(NY Post) No amount of Instagram [AI] filters will fix this.
Influencers might seem glamorous on social media, but their smoldering good looks apparently won’t last.
Experts at the gambling site casino.org have devised a grotesque model of what these content creators will look like by the Year 2050, complete with
pale, patchy skin
a hunchback and
chronic neck pain.
AI kills for the first time
Future social media influencers
“While the career [of social media influencer] can be glamorous, it can also bring significant changes to our lifestyle,” the gambling experts wrote.
They reportedly wanted to see how the “trendy profession” — which boasts 30-50 million adherents worldwide and is growing by 10-20% each year — can impact appearances over time.”
They deduced that “algorithm-chasing, [unrealistic] beauty standard pressures, and non-stop content creation can take a visible toll on both body and mind.” More
Like, Follow, Trafficked: Insta’s Fake Guru (BBC World Service Docs)
(BBC World Service) July 14, 2024: Investigations and #BBCNewsBrasil uncover the truth behind the rise of wellness influencer and spiritual life coach Kat Torres and the international search for her sex trafficked followers.
Former Brazilian model, wellness influencer, and spiritual life coach Kat Torres was an inspiration and a lifeline to women all over the world. More than a million people on Instagram followed her extraordinary career trajectory from extreme poverty in Brazil to a European modelling career and a life of luxury in the US.
But behind the perfectly curated posts is a story of witchcraft, exploitation and human trafficking - a dark and secretive sorority that led to missing women and sent their families and the FBI on a desperate search to find them.
After months of investigations, a team from #BBCEye and bbcbrasil uncover a wellness empire built on half-truths and lies. This film tells the story of her enslaved followers and the heavy price they paid.
And for the first time -- in a surreal confrontation behind the walls of a Brazilian prison -- we hear from the self-proclaimed “guru” who exerted absolute control.
Like beautiful Prince Siddhartha doing the unthinkable, renouncing his place of privilege and influence, to strive for something better, Miss USA is rejecting the title, dumping the throne, and tossing off the crown. Why? She says "I am silenced." So we are not likely to hear the real reason. What reason is she giving up what other competitors would kill for? It must not have been all it's cracked up to be.
Who me? I beat everybody else on this stage?
Miss USA Noelia Voigt, 24, has announced she is relinquishing her Miss USA crown and throne to preserve her mental health.
The beauty pageant winner, who was awarded the prestigious title Sept. 29, 2023, in Reno Tahoe, announced her decision to step down today (May 6, 2024) on Instagram, which is encoded with message "I am silenced." (See below).
“My journey as Miss USA has been incredibly meaningful, representing Utah with pride, and later the USA at Miss Universe (held in November),”
Voigt said in the lengthy statement posted to her account. “Sadly, I have made the very tough decision to resign from the title of Miss USA 2023.” USA TODAY has reached out to the pageant for comment.
"I AM SILENCED" (Noelia Voight on IG)
“Never could I have imagined the journey that my childhood dream would take me on,” Voigt, 24, continued.
“Constant and consistent hard work and dedication all lead me to where I am today, and I hope that the last seven years of competing in pageantry and sharing my journey with you all is something that inspires you to never give up on your dreams, whatever they may be.
Are Sydney Sweeney andWisdom Quarterly's numbers too big? Every time WQ reaches another million views, boobs. It's good for men's hearts, says science, but what about our lizard brains?
Her Instagram post comes after critics called her “not pretty.” [Do they say the same of Tate McRae, who is essentially her less well-endowed twin?]
Sydney Sweeney isn’t letting a little bit of controversy get her down. After headlines about her being “not pretty” and a bad actress made the rounds last week, she shrugged everything off and did what anyone would:
Cover up your man-boobs, Boobs!
She wore a slogan T-shirt that showed everyone that she’s staying above the fray.
Deep in a carousel of images shared over the weekend, Sweeney showed a snapshot of herself in an oversized gray sweatshirt that reads, “Sorry for having great t*ts.”
.
“Good times and tan lines,” she captioned the post.
Last week, producer Carol Baum, who worked on Father of the Bride and its sequel, said at an event that Sweeney is “not pretty” and “can’t act” — and that her hit rom-com Anyone But You was “unwatchable.”
Even with those comments, the film has earned $219 million at the box office worldwide.
According to the Daily Mail, Baum made her comments during a panel in Pleasantville, New York.
(Amy Sussman/GA/The Holly-
wood Reporter/Getty/InStyle)
“There’s an actress who everybody loves now: Sydney Sweeney. I don’t get Sydney Sweeney.
