An Alpine Holiday, Hallmark Channel 2025 (2.5/5 Hot Chocolates)

Two aspects differentiate An Alpine Holiday: authentic French Alps sets (no fake snow!) and a story that focuses more on sibling relationships than romantic entanglements.

A last wish sends two sisters on a quest to retrace their grandparents' alpine love story. Ashley Williams, a Christmas movie regular with quirky comic timing, plays one of the sisters. Their tension drives the plot, each carrying a sleigh full of grievances and regrets to unwrap.

The rest? Weak romance cider. One gets a limp French tour guide, and Williams has a nonsensical marriage epiphany about her dweeb back home.

Only for Hallmark Heads.

#movies #ChristmasMovies #HallmarkMovies #RomCom #HolidayMovies #100HotChocolates #AshleyWilliams #ChristmasReview #100WordReview #Larrys100 #100DaysToOffload #Drabble

In Summary: * Most significant event today was assembling and studying the instruction manual for my new little folding washing machine. Plan is to run the first load or two of laundry through it tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.

Prayers, etc.: * My daily prayers

Health Metrics: * bw= 223.11 lbs. * bp= 149/90 (62)

Exercise: * kegel pelvic floor exercise, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 07:00 – cooked meat, cooked vegetables, rice * 10:45 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 12:00 – pizza * 19:00 – 1 peanut butter sandwich

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 05:40 – listen to local news talk radio * 06:30 – bank accounts activity monitored * 07:00 – read, pray, follow news reports from various sources * 10:30 – listening to Jack in 60 Minutes, then to The Markley, van Camp and Robbins Show * 11:45 to 13:15 – watch old TV game shows and eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 13:30 – listen to relaxing music * 15:00 – listening to The Jack Riccardi Show * 18:00 – Listening now to The Flagship Station for IU Sports ahead of tonight's basketball game. * 19:40 – the Hoosiers control the opening tip, and the game is underway. GO HOOSIERS! * 21:38 – and the Hoosiers win. Final score: Indiana over Penn St. 113 to 72

Chess: * 10:30 – moved in all pending CC games

Here is a story I submitted to my professor at the community college I attended. He taught a writing class and had tenured at Stanford University, so I felt he knew quite a bit about writing. When he returned my story marked up just a bit in red ink, he wrote:

“This is the best short story I’ve read from a student in thirty years. Scratch that! This is the best short story I’ve read in thirty years.” (Paraphrased)

Well, I just KNEW I was going to get it published and some big magazine, right?

Wrong.

Led me to believe that he was either mistaken, or you have to know people to get into any professional magazine—or both. Either way, here it is:

Note: I apologize for the few swear words. I hadn’t read the story in over a decade and had forgotten they were there.

***********************************************************

Eulogies and Epitaphs

Some things are sweeter than honey, more luscious than life, and they come in the form of dreams. At any moment someone might walk through the door and enter your life, someone that doesn’t even exist but on paper, and that someone has the power to change your life.

Such was the case when Fred entered the diner at exactly six o’clock on a Wednesday morning. He didn’t exist except on paper, from a story I’d written for class. The instructor had us set a fictional scene in which we’d meet our character at a diner, talk things over with him and then write it. The thing was this was a dream, the kind of dream in which the things that make absolutely no sense in reality make perfect sense in the dream, like dancing rainbows or flying pigs. Sometimes life’s best lessons come in unconscious absurdity, because that is the only time we let our guard down long enough to swallow truth’s jagged little pill.

I knew who he was immediately from the lines on his face. Each wrinkle told a morose story, a sad tale of never having belonged anywhere. I’d created him, but while sitting at the booth near the window, I felt that I had it all wrong; maybe in some measure he had created me. And then I had to ask myself, do we create our fictional characters or do they create us? Does reality pour forth from books and novels, or do we pump emotional truth into our fiction? And does the best fiction have some effect on reality, such as the internet and cell phones having first existed in the form of the written word.

Our eyes met and he knew exactly who I was. I could tell by the slight smile, the illumination filling his rheumy eyes. He ambled precariously over to my table, and he waved me back down when I tried to stand. I was uncomfortable because I’d never met one of my fictional characters before. What was I supposed to say? Thanks for agreeing to this interview? How the hell would we pull this off?

He sat down and the waitress appeared, like one of those actresses off that seventies television program. Flo was her name. Her yellow uniform contrasted against the beige walls, and she held a green pad of paper.

“Coffee,” Fred said. “Black.”

“Just the way I like it, too,” I said.

Fred smiled as if he knew a secret, and maybe he did. The unease I felt increased, as if something were sliding up the back of my spine, a chill or slithering shadows. I looked behind me but only saw the backside of the waitress as she walked back to the kitchen with our order.

This interview was happening too fast. It was too life-like, less of a dream, which made it disconcerting. If this was a dream, then why did Fred already have a cup of coffee before him? Why was the spoon he was using to swirl ice around in his coffee clang loud like the tines of bells?

“The ice cools it down enough—”

“—I know,” I interrupted. “You can’t drink it when it’s hot.”

Like me, I thought, as I realized a cup of coffee was before me and I was doing the same cooling measure Fred was, stirring cubes of ice from my water glass into the thick liquid. The scent of caffeine filled the air, mingling with the clank of sterling silver on ceramic glass. The waitress’s perfume lingered like the seventies TV show, almost forgotten but still there just the same. The entire setting seemed dated, running backwards in time.

“Perfect place for an interview,” Fred said.

“Yeah,” I said, without conviction. “Nice… décor.”

Fred chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“The fact that you killed me in your story, yet here I am. Here we are.”

The waitress took our coffee cups away, and I realized that she was part of the dream, like a looping event, constantly refilling our cups and taking them away, and us barely getting to sip the hot liquid before she took it away or brought fresh coffee.

A bit weird, but I could get used to that, because this was one of those dreams that occurred halfway between sleep and consciousness. I felt the pressure of the pillow behind my head, heard my wife snoring next to me, so I knew I was asleep. But a part of me was awake, in this semi-liquid state of quasi-consciousness, locked partway between being fully awake and completely asleep, a realm of dreams in which anything could happen, where just enough reality poured in like cement, until sounds and colors hardened with a vividness that life never possessed.

I ignored my wife’s snores and they dissipated into the sound of a large semi tractor trailer rumbling down the road… going… going, gone—and all that was left now was Fred sitting across from me, trying to take a sip of his coffee before the waitress returned in this dream that was not a dream.

“Here she comes now,” I said.

“Better hurry up and take a sip,” Fred said.

“Why can’t she just leave us alone?”

“It’s part of the reason we’re here, son.”

I raised my eyebrows and almost laughed at my quizzical reflection in the window’s reflection beside Fred’s head. Fred grinned as if he understood exactly where I was coming from. He reached for his coffee mug but the waitress removed it before contact.

“Damn it all to hell,” he said. “Just like life. You think you’re going to get a little moment of peace and rest, then here comes life.”

“Here comes life,” I repeated, writing it down, wondering where the notebook and pen had come from. “So… the waitress represents life like a metaphor—”

“It’s best if you don’t try to understand it right now, son.” Fred took a sip of the coffee the waitress had just set down, enjoying it immensely from the expression on his face. “Just write it all out, let it flow… like a story or the drip, drip, drip of percolating coffee.”

He laughed at his own joke. Or was his humor a metaphor, too?

I was beginning to understand that this was as much an interview with myself as it was with my character. In that semi-conscious state I wondered what time it was, realizing I had to get up and off to school by a certain time—and had I set my clock the night before?—and I began to worry.

When I looked at the wall clock it read six o’clock. “That’s impossible.”

“What is?” Fred followed my gaze and read the clock. “I stopped it.”

“What?” I laughed, nervous. “You stopped the clock? Or you stopped time?”

Suddenly the noises in the diner intensified: the clanging of Fred’s spoon on the side of the ceramic cup, the same beige as the drab walls; the conversations of other patrons filling the room; the sizzle of eggs and bacon from the open window revealing the kitchen. And such wonderful scents! I became hungry, my stomach growling as I thought of hot buttered rolls and thick, rich coffee. The tempting goodness of syrup licked the air, contrasting with the bitter twang of coffee Flo had just set down before me.

“Such is life,” I said, feeling my rumbling belly and realizing that no matter how much I ate or drank, I would never be satisfied, not for long.

“You’re catching on, son.”

“In my story you never fit in, never belonged to anyone or anywhere,” I cut in, intending to take control of the interview. That was the number one rule: never let the interviewee control the interview.

“How do you know it’s your story?” Fred asked.

“What?” I was about to say something that was on the tip of my tongue, like peripheral memory, almost a tangible thought, an almost-question. “What are you talking about, Fred?”

“Don’t you think it’s my story?” Fred asked. “After all, you’re not in the story. You don’t appear once. But I do.” Fred brushed aside a wisp of gray hair that had fallen down his brow. “So shouldn’t we say it’s my story?”

“Okay, YOUR story.” My words came fast and clipped, angry because already I was losing control of the interview with a person that didn’t exist. “Whatever.”

I looked at the clock and it read a quarter after six. But as I watched, the minute hand slid backwards until it rested on the twelve. I was locked between wakefulness and sleep, where anything could happen and often did. Flo came back with another round of coffee. This time I was ready, having gotten used to my strange surroundings, and I drank as I could before she took it away again.

“Now you’re learning. You’ve got to breathe it in when it’s there, and be content when it’s not.”

“About your story…” I said, trying to take control again. “You never fit in anywhere in your story.”

“I didn’t write that,” Fred said. “You did.”

“But it’s your story.”

“How do you know it’s not your story, son?”

“Because I’m not in it. That’s what you said, remember?”

“Doesn’t matter what I say; I’m just a fictional character.”

“Damn it!” I pushed my coffee away. “Why doesn’t anything work out the way I plan? I’m just trying to get this assignment done for class, and you want to go all Socrates on me with philosophy.”

“Maybe that’s what makes for a good story, son. Asking questions that others want to know.”

“Do readers want questions?” I wondered aloud.

“Do they want them answered?” Fred offered.

The interview was turning back onto myself again, and I realized I’d already lost control a long time ago, and not just the interview; I’d lost control of life and love and all my hopes and dreams; I’d let hope slip away for the sake of beautiful women with blond hair, sacrificing my desires and offering my power to others who, eventually, deserted me. Wasn’t my life the exact replication of what was happening in the diner, with Flo giving us what we desired then removing it before we were satisfied?

Something was wrong. Suddenly I wanted to wake up, to run out of the diner as fast as I could and head back to reality where I convinced myself that I was in control. I strained to hear my wife’s snoring—she always snored—and soon the rumble of a diesel engine grumbled outside the diner. I was going to wake up and write this assignment, put thought to paper and be done with it—damn it!

“Not so fast,” Fred said, and the rumble dissipated like fading dreams once remembered but quickly forgotten. “We’re not done here.”

