Black-only swim times, Black-only lounges: The rise of race segregation on Canadian universities: 

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/black-only-swim-times-black-only-lounges-the-rise-of-race-segregation-on-canadian-universities/ar-BB1hzS8z

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Twice a week, the University of Waterloo athletic centre suspends its usual calendar of mid-morning swim lessons, and reserves its 25-yard pool for the exclusive use of a demographic that, in their words, does not have a good “relationship with water.”

“The aim is to get more Black Folx into a space where they haven’t always been welcomed,” reads the official description for the “Black Folx swim,” a 60-minute Black-only pool time. Users can swim lengths, practice diving or sign-up for a lesson. But they — and all the instructors — must be “Black folx.”

“This time is dedicated to building a better relationship with water for the Black community,” reads a bolded statement on the Black Folx Swim webpage.

The University of Waterloo is home to more than 30,000 international students. Many Canadian newcomers lack basic swimming skills and are at an outsized risk of drowning. This is why many lifesaving societies specifically target new Canadians for swim lessons.

But aside from a weekly trans-friendly swim and some scattered women’s only events, the Black Folx Swim is the university’s only demographic-specific swim time, and the only one targeting students of a particular ethnic heritage.

And Waterloo is not alone in this. While the idea of explicitly race-segregated spaces at Canadian universities would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, recent months have seen a wave of Black-only lounges, study spaces and events at Canadian post-secondary institutions.

The University of British Columbia recently cut the ribbon on a Black Student Space featuring showers, lockers and even a nap room.  To gain access, students must apply and affirm that they are one of the following: “Black African descent, African-American, African-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, and Afro-Indigenous.”

Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson, opened a Black Student Lounge in 2022. The space is intended as a shelter from “the harms of institutional racism.” In multiple public statements, TMU has referred to itself as a hotbed of colonialist institutional oppression, and the lounge is intended as a place where students can “heal” and “recharge” from said oppression, and “promote Black flourishing.”

The University of Toronto maintains a distinctive office of Black Student Engagement that curates a series of Black-only frosh and orientation events. While there are university-sanctioned “engagement” programs for Latin American and Southeast Asian students, these are mostly limited to mentorship appointments and workshops.

And it’s not just U of T pursuing Black-only frosh events. As noted in a feature by VICE, as recently as 2015 Canada didn’t feature a single Black-only frosh. But after Ottawa universities debuted BLK Frosh that year, the practice soon became commonplace.

Canadian university campuses have always been home to student societies or clubs whose membership is determined via national or ethnic characteristics.

McGill University, for instance, maintains more than 40 on-campus “culture clubs” targeted at student demographics ranging from Tamil to Moroccans to “North American born Asians.”

But the newly-opened “Black spaces” are different in that their explicit purpose is to demarcate Black-only areas in the interest of providing “inclusive spaces.”

When Simon Fraser University announced plans to build a Black Student Centre, administrators said the project was a direct outgrowth of their adoption of the Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism, a 2021 document signed by 46 Canadian universities.

The charter states that Blacks are underrepresented at Canadian universities due to a latticework of institutional anti-Black racism.

As such, it prescribes keeping close tabs on the ethnic characteristics of students and faculty at Canadian universities, and implementing a number of “deliberative processes” to ensure that a representative number of them are Black.

One of these processes is the construction of “affirming, accessible spaces … that foster Black belonging.”

At TMU, the Black Student Lounge was an outgrowth of a 2020 report known as the Anti-Black Racism Campus Climate Review.

Authors concluded that even after 10 years of concerted anti-racism efforts, the university was still awash in anti-black racism, which the report said was primarily manifest in “intuitive” ways such as “a sense of not belonging” and “lack of representation in the curriculum.”

Among its recommendations were a “dedicated Black student space on campus with the necessary resources allocated to it for Black students to feel safe.”

“Universities have historically been an unsafe place for Black students. The lounge is just one step towards dismantling this harmful reality,” Eboni Morgan, a Black student support facilitator, said upon the space’s launch .

1 hour ago, GoodKn19ht said:

Just for my personal clarification purposes, the original article was referencing corporation enrollment correct? I have seen this conversation shift to high schools and consolidation at that level, and it has become a little convoluted for me.  

Yes, it  was corporation enrollment, not just grades 9-12.

Not exactly a college football topic I know, but I thought this was interesting for those of us who enjoy watching live sports and what that entails regards the multitude of streaming services that are out there:  https://arstechnica.com/culture/2024/02/new-streaming-app-from-fox-disney-wbd-is-about-more-than-sports/

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Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), and Fox plan to launch an app together this fall, they announced Tuesday. The unnamed app will unite the sports offerings of the three media conglomerates, including their reported 85 percent ownership of US sports rights. The app could simplify things for sports fans while signaling a bundled future for streaming services—which could ultimately prove good or bad for subscribers.

