In The Buzz Cut, we bring you a round-up of all the weird, controversial, and wonderful stories we’ve been reading all week.
Seagulls are notorious for being attracted to food, and infamous for their tendency to smoothly snatch it away. A study in Britain has found a new way to put a stop to these hungry air demons: get into a staring contest with them.
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Gone are the days when people squirted soap into their hands and washed themselves: a group of people around the world, concerned about their dry skin and skin microbiome, are opting for no-soap baths. How do they avoid BO?
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Ismail Merchant, a celebrated Hollywood producer and an Indian Muslim from a conservative household, hid his sexual orientation from the world until the day he died in 2005 — except when you look closely; his love for thwarting society’s rules manifested in his cooking, which the art world often considered unconventional, and brave.
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Toni Morrison, who died this week at age 88, left behind a legacy full of her words speaking truth to power, fighting the patriarchy, and advocating for black people in race-obsessed America. As her fans mourn the loss of her life, they embrace the power of her work.
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Who knew “The Sims,” a franchise of life simulation video games, could help queer identity development? For 13 LGBTQIA+ people, building families on the game awakened them to their own identity. For writer Rachel Charlene Lewis, the realization that she was a lesbian came when she realized she had made all her Sims characters gay.
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Victoria’s Secret — the lingerie brand that explicitly caters to men — has increasingly lost its footing in an increasingly progressive world, especially after one of its executives told Vogue that VS shouldn’t employ trans models. After facing backlash, VS has changed its tune — as have many, many beauty companies — by hiring its first-ever openly trans model, Victoria Sampaio. Is it just for show?
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The author of the most popular novel of 2019 (Where The Crawdads Sing) — Delia Owens — is currently banned from an African nation, for her involvement in a murder. Currently a mystery, Owens’ time in Africa with her husband has been the subject of many journalistic forays — one of which is connecting the dots between her past and the fiction she writes.
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Climate change is swiftly coming for the world’s endangered animals, air quality, poor populations — and now its food and drink supply. A United Nations report warns if we keep going as we are with all the natural resource exploitation, then an increased proneness to natural disasters such as floods and droughts will make it almost impossible for the human race to feed itself.
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Television show Pose just made history with its depiction of sex between two queer black men — in veteran queer actor Billy Porter’s first-ever nude scene. Porter said it was refreshing to be seen as a sexual being on television after his characters have been asexualized for so long in the media.
