Quote
“The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
Seneca
Joke
My dad, unfortunately, passed away when we couldn’t remember his blood type… His last words to us were, “Be positive!”
Fun Fact
Baked beans are actually not baked, but stewed.
Reading Fact
Just imagine, 42% of graduates never read a book after graduating college.
History Fact
Albert Einstein turned down the presidency of Israel.
Einstein wasn’t a citizen of Israel. However he was Jewish. The German-born physicist was offered the post, but turned it down in 1952, saying:
“I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it. All my life I have dealt with objective matters, hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official functions.”
If you’re enjoying these history facts so far, you may also like these facts about Albert Einstein.
Movie/TV Trivia
Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon agree that if they’re ever confused for one another, they will just go along with it.
Movie/TV Quote
"I wish I knew how to quit you."
Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Heath Ledger hated the homophobic memes. "He was extraordinarily serious about the political issues surrounding the movie when it came out, Jake Gyllenhaal told Out for a 10th anniversary oral history of Ang Lee's romance classic. A lot of times people would want to have fun and joke about it, and he was vehement about being serious, to the point where he didn’t really want to hear about anything that was being made fun of." It makes sense: The mainstream "gay panic" humor of the '00s was so prevalent that The New York Times devoted a whole article to Brokeback parodies in 2006, highlighting the popular trailer mashups on "curatorial video sites -- including youtube.com, gorillamask.net, and dailysixer.com." Clips with wink-wink, pun-y titles like "Brokeback to the Future" could go viral by suggesting that Doc Brown and Marty McFly were actually lovers, playing on viewer expectations with mildly clever editing and music cues, and treating lines from Lee's movie as punchlines.
But as the spoofs have faded from the collective memory, picking up dust in YouTube's digital vault, the film, along with its most famous scene, has only grown in power. While Ledger's performance was the most celebrated at the time, earning the heartthrob a Best Actor nomination while his co-star was relegated to the Supporting Actor category at the Oscars, Gyllenhaal is the one who delivers the heart-breaking line, which first appeared in the short story by Annie Proulx on which the film is based. In fact, the script by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry grabs most of Jack Twist's yearning monologue, delivered with the titular mountain in the background, from Proulx's text. His emotional confession reaches its conclusion with "I wish I knew how to quit you," an admission of unfulfilled desire and unspeakable anger that's so raw it can only be said while the two stoic, wounded cowboys are facing away from each other. In her story, Proulx ends the scene with a stark, tragic description: "Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved."
Conversation Starter
What is a fashion trend you are really glad went away?
Writing Prompt
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