If you can run an entire marathon while wearing an inflatable T-Rex costume, you can do anything—including propose to the woman of your dreams! After the London Marathon on April 22, 2018, one Cretaceous Period apex predator took the leap and got down on one knee!
H/T - Mashable, Twitter, @BBCGetInspired
Chris Pratt is being roasted once again for what many consider yet another bit of performative Christianity.
Pratt, like many religious types, has been seizing the ongoing social media discourse about Charlie Kirk's death as an opportunity to highlight his faith.
Recently, he posted a video of him inviting followers to pray with him on social media—but people couldn't help but notice one telling detail.
Pratt was unable to keep his eyes closed.
Pratt said in the video:
“Hey guys, just stop real quick and pray with me."
He then quoted Psalms 46:10, which reads, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
He then launched into a lengthy prayer about turning away from "distractions" of the news cycle, turning to God, and making an effort to "choose what gives life" instead.
When he wrapped up the prayer, he then told his fans:
“OK, now you can continue scrolling, or you can turn your phone off and go outside.”
Fine, whatever. But the message was overshadowed by the fact that Pratt couldn't keep his own eyes closed.
Again and again throughout his prayer, Pratt can be seen opening his eyes to slits and peeking at the screen, presumably to read the prayer off a piece of paper or teleprompter app.
It kind of blew the image that the prayer was extemporaneous, off the top of his inspired head.
And the internet couldn't help but laugh at what many saw as Pratt's desperation to seem like an inspirational faith leader.
Pratt's outspoken faith has long been a bone of contention with many given the anti-LGBTQ reputation of the churches he has been associated with.
The controversy began in 2019 over the infamously homophobic Hillsong church, which Pratt denied ever attending after fellow actor Eliot Page called him out about the church's homophobic stance.
The church Pratt said he does attend, however, Zoe Church, modeled itself on Hillsong and has taken anti-LGBTQ stances as well.
Suffice to say, this isn't the first time Pratt has been caught bending the truth where his faith is concerned. Oops.
President Donald Trump was criticized after he complained about the NFL's new "Dynamic Kickoff" rule that is designed to make playing football safer, calling it "sissy" football in a Monday morning post on Truth Social.
Under the previous rules, kickoffs began at the kicking team’s 35-yard line, with the goal of sending the ball as far as possible to pin the opposing offense deep in its own territory. The receiving team would try to advance the ball, which would often lead to high-speed collisions as players sprinted directly at each other.
The new format still starts from the 35, but now all players on the kicking team—except the kicker—must line up with at least one foot on the opponent’s 40-yard line. No players can move until the ball touches the ground or is handled by a returner inside the 20.
Additionally, kicks caught or landing in the designated “landing zone” must be returned. Any kick that falls short of that zone is ruled a touchback, giving the receiving team the ball at its own 40. If the ball hits the landing zone and then enters the end zone, the receiving team must either return it or down it.
The result is that players start much closer together, reducing the speed and force of collisions and making kickoffs considerably safer—which Trump isn't happy about, given what he wrote:
"The NFL has to get rid of that ridiculous looking new Kickoff Rule. How can they make such a big and sweeping change so easily and quickly. It’s at least as dangerous as the 'normal' kickoff, and looks like he’ll. [sic] The ball is moving, and the players are not, the exact opposite of what football is all about."
"'Sissy' football is bad for America, and bad for the NFL! Who comes up with these ridiculous ideas? It’s like wanting to 'roll back' the golf ball so it doesn’t go (nearly! ) as far. Fortunately, college football will remain the same, hopefully forever!!"
You can see Trump's post below.
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
Trump is well known for complaining about anything and everything—but his latest angry social media post was mocked profusely considering it comes as the country grapples with far more important things like increased rates of political violence.
One wonders what will come up next on Trump's spinning wheel of things to complain about.
In the wake of far-right activist Charlie Kirk's assassination, Vice President JD Vance has stepped up his attacks on leftists, this time by baselessly claiming that the far-left is more likely to commit political violence than the far-right.
Vance hosted a special episode of Kirk's podcast to attack what he referred to as “the lunatics in American politics" and said without any evidence that the suspect in Kirk's killing was motivated by far-left ideology.
He also alleged that the left bears more responsibility for political violence:
"In a country of 330 million people you could of course find one person of a given political persuasion justifying this or that or almost anything but the data is clear: People on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence."
"This is not a both sides problem. If both sides have a problem, then one side has a much bigger and malignant problem and that is the truth we must be told. That problem has terrible consequences."
