#Air Canada Business Class

[rainbow-baby-one]

Air Canada Business Class Review!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5xmqCFWUs

[mmm-crackling]

im on the plane to canada! i was having a chit chat with the flight attendant, i love him so much.

flight attendant: so what brings you to canada?

me: i got into ice hockey about a year ago, i want to see some games

fa: oh yeah do you follow any teams?

me: yeah but you will judge me so hard. the leafs.

fa: you’re right, i am judging you

[pickreservations]

How do I Upgrade Business Class in Air Canada?

If you have any question about how do I upgrade my seat in business class in air canada, Then you can go through the content to know more about it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Humans in the loop” must detect the hardest-to-spot errors, at superhuman speed

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

If AI has a future (a big if), it will have to be economically viable. An industry can't spend 1,700% more on Nvidia chips than it earns indefinitely – not even with Nvidia being a principle investor in its largest customers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39883571

A company that pays 0.36-1 cents/query for electricity and (scarce, fresh) water can't indefinitely give those queries away by the millions to people who are expected to revise those queries dozens of times before eliciting the perfect botshit rendition of "instructions for removing a grilled cheese sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible":

https://www.semianalysis.com/p/the-inference-cost-of-search-disruption

Eventually, the industry will have to uncover some mix of applications that will cover its operating costs, if only to keep the lights on in the face of investor disillusionment (this isn't optional – investor disillusionment is an inevitable part of every bubble).

Now, there are lots of low-stakes applications for AI that can run just fine on the current AI technology, despite its many – and seemingly inescapable - errors ("hallucinations"). People who use AI to generate illustrations of their D&D characters engaged in epic adventures from their previous gaming session don't care about the odd extra finger. If the chatbot powering a tourist's automatic text-to-translation-to-speech phone tool gets a few words wrong, it's still much better than the alternative of speaking slowly and loudly in your own language while making emphatic hand-gestures.

There are lots of these applications, and many of the people who benefit from them would doubtless pay something for them. The problem – from an AI company's perspective – is that these aren't just low-stakes, they're also low-value. Their users would pay something for them, but not very much.

For AI to keep its servers on through the coming trough of disillusionment, it will have to locate high-value applications, too. Economically speaking, the function of low-value applications is to soak up excess capacity and produce value at the margins after the high-value applications pay the bills. Low-value applications are a side-dish, like the coach seats on an airplane whose total operating expenses are paid by the business class passengers up front. Without the principle income from high-value applications, the servers shut down, and the low-value applications disappear:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

Now, there are lots of high-value applications the AI industry has identified for its products. Broadly speaking, these high-value applications share the same problem: they are all high-stakes, which means they are very sensitive to errors. Mistakes made by apps that produce code, drive cars, or identify cancerous masses on chest X-rays are extremely consequential.

Some businesses may be insensitive to those consequences. Air Canada replaced its human customer service staff with chatbots that just lied to passengers, stealing hundreds of dollars from them in the process. But the process for getting your money back after you are defrauded by Air Canada's chatbot is so onerous that only one passenger has bothered to go through it, spending ten weeks exhausting all of Air Canada's internal review mechanisms before fighting his case for weeks more at the regulator:

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/air-canada-s-chatbot-gave-a-b-c-man-the-wrong-information-now-the-airline-has-to-pay-for-the-mistake-1.6769454

There's never just one ant. If this guy was defrauded by an AC chatbot, so were hundreds or thousands of other fliers. Air Canada doesn't have to pay them back. Air Canada is tacitly asserting that, as the country's flagship carrier and near-monopolist, it is too big to fail and too big to jail, which means it's too big to care.

Air Canada shows that for some business customers, AI doesn't need to be able to do a worker's job in order to be a smart purchase: a chatbot can replace a worker, fail to their worker's job, and still save the company money on balance.

I can't predict whether the world's sociopathic monopolists are numerous and powerful enough to keep the lights on for AI companies through leases for automation systems that let them commit consequence-free free fraud by replacing workers with chatbots that serve as moral crumple-zones for furious customers:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0747563219304029

But even stipulating that this is sufficient, it's intrinsically unstable. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, and the mass replacement of humans with high-speed fraud software seems likely to stoke the already blazing furnace of modern antitrust:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

Of course, the AI companies have their own answer to this conundrum. A high-stakes/high-value customer can still fire workers and replace them with AI – they just need to hire fewer, cheaper workers to supervise the AI and monitor it for "hallucinations." This is called the "human in the loop" solution.

The human in the loop story has some glaring holes. From a worker's perspective, serving as the human in the loop in a scheme that cuts wage bills through AI is a nightmare – the worst possible kind of automation.

Let's pause for a little detour through automation theory here. Automation can augment a worker. We can call this a "centaur" – the worker offloads a repetitive task, or one that requires a high degree of vigilance, or (worst of all) both. They're a human head on a robot body (hence "centaur"). Think of the sensor/vision system in your car that beeps if you activate your turn-signal while a car is in your blind spot. You're in charge, but you're getting a second opinion from the robot.

Likewise, consider an AI tool that double-checks a radiologist's diagnosis of your chest X-ray and suggests a second look when its assessment doesn't match the radiologist's. Again, the human is in charge, but the robot is serving as a backstop and helpmeet, using its inexhaustible robotic vigilance to augment human skill.

That's centaurs. They're the good automation. Then there's the bad automation: the reverse-centaur, when the human is used to augment the robot.

Amazon warehouse pickers stand in one place while robotic shelving units trundle up to them at speed; then, the haptic bracelets shackled around their wrists buzz at them, directing them pick up specific items and move them to a basket, while a third automation system penalizes them for taking toilet breaks or even just walking around and shaking out their limbs to avoid a repetitive strain injury. This is a robotic head using a human body – and destroying it in the process.

An AI-assisted radiologist processes fewer chest X-rays every day, costing their employer more, on top of the cost of the AI. That's not what AI companies are selling. They're offering hospitals the power to create reverse centaurs: radiologist-assisted AIs. That's what "human in the loop" means.

This is a problem for workers, but it's also a problem for their bosses (assuming those bosses actually care about correcting AI hallucinations, rather than providing a figleaf that lets them commit fraud or kill people and shift the blame to an unpunishable AI).

Humans are good at a lot of things, but they're not good at eternal, perfect vigilance. Writing code is hard, but performing code-review (where you check someone else's code for errors) is much harder – and it gets even harder if the code you're reviewing is usually fine, because this requires that you maintain your vigilance for something that only occurs at rare and unpredictable intervals:

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773779967521780169

But for a coding shop to make the cost of an AI pencil out, the human in the loop needs to be able to process a lot of AI-generated code. Replacing a human with an AI doesn't produce any savings if you need to hire two more humans to take turns doing close reads of the AI's code.

This is the fatal flaw in robo-taxi schemes. The "human in the loop" who is supposed to keep the murderbot from smashing into other cars, steering into oncoming traffic, or running down pedestrians isn't a driver, they're a driving instructor. This is a much harder job than being a driver, even when the student driver you're monitoring is a human, making human mistakes at human speed. It's even harder when the student driver is a robot, making errors at computer speed:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

This is why the doomed robo-taxi company Cruise had to deploy 1.5 skilled, high-paid human monitors to oversee each of its murderbots, while traditional taxis operate at a fraction of the cost with a single, precaratized, low-paid human driver:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

The vigilance problem is pretty fatal for the human-in-the-loop gambit, but there's another problem that is, if anything, even more fatal: the kinds of errors that AIs make.

Foundationally, AI is applied statistics. An AI company trains its AI by feeding it a lot of data about the real world. The program processes this data, looking for statistical correlations in that data, and makes a model of the world based on those correlations. A chatbot is a next-word-guessing program, and an AI "art" generator is a next-pixel-guessing program. They're drawing on billions of documents to find the most statistically likely way of finishing a sentence or a line of pixels in a bitmap:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

This means that AI doesn't just make errors – it makes subtle errors, the kinds of errors that are the hardest for a human in the loop to spot, because they are the most statistically probable ways of being wrong. Sure, we notice the gross errors in AI output, like confidently claiming that a living human is dead:

https://www.tomsguide.com/opinion/according-to-chatgpt-im-dead

But the most common errors that AIs make are the ones we don't notice, because they're perfectly camouflaged as the truth. Think of the recurring AI programming error that inserts a call to a nonexistent library called "huggingface-cli," which is what the library would be called if developers reliably followed naming conventions. But due to a human inconsistency, the real library has a slightly different name. The fact that AIs repeatedly inserted references to the nonexistent library opened up a vulnerability – a security researcher created a (inert) malicious library with that name and tricked numerous companies into compiling it into their code because their human reviewers missed the chatbot's (statistically indistinguishable from the the truth) lie:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

For a driving instructor or a code reviewer overseeing a human subject, the majority of errors are comparatively easy to spot, because they're the kinds of errors that lead to inconsistent library naming – places where a human behaved erratically or irregularly. But when reality is irregular or erratic, the AI will make errors by presuming that things are statistically normal.

