Latest news with #purity
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Billy Joel's Admission to Bill Maher About Classical Music: ‘I Get Stoned From It'
Billy Joel's Admission to Bill Maher About Classical Music: 'I Get Stoned From It' originally appeared on Parade. Bill Maher took his podcast Club Random on the road to Boca Raton, Florida, where he got to sit down with the iconic musician and piano player, Billy Joel. When the 76-year-old announced a couple of months ago on his Instagram that he was diagnosed with brain disorder Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH), he canceled his upcoming concert gigs and was not able to attend the June Tribeca Festival premiere of his HBO documentary And So It Goes. But this past week, the "Vienna" singer welcomed Maher into his home and sat down by his grand piano for an interview. In a clip posted on Friday by Maher, the singer talked about the stories behind his hits "Just the Way You Are," "Uptown Girl" and "She's Always a Woman." Joel also talked about his 1977 song 'Only the Good Die Young,' where his lyrics tell the story of a young Catholic woman and her attitudes to virginity and temptation in front of a lustful young man. "I'm tipping over sacred cows all my life. I like to do that," he said as he sat by his piano. "There is a code within the music itself that has nothing to do with the words, that takes you to this place, if it's done right." This then led the "Piano Man" singer to talk about his love for classical music. "What I love about classical music is its purity. It's just music! It can take me away somewhere else, completely. I get stoned from it!" Joel admitted. "I literally get carried away listening to beautiful music." The rest of the Club Random podcast episode will be released on Monday on YouTube, Amazon Music, Spotify and iHeartRadio. Plus, the first part of Joel's documentary, And So It Goes, is out now on HBO Max. Part 2 will be released next Friday, July 25. Billy Joel's Admission to Bill Maher About Classical Music: 'I Get Stoned From It' first appeared on Parade on Jul 19, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 19, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
The Guardian
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Six great reads: tradwives v radwives, hollowed-out London and the last musical genius?
'Like many people, reaching the age of 40 inspired Matt to do some self-reflection. He had achieved many hallmarks of adulthood: a college degree, a career he enjoyed, and two beloved dogs. But he'd never had a relationship, or even a sexual partner.' Scores of Christian men in the United States have been raised on ideas of abstinence and 'purity' – what, asked Jessica Bateman, does that mean for their sex lives later on? Read more The Prince Charles Cinema is beloved by film-lovers and counts the like of Christopher Nolan as a fan. But its future is at risk due to a David v Goliath battle with its billionaire owner. Writes Will Coldwell: 'To many, what was happening to the Prince Charles Cinema was about something bigger than a negotiation over rent. It was about the persistent threat of closure that so many cultural and community spaces in London face, the impact of rampant commercialism on the city's cultural diversity, and the seemingly unchecked power that developers wield.' Read more In pop, which equates genius with innovation, recent artists have not pioneered new forms like those from the 60s. Has, asks Rachel Areosti, the digital age sidelined invention and promoted the derivative for ever? Read more 'Height is often seen as a dealbreaker when it comes to romance, particularly within heterosexual relationships. But when Tinder recently said that it was trialling a feature that allows some premium users to filter potential matches by height, it quickly proved controversial. 'Oh God. They added a height filter,' lamented one Reddit thread, while an X user claimed: 'It's over for short men.'' What is behind the '6ft fixation' in dating – and could it be scuppering the chance of true connection? Leah Harper set out to find out. Read more Slick Rick, writes Alexis Petridis, 'remains the rapper's rapper, the most-sampled hip-hop artist in history'. In this brilliant interview the British-born artists explains why it's been more than quarter of a century since his last album and why he was inspired by the production techniques of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Read more 'For the uninitiated: the tradwife is a married woman, usually conservative and/or Christian, usually white (though not always), of the belief that her place is in the home. She is feminine, usually kempt, often dressed like Betty Draper, but increasingly workout gear in neutral tones too. Though at home, she is not a stay-at-home mother, rather someone who performs as if she is, documenting her life in dizzying, up-close fashion for us to wonder: who's doing the potty training?' Morwenna Ferrier isn't, she writes, the first wrung-out mother to take umbrage with this sort of performance. But, as the cost of living crisis squeezes, the fantasy of escaping into being a wife and mother becomes more vivid and, for realistic mothers whose life is a delicate balance between task and failure, app-reliance and guilt, maybe we should lean in to the term 'radwife'. Read more
New York Times
06-06-2025
- Health
- New York Times
After Years of Research as Wirecutter's Water-Quality Expert, I Decided I Don't Need to Filter My Water
