All Posts Tagged as 'Exclusivity'

Pacaso, founded in October by executives from the real estate company Zillow, aims to do to second homes what Airbnb did to hotels and Uber did to taxis. It targets luxury neighborhoods slightly off the usual tourist trails.

Critics say it changes the nature of a neighborhood; the company insists it is making exclusive communities more accessible and, by allowing eight people to share ownership of one home, reducing the intense demand on housing stock.

I know this is going to sound like a nonproblem at first, but there is a deeper issue that troubles me. Our 16-year-old son is an amazing kid: intelligent, hardworking, and athletic. He is a straight-A student who juggles multiple AP classes with a demanding sports schedule. He is one of the top three students in his class and is also being recruited by college coaches for his sport. But ever since he was in elementary school, we’ve had the same experience at the end-of-year awards ceremonies: He’ll occasionally get recognized for the “objective” awards, like honor roll or scoring the highest on foreign-language tests, but he has never won a single “subjective” award, the ones selected by teachers/coaches or voted on by his peers. When he was little, we would console him by saying “Don’t worry, just keep working hard and maybe you’ll get one next year!”

But after several years of that, we changed our message, instead emphasizing that hard work is its own reward, and that we are proud of him for his diligence and work ethic. I suspect one of the reasons he gets so little recognition is his personality: He is extremely quiet, introverted, and serious. He has a handful of close friends but gets along with everybody; his school tends to be a bit “clique-ish,” but he is one of the few students who has good friends among both the “smart kids” and the athletes.

I’m not concerned about the awards themselves or about him impressing anyone else. Now that he’s older, he tends to brush it off as no big deal. But I just watched him sit through yet another awards ceremony with a forced smile on his face and tears in his eyes as every one of his friends at the table got a special award from one of the teachers or coaches. He sometimes comments about feeling “invisible” because he doesn’t have the charm and charisma of some of his peers. We’ve tried telling him that sometimes teachers like to reward students for their effort since the students who excel in class already get the reward of good grades. But this doesn’t feel right either, especially after seeing him come home exhausted from a three-hour sports practice and then stay up till 1 a.m. studying.

After 10-plus years of this, I can’t help worrying that maybe we should be giving him different advice—instead of preaching self-acceptance, perhaps we should be telling him to adjust his personality, so he is a bit more likable? He is headed to college soon, so maybe I should do nothing and let him figure it out himself?

—Mom of the Invisible Man

Hunter Biden appears to have moved out of the luxury $5.4million home he was renting in Venice Beach, California amid a crime and homelessness wave that has hit the beach-front Los Angeles city.

The son of President Joe Biden was reportedly paying $25,000 a month to rent the three-story property on the Venice canals - just a block away from the beach.

But on Monday, DailyMail.com spotted a moving truck outside the palatial home with furniture being loaded into it. Father-of-five Hunter, 51, moved into the stylish property with wife Melissa and their son Beau at the end of 2020.

In St. Louis, Mo., the worst-in-country murder rate is at a 50-year high, the police department has nearly 100 unfilled jobs, and the mayor wants to defund the department and shut down a city jail.

St. Louis' Tishaura Jones, who became the city’s first Black female mayor last month, had campaigned on a promise to enact progressive criminal justice reforms.

The head of the city’s corrections department is also on his way out. Jones announced his resignation last week, saying she hadn’t requested he step down but making clear she wasn’t satisfied with how he ran things.

It’s now at its highest rate in 50 years – even as the population has dwindled in that same time period.

Some city officials have blamed the spike in violence on the coronavirus pandemic – which would follow the national trend, except St. Louis also led the country before COVID-19 in homicides per 100,000 in 2019 with 65.

An Asian American city councilwoman in California says she’s struggling to deal with cancel culturists who’ve called her racist and hounded her for months following a dispute with a local Black activist.

Lynette Lee Eng, a nonpartisan city councilwoman in Los Altos, was in the middle of an official Zoom meeting on Nov. 24 when she received a text message from a 22-year-old local activist named Kenan Moos complaining about the way she'd voted. She said something about it, and then things went woke.

She said the case illustrates how cancel culture and organized shaming and intimidation can interfere with officials’ routine duties as well as keep them fearful of speaking their minds honestly and getting meaningful work done. Moos and his supporters have repeatedly returned to subsequent city council meetings to re-air their grievances.

Lee Eng, who speaks slowly and deliberately, said that she has survived a stroke and already goes to great lengths to articulate her thoughts. The drama just makes her job harder, she said.

When mommy blogger Lacey Spears was convicted for the murder of her beloved five-year-old son Garnett, thousands of Spears' social media followers were absolutely shocked. For years prior, the young Kentucky mother had taken to the Internet for support by documenting Garnett's various health struggles. Lacey exhaustively blogged Garnett's medical journey, all the while hiding the one thing that was keeping him sick: unbeknownst to Lacey's faithful supporters, she had been secretly poisoning the child with life-threatening doses of salt through a feeding tube.

