Elon Musk has called Justin Trudeau an insufferable tool but I’m noting this because La Presse gives it as insupportable abruti, Le Devoir as pantin insupportable and TVA as épais insupportable.
Updates from December, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
The New York Times has a preview of a collection of classical sculptures which it says will be coming here to the Museum of Fine Arts, although the museum site doesn’t list it.
It’s the kind of work that art students used to be sent to draw. Does anyone do that kind of work any more?
Ian
Memorials, usually, but it has fallen quite out of fashion – here, at least. Countries under dictators still get monumental statues. Classical and neoclassical sculpture is considered kitschy these days, I have a bust of Pallas above my chamber door carved in alabaster from Greece becasue I thought it was funny… but you can buy such stuff. I don’t think many people are making htis kind of thing as “art” anymore except in the sense of artisanal prowess. Tombstoens and suchlike.
jeather
There’s this woman.
Kate
I was thinking more about art students being sent to draw the statuary in museums – which I’ve read about – than of sculptors reviving classical forms now. In a way, it’s a kind of life drawing without a live model, convenient 3D forms just sitting there while you draw them. But I imagine that’s no longer a thing.
jeather
It’s a thing; I see it in museums still. Drawing sculptures or copying paintings/drawings.
CE
I always see people drawing the classical statues at the Met in New York. They even provide chairs.
Ian
I’ve seen sketching classes at the Redpath Museum but I’ve never seen anybody sketching at the Museum of Fine Art in Montreal …although I have, like others here, seen this happening in many other museums around the world.
thomas
@Kate I have seen students sketching at the MMFA, usually during less popular hours.
Ian
Ah cool. We used to go to sketch back in the 90s when I was in my BFA. Up until just over 10 years ago the permanent collections were free. Stopping that probably cut into the number of sketchers.
There are still free times for the permanent collection though – On Wednesday evenings they are free for people under 25, Tuesday mornings for 65 and older, and for everyone the first Sunday of every month.
I believe that natives & the disabled get free access any time.
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Kate
Five alleged gang members have been arrested in three murder cases over the last two years.
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Kate
Two streets will be closed permanently to traffic so that Lafontaine Park can be enlarged: Émile‑Duployé between Rachel and Sherbrooke, and Calixa‑Lavallée north
bound, both of which cut through the park and have been closed experimentally in recent years.Nicholas
Great news!
FYI, it’s Calixa‑Lavallée north (the part between the bicycle traffic garden and Rachel, rather than the south segment leading up to the elementary school from Sherbrooke), not northbound, as traffic will be closed in all directions in the north part and neither direction in the south part.
dhomas
My first thought was “where will the 45 pass now?”. Then I checked and it seems like they’ve already moved that bus line to pass on de Lorimier instead of de Champlain / Émile-Duployé some time ago (sometime between November 2022 and January 2023, from what I can tell from the Wayback Machine). It was nice to have a bus stop that would leave you right IN the park, but overall I think this is a better use of the space.
Kate
Thank you, Nicholas.
Nicholas
dhomas, that detour for the 45 is rather annoying, as de Lorimier and Rachel are slow and sometimes blocked, necessitating a detour to the west, on Atataken and Parc La Fontaine, which are also slow and sometimes blocked. What would be really nice is a contraflow bus lane on Papineau (and de Champlain, to get around the bridge entrance). But the plan for the park seems to be to keep the asphalt for maintenance vehicles on Émile‑Duployé, and if so they should allow the bus to use it as well.
CE
Until recently I lived on Papineau across from the park. Émile-Duployé was permanently closed to car and bus traffic the day after the last municipal election. The 45 detour was a bit annoying but that bus now has so few departures that it became next to useless. The improvement in the park by taking out a major street was, however, a huge improvement (for people living on that stretch of Papineau and, especially, users of the park).
I think it would work well to have a northbound lane on Papineau reserved just for buses.
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Kate
Groupe Montoni, planning the reinvention of the old Molson Brewery site, presented a mockup Wednesday with promises of 20% social housing, a park and heritage façades from the older buildings.
Ian
I hope that commitment to social housing is in writing and non-negotiable.
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Kate
Bernard Drainville is ordering investigation of three Montreal schools for toxic behaviour, insubordination and interference, according to Radio‑Canada. CTV’s version of the story simply says the investigations are “over religion.”
Top Côté cartoon about praying in public.
Uatu
This and the previous story of public prayer are straight out of the Doug Ford “I’m going to distract you from my government’s shitty performance with a law against bike lanes” school of political misdirection. So again, where’s my doctor and why are Hydro rates rising and why are we continuing to sink money into Northvolt and why are we giving out 2 billion while education, health has to cut etc 😛
Jean Naimard
The thing is, the toxic religiosity is a big problem and it’s a good thing it’s been addressed.