An icy hand touched my shoulder and I remembered Edna from my story, Fred’s wife who, although deceased, still spoke to him. You need to listen to Fred, dear, her words slithered into my mind, and I realized that in this half-dream and half-wakefulness anything could happen, that ghosts could manifest, could whisper things into my mind exactly as I had Edna whisper dark things into Fred’s mind while writing my story—HIS story.

I jumped up, but immediately I was sitting again as if I hadn’t moved, and here came Flo with another round of black ichor, the remnants swishing around and slithering up the sides of the ceramic cups she set on the table. The coffee had changed, had become like life at the end: old age and withered skin and aching joints; rheumy eyes and failing health; funeral plans and coffins and, at the very last, the embalmer filling our veins with eternal illusion.

“Make it stop,” I whispered. “Please.” I wasn’t in control anymore—not that I ever was—but this made it worse, this dream that wasn’t a dream. “Make this dream or story—or whatever it was—stop.”

“It’s not my story, son. It’s not yours, either. It’s our story; we tell it together. That’s why you can’t wake until we both get to the end.”

“But this is an interview, not a story.”

That’s what you think, Edna whispered behind me.

I turned around but saw only Flo’s hips sashaying back and forth as she carried our coffee back into the kitchen. I wondered what went on in there, where all those luscious scents and sizzling sounds emanated from, but the rumble of a diesel engine grew louder, and I felt myself beginning to wake.

“We don’t have much time, son.”

Why did he always have to call me son? Did he feel a need to rub in the fact that he was older and presumably wiser?

“Much time for what, pops?” I countered, trying to take another stab at control.

Immediately I felt bad for saying pops. Fred had never fit in anywhere in his life, and here I was ostracizing him by calling him pops, by exposing his weakness.

“Or is it YOUR character weakness?” Fred asked. “Maybe you took your weaknesses and filled me with them.”

Was he reading my mind? And why not? After all, he had crawled from my subconscious where I was conscious of nothing, had slithered like primordial ooze through my typing fingers onto the computer screen when I’d created him. Fred knew more about me than I knew about myself. And now he was asking whether I injected him with my own weakness. How dare he!

“I thought this was your story, Fred. So it has to be your weakness.”

“Our story, son. Our weakness.”

“Whatever.”

Mine, too, Edna whispered, her voice growing fainter. It’s my story, too.

Maybe it was all of our stories: Fred and Edna and me. Maybe we all got involved and took control, writing the story to let our emotional truths out, exposing our shortcomings and flaws, revealing our fears and longings and—

Edna sat beside me, solidifying her substance into an ethereal bag of flesh and blood. She smiled and the chill of the grave wafted out like breath, slapping my face. Fred grinned at the waitress who asked, “Will there be anything else?” Before I could respond, the waitress took the tip that I couldn’t remember laying down.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I said, indicating the interview and life and death and everything in-between. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this at all.”

Edna laughed and the chill of the grave intensified. I felt earthworms moving in the ground around her coffin, wherever her body rested. The chill of dank earth and the scent of soil filled my nostrils.

“Make it stop,” I whispered, but like life and death the dream never stopped, because we never had any control anyway. We only told ourselves we did.

Flo brought us more coffee and the rumbling diesel engine grew louder. Fred mentioned something about not having much time again, and Edna’s form thickened and congealed like the fear growing in the pit of my stomach.

I had to get out, had to move fast. I stood but Flo blocked my exit from the booth. I shoved her and immediately found myself sitting back in the booth again, with Flo setting down a cup of coffee and Fred shaking his head with a forlorn expression as if I had just betrayed him.

“What is it that you want?” I shouted at Fred, I shouted at all of them. The patrons looked at me as I stood, and Fred and Edna and Flo just laughed. “Just what the hell do you want?”

“What is it that YOU want, son?” Fred asked. “When you’re writing stories and ruining the lives of your characters and hurting them like you hurt Edna and me, what the hell is it you really want?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Just tell us what it is you really want, dear,” Edna said, her voice loud and her body fully tangible.

“To write… simply to write,” I said. “What else is there?”

“To live on through your fiction,” Fred said.

“To live and never die in the minds of others,” Edna offered.

“Each character in your fiction,” Fred said, “each minor person who dies, lives on in the minds of the readers, and thus they never die.”

“None of us do,” Edna said with a smile.

“Except for you,” Fred said. “You’re going to die, John.”

The rumbling of the engine grew louder, shook the window beside the booth. The table vibrated and spoons wiggled. Ripples circled inside the coffee mugs, rippled outward from the coffee and spread throughout reality, spiraling outward with truth. And the truth was that my characters might possibly never die, not if they lived on in the minds of others.

But me?

I was going to die. The finality of the situation grew louder, like the rumbling of the diesel looming closer. The spoons bounced on the table and the window cracked. The minute hand on the clock spun around faster and faster as life slipped away like seconds and minutes and hours bleeding into eternity. Time was slipping away with each story I wrote, with each day lived.

I was going to die.

It was through my characters that I wanted to live on and be remembered. It was through the death of Fred and Edna that I hoped I would continue to exist in the minds of others.

How ironic to use death in order to live, to use fiction for truth, and to write words in order to replace reality’s illusion. Or was that merely wishful thinking, too?

Suddenly the rumbling grew louder and I was awake. My wife’s snores filled the bedroom, the smell of sleep saturating the air. The warmth of coziness licked my body, but I forced myself up into the darkness with a gasp. It was a half hour before the alarm was set to go off at six o’clock. Gradually, I calmed down. All a dream… that’s all. My breathing returned to normal and I wiped sweat from my brow.

The scent of coffee lured me toward the kitchen. My wife mumbled something in her sleep, the diesel engine almost forgotten.

I sat at the kitchen table, a ceramic mug of steaming coffee in hand, voraciously hungry. But hungry for breakfast or hungry for life? I heard the alarm go off and then it died.

A few minutes later my wife moved into the kitchen past Fred who sat across from me. She didn’t see him, but that was okay because he existed only for me, a fantasy come to life, a character I had breathed life into. He had been created piecemeal from pieces of myself and others, cemented together by my own emotional truth. Fred existed only for me and no one else, unless they let Fred into their minds via the reading of my fiction.

Did you enjoy the interview? Fred asked.

I grinned. My wife asked what I was grinning at and I cleared my throat.

“Just waking up, honey.”

She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down in the same exact spot that Edna was sitting; Edna and my wife occupied the same space. When did the dream end and reality begin?

“I understand,” I told them all, but my wife only knew I spoke to her.

“Understand what, honey?” she said.

Edna and Fred reached across the table and held hands. I did the same with my wife. Arms crossing dimensions, hands from different worlds, clasped on one table in one time and space; the dream bled into reality, or maybe reality bled into the fantasy. Regardless, we were all there, in one place and under one roof. Together.

“My stories aren’t just expressions of who I am,” I answered my wife. “They’re eulogies.”

“What does that mean?”

I shook my head. “Never mind.”

Some things were best left unexplained. How could I explain that Fred and Edna were with us? How could I tell her that each story I penned was nothing more than a tombstone, the words nothing more than epitaphs etched in the mind of others. But only if I sold those stories, only if others actually read them.

An image of a solitary tombstone came to mind. It rested on a grassy hill, and no one knew it was there, no one ever read its words or knew who was buried there. When I looked around the table, Fred and Edna were gone, and only my wife remained.

I squeezed her hand tighter.

Le domaine Médard‐Bourgault de St‑Jean‑Port‑Joli, classé « site patrimonial » au Québecpatrimoine-culturel.gouv.qc.ca, est à la fois un héritage artistique et immobilier (maison familiale et œuvres sculptées). Créer une fiducie d’utilité sociale (FUS) – appelée ici « Fiducie André‑Médard Bourgault » – permettrait de confier ce patrimoine à une entité autonome chargée d’un « intérêt général »voute.bape.gouv.qc.ca. Selon le Code civil du Québec, une FUS est « l’affectation d’un patrimoine à une vocation d’intérêt général plutôt qu’au bénéfice d’une personne »voute.bape.gouv.qc.ca. Autrement dit, les biens du domaine seraient gérés pour la conservation du patrimoine et l’animation culturelle, non pour le profit privé. Ce véhicule juridique est expressément conçu pour la préservation du patrimoine : « la fiducie présente notamment un grand intérêt pour la préservation de biens patrimoniaux »voute.bape.gouv.qc.ca. Par exemple, la FUS permettrait de consacrer les revenus (billetterie, dons, etc.) exclusivement à l’entretien du site et à son rayonnement culturel.

Avantages de la fiducie pour protéger le domaine

La fiducie assure une perpétuité de vocation et une gestion collégiale du patrimoine. En créant la FUS, on transfère les bâtiments et œuvres dans un « patrimoine d’affectation autonome » distinct du patrimoine personnel du constituantvoute.bape.gouv.qc.ca. Ce patrimoine fiduciaire peut être déclaré perpétuel : « la FUS peut être perpétuelle, elle existe tout aussi longtemps que le patrimoine auquel elle est affectée »voute.bape.gouv.qc.ca. Dans la pratique, cela signifie qu’aucun individu (ou groupe privé) ne « possède » véritablement le domaine : il n’appartient qu’à la fiducie. Les fiduciaires gèrent alors les lieux selon l’objectif fixé (protection, accueil du public, résidences artistiques, etc.)voute.bape.gouv.qc.cavoute.bape.gouv.qc.ca. Cette structure empêche par exemple qu’un héritier vende les terres à des promoteurs ou que le site soit morcelé : le domaine est « cantonné » à la fiducie et protégé de la spéculation immobilière.

La FUS offre par ailleurs des avantages procéduraux et fiscaux. Les actifs placés en fiducie ne font pas partie de la succession du fondateur, ce qui simplifie la transmission : les bénéficiaires désignés héritent par la fiducie sans passer par une homologation de testament classiquerbcwealthmanagement.com (passage en lieu sûr des actifs). De plus, une FUS à vocation culturelle peut obtenir le statut d’organisme de bienfaisance enregistrévoute.bape.gouv.qc.ca. En devenant OBNE (organisme à but non lucratif) ou organisme de bienfaisance, la fiducie pourrait émettre des reçus fiscaux pour les dons et recueillir des subventions réservées aux organismes culturels. Par exemple, le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ) offre des subventions aux organismes à but non lucratifcalq.gouv.qc.ca (et non aux individus). Une fiducie active comme OBNL faciliterait l’accès à ces financements. Enfin, en cas d’inaptitude du propriétaire (84 ans), la fiducie assure la continuité de la gestion : ses actifs pourront être administrés par les fiduciaires sans interruption au-delà de l’incapacité ou du décès du fondateur.

Obstacles et limites

Malgré ses atouts, la fiducie comporte des contraintes. Sa mise en place exige un acte juridique bien structuré et la désignation de fiduciaires compétents. La gouvernance de la FUS repose entièrement sur ces personnes et organisations engagées. En effet, « une FUS, même perpétuelle, est entièrement dépendante de l’implication des personnes et des organisations qui s’y engagent »voute.bape.gouv.qc.ca. Si les fiduciaires cessent d’agir (démission, désintérêt), la fiducie peut devenir inactive, laissant le domaine sans gestion. Il faut donc un conseil de fiduciaires solide et des règles statutaires claires pour assurer la pérennité.

