I’m in the process of divorcing my good-for-nothing, lazy, hateful wife. For years she has stayed at home, where she spent my money and had me subsidize her lifestyle while she supposedly was doing the “hard work” of raising children. Whenever I came home from a busy, hectic day, she would throw the kids at me, then sit on her phone while I did all the heavy lifting; on weekends, she would harangue me if I had the audacity to go out with friends when she has no friends of her own and expected me to be her entertainment. She complained that she never had a day off, but what about me?
We’re divorcing now, and she’s whining to everyone that she’s going to be penniless, that I’m throwing her out and she’s going to be homeless. She’s complaining that she gave up her career to take care of the kids. One of them is special needs but his needs aren’t that bad (just a feeding tube and wheelchair and a few weakness issues). I know she used it as an excuse to quit her job that she hated. She is lazy and spiteful and I don’t want to give her an ounce of my money, but I know my story isn’t sympathetic, and I’m afraid she’s going to take me to the cleaners. What can I do?
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Eternals is the latest film belonging to that great, teeming, not-so-riotous achievement in cross-platform multi-vertical corporate synergy/narrative cat-herding known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
You perhaps read the above and rolled your eyes. Maybe you muttered something unkind under your breath as well. If you didn’t, you assuredly know someone who did. That’s just simple statistics: Superhero films have become our cultural furniture; they’re the steady, unceasing hiss of universal background radiation none of us can escape.
And today, with the debut of every new film and television show, more and more prospective audience members find themselves aching to escape, to rid themselves forever of these children’s characters and their microweave pajamas and their hypertrophic musculature and their too-tidy, infantilizing morality tales.
It’s not a backlash, really, because backlash suggests a reflexive reaction driven by a sudden, overwhelming need to reject, to force out, to detoxify. What some critics and audiences are manifesting now, as they find themselves wading clavicle-deep through whatever particular numbered MCU Phase we find ourselves in, is something softer and sadder — a weariness bred by familiarity.
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Ikaris (Richard Madden) and Sersi (Gemma Chan) in Eternals. Sophie Mutevelian/Marvel Studios
Jakarta, officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (Indonesian: Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta), is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java (the world’s most populous island), it is the largest city in Southeast Asia, and also serves as the diplomatic capital of ASEAN. Jakarta is the center of the economy, culture, and politics of Indonesia. It has a province-level status which had a population of 10,562,088 as of 2020. Although Jakarta extends over only 664.01 square kilometers (256.38 sq mi), and thus has the smallest area of any Indonesian province, its metropolitan area covers 9,957.08 square kilometers (3,844.45 sq mi), which includes the satellite cities Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, South Tangerang, and Bekasi, and has an estimated population of 35 million as of 2021, making it the largest urban area in Indonesia and Southeast Asia and the second-largest in the world (after Tokyo), with a current population of 33,718,269 as of 2020. Jakarta ranks first among the Indonesian states in human development index. Jakarta’s business opportunities, and its ability to offer a potentially higher standard of living than is available in other parts of the country, have attracted migrants from across the Indonesian archipelago, making it a melting pot of numerous cultures.
Jakarta is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Southeast Asia. Established in the fourth century as Sunda Kelapa, the city became an important trading port for the Sunda Kingdom. At one time, it was the de facto capital of the Dutch East Indies, when it was known as Batavia. Jakarta was officially a city within West Java until 1960 when its official status was changed to a province with special capital region distinction. As a province, its government consists of five administrative cities and one administrative regency. Jakarta is an alpha world city and is the seat of the ASEAN secretariat, Financial institutions such as the Bank of Indonesia, Indonesia Stock Exchange, and corporate headquarters of numerous Indonesian companies and multinational corporations are located in the city. In 2017, the city’s GRP PPP was estimated at US$483.4 billion.
Jakarta’s primary challenges include rapid urban growth, ecological breakdown, gridlocked traffic, congestion, and flooding. Jakarta is sinking up to 17 cm (6.7 inches) per year, which, coupled with the rising of sea levels, has made the city more prone to flooding. It is one of the fastest-sinking capitals in the world. In August 2019, as a result of these challenges, President Joko Widodo announced that the capital of Indonesia would be moved from Jakarta to the province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. The city has over 35 colleges and universities, including University of Indonesia, State University of Jakarta, and the University of National Development “Veteran” Jakarta. Wikipedia
Here’s a chilling statistic for you: According to the CDC, Up to 40 percent of annual deaths in the US are preventable. Their causes range from unintentional injuries to heart disease.