The new app will give subscribers access to ESPN+ and various linear channels that show live sports, including ABC, FOX, TNT, TBS, truTV, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, FS1, FS2, SECN, ACCN, and BTN. The companies' announcement promised access to "thousands of events" through the app, including from the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, and NHL, as well as PGA, Wimbledon, UFC, and Formula 1 events, the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, the FIFA World Cup, and college sports. An anonymous person "familiar with the matter" told Variety that the app won't make original content.

People will be able to bundle the sports app with Disney-owned streaming services Disney+ and Hulu, as well as with WBD's Max streaming app. The upcoming app will particularly target "those outside of the traditional pay TV bundle," the announcement said.

The companies announced that they “have reached an understanding on principal terms to form a new Joint Venture (JV) to build an innovative new platform to house a compelling streaming sports service.” Each company will own a third of the JV and license their content non-exclusively. The app's creation is still "subject to the negotiation of definitive agreements amongst the parties.”

The companies said they'd share the price and other details for the app "at a later date." An anonymous person "familiar with current discussions" claimed to Variety that the app will likely cost more than $20 -$40 per month but less than $75-$80. Paolo Pescatore, an analyst at the UK's PP Foresight, is expecting around $50 per month, "with promos and discounts," per The Hollywood Reporter.

As streaming got bigger, watching sports got harder

News of the app brings the same type of trepidation that typically comes with mega corporations embarking in business together like this. But the app could also address a pain point impacting many streaming subscribers, which is that live sports have become harder to follow. With streaming services increasingly acquiring rights to sporting events, keeping up with your favorite team can feel like a chase.

For example, in 2019, after a yearslong hiatus from watching Yankees games, I heard the team made it to the playoffs. I didn't have any TV-related subscriptions: I didn't have cable or an account with any streaming services at the time (password sharing was alive and well then). Yet, that night I was easily able to watch the Yankees beat the Astros. After work, I bought a cheap antenna from RadioShack and watched the game broadcast on my local Fox affiliate. With my Yankees interest rejuvenated, I used that same sub-$20 antenna in 2020 to access a couple of cable channels (primarily the Yankees-owned YES) to watch pretty much every game in that season that I wanted.

Jump to the 2023 season, and accessing the bulk of Yankees games meant subscribing to numerous streaming services: Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, and NBCUniversal's Peacock. And my antenna, believe it or not, no longer got me access to any live Yankees games.

A unified sports app would help address such struggles, especially for people who watch a lot of sports. It also comes as streaming services are more aggressively seeking rights to sporting events (see: Netflix spending $5 billion on WWE Raw) and as media outlets like The Information report that sporting entities, like the NBA, are looking to increase the amount of revenue received from TV channels. A team effort like the one we're seeing from Fox, WBD, and Disney could help companies manage increasing licensing costs alongside declining revenue from traditional TV.

Live sporting events are one of the last things preventing people from cutting the cord. While people are rapidly moving from things like antennas and cable subscriptions, there's still interest in accessing live TV, as demonstrated by YouTube TV announcing this week that it has surpassed 8 million subscribers; it's the only cable TV service actually growing. The new WBD-Disney-Fox app could pave the way for evolving sports-viewing in an undoubtedly streaming future.

This doesn’t solve all the problems

There are many uncertainties around the newly announced sports app. As noted by the announcement, the app isn't finalized, and plans could change. But based on what we know so far, there are reasons to worry that there will still be confusion for streamers after the app launches.

For one, this doesn't signal the end of new streaming apps. Disney still plans to make a dedicated app for streaming ESPN, The Information reported this week. Variety reported that companies like Paramount Global and Comcast weren't contacted for this deal because WBD, Fox, and Disney "control approximately 85% of the US sports rights market" and thought that "bringing in more partners would make the structure unwieldy and make the price of a subscription too high." There have been no reports of this yet, but it's a possibility that companies left out of the deal could concoct their own subscription-based response.

Also unclear at this stage is the impact that heightened focus on bundling streaming services will have on customers. For example, the upcoming sports app bundles various media giants' offerings, and the app can be bundled with other apps owned by the upcoming app's owners. That could be convenient; it could also feel bloated and confusing.

As companies seek to bundle their services with other streaming services and subscriptions, like cell phone service, customers stand the risk of ending up back in a cable-like conundrum centered on complicated plans that make it hard to understand how much money you’re wasting on stuff you don’t actually watch, have confusing payment structures, and are hard to get out of.

It's a pivotal time as the shift to streaming continues relentlessly. Live sports is one of the last pieces of the puzzle for streaming services to figure out. Of course, there's a chance that Big Media will mess it up. But there's also still hope that streaming can ultimately make sports more accessible and simple. But if successful, the new WBD-Disney-Fox app could help finally push traditional TV over the edge, making my TV antenna more useless than it already is.

