#trudeau dating again

[ireton]

trudeau dating again

[mariacallous]

“Don’t mention the word ‘liberalism,’ ” the talk-show host says to the guy who’s written a book on it. “Liberalism,” he explains, might mean Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to his suspicious audience, alienating more people than it invites. Talk instead about “liberal democracy,” a more expansive term that includes John McCain and Ronald Reagan. When you cross the border to Canada, you are allowed to say “liberalism” but are asked never to praise “liberals,” since that means implicitly endorsing the ruling Trudeau government and the long-dominant Liberal Party. In England, you are warned off both words, since “liberals” suggests the membership of a quaintly failed political party and “liberalism” its dated program. In France, of course, the vagaries of language have made “liberalism” mean free-market fervor, doomed from the start in that country, while what we call liberalism is more hygienically referred to as “republicanism.” Say that.

Liberalism is, truly, the love that dare not speak its name. Liberal thinkers hardly improve matters, since the first thing they will say is that the thing called “liberalism” is not actually a thing. This discouraging reflection is, to be sure, usually followed by an explanation: liberalism is a practice, a set of institutions, a tradition, a temperament, even. A clear contrast can be made with its ideological competitors: both Marxism and Catholicism, for instance, have more or less explicable rules—call them, nonpejoratively, dogmas. You can’t really be a Marxist without believing that a revolution against the existing capitalist order would be a good thing, and that parliamentary government is something of a bourgeois trick played on the working class. You can’t really be a Catholic without believing that a crisis point in cosmic history came two millennia ago in the Middle East, when a dissident rabbi was crucified and mysteriously revived. You can push either of these beliefs to the edge of metaphor—maybe the rabbi was only believed to be resurrected, and the inner experience of that epiphany is what counts; maybe the revolution will take place peacefully within a parliament and without Molotov cocktails—but you can’t really discard them. Liberalism, on the other hand, can include both faith in free markets and skepticism of free markets, an embrace of social democracy and a rejection of its statism. Its greatest figure, the nineteenth-century British philosopher and parliamentarian John Stuart Mill, was a socialist but also the author of “On Liberty,” which is (to the leftist imagination, at least) a suspiciously libertarian manifesto.

Whatever liberalism is, we’re regularly assured that it’s dying—in need of those shock paddles they regularly take out in TV medical dramas. (“C’mon! Breathe, damn it! Breathe! ”) As on television, this is not guaranteed to work. (“We’ve lost him, Holly. Damn it, we’ve lost him.”) Later this year, a certain demagogue who hates all these terms—liberals, liberalism, liberal democracy—might be lifted to power again. So what is to be done? New books on the liberal crisis tend to divide into three kinds: the professional, the professorial, and the polemical—books by those with practical experience; books by academics, outlining, sometimes in dreamily abstract form, a reformed liberal democracy; and then a few wishing the whole damn thing over, and well rid of it.

The professional books tend to come from people whose lives have been spent as pundits and as advisers to politicians. Robert Kagan, a Brookings fellow and a former State Department maven who has made the brave journey from neoconservatism to resolute anti-Trumpism, has a new book on the subject, “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again” (Knopf). Kagan’s is a particular type of book—I have written one myself—that makes the case for liberalism mostly to other liberals, by trying to remind readers of what they have and what they stand to lose. For Kagan, that “again” in the title is the crucial word; instead of seeing Trumpism as a new danger, he recapitulates the long history of anti-liberalism in the U.S., characterizing the current crisis as an especially foul wave rising from otherwise predictable currents. Since the founding of the secular-liberal Republic—secular at least in declining to pick one faith over another as official, liberal at least in its faith in individualism—anti-liberal elements have been at war with it. Kagan details, mordantly, the anti-liberalism that emerged during and after the Civil War, a strain that, just as much as today’s version, insisted on a “Christian commonwealth” founded essentially on wounded white working-class pride.

The relevance of such books may be manifest, but their contemplative depth is, of necessity, limited. Not to worry. Two welcomely ambitious and professorial books are joining them: “Liberalism as a Way of Life” (Princeton), by Alexandre Lefebvre, who teaches politics and philosophy at the University of Sydney, and “Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society” (Knopf), by Daniel Chandler, an economist and a philosopher at the London School of Economics.

The two take slightly different tacks. Chandler emphasizes programs of reform, and toys with the many bells and whistles on the liberal busy box: he’s inclined to try more random advancements, like elevating ordinary people into temporary power, on an Athenian model that’s now restricted to jury service. But, on the whole, his is a sanely conventional vision of a state reformed in the direction of ever greater fairness and equity, one able to curb the excesses of capitalism and to accommodate the demands of diversity.

The program that Chandler recommends to save liberalism essentially represents the politics of the leftier edge of the British Labour Party—which historically has been unpopular with the very people he wants to appeal to, gaining power only after exhaustion with Tory governments. In the classic Fabian manner, though, Chandler tends to breeze past some formidable practical problems. While advocating for more aggressive government intervention in the market, he admits equably that there may be problems with state ownership of industry and infrastructure. Yet the problem with state ownership is not a theoretical one: Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister because of the widely felt failures of state ownership in the nineteen-seventies. The overreaction to those failures may have been destructive, but it was certainly democratic, and Tony Blair’s much criticized temporizing began in this recognition. Chandler is essentially arguing for an updated version of the social-democratic status quo—no bad place to be but not exactly a new place, either.

Lefebvre, on the other hand, wants to write about liberalism chiefly as a cultural phenomenon—as the water we swim in without knowing that it’s wet—and his book is packed, in the tradition of William James, with racy anecdotes and pop-culture references. He finds more truths about contemporary liberals in the earnest figures of the comedy series “Parks and Recreation” than in the words of any professional pundit. A lot of this is fun, and none of it is frivolous.

Yet, given that we may be months away from the greatest crisis the liberal state has known since the Civil War, both books seem curiously calm. Lefebvre suggests that liberalism may be passing away, but he doesn’t seem especially perturbed by the prospect, and at his book’s climax he recommends a permanent stance of “reflective equilibrium” as an antidote to all anxiety, a stance that seems not unlike Richard Rorty’s idea of irony—cultivating an ability both to hold to a position and to recognize its provisionality. “Reflective equilibrium trains us to see weakness and difference in ourselves,” Lefebvre writes, and to see “how singular each of us is in that any equilibrium we reach will be specific to us as individuals and our constellation of considered judgments.” However excellent as a spiritual exercise, a posture of reflective equilibrium seems scarcely more likely to get us through 2024 than smoking weed all day, though that, too, can certainly be calming in a crisis.

Both professors, significantly, are passionate evangelists for the great American philosopher John Rawls, and both books use Rawls as their fount of wisdom about the ideal liberal arrangement. Indeed, the dust-jacket sell line of Chandler’s book is a distillation of Rawls: “Imagine: You are designing a society, but you don’t know who you’ll be within it—rich or poor, man or woman, gay or straight. What would you want that society to look like?” Lefebvre’s “reflective equilibrium” is borrowed from Rawls, too. Rawls’s classic “A Theory of Justice” (1971) was a theory about fairness, which revolved around the “liberty principle” (you’re entitled to the basic liberties you’d get from a scheme in which everyone got those same liberties) and the “difference principle” (any inequalities must benefit the worst off). The emphasis on “justice as fairness” presses both professors to stress equality; it’s not “A Theory of Liberty,” after all. “Free and equal” is not the same as “free and fair,” and the difference is where most of the arguing happens among people committed to a liberal society.

