samhexum

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton was courtside Monday night in New York taking in the Milwaukee Bucks’ game against the Brooklyn Nets. It’s not the first time that Clinton has attended Bucks games, having appeared most prominently at Game 6 of last year’s first-round series in Milwaukee. Clinton is close friends with Bucks co-owners Mark Lasry and Wes Edens — who have been donors to the Democratic Party in the past — and he joined them and fellow co-owner Jamie Dinan to take in their team’s 113-94 victory over the Nets. But despite his close personal relationship to the owners — he and Hillary Clinton attended the wedding of Lasry’s daughter — the 42nd president’s interest and knowledge regarding the NBA team comes across as very real. When interviewed by NBATV Monday night, Clinton expressed his excitement about the play of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the moves the Bucks made to add to the roster in the past year. “He’s unbelievable, and he’s really come into his own this year,” the 72-year-old Clinton said of the Greek Freak. “I love to watch him. But he’s got a lot of good help now. You know it’s a different team now … They got George Hill. George Hill is reliable, he’s a great team player, he adds value to every place he ever plays. They’ve done things that works, and (Brook) Lopez is doing great there.” Later in speaking with writer Chris Sheridan, Clinton once again praised Antetokounmpo calling him a “once in a generation player, one of the great players in the league.” “This is becoming a team. It’s a different, strong team. The veterans they picked up are adding value. They can put three 7-footers on the floor if they want to and still move up and down the court. It’s a great, fascinating thing. I can’t wait to see what becomes of them,” Clinton added. “They’ve got some work to do, but they have the personnel now that can really do something exceptional.” Clinton certainly sounded like someone who frequently is tuning into Bucks games with his answers. And he’s justified in his excitement for watching: Milwaukee is first in the entire league with a 39-13 record and league-best plus-10 scoring differential.

It’s risky to have multimillion dollar artworks aboard one’s yacht, it turns out. During a panel at the Superyacht Investor conference at the Landmark Hotel last week in London my invitation must've gotten lost in the mail, Pandora Mather-Lees REALLY?!? you know her real name is something like Mathilde Smith— who instructs billionaires on how to care for their priceless art pieces on the high seas — recalled an unfortunate incident involving breakfast cereal and a Jean-Michel Basquiat piece. “[The yacht owner’s] kids had thrown their cornflakes at [the Basquiat] over breakfast on his yacht because they thought it was scary,” Mather-Lees said, according to the Guardian. “And the crew had made the damage worse by wiping them off the painting.” Helen Robertson, a conservator at the National Museum in London’s Greenwich, was also on the panel, the paper reports, and recalled another incident in which a Champagne cork struck a multimillion-dollar canvas when the crew had a party. Another expert explained how his swanky client had cut up an expensive work by famed Japanese artist Takashi Murakami so that it would fit into a space on board that also doubled as a kind of garage for Jet Skis. Another client hung a Rothko sideways.

HUH????????????

