By Friday you’ve usually figured out what the week actually was — not what you planned it to be, but what it turned out to be. This one turned out to be a lot, stargazer, and the sky isn’t quite done with it. Saturn opposing Venus today is a fresh aspect, asking something pointed about your relationships and what you’re actually putting into them. Jupiter and Mercury are one day from an exact conjunction, which means the ideas that came out of this week are still live and still building. Use today to sort out what’s actually going somewhere from what just felt big in the moment. The weekend is close.

Read your horoscope for the week, and see what the stars have in store for your sign today. 

Aries: March 21 – April 19

This has been a big week, and your instinct is to keep pushing through it — squeeze one more thing in before the weekend. Neptune squaring Mars has a different idea. The drive is there, but the traction isn’t, and forcing it today will cost you more than it gets you, Aries. Consolidate what you’ve already moved on this week. End it clean.

Aries monthly horoscope

Taurus: April 20 – May 20

You’ve done a lot of honest accounting this week — figured out what you want, found the words for it, maybe said some of it. Saturn opposing Venus today is the follow-up question nobody loves: okay, but does the structure support it? Not a buzzkill, Taurus. Just Saturn doing its job. If the answer is yes, great. If not, now you know what to build.

Taurus monthly horoscope

Gemini: May 21 – June 20

Tomorrow Jupiter and Mercury are exactly conjunct — your ruling planet at peak amplification — and whatever you put out there carries more than usual. Today is the last day to get the shape right before it sets, Gemini. Not the final edit, not the overthink. Just: what do you actually want to say when your voice has that much behind it? Figure it out today.

Gemini monthly horoscope

Cancer: June 21 – July 22

The Moon in Virgo on a Friday after a week like this has one thing on its mind — enough feeling, time to start doing. Your Moon has been working overtime since Wednesday, Cancer, and today it wants a return on that. Make the list. Send the message. Take the practical step you’ve been turning over all week. Actually do it.

Cancer monthly horoscope

Leo: July 23 – August 22

You’ve had a big week, and the energy is still running high — Jupiter in your sign has seen to that. Today, Saturn opposing Venus brings a more grounded question: are the people in your life actually on board with where you’re headed? Not every beginning gets automatic buy-in, Leo. The ones who matter will show you this weekend. Good thing to know early.

Leo monthly horoscope

Virgo: August 23 – September 22

Mercury peaks with Jupiter tomorrow — big ideas, maximum amplification, everything running large. Today, though, Saturn opposing Venus is asking you to do something very Virgo before that happens: figure out what actually deserves your energy and what doesn’t. Not everything needs the Jupiter treatment, Virgo. Triage first. The things that make the cut tomorrow will actually go somewhere. The rest can wait.

Virgo monthly horoscope

Libra: September 23 – October 22

Saturn opposing Venus today — your Venus — is the relationship audit you didn’t schedule but probably needed. Something in your life has been running on maintenance mode: you’re showing up, doing the things, keeping it going, but the actual investment has been gone for a while. You can feel the difference today, Libra. That feeling isn’t a problem to solve. It’s just information. Use it.

Libra monthly horoscope

Scorpio: October 23 – November 21

Everyone had a big week. The feelings, the big declarations, all of it. You’ve been watching and keeping track the whole time — not coldly, just accurately. Pluto opposing Jupiter is asking what actually moved this week versus what was just a lot of activity. You already know the answer, Scorpio. The question is what you do with that information going into the weekend.

Scorpio monthly horoscope

Sagittarius: November 22 – December 21

You’ve got about six things you want to act on simultaneously — big week, big ideas, Jupiter doing its thing. It’s Friday, Sagittarius, and launching everything at once before the weekend is very on-brand. Pick one. Just the one that actually has legs right now. Jupiter conjuncts Mercury tomorrow, and it’ll all still be there. You don’t have to do it all today.

Sagittarius monthly horoscope

Capricorn: December 22 – January 19

Saturn is your planet, and you’re comfortable with its demands — the work, the discipline, the long game. But Saturn opposing Venus today is your own ruling planet asking when you last let yourself actually enjoy something. Not planned it, not earned it first. Just let it happen. It’s Friday, Capricorn. The work will be there Monday. Give tonight to Venus.

Capricorn monthly horoscope

Aquarius: January 20 – February 18

You’ve been expanding an idea all week, stress-testing it, running it through every mental filter you own. Uranus sextiling Jupiter has been giving it reach. Today, Friday, do the thing that doesn’t come naturally: tell someone about it face to face. Not a post, not a draft. An actual conversation, Aquarius. That’s where Uranus in Gemini does its best work.

Aquarius monthly horoscope

Pisces: February 19 – March 20

You’ve been seeing something through a generous filter this week — Neptune opposing Venus has a way of making everything look more beautiful than it is. On a Friday that filter slips a little, and you catch the thing as it actually is rather than how you’ve been painting it, Pisces. That’s not a letdown. That’s the truth being friendly about it.

Pisces monthly horoscope

The post Daily Horoscope: August 14, 2026 appeared first on VICE.

Human beings have built an entire secondary social economy around pretending to be just slightly less interested than they are. 

To examine how people interpret availability in social and romantic life, ReverseLookup surveyed 9,100 adults across the US, EU, UK, and Latin America. What they found was a portrait of collective performance. Over half of respondents (52%) had deliberately sat on a reply or held off accepting an invitation even if they had no plans—not because they were playing games, necessarily, but because appearing too available seems desparate. Thirty-seven percent had flat-out lied about being busy. Thirty-three percent had passed on a same-day plan they wanted to go to because agreeing immediately felt like too much.

Most people have been on both sides of this, which is why reading about it feels a little exposing. Forty-four percent of respondents had assumed that someone consistently free at short notice probably had a less active social life. A wide-open schedule gets interpreted as low demand, regardless of what’s actually behind it. Forty-six percent had brought up other plans while arranging to meet someone—those plans didn’t affect anything; they just made clear that other people also wanted this person’s time.

Being Too Available Can Make You Less Attractive, According to Psychology

This behavior has been around for a long time. It’s the scarcity principle, documented by psychologists since a landmark 1975 study found that people consistently rated identical cookies as more desirable when only two were in the jar than when there were ten. Researchers at the University of Rochester later found the same dynamic in dating: people who interacted with a more selective online dating profile rated that person as more attractive and more valuable as a partner. The brain is running a crude supply-and-demand analysis on your DMs.

