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Driving Lists

Study finds Massachusetts has the worst drivers in America

study-finds-massachusetts-has-the-worst-drivers-in-america




On a long list of typical teenage behavior that I eschewed, is the fact that I had zero interest in getting my driver’s license (or learner’s permit, for that matter). I ended up not learning until I was 25, when I had a quarter-life crisis and convinced myself there was something metaphorically positive about driving myself to therapy sessions. I actually felt pretty comfortable once I got behind the wheel, but of course the thing with driving is that you constantly have to worry about everyone else on the road with you. And apparently, we should be the most worried when driving in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Insurance company LendingTree has released a study comparing driving habits across America, and Massachusetts came out on top in two categories: worst drivers and highest accident rate. Congratulations! But to be fair to the sixth state in the Union, nearby Rhode Island was a close second in both those categories, with California not far behind. Some more vehicular findings:

Massachusetts has the worst drivers in the United States, according to a recent study from the finance site Lending Tree.

Per the study — which collected data from all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., from Nov. 5, 2023 to Nov. 4, 2024 — Massachusetts ranked first for the highest number of reported incidents, including speeding, DUIs and citations, with 61.1 incidents per 1,000 drivers.

Within those incident types, the state also had the highest accident rate, with 44.4 accidents per 1,000 drivers — marking the only state to rate above 40.

Massachusetts also holds the 11th-highest DUI rate in the country, the study said.

According to WalletHub, Massachusetts has some of the highest car insurance rates in the country due to these factors.

As to why the Bay State is seeing these high numbers, CBS affiliate WBZ attained data that shows an increase in traffic in the state between 2022 and 2023, with 5% more cars on the road in Boston, over 10% more in Newton and about 15% more in Framingham — to name just a few cities.

CBS News, meanwhile, attributed this growth to the fact that many employees returned to offices after the COVID-19 pandemic, but less of those same workers are using public transportation, instead opting for cars.

This, combined with the state’s hazardous winter weather conditions, creates an environment primed for traffic incidents, the outlet reported.

On a positive note, Massachusetts drivers have the fifth lowest speeding-related incident rate in the country, at just 1.3 speeding incidents per 1,000 drivers, per the Lending Tree findings.

Additional findings showed that D.C. ranks highest for DUIs at 3.6 per 1,000 drivers, while California comes in at a close second with 3.5.

North Dakota, meanwhile, ranked first for highest incidents of speeding, with 8 incidents per 1,000 drivers.

Elsewhere, Arkansas ranked first for best drivers overall, with the lowest number of reported incidents at 14.7 per 1,000 drivers, as well as the lowest accident rate at 8.2 per 1,000.

[From People]

Well, I’m sure Arkansas is very proud to have won best drivers status. Good for them. I’m a little surprised New York didn’t show up higher on any of these lists, considering NYC has been declared as the worst US city for traffic, but the Empire State placed middle of the road in all categories. As for Massachusetts, it’s been years since I’ve been in the state myself, but I did spend a sizable portion of my youth in a car driven by my greater Boston-area bred grandmother, and… yeah, I totally buy them as worst drivers. I love my grandmother!! But being a passenger in her car was taking your life in your hands, for a variety of quirky yet terrifying reasons. Like the time we were listening to dulcet classical music, returning home after a summer day spent at the pool. We pulled into her parking space, and as she turned off the radio my grandmother said, “I was almost asleep!” Or the time we were on the highway and my grandmother glanced over to me, with a sly, conspiratorial look in her eye, and said, “When I see three trees on the right side of the road, and one tree on the left, I mentally imagine taking one tree away from the three and moving it over to the left, so both sides are balanced.” Or the fact that at a certain point she just decided that every single intersection had a stop sign.

Lastly, what’s with all the speeding in North Dakota? Are people trying to zoom towards or away from something? Whatever the answer is, I feel like FX could get another season of Fargo out of it.

Photos credit: David Tonnessen/PacificCoastNews.com/Avalon, Backgrid

Categories
Interior Design Lists

Pantone names its 2025 color of the year: Mocha Mousse

pantone-names-its-2025-color-of-the-year:-mocha-mousse




My excitement for what 2025 has in store melted away like sun tan in the rain when America elected to send a convicted felon and adjudicated rapist back to the White House. Call me partisan. But I still had one last bit of enthusiasm reserved, and of course it was for the Pantone 2025 Color of the Year. I’ve been waiting a year for this reveal, thanks to how utterly disappointed I was with the selection for 2024: Peach Fuzz. I was as underwhelmed and undercooked about Peach Fuzz as the raw chicken breast hue it resembled. Well, friends, the wait is finally over! And what dazzling shade has Pantone come up with to redeem themselves from last year’s fail? Mocha Mousse! Is it the electric shock of color I was looking for? Nope! But is it better than sad peach? You betcha! Please enjoy some effusive, decadent language from Pantone on how Mocha Mousse is the sanctuary of harmony the world has been craving:

Color us shocked. Pantone’s shade of the year has been announced and it’s… brown?

