ATTRACTION

Autistic people experience loneliness far more acutely than neurotypical people – new research. Autistic people are up to four times more likely to experience loneliness than non-autistic people. Despite enduring stereotypes that autistic people lack the desire for meaningful social connections, new research from my colleagues and I unveils the profound distress they experience due to loneliness. It also shows the unexpected role that differences in the ways individuals receive and interpret different stimuli through their senses – their “sensory processing” – may play in this phenomenon. We combined two complementary studies that investigated autistic and non-autistic people’s experiences of loneliness, using different methods. In the first study, autistic and non-autistic participants co...

Friday essay: Lessons in Chemistry – the real Prince Charming in this ‘bad romance’ is a good dog. If you were charmed by the Apple TV+ adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’s debut novel Lessons In Chemistry and want learn more about the book, the first thing you’ll discover is that it was a New York Times bestseller (for more than 58 weeks) and international hit, with a #BookTok following and rights sold to 40 countries. US cover. The second is that some American readers were angry about the cover because the pink jacket with the sexy illustrated book face – all flippy hair, pouty lips and cat-eye glasses – implies a sassy romance the story does not deliver. Garmus even received hate mail. “They were like, ‘You’re the worst romance novelist ever’,” she told the New York...

Where have all the wonder women gone? In the epilogue to Jill Lepore’s book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, we learn about Wonder Woman’s importance to the American feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Lepore briefly notes Wonder Woman’s place in US television in the same period. But in skimming over the character’s TV life, she misses a key step in her cultural significance. In the history of Wonder Woman on television lies a story about the ways that popular culture in general – and representations of “wonder women,” in particular – seek to reconcile feminism and femininity at different historical moments. The New Original Wonder Woman premiered in 1976 alongside two other action-adventure series with female leads, Charlie’s Angels and The Bionic Woman. This super-women trif...

Psychopathy of seduction. Picking up woman is nothing but mind games. Sure, being rich and good looking helps but when you see average looking men with beautiful woman, it does beg the question, how do they do that? Supreme clothing, and Hermes handbags, once were or still are highly looked upon items of fashion that many are begging to get their hands on. With limited releases that mean it is difficult to obtain and high prices which cannot be justified even if the quality is three times better than something one one-hundredth of the price. So why do people love them so much? Why are people trying so hard, waiting for the release and trying to have the fastest fingers, or purchasing thousands to even be considered for a handbag, just to give a company their money? Yet the companies a...

Reflections on International Online Dating. Online dating is nothing new, but where singles used to prefer matching up to other singles living near them, the preference for international singles has increased dramatically. Bottom line, we want foreign partners to satisfy our curiosity and need to connect. International online dating has increased drastically in the last decade, with apps and dating sites specifically providing services to match Western men and women with foreign partners becoming big business. From matching algorithms and translation services to gifts and singles tours, the international online dating companies pull out all the stops to help you find your perfect foreign match. Your chances of meeting a suitable single from an exotic locale are quite good, thanks to t...