Lol, people who shell out hundreds of dollars for a “DNA test.” First off, as Chris Bourn found out, DNA tests are more what you call “guidelines” than any sort of definitive map of your actual ancestry. Second, the whole idea that people would spend hard-earned beer money so that they can claim their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was Ghengis Khan is funny to me. I mean, didn’t the Great Khan have, like, a thousand kids? At that rate, my cat Marvin could claim Mongol matrilineal descent.
Cool it, 23andMe Guy — you’re not impressing anyone.
Must Read
“Ruffles and Floral Shirts Won’t Fix ‘Toxic Masculinity’”
Ever since this year’s Met Gala, in which the red carpet saw more than a few men wearing “feminine” touches like floral prints and ruffles, a great deal of digital ink has been spilled giving these celebrity men credit for blurring the gender lines, and for taking a small step in the fight against the current social ideas about what makes a man “manly.” But the sad truth is that, contra the wave of “RIP toxic masculinity!!!!” tweets, fundamentally altering the nature of masculinity probably involves a little bit more than kiss curls on male actors. READ MORE
23andMe(ish)
Shocker: DNA tests are full of shit. It’s not that the science behind them is wrong, per se, it’s that the science behind them is meaningless. While the tests appear to break down your DNA into percentages based on where your ancestors come from, that revelation is, in fact, misleading. Because what they’re really doing is matching you with the genetic profile of people with similar DNA, inferring a common ancestry that isn’t nearly as definitive as the services make it out to be.
The Real Reason to Grieve iTunes
iTunes, you will be sorely missed. Well, not the current iteration of iTunes. That shit was a dumpster fire. But OG iTunes, the one from the aughts that gave birth to mix CDs, the long forgotten pastime of going through friends’ music libraries and easy dorm-room DJing, was the glorious music revolution we all yearned for in the dark ages of the 1990s. But as fantastic as those things were, its best feature was actually the stoner-friendly music visualizer.
Saved From Certain Death
Stage IV pancreatic cancer is about as definitive a death sentence as someone can get. Jeopardy!’s Alex Trebek, who himself was diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer this year, was only given a 9 percent chance of survival. But in late May, he announced his tumor had shrunk by 50 percent and he’d entered remission. Miraculous cases like Trebek’s are rare, but they do happen for a lucky few. Quinn Myers spoke to two Stage IV survivors about their own journeys into remission.
Wait Your Turn
For anyone starting out (or, in my case, restarting) at the gym, workout etiquette can be daunting. Case in point: What’s a polite amount of time you can occupy a machine, or weights, before you need to give them up to another gym goer? I asked a personal trainer and a competitive powerlifter that question, and whether you’re under any obligation to let someone “work in.”
Processed Pantry Raid
You don’t have to rely on processed foods — laden with shelf-stabilizing preservatives — to keep a well-stocked pantry, especially when there are some healthy foods that will last just as long. In an attempt to help everyone avoid eating nothing but year-old boxes of Kraft Mac n’ Cheese, Ian Lecklitner asked nutritionist David Friedman, author of Food Sanity: How to Eat in a World of Fads and Fiction, how he stocks his pantry with healthy eats. Here’s what he said.
Happy Meal
We here at MEL might be big shots in the well-respected, eminently healthy, and most importantly, highly lucrative digital media industry, but that doesn’t stop us from cutting a few corners, money-wise. Take Sam Dworkin, this website’s highly respected senior designer, who recently admitted to ordering off the kids menus on Uber Eats to save money. Has Dworkin discovered an ingenious loophole in the space-food continuum, or is he ultimately saving a few pennies in order to end up with significantly less food? Only one way to find out.
Popped A Nut
In major news that shook the music industry to its very foundation last week, masked serial killer Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor announced on Twitter that he did, ahem, some damage to himself while trying to sing the high notes of Dokken’s 1987 song “Kiss of Death.”
Working on my ‘87 Dokken high notes this morning. Fucked around and blew out the left testicle. Careful on re-entry, kids. #kissofdeath #pissinblood
— confirm: 0-0-0… DESTRUCT… 0 (@CoreyTaylorRock) May 29, 2019
Naturally, we can’t let a revelation with far-reaching testicular implications like Taylor’s pass without an investigation; so we had Magdalene Taylor (no relation) reach out to a urologist to confirm whether a falsetto-induced ball explosion was truly within the realm of possibilities.
Jeff Gross
Jeff Gross is MEL’s senior editor for social media and content marketing. His daily ICYMI column, which chronicles all things meta on the site, is the quickest way to catch up on MEL, and the funniest thing you’ll read all day. Follow him on Twitter.
