After decades of regional strife that with global repercussions, tensions have recently begun to cool. The latest sign of that cooling is the recent news that the North and South Korean women’s table tennis teams have request to be united for the table tennis world championships. The International Table Tennis Federation noted that such a request is entirely against the rules, but they allowed the unified team for the sake of peace. The Federation also noted that they would never break the rules again.

Summer is on its way, which means it’s time to break out the grill. If you’re not a grill master (as any good suburban warrior should be), take a look at this Basics with Babish episode. He teaches you everything you need to know, from what kind of grill to buy to how to use a grill to several recipes. The first recipe is a simple kebab dish and the second is a more complicated stuffed pork tenderloin. Both are sure to please. 

Versova Beach in Mumbai, India has a bit of a trash problem. In fact, it has much more than a bit of a trash problem––this beach was littered with a jaw-dropping 2.7 million pounds of garbage. The city, state, and national governments were not doing anything to help clean up the trash. So local citizens took the job upon themselves. They created a massive chat group with hundreds of people, and the beach cleanup has become a daily effort. 

When you feel an emotion, there are certain physiological signs connects to that emotion. Oxytocin, for example, plays a part in creating and maintaining emotional bonds. When you interact with someone you love, that hormone kicks into gear. Other tests reveal that parts of your brain react differently to people you love versus yourself or other people. These test indicate that, yes, dogs do feel some strong emotions about humans. But, unfortunately, it’s impossible to prove emotions with physiological signs, and it might be even harder to define an emotion such as love in a quantifiable way. So for now you’ll have to rest easy knowing your dog probably does have very strong feelings of affection for you, and if you want to call them love you can.

Billions of pounds of plastic wind up in the ocean every year. Plastic comes from bottles and such, of course, actually comes from those tiny little bits of plastic that you never think about: microbeads in your bathroom products, for example, and glitter from festivals. That’s what led the Association of Independent Festivals in the United Kingdom to ban glitter from festivals. Hopefully similar organizations can make easy, small changes like this one. 

Many famous pieces of art stood in castles or churches, exposed to years, decades, or even centuries of soot from candles and fires, not to mention the ravages of moisture, dust, pollen, and so on. The result is that some of our most amazing pieces of art have been seriously tarnished. But scientists are doing interesting things to restore and protect that art. For example, scientists use lasers to restore some art, removing impurities from the painting.

Warning: do not watch this video if you’re at work. Michelle Wolf did not pull any punches in this her White House Correspondence bit. Whatever your opinion of her routine, though, you have to admit she had real guts to get up there and do that routine. 

The age of Net Neutrality is over. According to Net Neutrality opponents, this means a freer, better internet experience for everyone. According to Net Neutrality proponents, Net Neutrality prevented internet service providers from unfairly denying access or speeds. Unfortunately, the proponents seem to be correct. Comcast just announced that it will upgrade speeds to cable subscribers only. That sounds great, but the question must be raised: when will there be punishments for non-cable subscribers? And actually, isn’t this already a punishment for non-subscribers? Should access to greater speed be limited to those who pay extra for a service they don’t want or need?

Gibson guitars are among the most iconic instruments on the planet. So many musicians play(ed) Gibson guitars that it would take forever just to listen them: Slash, Jimmy Page, Zakk Wylde, Ace Frehley, and Bob Marley all play Les Pauls. Other famous players include Chet Atikins, Chuck Berry, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, and Jimi Hendrix. Basically, Gibson is part of rock and roll history. So what happened? Basically, cyclical debt that forced Gibson into a downward spiral.

The finer things in life are great, but sometimes it’s hard to tell if you are actually getting the “finer things” or just getting ripped off. Cheese, wine, and chocolate all fall into that category. Perhaps you’ve seen a bar of chocolate on sale at a nice grocery store or a chocolaterie going for ten, twenty, or even thirty bucks. What makes it worth that much? Could it be worth that much, and can anyone even tell the difference? As it turns out, they can. 

Sometimes you just need comfort food, and the thing with comfort food is that it’s not exactly healthy. You’ve got your chili cheese burgers, your pizza pies, your mac and cheese, your hoagies. This recipe is basically a heart attack in a bun: chili cheese pizza and mac and cheese all serve in a hoagie bun. Obviously you won’t want to make this monstrosity. However, the recipe also covers some of the basics for making delicious mac and cheese.

A Chinese restaurant in Toronto was recently fined a whopping ten thousand dollars for asking a black man to prepay his meal. The man was out celebrating his birthday with a group of friends, all of whom were black. When they went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, Hong Shing Chinese Restaurant, they were met with a disheartening demand: to pay for their meal before they received it. They did so, but then took the issue to court. From the article: “The restaurant in question was ordered to pay Wickham $10,000 as compensation for infringing on his human rights and for injury to his feelings, self-respect and dignity.” They restaurant was unable to provide a reason for asking the man to prepay, and the tribunal judging the case determined that the restaurant racially profiled the men.