samhexum

Mature, experienced, 2/3 of devilish (666)

Police from the 100th Precinct are looking for the suspect who allegedly assaulted an elderly man in broad daylight at a shopping center in Arverne last month. Police say the 66-year-old victim was inside the Stop & Shop at 70-20 Rockaway Beach Blvd. just before 1 p.m. on Sunday, June 28, when a stranger who had been screaming and cursing at other shoppers approached him and struck him with her purse. The crazed woman proceeded to punch him in the face with a closed fist and then began biting both of his arms, police said. The suspect fled the scene running eastbound on Rockaway Beach Boulevard toward Beach 69th Street. The victim sustained minor lacerations to his arms and was transported by EMS to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition. The NYPD released surveillance images of the suspect and described her as having a dark complexion with shoulder length braids. She was last seen wearing a black sweatshirt, black shorts, pink Crocs, a large blue backpack and she carried a white handbag.

A duck and a dog formed an unlikely friendship. Now they’re inseparable. Epilepsy medication helped the golden retriever, but it dulled her personality. The arrival of a 4-day-old duckling sparked new life in Barley For months, Barley was not herself. The golden retriever, now 7 years old, was diagnosed with epilepsy in February 2024 after a string of seizures. Although medication made the seizures stop, it also dulled Barley’s personality. “She lost her goldenness, her fun, her spunk,” said Tori Cannarelli, Barley’s owner who lives in Brookhaven, a suburban town on Long Island. “She was always sleeping or mopey. It was heartbreaking.” But Barley’s playfulness began to reemerge in May 2024, when a 4-day-old duckling arrived at their home. Barley stuck her snout into the duckling’s small enclosure, and the two locked eyes. It was then that an unlikely friendship was born. “They fell in love with each other instantly,” Cannarelli said. “It was the weirdest thing.” The duckling showed up at their house after Cannarelli’s husband saw a Facebook post by an elementary-school teacher looking to rehome two ducklings. Her husband said he planned to keep them at their house just for the weekend before bringing them to the local garden center he runs. One of the two ducklings died on the first night. “We don’t know why,” Cannarelli said, explaining that they believe the animal was ill when it arrived at their home. The surviving duckling, an American Pekin they named Louie, never made it to the garden center. They kept him because Cannarelli suspected the tiny duck was bringing Barley back out of her shell. “Maybe she was lonely, I’m not really sure,” Cannarelli said, adding that their vet said behavioral changes can happen when dogs start epilepsy medication. Within a few weeks, Barley and Louie were inseparable. Every morning, Barley would go to Louie’s outdoor pen, which has a wind-protected shed and a small pool. “You don’t expect that friendship, and it’s nice to see,” Cannarelli said. Pekin ducks are domesticated, cannot fly and don’t exist in the wild. They can live up to 12 years. “The duck is constantly following around the dog,” said Cannarelli, who has two children, ages 9 and 11. “They roll around together all day long.” They occasionally wrestle — though always gently, Cannarelli said. “Every now and then, she’ll get the zoomies and romp around and play with the duck as if he’s a puppy,” Cannarelli said. They also spar over food. Louie is a vegetarian, and his favorite foods are tomatoes, peas and cucumbers, which Barley enjoys, too. They often snag bites from each other’s dishes, and Louie prefers eating out of a dog bowl to eating out of a duck feeder. “The duck has no idea he’s a duck. He thinks he’s a dog,” Cannarelli said. That impression isn’t just a joke, said Stanley Coren, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of British Columbia and the author of “How to Speak Dog.” “If you’re getting these heterogeneous species living together,” Coren said, “they will pick up on the behaviors of the others who they’re living with.” Golden retrievers, Coren added, are among the breeds most likely to form this kind of bond with another species. “If you presented a duck to a terrier, the duck is gone,” Coren said. “Retrievers are much more interested in retrieving than they are in hunting.” In this case, the timing mattered, too. Although dogs are predators and ducks are prey, young mammals give off pheromones that can sometimes trigger a protective instinct in animals around them — especially females, according to Coren. “That means the initial contact which the dog makes with the duck is going to have this protective mothering kind of a halo,” he said, noting that he doubts the bond would have formed the same way if Louie was an adult duck when he met Barley. “Over time, that can turn into a friendship.” Coren said he is not surprised Barley perked up after Louie appeared. “Dogs are highly sociable and so are ducks, so they feel more comfortable having somebody familiar and nonthreatening nearby,” he said. “There really is an emotional bond, and it can be cross-species.” Shortly after Louie arrived at their home, Cannarelli started an Instagram account to chronicle their unusual relationship. She had been sending her colleagues photos and videos when they suggested she make an account. “I started it as a joke for the office girls,” Cannarelli said. For two years, the account had a relatively small following, but in the past few months, it suddenly took off. Some of her videos have drawn millions of views. “I’m completely blown away,” said Cannarelli, who refers to Louie as Barley’s “emotional support duck.” People online are charmed by their dynamic. “This beautiful story should be a book for kids,” someone commented on a recent post. Cannarelli said having a pet duck is not for everyone. “They’re very messy, they’re a lot of work,” she said. “You really have to love them and take care of them and keep them clean.” Still, she said, Louie has become a fixture in their family. “We all got attached to him. … It’s not something I thought was ever going to be in my future, but now that he’s here, I seriously love him,” Cannarelli said. “He’s even on our Christmas card.” She said she plans to continue sharing Barley and Louie’s friendship. “I want to give people something to smile about,” she said. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2026/07/12/duck-dog-formed-an-unlikely-friendship-now-theyre-inseparable/

