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2024 will test us. What can we learn from Strength, tarot's card of the year?

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2024 will test us. What can we learn from Strength, tarot's card of the year?

Years ago, when they were feeling lost and directionless and leaning too heavily on their vices, Edgar Fabián Frías cast a spell on themself. As part of the process, the L.A. based artist, therapist and magical practitioner decided they would pull a tarot card and get whatever they selected tattooed on their arm.

As luck (or the universe) would have it, Frías pulled the Strength card. Since then, they’ve had a line drawing of a feminine figure leaning comfortably against a large orangutan on their left bicep. “Fuerza” (Spanish for strength) is written in blue ink beneath the image. (The traditional Strength card usually depicts a lion rather than an orangutan, but in tarot, everything is open to interpretation.)

“It helped me on my healing journey, and I find the card often connects with people who are trying to recover or find themselves,” Frías said. “It’s like an angel or a guide that comes at just the right moment.”

If you too feel like you could use some Strength energy in your life, you’re in luck. Tarot practitioners say the Strength card is 2024’s card of the year. That’s because 2+0+2+4=8, and Strength is the eighth card in most modern English-language tarot decks. Just like honoring the seasonal rhythms of the year or the phases of the moon, working with the card of the year can be a way to frame and contextualize a specific period of time.

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“When we talk about the card of the year, we can think about what energies are associated with it that can help guide or support us or potentially give us some clues into the theme of the year,” said author and artist Sarah Faith Gottesdiener, who also leads tarot workshops.

For example, in 2023 — a Chariot card year — Eliza Swann, founder of the Golden Dome School, a mystery school for artists with branches in New York and L.A., moved houses four times. (The Chariot card is traditionally associated with movement and momentum).

“I never had a more insane moving moment,” Swann said. “And I thought, ‘Well, it’s a Chariot year.’ It helped me look at this crazy movement as having a mythic framework.”

For Frías, 2023’s Chariot year was an invitation to contemplate the direction of their life, where they were headed and the parts of their life where they didn’t feel empowered or in control. In this Strength year, they plan to think about ways to receive, call in and cultivate strength to make big changes happen.

“It’s about turning inward toward ourselves and opening up our hearts,” Frías said. “Some call it the conscious and unconscious coming together.”

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In the most popular and iconic tarot deck, known as the Rider-Waite-Smith and first published in 1910, the Strength card depicts a woman in a long white dress leaning over a lion with its tail between its legs. An infinity sign floats over her head, suggesting she might be a divine figure, and she seems to be using gentle pressure to close the lion’s mouth and calm it. The lion radiates a wild energy, but it looks up at her with something like trust. The woman is serene and unafraid.

The divinatory meaning of the card is “power, energy, action, courage, and magnanimity,” according to the little white book that accompanies the deck.

When the card is reversed (meaning it shows up upside down in a spread), it means “abuse of power, despotism, weakness and discord.” But most tarot readers say the imagery of the card suggests a more broad and expansive interpretation.

For Gottesdiener, the card is a reminder that strength is often soft and unforced and that we can look at our true natures with compassion. “There’s this relationship with animal nature or animalistic instinct,” she said. “She’s greeting this beast, this king of the jungle, and she’s not afraid of it. She’s greeting it for what it is.”

This could lead us to see 2024 as a year to reacquaint ourselves with desire, pleasure and play, she said. “We’re going inward to meet the beast. [In 2024,] we’ll be tasked with thinking about ‘What are our true natures?’ and ‘What do they need to flourish and grow?’”

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Swann said the Strength card is associated with Cybele, an iron meteorite that was celebrated as a mother goddess in Anatolia (the region now called Turkey). “I think of Strength as this really beautiful, divine, feminine ecstatic energy — this wildly sizzling meteorite,” Swann said. “And I think of her as the goddess of settling the score.”

On the collective level, Swann sees Strength card energy in all those who are rising up to make their voices heard. “All the labor unions striking is Strength,” they said. “The energy of organizing and making things more equitable is Strength.”