“I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney’s movie [Anyone But You] because I wanted to watch it,” she said.
“I wanted to know who she is and why everybody’s talking about her. I watched this unwatchable movie — sorry to people who love this…romantic comedy where they hate each other.”
It's a "man's world," right? I'm just making the most of it. "Sex sells," but who's buying?
Cover your beauty, Syd! It's distracting our eyes!
“I said to my class, ‘Explain this girl to me. She’s not pretty. She can’t act. Why is she so hot?’ Nobody had an answer. But then the question was asked, ‘Well if you could get your movie made because she was in it, would you do it?’” Baum continued.
“That’s a very hard question to answer because we all want to get the movie made and who walks away from a green light? Nobody I know. Your job is to get the movie made.”
Sweeney clapped back, saying in a statement shared by Variety: “How sad that a woman in the position to share her expertise and experience chooses instead to attack another woman.
If that’s what she’s learned in her decades in the industry and feels is appropriate to teach to her students, that’s shameful. To unjustly disparage a fellow female producer speaks volumes about Ms. Baum’s character.”
After Baum’s statement was shared, TMZ reported that she is “already expressing regret over the whole thing” and “wishes she never would’ve made her original comments.”
For more InStyle news, make sure to sign up for newsletter. Read the original article on InStyle.
COMMENTARY
It's very interesting. Fran and I were on retreat with an enlightened Buddhist nun.
(Yes, such people exist even if no one realizes it or can bring themselves to accept that such a thing could be possible in this decadent age, the Kali Yuga. But it was decadent and overcome with lust when the Buddha awakened and attempted to teach humans and devas the way to the end of all suffering. He assumed it would be hopeless because living beings in those days were so obsessed with sex and sensuality. This is, after all, the Sensual Sphere or Kama Loka we're living in).
There was calm and bliss (piti).
She asked a very straightforward question during a Dharma talk after a long day of meditating: "Where does clinging [lust] come from, outside or inside?"
"Like rain, does it (lusting for or clinging to the delights of the senses)," I asked myself, "creep in the poorly thatched roof of the physical senses and mind (the sixth sense)? Or does it arise from within (from some innate badness) like bubbling, oozing, staining crude oil?"
We were all stumped. We had all seen beautiful things. We had all, for having seen them, experienced lust, distraction, craving, preoccupation, obsession, thirst (tanha), desire, yearning, pining, and languishing, sick when we didn't get what we wanted, thrilled-then-disappointed when we did get it.
We were all hesitant. We all wanted to be good students, wanted to be right. We did not want to disappoint her as Americans. So we were waiting for her to drop a hint. Finally, someone dared to say that clinging (like lust) had to be coming from the outside.
Why? We were all peaceful and fine until someone dared to walk around provocatively dressed, thereby ruining our calm (samatha), stillness (samadhi), onepointedness (ekagatta), mindfulness (sati), and renunciation (nekkhamma).
Is this explained anywhere? (Abhidhamma)
Just as we were starting to let go and be free of the outside world's pull on us, some clinging or lust (for food, sex, a massage, a blissful experience) got the better of us and ruined the meditation. Clinging held us like six bondage straps, making us involuntary servants to this coarse, crass, and crappy body.
We were here for the bliss and rapture of meditative absorption, the calm and cool of mindful awareness, the insight and liberating-wisdom of spiritual knowing-and-seeing. The body and all its wants stood in our way, we thought.
Seeing a lovely, hot, shiny body, a little too much skin, one button too many undone, whew, it could be days before the mind simmered down again.
Clinging (repeated craving and grasping) had to be coming from the outside! We were fine until the outside world -- the boobs of a beauty or glistening muscles of a rugged and handsome person -- ruined us. It wasn't our fault! We were mere babes in Toyland!
The skull is like a thatched roof. And we are safe inside our guarded skull, until that darn rain seeps in from the evil (lusty, sexy, and provocative) world outside.
I can't help it if people stare at me.
"Is a fully enlightened person still overcome by lust [greed, craving, grasping], aversion [anger, fear, hate], and delusion [wrong views, distortions, ignorance about ultimate matters]?" she asked in answer to our suggestion that clinging had to originate outside ourselves.
"Well, no," we answered. If such liberated folks were still obsessed with greed, hatred, or confusion just because they saw sights, heard sounds, smelled scents, tasted savors, and felt sensations (to say nothing of mental past memories and future projections of these), what hope would there be for any of us in our practice?