Think about the difference between “I’m free Friday” and “I can probably make Friday work.” Same night, same result, but only one sounds like it came from a calendar with other things on it. The survey found that 29% had lost interest in a new friend or romantic prospect who appeared too available on a consistent basis. They weren’t making a deliberate decision. They were responding the same way people respond to a jar with two cookies versus a jar with ten—the one that’s easier to access feels like it’s worth less.

There’s an obvious irony in all of this. The behaviors the data flags as working against you—answering right away, being flexible, openly expressing interest—are the exact ones that build trust and actual connection. Research consistently finds that hard-to-get behavior inflates short-term desire while eroding the very intimacy it’s supposed to create. One of those things eventually has to give.

Half of adults are out here manufacturing scarcity about themselves. The ones who aren’t are probably still more fun to spend your time with.

The post The Dating Habit That Can Make You Seem Less Attractive, According to Experts appeared first on VICE.

America leads the world in a lot of things. The serial killer count is harder to brag about—but we’ve done it, folks.

A new analysis by PokerTube of official serial killer data found the US has 3,615 documented serial killers, accounting for 66.2% of all known cases worldwide. That’s more than 18 times the number recorded in Russia (196) or the UK (190). Two in every three documented serial killers in recorded history operated on American soil.

The state breakdown produces some counterintuitive results. Wyoming, not New York or Los Angeles, leads the nation in serial killers per capita, at 13.59 per million residents—roughly one known killer for every 73,584 people. Alaska has the scariest victim rate, at 8.67 serial killer victims per 100,000 residents, driven largely by Robert Hansen, the “Butcher Baker,” who abducted and hunted at least 17 women in the Alaskan wilderness before being sentenced to 461 years in prison. Missouri rounds out the top five with 350 total victims—the highest raw count among the leading states.

Wyoming Leads the U.S. in Serial Killers Per Capita, New Analysis Finds

The PokerTube numbers also add some wild context. Americans are statistically more likely to live next to a serial killer (1 in 94,800) than to win the lottery (1 in 292.2 million) or get bitten by a shark (1 in 11.5 million). The more comforting comparison: you’re still more likely to be struck by lightning (1 in 15,300) than to have a serial killer for a neighbor. So, yay?

Some of the margin is about how you count. Radford University’s Serial Killer Information Center runs the most thorough global database on the subject and has noted that countries differ significantly in how they define, investigate, and document serial killings. The US count benefits from decades of rigorous FBI classification and recordkeeping that most countries don’t have. That explains part of the number. Not all of it.

James Thompson, a strategist at PokerTube, noted that serial killer hotspots “cluster heavily in the West, with six of the top ten states being western states.” One detail the data also reveals: criminologists at Northeastern University have documented a significant decline in US serial killings from the 1990s peak. The golden age of the American serial killer appears to be, cautiously, behind us.

The US has 3,615 documented serial killers and retains every record that comes with that. The good news is that the number has been declining. The bad news is that Wyoming is still pulling some terrifying numbers. 

The post This State Has the Most Serial Killers Per Capita in America, According to a New Study appeared first on VICE.

Unless you’re both on the same page about an open relationship or love wild experiences together, most couples don’t want a third party in their bedroom. But what they’re not realizing is that there already kind of is. It’s that dang phone. 

Let’s back things up. Between 1996 and 2008, 59% of married adults had sex at least once a week, according to the Institute for Family Studies. That fell to 49% for the period 2010 to 2024. By 2025, nearly half of married couples reported going without sex for 12 months or longer, per Gitnux. Sexless marriages—defined as fewer than ten times per year—affect between 15 and 20% of US couples, with relationship stress cited as the leading driver at 40%. The factor increasingly backed by research, though, is the phone.

A 2023 IFS study found that married adults reported lower sexual frequency when their spouse replaced couple time with staring at their phone or computer. The habit researchers have named is called “bedtime procrastination”—two or more hours of screen time in the last stretch before sleep. Two people in the same bed, each in a separate universe. The bedroom is still there, but the place it used to represent mostly isn’t.

Your Phone Might Be Quietly Killing Your Sex Life

The pattern is a named behavior in couples therapy. “Couples begin living parallel lives,” Dr. Anna Elton, a licensed marriage and family therapist and clinical sexologist, told Fox News Digital. “Conversations revolve around schedules, errands, bills and the kids. Intentional time together becomes less frequent. Affection, physical touch, flirting and playfulness become less frequent, replaced by stress, conflict and growing resentment.”

A 2025 SimpleTexting survey, cited by Psychology Today, found that 40% of adults would rather give up sex for a year than their smartphone—or rather, that’s where they’d prefer to focus their attention. The same device couples use to scroll through other people’s vacation photos is the one creating a wall between them.

The fix, according to therapists, starts before the bedroom is even a thought. “Physical intimacy and emotional closeness go hand in hand,” Elton said. “If we want to improve our sex lives, we have to focus on the connection itself.” That connection requires time that’s currently being allocated elsewhere. Elton advises couples to define what satisfied looks like for their relationship and commit to protecting it before the drift becomes the autopilot move.

The post The Common Habit That’s Killing Your Sex Life (And How to Stop Doing It) appeared first on VICE.

The morning after something big always feels a little anticlimactic — the sky goes back to its regular business, the alarm still goes off, and you’re left holding whatever the eclipse handed you. That’s where we are today, stargazer, and it’s not a bad place to be. Mercury sextiling Venus at noon makes this one of the better days of the week for conversation — saying the thing you’ve been trying to say, making the connection you’ve been circling. Jupiter and Mercury are building toward an exact conjunction Saturday, which means the ideas are still gaining traction. The reset happened. Now comes the part where you decide what to do with it.

Read your horoscope for the week, and see what the stars have in store for your sign today. 

Aries: March 21 – April 19

Yesterday the eclipse fired and something got set in motion. Today is the morning after — and Mars in Cancer isn’t interested in charging ahead of what you just started. Moon sextiling Mars this morning has a steadier energy: check in on the people you care about, tend what got planted, move with intention instead of speed. The beginning happened, Aries. Now nurture it.

Aries monthly horoscope

Taurus: April 20 – May 20

Something reset yesterday and you’ve been sitting with it, turning it over, trying to figure out what it means going forward. Mercury sextiling Venus today is the aspect that gives you the words for it, Taurus. The thing you’ve been struggling to articulate — what you want, where you’re headed — it comes out better today. Use that. Say it to someone.

