How many times have you struggled to order street food or get public transportation directions while traveling abroad? Even after vowing you'd learn enough of a language to get through your next trip easily, you pretty much did nothing about it. But there's a recently popular method that will help you learn a language with less difficulty and less time, known as Reading-While-Listening or RwL, and that's what Beelinguapp's platform is based on.
Variousstudieshaveshown the benefits of RwL, and Beelinguapp is not afraid to use it. This mobile language-learning app utilizes an audiobook approach combined with karaoke-style animation to provide an immersive experience. Original audio is recorded by a native language speaker to help you hear how the words are pronounced as you read them and see how they're spelled and put together in sentences. It shows the same exact text in two languages, side by side, while it reads out loud to you.
Offering 13+ languages, such as Spanish, English, German, Korean, and French, Beelinguapp lets you choose from fairy tales, news, science papers, and novels to learn from, with new content being added every single week. With 4.7 stars in the Google Play Store and 4.6 in Apple's App Store, Beelinguapp must be doing something right! Give it a try and you just might have your best vacation yet.
In today's hyper-competitive business world, generating leads and converting them into a viable business is a vital numbers game that can be the difference between your operation scaling and stagnating. Unfortunately, leads are becoming more and more expensive to generate, meaning any mishandled or dropped leads can have a huge negative impact on your bottom line.
Communication is key. Staying aligned with leads, current clients, former clients, and your entire sales team is exceedingly difficult given how many communication mediums there are these days. Between the phone, email, webchats, and more, it's easier than ever to forget to follow up by simply misplacing where the original conversation took place.
That's where amoCRM shines. By centralizing each customer's communications (be it on Skype, Instagram, email etc.) into their own lead profile on the platform, this customer relationship manager (CRM) helps you keep track of all of your past communications and continue ongoing conversations without switching apps. This way, you can chat with your leads on their platform of choice, and gain quick access to all of your conversations without closing apps or switching platforms.
With the power of unified communications, your sales team is empowered to solve problems, not navigate through them. Retain and convert leads like never before with amoCRM. Right now, you can register for an extended 30 day trial through this link.
Testimonials as to the health and wellness benefits of CBD continue to roll in. Whether it's combating inflammation and pain relief for those battling arthritis, nerve pain, MS, or just general stress and anxiety management, many say that CBD supplements have provided them with a better quality of life.
So far, the FDA and serious medical trials have barely begun in the effort to back up those claims with hard science. However, the anecdotal results have been all the fuel needed to launch a galaxy of CBD-infused products to help with everyday aches and pains as well as deeper physical and psychological conditions.
It’s an exploding field — so check out 20 different CBD products that may help improve your daily life or that of a loved one, all at discounts up to 58 percent off.
Oils
CBD oils are extracted from the flowers of the hemp plant — and while they carry none of the hallucinogenic or addictive properties of another major marijuana component THC, they are often acknowledged as the most potent form of CBD, depending on the dosage.
While oils are direct extracts, tinctures combine those properties with vegetable glycerin, cinnamon oils, or even alcohol. While less potent, tinctures are often easier to mix with food and digest than the more bitter oils.
If you’re not a fan of the taste of CBD oil, the capsule format may be the best way to go for you. BALANCE 900mg CBD Capsules ($51.99; originally $65) are taken as one soft gel capsule per day, equipped with only three natural ingredients for a clean, honest and convenient daily CBD dose.
You could also try the Day or Night varieties of Jane West CBD Capsules ($35.99; originally $58), endorsed by leading cannabis activist Jane West. Morning capsules include amino acids and proteins for enhanced mood and increased concentration, while the Night edition contains tryptophan for improved sleep.
Lotions, rubs, and creams
CBD lotions, rubs and creams are administered topically, which means they can be best concentrated directly in high pain areas for muscle relief or alleviating skin conditions.
CBD Pain Lotion ($42.99; originally $60) includes a full spectrum blend of organic CBD that not only soothe aching muscles but can help heal skin from psoriasis, dryness, inflammation and other irritations. Originally created for post-workout use, RECOVER 600mg CBD Muscle Recovery Rub ($47.99; originally $60) is another full-spectrum CBD product produced in Colorado specifically to relax muscles after intense exercise.
The easiest way to integrate CBD into daily use may be as part of your regular bathroom beauty regimen. Sunset CBD Organic CBD-Infused Shampoo and Conditioner ($29.99; originally $59.99) includes all the rich nutrients and botanical extracts for shiny, healthy hair, but also contains CBD to promote collagen production and hair growth that nourishes the scalp and cuts down on irritation that can lead to dandruff.
Or you can just lay back and bathe in the restorative properties of CBD with a four-pack of these CBD Infused Bath Bombs ($44.99; originally $59.99). With styles ranging from calm and soothing to focused and sensual with oils of lavender, eucalyptus, tangerine, and peppermint, these bombs can either mellow you out after a tough day or help restore your skin with healthy CBD-enriched minerals.
Foods
How about a shot of CBD with your morning caffeine hit? Jane West CBD Coffee ($38.99; originally $48) is a combination of rich light-roast beans sourced from female coffee growers in Costa Rica infused shortly after the roast with full-spectrum CBD from certified organic hemp grow right here in the USA.
Or if coffee isn’t your thing, you can also get your CBD in good old comfort food with Hemp Extract Mac and Cheese ($14; originally $16). It’s just two cups of boiling water, hatch green chili, cheddar cheese, garlic and 35mg of CBD for both a tasty and healthy meal.
Gummies
Even among all these options, there may be no more delightful and yummy CBD delivery system than the tried and true gummy.
The images from this local news report from WGRZ in Hamburg, NY are crazy. Houses completely encased in ice, some of it up to three feet thick.
Cold temperatures, gale-force winds, and 18-foot waves from Lake Erie created an ice spectacle at Hoover Beach in Hamburg.
Homeowners on South shore Drive woke to the ice completely covering their doors and windows. In some cases, their homes were dark because of how thick the ice was.
Ed Mis, resident and homeowner in Hoover Beach, says he's never seen conditions this bad before. The front of his home is completely covered in ice that is likely one to three feet thick.
"I actually had to go out a secondary door and then chisel my way back into the house by breaking the ice," he told 2 On Your Side's Karys Belger.
