This 15.6-inch beauty packs all of the top-of-the-line specs you’d want in a premium laptop without adding bulk or weight. It’s sturdy, light, one of the thinnest on the market, and sports chromed-out copper details — basically guaranteeing you to be the biggest badass in the room. Use it as you’d use a traditional laptop, watch movies in tent mode, or completely fold it in half for taking notes, drawing, and easy one-arm carrying. (Yes, the digital pen is included. Jackpot.)
Inside, the 8th gen Intel Core i7-8550U mobile processor with eight-way processing provides high-efficiency power where you need it and reams of max-bandwidth DDR4 RAM to seamlessly run power-sucking video editing apps and keep up with hardcore gaming graphics (gaming is not the MacBook’s strong suit). Oh yeah, and those crisp graphics are displayed on a 3840 x 2160 4K touchscreen — but that’s just showing off at this point.
Drooling yet? Same. Regularly an understandably steep $1,599.99, you can save a whopping $500 and snag this beauty for just $1,099.99. (If we were you, we’d hurry — a deal this rare is likely to be gone within the next day or two.)
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Michigan vs. Ohio State football rivalry game is played every year with a presumption of unpredictability.
Rankings, records and statistics are of secondary importance to history, emotion and momentum. That was true again Saturday when No. 10 Ohio State downed No. 4 Michigan 62-39 in a game that didn’t play out like anyone had imagined. No one expected Ohio State to dominant like this on the scoreboard.
This was the most points scored by either team in the modern history of the rivalry.
The win gave the Buckeyes the Big Ten East title and sends them to the conference championship game next week against Northwestern. There also still hope of making the College Football Playoff.
The game had unusual twists, including Michigan scoring two touchdowns in six seconds near the end of the first half, and Ohio State answering with a seven-play, 41-second drive to kick a field goal.
The game had an unsung hero in Ohio State freshman Chris Olave. Coming into the game with five receptions, Olave caught two touchdown passes and blocked a punt that led to a Buckeyes third-quarter touchdown.
The game had unlikely occurrences: The Michigan defense, exceptional all season, was leaky throughout the contest. The Ohio State defense, inconsistent all season, came up with a handful of big plays.
Here are three observations about Ohio State’s seventh consecutive win over Michigan:
Is this the nation’s most dynamic offensive? Dwayne Haskins tore up the nation’s No. 1 defensive team. Haskins continuously found seams in Michigan’s secondary, throwing for five touchdowns to set a new Big Ten record of 41 TD passes in a season. Michigan’s exalted defensive playmakers couldn’t put much pressure on Haskins. The Wolverines had no sacks against Haskins in the first three quarters.
Throughout the game, Haskins hit wide open receivers streaking across the field.
As if Haskins’ production wasn’t enough, Parris Campbell broke off a 78-yard touchdown run on an an end-around play. The Buckeyes made Michigan’s defensive look pedestrian.
Ohio State rises up defensively when it matters: After losing 49-20 to Purdue on Oct. 20, the Buckeyes started reconfiguring their struggling defense
What you saw against Michigan was a defensive unit that made enough big plays to win a very important game. The Buckeyes sacked Shea Patterson three times in the first three quarters. Malik Harrison had a sack and two tackles for loss.
Pete Werner got his right hand around Michigan tight end Zach Gentry to knock down what appeared to be a touchdown pass.
The blocked punt, picked up and run into the end zone by Sevyn Banks, was a demoralizing event for the Wolverines.
Jim Harbaugh will face more questions: Harbaugh is now 0-4 against Ohio State since taking over as Michigan’s coach. What makes the record uglier is Meyer’s 7-0 record in the rivalry
Michigan fans were thinking they would make their first trip to Indianapolis and had the possibility of making the College Football Playoff. Those hopes are dead. The Wolverines (10-2) have had an exceptional season by most definitions, but at Michigan, a loss to Ohio State mans you have had an unsatisfactory season.
