#Or it will be Pedro who already had the label of more aggressive?

[42bakery]

Pol is a Marc fangirl and he's fangirling about Marc and his start at the sprint

[ebenenoir]

The reason why I disagree on Pedro being unable to come out if he is queer is because Pedro’s early career consisted of him playing flamboyantly gay characters on stage and in movies. He moved on to other roles because of how masculine he looks, talks, and acts and I just think that even if he came out as queer it wouldn’t hurt him because of that.

He’s played so many rugged, dad figure roles that I have a hard time believing he’s in a place in his career where saying he’s queer would hurt him. I think maybe 10 years ago or so, maybe? But we’ve come so far here in Hollywood that men and women can be out and still get roles but may be pigeon holed into a role based on their looks like any other actor.

Elliot Page will always be cast young because of his youthful looks and height. The Rock will always play macho characters. Michelle Rodriguez will always be the token tough Latina chick. Billy Porter thrives on queer roles, and Neil Patrick Harris is married to a man with kids but still gets straight roles because he’s straight passing, and Luke Evans still brings women to his shows because even if he is gay he’s fun to look at. Gay doesn’t stop women from wanting to look at the menu even if they can’t order anything. I’ve worked on film for 10 years and the people affected by coming out are the ones who are new and are worried about falling into the same roles and being labeled as the new woke gay best friend actor. But Hollywood is way more progressive behind the scenes than a lot of you think. And a lot of you pretend this isn’t the same man who refuses to back down being friends with problematic people online, I doubt he’d suddenly feel like he can’t show off his person regardless of gender like he has with his siblings and nephews and friends. And if he HAD something with SM, him constantly showing us his work was maybe his own way of showing him off subtly without starting rumors if he’s not ready to go red carpet official. A lot of us need to chill with speculations.

Pedro has been stereotyped already into rugged male roles since Narcos and I strongly doubt that’ll change if he ever went public with a male partner. That’s just my opinion and speculation. However, I don’t think it matters because fan speculations is doing more damage than not because of how many of us suspect he’s queer, and at this rate I feel like even if he came forward and said aggressively he was straight, a lot of fans would bully him into admitting he’s closeted and Hollywood is oppressing him. So it may be healthier to just say something then let fans run him and his career ragged. Cause we definitely will if we don’t let him figure his own shit out.

Thank you for your input 😛 You have made some interesting points. It's true that some actors are categorised into certain roles but I think that's their choice too. Those actors like these comfort zone, that brings them money. I am specifically talking about The Rock, Michelle Rodriguez and Billy Porter. I know what you mean about Pedro being stereotyped since Narcos, (dare I say since GoT?) but I don't necessarily think it's related to his looks imo. I am realizing now that he does a lot of stunts/action in movies : Equalizer, GoT, The Mandalorian, Triple Frontier, maybe The last of us, Kingsman. So I think it's good that he's chosen to play the role of Maxwell Lord, to play a different role for the Bubble. I hope he will be more versatile in his career. Maybe his career won't be affected but I think his mind will be affected a little bit. There will be a lot homophobic reaction from the gp if he ever dates openly with a man.

You mentioned the fact that he defends his problematic friends. As much as I agree that he's a stubborn person, who won't hesitate to defend what he thinks is right, I'm not sure he's immune to criticism. Just the fact that he followed fans on Twitter onlyvbecause they defended him proves it. (Jåm3s Gunn and GG drama). Also, during an interview in connection for the wine commercial, a journalist had mentioned that people in Chile liked him. He reacted by saying "please keep liking me". Imo he was much more serious than his tone made him sound. Could you give me some concrete examples of queer inclusion in Hollywood bts? 😊

"at this rate I feel like even if he came forward and said aggressively he was straight, a lot of fans would bully him into admitting he’s closeted and Hollywood is oppressing him."

You're right. I wouldn't go so far as to think he'll announce he's straight (if you know you know) but there was an overreaction when he mentioned a relationship with women in an interview. Some fans said he was forced to say that but they didn't have legit proof to say it.