Indeed, readers may feel that the work of reconciling Rawls’s very abstract consideration of ideal justice and community with actual experience is more daunting than these books, written by professional philosophers who swim in this water, make it out to be. A confidence that our problems can be managed with the right adjustments to the right model helps explain why the tone of both books—richly erudite and thoughtful—is, for all their implication of crisis, so contemplative and even-humored. No doubt it is a good idea to tell people to keep cool in a fire, but that does not make the fire cooler.

Rawls devised one of the most powerful of all thought experiments: the idea of the “veil of ignorance,” behind which we must imagine the society we would want to live in without knowing which role in that society’s hierarchy we would occupy. Simple as it is, it has ever-arresting force, making it clear that, behind this veil, rational and self-interested people would never design a society like that of, say, the slave states of the American South, given that, dropped into it at random, they could very well be enslaved. It also suggests that Norway might be a fairly just place, because a person would almost certainly land in a comfortable and secure middle-class life, however boringly Norwegian.

Still, thought experiments may not translate well to the real world. Einstein’s similarly epoch-altering account of what it would be like to travel on a beam of light, and how it would affect the hands on one’s watch, is profound for what it reveals about the nature of time. Yet it isn’t much of a guide to setting the timer on the coffeemaker in the kitchen so that the pot will fill in time for breakfast. Actual politics is much more like setting the timer on the coffeemaker than like riding on a beam of light. Breakfast is part of the cosmos, but studying the cosmos won’t cook breakfast. It’s telling that in neither of these Rawlsian books is there any real study of the life and the working method of an actual, functioning liberal politician. No F.D.R. or Clement Attlee, Pierre Mendès France or François Mitterrand (a socialist who was such a master of coalition politics that he effectively killed off the French Communist Party). Not to mention Tony Blair or Joe Biden or Barack Obama. Biden’s name appears once in Chandler’s index; Obama’s, though he gets a passing mention, not at all.

The reason is that theirs are not ideal stories about the unimpeded pursuit of freedom and fairness but necessarily contingent tales of adjustments and amendments—compromised stories, in every sense. Both philosophers would, I think, accept this truth in principle, yet neither is drawn to it from the heart. Still, this is how the good work of governing gets done, by those who accept the weight of the world as they act to lighten it. Obama’s history—including the feints back and forth on national health insurance, which ended, amid all the compromises, with the closest thing America has had to a just health-care system—is uninspiring to the idealizing mind. But these compromises were not a result of neglecting to analyze the idea of justice adequately; they were the result of the pluralism of an open society marked by disagreement on fundamental values. The troubles of current American politics do not arise from a failure on the part of people in Ohio to have read Rawls; they are the consequence of the truth that, even if everybody in Ohio read Rawls, not everybody would agree with him.

Ideals can shape the real world. In some ultimate sense, Biden, like F.D.R. before him, has tried to build the sort of society we might design from behind the veil of ignorance—but, also like F.D.R., he has had to do so empirically, and often through tactics overloaded with contradictions. If your thought experiment is premised on a group of free and equal planners, it may not tell you what you need to know about a society marred by entrenched hierarchies. Ask Biden if he wants a free and fair society and he would say that he does. But Thatcher would have said so, too, and just as passionately. Oscillation of power and points of view within that common framework are what makes liberal democracies liberal. It has less to do with the ideally just plan than with the guarantee of the right to talk back to the planner. That is the great breakthrough in human affairs, as much as the far older search for social justice. Plato’s rulers wanted social justice, of a kind; what they didn’t want was back talk.

Both philosophers also seem to accept, at least by implication, the familiar idea that there is a natural tension between two aspects of the liberal project. One is the desire for social justice, the other the practice of individual freedom. Wanting to speak our minds is very different from wanting to feed our neighbors. An egalitarian society might seem inherently limited in liberty, while one that emphasizes individual rights might seem limited in its capacity for social fairness.

Yet the evidence suggests the opposite. Show me a society in which people are able to curse the king and I will show you a society more broadly equal than the one next door, if only because the ability to curse the king will make the king more likely to spread the royal wealth, for fear of the cursing. The rights of sexual minorities are uniquely protected in Western liberal democracies, but this gain in social equality is the result of a history of protected expression that allowed gay experience to be articulated and “normalized,” in high and popular culture. We want to live on common streets, not in fortified castles. It isn’t a paradox that John Stuart Mill and his partner, Harriet Taylor, threw themselves into both “On Liberty,” a testament to individual freedom, and “The Subjection of Women,” a program for social justice and mass emancipation through group action. The habit of seeking happiness for one through the fulfillment of many others was part of the habit of their liberalism. Mill wanted to be happy, and he couldn’t be if Taylor wasn’t.

Liberals are at a disadvantage when it comes to authoritarians, because liberals are committed to procedures and institutions, and persist in that commitment even when those things falter and let them down. The asymmetry between the Trumpite assault on the judiciary and Biden’s reluctance even to consider enlarging the Supreme Court is typical. Trumpites can and will say anything on earth about judges; liberals are far more reticent, since they don’t want to undermine the institutions that give reality to their ideals.

Where Kagan, Lefebvre, and Chandler are all more or less sympathetic to the liberal “project,” the British political philosopher John Gray deplores it, and his recent book, “The New Leviathans: Thoughts After Liberalism” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), is one long complaint. Gray is one of those leftists so repelled by the follies of the progressive party of the moment—to borrow a phrase of Orwell’s about Jonathan Swift—that, in a familiar horseshoe pattern, he has become hard to distinguish from a reactionary. He insists that liberalism is a product of Christianity (being in thrall to the notion of the world’s perfectibility) and that it has culminated in what he calls “hyper-liberalism,” which would emancipate individuals from history and historically shaped identities. Gray hates all things “woke”—a word that he seems to know secondhand from news reports about American universities. If “woke” points to anything except the rage of those who use it, however, it is a discourse directed against liberalism—Ibram X. Kendi is no ally of Bayard Rustin, nor Judith Butler of John Stuart Mill. So it is hard to see it as an expression of the same trends, any more than Trump is a product of Burke’s conservative philosophy, despite strenuous efforts on the progressive side to make it seem so.

Gray’s views are learned, and his targets are many and often deserved: he has sharp things to say about how certain left liberals have reclaimed the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt and his thesis that politics is a battle to the death between friends and foes. In the end, Gray turns to Dostoyevsky’s warning that (as Gray reads him) “the logic of limitless freedom is unlimited despotism.” Hyper-liberals, Gray tells us, think that we can compete with the authority of God, and what they leave behind is wild disorder and crazed egotism.

As for Dostoyevsky’s positive doctrines—authoritarian and mystical in nature—Gray waves them away as being “of no interest.” But they are of interest, exactly because they raise the central pragmatic issue: If you believe all this about liberal modernity, what do you propose to do about it? Given that the announced alternatives are obviously worse or just crazy (as is the idea of a Christian commonwealth, something that could be achieved only by a degree of social coercion that makes the worst of “woke” culture look benign), perhaps the evil might better be ameliorated than abolished.

Between authority and anarchy lies argument. The trick is not to have unified societies that “share values”—those societies have never existed or have existed only at the edge of a headsman’s axe—but to have societies that can get along nonviolently without shared values, aside from the shared value of trying to settle disputes nonviolently. Certainly, Americans were far more polarized in the nineteen-sixties than they are today—many favored permanent apartheid (“Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”)—and what happened was not that values changed on their own but that a form of rights-based liberalism of protest and free speech convinced just enough people that the old order wouldn’t work and that it wasn’t worth fighting for a clearly lost cause.

