ombelico

When Jack was 14, it was before the blackout, so that was when The Beatles (and thus, Oasis) existed. I think the Oasis joke went a bit over the heads of the older crowd in the theater where I saw it today, but I definitely found it hilarious.

Yes, I was sure he meant "learning" the songs as in "learning to play" them. It's one thing to be familiar with Beatles songs and to be able to sing most of the words correctly (vast swaths of us can claim that), but it's another thing entirely to learn how to play them on guitar and sing them as best you can with no missed lyrics, etc.

I thought she had some sort of grill (or partial grill) in. No earthly reason why that should be necessary, though. Or why she thinks it's attractive (if she does).

The thing that puzzled me about Lularoe, and what finally got me to stop buying their clothes (I got into it because a friend of mine became a consultant and was touting it on Facebook, relatively soon after I moved to a new place where the clothes shopping options were rather thin), was that some of their clothes were actually rather cute or had pretty patterns. The dresses, in particular, weren't all that bad and didn't have some of the crazy patterns that the leggings did. But then the bulk of the stuff was just eyesores that were not marketable at all. They clearly had the ability to design some cute stuff, so why did they design so many ugly things? That's when I discovered that the consultants didn't even get to choose what they would be responsible for selling, and couldn't return items that wouldn't sell. I realized it was a scam and immediately stopped buying or wearing any of it. Now it's all gone to Goodwill. I feel a bit stupid that I bought as much as I did, and I didn't invest nearly as much money as these well-meaning women who in almost all cases were just trying to make some extra income for their families. It was a total scam and I hope that people are now more educated about all of these MLM companies so I'm glad that FFwSB and John Oliver are bringing attention to the problem. (I just checked and realized that while I have referred to Lularoe in the past tense, it seems they are still operating. So I guess it's even more urgent than ever to get the word out about this and similar companies.)

Yes, but the rapping in Spanish was fantastic. She'll "make you an offer you can't refuse." Ha!

The Twitter comments on this post suggest that Medvedeva was the target. Poor girl. I may not always care for her skating but I've never had the impression that she is anything but a kind, sweet person.

Linda Fairstein resigned from Vassar Board of Trustees

I was thinking about this contrast as well - the humans had to suffer an unimaginable horror because of the lack of euthanasia, but the animals are given the mercy of a quick death. I understand the hospital may have been uninformed about what the firefighters were going to go through but seeing the shape those men were in, truly a bullet to the head and a quick end would have been far more humane and compassionate.

The exact description she told her parents (according to the statement in court) was, “When Larry rubs my feet, he uses his penis.” I really can’t think of how a little kid would get an idea like that unless it actually happened to them. The parents were willfully calling their daughter a liar in not believing her.

“Glamorizing single motherhood, what planet is he on? Look at me Frank, am I glamorous?” ”Of course not, you look disgusting!” ”You’re damn right!”

Will Smith's story about his dad telling him that he was "the luckiest SOB" (or thereabouts) was funny but also Exhibit A of what makes him so exhausting - he never stops talking and even when he does have a funny story, he takes twice as long to tell it as necessary. Paraphrased: Octavia Spencer: "My bucket list item is to learn to belly-dance." Graham: "That doesn't sound that dangerous." OS: "You haven't seen my belly." 😂

I started the series not realizing that it had 8 episodes. By the time I got to the end of the fifth episode, I checked and couldn't believe there were still 3 whole episodes left. So I definitely agree that it was far too long. Unfortunately, since we still don't know what happened to Madeleine, watching a documentary on the case is always going to be frustrating since there still aren't any answers. Part of the length was taken up by the plodding way many of the interviews were conducted, both in Portuguese and English. The whole thing could have benefited from much better editing. We don't need a shot of the American flag every time we hop over to talk to the guy in DC from the NCMEC. But overall I was impressed that they used the McCann case to highlight other cases in Portugal and in the UK, along with the larger problems of child predators and human trafficking. The local prosecutor reminded me a lot of Giuliano Mignini, the prosecutor in the Amanda Knox case. Especially when this documentary brought up the previous case where the prosecutor and police accused the brother and sister of incest, then killing and chopping up the little girl, Joana, I flashed to the "Satanic sex game gone wrong" theory that Mignini kept putting forward in the Knox case. The Portuguese prosecutor here just seemed completely overwhelmed and misguided, with investigative "techniques" that were behind the times, but with too much pride to admit he was in over his head and accept outside investigative help.

I think the Royal Etiquette sketch would have been problematic if the joke was just that Leslie couldn't learn to "properly" stir tea. But Emma's instruction was so outrageous that no one could learn anything from her, no matter who the student was. I found it more a sendup of traditional British "stick your pinky in the air while you drink your tea" manners.

When Dr. Turner showed up at the prostitute's door and said "I'm here in a professional capacity," my heart sank thinking "Have you been there in some other capacity?" I swear if they turned Dr. Turner into a philanderer frequenting hookers I would never be able to watch the show again. I was very relieved when that didn't turn out to be the case. ETA Mother Mildred's departure gave me strong Mary Poppins "I'll stay until the wind changes" vibes.