Hummingbirds Can’t Resist This Vibrant Flower—and Why Garden Experts Say It’s a Must-Plant Plus, some additional gorgeous options to usher in all the hummingbirds. https://apple.news/AO-QCAPLURuC8B4ZsmjzwtQ

The remnant of P.S. 59, which was destroyed by the cyclone that hit Woodhaven 131 years ago, on July 13, 1895. Only that this storm struck on a Saturday in July prevented this from being a far more tragic tale. Next week marks the 131st anniversary of the infamous storm that struck Woodhaven, Queens. It was on July 13, 1895, that the storm swept in from the south, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Three people would ultimately lose their lives, including one victim more than 100 miles away in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The storm cloud, estimated to cover an area of 300 square yards, first struck Woodhaven at Jamaica Avenue and Elderts Lane after sweeping through Cypress Hills Cemetery, where it toppled monuments and ripped out trees and headstones. Eyewitnesses described the cloud as massive and dark, with some saying it was shaped like a funnel. Others recalled a soft red glow within the cloud. Trees and chimneys were torn from their foundations and hurled through the air as if they weighed no more than feathers. Several people were lifted off their feet and carried through the air before landing a block or two away. The worst destruction occurred at the newly built two-story brick schoolhouse at University Place (95th Avenue) and Rockaway Road, today Rockaway Boulevard. P.S. 59 had been built in 1890 on land purchased from manufacturer Florian Grosjean, whose legendary factory and clock tower still stand on the border of Woodhaven and Ozone Park. The roof of the schoolhouse was ripped away and the upper half of the building collapsed. The fact that the storm struck on a Saturday in July prevented this from becoming an even greater tragedy. No one was injured inside the school. Outside, however, it was a different story. One block east of the school, at 3rd Avenue (84th Street) and Rockaway Boulevard, 16-year-old newlywed Louise Petroquien was sitting at her sewing machine when she heard the commotion outside. Looking out the window, she saw the massive dark cloud overhead and ran outside to warn her mother. She emerged from a side doorway, but before she could shout a warning, a large beam torn from the roof of P.S. 59 struck her in the head and neck, killing her instantly. It was her mother, returning after the storm had passed, who found her daughter’s body beside the steps leading to their home. The storm continued south toward Jamaica Bay, leaving an eerie silence amid widespread devastation. Although nearly 150 homes were damaged, accounts differ on how many were destroyed. The true number was probably somewhere between 15 and 30. In the days that followed, more than 100,000 people traveled to Woodhaven on the Long Island Rail Road along Atlantic Avenue to witness the destruction. While residents cleared away debris, visitors dropped coins and bills into barrels set up to aid the nearly 300 people who had lost everything, or nearly everything, in the storm. The main attraction for many visitors, however, was the Petroquien home. The family allowed people to enter through the same doorway Louise had rushed through moments before her death. Visitors stepped past the spot where she had fallen before entering the parlor to pay their respects as the young bride lay in a rosewood coffin beneath a mound of flowers. For more than a century, accounts of the 1895 storm referred to Louise Petroquien as Woodhaven’s only fatality. However, another victim has been largely forgotten: five-year-old Johnny Kolb. Johnny had been playing near Atlantic Avenue and Rockaway Boulevard when the storm struck. He was later found beneath the rubble with a broken arm and leg and died the following day from his injuries. Both Louise Petroquien and Johnny Kolb were buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery. Today, the intersection of 83rd Street and Rockaway Boulevard, now part of Ozone Park, gives no indication that it was once the scene of one of the area’s most destructive storms. A new school was built just one year later at the same site where the original building had stood. In the latter part of the twentieth century, the building became well known as a Friendly Frost appliance store. What happened there 131 years ago serves as a reminder that we remain at the mercy of nature and its ability to humble us without warning. By Woodhaven Cultural and Historical Society