[H/t Robin Moore]
Ed Mis tells me this is what his house looked like when he woke up this morning. He says some of the ice has completely frozen over the top of his neighbor’s house and he’s worried about what will happen when it all melts. @WGRZ pic.twitter.com/XVrEomdslq
If you love tech gear, it can be difficult to live the green consumer life you want to be living. How can you fuel your desire to upgrade without contributing to the negative environmental impact the endless production of electronics causes? Shop refurbished.
You might think, "Meh, I'll pass on a used, busted up computer." But lots of refurbs today are trustworthy. Take, for instance, this Mac Pro. It's an Apple computer boasting a 3.7GHz quad-core Xeon E5 processor with 16GB RAM and a 512GB solid-state drive that costs 60% less than a new one—and it's certified refurbished. That means it was tested, inspected, and certified to look and work like new, including all relevant accessories. It might ship in plain bulk packaging, but that's not a bad tradeoff.
This Mac workstation made for pros in 2013 offers not only a sleek-as-heck design but also the most advanced technologies available around a unified thermal core, making it the most powerful and expandable Mac ever. It's got all sorts of ports for external connection, like Thunderbolt, HDMI, UltraHD, USB 3.0, and dual gigabit Ethernet, keeping it compact and quiet without losing any of its support for power-intensive apps. There's also Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity and the pre-installed macOS X (10.9.1 Mavericks).
Picking up one of these Mac Pros instead of buying brand new contributes to reducing electronic waste and demand for new devices. Sure, it's not exactly instant gratification, but when it comes to reducing your carbon footprint, not much is. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, as they say.
Help improve the planet's health while boosting your processing power as well as your budget's well-being when you buy a certified refurbished Apple Mac Pro 3.7GHz Quad-Core Xeon 16GB RAM 512GB SSD for $1599, a savings of 60% over a new one.
Whether you own or rent your place, insurance on that home is a necessary hassle - but a new tech-driven company called Lemonade is starting to show that while it might indeed be a necessity, it doesn't have to be a hassle.
Here's the way insurance typically works: You pay premiums and hope an accident never happens. If it does, you enter the purgatory of red tape, trying to pry restitution from a company that has little motivation or ability to pay out your claim.
Lemonade doesn't work that way. Instead, it utilizes a well-built technology platform and intuitive AI to make signup a breeze. If anything, the process of paying out claims is even easier: You answer a few questions, outline your lost or damaged property through video chat, and get satisfaction almost instantly. Lemonade takes a flat fee from your premiums, so there's no motivation for them to stonewall you when it comes time to file a claim. At the end of each year, they'll even turn a portion of the unclaimed money from those premiums to the charity of your choice.
Another great thing about their flat fees? They're super cheap, thanks to Lemonade's low overhead. Fees start at $25 for homeowners' insurance and $5 for renters. Get a quick quote and sign up today.
Since the 60s Genesis P-Orridge has been the mastermind behind artist collective COUM Transmissions and seminal music acts Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. Beyond that, P-Orridge has had an astonishing career in the visual arts, founding an artist collective called Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth, as well as helming the infamous pandrogeny project in, which P-Orridge and deceased partner Lady Jaye went through ongoing plastic surgery sessions to resemble each other in an attempt to, as New York's Rubin Museum's catalogue once put it, "break down the limitations of biological sex and express their unconditional love for each other." As of 2017, Genesis has been having an ongoing battle with cancer. Here's our interview with Genesis, conducted earlier this year.
Do you think something happens to our consciousness when we die?
We think about that a lot. But we've also spent much of my life as an existentialist. We had the, is it good or misfortune to have read La Nausée by John Paul Sartre when we were about 12. And needless to say, it totally altered the way I saw all the information I'd been given by the Church of England and the status quo. And it made me basically an existentialist. There's just "we're here, we die, there's nothing," you know? But then we also had these psychic experiences and saw certain things that made me still not 100% sure of that either.
We used to say we were a romantic existentialist because we've always had this strong belief in Big Love. But then, myself and Lady Jaye talked about what would happen when one of us dropped the body. We've had some experiences where we really felt bonded psychically and inter-dimensionally, mainly during ketamine experiments to be clear, so with enhancement, but nevertheless, very, very powerful experiences. So, if it is possible to maintain a sense of individual identity as just consciousness, how would we communicate with the other one? Because we want to stay in touch. So we came up with the three things that would make it clear it was a real communication. And they were: one, there had to be witnesses. Two, there had to be something that physically happened. You couldn't just think you heard somebody's voice or thought you saw somebody in the crowd that was them. And then it also had to have special meaning. Those were the three things we felt would give us a very strong sense that it was a real communication.
And after the funeral, so the second or third day after she dropped her body, Caresse and Genesse, my daughters, came to visit for the funeral and looked after me, and they were trying to get me to go back to California. Everyone was scared we were going to commit suicide. We didn't say that. But they couldn't imagine me staying here without Jaye, so everyone was in this non-verbalized panic, and we knew they were but we didn't say anything because we wanted them to suffer. If we were suffering, why couldn't they, you know? And then suddenly, while they're talking, I kind of drifted and was almost daydreaming, and we thought, what if we go with them? We're gonna need a picture of me and Jaye together to put by the bed. Of all the things, that's what came into my mind.
So we got up without saying anything and walked through the apartment to the bedroom, and in the bedroom, on the side of the bed, was what she called the kissing wall. And on the kissing wall were photographs from all over the United States, and all over the world, of us kissing. There were about 20, or probably 23 knowing the way things work. And so the last thing she saw when she fell asleep was these photographs of us kissing and being joined, and the first thing she saw when she woke up was us kissing. So it was like a sigil, like a magical invocation of always being aware, of always strengthening the bond.
So we looked at that wall, and there's all these nice pictures, and in the middle is one and it's me and Lady Jaye in Kathmandu, in the garden of the hotel we usually stay at called The Nirvana Garden, and we were both wearing red robes. And we sat on Lady Jaye's lap. So it's a blob of red, and our two heads kissing, and it really is like one being, the two heads a part of this one being, and we thought, that's the Pandrogyne -- it's the two of us becoming one.
Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye. Photo by Courtesy Of Genesis P-Orridge.
So that's the one we took off the wall, and we walked back through the apartment, to the little living room where we sat in a semi-circle. We put it face down on this cupboard against the window, a few feet from where we sat.
And then somebody, pretty sure it was one of the children, said, "So are you going to come to California, Papa?" And as we looked up, the picture rose up a few inches, then it floated across a few feet and settled in front of me -- between us -- me and everyone else. To this day we often say to each other, "Did that really happen? You were there..."