These are the hardest kinds of errors to spot. They couldn't be harder for a human to detect if they were specifically designed to go undetected. The human in the loop isn't just being asked to spot mistakes – they're being actively deceived. The AI isn't merely wrong, it's constructing a subtle "what's wrong with this picture"-style puzzle. Not just one such puzzle, either: millions of them, at speed, which must be solved by the human in the loop, who must remain perfectly vigilant for things that are, by definition, almost totally unnoticeable.

This is a special new torment for reverse centaurs – and a significant problem for AI companies hoping to accumulate and keep enough high-value, high-stakes customers on their books to weather the coming trough of disillusionment.

This is pretty grim, but it gets grimmer. AI companies have argued that they have a third line of business, a way to make money for their customers beyond automation's gifts to their payrolls: they claim that they can perform difficult scientific tasks at superhuman speed, producing billion-dollar insights (new materials, new drugs, new proteins) at unimaginable speed.

However, these claims – credulously amplified by the non-technical press – keep on shattering when they are tested by experts who understand the esoteric domains in which AI is said to have an unbeatable advantage. For example, Google claimed that its Deepmind AI had discovered "millions of new materials," "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge," constituting "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity":

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

It was a hoax. When independent material scientists reviewed representative samples of these "new materials," they concluded that "no new materials have been discovered" and that not one of these materials was "credible, useful and novel":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

As Brian Merchant writes, AI claims are eerily similar to "smoke and mirrors" – the dazzling reality-distortion field thrown up by 17th century magic lantern technology, which millions of people ascribed wild capabilities to, thanks to the outlandish claims of the technology's promoters:

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-really-is-smoke-and-mirrors

The fact that we have a four-hundred-year-old name for this phenomenon, and yet we're still falling prey to it is frankly a little depressing. And, unlucky for us, it turns out that AI therapybots can't help us with this – rather, they're apt to literally convince us to kill ourselves:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkadgm/man-dies-by-suicide-after-talking-with-ai-chatbot-widow-says

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[mommysmilk]

German (for the Ren thing)

✈️Strade x Ren Hana✈️

Ren is shaking in his seat, strictly refusing to look outside the airplane window. The plane has just hit some turbulence causing the carry-on bags to rattle in the overhead bins. He’s always hated even the thought of flying, much preferring stowing away on the cargo ship he used to get to Canada even if he was seasick and starving the whole time. But now, it wasn’t really up to him. When Strade brought up travelling to Germany for a holiday, he’d been a little excited, up until the moment he found out they were flying. After that he’d freaked out so bad he scratched Strade and consequently got a beating for it. His ribs were still bruised and ached everytime he drew in a breath too deep, like now.

”Behave, little fox. You’re drawing too much attention to yourself.” Strade sends him a warning glare, causing Ren to stiffen up and hang his head down in shame. ”We’re halfway there. Don’t start causing a scene.”

Ren nods in answer, gripping the arm rests of his seat. If he held onto his seat cushion any longer his claws would have ripped right through them. He tries to concentrate on anything else, staring at the small screen in front of his seat and zoning out. He’s able to calm down slightly but lets out a startled whimper when Strade’s hand grips his arm tightly.

”Get up, let’s go.” They can’t have landed already? Ren whips his head around to face the window and yeah, they’re still very much in the air. Confused, he looks at Strade. ”I’m not asking a second time.” Strade growls impatiently causing him to jump up to his feet. He gets dragged into the business class bathroom still barely fitting the both of them. After the lock clicks in place he’s being pushed, face against the door.

”Pants down. Don’t make me wait.” Strade’s words are followed by the clink of his belt and his zipper being undone. Ren quickly pulls down his pants and braces against the door. It’s never fun when Strade decides to fuck him without any preparation or lube. The burn makes him yip and let out little growls, ears pressed flat against his head. He bites his own arm trying to muffle his sounds.

This time he’s lucky as Strade comes quite quickly with a few more thrusts and a grunt and then he’s pulling out. He lights up a cigarette as Ren quickly pulls his pants up again. It’s going to be a bitch to sit down with cum leaking out of his ass for the next how many hours while his hole throbs in pain. He quietly mourns for his tail too, which is likely also going to get dirty. He’ll have to spend extra time brushing out the dirtied clumps of fur. After finishing his cigarette Strade puts it out on Ren’s neck, causing him to yelp loudly.

”Shut the fuck up and get back to your seat.”

[historia-vitae-magistras]

This is a little different from your usual content. But you have so much niche information that just I love to hear about. Do you have any podcast recommendations?

WHOO okay so I'm doing my nonfiction podcast recs and leaving out my horror or audio dramas but without further ado:

It's been out of production for years, but Caustic Soda is probably my favourite of all time. It's a small Canadian production of tons and tons of episodes on everything from shark attacks to murder to warfare to bugs and anthropology. It's so fucking funny and pretty well-researched as time goes on. Honestly, I was so young listening to this that it formed part of the lens through which I view the world.

Stuff You Missed in History Class: Often corny, wee bit lame, occasionally hilarious, always solid; this one is probably the one that has taught me the most. It's been on the air forever now, and it's really fucking great. They have also used sources that I actually dug out and made public for the first time and I'm quite proud of that. Its the favourite sweater of podcasts.

Time to Eat the Dogs is about the history of science and exploration. I highly recommend it if you like any of those things. I really like the host's interview style; all the guests are academics and authors. It's very conversational and feels like having a lovely sit-down with good friends, but those friends have Ph. Ds.

Casting Lots: Two really, really funny Brits discuss survival cannibalism across time and space. This podcast informed me that a story i heard as a fireside tale was based on true events. It somehow manages to mention Canada in every other episode and then some. I love the first three seasons in particular. They have truly done some incredible work in the course of their series and pulled from some primary sources that surprised even me, an actual archivist. They're shockingly respectful for how funny they are and how disturbing the content is and really take into consideration things like culture, empire, sex and racism as they discuss cannibalism, and it's just. I love it so much, truly.

Big Old Boats: It's not technically a podcast, but I've never once in my life actually watched the video as he discusses various maritime disasters, and I don't think I've ever missed anything by doing so. This is an absolute must-listen if you enjoy maritime history, missing ships, ghost ships, or just anything weird related to a boat. Archival work I did is actually mentioned in a couple of episodes!

Not What You Thought You Knew: Another podcast I really love that was, unfortunately, a very short run but academics and actual historians debunking popular historical myths. I am very, very fond of the episodes on The Night Witches in particular.

The Midnight Library: Last but not least my favourite fucking podcast currently running. It's a nonfiction podcast framed as a fictional witch/librarian in her cursed library telling (mostly) true stories around a particular theme, human vice, or any number of stories. And the way it's framed is so fucking great. Like they're talking about real history, witchcraft and folklore in so many of these, but you get little glimpses of world-building that have honestly started to bleed into the way I write. Even the ads are for fake magical businesses like 'the League of Lady Grave Diggers, the Broom and Fang pub. The library assistant/bouncer is a werewolf. The Witch's on-again and off-again boyfriend is a spring-heel jack. It's just so fucking clever a way to frame a nonfiction podcast in a spooky atmosphere while being historical, terrifying and funny in turns.

Anywho, if you listen to any of them let me know! And sorry if that went overboard!

[benvenutio]

AND ONE MORE THING i'm still angry abt the way mota portrays the RAF. rant below

it's not even accurate! the norden bombsight didn't even work that well! the us air force were also basically doing area bombing, because they missed their targets 70% of the time! and frankly considering what the americans did immediately following the european conflict ending (hiroshima and nagasaki.......) i really don't think they have the right to posture about the moral value of daylight raids versus night bombing.

it may not seem like it's that serious but this is a show that's supposed to be historically accurate, and all it seems to be doing is introducing a new generation of americans to the idea that they alone were the ones to win the war, and that the british were incompetent toffs who were too busy slagging off the brave American boys to get anything done.

WHICH ANNOYS ME 😡😡 bc the RAF was mainly comprised of working and middle class men, NOT the upper class!! aristocratic gents usually followed their fathers/uncles/family tradition into either the army or the navy - the much more 'established' forces. the RAF had been around for barely twenty years by the time ww2 kicked off!! that is nowhere near long enough to form the kind of traditions that would draw the sons of the upper class to join it - there obviously were members of the gentry who flew in the RAF, but predominantly it was lower/middle class boys who were the pilots and the navigators and the bombers, to say nothing of all the ground crew.

it comes across as hugely revisionist for hanks and spielberg to portray the RAF as a kind of incompetent playground of rich kids with nothing better to do - and completely disregard the 3 years of conflict the RAF had already endured, losing 56,000 men in the sky and thousands of ground crew. the whole reason the USAAF were able to become 'masters of the air' was because the RAF had already fought and taken down most of germany's top fighters during the Battle of Britain.

also!! it's not even historically accurate to have that weird fight between curt and the RAF officer, because the brits and Americans actually got along quite well when they were over here lmao. it's not even true!! as a character beat i enjoy it but from a historical perspective it's not even that realistic.