Like Jan, reader Graeme got his water tested after I suggested doing that before buying a different, clog-resistant filter. He later sent a quick update: 'It came back completely clear. You've saved me tons of time and money. NYC water continues to astound …' It does. New York's water is justifiably famous for its purity, and the city has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep it that way. But it isn't the only city that can boast such a thing. Consult your utility's Consumer Confidence Report. Here's New York City's latest. Here's Los Angeles's report. Here are Chicago's, Houston's, and Philadelphia's. You can usually find your CCR on your utility's website; the EPA can help you find your utility if you're unsure. (CCRs for the prior year are released as late as July 1, so you may find that yours is from two calendar years ago.) A few terms to know: MCLG is the Maximum Contaminant Level Goal. It isn't a requirement, but a level that the EPA or a state agency hopes to eventually achieve. MCL is the Maximum Contaminant Level that's allowed by federal or state law. (And that brings up an important side point: under the Safe Drinking Water Act, states can set water-quality standards that are stricter than the federal ones. Several states were ahead of the EPA on PFAS limits before the Biden administration tightened the federal standards in 2024, for example. That's worth remembering now that the Trump administration has rescinded or relaxed several of the standards and enforcement deadlines.) THMs are trihalomethanes, and are mainly the by-product of disinfectants that are used to reduce bacteria and other pathogens in the water supply. Almost everybody's CCR shows their presence at some level. How much is allowed is defined by the MRDL, the Maximum Residual Disinfectant Level; how much is aimed for is the MRDLG, the Goal. Most other listings are fairly self-explanatory: lead, mercury, and so on. To know even more, use a home water test kit. It will tell you exactly what's in your water, right where it comes out of your faucet. We recommend several Tap Score kits from SimpleLab, both for their ease of use — they come with prepaid and labeled packaging to help you ship your samples to the lab quickly — and for their clarity. The company explains the test results in plain language, flags anything of concern, and has support staff available to answer any questions you have. Michael Murtaugh/NYT Wirecutter This send-away kit delivers lab-tested measurements of more than 100 contaminants, and it explains what they mean and what to do if there's a problem. I spoke with SimpleLab founder and CEO Johnny H. Pujol to understand what he has learned from a decade of water testing. He also shared a detailed summary of the data the company has collected. A lot of people ask about PFAS and microplastics, Pujol said, 'but the likelihood is that you're going to spend a ton of money [on a test kit], and you may not find something that useful or interesting to your home.' (Testing for PFAS and microplastics requires two Tap Score kits in addition to the Advanced City kit that's our top pick; they cost between $300 and $795.) No PFAS chemicals are among the 10 most common contaminants that SimpleLab finds in either public ('city') or private well water, according to the data Pujol shared. Two trihalomethanes — specifically chloroform and bromodichloromethane, both by-products of disinfection at the treatment plant — are among the top 10 in public water. Substances that come from the earth itself — zinc, barium, strontium, and sulfates — are in the top 10 in both city and well water. So is copper, leached from pipes in the home. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and many other trademarked herbicides, shows up so rarely that when it does, Pujol said, 'our data science team sends a message out — hey, we found a detection.' And no PFAS are among the top 10 exceedances — instances where the level detected exceeded the company's in-house health-guidance levels, which are based on EPA and other health-agency benchmarks. Chloroform, bromodichloromethane, and dibromochloromethane, all disinfection by-products, are the top three exceedances in public water supplies. Lead and arsenic are numbers four and five. For private wells, they are numbers one and two. In terms of overall public health, Pujol worries that forever chemicals are drawing people's focus away from where it is needed more urgently. 'Here you've got a concentration that is almost comically low that gets widespread fear and interest — that's PFAS,' he said. "Whereas the classics — arsenic, radon, lead, nitrate — they don't seem to get the attention they deserve, and they're much more significant.' I didn't know all of this before I got my water tested, but I knew enough about the US water system, and about my utility's Consumer Confidence Reports, that I was confident the results would be fine. Still, I got that little fist of nerves. Having been president of my co-op in Queens, I was well aware that lead was likely to be present in the plumbing solder. And in New Jersey, there's a chrome-plating shop — almost certainly a source of hexavalent chromium and other nasty stuff — a block and a half away from my house. Sure, it's downhill, and sure, my water comes from a reservoir several miles in the other direction, and sure, the CCR showed nothing of concern. But. So it was reassuring to get the results I expected.
CNA
04-06-2025
- General
- CNA
What's Coming Up - Talking Point Finds Out What's Really In Our Honey
Is honey really as pure as it seems? Host Steven Chia investigates supermarket honey, testing purity and uncovering the truth about adulteration and why it matters. Catch this episode of Talking Point on 8 June 2025.