Taurus monthly horoscope

Gemini: May 21 – June 20

All week your ideas have been running big — Jupiter amplifying, Mercury in Leo adding flash. Today the delivery catches up, Gemini. Mercury sextiling Venus at noon is the aspect where what you say hits the way you meant it to — charming, easy, received well. Stop hiding the good stuff in texts. Take it into an actual room today and watch it work.

Gemini monthly horoscope

Cancer: June 21 – July 22

The eclipse was yours in a big way yesterday. Today your Moon has moved into Virgo and the energy has gone from charged and expansive to: okay, now what? You’re trying to get practical about what just reset, and Moon squaring Uranus this afternoon throws a wrinkle in that. Something unexpected interrupts the processing, Cancer. Let it. Not every post-eclipse realization arrives on schedule.

Cancer monthly horoscope

Leo: July 23 – August 22

The eclipse was in your sign yesterday, which means today is the first day of whatever just began. The fanfare is over. Nobody’s watching the sky anymore. And now comes the part that actually counts, Leo — the follow-through. What you do today and tomorrow with what the eclipse seeded is the whole thing. The beginning was yesterday. Begin like you mean it.

Leo monthly horoscope

Virgo: August 23 – September 22

The Moon is in your sign today, and Mercury is sextiling Venus at noon — which means the stars are actually cooperating with how you want to come across. You don’t have to work as hard as usual to make things connect, Virgo. Conversations go smoother. You come across better than you think you will. Stop bracing for the critique. It might not come today.

Virgo monthly horoscope

Libra: September 23 – October 22

Yesterday the eclipse asked you to figure out what you actually want for yourself. Today Mercury sextiling Venus hands you the conditions to say it — charming delivery, smooth timing, the other person in a receptive mood. The tools are right there, Libra. Use them to have the honest conversation, not just to make everyone comfortable again. You know which one you’ve been choosing.

Libra monthly horoscope

Scorpio: October 23 – November 21

Everyone’s leaning into their post-eclipse new beginning — saying yes, starting things, making moves. You’re asking a different question, the one nobody wants to answer first: what has to go before any of this actually works? Pluto opposing Jupiter has you doing the edit while everyone else is still writing, Scorpio. It’s not pessimism. It’s the thing that makes the beginning stick.

Scorpio monthly horoscope

Sagittarius: November 22 – December 21

Yesterday was enormous — Jupiter right in the eclipse, everything feeling possible and bigger than usual. Today is the morning after, and the question is what you do with all that feeling. Jupiter conjuncting Mercury by Saturday means the words for it are forming, Sagittarius. Don’t wait for the perfect articulation. Start getting it down now, rough and incomplete. Saturday will clean it up.

Sagittarius monthly horoscope

Capricorn: December 22 – January 19

You do your best work when nobody’s watching, and you’ve been heads-down so long that you forgot other people eventually catch up to what you’re building. The eclipse cleared some air, and Saturn trining Jupiter means what you’ve been working on is now visible in a way it wasn’t before, Capricorn. Someone’s going to notice today. Don’t deflect it. You earned this one.

Capricorn monthly horoscope

Aquarius: January 20 – February 18

Yesterday you committed to something more personal than usual — the eclipse pushed you there. Today, the Moon squaring Uranus this afternoon throws a variable into it, an interruption that makes you want to retreat back into your head and call the whole thing a thought experiment. Don’t, Aquarius. The complication is the test. If you meant it yesterday, you still mean it now.

Aquarius monthly horoscope

Pisces: February 19 – March 20

The dream has a place to go now — you gave it one. Today it’s pushing back, not because it was the wrong move, but because Neptune squaring Mars makes execution feel a lot harder than the vision promised. The idea is still good, Pisces. The distance between imagining it and doing it is wider than you expected. Cross it anyway. That’s the whole job.

Pisces monthly horoscope

The post Daily Horoscope: August 13, 2026 appeared first on VICE.

Pheromone maxxing is the latest self-optimization trend to make a bold claim about attraction. Like most bold claims about attraction, it’s about 30% correct.

The practice, circulating on TikTok as part of the looksmaxxing pipeline, involves ditching deodorant, skipping showers, and occasionally—among the more committed—drinking their own urine to “sweat out toxins.” All of this in service of amplifying a “natural musk” that allegedly contains pheromones that make you biologically irresistible. The sell is basically this. Stop trying so hard, smell like an animal, watch the attraction happen.

The trend is running several laps ahead of the research. “As a means of survival, sex workers are eroticizing body parts that can get through the algorithm,” sex educator Topher Cusumano told Men’s Journal. As platforms have cracked down on explicit content, underarms and sweat became vehicles for erotic material that doesn’t trigger a flag. What starts as an algorithmic workaround becomes a trend. A trend becomes a guy skipping showers and calling it a dating strategy.

The problem with the whole thing is that human pheromones, as a confirmed scientific category, are still theoretical. A 2025 review in Physiology & Behavior took a detailed look at androstadienone—a steroid in male sweat that’s been the frontrunner for decades—and still concluded the classification “remains inconclusive.” That’s 60-plus years of searching, and the answer is still a polite shrug. The pheromone cologne industry, though, is not letting that slow it down.

@fluffdumpster

first off #table #computer #firstoff

♬ original sound – Fluffdumpster

What Is Pheromone Maxxing? The Dating Trend Telling Men to Stop Showering.

The actual science is more interesting than the trend. Research on the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a cluster of immune system genes, has found that people are unconsciously drawn to partners whose immune profile differs from their own. In a famous set of experiments nicknamed the sweaty T-shirt studies, women consistently preferred the body odor of men whose MHC genes were most different from theirs. 

There’s a wrinkle. Research has found that hormonal birth control appears to completely reverse the MHC preference. Women on the pill tend to be drawn to men with similar immune profiles rather than different ones, raising a question no one warned them about when they started the prescription. The scent-attraction connection has more going on than a hygiene boycott can fix. It also works better when you don’t smell like a gym bag.

Your body odor is carrying biological data that someone, somewhere, is evolutionarily primed to find attractive. The deodorant is probably getting in the way, but please, please still take a shower. 

The post Introducing Pheromone Maxxing, TikTok’s Latest Disgusting Dating Trend appeared first on VICE.

