Photo: Constantin Stanciu (Shutterstock)

Some decisions require a lot of thought – weighing the pros and cons and striving to achieve the best possible result. But some people are undecided about just about anything, big or small. Whether you’re dealing with an ambivalent person or you are an ambivalent person yourself, you know it can be annoying.

But according to a new study done in British Journal of Social Psychology‘Ambivalence may not be the negative quality we think it is. in the an article for psychology today, Dr. Susan Krauss Whitbourne, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Brain Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, sheds additional light on the potential benefits of ambivalence, as well as a downside. Here’s what you should know.

How to use your ambivalence to your advantage

Basically, what matters is that ambivalent people take the time to consider the different sides of an issue, which can lead them to make more informed decisions. Whitbourne gives the example of a visit to a restaurant with a certain family member who takes forever to order and gets on everyone’s nerves (including the waiters). Here is she takes:

Weighing factors like healthy choices, price, and method of preparation can ultimately lead to better choices than rushing to get what’s first on your list of possible entrees. How many times have you been disappointed when your own main course arrives and realized you made the wrong choice by being too hasty?

The downside of ambivalence

Aside from things taking a long time, there’s another negative aspect of ambivalence, says Whitbourne:

A quick decision can be the mental equivalent of pulling the bandage off a wound without hesitation. It can be painful, but you are through. In chronically ambivalent people, the inability to resolve conflict can lead to tension, worry, and an overall negative state of mind.

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So keep that in mind the next time you’re in a situation where someone is particularly undecided (including yourself).

Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

Prime Day is fast approaching (again) and maybe you plan to spend it Finding good deals on off-brand technology like wireless earbuds and phone cords. But for all its convenience, the biggest shortcoming of online shopping is still the inability to see or test products firsthand before buying them. To feel like we know what we’re getting, we turn to user reviews – which are on Amazon at least increasingly unreliable.

It’s still wise to check out the reviews of Amazon products, but it’s worth taking your review a step further. Some product reviews on the site are misleading (to be charitable), if not fake, and all are worth checking out to see if they’re honest, whether it’s due to user error, a glitch on Amazon, or the increasing likelihood that the reviews have been bought and paid for, Amazon reviews should not be taken at face value.

This is how you can tell whether an Amazon rating is fake

Mistakes happen and sometimes reviews are inadvertently linked to another product. For example, a recent change to a Blu-ray player’s metadata on Amazon’s backend resulted in a brief period of displaying a number of reviews of unrelated products for the Blu-ray player, which changed its star rating until the bug was fixed. Likewise, it is not uncommon for a user to inadvertently rate the wrong product.

Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

There are, of course, more suspicious reasons for independent reviews to appear on the wrong products, such as: And even if the review is the correct listing, there are plenty of reasons why it could be fake or misleading – whether as part of one Review-for-pay racket; “Review Bombing” campaigns aimed at changing the rating of a product; Ads disguised as reviews; or those nosy positive product reviews that include a one-star rating because the reviewer wants to “send a message” that it is taking too long to ship or has some other aspect of the transaction that doesn’t apply to the product itself. Anyway, there are ways to determine if a product’s reviews are trustworthy.

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• Actually read the reviews: It is often easy to spot a fake review based on how it is read. If a reviewer has a completely different experience than what is expressed in other reviews and makes extremely positive or negative claims, it is likely to be untrustworthy. The same applies if a review spends a little too much time recommending an obscure alternative but does not offer a fair comparison or comment on the product for which the review is intended. And if there are plenty of one-star or 5-star reviews out there, but the text for each review is barely longer than a sentence (or even a word or two), this is another tell-tale sign of falsification.
• Look for “confirmed purchase”: Reviews from users who actually purchased the product will be marked with a “Confirmed Purchase” badge next to their name. There is a good chance they are reputable ratings / reviews, although given some unscrupulous sellers, that is not a certainty will offer “Refunds” in exchange for 5 star reviews.
• Read the product Q / A: These answer frequently asked questions, and responses from users who have purchased the product are tagged again with a “Verified Purchase” tag.
• Read non-Amazon reviews: It is always wise to seek external reviews, especially from professional reviewers / critics / websites that you trust. It can help you get a basic idea of ​​how the product is rated elsewhere, and you can rate user reviews elsewhere. But just because a reviewer and user arrive at different conclusions doesn’t mean they are lying. Reviews are inherently contextual and subjective, so don’t throw an opinion away just because it goes against the broader consensus.

Discover fake Amazon reviews with FakeSpot or ReviewMeta

Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

Even if you know the signs of a fake review, sometimes you will come across reviews or product reviews whose legitimacy you cannot pinpoint. In these cases we recommend using the FakeSpot app. Fakespot analyzes the reviews and / or product reviews for an offer on Amazon, rates each review and tells you how real or fake it seems (it also works with online stores like Best Buy, Walmart, Steam and Sephora). FakeSpot is available on the Internet, and further Android and iOS. As alternative, ReviewMeta works in very similar.

Report incorrect and misplaced Amazon reviews

The “Report Abuse” button for Amazon reviews Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

The reality is that a fake or misleading review or two will turn up for almost every popular product. These can be reported, but a few incorrect reviews are unlikely to change an entry’s overall score. However, if you notice a particularly enormous number of fake reviews for a product or discover that reviews for a product appear elsewhere, you can use the “Report abuse” button next to a review to draw attention to Amazon.

This article was originally published in 2019 and was updated on June 17, 2021 with additional context and links, and adapted to the current Lifehacker style.

Photo: Joshua Resnick (Shutterstock)

Lemons are one of the few – or perhaps one of two – fruits whose peel is as valuable as their juicy flesh. Lemon zest is one of the quickest ways to add the essence of sunshine to your dish, but sometimes you don’t need juice and zest at the same time, and you can get those asynchronous moments with a slew of lemon zest that you haven’t yet used up. Fortunately, they freeze well.

