Lori Laurent Smith

@RNN_RoyalNews Who is buying orange marmalade made by an American? Brits have a lot of GREAT marmalade choices that cost a half to two-thirds less than whatever she’s flogging. And Americans don’t eat marmalade- yes there are exceptions (I am one) but they will buy the cheaper British brands

Meghan Markle’s admitting defeat and attempting a rebrand for As ever and herself, and yet somehow it’s crappier than ever. The imagery is stale, boring and pretentious. The website is clunkier and uglier than ever. Her Instagram profile picture looks like a teenager attempting to look cool and trying to hold in a fart. The pose and expression are both bad (Meghan can’t pose or model to save her life). As ever, the brand will just fail even harder than before. She honestly does truly suck at this. 🥴

@RVealingthenarc Isn’t that the concentration camp shirt?

Harry greeting someone for 2 seconds before Meghan taps him to move so she can take over the interaction 👀 Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. #MeghanMarkleExposed #MeghanMarkleIsANarcissist #RevealingTheNarc

@XOQueenEsther Met Gala posted that she crashed it. No invite for you!

Blake Lively’s Met Gala Moment Was Deeply Tone-Deaf Blake Lively showing up at the Met Gala this year, smiling like nothing happened, honestly felt surreal. Not in a good way. More like… are we all just expected to pretend the last two years didn’t happen? Because that’s what it looked like. A reset. A clean slate. As if everything that went down with Justin Baldoni just evaporated the moment she stepped onto that carpet in a Versace gown. And I’m sorry, but it doesn’t work like that. You don’t get to be at the center of a situation that serious, with that much damage done to someone’s reputation, and then just reappear in full glamour mode like it was all some minor inconvenience. Whether people want to admit it or not, that whole situation left a mark. On him, on the project, and on how people see her now. What makes it worse is the timing. Walking into one of the most visible events in the world right after everything wrapped up just feels… off. There’s no reflection in that. No pause. No sense that any of it actually mattered beyond being something to get past. And then there’s the bigger issue. When something tied to a story about domestic violence turns into this kind of public spectacle, it cheapens it. It stops being about the message and starts being about ego, control, and image. That’s the part that doesn’t sit right. You can call it strategy, you can call it PR, but to a lot of people it just reads as tone-deaf. Versace dressing her? That’s their choice. But let’s not pretend fashion houses don’t pick sides when they do that. They know exactly what kind of attention it brings. Same with the Met Gala. They don’t “accidentally” invite people. Every name is a decision. So yeah, people are going to question it. They should. Because this didn’t feel like a comeback. It felt like someone stepping right back into the spotlight without acknowledging the weight of what just happened. Like the expectation is that the audience will move on simply because she has. Not everyone will. And honestly, they shouldn’t have to. PS: That’s the only soundtrack that actually fits that red carpet. moment.

@MatthewHitchmo3 @sage1411 IG needs to be audited now and regularly afterwards. They are a charity - donors deserve to see where their money is going. And that the charity isn’t corrupt. Transparency would help greatly.

@sage1411 Are you asking why an international event featuring individuals with complex needs from 23 countries costs more to run than a single country's event? I mean it sounds obvious it would cost more but we need the break down to come to any real conclusion.

How is Invictus charging for over $100k per veteran but they still have to pay for all the expenses to participate. Meanwhile, warrior games runs on just $2 million total?

@DuchessofGeeks It looks pics from a garage sale 🙄

This carefully curated selection of As Ever products is a master class in cheap stock photography. These are some of the cheapest-looking, blandest marketing photos anybody could come up with. Everything is grey, beige, and brown, but I suppose that’s just like Megan herself. Is this minimal aesthetic a reflection of Madame's recent trend of wearing less jewelry and ostentatious clothing? Or did she just hire the cheapest photographer she could, and this was the result?

