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OTTAWAPrime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the House of Commons Tuesday to announce his intent to retain the Ring of Power.

The ring, which he obtained last monthon the field of battleat the base of Mt. Logan in the Yukon Province, was freed from itsmaster when Trudeau slew a halfling ring bearer and took it from him.

"This ring... this precious ring... it is a gift," said Trudeau before the House of Commons."We can wield its power against the forces of white supremacy and transphobia!"

According to sources, Trudeau had a chance to destroy the ring when former Canadian intellectual Jordan Petersonimplored him to cast it into the fires from which it was made.

But Trudeau, who has been using the ring to quell anti-vaccine protests, today said he would bear it indefinitely.

"This I will have as compensation for the microaggressions I experience every day. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?" he said in his address.

Members of the Canadian parliament were mystified given that there is no ongoing emergency but opted to support their leader to avoid being canceled.

This woman - er, wymxn? - was pulled over for driving alone in the carpool lane. But she's got a surefire way to get out of the ticket: her preferred pronoun is they!

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Trudeau Announces He Will Retain Ring Of Power Indefinitely - The Babylon Bee

In September 2016, two months before Trump was elected, comedian and podcaster Shane Mauss sat across from Joe Rogan, recording episode number 851 of the Joe Rogan Experience. At the time, Mauss and Rogan seemed to have a lot in common: Theyd both worked as comedians and entertainers for over a decade, and theyd both successfully carved out their own paths as podcasters. Plus, theyd both had an interest in psychedelics, which was why Mauss was in Rogans studio that day.

Mauss was enthusiastically received by many JRE listeners, who were impressed by his willingness to take Kratom on air, as well as his insights on smoking DMT. Overall, Mauss working-class, open-minded sense of humor and curiosity sat well with Rogans audience.

In the five years since, however, a lot has changed. Mauss now has his own science podcast, Here We Are, in which he conducts long-form interviews with scientists while touring the country. The show averages a humble 20,000 downloads a month and has become a particularly important pet project for Mauss since COVID hit. Meanwhile, boasting 190 million downloads a month, Rogan and his podcast guests have spent much of the pandemic speculating if the virus was made in a lab, joking that wearing a mask is for bitches and implying that mask mandates could lead to an uprising. Most recently, Rogan has been under fire for hosting guests who spread COVID misinformation and share misogynistic and transphobic beliefs, as well as using the n-word in the past.

Like many others, Mauss noticed Rogans podcast becoming a safe haven for COVID conspiracists at the start of the pandemic, and grew concerned that Rogan was fanning the flames of an increasingly paranoid and misinformed fanbase thats escalated to scientists receiving threats against them and their families. Since he has access to so many scientists and other experts in their fields, he personally contacted Rogan on Twitter to say that the virus is serious, this is gonna be a really big deal, and if you want, I can connect you with some scientists who can explain this really clearly, Mauss tells me. But Rogan never responded. For all I know, he never saw my messages. Hes a super busy guy.

Mauss noticed an underlying theme in everything Rogan said on his podcast, like episode number 1,498 with Jon Stewart in June 2020, where Rogan joked he was going on tour but would spray Lysol on the audience. Kidding aside, the overarching sense that Rogan could distance himself from the crowds of people putting their lives at risk to line his pockets didnt sit well with Mauss. He interpreted it as, You need to be tough, and this is an individual responsibility, and if you dont have big enough biceps to punch COVID, its your fault for getting it.

As the pandemic continued and though much of what we knew about COVID was still evolving Mauss used his platform to try to help with the public health crisis. He interviewed experts like Nina Fefferman, a professor in the ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, about the use of statistical models to predict the outcomes of pandemics, as well as Olamide Jarrett, an associate professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of Illinois Chicago, to discuss the gravity of the contagion head-on. Most recently, Mauss sat down with emergency room physician Graham Walker, who reviewed Rogans recent interview with vaccine skeptic Robert Malone on Twitter, after Malone compared the vaccine to Nazi medical experiments.