La fiducie doit donc être conçue avec l’aide d’un notaire pour éviter les conflits (régime matrimonial, don manuel, etc.). Enfin, la fiducie impose des obligations administratives (comptes, réunions du conseil, respect de l’affectation, etc.) qui peuvent être lourdes pour un petit organisme.

Financements et subventions facilités

Le principal atout d’une fiducie/OBNL est l’accès simplifié aux subventions et aux dons publics. Le domaine, en tant qu’entité culturelle, pourrait bénéficier des programmes gouvernementaux destinés aux musées et aux sites historiques. Par exemple, le ministère québécois de la Culture ouvre régulièrement un Programme d’aide au fonctionnement des institutions muséales (PAFIM)musees.qc.ca, ciblant les musées et lieux patrimoniaux. Le guide d’aide-mémoire PAFIM précise que les dépenses admissibles incluent les salaires, l’entretien courant, les réparations, le chauffage, l’électricité, l’assurance, etc.musees.qc.camusees.qc.ca. Une partie des 8 000 $ annuels d’assurance pourrait être couverte par ce programme, tout comme l’entretien des bâtiments et l’embauche de guides pour les visites.

Au plan fédéral, le programme Emplois d’été Canada (anciennement « Canada Summer Jobs ») accorde aux OBNL une subvention salariale allant jusqu’à 100 % du salaire minimum pour engager des jeunes de 15 à 30 anscanada.cacanada.ca. La fiducie, en tant qu’employeur sans but lucratif, pourrait ainsi obtenir de l’aide pour payer les guides d’été ou les animateurs – et ne débourser qu’une partie (voire rien) de leur salaire. De même, divers programmes municipaux ou régionaux soutiennent la culture. Par exemple, la Ville de Québec propose une aide spéciale pour l’« accueil de résidences de création » : tout organisme culturel disposant d’un lieu de création (musée, centre d’art, domaine patrimonial, etc.) peut solliciter un financement pour héberger des artistes en résidenceville.quebec.qc.ca. La Fiducie André‑Médard pourrait en principe soumettre une telle demande si elle aménage des espaces de résidence.

D’autres subventions sectorielles existent : le CALQ offre des bourses et subventions aux OBNL artistiquescalq.gouv.qc.ca, et le Conseil des arts du Canada octroie parfois des fonds pour des expositions ou la revitalisation de lieux patrimoniaux. Par exemple, le programme fédéral « Patrimoine canadien – Aide au fonctionnement des musées » soutient les institutions muséales (notamment pour des expositions itinérantes ou la numérisation de collections). Enfin, l’adhésion à la Fiducie nationale du Canada (National Trust) donnerait accès à des conseils, outils et même un programme d’assurance pour maisons patrimonialesnationaltrustcanada.ca. Bien que ce ne soit pas une subvention directe, il s’agit d’un service avantageux pour les propriétaires d’un site historique.

Exemples de subventions potentielles :

• PAFIM (Québec) pour l’exploitation muséale (salaires, réparations, assurance)musees.qc.camusees.qc.ca.
• Emplois d’été Canada (gouvernement fédéral) pour financer jusqu’à 100 % des salaires d’étudiants guidant le publiccanada.cacanada.ca.
• Programmes municipaux de soutien au patrimoine ou à la culture (ex. : résidences artistiques, événements culturels).
• Subventions du CALQ aux organismes artistiques sans but lucratifcalq.gouv.qc.ca.
• Subventions de Patrimoine canadien pour musées (programme d’aide aux musées) ou muséologie (expositions, numérisation).
• Fonds privés et fondations (donateurs, commandites) avec reçu fiscal possible si statut OBNE obtenuvoute.bape.gouv.qc.ca.

Exemples de structures organisationnelles

En pratique, la création d’une fiducie peut s’accompagner d’une structure de gestion dédiée. Par exemple, la Fiducie du patrimoine culturel des Augustines (Montréal) a groupé son monastère et ses collections dans une FUS, tout en mandatant un OBNL pour en assurer l’exploitation hôtelière et muséalevoute.bape.gouv.qc.cavoute.bape.gouv.qc.ca. De même, la FUS des Augustines gère l’actif immobilier et muséal (Monastère de 1695 et archives), et un OBNL (Le Monastère des Augustines – Lieu de mémoire) s’occupe du volet économique. Cette double structure (FUS + OBNL) garantit que les décisions d’exploitation restent fidèles à l’affectation patrimoniale décidée par la fiducie.

Pour le domaine Médard‑Bourgault, on pourrait imaginer un modèle comparable : la Fiducie André‑Médard Bourgault détiendrait officiellement les terrains, bâtiments et collections, tandis qu’un organisme de gestion (association ou OBNL local déjà en place) s’occuperait des activités quotidiennes (visites, entretien, programmation culturelle). Il existe aussi des exemples de coopératives d’activités culturelles, de fondations ou de sociétés d’économie sociale qui peuvent jouer ce rôle. L’important est de préserver l’“affectation” des lieux (toile de fond culturelle et pédagogique) : la fiducie fixe la vocation (préservation et diffusion du patrimoine de Médard Bourgault), et la structure gestionnaire concrétise cette vocation auprès du public.

En résumé, la création d’une fiducie d’utilité sociale apparaît comme la meilleure protection pour le domaine Médard‐Bourgault. Elle inscrit le lieu dans une vocation durable d’intérêt public, permet de mobiliser financements publics et privés spécifiquement destinés au patrimoine, et sécurise le site au-delà de la vie du fondateurvoute.bape.gouv.qc.cavoute.bape.gouv.qc.ca. Les obstacles (complexité juridique, obligations familiales) sont réels, mais peuvent être surmontés par une planification professionnelle. À long terme, cette approche offrirait à André‑Médard Bourgault la garantie que le patrimoine légué par son père sera perpétué et valorisé dans les règles de l’art patrimonial québécois.

Sources : Définition et atouts de la fiducie d’utilité socialevoute.bape.gouv.qc.cavoute.bape.gouv.qc.ca ; guide MCC sur le fonctionnement des musées (PAFIM)musees.qc.camusees.qc.ca ; site gouvernemental Emplois d’été Canadacanada.cacanada.ca ; programme de résidences de la Ville de Québecville.quebec.qc.ca ; site du CALQcalq.gouv.qc.ca ; analyse légale des fiducies au Québecgirardavocats.comgirardavocats.com ; étude de cas (fiducie des Augustines)voute.bape.gouv.qc.cavoute.bape.gouv.qc.ca.

You pay £10.99 every month for Spotify Premium. You're shelling out £17.99 for Netflix's Standard plan. The deal seems straightforward: no adverts. Your listening and viewing experience stays pure, uninterrupted by commercial messages trying to sell you things. Clean. Simple. Worth it.

But here's the uncomfortable bit. What happens when that track surfacing in your Discover Weekly playlist, the one that feels perfectly tailored to your taste, is actually sitting there because the artist accepted reduced royalties for promotional placement? What if that show dominating your Netflix homepage wasn't prioritised by viewing patterns at all, but by a studio's commercial arrangement?

Welcome to 2025's peculiar paradox of premium subscriptions. Paying to avoid advertising might not protect you from being advertised to. It just means the sales pitch arrives wrapped in the language of personalisation rather than interruption. The algorithm knows what you want. Trust the algorithm. Except the algorithm might be serving someone else's interests entirely.

Here's what millions of subscribers are starting to realise: the question isn't whether they're being marketed to through these platforms. The evidence suggests they absolutely are. The real question is whether this constitutes a breach of contract, a violation of consumer protection law, or simply a fundamental reimagining of what advertising means when algorithms run the show.

The Architecture of Influence

To understand how we got here, you need to grasp how recommendation algorithms actually work. These systems aren't passive mirrors reflecting your preferences back at you. They're active agents shaping what you see, hear, and ultimately consume.

Netflix has stated publicly that 75 to 80 per cent of all viewing hours on its platform come from algorithmic recommendations, not user searches. The vast majority of what Netflix subscribers watch isn't content they actively sought out. It's content the algorithm decided to surface, using collaborative filtering that examines viewing behaviour patterns across millions of users. You think you're choosing. You're mostly accepting suggestions.

Spotify combines collaborative filtering with natural language processing and audio analysis. The platform analyses your listening history, playlist additions, skip rates, save rates (tracks with save rates above 8 per cent are 3.5 times more likely to receive algorithmic playlist placements), and dozens of other engagement metrics. Algorithmic playlists like Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and Radio now account for approximately 35 per cent of new artist discoveries, compared to 28 per cent from editorial playlists.

These numbers reveal something crucial. The algorithm isn't just a feature of these platforms. It's the primary interface through which content reaches audiences. Control the algorithm, and you control visibility. Control visibility, and you control commercial success.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: what happens when access to that algorithm becomes something you can buy?

Discovery Mode and the Spectre of Payola

In 2020, Spotify introduced Discovery Mode. The feature allows artists and labels to designate specific tracks as priorities for algorithmic consideration. These flagged tracks become more likely to appear in Radio, Autoplay, and certain algorithmically generated Mixes. The cost? Artists accept reduced royalties on streams generated through these promotional placements.

Spotify frames this as an opt-in marketing tool rather than paid promotion. “It doesn't buy plays, it doesn't affect editorial playlists, and it's clearly disclosed in the app and on our website,” a company spokesperson stated. But critics see something else entirely: a modern reincarnation of payola, the practice of secretly paying radio stations for airplay. Payola has been illegal in the United States since 1960.

The comparison isn't casual. Payola regulations emerged from the Communications Act of 1934, requiring broadcasters to disclose when material was paid for or sponsored. The Federal Communications Commission treats violations seriously. In 2007, four major radio companies settled payola accusations for $12.5 million.

But here's the catch. Spotify isn't a broadcaster subject to FCC jurisdiction. It's an internet platform, operating in a regulatory grey zone where traditional payola rules simply don't apply. The FTC's general sponsorship disclosure requirements are far less stringent than those of broadcasters, as one legal analysis noted.

In March 2025, this regulatory gap became the subject of litigation. A class action lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court alleged that Discovery Mode constitutes a “modern form of payola” that allows record labels and artists to secretly pay for promotional visibility. The lawsuit's central claim cuts right to it: “Telling users that 'commercial considerations may influence' recommendations does not reveal which songs are being promoted commercially and which are being recommended organically. Without that specificity, users cannot distinguish between genuine personalisation and covert advertising.”

Spotify called the lawsuit “nonsense”, insisting it gets “basic facts” wrong. But the case crystallises the core tension. Even if Spotify discloses that commercial considerations might influence recommendations, that disclosure appears in settings or help documentation that most users never read. The recommendations themselves carry no marker indicating whether they're organic algorithmic suggestions or commercially influenced placements.

For premium subscribers, this matters. They're paying specifically to avoid commercial interruption. But if the personalised playlists they receive contain tracks placed there through commercial arrangements, are they still receiving what they paid for? Or did the definition of “ad-free” quietly shift when no one was looking?

