“Five portions of fruit and vegetables a day — a familiar mantra for those concerned about their own and their children’s health — may not, after all, be enough, according to a new report by scientists, who suggest we should instead be aiming for seven a day, and mostly vegetables at that. Alarmingly for some who thought they were doing the right thing, tinned and frozen fruit may not be helpful at all.”

Gmail is ten years old! It is hard to believe that a massive multinational corporation would offer up a free service that works so flawlessly and that so many of us rely on but thanks to the wonderful benevolence of Google we have been able to enjoy a decade of it thus far, and the future is even brighter please don’t hurt me Google I am saying all the good things okay when you think about the wonders they are still sure to bring us. Happy birthday thing that knows way too much about me!

“Antibacterial products have been shown to be effective at killing microorganisms in hospitals and other healthcare settings, and toothpaste with triclosanmay help people with the gum disease gingivitis, Halden said. But there’s little evidence that these products are any more beneficial than regular soap for the general population, Halden said. This lack of benefit may be because people often do not use the products correctly: To effectively kill microbes, people need to wash their hands with antibacterial products for 20 to 30 seconds, but studies show people use the soaps for just six seconds on average, Halden said.”

That’s right. It’s the true sign of spring in New York! It’s the time that Whole Foods starts carrying Happy Tree Maple Water, “never heated early season maple water wild-harvested from the Catskill Mountains.” At about $6 for ten ounces, the unheated leakings of trees are dispensed far and near. The contents? Water, and some sugar. Tree sugar. “Happy Tree Maple Water is gathered using a fully sustainable tapping system, which causes no harm to our old-growth trees. Our product is always wild-harvested using only the best, clearest, and tastiest maple water,” let it be known. Get some for little Tanlines and Eurydice today!

“Lorenzo Semple Jr., a playwright and screenwriter who would probably be best known for his scripts for films like ‘Papillon’ and ‘Pretty Poison’ if he hadn’t put the Zap! and the Pow! in the original episodes of the arch, goofy 1960s television show ‘Batman,’ died on Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 91.”

Icona Pop Featuring Ty Dolla $ign, “It’s My Party”

With everyone searching for the secret to success in print media one publication has shown a possible path to prosperity: Hang around for forty years until the legal prohibitions against the subject of your magazine start to fade away and voilà,”Business is booming.” Maybe now would be a good time to start Journal of the American Heroin User or Crackforum or The Meth Aficionado.

Be aware that anytime today when you read something, hear something or see something you should take a second to remind yourself that the odds are it is a fabrication, one that is either so brazen and titanic in its scope that you cannot believe anyone would expect you to fall for it (thus giving it a weird kind of credibility) or so plausible in its larger details that you fail to notice that certain less significant aspects of it are full of falsehood. These lies, both large and small, aim to take advantage of the innate trust we are all born with as human beings and somehow maintain even as we wend our way through a world riddled with deceit and prevarication. They use our basic decency as a Trojan horse, and once they are welcome inside our heads they do what they can to manipulate us, to make us follow the rules they give us and buy the things they want us to buy and go about our miserable lives without the hope or realization that everything could — and should — be better. Do not forget: Every single thing you see today is a lie. Also it is April Fools’ Day, so there’s gonna be a lot of other stupid shit cluttering things up too.

by Matthew J.X. Malady

People drop things on the Internet and run all the time. So we have to ask. In this edition, Feministing executive director and Planned Parenthood global communications specialist Lori Adelman tells us more about what it’s like to chill with Dr. Ruth.

Another Tuesday, another selfie with the subversively cheeky Dr. Ruth 🙂 #365feministselfie cc @AskDrRuth @PPActionNJ pic.twitter.com/t247XYPGrD

— Lori Adelman (@Ladelman) March 18, 2014

Lori! So what happened here?

Dr. Ruth was delivering the keynote at a fundraising dinner for the New Jersey chapter of the nonprofit where I work, which I’d been asked to attend on behalf of my division. For some reason all the higher-ups who would normally be there repping for us were out of town or unavailable. So I ended up going and helping out by being what can only be truthfully described as one of Dr. Ruth’s de facto “handlers.” (Sensing a pattern here for how all the exciting things in my life happen.)

The thing is: Dr. Ruth is not a woman who needs a lot of people fussing over her. We’re talking about someone who was a trained sniper in the Israeli army and who knows how to throw a hand grenade.

So as we’re hanging around waiting for the event to begin, people were mostly bringing her tea (Lipton, two cups, no sugar) and taking photos with her. My boss showed her the final version of a video Dr. Ruth had recently shot with PPFA President Cecile Richards on the Affordable Care Act and sexual health, and she really liked that. She watched it twice, and then made everyone around her watch it (on my boss’s phone *evil laugh*). I was trying to connect with her, and I mentioned that I was a really big fan of her Twitter presence — which is true: She’s got one of the best feeds in the game (see, for example: this). She lit up at that, and I got to learn a bit about her “process” (sorry), which I feel kind of bad revealing on here, but basically she dictates all the tweets herself and then an assistant posts them. She was excited about the number of Twitter followers she had, which she knew to the tens of thousands.

Despite this, when I tried to tell her about my blog, which seems like it would be up her alley, she dismissed my explanations and maintained that she was “Internet illiterate.” Now, that is not the first time someone has claimed to not know how the Internet works rather than listen to me talk about feminist blogging. I know all the tricks. But it was very effective, and we did move on to other subjects. Touché, Dr. Ruth.

Somewhere during this exchange, I asked her if she wanted to take a selfie with me, and she was kind enough to oblige. I try not to subject my Twitter followers to too many photos I’ve taken of my own face, but in this case I made an exception.

You two seem like you’re having a blast in that photo. It’s such a great shot. Does she come across in the same way as she does when you see her on TV?

She very much comes across as you would expect: cheeky, blunt, light-hearted, and didactic. I also learned that Dr. Ruth is someone who freely shushes others mid-sentence if she is annoyed by what they are saying, which I definitely respect a lot. It is a skill I hope to hold and deploy as effectively as she does one day.

Also, she collects turtles, *swoon* ❤ Lesson learned (if any)?

My major takeaway from all this is that Dr. Ruth is a G. The woman is 85 years old, not even close to five feet tall, and still spreading a message of health and sex positivity with humor and charm.

Also, fun sex-related fact: According to Dr. Ruth, most cases of erectile dysfunction do not have physical but emotional or psychological root causes, and can thus be “cured” very easily (“within minutes!”) by talking to a therapist or your sexual partner.

Just one more thing.

I feel like I have milked this enough, so in closing I offer you this photo of Dr. Ruth and Madonna at a party together:

Here’s picture of me with Madonna at party after same event. pic.twitter.com/L8DKNX2zKc

— Dr. Ruth Westheimer (@AskDrRuth) November 26, 2013

Matthew J.X. Malady is a writer and editor in New York.

★ Fog lay over Amsterdam Avenue, up on the building tops and lowering to cover the whole roadway in the distance, but at least it wasn’t raining. Outside was raw and indoors was humid and stifling, but at least it wasn’t raining. Then it was drizzling, but at least it wasn’t raining hard. At least it wasn’t freezing. The narrow points of gratitude were adding up to resentment. Down on Herald Square, the wind was colder but no less drizzle-laden. Uptown again, there was more of the same. A rat walked unhurriedly along the not-even-dampened sidewalk, in broad if gray daylight, but to be fair, it was a very small rat.