Frédéric Demers

« Ils se croyaient bien à l’abri sous le brocard et les honneurs, mais quand on perce la dorure… Tout ce pus qui s’écoule. Ils se dessèchent à vue d’œil. » Jean-Claude Brisville, ‘Le souper’ (que je cite de mémoire)

@ithacarising Votre éloquence est magnifique. C’est un plaisir de vous lire chaque jour ici.

In the final, heart-pounding sequence of Apocalypto, Mel Gibson pulls off something quietly brilliant. He lets the scene unfold on two levels at once. On one hand, we're right there with Jaguar Paw and the men chasing him, racing through the jungle when those strange Spanish ships suddenly appear on the horizon, their sails catching the light like something from another world. To them, it’s just the next wave of terror rolling in. But we, watching with the cruel clarity of hindsight, see something far heavier. We understand that this isn't the beginning of the end - it's the end of something that had already begun collapsing long before the Europeans arrived. Gibson puts his cards on the table right at the start with that stark epigraph: "a great civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within". And that's really what the whole film is about - what eats away at societies from the inside until they become too weak to withstand the next blow. In that closing moment, he gives us something almost Shakespearean: the protagonists see only the next chapter of their nightmare, while we, from our privileged seat in posterity, watch the page turn on an entire epoch.

@ConsulofRome_ Do we have actual evidence that the lorica musculata was still in use in the IVth century?

A Roman officer of the 4th century

@JCJasmin3 15 ans? Pourquoi si tard?

Fiston, 15 ans, s'est fait baptisé aujourd'hui... Tout de suite après un ex-néo-nazi repenti. Dieu est bon!

Comment peut on titrer «fragile printemps à Téhéran » quand les condamnations à mort et les exécutions continuent chaque jour, et quand le #DigitalBlackoutIran dure depuis des semaines ? ⁦@femmeazadi⁩

@habitualinjury @ChrisHabs360 Thank you!

@demersfr @ChrisHabs360 "twenty thirty porta potties outside" haha

#Habs Martin St. Louis on coaching in playoffs "It is an unbelievable experience. I was happy to live it last year, and just to be a part of it and behind this group is unbelievable[...] Being front and center and part of it is not something I take for granted. I try to earn that every day, but there is nothing like being behind the bench of the Montreal Canadiens, and you magnify that with the playoffs—it is pretty cool." #GoHabsGo #NHL #Hockey

30+ years later and still very much relevant today…#CalvinandHobbes

One day, after years of heartache, Tom Sukanen decided to build a ship by hand on his Saskatchewan homestead. His goal was to finish it, drag it across the prairie and sail it home to Finland. This is the tragic story of Tom Sukanen. 🧵1/12

@eliasmakos Very impressive!

Tesla’s FSD has become really good at day-to-day driving, and it’s now performing like a human in very complex scenarios. Here’s video from last Friday, during afternoon rush hour. There’s a broken down pickup truck in the middle of the three open lanes in the Ville-Marie tunnel. Lights indicate that lane is closed. My car is in the leftmost lane, which suddenly also comes to a standstill, after police show up and an officer exits his vehicle and stops traffic. When it appears that the left lane will not start moving again, FSD moves my car two lanes over the right. 🤯 It then curves around a pothole in that lane, following how the car ahead handled it. 🤯 Honestly if it wasn’t for how bad Montreal roads are with potholes, I would hardly be driving myself at all.

@ashkan @RaysBaseball @MLB Having lost my team once and having had to deal with vultures from DC on an Expos message board for years before the move, I would HATE for Montreal to take a team away from another fan base. I know how it would hurt Rays fan to lose their team. Let’s not be vultures too.

Some of you have emailed me flagging the Tampa Bay @RaysBaseball “situation,” suggesting I should parlay the billions in LOIs into an offer for the Rays franchise. To be candid, I didn’t even run this by "J. Peterman," our liaison and advisor with @MLB. My gut instinct is that this would not be well received by the league. While I was not—and am not—involved with the previous “regime” that pushed the split-season concept, the whiff test suggests this is, if not actually, then certainly perceived as borderline tampering, collusion, or bad faith. I already admitted that I was offered the opportunity to pursue the @Padres - I love San Diego, but I felt an obligation and duty to bring the @Montreal_Expos back to @Montreal and intend to keep my word. Setting aside the fact that Montreal does not currently have a stadium ready to go (and I don’t believe MLB views the Olympic Stadium as particularly compelling), I personally prefer building an organization from scratch—something former Dodgers GM (and then some) @DanEvans108 aka "Dr. Martin Van Nostran" and I have discussed and excited about. It is a test of patience, and one I am happy to undertake. It’s a more challenging path financially, but it’s cleaner. So yes, while we likely have the capital to submit a bid for an existing franchise, if that franchise were the Rays, I believe—given the history—it would not be well received and could ultimately harm Montreal’s expansion bid. I may be a bit more "edgy" on X given that this is the asylum of the Web, but I am a very disciplined, conservative, controlled and coachable person in real life and I think MLB would not welcome this. That said, please send me any and all ideas.