Turning away, averting one's gaze, restraining the senses is just the first step. It might be difficult, but that's not all there is. Buddhism is NOT about severe austerities, penance, pious acts of self-mortification. It is about withdrawing into mental seclusion, calming the mind, exercising mindfulness, then cultivating insight that breaks through the illusion.
One develops the ability to see through the unreal, the superficial, the misleading. If this body were beautiful, why then we should celebrate it. If this body were the way to happiness, why then we should all become hedonists and have at it. If licentiousness and easy virtue were the way to liberation, why then we should condemn anyone who stood in our way and was being a stick in the mud at the party!
It is exactly because beautiful things in the world are constituent in nature not compact, ephemeral not permanent, disappointing not satisfying that they are not at all what they seem.
They are superficial illusions, they are disappointing, they are painful and struggling to get them is painful, and not getting them when one craves them is painful, and finally getting them is ultimately disappointing and not fulfilling. And we have been treading this hamster wheel for aeons beyond measures, past lives beyond comprehension, and most of us can see no end in sight.
So if there were a way to see things as they truly are, what would happen? We would become dispassionate, disillusioned, and detached. The mind that clings would let go.
Clinging and reacting to things in the world with lust, annoyance, or confusion comes not from them but from us. And when a person becomes enlightened, one has seen through the charade. One has seen things as they really are. For example, let's get gross.
I thought you liked my poop. You bag it.
Let's say we had a naked inflatable doll, beautiful, exquisite, the perfection of proportion, complexion, and symmetry, comely, alluring, and more real than real. But inside it was full of poop and worms and a stench so foul as to make us heave involuntarily. If a little leaked, or we opened its mouth or other openings and experienced the ugly inside behind the beautiful superficial outside, how might we feel?
We might feel tricked, deceived, upset to have been taken in by a shiny exterior. Or imagine a pretty pink bag, smooth and reflective, potentially useful to carry things like our lunch or precious possessions, only to find out that bag contained dog feces. Yikes! Suddenly we turn away, clutch our stomachs, berate ourselves for almost touching it.
What's inside this body? Or that pretty body covering Sydney Sweeney? (Well, I'd rather not think about that! Of course not. That would ruin all the fun of the illusion. Flowers are pretty and alluring, but they're steeped in fertilizer, worms, fungus, dead bodies, microbes, pathogens, pale threads taking in nutrients. Most of us instinctively avoid the muck or are stained, tainted, and stink.
Conclusion
People can be free. Practice.
If beautiful objects had the intrinsic ability to grab, take hold of us, make us obsessed, we would have little to no hope of escape.
But because lust (craving) and clinging arise not due to beauty, but due to the interaction of beautiful stimuli impinging on the senses (contacting consciousness) and our response to it, which is rooted in delusion, we can escape.
That delusion, very broadly stated, is a failure to see pretty phenomena as transient (radically impermanent), incapable of satisfying or fulfilling us, and it not being real (not a self, not what it seems.
When we see things, even the most beautiful things, as they really are (impermanent, disappointing, and impersonal), then the heart/mind lets go. There is no effort to reject beautiful things, only to see them as they really are. The effort is to see clearly (vipassana).
Whether things are ugly or dull, the same is true of stimuli that provoke aversion (fear or anger) or delusion (wrong view or ignorance). "Boring" things (that provoke inattention because they neither give rise to lust or anger) are neutral and peaceful, but craving makes them dull and something to get away from as we go in search of delight.
So by calm-and-insight we can be free here and now, even if beautiful creatures parade in front of us with next to nothing on and even if Hollywood feeds us airbrushed images and AI beauty pageant winners.
So you want to audition for Lines? Are you an actor or are you interested in acting? Hollywood Fringe meta-comedy LINES is casting. Stipend provided. Audition tapes are due by Friday, March 22, 2024, at 11:59 pm (PST).
Super awesome, kind, cool, and organized team. The simplistic and flimsy flyer has a QR code for details. This where it leads: site.
We are now casting for Lines, a meta-comedy premiering at the Hollywood Fringe this summer in June of 2024. Below is a dedicated page with all of the information: character bios, key dates, rehearsal commitment details, and next steps. Check out the Instagram to meet the dm and chat.🌟
📝 SUMMARY Lines opens on a blank stage with nothing but an empty hospital bed. One by one, members of the Jennings family enter the hospice room to say goodbye to Gladys, their dying matriarch.
This repeats the next day, and the next…and family tensions are revealed as they deliver monologues of regret, resentment, and gratitude to the sound of a heart rate monitor.
