a post that appeared to be a screenshot from…
You know how sometimes you see something come through your social media feed and you think, “There’s no way that’s real,” only to then have your mind blown when you find out it actually is real?
This is one of those times.
Twitter user @litcapital shared a post that appeared to be a screenshot from the IRS website with two entries on it:
“Illegal activities. Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.
Stolen property. If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year.”
Yes, you read that right. Dealing illegal drugs? Gotta pay taxes on that income. Stealing property? Gotta report that as income.
Tax szn is around the corner. Remember to report your income from illegal activities and stolen property to the IRS pic.twitter.com/c4S1yMZJLz— litquidity (@litcapital) December 27, 2021
Surely this is made up, right?
Nope. Go here: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17. Do a “Find” search with your browser and enter the word “illegal.” Then put in “stolen.” You’ll find the entries listed under “Other Income,” worded just like this.
We can all agree that taxes are overly complicated, and few of us have the time to read through every single IRS publication to figure them out. But requiring criminals to report illegal activity and stolen goods on their taxes? Really?
Someone had to actually come up with this policy. Someone had to say, “Hey, I think we should tell criminals that they have to report their criminal profits on their taxes,” and someone else had to say, “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” Someone had to approve it. Someone had to type it up and publish it, too.
Did they all do this with a straight face? Was it a serious conversation? Did any brave soul say, “Um, that’s stupid. No one is going to do that,” because it’s obviously stupid and clearly no one is going to do that?
That was my first thought upon seeing these tax requirements.
Add seven zeros to your example and you’ve just explained how corporate accounting works.— Jimmy (@nouseformonkeys) December 27, 2021
However, as it turns out, there actually is a good reason these policies exist. Illegal income does get reported sometimes, namely when someone has been caught (or thinks they’re about to be caught) in some illegal activity and they don’t want to get hit with a tax evasion charge in addition to whatever financial or property theft crime they’ve committed.
According to CNN Money, New England accountant Tom Hughes paid taxes on money he stole from his clients in 1999, 2001 and 2004. “I knew the money was taxable, there was no doubt about that,” Hughes told the outlet. “I had already been caught, and I didn’t want to face federal tax charges.”
He now gives speeches on financial crime and professional responsibility. Go figure.
However, Hughes is the exception, as tax experts told CNN that most criminals don’t report their illegal incomes. Duh. According to San Francisco tax attorney Stephen Moskowitz, most of those who do are facing embezzlement charges and are trying to avoid Al Capone-ing themselves. He has helped some of those clients document their illegal gains to avoid doubling their legal trouble due to illegal tax activity.
So basically, we have to have official tax requirements for illegal income in order for criminals to not be able to get away with tax evasion for that income. Still seems like a bizarre policy to actually write out in words, though, even if it makes sense from a legal perspective.
Humans are weird and money is weird and both things just seem to keep getting weirder. Yay us.
In a small village in Pwani, a district on Tanzania’s coast, a massive dance party is coming to a close. For the past two hours, locals have paraded through the village streets, singing and beating ngombe drums; now, in a large clearing, a woman named Sheilla motions for everyone to sit facing a large projector screen. A film premiere is about to begin.
It’s an unusual way to kick off a film about gender bias, inequality, early marriage, and other barriers that prevent girls from accessing education in Tanzania. But in Pwani and beyond, local organizations supported by Malala Fund and funded by Pura are finding creative, culturally relevant ways like this one to capture people’s interest.
The film ends and Sheilla, the Communications and Partnership Lead for Media for Development and Advocacy (MEDEA), stands in front of the crowd once again, asking the audience to reflect: What did you think about the film? How did it relate to your own experience? What can we learn?
Sheilla explains that, once the community sees the film, “It brings out conversations within themselves, reflective conversations.” The resonance and immediate action create a ripple effect of change.
MEDEA Screening Audience in Tanzania. Captured by James Roh for Pura
Across Tanzania, gender-based violence often forces adolescent girls out of the classroom. This and other barriers — including child marriage, poverty, conflict, and discrimination — prevent girls from completing their education around the world.
Sheilla and her team are using film and radio programs to address the challenges girls face in their communities. MEDEA’s ultimate goal is to affirm education as a fundamental right for everyone, and to ensure that every member of a community understands how girls’ education contributes to a stronger whole and how to be an ally for their sisters, daughters, granddaughters, friends, nieces, and girlfriends.
Sheilla’s story is one of many that inspired Heart on Fire, a new fragrance from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection that blends the warm, earthy spices of Tanzania with a playful, joyful twist. Here’s how Pura is using scent as a tool to connect the world and inspire action.
A partnership focused on local impact, on a global mission
Pura, a fragrance company that recognizes education as both freedom and a human right, has partnered with Malala Fund since 2022. In order to defend every girl’s right to access and complete 12 years of education, Malala Fund partners with local organizations in countries where the educational barriers are the greatest. They invest in locally-led solutions because they know that those who are closest to the problems are best equipped to solve and build durable solutions, like MEDEA, which works with communities to challenge discrimination against girls and change beliefs about their education.