That’s right: Brat Summer’s neon green and “Wicked’s” watermelon-chic aesthetic are so 2024, with the color company announcing Thursday morning that the shade for 2025 is a more demure Mocha Mousse.

PANTONE 17-1230 (Mocha Mousse’s government name), is a serene, lightly pigmented color. It’s “a mellow brown infused with a sensorial and comforting warmth,” Pantone Color Institute vice president Laurie Pressman tells USA TODAY.

Meant to engage multiple senses, the color should evoke a desire to dip your spoon into it, Pressman says. Inspired in part by “little treat culture” — a growing trend in which people punctuate their day with small pleasures like a store-bought coffee — Pressman encourages fans to “find your mocha moment.”

“Little treat culture really goes back to boosting our sense of personal comfort and wellness,” she says. That the color reflects a cup of coffee with one-too-many dashes of cream or a smooth milk chocolate is intentional. The name too is meant to tickle your tastebuds.

Aside from the more obvious chocolate connection, Pressman and Leatrice Eiseman, the Pantone Color Institute’s executive director, tell USA TODAY that the shade creates a sense of harmony and warmth.

…“The overriding theme as we went into looking for this year’s color was this whole idea of harmony,” Pressman says. As the world becomes more complex, consumers are searching for inner peace and balance, she says. A “versatile” light brown that can reflect both luxury and an alignment with the natural world is the perfect shade to communicate that desire.

“We have enough going on outside of us we’re looking for things that are softer and things that are lighter,” Pressman says. As for those “dopamine brights” (read: Barbie pink and Brat green), there’s a place for those as well, but mocha mousse reflects a mood much larger than any fleeting zeitgeisty trend, she says.

[From USA Today]

Hey, don’t knock my “dopamine brights,” Pantone! That’s the world I live in, and I have the apartment and wardrobe to prove it! That being said, and as long as “harmony” seems to be the key word, I do appreciate the value in a neutral — or, excuse me, “demure” — tone like mocha mousse, because it’s those browns, taupes, and grays that really allow the bolder colors to zing. If you put raspberry next to mocha mousse, the raspberry will vibrate in a way it just doesn’t on its own. Clearly all the food imagery Pantone conjured in their press announcement has successfully infiltrated my brain, lol. And if we’re being honest, that is probably how mocha mousse will actually manifest for me in 2025: an increase in my combined coffee chocolate indulgences.

Though the color of the year is brown, the color of the millenia is green, so naturally Pantone has multiple commercial partnership deals in the works to make money out of mocha mousse. Motorola, Joybird, Society6, and Post-Its are just a few of the companies releasing products in the sophisticated brown hue. But in a new twist, Pantone is also launching installations in cities across the world, the first one being the London Eye. They bathed the attraction in mocha mousse lighting, prompting the hilarious online comment, “Appropriate that it rained because it looks like mud.” Like they say: when in London, be salty!

Lol same https://t.co/FioyS7jRdc pic.twitter.com/JVBFGgLOBE

— MoonPie (@MoonPie) December 6, 2024

Categories
Jools Lebron Lists TikTok

‘Demure’ named the 2024 word of the year from Dictionary.com

‘demure’-named-the-2024-word-of-the-year-from-dictionary.com



The Brits got us started last week when the UK’s Cambridge Dictionary announced their 2024 word of the year: Manifest. What with celebrities, social media influencers, and the GOAT herself Simone Biles talking up the practice of visualizing goals into reality, not to mention the word being looked up 130,000 times on Cambridge’s website, manifest proved itself to be an obvious winner. Not to be outdone, American-based Dictionary.com has now announced their pick for 2024, and it is a very mindful choice. Yes, our favorite TikTok etiquette expert Jools Lebron launched “Demure” into being word of the year! A feat I consider doubly impressive considering her profile only really took off in August. And even better, Dictionary.com is giving Jools due credit for the word’s soaring popularity. Which of course is very demure, very mindful of them.

“The word ‘demure’ experienced a meteoric rise in usage in 2024. Between January and the end of August, this term saw a nearly 1200% increase in usage in digital web media alone,” the announcement read. “This sharp rise is mainly attributed to TikToker Jools Lebron’s popularization of the phrase.”

According to Dictionary.com, the term ‘demure’ means to be characterized by shyness and modesty and to be reserved.

The original TikTok video posted by Lebron, 31, on Aug. 5, showed her sitting in a car with makeup on as a caption over the clip read, “How to be demure … at the workplace,” before she shared her tips to the camera.

“You see how I do my make-up for work? Very demure, very mindful,” Lebron, who identifies as transgender, said. “I don’t come to work with a green cut crease. I don’t look like a clown when I go to work. I don’t do too much, I’m very mindful while I’m at work.”

“See how I look very presentable? The way I came to the interview is the way I go to the job. A lot of you girls go to the interview looking like my Marge Simpson and go to the job looking like Patty and Selma — not demure,” the TikToker joked. “I’m very modest. I’m very mindful.”

