Personal

Sasheer Zamata on social media & her comedic influencer killing “Spree”

By Gertrude Aziz 7 hours ago

Sasheer Zamata in “Spree” Dreamcrew Entertainment

“Originally it was going to be just purely an indictment of this horrible trend in America of white male mass murderers,” says “Spree” director and co-writer (with Gene McHugh) Eugene Kotlyarenko. “Then when we came upon the idea that actually there’s a lot that horrible people like that share in common with influencer culture.”

Shot largely with GoPro and phone cameras and unfolding in a livestream format, “Spree” takes what could be a gimmicky concept and turns it into an unnervingly comic horror tale. “Stranger Things” actor Joe Keery is Kurt Kunkle, a rideshare driver and frustrated aspiring social media star who decides to start poisoning, stabbing and drilling his hapless passengers in pursuit of likes. But when he crosses paths with Jessie Adams (“SNL” veteran Sasheer Zamata) a comedian with a sharp social media game, he begins to think she may hold the

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12 fun kids’ face masks for the COVID-19 pandemic

By Gertrude Aziz 9 hours ago

<span class="copyright">(Micah Fluellen / Los Angeles Times)</span>
(Micah Fluellen / Los Angeles Times)

With in-person school just starting for many children, face masks have become the new backpacks in terms of being necessities for at least 2020 and 2021. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children 2 and older “wear masks in public and when around people who don’t live in your household.”

As the world adjusts to life in the age of COVID-19, it’s safe to say many parents are probably adding fashionable face masks to their children’s back-to-school shopping lists. Although students in Los Angeles may be confined to online learning, kids in other states are returning to the classroom, for which the CDC also states, “Appropriate and consistent use of cloth face coverings is most important when students, teachers and staff are indoors and when social distancing of at least 6 feet is difficult to implement or maintain.”

We’ve rounded up

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How to get your finances in shape in just 1 month

By Gertrude Aziz 10 hours ago

Keeping tabs on your finances can be much easier said than done. With thousands of personal finance blogs, books and experts out there with sometimes conflicting advice, it can be hard to make sense of what you really should do.

We’re bringing it back to the very basics. If you set aside just 30 minutes each week for the next month, your finances will be in better shape than they are today. Knowledge is the ultimate power when it comes to managing your money. Here’s how to do it in a few short weeks.

Week 1: Take your financial health vitals

There are so many different components to your financial health. Think of it like a well visit to your doctor — you need to get your temperature and blood pressure taken before you can troubleshoot the big stuff. The same rule applies to your money.

This first week, get

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A Detailed Guide For Where To Buy Your Next Rug Online

By Gertrude Aziz 11 hours ago

Just like building a house, great interior design starts with a strong foundation — and a strong foundation often starts with a rug. In a digital era marked by the overabundance of choice, making such weighty decor decisions online instead of in-store can feel overwhelming. We may not be interior decorators but we’re pros in navigating the vast world of e-commerce, so we’re here to help you along your virtual rug journey.

There’s a lot to consider when picking out your floor art (yes, that’s what we’re calling it). In addition to selecting the right texture, thickness, and consistency, you also want to keep color palette and even country of origin in mind. Whether you’re going for dreamy bohemian or contemporary cool, your rug of choice wields the power to make or break a space’s design aesthetic — it pulls enough weight to dictate how your furniture is arranged. To

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I Thought Anonymity Was a Shield After My Sexual Assault. But Coming Forward Brought Me Back to Myself

By Gertrude Aziz 14 hours ago

Last year, I published Know My Name, a memoir about my experience being sexually assaulted on Stanford’s campus in 2015, the trial that followed and what I began to understand about healing and justice. For three years before the book’s release, I wrote while remaining anonymous, known only to the public as “Emily Doe.” Writing my book was like sitting at a desk inside a vast, empty dome. Every day I typed alone in the quiet, my sole job being to extricate the story. When I agreed to write a memoir, I could not guarantee that I’d reveal my identity. So from 2016 to 2019 I threaded sentences together while protected and insulated from the world, blissfully unknown. The only time my phone would ring was on Friday mornings, my editor calling to make sure I was submerged, but not sinking. She was the only person to have read

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3 Factors That Make Hanesbrands (HBI) an Attractive Pick

By Gertrude Aziz 16 hours ago

Hanesbrands Inc. HBI is gaining from robust growth efforts, which have been boosting investors’ optimism. Notably, shares of the company have surged 87.8% in the past three months compared with the industry’s growth of 39.4%. Also, the stock has comfortably outperformed the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector’s rise of 20.1% in the same time frame.