A California woman died in August as a result of being hit in the head by a batted ball at Dodger Stadium, according to a Los Angeles County coroner's report obtained by ESPN's "Outside the Lines" and details her daughter revealed to OTL in December. Linda Goldbloom, a mother of three and grandmother of seven, died on Aug. 29. The coroner's report states the cause as "acute intracranial hemorrhage due to history of blunt force trauma" and states that the injury occurred when she was struck in the head with a baseball during the Aug. 25 game at Dodger Stadium. Television coverage of the Padres-Dodgers game that night did not follow the flight of the ball or show where it ended up. No media outlet has reported what happened, but Goldbloom's family didn't keep it a secret and included this sentence in e-mail notifications on the day she died: "While the end came suddenly by a foul ball at Dodgers (sic) Stadium, she had a long beautiful and blessed life." The accident happened in the top of the ninth inning, when San Diego's Franmil Reyes fouled back a 93 mph pitch from Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen. The ball was hit a little to the first-base side of home plate, it sailed into the Loge Level -- just over the area protected by netting -- and it struck Goldbloom's head as she sat in section 106, row C, seat 5. "Ushers came down and asked if she was all right, and she said no, then EMT came and rushed her to the hospital -- she threw up in the ambulance," her daughter, Jana Brody, told OTL. Goldbloom, a longtime Dodger fan, was celebrating her recent 79th birthday and 59th wedding anniversary with her husband, Erwin, brother-in-law Michael and sister-in-law Eve. Brody was 100 miles away and celebrating her own wedding anniversary when she got the news that her mother was going to have emergency brain surgery after midnight at L.A County-USC Medical Center. For three days, Goldbloom was unresponsive, Brody said, except when a nurse saw her move one finger one time upon being asked if her name was Linda. Her eyes never opened at the hospital, and a ventilator kept her breathing. On the night of Aug. 28, Goldbloom's whole family and a rabbi gathered around her to share memories and say goodbye before abiding by her wish that she not be kept alive by machines if doctors deemed it impossible to restore her quality of life. After Goldbloom died the next morning, the Dodgers made no public comments about her death or what caused it. When OTL contacted the team Monday, more than five months later, a spokesman provided this statement: "Mr. and Mrs. Goldbloom were great Dodgers fans who regularly attended games. We were deeply saddened by this tragic accident and the passing of Mrs. Goldbloom. The matter has been resolved between the Dodgers and the Goldbloom family. We cannot comment further on this matter." Brody told OTL on Monday that she and her family would not comment on any agreement with the Dodgers or possible legal action, but she said she hopes to have a fund established in her mother's memory to assist victims of such accidents and their families. In Major League Baseball's 150-year history, there were two previous reported instances of fans dying after being struck in the stands by balls that left the field of play, including one nearly half a century ago on a foul at Dodger Stadium: Clarence Stagemyer, 32, died one day after he was hit in the head by a thrown ball on Sept. 29, 1943, at Griffith Stadium in Washington. Senators third-baseman Sherry Robertson fielded a grounder hit by Cleveland's Ken Keltner and threw it over the head of first baseman Mickey Vernon, and the ball struck Stagemyer in the first row of the stands. Alan Fish, 14, died four days after he was hit in the head by a foul ball on May 16, 1970, at Dodger Stadium. L.A.'s Manny Mota was batting against San Francisco's Gaylord Perry when he hit a liner down the first-base line, near the dugout, that struck Fish two rows from the field. The fatal injury to Goldbloom came during the first season in which all 30 major league teams had protective netting extending from behind home plate to at least the far ends of both dugouts to safeguard especially vulnerable sections of stadiums' lower bowls. MLB didn't mandate such extensions but had issued recommendations. Several teams that hadn't already announced plans for increased netting in 2018, including the Dodgers, did so after a young girl, seated on her grandfather's lap behind the third-base dugout, suffered life-threatening injuries from a foul line drive that left the bat at 105 mph and hit her in the face on Sept. 20, 2017, at Yankee Stadium. After the Yankees and other teams installed more extensive netting for last season, Geoff Jacobson, the father of the recovering toddler, told ESPN, "Sadly, it often takes great tragedy and suffering to cause change." He said he hoped his daughter would eventually write a college application essay about "how she was the last person to be seriously hurt at a baseball game." "My heart goes out to the whole family," Jacobson said after OTL told him what happened to Goldbloom. "It's so unnecessary that this had to happen. ... It's just tragic that another family is going through this and lost a loved one." MLB has historically relied on the century-old "Baseball Rule" to deter and defend against claims of injuries in the crowd from the impact of baseballs and thrown or broken bats. It says on the back of tickets that fans assume the risks incidental to games when they enter ballparks, and courts of law have generally held that as long as teams provide warnings and install netting in the areas of greatest danger, MLB has lived up to its responsibility. As MLB teams have put in the netting extensions, some fans who've endured serious injuries in ballpark episodes over the years have said it's not enough and that spring training, minor league and college parks are not keeping pace and are even more dangerous. Brody said she hopes her mother's death will spark serious consideration of further increases in protection, perhaps using Japan's more extensively netted stadiums as examples, especially in an era of bigger and stronger players, higher velocity and launch-angle projectiles, and more and more distractions for people attending games. "I just hope MLB takes a serious look in the mirror and continues to evaluate and improve fan safety," Jacobson said. "It was always questionable whether the nets were extended far enough or high enough, and every stadium has different degrees of protections." He suggested that the nets go all the way to the foul pole, as in Japanese ballparks. "Why did they stop where they stopped?" he said. "It seems arbitrary." "I'd love to see the netting extended vertically, and we know it doesn't block the view," Brody said. "Raise it a little higher -- what's the hurt in that?" Unlike some modern fans, whose smartphones can be dangerous diversions when the ball is in play, Goldbloom had only a flip phone that she wasn't using then and hardly ever took out, Brody said. The ball ricocheted off her mother's head and struck her uncle in the stomach, but he wasn't injured. Her parents, Brody said, had the same seats for about 10 games each of the past 10 years under partial season-ticket plans, and in the preceding decade, they attended about the same number of games in a different set of seats. Erwin Goldbloom turned down his chance at Dodgers postseason tickets and didn't renew for 2019 but will consider attending single games in seating that is "somewhere safe" -- meaning where there's netting -- Brody said. Linda Goldbloom, described by Brody as a "true fan," was buried about 10 miles from Dodger Stadium. "My mom went to the game and never came home," Brody said. "People need to be aware, and we'd really like them to be protected in the future."