But local initiatives can thrive and scale more powerfully with global support, which is why Pura is using their own superpower, the power of scent, to connect people around the world with the women and girls in these local communities.
The Pura x Malala Fund Collection incorporates ingredients naturally found in Tanzania, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Brazil: countries where Malala Fund operates to address systemic education barriers. Eight percent of net revenue from the Pura x Malala Fund Collection will be donated to Malala Fund directly, but beyond financial support, the Collection is also a love letter to each unique community, blending notes like lemon, jasmine, cedarwood, and clove to transport people, ignite their senses, and help them draw inspiration and hope from the global movement for girls’ education. Through scent, people can connect to the courage, joy, and tenacity of girls and local leaders, all while uniting in a shared commitment to education: the belief that supporting girls’ rights in one community benefits all of us, everywhere.
You’ve already met Sheilla. Now see how Naiara and Mama Habiba are building unique solutions to ensure every girl can learn freely and dare to dream.
Naiara Leite is reimagining what’s possible in Brazil
Julia with Odara in Brazil. Captured by Luisa Dorr for Pura
In Brazil, where pear trees and coconut plantations cover the Northeastern Coast, girls like ten-year-old Julia experience a different kind of educational barrier than girls in Tanzania. Too often, racial discrimination contributes to high dropout rates among Black, quilombola and Indigenous girls in the country.
“In the logic of Brazilian society, Black people don’t need to study,” says Naiara Leite, Executive Coordinator of Odara, a women-led organization and Malala Fund partner. Bahia, the state where Odara is based, was once one of the largest slave-receiving territories in the Americas, and because of that history, deeply-ingrained, anti-Black prejudice is still widespread. “Our role and the image constructed around us is one of manual labor,” Naiara says.
But education can change that. In 2020, with assistance from a Malala Fund grant, Odara launched its first initiative for improving school completion rates among Black, quilombola, and Indigenous girls: “Ayomidê Odara”. The young girls mentored under the program, including Julia, are known as the Ayomidês. And like the Pura x Malala Fund Collection’s Brazil: Breath of Courage scent, the Ayomidês are fierce, determined, and bursting with energy.
Ayomidês with Odara in Brazil. Captured by Luisa Dorr for Pura
Ayomidês take part in weekly educational sessions where they explore subjects like education and ethnic-racial relations. The girls are encouraged to find their own voices by producing Instagram lives, social media videos, and by participating in public panels. Already, the Ayomidês are rewriting the narrative on what’s possible for Afro-Brazilian girls to achieve. One of the earliest Ayomidês, a young woman named Debora, is now a communications intern. Another former Ayomidê, Francine, works at UNICEF, helping train the next generation of adolescent leaders. And Julia has already set her sights on becoming a math teacher or a model.
“These are generations of Black women who did not have access to a school,” Naiara says. “These are generations of Black women robbed daily of their dreams. And we’re telling them that they could be the generation in their family to write a new story.”
Mama Habiba is reframing the conversation in Nigeria
Centre for Girls' Education, Nigeria. Captured by James Roh for Pura
In Mama Habiba’s home country of Nigeria, the scents of starfruit, ylang ylang and pineapple, all incorporated into the Pura x Malala Collection’s “Nigeria: Hope for Tomorrow,” can be found throughout the vibrant markets. Like these native scents, Mama Habiba says that the Nigerian girls are also bright and passionate, but too often they are forced to leave school long before their potential fully blooms.
“Some of these schools are very far, and there is an issue of quality, too,” Mama Habiba says. “Most parents find out when their children are in school, the girls are not learning. So why allow them to continue?”
When girls drop out of secondary school, marriage is often the alternative. In Nigeria, one in three girls is married before the age of 18. When this happens, girls are unable to fulfill their potential, and their families and communities lose out on the social, health and economic benefits.
Completing secondary school delays marriage, and according to UNESCO, educated girls become women who raise healthier children, lift their families out of poverty and contribute to more peaceful, resilient communities.
Centre for Girls’ Education, Nigeria. Captured by James Roh for Pura
To encourage young girls to stay in school, the Centre for Girls’ Education, a nonprofit in Nigeria founded by Mama Habiba and supported by Malala Fund and Pura, has pioneered an initiative that’s similar to the Ayomidê workshops in Brazil: safe spaces. Here, girls meet regularly to learn literacy, numeracy, and other issues like reproductive health. These safe spaces also provide an opportunity for the girls to role-play and learn to advocate for themselves, develop their self-image, and practice conversations with others about their values, education being one of them. In safe spaces, Mama Habiba says, girls start to understand “who she is, and that she is a girl who has value. She has the right to negotiate with her parents on what she really feels or wants.”
“When girls are educated, they can unlock so many opportunities,” Mama Habiba says. “It will help the economy of the country. It will boost so many opportunities for the country. If they are given the opportunity, I think the sky is not the limit. It is the starting point for every girl.”