Sex with yourself is, theoretically, the time when you can drop the moaning and the sexy faces and just enjoy yourself. New data suggests we’ve found a way to ruin that too.

A 2026 Pleasure Census conducted by dating app HUD and sexual wellness brand Girls Get Off surveyed 2,183 people across 63 countries and found that 54% of Gen Z catch themselves “performing” during solo sex—thinking about how they look, sound, or should feel, with no one even in the room. Across all age groups, the figure sits at 44%. The same survey found 73% of Gen Z say appearance concerns make sex harder to enjoy.

There’s a clinical name for this. Spectatoring—coined by sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson in 1970—describes the act of mentally observing yourself during sex from a third-person perspective, evaluating your performance rather than experiencing your body. It was originally studied as a factor in sexual dysfunction and assumed to require a partner. The Pleasure Census data suggests the imagined audience is sufficient.

Performance Anxiety Is Ruining Masturbation for Gen Z

And once again, you can’t not talk about porn. A 2026 study found that women who watched porn reported increased performance anxiety about how they look and behave during sex. One participant said: “I feel stressed about not looking like the girls in porn movies.” The study found pornography led many respondents to view sex as performative rather than a shared pleasurable experience—a subconscious thought that doesn’t turn off when the other person leaves the room.

“For a generation raised on porn, it can be genuinely hard to unlearn the way we think we’re supposed to behave during sex,” sexologist Becky Crepsley-Fox told Metro. The internal audience doesn’t switch off. For many people, it eventually becomes the default, operating beneath every experience that was supposed to be free of it.

There’s decades of spectatoring research confirming what most people already know from experience: the moment your attention shifts outward, your body checks out. Orgasm requires presence, not an audience. Solo sex is the one place in the world where nobody else’s needs, reactions, or expectations are in the room. Using it to rehearse for them anyway is a waste

The only audience in the room is the one you built yourself. That’s both the problem and the only place the solution lives.

The post A Fear of Looking Weird Is Ruining Masturbation for Gen Z appeared first on VICE.

Every once in a while, the day arrives with a quality that’s hard to name — not good or bad, just charged, like everything is holding its breath. If you’re feeling it today, stargazer, you’re not imagining things. Today’s Solar Eclipse in Leo is the biggest sky event we’ve seen in months: a Sun-Moon conjunction that seeds new beginnings, resets the emotional and creative landscape, and asks every sign to start something they’ve been circling too long. Mars is newly in Cancer, bringing drive with a protective edge. Mercury is in Leo and firing. The eclipse doesn’t wait for you to be ready. It just goes. Best to go with it.

Read your horoscope for the week, and see what the stars have in store for your sign today. 

Aries: March 21 – April 19

The Solar Eclipse in Leo today is doing its new-beginning thing across the sky, and you’re feeling it — but not in the way you’d expect. Mars in Cancer has your drive pointed at the people around you rather than your own agenda right now, Aries. Whatever clicks into focus today isn’t about what you want. It’s about who you’d do anything for. Start there.

Aries monthly horoscope

Taurus: April 20 – May 20

Solar eclipses are reset buttons, and today’s in Leo is asking everyone to get honest about what they’re really after. For you, Taurus, that question lands squarely in values — not what looks good on paper, but what you’d choose if no one was watching. Jupiter sextiling Venus this week is backing whatever answer you give. Make it a true one.

Taurus monthly horoscope

Gemini: May 21 – June 20

Mercury sextiling Uranus this afternoon produces your best ideas — the ones that arrive fully formed, from nowhere, at an inconvenient time. Write it down immediately, Gemini. Today also happens to be a Solar Eclipse in Leo, right where your ruling planet is sitting, which means whatever you put out there has more reach than a normal Wednesday. Don’t waste it on small talk.

Gemini monthly horoscope

Cancer: June 21 – July 22

Most signs are experiencing today’s Solar Eclipse from the outside. You’re not. A Solar Eclipse is a Sun-Moon conjunction — and the Moon is yours, Cancer. Your ruling body isn’t a bystander to one of the biggest sky events of the year. It’s the other half of it. Whatever gets seeded today has your name on it at a cellular level. This one’s actually yours.

Cancer monthly horoscope

Leo: July 23 – August 22

The Solar Eclipse fires in your sign today, which means the Sun — your Sun — is the one pulling the trigger on a reset that everyone feels. That’s not a small thing, Leo. You’re not just experiencing this eclipse. You’re the sign it’s happening through. What you put into motion today, what you decide, what you begin — it has an outsized effect. Make it count.

Leo monthly horoscope

Virgo: August 23 – September 22

You’ve had a plan for how this was going to come together, and Mercury sextiling Uranus this afternoon would like to respectfully ignore it. The answer arrives from a direction you didn’t map out — faster, cleaner, a little annoying in how obvious it is in hindsight. The eclipse in Leo is backing it, Virgo. Stop second-guessing it just because it wasn’t your idea first.

Virgo monthly horoscope

Libra: September 23 – October 22

The Solar Eclipse today is seeding a new beginning, and the question it’s putting to you is one you tend to avoid: what do you actually want, separate from what everyone around you wants? Venus is at home in your sign, Libra, which means you’ve got the self-awareness for this — you just don’t always use it. The eclipse is a decent occasion to start.

Libra monthly horoscope

Scorpio: October 23 – November 21

Solar eclipses are all about new beginnings and bold intentions. You know that. You’re also already thinking three moves ahead — what this beginning leads to, what it closes off, what the cost looks like once the excitement settles. Everyone else is popping the champagne, Scorpio. You’re the one in the back reading the contract. The sky needs both. You’re better at one of them.

Scorpio monthly horoscope

Sagittarius: November 22 – December 21

Jupiter is sitting right in the middle of today’s Solar Eclipse in Leo, which means your ruling planet is directly in the blast radius of one of the year’s biggest reset buttons. For most signs, today seeds something small and personal. For you, Sagittarius, the scale is different. Whatever you’re beginning today has room to go much further than you think. Don’t sandbag it.

Sagittarius monthly horoscope

Capricorn: December 22 – January 19

The Solar Eclipse today is asking a question you don’t love: what are you building for yourself, separate from what you’re supposed to be building? Not the career, not the reputation — something that’s just yours. Saturn in trine to Jupiter is giving you the structural support to answer it, Capricorn. The door’s open. You don’t have to move quickly. Just don’t pretend you didn’t see it.