Meanwhile, the Meyer legend grows at Ohio State. The only question is whether he will step down to deal with medical issues.
While some household chores can be taken care of occasionally or even on a weekly basis, vacuuming is one of those tasks that feels never finished. Probably because almost as soon as we finish, we’re back to walking all over our nice clean floor. Point being—ain’t nobody got time to constantly haul out the vacuum every time someone forgets to take their shoes off, or the cat decides to hang out in the living room. Hence why you get an iRobot Roomba 670—which is now on sale for $100 off at Walmart, thanks to an extended Black Friday sale.
The iRobot Roomba 670 is the newest of the 600 series super-popular robot models, and the tool that’s gonna remove the hassle factor from your daily cleaning routine.
Once connected to Wi-Fi, you’ll have the power to control your Roomba straight from your smartphone. Out and about, yet need to make sure the floor is vacuumed up before company arrives later? Easy—schedule a cleaning from your phone, no matter where you are. Need to do a quick clean while relaxing at home? The Roomba is also compatible with any Alexa-enabled device or Google Assistant, so simply tell Alexa or Google to start or stop your robot, as you chill on the couch.
The iRobot Roomba 670 features dual multi-surface brushes, making it the only leading robot brand with two main cleaning brushes; one to loosen dirt, and the other to pick it up. It even has Dirt Detect sensors, which recognize concentrated areas of dirt in high-traffic areas of your home. Say goodbye to whatever pet hair, dirt, dust and debris that’s found its way to your den carpet.
Once it starts doing its job, don’t feel the need to keep an eye on it or put up a baby gate to block it from the stairs. Using a full suite of smart sensors, the Roomba robot vacuum makes more than 60 decisions per second to adapt to your home and help thoroughly clean your floors, and even has Cliff Detect sensors avoid stairs and other drop-offs.
If “passive cleaning” is a thing, the Roomba 670 has dominated the scene. The only thing easier than keeping a clean floor is hopping on this deal that’ll save you a full hundred bucks on this little wonder. Normally priced at $294, you can snag one of these puppies for just $194 at Walmart while the deal lasts. Hop on it here.
Despite the growing popularity of “clean” beauty products, industry veterans say terms like “natural” and “organic” are unregulated and often meaningless. Here’s why that’s the case. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY
Skincare sets wrapped in millennial pink and eco-green are already filling Instagram ads this season, and with their pore-refining promises these would-be stocking-stuffers also draw attention to “toxic chemicals” that’ve been canceled by clean-living proponents in the last few years.
Face masks with parabens? Don’t even think about it, the gospel of Goop preaches. Body lotions with mineral oils? Definitely not on Beautycounter’s “nice” list.
But trying to understand the rationale behind these decrees can be more complicated than applying liquid eyeliner in an airplane bathroom.
Experts and industry veterans say the muddy reality of the billion-dollar clean beauty movement – which drove a 27 percent increase in skincare alone this year – is that terms such as “natural” and “organic” are essentially meaningless and unregulated, and the much-hyped health risks of several chemical ingredients are based on questionable data.
“There is kind of a chemophobia in the U.S. – if it’s a chemical, a man-made chemical, it must be bad,” said Curtis Klaassen, former president of the Society of Toxicology and chair of Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutics at the Kansas University Medical Center.
The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit advocacy organization that’s a leader of the clean cosmetics crusade, says that even if it’s impossible to directly prove these ingredients cause cancer, people should believe the most pilloried chemicals are bad for you based on their review of research.
Nneka Leiba, EWG’s director of healthy living science, argues that outside of smoking, there is rarely “definitive proof” that a chemical causes cancer, but there is an overall burden on the body from chemicals in personal care products. Some of these chemicals are also present in the environment, but at least with cosmetics “you have the choice not to buy that product,” she said.