What’s curious about anti-liberal critics such as Gray is their evident belief that, after the institutions and the practices on which their working lives and welfare depend are destroyed, the features of the liberal state they like will somehow survive. After liberalism is over, the neat bits will be easily reassembled, and the nasty bits will be gone. Gray can revile what he perceives to be a ruling élite and call to burn it all down, and nothing impedes the dissemination of his views. Without the institutions and the practices that he despises, fear would prevent oppositional books from being published. Try publishing an anti-Communist book in China or a critique of theocracy in Iran. Liberal institutions are the reason that he is allowed to publish his views and to have the career that he and all the other authors here rightly have. Liberal values and practices allow their most fervent critics a livelihood and a life—which they believe will somehow magically be reconstituted “after liberalism.” They won’t be.

The vociferous critics of liberalism are like passengers on the Titanic who root for the iceberg. After all, an iceberg is thrilling, and anyway the White Star Line has classes, and the music the band plays is second-rate, and why is the food French instead of honestly English? “Just as I told you, the age of the steamship is over!” they cry as the water slips over their shoes. They imagine that another boat will miraculously appear—where all will be in first class, the food will be authentic, and the band will perform only Mozart or Motown, depending on your wishes. Meanwhile, the ship goes down. At least the band will be playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” which they will take as some vindication. The rest of us may drown.

One turns back to Helena Rosenblatt’s 2018 book, “The Lost History of Liberalism,” which makes the case that liberalism is not a recent ideology but an age-old series of intuitions about existence. When the book appeared, it may have seemed unduly overgeneralized—depicting liberalism as a humane generosity that flared up at moments and then died down again. But, as the world picture darkens, her dark picture illuminates. There surely are a set of identifiable values that connect men and women of different times along a single golden thread: an aversion to fanaticism, a will toward the coexistence of different kinds and creeds, a readiness for reform, a belief in the public criticism of power without penalty, and perhaps, above all, a knowledge that institutions of civic peace are much harder to build than to destroy, being immeasurably more fragile than their complacent inheritors imagine. These values will persist no matter how evil the moment may become, and by whatever name we choose to whisper in the dark.

[justforbooks]

Matthew Perry was a Friend to all, known the world over as Chandler Bing, always seconds away from a great wisecrack and a show-stopping grin. But he was also an addict. That was the “big, terrible thing” Perry referenced in the title of his memoir last year, giving it equal weighting with the TV series that made him an indelible celebrity, long after he had largely retreated from screens.

I read Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing last year and found it a jarring, often uncomfortable experience. It was one part juicy celebrity memoir, enlivened by the flashes of humour and winning self-deprecation that Perry (by his own admission) shared with his defining character; and one part harrowing account of a man intent on his own destruction.

Perry characterised himself as a ready-made, just-add-water addict: an alcoholic with his first drink at the age of 14, and hooked on painkillers with his first pill, prescribed after a jetski accident. High, he drove a red Mustang convertible across the desert, feeling “complete and utter euphoria”: “I remember thinking, ‘If this doesn’t kill me, I’m doing this again.’” It didn’t then.

Nearly a year to the day after Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing was published, Perry was found dead at his Los Angeles home in an apparent drowning. He was 54. Tributes from his friends and fans have rightly focused on Perry’s character and talent, with actors Morgan Fairchild (who played Perry’s on-screen mother) mourning “the loss of such a brilliant young actor” and Mira Sorvino of his “singular wit”. Even the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, (who knew Perry as a boy, and whom Perry claimed in his memoir to have beaten up) paid tribute to the “schoolyard games we used to play … Thanks for all the laughs, Matthew”.

Indeed, though Perry’s career never took off beyond Friends, he was arguably the standout performer in a talented cast of six. Any good-looking guy can be the smart-aleck, cracking jokes in the corner, but Perry imbued Chandler with energy and emotional depth.

Though defined by his deadpan delivery – Perry is right, when he wrote “that Chandler Bing transformed the way that America spoke” – he also had exceptional comic timing, and was a great physical performer. No one else has so effectively communicated combined dating anxiety and needing to pee. The fact that Perry managed to more or less keep it together over 10 seasons and 236 episodes, often while juggling ferocious substance abuse, is only further testament to his talent.

The success of Friends – not to mention the support from his castmates, his real-life friends – was what helped him to survive, Perry wrote. “There was no way I could have been a journeyman actor. I wouldn’t have stayed sober for that; it was not worth not doing heroin for that … When you’re earning $1m a week, you can’t afford to have the 17th drink.”

Perry also had a tricky part to play within the ensemble, in taking a platonic friendship between two cynics into a heartfelt romance. Chandler and Monica was Friend’s central love story, with none of the cushioning contrivances and strategic “breaks” of the series’ other pairings. In TV, as well as life, it’s harder to make yourself vulnerable and offer love steadily than it is to give in to doubt and run hot-and-cool: Perry showed that the smart guy, even the mean guy, could also be the nice guy you’d do well to marry.

In a series that has otherwise aged fairly poorly, Chandler and Monica are still an aspirational model for an equal partnership. As a teenager, I found it sweet when Chandler told Monica: “They can say that you’re high maintenance, but it’s OK, because I like … maintaining you.” As a far-from-easygoing, thirtysomething single woman, it is perhaps the most desirable declaration of love I’ve ever seen.

It is no wonder Perry was so beloved for his character. “For the longest time,” he wrote, he experienced it as a burden, though he had lately reached some kind of peace with Friends as his legacy. “If you’re going to be typecast, that’s the way to do it.” But at the widespread shock at his death, as the world woke up to the news on Sunday morning, you can picture Perry raising one quizzical eyebrow. As he wrote himself: “I didn’t stand a fucking chance.”

Perry might not have risked 17 drinks on set – but he would certainly try for 16. Especially during the later seasons of Friends, he was routinely drunk, high or hungover on set, prompting concern from Jennifer Aniston. (“‘We can smell it,’ she said, in a kind of weird but loving way.”) Even a “sober companion” to shadow him at work proved insufficient safeguard: when a read-through was cut short by Perry’s incoherence, the entire cast staged an intervention. When The One With Monica and Chandler’s Wedding aired, in May 2001, Perry was living in rehab.

For all Perry’s amusing celebrity anecdotes and determined good cheer, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing reads primarily as an addiction memoir without an ending. Indeed, it read as though it had almost been written in real time: Perry’s colon had exploded in July 2019, only three years before its publication, and in January 2022 he underwent his 14th surgery relating to his drug addiction. “I finally have rock-hard abs, but they aren’t from sit-ups,” he wrote, perkily.

Perry described, often, the reward he drew from supporting other addicts: “The best thing about me, bar none, is that … I can help a desperate man get sober.” Nonetheless, I was struck while reading it that the more recent timeline of Perry’s using and abusing was somewhat opaque. It felt somewhat strategic: an attempt to obscure his current reality and lend heft to the suggestion that the worst of his troubles were behind him. But even Perry himself – no doubt encouraged to come to a positive conclusion – could not find a more upbeat note with which to end on than the fact that he was alive at all.

For all its gestures to sobriety, “looking forward” and moving into the future, the final chapter reads like Perry speaking from beyond the grave, reflecting on the faces of his loved ones as if he has already passed on.

The world might be shocked at his untimely death, but Perry knew that his addiction was going to kill him; he told us in print a year ago, in a book that reached six figures in sales. Indeed, he wrote, his most surprising takeaway was that it hadn’t already.