But the card also has a shadow side, Frías said. This includes feeling overwhelmed, pessimistic, letting emotions control you, self-hatred and building walls between yourself and others.

“In 2024, we need to listen with our hearts and develop practices that help us cultivate hope, eagerness, joy and pleasure,” Frías said. “Especially when it’s hard to do so.”

If you’d like to try working with the energy of the Strength card this year, there are lots of easy ways to start. Frías usually keeps the card of the year on their altar as a reminder to look for the various ways its themes might show up over the next 12 months. If you don’t have an altar, you can make the card the picture on your phone’s home screen or tape a photocopy of it on your nightstand. (An image that represents strength to you would also work.) You also can gather friends to talk about your own strengths.

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“We’re taught to be humble and not name our own strengths, so saying them out loud would be a good practice,” Swann said.

And because Cybele’s festivities occurred around the spring equinox, Swann suggests imagining planting the seeds of your desires now and watching them erupt in the spring. “On the individual level, Strength is about working with the energy of desire to achieve goals and working with your own strengths, whatever they happen to be, so you get concrete results,” they said.

Perhaps, most simply, you can just meditate on what strength means to you. “You can look at where you have to be stronger, look at the divide between what you say and what you do,” Gottesdiener said. “You can also be really mindful about where you, yourself, might be in the card with your relationships and your life.”

The ultimate goal, she said, is to take the archetype out of the deck and bring it into your life.

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After weeks of speculation, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce wed in New York

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After weeks of speculation, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce wed in New York

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs, pictured at a basketball game in May, announced their engagement in August 2025.

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NEW YORK — Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are officially married.

After three years of dating, The pop icon and Super Bowl-winning football player, both 36, tied the knot in New York, according to a statement from Swift’s publicist, Tree Paine.

There were neither bridesmaids nor groomsmen. “Instead, her brother Austin Swift served as Taylor’s Man of Honor and Jason Kelce was Travis’ Best Man. The ceremony joined both families together,” Swift’s publicist said in the statement released Friday evening.

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The ceremony was officiated by comedian and a friend of the couple, Adam Sandler, the statement added.

The singer’s rep said that the couple was dressed in Christian Dior Haute Couture.

“The bride and groom’s wedding ceremony looks have been created by Christian Dior Haute Couture. They are designed by Jonathan Anderson, Creative Director of Dior Women’s, Men’s and Haute Couture Collections, in close collaboration with the Bride and Groom,” the statement said. “This is the designer’s first couture wedding dress for a world-renowned celebrity. Their shoes were custom made by Christian Louboutin and the bride wore Cartier jewelry.”

Security around the event was intense, so it remains unclear if the wedding was charming, if a little gauche. But the night before the ceremony the 20,000-person stadium was bathed in a lavender haze.

Details gleaned from a city permit obtained by The Associated Press, showed details of a “special event at MSG” scheduled to begin Friday evening and running overnight Saturday.

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As speculation built, fans began gathering in front of the stadium ahead of the expected wedding, despite the couple’s efforts to keep details of the celebration under wraps.

Superfans and sleuths appeared to have their hunches confirmed on Friday, as dozens of black cars dropped off elegantly dressed guests outside of Madison Square Garden in New York City.

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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Ken Marino

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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Ken Marino

Ken Marino loves living in L.A.

Living here has certainly been good for his acting career. Though he broke into the business as a member of NYC-turned-MTV sketch comedy group the State in 1994, he moved to L.A. in the fall of 1997 when he landed a role in the second season of “Men Behaving Badly,” an NBC sitcom. Marino shot just 13 episodes before the show was canceled. Still, he stayed in L.A., landing roles in much-loved shows like “Veronica Mars,” “Party Down,” “The Residence” and “Running Point.” He’s also co-written a few things, including “Role Models” and “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” out July 10, which was filmed in and around Los Angeles.