Netflix's Algorithmic Opacity

Netflix operates differently from Spotify, but faces similar questions about the relationship between commercial interests and recommendation algorithms. The platform positions its recommendation system as editorially driven personalisation, using sophisticated machine learning to match content with viewer preferences.

Yet Netflix's business model creates inherent conflicts of interest. The platform both licenses content from third parties and produces its own original programming. When Netflix's algorithm recommends a Netflix original, the company benefits twice: first from subscription revenue, and second from building the value of its content library. When it recommends licensed content, it pays licensing fees whilst generating no additional revenue beyond existing subscriptions.

The economic incentives are clear. Netflix benefits most when subscribers watch Netflix-produced content. Does this influence what the algorithm surfaces? Netflix maintains that recommendations are driven purely by predicted viewing enjoyment, not corporate financial interests. But the opacity of proprietary algorithms makes independent verification impossible.

One researcher observed that “The most transparent company I've seen thus far is Netflix, and even they bury the details in their help docs.” Another noted that “lack of transparency isn't just annoying; it's a critical flaw. When we don't understand the logic, we can't trust the suggestion.”

This opacity matters particularly for ad-free subscribers. Netflix's Standard plan costs £17.99 monthly in the UK, whilst the ad-supported tier costs just £7.99. Those paying more than double for an ad-free experience presumably expect recommendations driven by their viewing preferences, not Netflix's production investments.

But proving that content receives preferential algorithmic treatment based on commercial interests is nearly impossible from the outside. The algorithms are proprietary. The training data is private. The decision-making logic is opaque. Subscribers are asked to trust that platforms prioritise user satisfaction over commercial interests, but have no way to verify that trust is warranted.

The Blurring Line Between Curation and Commerce

The distinction between editorial curation and advertising has always been fuzzy. Magazine editors choose which products to feature based on editorial judgement, but those judgements inevitably reflect commercial relationships with advertisers. The difference is disclosure: advertorial content is supposed to be clearly labelled.

Digital platforms have eroded this distinction further. YouTube allows creators to embed sponsorships directly into their content. Even YouTube Premium subscribers, who pay to avoid YouTube's own advertisements, still see these creator-embedded sponsored segments. The platform requires creators to flag videos containing paid promotions, triggering a disclosure label at the start of the video.

This creates a two-tier advertising system: YouTube's own ads, which Premium subscribers avoid, and creator-embedded sponsors, which appear regardless of subscription status. But at least these sponsorships are disclosed as paid promotions. The situation becomes murkier when platforms use algorithmic recommendations influenced by commercial considerations without clear disclosure at the point of recommendation.

Research into algorithmic bias has documented several types of systematic preferential treatment in recommendation systems. Popularity bias causes algorithms to favour already-popular content. Exposure bias means recommendations depend partly on which items are made available to the algorithm. Position bias gives preference to items presented prominently.

More concerning is the documented potential for commercial bias. In a 1998 paper describing Google, the company's founders argued that “advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” That was Larry Page and Sergey Brin, before Google became the advertising-funded search engine. A president of an airline testified to the United States Congress that a flight recommendation system was created with the explicit intention of gaining competitive advantage through preferential treatment.

These examples demonstrate that recommendation systems can be, and have been, designed to serve commercial interests over user preferences. The question for streaming platforms is whether they're doing the same thing, and if so, whether their ad-free subscribers have been adequately informed.

Contract, Consumer Protection, and Advertising Law

When you subscribe to Spotify Premium or Netflix, you enter a contractual relationship. What exactly has been promised regarding advertisements and commercial content? The answer matters.

Spotify Premium's marketing emphasises “ad-free music listening.” But what counts as an ad? Is a track that appears in your Discover Weekly because the artist accepted reduced royalties for promotional placement an advertisement? Spotify would likely argue it isn't, because the track wasn't inserted as an interruptive commercial message. Critics would counter that if the track's appearance was influenced by commercial considerations, it's advertising by another name.

Contract law offers some guidance. In February 2025, a federal judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit challenging Amazon Prime Video's introduction of advertisements. The lawsuit argued that adding ads breached the subscription contract and violated state consumer protection laws. Amazon had begun showing advertisements to Prime Video users unless they paid an additional $2.99 monthly for an ad-free experience.

The court sided with Amazon. The reasoning? Amazon's terms of service explicitly reserve the right to change the Prime Video service. “Plaintiffs did not purchase access to 'ad-free Prime Video,' let alone an ad-free Prime Video that Amazon promised would remain ad-free,” the court stated. “They purchased access to Prime Video, subject to any changes that Amazon was contractually authorised 'in its sole discretion' to make.”

This decision establishes important precedent. Platforms can modify their services, including adding advertisements, if their terms of service reserve that right and subscribers accepted those terms. But it doesn't address the subtler question of whether algorithmically surfaced content influenced by commercial considerations constitutes advertising that breaches an ad-free promise.

UK consumer protection law offers potentially stronger protections. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 prohibits misleading actions and omissions. If platforms market subscriptions as “ad-free” whilst simultaneously surfacing content based on commercial arrangements without adequate disclosure, this could constitute a misleading omission under UK law.

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 strengthens these protections significantly. Provisions taking effect in April 2025 and through 2026 require businesses to provide clear pre-contract information about subscription services. More importantly, the Act prohibits “drip pricing,” where consumers see an initial price but then face additional undisclosed fees.

The drip pricing prohibition is particularly relevant here. If subscribers pay for an ad-free experience but then receive algorithmically surfaced content influenced by commercial arrangements, could this be considered a form of drip pricing, where the true nature of the service isn't fully disclosed upfront?

The Act also grants the Competition and Markets Authority new direct consumer enforcement powers, including the ability to impose turnover-based fines up to 10 per cent of a company's global annual turnover for breaches of UK consumer law. That creates real enforcement teeth that didn't previously exist.

FTC guidance in the United States requires that advertising disclosures be “clear and conspicuous,” difficult to miss and easy to understand. The FTC has also issued guidance specific to algorithmic decision-making, stating that when companies rely on algorithms to make significant decisions affecting consumers, they must be able to disclose the key factors influencing those decisions.

Applying this to streaming recommendations raises uncomfortable questions. If Spotify's Discovery Mode influences which tracks appear in personalised playlists, shouldn't each recommended track indicate whether it's there through organic algorithmic selection or commercial arrangement? If Netflix's algorithm gives preferential treatment to Netflix originals, shouldn't recommendations disclose this bias?

The current practice of burying general disclosures in terms of service or help documentation may not satisfy regulatory requirements for clear and conspicuous disclosure. Particularly for UK subscribers, where the CMA now has enhanced enforcement powers, platforms may face increasing pressure to provide more transparent, point-of-recommendation disclosures about commercial influences on algorithmic curation.

The Business Model Incentive Structure

To understand why platforms might blur the line between organic recommendations and commercial placements, consider their business models and revenue pressures.

Spotify operates on razor-thin margins, paying approximately 70 per cent of its revenue to rights holders. Despite having 626 million monthly active users as of Q3 2024, profitability remains elusive. Advertising revenue from the free tier reached €1.85 billion in 2024, a 10 per cent increase, but still represents only a fraction of total revenue.

Discovery Mode offers Spotify a way to extract additional value without raising subscription prices or adding interruptive advertisements. Artists and labels desperate for visibility accept reduced royalties, improving Spotify's margins on those streams whilst maintaining the appearance of an ad-free premium experience.

Netflix faces different but related pressures. The company spent billions building its original content library. Every subscriber who watches licensed content instead of Netflix originals represents a missed opportunity to build the value of Netflix's proprietary assets. This creates powerful incentives to steer subscribers toward Netflix-produced content through algorithmic recommendations.

For all these platforms, the challenge is balancing user satisfaction against revenue optimisation. Degrade the user experience too much, and subscribers cancel. But leave revenue opportunities untapped, and shareholders demand explanation.

Algorithmic curation influenced by commercial considerations represents a solution to this tension. Unlike interruptive advertising, which users clearly recognise and often resent, algorithmically surfaced paid placements disguised as personalised recommendations can generate revenue whilst maintaining the appearance of an ad-free experience.

At least until users realise what's happening. Which they're starting to do.

Platform Disclosures and the Limits of Fine Print

Spotify does disclose that commercial considerations may influence recommendations. The platform's help documentation states: “We may use the information we collect about you, including information about your use of Spotify...for commercial or sponsored content.”

But this disclosure is generic and buried in documentation most users never read. Research consistently shows that users don't read terms of service. One study found that it would take 76 work days annually for the average internet user to read the privacy policies of every website they visit.

Even users who do read terms of service face another problem: the disclosures are vague. Spotify's statement that it “may use” information “for commercial or sponsored content” doesn't specify which recommendations are influenced by commercial considerations and which aren't.

YouTube's approach offers a potential model for more transparent disclosure. When creators flag content as containing paid promotions, YouTube displays “Includes paid promotion” at the start of the video. This disclosure is clear, conspicuous, and appears at the point of consumption, not buried in settings or help documentation.

Applying this model to Spotify and Netflix would mean flagging specific recommendations as commercially influenced at the point they're presented to users. A Discover Weekly track included through Discovery Mode could carry a discrete indicator: “Promotional placement.”

Platforms resist this level of transparency. Likely for good reason: clear disclosure would undermine the value of the placements. The effectiveness of algorithmically surfaced paid placements depends on users perceiving them as organic recommendations. Explicit labelling would destroy that perception.

This creates a fundamental conflict. Effective disclosure would negate the value of the commercial practice, whilst inadequate disclosure potentially misleads consumers about what they're paying for when they subscribe to ad-free services. Either kill the revenue stream or mislead subscribers.

Subscriber Expectations and the Ad-Free Promise

The Competition and Markets Authority's 2022 music streaming market study in the UK found that between 2019 and 2021, monthly active users of music streaming services increased from 32 million to 39 million, with Spotify commanding 50 to 60 per cent market share.

The rapid growth of ad-supported tiers reveals preferences. Netflix's ad-supported tier reached 45 per cent of US households by August 2025, up from just 34 per cent in 2024. This suggests many subscribers are willing to tolerate advertisements in exchange for lower prices. Conversely, those paying premium prices likely have stronger expectations of a genuinely ad-free experience.

The Amazon Prime Video lawsuit, whilst dismissed on contractual grounds, revealed subscriber frustration. Plaintiffs argued that Amazon “reaped undue benefits by marketing Prime Video as devoid of commercials before introducing ads.” The claim was that subscribers made purchasing decisions based on an understanding that the service would remain ad-free, even if the terms of service technically allowed modifications.

This points to a gap between legal obligations and reasonable consumer expectations. Legally, platforms can reserve broad rights to modify services if terms of service say so. But consumer protection law also recognises that businesses shouldn't exploit consumer ignorance or the impracticality of reading lengthy terms of service.