“There are two kinds of drug addicts,” Perry wrote of his preference for opiates over cocaine. “The ones who want to go up, and the ones who want to go down … I wanted to melt into my couch and feel wonderful.” You can only hope that, now, he is as close to happiness as he felt that morning in the red Mustang.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[itsyoung8]

The age of the students at Bullworth Academy (part V)

Ouais salut l'équipe! Sorry for this long time of absence but as I said, studies take up a lot of my time. Well, here is the part V which was very much awaited (it's not true, but please do it)! Sur ce, bonne lecture!

Details:

-> I'm going to assume that Bullworth Academy is a high school

-> Since it is a high school located in the United States, four years ago and not three as in Europe (ex: France). That's why I'm going to make the following cut:

1st year: 14-15 years old - Freshman

2nd year: 15-16 years old - Sophomore

3rd year: 16-17 years old - Junior

4th year: 17-18 years old - Senior

Nerds:

Earnest Jones:

as seen in the previous part (I know it's dated), I had hypothesized (although it is very likely) that Ted was a 17-18 year old senior. Since Earnest and Ted are competing for the class steward position (I think that's it lol), I came to the conclusion that Earnest was also a 17-18 year old senior.

Algernon Papadopoulos:

I couldn't find much about Algie. The only small element that can give rise to a hypothesis is that in a line of dialogue, he says that Ted nicknames him "little buddy". In this case, if the word "small" refers to his age, it would mean that Algie is younger than Ted so either a freshman, sophomore or junior. But if it's not his age, then I don't have anything to make a hypothesis about his age.

Beatrice Trudeau:

Without a doubt, Beatrice is a 17-18 year old senior. On several occasions she talks about medical school and even says in a line of dialogue "I already know the medical schools to which I'll apply". Those in their final year have to apply to the universities they want and wait for an answer (like us in France). That's why Beatrice does this. Add to that the fact that she's been applying to be a cheerleader for several years, but Mandy turns her down every year. This reinforces this idea that Beatrice is a 17-18 year old senior.

Bucky Pasteur:

"I don't think I'll ever be big enough to be a Jock but I want to try!". This is the only element that allows me to go on a lead concerning Bucky. This line of dialogue makes me say that Bucky is not a 17-18 year old senior because it would be ridiculous to want to join the Jocks in his final year. So Bucky is either a freshman, a sophomore, or a junior. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything else that would allow me to give him a precise age.

Cornelius Johnson:

If you listen closely, you can hear Miss Danvers making an announcement that Cornelius has the worst result on a sports aptitude test in the history of the academy. From that moment on, I told myself that he must be a 14-15 year old freshman. However, Cornelius says that Dan was hanging out with the Nerds last year so the idea of a freshman is wrong because otherwise he wouldn't have known Dan as a Nerd.

I came to think that Cornelius might be a 17-18 year old senior and that the aptitude test is the test for those in their final year, I don't really know.

Thad Carlson:

First of all, I went to look again at Dan's presentation sheet and I hadn't noticed that it was written that Dan could be one of the oldest students in the academy. So I'm going to assume he's a 17-18 year old senior.

As far as Thad is concerned, if he knew his big brother as a nerd, then he is either a 15-16 year old sophomore or a 16-17 year old junior.

Donald Anderson:

Donald is, in my opinion, either a 16-17 year old junior because he says "This is probably the worst year. Ever at Bullworth" and in this case the word "ever" refers to the fact that he is still at the academy for this year but that next year it may change, either he is a senior of 17-18 years old because he speaks college like all the final year students I have dealt with in the previous parts.

Melvin O'Connor:

As I said with Russell, the age to drive a car in New England is about 18. On the other hand, for a scooter, you must be at least 16 years old without restriction (tell me if I am wrong Americans) while in France, for example, you must be at least 14 years old.

When Melvin says "I thought delays were supposed to wear helmets", we can assume that he is lashing out at someone who is on a scooter because it would be illogical to wear a helmet in a car. As a result, we can understand from this line of dialogue that Melvin may not be of legal age to ride a scooter. So we can say that, maybe, Melvin is a 14-15 year old freshman.

Fatty Johnson:

I'm not going to lie to you, but I haven't found anything that would allow me to start with even the beginning of an answer. Really, I promise you, I searched his dialogues and his presentation sheet and there is nothing!! Fatty is one of the characters we'll never know exactly how old he is lol.

Here's the end of that part. Next time I will try to deal with students who are not in any group. It's going to take me a little bit of time but that part will be there. Thanks for reading! Bonne journée tout le monde!

[ts1989fanatic]

Have We Reached Peak Taylor Swift? The Psychology Behind When Someone Becomes Overexposed.

Is Taylor Swift about to be in her 'overexposed' era?

Midway through the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift is everywhere.

The ongoing tour ― Swift is scheduled to resume the international leg in November ― and the subsequent concert film are certifiable cultural events that have actually boosted regional economies. (In Los Angeles, for instance, where Swift performed six shows, the California Center for Jobs and the Economy predicted a $320 million boost to the county. No wonder Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau practically begged the Grammy winner to visit up north.)

She’s even bolstering the NFL’s viewership: Since the “Cruel Summer”

singer started attending her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs games, the league has seen some Super Bowl-level numbers thanks to all the Swifties tuning in.

Meanwhile, the media coverage is breathless. While daytime talk show hosts ask Kelce’s mom about Swift, there’s play-by-play of the couple’s dates around the web: “They were in a rounded booth sitting super close to each other in deep convo the whole time,” a diner at the Waverly Inn in Greenwich, where Swift and Kelce dined on Sunday, told The Messenger. “It looked super romantic and was super intimate.”

But given Swift’s cultural dominance ― and NFL fans booing an ad for her concert doc early this month ― even her fans are a little worried that Taylor fatigue might soon set in. Is Swift due for another “overexposed” era?

“Kinda overwhelmed by how close Taylor is to overexposure,” one fan tweeted on X.

“You either die the hero or live long enough to admit that you have Taylor Swift fatigue,” another wrote on the site.

On the main Swift subreddit, fans debate if Swift will eventually go back into pop star hibernation like she did after her “1989” album.

Indeed, this isn’t Swift’s first go-around with overexposure. The success of “1989” in 2014 was followed by a heightened interest in Swift’s personal life: her famous friends (or her “squad”), her ill-fated romance with Tom Hiddleston, her drama with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. In response, Swift made a “conscious choice to disappear” and opt for a more “lowkey” life, a source close to the singer told People at the time.

Her rollout of her next album, 2017’s “Reputation,” was relatively quiet. (“There will be no further explanation. There will just be reputation,” Swift remarked on Instagram.)

Swift seems to pay close attention to her fandom and cultivate those parasocial relationships, said Lynn Zubernis, a psychologist and professor at West Chester University who researches fan psychology.

“Who knows, she might consider withdrawing from the spotlight again at some point,” Zubernis told HuffPost.

The professor likened the “Anti-Hero” singer’s ubiquity right now to Barney in the ’90s. Parents loved the purple dinosaur initially (no one kept their kids as entertained), but that love soured by the 104th listen of the “I love you, you love me” theme song.

“Familiarity is part of what drives fandom — we’re wired to attach to familiar faces, whether they’re offline or on our screens — but there’s a limit to how much repetition we can tolerate,” Zubernis said. “Too many instances of someone popping up and behaving the same way or saying the same thing can start to grate.”

The overexposure is sometimes exacerbated by the celebrity being perceived as “trying too hard” or being inauthentic, Zubernis said: Miley Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, even Lady Gaga come to mind, she said.

