Spank The Monkey Tonight
Abstaining from masturbating RAISES risk of anxiety, depression and erectile dysfunction, study warns
By LUKE ANDREWS
Participating in ‘NoFap’ techniques may lead to devastating mental health issues, a study suggests.
Born out of groups on Reddit, the ‘NoFap’ movement urges men to avoid masturbation to boost confidence, focus and even cure erectile dysfunction. Those who abide by the practice even call themselves ‘Fapstronauts’.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) surveyed 587 men who had taken part in the abstinence practice.
What Happened To Auden?
Things Worth Remembering: W. H. Auden’s Poignant Embrace
One stanza of poetry captures the pleasure of holding another person.
One of the odd things about poetry is that people head to it in times of crisis or unusually heightened emotion.
Poetry is not especially useful when describing the state of the traffic heading downtown. It is not required for summing up the pleasures of shopping. But there are moments when only poetry will do—as the most distilled form of communication possible. Consider how people not just read but often try to write poetry upon the death of someone they love. Or when they are falling in love—especially for the first time.
There seems something important about the fact that even people who don’t know they care for poetry instinctively know it is somewhere they can go to in extremis. Other art forms—music, in particular—may do similar work, but sometimes only poetry will do.
Which brings me to the only other person, apart from Eliot and Shakespeare, who will crop up here more than once over the next year: W. H. Auden.
Tom Sizemore Gone
Tom Sizemore Mourned By His Friends And Fans, Praised For His Transcendent Talents
By Bruce Haring
Although it was news for a few days that Tom Sizemore’s family was making “end of life” decisions, his death on Friday night still was a shock for those praying for a miracle.
Sizemore was once one of the hottest actors in Hollywood before his career was derailed by substance abuse, and his friends remembered that talent in the social media posts that came after the official announcement of his death.
His legancy includes his performances in Saving Private Ryan, Heat, Natural Born Killers, Enemy of the State, and Bringing Out the Dead.
Cracker Island
Gorillaz return: ‘We’re living in a world of cults’
The new album from Gorillaz is all about the cartoon foursome starting their own ridiculous cult. Just don’t ask Keith Richards to join.
The animated band, the brainchild of British musician Damon Albarn and cartoonist Jamie Hewlett, is back with an eighth album, “Cracker Island”.
It sees the characters of Murdoc, Noodle, Russel and 2D heading for Los Angeles and starting their own ill-fated cult.
The idea came from conversations between Albarn and Hewlett about our increasingly tribal world, as well as the need to flee London “because of Brexit and Boris Johnson and the fact the country is on its knees”.
“All of us are living in a world where we’re being separated from one another into cults,” Hewlett told AFP.
Rebuild Local News
from The Guardian
US local news outlets need tax breaks to help save democracy, says advocate
Steven Waldman says a new initiative, Rebuild Local News, wants to revitalize hundreds of outlets decimated by the industry
Local news organizations across the United States need to be given serious government financial help, especially in the form of tax breaks, in order to stave off a crisis in the media sector and help save US democracy, a leading advocate for local journalism has said.
Steven Waldman, co-founder of Report for America, said a new initiative, called Rebuild Local News, wanted to revitalize hundreds of local news outlets across America decimated by changes in the industry, shifts in the sector’s advertising revenue structure and more recently, the pandemic.
The Anechoic Chamber
The quietest place on earth will drive you insane
In 2015, Microsoft built a room that is now officially designated in the Guinness Book of Records as the quietest place on Earth.
By WALLA! HEALTH
Some say that silence is golden. However, this will certainly not be the case if you find yourself in the quietest room in the world – no one can survive for more than an hour.
In 2015, Microsoft built a room that is now officially designated in the Guinness Book of Records as the quietest place on Earth. Dubbed the anechoic chamber, it is located at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
Only very few people managed to survive in this room for a long period of time – at most an hour. After a few minutes, you will start to hear your heartbeat. A few minutes later, you can hear your bones creaking and the blood flowing through your body.