[The other people say] "Yes it happened, Gen." We thought about that night and all that happened and then, well, [referring back to the three criteria for contacting Jaye] "there were witnesses and it has special meaning and something physical happened." And then we just thought, "Lady Jaye, you're pretty good in three days, it mustn't be easy to learn to move things when you enter a non-corporeal state. You know, have you seen that film Ghost? So we thought, "Gosh, she's good." Then you think, maybe she's done this before? Yeah. Maybe she was truly a gift, you know, from something more incredible.
What can thecut-uptechnique teach us about our perception of reality?
Basically, it's like a perceptual loop. By becoming hyper aware of cut-ups, you become aware of the fact that nothing is really linear and nothing is fixed. [William S.] Burroughs and [Brion] Gysin always used to say, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted." So, you know, there is no definitive reality, and any interpretation of existing or appearing to exist here is as true as any other.
One of the things that Burroughs taught me early on, probably the first year we met: you'd say something like "the future" and he would say, "There is no future, Gen."
We'd say, "What do you mean?" and he would say, "There is no THE future." He said it should always be "A" future because every single human being has a different future. So where's THE future in that? There's all the futures that haven't happened that could have. So there's the possible and the impossible and the in-limbo futures. There's only "A" future and it's not specific.
Another thing that happens with cut-ups is you get alternative ways of seeing. You get collisions and combinations that would otherwise never occur, or wouldn't get noticed if they did occur. The cut-up technique heightens your ability to see these little chunks of information and how they move and change. And when they're rearranged, they tell you something totally different.
Language in particular is incredibly vulnerable to cut-ups. It's the most precious tool that was handed to us, for anyone thinking in a creative way from the last century. And if you look at film and TV and digital media, they are basically amplified versions of cut-ups working for the enemy. How do you fight the enemy? You have to know the weapons. If they're using cut-ups to control and suppress you, then how do you break those? By cutting those up and short-circuiting theirs.
You can come away realizing that it's all vulnerable to perception, that we are actually in control of what we perceive. And we can utilize cut-ups to stay awake and alert to what's being done around us to try and prevent us from thinking. It's one of the only weapons which utilizes chaos in such a positive way. It permeates everything that we do. I mean, without cut-ups, Lady Jaye and myself would not have come to the Pandrogyne, because we started out just being totally in love. And we would say how much we genuinely wanted to just become each other, just be absorbed into each other, and why couldn't we become one?
And we looked at history and even the Bible and myths and legends of the creation of humans. And most of them all have a moment where there's a being which is male and female, but then it becomes two. Ever since, the argument by mystics has been that perhaps the reason to experience physical living -- biological living -- is to reunify with the other half, or to become totally aware of what that means. And then, we were always seeking reunification with the divine.
Because we use cut-ups, we were looking for a way to make sense of what we were feeling and where it might go. And we thought about the Third Mind, which is my favorite book of Burroughs and Gysin. And in that book they go, "When we do these cut-ups with writing together, the result is not by Brion or by William, it's by the third mind."
It's creating a third mind that is unique and separate from the two of them. And then we thought, what if we do that with us as, say, two beings, cut up and reassembled, recreating the third being? That's the Pandrogyne. So, from simple games with words and collaging you can end up with this divine purpose rooted in a mixture of love and resolution as why we exist at all.
How do you think that we can spread more love in a world where there are so many competing versions of reality?
Love is probably the one triumphant quality of human beings. It seems to exist outside of the nuts and bolts of biological existence. No one really knows how to define it or explain it. A lot of people don't even believe it exists. Sometimes it can last a lifetime, and sometimes a week. So it's a bit like cold dark matter, you know, all of the thought particles. It's there and it permeates everything already. It's our job to locate it and not be afraid of love, not feel that we're demeaned, or weakened, or in some way open to ridicule or exploitation by believing and trusting in love.
We found that was the part that people found most uncomfortable about the Pandrogeny Project -- myself and Lady Jaye just totally surrendering into someone, both an idea and another being. People really have become very addicted to an individual, egocentric sense of self. You know, you only have to look at the contemporary world with branding and celebrities. When we've given talks at universities, we would often say to all the students: "So, what would you like to have happen if you could have anything, or what do you want to have happen in your life?." Almost 100% of the students would say, "I want to be rich and famous."
We would say, "Okay, for doing what?" And they would go, "We don't really care. We just want to be rich and famous." And we would say, "Well, it's because you don't care that you won't be rich and famous."
What advice would you give to someone who wants to form a community within an art practice?
Do it. Absolutely. I think you already know that. It's one of the things that we think is a way out of this pickle. As a sort of simplistic picture, first you change yourself, which means opening yourself instead of wanting any kind of result from other people, any kind of praise or recognition. You should do things because it's right for you to do them, and because you feel there is a positive action in the world -- or society -- in which you exist. And so you change yourself first. We would say you change your bedroom first, and then you try and change your household. Then you try and change the street, and then you try and change the town, and then try and change the world. For all of its flaws, digital social media and the connectivity of it is going to turn out to be really, really useful because it's exposed the unpleasant underbelly of culture, in all its forms.
What is happening in the current art world that excites you?
Nothing!
And what are your hopes for the future of art?
Hopefully for the art world and future, there isn't one, and [hopefully] there's no art market. There's no "somebody makes a piece of what we call art and it resonates as special, and they sell it for 10 grand and then the next person sells it for 10 million, and then the next one for 20 million, and the next one for 120 million, and they only got 10 grand because they were starving." That should change. Whatever art is made, each time it's resold, a certain percentage should go to the artist or their dependents. That seems only fair. You know, if you made something and sold it for a thousand, and then it sold for 200 million, that's not right. But it's become an art market like Wall Street, you know, where they buy them as investments, not because they appreciate it, and not because it even means anything.
A lot of it is just decorative stuff that looks nice in big penthouses on white walls. And it's obviously made with that in mind. And if somebody comes up with a formula where that works and they do sell some to rich people with white walls in penthouses, then they will tend to stick to that thing they did over and over again. They will then have a formula and they will repeat the formula so that the other rich people can go, "Oh, you got a Damien Hirst too? Do you have one of his butterflies? No? ...Oh, well, a lot of us do," so that they'll buy. But it's not about anything. It's not saying anything, it's not commenting on the weirdness of existence, which, to me, art should be commenting on existence. It should be the same as a religious inquiry. It's a search for wisdom and truth and balance with nature and with humanity. It's a calling like being a priest, or a doctor or a nurse or something like that.