Have you tried etsy?

The time came.

Though I love both actresses in their roles, they should have done a better job in casting Elena and Kip's coworker. They look too much alike; there's a quick shot of everyone at the bar watching Scott's speech and the two of them are on either side of Kip and they look like sisters. I've watched multiple reaction videos where the people thought they were the same person. In fact, Nick and Cory said that Scott can't be surprised that Elena knows his secret (when they're at the banquet) because he kept flirting with Kip in front of her at the smoothie shop.

An Indiana man cut off his genitals and lit them on fire in his mother’s garage, cops say. Christopher Peden, 36, from Fort Wayne, Indiana, has been charged with arson, public court records show. If convicted of the felony charge, Peden faces up to 12 years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000. The alleged incident unfolded on May 6, when the Fort Wayne Fire Department responded to reports of a fire in a detached garage after the owners’ neighbors woke them up and alerted them to the blaze, according to court documents reviewed by FOX 59. Around the same time, Fort Wayne police officers found Peden, who claimed he was stabbed in the city’s downtown area after being threatened the day before, the documents said. But after being taken to the hospital, Peden reportedly admitted to investigators that he was “dishonest” and he “wanted to be truthful.” The documents said Peden told investigators he “harmed himself” by cutting off his genitals with a kitchen knife and used gasoline to “set it on fire on the floor of the garage just inside the door,” according to FOX 59. When police investigated, they found a gasoline container, four lighters and a kitchen knife at the scene. Peden’s mother and brother, who live on the property, told investigators the garage only stored a gas container for the lawnmower and did not have electricity, according to an affidavit reviewed by WRTV. The fire reportedly damaged two nearby properties and two vehicles. Fire investigators said they recovered a gas container, four lighters and a knife from the scene, WRTV reports. Peden paid a $10,000 bond on Tuesday and is expected back in court early next week, according to public records. His attorney, David Felts, told The Independent he was recently retained and hasn’t had a chance to speak with Peden yet. When asked about Peden’s response to the allegations against him, Felts said he has “no comment.”

We Asked 3 Dietitians What You Should Never Order at McDonald’s–They All Said the Same Thing anything? https://www.aol.com/articles/asked-3-dietitians-never-order-140000000.html

@wsc are you going to put up with this outrageous betrayal?!? Declare war on @Luv2play!!!

Staff writer at The Atlantic, Rose Horowitch, argues that we are living in a “postliterate world” where fewer and fewer adults read books of any kind, and she examines whether civilization can survive this era in her August cover story titled, “The Age of Reading Is Over.” In it, Horowitch writes that society seems to have lost the desire 'to read book-length works, and with that are losing the higher-order abilities of comprehension and synthesis’ adding that Donald Trump is ‘representative’ of this era. Rose Horowitch joins Morning Joe to discuss her piece. it's not about Trump so this isn't political https://apple.news/Ay5UjEjW3SxeGGxS_k0u6rA

I never held it against her that holding out for a hero was used as the title song for Cover Up, starring the late, great Jon-Erik Hexum, and thus always reminded me of him.

