Hasta La Gadget!

For Allure, by Hayley MacMillen.

Whether or not you’ve achieved multiple orgasms in a single sex session (alone or partnered), you’re probably aware that some women have them. While male-bodied people generally require a “refractory period” to recover from climax before they can come again, female-bodied people don’t, even though prior research suggests only around 15 percent of women have actually achieved multiple orgasms. Enter a new yardstick against which to measure your sexual abilities: the so-called “super orgasm,” a term for up to 100 orgasms in a single sex session that a new documentary is trying to make happen.

As Self reports, a film from the U.K.’s Channel 4 titled The Super Orgasm charts the sex lives of five women who report experiencing these orgasms-on-steroids. An engineering student named Nathalie, for example, says she’s had more than 60 orgasms in one encounter. In the documentary, the women undergo “experiments” that show they are easily aroused, and that electrical activity and blood flow in their brains appear to be higher than in the brains of women who don’t orgasm multiple times per session.

All of this is well and good, except for the fact that these tests are less than scientific — only five women and no control groups do not rigorous research make. What’s more, it’s unclear what differentiates these women’s experiences from regular old multiple orgasms. “The main thing that is important to get across is that this isn’t scientific research,” University of Southampton sexual and reproductive health professor Cynthia Graham, PhD told Self. “While watching [the documentary], I started wondering what’s the difference between super orgasms and multiple orgasms, and the answer I got was ‘not very much.’”

If you are among the select group of women who can have an eye-popping number of orgasms in one encounter and you’d like to call this a “super orgasm,” then super. If not, then don’t feel this is something you should aspire to, or that women who can climax up to 100 times a session are your sexual superiors. Orgasms are great and multiple orgasms are great. So is one orgasm. And so is satisfying sex that doesn’t involve orgasm: Not everyone is capable of having one in the first place, which doesn’t mean they’re incapable of fulfilling sex lives. While the “super orgasm” may be a compelling title for a documentary, it seems it’s a far less convincing term for a real-life sexual experience, much less a realistic goal for your sex life.

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The International Tennis Federation on Monday said it was continuing its investigation into an alleged racist comment made by Ilie Nastase about Serena Williams’ pregnancy.

In an email to The Huffington Post, an ITF spokesperson said the federation would not comment further during the inquiry, which also covers other misconduct by Nastase.

The 70-year-old Nastase, Romania’s Fed Cup captain and a former U.S. Open and French Open singles champion, was heard saying of Williams’ unborn baby, “Let’s see what color it has. Chocolate with milk?” ESPN reported.

Williams had announced she was expecting her first child with fiancé Alexis Ohanian, who is white, earlier in the week. 

Nastase, nicknamed “Nasty” and often a magnet for controversy, reportedly made the audible remark on Friday to other players in Romanian while one of his players, Simona Halep, was answering a press question about Williams before a Fed Cup playoff against Great Britain in Constanta, Romania.

“The ITF does not tolerate discriminatory and offensive language and behavior of any kind,” the ITF said in a statement to outlets. “We are aware of alleged comments made by Romanian captain Ilie Nastase and have begun an immediate investigation so that we have the full facts of the situation before taking further and appropriate action.”

According to The Associated Press, Nastase also harangued the journalist who apparently reported what he said. “Why did you write that? You’re stupid, you’re stupid,” Nastase told Eleanor Crooks of the British Press Association.

Nastase made other news at the tournament when he was ejected Saturday from a match after berating an umpire and calling members of the British team “bitches.”

He previously caused a stir by publicly asking British captain Anne Keothavong for her room number, Yahoo and other outlets noted.

The ITF eventually suspended Nastase from the Fed Cup and said it was looking into all of Nastase’s alleged misconduct, the BBC wrote.  

“Under the terms of the provisional suspension, Nastase may not participate in the Fed Cup in any capacity with immediate effect, and shall be denied access to, and accreditation for, any ITF event including Fed Cup,” the Fed Cup said in a statement on Sunday.

Romania defeated the British in the Fed Cup, 3-2.

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SYDNEY ― Wendy Bowman was forced off her family farm a few hours north of Sydney, Australia, in the late ‘80s after a coal mine contaminated the water supply and caused her crops to die. Two decades later, she had to move again after another mine served her an eviction notice. But in 2010, when yet another company threatened to mine on her property, she’d had enough.

Bowman, now 83, filed suit, refused offers of millions, and despite being surrounded by mines on three side, has worked to protect her land and an important waterway from contamination ever since.