Personally I'm skeptical, but we'll have to wait and see.

The Arni's chain of restaurants started in Lafayette as Pizza King restaurants, and their style of pizza is definitely the same as PK:  https://meetyouatarnis.com/our-story/

Founder of Pizza King dies, leaving behind an Indiana legacy

https://www.jconline.com/story/news/local/2024/02/03/wendell-swartz-founder-of-pizza-king-dies-leaving-behind-an-indiana-legacy/72454120007/?fbclid=IwAR0-TDr2klsB_hzlbR0WqUNLtLmF47XkUqTI6ZkaHYrGoo_eFSm0VBoLeAU_aem_AaHhPM7RTM0kQFtOi9_3PJ4a_9WzHdCyU8gND4e0X2jbzGDhC51mnsRVcTYK-sllk-w#ls6k9wuboht0k3lsge

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LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Wendell Swartz, founder of Pizza King and creator of an Indiana tradition, died on Jan. 24 "after a long and colorful life of nearly 99 years," according to his obituary.

Born on May 26,1925, Swartz was a World War II veteran, trained as a tail gunner on a B-24 bomber in the Central Europe theater, flying more than 30 missions, his obituary described. He was honorably discharged in October 1945, receiving 4 Bronze Stars.

Before founding the Indiana legacy to be known as "Pizza King," Swartz earned a degree from Purdue University in 1952 and was a soloist for the Purdue Glee Club, according to his obituary. His love for music led Swartz to forming his own traveling dance band, singing on daytime TV, his obituary said, with a winning appearance on the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts.

Upon returning to the Lafayette area, Swartz and his wife, Barbara, opened the first Pizza King restaurant in 1956 on South Street near the Mar Jean Village, which no longer stands. The success of Swartz's first store led to the founding of Pizza King of Indiana, Inc., with the family's second store opening in Muncie just sixth months later.

"Timing was good and the product even better," Swartz's obituary said of his decision to sell the pizza making business in 1966. In the company's sale to bookkeeper, Don Schutz, the company's stores were divvied up between the two businessmen and their families, leading to the two Indiana Pizza King companies and logos Hoosiers are familiar with today.

Moving his family to Key Biscayne, Florida, after the sale of his Indiana Pizza Kings, Swartz decided to come out of semiretirement, his obituary said, when he decided to open a Pizza King in the sunshine state, which he would later rename "Sir Pizza" in 1969. According to his obituary, Sir Pizza became and is today an "institution" on Key Biscayne, like Swartz created in Indiana, still operating after 55 years, now under the ownership of Swartz's son, Barry.

Swartz will be laid to rest next to his wife, Barbara, in the Mariner Sands Memorial Garden in Stuart, Florida, according to his obituary.

Truly an Indiana Icon.  Many of my relatives who do not live in Indiana love to have a Pizza King pizza when they come and visit.

https://deadline.com/2024/02/carl-weathers-dead-1235812684/

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Carl Weathers, who starred as Apollo Creed in the first four Rocky films and appeared in Predator, The Mandalorian, Happy Gilmore, Action Jackson and dozens of other films and TV shows, died Tuesday, his family announced. He was 76.

“We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of Carl Weathers,” his family said in a statement. “He died peacefully in his sleep on Thursday, February 1st, 2024. … Carl was an exceptional human being who lived an extraordinary life. Through his contributions to film, television, the arts and sports, he has left an indelible mark and is recognized worldwide and across generations. He was a beloved brother, father, grandfather, partner, and friend.”

A sad day.  Mr. Weathers was truly an American Icon.  He will be missed.

He Was Arrested for Making a Joke on Facebook. A Jury Just Awarded Him $205,000 in Damages.

https://reason.com/2024/02/01/he-was-arrested-for-making-a-joke-on-facebook-a-jury-just-awarded-him-205000-in-damages/

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On a Friday in March 2020, a dozen or so sheriff's deputies wearing bulletproof vests descended upon Waylon Bailey's garage at his home in Forest Hill, Louisiana, with their guns drawn, ordered him onto his knees with his hands "on your fucking head," and arrested him for a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The SWAT-style raid was provoked by a Facebook post in which Bailey had made a zombie-themed joke about COVID-19. Recognizing the harm inflicted by that flagrantly unconstitutional arrest, a federal jury last week awarded Bailey $205,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.

"I feel vindicated that the jury agreed that my post was satire and that no reasonable police officer should have arrested me for my speech," Bailey said in a press release from the Institute for Justice, which helped represent him in his lawsuit against the Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office and Detective Randell Iles, who led the investigation that tarred Bailey as a terrorist based on constitutionally protected speech. "This verdict is a clear signal that the government can't just arrest someone because the officers didn't like what they said."