"The leader of our party, Donald J. Trump, escaped an assassin's bullet by less than an inch. Our House Majority Leader, Steven Scalise, came within seconds of death by an assassin himself. Now, the most influential conservative activist in generations, our friend Charlie, has been murdered."
You can hear what Vance said in the video below.
Shortly afterward, journalist Medhi Hasan, founder of Zeteo, went on Chris Cuomo's show on News Nation to counter Vance's lies. Hasan said the country is experiencing "a very macabre moment" and called out the far-right for using Kirk's death to "crack down on free speech." Hasan went after Vance's remarks in particular.
He said:
“JD Vance lied today on ‘The Charlie Kirk Show’ when he said the statistics are clear that this is a left-wing problem. It’s the exact reverse, right? Exact reverse. You look at the ADL center for extremism, which looked at 444 people killed by extremists between 2013 and 2022 — 75% of them by the right.”
“You look at the University of Maryland study that was done for their terrorism center, which found that from 1948 to 2018, right-wing extremists were more likely to carry out violence than left-wing extremists."
"You look at the head of the FBI who [President] Donald Trump appointed, Chris Wray, who said the No. 1 domestic terror threat in this country comes from religious and racially motivated extremists — specifically white supremacists."
“You can keep going, the National Institute for Justice found that the majority of instances since 1990, violent terroristic acts, were right-wing extremists. The single-biggest day of political violence, Chris, in our lifetimes, in this country, was Jan. 6, 2021, when right-wing extremists attacked the Capitol, injured police officers. They were ideologically motivated."
“So it’s bizarre for Vance to go on TV or go online and say the exact opposite of what both the official statistics say and the think tanks say, all of our evidence tells us.”
Hasan also brought up the murder over the summer of Minnesota state Democratic Representative Melissa Hortman, adding:
“I mean, there was a Democratic lawmaker, Chris, I don’t know how many times we have to say this, who was murdered in her home with her husband in June, by a Trump supporter. And Donald Trump today said, ‘Who?’ when he was asked about it.”
You can hear Hasan's remarks in the video below.
Hasan was right.
The Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism indeed confirmed his claim that 75% of extremists who killed people since 2013 were members of the far-right.
Additionally, a University of Maryland study confirmed that members of the far-right committed more acts of political violence since 1948 than any members of the far-left. The National Institute of Justice had also confirmed that the far-right committed most acts of "violent terrorism" since 1990.
And indeed, shortly after Hortman and her husband were murdered by a far-right extremist, President Trump told reporters he would not be calling Minnesota Governor Tim Walz following the shootings, calling it a "waste" of time—which makes his "Who?" response even more cruel.
Many have echoed his criticisms of Vance.
The Trump administration has vowed to crack down on left-wing groups they hold responsible for Kirk's assassination.
Attorney General Pam Bondi drew heavy criticism this week after vowing to “absolutely target” protesters engaged in “hate speech” and asserting she had the power to investigate businesses that declined to print memorial posters for Kirk.
It remains unclear what authority Bondi could use to pursue such “hate speech” cases, given the First Amendment’s broad protections for speech that does not directly incite violence.
The backlash against Bondi's remarks has been considerable, even from MAGA. Bondi later said on social media that “hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment," calling it "a crime."
Have you ever met someone who made you wonder how they survive day-to-day? Simple tasks seem beyond their ccapabilities.
Have you ever worked with someone whose skills are completely inadequate for sustainment of life—let alone the needs of the job?
Reddit user MySmellyRacoon asked:
"Have you ever worked with such a moron you wondered how they function in life? What were they like to work with?"
"I've been working construction nearly my entire life. During those decades I've encountered one or two moron's, but the one who takes the cake I worked with 35 years ago."
"I was one of the foremen on this site, but not this gentleman's foreman. His foreman sent him to find what was taking the reach lift with their material so long."
"Moron heads off across the site and spots the lift idling in front of the port-a-potty with the missing material on the forks. Rather than walking back, he climbs on the lift, something he's never operated before. He finds out how to get it in gear and disengage the brakes and takes off."
"The first thing he does as he's leaving is drive over another worker's car. Not bumping into, but right over the top. This doesn't stop him. He's got a mission. It's a self imposed one, but it's his. He manages to get all the way across the site without any further mishaps. Unfortunately, this isn't the end of our story."
"Now, having triumphantly arrived with the material he began to raise it while extending the boom. He did a bit more extending than raising though and punctured the brand new wall with the forks. Realizing his mistake he stops for a moment and contemplates his situation."