Thank you again for sharing your opinion! 😛

[marcjampole]

Mainstream news media created the conditions in which a bottom-feeder like Trump could thrive by focusing on celebrity culture to encourage conspicuous consumption

AARP the Magazine is thus a small part of the giant propaganda machine that created the celebrity culture that created Donald Trump. It took from the first stirrings of consumer culture in the 1890’s until the 21st century for the focus on celebrity to pollute our marketplace of ideas enough for a toxic algae boom like Donald Trump to emerge (with apologies to algae blooms worldwide!). But unlike cleaning up the environment, saving our political discourse is conceptually easy—all the news media has to do is dedicate more of its feature coverage to those whose accomplishments can’t be measured by money made or spent, and cease to cover every issue like a reality show featuring celebrities. Not one big action, but a bunch of little actions are needed to stem the tide of celebrity culture. AARP could do its part by working into the mix a healthy share of scientists, historians, civic leaders, activists and literary figures into Big5-Oh and other parts of the magazine.

Those seeking to put the Trump phenomenon in a broader context will usually point out that his rhetoric and actions typically stay within the margins of 21st century Republican thought, especially as it concerns taxes, regulation, healthcare insurance, women’s health issues and white supremacy. Sometimes Trump has extended those margins with more outrageous versions of standard Republican fare. Others label Trumpism as the American version of the movement throughout the West to embrace ultranationalist, anti-immigration autocrats.

As insightful as these analyses are, they miss Trump’s cultural significance. Not only does Trump represent the bitterly racist and classist endgame of Ronald Reagan’s “politics of selfishness,” he also is the apotheosis of our cultural decline into celebrity-fueled consumerism. Remember that in the real world, Trump was a terrible and unethical businessperson who drove companies into bankruptcy six times; had at least a dozen failed business ventures based on his most valuable asset, his brand name; lost money for virtually all his investors; often lied to banks and governmental agencies; and has been sued by literally thousands of people for nonpayment or breach of contract. 

But while Trumpty-Dumpty was engaging in a one-man business wrecking crew he managed to get his name in the newspaper for his conspicuous consumption, his attendance at celebrity parties and his various marriage and romances. His television show was a hit, which reaped him even more publicity. But make no mistake about it, before he started his run for political office by promoting the vicious, racially tinged lie that Obama hails from Kenya, the public recognized Trump primarily for the attributes he shared with the British royal family, the Kardashians, Gosselins, Robertsons, the housewives of New Jersey, Atlanta, South Beach and elsewhere, Duane Chapman, Betheny Frankel, Paris Hilton and the rest of the self-centered lot of rich and famous folk known only for being rich and famous and spending obnoxious sums of money.

Trump’s celebrity status always hinted at his master-of-the-universe skills in business and “The Apprentice” never missed an opportunity to reinforce that false myth. Thus, whereas the business world recognized Donald Trump as the ultimate loser, celebrity culture glorified him as one of the greatest business geniuses in human history. It was this public perception of Trump—completely opposite of reality—that gave him the street cred he needed to attract unsophisticated voters. Trump is completely a creation of celebrity culture.

When we consider the general intellectual, moral and cultural climate of an era—the Zeitgeist, which in German means the “spirit of the age”—we often focus on defining events such as presidential assassinations, Woodstock, the moon landing, 9/11, the election of the first non-white president. But a Zeitgeist comprises thousands upon thousands of specific events, trends and personal choices. 

Which brings us—finally—to the subject of this article, AARP the Magazine, the semi-monthly slick magazine of the American Association of Retired People (AARP). The magazine usually uses celebrities and celebrity culture to give tips on personal finances, health, careers, relationships, retirement and lifestyle to its members, people over the age of 50. Because AARP membership rolls is so enormous, I have no doubt that AARP is one of the four or five most well-read periodicals in the United States.

Now AARP the organization must have many qualms about Trump and Trumpism. Trump has already rolled back consumer protections that prevent seniors from being taken advantage of by both big businesses and small-time con artists. Trump is vowing to dedicate his second term to cutting Social Security and Medicare, two programs of utmost importance to the well-being of AARP’s members. The leadership of AARP certainly understands that Trump’s cruelly aggressive effort to end immigration from non-European countries is the main cause for the growing shortages of the home care workers so vital to many if not most people in their final years. They must also realize that a tariff war affects people on fixed incomes the most.