Yes, she didn't go into it but the mention that to her father, someone who makes false accusations was "the worst kind of person" leads me to speculate that there was something along those lines in the family history, that either he or a relative had been wrongfully accused of something (or at least that was his perception of the issue). It doesn't excuse his not believing his own daughter, though.

This film certainly does the most comprehensive job I've seen yet in linking Nassar's abuse to the overall culture in USA Gymnastics. Somehow I didn't find it as shocking or moving as "Leaving Neverland," but I think that's primarily because as an ardent fan of gymnastics, I've been following this story closely from the very beginning. I don't think there was really any new "news" in here about the Nassar matter that I wasn't already aware of. But I'm glad it's all in one place for those viewers who were not paying as close attention before. The part I found most shocking was the x-ray of Isabell Hutchins' fibula. How was she even standing on that leg? John Geddert needs to be thrown in jail for the rest of his life on child abuse charges, no question.

Kate's Queen Elizabeth = Kate's Theresa May = Kate's random-British-woman

Never underestimate what fear can do to people. The Boies law firm was incredibly threatening to Theranos workers, current and former. They saw what happened to former co-workers who spoke up and/or quit. Then they were living and working in Silicon Valley, one of the most expensive places to live in the country. These were not necessarily people that could afford hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Yes, it would have been more honorable to speak up, but I can understand why some really did not feel at the time that they were in a place to do so. Also, the Theranos setup was very silo-ed, such that each worker was only privy to and aware of a small component. It was hard for any given individual to see the full scope of the fraud. IIRC, Tyler only figured it out the full truth when he was moved from one department to another. I find it interesting that both this documentary and the 20/20 episode were each only 2 hours long. There are so many layers to this story that two hours just isn't sufficient. They could do 5 2-hour episodes and there would still be stuff left out.

My favorite part about the Japanese crowd is how they wave flags for each skater's country, to make them feel more at home. I don't think I've ever seen another crowd do that.

http://www.espn.com/espnw/sports/article/26322939/ucla-gymnast-katelyn-ohashi-new-floor-routine-viral-star-removes-michael-jackson-music-leaving-neverland

The hair and makeup are one thing, and even the voice is admittedly weird, but for me it's the bugging out eyes and the unblinking stare that are the most profoundly bizarre aspects of her appearance. Coupled with the description of her sleeping 4 hours a night, I would not be shocked at all if she was on cocaine or some other stimulant.

Fair point but the reason I'm not willing to let her (or the media) off here is that it was framed as "this revolutionary idea she came up with in her Stanford dorm room, led her to drop out of college, and create a multimillion dollar company." When a scientific finding or device moves from academia to industry, there are at least some publications or other form of evidence that the effect/tool is real, but needs the larger amounts of private/industry funding to refine the machine/tool, move the drug to clinical trials, and so on. All she ever sold was the idea, and she never had any scientific basis for what she was saying. This was what Dr. Phyllis Gardner was getting at - Holmes would get these "ideas" but they were misinformed and not scientifically sound, but Holmes wouldn't care and would go on to bulldoze anyone who didn't agree with her. There's a reason she focused on getting financial support from non-scientists - they wouldn't be able to see through the fraud. Right - she sold it as her idea and "vision", and even though she hired scientists to implement it, when they would come back and tell her it wouldn't work, she didn't take their expertise and experience into account, she just narcissistically said that they weren't committed enough to the "vision" and fired them. She had/has no real respect for science and technology, but she wanted to be seen as the Steve Jobs of biomedical research.

When he said that I immediately said, "And you would know!" I think I first heard about Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos story when she was profiled in Fortune, or thereabouts. Immediately something didn't about the story didn't pass the smell test - a college dropout (don't care if it was from Stanford) working in biomedical "research" with no qualifications, no peer-reviewed publications, but able to start a multi-million (eventually billion) dollar company? When real scientists spend years, decades even, toiling away in courses, lab research, publishing papers, writing grants, and defending their work to a perpetually skeptical field of experts? And the idea that you could run hundreds of tests on such a small amount of blood? One test, I could maybe buy, but not that many. But I still wouldn't have conceived of the level of sociopathy and fraud involved in the story. She never had a new technology! Ever! This is really a story for the ages. Dr. Phyllis Gardner is fantastic. I just want to travel around with her and hear her snark on pseudoscience and charlatans all day long.

I've been thinking about the extent to which the recalcitrance to acknowledge and accept that MJ was a true pedophile stems from his original start as a beloved and adorable child star. It's so easy to think of pedophiles as being so out there, so weird, so "other," that it just brings a lot of cognitive dissonance to see that little kid singing "A-B-C" and think that he grew up to be a pedophile. But acknowledging what appears to be the truth in this case is actually a good illustration of the fact that these people have to come from somewhere. MJ's story is obviously an extreme in so many aspects, unlikely to be duplicated again (fortunately), but I think there are also lessons in there about the cycle of abuse, the problems when family members and associates bury their heads in the sand, and the danger of not listening to your gut instinct and thinking "so-and-so would never do that."