If most subscribers reasonably understand “ad-free” to mean “free from commercial promotion,” but platforms interpret it narrowly as “free from interruptive advertisement breaks,” there's a disconnect that arguably constitutes misleading marketing, particularly under UK consumer protection law. The gap between what subscribers think they're buying and what platforms think they're selling might be legally significant.

Regulatory Responses and Enforcement Gaps

Traditional advertising regulation developed for broadcast media and print publications. But streaming platforms exist in a regulatory gap. They're not broadcasters subject to FCC sponsorship identification rules. They're internet platforms, governed by general consumer protection law and advertising standards, but not by media-specific regulation.

The FTC has attempted to address this gap through guidance on digital advertising disclosure. The agency's 2013 guidance document “.Com Disclosures” established that online advertising must meet the same “clear and conspicuous” standard as offline advertising.

But enforcement remains limited. The FTC's 2023 orders to eight social media and video streaming platforms sought information about how companies scrutinise deceptive advertising. This was an information-gathering exercise, not enforcement action.

In the UK, the Advertising Standards Authority and the Committee of Advertising Practice provide self-regulatory oversight of advertising, but their jurisdiction over algorithmic content curation remains unclear.

The 2024 Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act provides the CMA with enhanced powers but doesn't specifically address algorithmic curation influenced by commercial considerations. The Act's fake reviews provisions require disclosure when reviews are incentivised, establishing a precedent for transparency when commercial considerations influence seemingly organic content. But the Act doesn't explicitly extend this principle to streaming recommendations.

In the United States, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has raised questions about whether Spotify's Discovery Mode should be subject to payola-style regulation. This suggests growing regulatory interest, but actual enforcement remains uncertain.

The European Union's Digital Services Act, which took effect in 2024, requires very large online platforms to provide transparency about recommender systems, including meaningful information about the main parameters used and options for modifying recommendations. But “meaningful information” remains vaguely defined, and enforcement is still developing.

The Attention Economy's Ethical Dilemma

Step back from legal technicalities, and a broader ethical question emerges. Is it acceptable for platforms to sell access to user attention that users believed they were protecting by paying for ad-free subscriptions?

The attention economy frames user attention as a scarce resource that platforms compete to capture and monetise. Free services monetise attention through advertising. Paid services monetise attention through subscriptions. But increasingly, platforms want both revenue streams.

This becomes ethically questionable when it's not transparently disclosed. If Spotify Premium subscribers knew that their Discover Weekly playlists contain tracks that artists paid to place there (through reduced royalties), would they still perceive the service as ad-free? If Netflix subscribers understood that recommendations systematically favour Netflix originals for commercial reasons, would they trust the algorithm to serve their interests?

The counterargument is that some commercial influence on recommendations might actually benefit users. Discovery Mode, Spotify argues, helps artists find audiences who genuinely would enjoy their music. The commercial arrangement funds the algorithmic promotion, but the promotion only works if users actually like the tracks and engage with them.

But these justifications only work if users are informed and can make autonomous decisions about whether to trust platform recommendations. Without disclosure, users can't exercise informed consent. They're making decisions based on false assumptions about why those options are being presented.

This is where the practice crosses from aggressive business strategy into potential deception. The value of algorithmic recommendations depends on users trusting that recommendations serve their interests. If recommendations actually serve platforms' commercial interests, but users believe they serve their own interests, that's a betrayal of trust whether or not it violates specific regulations.

What Subscribers Actually Bought

Return to the original question. When you pay for Spotify Premium or Netflix's ad-free tier, what exactly are you buying?

Legally, you're buying whatever the terms of service say you're buying, subject to any modifications the platform reserved the right to make. The Amazon Prime Video decision establishes this clearly.

But consumer protection law recognises that contracts alone don't determine the full scope of seller obligations. Misleading marketing, unfair commercial practices, and violations of reasonable consumer expectations can override contractual language, particularly when contracts involve standard-form terms that consumers can't negotiate.

If platforms market subscriptions as “ad-free” using language that reasonably suggests freedom from commercial promotion, but then implement algorithmic curation influenced by commercial considerations without clear disclosure, this creates a gap between marketing representations and service reality. That gap might be legally significant.

For UK subscribers, the enhanced CMA enforcement powers under the 2024 Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act create real regulatory risk. The CMA can investigate potentially misleading marketing and unfair commercial practices, impose significant penalties, and require changes to business practices.

The Spotify Discovery Mode lawsuit will test whether courts view algorithmically surfaced paid placements in “ad-free” premium services as a form of undisclosed advertising that violates consumer protection law. The case's theory is that even if generic disclosure exists in help documentation, the lack of specific, point-of-recommendation disclosure means users can't distinguish organic recommendations from paid placements, making the practice deceptive.

If courts accept this reasoning, it could force platforms to implement recommendation-level disclosure similar to YouTube's “Includes paid promotion” labels. If courts reject it, platforms will have legal confirmation that generic disclosure in terms of service suffices, even if most users never read it.

The Transparency Reckoning

The streaming industry's approach to paid placements within algorithmically curated recommendations represents a test case for advertising ethics in the algorithmic age. Traditional advertising was interruptive and clearly labelled. You knew an ad when you saw one. Algorithmic advertising is integrated and often opaque. You might never know you're being sold to.

This evolution challenges foundational assumptions in advertising regulation. If users can't distinguish commercial promotion from organic recommendation, does disclosure buried in terms of service suffice? If platforms sell access to user attention through algorithmic placement, whilst simultaneously charging users for “ad-free” experiences, have those users received what they paid for?

The legal answers remain uncertain. The ethical answers seem clearer. Subscribers paying for ad-free experiences reasonably expect that personalised recommendations serve their interests, not platforms' commercial interests. When recommendations are influenced by commercial considerations without clear, point-of-recommendation disclosure, platforms are extracting value from subscriber attention that subscribers believed they were protecting by paying premium prices.

The resolution will likely come through some combination of regulatory enforcement, litigation, and market pressure. The CMA's enhanced powers under the 2024 Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act create significant UK enforcement risk. The Spotify Discovery Mode lawsuit could establish important US precedent. And subscriber awareness, once raised, creates market pressure for greater transparency.

Platforms can respond by embracing transparency, clearly labelling which recommendations involve commercial considerations. They can create new subscription tiers offering guaranteed recommendation purity at premium prices. Or they can continue current practices and hope that generic disclosure in terms of service provides sufficient legal protection whilst subscriber awareness remains low.

But that last option becomes less viable as awareness grows. Journalists are investigating. Regulators are questioning. Subscribers are litigating.

The ad-free promise, it turns out, is more complicated than it appeared. What subscribers thought they were buying may not be what platforms thought they were selling. And that gap, in both legal and ethical terms, is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

When platforms sell recommendation influence whilst simultaneously charging for ad-free experiences, they're not just optimising business models. They're redefining the fundamental bargain of premium subscriptions: from “pay to avoid commercial interruption” to “pay for algorithmically optimised commercial integration.” That's quite a shift. Whether anyone actually agreed to it is another question entirely.

Whether that redefinition survives regulatory scrutiny, legal challenge, and subscriber awareness remains to be seen. But the question is now being asked, clearly and publicly: what exactly did we buy when we paid for ad-free? And if what we received isn't what we thought we were buying, what remedy do we deserve?

The answer will need to come soon. Because millions of subscribers are waiting.

References & Sources

Legal Cases and Regulatory Documents:

• Amazon Prime Video class action dismissal, US Federal Court, February 2025. Available at: https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/customers-lose-class-action-over-amazon-prime-ads.pdf

• Spotify Discovery Mode class action lawsuit, Manhattan Federal Court, March 2025. Reported in Billboard and Rolling Stone.

• UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. UK Government. Available at: https://www.gov.uk

• Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. UK Government.

• FTC “.Com Disclosures: How to Make Effective Disclosures in Digital Advertising” (2013). Federal Trade Commission. Available at: https://www.ftc.gov

Research and Industry Reports:

• Competition and Markets Authority, “Music and streaming market study” (2022). UK Government. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/music-and-streaming-market-study

• Netflix recommendation system statistics: 75-80% of viewing from algorithmic recommendations. Multiple academic and industry sources.

• Spotify Discovery Mode statistics: 35% of new artist discoveries from algorithmic playlists vs 28% from editorial. Industry reporting 2024-2025.

• Spotify track save rate data: 8% save rate threshold for 3.5x increased algorithmic placement likelihood. Industry analysis 2024.

Academic Research:

• “How Algorithmic Confounding in Recommendation Systems” (2017). arXiv. Available at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.11214

• “Algorithms are not neutral: Bias in collaborative filtering.” PMC/National Center for Biotechnology Information. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8802245/

• “A survey on popularity bias in recommender systems.” User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, Springer, 2024.

News and Industry Analysis:

• “Spotify Lawsuit Says 'Discovery Mode' Is Just 'Modern Payola',” Billboard, 2025.

• “Class Action Lawsuit Accuses Spotify of Engaging in 'Payola' in Discovery Mode,” Rolling Stone, 2025.

• “Does Spotify's New 'Discovery Mode' Resemble Anti-Creator 'Payola?'” Recording Academy/GRAMMY.com.

• “Amazon Moves to Dismiss Class Action Over Prime Video Ads,” Lawyer Monthly, 2024.

• “Netflix's Ad Tier Has Almost Half of Its Household Viewing Hours, According to Comscore,” Adweek, 2025.

Regulatory and Government Sources:

• FCC Sponsorship Identification Rules and payola regulations. Federal Communications Commission. Available at: https://www.fcc.gov

• “FTC Issues Orders to Social Media and Video Streaming Platforms Regarding Efforts to Address Surge in Advertising for Fraudulent Products and Scams” (2023). Federal Trade Commission.

• UK Consumer Protection Laws and Regulations Report 2025. ICLG (International Comparative Legal Guides).

Platform Documentation:

• Spotify Terms and Conditions of Use. Available at: https://www.spotify.com/legal

• Spotify for Creators Ads Terms. Available at: https://support.spotify.com

• Netflix Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

• YouTube Help Centre: “Watching videos with paid product placements, sponsorships & endorsements.” Available at: https://support.google.com/youtube

Historical Context:

• Communications Act of 1934 (as amended), United States.

• FCC payola enforcement actions, including 2007 settlements with CBS Radio, Citadel, Clear Channel, and Entercom totalling $12.5 million.

• “FCC Commissioner Asks Record Labels for Information About Payola Practices,” Broadcast Law Blog, 2020.

Industry Statistics:

• Spotify advertising revenue: €1.85 billion in 2024, 10% increase year-over-year. Company financial reports.

• Netflix UK pricing: Standard tier £17.99, ad-supported tier £7.99 (2025).

• Spotify UK Premium pricing: £10.99 monthly (2025).

• Amazon Prime Video ad-free tier pricing: $2.99 monthly additional fee (US).

• Netflix ad-supported tier penetration: 45% of US households August 2025, up from 34% in 2024.

• UK music streaming market: 39 million monthly active users in 2021, up from 32 million in 2019. CMA market study.

• Spotify market share UK: 50-60% of monthly active users. CMA market study 2022.