From parades, film screenings to safe spaces and educational programs, girls and local leaders are working hard to strengthen the quality, safety and accessibility of education and overcome systemic challenges. They are encouraging courageous behavior and reminding us all that education is freedom.
Experience the Pura x Malala Fund Collection here, and connect with the stories of real girls leading change across the globe.
Generation X, typically the children of Baby Boomers born between the years of 1965-1980 tend to have a complicated reputation depending on who you ask. Some view them as a feral generation never to be spoken of poorly without consequence, while others view them as innovators pushing us into the future. But in recent years,…
This multi-year conversation started when a video went viral calling Gen X out for being “terrible” grandparents, claiming that they never want to help with grandchildren. It didn’t take long before other Millennials piled on to air their own grievances about Gen X grandparents. Most people criticizing the “new grandparents” were genuinely perplexed as to how they did not want to be more involved in the lives of their grandchildren.
Kylie Muse reveals in a video that she felt neglected by her Gen X parents growing up, saying, “It’s quite a common theme for Gen X parents to be neglectful in some capacity and it’s just crazy to me how more of them haven’t learned from the past 20 to 30 years, instead of these grandparents seeing their kids having kids as an opportunity to restore the health in their relationships with their kids by showing up and helping them during the hardest transition of their lives, they would rather double down and compromise their relationship with that next generation. All for the sake of hyper-individualism and pride.”
The critique coming from the younger generation is not lost on Gen X, and they started coming out in force to respond with such vigor you’d think John Hughes had just announced the re-release of The Breakfast Club. It would seem that some of the people complaining of the lack of involvement have not considered that Gen X could have valid reasons for not immediately jumping in to take on grandparenting in the way some expect. A man by the name of John S. Blake gives a candid look into why Gen X was neglected as children and, in turn, became hype-independent at an early age.
“As a Gen X who’s been on this earth long enough to have some hindsight I can tell you this, being independent at a young age is not a flex, what it actually means is capitalism is so brutal that our parents were forced to neglect their own children to stay alive. My generation was struggling so much that we had to leave our children unattended in order to produce enough so that we could afford to exist,” Blake says.
But perhaps one of the most heart wrenching explanations comes from an elder Millennial who goes by the name Amazing Dea. In response to another Millennial who asks about Gen X being let off the hook, Dea shares, “Being as though you look like you might be a younger Millennial, let me go ahead and enlighten you. Generation X and older Millennials had to live through more than just this pandemic. We had the crack epidemic, we had the AIDS epidemic and let me tell you something, it was scary as f***.”
Dea went on to explain that there were apartment complexes burned due to high populations of people with AIDS living in them and how they would witness people go from being completely normal to being addicted to crack in a matter of weeks. It seems that depending on socioeconomic status, Gen Xers lived wildly different lives with the common theme being growing up entirely too fast at an extremely young age.
Another person kindly breaks down the confusion over why Gen X isn’t rising to the occasion of being award-winning grandparents. In response to the criticism she replies, “We grew up in a different time, first of all. A lot of us, meaning me, Gen X, I was raised by boomers. A lot of us did not get raised by our grandparents. We were like the feral kids, like by 7 and 9 years old we were actually babysitting our brothers and sisters, alright.”
The woman explains further in the video that Gen X doesn’t want to raise their grandchildren or simply be babysitters, that there’s a difference between expecting grandparents to be involved and expecting them to be babysitters.
Let’s take it a step further. You share DNA with your grandkids they are part of you not everyone gets the privilege of being a grandparent so if you are one take that as a blessing #genxgrandparents
In many of the response videos shared by Gen Xers, they certainly seem to love their grandchildren and children alike, but there’s a discrepancy in expectation. The consensus of the forgotten generation seems to be that they had adult responsibilities much too early, were exposed to adult life experiences at a young age, and were often left to their own devices for long periods of time while also being told that their voices didn’t matter.
While the argument seems to be around their lack of involvement as grandparents, they appear to be saying that they want to enjoy the freedom they didn’t have as children, while being valued as a person and not a babysitter. In many follow up videos, Gen Xers gushed over their grandchildren and how they loved when they were around. It’s just that they draw the line at raising them. Maybe for some, their experiences with their own childhood isn’t enough to move Gen X out of the “worst grandparents” category, but for others it provides much needed context.
This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.
There are only a few things in this life we can’t evade. One of them is aging. Sure, there’s Botox and facelifts and all that jazz to help us look younger. But in the end, our cells simply insist on keeping score, and no matter how hard some might fight it, our DNA is bombarded…
There are only a few things in this life we can’t evade. One of them is aging. Sure, there’s Botox and facelifts and all that jazz to help us look younger. But in the end, our cells simply insist on keeping score, and no matter how hard some might fight it, our DNA is bombarded with hits that will eventually take us down.
