This trip into the celeb couple’s Cheshire mansion is nowhere as real as they’d like you to believe. But their self-deprecation is hard not to enjoy

‘There are two obvious problems here, the first being that the Rooneys’ lives feel like fiction: he was a generational sporting talent, a one-in-a-million player whose success has bought him and Coleen a ridiculous Cheshire mansion with a cinema, indoor pool and adjacent football pitch. To get back to the road you have to drive over a bridge across a lake. As we join them, Coleen is working out how to capitalise on a recent appearance on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, while Wayne is plotting an uptick in his media appearances that he hopes will make him a regular on Match of the Day. Technically, the Rooneys exist on our Earth, but – as they both admit, recalling their working-class childhoods in Croxteth, Liverpool – they have left ordinary life behind.

Even if we accept that they are to some extent real people, the further problem is that if you want to get to know someone, watching a behind-the-scenes “at home with” reality show is not the way to do it. This is an established format that was initially shaped by the Kardashians and has now evolved to fit the specific needs of retired British sportsmen looking to relaunch themselves as media personalities. By design, the shows are anything but realistic, instead offering a carefully calibrated blend of fantastic luxury that viewers can escape into, and domestic rituals – breakfast, the school run – offered up in a half-hearted attempt to show that really, these famous folk are just like us.

Continue reading...

Hoogleraar plantenecologie Hans de Kroon heeft altijd met een bredere blik naar de natuur gekeken. Tijdens een wandeling bij Nijmegen toont hij zijn „liefde voor het landschap”.

Wereldwijd gaan landen steeds meer schulden aan. Maar sinds deze zomer stijgen ook de rentes op die schulden.

Vandaag is een vriendelijke najaarsdag met flink wat zon en blijft het droog. De temperatuur stijgt naar ongeveer 19 graden en ligt daarmee iets lager dan gistermiddag. De wind is daarbij matig en komt uit het noordwesten.

Ars Technica reports:


Cities and counties around the U.S. are angry at the Trump administration over a proposal to override local rules that govern the deployment of wired broadband networks... The Federal Communications Commission [FCC] argues that too many local governments "excessively delay approvals and seek to extract exorbitant sums from providers, resulting in costs that render some deployments infeasible." The FCC plan is supported by broadband providers, but local governments told the FCC that it would override rules that protect public safety.

Local governments say the plan is illegal and that the FCC should instead focus on how Internet providers thwart competition with permit-hoarding and other tactics that prevent competitors from deploying networks... They object to FCC plans to impose a 120-day deadline for processing permits and to proposed limits on fees and compensation that local governments can require from providers... Another filing submitted by the League of California Cities said the FCC has no authority to adopt the proposal. "Federal preemption of traditional state and local authority over public property, construction, public safety, permitting, and rights-of-way management should rest on clear congressional authorization," the filing said. "The commission should not infer broad preemptive authority where Congress did not expressly provide it...."

A filing by Minnesota cities said the current FCC is making the same mistake it made during the first Trump administration, when its attempt to preempt state net neutrality laws was blocked in court... If the FCC finalizes its new preemption plan, city and state governments could sue and ask a court to rule that the agency exceeded its authority...

Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez approved the step of asking the public for input but signaled she would vote against the final proposal. "I am dubious about the commission's authority under Section 253 to use rulemaking to preempt states and localities when it comes to their management of rights of way and fees charged to providers," she said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

billy.reeder has added a photo to the pool: