Offset was a guest on Kai Cenat’s recent 24 hour stream, and he had to steal some time to get some sleep during the stream. He was exposed by everyone else there for not being able to stay up the full 24 hours when he retreated to one of the bedrooms in Kai Cenat’s house to get some rest.
However, viewers speculated that Offset was doing a bit more than just sleeping during the stream and that he was being unfaithful to Cardi B. Maybe those were Cardi’s fans – we can’t tell.
Kai Cenat and Cardi B were quick to shut down these rumors and back up Offset, saying that Cenat’s viewers were “embarrassing” for taking clips out of context.
Furthermore, some viewers still believe that Offset was being unfaithful to Cardi B.
These rumors were started by a video that was put together by some of Cenat’s viewers showing Offset’s actions during the stream.
The video depicts Offset conversating with someone off-camera before going upstairs and disappearing for 40 minutes, leading some to believe that the rapper cheated on Cardi B during Kai Cenat’s livestream.
When Senate incumbents are challenged in a primary and lose, it is usually because they are enmeshed in a scandal.
Incumbency has numerous advantages: sitting senators have six years to build up a war chest, they have high name recognition, and they have experience running statewide campaigns. Plus, both parties actively discourage primary challenges.
So why did Kennedy decide to mount this challenge? And why might he actually have a shot of unseating Markey?
A primary not like the others
It is tempting to see Kennedy’s challenge as another instance of generational conflict among Democrats.
Markey served in the House from 1976 until he won the Senate seat in a 2013 special election. During his House tenure, Markey established himself as an expert on energy and telecommunication policy.
Kennedy, the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, has served in the House for only eight years compared to Markey’s 37. Before announcing his Senate bid, Kennedy seemed to be on a path toward playing a role in the House Democratic leadership.
The 2020 primary season has featured several House campaigns in which young, progressive candidates have challenged long-serving incumbents in districts that were once considered safe. Three of these challengers – Jamaal Bowman in New York, Cori Bush in Missouri and Marie Newman in Illinois – even won.
But in the Massachusetts race, the ideological differences – if there are any – are muddled. Kennedy cannot make a credible claim to be running to Markey’s left. Markey has secured the backing of progressive star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the winner of the highest-profile primary battle of 2018, and he has made his support of progressive policy goals like the Green New Deal a centerpiece of his campaign.
Kennedy, meanwhile, secured the endorsements of older establishment figures like Nancy Pelosi and the late John Lewis.
Throwing a wrench in the machine
Instead, it seems as though the race is less a battle of ideas, and more one of political calculation on Kennedy’s part.
One of the most influential recent books on political parties, “The Party Decides,” contends that American presidential primaries are largely a ratification of decisions made by party elites well before the votes are cast. The authors note, however, that political parties long ago lost control of the nominations for the House and Senate.
This has not necessarily been the case in Massachusetts. The Bay State is one of the few remaining in which it is possible to speak of a “Democratic machine” – a party that can control nominations for state and federal offices.
With a few exceptions – the most obvious is Elizabeth Warren – statewide elections in Massachusetts feature seasoned Democratic officials who have faithfully waited their turn to take the next step up the state’s political ladder.
Markey is a product of this approach. When he announced his candidacy in the 2013 special election to fill John Kerry’s Senate seat, his long House tenure made him the closest thing to a “next in line” candidate. Markey’s candidacy dissuaded many other Democrats from running, and he easily bested his lone Democratic opponent, the more junior U.S. Rep. Steven Lynch, in the primary.
Both Massachusetts senators – Markey and Elizabeth Warren – are in their 70s, so even if Markey survives this challenge, there will likely be an open seat race in Massachusetts soon.
Why couldn’t Kennedy simply bide his time?
In this overwhelmingly Democratic state, there are many Democrats who have been patiently waiting their turn, from the state’s all-Democratic House delegation, to statewide officeholders such as Attorney General Maura Healey. The Massachusetts Democratic Party also requires candidates to receive 15% of the votes at the party convention to even appear on the ballot.
So the state Democratic Party’s byzantine traditions, more than anything else, may have influenced Kennedy’s decision. Had he waited for Markey or Warren to leave, he could have found himself vying against several other more seasoned opponents who have been licking their chops. And he may not have even made it onto the ballot.
Perhaps he thought he had a better chance in a head-to-head primary than in a race for an open seat. Furthermore, should he lose, he could build upon this race to run for an open seat in the future, though he’s given up his House seat in order to challenge Markey.
Smelling weakness?
Kennedy also seems to be gambling that Markey’s campaigning skills are rusty.
He may have a point. With no serious Republican opposition, Markey cruised to victory in 2013 and in the 2014 general election. As the representative from a safe House seat for nearly four decades before that, Markey is the rare Senate incumbent who has never had to run in a competitive race.
