The Wheel and Axle

Credits: Reuters/David Gray

Did you know that there is a Refugee Olympic Team in Rio this year?

That’s right.

From a pool of 43 candidates, the IOC selected ten athletes (five from South Sudan, two from Congo, two from Syria, and one from Ethiopia) to compete under the Olympic flag with country code Refugee Olympic Team.

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Timehop always brings back such wonderful memories and words of wisdom.

Earlier this week, we remembered the great Whitney Houston on her birthday.

It’s such serendipity that I then came across this new a capella group that did such a wonderful cover of one of her most memorable hits. I love a capella groups, and when they can do such a fantastic tribute, I love them even more.

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Out Tongan Olympic swimmer Amini Fonua rightfully gave The Daily Beast the #burn.

There is absolutely no excuse to The Daily Beast’s stunt of an “article” – an article that ultimately served no true journalistic purpose.

Their faux-journalist – a straight white privileged male named Nico Hines – wrote an article that was, as The Slate perfectly put it, “sleazy, dangerous, and wildly unethical.” In it, Hines wrote about going on Tinder and Grindr as he wandered through the Olympic Village in Rio; he zero’ed in on Grindr (because, you know, gays are more promiscuous), then proceeded to out several gay athletes he met through the dating app.

Oh, he didn’t name them directly. No, that would be wrong. He only proceeded to describe them in detail, including their statistics, their events, and their goddamn nationalities. Because, you know, Google doesn’t exist, and no one would ever figure out who these people are.

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Why hello there, BGC.

At the rate we’re going, I’ll probably lose a hundred pounds in a week.

In two weeks, I’ll be benchpressing a small building.

In a month, I’ll be juggling three SUVs, an angry lion, and a can of rootbeer with my bare hands.

By February, I’ll be able to take down Doomsday with but a single blow.

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Genius.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart will always be my favorite classical musician. He is a genius who started composing at the age of five, and he has created marvelous musical works of various genres: sonatas, concertos, operas, symphonies, and more.

My love for Mozart began sometime in the early 90s when I first saw the 1984 Oscar Best Picture winner Amadeus, a biographical drama that took some liberties with historical facts and utilized some of the more legendary stories surrounding the man.

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Despite the controversies that hounded her in her latter years, Whitney Houston will always be a true icon of music. Hers had been a golden voice that few could ever match. As with Madonna, Prince, and Michael Jackson, Whitney embodied the 80s so much that she was a legend by the time the 90s rolled around.

Her last few years were tumultuous, to say the least. Domestic violence, drug abuse, inability to perform properly during concerts: yes, these happened. Yes, these put her through some truly dark times. And with the circumstances surrounding her death, one cannot help but sometimes wonder if there was anything else that she, or the people around her, or even her fans, could have done to prevent her downward spiral into her untimely demise.

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Photo credits: Rappler

Hidilyn Diaz, Filipina weightlifter from Mindanao, just brought us a silver medal in the Rio Olympics. This is our first medal since 1996 and the first from a woman, the first for someone from Mindanao, and the first for a non-boxer since 1936.

This is what we call #PinoyPride.

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Major spoilers, obv.

Suicide Squad, while not as excellent I was expecting, was great. It was simply pure fun. Dark fun, exciting fun, a refreshing elevation of the darkness of the DCEU into dark humor.

Ignore the “critics” who say otherwise.

The film is based on a DC comic book series of the same name created by Ostrander and Yale in 1987 (not counting the original 1959 more “heroic” incarnation by Kanigher and Andru). In it, the government – through official Amanda Waller – assembles a team of (mostly) metahuman criminals to be Task Force X, a clandestine operative group designed to handle dangerous black ops missions in exchange for clemency and/or commuted prison sentences. They’re “patsies,” as they call themselves, because exposure or getting compromised during such missions leads to the government throwing them under the bus. They also serve as a backup plan in case another “Superman” surfaces, one who might not be as moral as the one who died in BvS.

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… tries to hit on your boyfriend.