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

There comes a point in life when you finally understand what the old saints meant when they whispered, “Actions speak louder than words.” I’ve lived long enough to see it proven over and over again. People may say they care, they may say they miss you, they may promise they’ll come by “sometime soon”—but time has a way of telling the truth. If someone lives thirty minutes away and two years pass without a visit, well… the heart already knows the answer.

And yet, this isn’t bitterness talking. It’s just the soft, weathered wisdom of someone who has learned to stop chasing what doesn’t want to stay. Excuses come—kids get sick, life gets busy, work calls, something always comes up. I used to take it personally. Now I simply nod, smile, and say, “I’ll pray for you.” Not out of spite. Not out of grumpiness. But because life is too short to spend wondering why someone didn’t show up. I’d rather spend it loving the people who do.

My heart stays busy enough—my church, my family, the few dear friends who prove their love by showing up in real time, not just in memory. And for the rest? I love them too. I pray for them. I pray for everyone—friends, strangers, leaders, enemies until they aren’t enemies anymore. I’ve prayed for presidents and prime ministers, for people I’ve never met, for people who may never know my name. If you’re reading this, I’ve prayed for you already. It’s just who I am now. Maybe it’s who God has been shaping me into all along.

And please understand—this isn’t written with anyone specific in mind. Not my pastor friends. Not my family. Not the people who are walking faithfully beside me. No, this is simply a truth I’ve learned about my own heart: love always tries to close the distance. It reaches across miles with a text message, across years with a phone call, across silence with a prayer. When love wants to stay, it finds a way. When it doesn’t… it drifts. And I’ve learned not to chase the drift.

There comes a moment when you open the cage door for the bird you’ve nursed back to health. You hold your breath as it hesitates, then spreads its wings—strong again. If it flies away and never returns, that’s alright. You did what you could. You loved while you had the chance. And now you let go.

So this is me opening that little cage door.

If you fly on, I won’t hold you.

If you return someday, I’ll be grateful.

And either way… I’ll still pray for you.

I’ll still carry your memory like a soft feather in the pocket of my heart.

God bless you.

And goodbye.

The interesting function is repair, which compares the expression for e.g. z11 with the objective adder expression for z11. If we can't find a node with the objective expression, we recurse into the sub-expressions and try repair those.

import sys
from bidict import bidict

gates = {}
nodes = set()

for line in sys.stdin.read().split('\n\n')[1].splitlines():
    a, op, b, _, c = line.split()
    gates[c] = (op, a, b)
    nodes.update((a, b, c))

nodes = sorted(nodes)
x = [p for p in nodes if p[0] == 'x']
y = [p for p in nodes if p[0] == 'y']
z = [p for p in nodes if p[0] == 'z']

def generate_exprs(gates):
    exprs = bidict()
    def go(p):
        if p in exprs:
            return
        if p in x or p in y:
            exprs[p] = (p,)
        else:
            op, a, b = gates[p]
            go(a)
            go(b)
            exprs[p] = (op, *sorted((exprs[a], exprs[b])))
    for p in nodes:
        go(p)
    return exprs

def objective(n):
    if n == 0:
        return ('XOR', ('x00',), ('y00',))
    else:
        return ('XOR', carry(n - 1), ('XOR', (x[n],), (y[n],)))

def carry(n):
    if n == 0:
        return ('AND', ('x00',), ('y00',))
    else:
        return ('OR', ('AND', carry(n - 1), ('XOR', (x[n],), (y[n],))), ('AND', (x[n],), (y[n],)))

def repair(gates, exprs, p, obj):
    def go(p, obj):
        if exprs[p] == obj:
            return
        if (res := exprs.inv.get(obj)):
            return (p, res)
        else:
            op, a, b = gates[p]
            obj_op, obj_a, obj_b = obj
            if op != obj_op:
                raise Exception
            if go(a, obj_a) is None:
                return go(b, obj_b)
            if go(b, obj_b) is None:
                return go(a, obj_a)
            if go(a, obj_b) is None:
                return go(b, obj_a)
            if go(b, obj_a) is None:
                return go(a, obj_b)
            raise Exception
    return go(p, obj)

swaps = []

for i in range(45):
    exprs = generate_exprs(gates)
    match repair(gates, exprs, z[i], objective(i)):
        case (p, q):
            swaps.extend((p, q))
            gates[p], gates[q] = gates[q], gates[p]

print(','.join(sorted(swaps)))

GO HOOSIERS!

Listening now to The Flagship Station for IU Sports ahead of tonight's Big Ten Conference men's basketball game between the (8-1) Penn State Nittany Lions and the (7-2) Indiana Hoosiers with opening tip scheduled for 19:30 Central Time.

And the adventure continues.

Matthew 18 is one of those chapters that quietly dismantles everything the world taught us about greatness, status, power, and importance. It never raises its voice. It does not shout. It does not posture. It simply opens with a question that exposes the human heart in one line: “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” That question did not come from skeptics. It did not come from enemies of Jesus. It came from His own disciples. The men who had walked with Him, eaten with Him, seen miracles with their own eyes. And they asked the same question every generation still asks in different language: Who matters most? Who ranks highest? Who wins?

Jesus does not answer with a speech about leadership, influence, platforms, or recognition. He calls a child. Not to illustrate something cute. Not to add a visual. He places the child in the center of grown men who are still measuring themselves against one another. And He says something that still collapses pride at the roots: unless you change and become like this child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Not climb the ranks of it. Not improve your standing in it. Enter it at all.

This is where Matthew 18 begins its slow dismantling of human ladders. It does not just address behavior. It addresses the architecture behind behavior. It exposes how even spiritual ambition can subtly rot into self-promotion. Jesus makes it painfully clear that greatness in His kingdom is not vertical. It is downward. It moves toward humility, not away from it. It bends low instead of climbing high.

This is not a call to childishness. It is a call to childlikeness. Trust without calculation. Dependence without shame. Sincerity without performance. The child does not enter the room deciding how to be seen. The child does not negotiate their value. They simply exist in the presence of the adults. And Jesus says that posture is the doorway into the kingdom of God.

Then the chapter does something even more unsettling. Jesus immediately moves from childlikeness to warning. He speaks about stumbling blocks. About harming the vulnerable. About anyone who causes one of these “little ones” to stumble. And suddenly the tone shifts from gentle invitation to blistering severity. He says it would be better to have a millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the sea than to become the one who trips the faith of the innocent. That is not poetic exaggeration. That is divine intensity.

This is one of the first moments where Matthew 18 makes something unmistakable: God’s tenderness toward the vulnerable is matched by His ferocity toward those who abuse power. Jesus shows us that heaven does not admire strength the way earth does. Heaven measures power by protection, not domination.

Then comes the teaching that very few people want to hear anymore. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. These words are not a call to bodily harm. They are a call to surgical honesty. Jesus is saying that anything you refuse to confront will eventually control you. Anything you defend will eventually demand more territory in your soul. He is not asking for self-mutilation. He is calling for ruthless awareness.

Matthew 18 does not allow anyone to hide behind soft spirituality. It refuses sentimental faith that avoids transformation. Jesus is not interested in surface obedience that leaves the heart untouched. He is confronting what we tolerate, what we excuse, what we secretly nurture while still wanting heaven to applaud our intentions.

From there, the chapter shifts again. Suddenly, Jesus speaks about angels who behold the face of the Father. About heavenly attention being directed toward the lowly. The invisible realm does not revolve around the famous. It is oriented toward the faithful. Toward the overlooked. Toward those the world forgets. That alone reframes everything we chase.

And then comes the parable of the lost sheep. One sheep wanders. Ninety-nine remain. And Jesus says the shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to go find the one. This is not a commentary on math. It is a revelation of heaven’s priorities. Heaven does not measure value by majority. Heaven does not trade people for efficiency. Heaven does not accept collateral damage as the cost of progress.

This is where many formulas break down. Because human systems always sacrifice the few for the many. But divine systems interrupt the many for the sake of the one. The shepherd leaves what is working to pursue what is wounded. And Jesus says heaven celebrates the recovery of one wanderer more than the maintenance of ninety-nine who never strayed.

This tells us something about God that religion often tries to disprove with complexity. God is not impressed by crowds. He is moved by return. He is not measuring attendance. He is watching the road for someone who has been missing themselves.

Then Matthew 18 moves into one of the most difficult teachings Jesus ever gave about relationships: confrontation. If your brother sins against you, go to him. Not go to the group. Not go to social commentary. Not go to public shaming. Go to him. Alone. Quietly. Directly. With the goal of restoration, not humiliation.

If he listens, you’ve gained your brother. That is the entire objective. Not winning the argument. Not protecting your reputation. Not gathering allies. Gaining your brother. The language is relational, not judicial.

If he doesn’t listen, take one or two others. If still no response, then bring it to the community. And even then, the goal is restoration. The goal is never punishment as entertainment. It is not exclusion as leverage. The entire process is built around redemption, not dominance.

This is one of the clearest exposures of how far modern culture has drifted from the heart of Christ. Today we escalate instantly. We broadcast immediately. We skip the private step and jump straight to the public execution. And we call it accountability. Jesus calls it something else. He calls it the opposite of love.

Then come the words that have been misused for centuries: “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This passage has been weaponized. It has been inflated into mystical authority divorced from moral responsibility. But in context, it is rooted in reconciliation. It is not about commanding heaven. It is about stewarding heaven’s values on earth. The authority Jesus gives here is relational authority. The power to forgive. The courage to restore. The restraint to pursue peace before applause.

And then, as if that were not enough to stretch the human heart, Peter asks the question that every wounded person eventually asks: “How many times must I forgive? Seven?” Seven was already generous by cultural standards. Peter was being impressive by human math.

Jesus answers with a number that breaks calculation. Not seven, but seventy times seven. He is not issuing a stopwatch. He is destroying the ledger. He is removing the concept of expiration from forgiveness.

And then Jesus tells one of the most haunting parables in Scripture. A servant owes a debt so massive it could never be repaid. The king forgives it. Completely. Freely. The same servant then finds someone who owes him a tiny fraction and demands payment with violence. The king hears about it and reopens the case. And the verdict is severe.

This parable dismantles spiritual hypocrisy at its core. The forgiven who refuses to forgive does not just wound others; they contradict their own salvation story. Forgiveness received that is not passed forward becomes spiritual hoarding. Grace that stops with us mutates into something unrecognizable.

Matthew 18 is not a gentle chaplain of human emotion. It is not a comfort blanket for religious systems. It is a mirror. It reveals how we treat the vulnerable, how we confront the broken, how we process offense, how we define greatness, how we manage power, and how generous our mercy actually is.

And somewhere inside this chapter, every illusion starts to crack. We realize that Jesus is not building a brand. He is forming a people. He is not cultivating celebrity. He is cultivating character. He is not constructing hierarchies. He is dismantling ladders and replacing them with tables.

This chapter quietly dismantles spiritual theater. It refuses performative holiness. It exposes how easily we can talk about grace while living in quiet bitterness. How we can preach humility while protecting our pride. How we can demand forgiveness while rationing our own.

