If you’ve ever tried to watch YouTube when it’s dark out, you know that the typical bright white of the video service’s page can be a bit blinding. Enter “Dark Mode,” a hidden feature that turns the light surfaces black or dark gray so you can get on…
Hobbies come in all shapes and sizes. Some keep you active while others are more sedentary, such as crafting hobbies. If wielding power tools and fire are where your heart lies, then finding a way to combine the two would likely be the best option. While making a flame thrower would certainly be a fun way to pass the time, it would likely leave you in some legal trouble whether or not you mean it to.
If you still want to use tools and heat, this Walnut Hollow Woodburning Tool might be able to let you live out some of your more arson-related dreams, without injury to anyone but possibly you! This is a soldering tool that comes with a variety of tips that will let you make your mark in different shapes. It comes with 11 points in all, and uses a dial to adjust the temperature.
This will plug into any standard two-prong outlet, and has a temperature range of 0-950 degrees Fahrenheit. You’ll be able to work on everything from foam and paper to leather and soft plastics, and there are instructions for which color on the dial corresponds to which materials. You’ll be looking at spending $23.99 on this device, but if this is a leisure activity and you can create something from it, you can turn those dollars spent into items that can be sold.
Available for purchase on Amazon
[ The Walnut Hollow Woodburning Tool – BURN IT FOR ART copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
When it comes to gadgets that are able to help you out in terms of fitness, you would not go too far wrong with Polar and its collection of devices. From running computers to heart rate monitoring, Polar had always managed to deliver top notch performance in ensuring that you are able to measure and compute all of your physical movement without missing a beat. Their latest device that is all set to hit the market? The Polar M460 GPS Bike Computer, where this bad boy will feature Advanced Power Meter Compatibility alongside Smart Coaching capability.
The Polar M460 GPS Bike Computer is special as it sports a sleek, all-black and fiber-like surface texture that is accompanied by an improved button grip. This particular bike computer will boast of integrated GPS, extra power meter compatibility, advanced power metrics and smart coaching, not to mention Strava Live Segments. It is a potent combination that makes it the ideal training tool for cyclists who intend to achieve their fitness goals. It does not matter whether you are a seasoned cyclist or one who has just taken up the sport as a hobby, the Polar M460 GPS Bike Computer will still have something to offer for everyone.
With an asking price of $79.90, the Polar M460 will boast of a two-month Strava Premium membership to boot. What is interesting about this particular device is its compatibility with an extensive list of third party power meters as well as advanced cycling power metrics. Some of these include the Training Peaks’ Normalized Power, Intensity Factor and Training Stress Score, which will boost training efficiency. The Polar M460 also ensures that cyclists remain connected thanks to smart notifications for incoming calls, texts, calendar alerts and social media updates. Best of all is, it is IPX7 rating water resistant to handle any foul weather with aplomb while you are out.
Press Release
[ Polar reveals the new Polar M460 GPS Bike Computer copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Need a lot of extra storage for your Nintendo Switch or action cam? The advent of 200GB+ cards means that 128GB cards, which until relatively recently sold in the $60-$80 range, are finally inching towards affordability.
We finally have real footage from Episode VIII, and as mysterious as it is, there are a number of details hidden in there that give us some clues as to what’s in store for Rey, Finn, Poe, and the rest when The Last Jedi arrives this December—and we’ve broken it all down for you, frame-by-frame.
Remember this time last year, when checking the news rarely meant hearing the word “pussy”? You know, outside of that one band from Russia?
Then came the tape.
The Washington Post, breaking news of Donald Trump’s now infamously vulgar “Access Hollywood” comments in early October, didn’t put the most outrageous word in its headline, writing instead the rather bland “Trump Recorded Having Extremely Lewd Conversation About Women In 2005.” As news organizations reflect the linguistic conventions of their audiences, the paper was considering its readers who weren’t comfortable with the slang for “vagina.” Others reporting on the tape, including The Huffington Post, and also avoided using it in their headlines, emphasizing instead the inappropriate nature of the remarks.
On TV, where perhaps our highest standards of decent language are meant to live, “pussy” was bleeped. In the aftermath, more headlines began appearing with the offending word partially present: “p***y.”
But then U.S. voters cast ballots and, through the ancient magic of the Electoral College, it was determined that the candidate who once bragged about sexual assault against women would become president. And the word began cropping up again ― in a different way.