Julian Wasser
The Lost Photos: When Hollywood Was Hollywood
The late Julian Wasser had unprecedented access to stars at their most unguarded
Private and candid moments with Hollywood royalty caught on camera are rare today in this age of everything-is-perfect Instagram, TikTok, and publicist restrictions. But in an earlier era, Los Angeles photographer Julian Wasser straddled the worlds of journalism and the bohemian-celebrity era of the 1960s and 70s with ease. He died at the age of 89 on Feb. 8 in L.A., having led a life behind the camera of unprecedented access. His secret? “My dad always had a camera on him. We had this Ryan O’Neal-Tatum O’Neal Paper Moon-esque relationship where we were sidekicks and I would be his assistant and carry his bags,” says his daughter, actress and producer Alexi Celine Wasser. “He was granted access because he was on assignment but the reason he got the shot is, he was always paying attention, and he knew when to get the shot.” He was also fearless. “He was an old-timey-back-east-kind-of-guy, born in Philadelphia but grew up in the Bronx, and he would just use phrases, like when he was trying to tell me something that would toughen me up, ‘That’ll put hair on your chest, man.’ He was a great dad.” (Wasser is also survived by a son, James.)
Go Milo!
Milo Ventimiglia Is Ready for Action
The This Is Us star is trading in his Terrible Towel for a Negroni in his new series, The Company You Keep.
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Milo Ventimiglia has finally found a character as unremarkable as he is. His words, not mine. Capturing the heart of Rory Gilmore — and the hearts of millions of teens across the world — in his 2001 breakout role as Jess Mariano on Gilmore Girls and later capturing the hearts of America as Jack Pearson on This Is Us, Ventimiglia’s newest character touches on his longest con yet: remaining completely elusive.
Not a stranger to action-based television dramas (see: Heroes and Chosen), Ventimiglia looks at home on the set of The Company You Keep. As he walks onto Stage 2 at the Paramount lot for his photoshoot with InStyle, you can sense how closely he holds the responsibility of continuing the legacy the space carries. He tells everyone about the history of the stages he’s filming on, explaining how the low ceilings make it complicated for lighting and sets. As the conversation moves on to the various offices on the lot that used to be occupied by film greats like Alfred Hitchcock, a large structure built to resemble a dimly lit dive bar towers behind him. It’s there on Stage 1 (where Star Trek: The Original Series and The Truman Show once filmed) that Ventimiglia’s current role comes to life.
Raquel Welch Gone
Raquel Welch: A Career In Photos
By Robert Lang
Raquel Welch had a 50-plus year career in film and television, starring opposite Marcello Mastroianni, Edward G. Robinson, Robin Williams, Jimmy Stewart, Faye Dunaway, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Farrah Fawcett, Jim Brown, Burt Reynolds, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn and many others.
Her breakout role came as Cora in the wild 1966 sci-fi pic Fantastic Voyage, opposite Stephen Boyd, Edmund O’Brien and Arthur Kennedy. Welch then starred as a cavewoman in the 1966 film One Million Years B.C. Her next major film was with Mae West and John Huston in the title role of Myra Breckinridge. She later starred opposite Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed and Michael York in 1973’s The Three Musketeers, for which she won a Golden Globe.
Backyard Aliens
Scientists’ alien ‘concern’ after finding space object sending signals to Earth
Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker and her team of researchers in Australia found an ‘impossible’ spinning object in space that terrified them when it sent radio signals to Earth
A scientist became “concerned” when she thought signals being sent to earth from space were being sent by “aliens”.
Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker was leading a team of researchers in Australia who found an ‘impossible’ spinning object in space that sent radio signals to Earth every 18 minutes.
“I was concerned that it was aliens,” said Dr Hurley-Walker of the object 4,000 lightyears away from earth, as reported by News Science and Nature.
She said she “broke out in a cold sweat” and asked herself if this was “the moment we finally found that the truth is… out there?”
Guardians of the Saguaro
Secretive Society Keeps Watch Over Arizona’s Holy Grail of Cactus
Members of the Crested Saguaro Society guard the location of rare specimens in the Sonoran Desert, a task made more urgent by population growth
PIMA COUNTY, Ariz.—Millions of saguaro cactuses grow in the Sonoran Desert, yet only an estimated one in 200,000 exhibits the spectacular crown of the crested saguaro.