She is one of six conservationists ― one from each inhabited continent ― honored this year with the Goldman Environmental Prize, billed as the world’s most prestigious award for grassroots activism. Past awardees have fought against air pollution in Slovenia, defended land rights in India and helped spearhead lead cleanup efforts in Los Angeles.

In Australia’s Hunter Valley, a fertile wine region about 100 miles from Sydney, coal mining has rapidly expanded, spurred by increased demand in Asia. The area is now home to dozens of coal projects, including 16 open cut mines like those Bowman has long fought.

Speaking from San Francisco ahead of the award ceremony, Bowman said the region where she lives has changed dramatically over the past 30 years. “The whole landscape has changed,” she said, adding that “even the wind comes in a different direction. ”

Along with the environmental impact of huge, city-sized pit mines, most of the families that grew up in the Hunter Valley are no longer there, she said.

“The thing is, a lot of those mining people were very cruel and very arrogant, they treated the land owners very badly,” Bowman said. “People just sold and went because they couldn’t stand it any longer. So many of the original families have gone.”

Bowman was one of the early landowners who ceded control of their property. Coal dust coated her crops, got in the milk she tried to sell and even settled in her lungs. She says 20 percent of her lung capacity is gone thanks to the pollution. A 2015 report by the Climate and Health Alliance estimated that coal burning in the Hunter Valley contributed to about $450 million in health care costs annually.

Two moves later, Bowman landed at a farm called Rosedale and launched a group called Minewatch NSW to help landowners face off against energy companies. But it was only a few short years before another coal company, Yancoal, tried to force her to sell Rosedale as well. Bowman refused, and a court decision protected her land for as long as she decides to keep it.

Speaking about the experience, Bowman said she knew at the time that if she sold, a half dozen other farms would be affected by her decision, because the mine would’ve been right next to a creek that irrigated her neighbors’ properties.

“It meant that if this water became so bad, like it had before, all the farmers downstream would’ve had to go,” Bowman said. “Having seen the destruction on the two pieces of land I loved so much, I couldn’t see the destruction of this area.”

Bowman’s behind-the-scenes work nonetheless drew the notice of those at the Goldman Environmental Foundation. When someone called Bowman to tell her she’d won an award and a one-time grant of $175,000, she thought it might have been a scam.

Having seen the destruction on the two pieces of land I loved so much, I couldn’t see the destruction of this area.
Wendy Bowman, Goldman Environmental Prize winner

The fight against mammoth corporations, often energy developers, is a common theme linking this year’s Goldman Prize winners. 

Prafulla Samantara, the winner for Asia, launched a 12-year legal battle to defend an indigenous community from an open-pit aluminum mine. Rodrigo Tot, an indigenous leader in Guatemala, did the same against nickel mining operations. American mark! Lopez worked to hold a battery recycling plant accountable for pollution from heavy metals, and Uroš Macerl of Slovenia helped stop a cement company from fouling the air.

Perhaps the most high-profile prize winner this year is Rodrigue Katembo, 41, a wildlife ranger in the Democratic Republic of Congo who was featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Virunga.” 

Katembo, a former child solider, was a longtime ranger in Africa’s oldest national park, a World Heritage site home to the most of the planet’s remaining mountain gorillas and one of the deadliest places on the planet for wildlife defenders, 160 of whom have been killed in the area over the last 15 years.

Despite the threats, Katembo went undercover to document how a British oil giant, SOCO International, attempted to conduct illegal oil exploration in the park. The footage he collected cost the company millions in funding and forced SOCO to announce it would give up an oil license in the park.

But the effort was not without its own trials: During the campaign to expel the company, Katembo was arrested and tortured for more than two weeks. Upon his release, he went back to work immediately.

“I was not more special than the 160 workers who had already died to protect the park,” Katembo said.

He has since been transferred to Congo’s Upemba National Park and has faced ongoing threats. He expressed hope that the Goldman Prize would bring Upemba international recognition so it gains its own World Heritage status.

All six winners of the Goldman Prize will be celebrated at a ceremony in San Francisco at 5:30 p.m. local time on Monday. The award gala will be streamed live here. A separate ceremony in Washington, D.C., will take place on Wednesday.

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I first began writing poetry when I was in high school to escape the constant and merciless torture inflicted on me by the homophobic monsters I called my classmates. My biology teacher, bless her, let me hide out in her lab during lunch or other free periods so I could avoid whatever living nightmares awaited me in the school hallways, and I began to write as a way to process the agony I was living through.