The good news is that with years often comes wisdom. I like to think of our minds as though they were hiking trails. Each trail has a sign, but instead of telling us which way to go, the signs remind us who we are. This past week, I was honored to read some of those signs at the senior home where my mom resides. Nearly every conversation, at least for me, yielded little sage sachets of advice that are truly invaluable.
Know someone before you marry them.
A woman in her early 80s shared that it takes about a year for someone’s “true nature” to be revealed, even in the most intimate of relationships. (This, at least according to a professor she had in graduate school.) In other words, she says, “A person can hide their psychological pathologies, on average, for about a year.”
So, she wishes younger people would wait at least that long before moving in or getting married. “Slow down,” she said. “Really take your time before you take the leap. Everyone puts their best foot forward at first and then sometimes that mask can slip. Don’t get stuck.”
Some research shows that the “honeymoon phase” can, of course, vary in length. Brides.com shares, “The honeymoon phase is an early part of a couple’s relationship where everything seems carefree and happy. It usually lasts from six months to two years and can be marked with lots of laughs, intimacy, and fun dates.”
No matter how long that phase lasts, her advice to slow down and really get to know someone before fully committing seems like (mostly) a good idea.
I met a woman who was a retired OBGYN. We talked at length about perimenopause, hormones, and life after 50. She urges, “Do the research, but also (for the most part) listen to your doctors. Most of them know what they’re doing.”
We both kind of laughed, and then she leaned in and said, “No. Really.” She added, “Nothing wrong with getting a second, or even third opinion. But listen and read all you can before it’s too late.”
One thing my mom rather casually mentioned really stuck with me. This was how difficult it is to make new friends—and not for reasons one might think. Sure, senior living facilities can be just as cliquey as groups were in middle school. But for my mother, it was less about fitting in and more about fearing she would lose people as she grew to love them.
“No one warns you how many of your new friends will pass on. When I first moved here, I befriended a brilliantly funny woman and within six months she was gone. This happens more and more and you never get used to it. You’re never prepared.”
If you don’t want to eat dinner at 4:30, you don’t have to.
On a simpler note, this one might be obvious to some, but it was certainly a common topic among the people with whom I spoke. Even though they serve dinner at 5:00 in many senior homes, it doesn’t mean you can’t put it in Tupperware and save it for later. To that point, just because people age, doesn’t mean they have to go to bed at 8:00 p.m. (Though for many, that timeline is just perfect.)
One man noted, “Just because we all live in one place doesn’t mean we all become one person. We’ve got night owls and early birds and every other kind of bird you could imagine. Eat and sleep when you want to. It’s still your life.”
His friend added, “If you want to play Mahjong at midnight, do it!”
This article originally appeared last year. It has been updated.
McDonald’s President and CEO Chris Kempczinski went viral recently after taste-testing the new Big Arch burger. Kempczinski, dressed in a light blue sweater, refers to the burger as “product” (not a burger, mind you) and takes a very timid bite, looking uncomfortable eating his own food. The video inspired the CEOs of Burger King, Wendy’s,…
McDonald’s President and CEO Chris Kempczinski went viral recently after taste-testing the new Big Arch burger. Kempczinski, dressed in a light blue sweater, refers to the burger as “product” (not a burger, mind you) and takes a very timid bite, looking uncomfortable eating his own food.
The video inspired the CEOs of Burger King, Wendy’s, and Kentucky Fried Chicken to take confident bites of their burgers, while Jack in the Box’s mascot, Jack, warned against timid eaters. Just when it looked like the burger wars were flaming out, the Columbus Metropolitan Library in Ohio stepped up with a challenge of its own: make the CEO “eat a book like it’s a hamburger.”
The library’s X feed is known for sharing interesting local history while also having fun.
On March 5, the library issued a challenge to its X followers: If the post reached 10,000 likes, CEO Lauren Hagan would eat a book. The tweet did much better than that, receiving more than 60,000 likes.
10K likes and we get our CEO to eat a hardcover book like it's a hamburger
The CEO of the Columbus Metropolitan Library was challenged to eat a book “like a hamburger”
In a follow-up video in which the social media admin promised the CEO would eat a book, he explained to Hagan how the library got caught up in the burger wars. After a quick cut, Hagan gets into character. “Hi, I’m Lauren Hagan, CEO of Columbus Metropolitan Library,” she says. “Last week, more than 50,000 of you made your voice clear. You’d like me to eat my words. More accurately, the words of our social media admin, who did not tell me about this.” She then grabs a book from the top of a pile and, after a very obvious edit, chomps into something resembling the book, which was probably a block of fondant or compressed cotton candy. Hagan ends the video with a pitch for libraries everywhere: “Check out your library, but remember, read them, don’t eat them.”
The video was funny and well acted, and Hagan and the social media admin looked like they could have been cast in The Office. Commenters overwhelmingly thought the social media admin deserved a raise.
This SMM turned this into a beautiful message and I think he should get a raise.
