DramatistDreamer

This woman laid out a very handy guide on Project 2025. To anyone who may not be aware or who only has a vague idea, this might be helpful to them.

I didn’t get to see this PC but skimming through the headlines, most are not really negative. Even the NYT, which said he had slips but showed strength on foreign policy. And it seems like they are finally acknowledging the existence of Project 2025. Also, try as they might, the media can no longer ignore the very callous sentiments expressed toward NATO by Trump, which are the worst ones yet.

I got to watch the first women’s semifinal on replay and found it entertaining. So often tennis commentators overuse the phrase “contrast of styles” but in the case of Paolini vs. Vekic, this really seemed to be the case. The 2nd semifinal, I watched some of it on replay but it was kind of on in the background while I was multitasking. I know a tennis fan who would faithfully buy a pint of strawberries before every finals weekend of Wimbledon and the amount of enjoyment she would derive from her strawberries seemed to have a direct correlation to the quality of the matches, especially on the women’s side. Hopefully wherever she is now, she will have thoroughly enjoyed her strawberries by the end of the weekend.

This story is kind of wild. Hackvists release two gigabytes of Heritage Foundation data

I absolutely think that this is at play. Whether mainstream news outlets are knowingly playing along or asleep at the wheel, I am not certain. The Hunter Biden mess peeled away so they are taking this up with gusto, hoping no one remembers the felonious merchandise they’re trying to sell.

Because I have pretty much blocked out much of that debate, I don’t know whether this was discussed at all during that debate but the Biden administration shout be touting this as much as possible and really lay down the facts and challenge his opponent to own up to how much he weakened the US in terms of technological advancement and security and how his predecessor/opponent’s constant picking fights with China did nothing to shore up U.S.’ place in supply chain security, quite the opposite—and the Biden administration’s approach has been far more successful. (yes, it’s the NYT, but we know that altruism about broken clocks…) U.S. Creates High-Tech Global Supply Chains to Blunt Risks Tied to China

Egregious behavior. No surprise that the NYT took halfway down the page to mention that he is a Trump appointee. https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-appointed-judge-resigns-report-054239681.html

This is probably around the same time I saw that BBC News report.

Christopher Bouzy, founder of Spoutible published a pretty detailed thread chain listing all of the anti-Biden Op-Ed pieces, some going back nearly a decade. This isn’t new. There is also an existing effort to try to force out VP Harris, because they likely know that Biden, like any president has a Vice President for a reason (there was also an Op-Ed that called for Biden to step down as VP, with some pretty bizarre suggestions for alternatives). If folks really want to focus on stability of the executive branch, they would realize that Biden has a solid VP in case anything should arise, like any president. Meanwhile, there is little to no ink being spilled on the very real, very destructive Project 2025 and Trump is getting away with his very weak unconvincing protestations of any links between him and Project 2025. Democrats need to direct the same and more energy to putting Project 2025 under a microscope, the way that some put Gingrich’s Contract On America but this time with a greater sense of urgency. Project 2025. Make it an inescapably urgent issue that voters will actually focus on.

As an example of how little I have been following this year’s Championships, I just found out that Coco Gauff got tossed out of the tournament with a loss to Emma Navarro.

Have they cleaned up the Seine yet? I have been reading about the cleanup effort as they intend for competitive swimming to take place there but from last reports the Seine was still very dirty.

ICYMI- According to reports, MTV decided to wipe their entire MTV news archive from the Internet. Some part of me wants to check to see whether there is any possibility that the archives were preserved in the Internet archive. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2024/06/26/mtv-news-archives-deleted/74225789007/

If there is a thread about this subject, please feel free to merge, moderators. We’ve had conversations about this topic and I know for sure that in one or two soapcentric threads we have discussed Marion Stokes and the incredible archive that she amassed but I am not sure how many members outside of the handful of us that have discussed this know about her. Thanks to her estate and her descendants, those videos will be preserved. For those who are not familiar, here’s a very brief primer. The uploaded clarified that Ms. Stokes didn’t secretly record television, she chose to keep the collection of videos private, not out of any financial interest but because she was wary of surveillance and she and her husband at one time had expressed their desire to move to Cuba and you can imagine the reaction to that. She was keenly aware of these television studios habits of “wiping” and felt it was important to preserve what was happening in media as a document of what was happening politically and culturally in American society, so that it couldn’t later be refuted or negated in some effort to rewrite history.