That sensibility confounds those who say the adage “the dose makes the poison” is one of the basic principles of toxicology. Klaassen compares it to the wind: Gusts of a few miles per hour are harmless, yet those reaching 100 mph can topple a house.
“The average person wants a yes/no for every chemical, and they don’t think about the dose,” Klaassen said. “It turns out that 50 percent of the chemicals in the world we think are carcinogens if you’re given enough.”
The need for more regulation
The back and forth on ingredient safety has been enabled in part by the relative low levels of U.S. regulation on the cosmetics industry – something many industry veterans and activists alike deem problematic.
For Nicolette Leung, 32, who primarily buys natural products after starting a clean-living transition a few years ago, the difference between the more rigorous regulations of countries such as the European Union and those in the U.S. gave her pause. Leung says she’s privileged to be able to make natural products a priority, though she says it hasn’t necessarily made navigating beauty aisles any easier.
“Even with natural beauty products it’s confusing,” Leung said. “I think the entire industry is confusing and opaque.”
“The truth is that there are no regulations around the term ‘clean beauty,’ ” said Paula Begoun, who launched cult-favorite beauty line Paula’s Choice in 1995. “It typically means minimal to no synthetic ingredients and the absence of any ingredient deemed controversial, even if there’s valid research attesting to the ingredient’s safety as used in cosmetics.”
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees cosmetics, which legally must be safe for consumers to use as directed and properly labeled. Unlike food and drugs, however, they do not need FDA preapproval before going to market.
Claims that companies are free to do whatever they want, legally filling products with known harmful ingredients, are not true. Certain ingredients are banned – lead acetate, which is found in some men’s hair dyes, was added to that list late last month. And the FDA has long tracked reports on exposure and “adverse event” complaints on products, says Dr. Linda Katz, director of FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors.
“Most chemicals that have been used in cosmetics have a long history of safe use and have not been the subject of major concern,” she said.
The cosmetics industry, through the Personal Care Products Council (PCPC), sought to help assuage consumer’s concerns by creating the Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) committee in 1976 in coordination with the FDA. The independent panel of scientists issues reports on safety risks, which are taken into consideration by the FDA and the industry. (Klaassen is a member of CIR.)
Critics say that self-policing method is not enough. EWG and Breast Cancer Prevention Partners (BCPP) run websites with their own determinations on safety. And EWG, which was among the groups petitioning the FDA to ban lead acetate, points to the fact it took so long for the ban.
The Goop effect
Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Jessica Alba’s Honest Company and Beautycounter have made highly publicized movements away from synthetic ingredients to natural alternatives, touting never-use lists of a thousand or more. The strategy has backfired in some high-profile cases, most notably Alba’s natural sunscreen that was widely panned because it didn’t protect skin from burning and led to lawsuits, and her baby wipes and baby powder, which were recalled last year due to mold and contamination of microorganisms, respectively. Beautycounter also recalled it’s Nourishing Day Cream due to bacteria last year.
Goop and Beautycounter say they err on the side of caution with their products.
“We believe that you can make beautiful, efficacious products without customers needing to worry about unsafe levels of toxins in their products,” said Susan Beck, Goop’s senior vice president of science and research.
Lindsay Dahl, vice president of Social and Environmental Responsibility at Beautycounter, argues the demand for hard causation of cancer or hormone disruption is misguided.
“If there’s opportunity for us to prevent exposure to some of these ingredients we should do everything we can to do so,” Dahl says.
Much of the focus of clean beauty proponents such as Beautycounter has been on preservatives, namely parabens, a family of chemicals used to prevent the growth of mold or bacteria, and formaldehyde-releasers, a type of preservative that slowly releases a small amount of formaldehyde in products to kill or prevent the growth of bacteria and microorganisms.
Linda Loretz, PCPC’s chief toxicologist, says preservatives have an important safety function that’s gotten lost in the discussion. Contamination is a frequent cause of recalls, she says.
