One of the best late spring or early summer activities is getting to spend time outdoors. Of course, there are a few downsides, like bugs, but the benefits and fun far outweigh the downsides, which can be fixed with citronella candles and mosquito net – or, if you’re wanting to spend the night outside, a tent cover for the trampoline.
If you’ve already got a trampoline, or are considering one, you may also want to check out trampoline tent covers, which can be put up and taken down quickly, allowing for an impromptu camping trip without all the hustle and bustle, reservations, planning, and car time that a regular camping trip requires. You can set up a campfire, tell spooky stories, and then snuggle into a sleeping bag and thank the stars you have a cozy cover that keeps the weather and bugs off you while you dream.
There are plenty of styles to choose from, some with additions and extras like inflatable capability, a treehouse design, or windows. There are more kid-friendly options as well as more practical designs for the adults. You can find covers for $50.00 and up on Amazon, or you can check out places like Wal-Mart or Wayfair for their offerings, which come in all sizes – you’ll be able to find the perfect fit for your trampoline. You may also be able to catch these on sale during cooler months, so keep an eye out and add one of these to your wishlist.
Many of us growing up wished we had our own pool. Some of us were lucky enough to have a neighborhood pool, a nearby lake, or a friend whose family had a pool in the backyard. Now that we’re older, of course, we know that pools come with upkeep and insurance and decide that the pool at the apartment complex or gym is quite enough.
However, that doesn’t stop us all from wanting to have some fun with friends on the weekend. Enter the best invention for pool parties in the last several years: group-size inflatables. That’s right – grab your closest four to six friends, some beer, and your bathing suits and hit the pool with an array of fun designs, my personal favorites being a giant unicorn, a pizza that splits into separate floats, and the inflatable island raft.
These have become so popular that some of the most sought-after inflatables are completely sold out, or only available at a special price on E-Bay. However, you can find a variety still available on Amazon, typically in the $125-200.00 price range.
Next time you decide to host a summer BBQ, a birthday party by the pool, or even a movie night on the water, you may want to consider one or more of these inflatables — after all, who can resist reliving a childhood dream?
This morning I almost burnt my fingers trying to check the bagels I was toasting in the oven. The oven mitt I had been using wasn’t very thick, and I wished I’d purchased something that would prevent me from nearly roasting my digits every time I wanted to check the progress of my breakfast.
Enter the AmyTalk Retriever Tongs, the stainless steel grippers made specifically to prevent this issue. They’re also good for those who may need a stronger grip on slippery dishes, such as those who live with conditions like arthritis or people who experience nerve or tendon pain.
You can purchase retriever tongs in a variety of colors, in packs of two, for as little as $10.00. These would make excellent presents for the chefs in your life, as well as new homeowners, graduates, campers, or grillers, and of course a nice little treat for yourself as well. They’d be particularly helpful during holiday seasons where the oven is constantly being used to produce cookies, cakes, pies, casseroles, ham, and turkey.
With a wide range of choices and pricing options, I wouldn’t be surprised if these tongs became kitchen staples in the very near future. If you’d like to jump on the bandwagon and be the first among your family and friends to use these clever little clips, you can find an array of them available on Amazon.
Tinder favors the attractive. That’s a fact. Some of us are very attractive, and some less so. But all of us can get better results on Tinder by doing the “right” things.
First a tip: You do not need a high match rate. How many people are you going to date? That’s a good number to go for in terms of matches. If you might date 5 people, you only need a few matches. Do not expect amazing results from Tinder, but you can get results. For example, a fairly good-looking 33-year-old, 5’9 white guy who studies attraction and Tinder itself put in tons of work testing profiles. His overall result, using fairly attractive photos, humor and jokes and other tricks, having a decent career, etc: 14/100 women dated him on his best profile (32% matched, 93% of those replied to his message, and of those 93% 72% gave him their phone number, of which 61% [14 people] went on a date). He compared it with a bar or club, where if he put in 6 or 8 hours of work, he would not get that many dates, so he liked using Tinder. Most people using Tinder will not be able to get anywhere near 14/100. but would be OK with one or two dates, I’m guessing.
HOW TO MAKE A GOOD TINDER PROFILE
- Profile photo. More important than anything else, and if you don’t have a presentable profile photo, it will be almost impossible for anything else you do to work. Either get a good profile photo or accept the fact you will get only 1 or so matches per hundred of your swipes, or don’t use Tinder.What is a good profile photo? It must be high quality (not blurry). It helps to have a dog in it somewhere. It helps if you are smiling but not too much. It helps sometimes if you are not looking directly at the camera. You can try an angle that looks up at your face. The picture should NOT be a selfie – it should look like someone else took it. The photo should not have any information in it that could possibly turn any girl off based on her associations. The ideal photos are often professionally taken photos, and involve the person looking like a model in a magazine. NOTE: you do not need to be good looking to get matches on Tinder. You just need to present your photos so that people will like them, using creativity, humor, and other enjoyable things if you can’t just sit back and rely on your good looks.