“Women Knit Thousands Of ‘Pussy Power Hats’ To Support The Women’s March On Washington,” The New York Times reported in January, as women knitted in part against Trump’s vulgar remark about their bodies. The Huffington Post also let the word fly free, uncensored, while other organizations referred to the “pussy hats” not by name but rather their iconic pinkness. As people began talking about “pussy hats,” knitting them and wearing them, the word “pussy” seemed increasingly normalized. Case in point: pussy hats are ending up in museums around the world to represent our present cultural moment.
A moment when we said “pussy” and it wasn’t offensive or embarrassingly porny, but powerful and unifying for regular women.
It’s too soon to tell whether women have truly reclaimed the word, in the aftermath of a contentious election marked by criticism over a sexist candidate. Thanks to repeated references in the news and pop culture, “pussy” feels neutered, part of the natural fabric of our language. Does it still have the power to shock? Maybe not as much.
Pussy hats, though, might be merely the more ubiquitous version of Pussy Riot ― the all-female Russian punk group. Seemingly another pop-culture lifetime ago, in 2012, Pussy Riot was getting in trouble for their protest performances, thrusting the word “pussy” into the media in a quieter version of recent events. “’Pussy’ Is Having A Moment,” declared Slate. ‘Can We Reclaim And Redefine ‘Pussy’? Sure, Why Not,” said Jezebel. The former reminded us about the effort to re-contextualize words offensive against women, including “pussy,” kicked off by riot grrrls way back in the ‘90s. Slate’s Lindsay Zoladz also brought up the examples of musicians Iggy Azaela, with her song “PU$$Y,” and Grimes, who introduced a line of rings (”pussy rings”) shaped like vaginas. Women ― a few, at least ― have embraced the word, claiming it for the feminist movement.
With their constant syntactic companions, maybe “pussy hat” and “Pussy Riot” allowed women the chance to warm up to the word by diluting it ever so slightly. Seeing it on its own, then, as on a “pussy grabs back” T-shirt, becomes more of a ho-hum affair, whether we feel empowered or simply desensitized.
As always, context is everything. From the mouth of a man, the term can retain its cruelty when intended as a crass reference to a woman’s genitals, and its hostility when used to criticize another’s masculinity. “Grab ‘em by the pussy” still makes for a grotesquely sexist string of words.
Women could begin saying “pussy” as casually and freely as the LGBTQ community reclaimed “queer,” gradually pushing out those who would use it to demean them as a mere part of their whole selves ― perhaps gradually turning it into a word we would have a hard time reading with malice. Language can be that way: like the society that uses it, it evolves.
You can be highbrow. You can be lowbrow. But can you ever just be brow? Welcome to Middlebrow, a weekly examination of pop culture. Read more here.
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A Tennessee mom has shared an honest post about her experience coming to terms with postpartum depression, and what she’s doing to help other mothers.
On March 26, Ashley French (known as The Wino Workout Wife online) posted a photo on Instagram and Facebook showing her and her son, Colby, on his first birthday. In her post, the mom of two, who lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, questioned how she could feel sad when her kids, or “miracle blessings,” brought her so much “unspeakable joy.”
The reason was postpartum depression, which French was diagnosed with in July 2016, four months after welcoming Colby.
“Postpartum depression SUCKS,” French wrote in her post. “It’s [sic] comes and goes like the East Tennessee weather, and leaves the damage of a tornado for me to try to pick back up.”
At first, French was in denial that she had postpartum depression. She told The Huffington Post she didn’t fit what she thought was the “classic mold” of a depressed person.
“I didn’t feel like doom and gloom all day,” she said. “I had no appetite changes. I had no negative or harmful thoughts of myself or my children. Those were all things that I thought postpartum depression was.”
French’s symptoms included feeling anxious and becoming impatient with even the tiniest mishaps. She also had intrusive thoughts she couldn’t control.
“One minute I’m watching the news, and the next thing I know I’m imagining my life with these two children if my husband died. That’s not normal,” she told HuffPost. “I became anxious in my ability to take care of two children, I started to doubt my abilities to be a mother, and I started to become a parent I didn’t want to be.”
Now that she’s been diagnosed, French has committed to speaking openly about her experience. She told HuffPost that before her diagnosis she didn’t know anyone with postpartum depression, but now has heard from many moms who have offered support.
She has also been inspired by a book titled “The Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod. It motivated her to make herself a priority by having “me time” in the mornings. She now wakes up an hour earlier to give herself a pep talk, visualize her day, work out for 30 minutes, shower and have a cup of coffee before her kids are awake.