“Without them you would either be keeping products in the refrigerator or rebuying them all the time because you’d be constantly throwing out contaminated products,” Loretz said.
The FDA says there’s no evidence of human harm from parabens in cosmetics, and CIR has repeatedly found formaldehyde-releasing preservatives to be safe in the very low percentages found in cosmetics. Yet almost all are on “baddies” lists, in industry parlance.
Jay Ansell, a chemist and board-certified toxicologist who serves as vice president of cosmetic programs at PCPC, says this discrepancy often results from organizations taking data developed for one application – such as morticians’ use of formaldehyde – and applying it across the board.
“That’s not really relevant in our opinion to a formaldehyde-releaser, which may result in a few parts per billion in a product, as opposed to an occupational exposure in high concentrations every day for a lifetime,” Ansell said.
Connie Engel, manager of science translation for BCPP, says it should all be taken into account when “making a best guess of what is true but also what is potentially protective of people’s health.”
For consumers such as Leung, shopping decisions are more about peace of mind than a frenetic fear of disease.
“I kind of look at it as a similar analogy to cooking,” Leong says. “Maybe preservatives aren’t going to kill you, but if I can know what all the ingredients are then that just makes me feel more secure.”
There’s industry-wide consensus on the potential harm of some ingredients, including hair-straightening products that release formaldehyde into the air when heated and specific uses of skin-bleaching agents. Those historically have affected women of color disproportionately compared to white women, in part because they are used in products that change hair and skin texture to conform with Western beauty standards.
Part of the rise in natural beauty has been driven by communities of color looking outside mainstream beauty to brands tailored to their skin and hair types and by immigrant communities seeking products of cultural importance, which are often natural.
“There’s a mythology of the Whole Foods soccer mom and affluent white women, but a lot of this is also driven by communities of color who are not necessarily affluent who are making really important choices for themselves and their families,” said Christine Keihm, senior vice president of marketing for Nubian Heritage.
Nubian Heritage co-founders Richelieu Dennis, Nyema Tubman and Mary Dennis have focused their 20-year-old brand on things such as shea butter and African black soap common in their family home of Liberia. There’s been a welcome uptick in research around those types of ingredients, making them easier to use in skincare products, said Ozohu Adoh, founder and CEO of Epara, a luxury skincare line tailored to women of color that recently launched in the U.S.
“The things that our African grandmothers told us, those kind of folklore or folktales, we now are starting to understand the scientific underpinnings of those claims they used to make,” Adoh said.
Room for agreement
The benefit of research on all potential ingredients, and the need for more of it, is another unifier in the beauty world.
The FDA announced plans this month to conduct a web-based survey about allergens in cosmetics, with aims of helping the agency better understand consumer decisions, perceptions and allergen awareness.
Most people “want to know what the facts are, and the problem is we don’t know exactly,” said Dr. Lynn A. Drake, a dermatology faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital and lecturer at Harvard Medical School.
Drake cites the need for more legitimate controlled clinical trials and transparency with ingredients. All of which goes a long way to clear up consumer confusion and build trust.
“It’s easy to trivialize some things like cosmetics. Is your lipstick as important as the pill for your heart?” she asks. “But little do we know that down the line one of these products might have something in it that could harm you.”
Please, do not attempt a gender reveal party without taking the proper safety precautions. Or maybe just … don’t do one at all.
The past two years have brought us multiple stories of people whose gender reveal parties have gone horribly wrong. Maybe the party started a forest fire. Maybe it caused a spectacular, deafening explosion.
Either way, they’ve been grievously dangerous. And while they’ve caused serious damage, they’ve also brought a small, perverse amount of pleasure to those of us in the anti-gender-reveal party camp.
Here are some of the most dangerous from the past few years.
1. The gender reveal party that resulted in a grandfather getting smacked in the face by a baseball
The next time you’re thinking of throwing a ball full of blue powder, please don’t aim it at grandpa.
