It might be a while before we learn the title for Episode VIII. More details about Star Trek: Discovery’s protagonist have been revealed. Michael Cudlitz may have let slip a tiny part of The Walking Dead’s big secret. Plus, Jerry O’Connell in Scream Queens, a new location for iZombie, and new stills from Rogue One. To me, my Spoilers!
The Fitbit Charge HR is a very good fitness tracker
. One might argue, and we certainly have, that it’s the best fitness tracker
available. But the Fitbit Charge HR is nearly two years old, and it has been plagued by issues over the last year. It’s time for a refresh and a refinement. The Fitbit Charge 2 looks like it’s solving all the problems of the original.
Sometimes commercials are bizarrely appealing, this is certainly the case with the latest commercial shilling the Surface Pro 4 tablet from Microsoft. It has a hipster looking dude playing a keyboard as he sings the virtues of the Surface Pro 4, which anyone familiar with the tablet already knows. The commercial highlights the pen that allows you to draw on … Continue reading
Typically, the less costly 3D printers aimed at consumers can only build smaller objects and they typically need to be tethered to a computer full time. A new 3D printer has landed on Kickstarter and has already blown its $100,000 goal out of the water by raising over $377,000 with 33 days to go on the project. The printer is … Continue reading
Iran made a lot of fuss about creating a national data network way back in 2005, and after 11 years it’s finally ready… sort of. The country has launched the first phase of the network, which promises speeds up to 60 times faster than conventional…
It’s more than a decade old, but Sky+HD remains one of the leading set-top boxes available to subscribers in the UK. YouView, TiVo and others all have their merits, but in terms of longevity, speed and ease of use, Sky’s had it all sewn up for years….
The Final Five were short one member in their appearance at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards.
According to ABC News, Olympic gymnastics star Gabby Douglas missed the big show because she was being treated for a mouth infection.
“Gabby is back in the hospital tonight being treated for a seriously infected past mouth injury,” her rep told The Associated Press. “She continues to have deep swelling and adverse reactions to medications.”
On Sunday, Douglas wrote on social media that she had been discharged.
Simone Biles sent a shoutout to her teammate during the award ceremony.
“The fifth member of our team, Gabby Douglas, is having medical issues and unfortunately couldn’t make it tonight,” Biles said, per Us Weekly. “Feel better Gabby!”
Douglas won gold in the team competition at the 2016 Rio Games after capturing the all-around and team golds at the 2012 London Olympics.
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The hit Netflix original series, “Grace and Frankie” tells the story of two decades-married women who find out their spouses are gay, with a healthy dose of Hollywood humor. But in real life, for an older couple, a spouse coming out can cause heartbreak that’s no laughing matter, for everyone involved.
“We’re all victims, both the gay spouse and straight spouse are victims,” Amity Pierce Buxton told The Huffington Post in an interview. Pierce Buxton founded the Straight Spouse Network in 1986, after her own husband of 25 years came out, to help other couples going through the same issues.
When the people involved are middle-aged or even older, the situation brings about its own unique challenges.
“When you’re older, there’s less time to rebuild a new life,” she says. In her experience, a third of couples split immediately and angrily, a third try to divorce amicably and another third try to make it work.
The revelation can be particularly difficult for older women who imagined a peaceful retirement, spending their golden years alongside their partner, enjoying visits from grandchildren. Along with questions of self-worth, many older women who may have put their careers on hold to raise children also could have financial concerns, Kimberly Brooks Mazella, a Virginia-based psychotherapist, told The Huffington Post.
That said, most of the anger that arises in these situations isn’t directed at the gay spouses’ sexuality.
“Many, including myself, are LGBT allies and strong supporters of gay rights,” Brooks Mazella said. “The anger that straight spouses feel is at having been used and deceived, especially when it goes on for years. I suspect the angriest ones fall in those [situations when] spouses did not come clean on their own.”
Indeed, in research she’s conducted on her own, she believes that two-thirds of gay spouses don’t come out on their own. Many are confronted by the straight spouse on a basis of infidelity or the discovery of other clues, like private communications or pornography.
Often times, experts say, the gay spouse doesn’t come out to their straight spouse because of an external factor like religious beliefs, societal restraints or even because of a true love and strong friendship with their other half.
“Living a closeted life is understandable. However, once you marry, then you’re bringing an unsuspecting woman into the closet with you,” Brooks Mazella said.
Some even believe that being in a heterosexual relationship will restrain their homosexual impulses. When that theory doesn’t work, they’re unable to live fulfilling, authentic lives and can be as devastated as their straight spouses.
“We’ve got to find ways to educate people that just being LGBTQ is not immoral or sick and that therefore there will be no more mixed orientation marriage … so that this doesn’t happen,” Pierce Buxton said. “No more closeted marriages.”
To understand more about what occurs in these situations, three women shared their own personal experiences with The Huffington Post. Here are their stories*.
Amity, 87
“We had two children. It was just a wonderful marriage, but toward the end he got distant. He’d taken early retirement and was traveling and doing things alone. I didn’t think much of it.