“You have to fill your own cup before you can properly fill others, and this morning routine allows me to do just that,” she said.
French has invited moms who “struggle with the day-to-day battle of making time” for themselves to come together for what she calls “Miracle Momma Morning.”
“It’s starting next Monday, April 17, and is open to anyone, no matter location,” she said. “There has been a great interest in it so far, especially from other mommas who crave that ‘me time’ in their day, and just haven’t been able to find it yet.”
French told HuffPost she has also dealt with an eating disorder in the past and has had multiple miscarriages. By being vocal about these experiences as well as her postpartum depression, she wants to encourage other women to not feel ashamed for experiencing any of these things. She has also vowed to keep fighting the stigma surrounding postpartum depression.
“We need to talk about this issue and bring it to the light so that mothers know they don’t need to suffer in silence.”
The HuffPost Parents newsletter, So You Want To Raise A Feminist, offers the latest stories and news in progressive parenting.
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A few years ago, Brazilian-born writer, actor and dancer Andrea Dantas heard back about her audition to dance flamenco on Madonna’s world tour. She didn’t get the job.
“I thought, ‘OK, you’re allowed to feel sorry for yourself for 10 minutes,’” Dantas told The Huffington Post. “After, I thought, ‘What do you want to do now? What do you want to do with your life?’ And I swear, I heard a voice that said ‘Frida,’ and I just knew.”
The fruits of Dantas’ labor are currently on view at Brooklyn’s BAM Fisher, in a one-woman show called “Fragmented Frida.” Dantas plays the role of the iconic painter Frida Kahlo, starting as a young, awkward yet precocious child ― complete with a bowl cut and a limp ― and ending up as the most renowned woman artist of all time: braided hair, unibrow and all.
Far more than Dantas focuses on the specifics of Kahlo’s artistic craft, she zooms in on her life story, an extraordinary journey riddled with hardship. At the age of 6, Kahlo was stricken with polio, leaving her right leg incapacitated and in tremendous pain. At 18 she was involved in a near-fatal bus crash, which left her pelvis crushed. While recovering, and spending most of her time in a wheelchair, Kahlo began to paint, famously declaring: “I don’t paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.”
It was Kahlo’s incredible resilience that drew Dantas to her as a character. “At that time in Mexico, being a woman wasn’t cool, being a feminist wasn’t cool, divorcing a man wasn’t cool, being a bisexual wasn’t cool, being so free sexually was not cool at all,” Dantas said. “How did she manage to do so much in spite of all the illness and all the betrayals? How does the underdog become the hero?”
Dantas read around 20 Kahlo biographies before writing the script, taking about eight months to research. She then trained with movement coach Thiago Felix to accurately convey how Kahlo moved through the world, crippled at various points by illness, injury and heartbreak.
Even after receiving recognition for her dreamlike self-portraits, which translated her brutal physical and emotional wounds onto her painted flesh, Kahlo continued to suffer. After being told she could not conceive, she became pregnant, only to suffer a grisly miscarriage. She experienced infidelity on the part of her husband, painter Diego Rivera, most painfully with her own sister.
While today Kahlo is regarded as a figure of strength and courage, it was important for Dantas to capture the softer, more vulnerable aspects of her personality to show how, despite the mythical status she achieved, she was an emotional, fallible human being.
“She had such a subtlety to her and a magnetism, she was a hopeless romantic,” Dantas said. “She was soft, she had a great sense of humor. It’s not just about the pain and the suffering. She was not a victim. This is a woman who, when her leg was amputated, the first thing she did was custom-make a boot for herself. She painted it red so everyone could see what was happening to her. She had an amazing zest for life.”
Although Dantas could not have predicted the political climate in which her play would debut, the current moment seems to make its message all the more pressing. “In the 1930s Frida said: ‘If the American people rebelled against everything that is wrong here, this would be a very different place,’” Dantas said. “Even then, she always said that women matter, that the LGBTQ community matters, that art matters. All the craziness that is happening in the country regarding immigration, she would have a lot to say about that for sure.”
There have already been countless retrospectives, books, essays and films devoted to the life of Ms. Kahlo. Through “Fragmented Frida,” Dantas hopes to add her own perspective to the mix with a performance revolving around one particular thread of Kahlo’s many accomplishments: Her exceptional ability to turn vulnerability into strength.
