Randomly Posting Stuff...
 

Randomly posting cause you feel like it.
 

If I get a new partner I promise her I will take her to France. (will only take an hour lol)

Randomly posting stuff cause you feel like it
 

I wish to say once and for all, do NOT post your own opinion if it differs in any way from the group. I am not surprised that many have stopped posting as unless it is a joke or what you had for dinner do not go beyond that. Eventually someone will pick you out to criticize you. Forget it.

Dave Chappelle’s Brittle Ego
 

Dave Chappelle’s Brittle Ego by Roxane Gay

Ms. Gay, a contributing New York Times Opinion writer, is the editor of “The Selected Works of Audre Lorde” and the author of the memoir “Hunger,” among other books.

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Credit: Art Streiber

We generally have the same debates about comedy over and over. Let’s address those upfront: Art should be made without restriction. Free speech reigns supreme. Sometimes good art should make us uncomfortable, and sometimes bad people can make good art. Comedians, in particular, are going to punch up and down and side-to-side.

Also true: Comedy is not above criticism, even if the most famous, wildly wealthy comedians will keep insulting those who question them. It’s just laughs, right? Lighten up. All criticism is forestalled with this setup, in which when you object to anything a comedian says, you’re the problem. You’re the one who’s narrow-minded or “brittle” or humorless.

“Shut up,” Dave Chappelle recalls telling a woman who had the gall to challenge his comedy, using a sexist slur and laughing at how witty he is, as if he’s the first man to ever deliver such an original, funny line. “Before I kill you and put you in the trunk. Ain’t nobody around here.” The audience cheers, before Mr. Chappelle explains that he didn’t in fact threaten the woman: “I felt that way, but that’s not what I said. I was more clever than that.”

Mr. Chappelle spends much of “The Closer,” his latest comedy special for Netflix, cleverly deflecting criticism. The set is a 72-minute display of the comedian’s own brittleness. The self-proclaimed “GOAT” (greatest of all time) of stand-up delivers five or six lucid moments of brilliance, surrounded by a joyless tirade of incoherent and seething rage, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia.

If there is brilliance in “The Closer,” it’s that Mr. Chappelle makes obvious but elegant rhetorical moves that frame any objections to his work as unreasonable. He’s just being “brutally honest.” He’s just saying the quiet part out loud. He’s just stating “facts.” He’s just making us think. But when an entire comedy set is designed as a series of strategic moves to say whatever you want and insulate yourself from valid criticism, I’m not sure you’re really making comedy.

Throughout the special, Mr. Chappelle is singularly fixated on the L.G.B.T.Q. community, as he has been in recent years. He reaches for every low-hanging piece of fruit and munches on it gratuitously. Many of Mr. Chappelle’s rants are extraordinarily dated, the kind of comedy you might expect from a conservative boomer, agog at the idea of homosexuality. At times, his voice lowers to a hoarse whisper, preparing us for a grand stroke of wisdom — but it never comes. Every once in a while, he remarks that, oh, boy, he’s in trouble now, like a mischievous little boy who just can’t help himself.

Somewhere, buried in the nonsense, is an interesting and accurate observation about the white gay community conveniently being able to claim whiteness at will. There’s a compelling observation about the relatively significant progress the L.G.B.T.Q. community has made, while progress toward racial equity has been much slower. But in these formulations, there are no gay Black people. Mr. Chappelle pits people from different marginalized groups against one another, callously suggesting that trans people are performing the gender equivalent of blackface.

In the next breath, Mr. Chappelle says something about how a Black gay person would never exhibit the behaviors to which he objects, an assertion many would dispute. The poet Saeed Jones, for example, wrote in GQ that watching “The Closer” felt like a betrayal: “I felt like I’d just been stabbed by someone I once admired and now he was demanding that I stop bleeding.”

Later in the show, Mr. Chappelle offers rambling thoughts on feminism using a Webster’s Dictionary definition, further exemplifying how limited his reading is. He makes a tired, tired joke about how he thought “feminist” meant “frumpy dyke” — and hey, I get it. If I were on his radar, he would consider me a frumpy dyke, or worse. (Some may consider that estimation accurate. Fortunately my wife doesn’t.) Then in another of those rare moments of lucidity, Mr. Chappelle talks about mainstream feminism’s historical racism. Just when you’re thinking he is going to right the ship, he starts ranting incoherently about #MeToo. I couldn’t tell you what his point was there.

This is a faded simulacrum of the once-great comedian, who now uses his significant platform to air grievances against the great many people he holds in contempt, while deftly avoiding any accountability. If we don’t like his routine, the message is, we are the problem, not him.