Kristoff St. John, the long-running star of “The Young and the Restless,” was found dead on Sunday. He was 52. Friends went to check on St. John at his San Fernando Valley home on Sunday, when they discovered his body, TMZ reported. They called police and paramedics, who pronounced the actor dead at the scene. Police and reps for St. John didn’t immediately returned Page Six’s request for comment. In a since-deleted tweet, however, St. John’s ex-wife, boxer Mia St. John, blamed the mental health facility that treated their son for Kristoff’s death. “THAT HOSPITAL KILLED OUR SON @TheArtofJulian THEN MY HUSBAND @kristoffstjohn1 THATS WHAT HAPPENED! THEY KILLED MY FAMILY,” she wrote. Kristoff and Mia’s son, Julian, died by suicide in 2014 while seeking treatment at the unnamed facility. They sued for negligence and later settled. The former couple also founded the El Saber es Poder (Knowledge Is Power) Foundation to battle mental illness. In 2017, Kristoff threatened suicide and was placed on a 72-hour hold for psychiatric evaluation. He leaves behind two daughters, Paris St. John and Lola St. John.

'Third time is NOT a charm': Hawaiian Airlines flight to Maui is forced to return to LAX THREE TIMES before being cancelled after suffering technical difficulties Hawaiian Airlines Flight 33 from Los Angeles to Kahului Airport was grounded on Friday because of 'separate and unrelated faults with different systems' Of the three returns that the flight had to make to the airport, one occurred before the flight had even taken off while the other two occurred mid-flight There were 207 people on board the flight All of their trips were refunded and each passenger was given a $100 credit to use on a future flight By MATTHEW WRIGHT FOR DAILYMAIL.COM A Hawaiian Airlines flight to Maui was cancelled after it was forced to return to LAX three times because of equipment failure, prompting the airline to issue refunds for more than 200 passengers. Hawaiian Airlines Flight 33 from Los Angeles to Kahului Airport was grounded on Friday because of 'separate and unrelated faults with different systems', airline spokesman Alex Da Silva explained to KTLA. The flight was initially supposed to take off at 4.30pm. Of the three returns that the flight had to make to the airport, one occurred before the flight had even taken off while the other two occurred mid-flight 'We understand our guests' disappointment and deeply regret their travel plans were disrupted,' Da Silva added. There were 207 people on board the flight. All of their trips were refunded and each passenger was given a $100 credit to use on a future flight. Additionally, the airline paid for all the passengers to have hotel rooms and provided them with meal vouchers for dinner and breakfast. They hope to accommodate the passengers on other flights.