On March 20, 2020, four days after several California counties issued the nation's first "stay-at-home" orders in response to an emerging pandemic, Bailey let off some steam with a Facebook post that alluded to the Brad Pitt movie World War Z. "RAPIDES PARISH SHERIFFS OFFICE HAVE ISSUED THE ORDER," he wrote, that "IF DEPUTIES COME INTO CONTACT WITH 'THE INFECTED,'" they should "SHOOT ON SIGHT." He added: "Lord have mercy on us all. #Covid9teen #weneedyoubradpitt."

The Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office snapped into action, assigning Iles to investigate what he perceived as "an attempt to get someone hurt." According to a local press report, the authorities were alarmed by "a social media post that promoted false information related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic." In response, "detectives immediately initiated an investigation," and as a result, Bailey, then 27, was "arrested for terrorism."

Another news story reported that Bailey "was booked into the Rapides Parish Detention Center on one count of terrorizing." William Earl Hilton, the sheriff at the time, explained why, saying he wanted to "impress upon everyone that we are all in this together, as well as remind everyone that communicating false information to alarm or cause other serious disruptions to the general public will not be tolerated."

Bailey's joke was deemed to pose such a grave and imminent threat that Iles did not bother to obtain an arrest warrant before nabbing him, just a few hours after Bailey's facetious appeal to Brad Pitt. But in a probable cause affidavit that Iles completed after the arrest, the detective claimed that Bailey had violated a state law against "terrorizing," defined as "the intentional communication of information that the commission of a crime of violence is imminent or in progress or that a circumstance dangerous to human life exists or is about to exist, with the intent of causing members of the general public to be in sustained fear for their safety; or causing evacuation of a building, a public structure, or a facility of transportation; or causing other serious disruption to the general public."

 

Bailey was apologetic when the sheriff's deputies confronted him, saying he had "no ill will towards the Sheriff's Office" and "only meant it as a joke." He agreed to delete the offending post after Iles said he otherwise would ask Facebook to take it down. But that was not good enough for Iles, who hauled Bailey off to jail anyway.

For very good legal reasons, the Rapides Parish District Attorney's Office declined to prosecute Bailey. But when Bailey sued Iles for violating his constitutional rights and making a false arrest, U.S. District Judge David C. Joseph dismissed his claims with prejudice, concluding that his joke was not covered by the First Amendment, that the arrest was based on probable cause, and that Iles was protected by qualified immunity.

That doctrine allows civil rights claims against government officials only when their alleged misconduct violated "clearly established" law. Joseph thought arresting someone for a Facebook gag did not meet that test. "Publishing misinformation during the very early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and [a] time of national crisis," he averred, "was remarkably similar in nature to falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre."

That was a reference to Schenck v. United States, a 1919 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Espionage Act convictions of two socialists who had distributed anti-draft leaflets during World War I. Writing for the Court, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."

Holmes' much-abused analogy, which had nothing to do with the facts of the case, was not legally binding. And in the 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court modified the "clear and present danger" test it had applied in Schenck—a point that Joseph somehow overlooked. Under Brandenburg, even advocacy of criminal conduct is constitutionally protected unless it is "directed" at inciting "imminent lawless action" and "likely" to do so—an exception to the First Amendment that plainly did not cover Bailey's joke.

With help from the Institute for Justice, Bailey asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to overrule Joseph, which it did last August. Writing for a unanimous 5th Circuit panel, Judge Dana M. Douglas said Joseph "applied the wrong legal standard," ignoring the Brandenburg test in favor of the Supreme Court's earlier, less speech-friendly approach.

"At most, Bailey 'advocated' that people share his post by writing 'SHARE SHARE
SHARE,'" Douglas wrote. "But his post did not advocate 'lawless' and 'imminent' action, nor was it 'likely' to produce such action. The post did not direct any person or group to take any unlawful action immediately or in the near future, nobody took any such actions because of the post, and no such actions were likely to result because the post was clearly intended to be a joke. Nor did Bailey have the requisite intent to incite; at worst, his post was a joke in poor taste, but it cannot be read as intentionally directed to incitement."

Another possibly relevant exception to the First Amendment was the one for "true threats," defined as "statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals." In a deposition, Iles claimed to view Bailey's post as threatening because it was "meant to get police officers hurt." The joke was especially dangerous, he said, because there were "a lot of protests at the time in reference to law enforcement."

As Douglas noted, that claim was patently implausible "because Bailey was arrested in March 2020, while widespread protests concerning law enforcement did not begin until after George Floyd's murder in May 2020." In any case, Bailey's joke clearly did not amount to a true threat.

