DramatistDreamer

Will Smith's company pitched and executive produced this movie. He is pretty much the reason it got made in the first place. Personally I had hoped he would have relegated himself to the producer but I also know that has never been Smith's way of doing things.

This probably belongs in the COVID-19 thread but it impacts Japan and the Olympic Games the most. This is pretty much a daily occurrence now.

I just had this V.O. in my head with a daytime soaps type announcer declare, "Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the role of _____ will now be played by..."

Practically too messy for words.

Hopefully Smith, who is likely to be the weak link, comes through on this one.

Did you hear her say that she didn't know where she was landing on her vault? She was flying blind. Having only done back walkovers, I am not in a position to judge someone in a sport where, if you land wrong, you can actually maim yourself. Speaking of accountability, Biles is the only gymnast on Team USA competing as a sexual assault victim for a gymnastics program that failed to take full accountability for wrecking tens if young girl's lives. I am not comparing these women against each at all. Both Venus and Serena have had mental health episodes, that cost them big. They suffered in silence for years. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I'm just saying appreciate these women. They are extraordinarily talented. They are also human, not robots.

George P. Bush looks like he's just withering on the vine these days, so to speak. I'm old enough to remember when some people were fawning all over him, like he were the conservative answer to 'John John', which I didn't understand, as he seemed fairly vacuous to me, with no ideas of his own. I guess he had hoped that he could be one of Orange Menace's favored vacuous politicians. No such luck for him, I guess. He humiliated himself and disparaged his family for nothing. Oh well.

Also, the lack of consideration for the fact that, along with the weight of expectations, in a city experiencing daily highs of infection rates for COVID-19, without her usual support system of her parents, and being the lone sexual assault survivor of Larry Nassar's "program" expected to compete for Team USA, a team that didn't protect her. F*CK these people who believe she asked for this because she's great at what she does. The discourse around these Black women athletes at this Olympic Games is disgusting and I just want to punch every single person who thinks he or she has the right to disparage them for being human.

After they had chair umpires (who are always right, haven't you heard?🙄) tell players that they don't believe them when the player complains of health problems being caused by excessive heat. After they throw players under the bus for 'poor performance', now they care.

Are we just going to pretend that the worst years for Lily and Holden weren't the last twelve or so years??

I never stopped wearing a mask. The CDC had a choice. They could have treated adult people like grown ups and laid it out, straight, no chaser about the choice between life and death. It's like last year, when they told people not to wear masks, instead of just being honest and saying that the national stockpile was low and that they needed those for hospital workers, care providers and essential workers and advise people to make their own. Yet they delayed.

Meanwhile, the ROC, which was created ostensibly, as a means for Russia to send a contingent of players to compete, despite a sports program that engaged in prolific doping for years, is scooping up medals, despite a supposed ban.

I don't see her playing to that age, but I could say the same of most of the WTA. Venus has played with an autoimmune disease since being diagnosed in 2011 (undiagnosed since 2006). Wozniacki retired about a year and a half after being diagnosed with RA. It's a bit unfair to all, to expect Osaka and the rest to live up to the standard that the Williams Sisters set. There is no one like either of them. Ashleigh Barty took nearly two years off from tennis to deal with her mental health struggles. When Venus and Serena's sister was gunned down, everybody in the tennis pundit-sphere practically had an opinion on how they thought both should be managing their careers and personal lives. I don't think Osaka asked the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Committee to make her the torch-lighter, but there was no way she was going to turn down what is essentially an honor. And Japan got plenty of buzz and to look less racist for a few days, when everyone knows what problems they have with xenophobia and monoculture.

It makes what Venus and Serena did over decades even more incredible. The fact that there are no Americans left in singles (are there any left in doubles?) makes it clear how much the Williams were carrying the U.S. tennis on their backs, even during the Olympics. Venus, at damn near 40, still managed a silver medal in MXD and might have gotten gold with a higher caliber partner.

The CDC should never have told people that they could stop wearing masks in the first place. I know that organizations are mad up of people, and people are only human, but a health organization needs to be more clear on the guidance they give, or risk losing credibility.

Wow, this sounds dangerous!

The media has made it a big deal. They shouldn't even be having these games in a pandemic. The majority of Japanese people don't even want it held and the infection rate of COVID-19 in Tokyo is at an all time high.

Just got a chance to read the full article. Thanks for posting @Juliajms. Some years ago (I don't remember what year), I read about what is referred to as Operation Fox Hunt in a NYT article. I admit, I thought the operation was solely engaging Chinese born residents in the U.S. I wouldn't have guessed that they were also engaging non-Chinese to participate in these maneuvers. Also, I don't believe that McMahon, a former Sergeant in the NYPD would not have been able to figure out that his actions were, at the very least, a breach of U.S. sovereignty. His history of having been in the NYC street crimes unit gives me a great deal of pause where he's concerned.

That too. I don't want to call her RG title a fluke but, it wouldn't be the first time that RG titlist ended up being a one-off.

When I saw this topic headline, for a moment, I thought it had to do with January 6, 2021.

I don't know why people sleep on Vekic, she's a fighter, I noticed this years ago. Injuries and a knee surgery, I think, was what has kept her ranking lower than it should be. The Spaniards tend to perform well in tennis at the Olympic Games. Even CSN, just recently in remission, managed to take Pliskova to three sets. And like I said before, tennis at the Olympics tend to yield some strange results sometimes. Swiatek is beginning to give off an air of emotional instability, imo.

...but I didn't think Lily was sweet. It wasn't until I got on social media that I started to hear that we the viewers were supposed to believe that Lily was infallible. Then again, I didn't really focus on Lily in those days.

From personal experience, I know that you can have a character very thoroughly outlined and imbued with certain specific characteristics, but that can be moderated as soon as you hear those first snippets of dialogue coming out of the actor's mouth. And even a spoiled little b*tch has to be imbued with some humanity, or else she/he lacks utter viability as a character. No writer wants to write that. Also, daytime dramas tend to have a heightened sense of melodrama, sometimes bordering on the maudlin in the worst cases. Lily and Holden/Lily and eve Lily/Dusty had very real and active canvases, so something obviously worked, fawning stories and all.

It depends on what part of the world you're talking about. There continues to be disinformation campaigns that are still actively trying to convince men that they cannot get or spread HIV if they sleep with a virgin.🙄 Because a person like Magic Johnson has been living with HIV for this amount of time, there are those who try to negate, or at least diminish just how deadly the virus can be. And there continues to be urban legends about how people can cure themselves with herbs, etc. One particular former South African president was known for doing this. DUI, I think is different, but the way it is prosecuted has led some to believe that being charged with DUI isn't as big a deal as say, gun crimes. Over the weekend, there were at least four DUI-related car crashes, three of them fatal. Two involved a driver who ploughed into a mother and child. In one case, the mother and child were badly hurt but are expected to survive, in the other, the mother and daughter were killed. People still make jokes about celebrities that get arrested for DUI because somehow the message has been spread that it's not as heinous as gun crime. I just wonder where that idea came to be.

Indonesia also put a lot of trust in the Sinovac vaccine, which appears to not be as effective as was once touted.