Kennedy substantially outspent Markey early in the race, and Markey has only begun to catch up in recent weeks.
Although the two candidates each raised approximately $10 million, Markey had three times as much money as Kennedy on hand as of mid-August. An influx of cash from Markey may be behind his recent surge in the polls that have given him a narrow lead. While Kennedy has likely benefited from name recognition, he has struggled to articulate why he is running and where he disagrees with Markey.
Just how unusual would it be if Markey were to lose?
The only Democratic Senate incumbent who has lost his seat to a primary challenger since the early 1990s was Arlen Specter, who switched parties shortly before the 2010 election, only to lose the Democratic primary to Rep. Joe Sestak. The last Democratic primary loser who resembled Markey was J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. Like Markey, he had a track record of impressive legislative achievements but rarely had to vigorously campaign for reelection. Fulbright ended up losing the 1974 primary to the state’s governor.
If the Arkansas comparison seems strained, a Massachusetts comparison could be more apt. In the first half of the 20th century, it was the Republicans, not the Democrats, who dominated Massachusetts politics. The liberal Republican Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was perhaps the most accomplished Massachusetts senator of his generation. Despite his national reputation, he lost his seat in 1952 to a much younger Democrat who, during the general election, ran a personality-based campaign fueled by his family’s money.
That Democrat was, of course, Joe Kennedy III’s great uncle: John F. Kennedy.
When asked if she’d tried to maintain her friendships amid her career, Billie admitted: “I think I felt resentful… I was so young; everything I felt back then, I don’t think I would even stand by. Literally, the world was being handed to me on a silver platter, like: ‘Would you like this?’”
“So all of my friends became my employees, which I felt was fine, and I was like: ‘What do you mean? I have friends, I have so many friends!’” Billie continued. “Then it was my 20th birthday, and I remember looking around the room, and it was only people that I employ, and I was like, hmm. And all 15 years and more older than me.”
“Then one of my best friends who worked with me quit out of the blue and didn’t talk to me,” the star recalled. “And it was the worst thing that happened to me, and that made me realize, like, Oh, wait, this is a job, and these are really people that if they left me, they wouldn’t ever see me again. I kind of had this realization, like, Oh, I might actually be alone for real.”
Billie also said that she would often find herself in romantic relationships where her partner was her only friend, so she would stay with that person longer than she probably should have because they were all she had.
Eventually, Billie made a proactive effort to expand her circle, explaining: “I’ve become very distant in that way from people that I work with, and I have a very weird relationship to being friendly with people that I work with because I’m very freaked out by loss and I have a lot of abandonment problems.”
“Then I worked really hard on friendship and making friends and making new friends and rekindling old friendships,” she went on. “About exactly a year ago, I reconnected with a bunch of old friends, and now I have so many friends; I have a crew now! I could literally cry about it. It’s been the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
That same evening, Billie said that she “burst into tears” because she was so happy to have friends at last.
“I could not go on,” she added. “I couldn’t go on without friends. My friendships are, like, the best part of my life.”
This article posted on 20th Sept. 2023 claims that the next crypto bull run will be like nothing we’ve seen on earth. The transfer of wealth will be so great.
The crypto market is a weird one that has no rules and as such, can be shaken at any time.
There have been constant asset prices traveling sideways for the better part of 2023. Nevertheless, hope in the vision of the Federal Reserve’s mythical “soft” landing, combined with the upcoming Bitcoin halving, has the online community salivating at the prospect of many life-changing opportunities that could be within reach soon.
However, note that with greed in the air, it would be foolish to ignore the difference in the landscape as the market sentiment shifts.
Whether it’s the likes of BlackRock looking to issue ETFs to commercialize crypto exposure, corporate adoption, multiple IPOs, the rise of artificial intelligence or the attempted onslaught of regulation, there hasn’t ever been this much discourse around the digital asset class.
Why do fingers and toes get wrinkly and change color after a dip in a pool or a bath? – Raymond Y., age 12, Bothell, Washington
Skin is an awesome and weird organ. As the body’s biggest organ, it does a lot to look after you, protecting you from the outside world of sunlight, harsh chemicals, nasty germs and severe cold. And it does all this while keeping water inside your body and enabling the sense of touch.
We know skin wrinkles as you get older or when you pinch it between two fingers. But it’s been somewhat of a mystery why skin gets wrinkly and even sometimes changes color after you take a leisurely bath or spend too long in the swimming pool.
Often people assume that these wrinkles form because the skin absorbs water, which makes it swell up and buckle. To be honest, I did too for a long time.
But researchers back in the 1930s discovered that in people with nerve damage in their fingers, the post-bath wrinkles didn’t form. Wrinkly fingers can’t just be due to water absorption then, or this would be a universal phenomenon, no matter how well your nerves are or aren’t working.