OR 10,000... Too Many Books? Mendel Uminer faced a crisis when his landlord objected to the 10,000 volumes in his New York studio apartment. For a young Jewish scholar and writer named Mendel Uminer, books are the wellspring of enlightenment. So when he scored a studio apartment a block away from Central Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side a year ago, he brought his books with him — all 10,000 of them. What followed, at least for a little while, was a charmed existence in his 600-square-foot temple of knowledge. Towering stacks of Judaica lined the walls, heaps of film criticism and opera history filled the prewar bathroom, piles of plays and poems blocked a window, and Uminer slept on a floor mattress engulfed in dog-eared novels. Waking up around noon, he spent his afternoons on his sunlit chaise, devouring the works of Yiddish writers like Chaim Grade and critics like Edmund Wilson, nourishing his mind while the city churned outside. “I’m always reading,” Uminer, 31, said. “I’m reading to extract knowledge. Every book I own, I need. My library is my manual for life.” He worked as a freelance Hebrew translator and used the apartment as the headquarters for his fledgling literary journal, Notarikon Review, hosting parties that gained a reputation among quarters of New York’s literary underclass. Striving writers drank beer among the teetering stacks while arguing over foreign affairs and Greek poetry. The stacks kept rising as Uminer added his hauls from thrift shops, book dealers and eBay deliveries. “I don’t think of myself as a hoarder,” he said, “but I guess my building did.” This past winter, he received a notice from building management. “You are violating a substantial obligation of your tenancy,” it began. “You are maintaining the Premises in a severely overcluttered condition; permitting the over-accumulation of books in the Premises; creating a fire hazard by over-accumulating combustible books in the Premises.” “I open this letter,” Uminer recalled, “and they’re telling me my books are a fire hazard, that I have to be out if I don’t get rid of them.” After he did not heed the warning, eviction proceedings began. He decided to fight back in court. One afternoon last month, Uminer stood amid the leaning towers, savoring his unruly paradise while he still could. As klezmer music played from his phone, he ran his hand across the spines of “The Russian Theater after Stalin” and “The Kurdish Question in Iraq.” He tenderly held up a book of poems by Abraham Reisen, a Yiddish writer he was smitten with. “Sure, maybe I’m a little bit different,” he said. “And I know my library might seem excessive to some. But it’s not as excessive as people might think. In a rabbinic household, no one would blink twice at a library like mine. Reading is part of my culture.” He descended the building’s opulent staircase and lit up a Marlboro on the sidewalk. “I thought I’d found peace here, that I’d start my magazine here,” he said. “Maybe I’ll need to stop growing my library for a while. But I feel I always need to be learning, because that’s what I think I have to offer the world.” A Precocious Scholar Raised in a Hasidic enclave of Crown Heights, Mendel grew up speaking Yiddish with his grandparents, listening to the teachings of his bearded Lubavitcher rabbi uncles and attending troika dances in banquet halls. His father, a pious real estate broker named Isaac, relished studying the Torah with him. But the boy craved literature. At 12, he was reading Dostoyevsky. In his teens, Uminer attended rabbinical seminary, where he embraced Talmudic study. Lessons began at 7 a.m. and ended with nights of vodka-fueled argument with the rabbis. “My days were spent studying texts in Aramaic, Hebrew and Yiddish, and I sometimes went a whole year without seeing a woman’s face, but I was also disobedient and incorrigible,” he said. “I was always reading what I wanted to read, not only what they wanted me to read. But that’s where you assert yourself. Where you form your opinions. Where you make your own sense of the world.” “If I form an opinion, and there are books saying the opposite, I need to read them all, to know if I’m justified,” he continued. “If I’m not convinced, I should let my conviction go.” In his early 20s, as he grew engrossed in Ovid and Rousseau, he befriended writers at Caffe Reggio in Greenwich Village and found himself browsing more at the Strand than at the Judaica emporiums of south Brooklyn. One year before his ordination, he turned away from the path set out for him. “It dawned on me I wasn’t as much of a true believer as I thought I was,” he said. “Maybe it upset my grandparents, but I decided I should just go do what I wanted to do, which was enter the modern liberal cultural society of New York. I didn’t want to be drunk on medieval piety anymore.” His mother, Dina Uminer, said she wasn’t surprised by his secular turn. “It tracked with the curious boy he always was,” she said. “Even when he was little, he would try to convince us of things through argument. A little bit of knowledge was