Matthew 18 dares to suggest that heaven’s greatest victories happen in rooms with no audience. In conversations no one applauds. In choices no algorithm rewards. In forgiveness that never makes headlines.

And this is where the chapter becomes uncomfortable in the deepest places of the soul. Because every one of us has a ledger we did not know we were keeping. Every one of us has a line we were slowly approaching where we planned to stop forgiving. Every one of us has a private definition of who deserves mercy and who no longer qualifies.

Jesus obliterates that line. He removes the expiration date from grace. He does not pretend forgiveness is easy. He simply refuses to let unforgiveness become justified.

The terrifying beauty of Matthew 18 is that it draws a straight line between how we receive mercy and how we release it. It does not soften that reality. It does not decorate it. It simply presents it as the logic of heaven.

And yet, beneath every warning in this chapter, there is the steady pulse of invitation. Become like a child. Lay down the sword of offense. Be ruthless with what corrupts you. Go after the one who wandered. Confront with courage and gentleness. Refuse to let bitterness become your inheritance. Let mercy be your reflex.

Matthew 18 is the chapter that reveals whether grace has merely touched your theology or actually transformed your nervous system. Whether you only believe forgiveness is real, or whether you have learned how to live without needing vengeance to breathe.

It exposes the part of us that still believes power is proven by force. And it gently, painfully teaches us that in the kingdom of God, power is proven by restraint. Strength is revealed through mercy. Greatness is recognized through humility.

And maybe that is why this chapter unsettles so many people. It leaves no safe place for spiritual ego to hide. It does not let us remain spiritual spectators. It drags the internal life into the light.

The disciples came asking about greatness. They left with a cross stitched into their definition of what greatness actually is.

The unforgiving servant does not just fail morally in Jesus’ parable. He fractures reality. He lives as if mercy can be received without being released. And this is where Matthew 18 stops being theoretical and becomes personal. Because almost everyone agrees with forgiveness in principle, but very few agree with forgiveness when the wound still aches, when the apology never comes, when the harm reshaped the trajectory of a life.

Jesus is not naïve to suffering. He does not minimize betrayal. He does not dismiss trauma as a spiritual inconvenience. What He does is remove our ability to crown pain as king. He removes our right to weaponize what happened to us as permanent justification for what we withhold from others. Matthew 18 is not asking us to pretend wounds never happened. It is asking us whether we intend to bleed forever.

The servant in the parable pleads for mercy and receives it in overwhelming abundance. The debt erased is impossible to quantify. It is beyond repayment. That matters. Because Jesus is revealing something easy to miss: we forgive most reluctantly when we forget what we have been forgiven. When grace becomes abstract instead of personal. When salvation becomes doctrine instead of deliverance.

That servant leaves the king’s presence forgiven but unchanged. He exits freedom and immediately re-enters accusation. He touches grace but does not let it rewrite him. And that is one of the most dangerous spiritual conditions a human being can live in: saved but not softened, pardoned but not transformed, spared but still brutal in how we measure others.

Matthew 18 exposes that contradiction without ceremony. The debt between the servants is real, but it is microscopic compared to what the king erased. Yet the servant behaves as though mercy is a resource that must be guarded, not a river meant to continue flowing. His forgiveness stops at himself. And the moment mercy stops moving, it begins to rot.

The king’s response is not arbitrary. It is not vindictive. It is simply consistent with reality. If you refuse to live by the mercy that saved you, you cannot be protected by it either. That is not punishment as revenge. That is consequence as truth.

This is where many readers recoil. Because forgiveness feels like losing control. It feels like letting the offender off the hook. It feels like minimizing the damage. But Jesus never defines forgiveness as denial. He defines it as release. Not release of the offender from responsibility to God, but release of the victim from lifelong bondage to the offense.

Unforgiveness does not keep the offender imprisoned. It keeps the wounded handcuffed to the moment of injury. Time moves forward, but the soul remains parked at the crime scene. Matthew 18 refuses to let us confuse justice with captivity.

What makes this chapter devastatingly honest is that it understands how much easier it is to confront someone’s external behavior than it is to confront our internal grudges. We prefer visible sin because it can be dealt with at a distance. But resentment, bitterness, and refusal to forgive take place in private, where we narrate our own stories without interruption.

And yet Jesus insists on dragging even that interior world into the light. Not publicly. Not humiliatingly. But truthfully. Gently. Exhaustingly. Repetitively. Seventy times seven is not a quota. It is an admission that forgiveness is not an event. It is a practice. It is not a single heroic moment. It is an ongoing surrender.

Matthew 18 is not teaching us how to be emotionally reckless. It is teaching us how to survive our own ability to become cruel. Because every wound comes with a seed. And that seed always wants to grow into someone who wounds back.

What Jesus does here is cut that lineage short. He interrupts the inheritance of violence, bitterness, relational avoidance, emotional retaliation, and spiritual withdrawal. He confronts the human instinct to protect the heart by hardening it. And He says, gently and without negotiation, that hardened hearts do not survive well in the climate of heaven.

And this is why Matthew 18 is not safe Scripture. It does not stay in abstraction. It follows us into marriages where silence has become strategy. It follows us into churches where offense has metastasized into factions. It follows us into families where forgiveness has been delayed until it feels unreachable. It follows us into childhood memories we hoped spiritual language would allow us to bypass.

Jesus does not bypass them. He enters them. But He does not enter with vengeance. He enters with a cross.

And now the chapter turns inward with terrifying tenderness. Because if the unforgiving servant reflects anything, he reflects the part of us that believes we have suffered more than others realize. That our pain outranks theirs. That our story exempts us from the commands that now feel unreasonable. We begin to believe that mercy is fair in theory but impractical in our specific case.

Matthew 18 dismantles that loophole with unsettling precision. It does not deny our pain. It places our pain inside a larger story of grace. It refuses to let pain become the highest authority in the room. Because when pain becomes sovereign, it will always crown bitterness as its successor.

What makes Jesus’ teaching so disarming here is that He never pretends forgiveness feels natural. It almost always feels like death before it feels like freedom. It feels like relinquishing a weapon you secretly planned to use one day. It feels like surrendering the moral superiority that suffering can falsely grant. It feels like choosing vulnerability in a world that has taught you to survive through armor.

And yet Jesus insists that the only way into life is through death. The only way into healing is through release. The only way into peace is through surrender. Matthew 18 does not sugarcoat that trajectory. It simply lays it out as reality.

The chapter began with a child standing among disciples arguing about greatness. It now ends with grown adults standing before God learning how to forgive. That is not accidental. Childlikeness is not innocence without wounds. It is trust without leverage. It is dependence without contingency. It is surrender without negotiation.

Somewhere between the child in the beginning and the debtor at the end, every illusion of earned standing collapses. The entire economy of the kingdom of God is revealed as mercy, received and recycled.

And this is where Matthew 18 quietly becomes one of the most terrifying and freeing chapters in the entire Gospel. Terrifying because it removes every rationalization for carrying bitterness without consequence. Freeing because it promises that the prison door has always been unlocked from the inside.

Jesus does not stand at the end of this chapter issuing audience-friendly affirmations. He gives us a mirror. He asks whether we have truly entered the kingdom as children or whether we are simply standing at the edge arguing about rank. Whether we are releasing mercy or rationing it. Whether we are becoming healers or quietly mastering the art of spiritual distancing.

He does not reduce discipleship to feeling. He makes it visible in behavior. In how we confront. In how we protect. In how we forgive. In how we treat the vulnerable. In how we dismantle our own stumbling blocks instead of weaponizing everyone else’s.

Matthew 18 ultimately refuses to let us construct a faith that is impressive but not transformed. It drags grace through the toughest rooms of the soul until something either cracks open or calcifies. It does not let us stay neutral.

And the longer you sit with this chapter, the more you realize it is not primarily about other people at all. It is about the stories we keep justifying, the grudges we keep feeding, the offenses we keep rehearsing, the debts we keep tallying, the pride we keep disguising as discernment, and the fear that keeps whispering that forgiveness will unmake us.

Jesus responds to that fear with a kingdom that is built on the opposite logic. In His kingdom, forgiveness does not erase identity. It restores it. Mercy does not weaken strength. It redefines it. Humility does not diminish worth. It reveals it.

And suddenly the chapter that once felt like a list of difficult commands becomes something else entirely. It becomes an invitation into a different nervous system. A different way of breathing. A different way of being human among humans.

Because the child at the beginning is not just an illustration. The child is a prophecy. A prophecy of what the kingdom produces in people who stay long enough to let their defenses fall. People who no longer need to win arguments to feel safe. People who no longer need to measure others to feel significant. People who no longer need to withhold mercy to feel powerful.

Matthew 18 does not teach you how to dominate your world. It teaches you how to survive without needing domination at all.

And maybe that is why this chapter feels so dangerous to pride, so offensive to control, so threatening to ego, and so irresistibly beautiful to the weary.

It does not promise status. It promises family.

It does not offer platform. It offers restoration.

It does not reward performance. It rebuilds hearts.

It does not crown rulers. It heals children.

And in the end, that is the only kind of greatness that survives the presence of God.

––––––––––––––––––––

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Your friend,

Douglas Vandergraph

#Matthew18 #FaithThatForgives #KingdomCharacter #BiblicalGrowth #RadicalMercy #FreedomThroughForgiveness #ChristCenteredLife #GraceInAction #SpiritualFormation #HeartTransformation

Working on a new story at work. An endpoint that can process a batch of items. Problem is, this makes logging tricky. How do you log a message for the whole request if it runs into an error? What about if an individual item in the request runs into an error? Decisions, decisions. Been chatting with Copilot about this and it's providing some insightful answers.

Getting used to Jira; I come from an Azure DevOps background. In a lot of ways I think it is better than Azure DevOps, but... there's so much going on here. Azure DevOps, while it doesn't seem to have as much functionality than Jira, seems easier to use precisely because of that.

Jamming to “Today, Tomorrow” by JJ Project. I could listen to this all day.

#Journal #Status #MusicVideo #JJProject

Matthew 17 is not a quiet chapter. It is not subtle. It is not soft. It is violent with glory, heavy with hope, and uncomfortable with truth. It opens on a mountain glowing with unveiled divinity and closes with a miracle that feels almost oddly ordinary—a coin in the mouth of a fish paying a tax. And somewhere between those two moments, everything shifts for the disciples in ways they do not yet understand. This chapter is a hinge in the Gospel story. It is the place where heaven interrupts earth without apology, and where Jesus quietly teaches that glory and humility are not opposites—they are partners.

Six days after Jesus tells His disciples that some of them will see the Kingdom before they die, He takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain. The text does not name the mountain, and I’ve always loved that. God doesn’t need to preserve the coordinates of glory. He just needs to meet you there. Mountains are where God keeps meeting people—Moses, Elijah, Abraham, now Peter and John and James. It’s as if elevation removes interference. The higher you climb, the quieter the world becomes. And in that quiet, God speaks.