- After the person approves of your photo, they will look at the text right under it and see what is written. This is where you should be funny and show personality. They will look at your age and profession. If they approve of that, they will read the top line of your profile. It should be funny and interesting usually. For example, SchoolOfAttraction wrote “If you think my profile’s tight, then just swipe right! Now you know why I’m not a rapper 😉
- After that, you should include funnily-presented things that involve stuff the opposite sex generally likes. Here are some examples from SchoolOfAttraction again: “I like talking about all the things you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company,” “If you can eat a packet of timtams in one sitting we’ll probably get along,” DO NOT READ THE NEXT SENTENCE!! You little rebel, I like you already,” “I’m a life coach who loves intellectual conversation and chocolate ice cream orgies.” As you can see, these are probably not really true specific to the person.
- Pre-confirmation. Things like placing a banner on top of your profile photo that says “It’s a match! with a heart” and making your photo a split screen with a famous celebrity who looks similar on one side and your photo on the other (even a terrible photo that gets 0/100 matches) and saying you’re that celebrity’s “evil twin” have shown to work.
- Engagement. A slide show (again, a banner on top of your profile photo with an arrow to see more photos), with a photo that shows comedic “reviews.”
- Canned responses once you try to message someone. They should be funny. Examples from SchoolofAttraction: “Wow okay, so I just arrived on Tinder, and I wasn’t going to actually talk to anyone (you could be an axe murderer after all), but I really liked X about your profile and had to say hello!” and “Soo…. Just checking you aren’t a fan of sharp dangerous objects by any chance? (an impressionable young man can never be too careful).”
- Message people when they are online and ask them out at the end of the first conversation. Have a short conversation and ask.
Alternative social media sites
People are increasingly unhappy with the increasing (what they perceive as) abuses some internet companies are employing as part of their use. That’s obvious everywhere in 2018. Just look at any link shared about one of the big companies and the top-voted comments. Part of the issue is that the companies keep changing from the reasons people liked using them. Also, the companies seem to want always to collect more information than people want to give them, even though they could probably make a profit with just the basic amount of information people don’t mind them having.
For example, Facebook is still doing a decent job in many things, including allowing people to share information, links, images, etc. All they have to do is respect (protect) freedom of speech, do not allow trolls to false-report content, do not collect more information about people than they generally offer in public (their hobbies, interests, ballpark economic status, general location, general age, etc), stop forcing people to send them private/sensitive information like picture ID card photos, stop locking people out of their accounts, and just let people use their platform. It would also help if they stopped worrying about “fake news” which it isn’t their job to try to filter – people will have to learn that not all sources are reliable, and all they have to do is look at the source to see if it is, and no one can really do this for them – which is something they are already learning, irregardless of big companies efforts to “reduce fake news.” If they did this stuff, they could still turn a good profit and at the same time maintain their user-base’s good will. Twitter works this way, not really worrying about “fake” accounts or news, because users themselves can follow or unfollow people they want in their feed, which is less work for the company and less aggravation for well-meaning users.
Anyway, since it seems many companies are not willing to do this kind of thing, a lot of people are looking for and suggesting alternative platforms. Here are some we’ve collected from others’ suggestions.
Social media alternatives:
- Voat – Like reddit
- 4chan – sort of like reddit
- ello – sort of like Facebook
- 9gag – for gifs and pictures, kind of like Imgur
- Mastodon – like Twitter
Search engine alternatives:
- DuckDuckGo.com – now has 30m uses and rising
- Searx.me – lots of people recently are using this even instead of DDG
A netizen’s reason for using Searx.me: “When I do a search for a website, searx.me doesn’t automatically slap the wikipedia entry as the top link. I’m looking for the website, not the opinion of a bunch of SJW shut-ins about it.”
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In early October 2018 Google made public that they had for some time been aware of a software bug that allowed illicit access to G+ users personal information, not including personal communication or phone numbers. The information potentially accessible included email addresses, birth dates, profile photos and gender, and affected up to 500,000 G+ accounts, reportedly.
Google announced they would be shutting down all consumer functionality of G+ over the next 10 months. Google said it would keep the enterprise version used by G Suite business customers.
Interpol chief vanishes in China
Family of Interpol Chief Meng Hongwei have not heard from him since he left Lyon, France for China a week ago.
Chinese state news SCMP reported that a source of theirs said that Meng was taken away by “discipline authorities” for questioning in China, although the Chinese government has made no public comment. Meng’s family have reached out to foreign authorities, fearing disciplinary measures against them as well.
Meng is a senior official in China’s CP government.
Disappearances of officials (or anyone) is not uncommon in China, one of the more severe forms of government discipline. Since President Xi took office in 2012, over a million party officials have received some form of discipline, it has been reported.
Interpol tweet:
New film about Pablo Escobar, but Colombians are asking actor not to play the role with 'glamour' so their kids don't want to repeat the story
Colombian drug war anti-hero Pable Escobar is the subject of a new movie, called “Loving Pablo,” based on a memoir written by a journalist close to the drug king pin, on Mrs. Virginia Vallejo. Vallejo was a lover of Escobar and eventually let U.S. federal agents to him.
However, Colombians asked leading actor, the some-might-say-glamorous-and-cool-already Javier Bardem not to play the role so that Escobar appeared glamourous and cool because they didn’t want the youth to see the movie and want to repeat the story, according to Bardem.
“We wanted to make sure that there was nothing glamorous and iconic to talk about,” the actor said.
Bardem’s take on the idea: “I believe that performing or making movies or any act – discipline, music, writing, sculpture, painting – it’s about bringing mirrors of who we are to ourselves, to get a glimpse of what we can be for the better or for the worse.”