never enough for him.” After putting away his kipa, Uminer enrolled at Columbia University to study film and philosophy. Outside the classroom, he interned at Tablet magazine. After graduating at 27, he met a young woman from Paris. He soon ventured to her home city, where the romance came to an end. “She kicked me out of her apartment, but I stayed in Paris until I spent my last dollar,” Uminer said. “I smoked Gitanes in the Marais. I got robbed in the subway. They had the best politics journals and literary magazines. Paris changed me.” He spent hours at the book stands along the Seine. Reading journals like Nouvelle Revue Française and Connaissance des Arts, he found his vocation. “These French journals had people making arguments in ways that really mattered,” he said. “So much of our writing here is about, ‘You must choose a lane.’ Theirs has a comfort with controversy, a precision in argument, a sense of historic consciousness, that we need more of.” Back in New York, Uminer decided to start a publication of his own, Notarikon Review, an eclectic journal that will “publish people who don’t agree on everything,” he said. Some of the writers he has recruited are former social-media adversaries. The debut print issue, scheduled to come out later this year, will include fiction by Julia Kornberg, an essay by Hayley Jean Clark about the artist Anna Weyant and a translation of a Yiddish short story by Abraham Reisen. Uminer conducted his first editorial meeting, over pizza and beer, on the floor of his Upper East Side studio. On a recent afternoon, he went browsing at the Mizrahi Bookstore in Marine Park, Brooklyn. When he entered the aisles packed with ancient Jewish texts and leather-bound Torahs, the store’s owner, Israel Mizrahi, warmly greeted him as “Mendy.” “I think Jews have an almost mystical relationship with books and knowledge,” Mizrahi said. “We’re always reliving our past, creating a thirst for knowledge, which is why a Jewish home needs a library. But Mendy’s insatiable curiosity stands out from all my customers. He understands that physical books are the only way we can truly retain knowledge. I’ve seen him spend three hours here in random conversation with someone about the kinds of horses used by 18th-century Polish Jews.” He had heard about Uminer’s apartment troubles. “Of all the vices, I find books to be the least dangerous,” Mizrahi said. “I think it’s possible his landlord might have their priorities misplaced, or might not understand him. If you’re not steeped in his culture, maybe his library does look chaotic. But I’d argue it only looks like a mess. I’ll bet he can tell you where every single book is in his apartment.” The Move After months of slow legal jousting, Uminer finally resigned himself to moving out of 6 East 65th Street, which is owned by the Hakim Organization, a company founded by the New York real-estate magnate Kamran Hakim. “I don’t want to be here if I’m not wanted,” he said. The Hakim Organization and the building’s management company did not reply to requests for comment. On a hot Friday, a few friends arrived to help Uminer with the move. They tamed the heaps of books into neat piles that could be placed into boxes. “Why has God cursed us with this heat?” Uminer said. “God doesn’t curse us, Mendel, we curse ourselves,” replied Julian Cosma, a filmmaker. “Well, I didn’t mean it in the Spinozistic sense. I just meant, it’s a hot day for moving.” While Uminer took a smoke break, Cosma heaved books into boxes. “It makes sense to me that Mendel, a Brooklyn yeshiva kid, would come to the Upper East Side and make this world for himself here, only to get rejected from it,” Cosma said. “There’s a New York now, keyed into professionalism and uniformity, that sees a guy like him and thinks something must be wrong. There’s an element to the city now that’s hostile to the life of the mind, to the eccentricity that might produce it.” More friends stopped by. As they disassembled the library, the walls grew more and more unobscured. Finally, it was time to take the boxes to the van outside. The sky darkened, and a hard rain began to fall. Wearing shorts and Tevas, Uminer led the charge, dashing into the downpour with a box of medieval Italian plays. His friends followed, getting soaked as they deposited their hauls into the vehicle. Drenched, they headed back to the apartment. Uminer ordered pierogies and stroganoff blinis from the Russian Samovar restaurant to reward his helpers while they kept packing. As night fell, the room turned into a salon crackling with arguments and discussions — about Nabokov’s early Russian poetry, about foreign affairs in Lebanon, about the French Romantic writer Charles Nodier. Among those holding forth was Katya Danziger, an art history student at Columbia. “Mendel lives in his mind,” she said, “and he can take that with him anywhere.” “I heard he’s found a bigger apartment,” Danziger added. “So that means, more books.” https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/style/too-many-books-new-york-city-apartment-scholar-landlord.html