(also like. american troops were warned off engaging in 'drinking matches, physical fights, or gambling' with the british forces due to the brits wiping the floor with them in all three. curt winning that fight wasn't half likely)

which is all to say: i like mota!! but for the characters, not the narrative, which is a bit too US-saviour for me to stomach. ik i'm coming into an US show and going 'why are the americans here 😡😡' and i'm fully aware it's a little funny to be like well why aren't they paying attention to the RAF in a show about US bomber command BUT STILL. mota sets itself up to be as accurate as possible, and it isn't.

it's disrespectful to the thousands of men from Britain, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and so many other countries- the ones who came from all over the globe and the Commonwealth - who died fighting for three entire years before the US joined the war, to portray them as foppish and incompetent.

[total-drama-takes-takes-2]

aftermath 2

A dark blue, fish-eyed globe turns itself across the screen, starting in Canada and traveling eastwards around the world. Five words flash over the globe: TOTAL - TAKES - WORLD - TOUR - AFTERMATH!

A static flash to Wales, on the countryside. 

---

Julia hangs at the back of the group, watching the two up front. Mal darts into frame for a moment, running around her ankles and barking before circling the group once again. 

The sound of laughter and sheep appears from behind the team and Julia turns a bit to catch a glimpse of Team Mojo following them up the crest, sheep in line and following Sha-Mod and Patrick in the front. 

The latter grins and waves as they pass by. “See you at the finish line, sweetie!”

Julia grimaces, but waits til the team disappears up ahead to make comment. 

“I hate that guy,”

---

Then to Australia, in the rainforest:

---

It’s dark. 

The sound of bugs flying, mammals chittering, and birds crying out fills the empty air. 

Slowly, Sha-Mod awakes. He groans and sits up, scratching his head with his back to the camera. “Owie,” he says. 

Then, it’s bright. Too bright. 

“Wait,” he grabs at his face. The feeling of warm flesh fills the void where smooth paper should be. Sha-Mod looks to the ground and sees the mulchy, emulsified remains of Lighting crumbled on the ground. “Oh, no. Oh no. This isn’t good.”

---

The Title Card flashes again and fades into a pink, warm-lit studio. Unlike last season’s aftermath, this peanut gallery is sparse and empty. O picks at his nails absent-mindedly, Alistair waves and flashes a pearly grin, Scary is holding a large book over their face and avoiding the glare of the cameras as they zoom in. Beneath them, the so-far eliminated contestants who bothered to show- Joner and Scruffy. 

But no one directs the attention of both the cameras and the audience like the navy-blue haired, sharply dressed pastel puff standing in the center of the stage. Caesar waves at the adoring crowd, soaking in the attention like a flower takes in the sun. And by the looks of it, he needs the vitamin D- he’s rather pale and tired-looking for someone of his sunny disposition. Behind him, on the pink couch in the center of the stage, a moody-looking teenage boy is on his phone, leaning back against the sofa with his legs kicked up. He pulls a wad of chewed gum out of his mouth and wipes it on the couch. Caesar cringes. 

“Welcome one, welcome all, to another riveting episode of Total Takes World Tour: The Aftermath! I’m your host, Caesar, and behind me is my… unique co-host. Noco,” he seems to go tense at the name, as if a shiver is running up his spine. “We have a very special episode for you today, folks, so stay tuned for drama, drama, and more drama!”

“Whoop-dee-doo,” Noco says unenthusiastically, twirling his finger in a little circle. Caesar grits his teeth. 

“Joining us today are our charming peanut gallery- O, Alistair- formerly known as Fren- Scary, Joner, Scruffy, and- hm. McLovin?” Caesar looks around the stage. “Has anyone seen McLovin?”

“McLovin is busy preparing this super secret awesome surprise for the fundraiser!” Joner chimes in. “I’m the lookout- I mean! He’s busy! Aw, man…”

Scruffy pats his shoulder. “You did your best,”

“Ahem, well… speaking of the fundraiser, this isn’t just any episode of Aftermath… today, we’re sending out an S.O.S. for our stranded friends,” Caesar says, pacing the stage. He speaks in long, dramatic drawls. “Stuck on a remote island in the middle of the Atlantic, not a penny to be spared.”

The peanut gallery sighs, and the audience aw’s. 

“Oh, can we cut the crap?” Noco yawns and sits up, turning on the monitor behind him to a live broadcast on St. Helena. The World Tour contestants are lounging on the beaches, enjoying provisions from first class, and playing tag in the fields. Chris and Chef toast to a much-needed vacation in their inflatable pool. 

Caesar rushes over and flicks off the screen. “Like I said- tragic!” 

“Listen, folks…” Noco says, standing in front of Caesar. “This whole episode is nothing but corporate pressure from the big wigs upstairs. The producers are too cheap to pay it out of their own fat pockets, and now they’re scamming us into believing that the cast is dying in some desert.”

“They’re stranded on an island. Together! I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. And Bonnie is all alone…” the host looks down warily, fidgeting with his bow tie. 

“Oh, please. A break from the script is a paradise. I would be relieved to know the charade is over. Max and Julia-”

Caesar begrudgingly pulls a small remote from his coat and presses the large red button on its surface. An extremely loud incorrect buzzer paralyzes the audience for a split-second. Noco falls backwards. 

“Alright, enough of that. Now, with your help, we can raise the necessary funds to save our stranded friends. Donate by calling the number below, or send your checks to the Aftermath Inbox,” Caesar says, pointing as a graphic flashes across the bottom of the screen. 

Across the stage, the peanut gallery pulls out landlines from under their seats. O gives Caesar a thumbs-up. 

“For our first telethon act, we have the one, the only: Takes Three Trio!” Caesar announces, backing away from the center of the stage as the lights dim. 

A single spotlight illuminates three figures in matching tracksuits. Sha-Mod, in blue, stands on the far left, nodding solemnly. Joner, in green, mirrors him on the right, staring up at the ceiling. McLovin, in pink, takes center stage. A single tear rolls down his cheek. 

Caesar mumbles “Oh, brother,” as a beat begins playing. 

Joner starts. “Our friends, you need to save- our friends, you gotta tell, our friends- that you care!”

Sha-Mod picks up. “St. Helena, they’re trapped down in: St. Helena. They can’t even- Sha-Party. It’s so unfair!”

“You gotta help now, they’re on the brink,” McLovin vocalizes. “The crew gets fired, if this ship sinks!”

“So make a difference- in their lives!” Joner says. 

All three harmonize on the next line. “Empty your wallets or they all die,”

Caesar cringes as Sha-Mod picks up from there. “Saaaaave this show! Total Takes!”

“Saaaaaaaaaave this show! Don’t let them escape!” McLovin sings. 

“Save the show that you love!” the three harmonzie again. 

A tear rolls down Joner’s cheek. “Saaave this show- Total Takes!”

“Saaaave this show- don’t forsake- Them,” McLovin continues awkwardly. 

“Save our friends with love… and one-hundred thousand dollars!”

Sha-Mod flips on a pair of sunglasses. “Save the show, baby. Send us your money. Please. Send us money,”

The lights turn back on and Caesar clears his throat. “That was… um, grim?”

“Thank you!” McLovin beams. 

“Oookay. Speaking of the Takes Three Trio, Sha-Mod: as the first booted contestant since the last Aftermath, would you do the honors of announcing our prizes?”

Sha-Mod pulls out a card and clears his throat. “For a donation of $25, you’ll get a, um… does this say a lock of hair from the contestant of your choosing?”

“Okay!” Caesar laughs, nabbing the cards from his hands. He leans into Noco. “I thought we agreed no body parts!”

“Do you want donations or not?”

Caesar thinks for a moment and then grumbles to himself. “And for a donation of $50, you’ll get a commemorative DVD copy of the first season of Total Takes Island!” The audience cheers. “For one hundred, you’ll get a personal shoutout on the Total Takes official blog!”

The audience whoops and hollers again. Scary peers over the edge of her book and rolls his eyes. 

“And for the low, low donation of $5, you’ll get… a signed folder of proof that Total Takes is scripted?” Caesar squints at the cue card. “ISAAC!”