2. The one where a young woman was smacked in the face by a ball
Maybe … just .. leave … baseballs … out … of … it?
3. The party that almost ended in an alligator chopping off someone’s arm
Earlier this year, Louisiana resident Mike Kliebert gave an alligator a melon full of blue Jell-o, which the alligator proceeded to chomp on, revealing Kliebert’s child to be a boy. It was a strong visual. I’m just not sure why folks can’t have a gender reveal party without exposing themselves to a deadly animal.
4. The party that resulted in a 47,000 acre wildfire
In April 2017, an off-duty Border Patrol agent set off fireworks in the grasslands of Arizona. The color of the fireworks was meant to reveal the gender of his baby, but instead they sparked a massive wildfire. The fire ultimately caused $8 million worth of damage and required 800 firefighters to get it under control.
If you’re thinking of having a gender reveal party, perhaps consider balloons instead of lethal explosives?
5. The party that caused one dad-to-be to break his ankle
He broke it while kicking a football full of pink powder. Ouch.
6. I’ll always have a special spot in my heart for the party that resulted in people screaming and running for their lives
Fireworks are once again to blame for the chaos at gender reveal party in Philadelphia in July. They were set off on top of a clothing drying rack, which surprisingly did not work well and instead sent fireworks spraying all over the place. “A few adults got hit but no serious injuries — just minor burns,” one partygoer said, encouragingly.
Just minor burns with this gender reveal party, folks!
7. This gender reveal party resulted in a fight over confetti at an Ohio Applebee’s
After guests at a gender reveal party released a confetti cannon in the parking lot of an Ohio Applebee’s, management asked them to clean up their mess. The guests refused and several of them retaliated by reportedly throwing menus at the hostess.
Isn’t childbirth magical?
The next time you’re thinking of having a gender reveal party, maybe just do it by … revealing the gender. Or better yet do nothing at all.
The world will somehow survive without blue and pink powder.
Let friends in your social network know what you are reading about
‘The GPS told me to do it’: Woman guided by GPS drives onto railroad tracks, police say
Pennsylvania police say a woman following GPS directions veered off a road and onto railroad tracks. She was ticketed for careless driving.
Post to Facebook
Sent!
A link has been sent to your friend’s email address.
Posted!
A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.
CLOSE
There are many ways to get from point A to point B, but which app truly gives you the best route? Time
Pennsylvania police say a woman who was following GPS directions veered off a road and onto railroad tracks, leaving her car stranded and resulting in a careless driving ticket.
The City of Duquesne Police Department posted about the incident to social media Wednesday, beginning the post “The GPS told me to do it…” The post includes a photo showing a disabled white sedan sitting on railroad tracks that run parallel to a multilane road.
The woman was “100% sober and had no medical conditions affecting her decision-making,” police say.
The Pennsylvania woman told officers “her GPS advised her to go this way,” when they arrived at the scene.
The incident happened about 10 miles outside of Pittsburgh at 10 p.m. Wednesday. The car needed to be towed away.
It’s not the first time GPS navigation issues have made headlines.
In the wake of Hurricane Florence, North Carolina officials warned that GPS apps were advising drivers to take routes that were flooded. “It is not safe now to trust (the travel apps) with your life,” the North Carolina Department of Transportation tweeted in September.
And in 2016, a driver who was following GPS directions turned too quickly and crashed — leaving the car suspended vertically on wires attached to a utility pole. No one was injured in that incident.
If you want to see a stunning physical feat, cast your eyes on the above video of gymnast Ashley Watson nailing a nearly 20 foot (5.87 meter) horizontal bar backflip to set a new Guinness World Record.
The Mexican government has reached a deal with the Trump administration that would require asylum seekers at the Southern borderto wait in Mexico while their claims are processed in U.S. courts, the Washington Post reported Saturday.