"Having successfully assessed the damage he determines that those holes are going to require repairs regardless of his next step. He decides that he still needs to deliver the materials, so he gives the lift more throttle while lifting and extending the boom."
"Which raised the wall and pushed it back. This forced the back wall off the building and it fell. This wall was 120 feet long and had $10,000 worth of windows in it."
"Rather than firing him, they made him safety officer. We decided that was a good job for him. Because he wasn't doing anything more than walking around with a clipboard, the job was safer for everyone."
~ Dioscouri
"I sat next to her for four months. She would lock herself out of her computer by repeatedly getting her password wrong several times a week, every week. Sometimes more than once a day."
"She had been hired in as a temp PA six months before I met her, but I have no idea what she'd been doing in all that time because she didn't seem to know how to do anything."
"Every day she would ask me things like:
"She would nod and smile constantly as you explained something, but that seemed to be the only thing that her head was doing. After the first few days I started saying 'Do you want to write this down?' And she would nod and smile and get a notepad and pen... but just keep nodding and smiling."
"I started writing her Post-it notes."
"She lost them."
"I started saying 'OK, I'm going to email you instructions so you can find them again if you need them' but she would somehow lose or delete them or occasionally send me a blank reply to one of them from days earlier."
"I printed her off a list of useful numbers to stick next to her monitor and phone but I had to give her a new copy every week or so because she somehow constantly lost it or got coffee or her lunch all over it. I emailed her a copy of the file, but who knows where that ended up."
"She also ate EXTREMELY loudly, lots of lip smacking and showering of crumbs and debris, and she started eating her lunch around 11am and would somehow make it last for at least 2 hours. I am not exaggerating. Her keyboard was always crusted with dried, mushed up lunch and I had to type things into it horrifyingly often."
"She was a very nice lady. Chatted happily about her granddaughter and her husband."
"But I have no idea at all how she made it to the age of about 55 because I'm pretty sure she was capable of getting badly lost in a moderately sized bouncy castle."
"I'm fairly sure I've met Labrador Retrievers who would have been a better PA."
~ butwhatsmyname
"This is an example of a conversation I have with a manager at my company a couple of times a day:"
"Me: Hey, can you please make an effort to get me 'X' by this date, I need it to complete my work.
"Them: I'm really busy today.
"Me: That's fine, I just need it by this date.
"Them: OK, sounds good.
"Me: Just to confirm, you will get me 'X' by this date.
"Them: Oh, you need me to get 'X' for you?"
"Me: Yes, can you please get it to me by this date."
"Them: When do you need it by?"
"Me: This date."
"Them: OK, no problem."
~ PictureNegative12
"Years ago, I worked at a soft-serve ice cream stand for a while, and we had a 16-year-old girl on what was her first job. She was weirdly sheltered and naive and had zero idea how to do ANYTHING."
"She was terrified of facing customers, scared of burning herself on the hot fudge dispenser, and couldn't tie up her apron."
"Among the other things she couldn't do, even after repeated training and patient demonstration: remember which machines were for chocolate, vanilla, or twist (they were labeled), remember which water taps at the sink were for hot and cold (they, too, were labeled), and make change at the register, by which I mean she didn't know which coins were worth how much."
"She also had no idea how to peel a banana."
"She was a dear, sweet soul who really wanted to do well and was excited about her first job, and we were kind and patient with her, but she just couldn't do it."
~ SterlingLevel
"I did a brief stint in construction working for my father-in-law (FIL). We hired a new guy, supposedly a qualified welder. I'm an IT guy with no experience in construction at all, I'm basically there to do easy fabrication stuff and fetch and carry for the competent guys. I'm supposed to be this guy's helper."
"Day one: He's late for work. 'Some guy kept tailgating me, I thought he wanted to race. Then he turned his lights and sirens on, I almost got arrested for fleeing!'."
"Day two: We go to the site, and he needs to cut some metal. They'd just laid down brand new flooring. I told him, Hey, we should probably not cut right here, we're gonna damage that floor. He told me to shut up. He damaged the brand new flooring, he got into a huge verbal fight with my father-in-law, and was fired on the spot."
"...about three years later, he's rehired. My FIL invites him to the house for dinner, I said, " Whoa, this guy looks familiar. I said, isn't that the guy you fired? FIL goes, well, everyone deserves a second chance."
"The following day, he complains about this stupid, fat cow he met. It's my sister-in-law. Fired again."