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In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

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“Working around L.A. and running around to jobs is how I got to understand L.A.,” Marino says. “It’s just a very comfortable city to live in. I just think it’s fun to be able to bounce around and do anything you feel like doing.”

Here’s how Marino would spend his perfect, carefree Sunday in Los Angeles.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

6 a.m.: Dog walking, coffee and flowers

We have two dogs. They need to go outside in the morning and eat, and they are very vocal about it. For a while, every morning at 5:58 my one dog, Dot, would start whining and moving around until I’d go “yeah, OK, let’s feed you.”

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In our family, I’m the one who feeds the dogs and takes them out, because I’m a morning person. I enjoy it when it’s not fully light out, maybe making myself a coffee or taking a walk to this place called Project Bloom Coffee. It’s a little mom and pop kind of place and they have terrific coffee and breakfast sandwiches. They’re also a florist. Sometimes they even use this cool paper holder with a handle where, on one side you put the coffee and then on the other side you put your beautiful flower display. So then you get to walk home with your coffee and your flowers together and it’s something I’ve never seen anywhere else.

7:30 a.m.: Online chess

After I go get my coffee and walk the dogs, I’ll still be the only person up so I’ll get on my computer and get a couple of games of chess in. I play people from around the world online on Chess.com, and I usually either get frustrated or feel like I’m the best chess player in the world. Anyway, I’m getting my rating up on the app and I’m very excited about it. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of chess tutorials on TikTok and YouTube that teach me how to play better.

9 a.m.: More coffee and “911”

If I go to Project Bloom, I’ll bring my wife a coffee and some flowers but if not, we have a little espresso and cappuccino maker so I’ll use that to make her a cappuccino, which I’ll bring to her in bed. She’s always very happy about that and then I’ll go try to wake my [16-year-old] daughter up, which usually takes about two or three tries until I take her phone, set the timer for five minutes, and then put it on the other side of her room so she has to get out of her bed to turn it off when it sounds.

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She and I have been religiously watching “911” recently. We started with Season 1 and now we’re about six or seven seasons in so I’ll make her breakfast — maybe a Nutella crepe with some little cherry tomatoes on the side, which is weird but she likes it or maybe some oatmeal — and then we’ll watch “911” and talk about our favorite characters, like Buck, Chimney and Bobby.

Noon: Lunch on the Westside

We have a little apartment in Marina Del Rey that’s right by the beach so sometimes I’ll go out there with the dogs, just to sit for a while and enjoy. I usually walk between the Venice pier and Washington Street, but sometimes I’ll go further north and walk along Venice Beach if I want to hang out with some freaky deakies.

When I’m over on that side of town, there’s a couple of places that I might go for food, like this Italian restaurant called Ospi that’s in Venice. They’re incredible. They make their own homemade pasta and it’s delicious. There’s also this chain called Guisados, and I love their tacos so sometimes I’ll do that too. Venice Ramen is good too, and they do these things called jumbo gyoza that are absolutely delicious. They’re like 2.5 times bigger than a normal gyoza, like palm-sized, and I really like them.

2 p.m.: Play practice and a pint

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My daughter is in two plays right now at this place called the Morgan-Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica, so it’s my responsibility to take her over there and drop her off for practice. When I do that, if it’s a Sunday, I might want to grab a Guinness somewhere and watch basketball. There’s a bar called Weary Livers down the street that has a lot of board games and it feels like you’re in somebody’s basement, which is good. It’s also right next to the Brixton, which is another nice bar that I’ll go to from time to time if I’m waiting for my daughter to finish rehearsal because it’s a lot of driving otherwise.

4 p.m.: Garage band practice

Typically on Sunday, we’ll also have a rehearsal for the Middle Aged Dad Jam Band. [Editor’s note: Marino co-founded the group with David Wain, whom he’s known since “The State” and who co-wrote “Wet Hot American Summer.”) We’ll play for a couple of hours in David’s garage, trying out new songs and working out what we’re going to do at our next live show.