Do you know how much people pay for the following that he gained? You're on the world stage… Use it!
The video brought a satisfying end to the burger wars and reminded people how much they love libraries.
The most popular commenter on a Reddit thread about the video wrote:
“Libraries are consistently great when allowed to be by their local governments and properly funded. I have never met a librarian who wasn’t an absolute gem of a person as long as they were treated respectfully. I feel like it’s the perfect example of letting people do what they love. Every librarian I’ve encountered had such a genuine love of reading and helping people find a book that it was hard not to get excited.”
Can kids predict the future? In 1966, the BBC’s Tomorrow’s World asked a group of 13-year-olds to share their predictions about what life in the year 2000 would be like. As you might expect, it was fascinating. Two decades later, the showrunners did the same thing again. Only this time, they asked the young teens…
Two decades later, the showrunners did the same thing again. Only this time, they asked the young teens of 1986 what they thought life in 2020 would be like. How did Gen X’s answers about the future differ from those of their Baby Boomer predecessors?
The 1966 cohort’s predictions dealt with space travel, robots, and computers. They were concerned about overpopulation and nuclear war.
“That was before the manned moon landings, the microprocessor, strategic arms limitation talks, or test-tube babies,” the feather-haired host shared. “So have the hopes and fears of today’s 13-year-olds changed as they look forward to the year 2020?”
The kids from 1986 offered their predictions:
“Perhaps brain waves to convert into radio waves, sent to someone else, convert back into brain waves. And it’d be like, what would you call it, like a telepathy thing.”
Kids who listened to music on cassette tapes had no concept of the Internet. Photo credit: Canva
“Well, instead of a channel tunnel, you could have something like a space tunnel, where you could go [from] one planet to the other, like bypasses.”
“Obviously, nuclear war worries me, but I don’t think that’ll happen unless they’ve got computers that press the button for them. Because no, I don’t think any human being is capable of actually pressing some button that releases all nuclear arms cuz it just means destruction of the world.”
“I don’t think they’ll be living on Mars yet, but I think they’ll still be living around here.”
“I think they may, unless they have another planet to go to, just there’ll be loads of tower blocks. Or people will be restricted to a certain amount of kids.”
“Probably be computers running the country.”
Predicting the future is hard work. In 1983, most people viewed the home computer as a passing fad.
“But when it comes to wars and things like that, nuclear bombs, and then they’re designing these different gases that can kill people within seconds and things like that. I think that aspect of technology should be wiped out completely.”
It’s interesting how similar many of the issues were between 1966 and 1986. Some of the worries these kids had are still major concerns 40 years later. But how accurate were their predictions of what 2020 would hold?
The kid talking about not living on Mars yet was right. One could make an argument that computers do run the country, but not necessarily in the way a 13-year-old in 1986 would have imagined. They had no concept of the Internet at that point, which made imagining the reality of 2020 impossible. But the threat of nuclear war and questions about whether a person would ever actually “push the button”? That still feels relevant.
“Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological state plans for it. Everyone knows it is madness, and every nation has an excuse.” — Carl Sagan
However, it’s 2026, and there’s nary a space tunnel in sight, so that one was a bust. It’s wild to remember how we assumed things like flying cars and easy space travel would be common in adulthood. (And yet somehow Google Maps still feels like a miracle every time we use it.) It feels like we’re farther from actual telepathy than we imagined in the ’80s, but who knows? With advancements in nanotechnology and the Wild West of AI, even the near future feels entirely unpredictable.
In 1985, wild-haired scientist “Doc” asked a philosophical question in Back to the Future: “Since when can weathermen predict the weather, much less the future?” Thankfully, we’ve drastically improved our ability to predict the weather since then. Predicting the future, however, remains as impossible as it has always been.
The English language is full of idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies that can drive English learners batty. But even for native English speakers, some words and phrases can cause confusion in ways they may not expect. For instance, not only are there English words that mean opposite things depending on how they are used (called contronyms), but…
The English language is full of idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies that can drive English learners batty. But even for native English speakers, some words and phrases can cause confusion in ways they may not expect.
For instance, not only are there English words that mean opposite things depending on how they are used (called contronyms), but there are also words and phrases that have opposite meanings depending on where they are used.
A person holding an American flag and a person holding a British flag. Photo credit: Canva.
Evan Edinger moved to the United Kingdom 13 years ago. He shares videos on YouTube about his experience as an American living in the U.K., including linguistic differences. For instance, saying the food in London is “quite good” may sound like a compliment, but it would likely be received as a bit of an insult by Londoners.
“English is full of words that quietly flip meaning when you cross the Atlantic,” he says. “Words that you think sound polite or a compliment, like this one, can really land you in hot water if you use them across the pond.”
“Quite”
That’s because Americans generally use “quite” as an intensifier. If something is “quite good,” we see it as better than just “good.” For Brits, “quite” is often used as a dampener, so “quite good” can mean less good than simply “good.”
