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We will be taking our fearless leader Michael Campbell to lands end this weekend to participate in the Virtual Polar Plunge for Special Olympics BC.
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Jason Kilar provides accidental insight into why mainstream networks don’t want lockdown restrictions to end.
WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar apologized after celebrating the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic has been “really good for (CNN) ratings.”
Kilar made the initial remarks during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference.
“It turns out that pandemic is a pretty big part of the news cycle, and that’s not going away anytime soon,” Kilar said.
“If you take a look at the ratings and the performance, it’s going well. And I think it’s going well because, A, the team at CNN is doing a fantastic job. And B, it turns out that the pandemic and the way that we can help inform and contextualize the pandemic, it turns out it’s really good for ratings,” he added.
GERMANS HAVE COINED MORE THAN 1,200 WORDS TO TALK ABOUT CORONAVIRUS
Germany’s nearly four-month lockdown has entailed no restrictions on the language’s propensity for multisyllabic, often tongue-twisting words. Germans have coined more than 1,200 of them to describe the rules and realities of life in the time of the novel coronavirus.
They’re not alone, of course. Over the past year, languages all over the world have had to expand and adapt to address the pandemic and the lives it has upended. The French adopted “quatorzaine” for a 14-day isolation period, and the Dutch use “hamsteren” to describe a frantic, hamster-paced stockpiling of supplies.
But in German — which has a grammar that lends itself to the forming of long, composite words and which borrows heavily from English — the rate and number of words added during the pandemic have no precedents in recent times.
Social distancing is Mindestabstandsregelung (minimum-distance regulation). Or, to get more precise, Anderthalbmetergesellschaft (one-and-a-half-meter society) for a group abiding by distancing rules. You need ways to cope? How about a little Glühweinstandhopping (hopping between mulled-wine stands) while, of course, paying attention to Mindestabstandsregelungen?
“I can’t think of anything, at least since the Second World War, that would have changed the vocabulary as drastically, and at the same time as quickly, as the corona pandemic,” said Anatol Stefanowitsch, a professor of linguistics at the Free University of Berlin. “I can think of many other examples of a huge cultural shift that changed the German vocabulary. But they didn’t happen within a few months.”
Part of the need to find words so quickly is psychological, according to Christine Möhrs, a researcher at the Leibniz Institute for the German Language. “By being able to talk about the crisis, I think, we reduce fears,” she said. “We can share our insecurities. But that means we have to find many, many new words, because so many things happened during the last months.”
Möhrs and her team have tracked more than 1,200 new coronavirus-related words as part of their ongoing effort to document changes to the language. Many of these words are borrowed from English, a habit Germans have practiced at least since the 1980s, when they started saying “computer” and “email” instead of “Datenverarbeitungsanlage” (data-processing unit) and “elektronische Post” to describe some of their new digital activities.
But aside from such English borrowings as “home office” and “lockdown,” the list of coronavirus-related German neologisms mostly features the traits that German neologisms are generally known for: length and precision.
As in most places, though, their use and meaning are also political. At the start of the pandemic, for example, the prohibition on going outside was called Ausgangssperre (going-out curfew). But German politicians soon realized that was a misnomer, because people could still go outside to exercise, shop for essentials or meet up with another person to go for a walk. The word changed to Ausgangsbeschränkung (going-out restriction) before later being subsumed by the more general English term “lockdown.”
But even “lockdown” was contested, according to Stefanowitsch, the linguist.
“People were saying it’s not really a lockdown, because we’re not actually locked into our homes,” he said. “It sort of became the one word where you could argue about whether or not it accurately describes all the changes that we’ve had to deal with.”
After some restrictions to slow the spread of the virus were eased in the fall, German media started using the term “lockdown light,” while critics of the lockdown’s multiple extensions dubbed the new regimen Salamilockdown, meaning a lockdown that happens in slices rather than at a single stroke. The list of new words that Möhrs and her colleagues compiled includes more than 30 versions of the term.
In recent months especially, with debates over vaccines flaring, words such as “Coronadiktatur” (corona dictatorship) and “Impfzwang” (forced vaccination) have been shared widely on social media and at anti-government demonstrations.
