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jujumin-translates · 9 months ago

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★ Main Story | Act 13 - Budding Spring | Chapter 6 - Current Location

Hisoka: …But this is just the pre-thing.

Sakyo: Right. This doesn’t affect the final verdict. It’s only a temporary poll.

Kazunari: Exactly! Aah, we got way too worked up!

Taichi: If we do our best during the real thing, we’ll totally be able to make up for it, right!?

Misumi: We still have a whole year~. Let’s do our best~!

Yuki: …Still, the fact is that our votes didn’t go up with there being so many other troupes competing.

Chikage: Taking a quick look at the rankings, you can really see that the influence of well-known celebrities and influencers really gave them a strong start.

Chikage: I’d say that this was an unfair fight, given the conditions were that only social media voting would count for this.

Sakyo: Even so, SNS Votes are still part of the main competition, so I don’t think we can necessarily say the playing field is going to change drastically.

Sakyo: If we’re currently seventieth, I doubt we’ll be able to move up to the top ten just in the first quarter…

Izumi: Then what are we going to do…?

Itaru: Considering the Newborn Fleur Award only just dropped, it’s not like we’ve got any wikis to browse for strats…

Itaru: And we still don’t have a clue how much of an impact Theater Votes are going to have.

Homare: All we know for now is that… it’s of the utmost importance that we move up the ranks in each of the four rounds of voting between the first and fourth quarters.

Omi: We have four total chances, so we have to be sure to take them all.

Azuma: We don’t have to jump up the rankings all in one go, we just need to gradually make our way up to at least tenth place.

Tsuzuru: Four rounds, huh… should we do performances that’ll stand out and be talked about as much as possible?

Sakyo: No, wouldn’t it be better to stick with keeping each troupe’s performance in MANKAI Company’s style, as opposed to doing something unconventional?

Tasuku: That’s true, the most important thing is making sure that the fans who usually come to our theater are satisfied.

Tsumugi: I think prioritizing getting Theater Votes is the way to go. Each one of those counts for one more point than the SNS Votes do.

Tenma: All we’ve got to do is continue on like we’ve been doing and give the audience the best performances we can…

Masumi: We don’t need to change what we’ve been doing.

Tsumugi: Right. We just need to keep putting on good plays. Just like we always have.

Misumi: Yeah, yeah! None of it matters if all you care about is the rankings~!

Muku: You’re right… I have to do what I can.

Juza: Yea. We’ve been steadily gainin’ experience and growin’ as actors. Even if it’s kinda crude, ‘s’all we can do.

Banri: So that means we’ll just be doin’ our usual performances, right?

Homare: For our usual performances, Spring Troupe’s performance is up next, correct?

Tsuzuru: Kinda nervous having us start out like this… If we screw up here…

Itaru: It’s a little terrifying to think about how we’ll be affecting things in the long run.

Citron: There is no need to worry! We just have to put on a Spring Troupe play like we always do!

Sakuya: Yeah. We were like this during our first performance, but if we hadn’t pushed on, we never would’ve been able to connect with Summer Troupe.

Tenma: Exactly. Summer Troupe wouldn’t have existed if it wasn’t for Spring Troupe’s performance. You guys can definitely do this.

Tsuzuru: Right, we have to do this…

Citron: If we could do it back then, then we can also do it now. We can be sure of that!

Chikage: I’ll do my best, too.

Sakuya: We’ve got more experience than we did back then, and we’ve got six people now, too. I’m sure we’ll be just fine.

Banri: ‘Course, we’ll be supportin’ you guys, too.

Tsumugi: Let’s all do our best to work all the way through the fourth quarter.

Sakuya: Let’s do our best!

· • —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– • ·

momo has entered the chat.

momo: Fleur Special Award-winning MANKAI Company placed 70th? Something’s sus here momo: Can’t believe that a troupe that literally just formed and hasn’t even performed yet is ranked top for a theater award, something’s definitely sus here momo: Can’t believe they’re really doing this social media voting thing. And why was the pre-thing ONLY social media voting? There’s gotta be a troupe that was buying votes or rigging it somehow momo: People were actually suggesting to use throwaways online cuz you could use them to vote as much as you want momo: And online popularity and IRL popularity are totally different things anyway

Iv: yua troupe def only got first cuz it was created by that famous vtuber, and the fact that they got like double the votes compared to second place is like so gross and weird fr Kar: That sucks. You doin okay? momo: God no. What am I gonna do if my oshi is shocked by MANKAI ranking so low? I can’t do this, I’m literally getting mental illness just thinking about it /neg shiki: It’s really disappointing the way things turned out with this. Social media really just does have a huge influence, doesn’t it? momo: Winning just cuz you’ve got big social media presence is so not fair Iv: i mean, tru, but it fits the era and it’s still a good thing, there’s tons of fans who wanna see their oshis but can’t actually go to the theaters, y’know? Kar: I mean, this is probably what got some people into theater, so it’s just a matter of strategy, ain’t it? Dunno, that’s just what I think momo: I mean, maybe, but still

[ ⇠ Previous Part ] • [ Next Part ⇢ ]

#a3!#a3! translation #sakuya sakuma #towa ichinoe

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katy-kt-katie · 1 year ago

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For FicTober, I’ve been writing a chaptered story. I’d say it’s 50% slowburn hallmark movie and 50% smut.smut.smut. I used Twitter polls to vote on the initial story concept and some of the story arcs. Check it out. 29 chapters are complete on AO3- Get a chapter 1 and 2 sneak peek below and read the rest: HERE.

The Toy

Mulder and Scully take on a case involving strange deaths during sex.

Chapter 1:

Religious people often talk about critical situations being the work of God or the Devil. I’m not a religious man, but as I sit in this moment, I have these same thoughts. How on earth did I get here? How on Earth am I going to move forward from this?

Mmmmm.

She’s moaning. Scully is moaning now, just feet away from me, as she prepares to orgasm—not just orgasm, but to have the best orgasm of your life, according to the readers of Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Don’t look, just listen, okay…it would be awkward if you saw me…you know.

That’s what she’d said earlier; the ground rules she determined made her feel safe and okay with this experiment. But I still see her—as I lay back and close my eyes, my imagination fills in all the blanks. Scully in her silk robe, lying on her back. The robe has fallen open, and she’s pinching her nipple with one hand while her other hand is between her legs, bringing herself pleasure. She wiggles and flexes, her face blushed, and her eyes closed.

But in reality, I can't see any of that. I’m sitting on her couch in the dark with my back to her as she’s chasing that orgasm in her bed. The door is cracked so that I can hear her. And what’s my role in all of this? I’m monitoring her for safety, ensuring that what befell the others doesn’t happen to her. Mulder, you're the only one I trust... I’ll make some noises so that you know I’m still okay, she had said when we agreed to this…situation. And the noises are driving me wild.

Oh my god, oh my god, she whines in the distance.

So it is God then, I think, and maybe it’s the Devil who is responsible for my hard and hot cock demanding attention in my jeans.

Chapter 2:

ONE WEEK EARLIER

I duck as the pencil I’d thrown at the ceiling plummets back toward my eyeball.