What AARP leaders—of the organization and magazine—show no signs of understanding is that they played a role in creating the monster. The focus of AARP the Magazine and the other AARP member publication on promoting celebrity culture helped to create the playing field that Trump dominates—that shadow land of aspirations for attention and materialism in which all emotional values reduce to buying and consumption and our heroes have either done nothing to deserve their renown or have worked in the mass entertainment industries of TV, movies, sports and pop music.  

As an example of how celebrity culture permeates and controls the aspirational messages of AARP the Magazine, let’s turn to the feature on the last page of every issue, something called “Big5-Oh”: Big5-Oh always has a paragraph story with photos of a famous person who is turning 50 sometime during the two months covered by the issue. The bottom third of the page consists of one-sentence vignettes with head-and-shoulder photos of famous people turning 50, 60, 70 and 80. The copy typically describes something the famous person is doing that demonstrates she or he is continuing to thrive and do great things despite advancing age.

I’ve seen Big5-Oh in every issue of AARP I have ever read, and I have perused each issue for about 18 years. And in every issue, the famous people mentioned are virtually all celebrities, by which I mean actors, pop musicians, sports stars and those known only for being known like the Kardashians and Snooki. Only quite rarely a film director, popular writer or scientist sneaks in.

The latest issue, covering August and September 2019 exemplifies the celebrity-driven approach that hammers home the idea that only celebrities matter (since it’s only their birthdays and ages that are seemed worth memorializing). The featured person turning 50 is Tyler Perry, an actor and writer-director. The smaller features include four actor, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jason Alexander, Richard Gere and Lilly Tomlin, plus the athlete Magic Johnson and the rock star Bruce Springsteen.

Not one scientist, not one historian or sociologist. Not one civic leader, politician, physician, novelist, poet or classical or jazz musician. No astronaut, architect or engineer. I did a little cursory research to come up with a reconceived Big5-Oh for August and September 2019: The big feature, always about someone turning 50, could be the chess player Ben Finegold, the best-selling but much scandalized popular writer James Frey or the filmmaker Noah Baumbach. That’s pretty much a wash with Tyler Perry. If I were editor of this feature, I would probably still pick Tyler Perry over this competition. 

But when we get to people who turned 60 and 70 during these months, you realize how much celebrity culture guided the editor’s choice of subjects: ignored are the designer Michael Kors, the current governor of Virginia Ralph Northam, the distinguished Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, the even more distinguished journalist James Fallows, the important literary novelists Jane Smiley, Martin Amis and Jonathan Franzen, the leader of the Irish Green Party, astronaut Scott Altman and Beverly Barnes, the first woman to captain a Boeing 747. All these people are non-celebrities and all have made more significant and lasting contributions to America than the people the column’s editor selected, with the possible exception of Magic Johnson and Bruce Springsteen. 

What’s more significant, though, is including some of these people instead of all celebrities would make an important message about what we value in our society. It would say that we honor the intellectual contributions of our writers, scientists, knowledge professionals and civic leaders. The fact that AARP always selects celebrities for Big5-Oh and tends to build other stories and features around celebrities makes the opposite message about value—that all that matters is the gossip surrounding celebrities and the promotion of celebrity culture.  

Now AARP shares the blame for our culture’s emphasis on shallow consumerism and superficial celebrities with many of our cultural organizations and educational institutions. For example, the political reporting of the mainstream media reduces all political discourse to celebrity terms—name-calling, who is feuding with whom, who’s winning in the polls, the skeleton-closet scandals of the candidates’ families, which celebrities love and hate them, zingers and misstatements, the candidates’ theme songs and other main themes of celebrity culture. Notice that Trump is as much a master in these endeavors as he is an inexperienced and ignorant buffoon in matters related to governance such as policy, history, the inner workings of the government and the scientific research informing governmental decisions. Note, too, that based on how much ink and space is given to endorsements by the media, in the hierarchy of value, celebrities rate above elected officials who rate above unions, business and scientific organizations and luminaries in fields other than entertainment. 