“With all due respect…”
Other opposite meanings are less subtle, like the phrase “with all due respect.”
“I’ve lived in this country for over 13 years, and I’ve only found out this year, Brits do not mean this when they say it,” shares Edinger. “When an American says, ‘With all due respect,’ it’s usually just a polite way to pad out some criticism. ‘With all due respect, I think we should do it this way instead.’ Basically, ‘I respect you. I do. But I do disagree with you in this instance.’ In Britain, they say the same words, ‘with all due respect,’ but the implication is that they actually don’t respect you or your opinion at all. The amount of respect that you’re due? That’s in question. ‘With the respect you’re due,’ which, of course, is nothing.”
Can we just all admit that when someone says "With all due respect" they don't respect them at all?
It’s a bit similar with “I’ll bear that in mind.” In the U.S., that usually means you’ll consider it and might actually do it. In the U.K., it more often means you have no intention of doing it and have probably already forgotten it.
“Though diving deeper into the data, it would appear that Americans in the Northeast are significantly more likely to share the British stance,” Edinger adds. “I think that makes sense, actually. But overall, American culture prioritizes direct communication. If they like your idea, an American will probably tell you. Same as if they dislike it, you’ll know. As a lot of British culture emphasizes indirectness and not causing offense, expressions like, ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ act as a polite way of refusing an idea without outright saying it to soften the blow.”
To “table” something
If you’re an American and you hear “let’s table that discussion,” it means, “Let’s not talk about this now. We’ll come back to it later, if we have time.” For Brits, it means, “Let’s talk about this right now.”
“This is one expression that causes a lot of confusion in international meetings,” says Edinger. “In British English, to table a motion or an issue means to bring it forward for discussion. For instance, if an item is tabled in parliament, well, it has been figuratively put on the table to be addressed immediately.”
In the U.S., it’s the opposite.
“In both houses of the United States Congress, the motion to table is used to kill a motion without debate or further discussion,” he says. “Quite interesting that both countries’ political bodies have the same word that means quite literally the very opposite. It’s quite literally the difference between, ‘Well let’s talk about this immediately. It’s really important,’ and ‘Let’s never speak of this again.’”
A “moot point”
For Brits, a “moot point” is a point that’s debatable—something that can be argued either way, which aligns with its original meaning. A moot was an Anglo-Saxon assembly or court, so a moot point is one that would be argued there.
For Americans, a moot point isn’t debatable—it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. There’s no point in debating it at all anymore. (Or, as Joey on Friends would say, “Like a cow’s opinion.”)
How did we end up with such an opposite meaning? Edinger explains:
“Often, an important part of law school is arguing hypothetical cases in a moot court for practice. It’s similar to a mock trial. So, a moot point would be a point brought up in a moot court. During the 19th century in America specifically, this evolved more to focus on the hypothetical nature of the moot point.”
Edinger points out that even the Supreme Court of the United States uses the term “moot question” to refer to a question that has no bearing on an issue.
Solicitor
In the U.S., when we hear the word “solicitor,” we usually think of a door-to-door salesperson or someone who knocks on the door trying to persuade us to buy something or believe something. People often hang “No Solicitors” signs on their front porches to deter them.
A “No Solicitors” sign in the U.K. might be confusing, as a solicitor is not a salesperson but “a qualified legal professional who provides specialist legal advice on different areas of law and is responsible for representing a client’s legal interests.” Americans would call them lawyers, but in the U.K., a lawyer could be anyone working in a law-related role.
Public school
A solicitor in the U.S. probably went to public school, and a highly regarded solicitor in the U.K. also probably went to public school, but the term means something completely different in each country.
In the U.S., a public school is a free school funded by the government that anyone has the right to attend. In the U.K., a public school is one of the prestigious, selective, and expensive private boarding schools attended by the children of wealthy families. The famous Eton College is a public school in the British sense, but not at all in the American sense.
In Britain, the secondary school you attended is often considered a lot more important than the university you attended.
For instance, attending prestigious "public schools" like Harrow, Winchester and Eton signals you are of a "higher class".
To make matters even more confusing, what Americans call public schools, Brits call state schools. In the U.S., we usually use “state school” to refer to public universities.
Momentarily
If a pilot announces, “We’ll be landing momentarily,” Americans understand that to mean “very soon.” But for Brits, that sentence might be confusing, since “momentarily” means “just for a moment.” As in, maybe the plane will touch down and then immediately take off again.
It’s the difference between “in a moment” and “for a moment,” which may not seem huge but could lead to big misunderstandings.
It just goes to show that even when we speak the same language, there’s plenty of room for miscommunication.
Actress and author Mariel Hemingway has quite the legacy. Her grandfather was the famed Pulitzer Prize– and Nobel Prize–winning author Ernest Hemingway. In fact, her family is full of writers, actors, painters, and opera singers. Like her grandfather, she came by her own talents at a cost. Many of those gifts in acting and writing…
Actress and author Mariel Hemingway has quite the legacy. Her grandfather was the famed Pulitzer Prize– and Nobel Prize–winning author Ernest Hemingway. In fact, her family is full of writers, actors, painters, and opera singers. Like her grandfather, she came by her own talents at a cost. Many of those gifts in acting and writing came with deep mental anguish.