"On its face, Bailey's post is not a threat," Douglas writes. "But to the extent it could
possibly be considered a 'threat' directed to either the public—that RPSO deputies would shoot them if they were 'infected'—or to RPSO deputies—that the 'infected' would shoot back—it was not a 'true threat' based on context because it lacked believability and was not serious, as evidenced clearly by calls for rescue by Brad Pitt. For the same reason, Bailey did not have the requisite intent to make a 'true threat.'"

Furthermore, the 5th Circuit held, Iles should have known that Bailey's post was protected speech. "Based on decades of Supreme Court precedent," Douglas said, "it was clearly established that Bailey's Facebook post did not fit within one of the narrow categories of unprotected speech, like incitement or true threats." Iles therefore could not find refuge in qualified immunity.

The appeals court rejected Iles' claim that he had probable cause to arrest Bailey, whose conduct clearly did not fit the elements of the crime with which he was charged. "Iles is not entitled to qualified immunity," Douglas wrote, "because no reasonable officer could have found probable cause to arrest Bailey for violating the Louisiana terrorizing statute in light of the facts, the text of the statute, and the state case law interpreting it."

The 5th Circuit also thought Bailey plausibly claimed that Iles had retaliated against him for exercising his First Amendment rights. As Douglas noted, "Iles admitted that he arrested Bailey at least in part because of the content of his Facebook post, rather than for some other conduct." And it was clear that Bailey's speech was chilled, since he agreed to delete the post after Iles told him the sheriff's office otherwise "would contact Facebook to remove it."

That decision did not assure Bailey of victory. It merely gave him the opportunity to persuade a jury that Iles had violated his First Amendment rights and the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of "unreasonable searches and seizures." The 5th Circuit said he also could pursue a state claim based on false arrest.

Last week's verdict against Iles and the sheriff's office validated all of those claims. "It is telling that it took less than two hours for a jury of Mr. Bailey's peers in Western Louisiana to rule in his favor on all issues," said Andrew Bizer, Bailey's trial attorney. "The jury clearly understood that the Facebook post was constitutionally protected speech. The jury's award of significant damages shows that they understood how Mr. Bailey's world was turned upside down when the police wrongly branded him a terrorist."

Institute for Justice attorney Ben Field noted that "our First Amendment rights aren't worth anything if courts won't hold the government responsible for violating them." Bailey's case, he said, "now stands as a warning for government officials and as a precedent that others can use to defend their rights."

The First Amendment wins in the end. 

https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2024/01/31/indiana-rep-jim-lucas-republican-gun-laws-statehouse-general-assembly-2024-seymour/72422259007/

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An Indiana lawmaker flashed a holstered handgun during a conversation Tuesday with students who were visiting the Statehouse seeking legislative action to curb gun violence.

The moment was caught on video by a student and shared on X, formerly Twitter. It was first reported by The Statehouse File, which operates out of Franklin College's Pulliam School of Journalism

Indiana state Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour, can be seen in the video having a conversation about firearms with students from the Burris Laboratory School in Muncie, The Statehouse File reports. A student asks Lucas if he carries a gun, which prompts the representative to open his blazer.

"I'm carrying one right now," Lucas said.

"Nothing about that makes me feel safe," replied the student.

A longer video of the 10-minute exchange can be found at TheStateHouseFile.com.

On Tuesday, Muncie high school students affiliated with Students Demand Action, a national organization committed to ending gun violence, encountered Lucas in an elevator at the Statehouse. The representative struck up a conversation with the students, which resulted in a discussion about gun laws and school shootings, according to The Statehouse File.

 

Makynna Fivecoats, a 17-year-old student at Burris Laboratory School, recorded the exchange between Lucas, the students and a parent chaperone, Alison Case, The Statehouse File reports. During their discussion, Lucas flashed his gun to the teenagers.

“My heart sank to my stomach,” Fivecoats later told The Statehouse File. “I genuinely felt very unsafe in that moment. And I really just wanted the conversation to kind of end after that.”

A student next told Lucas that people carrying firearms do not make them feel safe but rather threatened, prompting the following exchange:

"OK, those are feelings," Lucas responded. "I'm talking facts."

"That's what this is about; this is about feelings," replied the student.

"People who want to kill you don't care about your feelings," Lucas said.

 

Lawmakers are allowed to carry guns at the Statehouse, and, since the passing of a 2017 Senate bill, their staff members have that right, too.

The bill, which Lucas helped sponsor, was introduced to allow employees of the Senate and House, as well as those who work for the Legislative Services Agency, to be armed partially out of consideration to the late hours many of them work during the annual legislative session when armed law enforcement has gone for the day.