The original artists were healers. They were often shamans as well. You know, they would make objects to work within rituals. They would draw things in the sand, in the soil, and sometimes on a cave wall. And eventually they drew them on something they could take with them to different locations. That's how it grew. That's where it comes from. So it's about trying to make things happen.
It's important to tell people about the things that inspire you. The chances are higher that it will inspire other people around you. Everyone you meet, everyone you have respect for, and everyone that inspires you to think again. All of that is really important and it is information that you should share. If you think they're important and exciting, why wouldn't you want to share that with other people? The art world version of that is "Don't tell anyone."
We've always believed in sharing anything we found out that seemed interesting. You know, we've never had a problem with that. Burroughs and Gysin were the same. When we met Burroughs, his books were all out of print. He was living in two tiny rooms in London in this tiny little apartment. We said to him, "This is a travesty. You're really important." And so we did the album with him. We'd all read about the cut-up experiments in books, but nobody had heard them. So I said, "We want to hear them, what did they sound like?" And so we did that. And then I said, "Why don't we do a special event, a festival, to celebrate the influence of you and Brion Gysin on all these new young artists like us? To tell them about how this is a current..it's not individual people...it's a trajectory, and all of us are part of the same one. It's the lineage, it's why I love the statement by Brion Gysin so much: "Wisdom can only be passed on by the touching of hands." That's why we feel that we've been really blessed by meeting people who were very important in terms of things that influenced our ideas. We try and share ourselves with people too, if they feel like that, so those are all really important things to keep in mind. We're not in an ego game, we're trying to change the fucking world. Before it's not change-able.
What do you feel the value of nonsense is, especially in a world of such intense and conflicting ideologies? Do you think it can reveal truth, meaning, or universalities?
I don't really care (laughs). I like the Charlie Manson quote, "No sense makes sense." We use that a lot. Basically we deal more with strategies than artworks as such. So as a strategy, yes of course. Ridiculing things or exposing the insanity of things, stripping away the emperor's invisible clothes -- it's just a strategy. The strategy should be what works in a given situation. So it would depend on the situation. Sometimes the best strategy is to walk away, sometimes it is to be somewhat aggressive, sometimes a million other things. It's what works this time. You shouldn't have a formula. You should only have strategies that are appropriate at the moment. And those change. A situation now where nonsense made sense as a strategy might not make sense in a year. It can change, so you've got to be fluid and flexible.
That's why cut-ups help, because they keep you flexible and aware of the collisions that happen that are not linear. Time is one of the great big problems that we've created, because we tend to work assuming that time is linear, and it's not. For people to have control over society, they need to give the impression that it's linear, and it goes from point A to point B, and that is the rule of nature. We know it's not.
Nothing is fixed. Time is not fixed. Time at the very best is a loop. The moment we exist in the present, no futures have happened yet. They're happening instantaneously like a wave moving, but there's no after and before, there's just this wave where we appear to exist. It's very tenuous. So strategies are much more important than anything else, and when Burroughs told me how to short-circuit control, obviously, any weapon is useful.
It's getting harder and harder to maintain a rebellion. Don't assume that success is measurable in those old ways. Success can only be measured in who is coming to see you do what you do, because they are really touched by and feel the same way and can go, "That resonates with me. I feel like that too." Then they'll come and say, "You know, I want to know more about why you do this. Because I feel like this. And I think that means I'm like you in some way."
And that's how our networks always grew, because there was no internet. You know, it took two weeks for a letter to get to somebody sometimes, and I'd have to write back so everything slowed right down, but it gave you a lot of space to grow unnoticed.
That's why it was cool when people freaked out. We'd been doing that for six years, until we did this big show with ICA in London, down the road from Buckingham Palace. You could see it from where we were in a gallery owned by the queen. Then they noticed us and then they tried to destroy us. But it wasn't COUM Transmissions that made them force me into exile. It was Temple ov Psychick Youth in the 80s. After the ICA and COUM they were watching me -- we know this from what we were told later. So I was on their "to be watched, dangerous, nasty person" list. It took them 10 years but they finally got me. They didn't get me for doing anything, they just made it impossible for me to be in England. They couldn't even get me on a parking ticket. I hadn't done anything. Must have driven them up the wall, and they couldn't find anything. No drugs, no parking tickets, no nothing. I mean, we must have had them scared in some way for them to go to those lengths.
I was told by Scotland Yard they could not guarantee my physical safety if I went back. My civil rights lawyer said, "You mean that something could happen to Genesis like, being killed?" and they went, "Yes, that's what we mean. So tell your client not to come back." Which is what they wanted. They wanted me out of the way, you know. And this is all pre-internet. So in a way, that helped protect us because they didn't know where we were. They couldn't track us.
There was much more privacy.
Well, one of the things we wrote an essay about a long time ago was privacy is the last taboo. And I'm surprised over and over again, I'm surprised how many people surrender their privacy happily, they can't wait to tell everybody else in the world about themselves. Stepping back and thinking, is there another way without the Internet, like, could you turn up lots of events handing out manifestos to people? And, what we did with COUM Transmissions at the very, very, very, very beginning, we would just appear in the street wearing weird outfits. And young people would occasionally come up and say, "What are you? Who are you? You look interesting." And if they seemed interesting, we'd say, "Why don't you come back for a cup of tea?" And some of them would end up living with us and becoming part of it. Sometimes for a while, sometimes just for a little while, sometimes for years, and it would spread like that, one on one, you know, much slower, but it was much more. It had a lot more strength. People had to make the effort to get in touch. Obviously now my life is more complex because of being sick, but my plan was to go back into sending letters. The problem with that is, in England, the authorities were opening my letters. So we couldn't put in anything that might provoke them in letters. You become self-censoring, because you're aware that you're being checked out all the time. It's difficult. That's one of the things you're going to have to find strategies for. But when in doubt, be extreme. Okay, been there, but it's fun. So that's what you meant a little bit by the nonsense, you know? It's harder now than it was when we were doing it.
It's really confusing
They've gotten better and better, like I was saying, at closing it down and stopping you from breaking out of certain restrictions and so on. And that's deliberate. My personal strategy at the moment is books. You know, I can't go anywhere. And I don't know how long we'll be here to try and get as many ideas and examples of how we did it. In the hope that that's helpful to other people when we're not here. That's what I'm working on now and doing my autobiography. There's a book coming out on my birthday called Sacred Intent, which is interviews from 1986 till now, and they're basically about why we do what we do and that it's about ultimately trying to save humanity from itself. That's to me what art is really, ultimately about—this spiritual thing. And that's really been out of vogue for so long.