[theconservativebrief]

The Trump administration is threatening to cut off aid to the government of Honduras — and possibly Guatemala and El Salvador as well — if a caravan of more than 1,000 Honduran migrants, which has already crossed into Guatemala, isn’t stopped before it reaches the United States.

The threat initially came from President Trump’s Twitter account Tuesday morning, which makes it hard to know how serious it is; the president tweets a lot of threats that don’t go anywhere, and actually made an identical threat to the government of Honduras over a previous migrant caravan this spring. But Vice President Mike Pence tweeted something similar later Tuesday morning after a conversation with the president of Honduras.

Spoke to President Hernandez of Honduras about the migrant caravan heading to the U.S. Delivered strong message from @POTUS: no more aid if caravan is not stopped. Told him U.S. will not tolerate this blatant disregard for our border & sovereignty. https://t.co/d0fOMcpoUi

— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) October 16, 2018

By Tuesday night, Trump had expanded the threat to the other two countries in the “Northern Triangle” of Central America:

We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP (END)!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2018

Mexico is likely to step in to defuse the situation, as it has in the past. The Mexican government has already announced that caravan members who don’t have proper visas won’t be allowed to enter Mexico from Guatemala. (In April, Mexico allowed a caravan of more than 1,000 migrants to enter the country, but later forcibly dispersed them.)

But the Trump administration doesn’t appear sanguine about this possibility. As he was in April, the president is again fixated on the idea of a large group of people seeking to migrate to the US. And just as the April caravan helped spur a border crackdown that is still ongoing, the president’s current fixation is likely to drive US policy at the US-Mexico border and beyond.

Trump’s simplistic view of migration — in which people immigrate because their government is “sending” them, and governments ought to try to keep people from leaving so they can “make their countries great again” — doesn’t fit Central American migration to the US. The continued flow of people, often children and families, and often seeking asylum, from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador through Mexico to the US is both a complicated policy problem (in which issues of economic and humanitarian migration get tangled up) and a matter of really sensitive diplomatic dynamics.

To accomplish Trump’s aim of preventing people from even reaching the US-Mexico border, much less being allowed to seek asylum in the US, the government needs all the help it can get from Mexico and Guatemala. Trump’s bullying makes it harder for his government to ask for that help. But when other governments do help the US with “border security,” the asylum-seekers themselves are often the ones who lose out.

For the past several years, a majority of people crossing illegally into the US from Mexico haven’t actually been Mexican — a growing share have been Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran. Central American migrants face a dangerous journey through Mexico, not least because Mexican immigration officials, acting at the behest of the US, have aggressively detained and deported (or worse) nearly a million Central American migrants in recent years.

So “caravans” have become a way for activist groups to call attention to the plight of migrants and to provide strength in numbers.

Last Friday, a group of about 160 Hondurans set out from San Pedro Sula, frequently labeled the murder capital of the world. According to the Associated Press, the Honduran caravan gathered strength as it made its way to Guatemala — with migrants choosing to join out of economic desperation, fears for their safety, or both — and numbered an estimated 1,600 once it arrived at the Guatemalan border Monday.

Guatemalan officials initially didn’t allow the caravan to enter, but after an hours-long standoff they relented.

In other words, while the Trump administration is threatening to punish Honduras if the caravan doesn’t return, the Honduran government can’t actually bring the migrants back (at least not without invading Guatemala). Stopping the caravan is now up to the Guatemalan government, or, more likely, the Mexican government.

Mexico’s response to the spring caravan shrunk the group heading to the US from more than 1,000 to about 300. But Mexico also responded to that caravan by giving migrants the opportunity to get humanitarian visas to stay in Mexico, while it appears to be taking a harder line with the current group.

But even though the caravan is several weeks from arriving at the US-Mexico border — and will almost certainly be apprehended before that — both Trump and Pence view its existence as a violation of America’s “border and sovereignty.”

That’s consistent with Donald Trump’s understanding of immigration policy, at least as it’s been portrayed in his own comments and reporting from inside the White House.