Capricorn monthly horoscope

Aquarius: January 20 – February 18

You spend a lot of time thinking about what’s good for everyone — systems, ideas, the bigger picture. Today’s Leo eclipse is firing directly across from your sign with a more personal agenda, Aquarius. What do you actually want for yourself? Singular. Just you. Mercury sextiling Uranus this afternoon gives you the language for it, if you’re willing to use it.

Aquarius monthly horoscope

Pisces: February 19 – March 20

You’ve been carrying something around for a while — an idea, a feeling, a life you keep imagining but haven’t started. Neptune in Aries has been slowly giving it legs, and today’s Solar Eclipse is the closest thing to a starting gun you’re going to get, Pisces. The dream doesn’t have to stay in your head anymore. Give it somewhere to go.

Pisces monthly horoscope

The post Daily Horoscope: August 12, 2026 appeared first on VICE.

The friend zone sucks. You liked someone, they liked you back as a good listener, and you either waited it out or moved on. The whole thing was painful, but at least it was cheap. Not anymore.

The average all-in date in 2026 costs $189, up 12.5% from the year before, according to BMO’s Real Financial Progress Index — and that includes the grooming products, the gas money, and whatever restaurant managed to charge $40 for pasta. Americans who dated went out about 12 times over the past year, down from 14 in 2025, spending an average of $2,323. Restaurant prices have climbed nearly 40% since early 2019, per S&P Global. Nearly half of single Americans say dating has priced them out.

Into this economic climate, the friend zone has become a casualty. The premise of it, paying for someone who might never reciprocate romantically (drinks, dinners, planned outings), was always a gamble. When the tab was smaller, the gamble was more manageable. Now, with the average date approaching $200 and 71% of men expecting to cover everything early in courtship, according to the same BMO survey, the case for waiting out the friend zone has gotten much harder to make.

Why People Are Starting to Abandon the ‘Friend Zone’ for Good

The sentiment has been circulating online for months. The case people are making is sadly understandable. Money spent on someone who might never become a romantic partner is money wasted in an economy where groceries, rent, and utility bills are already eating through the paycheck. Comment sections reliably fill with men who agree. One commenter on Team Blind said. “I would be happy to pay for dates in a monogamous relationship,” he wrote, “but with the way dating is, you’ll get taken advantage of as a man if you pay for anything beyond a drink or coffee too early.”

The friend zone exit is part of an accelerating trend. The 14th annual Singles in America survey from Match and the Kinsey Institute found 53% of U.S. singles reporting dating burnout. A Bank of America survey found over half of Gen Z adults spent $0 a month on dating in the past year. A growing number of men are treating the friend zone exit as an early move in a longer withdrawal from dating entirely.

Being friend-zoned when you really like someone is a blow. Now you’re going broke too? Who wants to opt into that? 

The post It’s Official. Inflation Is Killing the Friend Zone appeared first on VICE.

There was a time when feeding two people meant making dinner. Maybe somebody hated mushrooms or picked the onions out, but the basic premise held. Now one person is on a GLP-1, the other is tracking protein, dairy is a problem, carbs are off limits, and dinner for two can require two separate meals. That’s food divorce for you. 

Americans have gotten much pickier, or at least much more specific, about what goes on the plate. In 2018, 36% said they followed a dedicated diet or eating plan. By 2025, that number had climbed to 57%, according to the International Food Information Council. Then came the GLP-1 boom. A March 2026 KFF poll found 12% of U.S. adults were taking medications like Ozempic or Wegovy, and the CDC says 6.7% of people have a food allergy. Two people can share a kitchen and still have completely different ideas about what to eat for dinner.

The thing is, eating together is actually good for us. A 2026 study published in Appetite followed more than 12,000 couples in Germany and found that couples who shared meals regularly reported greater relationship satisfaction, fewer depressive symptoms, and better overall health. Meanwhile, Americans are doing increasingly little of it. The 2025 World Happiness Report found about 1 in 4 Americans eats every meal alone on any given day, a 53% increase since 2003.

What Is a ‘Food Divorce’? The Relationship Trend Splitting Up Dinner.

Food has also become heavily loaded with identity. Julie Menanno, a marriage and family therapist and author of Secure Love, told Bustle that the pressure around food has become pervasive. “There is enormous pressure to get food right, exercise right, health right, body right,” she said. “And nobody really has the answers.”

GLP-1 medications also bring this into laser focus at home. Dr. Leila Fathi, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Food Policy at City St George’s University of London, told Metro that side effects including nausea and reduced appetite can “reshape individuals’ relationships with food,” creating associations that leave couples preparing and eating meals separately.

A food divorce—the term Metro has coined for couples who shop, cook, and eat independently—is the name for an arrangement that’s already emerging across households. The logic is clear: if the shared meal has become a source of friction, eating separately removes one argument from the rotation. What’s less clear is whether removing the friction also removes the ritual.

Maybe the family dinner was always given too much credit. Plenty of miserable couples have eaten lasagna together. Still, when two people start shopping separately, cooking separately, and eating separately, it’s fair to wonder what else gets divided up along the way.

The post The Crazy Reason Why Couples Are Starting to Eat Separately appeared first on VICE.

You know the feeling. A notification, an offhand comment from your boss, an awkward conversation you can’t stop replaying—and your stress response is completely out of proportion to what actually happened. There’s a reason for that, and it goes back about 300,000 years. 

That response comes from a brain built for a world that no longer exists. Researchers at James Cook University published a 2026 review in Behavioral Sciences calling it evolutionary mismatch—what happens when ancient mental systems get dropped into environments they were never designed for.

Humans evolved in small communities where threats were immediate and physical. That same brain now has to process social media feeds, 24-hour news cycles, and an ungodly amount of unread emails.

Psychologist Chris Gilbert, M.D., Ph.D., and neuroscientist Eric Haseltine, Ph.D., developed the five-step-no-tiger method (outlined in their book There’s No Tiger Around That Corner) around a simple premise: most of the time, there is no tiger. The threat your brain thinks is existential is, by modern standards, an annoyance. The approach, detailed in Psychology Today, draws from evolutionary psychology and CBT to help the modern brain stop treating everyday stressors like predator attacks.

Step 1: Follow the Anxiety Back

The fear response your brain is running didn’t originate with the thing that set it off today. Negativity bias—the brain’s evolved tendency to fixate on threats over everything else — has a way of making a minor stressor feel fatal. Step one is getting under the current anxiety to find what’s actually driving it, and asking whether that source justifies the response.