The Post, which quoted Mexican officials and senior members of President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s transition team, reported the agreement would break with long-standing asylum rules and place a “formidable new barrier” for migrants from Central America attempting to reach the United States.
The Post said the plan was dubbed “Remain in Mexico.”
Thousands of migrants, fleeing violence and poverty, have gathered at the Mexican border city of Tijuana. They are among several hundred other asylum-seekers heading north in groups toward the United States.
The Post reported that no formal agreement on the issue has been signed, and many details remain unresolved. López Obrador takes office Dec. 1.
Before the U.S. midterm elections, President Donald Trump called the northward movement of migrants in caravans an “invasion” and ordered several thousand troops to the border to bolster border security.
The Post, quoting U.S.and Mexican officials, said the deal took shape last week in Houston during a meeting between Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s incoming foreign minister, and top U.S. officials such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
The White House had no immediate comment on the Post report.
The Post reported that asylum applicants at the border would have to remain in Mexico while their cases were processed through U.S. courts.
That could end the system derided by Trump as “catch and release,” which has generally allowed those seeking refuge to wait on safer U.S. soil.
“For now, we have agreed to this policy of Remain in Mexico,” Olga Sánchez Cordero, the top domestic policy official under López Obrador, told The Post. She called it a “short-term solution.”
“The medium- and long-term solution is that people don’t migrate,” said Sánchez Cordero, the incoming interior minister. “Mexico has open arms and everything, but imagine, one caravan after another after another, that would also be a problem for us.”
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order this week blocking a Trump order that would deny protection to people who enter the country illegally seeking asylum.
“Whatever the scope of the president’s authority, he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden,” Judge Jon Tigar wrote in his order.
Trump responded by blasting “Obama judges” who challenge his orders, saying such judges make the border unsafe.
You’ve probably seen plenty of impressive rocket launches but you’ve never seen one quite like this, which shows what a rocket launch looks like from space.
The launch of the Russian Progress MS-10 cargo spacecraft (a Russian Soyuz rocket) took place on November 16. The timelapse was captured by ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst, who is onboard the International Space Station (ISS), from nearly 250 miles up.
The entire video is astounding but the most extraordinary moments are just seconds into the launch and then the burning of the rocket’s core stage upon re-entry around 35 seconds.
While this may all seem so impressive it’s like something out of a movie, it’s all very, very real and very, very spectacular.
Let friends in your social network know what you are reading about
Hall of Fame coach Mike Ditka hospitalized after suffering heart attack
Legendary NFL player and coach Mike Ditka suffered a heart attack earlier this week, according to his agent, and he “expects to be home soon.”
Post to Facebook
Sent!
A link has been sent to your friend’s email address.
Posted!
A link has been posted to your Facebook feed.
Legendary retired NFL player and coach Mike Ditka suffered a heart attack earlier this week, according to his agent.
“Coach Ditka had a mild heart attack earlier this week. Doctors inserted a pacemaker, and he is doing much better,” Ditka’s agent, Steve Mandell, told ESPN. “He appreciates the outpouring of support and expects to be home soon.”
Ditka, 79, was playing golf Wednesday in Florida before he was hospitalized, according to reports from the Chicago Sun Times and WGN.
Ditka suffered a heart attack in 1988 — the same year he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a player — while coaching the Chicago Bears but famously returned to work just 11 days later. He also suffered a stroke in 2012.
Ditka, a Super Bowl-winner both as a player and a coach, coached the Bears to the franchise’s only championship in 1986 — a feat that made him one of the most beloved figures in Chicago sports history.
Since being fired as head coach of the New Orleans Saints in 2000, Ditka has spent time in the restaurant business and as a national TV NFL analyst.
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F888062%2Fee1821a5-e50e-426b-9149-209492ba23c7.jpg)
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F888074%2F9992db79-1607-46de-ab31-7d7d1382869b.jpeg)
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F887118%2F21e7ad05-170d-49e0-a611-924e21620a77.jpg)
trendynewsday 