The gloomy boy grins and shrugs. “I figured someone would bite. I mean, hey- the proof is in the pudding,”

O leans into Alistair. “I hate when he smiles. It scares me,”

The pink-haired actor nods in agreement. 

Caesar glares. “Fine. Whatever! For the price of $200, you’ll get a blind date with none other than our beloathed co-host, Noco!”

Noco’s smile drops. “Huh?”

The phones begin ringing off the hook, filling the air with the sharp sound of bells. Caesar scoffs. “Imagine that,”

“To be fair, the dark and mysterious “bad boy” look is really popular,” Scruffy says, matter-of-factly. “Noco is really popular in my superfan Discord server.”

The host rolls his eyes. Peter stands suddenly, clutching the landline receiver in his sweaty palms. “Um, I have about six different people with $200 donations. What do I do?”

“Yeah, we’re out of hold space here, man!” O yells. 

“Then it’s a bidding war! Starting price, $200!”

“You-you can’t do that-! I hate romance! I hate happiness! No one should want to “date” me!” Noco interjects, shoving a finger in Caesar’s face. He swats it away. 

“Tough luck. Let’s see those numbers!” 

The monitor drops from the ceiling again and crackles to life, displaying a whirl of flashing numbers, climbing up to the thousands faster than they can count. Noco shrivels like a grape in the sun. 

“While the fans battle it out, let’s have another special guest on stage to boost these numbers. You may know him as the Princess of Total Takes- or the dunce! Ladies and gentlemen, Patrick!” 

Patrick walks out on stage, stiff and unhappy. He glares sharply at Caesar before taking a seat, his legs neatly crossed. 

“Welcome to the show, Patrick, we’re glad to have you. Can I offer you something? Water? Tea? First aid?”

The audience laughs and Patrick scoffs. 

“Whatever,”

Caesar clears his throat and winks at the audience, who laughs in turn. “So, you’ve had quite the rough season, haven’t you?”

“As if. I was just getting warmed up, and they gave me the boot! They don’t know what they’re missing- Team Mojo just lost its most valuable player!” Patrick snaps, holding out a petite porcelain teacup for an intern to fill with warm water. “Those two kittens won’t last a day without me, I- honey, not sugar. I’m watching my complexion- I’m unexpendable! It should’ve been that cupcake, Albert.”

The audience Ooh’s. Caesar chuckles. “Yes, yes- word on the street is that you two weren’t the best of friends. And yet you never rigged the votes to get him kicked from the game?”

Patrick raises an eyebrow. “Rigged the votes? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, you know, you… you rigged the votes in season one, and you rigged them to get Sha-Mod booted…”

The camera pans over to the Takes Three Trio, who all shake their heads in a disapproving fashion. Patrick takes a long sip from his teacup. 

“Listen, Bluebell, I don’t know who you’re getting your info from, but I didn’t do any “rigging”. A guy like me doesn’t have to play dirty- if everyone knows what’s best for them, they stay outta my way!” 

Caesar raises an eyebrow. “Wait, so… you didn’t rig the votes against Fren in Island?”

“Who is Fren?”

“My, my… with the irrefutable evidence of tampering, this means there’s an entirely different- possibly two different traitors in our midsts!” the host says, prompting the audience and peanut gallery (nix Scary) to gasp. “Scruffy- our resident TD expert- any thoughts?”

Scruffy scratches their chin, looking around for a few moments. “I can’t believe I never considered… I suppose I was just so caught up with Jules…”

“Don’t remind me,” Patrick grumbles, delicately holding his cup. 

“Oh, speaking of which…” Caesar says, checking his watch. “It’s time for our next segment- Who Dumped Who? And make sure to keep those donations rolling in!”

The monitor lowers again, turning on and focusing on the image of Patrick and Julia through a restaurant window. The audio is unintelligible, but within seconds, she’s throwing a fistful of spaghetti at his face. 

A faint ding sounds. “That’s one breakup for Julia!”

Another scene starts, this time of the two smiling awkwardly for a fan picture on the street. The fangirl snaps a selfie with them and walks away, and the two immediately burst into an argument. Patrick shouts something indistinct and storms off (into oncoming traffic, where he’s hit by a bus). 

“That’s one for Patrick!”

Another segment plays, this time of the two in the peanut gallery in the aftermath studio, already bickering about something while Ass and Courtney cover their ears from the row beneath them. Julia shoves Patrick off the benches and he falls into the audience with a shriek. 

“Another for Julia!”

Before the next clip can play, the sound of revving pulls everyone’s attention to the side of the studio. Caesar raises an eyebrow. “Um, what’s-”

Two massive ramps have been set up on either side of the room. McLovin is on the left, revving a motorcycle. He’s dressed in a white suit with a matching helmet. Caesar’s jaw drops. 

“See? Surprise!” Joner says. 

“If I die, everyone has to donate double!” McLovin shouts, flipping his visor down. 

“Wait- WAIT!” Caesar shouts. But it’s too late. 

McLovin speeds off, climbing one of the ramps at a speed faster than the cameras can capture and flying through the air. 

It lasts all of two seconds before he smacks into a ceiling tile and falls dead-center in the stage. Drywall showers on him like rain made out of asbestos and chunks of roof. 

Caesar stares. The audience falls silent. 

He turns to the counter on the monitor. The numbers are still for a moment- and then shoot up. The host sighs with relief, and the audience cheers. 

Sha-Mod and Joner rush over and help McLovin out of the rubble while he grins.

“Awesome,” he says. A tooth falls out of his mouth. 

Caesar wipes the sweat off his forehead and sits back on the couch. The lights overhead flicker and some more drywall dust falls from the ceiling. He swipes it off his shoulder. 

“Why so tense? You’re not the one going on a date with some happy-go-lucky rando!” Noco snaps. Caesar ignores him. “Ohhh, I see. Now this I can get behind.”

Noco stands, grinning. “Feeling miserable? Helpless? I’m your guy! For a donation of $1000, I’ll psychologically torture the cast member of your choice! Cough, cough- CAESAR!”

The phones begin ringing again, and the tally counter soars. Noco grins maliciously. 

“Now, I’m no theracologist or whatever,” he says, gesturing towards O, who glares. “But if I had to guess, I’d say Bonnie being stuck in that terrible place all by themselves is really bothering you, right? Knowing that they’re all alone? Even worse- that they’re being singled out and picked on because of your relationship?”

Caesar shifts uncomfortably. “I don’t know what you’re-”

“Don’t play dumb!” Noco scoffs. “This whole control freak thing is just you making up for how helpless you feel. You’re positively miserable! This is great!”

He claps his hands quickly and squeals. Caesar glares at him. The tally counter rises, and rises, until a loud siren blares. 

“And with that, it looks like we’ve reached our goal,” the host announces. “Time to see who bid the highest for a beautiful, romantic, sweet, and ENDEARING evening with Noco!”

Noco’s smile drops and he goes pale again. “There’s… no way anyone actually-”

“At a bidding price of $60,000, Noco will be going on a date with… Becky from Vancouver!” Caesar reads off the monitor, a smile creeping back on his face. “Let’s get Becky on call!”

The screen crackles to life and focuses on the image of a pretty girl in a pink outfit with a blonde ponytail. She squeals, clutching a unicorn plush in her lap. “OMG! I won! My Daddy is like, never going to forgive me for maxxing his credit card, but it’s worth it!” she screeches. Noco looks sick. “Ohmigosh, Noco looks JUST like my favorite Twilight character, I can’t wait! EEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Caesar grins widely as Noco scampers away, a few security guards close behind him. 

“That’s enough of that,” the host says. “And it looks like we’ve hit our quota just in time, too! That’s all for today, folks- catch Total Takes: World Tour on your nearest TV soon! Good night, everyone!”

[starshideyourfics]

You Are Here - part 1

September 11, 2001 — Gander, Newfoundland, Canada

“Sorry, is this seat open?”

Eddie’s head snaps up, putting aside his book. They’ve been sitting on the tarmac in the middle of nowhere for hours, long enough that the sun has set, with no one explaining exactly why, and it’s not like he has much of his book left. It was supposed to last well-past when he landed in Chicago, but that wasn’t gonna happen, so he’s not that irritated at being interrupted.

He’s even less irritated when he sees that the question asker is the most beautiful man he’s even seen: golden skin dotted with moles, thick chestnut hair highlighted by the summer sun, a pointed Roman nose supporting wire-rimmed glasses, all wrapped up in charcoal slacks and a periwinkle button-down.

After his brain finishes short-circuiting, Eddie snaps his dangling mouth shut, composes himself, and says, “Sorry, can you repeat that? It’s been a weird day,” Eddie asks.

The man gives a weak chuckle. “It really has. Sorry, it’s just that after they started giving out free booze, things have gotten rowdy in the back and I’ve got case files I need to go over.” To emphasize his point, he holds up a briefcase and shrugs.

