Una tenista polaca de 24 años llegó a París la semana pasada clasificada en el puesto 114 del mundo, sin patrocinadores, sin ingresos garantizados y sin certeza siquiera de poder pagar su habitación de hotel.
Tuvo que ganar tres partidos de clasificación solo para entrar al cuadro principal del Abierto de Francia. El dinero de los premios solo se paga al final del torneo, así que una marca polaca de bebidas deportivas intervino discretamente y cubrió su factura de hotel.
Su nombre es Maja Chwalinska. Y hoy, juega la final del Abierto de Francia.
Antes de este torneo, había ganado exactamente un partido de cuadro principal de Grand Slam en toda su carrera. Luchó contra una depresión tan severa que en 2021 no podía levantarse de la cama. Se sometió a una cirugía de rodilla en 2022. Pasó años luchando en torneos menores por toda Europa solo para mantenerse a flote.
Luego llegó a París, ganó tres clasificatorios y siguió ganando. Zheng Qinwen. Elise Mertens. Maria Sakkari. Diana Shnaider. Nueve partidos seguidos. Un solo set perdido.
Ahora es la primera clasificatoria en la historia del Abierto de Francia en llegar a la final. La última vez que una clasificatoria alcanzó una final de Grand Slam fue Emma Raducanu en el Abierto de EE.UU. de 2021. Raducanu ganó.
Simplemente por llegar a la final, Chwalinska ha ganado más dinero en premios que en toda su carrera junta. El cheque por ser subcampeona es de $1.6 millones. Si gana hoy, se lleva $3.25 millones a casa.
Hace una semana no podía pagar su habitación de hotel.
Many people, especially immigrants from countries like Nigeria and India, are opting out of workplace pensions in the UK without fully understanding what they may be giving up.
Ohen patience Obazelu, a priestess of Olokun and Mammy-wata at her shrine to these divinities in Benin city,ca.1991.
She's been a priestess since her secondary school days, and she holds a harmonica, which she uses in her olókun and Mammy-wata practice. On the floor are chalk Iconographs of different meanings or symbolism: the two-headed snake and the fish, which are associated with her worship of the water.
At first she suffered deep paralysis that twisted her head to the back and those who wish to speak to her, had to do it from the back, this was until she was initiated into esago worship, and before the paralysis she couldn't even walk which necessitated her first ever olokun initiation. At this time, rumors of Mammy-wata sighting in the area by school children were prevalent in the area.
Two years later, she fell into a coma where she couldn't hear human voices but could hear that of birds and the wind, and anyone who touched her received "Oriri" a shock like those of an electric fish, until she was initiated into the Mammy wata worship, note she had earlier done initiation into Obanje worship. Her life, according to her interview with norma rosen, has since smoothed out ever since she became a Mammy-wata devotee.
Her choice of Mammy-wata imagery is very creative and foreign influenced, as she regards the Indian snake charmer chromolith as very important as it delineate the Mammy-wata altar rom the Olokun's altar, the former she believes is a woman with fish-tail as leg.
She was 22 when the interview and photos of her were taken by Norman Rosen in 1990/91.
The effective tax rate on minimum wage earners in the UK 14% and if you include a council tax rate of £2,500 pa, the effective tax rate jumps to 24% of minimum wage earners on the NLW.
This rate is still one of the lowest in Europe if you consider the social nets in place for low income earners
You know that Local Authorities fund the bulk of adult social care, and they're already stretched. The only way to push care wages up meaningfully is to raise council tax, which goes up every year as it is.
So pick a struggle. Either higher wages funded by higher taxes on households who are also feeling the cost of living, or lower wages propped up by migrant labour and schemes to nudge more Britons into the sector.
You can't have higher pay, lower taxes and a closed labour market all at once. Something must give brother.
🧵 2/5
By the late 1920s a Dutch born American engineer named Carl Norden was working on a problem that no air force in the world had solved.
How to drop a bomb from 20,000 feet in the air, traveling at hundreds of miles per hour, into something the size of a small building.
The math was punishing.
The bomb had to be released early enough to fall through wind and air resistance to a target the bombardier could no longer see.
Speed, altitude, drift, temperature, the curvature of the earth — all of it had to be calculated in real time by a man looking through a small telescope in a moving aircraft.
Carl Norden built a machine that did it for him.
The Norden bombsight was a 50 pound electromechanical analog computer containing approximately 2,000 precision parts.
Gyroscopes. Motors. Gears. Mirrors. A telescopic sight. A rotating directional indicator.
An autopilot link that allowed the bombsight to actually fly the aircraft during the final minutes of the bomb run, holding the bomber rock steady on its approach to the target.