“One of these days, you’re going to maim yourself, Mulder,” a familiar voice says. I snap my gaze to the door to see Scully reporting to work. She brushes some snow from her coat and hangs it on the hook before adjusting her high-heeled shoes and cracking her neck on her way to the desk.

“In that case, I look forward to the very thorough and diligent care of my personal doctor,” I wink at her. Flirting…that’s what I'm doing. It’s what I’ve always done for years with Scully.

Since we’d kissed at New Year’s, our flirty banter feels a little different to me, but I guess not to her—she’d said she enjoyed kissing me, but it couldn’t happen again. The next day, it was as if the kiss had never happened.

“If you came under my care, I’m sure a colonoscopy would be in order,” she teases.

I shake my head and grin as I grab four files and toss them across the desk toward her.

“What do we have?” she asks, immediately transforming into Special Agent mode, flipping through the top case file.

“Four deaths, spread across the Pacific Northwest. All women—various ages—all died of heart attacks unexpectedly without pre-existing conditions.”

“Hmm,” she says as she flips through the file. She is both meticulous and swift when processing information, a true pinnacle of efficiency. “Mulder heart attacks are unfortunately quite common in women.”

I throw another pencil at the ceiling as I wait for her to catch the common link, the countdown playing in my brain… three, two…one —

“Wait,” she demands. “The heart attacks all occurred during the act of sexual intercourse?”

“Yep.”

“Well, that is rather odd. But, still, about one-tenth of one percent of people die during consensual sex,” I notice her cheeks blushing now, her gaze dropping, and her hands fidgeting. Her body shows signs of nervousness as she talks to me about this, but her words are one hundred percent Dana Scully, MD. “Sex can be very strenuous.”

I chuckle, leaning back in my chair and propping my feet on the desk. “Dr. Scully, how many of those one-tenth of one percent of people dying during sex would be women with no pre-existing cardiac conditions?”

“Well,” she stalls. “I agree. It is an anomaly.”

“The computer picked it up,” I say, grabbing the files back from where she’d laid them down.

“Computer?” she asks.

“You know, the new TI-6969 the boys have down in the lab with the profiling algorithm. It looks for connections in seemingly unconnected cases. And it hit on this.”

She rolls her eyes and scoffs. Oh, how I love bantering with this woman.

“So I’m assuming we are heading to the Pacific Northwest, Mulder?”

“Plane leaves at eleven.”

READ ALL 29 CHAPTERS: HERE

Tagging @today-in-fic @xffictober2023

#xfiles #the x files #fox mulder #dana scully #msr #today-in-fic #first time #mulder and scully #smut #slowburn

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theculturedmarxist · 1 year ago

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Democrats lately have been basking in good news. The fourth Trump indictment! Continued success for abortion rights (the defeat of the Ohio referendum)! Good news on “Bidenomics” (slowing inflation and strong job creation)!

The sentiment seems to be: we got this! How could we lose to a candidate (assuming it’s Trump) who’s under a blizzard of legal scrutiny for undermining democracy and represents a party that wants to take away women’s right to choose—especially when we, the good guys, are doing such a great job with the economy?

This “how can we lose?” attitude is uncomfortably reminiscent of Democrats’ attitude in 2016. Then too they thought they couldn’t lose. And yet they did.

Perhaps it’s time to take out an insurance policy. It may be the case that a multiply-indicted Trump is now toxic to enough voters and abortion rights such a strong motivator that even a candidate with Biden’s weaknesses will beat him easily. But it might not and that’s where the insurance policy comes in.

Consider that right now the race looks very, very close. The RealClearPolitics poll average has Biden ahead of Trump by a slender four-tenths of a percentage point. If that was Biden’s national lead on election day, he’d probably lose the presidency due to electoral college bias that favors Republicans.

In the latest Quinnipiac poll, Biden has a one-point lead over Trump consistent with the running average. Among white working-class (noncollege) voters, he’s behind by 34 points, considerably worse than he did in 2020. If Trump (or another Republican) does manage to prevail in 2024, we can be fairly sure that a pro-GOP surge among these voters will have something to do with it.

States of Change simulations show that, all else equal, a strong white working class surge in 2024 would deliver the election to the GOP. Even a small one could potentially do the trick. In an all-else-equal context, I estimate just a one-point increase in Republican support among the white working class and a concomitant one-point decrease in Democratic support (for a 2-point margin swing) would deliver Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin (and the election) to the Republicans. Make it a 2-point increase in GOP support and you can throw in Pennsylvania too.

So an insurance policy to prevent such a swing is in order.

The problem: these are very unhappy voters. In the Quinnipiac poll, white working-class voters give Biden an overall 25 percent approval rating versus 70 percent disapproval and 72 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him. On handling the economy, Biden’s rating is even worse—24 percent approval and 73 percent disapproval. Just 20 percent say the economy is excellent or good, compared to 79 percent who say it is not so good or poor. By 63 to 16 percent, these voters believe the economy is getting worse not better. Evidently they haven’t yet heard the good news about Bidenomics.

The temptation among Democrats is to ascribe the stubborn resistance of these voters to Democratic appeals and openness to those of Trump and right populists to misinformation from Fox News and the like and, worse, to the fundamentally racist, reactionary nature of this voter group. The roots of this view go back to the aftermath of the 2016 election.

As analysts sifted through the wreckage of Democratic performance in 2016 trying to understand where all the Trump voting had come from, some themes began to emerge. One was geographical. Across county-level studies, it was clear that low educational levels among whites was a very robust predictor of shifts toward Trump. These studies also indicated that counties that swung toward Trump tended to be dependent on low-skill jobs, relatively poor performers on a range of economic measures and had local economies particularly vulnerable to automation and offshoring. Finally, there was strong evidence that Trump-swinging counties tended to be literally “sick” in the sense that their inhabitants had relatively poor physical health and high mortality due to alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide.

The picture was more complicated when it came to individual level characteristics related to Trump voting, especially Obama-Trump voting. There were a number of correlates with Trump voting. They included some aspects of economic populism—opposition to cutting Social Security and Medicare, suspicion of free trade and trade agreements, taxing the rich—as well as traditional populist attitudes like anti-elitism and mistrust of experts. But the star of the show, so to speak, was a variable labelled “racial resentment” by political scientists, which many studies showed bore a strengthened relationship to Republican presidential voting in 2016.

This variable is a scale created from questions like: “Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.” The variable is widely and uncritically employed by political scientists to indicate racial animus despite the obvious problem that statements such as these correspond closely to a generic conservative view of avenues to social mobility. And indeed political scientists Riley Carney and Ryan Enos have shown that responses to questions like these change very little if you substitute “Nepalese” or “Lithuanians” for blacks. That implies the questions that make up the scale tap views that are not at all specific to blacks. Carney and Enos term these views “just world belief” which sounds quite a bit different from racial resentment.

