I’m retiring after serving as 4chan’s founder and administrator for more than 11 years, from the age of 15. You can read the full announcement on the 4chan News page.
Emanuel Valeri & Tania Kehlet - Dreams Do Come True
It could easily be said that Emanuel Valeri & Tania Kehlet are the ‘sweethearts’ of competitive dancersport. Almost 15 years of successful dance partnership, which had started in 2002 dancing in Youth and lasted until their recent retirement as Professionals.
Today is a very big day for us. Winning the world professional championship in our very own home country in front of all the people we love so deeply is something we could only have dreamt of when we started out dancing many years ago. It all started out with a dream… A dream that with time became our only motivation of life!… And tonight we proved it once again… “dreams really do come true!!!”
We want to see tonight as a happy time… We are happy with what we have achieved both in results and as competitive dancers… We are happy and proud about the way we have managed to do everything keeping our morals and beliefs at the highest level all the way through… We are happy to stand here today not alone, but looking around us seeing all the beautiful people, students and friends that we have managed to bring along with us all the way to this day… We are happy to announce that: Today has been our last competition!!! …
We shall not retire from dancing!!! … We will keep on doing shows and keep on developing this beautiful art-form in every aspect possible for us… Dancing means living for us and as long as we will keep breathing we will not stop living and dancing… Dancing is what we are and what we will always be…
We are addicted to it!
Elena Anashina
Standing here being crowned as heroes today makes us feel deeply thankful and humble!!! There are so many people we would like to thank. Starting with all our sponsors. DanceCos, Lella, NY, Alfa Fashion, International Danceshoes and Chrisanne Clover. Thank you for your support. Thank you to all the members of the Danish Sportsdance federation, Team Denmark and Line Hovgaard. Our success is your success too!
Henrik Larsen, who has followed us right from our first try out. Thank you for never loosing belief in us even when we had ourselves!!!
Thank you to our dear friends, fans and students. We feel so blessed to have the best friends anyone could wish for. Friends that have followed us all around the globe just to be near us and support us. Students that has inspired us every day to become better teachers and therefor keep going deeper in understanding the magic of dance. We love you all and together we will grow and keep improving…
Thank you to our dear parents and family.
Without your love and support nothing would have been possible. Thank you for not only giving us the roots to become what we´ve become, but thank you also for being there till the end, sharing good and bad moments with us, leaving us knowing that we were never alone. We love you!
Thank you to our teacher and mentor, Hans Laxholm. No words can describe how thankful we are to what you have given us. Not only have you taught us to dance. You have taught us to live and to maintain a pure heart in everything we do… One day we hope that someone else will feel about us the way we feel about you. Thank you!
Our biggest thank you goes to the people that made it all start and followed it all the way through. Teachers… Then friends… Then family… William and Alessandra…
What to say… We always knew that you were there for us and we also know that it wasn’t always easy. You know us better than we know ourselves and you have seen the best and the worst of us and somehow you are still here and you still love us!… Thank you seems such a poor word, but it is the only one we know. From the bottom of our heart THANK YOU for everything…
Elena Anashina
Ladies and gentlemen.
Our last thank you goes to you!!!! We are happy to have shared this moment and many others in the past with you. You have to know that our biggest inspiration and motivation was always YOU!!!
We want to leave you with a feeling of thankfulness and love…
As a very last thing it is important for us to leave a message to all the young dancers out there today!
Wherever you are, wherever you dance and whoever you are… You are in a changing world and it is easy to get misled or carried away focusing on things which lay outside of the actual dancing… Don’t fall in the trap!… Your dance life is hopefully long and having your own art and style will help you to go through life with less regrets and more success… Believe in creating good ART! Believe in good dancing, believe in good people, believe in good teachers, believe that by keeping your head down focusing on your job and working hard, you CAN succeed… Even when sometimes it seems impossible trust and believe in your heart that DREAMS DO COME TRUE…
Love to all of you…
Emanuel and Tania
Dance Comp Review Thanks You for the wonderful dance you’ve gifted us throughout these years, and wishes you the best of luck in the new chapters of your lives.
Photography:Elena Anashina Exclusively for Dance Comp Review
Last week, former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Welterweight Champion Matt “The Terror” Serra, decided to hang up his gloves and retire from the sport of Mixed-Martial-Arts (MMA).
In an interview with Newsday, Serra recalls the beginning of what ultimately sealed his fate to walk away from the sport he loved.
The beginning of what would prove to be a crazy ride started when Serra felt a pain in his left arm after a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu session at one of his academies on April third. The scrappy 39 year-old chalked it up as nothing more than a pulled muscle, and didn’t give it much more thought.