Step 2: Talk to Both Brains

Rational self-talk by itself doesn’t reach the part of your brain generating the anxiety, because that part predates language. The primitive brain responds to images and physical sensation, while the rational mind works with logic and evidence — that’s why telling yourself to just “calm down” doesn’t work. Gilbert and Haseltine suggest pairing the two: downgrade the mental image from predator to pest (a skunk, not a tiger), then back it up with data—test results, actual probabilities, real-world evidence—so both sides of the brain have something to work with.

Step 3: Expect a Non-Linear Recovery

Setbacks are part of life, and the method asks you to accept that before they happen. Not as a warning, but as a given. A bad day you saw coming is a different animal than one that blindsides you—the first is something to move through, the second usually feels like proof that nothing’s working.

Step 4: Count What’s Improved

The same mechanism that amplifies threats also lets progress slip by completely unnoticed—which means the brain can be improving while still feeling like it isn’t. Deliberately taking note of what’s easier, even in small increments, is how you change that.

Step 5: Mine the Setbacks

Every relapse carries information—the trigger, what made it worse, what didn’t help. The method asks you to examine setbacks rather than just survive them. Done over time, that examination makes the next one easier to move through.

Your ancestors needed a brain that treated uncertainty as a death threat. You inherited that brain. The five steps exist because that’s not going away, but it can be managed.

The post Why Your Brain Overreacts to Everyday Stress, According to Psychology appeared first on VICE.

After a brutal hot yoga class—mat-soaked, muscles done, head finally clear—I’ve always left with the sense that whatever’s coming tonight, sleep won’t be a problem. I’ll be dead to the world as soon as I hit the pillow.

Recently, researchers at Harbin Sport University pooled data from 30 randomized controlled trials involving over 2,500 people with sleep disturbances across more than a dozen countries. Of all the exercise types they compared, including walking, aerobic exercise, resistance training, tai chi, qi gong, and combination workouts, high-intensity yoga came out on top. Two sessions per week, capped at 30 minutes each, for eight to ten weeks produced the strongest improvements in sleep quality, according to the study, published in Sleep and Biological Rhythms.

If you’re picturing candlelit yin yoga with blocks, slow movement, and stretching, that’s a different class. High-intensity yoga moves fast, flows between poses, and uses body weight as resistance. Think power flow or hot yoga rather than a restorative session with props. The researchers say that intensity level is what drives the results.

The Best Workout for Sleep Might Not Be What You Think

What separates yoga from a 30-minute run is the breathwork. A 2025 meta-analysis published in the International Journal of Yoga found that regular yoga practice boosts melatonin levels (the hormone your body produces naturally to regulate sleep, not the gummy version), likely by activating the parasympathetic nervous system through controlled breathing. Separate research suggests yoga also regulates brainwave activity in ways that promote deeper sleep.

Aerobic exercise used to be at the top. This study places it well behind yoga, by a margin the researchers described as “significantly superior.” The discrepancy might have a simple explanation. The aerobic-versus-anaerobic question has no settled answer when it comes to yoga, and that ambiguity can pull results in different directions depending on how each trial categorizes it. Walking finished second here, followed by resistance training.

A 2025 study found tai chi produced results on par with cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, the clinical gold standard for sleep treatment. Yoga covers much of the same ground—breath control, physical load, sustained attention—which may explain why the two keep producing similar results.

The Harbin team was transparent about the caveats. Studies were limited in size, and the populations were so varied that a universal prescription remains elusive. If sleep disruption is affecting daily life, a conversation with a doctor is a more reliable starting point.

Lots of money gets spent on melatonin supplements every year. Two yoga sessions a week in a 100-degree room is really all it takes. 

The post Scientists Found the Best Workout to Do If You Want to Sleep Better appeared first on VICE.

The country is, by most measures, getting sober. Millions of Americans have walked away from the nightly pour, picked up a sparkling water, and started logging their “dry lifestyle” alongside everyone else who did the same. Two states didn’t participate.

A 2025 Gallup poll found just 54% of American adults say they drink—the lowest figure since tracking began in 1939, down from 67% three years ago. New Hampshire and Delaware received no such memo. Data from the World Population Review puts New Hampshire at 4.67 gallons of ethanol per capita, over twice the national goal of 2.1 gallons, and Delaware at 3.52, both above the national average of 2.48 gallons.

Here’s the part that should make neighboring-state residents feel played. New Hampshire’s numbers are based on sales, not residency. The state runs a government liquor monopoly that sells wine and spirits tax-free, with outlets planted at highway exits along the Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine borders. Redditors have flagged it for years. “People from NY always bootleg from NH; it is literally 30% cheaper,” one commenter wrote. “A handle of Crown Royal in NH is $29.99. In NY, it’s $47.99.”

Why New Hampshire and Delaware Sell So Much Alcohol

The operation has a founding irony baked in. New Hampshire created its Liquor Commission in 1934 to rein in drinking after Prohibition ended. Nine decades and $4.7 billion in profits later, that same commission funds the state’s schools, roads, and addiction treatment, in a state that collects no income or sales tax.

Delaware runs the same play, without the government monopoly. There’s no state sales tax on anything, liquor included, and a sprawl of private warehouse outlets clustered near the Pennsylvania and New Jersey borders have made it a reliable stop for out-of-state shoppers. State health data puts the adult binge drinking rate at 14%—Delaware has its own drinkers, tax advantages aside.

Nevada came in third at 3.42 gallons, unsurprising for a state with Las Vegas in it. North Dakota and Montana rounded out the top five, with Montana also leading the country in alcohol-related traffic fatalities. Utah, with strict alcohol laws and a large Mormon population, came in last at 1.34 gallons per capita. No shocker there. 

If the sobriety trend holds, New Hampshire has a problem on its hands. Its tax-free liquor empire was built for people who want to drink. Fewer of them do.

The post These 2 Tiny States Lead America in Alcohol Consumption. Here’s How They Do It. appeared first on VICE.

Some days you walk into the morning already knowing something is different before anything has actually happened — not because of anything you can point to, just a feeling in the body that something changed while you were sleeping. That’s today, stargazer. A Tuesday with a charge that lives in the chest before it lives anywhere else. Tomorrow’s Solar Eclipse in Leo is casting its energy forward early, and the sky is meeting it: Mars changes signs tonight, Uranus trines Venus exactly, Mercury faces off with Pluto after dark. Something has been building toward today for a while. You don’t have to push. Just stay open to what’s already moving.

