All posts tagged: settling

Blake Lively makes shocking Met Gala return hours after settling Justin Baldoni lawsuit

Blake Lively makes shocking Met Gala return hours after settling Justin Baldoni lawsuit

Blake Lively turned heads in her first appearance at the Met Gala in four years, just hours after settling her years-long legal battle with actor Justin Baldoni out of court.  The 38-year-old looked incredible in an archival Atelier Versace gown from 2006, featuring a halter neck, a structured bodice and a dramatic tulle skirt in pastel colors with a long, flowing train.  She accessorized with custom Lorraine Schwartz jewelry and wore her hair in bombshell waves down her back. Blake’s custom Judith Leiber bag featured artwork from each of her four children with Ryan Reynolds, including James, 11, Inez, nine, Betty, six, and Olin, three.  © WireImageBlake arrived in the show-stopping Versace gown “We were trying to find a piece of famous, iconic art to put on and make it look like it was in a frame. And then I said, ‘Would you, actually, if you’re gonna make it custom, would you do my kids?’” the Gossip Girl actress told Vogue.  “My kids each painted a watercolor painting. Each of my four kids did this, so I have them with me, because …

Stop settling for sad parfaits

Stop settling for sad parfaits

In my experience, the yogurt parfait is often more elegant in name than in execution. “Parfait” suggests precision: a glass vessel, a long spoon, something architectural and composed. It sounds like restraint. It sounds like Europe. But conjure one in your mind’s eye and I suspect we’re seeing the same thing: slumped berries bleeding into pale yogurt. Yogurt that was too sweet to begin with and has since gone watery, pooling at the bottom like regret. Granola that’s either stale — thin-sliced cardstock masquerading as crunch — or so aggressively hard it feels like a dare to your dental work. The promise is layered pleasure: creamy against crisp, bright against rich. The reality is often beige. Damp. One-note. A breakfast that feels more like penance than possibility. And yet — the idea persists for a reason. At its best, a parfait is a study in contrast. Cool and tangy yogurt, fruit that tastes unmistakably like itself, crunch that shatters and then yields. Sweetness balanced by salt. Softness interrupted by texture. It should feel deliberate. Alive. …

Science fiction blinded us to the perils of settling Mars

Science fiction blinded us to the perils of settling Mars

In Andy Weir’s bestselling novel The Martian, foul-mouthed protagonist Mark Watney “sciences the shit” out of his circumstances to survive being stranded on Mars. The result is an engrossing work of science fiction, particularly captivating for its apparent realism. Watney ekes out an existence by eating potatoes sowed in Martian soil fertilized by his own feces. He shelters from the frigid conditions in his above-ground habitation unit, huddling around a repurposed, radiating nuclear battery.  Watney’s survivalist experience isn’t exactly an advertisement from the Red Planet’s tourist board, but it does romanticize space settlement, showcasing humanity’s ability to heroically persist beyond our “blue marble.” Readers are left with the sense that living on Mars is not just possible, but probable.  In reality, Watney’s experience would have been far, far more uncomfortable. We now know a “toxic cocktail” of oxidants, iron oxides, and perchlorates permeate the Martian soil and would make growing plants exceedingly difficult. Watney might have been able to harvest a few stunted potatoes, but they would hardly be nourishing, likely leaving him weakened and …

Stop settling for smart TV ads and use this default launcher instead

Stop settling for smart TV ads and use this default launcher instead

Smart TVs are meant for personal entertainment. You buy it for its crisp 4K resolution, the deep blacks, vibrant HDR, and cinematic sound quality. In short, when you purchase a smart TV, you bring a theater experience home—not as a digital billboard for big companies and businesses to show their product ads right in your living room. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the default Android TV or Google TV home screens have become. You get autoplaying trailers and a dedicated sponsored section where TV shows and movies (I am not interested in) are slapped on the home screen, eventually taking up most of the available screen space. But all of these problems were gone, thanks to Projectivy Launcher. The default home screen feels like a sales pitch It is a billboard, not a launcher Credit: Shimul Sood / MakeUseOf A decade ago, TVs had home screens that were straight to the point. Either they started with the last channel you watched or the more expensive ones, showed you the apps installed and the inputs, and that was …

Should you really ‘enjoy yourself before settling down’ and entering a relationship?

Should you really ‘enjoy yourself before settling down’ and entering a relationship?

SEX ACCORDING TO MAÏA MAÏA MAZAURETTE If we were to believe some of the injunctions ingrained in our collective psyche, relationships would be a subtle blend of boredom, torture and imprisonment. I am thinking of a phrase that is often repeated, one which seems innocent but is full of pitfalls: “You have to experiment and enjoy yourself while you’re young, before you settle down.” A first observation: If sex were better when we are young, we would know it by now. As it happens, we do not. Sexual satisfaction only starts to decline for men after the age of 60. For women, this only begins after 50 (according to the 2024 “Context of Sexualities in France” survey, by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, or INSERM). That’s a rather maximalist definition of youth! By claiming that heavenly pleasure can only be reached right after adolescence, we are simply repeating ageist clichés. You have 86.01% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only. Source link