Elected in 2012, Lucas represents House District 69 in southern Indiana. The district includes portions of Bartholomew, Jackson, Washington and Scott counties. Lucas serves on Veterans Affairs and Public Safety committee, Local Government committee and the committee for Public Policy.

Last year, Lucas avoided jail time after pleading guilty to operating a vehicle while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a crash. He was arrested after crashing his vehicle at State Road 11 and Interstate 65 just north of Seymour around midnight, according to the Indiana State Police.

Lucas later apologized for his behavior on WIBC's The Hammer and Nigel Show. 

This isn't the first time Lucas' behavior has stirred controversy around firearms and students.

During the 2020 legislative session, he told a group of Columbus students that gun control laws wouldn't prevent school shootings and that training teachers to use firearms can make schools safer, according to the Columbus Republic. A federal court has ruled “police do not have a duty to protect children while they are being slaughtered,” he said, the newspaper reported at the time.

 

“Do you believe that more guns that are being carried, including in this room, would make my classmates and I safer?” a 12-year-old student asked.

Lucas said, “Absolutely,” then told the audience of almost 60 at a Columbus location: “I’m carrying right now. Does that scare anybody?”

According to the Republic, around 20 people — roughly a third of the room — raised their hands to signal that it did scare them. Others said “yes,” and a few people said “no.”

 

Of course certain members of the media and punditry are going ballistic over this.   Who here believes Mr. Lucas did something wrong?

On 1/31/2024 at 11:22 AM, swordfish said:

A "Black National Anthem"?  Didn't know it was a real thing?  OK - What happens if someone takes a knee?

 

Instant "cancellation" and virulent calls of racism.

23 hours ago, Bobref said:

 I also understand the difference in compensation between the No. 1 team and the No. 2 is pretty substantial.

Reportedly 7 million dollars: https://deadspin.com/greg-olsen-tom-brady-fox-sports-nfl-1851215797

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Greg Olsen joined the Dan Patrick Show yesterday, and he was pretty honest about not feeling great that Tom Brady is going to bump him from the No. 1 slot on Fox broadcasts of the NFL. There’s also the little nugget that slotting down the No. 2 team is going to cost Olsen some $7 million a year. Hard to take lying down.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Brady is acceptable or better at the job. On the rare occasions he’s been left to just speak about the ins and outs of the game he’s pretty good at spelling things out clearly. That doesn’t mean he needs to be automatic in the role, or why Fox thinks they need the biggest name possible when their ratings are already through the roof and pay him a ridiculous amount of money to do so when Olsen is already doing the job as well as possible.

 

This has become something of an arms race between the networks, though it’s unclear why. People are going to tune into the NFL if Statler and Waldorf were doing the game (and that’s an experiment worth trying). But once CBS got the recently retired Tony Romo, and everyone seemed to ignore how awful he was at the job, and then ESPN chased down Buck and Aikman, and Amazon had to have Al Michaels, everyone’s gotta have a toy. Olsen is merely good at the job, really good, but that doesn’t move the needle, even if that needle only exists in Fox executives’ heads.

 

Olsen is certainly getting screwed, and he’s far better at the job than Romo and likely to be better than Brady. Like many people, he’s getting beaten out by someone with greater name recognition and that’s it simply for the sake of it. But hey, that’s showbiz. 

Mr. Romo truly is awful in the broadcast booth.  I don't know how a consummate pro like Jim Nantz stands him.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10107309-tom-brady-to-replace-greg-olsen-as-foxs-no-1-game-analyst-for-2024-nfl-season

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Tom Brady will officially step into the broadcasting booth in 2024, but he will be replacing a fan-favorite.

Per Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports, Brady confirmed he will join Fox as the network's lead NFL game analyst for the 2024 season. Former tight end Greg Olsen, who excelled in the role this season, will drop down to the No. 2 crew.

Brady will be working alongside Fox's No. 1 play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt. The expectation is that Olsen will call games with Joe Davis.

"I believe I can provide a pretty unique perspective that I think a lot of people will really like. It's going to be a lot of hard work. It's going to be a lot of fun," Brady told McCarthy. "It's always about challenging yourself to grow in different areas. And this is certainly one way that I'm doing it."

The legendary quarterback signed a 10-year, $375 million contract with Fox in May 2022, but there was a lack of clarity as to when he would be ready to join the network as its top color commentator. He took a "gap year" after his retirement to prepare for the position.

A crappy deal for Mr. Olsen, I kind of like him in the broadcast booth.    But a big break for Tom, he was struggling to make ends meet there for a bit. *sarcasm*

Portland Requires Homeowners Get Permits To Remove Trees Knocked on Their Homes by Winter Storm: https://reason.com/2024/01/30/portland-requires-homeowners-get-permits-to-remove-trees-knocked-on-their-homes-by-winter-storm/

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If you need more evidence that America has become a "permission-slip" society, look no further than the City of Portland, Oregon, requiring homeowners to get permits to remove trees that've fallen on their houses during recent winter storms.