Because Rogan has apologized for spreading misinformation and walked some of his comments back, other comedians have tried to get Mauss to lighten up and look at the context of the podcast. But Mauss argues that the context is even more horrifying. If you think the little clips are bad, if you actually hear where Joe Rogan is coming from, its the perfect storm of everything dangerous during a specifically communal, specifically scientific problem, he argues.

Mauss has since followed up with Rogan again on Twitter:

Ultimately, Mauss tries to control what he can by working to correct the misinformation Rogan repeatedly hurls into the world. But that doesnt mean its easy. Trying to communicate this stuff is like, oh my god. Id rather have COVID than try to explain COVID to the general public, he jokes.

Even as a kid growing up in Wisconsin, Mauss was interested in biology, philosophy and any scientific explanation for human life that he could use to argue with his Christian family. When I first learned about evolution, it was to argue with religious people, quite frankly, he tells me. When Mauss decided to skip college to pursue stand-up, working in construction and factories to pay the bills, he continued to independently educate himself by listening to audiobooks while driving to gigs.

His comedy career took off in 2007 after his first of five appearances on Conan and a Comedy Central Presents special a few years later. But then he found himself at a strange crossroads: My comedy dream came true, and I thought it was going to take longer. So I was like, now what? To try something new, he decided to blend his two loves science and comedy through live themed shows. Soon Mauss got in the habit of emailing scientists with more specific questions for his jokes. Surprised by how accessible they were, this back-and-forth eventually inspired him to start conducting long-form interviews, which laid the foundation for Here We Are.

Mauss, however, wasnt initially successful at blending stand-up and science. One misstep in 2013 was the release of his Netflix special Mating Season, which was intended to make evolutionary biology more accessible to the religious, anti-science groups hed grown up with. I was really unhappy with the end result, Mauss says, admitting that he made something too hyper-accessible and dumbed down. I focused too much on making it funny and not enough on making it interesting because I got scared. I was still figuring out how to present this stuff. But what originally inspired that special getting an evolution-denier in the back of Hyenas Comedy Club in Plano, Texas to say, I never thought Id laugh at science like that still inspires him today. The difference is hes now trying to do it on a broader scale.

Both science and comedy are largely about finding novel incongruities in life and communicating those ideas to others, so it makes sense why Mauss and his scientist guests have a lot in common. And he loves that scientists tend to take a zoomed-out look at most things. Id rather talk with scientists on my show more than I would with almost any comedian on any podcast on almost any day of the week, with few exceptions, he says.

Mauss has also found that scientists are open to being corrected when theyre wrong and are rarely certain about anything. Scientists say, I dont know more than anyone Ive ever met, Mauss explains, something hes been trying to work on personally as well. And that may also be the difference between someone like Mauss hero, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, who hes interviewed several times, and Rogans buddy Jordan Peterson. Ive never met any scientist who speaks so matter-of-factly and with such authority on any subject like the way Jordan Peterson speaks about subjects he doesnt even study, he says.

All of this is very personal for Mauss, too. Years before COVID, he lost his comedy mentor to conspiratorial thinking. When Mauss teacher and close friend was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, he fell down a rabbit hole of conspiracies, first focused on what causes MS and then turning to Alex Jones rantings, anti-Semitism and shape-shifting lizard people. His friend soon stopped trusting doctors and went into debt chasing homeopathic cures. I was trying to get him out of that for a while, Mauss says. Its this experience that pushes him to continue to try to reach others who have similarly fallen victim to all sorts of dangerous misinformation.

In the end, too, its also why he views his podcast as his true calling. I dont really even care about comedy anymore, honestly, he tells me. Other than it being a nice way of delivering science in a more palatable, understandable way thats clear and entertaining. He might not have all the answers and what he talks about might be more scary than funny but thats sorta the point: Hes more than happy to hand over the mic to the people who do.

Lauren Vinopal is a writer and stand-up comedian based out of New York City, who writes mostly about health, science and men. She is the host of the Mid Riff Comedy Show in Brooklyn, a frequent podcast guest all over, and lives the life of a teen who looks like they havent slept in years.