He had left and then he took me out for lunch the following year and he made some accusation that I was frigid and I got livid. Later, he was in the hospital for some minor surgery and I went to visit him while he was under influence of anesthesia. He said, ‘I have something to tell you. I’m gay.’ I burst out laughing and said, ‘Are we ever in a soap opera?’
He had a lover who he had jilted to marry me, because he was a Catholic. But he was totally faithful to me during our marriage.
There’s a shock then a disbelief. Then it takes a little time to face the reality. You ask yourself, What does this mean? Wasn’t I sexy enough? Didn’t I know the right lovemaking technique? You just wonder, ‘If my life has been involved in someone else’s lie, then who am I? My whole belief system went askew.
It was rather obvious, it was like a prison for him. He couldn’t be who he was. One day he told me, “I don’t think I can go on anymore.’ I said, ‘Of course you can!’ The next day he took his own life. Life was too much for him. He was a great person and I absolutely sobbed. I think he was depressed because [for] his whole life he wasn’t able to be himself. Gay men go through the same issues, with their sexuality and identity. The kids do too. All the people involved go through the same issues.”
Susan, 51
“About 10 years into our marriage, I thought he was having an affair with a woman. I’d heard him talking on the phone to someone about dancing at a bar, and then somehow I figured out he was speaking to a man. One night on vacation we were drinking probably a little too much and I asked him about it, his response to me was ‘I’ve always found men attractive.’
I questioned him again over the next few years and he would just get angry, so I stopped, but it was always in the back of my head. It was at that point that I started watching him, and putting the clues together, but it was close to 10 more years before I had the courage to end my marriage.
By 2015, things got pretty ugly. He was coming to terms with his sexuality and I was at the end of the puzzle. I got the courage to ask the question, ‘Did you know before you married me that you were gay?’ and he answered yes. So at that moment and for a long while after that I had very mixed emotions about this truth. There was a huge part of me that was angry and hated him, but at the same time there was just as huge a part of me that felt sad for him. I remember telling him had he just been honest with me we could have been the best of friends. I told him I wanted out.
The revelation of his sexuality has certainly had an impact on my self esteem. If I could live with someone for 20 years and not really know them then what is wrong with me? It has me fearful of meeting someone or being intimate with someone. But on the flip side, am I such an accepting person? Do I have no bias or prejudice? Those, to me, are positive traits, so this journey has made me look at myself from that perspective.
I tell my children, in a perfect world, we could all spend holidays together, I’m just not 100 percent there yet.
I’m not really sure what the experience has been like for him. In my opinion he only has one foot out of the closet. He doesn’t say he is gay, he tells people that he is interested in men. It’s as if he is afraid to say the word, so my guess is that it’s been difficult for him.”
Judith, 70s
”Mine was a very different kind of experience from many people’s. I knew before I married him, but I was so drawn to him, my soulmate. One day before we married, Dick said, ‘I have something to tell you. If it weren’t for you I’d be homosexual.’ It was 1966. Gay didn’t exist. In my world, I didn’t know anyone who was gay. My feeling was, this is like a neuroses. He said yes, in part. He’d been in therapy and I asked him if he couldn’t just get more therapy.
He asked me to marry him and we got married. I didn’t know that he was suffering. I didn’t know that he was thinking about men or fantasizing. We just didn’t speak about it. Things were rocky.
When he told me, on the one hand, I was flattened. I felt this terrible sense of loss. On the other hand, I was a feminist and I really supported gay liberation, which was just beginning. I did say to him, ‘I admire your courage.’
If he had slept with a woman, I would have been devastated. That would have dislodged me from my place with him. I was still the only woman in his life. That was also comforting. It was like any breakup with someone you deeply love, it was never going to be the same.
He was the most important person in my life, and remained so, until I had my daughter. It was never a problem with my husband until Dick died in 1986 from AIDS. My husband was surprised by my grief. I’ve never bonded with anyone that way. My whole youth and my young enthusiasm were bound with him. You can’t get that back. ―
(You can read Judith’s full story here.)
*Some responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.
If you are seeking support in a mixed orientation marriage, you can reach out to the Straight Spouse Network here for guidance and more resources.
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Two Republican judges ceded their principles last week to Ohio Republicans intent on suppressing the African-American vote. The Ohio GOP, like their counterparts nationally, have decided that if they can’t win minority voters, they will cheat.
So over the past decade, Republicans across the country have perpetrated fraud in the form of voter ID laws, limits on early voting, restrictions on voter registration and other onerous requirements to make it difficult for minorities, young people and senior citizens to vote – requirements described as voter suppression in numerous lawsuits filed to overturn them.
Last week, two George W. Bush-appointed judges said Ohio Republicans could eliminate “Golden Week” when registration and voting may occur on the same day. The third judge on the panel, one appointed by President Barack Obama, dissented, writing that abolishing the week “imposes a disproportionate burden on African-Americans.”