Two days later, while working as a corner man for one of his fighters, the pain was back and worse than before. By 2 a.m. he couldn’t even lift his hand to touch his neck, that’s when he finally decided to drive himself to the emergency room at Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, New York.
After a few tests, two blood clots were found in his arm and another in his lungs. Doctors put Serra on blood thinners to address the clot in his lungs. For now he’ll be injecting himself in the abdomen with a high dose of Lovenox (a drug that prevent blood from clumping up as is flows through your body), every day for at least the next three months. A thankful Serra recalls:
“Then I got freaked out. You don’t catch that [and] after the lung, that stops your heart or your brain. Then you’re done. I’m very fortunate to, basically, be here. Sounds kind of morbid. If I didn’t catch that – I was about to go to bed. I’m like, man, something’s not feeling right.“
Last week, while giving an interview to the MMA Hour’s Ariel Helwani (May 27th, 2013), Serra was asked what exactly the name of the medical condition was that landed him in the emergency department, and in classic Serra fashion he responded with:
“I have a weird disorder, or whatever you wanna fuckin’ call it. It’s some kind of… what is it called? The boom-boom syndrome. Ah, I forgot the fuckin’ name of it. My wife knows.”
So, instead of bugging Serra’s wife with your questions, we here at Injury-Duty figured it’d be a perfect opportunity for us to help clear things up.
What finally got Serra to make a visit to the emergency department was the pain in his arm, which was the result of blood clot, as we now know. But, what caused the blood clots in the first place you ask? Well, to better understand that, lets take a quick Injury-Duty anatomy crash-course.
On both the left and right sides of your upper chest, you have a relatively snug space between your collarbones (in medical jargon, your clavicles) and your first ribs (click for an image), which sits right behind the collarbone. In that space run three important structures:
Brachial plexus: This is essentially a thick bundle of nerves responsible for taking all signals from your brain to your arm (and vice versa).
Subclavian artery: This artery’s job to supply your arm with “fresh” (or oxygenated) blood.
Subclavian vein: This vein’s job to remove “used” (or deoxygenated) blood from your arm, and return it to your lungs where it can pick up more oxygen.
After a thorough evaluation by his medical team, Serra was diagnosed with what is known as thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS), which is just a fancy way of saying that the “snug space” we described above (known as the thoracic outlet) is being smooshed. What is doing the smooshing? It can be do to a lot of things, but here is a list of the most common causes:
A broken first rib or collarbone
Neck muscles that are too large (from such things as bodybuilding. We’re pretty sure this is what Serra would say happened.)
Extending the arm above the head for a long period of time (during sleep or while unconscious)
A congenital anomaly (nerd speak for having something in your body that developed abnormally)
Tumor (pretty rare)
As for what exactly is being smooshed, well here are the most common suspects:
Brachial plexus (i.e. Neurologic type of TOS)
Subclavian vein (i.e .Venous type)
Subclavian artery (i.e. Arterial type)
The symptoms a patient might have due to TOS are divided into categories, all depending on what exactly is being smooshed:
Neurologic (meaning involving the nerves): Most common, making up about 95% of all cases.
Venous (meaning involving the veins): Responsible for 4% of all cases.
Arterial (meaning involving the arteries): Rare. Occurring only in about 1% of all cases, but is potentially the most serious of the three types.
Serra’s case was actually pretty “text-book”. The quickness with which the pain, swelling and bluish discoloration of his arm hit are classic hallmarks of the venous type of TOS (again, the smooshed subclavian vein variety). These patients are typically males, in their late 20s to early 30s who have participated in some form of strenuous physical activity with the affected arm (insert masturbation joke here… come on. You know you were thinking it in your head).
The trouble with smooshing the subclavian vein (or any vein, actually) is that doing so causes a sort of back-up of blood. And, since veins are under pretty low amounts of pressure, it doesn’t take much to clamp down on one. For example, this is why it’s advised when on a long trip (a plane flight for example) that you stand up and stretch every two hours or so. The simple action of your knees being bent (along with the pressure of the seat your in pushing down on the veins in the back of your knees) can cause blood flow to slow down. What’s the problem with that you ask? Well, when allowed to sit around in one place for too long, blood likes to clump up and form a clot. Trouble is, when the clots are able free themselves up, or whatever it was that was sloshing the vein to begin with is moved, these clots are free to plug up another spot in your body, and too often that spot is in the lung, this is known as a pulmonary embolus (PE). Sometimes the PE is small and easily managed, but it is not uncommon for larger one to kill a patient, quickly.