Mark Cuban just described the largest wealth transfer of the AI era. Almost nobody understood what he said. Cuban: “There are 33 million companies in this country. Aren’t going to have AI budgets. Aren’t going to have AI experts.” Not tech startups. The shoe store. The regional trucking outfit. The accounting firm with 12 employees. The businesses that actually run the physical economy. They know AI is coming. They have no idea what to do with it. Cuban: “You’ve got the head of Microsoft saying software is dead because everything’s going to be customized to your unique utilization.” Software is dead. The SaaS era ran on one rule. Build a generic product. Force millions of companies to bend their workflows around it. Charge rent forever. AI ends the contract. The business stops bending to the software. The intelligence bends to the business. But customized by whom. The third-generation manufacturer cannot tell Claude from Gemini. The county hospital is staring at a reactor asking where the light switch is. Cuban: “Who’s going to do it for them?” That question is worth more than the frontier models themselves. Hundreds of billions are being burned to build the foundation. The smartest engineers alive are locked in a bloodbath over who owns the base layer. Let them fight. Let them burn the capital. Let them drive the cost of raw intelligence toward zero. Because the wealth does not collect where the brain is built. It collects where the brain meets the business. Every ambitious kid in college right now thinks survival means a seat at OpenAI or Anthropic. Cuban is staring at the other 99 percent of the economy. Learn the models. Then learn the messy, unglamorous reality of how a 50-person company actually operates. Walk through the door. Understand their problems. Wire the intelligence directly into their revenue. That is not a job title. That is an entire economic class being born. You do not need to build the brain. You need to build the nervous system. The biggest winners of the electricity era were not the engineers who built the generators. They were the ones who walked into dark factories and showed the owners where to plug in. 33 million companies are standing in the dark right now. Silicon Valley is racing to build the god. The fortunes will belong to whoever teaches him a trade.

@lady_doi @PixieCav The whole time me I lived in London working for the BBC, she was called The Princess of Wales. Or colloquially “Lady Di”.

@llaurentsmith @PixieCav I know that. But what did the world call her? I’m a lifelong monarchist and I know the titles and conventions. I’m simply talking about the nomenclature the average person uses!

"Meghan’s visit causing ‘considerable concern’ behind palace gates" 🗞️ A longform article in The Telegraph about Meghan's grifting and merching in Australia under the guise of 'charity' "Prince Harry and Meghan’s tour of Australia has raised alarm in royal circles after it emerged that Meghan is earning money from a shopping platform built around the outfits she wears on charitable engagements. The Duchess of Sussex has invested in OneOff, a 'style-driven fashion discovery platform', which includes purchasing links to a host of celebrities’ clothes. She is understood to be receiving a share of sales. Meghan’s OneOff page includes seven outfits she has worn since the couple arrived in Australia on Tuesday for what has been described as a “quasi-royal tour”. One of the “looks” featured is the black Karen Gee “Priscilla Dress” worn by the 44-year-old mother-of-two on a visit to the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne on Tuesday. Visitors who click on the link can press a “buy now” button straight to the website where the $1250 dress is available for pre-order. There are also links to the Real Fine Studio Puffy Hearts earrings worn by Meghan, along with her Christian Dior iridescent black leather high heels, although they appear to have already sold out. According to Vogue, the current revenue split on a sale is 10 to 25 per cent from the retailer to OneOff, which is split with the creator. The London Telegraph understands that the commercialisation of Meghan’s wardrobe has “caused considerable concern” behind palace gates. A royal source said: “Everybody just rolls their eyes now as they know the routine – push the envelope, get criticised, reverse tack and say you made a donation. By making money while doing ‘philanthropic’ work, they very much appear to be having their cake and eating it.” Another insider said: “Grifting is one thing, but carrying out a faux royal visit to a children’s hospital while flogging your outfits online appears to have crossed a line.” It follows increased discomfort over the monetisation of the tour, where tickets to a high-end “girls’ weekend” retreat in Sydney have been on sale for up to $3199 for VIP access to Meghan. Also featured on her OneOff page is the khaki suede St Agni bomber jacket ($1000) and skirt ($890) she wore on a visit to the Australian National Veterans Art Museum in Melbourne on Tuesday. Meghan once complained about having to wear tights as a working royal. While promoting the second series of her Netflix show With Love, Meghan, she said: “It was different several years ago, when I couldn’t be as vocal and I had to wear nude pantyhose all the time. “Let’s be honest, that was not very myself. I hadn’t seen pantyhose since movies in the ’80s! That felt a little bit inauthentic.” There is even a link to her Cartier Tank Française 18-carat gold watch. Diana, Princess of Wales, had the same watch, and it has never been officially confirmed whether the watch Meghan wears belonged to her late mother-in-law. When the couple stepped down as working royals in 2020, they released a statement titled Spring Transition 2020 on their now-defunct Sussex Royal website, which read: “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will become privately funded members of the Royal family with permission to earn their own income and the ability to pursue their own private charitable interests.” The original statement was not agreed upon, with the late Queen Elizabeth leading negotiations over what the Sussexes’ future would look like in a meeting that has become known as the Sandringham Summit. Buckingham Palace made it clear that a “half-in, half-out” model was not acceptable, confirming that the couple would step back from all active royal duties, including official military appointments. They were banned from using the name Sussex Royal for their activities, over fears their money-making plans would look as though they were endorsed by the royal family. Since then, the couple has made commercial deals with Spotify, Netflix and others, and Meghan has launched her own business, As Ever. Palace aides have welcomed the Sussexes’ commercial success, believing they are better placed earning a living than having to rely on royal scandals to make headlines as they did in the era of their Oprah Winfrey interview and Harry’s autobiography, Spare. Since then, the royal family has enjoyed being able to concentrate on their official duties while the public interest drifts from the so-called “Sussex soap opera”. But the visit to Australia, where King Charles is head of state, is more complicated, with crowds turning out to see the couple because of their former royal status. The tour has also prompted confusion over whether it is a commercial or charitable endeavour. It has once again led to criticism of The Firm – as the royal family is sometimes called – with Meghan complaining about having been trolled and Harry complaining about not wanting to be royal. References have also been made in news coverage to previous visits by Princess Diana, who was careful never to cash in on her royal status, despite being a global fashion icon." ✍️ Camilla Tominey, The Telegraph, London