“At first their ‘antics’ were popular, but people soon grew tired and cynical about them,” she said. “Justin Bieber, James Franco, Shai LaBeouf and Kanye West fall into that category too, and all have been on lists of ‘celebrities we’re tired of’ as a result.”

There’s also a common trajectory that fandom tends to take: Fans love to root for their favorite celebrity ― or sports team or TV series ― because of that vicarious sense of success they gain, but there’s also a cost to that success and visibility, Zubernis said. Some fans jump ship.

“Fans also relish feeling ‘special’ and seeing their fandom as exclusive ― as in, we are the only ones who see how truly special this person is and appreciate her,” the professor said.

“Once someone like Swift becomes beloved by everyone, even ‘normies,’ the fandom doesn’t feel as exclusive anymore,” she added. (Think how in high school, you used to say, “Yeah, I liked that band when they were still underground.”)

Jaye L. Derrick, an associate professor of psychology who studies parasocial relationships at the University of Houston, has a different take: She thinks that most of the people complaining about Swift were never fans to begin with.

“She has a very large following, but no celebrity can make 100% of the population like them,” Derrick told HuffPost.

“As Taylor Swift is shown to new markets, she is meeting some pushback from people who may have been aware of her before but never sought her out,” she said. “I suspect that most of the negative exposure is from people who had maybe consciously avoided her before and are not able to avoid her anymore.”

Tracy Gleason, the chair and professor of psychology at Wellesley College and an author of a paper on parasocial relationships, agrees with Derrick. The fans at the Giants game who booed her ad, for instance, might have done so because she’s dating a player on a rival team.

“Another possible explanation for the football game is that people who are fans of football, some of whom are likely women, are not necessarily fans of Taylor Swift,” Gleason told HuffPost. “Seeing Taylor get more attention than the game itself might have felt distracting and annoying.”

“Who knows, though,” she added. “Maybe they are Swifties but just want to keep each of the things they enjoy in their own lane: Taylor belongs on the stage and football belongs in the arena.”

Is misogyny at play when we deem someone “overexposed”?

When it comes to conversations about fame, some have pointed out that it tends to be women that get the whiplash “love-hate” treatment: They’re celebrated at first, then they’re deemed overexposed, like Anne Hathaway or Jennifer Lawrence were after their respective Oscar campaigns.

For the most part, men have more room to navigate fame: There’s a double-standard for the type of behavior that is considered appropriate for men versus for women, Derrick said.

For starters, men are expected to express their agency, so they are allowed to promote their projects.

“For women, it is harder to engage in agentic behavior without people viewing them as too in-your-face,” Derrick said. “In American society, we traditionally expect women to be more communal and less agentic.” (Swift addresses this complicated bind for women in the song “The Man” from 2019 album “Lover.”)

The professor thinks these women would probably get a pass if they were “trying too hard” to promote something communal, like a charity, but over-promoting yourself is a cardinal sin in celebritydom if you’re a woman.

With male examples of overexposure, it usually results from some publicly frowned-upon behavior: Bieber was a notoriously bratty teen (which is hardly a crime, of course, but his reputation persists), West was accused of antisemitism, Franco and LaBeouf were both accused of sexual misconduct, and Elon Musk has been accused of not only damaging Twitter (or as he’s rebranded, X) but threatening democracy itself.

Women celebrities are shamed for bad behavior, too, of course, but also for deviating from social expectations, Zubernis said.

“The culture still isn’t all that comfortable with women being very visible or powerful or successful in some way; that idea is vaguely threatening to the status quo,” she said. “I think that would apply to Swift, Hathaway and Lawrence.”

If you were a fan of any of those women to begin with, though, you probably stuck by them through and through. Fandoms tend to be ride or die until something truly cancellable happens.

“There are times when fans will turn on a celebrity, but those are usually cases where the celebrity did something out-of-character that led people to become disillusioned with their brand,” Derrick said.

In other words, when it comes to these “overexposed” claims ― or criticism from non-fans who wish Swift would take a sabbatical ― Swifties worldwide are probably just going to “shake it off.”

ts1989fanatic:

So Michael Jackson in his prime was everywhere and until he went off the deep end was beloved by fans and none fans worldwide. But Taylor Swift who has in my opinion reached MJ status is over exposed, you know this was not really a thing until she started dating Travis Kelce.

So to answer the question posed above

Is misogyny at play when we deem someone “overexposed”?

In the case of Taylor Swift damn straight misogyny is at play, all these talking heads and college professors and the rest of the media jackals and TS haters need to just FUCK THE HELL OFF.

[intersectionalpraxis]

I don't know exactly how elections work in Canada so I'm sorry if this is a dumb question but would you vote for Trudeau after all his genocide support? I'm asking because I can't bribg myself to vote for Biden and Trump is out of the question. A third party will never win here. ☹️ In good conscience, I can't vote for a man who allowed thousands of kids to be murdered.

When there is a federal election in Canada (in order to elect a Prime Minister), we vote for the political party running in our 'riding.' To compare a riding to the American Electoral College system, it's similar to how you vote for candidates to represent you depending on the system (since I know it varies across states) -in Canada, those in 'ridings' represent the people in their specific area. If they win, they have a 'seat' in Parliament (which is located in Ottawa on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin territory).

Canada functions under a first past the post system [FFTP] (as this is the most common method in the US, if I'm not mistaken?), which means that even it's a 48% to 50% vote between Conservatives and Liberals then the later would 'win' (I believe in Australia, due to their system, citizens would have to re-vote again if it's that close). I digress, but that's how it 'works' here.

Also, due to the parliamentary system, whether a voted-in party has a majority or minority of votes, will determine their position (and degree of power) in the House of Commons (which is like your Congress). Right now we are yes, currently run by a Liberal minority government -back in 2019 Trudeau was I believe shy of a dozen votes from being a majority government. The next federal election date in in 2025, usually it's in the fall.

So, complex parliamentary system aside -who you vote for in Canada is a Member of Parliament (an MP) from the 'riding'/area you are in, who represents you in the House of Commons, and they function under the leadership of 'X' party that is elected.

I have voted Liberal in the past because I loved the MP in my riding. She's done a lot of amazing work in the community. Over time, however, I have voted NDP (New Democratic Party), which is led by Jagmeet Singh right now. Of the over 300 seats in Parliament, they have 25 seats. I align with them on a lot of their ideologies, namely because they are more left-leaning than Liberals, but due to what happened recently - I can't look at them the same way, in the same respect I can't for Liberals either.

What they did to MPP Sara Jama (a disability and housing activist), by expelling her from the Caucus (which is just a collective term for those sitting in Parliament), because she openly supported Palestine. The 'Progressive' Conservatives voted to censure her and they successfully did. And over what, you might ask? She said she wanted an "end to all occupation of Palestinian land" and called for a ceasefire. You can follow her on X here, for folks interested in learning more about her work; she also has the video (that I believe went viral on tiktok about her demanding a ceasefire)- @/ SarahJama_)

So, for me, there will be some time to think about what I would like to do, but I will most definitely not be voting for a Liberal MP, that's for sure. As for the US, I have spoke about the socialist party running right now -Claudia De La Cruz and Karina Garcia (for President and VP, respectively) -they have supported Palestine and do a TON of advocacy work. If I could, I would vote for them.