Read your horoscope for the week, and see what the stars have in store for your sign today. 

Aries: March 21 – April 19

Mars moves into Cancer tonight, and the way you move through the world changes. Not slower — different fuel. Where you used to go straight at things, you’ll find yourself circling first, checking the temperature, leading with feeling rather than force. That might feel unfamiliar, Aries, but it’s not a downgrade. It’s Mars picking up a skill set it’s been missing. Let it.

Aries monthly horoscope

Taurus: April 20 – May 20

You didn’t plan for today’s development — whatever it is, it came out of nowhere, not on your schedule. Normally that would be a problem for you, Taurus. Normally you’d push back. But Uranus trines Venus exactly today with a way of making the unplanned thing feel oddly right. Notice that. Not every good thing announces itself in advance. Some just arrive and fit.

Taurus monthly horoscope

Gemini: May 21 – June 20

Jupiter conjuncting Mercury today turns up the volume on everything in your head — ideas running big, words coming easily, the urge to say more than you planned. That’s the Jupiter effect, Gemini. Enjoy it. Just know that Mercury opposing Pluto tonight has a way of pressure-testing whatever you put out there. Go bold. Don’t go sloppy. There’s a difference, and you know it.

Gemini monthly horoscope

Cancer: June 21 – July 22

There’s a handoff tonight you’ll feel before you can name it. The Moon leaves your sign, and Mars moves in — one departing, one arriving, same house. For Cancer, that’s good news. The heavy emotional processing of the last couple of days starts to lift, and something with more heat and drive takes its place. You did the feeling work. Now you get to move.

Cancer monthly horoscope

Leo: July 23 – August 22

Tomorrow’s Solar Eclipse lands in your sign, and today has that charged, pre-event feeling — like the hour before something you’ve been waiting for. The Sun is fully in Leo, and there’s an electricity to it that’s hard to ignore. Get clear on what you actually want the reset to look like, Leo. Tomorrow the eclipse does the work. Today you set the intention.

Leo monthly horoscope

Virgo: August 23 – September 22

Your instinct is to tighten things up — trim the excess, get to the point, make it precise. Mercury conjuncting Jupiter today pushes the picture bigger whether you asked for it or not. Not everything needs to be edited down before it’s ready, Virgo. Some ideas just need room to breathe first. Let Mercury run big today. The fine-tuning can happen tomorrow.

Virgo monthly horoscope

Libra: September 23 – October 22

You’ve been maintaining a careful equilibrium — managing, balancing, keeping things from tipping one way or the other. Today something tips anyway, and here’s what surprises you, Libra: it’s a relief. Uranus trine Venus exactly has a way of loosening what you’ve been holding in place. Not everything that gets disrupted needed to stay where it was. Let it settle somewhere new.

Libra monthly horoscope

Scorpio: October 23 – November 21

You’re usually the one who initiates the hard moment — you see it coming, you choose the timing, you control the approach. Today the Moon opposing Pluto flips that. Something emotionally charged arrives on someone else’s schedule, and your first instinct will be to close it off, Scorpio. Don’t. The things that catch you off guard are usually the ones that stick.

Scorpio monthly horoscope

Sagittarius: November 22 – December 21

Tonight has a particular quality to it — the Moon conjuncting Jupiter in Leo — where everything feels bigger and more possible, and you want to say yes to all of it. That’s Jupiter doing what it does best, Sagittarius. Don’t immediately convert the feeling into a plan or a project. Just let the optimism exist on its own for a minute. It’s allowed.

Sagittarius monthly horoscope

Capricorn: December 22 – January 19

Tomorrow’s Solar Eclipse has a lot of people bracing for impact. You’re not one of them. Eclipses do what Saturn has been doing to you for months — accelerate the reckoning, force the honest accounting, move things along whether you’re ready or not. The difference, Capricorn, is you’ve been ready. You did the prep work. Tomorrow isn’t a disruption. It’s a delivery.

Capricorn monthly horoscope

Aquarius: January 20 – February 18

Today has a lot of people feeling the weight of things — eclipse tomorrow, sky asking a lot, everyone a little on edge. You’re finding it interesting. Moon sextiling Uranus this afternoon hands you the kind of signal you’re built to receive: a flash, a click, something from an unexpected angle that makes everything snap into place. While everyone else braces, Aquarius, you’re taking notes.

Aquarius monthly horoscope

Pisces: February 19 – March 20

Two Neptune trines today — first the Moon, then Mercury — which means the imaginative channel you live in is running unusually clear right now. What’s coming through isn’t static, Pisces. The reception is actually good today. Whatever surfaces this morning or tonight, write it down, sketch it out, tell someone about it. This frequency doesn’t hold forever. Catch it while it does.

Pisces monthly horoscope

The post Daily Horoscope: August 11, 2026 appeared first on VICE.

The festival bathroom situation has been getting worse over the past few years. So bad, in fact, that your chances of encountering someone’s bodily fluids, or worse, are 50/50 at this point. 

At Lollapalooza this past weekend in Chicago, a video began circulating of concert attendees crowd-surfing a cardboard box through the audience. Inside it was a plastic urine bag, the ones typically found in a hospital room. Instagram account @edmtrain posted the clip with the caption “Passing a bag of pee through the crowd is not ok.” It has since pulled nearly 177,000 views.

The comment section had thoughts. “That’s such a f–king biohazard. Gross,” read one. Someone reshared the video with the caption “passing pee through the crowd is DIABOLICAL.” Several others rechristened the event “Lollapeelooza.” One commenter’s advice was simple. “Have a friend hold your spot and go use the bathroom.” Another took the long view. “In my day we used to just fight the crowd to go to the bathroom and then find our way back like normal people,” they wrote. “This is nasty AF.”

Lollapalooza 2026 sparked widespread disgust after showing festivalgoers crowd-surfing a plastic bag filled with urine across a packed audience. The incident, dubbed "Lolla-pee-looza" by observers, fueled debate over concert and festival behavior.#lollapalooza #festival #music…

— Tomson (@TomsonWoo) August 5, 2026

Lollapalooza Fans Reportedly Passed a Bag of Pee Through the Crowd

The pee bag wasn’t Lolla’s only contribution to the genre. In a Reddit thread titled “Poopoopalooza,” one attendee described watching a woman defecate on the ground at the Bud Light stage while the crowd waited for John Summit. “PLEASE don’t poop in the crowd / on the ground in general,” they wrote. “Didn’t realize this needed to be said.”