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The Comedian Trying to Make Joe Rogan Fans Feel Better About the COVID Vaccine - MEL Magazine

The philosopher Nina Power believes men are under attack. Western society has done away with the positive dimensions of patriarchy, that is, the protective father, the responsible man, the paternalistic attitude that exhibits care and compassion. In her new book, What Do Men Want?, she expresses the hope that, following a great deal of bitterness in recent years, men and women can reconcile on the basis of a renewed and greater understanding of one another and advocates a return to old values and virtues honour, loyalty, courage; rather than being made to feel guilty for their gender privilege, Boys and men must be allowed to be good, to become better.

These are worthy sentiments, but the underlying premise is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Just how prevalent is the current demonisation of men? Have compassion and virtue really been abolished? Are boys not presently allowed to be good? The sweeping, simplistic and vaguely sour tone recalls the handwringing culture wars opinion pieces that have proliferated in recent years. They invariably follow a template: an obscure incidence of arguably overzealous identity politicking usually involving a university campus is held up as evidence of a deep civilisational malaise. The alarmist register can make for compelling clickbait, but whether it can sustain a serious, book-length work is another matter.

To give us a sense of 21st-century male ennui, Power presents a cursory overview of the masculinist online communities known collectively as the manosphere. At the relatively respectable end of the spectrum we find Canadian self-help guru Jordan Peterson, whose brand of commonsensical conservatism has helped lots of young men find a sense of direction in their lives. (Many people, it seems, desire the kind of certainty that comes from someone saying basic things in a stern manner, she notes.) At the more extreme end are gender separatist groups such as Men Going Their Own Way, and self-styled incels (involuntary celibates).

Power argues we should try to understand these communities rather than treating them as pariahs. She invokes the trajectory of notorious pickup artist Neil Strauss, who authored a bestselling manual on chatting up women before eventually seeing the error of his ways, to show that redemption is possible. Intriguingly, she suggests the subculture around obsessive self-improvement contains a kernel of radical leftism: If pro-masculinist books have an appeal it is in large part because they present an image of an escape from various kinds of depressed, morose types of masculinity in a consumerist, hedonistic society. In this analysis, the restraint and discipline advocated by, for example, the NoFap movement which preaches abstinence from masturbation and pornography is re-conceived as a form of anti-capitalist resistance.

After years of febrile identity politics discourse, it can be refreshing to read a writer urging us to come together and put aside our differences. But what does that actually mean? To whom is Power referring when she writes, in an apparent dig at contemporary feminists, that we should be wary of those who seek to generate resentment by pitting men and women against each other? Set against her caricaturing of bien-pensant liberalism, Powers ostensibly reasonable call for compassion feels at best platitudinous, at worst disingenuous or even reactionary: most forms of political struggle involve some measure of conflict between competing groups; to renounce this altogether amounts to a politics of quietism.

There is of course something to be said for the idea that cultivating personal virtue can mitigate the apathy and alienation of modern life, but most people already do this after a fashion. There may indeed be some pockets of misandry here and there, but they hardly amount to a societal war against men. And while many members of incel communities are probably just decent guys who lost their way, enough of them are thoroughly vile for the movement to be of concern. As with so many sallies in the culture wars, there is little substantive insight here just a simmering animus against a largely imagined enemy.

What Do Men Want? Masculinity and Its Discontents is published by Allen Lane (18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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What Do Men Want? by Nina Power review a misguided defence of the male - The Guardian

Nurse Jordan Ledbetter performs a test for COVID-19 outside the Marion County Health Department in Hamilton, Alabama, on Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2022. (AP Photo / Jay Reeves)

HAMILTON, Ala. (AP) A handwritten log kept by nurses tells the story of the losing battle to get more people vaccinated against COVID-19 in this corner of Alabama: Just 14 people showed up at the Marion County Health Department for their initial shot during the first six weeks of the year.

That was true even as hospitals in and around the county of roughly 30,000 people filled with virus patients and the death toll climbed. On many days, no one got a first shot at all, while a Mexican restaurant up the street, Los Amigos, was full of unmasked diners at lunchtime.