The outbreak has caused at least 2,797 deaths globally.
In response, Amazon.com issued orders to employees to defer all non-essential travel within the U.S. and beyond. Google set new restrictions for travel to Iran, Japan, South Korea, and two Italian regions, Lombardy and the Veneto, where the virus is spreading.
Other technology companies are doing the same: trying to limit the risk their employees face from the unstoppable spread of coronavirus around the world.
Both companies had already halted employee travel to China, and Google temporarily closed down its offices in China at the end of January. A Google employee in Zurich, Switzerland, has the novel coronavirus, a spokesperson confirmed to The Verge. “They were in the Zurich office for a limited time, before they had any symptoms,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Amazon senior vice president Dave Clark wrote in an email that employees should not schedule meetings that call for travel until at least the end of April, The New York Times reported. The company is one of the leading buyers of corporate air travel, and it booked $220 million in flights in 2017.
Canada’s TD Bank Group told Reuters it was suspending all non-essential business travel to China, Iran, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. Its peer Bank of Nova Scotia has also reportedly halted non-essential travel.
JetBlue which flies in the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America, became the first U.S. airline to offer waivers for all travel on Wednesday, announcing it would suspend change and cancellation fees for new flight bookings between Feb. 27 and March 11 this year.
Facebook Inc also said it would cancel its annual developer conference in May because of the virus.
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gain authority on the topics of your choosing
lead presentations at work or give a toast at your BFF's wedding
change a tire in the middle of a road with no cell service
make your brain more quick and agile
With the Ultimate Memory Mastery Bundle, you'll get 7 courses teaching simple yet powerful techniques to strengthen your memory, effortlessly recall information, and reduce the amount of time it takes to memorize something. You'll find actionable, easy-to-apply concepts and activities that can be used immediately—methods that are tested and used by memory experts, including basic mnemonic systems.
Including 7 hours of content from the psychologist who founded the Brain Academy, you'll learn dual brain theory, brain systems and neurochemicals, the psychology of memory, the history of memory training, and the memory formation process. There's even a course dedicated to how to rewire your brain via neuroplasticity and one focused on how to apply the Neurocognitive and Behavioral Approach to your everyday life.
Great for beginners but also featuring advanced topics, the 222 lessons in the Ultimate Memory Mastery Bundle are available for a mere $19.99. It seems like a no-brainer.
In balmy Calgary, two Weinermobiles are for sale. It's not clear if the $12,000 asking price is for both hot dog shaped cars, or the price per. One things is certain -- THE PEANUT IS NOT FOR SALE ! STOP ASKING.
A Google employee who "had been in the Zurich office for a limited time" has been diagnosed with coronavirus.
“We can confirm that one employee from our Zurich office has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. They were in the Zurich office for a limited time, before they had any symptoms. We have taken — and will continue to take — all necessary precautionary measures, following the advice of public health officials, as we prioritize everyone’s health and safety,” a spokesperson for Google told CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa.
According to 9to5Google, Google has already banned employee travel to China, Iran and parts of Italy, and is planning to ban employees from traveling to Japan and South Korea, starting next week. They have also posted signs at their bay area offices "reminding people to wash their hands and cover their mouths."
Google hasn't released the identity of the infected employee.
Disney World's Jungle Cruise ride isn't so dull after all. Yesterday, passengers got the ride of a lifetime when their boat began to sink. Some people got soaked up to their waists while staff called the park's Reedy Creek Fire Department. Fortunately the adventurers all made it back onto land as park members helped them climb to safety. They don't call it Adventureland for nothing.
In this absolutely fascinating segment on a 1970 episode of The Dick Cavett Show, two members of the Women's Liberation Movement, Susan Brownmiller and Sally Kempton, argue with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner about the depiction of women in his magazine. After Brownmiller and Kempton present their argument, Hef says, "I'm more in sympathy then perhaps the girls realize," in one of his many cringeworthy self-owns on the episode.
According to Wikipedia, the first electrical motor was a homopolar motor. "Its operation was demonstrated by Michael Faraday in 1821 at the Royal Institution in London." I have to admit I'm with Insane Clown Posse on how they work, but you can easily make one at home with a few simple parts, as shown in this video by DaveHax.
I've been using iTunes Match since the service launched in 2011, and it's been nothing but great until now. At the time, I had a personal laptop and a work computer, along with an iPhone that maybe held 16 gigs. The fact that I could just upload my extensive music library up to Apple's servers and stream or download any of my songs onto any of those devices at any time was a game changer. I'm one of those people who still likes to buy music whenever possible (maybe it's karmic, and I'm hoping someone buys my music some time, too), so I've continued to use the service, downloading my preferred albums at any given to listen to on-the-go instead of dipping into my data plan.
Honestly, the only quirk I discovered with the service was a blessing in disguise. iTunes Match will upload any of your music, but if matches something that already exists in their library, they'll let you download the corresponding high-resolution audio files. I had a lot of shitty CD-rips from high school that were suddenly returned to their high-quality glory, and freed of those obnoxious data squelches on the high end.
That is, until the other day. When I had a hankering to listen to "I Don't Want To Be An Asshole Anymore" by the Menzingers. 'Cause it's great song!
Except it wasn't there. In fact, the entire album was missing from my library. I own the entire Menzingers discography — purchased music! — and Rented World was now completely gone.
I'm not idiot, so I do keep backups of my iTunes library. In fact, when I purchase songs from the iTunes Store (like I did with this Menzingers album), I convert them into WAVs and then manually re-upload them into my iTunes Match library, just to be triple-sure that I always have a good quality recording available.
I reached out to Apple, and I was told that, "This album has been modified by the content provider for many reasons. […] From time to time our content providers update their items in the catalog to ensure the highest possible quality for our customers," and that this was why I could no longer directly re-download the album from the iTunes Store.
This is, of course, the inevitable risk of buying any kind of digital media — you don't actually own it. You're technically just buying a license to access that media, which can be revoked at any time. Presumably, that's what happened here (although Apple wouldn't just say so directly). I'm certainly surprised that Epitaph — a famously independent punk rock record label — would revoke the license for one Menzingers album while leaving the rest of them intact on the iTunes Store. But music licensing is messy.
What's particularly frustrating, however, is that I had manually converted the entire Rented World album into non-Apple music files, and re-uploaded those into iTunes Match — specifically to avoid this kind of situation. While I'm not that surprised that Apple still embedded something in the audio files that would allow them to keep tracking the song across different formats, I am appalled that they could and would remove those files from my iTunes Match library as well.