While Hemingway continues a successful career onscreen—she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as a teen for her role in Manhattan—she is also a writer. In exploring her complicated family struggles, she never seems to shy away from stripping away any semblance of ego. This is reflected in her work, where she bares vulnerable parts of life: mental health, depression, and most recently, aging.
In a recent Instagram post, she shared a close-up photo of her face—no smile and perhaps just a dash of makeup. With Sheryl Crow’s “If It Makes You Happy” underscoring the photo, she wrote:
“I have been talking about aging lately.
But today it is not aging.
It is wrinkles.
The lines around my mouth I swore I would never have. The soft crepe skin at my neck that seems to appear overnight. The mirror catching me in light I did not ask for.
Some days I do not care.
Other days it feels like a punishment.
I eat well. I move my body. I take care of myself. I do the things we are told will protect us.
And still… time touches my face.
There is a voice that whispers, Why this? Why me? Why now?
I know it is fashionable to say we earned our wrinkles. That this is graceful. That this is beautiful.
And yes… part of me knows that is true.
But another part feels something deeper.
What I realized is this.
The ache is not about the wrinkles.
It is about identity.
Somewhere along the way we start to believe the mirror is telling us who we are.
That youth equals value. That smooth skin equals worth. That beauty equals belonging.
And that is the lie.
Because there is a woman inside of me who has not aged one day.
She is calm. She is radiant. She is grounded. She is sovereign.
She does not disappear because my skin changes.
She was never my skin.
She is my rhythm. My breath. My voice when I stop performing.
Time changes the body.
But it does not touch the throne.
When I remember that, something softens.
I stop fighting the season. I stop punishing myself for nature. I stop confusing appearance with identity.
This is not about pretending you love every wrinkle.
It is about remembering you are not the wrinkle.
It is not what you add.
It is what you remove.
Remove the belief that beauty is youth. Remove the fear that aging equals invisibility. Remove the story that your value lives in your face.
When there is nothing left to remove, the Queen remains.”
Fans respond
Her prose has clearly resonated with fans. More than 92,000 people liked the post, and over 5,000 have commented so far. Famous and non-famous Instagrammers alike chimed in to share how touched they were.
Go-Go’s guitarist Jane Wiedlin exclaimed, “Yes! Exactly what you said. We are not allowed to age, at the same time men are elevated as they age, for their sage wisdom.”
Comedian Chelsea Handler simply wrote, “Beautifully said.”
Another woman shared a personal anecdote: “Last Sunday was my 70th birthday. I looked into the mirror and cried tears of joy. Lines and dark spots? No! They were tears of joy, gratitude, and for my life. If you make it this far, it’s for a reason. Life is so worth living. Who cares what I look like? I’m covered in paint every day anyway!”
Hemingway is far from the first woman to openly discuss the beauty standards seemingly placed on women in society.
In a recent appearance on the podcastHow to Fail with Elizabeth Day, actress Kate Winslet didn’t hold back. “We’re so conditioned, women in our 40s, to think, ‘Okay, well, I’m creeping closer to the end,’” she said. “You know, you think you go into menopause and you’re going to stop having sex, and your boobs are going to sag, and your skin’s going to go crepey, and all these things.”
She continued, “First of all, so what? And secondly, it’s just conditioning. You know, I think women, as they get older, become juicier and sexier and more embedded in their truth and who they are. More powerful and more able to walk through the world and care less.”
It can seem easier said than felt. Luckily, many women are feeling more empowered to get raw thanks to celebrities using their voices.
Swedes are known for their delicious and creative-looking, tiny candies avialable at the godisvägg (wall of candy) at their local grocery store. Just grab a bag, fill it up, and pay by weight. Some of Sweden‘s most popular pick-and-mix candies are, of course, Swedish Fish, Ahlgren’s Cars (a small automobile-designed marshmallow candy), Salmiak (salty licorice),…
Swedes are known for their delicious and creative-looking, tiny candies avialable at the godisvägg (wall of candy) at their local grocery store. Just grab a bag, fill it up, and pay by weight. Some of Sweden‘s most popular pick-and-mix candies are, of course, Swedish Fish, Ahlgren’s Cars (a small automobile-designed marshmallow candy), Salmiak (salty licorice), and Polly candies that combine chocolate with a soft center.
However, if you’re a child in Sweden, you’ll have to wait for Saturday to enjoy a bag full of the local godisvägg. That’s because, according to the Swedish tradition known as Lördagsgodis (Saturday candy), they only eat sweets once a week. It’s a sweet tradition but has a rather dark past.