[disappointmentthemusical]

anti-zionism is not antisemitic, but that does not preclude anti-zionists being antisemitic

do not allow yourself to be sucked into antisemitic conspiracy theories about the purposes/intent behind the synagogue tunnels. while there are systemic issues within judaic institutions, the hassidic community included, do not allow the injustice of a secular government that bears the star of david to push you into assumptions and stereotypes. even a little research will tell you that the tunnels are about building expansion.

on this note, let us remind ourselves that zionism is rooted in antisemitism. beyond tenants in jewish scriptures, zionism requires the antisemitic belief that jews are not/cannot be loyal to any state/people other than israel and fellow jews. this notion pre-dates the creation of the colonial state of israel. the idea that jews are inherently untrustworthy and traitors has been played up time and time again, most notably pre-WWII to justify laws and policies limiting jewish freedoms and citizenship. for anyone familiar with french history, you will know the role this sentiment played in the Dreyfus Affair, which changed all of europe's relationship with/view of its jewish populations.

the zionist project will soon be used against jews outside of israel. regardless of how the war ends, israel has embedded itself in the world's perception of jewish identity, in one way or another. do not be surprised when politicians and media outlets begin questioning jewish loyalties in the aftermath of the genocide, particularly if western governments are able to hide their participation in the ethnic cleansing of palestinians. if this is reframed as a jewish aggression or an aggression committed solely by israel as Biden and Trudeau and Macron and whoever bravely pleaded with Netanyahu to limit civilian casualties, then imagine how much easier it will be to pose jews as a domestic threat.

[beardedmrbean]

A Toronto man has been charged with public incitement of hatred after police allege he held a "terrorist flag" during a demonstration last weekend.

Police say the 41-year-old man allegedly waved a flag of "an organization listed as a terrorist group by Public Safety Canada" while marching through the city's downtown on Sunday.

Speaking at a Toronto Police Services Board meeting Thursday, police Chief Myron Demkiw called the charge "unprecedented," noting the "very high threshold" to charge anyone with a hate propaganda offence.

"We're not putting up with this kind of hateful conduct," said Demkiw, at a news conference Thursday.

"This type of allegation points to an extremist, hateful perspective that we do not welcome in the city."

Police have not confirmed what the flag depicted or what group it was associated with. Speaking to the board, Demkiw said he would "not be complicit in providing a platform to both acknowledge or promote the hateful ideology."

The man is set to appear in court in Toronto on Feb. 23.

Antisemitic incidents make up 53% of reported hate crimes since Israel-Hamas war began: Toronto police

2 Toronto councillors say they want fire at Jewish-owned deli probed as possible act of terror

The chief said Toronto has seen more protests since the start of the Israel-Hamas war than any other city in Canada, and those demonstrations have escalated recently.

He also announced Thursday that demonstrations on the Avenue Road bridge over Highway 401 will now be prohibited as they pose a threat to public safety and have made many in the surrounding Jewish community feel intimidated.

Demkiw said people who ignore the ban can expect to be arrested "if necessary" and any activities that take place on the bridge will be investigated "with a criminal lens."

2 antisemitic hate crimes reported so far in 2024

Demkiw also provided the board with the latest details on the force's hate crime statistics, saying hate crime calls to Toronto police were down in December.

Demkiw said there were 10 reported hate crimes last month compared to 48 in November — a 48 per cent decrease. The shift is the first to come after the force raised alarm about the sustained spike in calls starting Oct. 7.

He called the recent figures "good news" but warned antisemitic incidents are still a major concern, representing a majority of all hate crimes in 2023. There were 132 total incidents reported compared to 65 in 2022.

This year, there have been two antisemitic hate crimes reported so far, one of which was a suspected arson attack against a Jewish-owned deli store in North York.

To date, the force also received 145 reports from people using the recently launched hate graffiti web form, police said.

"Let me be clear and unequivocal, our commitment to keeping our city's Jewish community safe is unwavering," Demkiw said.

"I will say this once again and as many times as necessary: violence and hate will not be tolerated."

It was the PFLP flag,

Demkiw and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met on Wednesday to discuss the recent and "alarming" increase in antisemitic incidents and what more can be done to keep Jewish Canadians safe. The meeting came after two Toronto councillors asked the federal government for help fighting antisemitism in Toronto.

"As partners, we'll continue to do what is necessary to tackle hatred in all its forms," Trudeau said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

From October to December, the force received an average of 190 hate-related calls, up from the average of 47 for all the months prior in 2023.

Demkiw notes the second highest increase were LGBTQ+ hate crimes, going up from 40 in 2022 to 66 reported in 2023 There was also 35 reported anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab hate crimes last year compared to 12 the year prior, marking it the third highest category.

Between Oct. 7, 2023 and Jan. 10, 2024, the force said its arrested 54 people, resulting in 117 charges related to hate crimes. The most common charges were mischief, assault and uttering threats.

[dogwittaablog]

You opened this can of sardines for me the topic of employed Nolan/what is he gonna do now. Buckle in Buckaroos as I spout some nonsense.

1. He can go work for the NHL (kinda unlikely at this point imo). Despite not being able to play he seems to actually enjoy hockey still. His dad back in his early career had always said that he was a very analytical watcher, replaying parts of games over and over again to figure out what they were doing. I can see him somewhat settling behind a bench as a playmaker, and being a little shit about it. Like making the most annoying but legal plays. I can also see him becoming a bit of an advocate for players and head injuries considering what he's had to go through.

Even if not directly behind the bench or in the NHL there is a possibility for him to work with a smaller team or a more behind the scenes role. It would be private enough for him I feel.

2. Hunting (more likely). Even in pre NHL interviews he constantly brought up his love for the wilderness and hunting and possibly being a hunting guide. This I feel is the most likely possibility. Opening like a little Patrick's hunting guides venture. If I'm being a bit more optimistic and whimsical, an actual hunting store to sell supplies.

This might also mean more social media pat as he promotes himself. He's an advocate for ethical hunting and consuming so I can see him pushing that angle and teaching about how to respect and use the animals.

3. He has a tiktok, "Why the flyers can eat my ass (NHL exposed) Part 1 of 12.

4. Joins Mt. Joy (this is the crack fic one). He's close to the band, can play guitar. Why not? Write a few songs for them, date their pianist (I think that's her role?) Would b cute.

Sorry for rambling, but I do genuinely hope he ends up okay in the end and settles down well after everything he's been through. He doesn't seem like a bad guy and holy fuck has he been put through the wringer. I want him to be okay and succeed in something and not have everything he does be over analyzed by everyone ya know.

(Imma tack this on at the end, I agree at what he was getting with with the mailloux thing cause Trudeau absolutely sucks, but my god man has poor wording choices.)

Hahahaha living for the in detail post! Feel free to ramble I’m all ears.

I think jumping in an NHL job after what he had to go through would be pouring salt on an open wound, for now at least. Realistically it’d be a solid real job to have, tho it’s probably still gonna be way too much attention for him even if it’s behind the scenes. It’d give people too much to talk about. Would be pre sweet if he even took up coaching for a local team, whatever age really.

Please if dude was desperate for money or just to do something I was even thinking how he would probably debate joining his dad in real estate and work for him 😭😭😭😭

Don’t think money is an issue tho, cause he gives me vibes he’s pretty frugal and just living life lmao. Also Manitoba isn’t the most expensive place to live in to what I’m aware of.

Conclusion I really don’t think hes finding a job that’s about $$$ but something he enjoys and what he aligns with, so the hunting and fishing guide is 100% Though he has so many resources to branch out in multiple things.