Again, I have backups, so it's not the end of the world. But the fact that I'm paying Apple for a service that specifically lets me upload and access my personal library to their servers — and that they can still reserve the right to delete things from that library if they so choose — is deeply concerning.
And Apple, despite their infamous customer service, has been utterly useless, refusing to offer any clear answers.
Throw out some random words and Los Angeles-based Harry Mack will instantly spit them out in an amazing rap that is custom-made for each audience. For someone who can't even remember her name under pressure, this kind of improv is mind-blowing.
"Just to ba abundantly clear," CNN reassures us, "There is no link between the virus and the beer."
5W Public Relations said that 38% of Americans wouldn't buy Corona "under any circumstances" because of the outbreak, and another 14% said they wouldn't order a Corona in public. The survey encompasses polling from 737 beer drinkers in the United States.
In another survey conducted by YouGov, the firm found consumers' intent to purchase Corona fell to its lowest level in two years. The survey also showed that Corona's buzz score, a metric that that measures favorability, has dropped significantly since the beginning of the year.
As of today, 83,577 people are diagnosed as having it, with nearly 3,000 dead. Coronavirus, that is, not Corona.
ICE has done facial recognition searches on millions of photos Maryland drivers without court approval. They appear to be targeting immigrants who sought driver’s licenses after 2013.
The access sought by Maryland state officials “goes far beyond what other states allow and that alarms immigration activists in a state that grants special driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants,” report Drew Harwell and Erin Cox at the Washington Post:
More than 275,000 such licenses have been issued statewide since 2013, when the state became the first on the East Coast to defy federal guidelines and allow undocumented immigrants to obtain a license without having to provide proof of legal status. The technology now under scrutiny could let an ICE official run a photograph of an unknown person through the system and see if any potentially undocumented immigrants are returned as a match.
“It’s a betrayal of immigrants’ trust for the [state] to turn around and let ICE run warrantless searches on their faces,” said Harrison Rudolph, a senior associate at Georgetown University Law School’s Center on Privacy and Technology. “It’s a bait-and-switch. … ICE is using biometric information in the shadows, without government notice or public approval, to hunt down the most vulnerable people.”
Admit it...even having a pocket knife within reach at a moment’s notice makes you feel a little like James Bond, right? Like, if you run up against a locked vault or a sinister superweapon, all you’d need are a couple of hand-held tools to diffuse the whole situation and save the world.
Look, we don’t recommend trying to disable a bomb with any of the 10 cool pocket knives and multi-tool gadgets in this assortment, but they do offer some peace of mind in a jam.
Is there a more badass a feeling than knowing you’ve got a blade hanging around your neck? This Kickstarter-funded survivalist dream is a military-style lightweight dog tag with its own key-sized blade. The 1-inch blade can even be removed and re-inserted to create its own blade and handle set-up for added versatility.
A pocket knife with a decidedly Japanese feel, the Pocket Samurai folds together the popular higonokami knife style into this portable package. With a razor-sharp tanto style blade, pocket clip and keychain loop, it’s super handy.
They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but what if you could have both? This stainless steel blade and tungsten carbide window punch can handle all your on-the-spot cutting, all while housed in the body of a pen that can write in any conditions, even on wet paper.
It may look like a key, but this highly-adaptable little gadget is as multi-faceted as they come. With a scoring tip, serrated edge, as well as varying wrench and screwdriver uses, it can cut boxes, split knots, scrap, tighten or do just about anything. You can even use this thing as a pipe. Seriously.
A cyclist card is just that: a tool that fits in a wallet card slot and can help bail you out of innumerable road situations. With a tire pry, hex wrenches and a truing fork among its more than 43 functions, it might be just the tool to fix a seat, adjust a brake or just keep you riding through trouble.
Sure, it’s got 7 wrenches, a bottle opener, a wine stripper and more built-in, but the real calling card of the EverRatchet is that patented ratchet feature applying up to 20 lbs. of torque in tight spaces or limited visibility.
With Phillips, Torx and flathead screwdriver tips — six in all — this star-shaped tool is engineered for your quick fix-it chores. Tips attach magnetically for easy use and the ceramic bearings inside create smooth spinning services to get your job done.
The KeyBar is a key organizer...which doesn’t sound very sexy until you start checking out what else this integrated multi-tool can do. Load in the keys you need or the attachments you want to use like scissors, belt tools, magnets, flash drives and more, and it’s literally the tool built just for you.
It’s the size of a credit card, but this thick-gauge, extra-durable stainless steel helper serves as a knife, saw blade, screwdriver or a trusty 2-position, 4-size, butterfly screw or directional auxiliary wrench. It even comes with its own protective case (not that it fears much.)
Bottle openers are always useful, but they’re often too bulky to carry on a keychain without weighing the whole thing down. However, the titanium Pry.Me is the world’s smallest bottle opener, made to hold up to 164,000 times its own weight (strong enough to pull a car), open bottles with a flourish, all while being smaller than a penny.
Nuclear semiotics is the discipline of communicating the nature of radioactive waste to people who don't know what it is. How do we tell our distant descendants -- people 10,000 years from now -- to stay away from it? The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico studies the proposals, which include scary earthworks but also a disarming message (below) originally devised by Sandia Labs. These immortal words have been immanentized by Nuclear engineer and PhD student Katie Mummah as a "Live Laugh Love"-style sign.
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
A Sydney veterinarian pulled an entire beach towel from the snake that ate it. The snake, Monty Python, an 18-year-old carpet python, is recovering; no word on the towel.
"A flexible endoscope was placed down Monty's gastrointestinal tract, which allowed us to visualise the end of the towel sitting in her stomach," Small Animal Specialist Hospital posted to Instagram. "With assistance from our internal medicine team, very long forceps were placed through the endoscope and used to grasp the towel."
Uri Tuchman explains how to make a very tiny but realistic-looking mattress from a block of maple. "Don't ask any questions," says Uri. "We are going to carve a mattress, out of this." It's the perfect introduction to his channel, where he makes small, beautiful items with hand tools, many of which he made himself.
Police in Grass Valley, California, released bodycam footage showing an officer pulling a man from a burning building. In the video, emergency services arrive to find the blaze well-underway and are unable to enter the house due to the choking fumes.
