The Milan Cortina Winter Olympics started off strong, with multiple Team USA athletes speaking out against ICE. But it ended with a groan when the U.S. men’s hockey team won gold and invited podcaster-turned-FBI director Kash Patel into their locker room to chug beers and slam his fist on the table. He also put Trump on speakerphone so he could invite them all to Tuesday’s State of the Union, and joke that he’d have to invite the gold-medal winning women’s team, too, because “they’d probably impeach me,” if he didn’t. The entire locker room erupted in laughter.

On Monday, the women’s team turned down the invite, albeit with what felt like a way-too-polite rejection. “Due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments following the Games, the athletes are unable to participate,” a spokesperson for USA Hockey said. “They were honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment.”

However, during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night—which was chock-full of outright lies and baffling claims—Trump declared that the women’s hockey team “will soon be coming” to the White House. But it’s unclear where he got that confirmation, as that’s not quite what the spokesperson suggested. They did use words like “honored” and “grateful for the acknowledgment,” which makes me slightly less optimistic that they’ll officially turn down an invite to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But I still believe. 

Trump made this very brief mention of the women’s team after welcoming the men’s hockey team into the chamber for a standing ovation. He introduced them by shouting, “We’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it. People are asking me, ‘Please, Mr. President, we’re winning too much! We can’t take it anymore! We’re not used to winning in our country! Until you came along, we were just always losing.'” Republicans then started their second, but far from their last, “USA” chant of the night.

Both U.S. teams beat Team Canada in overtime to win Olympic gold. This marks the men’s first Olympic gold since 1980 and their first Olympic medal since 2010. It’s the women’s first Olympic gold since 2018, though they’ve medaled at every Winter Games since the sport was added in 1998. Jezebel reached out to USA Hockey for comment and will update if we hear back.

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darkspaceboytoy:

Did you guys see this? That’s so fucking funny

threetoadswaltz:

depsidase:

oh my god it’s real

Watching the Olympic Games, it may often feel like they are as much about pomp and ceremony as they are about sports. The International Olymic Committee (IOC) has a long list of protocols that need to take place during opening and closing ceremonies, the playing of the Olympic and National Anthems and lighting of the flame, for example; and medal ceremonies have similar requirements. Looking at the Games of the 21st century, it becomes clear that many of these traditions have their origins in the birth of the modern Games in 1896 Europe, a context of chivalrous ideals marred by racist notions of superiority; while other traditions can be traced further back to the original games in Ancient Greece, where religion and ritual were key components of the celebrations.

In 1992, a previously-abandoned tradition of the Games was revived, at least in theory: the Olympic Truce. Originally known as ekecheiria, it was established by rulers of Greek city-states in the ninth century BCE to try and guarantee safety from conflict for participants and spectators to the Olympiads. The following year, the United Nations supported this revival, asking that it would take place from one week before the start of the Olympic and Paralympic Games to one week after their conclusion. The 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games were the first for which the President of the UN General Assembly requested the observance of an Olympic Truce. Since Nagano 1998, the UN's Secretary-General has also joined the call for this Truce.

With the "homecoming" Athens 2004 Summer Games, the Truce started being represented by a wall or mural, a physical installation in the Olympic Village, on which athletes, volunteers and occasionally the general public could leave messages and dedications aspiring to the Truce's ideal of peace. These Truce Walls have featured various materials, from tiles in Rio 2016 to wood for Tokyo 2020. After the respective Games and Truce, the wall/mural is left to the host city, some of which have repurposed the materials, kept the objects in storage or displayed them in local museums.

A partial exception can be found in the Olympic Museum in Lausanne. Some of the panels for the London 2012 edition, in which the Truce Wall consisted of translucent acrylic "totems", are on display in the Swiss city known as the Olympic Capital due to its hosting of the IOC. Heavily-signed, these panels center a section of the Museum dedicated to the Olympic Truce, which is also represented in the Museum's gardens with a sculpture by artist Rosa Serra from Spain. The revived Olympic Truce is non-binding, and has therefore been broken a few times, specially by Russia in the context of the Crimea conflict. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 coincided with the Beijing Winter Olympics, representing the clearest violation of the Truce as of the time of writing.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
The Man from Madras, whose balls were of brass, is in fact a meditation on the need to find synthesis between humanity and technology in modern life.

At the time of its completion under Hadrian, the Pantheon in Rome had the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome.

It still does. It’s held that record for nearly 2,000 years.