[sassyfrassboss]

MM being BFFs with the Trudeaus was always so funny to me. The Trudeaus aren't Toronto crowd they are Montreal crowd. Two different worlds it is. One is English Canada crowd and one is French Canada crowd. Also Trudeaus never lived in Toronto at all. They were in Montreal and Ottawa. Again worlds away from Toronto lifestyle. No way she was bffs with Sophie.

Trudeaus are good friends with Mulroneys. So I'm not saying it's not possible for them to have some kind of relationship, but absolutely not bffs. I can't explain the French Canada- English Canada nuances and layers here properly. But the Trudeaus are French Canadians and they don't give their soul over to the Toronto crowd.

It's cool! My co-worker is from Toronto and she explained it all to me since we have an office in Montreal. I also dated a guy from Montreal who once explained Canada to me...although I wasn't paying that much attention because his accent was HOT AS HELL!

I think Meghan could have met anyone at that point and made it out as if they were BFF's and she was the executor of their estate and guardian of their kids...

Girl knows how to spin a web of lies off of a single grain of truth.

[lea-panthera]

Queen Elizabeth II's top ten funniest quotes(in no particular order):

1. "If I wore beige, nobody would know who I am."

2. In the summer of 2013, as speculation over the possible arrival date of the royal baby reached fever pitch, the Queen was asked when she thought the child might arrive. "I hope it arrives soon because I’m going on holiday," was her straight-forward reply.

3. After hearing the Everly Brothers sing their song ‘Cathy’s Clown’, the Queen told her lady-in-waiting: "They sound like two cats being strangled."

4. At the Chelsea Flower Show in 2016, when told by a gardener how lilies of the valley have poisonous traits she is said to have replied: "I’ve been given two bunches this week. Perhaps they want me dead."

5. She was out walking in Scotland once when a passer-by commented that she ‘looked just like the Queen.’ ‘How reassuring,’ she replied.

6. During a trip to the U.S. in 1991, the five foot three monarch found herself dwarfed by the podium at the White House, with only her hat showing. The next day in front of the House of Congress she opened her remarks with: ‘I do hope you can see me today.’

7. Appearing alongside world leaders at a photo call for the G7 in Cornwall in 2021, the Queen picked up on some negativity in the group: ‘Are you supposed to be looking as if you’re enjoying yourselves?’, she quipped.

8. Back in the States in 2007, President George W Bush mistakenly thanked the Queen for helping Americans celebrate their bicentennial in 1776, not 1996. Speaking at a formal dinner two days later, the Queen began by saying: ‘I wondered whether I should start this toast by saying, “When I was here in 1776…”‘

9. She was made to feel her age again during a dinner in Malta in November 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pointed out he was the 12th leader to serve during the Queen’s 63 year reign to which the monarch quipped: ‘Thank you, Mr Prime Minister of Canada, for making me feel so old.’

10. During an argument with her mother, Elizabeth was asked ‘Who do you think you are?’ To which she replied: ‘The Queen, mummy, the Queen.’

Which one's your favorite?

Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/metro.co.uk/2022/09/10/21-of-the-queens-funniest-quotes-from-over-her-reign-15483796/amp/

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Another in my series of posts about these 12-ish hours of comedy I found called: “4 at the Store: Nineties and Noughties Stand-Up Comedy from BBC Radio 4″, where I can’t even decide which bit of that title I like best, it’s all great. But Tumblr won’t let me embed audio into a reblog, so once again I have to start a new one, I have a feeling there will be quite a few of these by the time I’m done.

The individual files are, annoyingly, not all labeled with their original air dates. I’m going through and labeling them as I listen, with the names of the performers and whatever I can work out about the dates. I’ve said in my couple of other posts about this that the comedy is sort of charmingly and/or amusingly and/or painfully/terribly dated, but I have now worked out a new feature of dated comedy: it at least lets me accurate label the files. I’d worked out from some stuff that this one was from December 27, but I’d thought it was December 27, 2000, until I heard this song about the 2001 general election, which nicely confirms the exact year.

Forget those routines about fax machines and old video games - how’s this for a good bit of nostalgia in comedy? Nostalgia for a time when the joke to make about elections was that the Tory leader was so bad that no matter how badly the terrible Labour leader fucked up, he couldn’t lose. Rather the opposite of the more recent overriding view:

He was right, though. They didn’t vote for Iain Duncan Smith to be Prime Minister. They did keep voting him in as a front bench MP and he helped pass some awful stuff under the Cameron administration, but at least he didn’t become Prime Minister. God, can you imagine how fucked up it would be if someone as bad as Iain Duncan Smith had become Prime Minister?

(I realize it might be a bit condescending for me as an outsider to make fun of the state of another country’s politics, but trust me, Canada’s current PM will not survive the next election and our current Leader of the Opposition is as bad as the worst people who’ve led Britain in recent years, so our time will come. Also most of our provinces are already being run by Premiers who are at least that bad, not to mention Trudeau himself is an absolute mess who only looks okay by comparison to those other options, another example of the phenomenon that apparently Mitch Benn wrote a song about and played on Radio Four in 2001.)

[weshipyourride]

2023 UNBOUND Gravel Recap

UNBOUND Gravel, one of the world's premier gravel cycling events, once again drew thousands of riders from around the globe to take on the challenge of a life time this past weekend in Emporia, Kansas. Among them were Bikeflights staff members Kerry Werner and Sunny Singh. With scenic routes and grueling weather, Unbound Gravel 2023 proved to be an unforgettable experience for both participants and spectators alike.

Photo by Dominique Powers

The All Things Gravel expo kicked off the weekend of activities on Thursday and lasted throughout the next day. Cycling industry vendors enjoyed the opportunity to meet riders and talk about their products.

Bikeflights also participated in the expo and met many riders who used our services to ship to Unbound, as well as talked with potential new customers. 

“Working the expo was great!” said Sunny. “It was cool introducing our service to people who haven't used us before. There was some wild weather that we had to deal with but overall it was a great two days working at the expo tent.”

Riders faced intense heat and unexpected rain showers throughout race day on their respective courses, including the iconic 200-mile route, as well as the 350-mile XL, the 100, 50 and 25-mile options. About 10 miles into the longer courses, the road had turned into several miles of hike-a-bike through mostly unrideable mud, something many riders will no doubt remember for years to come!  

With tired legs from working the expo, Kerry and Sunny recovered overnight, then woke up ready to race. 

“That was the most messed up thing I’ve ever subjected myself to!” said Kerry “I settled into a good group, and then the cracks started opening. But I can say without a doubt that I gave it everything.” 

“I just channeled my inner turtle and kept steady, mile after mile,” Sunny said, describing his ride strategy. “Kerry helped me with some nutrition tips and I always felt like I had gas in my tank. The weather was pleasant and the views were straight out of a 2000's-era Windows screensaver. It was rad.”

By the end of the day, Sunny had completed his longest ride to date and his first-ever gravel event, and Kerry rode into 23rd place, putting him in ninth overall and setting him up for a close battle in the Life Time Grand Prix series. Nice work, guys! 

Keegan Swenson and Carolin Schiff won the elite men’s and women’s races, respectively. 

A huge shout out also goes to some some of our amazing Ambassadors who competed, including Maxxis Factory Racing riders Haley Smith and Andrew L’Esperance, Starla Teddergreen, Kyle Trudeau, Enzo Moscarella, Jake Wells and Alexey Vermeulen. 