Officers dither for lack of options until one, named as Jonathan Brown, heads off to check for a back door. He finds it, boots it in, then spots a man unconscious on the ground. Brown grabs the man's feet, hauls him out of the house and summons medics from a waiting ambulance.
The victim had third-degree burns and burned lungs, and is recovering in stable condition at UC Davis Medical Center, according to Grass Valley Police Chief Alex Gammelgard.
The Trump administration is reportedly considering the possibility of re-implementing the Defense Production Act. Originally enacted during the Korean War, the Act essentially empowers the President to control the means of production—the idea being that it would be in the interest of the nation's defense to force private manufacturers to focus their production efforts on things that would benefit the country in a time of tenuous resources.
A White House official confirmed that the administration was exploring the use of the law to spur manufacturing of protective gear. Both the DHS official and the White House requested anonymity to discuss the issue.
“Let’s say ‘Company A’ makes a multitude of respiratory masks but they spend 80% of their assembly lines on masks that painters wear and only 20% on the N95,” the White House official said. “We will have the ability to tell corporations, ‘No, you change your production line so it is now 80% of the N95 masks and 20% of the other.’”
“It allows you to basically direct things happening that need to get done,” the official added.
In other words, it's precisely the kind of government-controlled economic planning that Republicans have warned would happen under a Democratic-Socialist administration. Except in this case, it's good. Because they're the ones doing it.
The White House is now insisting that all scientific and government-health related communication about the cdc be routed through the Trump administration before going public. And that person in charge of this communication funnel? Vice President Mike Pence, who as a governor previously took his sweet-ass time doing anything to address a major HIV outbreak in Scott County, Indiana.
The White House moved on Thursday to tighten control of coronavirus messaging by government health officials and scientists, directing them to coordinate all statements and public appearance with the office of Vice President Mike Pence, according to several officials familiar with the new approach.
[…]
Officials insist the goal is not to control the content of what subject-matter experts and other officials are saying, but to make sure their efforts are being coordinated, after days of confusion with various administration officials showing up on television. And they say they are not focused on specific news releases rather with a streamlined effort around television appearances.
The instinct to try and control epidemic news isn't necessarily bad if it's in good faith. People can panic and make bad decisions when they're scared, which can also make it easier for predatory conmen to exploit that fear for profit. Scared and panicked people could potentially overwhelm medical services out of paranoia, preventing people who are actually infected with the condition from getting the help they need. Hell, I can even understand why my own doctor lied to me about swine flu. ("You have a viral infection," he told me, after 5 straight days of vomit, diarrhea, and fever. Yeah no shit.)
Unfortunately, there's little reason to take this disaster response in good faith. And considering what happened to the late Doctor Li Wenliang, who literally died because the Chinese government was trying to control the flow of information relating to coronavirus—there's very good reason to be skeptical about the potential problems of Pence's pandemic information filter.
There's no shortage of CRMs out there for large corporations, e-commerce companies, and booming startups to utilize. Think Salesforce, for example. But if you're running a small business of ten employees max, there's no way it makes sense to invest in an expensive, robust option like that. You're better off using your old system of spreadsheets, emails, and Post-its.
Or instead, you can turn to a solution like Daylite. Not only is the pricing structure more small business-friendly, but it's actually designed for small teams, especially those just starting out. Use PCs and Android? It's probably not for you. Daylite is a native solution for Mac and iOS only. It's designed for companies that work with clients, like law firms, consulting firms, financial firms, and real estate brokers, but not for traditional e-commerce companies.
At its core, Daylite is a CRM, meaning it organizes all the client details and communications, deals, leads, and information that make your business run. It keeps all of the above organized, and incorporates project management tools to keep you on track. You can set automated reminders, delegate tasks, and link your calendar so that you never let anything fall through the cracks. And most importantly, it can be used by your entire team, so everyone has access to all of the information from anywhere (with permission controls to help you determine who's allowed to have access, of course.)
It's worth saying that Daylite is more focused on efficiency and project management than your average CRM. It's hyper-focused on helping small businesses grow at a crucial time, and the reviews say that it does a great job at that. Over 6,000 small businesses use Daylite and it's earned itself top reviews on sites like Capterra and GetApp. Take advantage of a 30-day free trial with Daylite right now and try it out for yourself.
If you're curious about what rapist Harvey Weinstein did in the days before before being locked up, this segment of Inside Edition has the details. They say he spent time with his two young children and saw a movie. He didn't spend time with his adult children from an earlier marriage. The last time he saw one of his daughters was in 2017 when he went to her house. She ended up calling 911 and told the operator that her father was suicidal.
According to the segment, Weinstein, who was supposed to go to Rikers Island is still at Bellevue Hospital. His publicist (can you believe he still has one?) told Inside Edition that his rapey client is in a "prison cell that's set up like a hospital, and right outside he has guards watching his door, and every place he goes he's on 24-hour watch. In fact everything he does, even the restroom and the walls are all clear plastic or glass so that people can monitor him 24/7."
There’s clearly a fortune to be made and a surfeit of material, judging by the acres of newsprint dedicated to Royal shenanigans in this week’s tabloids.
“Prince Andrew Attempts Suicide!” screams the cover of the ‘Globe,’ whose endless run of Royal exclusives can only be the result of an army of paid high-level courtier informants in every Royal palace and estate who monitor every conversation among the Windsor clan, and have listening devices planted in every Royal bedroom.
It’s hard to imagine how else they discovered Andrew’s “secret overdose nightmare."
It’s an impressive undercover operation and you have to admire the way they beat the Fleet Street Royal press pack week after week.
Admittedly, the ‘Globe' cover photo of Prince Andrew does look suspiciously Photoshopped to emphasize his ashen pallor and intensify the dark circles under his eyes, but that’s only fair when reporting on his “secret overdose nightmare.”
Andrew was "Brought back from the DEAD as new sex scandal EXPLODES,” the rag claims. A doctor and nurse “sworn to secrecy” - but clearly in the employ of the ‘Globe’ - pumped Andrew’s stomach after he was found by a bodyguard unconscious on the floor at Windsor’s Royal Lodge, with “his life hanging by a thread . . . with foam bubbling from his lips.” An empty bottle of prescription painkillers was allegedly found beside him.
There’s no mention of Andrew being taken to hospital, which you’d think would be a necessary precaution for someone of his stature, or of the likely dialysis of his blood to flush out the meds, or of the suicide watch he’d be under if such an attempt actually happened.
Frankly, it’s hard not to suspect that the Queen is personally feeding information to the media to sway public opinion in her favor.