Its rare beauty spawned the needle-in-a-haystack mission of Arizona’s secretive Crested Saguaro Society. With the zeal of birders, the society’s 10 members are out to find as many of the crested saguaro as time and energy allow. They hunt in a desert that stretches across 100,000 or so square miles.
“It becomes a little bit of an obsession,” said Pat Hammes, a 77-year-old retired courtroom clerk from Tucson, Ariz. She estimated that she and her late partner, Bob Cardell, spent eight hours a day, two days a week for more than six years to locate some 2,200 of the rare cactuses.
The saguaro, the largest cactus in the U.S., often grow to 40 feet, according to the National Park Service, and one 78-footer set the record. When they reach the age of 60 to 80 years old, a rare few grow the scalloped crest that sets them apart. Biologists have yet to discover exactly why. The widest crest recorded by the society was 17 feet, though members still argue over whether the measurement was logged accurately.
Dudamel to NY Phil
N.Y. Philharmonic chief looks to Gustavo ‘Dudamel era’ after historic appointment
By Olivia Hampton, Leila Fadel
When the New York Philharmonic‘s current music director, Jaap van Zweden, announced he would be leaving his post next year, president and CEO Deborah Borda had only one new maestro in mind: Gustavo Dudamel.
“There are so many things that are remarkable about Gustavo Dudamel,” Borda tells NPR’s Leila Fadel. “But I think number one is his ability to communicate with both musicians and audiences and to express pure joy in music. And this is something that we simply can’t quite put into words. It’s spontaneous combustion.”
The 42-year-old Venezuelan’s charismatic approach has made him one of the world’s most sought-after conductors. He will officially lead the oldest symphony orchestra in the U.S. starting with the 2026-27 season, for an initial five-year term, beginning as music director designate in the 2025-26 season. Dudamel follows in the footsteps of giants such as Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini and Leonard Bernstein, all former New York Philharmonic music directors.
Broken Sun
Huge Piece Of Sun Breaks Off, Scientists Stunned
Scientists are trying to understand the impact this huge prominence will have on Earth.
Edited by Amit Chaturvedi
The Sun has always fascinated astronomers. And now, a new development has baffled scientists. A huge part of the Sun broke off of its surface and created a tornado-like swirl around its North Pole. Though scientists are trying to analyse how this occurred, the video of the development has stunned the space community. The remarkable phenomenon was caught by NASA’s James Webb telescope and shared on Twitter by Dr Tamitha Skov, a space weather forecaster, last week. The Sun keeps emitting solar flares (called prominence) that sometimes affect communications on Earth, hence scientists are more concerned about the latest development.
“Talk about Polar Vortex! Material from a northern prominence just broke away from the main filament & is now circulating in a massive polar vortex around the north pole of our Star. Implications for understanding the Sun’s atmospheric dynamics above 55 degrees here cannot be overstated!” Dr Skov said in a tweet last week.
Killer Watches
from Business Insider via Yahoo! News
A woman said her Apple Watch regularly ‘thinks I’m dead’ during her spin classes, NYT reports
by Sam Tabahriti
A spin-class teacher said her Apple Watch regularly “thinks I’m dead” as it detects potential accidents during her classes – but failed to react when she had a genuine accident.
“My watch regularly thinks I’ve had an accident,” Stacey Torman, from London, England, told the New York Times, describing whether it be when she is riding the bike, cheering people on, or waving at her students to congratulate them during her spin classes.
Torman added that, at moments “I want to celebrate,” her watch “thinks I’m dead.”
God Bless Manure
Brown gold: the great American manure rush begins
by Jessica Fu
The energy industry is turning waste from dairy farms into renewable natural gas – but will it actually reduce emissions?
On an early August afternoon at Pinnacle Dairy, a farm located near the middle of California’s long Central Valley, 1,300 Jersey cows idle in the shade of open-air barns. Above them whir fans the size of satellites, circulating a breeze as the temperature pushes 100F (38C). Underfoot, a wet layer of feces emits a thick stench that hangs in the air. Just a tad unpleasant, the smell represents a potential goldmine.