“By using such words, a meaning is suggested that was never intended,” Möhrs said. “Even if a politician says, ‘Vaccines are not mandatory, and there is no Impfzwang,’ the sentence still contains the word,” she said. “When you think about a sentence like, ‘Don’t think about the blue elephant,’ well, the blue elephant is in your mind.”
Möhrs and her team are evaluating hundreds of new words for their list, with frequency of use among the criteria. It will take at least another year or two to determine whether any of them will make it into a dictionary. But Möhrs has some favorites already. The rhyming word “Fussgruss” (foot greeting), for example.
“It shows that we humans want to be connected to each other,” she said. “You put your feet together and say hello.”
Kootenay Living
Opportunity knocks if you are looking for an investment with cash flow potential, a new life in retirement or recreational property for yourself. Smaller and more charming than some of BC’s bustling destination cities – the East Kootenays is a must-see for those dreaming the dream.
Cranbrook is located in southeastern BC between the Canadian Rockies and the Purcell Range of the Columbia Mountains. Residents of Cranbrook and the surrounding communities of Kimberly, Fernie, Invermere and Creston enjoy spectacular landscapes, hot summers, mild winters, and activities available all year round.
The Shadow Mountain Opportunity
Where your home course is just outside your door. With spectacular views, dramatic elevation changes and immaculate greens and fairways, Cranbrook’s Shadow Mountain is a golf experience second to none. Brand new homes start for as little as $420,000 and fully serviced lots are available to build your unique forever home. This may be the best time ever to take advantage of the price differential between big city and small town living.
Quick Facts:
1. Cranbrook is home to the East Kootenay Regional Hospital
2. Post-secondary and continuing education at the College of the Rockies
3. The Canadian Rockies International Airport
4. A summer-long Farmer’s Market
5. Annual & local festivals, unique restaurants, shopping, pubs, and more
6. Recreation options including world-class biking, hiking, and walking trails
7. Kimberley Alpine Resort, a major ski destination
8. A golfers paradise with Shadow Mountain Resort and 7 other courses within 30km
9. Indoor arenas, fitness centres, and a bustling event calendar.
The share price of the David Beckham-backed biosynthetic cannabinoid company Cellular Goods climbed by more than 300 per cent after debuting on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) earlier today, reports Sky News.
The company sells a line of skincare and topical products infused with cannabinoids and saw share prices jump from 5 pence ($0.08) to more than 20 pence ($0.33) on its first day of action.
“We are delighted with the strong support from a wide range of institutional and retail investors to build premium consumer products based on biosynthetic cannabinoids under the Cellular Goods brand,” chief executive Alexis Abraham told Sky News.
Susannah Streeter, a senior investment and markets analyst with Hargreaves Lansdown, told City A.M. that Beckham’s association with the company likely helped boost the stock on its first day of trading.
“It’s not clear exactly how Mr. Beckham’s backing will evolve with Cellular Goods, but whether he’ll remain behind the scenes, or appear on the packaging, his personal brand has given the launch a bit of a kick,” Streeter said.
Though recreational cannabis remains illegal in the U.K., the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) recently allowed medical cannabis companies to be publicly traded. Cellular Goods is just the third cannabis company to list on the LSE.
“There has been a massive burst of excitement, and it’s warranted, but not all companies are created equal, and because they carry a cannabis title, one should not immediately think they’re a good company,” venture capitalist Ed McDermott told City A.M.
McDermott predicts that there could be as many as 20 cannabis-related companies listed on the LSE by the end of the year.
Despite the good news for investors, cannabis patients and advocates continue to petition the U.K. government to improve access to medical cannabis.
More than 40 children in the U.K. with severe forms of epilepsy are at risk of losing access to their medicine due to Brexit restrictions, The Timesreported in January.
British prescriptions are no longer recognized in the European Union and with many families travelling to the Netherlands to get their cannabis prescriptions filled — and Dutch law requiring a valid prescription to export cannabis products — those families are still searching for alternatives.
“I am facing the fact that my son might go into refractory epileptic seizures again, which can kill people,” Hannah Deacon, the mother of Alfie Dingley, the first patient in the U.K. to receive a permanent medical cannabis licence, told The Guardian in January.
“That’s how dangerous this is. So to say, ‘Oh, you can swap it for another product, sorry we can’t help,’ it is grossly unacceptable. It’s very very dangerous and I’m really frightened about what is going to happen,” Deacon said at the time.
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