When it comes to online dating, Giovanni Wolfram, a 25-year-old living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, isn't all too worried about whether his fellow dating app users will find him attractive. Rather, his biggest fear is that he might come off as "cringey." "You can get away with being ugly," Wolfram says. "But being cringey is just like--that's a character that's imprinted on you." Since he first joined Hinge at 18, he has worked hard to scrub his profile of sincerity.

Comedian and actress Sarah Silverman explained that she'cringes' at some of her past jokes, suggesting that certain forms of humor are no longer as socially acceptable. Comedian Sarah Silverman said during an interview on CBC Radio One's "Q with Tom Power" that she cringes at some jokes from her past, but claimed it's a normal learning process as time goes on. Silverman has made a career out of using shock-value in her comedy, from saying, "I hope the Jews did kill Christ, I'd do it again" in a standup routine, to wearing blackface in a past comedy skit. In a recent interview she noted that many of her past jokes make her uncomfortable, but she thinks that comedians and America in general need to accept societal progress. "Gee, comedy is not evergreen," she said the interview.

By now, it will have been difficult to avoid the screenshots of the flirty messages Adam Levine sent to his fans - and the resulting memes. The Maroon 5 frontman is married to model Behati Prinsloo, with whom he has two children, and she is currently pregnant with their third. But, over the last week, five women have come forward accusing 43-year-old Levine of sending them explicit messages in recent years. The first was Instagram model Sumner Stroh, 23, who uploaded a bombshell TikTok video in which she claimed the two had had an affair last year and revealed a slew of flirtatious DMs. Then comedian Maryka and a woman named Alyson Rose shared screenshots of their alleged Instagram conversations with the singer. Levine's former yoga teacher, Alanna Zabel, next accused him of sending a dirty text to her, before fitness influencer Ashley Russell claimed he started messaging her on social media this year.

There's nothing like migration to reveal how things that seem natural may be artifacts of culture. When I left India for college in England, I was surprised to find that pinching my Adam's apple didn't mean, as I had thought it meant everywhere, "on my honor." I learned to expect only mockery at the side-to-side tilts of the head with which I expressed degrees of agreement or disagreement, and trained myself to keep to the Aristotelian binary of nod and shake. Around that time, I also learned--from watching the British version of "The Office"--that the word "cringe" could be an adjective, as in the phrase "so cringe." It turned out that there was a German word for the feeling inspired by David Brent, the cringe-making boss played by Ricky Gervais in the show: Fremdschämen--the embarrassment one feels when other people have, perhaps obliviously, embarrassed themselves.

Originally intended as a rescue robot for emergencies, humanoid robot Fedor, or "Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research," was instead co-opted by Roscomos, the Russian space agency, in 2019. Its mission: to test a new emergency rescue system aboard a Soyuz 2.1a rocket, a dicey setting that's better for Fedor to handle than a human being. It would learn how to connect and disconnect electric cables using "standard items from a screwdriver and a spanner to a fire extinguisher," according to Alexander Bloshenko, the Russian space agency's director. Fedor was to fly to the International Space Station, where it would be an astronaut assistant, especially on risky spacewalks. Once it got to the International Space Station, however, it quickly became clear that Fedor's long legs and clumsy hands were not suitable for space walks or grabbing handrails in zero gravity. So its mission was aborted, but Roscomos plans to improve on Fedor's design for a potential future mission.

Last week, while giving a commencement speech to New York University graduates, pop star Taylor Swift offered a timely bit of advice: "No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. Cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime." We live in inescapably cringe-y times. Los Angeles-based writer K. Allado-McDowell's new novel, Amor Cringe, is a love letter to cringe maximalism. Allado-McDowell set out to write the cringiest story possible and ended up creating an odd, surprisingly funny little book.

Two Thursdays ago, I was sitting alone in my SoMa loft, screaming at my computer. I was reading something that can only be described as magic. It was a post about how to run an effective board meeting. Part of what makes it so hard to build a strong board is a lack of focus and direction. When you go out and recruit board members, you have to be very intentional about your recruiting efforts and have a defined process.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere. It quietly integrated itself in nearly every aspect of our lives. Still, this technology is in its infancy and we don't entirely understand its full potential. We cringe at the idea of data being mined by governments, as reported in an amazing story on CBS's 60 Minutes. We worry about Big Brother, but excitedly lap up every Cortana or Siri update hoping it makes life just a little bit more interesting and easier.