As VICE has covered, the concert bathroom situation has been building. A Devilskin show in New Zealand was paused last week mid-set after someone defecated in the mosh pit. Earlier this year, Olivia Rodrigo told KISS FM UK she’d been smelling adult diapers from the stage—fans wearing them to hold their spots. The decision tree at major shows has narrowed. Leave your spot and lose it, or stay put and improvise. This is where that logic goes.

Noah Kahan wrote on X after human waste was reportedly left at one of his shows. “If you have to poop at a show, please dear god just go to the bathroom,” he wrote. “There’s a venue worker out there with a 1000 yard stare after dealing with that.” Meanwhile, a Morgan Wallen concertgoer in Baltimore last month accused a man of urinating on him and his wife mid-show.

If you have to poop at a show please dear god just go to the bathroom lmao I’ve pooped my pants as much as the next 29 year old but you guys gotta understand there’s a venue worker out there with a 1000 yard stare after dealing with that

— Noah Kahan (@NoahKahan) June 27, 2026

Live music has always involved a tolerance for discomfort. Elbows, spilled drinks, the guy who’s six-foot-four directly in your sightline. A urine bag traveling overhead or the waft of someone’s sh*tty diaper is taking things too far. 

The post A Bag of Pee Was Crowd-Surfed at Lollapalooza: ‘This Is Nasty AF’ appeared first on VICE.

Ever had an orgasm so good that you saw colors? Not in a metaphorical way, but with wild, vivid colors? Some people do, and it’s an actual neurological event. 

About 4% of people have synesthesia in some form—the neurological condition that causes senses to bleed into each other. Letters have colors. Sounds have flavors. Sexual synesthesia is when the cause is arousal or just the emotional experience of sex, and the responses could be anything from colored halos and flashes to abstract shapes and full-on scenes. Neuropsychologist Cathy LeBeau, whose 2026 study in Psychology of Consciousness examined sixteen cases, describes them as intermittent and involuntary.

One explanation involves what the brain does right before orgasm. Sex researcher Nicole Prause, Ph.D., told Bustle that “shifts in brain state appear to occur” before orgasm arrives, producing brainwave activity that resembles meditation. In that state, sensory filtering loosens, and the brain becomes less able to suppress visual signals—creating an opening for experiences that only exist in people with the right neural wiring.

The Rare Neurological Condition That Can Make Orgasms Look Like Fireworks

Sexual synesthesia is poorly documented partly because people who have it usually don’t know it even has a name. A study cited in the book Synesthesia: Perspectives From Cognitive Neuroscience found that 1.2% of synesthetes see colors during orgasm. As Lebeau told Men’s Journal, “most of the time, sexual synesthetes only become aware of their condition once they read about it.” People don’t exactly swap notes on what they see during sex.

The accounts people give are visually consistent in their variety. One woman told Scientific American she sees “seafoam green, bright yellow, black and red, hot pink or white,” like looking through tinted glasses or up at an aurora-lit sky. Another painted one of her orgasms to show her boyfriend what it looked like. It’s been shown that experience correlates with emotional connection. According to Lebeau’s research, arousal on its own isn’t enough—participants said trust and intimacy made it more likely to happen.

A 2013 study found that while synesthetes rated their experiences as personally enriching, they also reported feeling more isolated from their surroundings during sex—the intense inward pull consuming attention that might otherwise go toward a partner. Lebeau’s research found that some synesthetes treat the absence of a visual response as a dealbreaker. Meaning, they must not have a connection with this person. 

There’s no test for it, no treatment, and no way to acquire it. The people who have it have probably been having a fundamentally different experience of sex their entire lives, and most of them figured that out by reading an article.

The post Some People Literally See Colors When They Orgasm, Study Finds appeared first on VICE.

The 72-hour rule is the internet’s latest answer to the question of why couples stop having sex. The concept is simple. Aim to be intimate, whether that’s sex or another form of physical connection, every three days. On social media, it’s getting exactly the reaction you’d expect. Half the comments say it sounds clinical and exhausting. The rest are into it.

This isn’t a new idea. VICE covered the case for scheduling sex earlier this year, and the research behind it is fairly damning. The Knot’s 2024 Relationship and Intimacy Study found only 2% of couples actually schedule sex, while 24% say they’re dissatisfied with their sex lives. The 72-hour rule is the same argument with a catchier name—sex doesn’t maintain itself, so at some point you have to decide it’s worth protecting.

Leigh Norén, a sex therapist and coach, told Stylist that structured intimacy can work. “Intimacy, whether physical, emotional or sexual, can often fall by the wayside in long-term relationships,” she said. “While Hollywood has us believe that if we’re with the right person, we don’t need to work at it to keep it alive, we absolutely do.” For couples who respond well to routine, the 72-hour rule is like a regular checkpoint rather than a deadline.

Not everyone is convinced. Mariàn Martínez, a sex and relationships coach at Smile Makers Collection, told Stylist she thinks the rule is targeting the wrong thing. “Most don’t stop having sex because they forgot to put it in the diary,” she said. “They stop because they’re exhausted, resentful, disconnected, carrying unequal mental loads or because desire has become another thing to produce.” Putting a timer on sex won’t fix any of that. For couples in that position, a 72-hour deadline is just another thing to fail at.

This New Relationship Rule Says Couples Should Be Intimate Every 3 Days

A 2024 study out of New Zealand found that women who have sex at least once a week report the highest relationship satisfaction—suggesting frequency and satisfaction are connected, up to a point. The 72-hour rule sits somewhere in that range for most couples. Whether it works depends on whether both people are actually committed to it, instead of one person adding it to the list of things the other hasn’t done yet.

The number is almost beside the point. What the 72-hour rule actually does, when it works, is move sex from the category of things that might happen into the category of things both people have decided to do. Three days or once a week—the interval doesn’t matter as much as the agreement behind it. The rule won’t fix a relationship that has bigger problems. But for couples who’ve just let things slide, it’s a place to start.

The post Couples Are Trying the 72-Hour Rule to Fix Their Sex Lives appeared first on VICE.