Study: Sending emojis is linked to scoring more dates, sex

Emojis might contain more emotional information than meets the eye.

Pixabay
Sex & Relationships
  • A new study shows that people who frequently used emojis in text messages with potential dates engaged in more sexual activity and had more contact with those dates.
  • However, the study only shows an association; it didn't establish causality.
  • The authors suggest that emojis might help to convey nuanced emotional information that's lacking in strictly text-based messaging.
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Brazil's Amazon fires: How they started — and how you can help.

The Amazon Rainforest is often called "The Planet's Lungs."

NASA
Politics & Current Affairs
  • For weeks, fires have been burning in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, likely started by farmers and ranchers.
  • Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, has blamed NGOs for starting the flames, offering no evidence to support the claim.
  • There are small steps you can take to help curb deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, which produces about 20 percent of the world's oxygen.
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Andrew Yang: Give truckers severance packages when driverless vehicles take over

The 2020 Democratic candidate's plan to give Americans a universal basic income seems to include a special provision for truckers.


Photo credit: ROSLAN RAHMAN / Contributor
Politics & Current Affairs
  • Andrew Yang is a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who's made technology and automation central to his campaign.
  • Yang says the U.S. needs a plan for how to manage the upcoming loss of millions of American trucking jobs to self-driving vehicles.
  • Yang wants to tax profits from self-driving trucks to give these laid-off truckers a "severance package."
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Study: Selfies are perceived far more negatively than ‘posies’

In a new study, people who posted a lot of selfies were generally viewed as less likeable and more lonely.

Kim Kardashian/Instagram
Surprising Science
  • A new study examined how people perceive others' Instagram accounts, and whether those perceptions match up with how the posters rate their own personalities.
  • The results show that people react far more positively to "posies," which are photos of the poster taken by another person.
  • Still, it remains unclear exactly why people view selfies relatively negatively.
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