“She overcame so much,” Dantas said. “She shows, with certainty, there is nothing a person cannot overcome.”
“Fragmented Frida,” directed by Christine Renee Miller, runs until Sunday, April 16, at BAM Fisher in Brooklyn, New York.
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Susan Clarke Schaar has been the clerk of the Virginia state Senate for 27 years. G. Paul Nardo has been the clerk of the Virginia state House for five and a half years.
Schaar was making $175,392. The less-experienced Nardo was making $194,341.
It’s hard to find a more blatant display of gender pay disparity than what has been going on in the Virginia General Assembly.
Republican leaders in the state Senate recently authorized a raise for Schaar, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, so that she now makes $195,500 ― essentially the same as her male House counterpart who has been on the job for 21 years fewer than she has.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment, Jr. (R) has been trying to fix the imbalance for months, saying, “I just think that she’s entitled to be compensated at the same level as the clerk of the House. She’s been here 30 years.”
He first filed a budget amendment in January to try to raise Schaar’s salary.
Norment had the support of Democrats in the House, but some of his fellow Republicans in that chamber opposed his move. Del. S. Chris Jones (R), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, for example, argued that Nardo does more work than Schaar.
“The clerk in the House of Delegates is the keeper of the rolls,” he said in February. “Next year when we get here, his office and he (will) take care of the inauguration. So the jobs are not equal in what they do as far as their task at hand.”
House Republicans also rejected a Democratic budget amendment to bring Schaar’s pay in line with Nardo’s at that time. Norment and the Senate Rules Committee ultimately authorized the raise for Schaar.
Nardo started in the clerk position in 2011 with a salary of $157,540. He received routine raises, but also a significant boost thanks to a move by House Speaker William J. Howell (R). Before being clerk, Nardo was chief of staff to Howell from 2002-2011.
Schaar has worked in the state Senate for a total of 43 years, starting at the age of 23. She told the Times-Dispatch she was satisfied with the new pay arrangement and did not return an additional request for comment from The Huffington Post.
Nardo said he didn’t have any comment on the matter, because it was an issue that was between Schaar and the legislative chamber.
“The Senate Clerk works for a separate coequal legislative body and her pay is set completely separate from and by non House members,” he said. “The Speaker sets mine as Clerk and Keeper of the Rolls of the Commonwealth.”
Jeff Ryer, spokesman for the Virginia Senate Republican Caucus, said neither he nor anyone else from the caucus would comment for this piece because they do not consider The Huffington Post “a legitimate news organization.”
Want more updates from Amanda Terkel? Sign up for her newsletter, Piping Hot Truth, here.
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When Claire Daniels joked about wanting a Dr. Pepper fountain on Twitter, she never expected her dream might become a reality.
Back in December, the Kansas State communications major expressed her dismay at how much she was spending drinking her favorite soft drink.
The tweet caught the eyes of Dr. Pepper’s marketing team, who decided it would be fun to actually surprise Daniels with the soda fountain of her dreams, according to the Kansas State Collegian.
“We were really inspired by her love of the brand and wanted to have a fun twist on what exactly that means for her,” Dr. Pepper associate brand manager Lynsey Loomer told the paper.
Loomer said she and her team figured Daniels just wanted a restaurant-type soda fountain, but decided it would be more fun to make a giant fountain, like the kind usually placed outdoors.
Daniels admits she had no particular fountain in mind.
“I honestly don’t know what I was picturing,” Daniels told the paper. “It was just kind of like a joke-y kind of tweet.”
Dr. Pepper officials surprised Daniels at her home in Manhattan, Kansas on Thursday.
The rust-colored fountain holds around five gallons of Dr. Pepper. But other than a ceremonial sip on Thursday night, the company is strongly discouraging her from drinking out of it for safety reasons, like if a bird poops in it.
However, Dr. Pepper made up for that minor inconvenience by giving her 1,200 cans of the sugary soda.
“I have always loved it. It’s the best-tasting pop,” Daniels told the Wichita Eagle.
Daniels is still in shock over the giant soda fountain.
“It’s really crazy,” she told the paper. “I am still kind of in awe … It was just kind of a joke tweet, but here we are. I think it’s awesome. I’m really excited. It’s kind of crazy to think one tweet could make this happen.”
The fountain remains in front of her college house, but a Dr. Pepper spokeswoman told HuffPost the company promises to move it to wherever she wants next.
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