But in the aftermath of the Trump election, researchers continued to use the same scale with the same name and the same interpretation with no caveats. The strong relationship of the scale to Trump voting was proof, they argued, that Trump support, including vote-switching from Obama to Trump, was simply a matter of activating underlying racism and xenophobia. Imagine though how these studies might have landed like if they had tied Trump support to activating just world belief, which is an eminently reasonable interpretation of their star variable, instead of racial resentment. The lack of even a hint of interest in exploring this alternative interpretation strongly suggests that the researchers’ own political beliefs were playing a strong role in how they chose to pursue and present their studies.

In short, they went looking for racism—and they found it.

Other studies played variations on this theme, adding variables around immigration and even trade to the mix, where negative views were presumed to show “status threat” or some other euphemism for racism and xenophobia. As sociologist Stephen Morgan has noted in a series of papers, this amounts to a labeling exercise where issues that have a clear economic component are stripped of that component and reduced to simple indicators of unenlightened social attitudes. Again, it seems clear that researchers’ priors and political beliefs were heavily influencing both their analytical approach and their interpretation of results.

And there is an even deeper problem with the conventional view. Start with a fact that was glossed over or ignored by most studies: trends in so-called racial resentment went in the “wrong” direction between the 2012 and 2016 election. That is, fewer whites had high levels of racial resentment in 2016 than 2012. This make racial resentment an odd candidate to explain the shift of white voters toward Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

Political scientists Justin Grimmer and William Marble investigated this conundrum intensively by looking directly at whether an indicator like racial resentment really could explain, or account for, the shift of millions of white votes toward Trump. The studies that gave pride of place to racial resentment as an explanation for Trump’s victory did no such accounting; they simply showed a stronger relationship between this variable and Republican voting in 2016 and thought they’d provided a complete explanation.

They had not. When you look at the actual population of voters and how racial resentment was distributed in 2016, as Grimmer and Marble did, it turns out that the racial resentment explanation simply does not fit what really happened in terms of voter shifts. A rigorous accounting of vote shifts toward Trump shows instead that they were primarily among whites, especially low education whites, with moderate views on race and immigration, not whites with high levels of racial resentment. In fact, Trump actually netted fewer votes among whites with high levels of racial resentment than Mitt Romney did in 2012.

Grimmer and Marble did a followup study with Cole Tanigawa-Lau that included data from the 2020 election. The study was covered in a New York Times article by Thomas Edsall. In the article, Grimmer described the significance of their findings:

Our findings provide an important correction to a popular narrative about how Trump won office. Hillary Clinton argued that Trump supporters could be placed in a “basket of deplorables.” And election-night pundits and even some academics have claimed that Trump’s victory was the result of appealing to white Americans’ racist and xenophobic attitudes. We show this conventional wisdom is (at best) incomplete. Trump’s supporters were less xenophobic than prior Republican candidates’ [supporters], less sexist, had lower animus to minority groups, and lower levels of racial resentment. Far from deplorables, Trump voters were, on average, more tolerant and understanding than voters for prior Republican candidates… [The data] point to two important and undeniable facts. First, analyses focused on vote choice alone cannot tell us where candidates receive support. We must know the size of groups and who turns out to vote. And we cannot confuse candidates’ rhetoric with the voters who support them, because voters might support the candidate despite the rhetoric, not because of it.

So much for the racial resentment explanation of Trump’s victory. Not only is racial resentment a misnamed variable that does not mean what people think it means, it literally cannot account for the actual shifts that occurred in the 2016 election. Clearly a much more complex explanation for Trump’s victory was—or should have been—in order, integrating negative views on immigration, trade and liberal elites with a sense of unfairness rooted in just world belief. That would have helped Democrats understand why voters in Trump-shifting counties, whose ways of life were being torn asunder by economic and social change, were so attracted to Trump’s appeals.

Such understanding was nowhere to be found, however, in Democratic ranks. The racism-and-xenophobia interpretation quickly became dominant, partly because it was in many ways simply a continuation of the approach Clinton had taken during her campaign and that most Democrats accepted. Indeed, it became so dominant that simply to question the interpretation reliably opened the questioner to accusations that he or she did not take the problem of racism seriously enough.

We are still living in that world. Scratch a Democrat today and you will find lurking not far beneath the surface—if beneath the surface at all—a view of white working-class voters and their populist, pro-Trump leanings as reflecting these voters’ unyielding racism and xenophobia.

This is neither substantively justified nor politically productive. Democrats desperately need that insurance policy for 2024 and getting rid of these attitudes toward 40 percent of the electorate (much more in key states!) should be part of it. Think of it as a down payment on the “de-Brahminization” of the Democratic Party. This attitude adjustment might irritate some of their activist supporters, but considering the stakes, that seems like a small price to pay for a potentially vital insurance policy.

#2016 presidential election #democrats #voting #racism #working class

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jovenshires · 1 year ago

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(tags from @notthatalex not putting you on blast or anything just taking a moment to address bc i think it's interesting!!)

i really dont think so tbh like. i've said it before but it cannot be stated enough: there's a HUGE gap between dyn number four and the top three. while ian & anthony aren't too far off from the 4th dynamic, they're decently far from the 3rd. out of all the responses i got, less than 50% put ian and anthony in their top ten at all. which is CRAZY to me, especially considering the top dynamic has about a 75%. they were actually closer to the tenth dynamic (amanda & shayne) in their number of votes than to the number one dynamic. they're technically closer to the twelfth dynamic too. (the gap from ian & anthony to the number twelve choice is 37 votes, whereas their gap to the first choice is 38. this isn't all that crazy until you realize they ranked at 5 and it's just a WILD jump up in the top four.)

i think a lot of the fandom here on tumblr is very new, probably joined in the last 1-3 years, so they gravitate toward the new cast and newer dynamics. and that's totally fair, just fascinating. plus the purpose of the poll too wasn't exactly a ranking system, just to see which dynamic was the most popular, which i thought was done best by seeing who got the most votes overall rather than having people rank their favorites. ykwim??

and i wasn't planning on it but..... 👀 if people are interested i could do that. i'll have to wait until the last result is published (which will be january 3rd) but i love lil charts and stuff so yeah i'd be down!!

#replies #alex #personal #notthatalex

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tyanis · 1 year ago

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Which SIX Resident Evil characters actually WANT to build the guest house? WINNERS!

While Chris, Carlos, Claire, and Jill all genuinely wanted to help (most) of the guest characters, Alcina just wanted their ugly van off the damn driveway and saw this as the best way to achieve that.

Heisenberg though...

Well... that house probably has some hidden traps and pitfalls in it. As a treat.

A treat for Heisenberg.

Anyway, the guest characters are released into their new environment. They're hesitant at first before scurrying inside and sorting out their territories.

Now that they have a place of their own they will no longer be joining in for the remaining polls, leaving those to the original gang.

So... no vacations during the final few polls.

Speaking of, this marks Chris and Jill's tenth wins! They wouldn't have gone on vacation anyway, what with being the main four, but still.

With the house now built, the gang turns to the horror of the guest van... it's an absolute mess... but maybe with some work...

Alcina sees where this is going and groans in despair.

