More than 4 million people say they fear being evicted or foreclosed upon in the coming months, just as two studies released Wednesday found that the nation's housing availability and affordability crisis is expected to worsen significantly following the pandemic.

The studies come as a federal eviction moratorium is set to expire at the end of the month. The moratorium has kept many tenants owing back rent housed. Making matters worse, the tens of billions of dollars in federal emergency rental assistance that was supposed to solve the problem has not reached most tenants.

A movement in Buckhead, Atlanta, the city's wealthiest neighborhood comprised of predominately White residents, is working to secede in order to form its own city due to a rise in crime.

I know this is going to sound like a nonproblem at first, but there is a deeper issue that troubles me. Our 16-year-old son is an amazing kid: intelligent, hardworking, and athletic. He is a straight-A student who juggles multiple AP classes with a demanding sports schedule. He is one of the top three students in his class and is also being recruited by college coaches for his sport. But ever since he was in elementary school, we’ve had the same experience at the end-of-year awards ceremonies: He’ll occasionally get recognized for the “objective” awards, like honor roll or scoring the highest on foreign-language tests, but he has never won a single “subjective” award, the ones selected by teachers/coaches or voted on by his peers. When he was little, we would console him by saying “Don’t worry, just keep working hard and maybe you’ll get one next year!”

But after several years of that, we changed our message, instead emphasizing that hard work is its own reward, and that we are proud of him for his diligence and work ethic. I suspect one of the reasons he gets so little recognition is his personality: He is extremely quiet, introverted, and serious. He has a handful of close friends but gets along with everybody; his school tends to be a bit “clique-ish,” but he is one of the few students who has good friends among both the “smart kids” and the athletes.

I’m not concerned about the awards themselves or about him impressing anyone else. Now that he’s older, he tends to brush it off as no big deal. But I just watched him sit through yet another awards ceremony with a forced smile on his face and tears in his eyes as every one of his friends at the table got a special award from one of the teachers or coaches. He sometimes comments about feeling “invisible” because he doesn’t have the charm and charisma of some of his peers. We’ve tried telling him that sometimes teachers like to reward students for their effort since the students who excel in class already get the reward of good grades. But this doesn’t feel right either, especially after seeing him come home exhausted from a three-hour sports practice and then stay up till 1 a.m. studying.

After 10-plus years of this, I can’t help worrying that maybe we should be giving him different advice—instead of preaching self-acceptance, perhaps we should be telling him to adjust his personality, so he is a bit more likable? He is headed to college soon, so maybe I should do nothing and let him figure it out himself?

—Mom of the Invisible Man

Woke people wear locs or baby fros and use coconut oil, olive oil, and hemp soap. They blog, they have a brand, they wrap themselves in henna or war paint at festivals even though they rarely engage in a physical war, if they ever engage at all.

Woke people have the best graphic T-shirts and catchiest hashtags. They have great jobs or no job because their families can afford to float them, they are the first to pop up at a protest, take the best viral images, and run home to talk about it on the internet. Sharing variations of the same image repeatedly.

'Where is the outcry when blacks kill other blacks?' Well, let me show you. It can be found within the countless murals (sidewalk and wall) found in the black community; the countless trees lined with teddy bears and liquor bottles; the hostility toward police in the community who are sworn to protect and serve and who are always present except at the time of many violent attacks. It can be seen in the overflow of emotion at funerals of slain young people; and, due to the lack of positive safe outlets for grief and loss counseling and the miseducation of effective coping mechanisms, will often lead to self-medication to suppress these emotions. Leading to high rates of drug abuse and alcoholism. I can go on and on. So honestly, all the 'Woke People,' aka Poverty/Struggle Pimps, exit left

The science is clear: without drastic action to limit temperature rise below 1.5C, the Earth, and all life on it, including all human beings, will suffer devastating consequences.

Two Florida women dressed as elderly individuals in an effort to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, the local sheriff's office confirmed to The Hill.

When I moved to New York at 22, it became clear that an honest man would have a hard time getting a job. The nicer interviewers would get concerned and offer sincere advice, telling me that when asked about my biggest flaw, I wasn’t supposed to actually list my flaws. When I told them I hoped some employers would appreciate my honesty, most laughed. In some cases, I ended interviews early on the grounds that the interviewer and I clearly weren’t compatible. But I got lucky and was hired by an eccentric who was charmed by my earnestness. After two months as his assistant, he brought up areas where I needed to improve, and I candidly told him that I didn’t think I could do better, that I wasn’t the best person he could get for this job. I pretty much persuaded him to fire me.

After years of feeling torn between my old ways and my new ones, I got over my discomfort at participating in the dishonest world and started to see why people spared one another the truth. As I experimented with small talk, I noticed how others used honesty to establish intimacy. I’d always seen “hiding feelings” as cowardly, but for other people, the selectiveness of their honesty was what gave it meaning. They’d choose who was special enough to hear their secrets. My indiscriminate, automatic honesty had meant that I’d tell a personal story the same way to a stranger as I would to my closest friend; that cheapened anything I shared. Anyone who loved me wanted to see a side that I didn’t show others, but I hadn’t saved one for them. Immediate honesty was impatient; if I wanted people to be honest with me, I had to earn it.