Once the blood clots in Serra’s arm and lung were confirmed (probably using venography) he was likely given tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), often referred to as the "clot buster”, to help breakdown the clots that had already formed. And, to prevent new clots from forming, he was started on Lovenox (a drug that prevents blood from clumping up as is flows through your body).
Now that the medical team had figured out what exactly was going on, the next step was to figure out how to prevent it from happening again. For that, the treatment for TOS is surgery, with the goal being to remove whatever it is that’s responsible for smooshing the vein in question. And, because the structures that are being smooshed in patients with TOS can vary, surgeons have preferences as to where they feel the best place to enter the body is to correct the problem. In Serra’s case (venous TOS), many doctors believe that the transaxillary approach (in simple terms, that means through the armpit. Yes, sounds odd, but take a look at the picture to get a better idea). This approach allows for the surgeon to best see the important structures that may be playing a role in the problems being caused. The surgery was done almost exactly one month after Serra had initially presented in the emergency department with arm pain.
Had Serra opted to not have surgery, chances are pretty much 100% that he’d have another clot form (even if he continued to use medications that prevent his blood from clotting).
Is TOS enough to force somebody into retirement: Generally speaking, no. Serra will likely be allowed to return to physical activity in 6-8 weeks. But, he is 39 years old and has a successful BJJ gym he runs, which both are likely factors that went into his decision to leave the sport.
Will he have to worry about contact sports now?: No, he will not have to alter his training or recreational activities after his surgery.
On behalf of one Long-Island based team to the another, we here at Injury-Duty would like to wish Matt Serra a speedy recovery all the best in his future endeavors!
Yamashita san, a tired old worker at the Shibuya crossing.
The Japanese government has decided to raise the official age of retirement to age 65 by 2025. People over 65 are now expected to account for 60 per cent of Japan’s population by 2060, according to government’s estimates. The country could lose more than 27 million workers in future if it does not address some of the lowest birth-rates in the world, at just 1.4 children per woman.
The earlier you begin socking away savings, the much better off you’ll be in your “golden years.” By using some tax tips, you can end up paying little or no taxes after you retire. To learn more, see the full TurboTax article.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, are you ready to invest but don’t know where to begin? We recommend starting small with micro-investing through our partner Acorns. They’ll round up your purchases to the nearest dollar and invest the change in a nicely diversified portfolio of stocks, bonds, and ETFs. Easy as eating pancakes: Start small with Acorns
Got a retirement plan already? How about three or four? Have you been leaving a trail of abandoned 401(k)s behind you at every employer you quit? Did we just become best friends? Because that was literally my story until recently. Our partner Capitalize will help you quickly and painlessly get through a 401(k) rollover: Roll over your retirement fund with Capitalize
Sandra Day O’Connor pushed through the highest legal barriers when she became the first woman on the Supreme Court in 1981. And she continued to don the robes of justice for 25 more years - even working through a 1988 breast cancer diagnosis. This conservative judge with a steel-trap mind participated in some key legal decisions of the 20th and 21st centuries - blazing her own path amidst the push and pull of politics. After stepping down from the bench, she kept right on at it, famously noting: “I need to retire from retirement.”
Tell your friend she’s got a little Sandra in her. Reblog now to give her a little push.
This week on my podcast, I read my recent Medium column, “Against Cozy Catastrophies: Cowering in a luxury bunker is a lousy retirement plan.” It’s a column about the failure of a market-based, individual based approach to the collective problem of retirement savings.
One of the major contributors to the national wealth of the world’s “advanced economies” after World War II was the advent of universal retirement programs. Some of this came from the private sector: employer-provided defined-benefits pensions (guaranteeing a proportion of your final salary from retirement until death). Some of it was public: Social Security programs.
The revolutionary idea was to treat retirement as a social problem, not a personal one. It acknowledged that people with low wages will struggle to put away enough for retirement, forcing them to stay in the workforce (making harder for their kids’ generation to get jobs), or to rely on their families for support (hamstringing their kids’ generation as they launched their careers).
In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter’s IRS created a new kind of pension: the 401(k), a tax-sheltered, personally directed “market pension.” In other words, it was a way for the government to encourage workers to gamble in the stock market.
At first, this seemed like an attractive proposition: employers made generous matching payments to their workers’ 401(k) contributions and the IRS gave generous benefits to workers who used their savings to gamble on stocks.
As Tom Fraser writes for Jacobin, the shift from employer-based, defined-benefits pensions to market-based, speculative pensions was key to neutralizing union demands for good employer pensions, and labor demands for good Social Security benefits:
This was a catastrophe. Today, most young workers have little or no pension savings (indeed, most American households have less than $400 in savings overall). Workers who are forced into retirement by layoffs or exhaustion have to liquidate their family homes and/or burden their children.