Portland alt-weekly Willamette Week published a story last week about Joel and Sarah Bonds, who had a large Douglas Fir in the backyard squash their house after it became weighed down with ice. The tree barely missed the Bonds' young daughter and cat.

As it turns out, the couple were not unaware of the danger posed by the tree. In 2021, they'd applied for a necessary city permit to cut down the tree and another in their backyard. The city's Urban Forestry division turned them down, citing the trees' apparent health and the damage their removal would do to the "neighborhood character."

That decision rankles the Bonds now. Making them even more mad is the fact that the city is requiring them to obtain a $100 retroactive removal permit for the one tree that fell on their house and plant a new one in its place at their own expense.

A Forestry Department employee also advised them to hire an arborist to chop down the second, still-standing tree, but that they should take care to document the work in case they'd need to apply for another removal permit. According to the Willamette Week story, the couple could risk daily $1,000 fines for removing the tree without a permit.

The Bonds aren't the only homeowners being required to get retroactive removal permits for trees knocked down by the weather. This fact has provoked local outrage and calls for a change in policy.

A recent Oregonian editorial argues that the city should suspend the need to get retroactive removal permits for weather-downed trees, noting that neighboring cities in the area are not requiring such permits. One lawyer who spoke to the paper argued that the city code doesn't obviously apply to trees felled by bad weather.

The city maintains that the removal permits are required by the city code and that city council action is needed to waive those permitting requirements.

The whole episode is an illustration of how property rights have been turned on their head in America's cities. The city regulates tree removal to protect surrounding property owners' interest in the shade and character of the neighborhood. Homeowners' interests in doing what they please on their land are of secondary concern, even though they have to bear all costs and liabilities associated with keeping these trees on their properties.

Complete bullshit.  It's clear in Portland home "owners" don't really own anything.

Something special is happening with Indiana State basketball, and Terre Haute is in love.

https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/columnists/gregg-doyel/2024/01/27/indiana-state-basketball-beats-bradley-continues-mvc-surge-under-coach-josh-schertz-robbie-avila/72303003007/

Quote

TERRE HAUTE – The game is over and nobody is leaving because something special has just happened here — because something special is happening here. Indiana State basketball just happened, all over Bradley. Indiana State basketball is happening all over the Missouri Valley Conference, and don’t be surprised if Indiana State basketball happens to somebody in the 2024 NCAA tournament.

Right now, Robbie Avila and Jayson Kent and Ryan Conwell are celebrating this 95-86 victory against Bradley on Saturday evening with a slow tour around the Hulman Center, slapping palms with fans on the front row and waving to fans higher up the recently remodeled basketball arena that was home to Larry Bird.

Nobody’s leaving because this is too much fun at the Hulman Center, where the Sycamores are running an NBA offense with speed, skill and explosion. The team has some imperfections, depth being one of them — the starting five played the entire second half, and would’ve played the entire overtime had one not fouled out — but Indiana State is the kind of team, all that shooting and guard play and coaching, you won’t want your favorite team to see at the NCAA tournament.

....

Yeah, it's special until some major program snatches up Josh Schertz.  Enjoy it for the short period it lasts.

2 hours ago, Impartial_Observer said:

Everyone knows your position, you don’t need to remind us every time someone makes a post in this thread, that’s kinda trolling. 

This particular thread had only existed since 1/23/24 at 10:58am.  And I posted my position exactly once in it so far. 

Not trolling.

21 hours ago, Rodney said:

im bored

the hell have you people been up to?

 

 

Going to watch Indiana's Game:  High School Basketball.  Nothing like a warm gym on a cold Friday or Saturday night in January.

19 hours ago, Staxawax said:

So as part of the latest expansion of the soon to be 3,000 student HS Avon has added a state of the art training and weight lifting facility.  Folks around here think it will be a game changer for the football program.

 

Thoughts?

What valley is being defended by Avon H.S.?

19 hours ago, btownqbcoach1 said:

Mute button works well for trolls 

Sorry that you think individual who disagree with you are trolls.   Navel gazing must be one of your primary activities.

1 hour ago, Cloudy14 said:

@Muda69 While he doesn't say it explicitly, here are a couple of quotes below that appear to encourage it. I see the quote at the bottom of the article stating it is a local matter, but he still qualifies it with the "unpleasant" quote.  It's also hard to deny the entire tone of the article is set toward consolidation.  

So, if you have low educational attainment that’s keeping your local economy from growing, or if you face a local nursing shortage, it is time to connect the dots to local school corporations.

Still, our research, and that of many scholars before us tells a clear story. Very small school corporations, with roughly 2,000 or fewer students, are shortchanging the educational outcomes of a substantial share of their students.