#resident evil #resident evil poll #Resident evil poll results #house builder #karl heisenberg #chris redfield #carlos oliveira #claire redfield #jill valentine #alcina dimitrescu #lady dimitrescu

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mariacallous · 2 years ago

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President Maia Sandu’s call for a major rally in support of Moldova’s European Union membership aspirations on May 21 in Chisinau’s central square got a boost on Monday as three small pro-European political parties said they would take part.

The Chisinau authorities want to signal to the EU that there is widespread support for the European idea before a summit on June 1 in Moldova of the European Political Community, an intergovernmental forum for discussions about the future of Europe, which will be attended by leaders of EU states and EU partner countries.

“We launched the initiative to convene a citizens’ meeting in Chisinau to tell the world that we are Europeans and that this is our chosen path. Let’s answer those who ask what the Moldovans want – a blunt and clear answer. Let our voice be heard, the voice of the many – the voice of our people,” Sandu said on Monday.

Sandu insisted in her speech that most of the Moldovan population has not fallen into a Russian propaganda trap intended to derail Moldova’s European course.

“At the same time, dirty money, which finances attempts at destabilisation, continues to flow. There are insane people in Moldova who watch what is happening in Ukraine and enjoy the crimes there. Who see the horrors of Bakhmut, Bucha, Mariupol and Kherson and say that their people [the Russian army] are close,” she added.

Moldova’s former pro-Russian president Igor Dodon on March 30 urged ethnic Gagauz people to “hold out” until the arrival of the Russian army in Moldova.

“We must be friends with Russia. Not against Europe, but without Russia we will not survive,” Dodon said.

“We need a cheap market and cheap fuel for farmers. We need cheap gas and electricity. Otherwise, no way. That’s why I want to ask you not to let your guard down. Everything will be fine. We will endure. Our people are already close,” he added.

He later tried to deny the reference to the Russian army, saying he was referring to MPs from his Party of Socialists.

In February, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that “Moldova could have the fate of Ukraine” if it continues collaborating with the West.

Last week, a group of deputies from the Party of Socialists participated in the tenth annual Economic Forum in Moscow, which sparked accusations that it de facto represents Russia’s political interests in Moldova.

Another party in the parliamentary opposition, the Ilan Shor Party, openly represents Russia’s interests in Chisinau. The authorities claim that the party, led by fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor, illegally funded anti-government protests.

Sandu has claimed that the protests are being organised with the involvement and financing of Moscow.

Recent polls show that most Moldovans favour joining the European Union. Moldova obtained the status of an EU candidate country in June 2022, just four months after applying for membership, against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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f1 · 2 years ago

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Tsunoda expected much worse after narrowly missing points again | 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

Yuki Tsunoda said AlphaTauri was losing out to its rivals in the straights and corners in Jeddah after narrowly missing a points finish for the second race in a row. From 15th on the grid, Tsunoda climbed to sixth in the first third of the 50-lap Saudi Arabian Grand Prix before pitting. He then ran in eighth but lacked the pace of the cars behind him and eventually finished 11th. He described it as a “pretty tough” race. “I gave my 100% effort every lap, and still couldn’t [retain position],” Tsunoda said of his lengthy second stint in the race. “Lost positions like that in the end in the last four laps, so I’m just really frustrated.” On a high-speed track where very few of the corners require braking, Tsunoda said his AlphaTauri AT04 “lost too much pace in the straights, and a couple of corners that required downforce.” He “had to put in 100% effort in sector one to maximise the pace from our car to make the gap as much as possible” to avoid being passed around the rest of the lap. In the end, Tsunoda’s efforts were not enough to avoid being passed. it leaves AlphaTauri as one of two teams yet to score in 2023 despite their worst result so far being better than seven other teams’. “I think there’s frustration for all of us [at the team],” said Tsunoda. “At least I gave every effort, and at least I was able to extract the performance from the car as much as possible, and fighting close to the points. Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free “So at least I gave excitement to the team. That’s really positive. Hopefully we can develop through the year and I can score points at some point as soon as possible.” Poll: Vote for your 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix Driver of the Weekend Tsunoda finished one second away from tenth place at the Bahrain Grand Prix, although in that race he never actually ran in a points position. In Jeddah he was demoted from the top ten with five laps to go and ended the race 2.6s away from his first points of 2023. Despite the frustration, Tsunoda was encouraged by the improvement he has seen since Bahrain. “Definitely we didn’t expect that pace,” he said of his Jeddah performance. “I expected much worse than that. So good job from also the engineers and mechanics. Just need a couple of tenths, at least, every lap.” He is hopeful the team will be able to capitalise on a chance to score points soon. “At least I saw my potential,” he said. “My performance, that’s the most important thing. “If I keep fighting like this, I think there’s at some point a big chance, more than this one. So if that happens, I’ve just got to maximise that opportunity. Until then, I just wait and extract from the car like this performance as much as possible.” Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix Browse all 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix articles via RaceFans - Independent Motorsport Coverage https://www.racefans.net/

#F1 #Tsunoda “expected much worse” after narrowly missing points again | 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix #Formula 1

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truck-fump · 1 year ago

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No Labels Isn’t What It Claims to BeThe “No Labels” Party...

New Post has been published on https://robertreich.org/post/732283623833796608

No Labels Isn’t What It Claims to BeThe “No Labels” Party...

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No Labels Isn’t What It Claims to Be

The “No Labels” Party is not what it pretends to be. It’s a front group for Donald Trump.

Now I understand, if you’re sick of the two major parties, you might be intrigued by a party that claims to be a “common sense” alternative that finds the middle ground.

But if you or anyone in your life is planning to vote for No Labels — or any third party — in 2024, please watch and share this video first.

Here are three things you need to know.

First, No Labels is a dark money group with secret far-right donors. Investigative reporting has revealed that they include many of the same Republican donors who have pumped huge sums of money into electing candidates like Trump and Ron DeSantis. They also include the rightwing billionaire Harlan Crow, who spent years secretly treating Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to a lifestyle of the rich and famous.

If the No Labels Party is backed by Trump donors, in an election where Trump is on the ballot, there’s actually a label we should give to “No Labels.” Clearly, they’re a pro-Trump group.

Second, the premise No Labels is based on — that Donald Trump and President Biden are at equally extreme ends of the political spectrum — is preposterous.

Trump has been impeached twice, found by a jury to have committed sexual assault, is facing 91 criminal charges in four separate cases — two of them in connection with an attempt to effectively end American democracy.

There is no “equally extreme” candidate as Trump!

Finally, the structure of the Electoral College means that as a practical matter, a third party only draws votes away from whichever major party candidate is closest to it. No third party candidate has ever won a presidential election.

And in this particular election, when one of the major parties is putting up a candidate who threatens democracy itself, we cannot take the risk.

Donald Trump has already tried to overturn one election and suggested suspending the Constitution to maintain power. It is no exaggeration to say that if he takes the White House again, there may not ever be another free and fair election.

Democracy won by a whisker in the last presidential election. Just 44,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — less than one tenth of 1 percent of the total votes cast nationwide — were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the Electoral College that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives, and hence to Trump.

