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Health

Psychologist breaks down why cruises are good for our mental health

Popularity has surged since the pandemic. There's a reason why.

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Not a phone in sight. So beautiful.

Cruise life might have taken a hiatus in 2020 (along with everything else), but post-pandemic business is booming. There are more people embarking on cruises than even in 2019, according to the Cruise Lines International Association (TIME). And with overall prices that are lower than a lot of mortgages and rents, many folks opt to cruise full-time.

So…is it just the competitive prices calling us to sea? The promise of adventure, perhaps? Or is it simply the 24-hour buffet that makes it so intriguing?

A psychologist and cruise enthusiast has some compelling thoughts.

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Science

A recent scientific study found that life on Earth will survive nearly anything

Life could survive pretty much anything the universe is going to throw at us.

Earth faces many challenges moving forward except maybe inhabiting life.

This article originally appeared on 07.17.17


Scientists have calculated what it would take to sterilize the planet. No wait, stay with me! It's not as morbid as it sounds!

Three scientists from Oxford and Harvard universities were interested in just what it would take to sterilize the Earth — not just wipe out humanity, but get a really deep scrub in there and completely wipe out life.

What they found is that life could survive pretty much anything the universe is going to throw at us for at least 7.6 billion years.

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If there's one thing that unites us all, it's the inevitability of death. That may sound morbid, and it's not something most of us care to think about, but our mortality is something every person on Earth has in common.

However, ideas and beliefs about what dying means are as diverse as humanity itself. So when someone manages to nail a universal truth about death, we pay attention. And when someone does so in a way that touches us deeply, we share it as a way to say, "Look at this gorgeous evidence of our shared human experience."

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If you and I (in this fantasy we are best friends fulfilling our lifelong dream of visiting Paris) decided to see what The Louvre's glass pyramid looked like covered in paper, we would likely spend the majority of our trip becoming intimately acquainted with France's legal system.

I know it sounds unfair but the reality is that you (best friend) and I are not famous artists. And while the french government may not trust us to cover one of its most famous landmarks in paper, I have some excellent news: We can still see what it looks like.

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