Wow, at 4am! Where was this?

I gave Arteta’s lineup a 4, but it’s not really his fault, he basically had zero viable options for a different lineup. It doesn’t really make sense to give his lineup a high rating though: Trossard at #9? Bad. Merino at #8? Not ideal. Rice at #6? Bad.

I also gave his subs a really low rating, but again, not really his fault. At the beginning of the match I was noting just how weak the bench was. 2 left backs, 2 GKs, 3 academy kids who definitely shouldn’t be playing a second in a CL semi final. Basically the only options he had were Nwaneri, White and maybe a left back. His subs had almost no impact, but he hardly had subs who could be expected to change the game. Maybe he could have put on Nwaneri earlier, but who would he have taken off?

Arsenal played badly, but IMO it was largely the result of suspensions and injuries. Partey is really a lynchpin of this team, and taking him out basically ruined midfield. Having to use Rice to cover for him blunted the attack and transition play. Having to move Merino into midfield meant there was point of the spear to focus the attack, nobody to hold up the ball. The spine of the team had scoliosis.

whose

I agree. When the heroes are vigilantes, they’re only acting as vigilantes because either the police are corrupt, or the police are overwhelmed.

I am not a Batman fan, and love to joke that if he and the other Gotham billionaires paid a reasonable tax, Gotham wouldn’t be such a hellscape. But, the Batman theme is that the police are frequently corrupt and always overwhelmed, so a civilian needs to step up and protect the people.

Spiderman’s whole deal is “with great power comes great responsibility.” He puts his life on the line to protect people, and mostly from small-scale disasters like a run-away train.

What this comic gets absolutely wrong is that comic book heroes never try to stop someone from changing the status quo if they’re doing it peacefully. The only ones they try to stop are the ones trying to do it by force.

Also, often, the status quo they’re trying to preserve is “Earth is not being invaded by aliens”, or “this supervillain is not currently on a rampage”.

As for movies about changing the status quo, that’s really what the whole X-Men comic has been about since it came out in the 1960s. The whole theme there is “mutants aren’t accepted by society, but they want to be, so they put their lives on the line to try to prove mutants are good”. Over the years mutants have stood in for jews, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, etc.

Sometimes the X-Men are fighting off supervillains or aliens. But, often they’re fighting off an oppressive government that is trying to wipe them out. So, the status quo they’re trying to change is “the people hate mutants and the government wants to wipe them out”.

I really hate how you can no longer celebrate when a goal has been scored by your team because of VAR.

Yeah. You’d think that terrorism would at least require… terror? The supervillains in superhero movies do make people feel scared (though apparently not scared enough to actually move out of NYC despite it being destroyed on a regular basis). But, the heroes don’t make them scared at all. The superheroes make them feel safer.

Timber is being completely outplayed, and will probably be on a card soon.

Jack Francis, Ismael Kabia, Nathan Butler-Oyedeji, Tommy Setford (a 3rd GK, just in case), 2 extra LBs in Tierney and Zinchenko. It really shows how injuries and suspensions have reduced our options.

I really want a heartwarming story to come out of the ladies inspiring the men before their big match.

Will you be met by many other similarly crazed individuals?

I bet their paramilitary uniforms were better looking than the flag-pants and facepaint the MAGA groups prefer.

He’s a city boy though, would he survive living in Carleton Place? Also, the conservative candidate there only won by 5 percentage points. There’s probably a risk that if he ran there he’d lose again. Same name as his riding, but definitely no longer just suburban.

Sure, phrase it that way if you want. But, the point is, he did something to convince people he was anti-Trump and standing up for Canadians and it worked. Poilievre didn’t do that and lost.

So, now what for Poilievre?

Maybe the knives come out and he’s forced out as Conservative leader. I mean, he had a 20 percentage point lead over the Liberals and lost it. That has to piss them off. All he needed to do is do what Doug Ford did and stand up for Canada and against Trump.

But, if he doesn’t step down, where does he get someone to step down so he can run in a by-election? If he wants to stay near Ottawa, he’ll really have to move somewhere rural. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who actually likes rural people or rural life very much. Or, he could move to Alberta. Lots of safe Conservative ridings in Alberta, some are even in urban areas. But, will they want a guy who is the very model of a carpet-bagger? A politician who has never had a job outside of politics, not just from “Ottawa” meaning the federal government, but who has literally lived in Ottawa(ish) for years?

I hope they ditch him. I’m sure the conservative party could do a lot worse, but there’s also a chance they could find a leader who has actually done something with their lives outside politics, and who has their own ideas, not just reheated culture war crap from Canada’s Shorts and just shouting down anything the Liberals suggest.

No, awesome job!

That’s why I carefully worded it “canada-wide parties”. If it were just big parties by vote, you’d definitely be right. In fact, Bloc is the only big party that came through the last few months with their leader intact.

They’re not an “official party”, but they still got 6% of the vote. But, because of FPTP they only got 2% of the seats. Bloc Quebecois got 6.4% of the vote and 6.7% of the seats. There are still a lot of people out there who would want to vote NDP, but who voted Liberal to achieve “anybody but Conservative”. The plan worked, but I think they’d like some electoral reform.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4jd39g8y1o

I would love to see it be their #1 demand. If they did it, it would probably mean you’d never see another Liberal majority, but I think there’s a good chance that you’d see more left-leaning people elected. It goes against the interests of the Liberal party, but it might be in the interests of many of the things Liberals say they care about.

If it did pass, it would make voting “anybody but Conservative” much easier, which might really hurt the cons, which might cause them to split. That would be good too. Right now the conservatives are a bad alliance of small-government types who want to cut taxes and cut spending, and big-government types who want the government to go after anything they see as “woke” or “DEI”. It would be much healthier if those two could be split from each-other.

On Jan 1st, the 3 major canada-wide parties were:

• Liberal, headed by Justin Trudeau out of Papineau
• Conservative headed by Pierre Poilievre out of Carleton
• NDP headed by Jagmeet Singh out of Burnaby South

On May 1st the 3 major parties will be:

• Liberal, headed by Mark Carney out of Nepean
• Conservative headed by Pierre Poilievre(?) out of ?
• NDP headed by ? out of ?