If candidates from No Labels— or any other third party, like the Green Party or the Libertarian Party — peel off just a fraction of the anti-Trump vote from Biden, while Trump voters stay loyal to him, Trump could win the top five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office. And No Labels’ own polling shows they would do just that!

Let me be absolutely clear. Third-party groups like No Labels are in effect front groups for Trump in 2024, and should be treated as such.

The supposed “centrism” No Labels touts is nonsense. There is no middle ground between democracy and fascism.

Please share this video and spread the word.

#Uncategorized

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eurovision-revisited · 2 years ago

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1992 Malmö - Number 10 - Mia Martini - "Rapsodia"

youtube

Perhaps another surprise as "Rapsodia" is often seen as the best song in the 1992 Eurovision Song Contest and has finished highest of all the 1992 entrants in the annual ESC Radio poll for the last three years. I only have it tenth when it actually finished fourth in the final behind the English language entries. Maybe you could even say it was the true winner in 1992.

Italy had relied on an internal selection in 1992 and wisely chose Mia Martini with her raspy, emotional vocal and a ballad celebrating the eternal wonders and difficulties of the rhapsody of love. Mario may have been so Italian at number 11, but Mia is even more so. Drama and emotion perfectly delivered.

Mia is of course one of the most celebrated and missed fixtures of the Italian and European music scene. Through a tumultuous career beset with fraught relations with the men in the record industry, she's sung at San Remo four times at this point as well as representing Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1977, finishing 13th with the song Liberia. That performance as well as battles over the song itself were one of the many squabbles that littered her life.

She left us tragically early only three years after this performance, far too young.

#Youtube #esc #esc 1992 #eurovision #eurovision song contest #italy #mia martini #bracket #ballad

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walks-the-ages · 2 years ago

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[ID: the same pie chart as the first image, now with many more tiny slices, each labeled with a Doctor Who incarnation. The Largest slice is 26% of the pie chart for the Eighth Doctor, and the two other largest slices are 15% for the Twelfth Doctor, and 13% for the Tenth Doctor. end ID]

We've now got 100 votes on the multiple choice, and Eight has 26 votes!

Typed out starting with the Eighth Doctor and moving clockwise around the pie chart, the current results (2/15/2023 6pm) are:

Eight: 26

Rowan atkinson: 1

Richard E grant: 1

Shalka: 1

Unbound Warner: 2

Nine: 5

Ten: 13

Eleven: 3

Twelth Doctor (1): 15 [17 total]

Thirteen (1): 1 [2 total]

Ruth/Fugitive: 1

Twelve (2): 2 [17 total]

Thirteen (2): 1 [2 total]

One: 3

Two: 5

Three: 6

Four: 1

Five: 5

Six: 5

The Valyard: 1

Seven: 2

Write-in votes:

Lethian Campain Assassin: 1

Master!Doctor (POTD): 1

The Warrior (unbound doctor of war) 1

Joke Entry of Martha Jones (which was hilarious to read)

Please make sure to signal boost this survey so we can get a wider reach in fandom! Hundreds of people voted on the tumblr polls but not many people have done this survey yet, only takes a few seconds to fill out if you're just picking your favorite from the multiple choice question :D

"Favorite Doctor Survey" Update February 11th, 2023, ~9pm Eastern Standard Time:

[ID: a screenshot of a pie chart which has a multitude of colors in sections, the largest being labeled with percentages of 23.3%, 16.3%, 11.6%, and two are labled 7% while the rest are not labeled. there is a list of Doctor Who incarnations off to the side with color coding which trails off. end ID]

So far, we have 43 votes, and right now, the 8th Doctor is in the lead with 10 votes, aka 23.3%!

I am extremely delighted with this fact, we need more people to appreciate the Eighth Doctor ~! For anyone who is unaware of it, the Eighth Doctor is not limited to just the 1997 TV movie and a few minutes in Power of the Doctor--

--oh no, this Bestest Boy Ever has not only over a hundred audio dramas (and counting!!) on Big Finish, but also at least 74 Novels to his interation! If you do not know the Eighth Doctor yet, now is your excuse to go watch his movie on the web archive and then dive into the world of Big Finish to experience his adventures with Charley! :D

*Ahem* So, onto the next "Favorite Doctor!"

To no-ones surprise, the Twelfth Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi is holding steady in second place, with 9 votes!

There's a slight error in the graph because I realized I'd forgotten to add his actor and year to the 12th doctor listing and the answers already submitted didn't get edited, so Peter Capaldi's 12th Doctor is not just the dark teal 16.3% you see above, but also the dark blue right underneath it which is the first 2 original votes before the updated info.

In 3rd place, appropriately enough, we have the Third Doctor, played by Jon Pertwee! He currently has 5 votes, aka 11.6%!

Everyone seems to love his dynamics with UNIT, being earthbound, and his fatherly/grandfatherly relationships with his companions-- not to mention his chemistry with The Master!

Tied for 4th place, we have the Sixth and Second Doctors, each with 3 votes, aka 7% !

One, Five, Nine, and Ten each have 2 votes,

Four, The Valyard, The Shalka!Doctor, Eleven, and Thirteen all have 1 vote each,

and so far we have two write-in answers: one vote for "The Lethian Campaign Assassin" (an extremely intriguing wiki article) and one vote for the Master!Doctor from Power of the Doctor :D

Let's keep those votes rolling in! I pretty much have no time limit on this poll lol, i'll just post periodically when there's a significant number of new votes or if someone else takes the lead!

In the meanwhile if you haven't taken the survey yet, here is the link to cast your vote:

And if you'd like to see what all the hype is about for the Eighth Doctor, here is a link to a gorgeous fan-made upscaling of the movie, which was posted to the archive by the uploader-- you can stream it from the archive (make sure you set it to 1080p and give it plenty of time to buffer!)

Or, even better, download the mkv video, and use VLC media player or a similar open source program so you can adjust the playback speed to around 96% for the proper pitch and speed!

When they were doing US to UK conversion they uh. lol they fucked up the framerate so to fix it the movie was sped up on release, so watching it without adjusting the playback speed will make everyone sound like chipmunks comparison to their normal voices, but can also cause some motion sickness from the weird, fast framerate

! So I highly reccomend downloading it so you can adjust the playback speed a custom amount! Oh, and don't forget to favorite to show the upscaler some love for their hard work, they made it into a beautiful masterpiece! [ it literally looks better than my physical dvd i bought years ago lol]

If you'd like to dip your toes into some other, slightly more obscure Doctors featured on this survey, I also have a link to the 4k Upscaling of "the Scream of the Shalka", an animated Doctor Who episode from 2003, which was never continued (on screen at least; it has one short story sequel written available online, "The Feast of the Stone"!

Scream of the Shalka, in 4k HD, again, thanks to fans taking the time to upscale things!

Scream of the Shalka short story sequel:

(please note for fellow Shinigami-Eyes users, there is no transphobia in the short story, the entire BBC website is now universally marked red in shinigami eyes)

#Dw #doctor who #classic who #the doctor #Eighth Doctor #8th doctor #long post #bold text #described images

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black-academia · 3 years ago

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The BelleTriste Book Club FAQ

How do I join the book club?