So, if it isn’t swelling due to water, then what is behind pruny fingers and toes after a long swim? Scientists have recently discovered what they think is the answer.
A nerve signal for narrower blood vessels
To explain what is happening, first you need to know a bit about the autonomic nervous system – the involuntary part of how your body works. Functions like breathing, blinking, your heart pumping or your pupils constricting in the sun all happen without your needing to consciously control them, thanks to the autonomic nervous system.
It also automatically controls the expansion and contraction of your blood vessels. Typically, temperature, medications or what you eat or drink can cause your blood vessels to expand or contract. Think of how your skin may flush of its own accord when you go out into a hot day, exercise or even blush.
This contraction of your blood vessels is also what causes the skin to wrinkle after a lengthy swim.
When your hands and feet come into contact with water for more than a few minutes, the sweat ducts in your skin open, allowing water to flow into the skin tissue. This added water decreases the proportion of salt inside the skin. Nerve fibers send a message about lower salt levels to your brain, and the autonomic nervous system responds by constricting the blood vessels.
The narrowing of the blood vessels causes the overall volume of skin to reduce, puckering the skin into these distinct wrinkle patterns. It’s like how a dried-out grape becomes a wrinkled raisin – it’s lost more volume than surface area.
This constriction of blood vessels also causes the skin to become paler – it’s the opposite of what happens when your skin gets redder when you get into a really hot bath, due to your blood vessels dilating. The color change is a little more obvious in people with lighter complexions.
With nerve damage, this constriction doesn’t occur. The blood vessels never get a message to narrow, so the wrinkles never happen even if you stay in the bath for a really long time.
But does this skin wrinkling-when-wet serve any purpose?
Researchers have found that wrinkled skin has added grip underwater in comparison to unwrinkled skin. Better grip lets you grasp objects more firmly. It makes walking along an underwater surface easier, with less likelihood of slipping. I think this is a fantastic feature to have evolved over time.
My research team and I have performed studies to look at changes in skin structure and function with prolonged immersion in water, but not to study wrinkles. We’re interested in skin analyses that can be done to help forensic investigators after a crime or disaster. We also want to learn more about immersion foot syndromes – skin injuries caused by working in wet environments for long periods. They tend to affect military personal, or farmers whose crops grow in flooded fields, such as rice paddies.
Prolonged immersion in water makes skin more likely to break, but this weakening can take weeks to occur. Just don’t stay in the swimming pool too long and your pruny digits will go back to normal once you’ve dried off.
Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.
And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.
I (28, M) recently went on a date. I met Sally (fake name, 25, F) on Hinge, connected well and we both decided to meet for drinks. I don’t go to Hinge for hookups but s*x does happen when you connect with someone and I like to be prepared so I will bring protection.
The night goes well — great conversation, great chemistry — and she invites me back to her place. We talk a little longer and we get to her bedroom and as things get hot and heavy, I pull out a condom.
And then room dynamic changes. She questions why I brought a condom and then politely asks me to leave. As I get home, apologizing in the process, she states that she doesn’t like the idea that I was potentially expecting to get lucky — understandable — and doesn’t think it will work.
After bringing this back to the friend — male and female — group, it has been mixed feedback. On one hand, it is responsible to bring your own protection. On the other, it is kind of a weird move to do that early in the dating process. Wanting to hear the thoughts from the general population, especially as it is pretty common for me to bring a condom on a first date.
AITAH for wanting to be safe if a situation happens but also expecting a situation to potentially happen early in dating?
E: Explaining “hot and heavy”: making out with physical touch and clothes being removed. Intercourse was next, I just didn’t want this to post to focus on erotica/s*x but rather the idea of “the presumption of s*x.”
Game notes: The Tigers get a third consecutive scorcher down in Arizona after winning Saturday night. Brieske will try to bounce back after giving up four runs in five innings vs. the Boston Red Sox. Detroit then moves on to San Francisco to finish the road trip.
When did it all go wrong for Eddie Murphy? It was all wrong from the start.
The man has way too big of an ego for someone who isn’t that good of an actor. Actually, I’m being unfair. He has the potential to be a good actor, but he chooses to be lazy and takes jobs that pay him the most without a care for the quality.
Most of what he does in his movies is mug for the camera and act like Eddie Murphy. Don’t believe me? Coming to America was basically Eddie Murphy with a weird accent and mannerisms. Donkey from Shrek is basically Eddie Murphy in donkey form. The list goes on.
Sometimes he plays more than one role in his movies. None of them are convincing at all. It’s just Eddie Murphy being Eddie Murphy, thinking that he is funny for unconvincingly playing men, women, and children who look and act a lot like him like he did in The Nutty Professor.
