firehose

	Courtney shared this story from A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss:
	All this to model underwear

---

Presented with absolutely no comment.

Most models would have you believe they eat whatever they like – “I eat burgers and French fries!” they protest, as if they fall out of bed every day looking like a magazine advertisement. Industry people know that’s not true, and so does supermodel Adriana Lima.

Lima is disarmingly frank about what it takes to prepare for the Victoria’s Secret fashion show – watched by eight million people, reportedly – in which the world’s highest-paid models wear barely-there lingerie as part of a production that costs $10 million.

So here’s what it really takes to be an Angel: Lima, 30, has been working out every day with a personal trainer since August. For the last three weeks, she’s been working out twice a day.

“It is really intense, it’s not really the amount of time you spend working out, it’s the intensity: I jump rope, I do boxing, I lift weights, but I get bored doing that. If I am not moving I get bored very easily.”

She sees a nutritionist, who has measured her body’s muscle mass, fat ratio and levels of water retention. He prescribes protein shakes, vitamins and supplements to keep Lima’s energy levels up during this training period. Lima drinks a gallon of water a day. For nine days before the show, she will drink only protein shakes – “no solids”. The concoctions include powdered egg. Two days before the show, she will abstain from the daily gallon of water, and “just drink normally”. Then, 12 hours before the show, she will stop drinking entirely.

“No liquids at all so you dry out, sometimes you can lose up to eight pounds just from that,” she says.

“It’s like they’re training for a marathon,” says Sophia Neophitou, the British fashion editor who is chief stylist for this year’s show.

“Adriana works really hard at it. It’s the same as if you were a long-distance runner. They are athletes in this environment – it’s harder to be a Victoria’s Secret model because no one can just chuck an outfit on you, and hide your lumps and bumps.”

The body type they are looking for when casting for the show harks back to the Eighties, says Neophitou, to the golden age of the original supers: Linda, Christy, Cindy, Elle and Naomi.

“It isn’t about being a waif, it was about being empowered and you can achieve that,” Neophitou says. [source]

Now, however, it is reported that she’s simply “misunderstood.” Not that The Telegraph lied on her, but that she was misunderstood:

Adriana is insisting that the details of the “crazy diet” are just a “misunderstanding.” She spoke with E! Canada to set the record straight. She even showed E! Canada her piece of […] cake [and coffee] prior to the show, saying, “I have my Starbucks coffee right there… it was a misunderstanding.”

Like anyone whose body is her source of income — or who poses in her skivvies for all to see — the model says she’s conscious of her figure. She admits, “You can’t eat everything, of course… I eat healthy and work out a lot.”

The new mom also hopes to set a good example for others, saying, “Those teenagers out there, don’t go starving yourself or only drinking liquids. Don’t do that please!” [source]

But then, maybe not so much, because as the ET Canada quotes Adriana:

“Everybody is talking about my crazy diet,” she told me backstage this morning as she got glammed for tonight’s catwalk.

“I know it’s very intense but … I just have an athlete’s mind and I appreciate doing this thing,” she said. “It’s not that I do crazy diets throughout the year. I just do it for this particular thing. After this show, I become normal again.” [source]

Two-a-days, liquid diets and booty paint. Next time you get sad that you don’t look like a Victoria’s Secret model in your lacey unmentionables every day of your life… just remember: two-a-days, liquid diets and booty paint.

I guess I never actually mean it when I say “presented without comment,” do I?

The post Victoria’s Secret Angel Adriana Lima’s “Supermodel Diet” appeared first on A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss.

The search for Marvel’s Jessica Jones has come to a close: according to Deadline, Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23 star Krysten Ritter has “been tapped” to play the superhero-turned-detective.

Ritter was reportedly selected from one of 5 potential stars after reading with The Following‘s Mike Colter, rumored to be the favorite to play Jones’ husband Luke Cage. (Sorry, all you Terry Crews hopefuls.) Cage will appear in 7 out of the 13 episodes slated for the Jessica Jones Netflix series.

Although I’m not familiar with Colter’s work (yet!), Ritter’s experience with both drama (Breaking Bad) and comedy (Don’t Trust the B, Vamps) make her a compelling choice to play the PTSD-afflicted former superhero. In her work as a co-writer on the coming-of-age movie L!fe Happens, Ritter also showed a knack for creating believable female characters–strong women who are also allowed to be flawed.

Melissa Rosenberg (Dexter) is set to executive produce.

What do you think, gang?

(Via SuperHeroHype)

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?