The energy industry is transforming mounds of manure into a lucrative “carbon negative fuel” capable of powering everything from municipal buses to cargo trucks. To do so, it’s turning to dairy farms, which offer a reliable, long-term supply of the material. Pinnacle is just one of hundreds across the state that have recently sold the rights to their manure to energy producers.
The Old Man In The Amber
30 Million-Year-Old Praying Mantis Is Preserved in Pristine Piece of Amber
Embedded within a clear piece of amber, a small praying mantis sits at attention, frozen forever in time. The piece, which measures just slightly over one inch tall, was sold via Heritage Auctions for $6,000 in 2016. The pristine piece of amber, which comes from the Dominican Republic, gives a rare view of this incredible mantis.
The amber itself derives from the extinct Hymenaea protera, a prehistoric leguminous tree. Most amber found in Central and South America comes from its resin. Amber from the Dominican Republic is known as Dominican resin, which is noted for its clarity and a high number of inclusions.
Heritage Auctions dates the piece in question to the Oligocene period, placing it anywhere from about 23 million to 33.9 million years old. It’s an important period of time where the archaic Eocene transitions into more modern ecosystems of the Miocene period, which lasted until 5 million years ago. Incredibly, the mantis itself doesn’t appear so different from what we see today.
Paco Rabanne Gone
Paco Rabanne, Spanish-Born Designer Synonymous With a Space-Age Aesthetic and Best-Selling Perfumes, Dies at 88
His death was confirmed by Spanish group Puig, which controls the Paco Rabanne fashion house and fragrance business.
Paco Rabanne, the Spanish-born designer synonymous with a Space Age aesthetic and best-selling perfumes, has died at age 88 in Portsall, France.
His death was confirmed by Spanish group Puig, which controls the Paco Rabanne fashion house and fragrance business.
“Paco Rabanne made transgression magnetic,” said José Manuel Albesa, president of Puig’s fashion and beauty division. “Who else could induce fashionable Parisian women to clamor for dresses made of plastic and metal? Who but Paco Rabanne could imagine a fragrance called Calandre – the word means ‘automobile grill,’ you know – and turn it into an icon of modern femininity?”
Winning!!
High School Basketball Coach Fired For Posing As 13-Year-Old In JV Game
A 22-year-old assistant high school girls basketball coach was fired after posing as a 13-year-old player during a recent junior varsity game, WAVY TV 10 Sports Director Craig Loper reports.
A video obtained by the news station shows Arlisha Boykins wearing a jersey for the Churchland High School JV girls basketball team and actively playing in the team’s game against Nanesmond River High School. Boykins was impersonating a 13-year-old player who was out of town for a club basketball tournament at the time of the incident, the teenager’s parents told WAVY TV 10.
Zevon Rocks
Warren Zevon Is Finally Nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Thanks to Billy Joel
Joel sent a letter to the nominating committee urging them to consider the late singer-songwriter
On Wednesday morning, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its slate of nominees for the Class of 2023: Kate Bush, Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order (interestingly, the two groups — the latter of which was formed after Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis’s suicide — are being nominated as one entity), Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the Machine, Soundgarden, The Spinners, A Tribe Called Quest, The White Stripes and Warren Zevon.
Zevon’s nomination in particular was a long time coming; this is the first time the legendary singer-songwriter has been nominated for the Hall of Fame, despite the fact that he has been eligible since 1994. And it turns out Billy Joel may have had something to do with the late musician’s nomination. Joel told the Los Angeles Times recently that he wrote a letter to the Hall’s nominating committee urging them to consider the “Werewolves of London” singer.
Whirly Elon
Mysterious ‘whirlpool’ in the night sky might have been Elon Musk’s fault
The mystery behind a swirling whirlpool that appeared over Earth’s skies may have been solved.
The flying spiral was pictured in the early hours of January 18 by the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii.
It is now believe that the phenomenon was actually the launch of a new satellite by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
That day the firm launched a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral to deploy a GPS satellite into a medium-earth orbit for the US Space Force.
Brain Jam
Sitting in traffic for just 2 hours can lead to brain damage
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Breathing in diesel exhaust fumes while sitting in traffic could be disastrous for your brain, a new neuroscience study warns. A team at the University of British Columbia says brain scans show increased impairments in brain function after exposure to traffic pollution. In fact, signs of decreased brain function can start to appear in as little as two hours.
