Americans spend $100 billion annually on cocaine, heroin, pot and meth. Many users spend small amounts at a time—$10 may buy a day’s supply of heroin, for instance. But over time users may build a tolerance to a drug and need more of it to feel high.
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What’s most important—and troubling— is the decades-long, systemic expansion of the economic distance between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor, and the long, backward slide for the majority of those in-between.
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A New York City hotel is offering wealthy guests a chance to go “glamping”—glamorous camping—so they can experience the outdoors with four-star amenities. Guests at New York’s AKA Central Park can spend $2,000 a night to sleep on a queen bed on the terrace of the hotel’s penthouse. “It’s basically being able to sleep under the stars in a luxury […]
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Number of Academy Award winners in the past twenty years who thanked God in their acceptance speeches: 7 Who thanked Harvey Weinstein: 30
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Self-awareness, after Donald Trump attacked conservative pundits George Will, Jonah Goldberg, and Stephen Hayes for mocking his Republican presidential candidacy, calling them “boring” and “dumb as a rock” and their publications “dying.” Said Trump: “The weakness of conservatives is that they destroy each other.”
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Americans drink far less today than our predecessors did. In 1830, the average American drank the equivalent of 7.1 gallons of pure alcohol per year. In 2013, by comparison, the average American drank the equivalent of 2.34 gallons of pure alcohol.
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Percentage of Americans and Chinese, respectively, who believe their government is “on the side of average citizens”: 12, 80 Who believe their government is “on the side of corporations”: 73, 17
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52: Number of unprovoked shark attacks in the U.S. last year (compared with 20 elsewhere in the world). None were fatal. 28: Number of attacks in Florida, the most of any state. Runners-up were Hawaii (seven), South Carolina (five), California (four) and North Carolina (four). 65%: Percentage of attacks involving surfers (or people doing other board sports); 32% involved swimmers. The rest involved […]
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A family of Norwegian bears broke into a holiday cabin and threw an epic, alcohol-fueled party. The cabin’s owner, Even Nilsen, returned to the cabin to find that the bears had eaten all the food and bitten into more than a hundred cans of beer, sucking down the contents. One bear evidently became so intoxicated that it passed out on […]
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Pope Francis has declared Oscar Romero a martyr of the faith, paving the way for the murdered Salvadoran archbishop to be beatified, a step toward sainthood. A right-wing death squad executed Romero in a hospital chapel in 1980 while he was celebrating Mass just a day after he preached a sermon asking government soldiers to stop their repression. No one […]
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