Luke

Bandaid.
My wife is a Rockstar and I'm just trying to keep up.
Go Flames!🔥

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

I'm seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points.

I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days.

Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them.

However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right - nay, obligation - to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created.

When you've known people since they were ten years old it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn't managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I've repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said.

The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's 'all witches' speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through' (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness.

Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her 'public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who's identified into the women's prison?

I wasn't a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women's rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges.

The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me - a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was - I might never have been this honest.

Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.

[Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦🇳🇱 @ryangerritsen]

We have over 4000 organized crime groups operating within Canada & an army of police & RCMP officers are at an Ostrich Farm to make sure they are “taken care of”

[Cenk Uygur @cenkuygur]

You don’t have a right not to be offended. Charlie offended some people, I offend some people. So what? You didn’t like what he said - and then what happened? “He’s influencing people!!” So what, influence them back. In America, we don’t shut down opinions we don’t like. Period.

[Kirk Lubimov @KirkLubimov]

Take note:

Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney said nothing about the racist slaughtering of Iryna Zarutska and said nothing about the shooting of Charlie Kirk.

However, he does condemn the elimination of the Islamic Jihadists Hamas leadership.

Got it?

[Luke @BackInCanada]

@ayaonx 2001: A Space Odyssey

[Coffeezilla @coffeebreak_YT]

Respect to all the conservative folks who are not letting this go despite Trump wanting them to.🫡

This is not left vs right.

It’s the people vs the pedophiles.

[Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX]

Anytime there is an extreme weather event, why does it have to be blamed on “climate change” or “weather modification”?

Why can’t it be “just weather”?

Have people become so brainwashed and intellectually lazy that they cannot grasp the fact that the weather always has done crazy things? Or are we just pretending that thunderstorms, floods and heatwaves never happened before 1980?

As a meteorologist who studies weather patterns, this blame game is beyond silly at this point.

[Armena Royals @ArmenaRoyals]

Tuesday Night Game Two!

[Stephen Punwasi 🏚️📉🐈☃️ @StephenPunwasi]

🇨🇦 just busted 3 fentanyl labs in 2 days.

All well equipped, industrial scale facilities within a short-drive of each other in BC. All to produce the fentanyl 🇨🇦 totally doesn’t have.

Tragically I’m not your fentanyl czar, but here’s what I’d notice if I were. 😉

<thread>🧵👇

[Adam Carolla @adamcarolla]

If white liberal women hated the corporations poisoning our food as much as they hate Elon Musk, imagine how much healthier America could be. #MAHA

[Martyupnorth®- Unacceptable Fact Checker @Martyupnorth]

It should be obvious to everyone by now that the carbon taxes were never about saving the planet.

[Luke @BackInCanada]

@JoshRyanSports I would be down 👌

[Ricky Gervais @rickygervais]

Good luck to all the Oscar nominees.
And remember…

[BigFlamesGuy @BigFlamesGuy]

Going from watching McDavid, Mackinnon, Makar and Crosby on team Canada….

to watching Kevin Rooney, Daniil Miromanov, Jake Bean and Dan Vladar on the Flames

Sigh

[Lex Fridman @lexfridman]

Everyone should be in favor of transparent, efficient government. Seems obvious.

[Angelica @_angelica_toy]

THIS.

[Luke @BackInCanada]

@NHL_Watcher Dustin wolf

[Jillian Michaels @JillianMichaels]

Some asked what could have been done differently in LA - I do lunges for a living and even I can figure this out:

1. Have existing reservoirs filled. If repairs are needed do them during rainy season or after new ones are built.

2. Build the new reservoirs Californians voted to fund in 2014 - not one is complete.

3. Stop using tax payer dollars to fund crazy sh!+ like drug kits to the homeless and fund desalination plants.

4. Increase funding to the fire department - don’t cut it.

4. Do prescribed control burns!

5. Create fire breaks.

6. Divert the water for the smelt fish back to urban areas. - when the fire retardant and fire waste washes into the ocean those fish are screwed way worse.

6. Get nut farmers out of Cali and into another state. It takes 1.1 gallons of water to grow an almond.

7. Make sure during fire season the mayor is in LA so someone can declare a federal emergency - this way the navy choppers that drop water could have been deployed immediately. Not days later.

8. Call in the National guard before all of LA is on fire and being looted.

9. Force the privately owned utility companies to update their 100 year old equipment so it doesn’t fail and start fires and kill people and animals.

11. Recall Gavin Newsome.

[Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. @hubermanlab]

Trad media now covering the alcohol cancer link, a call for warning labels etc. Ahem “I told you so” but moreso, the data are NOT new. Let’s be smart & eliminate the phthalates & BPAs & certain food additives- which we know are endocrine altering/carcinogenic ASAP. Why risk it?

[Chris Martz @ChrisMartzWX]

Here’s the deal. 👏

• When “climate scientists” stop flying to attend conferences overseas,

• When politicians and celebrities stop flying in private jets to collect environmental stewardship awards, or buying oceanfront properties, and,

• When everyone demanding that we the peasants decrease our carbon footprint and decides to go live off-grid with no electricity, no WiFi, no running water and no plumbing,

I then, and only then, will be convinced that there is a “climate emergency” that we should be worried about.

Demanding that I pay more for gasoline, more for electricity, stop eating red meat and purchasing “carbon credits” will not have any measurable effect on weather conditions 100 years from now.

You cannot reach into my wallet, take my money, and promise to use that to set a thermostat on the planet.

💥 Happy New Year everyone!! 🥳