Now along comes Donald Trump claiming he’ll lose the election only if Democrats cheat at the polls. He pointed his finger at Pennsylvania and Philadelphia in particular. The City of Brotherly Love is a filthy den of schemers and scam artists, according to Trump. Pennsylvanians living west of the city line are little better in Trump’s estimation.
Trump besmirched Pennsylvania’s reputation despite the fact that Keystone GOP officials admitted in a lawsuit won by voting rights groups in 2014 that there was absolutely no in person voter fraud in the state. None. But that doesn’t matter because when Republicans like Trump cheat, they think everyone else cheats too.
Image by: DonkeyHotey/Flickr
At an Aug. 12 rally in Altoona, Trump called on his supporters to sign up to stand sentry as poll watchers “in certain areas” which other speakers made clear was Philadelphia. So, essentially, Trump was asking white, rural residents to travel to Philly, which is 45 percent black, and try to intimidate voters. Good luck with that.
Here’s what he said: “We’re going to watch Pennsylvania. Go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don’t come in and vote five times. . .If you do that, we’re not going to lose. The only way we can lose, in my opinion – I really mean this, Pennsylvania – is if cheating goes on.”
U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster, a Republican from southeast of Pittsburgh, spoke on Trump’s behalf at the event, accusing Philadelphians of nefarious deeds:
“The people in western and central Pennsylvania have to overcome what goes on down in Philadelphia. . .The cheating, what they do – we’ve got to make sure we’re doing the job here in central Pennsylvania.”
The thing is: There is no cheating. The GOP could find absolutely no case of in person voter fraud – not one – when it desperately needed one, just one, to justify its burdensome voter ID requirements after they were challenged in a lawsuit by the ACLU of Pennsylvania and other voting rights groups.
In the end, the state of Pennsylvania, then completely run by Republicans – governor and both houses of the legislature – stipulated in court that, in fact, there was no in person voter fraud in Pennsylvania. So, of course, there was no way the GOP could justify its excessive voter ID requirements that would have disenfranchised as many as three quarters of a million Pennsylvanians.
This had followed a swirl of publicity around a videotaped statement by GOP leader of the Pennsylvania House, Mike Turzai, in which he announced that the then-new voter ID law was “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
That would occur, of course, by disenfranchising people who intended to vote for President Obama’s reelection, including many Philadelphia residents. It would occur by GOP cheating.
In 2014, Pennsylvania courts overturned the voter ID law. This year, the Ohio decision aside, that has been the trend of most court rulings. Many judges have cited the disproportionate effect these voter suppression laws have on minorities. And just like in Pennsylvania, the laws’ defenders have failed to provide evidence of the in person voter fraud that the legislation is supposedly intended to prevent.
The ACLU and voting rights groups have secured victories in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Texas and North Dakota this year.
In July, a federal appeals court struck down the North Carolina voter ID law, saying it deliberately “target[ed] African-Americans with almost surgical precision” in an effort to depress black voter turnout. As to the lawmakers’ contention that the legislation was needed to prevent in person voter fraud, the judges said voter ID, “imposes cures for problems that did not exist.”
In the Badger State, the judge wrote, “The Wisconsin experience demonstrates that a preoccupation with mostly phantom election fraud leads to real incidents of disenfranchisement which undermine rather than enhance confidence in elections.”
In North Dakota, a federal judge found the voter ID law placed an undue burden on Native Americans and wrote, “No eligible voter, regardless of their station in life, should be denied the opportunity to vote.” He found that voter fraud in the state has been “virtually non-existent.”
On July 20, a federal appeals court ruled that the Texas voter ID law violated the U.S. Voting Rights Act. This was the fourth time in nearly four years that a federal court decided that the law discriminated against black and Hispanic voters. But, still, the Texas GOP wants to implement it.
They’re the cheaters. The North Dakota Republicans are cheaters for trying to prevent Native Americans from voting. North Carolina Republicans are cheaters for deliberately targeting African Americans with surgical precision to prevent them from voting. Pennsylvania Republicans are cheaters for trying to prevent African-Americans, students, seniors and other likely Democrats from voting in an attempt to assure Romney a victory and their own re-elections.
Trump is a cheater as well. He cheated small businessmen and craftsmen repeatedly during his multiple bankruptcies, denying them payment for work they performed for him in good faith. Likewise, Trump reported on his sworn financial disclosure forms to election regulators that the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Fla., was worth $50 million, but when it came to paying taxes on the property, he told Palm Beach County it was worth a measly $5 million. Similarly, Trump bought $65,000 in jewelry from a New York store, then had an empty box shipped out of state to evade sales tax – in a scam he got caught at.
That’s how he can accuse Philadelphia and Pennsylvania – without any evidence at all – of trying to steal the election from him. He’d do it.
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What if you could grow food in your backyard with little to no understanding of gardening? A new robotic system may make this a reality for everybody. Farmbot Genesis is an open source, autonomous farming system that is supposed to fit virtually anyone’s backyard, greenhouse or rooftop.
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