Just fill out the Google Form. There is no application process, but you must be over 18.

Who is running this?

Just me, Sai! I run the black-academia blog, and I decided to create this book club in order to read more books, talk about them and hear a variety of ideas and opinions, and (virtually) meet new people with shared interests.

What happens after I sign up??

& other FAQs...

After you sign up, you'll receive a welcome email! It includes links to the book poll (if you sign up before July 1st), and a link to the optional group chat.

When is the deadline to join?

You can join the discussions at any time during this summer session (9th July - 13th August), but voting on books closes at midnight on Friday July 1st, 2022. Just make sure you fill out the form so you get important links and updates.

Where and when do we meet?

Saturdays from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM EST. We meet online on the Zoom platform. Every week, a link and passcode will be sent to the email you provided when you signed up.

What are the exact meeting dates:

First Discussion: Saturday, 9th July 2022

Second Discussion: Saturday 16th July 2022

Third Discussion: Saturday 23rd July 2022

Fourth Discussion: Saturday 30th July 2022

Final Discussion: Saturday 13th August 2022

Do I have to be in the United States?

Absolutely not! As long at the meeting time works for you, you are most welcome!

What's the pace like?

A book a week, but they're all under 300 pages. If you're a slower reader, you can choose to come every other week, so that you have more time to read. Or you can come to just one of the later discussions, such as the final discussion... it's all up to you!

Bunny by Mona Awad

What books will you be reading?

After the poll ends, we will read the four top polling books of the ones listed below, and then Donna Tartt's The Secret History over two weeks at the end.

Savage Theories by Pola Oloixarac

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung

Dead Poet's Society by N.H. Kleinbaum

The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa

The Crazed by Ha Jin

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yōko Ogawa

We Wish You Luck by Caroline Zancan

The Liar's Dictionary by Eley Williams

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

The Lies We Tell by Katie Zhao

Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crowley Hall by Suzette Mayr

I have more questions...

Sure! Just send me an ask here!

I look forward to talking to you!

Sincerely,

Sai 🖤

#belletriste book club #dark academia #black academia #dark acadamia aesthetic #poc dark academia #light academia #academia #books #books and literature #classic books #dark academia books #book club

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causeiwanttoandican · 4 years ago

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The Times

Prince William’s close friends on what makes him tick — and why he’s not trapped

March 20 2021, 6:00pm

As the world devours the Harry and Meghan interview, what’s going on with the brother who was left behind? He’s embracing his destiny, William’s close friends tell the Sunday Times royal correspondent, Roya Nikkhah

Next month Prince William will celebrate his tenth wedding anniversary — the day he became a duke and embarked on the most formative decade of his life. Back then, the tentative 28-year-old newlywed was not ready to devote himself entirely to royal duties. A decade on, he is in a very different position.

The job of being the heir to the heir to the throne, of finding a balance between life and duty, is difficult at the best of times. These are not the best of times. In their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey this month the Duke and Duchess of Sussex accused the royal family and the institution around it of racism and callous disregard for a suicidal newcomer, among many other damning charges. Harry the spare also declared that William was trapped within “the system … My brother can’t leave that system, but I have.”

In the immediate aftermath of the interview William was “reeling”, a source close to the duke says. “His head is all over the place on it.” Four days after the Sussexes had their say, he hit back during an engagement with the Duchess of Cambridge at a school in east London. Asked about accusations of racism, William retorted with restrained fury: “We’re very much not a racist family.” He also confirmed that he hadn’t spoken to Harry yet, “but will do”. By the weekend it emerged they had “been in contact”.

William is thought to have been less than thrilled a few days later when that conversation made global headlines after the American presenter Gayle King, a close friend of the Sussexes, revealed live on air that it had not been an easy chat: “I did actually call them to see how they were feeling,” she told viewers. “Harry has talked to his brother and he had talked to his father too. The word I was given was that those conversations were not productive.” The intervention prompted a senior royal source to say that “none of the households will be giving a running commentary on private conversations”.

A close friend of both brothers says Harry’s “trapped” comment was “way off the mark”, insisting that William does not see it that way. “He has a path set for him and he’s completely accepting of his role. He is very much his grandmother’s grandson in that respect of duty and service.”

When the Queen turned 90 nearly five years ago William admitted “the challenge” that “occupies a lot of thinking space” is how to “modernise and develop” the royal family, and make it “relevant in the next 20 years’ time”. Twenty years now seems like a very long time. In the hours and days after the Oprah broadcast, William was at the heart of all discussions with the Queen and the Prince of Wales about how to respond to the Sussexes. He was keen that the issue of race should be acknowledged in the Queen’s statement as an area of particular concern that “will be addressed”.

William has always railed against being a “ribbon-cutter royal” and the issues he champions — mental health, battling racism in football, homelessness and his ramped-up eco-warrior role — are a window into where the future King William V will take the House of Windsor. A friend says: “He’s a small-c conservative. He values tradition and the need to go around the country, but he realises he can make a difference beyond traditional royal duties.”

Today royal popularity is, to put it mildly, in a state of flux, but William’s strategy has been working. Post-Oprah, he ranks just below the Queen at the top of a YouGov poll of royals. Not so long ago such a position looked like a long shot, when the “workshy Wills” and “reluctant royal” tags plagued him and he was clocking up fewer days of royal work than his nonagenarian grandparents. Pictures of him hitting the ski slopes and clubs of Swiss resort Verbier in March 2017, missing a Commonwealth service that even the Duke of York flew back for, didn’t help.

After the lasting PR gold dust of the Cambridges’ 2011 wedding and the births of Prince George and Princess Charlotte, it was the first public nosedive for William, who was still working as an air ambulance pilot. “That pissed him off,” a friend says. “He was leaving home at 5.30am, getting home after dark and saving lives in between, but people were still being critical of his commitment to his [other] job.” William was based at Cambridge airport with East Anglian Air Ambulance for two years, where he was on call for “some very sad, dark moments”, often working “on very traumatic jobs involving children”. He later acknowledged that “after I had my own children … the relation between the job and the personal life was what really took me over the edge, and I started feeling things that I have never felt before”. But it was a job he loved, because of “working in a team … that’s something that my other job doesn’t necessarily do. You are more out there on your own.”

A former royal aide says: “Immediately after their wedding he had a very clear idea of the pace at which he wanted to take things.” William was adamant he wouldn’t curtail his day jobs, first as an RAF search and rescue helicopter pilot in Anglesey and then with the air ambulance. “If you’re not careful, duty can weigh you down an awful lot at an early age,” he said, insisting he didn’t “lie awake waiting or hoping” to be king. He delayed full-time royal duties until the autumn of 2017, when, acknowledging the Cambridges’ future required more time at “monarchy HQ”, they moved from Norfolk to London and George started school.

