Free Republic

According to a Gallup poll, just two in 10 people have a best friend at work. The group that has seen the greatest decline is younger workers: For those age 35 and under, the two-in-10 figure is down from 25 percent in 2019. All of this has gotten some attention since the US Surgeon General’s declaration last year that loneliness can have serious health consequences. “Employees are isolated and lonely,” says Julianne Holt-Lundstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, who posits that the rate of surviving a job for people who are socially connected is 50...

It's been ten days since our very prolific and wonderful FReeper FRiend Nick Carraway posted anything. Anybody got any idea where he might be? I hope he's all right. He posts so many eclectic articles that are fun to read and usually generate great threads of posts.

Mystery shrouds the deaths of three Kansas City Chiefs fans found dead in their friend's snowy backyard after a Jan. 7 NFL watch party. Jordan Willis hosted the gathering in his Northwest 83rd Terrace home. After Ricky Johnson, 38, Clayton McGeeney, 36, and David Harrington, 37, were found dead on his property two days later, he reportedly told family members that his friends "froze to death," a victim's family member told FOX4 Kansas City.

“Friends” co-star David Schwimmer wrote a blistering critique aimed at activists who ignore or question Hamas terrorists’ sex crimes towards Israelis on Oct. 7. Schwimmer, who is Jewish, wrote on Instagram Friday that he has been an advocate against sexual violence for nearly 30 years. Referencing the New York Times’ recent investigation of sexual assaults at the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, Schwimmer emphasized the importance of believing survivors.

Matthew Perry, a comic actor known for playing the sarcastic, boyishly charming and tightly wound Chandler Bing in the long-running sitcom “Friends,” was found dead Oct. 28 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 54. Perry was discovered by a witness unresponsive in his hot tub at about 4 p.m. Saturday, Capt. Kelly Muniz of the Los Angeles police said in a statement Sunday. The Los Angeles City Fire Department responded and pronounced Perry dead on the scene, she said, adding that detectives from the LAPD’s robbery-homicide division investigated and found “no obvious signs of trauma.” The official cause...

Matthew Perry has died at the age of 54, TMZ has reported. The beloved “Friends” star was reportedly discovered dead in the jacuzzi of a home in Los Angeles’ ritzy Pacific Palisades neighborhood just after 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon. Law enforcement sources told TMZ that first-responders rushed to the address with the call first reported as a cardiac arrest. They added that no drugs found at the scene and no foul play is suspected. In a statement, the Los Angeles Police Department stated: “We responded to the 1800 block of Blue Sail Rd for a death investigation on a male...

Jenna Ellis – the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 – says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a “malignant narcissist” who cannot admit mistakes. “I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”*** Described by the New York Times *** as “a lawyer whom Trump sought out after seeing her television...

Friends of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), a convicted sex offender, are urging him to run for political office again — making a comeback by pitching himself as a moderate Democrat to rebuild New York City. Curtis Sliwa, the former GOP mayoral candidate for New York City, said he and others are encouraging Weiner to run for office again.

Jennifer Aniston spoke recently about the state of comedy and what’s considered funny – and what’s not – on the occasion of the debut of her new Netflix comedy Murder Mystery 2 with Adam Sandler. “Comedy has evolved, movies have evolved,” the former Friends star told French news agency AFP. “Now it’s a little tricky because you have to be very careful, which makes it really hard for comedians, because the beauty of comedy is that we make fun of ourselves, make fun of life,” she said, before getting specific. In years past, “you could joke about a bigot and...

Have you seen President Trump's powerful 4 minute video message? Don't miss it!A NATION IN DECLINEQ is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation.Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding 'mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased media) to endure...

Recently, I lost a friend of over 40 years. It was his choice to terminate our friendship. We had known eachother since college. We reconnected on Facebook for many years, about 12, and rather suddenly tore into me for a variety of criticisms. A little background on him: He recently lost his wife of 30+ years then promptly got covid. I offered my condolences and told him he could reach out for anything at all. Then, upon hearing nothing back, I left him be. I noticed him corresponding more and more with a younger Facebook girl. No worries, not my...