Here's a gallery of beautiful and unexpected artworks, created with snow and doomed to melt away in spring.

Read more...

He's on a crusade to put every single human being online.

tastefullyoffensive:

[jeremykaye]

rosietherevolter:

A bus stop in Seattle.

Among the wealth of data leaked in this week’s Sony Pictures hack are hundreds of pieces of sensitive medical information about the studio’s employees, including complaints about unpaid insurance claims.

v3rgEz writes You may have heard that the image-conscious Los Angeles Unified School District chose to return the grenade launchers it received from the Defense Department's surplus equipment program. You probably have not heard about some of the more obscure beneficiaries of the Pentagon giveaway, but now you can after MuckRock got the Department of Defense to release the full database, letting anyone browse what gear their local department has received.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

beggin:

I’m coming home

In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, John Seabrook writes about how the streaming service Spotify is changing the landscape of the music industry. On Out Loud, Seabrook joins Kelefa Sanneh, who also writes frequently about music for the magazine, and Nicholas Thompson, the editor of newyorker.com, to discuss how artists, record companies, and their own listening habits are adapting to the economics of streaming. They discuss how Spotify became the dominant streaming company, why Taylor Swift recently pulled her entire catalogue from the service, and how the industry is likely to evolve as the tech industry and the music business continue to converge. Seabrook says, “The tips of the two continents are just touching. And that is going to be a fascinating, enormous cultural change, conflict, and hopefully synthesis to watch.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Between China and Keystone XL
On Immigration, Obama Isn’t the Radical One
Is Dishonesty Endemic to Banking and Finance?

songofsarcasm:

breelandwalker:

rotifers:

etherealspacewitch:

fatanarchy:

Good luck affording a place to live. Forget being able to fucking eat “healthy” like you’re “supposed to” (aka, morally obligated to).

in hawaii, you have to work 2 more hours in a week than exists in a week to pay rent

Anyone who puts in an honest 40 hours of work per week, regardless of the skill level of the job, ought to be paid at least enough to keep a roof over their head and afford vital expenses like food and health care. This country has betrayed the working class, and it’s absolutely inexcusable.

Putting this out there for all the assholes who don’t think minimum wage should cover living expenses.

Like 80% of my income goes to rent (and I have a roommate) and I moved to a place where rent is literally hundreds of dollars cheaper than it is where I used to live.  

Modern life.  And older people make snide remarks about 20-somethings who have to move back in with their folks.  They can’t afford to live anywhere else, unless their families want them living in boxes, with no food and no health care.

socialjusticekoolaid:

Happening Now (12/4/14): Protesters in NYC continue to #ShutItDown, including key arteries of the city, like the Lincoln Tunnel and the Brooklyn Bridge. My respect is infinite. #staywoke #farfromover

iwriteaboutfeminism:

While Black Americans are fighting for their lives, NBC celebrates lighting up a big Christmas tree.

Wednesday, December 3rd

It’s a shame how many classic styles of tailored clothing disappear as time moves on. Topcoats and overcoats, especially. With fewer and fewer men wearing suits and sport coats nowadays, retailers have little incentive to sell the kind of outerwear that traditionally accompanied them. We have a hundred companies at this point offering designer versions of the Army M-65 jacket, but perhaps a quarter of that number selling classic overcoats.

Some styles have fared better than others, however. The generic, single-breasted topcoat is sold everywhere, and many American stores still offer the polo. Tweedy Ulsters and wool Loden coats, on the other hand, are near impossible to find.

One coat that seems to hang by a thread is the Balmacaan – a long, loose-fitting style made with a fly front and raglan sleeves. Since it was designed to keep the rain and wind out, the collar can be buttoned all the way up to the neck, and the coat’s shell is typically made from a densely woven gabardine (like you’d expect for a trench) or heavy tweed. Supposedly, those raglan sleeves are also better at keeping the water out than set-in sleeves, but I’ve always thought that was marketing speak.  

In any case, there are only a handful of places anymore where you can buy a Balmacaan coat. As expected, O’Connell’s, The Andover Shop, and Cordings are among them, and they’re about as traditionally styled as you can get (a reader just notified me of one at Magee, which also looks great). In addition, Camoshita offers them every now and again, typically in more fashionable designs. For example, this season’s model comes in a waffle-textured wool, which can go over casual clothing just as well as a tailored jacket. After that, you can either go vintage or bespoke (vintage coats being especially good since they’re typically in great condition and are classically designed, but only cost a couple of hundred bucks). 