Mixue opened its doors on July 1 at 41-01 Kissena Blvd. in Flushing. Since then, its popularity has skyrocketed. This Chinese-originated fast food chain is widely known for its vanilla soft serve, bubble tea and fruit teas and arrived to a lot of excitement in the neighborhood. Mixue is a food chain that originated in Zhengzhou, China. It’s popular for its cheap prices, including a vanilla soft serve for $1.19 and $2 lemonade in the U.S. According to allrecipes.com, Mixue has surpassed McDonald’s and Starbucks location numbers. Mixue has 48,000 stores globally, while McDonald’s and Starbucks are at have 42,000 and 43,000, respectively. Mixue’s prices are so cheap because they own their entire supply chain. Yahoo Finance says, “Controlling everything from the agricultural source to the cold-chain logistics allows the company to supply over 1 billion global franchise locations with significantly reduced distribution cost.” https://qns.com/2026/07/ringo-starr-perform-forest-hills-stadium-oct-1/ Queen of cinema: A movie theater blooms in Queens After Emelyn Stuart was told the building containing her movie theater in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for eight years was being turned into condominiums, she had to decide what to do. Stuart had just spent $250,000 on a new auditorium at her Stuart Cinema and Café and had commitments to studios for movies, but no movie theater to show them. It was not the way she wanted this “movie” story to end, but it came very close to an unhappy ending until Stuart rewrote the story. She recently walked through the solution, a new cinema in Long Island City she had built in about two months. She strolled through auditoriums with 45 and 50 seats, smiling and a survivor in a tough business. The cinema has comfortable chairs (yes, more comfortable than her first cinema), a better café and shows blockbusters and smaller movies. “It took me eight years to build the audience and the following. I had to move quickly. I found this space,” she said as she walked through the cinema, which opened in May. “I’m super happy. The old space was smaller. We didn’t have a kitchen. We always wanted to have a kitchen so I could offer more food.” Businesses open all the time, but this new cinema is not an ordinary business, showing movies, dreams on the screen, and doing much more, providing a venue for everything from parties to festivals as well as blockbuster and smaller movies just blocks from the Museum of the Moving Image. “We don’t really need to be on a main avenue, because we draw in foot traffic. They were willing to offer me a long-term lease and willing to work with me,” Stuart said of a landlord that gave her a launchpad to keep her dream alive. “I’m only 10 minutes from my old location. So I wouldn’t have to lose those customers.” Stuart invested in new projectors, as well as $350 leather seats and soundproofing and, as she puts it, has a space as good and modern as any other movie theater. “I have everything they have in the theater, but it’s smaller,” she said. “The studios had no issue giving me movies.” She and her cinema do more than show big movies, presenting private events and private screenings and a path to at least consideration for big awards. “We help filmmakers qualify for the Oscars,” Stuart said of smaller movies. “We do birthday parties, panels. A lot of people meet in our space. People can play their wedding anniversary video and have a whole night for themselves.” Queens World Film Festival Executive Director Katha Cato sees the new cinema as boosting indie movies in the borough. “The Stuart Cinema and Cafe is another giant leap forward for a thriving indie film community exploding in Queens,” Cato said. “Two additional screens in Queens make so much more possible for all of us working to bring these independent voices forward.” Local movie makers see the new movie theater as a new way to reach audiences at a smaller venue. “I was thrilled to screen at Stuart Cinema,” said Patricia Silva, whose award-winning movie “Bright Vignettes: How Astoria Got its Pride,” was screened there, near the core of the movie itself. “It’s an independent theater.” Stuart worked in corporate America, at large law firms and brokerage houses, before she began producing film and television, facing problems with distribution. “People were like, ‘You’d better build your own movie theater,” Stuart said. “That’s what I did. And here I am.” While movie theater food typically means popcorn and soda, not being a huge fan of this fare, she opened a smaller café at her first cinema and a larger one here. “I’m Dominican,” Stuart said before going over the menu in her film version of a field of dreams. “I’d love an empanada. What if we had a spicy latin burger? What if we had a Cajun chicken sandwich?” She offers Coquito Spanish egg nogg, in keeping with her Dominican roots. “We sell it every day,” Stuart said. “Most people make it only for Christmas.” Stuart said there is more space between rows and the “theater is bigger” as crowds arrive, often to see big movies, even as she works on projects as well in Brooklyn. The new cinema has been doing well, opening with the new “The Devil Wears Prada” movie and Michael Jackson biopic “Michael.” “They both did amazing,” she said of showings that attracted old and new fans, not just of the movies, but the movie theater. The cinema, she said, is the only Afro Latina-owned movie theater in New York State in an industry that often remains male-dominated. “It’s a very closed, old boy, old school network,” Stuart said. “A lot of people pass their theaters down generation after generation.” They just finished showing “Scary Movie” and “Toy Story Five,” helping drive business. “Movies are doing better here than at my other theater,” Stuart said before pausing. “It could also be that we have better movies now. We’ve got movies that people are excited about.” She also shows smaller movies and thinks out of the box (office) when it comes to menu, providing popcorn with a twist, such as chocolate whiskey flavor. “We have something nobody else has,” Stuart said. “We have liquor-infused popcorn. People don’t have to drink alcohol. They could also eat the popcorn.” We talk as Stuart walks through her cinema where others get to see, if not her dreams, movies she shows, and share in her dream. “We’re about to start ‘Toy Story,’” Stuart says, although every day is another page in her own story as well. “A staff person comes in and programs all the movies and then we’re good to go and they just play.” She is running a movie theater, half Hollywood and half home, with pillows on a bench that make you feel like you are in a place built and furnished with love. “These days, my favorite movie is ‘The Greatest Showman,’” Stuart says of a movie that, in some ways, echoes her story. “It’s really about the underdog and it’s a musical with dancing.” They have a stage (although no backstage) in both auditoriums where they presented a puppet show, burlesque show for Pride month, comedians, spoken word and showed the FIFA World Cup United States versus Bosnia. They also offer special discounts ($8 movies on Wednesday) as a dream that nearly turned into a disaster, like a phoenix, grew wings and turned into a sequel in an industry where that sometimes happens. “The audience is out there,” Stuart said with a smile that just months ago might have been difficult to imagine. “We consider ourselves a gathering space. It’s not just about the movies.”