@SabirahLohn The Times of London is reporting she had 19 tables set for 8 each, so at most 152. A lot of those tables don’t look full.

This is embarrassing.

@lady_doi @PixieCav Her title was Diana, Princess of Wales.

@llaurentsmith @PixieCav We know that in theory, but Harry has never been called Prince Henry. In reality, if they lost Sussex, everyone would start calling her Princess Meghan. Diana was NEVER called Princess Charles. She was the Princess of Wales, but mostly called Princess Diana.

@lady_doi @PixieCav It would be Princess Henry like Princess Michael. Her husband is Prince Michael of Kent and he is the grandson of a King.

@PixieCav If Parliament removes their titles, she effectively becomes Princess Meghan, because he will remain Prince Harry (unless the King removes that too, like he did for Andrew).

@XOQueenEsther His mother must be rolling in her grave!

Prince Harry & Meghan Markle’s Vile Hospital Exploitation: Ill Children Used for PR While Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne Enabled the Disgrace This is beyond tone deaf. It’s disgusting. Sick children are not props. A hospital is not a stage. And yet somehow Harry and Meghan still manage to turn a space meant for care and privacy into a backdrop for their image. Dragging vulnerable kids into a foyer, lining them up, exposing them like that… for your despicable image rehab tour. It’s vile. It’s straight-up disgusting, stomach-turning, soul-rotting exploitation. These are children fighting for their lives, hooked up to machines, scared, in pain and you turn their hospital into your goddamn stage. Parading them through the lobby like accessories so you can smile for the flashes and pretend you care. If they actually cared, they would have quietly gone bedside to bedside. No cameras, no staging, no spectacle. Just human decency. But no that wouldn’t get the headlines, the “look how royal we still are” narrative you’re both addicted to. This was curated. Deliberate. And those kids were used. Sick children aren’t your backdrop, and their pain isn’t your photoshoot. And Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne should be ashamed for allowing it. Whoever on their admin or PR team greenlit dragging ill kids into the foyer for this needs to be held accountable questioned, exposed and removed. Who thought it was acceptable to parade unwell children out like that? That decision needs to be questioned. Because safeguarding those kids should come before anyone’s PR, status, or connections. I am appalled. I am disgusted. And the level these two will go to exploit the weak and vulnerable just to feed their ego is sickening. This wasn’t compassion. It was exploitation & the children deserve better than your performative, camera-chasing bullshit.

@RNN_RoyalNews Where’s Rachel’s wedding band?

Meghan’s weird, y’all. 🤨 Apparently, Meghan wants to relive her bump clutching day so she’s doing the same to her friend. This display is just bizarre and is not going to help Meghan’s two solid weeks of bad press.

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Disaster patriarchy: how the pandemic has unleashed a war on women. “In disaster patriarchy, women lose their safety, their economic power, their autonomy, their education, and they are pushed on to the frontlines, unprotected, to be sacrificed.” theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2…

Getting inspired by the poetic work of French street artist JR. And you? What's inspiring you this lovely Tuesday morning? #inspire #Creative #photography mymodernmet.com/jr-chronicles-…

"We need to change and grow as we learn, and in the case of COVID-19, that willingness to assimilate new information is the kind of mindset that will keep us and our families safe." #PR # #covid #uncertainty lnkd.in/gHXd7gr

This is what #blackexcellence looks like. @DennisNia does it again! 🔥 📹 @Pac12Network

Kamala Harris Makes History as First Woman and Woman of Color as Vice President! Ms. Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, has risen higher in the country’s leadership than any woman ever before her. via @NYTimes nytimes.com/2020/11/07/us/…

We did it, @JoeBiden.