He’d had to fight his corner for the air ambulance role. A source close to William reveals “there were lots of raised eyebrows in the Palace when he wanted to do that. While the Queen and his father backed him, some senior courtiers questioned whether it was becoming of a future king to be doing a middle-class role, hanging out with ordinary people. They thought he wouldn’t stick it out, he’d find it boring, or was doing it out of stubbornness to put off royal duties. He was pretty bloody-minded about it, and determined that other people’s expectations in the media or the system shouldn’t get in the way of his own values.” In the wake of Harry and Meghan’s interview much has been speculated about the extent to which royal life is dictated by Palace officials, but it is clear that William has managed to forge his own path. Who knows how high those senior courtiers’ eyebrows rose in 2019, when William spent three weeks shadowing the spooks of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to learn how they combat terrorism. He insisted on being called “Will” and lunching in the canteen every day.

Those closest to the duke say his resistance to the idea of full-time royal duties stemmed not only from a desire to achieve something for himself but also from a fear of the impact on his family life. Miguel Head worked alongside the prince for ten years until 2018, as William, Kate and Harry’s communications secretary and later as William’s private secretary. “In his role everyone’s going to tell you you’re marvellous,” Head says. “The RAF and air ambulance jobs were about knowing what his abilities were, what he was good at in his own right. Without that he’d still be hankering for something that was his own.” After children came along he says William developed a “visceral determination to give them a life of consistency and privacy that were missing for large parts of his own childhood”.

Another close aide says the plan enabling the Cambridges to have a few years of “normal” married life, away from the full-time glare of the royal spotlight, paid dividends: “For years, the battles around privacy and paparazzi intrusion were all-consuming. He wanted to know, could we build them a credible plan allowing them a family life while slowly increasing the profile of official life? It took years to get there, but the success of that plan allowed him to be confident and content in his role. He’s not worried about his kids’ privacy any more and he has been able to be the kind of dad he wants to be.”

“Marriage maketh the man,” a friend says. “Catherine’s groundedness has been the critical anchor. And where his relationship with the media was once all fury and frustration, he now understands using the power of modern media, so the public feel they’re getting enough access.”

The children’s birthdays are marked with photographs — often taken by the Duchess of Cambridge — and there has been a noticeable increase in their public appearances of late. While not “officially” staged, William was happy to let George and Charlotte be photographed at their first Aston Villa match with Mum and Dad in 2019. Pandemic set pieces have shown the family clapping for the NHS on the steps of Anmer Hall, their Norfolk home, and, before Christmas, their first red-carpet appearance together for an evening at the panto with key workers and their children.

As they celebrate their anniversary on April 29, friends who joined the Cambridges on their wedding day tell me the partnership’s equal footing is key to its success. “They’ve got a solid relationship and she gives him confidence,” one says. “There is no jealousy, no friction, they are happy for each other’s successes.” In private William talks as passionately about Kate’s work as his own campaigns, and takes pride in her growing confidence on the public stage.

William has said his grandmother’s approach to being head of state is to take “more of a passive role. She’s above politics and is very much away from it.” He doesn’t plan to meddle in party politics, but he was not happy about the unenviable position the government put the Queen in with the 2019 proroguing of parliament, which was later ruled to be unlawful and forced an apology from Boris Johnson to the monarch. Constitutionally the Queen had no alternative other than to act on the advice of her government, but in William’s reign there will be “more private, robust challenging of advice”. His last three private secretaries — Christian Jones, Simon Case, now the cabinet secretary, and Head — had all worked in government departments, helping William to keep his finger on the political pulse. The new incumbent, the Whitehall heavyweight Jean-Christophe Gray, who served as David Cameron’s spokesman, continues in that vein.

The former Conservative leader Lord Hague of Richmond was last year appointed as chairman of the Royal Foundation to develop William’s work on mental health, the environment and a raft of new support programmes for key workers. “People internationally and nationally respect his credibility and knowledge on these issues,” Hague says. “He’s very persuasive. You only see that behind the scenes. He knows what he wants and he goes out to get it.”

Charlie Mayhew, chief executive of the conservation charity Tusk, has known William since he was 20. In 2005 Tusk and Centrepoint, the homelessness charity championed by Princess Diana, were the first patronages William took on. “In those early years I kept having to pinch myself to remember how young he was,” Mayhew says. “He was much more mature than his age and very aware of his destiny coming down the track. He had a sincerity, but never without wicked humour. His teasing is merciless.”

William knows some people see his passion for conservation as a posh man’s part-time hobby, but Mayhew says the duke’s “genuine and huge knowledge” undermines that view. “He’ll call and WhatsApp to flag up something that I haven’t even seen in the conservation space. He can be impatient to get things done.” Last year William launched the Earthshot prize, a £50 million Nobel-style environmental award to galvanise solutions to global problems over the next decade. He believes “conservation and the environment … shouldn’t be a luxury, it’s a necessity”, Mayhew says. “That’s the drum he wants to beat. He’s got a megaphone and wants to use it in the most constructive way. He speaks for that next generation and I think they can relate to it.”

A turning point for William was his 2015 official visit to China, one of the world’s largest consumers of ivory, where he met President Xi and condemned the illegal wildlife trade as a “vicious form of criminality”. Unlike his father, who has refused to visit the People’s Republic over its human rights record and treatment of Tibet, William’s view was that despite the UK’s fractious relationship with China, “we’ve got to engage”.

“It was very political, raising the illegal wildlife trade in China. I’m sure the diplomats were having all sort of nightmares in advance,” says Mayhew, who joined the duke in China. “But he was gathering greater confidence that he had the ability to be a mouthpiece for the issue.” Mayhew reveals that while William was visiting Japan before China, he still hadn’t secured a meeting with Xi. “But when the Chinese saw all the high-level meetings he was having in Japan, they changed their minds and Xi made time for him.” Later that year, as Xi began a UK state visit, William appeared on Chinese television condemning the ivory trade. Two years later China banned the trade.

In 2018 he spent months prepping for his most high-stakes overseas visit yet, to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories that summer. Navigating the diplomatic tightrope walk between Jerusalem and the West Bank, he visited a Palestinian refugee camp in Ramallah. As he travelled back to Jerusalem, he changed his speech for a reception with young Israelis and Palestinians to strengthen his solidarity with the latter: “My message tonight is that you have not been forgotten … The United Kingdom stands with you.” It was a bold move, but both sides hailed his visit a success and the officials breathed a sigh of relief. To the delight of the travelling press pack, William’s engagements on the final day were brought forward, allowing the diplomat duke and president of the Football Association to land back in the UK in time to watch England’s World Cup tie.

Ask him if he’s a peacemaker and William will laugh, saying Kate is the mediator. But according to a source close to William and Harry, his bridge-building skills were deployed in the lead-up to Harry and Meghan’s wedding in 2018, when tensions in the Kensington Palace household, then still shared by the brothers, were running high: “Every time there was a drama, or a member of staff on the verge of quitting, William would personally try and sort it out.”

As the brothers clashed more over the substance and style of their work, and the family hierarchy that William is a stickler for but Harry is less keen on, a split was inevitable. When they finally divided their households in March 2019, it had been a long time coming. But he never thought that a year later his brother would up sticks for America.