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On the other hand, I've always believed that if God is truly divine and understanding/forgiving, he/she wouldn't be petty and get caught up in the technicality of whether you believed or not, and would judge you on the quality of person that you were. Thus, if the life you led was worthy of being rewarded in the afterlife, whether you were a believer or an atheist, you'd be rewarded.

When I was a kid, my pool club would occasionally have movie nights. Somebody at the club had connections, and I saw THE GRADUATE & THE FRENCH CONNECTION there I'd guess pre-1974. Also Mel Brooks' THE 12 CHAIRS. ANYHOO... Whilst Benjamin was driving and Scarborough Fair was playing, my friend leaned over to me and asked 'Are they singing Are You Going To Start An Affair?' I cracked up, but given the storyline at that point in the movie, it kinda made sense. I've never been able to sing it any other way since.

And it's funny... Yaphet was exactly how I pictured him! More importantly, were you turned on or off by Bortus' mustache?

Abby's I actually prefer them to Roy Rogers. And I love Ving Rhames' voiceovers in the commercials... WE'VE GOT THE MEATS!

Last night's sweetly odd (oddly sweet?) episode of THE ORVILLE had Dr. Finn (Penny Johnson-Jerald) realizing she'd developed feelings for the ship's robot, Isaac, and his crewmates' attempts to help him understand dating, especially as it pertains to dating insert nauseated face a woman. The best episode of season one had the two of them crash-landing on an alien planet with her two kids and him protecting and bonding with the kids (the older of whom is also the son of Dr. Bailey on GREY'S ANATOMY, so the poor kid is typecast as the son of black female doctors) while she was being held hostage. She'd been warmer to him ever since.

https://www.companyofmen.org/threads/preparing-for-an-anal-invasion.126883/ http://68.media.tumblr.com/9cff9da3b15c944e083977546c5c4c19/tumblr_opfvamDjaP1rp0vkjo1_500.gif

What do you want to know about me, Mr. Busybody?