This toxic performance crescendos when Mr. Chappelle shares a heartbreaking story about his trans friend Daphne Dorman, a comedian, who died by suicide — suggesting that if she was fine with his comedy, how dare anyone else have a problem? The story is bittersweet and sometimes funny, and then it is tragic, and the worst part is that Mr. Chappelle is clearly so very pleased with himself when he gets to the punchline. He thinks he has won an argument when really, he is exploiting the death of a friend. For comedy. Of course, we don’t know Ms. Dorman at all; pushing back against this portrayal twists us in an impossible bind. Once more, Mr. Chappelle forestalls any resistance.

One of the strangest but most telling moments in “The Closer” is when Mr. Chappelle defends DaBaby, a rapper in the news for making pretty egregious homophobic remarks, and his fellow comedian Kevin Hart, who once lost an Oscars hosting gig for … making homophobic remarks. Both men faced professional consequences for their missteps, but neither was canceled: Mr. Hart remains one of the highest-paid comedians in the world. DaBaby has more than 43 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

At the end of his special, Mr. Chappelle admonishes the L.G.B.T.Q. community one last time, imploring us to leave his “people” alone. If it wasn’t clear from his words, the snapshots of him with his famous pals in the closing credits of “The Closer” make it abundantly clear that Dave Chappelle’s people aren’t men or women or Black people. His people are wealthy celebrities, and he resents even the possibility of them facing consequences for their actions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/o...lix-trans.html

Thinking of sweet Boots
 

That isn't a photo of Boots, just a stock photo that reminds me of him. He didn't have a white nose, but he had white paws.

Just in time for Halloween
 

Warning might be triggering for some people.

Sane ones.

Proceed at your own risk.

every fall a hillside along oregon's highway 18 greets passersby with a massive smiley face formed by trees. ... the larch trees have been organized in such way that during autumn, their needles turn yellow, creating the body of the face while the douglas fir makes up the eyes and mouth.

That has nothing to do with the type of trees planted it's a crop circle. Just the alien's way of saying happy holidays, each year, every winter.

Oy veh, jocularity for most of us, but some people actually buy that explanation FSF! I'm constantly amazed at the schlock some people believe.
It's a nice photo, though.

Randomly Posting Stuff Cause I Feel Like It.
 

When I went to the casino down 18 in 2019 I saw this and was amazed. I looked it up and sure enough it was put there as an interest for passers by to view. Done by a logging company. They hope it will last as it will age as it grows apparently but interesting to see. ty Besame'.

Cuteness alert! Babies, some in hospitals, dressed and posed in halloween costumes.
 

Cuteness alert! Babies, some in hospitals, dressed and posed in halloween costumes.

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Cause I feel like it
 

ty Orema, if these are for order I will take the one with the purple wings. What a bunch of sweet babies.

I know. They’re just adorable.

These kinds of photos were featured on the local news yesterday. Below is a link to the article with more photos. For some reason, I couln’t borrow (cough, cough) the photos from this website yesteday, but I found the ones below on the internets.

Glad you enjoyed them, Stone-Butch.

https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rap...-hospital.html

You Feel Like It
 

OMG that little purple mermaid and the little one holding hard to his pumpkin are so so so adorable. Babies are so easy to make you smile. ty Orema that made my day when not much else does.

Actually I do believe in the existence of aliens. Why? Well because I've had contact, encounter type experiences all my life. It's just something I don't talk about much. Anymore I'm bored with the argument and besides I'm not here on this planet to try and make a believer out of anyone. How fair would that be? I mean there are times I can scarcely believe it myself and I'm the one it's happened to!

I don't think it's crazy to believe in aliens. Or that just because a person is crazy they couldn't have seen real ones. In any case what does it matter? As long as a person isn't harming anyone... so what if they believe the Tooth Fairy is real and she's married to Santa Claus? To my mind, way of thinking throughout history it's far more often been a belief in an angry vengeful God the source of human misery, cause of suffering than any belief in aliens. Or Santa Claus. Or the Tooth Fairy.

Cause I Feel Like It
 

Well I got a little more of "cool" weather than I counted on LOL. It is now 32 F or up here 0 C. Sunny and freezing.

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Adrienne Waheed, from Black Joy And Resistance

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A U.S. military service member speaks with Afghan children in the recreation area of an Afghan refugee camp at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., on Nov. 4. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images/from washingtonpost.com)

Randomly Posting Stuff...
 

Keanu Reeves 💛
 

This is Matrix movie star Keanu Reeves. He was abandoned by his father at 3 years old and grew up with 3 different stepfathers. He is dyslexic. His dream of becoming a hockey player was shattered by a serious accident. His daughter died at birth. His wife died in a car accident. His best friend, River Phoenix, died of an overdose. His sister battled leukemia.

