RESTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 20, 2023--

A woman has sparked a debate across social media after finding an abandoned couch on the street and taking it back to her apartment. Creator Amanda Joy posted a TikTok of the ‘dream couch’ she had found on the street in New York showing the process of getting it into her apartment. Joy believed the couch to be the $8,000 ‘Bubble’ couch from French brand Roche Bobois. Posted on Saturday, the TikTok now has over 40 million views, and over 4 million likes. The rest of the TikTok showed Joy’s dad picking up the couch in his van and the process of cleaning the couch, before moving it into her apartment. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter However, the now viral TikTok has led to some saying the couch is a fake, and others being concerned about bed bugs. User @boymolish shared the TikTok to Twitter with the caption ‘WHY TF AM I NEVER THIS LUCKY’, and the Tweet had many saying that Joy had not cleaned it enough: Some argued that if you throw an 8k coach on the street there has to be an reason, implying that there was something wrong with it. But some disagreed, saying if you’re rich enough, it’s not a big deal to give away such expensive items for free. Others did some digging and argued that it wasn’t an authentic ‘Bubble’ couch, with one Twitter user comparing the material of the couch Joy now had in her apartment, to the one on the website. As a result of the growing debate around her TikTok, Joy posted an update video, specifically responding to a comment that said ‘it looks so good but I’m SO SCARED about it being BED BUG CENTRAL.’ Joy shared with users that the couch was outside on the street for less than 24 hours. She added that they let the couch sit in her dad’s workshop for over two weeks to ensure they couldn’t see any bed bugs. Joy also told viewers that the reason she thought it had been thrown out is because it has ‘a lot of rips,’ which she has covered with pillows, and ‘has some stains.’ At the end of the video, Joy also showed the tag, ‘for anyone who wants to tell me it’s fake.’ Some viewers were still convinced it wasn’t clean enough, suggesting she should get it professionally cleaned and reupholstered. Whilst others said as long as Joy was happy with it, they didn’t care. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Alcohol addiction ruins millions of lives every year, but scientists may have found a cure for this terrible affliction. A new treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD) has been trialled in monkeys with impressive results and, if these translate to human trials, the impact could be monumental. A team of neuroscientists and physiologists from across the US tested a new type of gene therapy to see if they could directly target the underlying brain circuitry associated with sustained heavy drinking. As they noted, in the journal Nature Medicine, people suffering from AUD commonly return to alcohol use even if they attempt to quit. This is largely to do with what’s known as mesolimbic dopamine (DA) signalling – meaning how the central nervous system circuit communicates the feelgood neurotransmitter dopamine. A protein called glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) is key to keeping these neurons in this reward circuitry functioning. However, experts have found that levels of GDNF are reduced in people with AUD during periods of alcohol abstinence, most notably in a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as IFLScience notes. Therefore, the researchers decided to test whether using gene therapy to deliver more GDNF to the VTA could help reinforce this crucial dopaminergic signalling and prevent patients from suffering an alcoholic relapse. The team of scientists explained how alcohol consumption in non-addicts prompts the release of dopamine, creating a pleasurable buzz feeling, but chronic alcohol use causes the brain to adapt and stop releasing so much dopamine. “So when people are addicted to alcohol, they don’t really feel more pleasure in drinking,” Dr Kathleen Grant, a senior co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It seems that they’re drinking more because they feel a need to maintain an intoxicated state.” For their research, Dr Grant and her colleagues used eight rhesus macaque monkeys, who were exposed to increasing concentrations of alcohol over four 30-day “induction” periods. The monkeys then had free access to alcohol and water for 21 hours a day for six months, during which they developed heavy drinking behaviours. This was then followed by a 12-week abstinence phase, with the GDNF treatment performed four weeks in for half of the subjects. The gene therapy was delivered using a a viral vector containing a copy of the human GDNF gene injected directly into the primate’s VTA, according to IFLScience. And the results were truly jaw-dropping. “Drinking went down to almost zero,” Dr Grant said. “For months on end, these animals would choose to drink water and just avoid drinking alcohol altogether. They decreased their drinking to the point that it was so low we didn’t record a blood-alcohol level.” The most exciting aspect of their findings is the suggestion that gene therapy could offer a permanent solution for people with the most severe cases of AUD. This will be a welcome glimmer of hope to many, given that some 29.5 million people were diagnosed with AUD in the US alone in 2021, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Of these 29.5 million sufferers, almost a million (894,000) were aged between 12 and 17. It’ll likely be some time before we know for sure whether the gene therapy can be rolled out in humans, but it’s an important first step in tackling this devastating disorder. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

A photo of MrBeast shared by the streaming platform Kick asleep on a plane has fans concerned that the most subscribed YouTuber on the planet is broke. MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, has a reported net worth of $100 million but has spoken in the past about how much money he loses when filming his highly produced and expensive YouTube videos as well as having his own Feastables and MrBeast burger ranges and advertising and sponsorship deals. However, fans have been alarmed at an apparent image of the 25-year-old asleep on a plane while flying in economy class when he could easily afford to fly in the more lavish business seats in first class or even on a private jet. The image which has since gone viral saw Kick say on their X/Twitter account "bro wtf MrBeast doing in economy?" without any indication as to whether the person in the picture was actually the YouTuber or not. Many fans of MrBeast have since latched onto the photo asking if he is in financial trouble while others weren't convinced. Dexerto have reported that the person in the picture could be a lookalike while a community note on a Drama Alert tweet also stated that there was no proof that MrBeast was actually in the photo, while also stating that it was actually a Taiwanese airline and not a Spirit Airlines plane. MrBeast is yet to respond to the image but it is highly unlikely that he is broke given that his most recent YouTube video has more than 98 million views. Regardless even if it is him, just because he's very rich doesn't mean he has to spend frivolously or think that he is above anyone else on a plane. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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