The study focused on a person’s functional connectivity — a measure that tests how well different brain regions interact with one another. According to the study authors, this is the first controlled experiment to show evidence of humans showing altered brain network connectivity as a result of air pollution exposure.
Battle In New Canaan
Gates Battle of the Bands Final
by Ms. Tootsie
The four finalists from each heat will play against each other for the ticketed final on Saturday, February 4th, 2023, from 8pm. With sudden death for 2 bands, the 2 remaining bands must play the SAME song. It is then that the official judges will decide on the winning band. Guest Judges include renowned author James Frey, Brian Fox, from School of Rock, New Canaan and Andrew Ault, Musician and Art Director.
The event is held each year to raise money for Meal on Wheels. It is generously sponsored by Karl Chevrolet and produced by Rock Paper Scissors Custom Events. It has become the perfect way to kick off a new year by watching live, talented and local bands.
Everything Is Still Everything
Why More Physicists Are Starting to Think Space and Time Are ‘Illusions’
A concept called “quantum entanglement” suggests the fabric of the universe is more interconnected than we think. And it also suggests we have the wrong idea about reality.
by Heinrich Päs
Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images
This past December, the physics Nobel Prize was awarded for the experimental confirmation of a quantum phenomenon known for more than 80 years: entanglement. As envisioned by Albert Einstein and his collaborators in 1935, quantum objects can be mysteriously correlated even if they are separated by large distances. But as weird as the phenomenon appears, why is such an old idea still worth the most prestigious prize in physics?
Coincidentally, just a few weeks before the new Nobel laureates were honored in Stockholm, a different team of distinguished scientists from Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Fermilab and Google reported that they had run a process on Google’s quantum computer that could be interpreted as a wormhole. Wormholes are tunnels through the universe that can work like a shortcut through space and time and are loved by science fiction fans, and although the tunnel realized in this recent experiment exists only in a 2-dimensional toy universe, it could constitute a breakthrough for future research at the forefront of physics.
But why is entanglement related to space and time? And how can it be important for future physics breakthroughs? Properly understood, entanglement implies that the universe is “monistic”, as philosophers call it, that on the most fundamental level, everything in the universe is part of a single, unified whole. It is a defining property of quantum mechanics that its underlying reality is described in terms of waves, and a monistic universe would require a universal function.
B.E.E. ‘The Shards’
Bret Easton Ellis’s Great Defense of Gen X
‘The Shards’ parachutes us back into the world before teenagers became so sensitive. ‘We were very, very free to explore things that might hurt us, potentially might damage us.’
You can see the Century Towers—the site of the harrowing climax of The Shards, Bret Easton Ellis’s new novel—from Ellis’s 11th-story condo in West Hollywood. It was designed by I.M. Pei in 1964, and for many years it epitomized mid-century-modern chic, and the juxtaposition Ellis paints in his novel—blood splattered against sleek white walls, chaos enveloping order—feels anticipatory. The crack-up on our horizon.
When I asked him, over dinner at Matú in Beverly Hills, whether the crack-up had already happened, whether it was all over, or whether there was any cause for hope (in America, the West, the human species), he laughed and said, “I never feel optimistic about the future. I don’t even think about it any more. I just read novels. I answer my emails. I keep The Food Network on.”
It had been almost 13 years since Ellis, the author of Less Than Zero and American Psycho, had published a novel when, in April 2020, he was sitting at his laptop in the condo and The Shards just “announced itself,” he told me.
He had been trying to write it since he was 17. But every time he tried he failed. It wasn’t until 2020 that he realized “the key to unlocking it after all these years was that it needed an older voice, that it was, in fact, a memory.”
[ click to continue reading at The Free Press ]
Poodlerobics
Neurons Obsolesced
How ChatGPT Will Destabilize White-Collar Work
No technology in modern memory has caused mass job loss among highly educated workers. Will generative AI be an exception?
By Annie Lowrey
In the next five years, it is likely that AI will begin to reduce employment for college-educated workers. As the technology continues to advance, it will be able to perform tasks that were previously thought to require a high level of education and skill. This could lead to a displacement of workers in certain industries, as companies look to cut costs by automating processes. While it is difficult to predict the exact extent of this trend, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the job market for college-educated workers. It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks.