In the winter of 2014, Garnett passed away in a New York hospital from toxic amounts of sodium in his bloodstream. Detectives were sent to Spears' home where they discovered Garnett's medications tucked behind a large can of salt. It was then revealed that Spears had asked a neighbor to enter their home and dispose of Garnett's feeding bag which was allegedly filled with the equivalent of 69 packets of salt.

After a highly publicized two-week trial, Spears was sentenced 20-years-to-life for the second degree murder of Garnett. The New York prosecutors called her actions, "nothing short of torture." Death by salt poisoning is extremely painful, and Garnett spent his last days screaming in agony (the hospital-room videos are disturbing) before the decision was made to take him off of life support. The defense blamed the hospital for both the elevated levels of sodium in Garnett's blood and his subsequent death. Spears maintains her innocence and vehemently insists that she does not have Munchausen's Syndrome by proxy. Obviously, the judge thought otherwise, citing "mental illness she refuses to acknowledge."

Q. Baby, not grandchild: Our oldest daughter is nearing 40 and frustrated by her lack of prospects in having a husband, a home, and a child. Her standards are profoundly high: must make six figures, be 6 feet tall, and no previous marriages or children. She is divorced herself. She is a very driven career woman and works 60 hour weeks regularly.

She announced to her father and me that she will be proceeding forward as a single mother and getting a sperm donation. We were happy but hesitant. That quickly turned to horror when our daughter told us she was looking to move back home with us. Her expectations were that I would be taking care of the baby while she continued her career normally. I love my children and I love my grandchildren, but I am done raising babies. My husband and I are nearing retirement and have plans that do not include diapers and midnight feedings.

We told our daughter this would not be possible and she became upset. She accused us of being “selfish” and denying her the chance of being a mother. My husband lost his temper and told her the only one who was being selfish here was her. She is the one making the choice to have a child and demanding everyone rearrange their lives over it. At this point, our daughter is no longer talking to us but is speaking to her siblings. She is proceeding with her plan and has an appointment at a clinic. If this works, this will be our first biological grandchildren (our son married a woman with older children). It breaks my heart that we might miss this. We tried reaching out to our daughter but no response. She can carry a grudge to the grave. What can we do here?

In the wake of the violent riots at the Capitol, the left predictably tried to paint Conservatives with a broad brush of all being violent hate-mongers. This is despite years of violence from the left, often rationalized with excuses of various justifications for that behavior. The violent riots of last year were encouraged by members of the Squad and even the current Vice President, Kamala Harris. We were told that the damage seen in major cities across the country was a result of our failure to act on whatever pet issue the offending group was “fighting” for, and we were to blame for the violence, not the perpetrators. Part of Trump’s mantra during this time was “law and order,” to which the left laughed and often violently reacted to those statements, as well.

When the Capitol Riots took place, the left and media swarmed Republican lawmakers, demanding apologies and for them to denounce the violence… and Trump. The media circled like sharks, attempting to paint conservatives as co-conspirators in some vast conspiratorial action to overthrow the American Government, despite their vehement rejections of violent rhetoric. Meanwhile, for the last four years, we have endured liberal conspiracy after liberal conspiracy to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States. Their rhetoric has been responsible for protests and violence across the country yet, somehow, they get a pass.

In any other time, Teigen heading to Washington D.C. to support Legend probably wouldn't raise any eyebrows. However, due to the fact that the world is still dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, many people didn't agree with Teigen's decision to tag along. Needless to say, Twitter had a lot to say and it didn't take long for people to start criticizing not only Teigen's attendance, but Legend's attendance as well.

The rapid development of several COVID-19 vaccines has compelled numerous web commenters to accusingly ask why the same hasn’t been done for HIV, a pandemic that has lasted nearly 40 years longer than the coronavirus.

However, a closer look at the different virology of coronavirus and HIV helps explain why the former has a soon-to-be widely available vaccine and the latter doesn’t.

The aforementioned critics often claim that the lack of an HIV vaccine is due to the fact that HIV has most affected men and trans women who have sex with men, Black people, people of color, and intravenous drug users — marginalized people who tend to have less money and political power. Thus, the lack of an HIV vaccine can seem like a conspiratorial way to let these communities die off.

Religious orders are supposed to provide spiritual guidance to those who join. But some of the women who entered Sisters Minor of Mary Immaculate (SMMI) say they faced physical and emotional abuse.

Patricia Budd, one of the former nuns of SMMI, first entered in 1995 in hopes of connecting with her Catholicism. It was at her first retreat where she met the order’s U.S. delegate, Sister Theresa Kovacs.

“It was a lot of hugs. There was a lot of encouragement,” Budd told HuffPost. “They would listen to you, and you felt really important, and you felt like you’re valued.” But soon after she joined, Budd and the other nuns realized things were not as they seemed.

“I witnessed other girls just being yelled at on a constant basis by Theresa Kovacs,” said Rose, who joined SMMI in 1995. (Three interviewees asked to only be identified by their first names.) According to Rose, a sister named Georgiana often got the brunt of Kovacs’ anger.