You blokes can’t understand that, because you used religion to exploit and dominate us, but this is precisely why we absolutely HATE religion and do not want to see kids exposed to that.
Ian
Wahey, THE jeannaimard from reddit? We’ve got troll royalty here, folks!
Kate
Jean Naimard, we “blokes” didn’t “use” religion as a club. Most Québécois folks embraced it as the most important thing in life. You can’t make women have a dozen kids and chivvy some of them to becoming nuns and priests if they don’t believe in the thing.
Because you don’t believe and can’t imagine yourself into the mindset of people who did, does not mean they didn’t. Having grown up in a religious Irish Catholic household, it wasn’t so different for me. And blokes did not do that to us! My ancestors (recent ancestors) loved and wanted the religion and felt no doubts about it. I remember what it was like living in that setting. My mother even dutifully suggested I should consider becoming a nun.
Ian
I’ve heard the blokes blamed for lots of stuff but tricking the good people of Quebec into being dominated by the Catholic church is a new one on me. Next you’ll be telling me la Grande Noirceur was a secret false flag plot by a cabal of Westmount Rhodesians with Duplessis as their sekrit double agent.
SMD
Good Godin cartoon this morning, as well: https://www.ledevoir.com/photos/galeries-photos/les-caricatures-de-godin/1380524.
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Kate
QMI got a couple of cops to defend random stops as important in protecting the populace, with a tone of contempt for ideas like reducing police funding in favour of less antagonistic methods.
Nicholas
I guarantee if the “random” stops happened in upper Outremont, on special-plated vehicles on the Colline parlementaire and in marginal ridings, the government would withdraw the appeals.
jeather
Luckily, both the cops and the politicians are united in wanting to randomly stop primarily POC, for some secret not structural racism reason.
Ephraim
We should equip all police cars with a new small green siren light. It’s job is to ensure that all stops are random and therefore it uses GPS and time of day to ensure that they are in fact random. And when it flashes, you have to randomly stop the next car that is to your right and in front of you. You have no choice. You have to do it or the entire system isn’t random. And each time you randomly do a stop, without the green siren, you are required to hit the button, which will self correct the system with future shops… and all of a sudden people in Westmount are going to have to be pulled over, because… it’s random!
Ian
Typical pig logic –
Some animals are more equal than others.
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Kate
La Presse pieced together the story of the suspect suitcase at Trudeau last month, how the airport authorities wanted the plane to depart anyway while the police did not.
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Kate
A man has been arrested for shooting at a snow removal crew in Pointe‑aux‑Trembles. Nobody was wounded.
Nicholas
It makes more sense when you realize the guy shot at a tow truck driver removing a (presumably his) vehicle illegaly blocking snow removal. Should definitely get some jail time for negligently putting lives at risk over his own carelessness, but he should get a commensurate related penalty, including being banned for life from owning a firearm (he’s too emotional) and banned from parking on city streets for, say, a decade.
MarcG
I quietly assumed he was woken up by the clown horns at 4am and lost his shit.
Kate
TVA says the man was irritated by the clown horns, but it was only just after 9 pm.
Nicholas, that article says it wasn’t even the man’s car that was being towed.
steph 22:21 on 2024-12-11 Permalink
We’ll be mocking their president non stop for the next four years. We can have a thicker skin.
& this coming from Musk.. what a yawn – we’ve blocked twitter, can we continue to just ignore him compeltely?
Kevin 22:41 on 2024-12-11 Permalink
The richest man in the world still can’t buy friends.
daniel 00:23 on 2024-12-12 Permalink
oh, that is interesting from a language perspective.
MarcG 08:51 on 2024-12-12 Permalink
Note that the tweet he’s responding to is from the same person who wrote the New York Post article about Montreal being the antisemitism capital of North America a few weeks ago.
DeWolf 09:17 on 2024-12-12 Permalink
TVA’s translation is most accurate 😉
Joey 11:31 on 2024-12-12 Permalink
@steph unfortunately, we cannot
Ian 21:06 on 2024-12-12 Permalink
None of those translations are correct in that Musk probaly meant “tool” as in “dick”. For a good idiomatic translation though, I propose “espèce de con”
MarcG 09:31 on 2024-12-13 Permalink
Google Translate’s new ‘French (Canada)’ feature translates “insupportable abruti” to “insufferable asshole”.
Ian 09:38 on 2024-12-13 Permalink
Given newsroom budget cuts, I wonder if La Presse used Google Translate.
dhomas 12:03 on 2024-12-13 Permalink
@Ian: I don’t think so. “Insufferable tool” translates to “outil insupportable” in Google Translate. 😀
I was kinda hoping for a “I’ve been called worse things by better people” response from Trudeau. Missed opportunity.
ottawaowl 18:54 on 2024-12-15 Permalink
L’avis d’une traductrice chevronnée: La traduction du Devoir est la meilleure.