"He gets re-hired after profusely apologizing (FIL is a big believer in second chances), he ends up working for several months after that before tripping over his dog carrying a pan of boiling water and ending up in the hospital for several weeks. He called my FIL first, asking what to do. FIL told him to call 911, not me!"
"No idea what happened to him after that, I know he came back to work for a while. I should ask FIL how he's doing."
~ zerbey
"I am a surgeon. At this one hospital we had this scrub tech named Angela who I was sure had absence seizures. She would just routinely stare off into the distance in the middle of a case and you would have to ask for something several times while snapping your fingers. This would happen 3 or 4 times every hour."
"She wasn’t, as it turns out, having seizures. She was just that vacant."
"We did a quick surgery to just replace a battery device. It’s literally just make incision. Remove battery. Connect new battery. Make sure it’s working and then close up."
"We make incision and disconnect the battery. Then I hand it to Angela. I take a second to stop some bleeding. And then ask for the new battery. I connect it and we check and it’s not working."
"We are trying to troubleshoot and then I realize she just wiped off the old battery and handed it back to me. She apparently had done this to other surgeons."
"The OR refused to get rid of her because she was super pleasant otherwise, never caused a fuss and was always there on time (just super incompetent). She was never blamed. We just called it a 'system error'."
"And a new OR policy was put in place where the circulating nurse had to check that the old battery was handed off to her before we put the new one in. And the surgeons had to specifically ask for the 'new battery that has not previously been in the patient'."
"She also could not count. Which is really bad for a scrub tech. Sutures often come in packs of 8, so most techs will just count their needles by counting pack of sutures. 8, 16, 24, 32, etc... We could not get Angela to count by 8’s. It was literally 8, 15, 22... 'No, Angela, 8, 16, 24, 32... 8, 16, 32'."
"So another OR policy gets created. Everyone had to count by ones."
"But then Angela would even mess that up. She had some number dyslexia or something. Whenever she got to 34, she would inevitably then say 43. It became a routine in the OR that once she got into the 30s everyone in the room would stop what they were doing and make sure she was counting correctly."
"She did win employee of the week once. She came in to work one day when she was not scheduled. We were particularly busy that day and it was helpful just to have an extra warm body. Turns out that she was supposed to go on vacation that day and she just forgot."
~ halfmanhalfrobot69
"I had an employee, and we'll call him Kev. We worked overseas, and the government gave us money to pay our rent and utilities. Kev rented an apartment from a local national coworker."
"Kevin had gone overseas without his wife, but he missed her, so he flew her over. He decided that he hadn't missed her that much, so he sent her back."
"About six months go by, and Kev has a meeting with the Commander. In all that time, Kev had not been paying the rent to his coworker. It turns out that he had 'met' a Russian woman online, and he had been sending the money to her."
"He told his wife that he had a business trip to Nevada. In truth, his Russian girlfriend was supposed to meet him in Las Vegas. But wouldn't you know, she had a car accident on the way to the airport! So then she needed more money for medical bills."
"When he got back, he told me his sad story. I spent less than a minute on Google and showed him the Russian dating scam. The script was word-for-word. He was sad."
"So Kev lost his security clearance and couldn't perform any work. So he was paid to surf the internet. Meanwhile, his wife was homeless and living in a storage unit."
"Each month l had to collect Kev's rent money with extra to catch him up. We couldn't fire him or send him home because then we could not ensure that he paid back his coworker."
"Time goes by, and Kev tells me that he's met a Malaysian woman online. He tells me that he has been sending her what little money he had to help her with legal problems. But when those problems were gone, they would both be rich!"
"She was even going to meet him in Seattle, but guess what? She had an accident on the way to the airport and now she needed money for medical bills."
"I got on Google and showed him the scam, almost word-for-word. He said no, this was different. This had only one lawyer, whereas his girlfriend had TWO lawyers."
"He eventually returned to his stateside job working on...the space program."
~ pappyvanwinkle1111
"Our company flew in a bunch of people from all over the country for a trade show. None of us had ever met each other before, but after grabbing dinner together, everyone was cool, except one guy, who we will call Gary."
"Gary was an older guy, maybe 50 or 60, but constantly talked about how his mom policed his behavior and how he wasn't allowed to do certain things because she said so."
"Instead of leaving his suitcase in his hotel room, he brought it to the restaurant with him, proceeded to open it at the table and pull out a massive bag of chocolate chip cookies and a half gallon of milk. He doesn't order anything at this nice steakhouse and instead just eats 39 cookies for dinner."