The clip was quickly reshared and recreated in other videos shared on the platform with Lebron’s voiceover uttering the phrase “very demure” playing over the top. The video has since garnered five million likes on TikTok.

Lebron, who has become a social media star on the back of the video, acknowledged the announcement of ‘demure’ as the word of the year as she reposted the news on her Instagram Stories on Monday, Nov. 26.

“Between August 2023 and July 2024, there was no significant trend in the usage of the word ‘demure.’ By the week of Aug. 18, 2024, however, there was almost 14 times more interest in the term, highlighting the term’s almost overnight explosion in popularity,” Dictionary.com explained, referring to Lebron’s impactful video.

[From People]

That Marge Simpson line gets me every time! Well done, Jools. As I’ve said of Ms. Lebron before, I love a gal who promotes etiquette and vocabulary. While “demure” used to primarily mean reserved, quiet, or modest, Dictionary.com notes that Jools’ TikTok tutorials have broadened its definition to mean refinement and sophistication, particularly as it pertains to appearance and/or behavior. If she’s wielding that kind of influence, I really hope Jools is able to make money from this! (Mindfully and demurely, of course.) She’s filed to trademark her catchphrase “very demure, very mindful,” after a brief scare that she’d missed out when some interloper filed to trademark ahead of her. American trademark law is nothing if not convoluted, but I still think Jools has a strong case in terms of having already clearly made the phrase her public signature. And if Dictionary.com says searches for “demure” increased 1,200% percent between January and August, how much more has that percentage skyrocketed since her August videos gained traction? I’d venture to guess by very un-demure margins.

photos via Instagram and YouTube/Good Morning America

Categories
Lists Netflix

The Night Agent and Ginny & Georgia top Netflix’s most watched shows

the-night-agent-and-ginny-&-georgia-top-netflix’s-most-watched-shows




For the first time ever, Netflix has released an engagement report, which lists the hours that each of its more than 18,000 titles were streamed during the first half of 2023. The top titles streamed globally this past January through June are The Night Agent, Ginny & Georgia (season 2), The Glory, Wednesday, Queen Charlotte, and You (season 4). Other notable streamers within the top 20 include telenovela La Reina del Sur, Outer Banks (season 3), Love is Blind (season 4), Firefly Lane (season 2), Luther: The Fallen Sun, and Manifest (season 4). That last title surprised me because I honestly thought Dustin at Pajiba was the only person in the world still watching it, lol. Non-English stories accounted for 30% of all viewing.

Netflix has released its first-ever engagement report, providing more viewership data transparency than ever before. Among the streaming platform’s most popular shows are global hits, teen shows and female-fronted stories.

The FBI thriller “The Night Agent,” the first two seasons of “Ginny & Georgia,” Korean drama “The Glory,” Jenna Ortega’s “Wednesday,” “Bridgerton” spinoff “Queen Charlotte,” the fourth season of Penn Badgley’s “You,” the third season of Spanish telenovela “La Reina del Sur,” the third season of “Outer Banks” and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “FUBAR” rank as the ten most-viewed shows or movies on Netflix from January to June 2023, according to the streamer.

The top 100 – among more than 18,000 titles available on Netflix – includes the fourth season of “Manifest,” the second season of “Firefly Lane,” Jennifer Lopez’s thriller “The Mother,” Eddie Murphy’s “You People,” both seasons of the now-cancelled “Sex/Life,” reality shows including “Perfect Match” and the fourth season of “Love Is Blind” and award season breakouts “The Diplomat” and “Beef.”

Netflix has historically been highly selective about revealing audience viewing habits, highlighting high-performing content in “Top 10” lists or “Most Popular” lists in lieu of more robust consumption figures. The newly released data publicly discloses the least-watched shows and movies for the first time.

According to Netflix, non-English language programming like “The Snow Girl” (Spain), “The Empress” (Germany) and “Fauda” (Israel) comprised 30% of viewers’ most-watched content. Original series and films accounted for 55% of viewing time, while 45% was licensed content – like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Suits,” both of which have found new audiences on the platform.

[From CNN]

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I’m surprised at some of the results. I’ve only seen a handful of the shows in the top 100 and out of the top 10, I’ve only seen Wednesday! I wonder if that will change when the second half comes out. Honestly, my biggest takeaway here is that I really don’t watch Netflix as much as I think I do. This list has reminded me of some movies and shows that I want to watch, but with streaming services raising prices nonstop, I think it may also be helping me put it in the “cancel” column on list of discretionary expenses. Not until I’ve finally watched Better Call Saul, of course.

And, because I know some of you are probably wondering, Suits placed 67th in the rankings, which, again, only show data from January through June 2023. It didn’t really take off until the summertime. Netflix says it’s going to release the viewer data for July through December 2023 sometime in the new year, which makes sense since technically, they’re still counting what we’re streaming up until 11:59 p.m. on the 31st. I’m guessing Suits is going to be at the top of that list. If you’d like to see the full list, you can download a full spreadsheet of it here.

Photos courtesy of Netflix Press