More terrifying still is that this percentage is estimated to increase in the future. And even if we manage to reach old age, perhaps we’ll have to endure diseases that significantly reduce the quality of our days. As Norman Lazarus, an octogenarian doctor famous for his enviable health, says in his book, The Lazarus Strategy, “the number of people living with four or more diseases will nearly double between the years of 2015 and 2035.”
In recent years, BBC Culture has conducted an annual poll of film critics, experts, and industry figures from around the world to decide on the greatest films in a particular category: you may have come across our 100 greatest films directed by women list in 2019 and our 100 greatest non-English language films in 2018, among others. However, this year, it felt about time that we turned our attention to another art form: television. That’s in part because TV has played such a crucial role in many of our lives over the past 18 months when we have relied on it for information, entertainment, solace, and inspiration in equal measure.
But also it felt like the right time to survey the television landscape because arguably it has been the defining art form of the past 21 years: where once, rightly or wrongly, it was largely patronized as cinema’s younger, more rough-and-ready sibling, today its artistic credibility is unassailable, while the advent of streaming platforms has also given shows the ability to reach unprecedented global audiences all at once. And so, in order to mark TV’s ascendancy, we have decided to ask the question: what are the greatest TV series of the 21st Century?
La Huasteca is a geographical and cultural region located partially along the Gulf of Mexico and including parts of the states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Puebla, Hidalgo, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro and Guanajuato. It is roughly defined as the area in which the Huastec people had influence when their civilization was at its height during the Mesoamerican period. Today, the Huastecs occupy only a fraction of this region with the Nahua people now the most numerous indigenous group. However, those who live in the region share a number of cultural traits such as a style of music and dance, along with religious festivals such as Xantolo.
Historically and ethnically, the Huasteca region is defined by the area dominated by the Huastecs at their height. The actual extension of the region is somewhat disputed as well as how it should be sub-divided. Geographically it has been defined as from the Sierra Madre Oriental to the Gulf of Mexico with the Sierra de Tamaulipas as the north border and the Cazones River as the south. It extends over the south of Tamaulipas, the southeast of San Luis Potosí, the northeast of Querétaro and Hidalgo, and the extreme north of Veracruz and Puebla and a very small portion of Guanajuato over an area of about 32,000km2. Wikipedia
Comedians Bobcat Goldthwait and Dana Gould were premiering their new documentary comedy special Joy Ride at the Moontower Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas, earlier this fall where “Jerry Seinfeld is a god,” and as the section of the film about Goldthwait’s decades-long feud with that iconic comedian approached, he started to get a little nervous.
“I was relieved when they burst into applause after I said, ‘Jerry Seinfeld finally has an opinion and it’s about me,’” Goldthwait tells me on this week’s episode of The Last Laugh podcast. “I was really happy to hear comedy nerds laughing at that.”
“Hot dog buns and Bobcat Goldthwait, the two things that get his goat,” Gould jokes.
Goldthwait goes on to explain in the film how Seinfeld used an episode of his show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee—or “Rich Comedians in Cars Bitching About Their Diamond Shoes Being Too Tight,” as he calls it—to attack him during a conversation with the comedian Bridget Everett.
“If you’re funny, you win. If you’re not funny, you don’t,” Seinfeld says in the episode. “And he’s not funny. That’s why he had to do that stupid fucking voice. Because you have no fucking act!” Everett, who has to then tell Seinfeld she is good friends with Goldthwait, laughs uncomfortably throughout his rant.
You know what feels like a little bit of a rip-off? Sunday night prep. And I use that term liberally — I’m talking about meal planning, house cleaning, getting a jump-start on your work to-do list, even taking off chippy nail polish and replacing it with a fresh coat. Yes, I do all of these things because they are practical and they’re a good way to ease into Monday morning. I’m not disputing their usefulness — just that we have a limited number of weekend hours at our disposal, and yet we’ve all collectively decided to spend a chunk of them being weekday-style productive. Wouldn’t the weekend feel so much longer if we spent it, well, weekending?
Sort of. As it turns out, my bitterness is slightly, but not entirely, misplaced: Dedicating every Sunday evening to the same old routine really does make it seem like the weekend is rapidly disappearing from under you. But then again, lazing around in your pj’s has the same effect.
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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