Trump doesn’t appear to understand that the US can’t simply shut down the US-Mexico border; that people coming to the US without papers can’t simply be repelled or deported (because they might have valid grounds to claim asylum).

Anybody entering the United States illegally will be arrested and detained, prior to being sent back to their country!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2018

Nor does he appear to understand that people apply for visas to come to the United States rather than being preselected and “sent” by home countries trying to get rid of them. Given all that, it makes perfect sense that Trump would blame Central American countries for failing to prevent people from leaving — and would see it as an insult to the US that they didn’t.

Others in the Trump administration, however — not least White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who served as director of the US military’s Southern Command (including Central America) before becoming Trump’s first Homeland Security secretary — understand that it’s much more complicated than that.

To anyone who isn’t Donald Trump, it’s obvious that simply preventing people from leaving a country is both a violation of human rights (since they may be fleeing persecution, including government persecution) and an unworkable solution. If the US can’t prevent literally everyone from illegally crossing the US-Mexico border, it’s odd to think that a much poorer and less well-governed country could do a better job with theirs.

Typically, the US’s response to Northern Triangle migration has been that it wants to address the “root causes” — to stop people from wanting to leave. Generally, that means encouraging investment in the economy of those countries and the “rule of law” of their governments.

This attitude — taken both by the Obama administration, and by Kelly’s DHS — justifies denying asylum to Central American migrants because it paints them as economic migrants rather than refugees fleeing violence. It also makes migration seem more “solvable” than it really is, as the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Kevin McAleenan, learned during a recent trip to Guatemala. (Alicia Caldwell’s article about McAleenan’s trip for the Wall Street Journal is well worth reading to understand just how complicated the issue is.)

But it’s good for relations with Mexico and Northern Triangle countries, who will happily agree that the problem with their countries isn’t violence or human rights abuses but simply that not enough people are giving them money.

Under Trump, however — and specifically once US-Mexico apprehensions returned to normal levels after an early-2017 dip — the attitude has shifted. Trump characterizes the problem with Central America as gang violence, but uses that as a reason for the US not to accept Central American migrants, rather than a reason to extend asylum to them.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who’s led the charge to narrow asylum grounds so that it’s harder for Central American gang victims to qualify for legal status in the US, has made it clear that he doesn’t believe gang violence is a type of persecution covered by US asylum law.

It’s essentially the “shithole countries” view. Central American countries are poor and crime-ridden, and instead of being a reason for the US to help them, it’s a reason for the US to build up walls.

The problem is that callousness and bullying make the governments of these countries less inclined to do what the US wants — as Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto gently chided Trump during the last caravan crisis.

As long as the Trump administration wants to prevent people from making it even within sight of the US-Mexico border, it desperately needs Mexico and all of the Northern Triangle countries to cooperate in apprehending migrants en route. After all, millions of the dollars that the US currently sends to Honduras are aid for military and border security.

In other words, the US is already exerting substantial control over the way that the Northern Triangle countries and (especially) Mexico engage in immigration enforcement — it’s just doing it with carrots for foreign governments, so that they’ll give the stick to asylum-seekers.

In this video from Vox’s Borders series, Johnny Harris explores how the US and Mexico work together to prevent Central American migrants from arriving at the US border.

The crackdown at the US-Mexico border can be traced back to Trump’s fixation with the caravan this spring: By the time 300 caravan members arrived at the San Ysidro port of entry (near San Diego), the Trump administration had put into motion the zero-tolerance prosecution effort that would lead to widespread family separation and had stepped up its restriction of asylum-seekers coming legally into official ports of entry.

The administration characterizes the latest caravan as yet more evidence that further enforcement is needed; “The current reporting on the migrant ‘caravan’ from Honduras is what we see day-in and day-out at the border as a result of well-advertised and well-known catch-and-release loopholes,” DHS spokesperson Katie Waldman said Monday.

It’s already an international effort. At some ports of entry, Mexican immigration officials are responsible for organizing a weeks-long line of asylum-seekers waiting their turn to be allowed to enter the US legally.

But human-rights observers claim the Mexican government isn’t primarily interested in protecting an orderly asylum process — it’s interested in helping the US stop people from crossing, legally or otherwise.