6 p.m.: Guerilla promotion

Right now, David [Wain] and I are trying to figure out different promotional things we can do for our movie, “Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass,” so maybe we’d do some more of that. It’s a really funny movie and we sold it at Sundance.

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Anyway, two Sundays ago we walked around with our friend Frank Barrera, who is also one of the camera operators on “Gail Daughtry.” We went to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and we shot promos for the movie where we were talking to different people and pretending that the Gail Daughtry cinematic universe is vast and has been around for decades, like we were asking people what their favorite Gail Daughtry movie is. It confused a lot of them, but every once in a while somebody would say something so we’re using those for promo spots.

I also spent some time just running up and down the street being very overly enthusiastic and screaming “the new Gail Daughtry movie is coming out!” and then we shot people’s reactions, which were typically “confusion” and “not caring.” Like, “Stop yelling at me, weirdo.”

7:30 p.m.: Thai takeout

On weekends, my wife and I like to order from a specific Thai place that’s won many awards. It’s called Luv 2 Eat Thai Bistro and it’s absolutely fantastic. The crab curry is so delicious and they do these street food sausages that we crave. They come with ginger and peanuts and garlic, plus a big slab of raw cabbage and some hot peppers and we’ll eat them like popcorn, just throwing them in our mouths while we catch up on “Survivor.” The flavor is just insane, and we think about how good they are all the time.

9:30 p.m.: Checkmate

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After we watch “Survivor,” usually what happens next is that we’ll end up going, “Should we watch a movie?” Then we’ll look around for a movie for a while and then my daughter will be like, “Hey, Mom! Come in here and watch this YouTube show with me” so my wife will get pulled away, and I’ll immediately pick up my computer and start playing chess again. I like to bookend my day with a quiet chess game in the morning and another quiet game at night. It’s a nice way to wind down.

I’ll typically play a minimum of about three games before my eyes start to close because they’re trying to fall asleep. That’s when I’ll quit because I’ll be making stupid moves and it affects my rating, like “Oh, I just lost that game because I fell asleep while my computer was on,” so that’s how I know when I’m done.

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Nearly half of Americans surveyed don’t know what America 250 commemorates

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Nearly half of Americans surveyed don’t know what America 250 commemorates

People visit the Liberty Bell on the eve of Independence Day in Philadelphia on July 3, 2025. The crack in this symbol of U.S. freedom echoes the paradox between national pride and civic ignorance revealed in a new national poll.

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Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images

A new national poll reveals a striking paradox in public sentiment ahead of America’s 250th anniversary: a disconnect between Americans’ strong patriotic pride and their lack of civic knowledge.

According to a survey from the libertarian Cato Institute think tank of more than 2,000 U.S. adults conducted in late June, 86% of respondents said they are grateful to be American and 70% believe the nation’s founding principles remain relevant.

However, nearly half of Americans (46%) don’t know that America’s 250th anniversary commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

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This civic ignorance extends to basic governance: Nearly 60% do not know the main purpose of the U.S. Constitution is to limit government power, and do not know why the colonies declared independence from Great Britain.

Furthermore, the report highlights deep anxieties about the future of American liberty.

The majority of those surveyed believe the country has strayed from its founding principles, and more than half fear the U.S. could cease to be a free country within the next 50 years, citing corruption and the abuse of power as primary threats. The majority of both Republicans and Democrats share these fears.

The concerns are especially pronounced among Gen Z respondents, who exhibited both the lowest levels of civic knowledge and the least favorable views of the nation’s founders. The majority of Gen Z failed to cite the adoption of the Declaration of Independence as the source of the 250th anniversary.

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“The lack of civic knowledge is a great disaster,” said Coe Professor of History and American Studies and Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Stanford University Jack Rakove. “Any democratic system of government to succeed requires having an informed electorate.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning authority on the drafting of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence blamed the problem on the fragmented media landscape and schools prioritizing STEM subjects over civics and history.

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