“Yeah, sure, go ahead,” Eddie says, moving his bag out of the empty seat next to him. He feels like an idiot, but at least Jeff and Frankie are sleeping behind him and unable to witness his flailing. And he’s pretty sure Gareth is one of the loud drunks at the back if their most recent singalong is anything to go by—it explains the short Iron Maiden interlude. But it means his bandmates aren’t giving him shit for his brain turning to mush in the face of this beautiful normie.

“Thanks,” the guy says, slipping into the seat and holding out his hand, “I’m Steve, by the way.”

“Eddie. Glad I could offer you refuge in this trying time.” His heart jumps when Steve full-on giggles at his lame joke.

But Steve sobers pretty quickly. “I just wish someone would tell us what’s happening. I’ve got my cellphone, and a handful of international minutes left, but I’d guess we’re too far away from any cell towers out here anyway… Have you heard anything up here in business class?” And isn’t that the real kick in the head? Eddie Munson is sitting in Business Class on an international flight after his band went on their first European tour, wearing ripped black jeans and a ratty old hoodie since he always gets cold when he flies, and Steve is clearly some kind of lawyer or banker or something sitting back in economy. And yet, here they are.

“The flight attendants have been whispering together, and the pilots have been out of the cockpit a couple times, but they’re doing a really good job keeping it all hush-hush. It’s not like there’s much we can do being stranded out here with a bunch of other planes. I’m sure you won’t get in trouble with your boss,” Eddie says, testing the waters and fishing for information.

“Oh, no, I’m not worried about that. I don’t have any court dates too soon.” Yes, totally right about the lawyer thing, Eddie thinks. “It’s just, my partner was flying today, too, back home from Boston. I hope she’s not all tangled up in this.” And he’s straight and in a relationship, of course, Eddie adds, because there’s no way a guy as good-looking as Steve isn’t pinned down. That doesn’t stop Eddie from checking his left hand and finding no ring.

“Sorry, that sucks. Everyone I know flying today is on this plane with me,” Eddie says softly with a gesture over his shoulder at his sleeping friends. “Our manager is probably freaking out right now, so hopefully we get back in the air soon. Or they let us off, and we can work together to track down a phone.”

“I’d like that,” Steve says with a smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes.

Just then, a flight attendant comes over the intercom and says, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have finally been cleared to deplane. You may take your carryon items; checked luggage will remain in the hold. The flight crew will be handing out blankets and pillows as you exit the plane.”

Eddie and Steve turn to each other with wide eyes. “Guess it’s time to track down that phone,” Steve says, worry and hope warring in his expression.

And Eddie can’t help it—hates seeing that worry, knows it all too well from growing up in an unstable home—and he takes Steve’s hand and says, “It’ll be okay. There’s gotta be a bank of pay phones in there. And maybe someone will finally tell us what’s going on.” He squeezes Steve’s fingers.

Steve squeezes back.

part 2

[haveyouseenthis-childhoodshow]

Have you seen this childhood show: The Famous Jett Jackson (1998-2001), Canada and the United States (English)

Commentary/Context/Memories: RIP Lee Thompson Young

[Mod A: I have heard of this show, but I was a bit too young for it! It was about Jett Jackson, a famous actor who moves the cast/production of the show he stars in, Silverstone, from Hollywood back to his hometown of Wilsted, North Carolina in order to stay close to his family and help revitalize the economy of his small town by providing jobs to the townspeople and keeping the small family businesses alive. Half of the plot of Jett Jackson was about his life outside of the production where he gets involved in a mix of humourous situations and local politics with his friends (who were a mix of his school friends and cast/crewmates). They explored various issues such as the ethics of censorship, big box stores, and class issues (such as Jett realizing his own potential out-of-touch perspective with African American issues due to the privileges of his fame and wealth). The other half of the show is set in “show within a show” Silverstone, where Jett plays a spy who fights against villains such as “The Rat” as part of the spy organization Mission Omega Matrix (MOM). I don’t know if this was played out like it was actually happening or if we see the behind the scenes crew during the action sequences, but it does sound like Disney reused the “show within a show” premise for Sonny with a Chance (which was one of the last Family Channel (aka Canadian Disney Channel) shows I watched). It seems like a really interesting show, very sorry to hear about Lee Thompson Young (the actor who played Jett Jackson)’s death.]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Umar Lee:

Before Mike Brown

Growing up in North St. Louis County, I remember a vibrant community full of churches, bars, VFW halls, Knights of Columbus, shopping malls, movie theatres, and all of the amenities working, and middle-class post-war Americans desired. To be a kid who loved sports, like me, North County offered Khoury League baseball, JFL football, little league wrestling, boxing gyms, soccer clubs, hockey clubs, basketball leagues, and much more. I played plenty of sports growing up in organized leagues (wrestling, baseball, and football); but I played more with kids in the street. When I wasn’t playing sports, I was listening to Jack Buck and Mike Shannon call Cardinals games on KMOX radio, sneaking up late at night to watch pro wrestling, reading wrestling and boxing magazines in the store because I couldn’t afford to buy them, also reading the St. Louis-based The Sporting News to keep track of stats, admiring the photos and articles in Sports Illustrated, of course reading the sports section in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch daily, and watching whatever sports were aired TV on the weekend for households without cable, topped off by sports news coverage from the likes of Jay Randolph, Ron Jacober, and Art Holliday on Channel 5.

Yet, while all of this was going on, which has left me with a life of fond memories, the North County, and my personal story, isn’t complete without looking at other events. The sports sections of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discussed Whiteyball, our loss of Big Red football, almost losing the Blues to Canada, and the Steamers; but the news and businesses pages were far bleaker. St. Louis had then, and has now, one of the highest rates of violent crime in America, political dysfunction and corruption, and countless municipal fiefdoms. These pages also contained news of factory closings and job losses. Like Michigan, Pennsylvania, northeast Ohio, and other parts of the Rust Belt; working-class St. Louisans were reeling from job losses. North County was built up and populated by factory workers and those in the building trades, the small houses were built for guys like my dad who left high school and walked right onto an assembly line, and when those factories close, and the builders stop building, the economic conditions that underpin the health of families and communities erode. When Combustion Engineering in North St. Louis laid off my dad, uncle, and other relatives in the 80s, it hit like a micro version of the Great Depression. The saving grace would come years later when my dad joined my grandpa at GM, which had moved from North City to St. Charles County, skipping North County in the process, and my uncle getting rewarded for his service loading dead and wounded American bodies into helicopters in Vietnam by getting hired at the federal records center in Overland.

Beneath the changing economic conditions was the issue that defines St. Louis, and in particular, North County. Race. North County was largely farmland before World War II with a sprinkling of small towns mixed in. Old Town Florissant and Sacred Heart Parish in an example of historic North County which was a community of French and German Catholics who later welcomed and embraced Irish and Italian Catholics. Like south St. Louis City, places like Ferguson and Florissant, bonded together at church, in labor unions, and in neighborhoods. The problem is that these tended to be nearly exclusively white, and as the Black population of North City spilled into North County in large numbers beginning in the 1970s, this began to create tension. As a reference point, my dad graduated from Riverview Gardens in 1970 when the first Black student enrolled, today the school is virtually 100% Black. After splitting with my dad, my mother, who lived in North City and North County with us as small kids, took my biracial younger half-siblings to be raised in the Shaw and Dutchtown neighborhoods of South City, because she deemed the Riverview Gardens schools to be too white and racist. I stayed in Black Jack and then Florissant along with my older sisters, dad, stepmom, and grandparents.

As economic conditions became unstable in North County, white families began moving out to St. Charles County, and Black families began settling in areas that had previously been all-white, the existing white establishment relied on police departments, most of them either all-white or close to it, to act as a buffer zone. This frequently was manifested in traffic stops with places like Jennings being the worst. White residents of North County feared crime rates would soon mirror those in north city, and these fears were only heightened after high-profile crimes such as the 1982 kidnapping and murders of Gary and Donna Decker in Bellefontaine Neighbors, the stabbing death of McCluer North student and football player Dan Mckeon (brother of two professional soccer players) at a 1987 party in Florissant, the rape and murders of the Kerry sisters in 1991 at the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, and the rape and murder of freshman student Christine Smetzer by a fellow student in a McCluer North bathroom in 1995.

Meanwhile, Black families arriving in north county for better schools, safer communities, and more amenities, after generations of legalized housing segregation in St. Louis City and County, often faced the brunt force of aggressive north county policing. Instead of harassing criminals and reducing crime, police departments in north county were often harassing students and law-abiding citizens coming home from work, church, or a night out. Before body cameras and smart phones these police interactions often included profane and racially abusive language and frequently beatings. This created a climate of distrust and anger in the Black community in North County. Crime was going up, but police were harassing law-abiding citizens instead of stopping criminals, and Black residents were also disproportionately victims of crimes that received far less media attention. As the racial composition of North County municipalities changed to majority-Black, voter turnout remained higher among longtime and typically older white residents. This meant that the numerous city halls and police departments in places like Ferguson remained nearly all-white even as whites became a minority in those communities.