Advocates recount stories from asylum-seekers of officials on both sides telling them they aren’t allowed to seek asylum in the US, or of Mexican officials detaining them or threatening them with deportation after they tried to present themselves at a US port.

When the caravan arrived at San Ysidro this spring, the US didn’t allow any of its members to enter initially, due to the restrictions at the port of entry. It gradually allowed a few at a time to enter legally over the next days and weeks.

In the meantime, a Human Rights Watch report published last week alleges that Mexican police arrested two of the asylum-seekers and beat one of them, and a group of armed men attempted to burn down the shelter where another group of asylum-seekers was staying.

One Mexican official told Human Rights Watch that the US had asked the Mexican government to clear out the plaza where asylum-seekers were waiting — with the implicit understanding that anyone whose Mexican travel visas had expired would be deported. If Mexico had complied, it would have, essentially, deported people from Mexico because they had to wait in Mexico before being allowed to cross legally into the US.

It would have been an act of “border enforcement” without US involvement. That’s exactly what Trump and Pence are calling for now. The point is to prevent people from arriving — how that happens, and what happens to the people instead, appears to not be the US government’s concern.

Original Source -> Trump’s threats to stop aid over a new migrant caravan, explained

via The Conservative Brief

[42bakery]

Hii!! I hope you are doing well :) I’m the anon who is dragging her friends to watch motogp so I have someone to talk to but they love asking hard questions; there are things that I was able to answer and there are things that I checked your blogs and you have already answered but they asked me a question that made me unsure of the answer that I gave and who better to ask than our expert

Their questions was why some people ride on “edge” better than others? And how can two teammates but one is better at finding the limits and hovering and not crashing but when his teammate tries he immediately crashes? I told them that it was natural and freaky thing the only people that I could think of that rode their entire career hovering on the limit are Casey and Marc maybe even Vale too. But I also told them it maybe because some riders ride Motorcross for fun so do you think that actually help?

Hi again anon 👋👋👋👋

I'm really glad this or my old blog had helped you. Also how did you find things there? Because there's a bunch of things I never properly tagged with Tech talk or something like that.

Okay, why I'm labeled tech expert? This is only my 5th MotoGP season, I'm still learning a lot. There are here people that has grown watching MotoGP. @motocorsas is more expert in the subject that I'm. Also there are literal engineer in this site following MotoGP, and I'm not an engineer (I had some subjects, but all of them applied to my field, which is production and biology). So no, I'm not an expert.

The thing is all riders ride on the edge and the reason why some are better than others is because they are willing to asume more risk like Marc or Pedro (Brad too, but like one step behind). They do find the limit in practice, and then play with that in the races. In those cases, when a rider crashes is because they have ridden beyond theirs and the bike's limit.

Being teammates or having the same training routine has nothing to do to be able to be over the edge without crashing. It has more to do with their riding style and their natural ability to read the bikes feedback and make the necessaries adjustments to not crash. So let me explain, as they ride, the riders feel the bumps of the track, the change of surfaces (if there is any) and the grip level, among other things, and that tells them when to break, when to push and when to do the change of direction.

An aggressive rider such as Marc, Pero or Brad, will test and stress the bike beyond the limit during practices, and then get the feed back on what is going to happen before the crash. Other riders such as Luca or Fabio are more in the smart side and prefer to get the limit by pushing small increment by small increment. Kind of 'I stop here, I don't know what's ahead, but this is safe'.

Then again, the bike does a lot. The Honda for example gives you 0 feedback, and actually one of the complains it was that the first warning something was wrong it was the rider actually flying. The Ducati or the Yamaha is actually pretty good in giving you feedback. But this is not a aggressive bikes give no feed back and stable one gives you, because KTM has been working on the feed back and is much better than the Honda. And Aprilia is also bad in the feed back, but then again, the Factory seems to actually suck at producing parts that are exactly the same, which makes the riders feel off when jumping from bike 1 to bike 2 or changing one part for a new one.

Okay to sum up, basically the more risk a rider takes, the more at ease he's with riding beyond the edge (because everyone rides on the edge)