Be safe there. Beryl is a storm full of fury. St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada seem to have taken the full force, although they seem to be among the least equipped to deal with that type of impact. Jamaica would not have suffered any loss of life (two souls lost sadly) had everyone just refrained from venturing outside until given the all clear. This season threatens to be a doozy, starting with a Cat 5 so early in the season but people have got to exercise common sense— no playing sports, hosting parties, tinkering with WiFi cables or going onto the roof (for any reason) until the storm has officially passed.

I just haven’t been into it and I had been an avid fan since junior high days. I haven’t even bothered to tune into most of the matches (although I did tune into a few points here and there yesterday and saw the final two games of the final match of today, and saw Lulu Sun break some Brits’ spirits some minutes ago). The scheduling has been poor. The ITF/ATP/WTA need to engage in some radical thinking and action to steer the ship around and I don’t mean tinkering with court surfaces as they have been known to do (I’m looking at you TA and LTA) but take the streaming options out of the hands of the likes of TC and ESPN, at the very least, don’t give them exclusive streaming rights. TC hasn’t grown much in reach since their early days and ESPN got people interested in their ESPN3 service, which they now seem to be turning into some weird zombie streaming service in order to push their subpar ESPN+ service. Now they want to do this other joint sports streaming service…all over the place. You would think the ITF would make some effort to attract more people besides throw some weird reality-doc series to Netflix (which, last time I checked, shows exactly none of the major tournaments), but they are relying on an ever shrinking pool of engaging personalities actively playing the game.

Hopefully MVJ, Sheila Ducksworth and any stars of the forthcoming cast will make appearances on BET, Comedy Central, and the YouTube channels of THR and Variety to get the word out, really expand the reach beyond the usual platforms. Do an interview on Shondaland and Oprah Daily. Some people might be skeptical of CBS pulling a Fox or WB, and I do admit this has crossed my mind but I am willing to suspend those thoughts and watch the process unfold, and just hope everything is being done for the benefit of The Gates.

Thanks Errol, this sounds reassuring coming from you. This sounds good, as long as The Gates is the priority in this and CBS as co-producer, I would think will prioritize this new show in marketing and promotion and the other shows will benefit from the effects.

Whoa. Dutch Volleyball player Steven van de Velde, convicted of raping 12-year-old, qualifies for Paris Olympics

Despite her insistence that she dropped the clause, some fans seemed to continue to blame her, citing one interview where she seemed evasive when asked about it. Someone recently posted that discussion/interview, so I had a chance to see it. To me, she appeared evasive because she really wanted to focus on where the character of Lisa was, not where she had been and she wanted Lisa to remain vital in the way she had become when that late 1980s Donahue episode happened. So I do believe Fulton when she said the clause was a thing of the past. I also think the way that she played Lisa’s menopause storyline with such conviction and in genuine “Lisa” fashion convinced me that she was accepting of the character being moved to a different stage in life. Tom and Margo have been having miscarriages since the early 1980s and although I realize that some couples do suffer multiple miscarriages, I don’t understand why every writing regime had to write one. I guess given their history, it seemed a logical way to provide an exit storyline for Gregg Marx but another miscarriage, that’s a tough one.

The Gates will be the first daytime soap opera that I am genuinely interested in tuning in to in about 15 years. I have pretty much given up on the current lot.

Meanwhile, in the election campaign on the other side of the Atlantic, current PM Rishi Sunak, who once said he was proud to be the first PM of Asian heritage and even prouder that it’s “no big deal” is getting a rude awakening, courtesy of a man campaigning on behalf of Nigel Farage’s “Reform” Party, as demonstrated by an undercover report from Channel 4 News.

Oh dang, Martin Mull was so funny in every role he portrayed, from the cad boss in Mr. Mom to the shut-in who falls for Dorothy on The Golden Girls. May he R.I.P.

Robin Wright reunites with Tom Hanks for a time bending movie called Here and it seems like some CGI and other interesting visual effects are at work here.

Daytime soaps tend to write storylines about 20 years after when they would be groundbreaking. Yes, many of the themes are still (sadly) relevant and talented actors can still make the drama compelling but by the time soaps get around to writing them, it is no longer controversial, cutting edge or groundbreaking. Unless you live a very sheltered life, the story really doesn’t offer much insight. A story about interracial marriage in the 1990s? Yes, you care about the characters involved but it’s just not all that insightful by then. There were promising stories that got cut short or watered down too because of network pressure and death threats from “fans”.

That’s fair. Since independence, Kenya has had a number of protests, some caused by ethnic strife often stoked by candidates running for office exploiting ethnic divisions. The Kenyan police are known for their brutality (a holdover from training under colonialism) which is why many are objecting to Kenyan police being deployed to Haiti which the U.S. is funding.