No bodyguards, no luxury houses. Keanu lives in an ordinary apartment and likes wandering around town and often seen riding a subway in NYC.
When he was filming the movie "The Lake House," he overheard the conversation of two costume assistants, one crying as he would lose his house if he did not pay $20,000 - On the same day, Keanu deposited the necessary amount in his bank account. In his career, he has donated large sums to hospitals including $75 million of his earnings from “The Matrix” to charities.

In 2010, on his birthday, Keanu walked into a bakery & bought a brioche with a single candle, ate it in front of the bakery, and offered coffee to people who stopped to talk to him.

In 1997 some paparazzi found him walking one morning in the company of a homeless man in Los Angeles, listening to him and sharing his life for a few hours.

In life, sometimes the ones most broken from inside are the ones most willing to help others.

This man could buy everything, and instead every day he gets up and chooses one thing that cannot be bought to be a caring person. :stillheart:

Randomly Posting Stuff Cause you Feel like it.
 

Family dinners, family sing songs, family laughter, these are the only things that matter in the end.

Morgan Freeman 💖
 

Randomly Posting Stuff...
 

Cause you feel like it.
 

It is eerily dark and quiet after all the freezing rain stopped. Nothing to be heard but cars off in the distance. Talk about silent night, but I really like it.

Jump Ropes
 

This Simple Piece of Equipment Could Elevate Your Workout

A jump rope can increase your agility and speed while giving you a great workout in half the time of a run.

By Rachel Fairbank
Jan. 7, 2022

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Photo of Bernadette Henry borrowed from the internets.

If you’ve ever seen Bernadette Henry jump rope, as she often does around New York City, it’s hard to believe she ever does anything else. As the swings of her rope blur into a multi-curved arc, she hops, skips and jumps in a quick, ever-changing pattern, two separate rhythms stitched into a complex and dizzying dance.

For Ms. Henry, who teaches jump rope classes, juggles a full-time job as a caseworker and cares for her three children, two of whom are autistic, it’s the portability, versatility and high-intensity nature of jump rope that appeals to her. “I love jump rope because of how much work you can get in in such little time,” she said.

As we face another winter of pandemic stress and potentially limited access to gyms, finding new at-home workouts will be crucial. And a number of studies are showing that jump rope is an incredible tool for building strength, speed and agility, even if you weren’t gifted with a lot of athletic ability. It’s also a workout that can be done just about anywhere, with very little equipment, while exercising the entire body.

“The possibilities are endless, as long as you have some space and are on a good surface,” Ms. Henry said.

Jump rope increases speed and power.

In a recent meta-analysis of 21 studies, published in the Journal of Sports Sciences, jump training was linked to faster running times for endurance runners. That’s because when you are jumping, your foot hits the ground for shorter periods of time than while running.

“Less time spent on the ground is more time moving forward,” said Jason Moran, a researcher at the University of Essex and one of the authors of the paper. It’s this reduced contact time, along with the power it takes to push off from the ground, that helps increase speed in activities like running.

In addition to building speed, it also increases power. With the quick motion of jumping, your muscles and tendons have to contract and recoil faster, while still providing an equal amount of force. As Dr. Moran explained, while strength is the ability to exert force, power is the ability to do it within a certain time frame. Therefore, exerting the same amount of force in a shorter time frame builds power.

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Credit: Ryan Young for The New York Times

Your balance improves, as does your response time.

Any repetitive jumping activity increases the number and efficiency of fast-twitch muscle fibers, which are used in quick, explosive movements. “When you jump rope, fast-twitch muscles are firing faster and giving feedback to the brain quicker,” said Alysia Robichau, a former college gymnast and sports medicine doctor at Houston Methodist Hospital.

In addition to its athletic benefits, the connection between your fast-twitch muscle fibers and your brain is a major part of what keeps your body in balance, especially if you have to react quickly. As Dr. Robichau explained it, fast-twitch muscles are used for sprinting, but “they’re also used to prevent you from falling off the curb.”

As we age we lose muscle, with our fast-twitch muscles declining the fastest, which is one of the reasons older people have a higher risk of falling. Exercises such as jump rope can prevent or reverse that decline in places like calves, hamstrings and quadriceps.

You gain increased bone density.

Bone tissue is dynamic, engaged in a constant cycle of building and breaking down. When your bones are put under repeated stress, such as by jumping rope, it stimulates them to build back thicker and stronger.

High-impact activities like jump rope have been shown to provide a force that is high enough to build bone density. Compared to other, lower-impact exercises, “this is going to be much better for you in terms of building your bone density,” said Dr. Michael Fredericson, an orthopedic surgeon at Stanford University School of Medicine.

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Research shows that exercises involving jumping build bone strength and explosive power while helping to stabilize joints. Credit: Ryan Young for The New York Times

Mixing it up can reduce injury.

All of the different movements in jump rope, such as hopping, skipping or shuffling, offer a more varied form of movement than what you get from something like running, where you are doing a single repetitive motion.