These workers — who will soon be forced into an impoverished, precarious retirement — weren’t reckless spenders whose lack of foresight led to their inadequate savings. Rather, 40 years of wage stagnation and spiraling housing and education costs left many workers with no discretionary income to put into market pensions.
Even for workers who did manage to save, disasters like the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 forced many to liquidate their pension savings (selling into a weak market and incurring huge penalties). All this highlights how lucky those of us with savings really are.
In my column, I describe one of the classic cons: you get a phone-call from a stranger who predicts that a certain team will win tonight’s sport’s match. The prediction comes true, and you get another call from the same tipster, with another tip. That one comes true, too. Then another, and another. Finally, the tipster calls and says, “Now that you’ve seen how good I am at this, I’m not going to give you any more tips for free. The next one costs $100,000.”
This is pretty convincing, from the mark’s point of view — but once you know how the scam works, it’s obvious that the con artist has no special insight. Rather, he starts off by making 32 phone-calls and predicts a win for one team with 16 of them, and a loss with the other 16. After the first match, he discards the 16 marks he gave bad advice to, and splits the remaining 16 in two groups. Eight of them get calls with a win prediction, and 8 with a loss. After that match, he does it again, discarding the 8 bad prediction marks and splitting the remaining 8 into two groups of 4. Then again. Finally, there’s just two marks, and each of them gets the $100,000 demand. The con artist nets $200k from 62 brief phone-calls.
As the mark, it’s easy to think you’re watching a dazzling demonstration of skill. As the scammer, you know that it’s just dumb luck. Those of us with pension savings lucked out. We had a job that produced discretionary income surpluses we could invest. We made bets that didn’t sink our savings. We avoided forced liquidations during the 2000 and 2012 and 2020 crises.
But even though we’re lucky, we are by no means guaranteed a comfy retirement. J Paul Getty said, “If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.” The corollary is that when one person lacks retirement savings, that’s their problem; when most people lack retirement savings, that’s everyone’s problem.
If tens of millions of people who worked all their lives are forced out of the labor market and into precarity and poverty, burdening their children or being forced to choose between food, heat and rent, they won’t take that lying down. They won’t dig holes, climb meekly inside, and pull the dirt in on top of themselves.
Your retirement savings won’t buy you a ticket to a comfortable dotage — it’ll buy you a front-row seat to a cozy catastrophe. “Cozy catastrophes” are Brian Aldiss’s term for post-WWII English sf novels in which middle class people weather disaster from behind the walls of fortified country farms, while gangs of proles maraud through the land (think Day of the Triffids).
The only thing worse than retreating to your walled retirement compound and trying not to hear the cries of your former co-workers who are clawing at the gates is to be those retired co-workers. That’s why I have a retirement savings account — for the same reason I have private health insurance. The only thing worse than having it is not having it.
But I don’t kid myself that because I’ve “solved” this as an individual, I’ve actually solved anything. Like public health, retirement is a social problem, not a personal one. Your first class berth on the Titanic may guarantee you a seat in one of the half-empty lifeboats, from which you can listen to the pleas of the steerage passengers as they run out of energy and drown. But no one with an iota of compassion can say that this is a good outcome.
[Image ID: A lush lawn and garden hedge wall; through the gate and over the hedge, we see a smouldering, apocalyptic landscape. Desperate hands reach over the wall. In the foreground is a No Trespassing sign.]
Gorgeous two storey Villa with six bedrooms in superb location
Beautiful, two storey villa with six bedrooms in prestigious gated community conveniently located between Sosua and Cabarete.
Very large area of construction and huge garden.
The villa boasts a refined tropical elegance with soothing decor and Caribbean art. Ideally located just seconds away on foot from the exclusive beach club, with delicious restaurant, seaside pools and paved walking and biking paths.
Highlights:
6 bedrooms with en suite bathrooms
Secure, gated beachfront resort community with many amenities
Private pool and gazebo
Upper level private patio ideal for sunbathing
Outdoor BBQ
Steps to beach club with restaurant, bar and pool
30 minutes to world class Playa Dorado Golf
60 minutes to Playa Grande Golf
All in all, a lovely property, perfect as a full time residence, vacation retreat or excellent rental investment.
An incredible opportunity to own a secure one-level house with 3 bedrooms and pool in a convenient beachfront location. This spacious home is located in a gated, family oriented community of professionals and retirees which features 24/7 security, ample green areas.