The vaccination drive in the U.S. is grinding to a halt, and demand has all but collapsed in places like this deeply conservative manufacturing town where many werent interested in the shots to begin with.

The average number of Americans getting their first shot is down to about 90,000 a day, the lowest point since the first few days of the U.S. vaccination campaign, in December 2020. And hopes of any substantial improvement in the immediate future have largely evaporated.

About 76% of the U.S. population has received at least one shot. Less than 65% of all Americans are fully vaccinated.

Vaccination incentive programs that gave away cash, sports tickets, beer and other prizes have largely gone away. Government and employer vaccine mandates have faced court challenges and may have gone as far as they ever will.

And with COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths subsiding across the U.S., people who are against getting vaccinated dont see much reason to change their minds.

People are just over it. Theyre tired of it, said Judy Smith, administrator for a 12-county public health district in northwestern Alabama.

The bottoming-out of demand for the first round of vaccinations is especially evident in conservative areas around the country.

On most days in Idaho, the number of people statewide getting their first shot rarely surpasses 500.

In Wyoming, a total of about 280 people statewide got their first shot in the past week, and the waiting area at the Cheyenne-Laramie County Health Department stood empty Tuesday morning. The head of the department fondly recalled just a few months ago, when the lobby was bustling on Friday afternoons after school with children getting their doses. But they arent showing up anymore either.

People heard more stories about, well, the omicrons not that bad, Executive Director Kathy Emmons said. I think a lot of people just kind of rolled the dice and decided, Well, if its not that bad, Im just going to kind of wait it out and see what happens.

Marion County, along the Mississippi line, is part of a band of Alabama counties where most people arent fully vaccinated more than a year after shots were rolled out. Just to the east, Winston County has the states lowest share of fully vaccinated residents, at 26%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 42% are fully immunized in Marion County.

The digital sign outside First National Bank flashes Bible verses along with the temperature, and many Marion County residents work in small plants that make mobile homes and components for prefab housing. Most area jobs are blue-collar, and TVs are typically turned to Fox News. A conservative, working-class ethic runs deep.

The area went heavily for President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. And yet resistance to the vaccine is so strong that two counties over, in Cullman, some booed Trump when he encouraged vaccinations during a rally that drew thousands last summer.

COVID-19 has killed almost 18,000 people in Alabama, giving the state the nations fourth-highest rate of deaths relative to population. Marion Countys rate exceeds the state average at 1.78%, with more than 140 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Health officials expected to have a hard time persuading Black people to get government-sponsored vaccines in Alabama, home of the infamousTuskegee syphilis studyand a place where distrust of Washington runs deep. They started work on public education campaigns weeks early in mostly Black areas, which now have some of the states highest vaccination rates, at 60% or more.

But they didnt expect the stiff resistance among rural whites that has kept vaccination numbers stubbornly low in places like Marion County, which is 94% white. While rural transportation difficulties, confusion over vaccine costs theyre free and a lack of health care access have also been factors, the partisan divide in America killed the vaccine drive for some before it really got started, officials said.

Rural white men who identify as conservative are just not interested in this. That caught us off guard, said Dr. Scott Harris, head of the Alabama Department of Public Health. By the first or second month of the vaccine campaign, it became clear that those folks just werent going to come in.

Richard Kitchens is among that group. The owner of a clothing and sports shoe shop on the square in Hamilton, Kitchens said he isnt interested in the vaccine after getting COVID-19 in 2020 before vaccines were available and having relatives who contracted the illness, developed only minor symptoms and recovered.

Short of a proven guarantee against illness which no vaccine provides he doesnt see the point.

I guess if I knew I could go out and get a shot and wouldnt get it or spread it, I would go get it, and they say it helps, Kitchens said. But I think that will be determined sometime down the road maybe.

Doris Peterson is fully vaccinated, but she said she didnt get a booster on the advice of her two adult daughters, neither of whom is vaccinated. Peterson said she is used to being one of the few people around still wearing a mask in public.

Most of the time I am it, she said.