In 2014, North County was a powder keg waiting to erupt. All it needed was a spark. That’s why I began writing about north county in my Evening-Whirl column and for the Huffington Post. No one was talking about North County and it was ready to explode. Local media focused on stories about bike lanes, hipster neighborhoods, and business as usual. Months before August 9th, I told Paul Fehler, of the Pruitt-Igoe Myth and political fame, that if there was a riot and civil unrest in St. Louis it would be in North County. A week before August 9th, with future mayoral candidate Cara Spencer watching, I had a heated argument with legislative aide Michael Powers at The Royale because he said I talked about problems in North County too much. Everything in the County is fine, I was told, all focus must be on the city.

Then it happened. Mike Brown Jr., a recent graduate of Normandy High School, walked to an immigrant-owned and ran store with a friend (most such stores in the Black communities of St. Louis are owned by Palestinian Muslims), there was an altercation, but nothing out of the ordinary for a St. Louis hood store, and as he walked through the apartments and onto Canfield at the edge of Ferguson, he met up with Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The encounter was fatal and almost certainly avoidable. Ferguson immediately handled the situation in a reckless and insensitive manner. Allowing the dead body of Mike Brown to lay in the streets for hours, and bringing out police dogs to intimidate family members, neighbors, friends, and those brought out by social media posts and discussions on Black radio. What happened that day, we’ll probably never know the entire truth. What we do know is what happened on August 9th of 2014 permanently changed St. Louis and America.

My Time in Ferguson

People have to remember that what became known as the Ferguson Uprising was not something that was instigated by academics, leftist political organizations and organizers, out of town celebrity activists, intersectional dogmatists, or people with college degrees. The anger at the death of Mike Brown came from the neighborhood. A neighborhood ranging from lower middle-class to generational poverty. People struggling and hustling just to stay above water. The community came out August 9th, but the uprising began August 10th and that was a day when an older generation of pastors, community leaders, and politicians were largely pushed aside, by a younger generation seeking an immediate redress to their grievances. It was leaderless and often without direction. Purely organic and there was a beautiful sense of community in the early days. Elders such as Anthony Bell attempted to provide direction (Bell setting up voter registration tables); but the situation was too fluid and beyond the capabilities of individual organizers.

[...]

From the beginning, I sought to use whatever platform I had to highlight the history of North County and attempt to tell a story of how we arrived at this moment. Having said that, like everyone else, I was caught up in the drama and passion of the Ferguson moment. I made videos, wrote some articles, cowrote a few pieces with Sarah Kendzior, and appeared on many local, national, and international news outlets (Al Jazeera links aren’t working). I was also arrested twice in Ferguson, threatened with arrest many more times, received numerous and graphic death threats, sparred with police supporters, lost my cool, provoked, was provoked, and finally lost my job and shortly thereafter my apartment (and in the middle of all of this, my grandma died and I was in a messy relationship). If you look at photos I didn't have grey hair before Ferguson. A few months later I was buying Just For Men.

I found a way to piss off police supporters and get under their skin, as did guys like Bassem Masri. In my estimation, the reasons for that are twofold. Firstly, we both grew-up in north county, so many of the people responsible for targeting and doxxing us were those we either grew-up with or went to school with. I saw lifelong friendships created in the Ferguson-Florissant School District end over Facebook posts during the Ferguson Unrest. This was mostly along racial lines. Secondly, unlike most activists, or those you see on Ivy League campuses today, we didn't talk and sound like spoiled brats, smart alecky rich kids who'd have to go to therapy for decades after one physical altercation. We'd been in plenty of fistfights, street brawls, and I'd been shot at and stabbed. Twitter trolls, insults, and radio talkshow hosts like Mark Reardon and Bob Romanik weren't gonna hurt my feelings.

[...]

Trump and The 2020 Sham

For the sake of time, and if anyone is still here, I'll fast forward to 2020. I've already previously stated, and Sarah Kendzior noted this in her book discussing St. Louis, that I believe Ferguson is partially responsible for electing Donald Trump as president. As in 1968, when Richard Nixon promised law and order, I knew conditions were ripe for a populist right-wing politician promising to restore law and order. No one saw COVID-19 coming, the shutdowns, the summer of massive protests after the murder of George Floyd, and the crazy presidential election. Four years later, I think we're still all trying to make sense of it.

While I fully embraced vaccines, and I'm happy I'm vaxxed, and I supported shutdowns at the time, I think it's pretty clear they did more harm than good. Most harmed were our children- particularly poor and working-class kids, who fell behind due to the virtual learning sham, and never caught up. I was at the Dallas campaign event where Biden was endorsed by multiple presidential candidates, thus virtually sealing the nomination. The South Side Ballroom was so packed, that I could barely move or breath, and couldn't get in a position to take a good photo, despite being relatively close to Biden. The next week it was too dangerous to publicly campaign, Biden stayed at home, and we elected an elderly man who was not up to the job but has generally been good in office both for American workers and our international allies. Mainstream media, so eager to defeat Trump, played along. Oh, the viable Democratic alternative was another elderly gentleman who honeymooned in the Soviet Union. It was not a year of good choices, but Biden was the best in my estimation.

[...]

The Aftermath: Where We Stand

Where are we today? A decade later, are we in a better place? North County is still in a state of serious decline and seems to be getting worse each year, North City is doing even worse, the population of both St. Louis City and County is declining, and many are opting for more prosperous communities, most notably Texas and Georgia suburbs (both reddish states). Violent crime spiked for a period, the decline in traffic enforcement has made driving and walking our streets far less safe and often deadly, and area police have essentially stopped policing. They don't want to be stars in a viral video or become a hashtag. For many cops, if they couldn't do things the old school way, they aren’t gonna do it at all. This has made our communities more dangerous, less livable for the most vulnerable, and places few people want to live in. This is a negative consequence from the lack of a strategic plan after Ferguson and failures on both the parts of law-enforcement and the community to hear one another.

The good news is that St. Louis now has better prosecutors (Wesley Bell and Gabe Gore) who are committed to public safety, holding those accountable who harm our community, and enacting diversion programs and other positive post-Ferguson reforms. St. Louis has a mayor in Tishaura Jones who wasn't created in a lab by white progressives; but is a genuine leader, reared and educated locally. Without Ferguson, I'm doubtful Mayor Jones would've been elected, nor a new generation of leaders such as Adam Layne and Marty Murray.

So, it must be recognized, that while there have been some unintended negative consequences from Ferguson, there are also positive developments. These aren't just political. What inspires me isn't politics. I'm inspired by faith leaders in our community who took the Ferguson moment and began having serious conversations with their congregations. Fathers and mothers who began having difficult conversations at home with their sons and daughters. Teachers who began listening to their students. Old classmates who reached out to one another to have a beer and talk across the racial divide. Our increased racially diverse families and suburbs who are defying our political discourse on both sides as progressives have adopted a rigid and dogmatic Race Science and MAGA is doubling down on Nativism and Majoritarian racial grievances. By our faithful and intact immigrant families providing needed life to a region desperately in need.

@Umar Lee wrote a solid perspective on the 10-year anniversary of the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson and North County from a North County POV. #Ferguson

Read the full story at Umar Lee's Substack.

[usafphantom2]

IMAGES: For the first time, B-1 bombers join the largest Nordic air exercise

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 06/06/2023 - 12:00 in Military

A pair of B-1 bombers flew over the North Sea on June 5, participating in a broad air exercise in the Nordic region.

As part of the Arctic Challenge Exercise 2023, the B-1s of Dyess Air Base, Texas, flew over the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and integrated into the F-35 of the U.S. Air Force and the Royal Norwegian Air Force, as well as United States Navy Aircraft.

“The U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy routinely conduct operations in the Far North alongside Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian air forces and naval, and the Arctic Challenge provided enhanced opportunities for NATO allies and partners to integrate with U.S. strategic bombers and Ford aircraft carrier class in a new environment,” said a U.S. Air Forces press release in Europe.

The B-1s are in Europe as part of a deployment of the Bomber Task Force at the RAF Base in Fairford, United Kingdom. Since they arrived two weeks ago, the aviators and the aircraft have been busy. On May 23, a B-1 was intercepted by a Russian fighter in the Baltic Sea region. On May 30, a bomber flew over Bosnia and Herzegovina, in a demonstration of support amid the ongoing unrest in the area. And on June 1º, a B-1 integrated into the allied forces during a small strength exercise in France and Belgium.