"Our company made us share hotel rooms and we were cool with Gary's roommate, so we're just hanging out in their hotel room when Gary starts acting real weird and secretive. He ends up telling us that he smokes, and that no one can find out, especially his mom. Of course, we assume he means weed, but this guy pulls out hand rolled cigarettes with regular tobacco in them."
"But one thing stood out way more than any of this odd behavior. At about 4 in the morning, I hear a knock at our hotel door. It's Gary's roommate and he's asking if he can sleep in our room. We say sure and ask him what's up. He says that Gary got up around 2 in the morning, turned on the hotel room lights, showered, ironed his clothes, got fully ready, and then left the hotel room."
"Gary returns to the hotel room around 330am, and has brought, what we suspect, are two ladies of the evening, with him."
"He turns on all the lights again, starts playing music, turns on the TV, and is trying to seduce these women on his bed. Gary's roommate is trying to sleep just 2 feet away while this goes on. Roommate puts up with it for 30 minutes before coming over to our room."
"The next day, it takes about 10 minutes before the story has spread like wildfire."
"Management finds out, and fires him on the spot. He is literally perplexed about it, saying he didn't do anything wrong."
"Anyways, the company gets him a flight back home, and apparently, he ends up getting arrested at the airport because he got into a fight with TSA because they wouldn't let him take an entire pizza through baggage check."
"Just a wildly weird dude that I think about once a year and wonder what he's up to nowadays."
~ CHUNKY_BLOODY_QUEE
"The hands down winner for me would be this one junior engineer I worked with about 20-25 years ago. Let’s just call him Junior."
"Junior had been on the job about six months when management decided he should travel to a client site on the other side of the country, to see how they used our product and get specs from them for a custom job."
"According to the senior coworker who was saddled with him, Junior showed up to the airport with only his wallet, containing ID and a bus pass for the last city the guy had lived in, and plane ticket. No cash, no credit cards, and no clothes for a four day trip."
"Senior guy claims he thought maybe there was a checked bag he somehow never saw, but I think he just wanted to see where this was going."
"OK, so the hotel was OK, it was on the corporate account. Car was OK-ish, though since Junior showed up with no insurance card, only the senior guy could drive. Food was…. OK. Junior balked at only being able to eat at the hotel or when the senior guy wanted to break for a meal."
"But the clothing I’m still laughing about. Junior seriously thought he could borrow senior guy’s clothes! That would have been ridiculous on its own, but Junior was an absolute beanpole, while the senior guy was of entirely average height and build. Junior ended up wearing the same clothes the whole trip."
"I mean, it’s possible that he somehow thought it was a single-day trip. But he’d have been thinking that against all evidence, since he definitely had his tickets that showed very different days on the flights."
"It was also quite a long distance, so even the very earliest and latest flights in a single day wouldn’t have left more than a few hours for a facility tour and several meetings. They also almost certainly flew out on a Sunday, though it’s been so long I can’t say for sure."
"There was a lot of break room talk about how on earth he thought the no extra clothes thing was going to work out for him. He even had to get a toothbrush and comb and other toiletries from the hotel."
"Actually, maybe he thought hotels always provide that stuff? Plus pajamas, and have an in room washer and dryer, or fast turnaround free laundry? That never occurred to me before, but it’s possible."
"Junior didn’t last long at the company after that."
~ ServoCrab
What's your workplace story?
On Sunday, Texas MAGA Republican Senator Rafael "Ted" Cruz exploited graffiti—allegedly found on a busy roadway in Houston—that was unkind toward murdered Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, for a self-promoting photo-op and video.
He then posted both still images and the video on X.
Cruz captioned his video:
"Erasing evil:"
You can see Cruz's self-aggrandizing use of Kirk's death here:
Cruz captioned his photos, painting the graffiti allegedly left by someone else and later found by Cruz, with:
"Some deranged bastard put this graffiti on the 59 freeway in Houston."
"TXDOT has been notified & I’m sure sure they will remove it expeditiously."
"But, in the meantime, Texans don’t have to look at this hateful garbage anymore."
As with most things he does, Cruz received few accolades in the comments.
@tedcruz/X
@tedcruz/X
@tedcruz/X
Cruz joins a long list of conservative pundits, Trump administration members, and Republican politicians clout chasing off Kirk's murder, with many attacking free speech rights guaranteed under the First Amendment.
Unsurprisingly, none have suggested gun control measures.