[dioskourosnews]

Trudeau Threatens Canadians Again: Get Vaxed — Or Who Knows What Might Happen

Published October 31, 2022

video

https://rumble.com/v1qspku-trudeau-threatens-canadians-again-get-vaxed-or-who-knows-what-might-happen.html

source

The Vigilant Fox

"I think one of the things to remember as flu season approaches is people got to get vaccinated, whether it's getting the flu vaccine or getting 'up-to-date' on your COVID shots," said Trudeau.

But then he subtly turns that suggestion into a threat:

"If we're able to get a high enough level of vaccination, we reduce the danger of needing to take other health measures to make sure that we're all safe..."

Sounds like code for mandates and restrictions.

Source: https://twitter.com/riseupandresist/status/1586839923834818560?s=20

dioskourosnews.com

BECAUSE WE LIKE THE TRUTH

[trustranking]

Shimo licent

#Shimo licent series

In one cartoon, Brian Mulroney has a secret fetish for all things American. Her subjects are often long dead, yet they seem like real people, albeit with oversized personalities or embarrassing foibles. Rather than sticking to the facts, she imagines the inner lives of her characters, making them say things that sound modern, says John Martz, chair of the Canadian chapter of the National Cartoonists Society. Then again, if you know these subjects too well you might be irritated by her generous use of artistic licence. And if you’re not a history buff and don’t know, for instance, who Edwin Booth is, you probably won’t get all the jokes. from McDonald’s is a challenge, she says. Making history funny to people who don’t know their Sir John A. Beaton’s work is “delightful, funny and endearing even if I have no idea what in the world this crazy Canuck is referencing.” The otherness makes her “vaguely otherworldly,” says Seattle-based Larry Cruz, who writes reviews on the website, The Webcomic Overlook. Their reactions to (for them) unknown, obscure figures such as Wilfrid Laurier range from bemusement to gratitude for an introduction to a culture and history outside their own. If you’ve seen a Beaton comic, it might have been on the comics pages of the National Post, or perhaps through a link to her website, Although she has thousands of Canadian fans, the readers of her website are mainly American. Also, since she hasn’t yet drawn enough to fill a book, she doesn’t want to become “overwhelmed.” Still finding her feet, Beaton wants to find out more about the industry so she doesn’t get shortchanged. About 10 other agents and publishers have asked her to write a book, but so far she’s refused. In the little over a year she’s been doing the comics, her work has been talked about on the website Wonkette and in Bitch magazine a reviewer for Wired magazine called Beaton’s the “funniest comic that I’ve read in awhile.” Recently Daily Show writer Sam Means approached her to illustrate a children’s book he is writing. Originally from Cape Breton, Beaton is a Toronto-based cartoonist who has fans ranging from award-winning graphic novelists to geeky comic nerds.

#Shimo licent series

Pearson too nice to be prime minister? Was John Diefenbaker a mad, bug-eyed egotist? And was Pierre and Margaret Trudeau’s marital relationship a little like that of father and daughter? These are the sorts of questions 25-year-old Kate Beaton gently probes in her series of comics on Canadian history, which are unusual enough to have sparked the sort of praise most writers spend a lifetime cultivating. Your journey will be stress-free as long as you remember to keep an ear on local traffic news, and leave plenty of time to reach the airport.Was Lester B. There's no more panicking about missed connections: your hire car is ready when you are. With a hire car in Shimo-suwa you don't need to worry about getting to and from the airport. Hiring a car in Shimo-suwa opens up a whole world of possibilities, and takes the stress out of discovering new places. Drive into the countryside for a unique perspective on Shimo-suwa, visit a nearby town without any hassle, or simply enjoy the feeling of the open road beneath your tyres. Once you've seen all the top sights that Shimo-suwa has to offer, you can buckle up and go exploring. Whether you're looking for a cute convertible for a romantic break, a people carrier for a stag do, or a hatchback for a family trip, we'll show you the best available deals and help you to save money. Simply tell us the dates of your trip and we'll show you what cars are available from a range of car hire companies in Shimo-suwa. With Skyscanner you can choose the car you want, at a price you want. With our hotels in Shimo-suwa you can find and compare the best prices for hotels with parking, so both you and your hire car will have somewhere to stay. You don't need to get your head around any complicated public transport systems: simply jump in your hire car and go. You'll have to go through passport control and show the nice people at the car hire desk your driving licence too, of course, but you get the picture. It's as easy as reserving online, stepping off the plane, and driving off. Beat the crowds and make the most of your city break in Shimo-suwa by renting a car.

[atlanticcanada]

12 days after Fiona, more than 17,000 customers in P.E.I., N.S. are still without power

More than 17,000 customers are still without electricity 12 days after post-tropical storm Fiona hit the Maritimes on Sept. 23.

As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, Nova Scotia Power was reporting 2,302 active outages affecting 7,664 customers, with most outages reported in the Truro, Pictou County and Cape Breton areas.

According to the outage map, it is estimated power will not be restored in the Truro and Pictou areas until the weekend. Most estimates in Cape Breton indicate residents should have power back by Friday night.

Nova Scotia Power’s Northeast Emergency Operations Centre Lead Lia MacDonald provided an update to customers Wednesday morning in a video posted to Twitter.

“Please know that we are here and working in your community day and night to restore your power as quickly and safely as we can and we’ll be here until the job is done,” she said. “The damage Fiona has caused is historic. The repairs our crews are facing are complex. In many cases, in fact, the repairs are rebuilds.”

MacDonald also added that many of the customers without power are individual homes that require one or more crews to complete final repairs.

PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

On Prince Edward Island, 9,398 Maritime Electric customers were without power Wednesday morning. The largest concentration of customers is in the Charlottetown area.

The province did not hold a news conference on Tuesday.

In its latest press release, the P.E.I. government said crews are making more “community-level progress” with power restoration across the island.

Five schools on the island remain closed Wednesday. A start date has not been announced for École Évangéline classes to move to to L'Exposition Agricole et le Festival Acadien grounds.

Prince Street Elementary, Queen Charlotte Intermediate, St. Jean Elementary and West Kent schools are also still closed.

The City of Charlottetown says Fire Station #1 on Kent Street is open Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for anyone in need of a comfort centre.

The P.E.I. government has also compiled a list of about 30 reception centres open across the island.

Any resident needing temporary emergency shelter can call 211 or the Shelter Support Line directly at 1-833-220-4722.

Charlottetown residents can also seek temporary disaster shelter at the Murchison Centre.

TRUDEAU ANNOUNCES $300M FIONA RECOVERY FUND

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Tuesday that the federal government is setting up a $300-million "Hurricane Fiona recovery fund" to help Atlantic Canadians rebuild from the deadly and destructive post-tropical storm.

As a result of storm surge and high winds from what’s been cited as one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall in Canada, a number of homes were swept out to sea. Businesses, bridges, airports and other infrastructure were also severely damaged.

"This funding will support projects to repair and rebuild storm-damaged critical infrastructures such as wharves, support the cleanup of fishing gear so that boats and marine life can once again safely navigate these waters, and of course help local businesses and communities rebuild and recover," Trudeau said Tuesday.

The fund will provide "up to an additional $300 million over two years, starting this year," according to the government, with the money to be administered through the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) in co-ordination with the Canada Economic Development Agency for Quebec Regions (CED) as well as other related departments.

The federal government has yet to announce the specifics of how this funding will be allocated, other than the minister responsible for ACOA, Ginette Petitpas Taylor, telling reporters that while there are still some details to be worked out, "the money is going to be rolling out very quickly."

The federal government has previously committed to matching all Fiona-related donations made to the Canadian Red Cross until the end of the month, and has offered some tax deadline relief to those on the East Coast. 

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/UQ4PfdT