Without any warning, the Playwright stands and calls the whole thing off, declaring their work "a piece of sh*t." From the back row, an Audience Member convinces them to finish.
The Playwright, with nudges and advice from the Audience Member, begins to write new scenes in real time, experimenting with different themes, introducing and then retracting new plot points, changing character’s traits, and struggling to generate something that feels authentic and true to the story — especially for the character Gerry.
Gerry remains inconsistent, mysterious, or absent until the climax of the play when it is revealed that Gerry is in fact the self-insert of the Playwright [they/them], who is reckoning with their complicated relationship with their own recently deceased mother.
Only by acknowledging their grief does the Playwright finally figure out how to write Gerry’s goodbye to their mother — and they enter the play to deliver the final monologue in a moment of long-awaited catharsis and vulnerability. More
I should probably start by sitting in a group because I don't really know what I'm doing.
.
I used to try to sit alone but would fall asleep.
Ocean Grove, Victoria. Being Magazine profiled this picture, "The power of meditation." ✨
By carving out time to simply be with ourselves — just as we are — we’re deepening our capacity to be present, curious, and compassionate. We strengthen these tools in our meditation [stillness] practice, but we practice them in the everyday moments of life that challenge us.
📸 @andyrogersphotographer
wellbeing.com.au/being/the-power-of-meditation
Sit in the City
Yeah, that's a good idea.
In group meditation sits at Shambhala Los Angeles, in the town of Eagle Rock, the lead would often say, "There's no wrong way to meditate."
This was helpful at first because it can remove over-striving, efforting, stress, and perfectionism. At that time, when people are new to sitting, it's wise to exercise "beginner's mind" rather than the more usual "monkey mind."
One can then settle into a natural sit and meditation may happen. Sitting is not really the same as meditating but it's the proximate cause of it.
This is incorrect. There are right and wrong. For example, there are habits one might fall into that will be detrimental, not the least of which is "wrong mindfulness" (miccha sati). Some might say, "There's no wrong mindfulness," but there surely is.
That's why the historical Buddha specified "right mindfulness" (samma sati), a component of the Noble Eightfold Path to enlightenment. "Noble" (arya) means enlightened, awakened, liberated. Otherwise any old mindfulness (bare awareness, presence, vigilance, wakefulness) might do.
What is the "right" way?
The "right" way is to sit skillfully engaging the Five Hindrances that are sure to come up:
Craving
Aversion
Sleepiness
Restlessness
Doubt.
Single-pointedness of mind alleviates craving, which is diversified, full of grasping this and that, and clinging to the pleasant.
Loving kindness alleviates aversion (anger, annoyance, wrath), which also manifests as fear (a kind of needing to get away from what is perceived as unpleasant).
Attentiveness (and rest ahead of time) alleviates sloth and torpor or bodily tiredness and mental sluggishness, as does a sense of urgency (samvega) that life is short, suffering is imminent, and our wish and chance to practice is brief and fleeting.
Contentment (calm in the here and now) alleviates restlessness, which is a form of too much sense of urgency. This may seem a contradictory message, given the former hindrance, but it's all about balance. We must balance the Five Strengths (faith/confidence, wisdom, energy, stillness/concentration, and mindfulness).
Direct seeing eventually alleviates skeptical doubt, and trust/faith (conviction or confidence in the Buddha, the Community of Awakened Disciples (Sangha), and the Teaching (Dharma) alleviate it immediately.
There's no need to control the experience. Let go.
There are other antidotes as well, which Wisdom Quarterly has covered before. Another better way would be to develop or come to a meditation practice with wholesome states, such as nongreed, nonhatred, and nondelusion positively expressing themselves as letting go, kindness and fearlessness, and mindfulness (bare awareness of what is present at this moment) or right view, wisdom, and open-mindedness to hear the Dharma.
Western Buddhist teacher Beth Upton (bethupton.com) teaches the perfect balance of contentment and a sense of urgency to make striving a joy and a success:
Meditation is a practice where an individual uses mindfulness techniques to focus the mind on a subject or activity to cultivate attention and clear awareness.
Achieve mental clarity, lower stress, and return to balance.
This meditation is a guided class with breathing techniques (pranayama), sharing, socializing, divination deck, chanting accompanied by harmonium, relaxation cues, a beautiful mantra.
It's the perfect way to create space for the mind to quieten, relax, and find bliss. Led by Yogini Stella Han (Yogihantas on Instagram). Cushions, blankets, and everything needed is provided. Just wear something comfortable. Studio B.
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