Then we have roles where Eddie Murphy actually tries to act, and gets serious. Then he tries to acquire an Academy Award for taking on a dramatic role like he did on Dreamgirls.
But here’s the truth. The people who run the Academy know that Eddie is lazy, and rightly do not see him as fit for any acting awards. He rewarded them for their foresight by going back to making his terrible comedies, rather than pursuing a more dramatic route.
Sure, he was a legend in his time. He was a great standup comedian and he was great on SNL. Many of his early movies like Trading Places and Doctor Dolittle were also entertaining.
However, people grew tired of his shtick. Coupled with the many controversies he has weathered over the past couple of years, it’s no small wonder why he fell off the face of the Earth.
Now he’s considered a legend.
Don’t believe the hype. Watch any of his films without sound and you will find almost all of them to be dull and boring. He’s not as good a comedic actor as you think.
Do, however, respect his place in pop culture, as one of the most famous comedians of the ’80s. I especially recommend watching his two standup specials, Raw and Delirious.
As the Thanksgiving holiday was winding down, a medical center in Salem, Oregon, found itself in the middle of a frothing social media mess. A nurse named Ashley Grames posted a video on TikTok that went viral in which she mock-confessed to ignoring coronavirus health guidelines.
The video – which Grames has since taken down, though it remains available on other feeds – is less than 15 seconds long. And if you’re not familiar with TikTok tropes, the video will seem very weird. The nurse is wearing scrubs and seemingly at a medical facility. She lip-syncs to a short audio clip from “The Grinch” and mocks her co-workers’ outrage at her decision to flout the state mask mandate outside of work.
The nurse’s antics drew some unflattering attention to her employer, Salem Health, which suspended her pending an investigation. But it highlighted the ease with which employees can pull out a phone on the sly and share a little clip before the boss is any the wiser. Popular examples include a Domino’s Pizza cook, an Amazon warehouse workerlink not working for me and Starbucks baristas. Their employers thus serve as unwitting backdrops – with the logos, uniforms and workplaces on full display.
It’s pretty much impossible to dance with your uniform on in the backroom without violating those rules – so why aren’t companies cracking down more?
Cops love to dance.
TikTok teems with uniforms
TikTok, the preferred social media platform of the Gen Z set, is not really about connecting with friends. It’s more about recording the trending dance or fluffy topic of the moment and hoping the algorithm will spread your post to its billions of users.
Since much of TikTok is wordless and anodyne, TikTok seems the perfect corporate antidote to more pointed and politicized commentary on Twitter or Facebook.
And for the most part, it is. In 30-second bites, workers conjure up a mini fantasy world of a job free of supervisors. A man twirls and glides in a glum potato warehouse. An Amazon worker packs boxes with Olympic speed and precision. Hospital workers in protective gear groove with balloons bulging out of their scrubs.
And of course, there are cops – so many dancing cops. Police officers in full uniform, usually standing on the road or next to their patrol car, following prescribed dance moves to snippets of R&B or hip-hop.
Why do cops love TikTok? Why does TikTok love cops? Their dancing is merely OK. But the uniform pops on the camera and the videos have a subversive quality – like, they probably aren’t allowed to do any of this, but they’re doing it anyway. The man thumbing his nose at the man.
It’s free promotion for the employer, as recruiting and marketingcompanieshavepointed out. Even before the COVID-19 era, these types of jobs could be difficult, dangerous, boring or low paid. Videos that present an alternate narrative, from the workers’ perspectives – showing them looking cool or being silly – can’t really be replicated in formal marketing.
The honeymoon is over
On the other hand, TikTok may just be following the same trajectory of social media predecessors like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It all seems like fun and games until the scandals mount.
Beyond the Trump administration’s attempt to ban the app, companies have also pounced on the faintest whiff of embarrassment. Before there was Ashley Grames, there was Tony Piloseno, a popular TikTok paint mixer fired over the summer, apparently for posting a video in which he mixed blueberries with paint.
And there have been less high-profile scandals in recent months: a Chik-Fil-A worker fired over a video advising viewers to save money by ordering a drink with two extra pumps of mango syrup; a police officer suspended over a homophobic video about “magic” Crocs; and a Domino’s worker fired for posting videos of himself spinning a pizza slicer in the air.
With Grames all over the news, companies that have not been monitoring workplace TikTok posts may be scrambling to avert the next crisis, however minor.
As sociologists Steven Maynard-Moody and Michael Musheno observe in their book “Cops, Teachers, Counselors,” front-line workers are mired in rules and procedures. The inevitable response to scandal, they argue, is just to impose more rules.
But much of the appeal of TikTok resides in its patina of transgression. Dunkin’s official TikTok squad is as humdrum as any other corporate social media account. Reaping the viral rewards of TikTok may ultimately require companies to accept a little risk – and at least pretend they don’t approve.