“It would be a torrent of the nastiest stuff you could ever say to a human being, she would say to me,” said Georgiana. “It was meant to keep people in line.”

The nuns faced strict rules. They weren’t allowed to speak to each other. They weren’t allowed to go for walks outside the convent doors.

“Basically your food is pretty much less and less,” she said. “And so, that’s pretty much like what a cult is — and break you down. That’s the whole thing. Always to break you down.”

When the church doors open, only white people will be allowed inside.

That’s the message the Asatru Folk Assembly in Murdock, Minnesota, is sending after being granted a conditional use permit to open a church there and practice its pre-Christian religion that originated in northern Europe.

Despite a council vote officially approving the permit this month, residents are pushing back against the decision.

Q. I accidentally made everyone hate me: I’m a first-year teacher at an urban Title I middle school. As is common for many teachers in my position, I’m using my personal paycheck to cover the gaps that classroom funding doesn’t. After I realized at the beginning of the year that many of my students were having trouble concentrating, I started keeping a stash of healthy snacks near my desk. The students know they can come take a snack when they need one. The costs add up quickly, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make if it helps my kids focus.

Not long after I started keeping the food in my room, I began noticing it disappearing dramatically between the time I left each afternoon and the time I clocked in the next morning. The only staff who have a key to my room are the custodians and the administrators—both of whom are fed a meal by the cafeteria if they work nights. Because I rarely stay late enough to see the night staff in person, I started leaving notes on the snacks, stating that they were for students. When that didn’t work, I eventually hid them in my desk or closet (neither of which lock). They were still being taken. I weighed my options and realized I was either going to have to stop buying food for the kids or tell someone, so I mentioned what was happening to our head of facilities. Unbeknownst to me, our head of security hid a camera in the classroom, caught the custodian who was stealing, and promptly fired him.

My students’ food is no longer disappearing, but now I have another problem: All my co-workers hate me! The administrative assistant told anyone who would listen what happened, and now everyone is angry that I caused someone to lose his job. Some of the other teachers had also grumbled in the teachers’ lounge about food going missing from their rooms, so I know I’m not the only one who was upset, but apparently I broke some unspoken rule about tolerating food theft. Was I wrong to report it? I’m seriously considering quitting because so many people are suddenly being hostile and treating me like an entitled Karen.

Last month, news broke that Carl Lentz, one-time “spiritual confidant” to celebrities including Justin Bieber and head pastor at Hillsong megachurch, was “released” from his job due to unspecified “moral failures.” Soon afterward, it was revealed that Lentz cheated on his wife, having had an affair with Brooklyn-based fashion designer Ranin Karim (and potentially, many others). As of last week, it appeared like his redemption arc was beginning to unfold, having reportedly entered treatment for anxiety, depression, and “pastoral burnout.” Except, of course, new information about a seedy, “sexual inappropriate” culture at Hillsong has begun to emerge, and I just don’t get how a “religious man” gets out of this one!

According to Page Six, back in 2018, whistleblowers within the Hillsong organization sent a letter to church leaders citing “verified, widely circulated stories of inappropriate sexual behavior amongst staff/interns,” allegedly labeling Hillsong “...dangerous and a breeding ground for unchecked abuse.”

Apparently, one high-ranking church leader was instructed to leave after the letter exposed he had “multiple inappropriate sexual relationships with several female leaders and volunteers and was verbally, emotionally, and according to one woman, physically abusive in his relationships with these women.” Another high-ranking male church leader was accused of “not respecting physical and sexual boundaries within dating relationships with female church volunteers.”

Someone asked me the other day what my favorite movie was, and I immediately said Arthur, like I always do. Then they said, “Never heard of it? When did it come out?” I didn’t answer 1981, nearly 40 years ago. At that moment I felt old, out of date, and superficially shallow.

Thus, I was not surprised by a new report from The Fenway Institute that found older LGBTQ+ adults in the state of Massachusetts have been diagnosed with depression at twice the rate of their straight, cisgender peers. It could be Massachusetts or any other state, or any other country because depression among older LGBTQ+ people is real, and no doubt much more widespread than we ever realize. I always tell people that if it could happen to me, the proverbial life of the party, it can happen to anyone. Having dealt with severe depression, and then having sought out many older LGBTQ+ people who also experienced similar circumstances, I found it remarkable that we all suffered from some sort of PTSD from our youths.

Again, not surprised that the report also found that LGBTQ+ individuals were twice as likely to fall and be injured in a fall over the past year, and I wouldn’t be shocked to hear if some of that was related to dangerous behavior about feeling alone and useless. Another woman, a lesbian, told me that she had a life-threatening operation, and has not been the same since and feels there’s nothing to live for, except her cat, who is 10. Otherwise, she is alone, without her partner who died, and without a family to take care of her. The family has made her feel shame for who she is, and she worries about being alone for the remainder of her life. Some days, she doesn’t feel like getting out of bed, and subsists on her Social Security checks, desperately afraid that she’ll end up in a nursing home left to die. We didn’t discuss it, but I’m sure she feels equal trepidation about not being able to pay the costs of round-the-clock care.