In 1946, as part of the Vipeholm dental study, the Swedish government forced mental patients in its hospitals to eat caramel and other sweets to observe their effects on teeth. After high sugar consumption was linked to tooth decay in the 1950’s, the Swedish government recommended that people eat sweets only once a week.
At the time, trust in government was high, and the growing social safety net required the population to work together to maintain high public health standards. Plus, when the public takes good care of their teeth, it’s a lot easier for the government to pay for healthcare.
The tradition also makes it easier for parents to say “no” to sweets and gives kids something to look forward to on the weekend.
“Mostly, it’s a tool for managing candy, so that there’s no asking about candy during the week, and if they do, ‘It’s not Saturday.’ So, it’s a really a good way to control the sugar,” Therese Larri, a Swedish parent, told the BBC. “But then, it’s an event. They get to choose where we go, which store we go to, and then they take their time. It feels like a big part of the fun is to choose and plain, ‘What am I Gonna get?’”
The Lördagsgodis tradition is also better for people’s teeth because, according to research, it’s better to eat a pound of candy in one sitting and then brush your teeth than to spread the candy over a week and brush every night. The Vipeholm dental study found that sticky sweets eaten between meals cause far more cavities than larger amounts of candy eaten in one sitting. That’s probably a big reason why Swedish people have some of the best teeth in Europe.
Dentistry Today found that Sweden has the fourth-best teeth in Europe, based on a study of 24 European Union countries, plus England and Switzerland.
The Lördagsgodis tradition and the science behind it could be a great way for parents in other countries to talk with their children about candy. Simply ask them: Would you like a little candy throughout the week, or one big day to gorge on an entire bag? If they say they’d take more candy, that’s the lesson of Lördagsgodis: If you can delay your gratification for a few days, you can have all the candy you like.
As Millennials entered adulthood, they ushered in an ideology that was pretty much the antithesis of their Boomer parents’ views in every way, shape, and form. But now, with yet a few more years under our belt, many Millennials are starting to see that maybe, just maybe, the Boomers were reasonable with a few things. …
As Millennials entered adulthood, they ushered in an ideology that was pretty much the antithesis of their Boomer parents’ views in every way, shape, and form. But now, with yet a few more years under our belt, many Millennials are starting to see that maybe, just maybe, the Boomers were reasonable with a few things.
That was certainly the sentiment shared by those who watched a video posted by educator Angie Williams (@the.teacher.chic), as she jokingly tried to school her mother Chris Andresen (who also happened to be a retired teacher) about how to approach the “millennial teaching” method. All to no avail.
For instance, Williams tries to explain that teachers don’t use terms like “boys and girls” to get students’ attention, but instead incorporate “inclusive” language, like “team” or friends.”
“But…they’re not my friends,” Andresen astutely quips.
Moving on to giving student feedback, Andresen looks at a piece of artwork and says, “I’m so proud of you.” Williams corrects her, saying, “you don’t wanna make it about you, you wanna make it about them and their artwork.”
“You… can tell I’m proud of you!” attempts Andresen. Williams then shakes her head, saying, “that’s still about you,” to which Andresen immediately blurts, “damn fine work!” Close enough.
Andresen is also amazed to hear that teachers today never sit. “Aren’t you tired?” she asks.
When it comes to discipline or displaying authority, Williams encourages her mom to only use “positive language,” adding, “We say what we want them to do.”
Andresen translates this as “close your mouth, shut up, and get in line” and “don’t fall on the scissors.”
To the latter, Williams suggests instead that she say, “make a safe choice with your body.”
“Well, what are you going to say if the stab themselves in the eyeball?” Andresen retorts.
“Was that a safe choice with your body?” Williams replies. “Is that a dumb question?” Andresen responds. Williams then seemingly wins the arguemtns, saying “there are no dumb questions,” elaving Adresen looking utterly befuddled.
Still, the seemingly unanimous sentiment in the comments was that Andresen was totally the reasonable one here.
“They are not my friends. 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼 Your mom is great!!!! Don’t fall on the scissors 😂😜”
“Mom wins here. She is 100% right!!”
“I bet this made her so happy she’s retired!! 😂😂😂”
“I’m team mom.”
Screenshot
“Nope. On mom’s side with this one. The vague talk is one reason they act the way they do. Yes. I currently teach.”
“I think more teachers need to use ‘damn fine work.’ I would have felt so good about my progress!!!”
“I’m a teacher. And I am definitely on your mom’s side. No one’s telling these kids to stop anything! It is actually a huge part of the problem!”
While Williams and her mom were clearly just making the video in good fun, it does point to a very real issue that teachers are facing. In addition to excessive administrative tasks, battling cellphones for attention, and depressingly low wages, many educators lament not having much power to contend with classroom behavior issues. So maybe Andresen blunt ““close your mouth, shut up, and get in line” feels a bit refreshingly structured.
No one is necessarily saying we should go back to hitting kids with rulers, but maybe there is something to be said about just letting them know running with scissors is a bad idea. Class dismissed.