@mamboitaliano__ None. It's Cosimo de' Medici the Elder.

Quick poll: 7 legends at a bar ☕️ Which one pops into your head FIRST when you hear “Italy” 🇮🇹? 1. Dante Alighieri 2. Leonardo da Vinci 3. Galileo Galilei 4. Christopher Columbus 5. Giuseppe Verdi 6. Sophia Loren 7. Julius Caesar

Ce fil👌 Et idem, mutatis mutandis, pour tout ce qui concerne les seins, la ménopause, la réalité ou la possibilité de grossesse et d'allaitement et le risque de tomber enceinte à chaque rapport sexuel. Seul un homme peut sincèrement croire qu'on puisse être femme sans cela.

Wow!

@ashkan @WatchMojo In the spirit of the "Balance" album, you should check out the Swedish band Therion, and especially this gem: youtube.com/watch?v=u4-IvH…

The roadmap. Honestly, I realize this seems crazy, but, make fun of it (as people did @WatchMojo) - it's happening. A "madman" at work... help me or get out of the freakin' way. Casting the next great band... see the submit form below.

@ivandemigoal L’année d’après, il était prêt à échanger Caufield (encore très jeune) pour Kyle Palmieri…

Never forget

This eagle couple having a disagreement on how to organize nest

@ithacarising @cosmoslitterair Espérons alors que cette série sera traduite en anglais: goodreads.com/series/311996-…

J’ai lu l’intégralité de l’œuvre de Shakespeare, chaque pièce jusqu’à la dernière et la plupart des sonnets, non pas parce que j’étais né avec une âme poétique, mais parce que mon père était professeur de littérature et que toute résistance était vaine. Les repas de famille tournaient souvent à la récitation de passages jusqu’à ce que le pentamètre iambique devienne une seconde nature. J’ai eu la chance de voir ses pièces montées comme il faut au National Theatre à Londres, et je les ai aussi suivies en traduction ou en adaptation en France, dans divers coins d’Afrique, en Inde et en Chine. Ce qui ne cesse de m’étonner, c’est à quel point elles supportent le voyage sans broncher. L’attrait de Shakespeare est presque indécemment universel. Il se glisse sous la peau de l’humanité partout où on le pose, parlant avec la même conviction aux empereurs comme aux paysans, aux dévots comme aux damnés. Transportez-le sur une scène à Lagos ou à Pékin, le public se reconnaît encore dans son miroir, riant et grimaçant aux bons moments. T.S. Eliot a un jour déclaré que « Dante et Shakespeare se partagent le monde entre eux. Il n’y en a pas de troisième ». Une belle formule, mais j’ai toujours pensé qu’elle ratait légèrement la cible. Ils ne se partagent pas le monde : ils le complètent. Dante trace la carte imposante du péché et du salut ; Shakespeare la peuple de ces créatures glorieusement imparfaites, bruyantes et contradictoires qui doivent vraiment se frayer un chemin à travers cette architecture divine – et qui, d’une manière ou d’une autre, nous font les aimer quand même.

Shakespeare en 5 faits surprenants : 1) Il a inventé plus de 1 700 mots de la langue anglaise : bedroom, lonely, generous, obscene, swagger... 2) On ne connaît aucun manuscrit original de sa main. Toutes ses œuvres nous viennent de copies ! 3) Il jouait lui-même dans ses pièces, et souvent des rôles secondaires. 4) Il a légué à sa femme son "second meilleur lit" dans son testament. Les historiens se disputent encore sur ce que ça signifie ! 5) Hamlet est la pièce la plus jouée au monde depuis 400 ans sans interruption. Vous avez déjà lu ou vu une pièce de Shakespeare ? Laquelle ?

@PeteBlackburn Speaking of unhinged setup, how about Kelly Hrudey after being acquired by LA from the Islanders?

The Bruins playing the Stars & Panthers back-to-back reminds me of the most unhinged setup in the history of the league

Étranglée à mort par son conjoint. À 18 ans… Ouf. Déjà le huitième féminicide de l’année. Une vie de plus volée et toujours cette impression qu’on n’en fait pas assez. ❤️‍🩹 tvanouvelles.ca/2026/03/31/pos…

@BrianDijkema @clara_jace Indeed!. The amount of cargo we can fit in our Dodge Grand Caravan with the Stow-n-Go system never ceases to amaze me.

@clara_jace Best vehicle !! Fits kids and a 4x8’ sheet of plywood!!!

With two toddlers and a baby on the way (plus a big dog), we finally reached the minivan stage of life! The sense of power is unbelievable... I am practically the captain of a small ship. My ancestors would be so proud.