That would explain ‘Us’ magazine’s story that reveals Her Majesty’s inner-most thoughts: “The Queen’s Revenge. ENOUGH! Demands immediate ‘MEGXIT’ with STRICT RULES. Strips Harry & Meghan’s ROYAL TITLES. Plans to crown Kate the NEW QUEEN.”
Once again, the Queen seems to be getting carried away with her own sense of omnipotent infallibility,
But despite the story apparently being fed to its headline-writers from Her Majesty’s lips, the story inside ‘Us’ doesn’t suggest for a single second that Kate is about to be crowned Queen, especially since Charles is next in line to the throne, and his wife Camilla might have a thing or two to say about that.
And though Harry & Meghan will no longer be known as His & Her Royal Highnesses, they have retained their Royal titles, and will continue as Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex. You can tell the Queen is behind this story leak because Meghan is accused of orchestrating the family rift. The Queen allegedly “blames Meghan for pulling the strings behind the scenes,” which seems like the pot calling the kettle black.
"An unnamed insider says that Harry is henpecked by his domineering wife: “The Queen thinks he’s being controlled like Meghan’s personal puppet, and it’s really nothing short of pitiful.”
You can see the Queen’s fingerprints all over the ‘National Enquirer’ cover story: “My family is NOT for sale! Queen Kills Meghan’s $1B Royal Payday! Bans duchess’ business peddling ROYAL brands. Harry’s RAGING wife threatens TV tell-all.”
Unnamed “high-level courtiers” and a “senior aide” warn that Meghan could “embarrass her royal in-laws by starring in a raunchy movie and play a sexy stripper like Jennifer Lopez did in ‘Hustlers.’ Right. That’s going to happen. Don’t be surprised if next week we’re told that the Queen has bought the rights to ‘Deep Throat’ just to make sure Meghan can’t star in a remake.
Meanwhile, the Queen is clearly pushing the family values of slavishly obedient Prince William and Duchess Kate, who according to the ‘Enquirer' “spice up their love life” by setting aside two nights a week to “relax, enjoy a home-cooked meal, then snuggle on the couch and have early nights” claims a source. How racy. That’ll spice up any love life.
Back in the real world, the ‘Enquirer’ tells us: “Elton John May Never Sing Again!”
Or he may sing again. He’s had a bout of pneumonia, which isn’t exactly known for ending singing careers - unless it kills you. Which of course is precisely where the ‘Globe’ goes with its story: “Fears Elton Has Months To Live.”
He is evidently “so frail he’ll be dead by September!” Or he won’t. How serious is his illness? An insider reveals: “He’s been told to slow down his schedule.” Well, it doesn’t get more life-or-death than that.
The tabloid obsession with celebrities’ weight continues unabated.
“Holy Cow!” proclaims a particularly cruel ‘Enquirer’ headline. "Baywatch Babe Packs On 100 Lbs!” Evidently actress Yasmine Bleeth isn’t allowed to age gracefully. Once a Baywatch Babe, always a Baywatch Babe, the Enquirer seems to believe. No doubt that the health-conscious rag’s editorial staff all look and weight the same as they did in their twenties.
The ‘Globe’ notes “once-beautiful” actress Ashley Judd’s “swollen face,” apparently the result of medication and Botox injections to treat crippling “siege migraine” headaches.
The rag then attacks “women-hating savages” who have criticized Judd’s “puffy puss.” They’re all heart.
The ‘Enquirer’ continues its commitment to public service with Week Five of its never-ending feature on “perv priests,” filling another two pages with the small-print names of dead and defrocked men of Catholic cloth. This alphabetical state-by-state trawl through “America’s Dirty Clergy" is still only up to Minnesota, promising weeks more lists of disgraced sexual abusers. Since the ‘Enquirer’ isn’t outing a single priest who hasn’t already been publicly identified, it’s really one of the publication’s more enervating features in recent memory.
As an antidote to all that sleaze ‘People’ mag brings us a saccharine collection of feel-good interviews in which celebrities are just so gosh-darn wholesome and aw-shucks good to know.
Comedy star Melissa McCarthy is this week’s cover girl, with the sage advice: “Life is short. Just be yourself.” She talks about “finding laughter every day . . and why we should celebrate each other’s quirks.”
Perhaps she should talk to the Queen about finding laughter in Harry & Meghan’s shenanigans, and celebrating her second son’s quirky friendship with a disgraced pedophile billionaire.
Rocker Sting tells ‘People’ mag “What I know,” most of which sounds like advice from a self-help app on his smart phone: He never forgets where he came from, stays grounded, and lives life without regrets, rather like a living Hallmark card.
Recovering alcoholic Ben Affleck, playing a recovering alcoholic in his latest movie ‘The Way Back,’ reminds us that he’s a recovering alcoholic in his AA-tinged interview with ‘People,’ confessing the realization: "You can get better. You can change your life.”
But apparently you can’t stop talking about it. ‘People’ mag is just the latest stop on Affleck's continuing self-recrimination-filled, make-amends, apologize-for-everything sobriety sob-a-thon, reading like an ode to Step 4 and Step 9 of the 12 step program.
If you’ve ever seen a Ben Affleck movie expect a phone call from him any day now apologizing for any harm he may have inflicted on you, and offering to make amends.
Fortunately we have the crack investigative squad at ‘Us’ to tell us that La La Anthony wore it best, that Keke Palmer is “starting cooking classes soon” (news you can use!), that actress D’Arcy Carden carries gum, keys and gold-painted toy dinosaurs in her Chloé Vick tote, and that the stars are just like us: they carry their luggage, shop for groceries, and feed parking meters, just as they do every damn week. If the paparazzi could be bothered hanging out anywhere but airports, supermarkets and high streets, we’d have some more interesting shots of the stars behaving like regular folk.
As if the coronavirus isn’t scary enough, the ‘Globe’ brings us yet one more thing to worry about: “Your Cash Could Kill You!” Explaining that “the real danger to YOU AND AMERICA is U.S. currency - which fuels China’s huge black market - returning to our shores and triggering national panic and economic chaos.”
Under this Doomsday scenario, “Getting a couple of dollar bills in change at a local store could KILL YOU.” And that’s in capital letters because presumably it wouldn’t be scary enough if it was just going to “kill you.”
Surely it can’t be long before some heavenly-inspired Televangelist instructs true believers to send him all their tainted cash to be prayed over and spiritually cleansed of all disease for the greater glory of the Lord. Amen to that.
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