Do Babies Get Bored? “Babies have mechanisms built in to prevent them from wasting time on things that don’t have sufficient amounts of learning value,” explains baby-researcher and psychology researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Celeste Kidd. “You could think of that as boredom.” Kidd notes that a baby is essentially a learning machine. Babies are constantly exploring and looking for novel experiences to gather more data about their world....

Gregg*, a father of one in New York City, discovered this. A year after the birth of his first child, he and his wife’s marriage was really struggling. But instead of looking for an exit, he took a closer look at the situation. His wife, he realized, was grieving the loss of her former self and, while it wasn’t necessarily about “him,” he understood he needed to help out more....

Another effect (and cause) of the liberalization of laws around marijuana is the liberalization of attitudes around marijuana. The stigma around parents smoking a little weed or popping an edible every once in a while is fading fast, and moms and dads who choose to enjoy pot are now tasked with choosing from the aforementioned plethora of different options. But what kind of weed makes sense for parents? We asked some experts for their thoughts on the topic for parents in different situations....

Such responses make sense, of course: To find out you can’t conceive a child is to find out that child you wished a dreamed for will not arrive. Grief and sadness are natural emotions. As is stress. Reproductive issues are hard on people under any circumstance but when the problem is one of male infertility, it often becomes more difficult. Why? Not only does the idea of male infertility often carry a harsher societal stigma, but, due to stubbornness or some notion of masculinity, men are also generally less likely to address their feelings in an honest way....

According to New York Times, inflation rates have jumped to the highest level in close to 40 years. Data released this week points to rising housing costs, supply chain disruptions, and rapid consumer demand have all led to “fuel the strongest inflationary burst in a generation.” According to the Consumer Prince Index, the number jumped by 6.8 percent this year through November. It’s the fastest-paced rise since 1982. “After stripping out food and fuel, which can move around a lot from month to month, inflation climbed by 4....

Kennedy, who has all sorts of dumb opinions about the made-up dangers of vaccines, posted a series of photos on Instagram showing himself and Biel at the California State Assembly, where they reportedly were lobbying politicians to not support SB 276, which would close loopholes in the medical exemption process. The two were likely representing Children’s Health Defense, a faux-environmental group founded by Kennedy that has repeatedly warned about nonexistent toxic levels of mercury found in vaccines....

“How this got into the top 40 I really don’t know, but I don’t think I’m overreacting when I say that whoever is responsible for it should be locked in prison for the rest of their lives,” Kimmel said of the viral tune, which hit the Billboard Hot 100 list at No. 32 this week. “And then when they die, their bodies should be fed to the very sharks they sang about....

But there is a great deal of harm that can come to a marriage when accounts, debts, and purchases are kept hidden. And, as it turns out, this financial infidelity is more common that one might think. A recent creditcard.com survey, for example, found that 29 million Americans — one out of every five people living with a spouse or partner — are keeping a bank or credit card account secret....

Markman considers helping a kid understand the hows and whens of lying similarly to explaining how to swear. He suggests we teach kids about swearing not because the words themselves are inherently evil but “because the kid isn’t old enough to figure out the social situations in which they are appropriate.” Rather than letting them figure it out through trial and error, parents limit the trials up front then try to help kids avoid errors....

“Whatever little things brands can do to help make it past the pandemic are good things,” Chief Marketing Office Dave Skena told Insider. The free donut initiative is actually extremely generous. The free donuts are not just a one-time offer. The deal lasts through 2021 and there are no limits to the number of donuts vaccinated people can enjoy. In fact, if you want to, you could grab a free Krispy Kreme donut every day for the rest of the year as long as you bring your vaccination card....

On Monday’s airing of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the couple revealed that they tried to have the “birds and the bees” talk with their five-year-old daughter Lincoln after she brought it up out of the blue. “We weren’t like, ‘Oh crap we gotta get around to that talk, she’s five,” Shepard first clarified, before explaining that they started by going over male and female anatomy. “Penis, vagina, ovum, sperm, we were laying it all out,” the 44-year-old dad said....

Historically, the word “Stormtrooper” originated during WWI and applied to a specific kind of German soldiers. By WWII, the term “Sturmabteilung” which translates to “Storm Detachment” was an early Nazi Germany paramilitary group. Naturally, no parent in their right mind would select Halloween costumes for their kids reminiscent of either WWI Stormtroopers or proto-Nazis. And yet, arguably, this is kind of what we’re doing every time we put a kid in a Stormtrooper costume....

According to a release, Max is sensitive to loud noises, bright lights, and fabrics that are uncomfortable. He also “sometimes prefers to play on his own” and it “can also take more time for him to warm up to new friends and experience.” Max enjoys numbers, buses, and bugs, plus he is close with his older sister Amira, who will also be coming to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Thirteen-year-old Israel Thomas-Bruce, who was diagnosed with ASD when he was 4, will voice Max....

The survey itself is fairly straightforward. The Derm Review asked 1,113 men about how often they wash their penis. Half of the men were aged 25 to 43, a quarter were 35 to 44, 12.1 percent were 18 to 24, and about 10 ish percent were 45 years and up. Even though the standard medical advice, according to The Derm Review, says you should watch it daily, 21.6 percent of men surveyed fail to do so....

Actress Mila Kunis is a mama to two kids, 6-year-old daughter Wyatt Isabelle, and 4-year-old son Dimitri Portwood. She and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, seem to be really down-to-earth kind of parents. Even though both are celebrities, Mila and Ashton are not afraid to share the parenting strategies they rely on. The last confession – that they don’t bathe their kids every day – had the whole internet talking. And Mila might have sparked another conversation, this time about teaching her daughter to stand up for herself....

I hate this shit. I always have. Before she and I used to make fun of those women, the ones who all post phrases on social media that seem like they’ve been pulled from Target pillows and who feel the need to tell the world everything. It’s not her. In fact, it was the opposite of her. But now I feel like she’s been brainwashed a bit and is falling in line....

The Toy Zone wanted to find out the ’90s toys that are worth a lot of money now. Data was collected in March 2021 by looking up toys and prices on Mavin and took note of the toy, the price it sold for, the year it was released, and came up with a detailed list. For this purpose, they excluded any toys sold as part of a set, and up to 10 most expensive toys were included for each toy line....

NASA shared a new photo of the Sun taken from a satellite on October 27th, 2022 that looks like it’s perfectly in the season with Halloween just around the corner. The bright orange Sun looks like it’s smiling, with its mouth, eyes, and all. “Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the sun ‘smiling,’” NASA said in a Wednesday tweet. It really does look like the Sun is smiling. In the center of the bright orange and white swirls are two black spaces that look like eyes and another black section that looks like a chubby-cheeked smile....

The new series is set to be a trilogy, so the first trailer is for the first installment, Siege. It’s set on Cybertron, the home planet of the Transformers, and focuses on what looks like a brutal civil war between the Autobots and Decepticons led by Optimus Prime and Megatron, respectively. Their conflict centers on the Allspark, the source of all life and power on Cybertron, which can also be used to “reformat” the machines, which doesn’t sound great....