“You’re working the bone in different directions, as well as your muscles,” Dr. Fredericson said. This is what he calls a more multidirectional type of training, which research suggests can help prevent overuse injuries.

In his practice, Dr. Fredericson treats a lot of recreational tennis players with tennis leg, a torn calf muscle often caused by performing a rapid movement, such as pushing off to reach a shot. Most players, he said, are not training their calves for such quick, explosive movements. Jump rope, which is a similar motion, can help prevent this.

Start slow, give your body time to adapt.

Jump rope requires lower body strength and coordination, but you can develop the skill with a little patience and consistency. Working your way up to 10 minutes of continuous jumping is hard in many of the same ways that working up to 30 minutes of running is, so it’s important to start off slow, to give your body enough time to adapt. “Stay within your own pace,” Ms. Henry said.

Going slow is especially important if you are just starting to work out after a period of inactivity, if your body isn’t used to the impact of jumping or if you are recovering from injuries. It’s also important to speak with your doctor before starting any new exercise program.

In the beginning, it may be enough to do one or two jumps at a time, until you have enough awareness of how your feet and the rope are supposed to move together. Or try jumping in place as a way to break it into simpler components. Stand as you would normally, with the jump rope behind you, and jump without swinging the rope. This will help you become comfortable with the movement of jumping, while also establishing the coordination of holding the rope as you jump.

You can also swing the rope over your head, letting it stop before it reaches your feet, at which point you step over it to develop a sense of timing for when the rope will hit the ground.

Once your body is used to jumping, it shouldn’t feel too hard. “You want to be relaxed and easy in your movements,” said Dwight Pratchett, a former professional boxer and boxing coach based in Houston. “When you tense up, you use up your gas too fast.” For Mr. Pratchett, jump rope has been a valuable tool for improving footwork and aerobic capacity, both in his work as a coach, as well as his own fitness regimen.

If jumping doesn’t feel right, it’s important to look at your form. “You want to really nail down the basics,” Ms. Henry said. This includes jumping on the balls of your feet, rather than flat-footed, with a slight bend to your knees. In the beginning, it’s best to jump with both feet at the same time, until you feel comfortable enough to start alternating.

“It’s hard to get that rhythm, but once you get it down, you can feel it,” Mr. Pratchett said. “It’s almost like dancing.”

The right equipment is essential.

It’s important to have the right jump rope and shoes. To find the right rope length, stand on the middle of the rope and pull it taut. The ends should then reach to your armpits. It’s better to jump on a softer surface, such as a rubber mat, but a wood or concrete floor works just fine, as long as your shoes are supportive.

If you are in a room with a lower ceiling or in a crowded area, you can still do a jump rope workout, although you may need to modify your technique and avoid the higher jumps. “The more you practice in a restrictive space, the more you get used to it,” said Ms. Henry.

She said that more than 20 years of jumping rope has helped her lose weight, reverse her pre-diabetes, reduce her blood pressure and keep her strong. It’s also an invaluable source of stress relief. When she is jumping rope, she’s not thinking about work or family or any of the many other demands in her life. “I feel like I am on vacation,” she said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/w...-exercise.html

Sisters are doing it for themselves.

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https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...er-lee-israel-

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Goodbye cold, long, cruel, Jan and .....
 

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Baskin-Robbins unveils new rose ice cream ahead of Valentine's Day..
 

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Baskin-Robbins is introducing a new decadent ice cream flavor to celebrate the month of love.

The new offering, dubbed "Secret Admirer," features pink cake flavored ice cream, swirled with a rose ice cream, and sealed with a sweet strawberry ribbon.

"The launch of Secret Admirer builds on our history of high-quality flavor innovation, offering unique elements like real rose extract that our guests may have never experienced before alongside familiar flavors,” said Jeanne Bolger, Baskin-Robbins' director of research & development.

“We are excited to introduce an ice cream that is both intriguing and festive in the spirit of Valentine’s Day,” she added.

https://sportshub.cbsistatic.com/i/2...=0.753:1,smart

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What has kept you together for almost 50 years?


R: Well Gai is tenacious and she doesn’t let go. She’s loyal and likes crazy women. It’s the real deal, that’s all.

G:I knew when I met Rhonda and I’ve always known. What really makes it work is waking up in the morning and saying “Who is this person?” Yes I know so much about her, but in ways I discover that I don’t know anything about her. It’s fantastic! @gaigherardi and @rhondadhawkins

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Golden Gate Park hosted San Francisco's largest outdoor display of AIDS Memorial Quilt last weekend. The public was able to view more than 3,000 hand-stitched panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt while it was on display June 11-12 at Golden Gate Park. (Photo courtesy of National AIDS Memorial)

https://localnewsmatters.org/2022/06...-this-weekend/