https://qns.com/2026/07/ringo-starr-perform-forest-hills-stadium-oct-1/

https://www.tvline.com/2211461/task-season-2-mare-of-easttown-julianne-nicholson-cast-crossover/ Julianne Nicholson has joined Season 2 of the HBO detective drama, where she will reprise her Emmy-winning "Mare of Easttown" role of Lori Ross, Variety reports. Details about her character's introduction into the series have yet to be revealed. The casting news now directly connects "Task" and "Mare of Easttown," which both hail from creator and showrunner Brad Ingelsby and take place in Philadelphia's working-class suburbs. The two series were previously unrelated. "Mare of Easttown" premiered on HBO in 2021 and starred Kate Winslet as Marianne "Mare" Sheehan, a police detective investigating the murder of a teenage mother. Nicholson played Lori, Mare's best friend, whose son becomes involved in the investigation. Nicholson is a two-time Emmy winner, winning for her work in "Mare of Easttown" as well as her guest-starring role as Dance Mom in the HBO comedy "Hacks." She recently starred in "Paradise" as tech billionaire Sinatra, and in BBC's "Dope Girls" as Kate. Nicholson's other TV credits include "Winning Time: Rise of the Lakers Dynasty," "The Outsider," "Eyewitness," "Boardwalk Empire," and "Law and Order: Criminal Intent." Her film credits include "August: Osage County," "I, Tonya," and "Blonde." COOL! I love her work. @EVdude said: Two episodes into Mare… love it. Nice to know it may have a second season.