I don’t know why this never crossed my mind – I love freezing things (like ginger, for example) – but I’m glad someone thought of it. Reddit user ehp29 was recently deleted this tip in r / EatCheapAndHealthy, a subreddit devoted – as you can probably imagine – to cheap and healthy eating:

I sometimes find that I only need a touch of lemon peel for a dish and I don’t have to go to the store and buy a whole lemon that I only use a little bit of.

So when I use fresh lemon juice in a dish, I put the leftover peel in the freezer and pull out the peel to grate it into pieces if necessary. Lemon peel doesn’t really affect the texture of a dish, so it doesn’t matter if it freezes well. Just the zest of a lemon should be enough for some dishes so that it doesn’t take up much space in the freezer.

The same would probably work with orange or lime, I just find lemon peel is the most common. I love it in baked goods and oatmeal.

This is a smart move for two reasons – one obvious and the other less so. The obvious thing is that the freezer will stop the lemon peel from decaying so you can use it at a later time when it’s needed. The less obvious one is that rubbing juiced lemon peel is annoying – they’re all soft and flabby – and freezing them tightens them a little, which makes them easier to taste. So next time you’re making lemonade or any other dish or drink that requires a range of lemon juice, toss the pods in a freezer bag and toss them in the old freezer. In the future, you will be very glad you did.

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Photo: Arina P. Habich (Shutterstock)

Hardly any other dish is as political and polarizing as corn bread. If you think the pineapple-on-pizza debate is hot, ask someone from the American South if cornbread is supposed to be sweet or savory. Much like the big Sugar in Grits debate, the cornbread issue often provokes a profound reaction, especially among blacks.

You know, corn was one of the few crops the enslaved recognized when they were forced to work on plantations in the New World. Although its domestication dates back 10,000 years to southern Mexico, the general historical consensus is that the Portuguese introduced corn to Africa in the 16th century. West Africans knew how to manipulate corn kernels and prepare delicious dishes – especially baked goods – without milk, butter, and eggs. The original American cornbread recipe calls for cornmeal, salt, hot water, and lard. That’s it.

Cornbread is American, even more so than apple pie.

According to food historian and author Michael Twitty “[w]Today we call hat cornbread, puffy and leavened with egg, it was corn [once] pone. It originated from British colonists who adapted their baking to white corn flour. ”In Jamaica, where I come from, corn pone is a dense dessert made from yellow corn flour and smells of nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice. It takes a skilled hand to make sure it doesn’t get as solid as a brick. There’s an old Jamaican saying, “A bad pone can kill a pig.”

With Juneteenth around the corner, I’ve had tons of conversations about cornbread – its origins, its transformation, and its meaning. For African Americans, cornbread represents an intuitive desire to be reflected in the pantheon of American cuisine. We all love fried chicken and know its origins, but at some point cornbread was appropriated and its origins messed up. Cornbread is American, even more so than apple pie. Do you want evidence? The Southern Foodways Alliance has made a decision Corn Bread Nation as the title of her anthology of southern food writing.

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In the kitchens of the Great House, making corn bread enabled the enslaved cooks to transport themselves home. As the cornmeal flowed through their fingers as they measured the ground flour, the memories of the middle aisle faded for a moment. The flowing yellow or white flour reminded her of that kenkey, Pap, ungali, and pastry bread – dishes made from ground corn they would eat at home.

I see cornbread as a palantir – mystical and indestructible – representing what was and a prediction of our future.

Cornbread has long been revered in Texas, the birthplace of Juneteeth. An 1853 New York Times article published 12 years before June 15 about Texas said, “Cornbread is the staple food – anything made from wheat flour is as scarce as ice in the Sahara.” It are many different types of cornmeal on the market and I’ve tried most of them. Texans prefer pan-fried cornbread over the corn muffins you’d find in South Carolina, for example, and I prefer cornbread made from finely ground cornmeal. Although coarsely ground flour makes a better crumb, I like a corn bread that I can mock up without a drink. (I don’t like when my cornbread eats like a Popeyes cookie.) If you like Jiffy, good for you, me too.

I see cornbread as a palantir – mystical and indestructible – representing what was and a prediction of our future. As divisive as it is, it also brings us together, especially when you make fun of how someone else is doing theirs. My aunt puts cream colored corn in hers. I have cheddar cubes and scotch bonnet pepper stains in mine. I’ve seen Caribbean chefs add orange peel and coconut, and I’ve seen chefs in the South American use whole grain corn and bacon in their mix. However you cut it, cornbread is freedom manifested in one delicious bite at a time.

Here’s my favorite cast iron pan cornbread recipe that I keep making. Sugar is optional.

How to make corn bread from the cast iron pan

ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups ground cornmeal (make sure it’s not cornmeal! Please don’t make this mistake. When in doubt, choose medium or coarse grain)
• 3/4 cup self-rising flour (keep the side eye to yourself, self-rising flour is a gem!)
• 1 ¼ cups buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons of hot water
• 1 piece of butter, melted; plus a quarter of a stick, unmelted
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 30 g can of whole grain corn, drained
• ½ cup white sugar (yes, optional)

Place the cast iron pan in the oven and preheat to 425F. In a bowl, mix together melted butter, buttermilk, eggs, and sugar if you like. Mix the cornmeal and flour in a separate bowl. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients, then mix with a wooden spoon. Add corn and hot water and work in. Take the hot pan out of the oven and put in the butter knob (¼ stick). When it melts add the cornbread mixture. It should sizzle. Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes or when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.