Yes, I believe Mr. Hick's tone is set toward consolidation.   But he also states that such consolidation should come from the people, and not government coercion.  A stance I support.

1 hour ago, Coach_K said:

I understand your position and I am not looking for a gotcha moment here, but Do you think there are any advantages to having artificial surfaces?

No.

5 hours ago, swordfish said:

https://nypost.com/2024/01/23/news/transgender-man-found-to-be-pregnant-during-sex-change/

A transgender man who underwent a mastectomy while transitioning in Italy was found to be five months pregnant — joining a rare group of so-called “seahorse dads.”

The parent-to-be, referred to only as “Marco” in Italian media, already had a breast removal op and was preparing to get rid of the uterus when the pregnancy was discovered at a hospital in Rome, the Telegraph reported.

“Having discovered the pregnancy, the first thing to do is to suspend [hormone] therapy immediately,” Dr. Giulia Senofonte, an endocrinologist, told La Repubblica, the news outlet that first reported it.

The expert on gender therapy warned that the fetus could be at risk.

“If the halting of the therapy is not immediate, there could be consequences, especially in the first trimester of pregnancy, which is an important time for the development of the baby’s organs,” Senofonte said.

“It’s difficult to talk about it in abstract terms, but it all depends on the timing of the suspension of the dosages of testosterone that the person is taking,” she added.The Italian transgender man was in the process of transitioning when found to be five months pregnant.Ermolaev Alexandr – stock.adobe.com

High levels of male and female hormones in the parent’s body carry cardiological risk because of possible blood pressure and coagulation problems, Senofonte said, according to the Times of London.

“Hormone therapy blocks the menstrual cycle but it is not a contraceptive. The person can continue to ovulate and, consequently, runs the risk of pregnancy,” she said.

“People dealing with transition usually recommend contraceptive pills that can be used during hormone therapy,” the expert added.

Marco, who is expected to go through with the pregnancy, will be the child’s biological mom but will be registered legally as the dad, according to La Repubblica.

The unusual case — believed to be the first of its kind in Italy — makes him a member of a tiny group of people known as “seahorse dads,” transgender men who carry babies, the Telegraph reported.

The term is derived from the fact that among seahorses, the males carry and give birth to their young.

Italian law permits abortion after 90 days only in the case of serious fetal defects or a significant health risk for the mother — but psychological stress from the unusual maternity could justify a therapeutic abortion, said Matilde Vigneri, a consultant at a gender dysphoria clinic in Palermo.

“If Marco’s pregnancy goes ahead, Marco will find himself to be both a biological mother and legal father,” she said, the Times of London reported.

“It will be a shock. Here same-sex families are still without rights, just imagine a child born in such special circumstances,” Vigneri said.

Toni Brandi, president of Pro Vita e Famiglia, a conservative Catholic foundation, said he hoped Marco would decide to halt his therapy permanently.

“The gender fluidity theory is total madness. It’s against science and against nature,” Brandi said. “This case is a challenge for gender theories because it shows a woman is a woman.

“If I perceive myself to be a woman tomorrow, it doesn’t make me capable of bearing a child,” he added.

Several transgender males have given birth in the US, but the case is believed to be unprecedented in Italy.

So many levels of craziness in this story.....

1)  Only a Female (or woman) can become pregnant.  (Fact)  Referring to this person as a "pregnant dad" is false or pretend.

2)  Why not have an abortion? - Because Italy (like most of the rest of the world) sets limits on abortion (in Italy, not 90 days unless extreme health risks)......Wait, I thought only the US was abortion intolerant.

3)  After birth and after transition, this person will be both a biological mother AND a legal father.......

Literally cannot wrap my head around this one except to say - crazy....

So a woman got pregnant.    

And water is wet.

22 hours ago, JustRules said:

Second, the crew he's working with in the playoffs is different than the crew he's working with in the regular season. 

What?  I've been told on this very forum that this kind of thing is anathema, working with different crews.  Blasphemy!

56 minutes ago, First_Backer_Inside said:

If less than 2,000 students in 162 of the 290 schools in our state is what makes you feel unpleasant and keeps you up at night, I'd love to have your life.

Where did I say such facts keep me up at night?  Anyway, I assure you that they do not.

17 minutes ago, Cloudy14 said:

  I think my main point is that I would caution consolidation based on aggregate data and leave this up to the communities where the children and their parents live.

And where has Mr. Hicks said anything different?

41 minutes ago, Impartial_Observer said:

I believe every public school board in the state must face voters every four years, so……I’m guessing they don’t really give a shit what you think Muda. 

I'll never vote for a government school board candidate who champions artificial surfaces for football fields, or for most any outdoor extracurricular activity.