Kelly Moore, a former Tennessee health official who now heads a CDC-funded vaccination advocacy organization named Immunize.org, recalled seeing data from a recent survey that hit her like a punch to the gut.

The results were presented at a CDC meeting of vaccine experts earlier this month. The January survey of about 1,000 adults asked unvaccinated participants what, if anything, would change their mind and persuade them to get a shot. Half said nothing.

It was quite demoralizing to see those results, frankly, Moore said.

With the pandemic still a mortal threat, public health workers havent given up on getting more people vaccinated, even if it feels like an uphill slog.

Jordan Ledbetter, a nurse who works at the Marion County Health Department, was thrilled when two people came in for first-time shots on the same day recently.

That was exciting, she said. There are days when I havent given any vaccines.

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US Vaccination Drive Is Bottoming Out as Omicron Subsides - WTTW News

Libertarian: COVID Is Reshaping Education

Pandemic-era stresses accelerated big changes to education, observes Reasons J.D. Tuccille notably, families growing acceptance of charters, homeschooling, and a host of flexible approaches to teaching kids. In December, EdChoice found that 68 percent of respondents had grown more favorable to homeschooling during the pandemic. Theyre also supporting, in similar numbers, public-funding measures (e.g., vouchers) for alternatives to traditional schooling. Such options had been gaining acceptance long before COVID-19, but the pandemic fueled discontent, as school officials, whod found educating kids a challenge in good times, left them high and dry in the midst of a public health crisis. Families that once deemed alternatives unthinkable soon began considering them. And as families go, so goes the culture.

A staggering act of appeasement, is one label for Team Bidens decision to arrange for the payment of Irans dues at the United Nations, report The New York Suns editors. Youd think the UNs decision to strip Tehran of its voting rights for failing to pay its dues would be a boon for America. Its the fruit of American sanctions, after all, and would mean that Iran would be able to foment less trouble at Turtle Bay. Yet the Biden administration arranged for $18 million of blocked Iranian funds to be released so they could pay their dues and vote. Meanwhile, Tehran finds the cash to supply weapons to the Houthis, help Hezbollah and join in naval maneuvers with Russia and China.

Democrats seem to think that the rallying cry of racism is essential to galvanizing their most loyal demographic, Black Americans, Barrington D. Martin II gripes at Newsweek. This amounts to little more than gaslighting us into submission, into voting for a party that has long ceased to do anything for us. Dems voting-rights bill isnt about helping Black voters, but maintaining political power by reinforcing the belief that the other party is racist. The idea that new voting laws put into place by GOP-led state legislatures in the wake of the 2020 election were created to disenfranchise Black voters is a ridiculous claim, one that shows the subconscious disdain Democratic officials have for their Black voter base.

The University of Torontos Jordan Peterson has left his professorial post, notes J. Scott Turner at Spectator World, and no wonder: The academy has changed fundamentally, and with each passing year there are fewer and fewer who can restore it. For refusing to use novel pronouns preferred by the transgendered, Peterson was denounced as a bigot, his university threatened his career, his speaking events were disrupted and his fellow academics deserted him: Totalitarian states, which our universities are coming to resemble, are kept in power by the skillful use of lies and pressure to conform. Yet change is not irrevocable. In late-1980s Eastern Europe totalitarian regimes collapsed catastrophically once people began to see that they were not alone in their doubts. We need fewer people willing to acquiesce in the lies, about race, about gender, about the soothing tropes of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The latest polling, warns National Journals Josh Kraushaar, shows Joe Biden isnt just losing support among typical swing voters . . . hes now starting to take friendly fire from his own base. And its a self-inflicted problem, since he inflated expectations among his supporters that hed pass a transformative big-government agenda like FDR and LBJ. In NBC polling, his 40 percent job approval among the youngest voters (age 18-34) is down 16 points since April. Worse: Hes only winning over 64 percent of African-American voters. The White House insists Republicans have no agenda, but being the opposition party without an agenda is a better place to be than the governing party facing a mutiny within the ranks.

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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COVID is reshaping education and other commentary - New York Post