Rare Fossil of Triassic Reptile Discovered in Antarctica The fossilized remains of an early reptile dating back some 250 million years have been uncovered in the unlikeliest of places: Antarctica. The discovery shows how wildlife recovered after the worst mass extinction in our planet’s history, and how Antarctica once hosted an ecosystem unlike any other. Needless to say, paleontological work in Antarctica is very different than it is elsewhere. Unlike Alberta or Montana, for example, which feature abundant rock outcrops, Antarctica is covered in a massive sheet of ice, obscuring much of its paleontological history. And it’s not as if Antarctica doesn’t have stories to tell—it very much does. It was only recently, within the last 30 to 35 million years, that the continent froze over. Before that, it was home to a warm climate, lush forests, rushing rivers, and a remarkable abundance of life. To find fossilized traces of this forgotten life, whether it be in Antarctica or elsewhere, scientists need to find rocks. Antarctica provides only two possibilities: islands along its coastline and the Central Transantarctic Mountains—a spine of mountains that cut a swath through the middle of the continent. The tops of these mountains poke through the glaciers, creating a rocky archipelago—and a place for paleontologists to do some prospecting. It’s here, on the Fremouw Formation of the Transantarctic mountains that Brandon Peecook, a paleontologist with the Field Museum of Natural History and the lead author of the new study, discovered the rare Triassic reptile. “Standing on the mountain, it was difficult to imagine how truly alien Antarctica must’ve looked like back then,” Peecook told Gizmodo. “Looking around, I could see no trace of macroscopic life for miles in every direction.” Indeed, Antarctica may be desolate and inhospitable today, but it wasn’t always that way. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Fremouw Formation was home to a vibrant forest filled with life, from winged insects to four-legged reptilian herbivores. The discovery of a previously unknown iguana-sized reptile, dubbed Antarctanax shackletoni, is now adding to our knowledge of the continent’s former ecological glory. Antarctanax means “Antarctic king” and shackletoni is a tip of the hat to British polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. A. shackletoni was an archosaur, sharing a common ancestor with dinosaurs and crocodiles and living during the Early Triassic Period some 250 million years ago. It’s now one of the earliest reptiles to appear in the fossil record. Details of this discovery were published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The partial fossil consists of an excellently preserved vertebrae (including neck and back), a partial skull, two feet, some ribs, and an upper arm bone. It was discovered during an expedition to the Fremouw Formation during the Antarctic summer of 2010-2011. Analysis of these fossilized bones (particularly the skull) and the fossils found alongside it suggests it was a pint-sized carnivore, munching on bugs, amphibians, and early proto-mammals. The Early Triassic is of great interest to paleontologists because it came in the wake of one of the worst episodes in Earth’s history—the end-Permian mass extinction, a time when extreme and prolonged volcanism wiped out nearly 90 percent of our planet’s life. It resulted in a sweeping ecological reboot, setting the stage for the survivors to take over. Among these survivors were the archosaurs, who took full advantage. “A pattern we see over and over again with mass disturbances like the end-Permian mass extinction is that some of the animals who managed to survive quickly filled in the empty ecospaces,” Peecook told Gizmodo. “Archosaurs are a great example—a group of animals that were able to do practically everything. This clade just went totally ballistic.” Indeed, archosaurs, including dinosaurs, were among the greatest beneficiaries of this recovery period, experiencing enormous growth and diversity. Prior to the mass extinction, these creatures were limited to equatorial regions, but afterwards they were “everywhere,” according to Peecook—including, as we now know, Antarctica. The continent was home to A. shackletoni some 10 million years before the appearance of true dinosaurs. As an aside, Antarctica did host dinosaurs, but not until the Jurassic Period. This discovery is also shedding light on Antarctica’s distinctive animals. Because Antarctica and South Africa were physically connected at the time, paleontologists worked under the assumption that the two regions had much in common in terms of the local wildlife. And because fossils are abundant in South Africa, paleontologists used this record to make inferences about the kind of life that likely existed in Antarctica. But as Peecook explained, this is turning out to be a mistake; Antarctica hosted an ecology unlike any other. “We know the South Africa fossil record really well, but in Antarctica we’ve only discovered around 200 species,” he said. “But we don’t find these species anywhere else. Paleontologists have only gone to Antarctica a few times, but every time they go they find new species, and surprising new occurrences—it’s really exciting. The original argument that you could connect these two environments together is now incorrect. The Antarctic record has lots of unique things happening.” That Antarctica featured a unique set of species is not surprising. Like today, the continent was at a high altitude, featuring prolonged days in the summer and extended nights in the winter. Animals and plants had to adapt to survive, thereby adopting novel physical characteristics and survival strategies. Scientists discover 'disturbing' cavity roughly two-thirds the size of Manhattan beneath Antarctica A massive cavity that is two-thirds the size of Manhattan and nearly the height of the Chrysler Building is growing at the bottom of one of the world’s most dangerous glaciers - a discovery that NASA scientists called “disturbing.” The hole, which is almost 1,000 feet tall, was seen during the space agency’s study of the disintegrating Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, NASA said Wednesday. It’s big enough to contain 14 billion tons of ice, most of which has melted over the last three years. Thwaites Glacier, one of the hardest places to reach on Earth, is responsible for around 4% of the global sea rise. Scientists had long predicted the glacier was not tightly attached to the bedrock underneath it and expected to find some gaps. Yet the immense size and fast-moving growth rate of the hole in Thwaites was called both “disturbing” and “surprising” by researchers. "[The size of] a cavity under a glacier plays an important role in melting," the study's lead author, Pietro Milillo, said. "As more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster." Thwaites holds enough ice to raise the world ocean just over 2 feet and backstops neighboring glaciers that are capable of rising sea levels an additional 8 feet if all ice were lost. The cavity was seen using NASA’s Operation IceBridge, an airborne campaign beginning in 2010 that studies connections between the polar regions and the global climate. Researchers hope the new findings will help others preparing for fieldwork in the area better understand the ice-ocean interactions. “The findings highlight the need for detailed observations of Antarctic glaciers' undersides in calculating how fast global sea levels will rise in response to climate change,” according to the study by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.