His participation in the Arctic Exercise Challenge, however, marks his greatest training opportunity so far - and the first time American bombers have flown in the biennial exercise since it began in 2013.

In addition to the B-1, the U.S. Air Force is flying F-35 and F-15 from the 48ª Fighter Wing of Lakenheath RAF Base, UK, in the exercise, as well as KC-135 from the 100ª Air Refueling Wing of the RAF Base of Mildenhall, UK, and the Maine National Air Guard.

Sweden is leading the exercise, with aircraft also stationed in Norway and Finland. The USA, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and the Czech Republic sent personnel and aircraft.

"By training and performing realistic exercises in the Far North, such as the Arctic Challenge Exercise 2023, U.S. forces and allied and partner nations improve skills, adjust interoperability, nurture important relationships and adapt to the inherent challenges posed by the struggle in the extreme conditions of the Arctic," said a USAFE press release.

Tags: Arctic Challenge ExerciseMilitary AviationB-1B LancerUSAF - United States Air Force / U.S. Air Force

Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Daytona Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work around the world of aviation.

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[charlesandmartine]

Wednesday 1st May 2024

We are fast closing in now to the end of our trip with the flight home scheduled for Friday arriving home on Saturday. So today is the penultimate day on the train. Overnight we slipped secretly into Beibridge, a frontier town minutes away from the border with South Africa. A more scruffy station would be hard to find. The immigration man was tidied away in an office behind piles of cardboard boxes and files full of long undiscovered, lost documents. His occupation spelled out on a handwritten sign hanging skewed from the platform ceiling. Another lopsided sign encouraged 3rd and 4th class passengers to use a rather dubious waiting room. In preparation for the next leg of our journey, the two Rovos diesel tractor units would need to be disconnected and replaced by a single South African unit piloted by a South African driver. We were eating our breakfast of Eggs Benedict as the train moved slowly out and we were warned that we would have something less than ten minutes before we would cross the Limpopo River and leave Zimbabwe behind us. The Limpopo of course made famous by Rudyard Kipling's Just So story, Elephant's Child. It was good to see, but an unreliable straw poll might suggest that all had expected the river to be just a little wider!!

Our train has 20 carriages in all, eleven of them being the sleeper side of the business, then two dining carriages with two kitchen carriages, four lounges, one carriage for staff accommodation. In total there are 53 fee paying guests on board. In all the train is likely to be about 500 meters in length; probably half the length of the train that carried us across Australia.

Lunch was served at one. It seemed odd that we had had no excursions today. Instead we sat in the lounge, or in the sunny but hot observation platform at the very back of the train. Passing through stations or across road junctions small children would appear from nowhere and run behind the train squealing excitedly. The heat would beat down mercilessly and force us eventually to move into the cool of the air-conditioned carriage. Conversation flows and you talk to people of all walks of life and nationality. The South African is worried about the outcome of the forthcoming May elections. In particular, nationalisation, poor management and yet more restrictions on their way of life. Many talk of leaving the country if all goes badly, including the Americans. We have met many nice and interesting people on the train. Especially Linda and Pam; sister's but one from the UK and the other from Canada. A pair of farmers from UK, Julie and Andrew who want to retire but a farm is a huge responsibility and difficult to hand on, let alone sell.

The evening meal had a real end of term feel to it. The fillet steak was so tender it virtually walked into our mouths. The wines flowed superceded by liqueurs and to finish the perfect evening we retreated to the observation car for cocktails. The ladies in their finery and the gents making the most of a tie and collar. I think all 53 guests on board had most likely had conversations with eachother. I'm not sure if our Christmas card list has increased much in size but friendship's have certainly been made.

Tomorrow after breakfast we all go our separate ways. The Rovos train gets washed down and prepared for it's next journey. We go to Pretoria for the night and then forwarded to Johannesburg for our flight home on Friday.

Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, 'Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.' Rudyard Kipling

[beardedmrbean]

Canada has long been a draw for people from India's Punjab province seeking new opportunities elsewhere. But has the Canadian dream soured?

It's hard to miss the ardour of Punjab's migrant ambitions when driving through its fertile rural plains.

Billboards promising easy immigration to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK jut out through ample mustard fields.

Off the highways, consultancies offer English language coaching to eager youth.

Single-storey brick homes double up as canvasses for hand-painted mural advertisements promising quick visas. And in the town of Bathinda, hundreds of agents jostle for space on a single narrow street, pledging to speed up the youth's runaway dreams.

For over a century, this province in India's northwest has seen waves of overseas migration; from the Sikh soldiers inducted into the British Indian Army travelling to Canada, through to rural Punjabis settling in England post-independence.

But some, especially from Canada, are now choosing to come back home.

One of those is 28-year-old Balkar, who returned in early 2023 after just one year in Toronto. Citizenship was his ultimate goal when he left his little hamlet of Pitho in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. His family mortgaged their land to fund his education.

But his Canadian dream quickly lost its allure a few months into his life there.

"Everything was so expensive. I had to work 50 hours every week after college, just to survive," he told the BBC. "High inflation is making many students leave their studies."

Balkar now runs an embroidery business from a small room on one side of the expansive central courtyard in his typical Punjabi home. He also helps on his family's farm to supplement his income.

Opportunities for employment are few and far between in these rural areas, but technology has allowed entrepreneurs like him to conquer the tyranny of distance. Balkar gets the bulk of his business through Instagram.

"I have a good life here. Why should I face hardships there when I can live at home and make good money?" he asks.

The BBC spoke to at least half a dozen reverse migrants in Punjab who shared similar sentiments.

It was also a common refrain in the scores of videos on YouTube shared by Indians who had chosen to abandon their life in Canada and return home. There was a stark difference one young returnee told the BBC between the "rosy picture" immigration agents painted and the rough reality of immigrant life in Toronto and Vancouver.

The "Canada craze" has let up a bit - and especially so among well-off migrants who have a fallback option at home, says Raj Karan Brar, an immigration agent in Bathinda who helps hundreds of Punjabis get permanent residencies and student visas every year.

The desire for a Canadian citizenship remains as strong as ever though among middle- and lower middle-class clients in rural communities.

But viral YouTube videos of students talking about the difficulty in finding jobs and protests over a lack of housing and work opportunities has created an air of nervousness among these students, say immigration agents.

There was a 40% decline in applications from India for Canadian study permits in the second half of 2023, according to one estimate. This was, in part, also due to the ongoing diplomatic tensions between India and Canada over allegations Indian agents were involved in the murder of Canadian Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

There are also hints of deeper cultural factors at play, for a waning Canadian dream among an older generation of Indian migrants.

Karan Aulakh, who spent nearly 15 years in Edmonton and achieved career and financial success, left his managerial job for a comfortable rural life in Khane ki Daab, the village where he was born in 1985. He told the BBC he was upset by LGBT-inclusive education policies in Canada and its 2018 decision to legalise recreational cannabis. Incompatibility with the Western way of life, a struggling healthcare system, and better economic prospects in India were, he said, key reasons why many older Canadian Indians are preparing to leave the country.

"I started an online consultancy - Back to the Motherland - a month and a half ago, to help those who want to reverse migrate. I get at least two to three calls every day, mostly from people in Canada who want to know what job opportunities there are in Punjab and how they can come back," said Mr Aulakh.

For a country that places such a high value on immigration, these trends are "concerning" and are "being received with a bit of a sting politically", says Daniel Bernhard of the Institute of Canadian Citizenship, an immigration advocacy group.

A liberalised immigration regime has been Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's signature policy to counter slowing economic growth and a rapidly aging population.

According to Canada's statistics agency, immigration accounted for 90% of Canada's labour force growth and 75% of population growth in 2021.

International students contribute to over C$20bn ($14.7bn; £11.7bn) to Canada's economy each year, a bulk of them Indians who now make up one in five recent immigrants to the country.

India was also Canada's leading source for immigration in 2022.

The numbers of those leaving are still small in absolute terms with immigration levels at all-time highs in Canada - the country welcomed nearly half a million new migrants each year over the past few years.

But the rate of reverse migration hit a two decade high in 2019, signalling that migrants were "losing confidence" in the country said Mr Bernhard.

Country specific statistics for such emigrants, or reverse migrants, are not available.

But official data obtained by Reuters shows between 80,000 and 90,000 immigrants left Canada in 2021 and 2022 and either went back to their countries, or onward elsewhere.

Some 42,000 people departed in the first half of 2023.

Fewer permanent residents are also going on to become Canadian citizens, according to census data cited by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. In 2001, 75% of those eligible became citizens. Two decades later, it was 45%.

Canada needs to "restore the value of its citizenship," said Mr Bernhard.

It comes as Canada debates its aggressive immigration targets given country's struggle to absorb more people.