The bombardier set the variables.
The Norden calculated the release point.
The Norden flew the aircraft.
The Norden dropped the bombs.
In controlled tests it seemed astonishingly accurate.
Bombs were placed inside areas the size of football fields from four miles up.
@Funminz The rest of the world takes them for granted. Many of us are able to live good lives just by working in random basic jobs. Not in Nigeria!
Imagine Kemi as a politician in Nigeria? Women leader, surulere constituency 😂😂
In the final game of his career, Japanese legend Tomoaki Makino and his manager decided to let his wife get subbed in wearing his shirt and take a penalty in honor of him😭
Three years since the minister of Communications and Innovation was appointed, and he achieved many big wins:
- Data prices are lower, and quality of internet is way better
- The Post Office now works perfectly
- Startup funding at all time high
- 10,000s of techies got jobs
- Nigeria is now a major outsourcing capital
- Cyber security is very high - nobody is getting hacked
- Bandits are easily traceable via their phone lines
- Many early stage digital companies in all parts of the country
- Broadband is now ubiquitous and cheap
- The ministry website is loading quickly
Congratulations - this shows that technocratic appointments are the best.
@smartnakamoura Telephone numbers should not be used as a means of verifying identity. Policy makers in Nigeria are very dumb!
If numbers are recyclable, why add them to life identification information such as NIN & BVN? In a country where some persons have multiple telephone numbers.
In 2015, when Buhari presided over the massacre of hundreds of Shiites in Kaduna, killed El-Zakzaky's children, and threw El-Zakzaky and his wife in prison, I spoke out. I argued my friends that Nigerians needed to protest against such brutality. They rebuked me and said that the Shiites deserved what they got because they had no right to obstruct a general's convoy lol.
I told them what the soldiers did was reprehensible, and that they could do the same thing in Ikeja someday. They laughed it off and Lagosians would never behave like Shiites and no president could ever attempt such.
Unfortunately, 5 years later, Lekki Toll Gate happened and the government denied it. Sanwo Olu and Fashola ignominiously cosplaying as detectives at the crime scene. Terrible times.
The same pattern is now playing out in the South East, and one day it will come home to every other region. Life will go on as it always does in Nigeria, with the bodies barely cold before people move on.
We Nigerians need to understand that our leaders have no tribe. They will unleash evil on any ethnic group, as long as it serves their interests. No region is exempt as soon as a president from another ethnic group gets to Aso Rock. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we stop cheering when it happens to someone else.
It goes against my egalitarian instincts, but the facts don't care about my feelings.
This is my parents' house where I grew up, and I know 99.999% of my audience can never find this place on a map of Lagos. But it exists, and this was my everyday reality until I moved out at 25.
Imagine thinking that I could experience the world through the same frame of reality as someone who grew up eating Indomie Instant Noodles with their parents and 7 siblings in a room-and-parlour next to an evangelical church with a loudspeaker outside.
Imagine trying to explain to these people that the oyibo paradise they saw on their old CRT television in those American movies after NTA Newsline, is actually a parasite economy built on their poverty. How could they possibly even have the frame of reality to comprehend such a thing? Imagine trying to explain geopolitics to people who haven't had the opportunity to taste whole milk before.
It's almost pointless.
I must sound like I'm absolutely insane to them.
David,
Millions of Nigerians have the internet at the palm of their hands. They can Google stuff, ask questions, compare their lives with others, and even do basic research on how to improve their existence so that they can then uphold the leaders to a higher standard.
That they choose to remain under the heavy yoke of our current crop of masters rather than rebel and seek change is not your fault. That they rather collect rice and ₦5,000 is totally on them. They cherish their current suffering.
You cannot change things by trying to educate those who refuse to be educated.
Real change in this country will only come from an intelligent, laser-focused leader who will not bend to the whims of foreigners but will instead make calculated decisions and negotiate a better future for us all.
Perhaps this your crusade will awaken that person. But it is a long shot, sorry.
Drugs is scorrect as the term for pharmaceuticals just that it is only used in academic and clinical settings while medication is a synonym for drugs and mostly used to refer to medicines.
Also, drugs have about 3 meanings of which 2 have negative connotations hence the stares and gasps whenever you mention it.
Sometimes I read stories about children being harmed and I genuinely wonder how it even gets that far…especially in a country like the UK where safeguarding systems are so tight and powerful .
Within my community, I’ve seen how quickly the weight of those systems can come down on parents, no room for error before their kids get yanked off into the system.
Then you come across reports like this, from The Voice ….and it starts to make sense.👇👇
Black mothers, in particular, are more likely to be profiled, questioned, and second-guessed about the welfare of their kids.