For those interested in bespoke, Molloy & Sons has a brown Donegal wool with orange and cream flecks of color. I think it might be the perfect cloth for this kind of project. Have one made and wear it with with collar buttoned-up, like you see above, or worn more casually with the coat open and layered over another jacket. It would be a great thing for chilly days.  

(Photos via Anton Helsinki, The Sartorialist, No Man Walks Alone, Forbes, Cape Cod KG, and Molloy & Sons)

Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood

Original Source

An anonymous reader notes that Comcast inadvertently posted a bit too much in a blog post today. Earlier today, Comcast published a blog post to criticize the newly announced coalition opposing its merger with Time Warner Cable and to cheer about the FCC's decision to restart the "shot clock" on that deal. But someone at Kabletown is probably getting a stern talking-to right now, after an accidental nugget of honesty made its way into that post. Comcast posted to their corporate blog today about the merger review process, reminding everyone why they think it will be so awesome and pointing to the pro-merger comments that have come in to the FCC. But they also left something else in. Near the end, the blog post reads, "Comcast and Time Warner Cable do not currently compete for customers anywhere in America. That means that if the proposed transaction goes through, consumers will not lose a choice of cable companies. Consumers will not lose a choice of broadband providers. And not a single market will see a reduction in competition. Those are simply the facts." The first version of the blog post, which was also sent out in an e-mail blast, then continues: "We are still working with a vendor to analyze the FCC spreadsheet but in case it shows that there are any consumers in census blocks that may lose a broadband choice, want to make sure these sentences are more nuanced." After that strange little note, the blog post carries on in praise of competition, saying, "There is a reason we want to provide our customers with better service, faster speeds, and a diverse choice of programming: we don't want to lose them."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

yiduiqie:

saintshiva:

heartoflaos:

Buddha Statues’ Heads: What it actually means.

Yesterday, I went shopping at Homegoods with my mom for some interior decorations and a few gifts. And what do you know: Buddha’s heads, either in brass and sold as “antique” or dipped in bright neon paint. My mom shook her head in disapproval and laughed. This really got my mind thinking that shoppers have literally no clue what these statues’ heads are really about.

This really got my mind thinking about that Thai movie “Ong-Bak" about how a group of thieves decapitated a Buddha statue’s head  & how a Muay Thai skilled warrior volunteered to return it before it is sold in the black market. Cutting off that religious statue’s head is seen as an act of vandalism & violence. It is one of the utmost disrespectful marks one could do in the religion. The original heads were stolen from respected places of worship. Cutting off Buddha statues’ heads have been happening for who-knows-how-long originally by greedy thieves.

And now they are replicated into fashion statements or interior decorating. They really have such a dark history behind them that nearly a lot of people had forgotten. (None of those pictures belong to me.)

The Buddha bust, usually in a faux Thai or Indonesian style, is one of the ugliest and most ignorant bourgeois accoutrements one can posses. Not only is it a bland and obvious attempt to purchase the appearance of spiritual depth, its presence immediately belies a total ignorance of the context and history of Buddhist images themselves!
A severed Buddha head, plundered from Borobudur, in the corner of a gentleman’s study is a romantic relic from a bygone age when the world considered genocide and forced military conquest a viable means of affairs. To keep a stolen cultural artifact as a trophy is to deny a sovereign people access to their own cultural heritage to satisfy one’s own ego.
That the idea of the severed Buddha head as decoration flourishes today is a disappointing reminder that the aesthetics marketed towards the middle class are a cheaper version of those objects collected by the wealthy, further divorced from their original context.

I received the severed Buddha’s head, once, as a secret santa gift from a boss. They thought it an appropriate gift. It was not. 

Several years ago I was in the checkout line at Target when the woman in front of me loaded a bunch of stuff on the belt, including a Buddha head candle that looked a lot like the images above. The checkout employee was a man in his 50s or so who appeared to be Southeast Asian. He picked up the Buddha head and visibly started—apparently he did not know they were in stock.

"What is this?" he asked, sort of rhetorically.

"A candle," the woman buying it said.

"What, NO!" Dude was horrified. He kept saying to her "You can’t burn this. Please don’t burn this. Do you understand why? This is the Lord!"

The woman was just trying to get going so she said yes or whatever but I could tell he didn’t believe her because he kept on about it. And hey, I cannot blame him.

I’ve often wondered if that man went and found all the other candles and OOPS lost them or something.

submitted by drunkengeebee [link] [322 comments]