Minnesota’s major hospitals and healthcare systems are stepping up their urgency ahead of Thanksgiving this week with a messaging campaign that declares “There’s no more time to be ‘Minnesota Nice.'”

The campaign is called “Fight COVID MN.”

“We need to pull this lever, which is a little bit more in your face,” said Dr. Rahul Koranne, the president and CEO of the Minnesota Hospital Association.

One of the first two posters shows a healthcare worker in PPE with text that says, “We’re not the front line. You are. We’re your last chance.”

The other reads, “We’re sure it’s good, but is Grandma’s pumpkin pie really to die for?”

“I think it’s time to get pretty aggressive,” said Dr. Omobosola Akinsete, HealthPartners’s chair of infectious diseases.

If you’re prone to doom-scrolling Twitter, or can’t take yet another stressful headline in the news, Oprah Winfrey has some suggestions on what books to read next.

Winfrey recently suggested seven books that are perfect to read right now, or during any stressful moment in life. She values these books “for their ability to inspire and comfort and enlighten,” she said in a video on her Instagram Monday.

“During these times, I know it’s hard sometimes to focus on anything because we’re so distracted by the roar of the news, not to mention the steady hum of our own anxiety,” Winfrey said.

But research has shown that reading can reduce your stress levels as effectively as other relaxation methods. Just six minutes of reading can lower your blood pressure and decrease other stress-related bodily responses, a 2009 study found.

From poetry to spirituality, here are the books that Oprah likes to “revisit time and again.”

I masturbate almost every day. If I’m bored or feel the urge, I will do it a couple of times a day. I figure if masturbation is so healthy, then I’ll be damned if I’m going to deny myself a dose of healthiness. And yet, while I do masturbate regularly, there have been times in my life when I haven’t. Extended periods of time, to be exact.

Week Two:
Although I never think I'm going to get agitated from sexual frustration, it does happen. During week two, the slightest thing gets on my nerves. I’m also antsy — like I have an itch I need to scratch, but just can’t. In fact, it’s not just that I can’t scratch it, but it also feels like I’m not even sure where that itch is.

While I know what’s causing the agitated itchiness and can recognize how to remedy the “issue,” I still don’t masturbate (because I'm at my parents' house). Then I get angry at myself for not giving into the urge and slipping away somewhere private. Instead, I spend time wondering why I have this hangup, and getting even more annoyed at myself.

Also, I write about sex! I tell myself I should be able to masturbate whenever I need to, and be totally cool with it! Yea, there's a lot of mental chastising going on at this point.

Some passengers are out of control. Just over a week ago an American Airlines passenger handed a flight attendant a vicious note, calling her a “gloried maid,” “4 eyed c*nt,” and saying that if it wasn’t for this job, she’d be “cleaning motel rooms for $2 tips and meth.” Fortunately American Airlines acted swiftly to ban this passenger.

Well, now another flight attendant is reporting that she received a note from a passenger…

A couple who were married for more than half a century reportedly succumbed to coronavirus complications on the same day in Texas.

According to CNN, Betty and Curtis Tarpley, 80 and 79, died within an hour of each other on June 18 and held hands during their final minutes together.

The couple's son, Tim Tarpley, told the network that Betty showed symptoms of the deadly disease just before she was taken to Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth on June 9. Curtis was admitted to the same hospital just two days later.

Tarpley said Betty phoned both him and his sister, telling them she was at peace with dying as her condition continued to decline.

"I just screamed, 'No!' I was like, 'I've got too much, too many other things to do in this life that I want to show you, and I'm not ready,'" he recalled to CNN.

When Gail Savage’s landlord messaged asking her if she would “stay all night” with him, she assumed he’d texted the wrong number.

“I was like, He probably meant to send that to his girlfriend,” Savage, 29, told BuzzFeed News.

A single mom to 2-year-old son Salem, Savage lost her job working as a bartender at a popular Indianapolis cocktail bar and her gigs working as a burlesque performer when the state shutdown occurred on March 16. She’d let her landlord know and they’d been texting about how she was waiting for the federal stimulus check to arrive to pay her April rent, when he suddenly inquired if she could get a ride and “stay all night” with him.

“I don’t know if you meant to send that to me,” she replied.

“I did,” he wrote back, in text messages seen by BuzzFeed News.

Without a doubt, quarantining is yielding environmental improvements. Driving and flying have dropped considerably. According to satellite imagery from NASA, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other emissions are down. The canals in Venice are cleaner, and people in certain parts of India can see the peaks of the Himalayas for the first time in years.

These environmental benefits certainly sound encouraging. But they raise the question: At what cost?

Millions of people are stuck at home worrying about their finances. Small business owners are wondering if and when they’ll be able to reopen their doors—and pay their workers.

Schools have closed for the year. College and high school graduations are canceled. Anxiety and isolation have replaced many of our most basic activities.