As you come into the house there is a vestibule that welcomes you into a warmth and cozy atmosphere…
The large living / family room is a fantastic place to get together and entertain as it next to the kitchen and it also features beautiful views of the pool and backyard.
The perfect complement to this spacious social area is the terrace which is conveniently located next to the kitchen, making it ideal for BBQs, just sitting outside enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning, reading the news or just relaxing… ensconced in a lush tropical garden on a private sandy beach.
For Sale: Magnificent Oceanfront Mansion with Panoramic Views
City: Cabrera
Country: Dominican Republic
Price: $ 4,900,000
Beds: 10
Baths: 10
Floors: 2
Square Feet: 12,658
Lot Size: 10,000 m2
This individual cliff top property sits right above the beautiful crystal clear waters of the Atlantic Ocean, with panoramic views.
This premier rental property is nested on two acres of pristine Caribbean coastline. Featuring 10 bedrooms a beautiful oceanfront pool, a hideaway jacuzzi, oceanview bar and entertainment center, grass tennis court, and multiple living areas, this villa is like no other in the Caribbean.
Situated on cliff side with incredible ocean views as the backdrop, this award winning ten bedroom luxury villa will enchant you with its 12,000 square foot living space. Play tennis in the full size grass tennis court or sunbathe by an alluring slate bottom pool and soak in a free form rock whirlpool Jacuzzi complete with a cave/Enjoy sunset cocktails around an authentic Tiki bar and sample the delicious cuisine from our professional kitchen and finish the night at the in house disco and discover why the villa is know as the best party villa in the Caribbean!
The villa is blessed with the most dramatic Caribbean sea-views imaginable. This premier rental property is nested on two acres of pristine Caribbean coastline. Featuring nine bedrooms an beautiful oceanfront pool, a hideaway Jacuzzi, ocean view bar and entertainment center, grass tennis court, and multiple living areas. This villa is like no other in the Caribbean!
Exclusive Caribbean home for sale in Cabarete Country
Dominican Republic
Price: $ 2,200,000
Beds: 6
Baths: 6.5
Floors: 2 Square Feet: 10,764
Lot Size: 3,500 m2
Windward House, designed by the award-winning American architect and completed by a German contractor in 2009, is a 6-bedroom, 6-½ bath 1000 square meter (10,000 sq. ft) villa of exceptional quality. From the fabulous heated pool/spa combination with reflecting pool, coralina terraces and waterfall, to the over 700 square meters (7000 sq. ft.) of travertine marble floors, American and European appliances and hardware as well as furnishings from all over the world, this is an ideal home for a family requiring elegance as well as flexibility.
One enters the villa through mature tropical gardens, across a wooden bridge that spans a fishpond containing Tilapia, Koi and exotic turtles. The foyer opens onto a black-stone lined reflecting pond which divides the private and public areas of the villa. To the left, at ground level, are 3 bedrooms each with en suite full bath. One bedroom is currently in use as an office. Turning right from the entry, one walks through a spacious 90 sq. meter great room with Tea nook and 5 meter ceilings. Next are wine room, dining room and kitchen with huge pantry that opens onto an extensive outdoor kitchen as well. A 4th ground floor bedroom with full bath is accessed from the dining area. Connected to the kitchen are extensive service areas including laundry, staff apartment with bath, storage and mechanical rooms and 2-car garage. The garage includes a large storage loft………
Built more than 35 years ago, when Lord Glenconner was still developing Mustique, the blueprint of Plantation House was designed by Swedish architect Arne Hasselqvist, who worked on a number of the island’s other villas. Hasselqvist also worked on the house with Oliver Messel, Lord Glenconner’s main designer for the entire island.
The two pandemic years have given a boost to “unretirement” and also led to “returnships” #retirement #unretirement #work #pandemicresponse
Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com
I first wrote about unretirement here in January 2016. I also wrote about it at that time on another blog in connection to learning and education. It was a new term and I found so little about it online at first that I thought I might have coined the term myself. I’ve written about aspects of it a number of times here over the subsequent years. But the term…
bring on the evening hours||a sussex downs playlist
The hours have grown long and the days grow late, and the country calls. The time has come to leave the hectic city behind, to set aside the trappings of two lives well and truly lived to settle into the quiet evenings of forever. And perhaps, for a little while, among the bees and flowers there is some peace to be found at last in these ever-fleeing numbered days.
When alone in the woods, the sound of a distant train is very comforting. There is comfort in the consistency, a sentimental familiarity. Sometimes lying awake at night, waiting for the train is the only thing that brings sleep.
Toliver Smythe knew this feeling well. He engineered a train for fifty years of his life. When he finally retired he purchased a house just over a hill from the track…