A recent report from National Bank of Canada economists cautioned that the population growth was putting pressure on its already tight housing supply and strained healthcare system.

Canada has seen a population surge - an increase of 1.2 million people in 2023 - driven mostly by newcomers.

The report argued that growth needed to be slowed to an annual increase of up to 500,000 people in order to preserve or increase the standard of living.

There appears to have been a tacit acceptance of this evaluation by policymakers.

Mr Trudeau's Liberal government recently introduced a cap on international student permits that would result in a temporary decrease of 35% in approved study visas.

It's a significant policy shift that some believe may end up further reducing Canada's appeal amid a wave of reverse migrations.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

#20yrsago Bruce Sterling on Total Information Awareness https://www.wired.com/2003/04/i-want-my-tia/?pg=4

#20yrsago Chinese state sends 20m SMS messages to crush SARS rumor https://web.archive.org/web/20030618180119/http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/news/0,12597,928906,00.html

#20yrsago Found poetry from Rumsfeld’s speeches https://web.archive.org/web/20030415133226/http://slate.msn.com/id/2081042/

#20yrsago OS X floppy disk RAID https://web.archive.org/web/20030601111810/http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm

#15yrsago Best practices for water imbibing: “Just drink when you’re thirsty” https://www.npr.org/2008/04/03/89323934/five-myths-about-drinking-water

#15yrsago Debating the feasibility of an in-flight liquid bomb https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/the_liquid_bomb.html

#15yrsago Boston judge: making files available to download isn’t piracy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/making-available-distribution-says-court-london-sire-v-doe

#15yrsago Air Canada: for $35, we’ll let you talk to customer-service reps who can actually help you with a cancelled flight https://www.thestar.com/business/2008/04/03/air_canada_to_charge_for_customer_service.html

#15yrsago Japanese creative packaging design solutions to ugly barcodes https://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/04/japanese-creative-barcodes.html

#15yrsago Charles Manson uses Creative Commons licenses https://web.archive.org/web/20080403104925/http://blog.limewire.com/posts/1616-Even-Charles-Manson-Digs-Creative-Commons

#15yrsago China’s instant cities — jaw-dropping National Geo feature https://web.archive.org/web/20080402102202/http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0706/feature4/index.html

#15yrsago Banks refuse to take title on repossessed crappy houses https://web.archive.org/web/20080406130131/http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/04/the-advantages.html

#10yrsago Iain Banks: I’m dying of cancer, this book will be my last https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/03/iain-banks-gall-bladder-cancer

#10yrsago Podcast to mark centennial of Marc Davis, co-creator of Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean https://mousetalgia.libsyn.com/remembering-marc-davis-with-alice-davis

#10yrsago Autonomous sensory meridian response — self-diagnosed neurological condition/superpower that makes you really enjoy whispering https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/maria-spends-20-minutes-folding-towels-why-millions-are-mesmerised-by-asmr-videos-7956866.html

#10yrsago Queen goes on austerity footing, receives mere £5M pay-rise from the taxpayers https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/apr/02/queen-gets-5m-payrise-taxpayer

#5yrsago Offering users transparency and privacy is the only way Big Tech can avoid being turned into content cops https://dangillmor.medium.com/why-tech-platforms-should-give-users-more-control-and-how-they-can-do-it-6c6c48ab90c0

#5yrsago The technologies that would make the web more participatory https://medium.com/@anildash/the-missing-building-blocks-of-the-web-3fa490ae5cbc

#5yrsago Eight months ago, Panera Bread was warned that they were leaking up to 7 million customers’ data. They fixed it yesterday. Kinda. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/04/panerabread-com-leaks-millions-of-customer-records/

#5yrsago Even the telco industry thinks Ajit Pai is an asshole for maiming Lifeline, a broadband subsidy for poor Americans https://www.techdirt.com/2018/04/03/fcc-boss-under-fire-facts-optional-attack-low-income-broadband-programs/

#5yrsago Analysis of all the elections since Trump produces no clear answers on the class and suburban/urban correlates of flippability https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/be-skeptical-of-anyone-who-tells-you-they-know-how-democrats-can-win-in-november/

#5yrsago Alex Jones falsely accused a guy of being the Parkland school shooter, so now he’s being sued for more than $1,000,000 https://www.thedailybeast.com/falsely-accused-parkland-school-shooter-sues-alex-jones-infowars-for-defamation/

#5yrsago 2018 tsunami: Teachers lead mass strikes in four red states that voted for Trump in 2016 https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/381307-teachers-flex-political-muscle-in-red-state-strikes/

#5yrsago The Manhattan property bubble is bursting https://www.ft.com/content/b0ab3fa6-36a7-11e8-8eee-e06bde01c544

[canadianfreightquote5]

Understanding Freight Shipping Rates in Canada: A Comprehensive Guide

Freight shipping plays a critical role in ensuring that goods are transported efficiently across Canada. Whether you're a business owner, a logistics manager, or an individual needing to move goods, understanding the factors that impact freight shipping rates in Canada is essential to managing costs and ensuring timely deliveries. Freight Shipping Rates Canada In this article, we’ll break down the key components influencing freight rates and how you can optimize shipping strategies.

Factors Affecting Freight Shipping Rates in Canada

Distance and Shipping Zones

One of the most significant factors impacting freight shipping rates is the distance between the pickup and delivery locations. Canada is a vast country, and shipping across provinces or regions involves different pricing structures, often based on shipping zones. The further the destination, the higher the costs due to fuel, driver hours, and road tolls.

Type of Freight

Freight is classified into different categories, such as general goods, perishable items, hazardous materials, or oversized loads. Shipping specialized goods may require particular handling and packaging, which can drive up costs. Additionally, certain materials may require specific certifications or documentation, adding another layer of complexity and cost.

Freight Weight and Size

The weight and dimensions of your shipment are crucial elements that determine the price. Most freight companies use dimensional weight to calculate costs, considering both the physical size and actual weight. Bulkier or heavier items will generally incur higher shipping rates, especially if they exceed standard weight limits.

Mode of Transport

The method of freight transportation—whether via truck, rail, air, or sea—also has a significant impact on shipping costs. While trucking is a popular choice for domestic shipping within Canada, other modes of transport like air freight or rail might be more suitable for long distances or international shipping, albeit at different price points.

Freight Class

In Canada, freight shipments are classified into different categories based on the type of goods being shipped, known as the National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) system. This classification impacts how shipping rates are calculated, with low-class items (which are dense and easy to handle) costing less to ship compared to high-class items (which are bulky, fragile, or require special care).

Fuel Surcharges

Given that fuel prices can fluctuate, most freight carriers add a fuel surcharge to their shipping rates. This additional cost is adjusted based on the current price of fuel, making it an important component of freight shipping expenses.

Seasonal Demand

Peak shipping seasons, such as the holiday period or agricultural harvests, can affect freight rates. During these times, there is often an increase in demand for shipping services, leading to higher rates due to limited carrier capacity.

How to Lower Freight Shipping Costs

Reducing freight shipping costs is key to improving your supply chain efficiency and maintaining competitiveness. Here are some practical tips to lower your freight shipping rates:

Consolidate Shipments

Whenever possible, consolidate smaller shipments into one larger shipment to reduce costs. Less-than-truckload (LTL) shipping can be more expensive than full truckload (FTL) shipping due to the additional handling and stops required for smaller loads.

Negotiate with Carriers

Building long-term relationships with freight carriers can help you secure better rates. Regular customers often have the advantage of negotiating volume-based discounts, especially if your business has consistent shipping needs.

Use Freight Brokers

Working with a freight broker can help you navigate the complexities of the industry. Brokers often have established relationships with multiple carriers and can find the best rates for your specific shipping requirements.

Optimize Packaging

Reducing the dimensions of your shipment by using efficient packing methods can help you save on dimensional weight charges. Make sure that your packaging is robust enough to protect the goods without adding unnecessary bulk.

Consider Off-Peak Shipping

Shipping during non-peak times can sometimes result in lower rates. If your schedule is flexible, plan your shipments during periods of lower demand to take advantage of reduced pricing.

Conclusion

Freight shipping rates in Canada are influenced by a variety of factors, from distance and weight to the type of freight and the seasonality of shipping. Understanding these elements and applying strategic practices can help you manage costs effectively. By consolidating shipments, negotiating with carriers, and working with freight brokers, you can optimize your shipping process and secure the best possible rates.

If you're looking for reliable and cost-effective freight shipping solutions, consider using Canadian Freight Quote. Freight Shipping Rates Canada Their expert services help businesses and individuals navigate the complexities of freight shipping while offering competitive rates tailored to your specific needs.

Contact Canadian Freight Quote Today

Get a quote and learn more about how you can save on freight shipping costs across Canada. Visit Canadian Freight Quote for more information.