Moreover, analysts look optimistic regarding the stock’s performance. Evidently, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2020 earnings has improved significantly to $1.47 per share in the past 30 days.

Let’s discuss the factors that are likely to keep driving the company’s growth.

Protective Gear Business: A Key Driver

In an attempt to stay afloat amid the coronavirus pandemic, Hanesbrands developed a product line of personal protective garments. The newly-floated business resonates well with the present environment, commercial and consumer demand. Notably, the company has sold about $752 million of personal-protection garments worldwide during the second quarter of

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A Search That Forged New Stars, Friends and Rivalries

By Gertrude Aziz 18 hours ago

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) participates a briefing on the pandemic from public health experts in Wilmington, Del. the day after she was introduced as Joe Biden's running mate, Aug. 13, 2020. (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) participates a briefing on the pandemic from public health experts in Wilmington, Del. the day after she was introduced as Joe Biden’s running mate, Aug. 13, 2020. (Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times)

It was early in Joe Biden’s vice-presidential search when he asked his advisers a sensitive question about Sen. Kamala Harris. He kept hearing so much private criticism of her from other California Democrats, he wanted to know: Is she simply unpopular in her home state?

Advisers assured Biden that was not the case: Harris had her share of Democratic rivals and detractors in the factional world of California politics, but among regular voters, her standing was solid.

Biden’s query, and the quiet attacks that prompted it, helped begin a delicate audition for Harris that has never before been revealed in depth. She faced daunting obstacles, including an array of strong competitors, unease about

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Two transgender women arrested at rights rally call treatment at Miami jail ‘dehumanizing’

By Gertrude Aziz 20 hours ago

After being arrested for protesting in support of the rights of Black trans and gender-noncomforming people, two transgender women say they found themselves facing the same type of discrimination they were rallying against.

Gabriela Amaya Cruz and Jae Bucci were two of more than 30 demonstrators who were taken into custody at a July 19 protest in downtown Miami, where all participants were charged with obstructing the roadway. Both women say Miami-Dade corrections officers threatened to jail them with men and repeatedly interrogated them about their private body parts.

“My genitals were just a topic of conversation throughout most of the night,” Cruz said, “It’s disgusting that genitals at the end of the day are the only validation in their eyes of what it means to be female.”

Their experience at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center underlined the conflict between how members of the LGBTQ community define themselves and

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Masks are on superintendents’ back-to-school shopping lists. Some leaders wonder if there will be enough.

By Gertrude Aziz 21 hours ago

Shari Obrenski, a high school history teacher in Cleveland, usually spends about $500 each year on paper, pencils, markers and tissues for her classroom.

This year, her back-to-school list includes hand sanitizer, wipes and disinfectant spray — none of which Obrenski can find in stores. She hopes the Cleveland Metropolitan School District can get them.

“Reopening safely across the country is going to cost billions of dollars,” said Obrenski, who’s also the president of the Cleveland Teachers Union.

Cleveland schools will be online for the first quarter of the school year after a surge of COVID-19 cases in the area. 

As rising infections put the first day of school in limbo across the country, school districts are trying to make sure they’ll have enough cleaning supplies, masks and other protective equipment to bring students and staff back safely.

“There’s an expectation for school districts to kind of figure this all

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Here’s Exactly Where to Buy Face Masks Online

By Gertrude Aziz 2 days ago

Practicing social distancing is the best thing you can do to slow the spread of COVID-19, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises you to wear a cloth face covering in public settings where social distancing measures are difficult to maintain, like protests, grocery stores, and pharmacies—especially with virus cases on the rise in states across the nation. With this recommendation, everyone wants to know where to buy face masks. We rounded up some options below—including face masks for kids, breathable face masks, face masks for glasses, and the best face masks on Amazon and Etsy—and we’ll update this list as companies go in and out of stock.

Cloth face masks don’t guarantee you won’t contract the virus or pass it on, but they’re a public health measure we should all take seriously, whether your city is slowly reopening or experiencing a new wave of cases. If you’re

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