The pair went for a long walk to clear the air after the “Sandringham summit” when the Megxit deal was hammered out, but did not part shores as friends. What upset William the most was Harry and Meghan’s surprise launch of their “Sussex Royal” website before the summit, which featured their blueprint wish list of a part-time, commercial royal future. Later, when the Queen decreed they could no longer use “royal” in their future ventures, their website hit back with this bold statement: “While there is not any jurisdiction by The Monarchy … over the use of the word ‘Royal’ overseas, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not intend to use ‘Sussex Royal’ … or … ‘Royal’ …” Both “the content and that it’s still online is staggering”, a senior royal source says. “That was it for William, he felt they’d blindsided the Queen in such an insulting and disrespectful way,” says a source close to him, who reveals it was still at the forefront of William’s mind at the Commonwealth Day service one year ago. It was the Sussexes’ final engagement as working royals, and the froideur between them and the rest of the family was unmistakable.

It is a year since the Sussexes left for California and William misses Harry. “Once he got over the anger of how things happened, he was left with the absence of his brother,” an aide says. “They shared everything about their lives, an office, a foundation, meetings together most days and there was a lot of fun along the way. He’ll miss it for ever.” A close friend says William “definitely feels the pressure now it’s all on him — his future looks different because of his brother’s choices, it’s not easy.” Another friend says: “It’s still raw. He’s very upset by what’s happened, though absolutely intent that he and Harry’s relationship will heal in time.”

After lobbing bombs in his Oprah interview, Harry said: “I love William to bits … We’ve been through hell together … we have a shared experience … The relationship is space at the moment, and time heals all things, hopefully.” Harry would be wise not to set his stopwatch.

The first test will come this summer, when the brothers could be reunited for a series of family engagements including the Duke of Edinburgh’s 100th birthday and the Queen’s birthday parade in June. In July they are scheduled to unveil a statue of their mother at Kensington Palace, marking what would have been Diana’s 60th birthday, an emotionally charged occasion with the world watching.

While a chasm has opened up between the brothers, William has grown closer to the Queen and Prince Charles. He has helped them to navigate their way through Megxit, Prince Andrew’s removal from public life following the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and, now, the Oprah controversy. “That has changed the way the Queen sees him and values his input,” a courtier says. William also feels his relationship with his grandmother has “massively improved” in recent years and their views are “more aligned than ever”.

Friends say there has also been a “renaissance” in William and Charles’s relationship. “As the years passed there were strains imposed by the system — money, work, competition, Diana,” one says. “Part of William’s evolution is that as he has become closer to his father, he sees their similarities. At William’s wedding there was a gag in one of the speeches that he was more like his father than he’d ever admit, which made a lot of us laugh. As their respective destinies get closer, it weighs more heavily on them and strengthens the bond. The rift with Harry has also brought them closer.”

William is said to hate “flummery”, though the role of future king comes with plenty of bowing and scraping. But in 2017, for the first time publicly, he didn’t get his way. As a new parent worried about rising teenage suicide rates, he had spent a year convening a Cyberbullying Taskforce with big cheeses from tech and social media giants including Facebook, Snapchat, Apple, Google and Twitter. He wanted them to adopt industry-wide guidelines creating safer online spaces for children. According to William the meetings at Kensington Palace got “fruity” and the tech giants didn’t come close to the change he wanted. He was furious.

Tessy Ojo, chief executive of the Diana Award youth charity, sat on the taskforce. “He was deeply disappointed,” she says. “He didn’t come into it as ‘the duke’, he gave emotional pleas as a father.” William has since publicly condemned social media giants for their “false choice of profits over values” and privately offered support to the family of Molly Russell, who took her life at 14 after viewing images of self-harm online. Ojo believes it is William’s “lived experience of the fragility of life that guides the work he does”.

It also shapes the way he and Kate are raising their family. William has said he is determined that the grandchildren Diana never knew should “know who she was and that she existed”. He “constantly” talks to his children “about Granny Diana” at bedtime, so that they know “there are two grandmothers in their lives”. Earlier this month on Mother’s Day, Kensington Palace’s social media feeds published George, Charlotte and Louis’s cards paying tribute to “Granny Diana”, revealing it is an annual ritual for the Cambridge children. After a difficult few weeks for William, a line in Charlotte’s card provided poignant insight into how he is feeling: “Papa is missing you.”

He is on course to be a more modern monarch than any before him, but William is still a creature of habit at heart. He has the same tight circle of friends from his schooldays, one of whom says that, with William, “it’s all about trust and loyalty”. He plays five-a-side football in his Villa socks when he can, goes to the Chelsea Harbour Club gym he went to as a child with his mother and has a “smart casual” public uniform of chinos, jacket, blue shirt and no tie.

“William’s not trying to be down with the kids,” a friend says. “He never wants to be painted as irrelevant or dull, though he’s allergic to being compared to celebrities. The public doesn’t always get to see his funny side, but otherwise he’s the same in private as in public. He once said, ‘I’ll be in the public eye all my life. I can’t hide who I am because I’ll be found out.’ ”

In 2019, during a visit to a youth homelessness charity supporting LGBT people, William was asked how he would feel if one of his children was gay. “Absolutely fine,” he replied. “I fully support whatever decision they make, but it does worry me from a parent’s point of view how many barriers, hateful words, persecution and discrimination might come.” Such a personal exchange was a radical departure from royal engagement small talk. But William, the first in his family to be photographed for the cover of a gay magazine, had personally put the issue on the agenda.

As president of Bafta he gave the academy a diplomatic dressing down in his speech at last year’s ceremony, expressing his “frustration” over the lack of diversity: “In 2020, and not for the first time in the last few years, we find ourselves talking again about the need to do more to ensure diversity in the sector and in the awards process — that simply cannot be right in this day and age.” The 2021 nominees announced this month suggest his words hit home.

William “thinks the public look to him to keep royal work looking modern”, a confidante says. “The Queen and Prince of Wales are providing continuity and stability. He’s carving out his own relationship with diverse communities. He sees it all as a way of doing things now that will help a smooth transition when the time comes.”

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, as a former frontline worker himself, William has led the royal charge supporting key workers. “Now, more than ever, he knows what his role in public life is, and he sees the value in it,” a close aide says. Chatting to NHS workers in January, William said: “Something that I noticed from my brief spell flying the air ambulance … is that when you see so much death and so much bereavement, it does impact how you see the world … as a … darker, blacker place.” Soon after the first lockdown was announced, the Cambridges’ Royal Foundation launched Our Frontline, a round-the-clock mental health and bereavement service for key workers.

Miguel Head says the future King William will continue to campaign on his big issues: “I can’t see him backing away from causes he’s passionate about. And while he’s not someone who loves ceremony, he knows the importance of it. When he gets the top job he won’t do away with it all. He’s mindful the monarchy represents something timeless that’s above all of us, and many people like the magic and theatre of it.”

Roya Nikkhah

Roya is royal correspondent at The Sunday Times. Over more than a decade she has covered royal events for the BBC, interviewed the Prince of Wales and Prince Harry and presented the films Prince William, Monarch in the Making and Meghan and Harry: The Baby Years.

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