20 years later, I’m alive and thriving, and I credit poetry as playing a large part in me still being on this planet. Today, I have an MFA in poetry from New York University, and while my job as editorial director of HuffPost Voices makes it hard for me to dedicate the kind of time and energy I’d like to my poetry, I still write ― often to work through confusion or pain or other emotions in the same way I did as a 14-year-old.

Last year, in the midst of a particularly bad bout of depression, I wrote a poem entitled “This Might Not Make Sense Now, But Don’t Worry, It Will.” The poem deals with the strange and devastating feeling of being so distanced from the things that made me happy that, while not being suicidal, I worried that I had become so apathetic about my life that it now held little meaning for me.

After reading the poem, Carina Kolodny, a creative director at HuffPost (and a friend of mine) asked if Ji Sub Jeong, one of HuffPost’s talented multimedia producers, could have a go at animating it, and I was incredibly moved by the poem’s transformation from written word to animated short. 

Today we’re sharing the piece as part of National Poetry Month. Check it out above and read the poem below.

This Might Not Make Sense Now, But Don’t Worry, It Will
for Paolo Fanoli

When I ask Paolo how to draw the line between 

not wanting to live anymore and wanting to die, 

all he’ll quietly commit to is “that isn’t funny.”

I’m worried I worry him.

He says if I ever left him he would keep my body 

under his bed and drag it out once a day to remember me, 

prop up the less and less of me that’s left of me 

and remind me of the world I left behind me — just look! 

Some people can wake up every morning, open their 

eyes and recognize something beautiful, even if it’s 

just the sun slobbering across the bedroom floor with its 

hot black tongue, 

so, why can’t you?

He’s right, of course, but when I was 14, nothing was 

more beautiful than the thought of the heavy gray 

garage door guarding the far edge of my family’s driveway 

and how sweetly, how surely it could kiss my head

apart from the rest of my body if only I asked it sweetly 

enough.

Things were different then —

I still was afraid to ask for what I wanted then and I 

spent my lunch hours holed up in the biology lab hiding 

from the other boys, sobbing into my sandwich, another 

pickled frog prince bobbing in his embalming fluid, one more 

never-born piglet day-drunk on the useless daydream of 

one day living someone else’s life on the other side of the glass 

but we both know how that story ends.

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Claims that Steve Bannon continues to profit from “Seinfeld” re-runs could be a show about nothing.

A profile of the Trump adviser appearing in the May 1 issue of The New Yorker dedicates six paragraphs to untangling the claim that Bannon has fueled his right-wing campaign in part on a steady revenue stream from the show’s syndication deal. 

The passage describes negotiations facilitated by Bannon & Co. between Westinghouse Electric, Castle Rock Entertainment and others. Bannon has claimed that Westinghouse executives encouraged him to take an ownership stake in the deal, which led to “a stream of ‘Seinfeld’ royalties,” according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

But when The New Yorker’s Connie Bruck went looking for evidence of that steady stream, she found the equivalent of a bunch of crackers in Kramer’s briefcase.

From the New Yorker:

There were several companies involved in the deal: Turner Broadcasting Systems; Castle Rock; Sony, which owned a stake of about forty-four per cent in Castle Rock; and Westinghouse, with a fifteen-per-cent stake. In the end, Westinghouse received its cash compensation, plus a small percentage of the TV package, and Bannon & Co. got a smaller one. In 1995, Westinghouse acquired CBS, and CBS became the surviving company.

That fall, “Seinfeld” went into syndication. After Turner Broadcasting merged with Time Warner, in late 1995, Turner’s Castle Rock came under the Warner Bros. umbrella. Warner Bros. started sending out all “Seinfeld” profit-participation statements, including Westinghouse’s, which goes to CBS. The Castle Rock and the Westinghouse records from the early months of syndication are not readily available. It is possible that Bannon’s deal was capped and paid out at that time. But, since then, neither CBS nor Castle Rock nor Warner Bros. has records of payments to Bannon, if those records are as they were described to me.

The New Yorker profile also mentions “Seinfeld” in reference to Bannon’s divorce. The piece describes an April 1997, “income and expense declaration” that includes no evidence of profit participations from “Seinfeld.” 

“Either they were not substantial or Bannon failed to disclose them in a sworn statement,” Bruck writes.

The New Yorker even solicited a comment from “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David, who said, “I don’t think I ever heard of him until he surfaced with the Trump campaign and I had no idea that he was profiting from the work of industrious Jews!”

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