Bonnie Tyler, Welsh singer known for the hit ‘80s songs “Total Eclipse of the Heart” and “Holding Out for a Hero,” has died at 75. The news comes two months after the three-time Grammy nominee underwent emergency intestinal surgery and was placed into an induced coma. “Bonnie’s family and team are heartbroken to announce that Bonnie unexpectedly passed away last night in hospital in Portugal as a result of the illness that she was being treated for,” a statement reads

https://apple.news/A5rrB0kp_QducC7GMbamBCg

You know I just called Walmart and told them that my preset instructions for deliveries are that I'm disabled and it's hard for me to walk so please bring the package upstairs, and I mentioned that I said that to the delivery person over the intercom (although I don't know if she could hear me) And I also said that I couldn't get downstairs until the next morning (which ain't exactly the truth), and long story not short, my $1.45 refund is in the works.

Apartment building... I let the superintendent know, I've asked him to be on the lookout for my missing property. I told him I'm devastated! I hope he gets my sarcasm.

BUT... after just getting a text that my new shopping cart had arrived, I started to throw my clothes back on so I could go downstairs to get it when there was a knock at my door because the driver had brought it upstairs to me.

Well, to be fair, they didn't know what was in the box . I really hope they have a dishwasher and haven't used a Brillo pad in years.

SOMEONE STOLE MY BRILLO PADS!!! On the night of 7/3 I placed a Walmart order for pickup that I will be getting tomorrow. On the morning of 7/4 I got an email saying that my box of 10 great value Brillo pads hadn't been available for pick up but they could deliver it to me that day if I wanted or I could just have a refund. I figured, let them deliver, which they did that night. They left it by the mailboxes. Since it cost a whopping $1.45 including taxes I felt in no need to rush downstairs and get it. I finally went down to get the mail today and guess what? That's $1.45 I'll never see again!

https://www.aol.com/articles/panic-boeing-737-disappears-off-195158000.html A search-and-rescue operation is underway as a Boeing 737 cargo plane carrying five people disappeared from radar around Pakistan. The plane disappeared on Tuesday night, west of Karachi, the capital city of the province of Sindh. The K2 Airways aircraft was heading to Sharjah from Karachi on Tuesday when it reported a navigational system issue at around 9:18 p.m. local time, and was prompted to head to the Karachi Area Control Center, the Pakistan Airports Authority (PAA) revealed. In a series of posts, the PAA revealed further details about the incident, noting that the aircraft was caught on radar "rapidly descending." "K2 Airways B 737 of Pakistan Cargo Flight enroute from Sharjah to Karachi at time 2118PST reported Navigational system issue and was promptly guided by KARACHI ACC," the airport authority posted. "However, at time 2121 PST, aircraft was observed on radar rapidly descending and with rapid heading change, subsequently radar contact and communication was lost approximately 155 nautical miles west of Karachi," it added. It also noted that a rescue coordination center, a primary facility responsible for promoting efficient organization during a search and rescue operation, had been activated. The coordinated operation was launched at sea through different agencies to located the aircraft and the missing individuals on board. A cause for the incident was not immediately determined. However, the PAA said it was launching an investigation into the disappearance. Interestingly, the disappearance came just hours after the PAA team led by the Airport Manager and Deputy Airport Manager discussed safer flight operations at Karachi Airport with local authorities. "The Commissioner directed immediate improvement in sanitation and cleaning around the airport to help reduce bird hazards," the PAA posted on X.