Matthew Perry’s battle with addiction didn’t only nearly cost him his life — it came with a staggering price tag, too. “I’ve probably spent $9 million or something trying to get sober,” the “Friends” star admitted to The New York Times in an interview about his upcoming memoir detailing his harrowing near-death struggle. By the time he almost died at the age of just 49, Perry also realized he had spent more than half his life in treatment centers or sober living facilities, he said. His life as “a drug addict” — which he insists in the book is proof...

“Homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s,” the Coalition for the Homeless reports.After decades of failure, New York City homelessness keeps getting worse. The only people who appear to be benefiting are the ones who make a pretty penny “serving” the homeless. The homeless–an ever expanding group in our major cities–are still sleeping rough and dying of overdoses.New York City’s homeless population has surged in recent years to 80,000 people, according to The Bowery Mission, a 150-year-old agency serving the hungry and homeless, citing federal data.This despite the fact that...

After pledging $4 million to Brandeis University over “guilt” about the lack of racial diversity on “Friends,” co-creator Marta Kauffman is now expressing regret over how the show represented another demographic: transgender people. In an interview with The Conversation on the BBC World Service that will air on July 11, Kauffman called it a “mistake” to refer to the transgender mother of Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) as his “father.” “Pronouns were not yet something that I understood,” Kauffman told the BBC. “So we didn’t refer to that character as ‘she.’ That was a mistake.’” The character, who had the stage...

The co-creator of Friends has said it was a mistake not to use appropriate pronouns for Chandler Bing’s transgender parent in the hit 90s sitcom.Marta Kauffman, 65, said she now regrets the representation of the character Amanda Bing, who was played by Kathleen Turner.“We kept referring to her as Chandler’s father, even though Chandler’s father was trans,” she said in an interview with The Conversation on the BBC World Service, which will be broadcast on 11 July. “Pronouns were not yet something that I understood. So we didn’t refer to that character as she. That was a mistake.” Kauffman co-created...

If you’re a Hollywood elite facing the wrath of the diversity mob, a cool $4 million judiciously dispersed can buy you a lot of redemption. Friends creator Marta Kauffman has atoned for the sitcom’s lack of diversity by pledging $4 million to her alma mater, Brandeis University, to establish an endowed professorship in the school’s African and African American studies department. The result: glowing mainstream media coverage and social media feedback. In a mea culpa with the Los Angeles Times, Marta Kauffman prostrated herself before the diversity police, saying she is “embarrassed” by the lack of minority characters in Friends.

A new poll finds more Americans are borrowing money from family and friends than they were a year ago. According to Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, 25.6 million people, or more than 10 percent of U.S. adults, had to rely on their support network for financial backing, up from 19.1 million a year Fourteen percent of respondents who identify as millennials said in the survey that they borrowed money from their family members and friends, a 3 percent increase from April 2021.

Drums, Marimba, Percussion: Barrie BarlowOrchestral Arranger: Dee PalmerConductor: Dee PalmerFlute, Producer, Saxophone: Ian AndersonAcoustic Guitar: Ian AndersonLead Vocals: Ian AndersonBacking Vocals: Ian AndersonBass Guitar: Jeffrey HammondAccordion, Organ, Piano, Synthesizer: John EvanElectric Guitar: Martin BarreGuitar: Martin BarreOrchestra Leader: Patrick HallingUnknown: Robin BlackProducer: Terry EllisWriter: Ian AndersonMarch, the Mad Scientist (2002 Remaster)November 6, 2014 | Jethro Tull

Is it best to go hiking with friends, or set off alone? For many of us, getting our hiking boots on the trail is all about unplugging and getting away from it all to enjoy some much-needed peace and quiet. Some of hiking’s best-known pioneers, from Alfred Wainwright to John Muir, were famous for extolling the merits of hiking alone but on the other hand, hiking safety advice is generally to go out with someone else and hiking can be a fun and healthy way to connect with friends. So do you still get all the benefits of hiking when...

Former President Donald Trump expressed admiration for predecessor Barack Obama at a ticketed Florida event Saturday, after spending years slamming the Democrat. Speaking at the kickoff of his four-date “History Tour” with Bill O’Reilly at an arena in Sunrise, Florida, the Republican said of Obama, “I liked him,” while also calling him “smart and sharp,” according to The Sun Sentinel.