There you have it, I guess: ChatGPT is coming for my job and yours, according to ChatGPT itself. The artificially intelligent content creator, whose name is short for “Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” was released two months ago by OpenAI, one of the country’s most influential artificial-intelligence research laboratories. The technology is, put simply, amazing. It generated that first paragraph instantly, working with this prompt: “Write a five-sentence paragraph in the style of The Atlantic about whether AI will begin to reduce employment for college-educated workers in the next five years.”
Shaving Is For Girls
Hazed By Waze
Waze leads to brain haze? Here’s why using real maps instead of GPS could prevent dementia
HAMILTON, Ontario — Turning off Waze or your favorite GPS app and using an old-fashioned map may be the best way to fight Alzheimer’s disease, a new study reveals. Researchers at McMaster University say orienteering, an outdoor sport that exercises the mind and body through navigation puzzles, can train the brain and stave off cognitive decline. The aim of orienteering is to navigate between checkpoints or controls marked on a special map. In competitive orienteering, the challenge is to complete the course in the quickest time.
For older adults, scientists say the sport — which sharpens navigational skills and memory — could become a useful intervention measure to fight off the slow decline related to dementia onset. They believe the physical and cognitive demands of orienteering can stimulate parts of the brain our ancient ancestors used for hunting and gathering.
Hottygenarians
They’re Cover Girls. They’re in Their 70s.
Sky-high demand for older models—women in their 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s—is creating a silver wave in the modeling industry. They even get stopped at the supermarket.
By Rory Satran
Ninety-year-old Frances Dunscombe only began modeling at age 82 after the death of her husband. When her daughter, a model in her 60s, suggested Ms. Dunscombe join her to visit her agency, she scoffed, “You must be joking.” Now, she realizes, “Actually, I think it was quite a good time to start modeling, because it wasn’t going to go to my head.”
A childhood war evacuee in Britain, Ms. Dunscombe left school at 15 and didn’t have a major career until modeling. Now, several years into her modeling career, she’s done lingerie pictures, worn Prada in Hunger magazine and been on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar UK. Ms. Dunscombe, who lives in Surrey, United Kingdom, sees her mission as inspiring and advocating for older women. “I get extremely irritated when fashion editors promote the most frumpy of clothes for the older age groups,” she said. “Aren’t they aware of what is going on at the moment? That we are coming to the fore.”
Ms. Dunscombe is part of the fashion and beauty industry’s new silver wave. In recent years, luxury fashion brands, direct-to-consumer beauty brands and mass clothing lines have begun casting older models—much older models. Some are celebrities, but increasingly, they are unknowns.
MonsteraX
Inside the Digital Marketplace Where Rare Plants Sell For $9,000
Welcome to MonsteraX, the eBay of rare and variegated plants 🌱
By Rae Witte
Since the early days of isolation, the rare plants market has surged, following in the footsteps of the sneaker market with resellers reporting prices jumping from under $100 to hundreds and thousands of dollars, unregulated marketplace scammers, and requiring lots and lots of research. The simple days of bringing a local nursery staple snake plant or ubiquitous fiddle leaf home seem to be over as more people obsess over collecting these scarce breeds.
After losing his mother, Manny Lorras took over the care of her cat and her collection of rare plants. Once a child who begrudgingly tagged along with both parents to flower shows and was given gardening-related chores, Manny found comfort in tending to his newly acquired plant family. “I learned how to rehab these orchids that she had, some snake plants, and more of the traditional houseplants, and I got really into it,” Manny says.
It was a trip to a local plant store near his home in Brooklyn that really threw his interest into overdrive though. “There was this massive plant that was almost five feet tall, had these really bright pink leaves, and I thought it was super cool. I was like, ‘What is this? This is so strange,’” he recalls. “There wasn’t a lot going on, given it was the early days of COVID. I bought it and spent what I thought was a lot of money for a plant at the time: $500.” This turned out to be a variegated plant, which presents multicolored (thus, pink) due to a mutation that results in the absence of chlorophyll.