And then it happens. Jesus is transfigured. Not improved. Not fixed. Not upgraded. Revealed. That word matters. His face shines like the sun. His clothes become white with a light no bleach could ever reproduce. This is not a costume change. This is the removal of a veil. For a brief moment, the disciples do not see the carpenter from Nazareth. They see the King He has always been.

This moment confronts one of the deepest struggles of faith: most of the time, Jesus looks ordinary. He walks. He eats. He sleeps. He bleeds. He sighs. He grows tired. He feels misunderstood. He is accessible. And because He is accessible, we often forget that He is also overwhelming. This mountain reminds us that the same Jesus who listens to whispers is also the same Jesus who silences storms with a sentence.

Then something even stranger happens. Moses and Elijah appear and begin talking with Jesus. The Law and the Prophets standing face to face with the fulfillment of both. They are not scolding Him. They are speaking with Him. Past revelation honoring present incarnation. It is a stunning confirmation that Jesus is not a rival to Scripture—He is the destination it was always pointing toward.

Peter, overwhelmed and overcaffeinated in the spirit, immediately tries to manage the moment. He offers to build three shelters. One for Jesus. One for Moses. One for Elijah. And in that single suggestion is one of the most subtle warnings of the Gospel. Peter tries to categorize Jesus alongside the greats instead of recognizing that He stands above them. He tries to preserve a moment God never intended to be permanent. He tries to organize glory instead of surrendering to it.

And that’s when the cloud arrives.

A bright cloud overshadows them—the same kind of cloud that filled the temple, the same kind that led Israel through the wilderness. And from the cloud, a voice speaks in language that rearranges everything: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.”

Not admire Him. Not analyze Him. Not debate Him. Listen to Him.

This is the only command spoken directly by God the Father to ordinary humans about Jesus in the entire Gospel narrative. And it tells us something deeply uncomfortable. It means that we can admire Jesus without listening to Him. We can celebrate Him and still ignore Him. We can quote Him and still disobey Him. And God cuts through all of our noise with a single sentence: Listen to Him.

The disciples collapse in terror. Not awe. Not inspiration. Terror. Real encounters with God do that. They undo your library of religious clichés. You don’t feel powerful in moments like this. You feel exposed. You feel undone. You feel small in the most honest way.

And Jesus touches them.

This might be one of the most tender details in the entire chapter. The glorified Christ does not stand over trembling humans with crossed arms. He steps toward them. He touches them. He tells them not to be afraid. The same hands that just held light like clothing now press gently into shaking shoulders. Glory does not cancel gentleness. Power does not eliminate compassion.

When they look up, Moses and Elijah are gone. Only Jesus remains.

That detail matters more than most sermons ever give it credit for. When all the visions fade, when the spiritual hype settles, when the echoes of divine encounters quiet down—Jesus remains. Not the experience. Not the rush. Not the emotion. Him.

They go back down the mountain with a secret they are not allowed to share yet. Jesus tells them not to speak of what they have seen until after the resurrection. There are moments God gives you that cannot yet be explained. There are revelations too heavy for public language. There are encounters that are meant first to anchor you, not impress others.

And almost immediately, they step from heaven’s glow right back into human chaos.

A desperate father approaches. His son is tormented by seizures that throw him into fire and water. The disciples had tried to heal him and failed. They had power—but not access. They had authority—but not clarity. And the father turns to Jesus with exhausted honesty: “If you can do anything, have mercy on us and help us.”

Jesus responds with a frustration that almost stings when you read it too quickly. “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you?” This isn’t cruelty. It’s grief. It’s the ache of watching people settle for shadows when the substance stands right in front of them.

Jesus heals the boy instantly. And later, the disciples ask privately why they could not cast the demon out. Jesus says something that sounds simple but carries dangerous weight: “Because of your little faith.”

Not no faith. Little faith.

We tend to think little faith is harmless. Jesus treats it like it is limiting. He follows it with the mustard seed illustration—faith so small it could be overlooked, yet potent enough to move mountains. What He is not saying is that faith must be loud. What He is saying is that faith must be honest and anchored. Little faith becomes powerful when it is placed in a limitless God instead of in loud religious confidence.

Then Jesus returns again to the reality the disciples do not want to hear. He warns them again of His coming betrayal, His death, and His resurrection. And the disciples respond the same way many of us do when God speaks a truth that interrupts our expectations: they become distressed. They understand just enough to be uncomfortable, but not enough to find peace.

And then comes the moment that makes this chapter feel so strangely human after all this divine intensity.

The collectors of the temple tax approach Peter and ask if Jesus pays the tax. Peter answers impulsively, “Yes.” But Jesus already knows the conversation. He explains to Peter that kings do not tax their own sons. And yet He chooses to pay anyway—not because He owes it, but because He refuses to cause unnecessary offense. He sends Peter fishing, and in the mouth of the first fish Peter catches is a coin sufficient to pay both their taxes.

This small miracle is easy to overlook. But it may be one of the most revealing in the chapter. The same Jesus who burns with glory on a mountain is willing to submit to earthly systems for the sake of peace. The King who owes no one anything still chooses humility. Power restrained is one of the rarest forms of power in the universe.

Matthew 17 refuses to allow us to choose between mystery and obedience. It insists on both. It shows us that spiritual encounters do not remove us from responsibility. They deepen it. The disciples are not empowered to escape suffering. They are empowered to walk through it with clarity, compassion, and courage.

This chapter also confronts the part of us that loves moments more than movement. We want the mountain to last forever. We want the light without the valley. We want the affirmation without the assignment. But God has never measured faith by how moved you were in worship. He measures it by how obedient you are when no music is playing.

The transfiguration was not given to make the disciples feel special. It was given to prepare them for what was about to break them. This is how God often works. He gives you light before He gives you weight. He gives you confirmation before He gives you confrontation. He gives you revelation before refinement.

There is also something deeply personal happening in this chapter that most people never pause long enough to see. Peter is present for one of the greatest revelations in human history—and minutes later, he will be the one dealing with tax collectors and fishing for coins. That is not irony. That is Christianity. High calling. Daily submission. Heaven’s fire. Earth’s errands.

If you have ever walked out of a powerful moment with God and immediately been confronted with laundry, bills, deadlines, children crying, traffic, illness, or exhaustion—Matthew 17 is for you. God is not offended by your humanity. He is patient with your process.

This chapter whispers to every person who feels like their faith is small, their failures are loud, and their doubts are heavy. It reminds us that the same Jesus who glows with eternity still walks with fishermen. It teaches us that God’s voice can interrupt fear, but God’s presence is what teaches us how to live afterward.

Matthew 17 also exposes something quietly dangerous: the temptation to freeze God into our favorite version of Him. Peter wanted to keep Jesus glowing on the mountain. He wanted the spectacle preserved. But Jesus refuses to be domesticated by memory. He will not stay where you felt Him most strongly. He will lead you where you need Him most desperately.

The glow fades. The valley remains.

And that is where faith matures.

We love the idea of transformation. We fear the process that produces it. The disciples come down that mountain with eyes that have seen too much to return to comfortable ignorance, yet not enough to avoid fear. That is where most of us live—between what we’ve seen and what we still don’t understand.

Jesus does not shame them for this. He walks with them through it.

Every major element of Christian life appears in this one chapter: revelation, fear, obedience, failure, power, humility, suffering, provision. It is not a spiritual shortcut. It is a spiritual education.

The transfiguration tells us who Jesus really is. The failed exorcism tells us how limited we really are. The tax miracle tells us how gentle power truly behaves.

This chapter refuses to flatter our faith. It strengthens it.

If Matthew 16 teaches that revelation builds the church, Matthew 17 teaches that revelation must also reshape the person. Seeing Jesus clearly changes you—even if it scares you first.

And what scares us most is not always God’s power.

Sometimes it is what His power exposes.

It exposes our attempts to manage what should be surrendered. It exposes our confidence in our own methods. It exposes our hunger for spectacle more than faithfulness. It exposes our desire for deliverance without discipline.

And yet, even in that exposure, Matthew 17 never paints Jesus as impatient with weakness. He is patient with growth. He is firm with pride. He is gentle with fear.

The mountain moment confirms His divinity.

The valley moment confirms His mercy.

The tax moment confirms His humility.

You cannot fully follow this Jesus if you only want the parts of Him that feel dramatic. You must also follow Him into the everyday obedience that no one applauds.

The disciples did not leave this chapter fully understanding resurrection, suffering, or power. They left it changed, unsettled, and more anchored to Jesus than they had been before.

And that is exactly what real encounters with God do.

They do not always give answers.

They rearrange allegiances.

They do not always bring comfort.

They bring clarity.

And clarity is often what makes comfort unnecessary.

Matthew 17 quietly asks every believer a question we cannot avoid forever: Are you following the Jesus you admire, or the Jesus who speaks with authority over your habits, fears, plans, and pride?

Because the Father’s command did not come with a footnote.

“Listen to Him.”

Not when it’s convenient.

Not when it confirms you.

Not when it aligns with your expectations.

Listen when it confronts you.

Listen when it calls you into harder love.

Listen when it leads you down the mountain instead of keeping you in the light.

The mountain was not the destination.

It was a revelation for the journey.

And the journey is not finished yet.

The more time I sit with Matthew 17, the more I realize this chapter is not just about a moment of glory—it is about the tension between what God reveals and what God requires afterward. Many people want the revelation without the reshaping. They want the vision without the vulnerability. They want the fire without the refinement. But God rarely separates the two.

That mountain was not given so the disciples could brag about what they saw. It was given so they would not collapse when they later watched Jesus suffer. God let them see His glory first so that when everything looked like failure, they would remember the truth their eyes once held. There will be moments in your life when faith must survive on memory alone. There will be seasons when what you once knew is the only thing strong enough to keep you standing.

That is part of what makes this chapter deeply personal. It teaches us that God is not reckless with revelation. He is strategic with it. He shows you just enough to keep you anchored when everything else feels uncertain. If you ever wondered why God gave you a powerful encounter years ago but now seems silent, Matthew 17 answers that. Some encounters are not meant to be repeated—they are meant to be remembered.

And then there is the boy at the bottom of the mountain.

I have always believed that boy represents every human life broken by forces we cannot control. Thrown into fire. Thrown into water. Thrown into things that should destroy us but don’t quite succeed. The father’s plea is not polished. It is not theological. It is raw: “Have mercy on us.” That is not a prayer rooted in knowledge. It is a prayer rooted in desperation.

And Jesus responds.

Immediately.

No speech. No delay. No conditions.

Deliverance does not come because the father got his wording right. It comes because Jesus is who He is. That alone should dismantle half of the fear-based theology still circulating in church spaces today. People are not healed by perfection. They are healed by proximity to Christ.

But the disciples’ failure exposes something important. They had been given authority earlier. They had been successful earlier. They had power earlier. And yet, in this moment, they fail. That failure teaches us something deeply uncomfortable but incredibly freeing: past victories do not guarantee present success. Faith is not stored in yesterday. It must be lived today.

When Jesus says their faith was “little,” He is not mocking them. He is diagnosing them. Their faith had shrunk into method. They trusted the process more than they trusted God. They trusted what worked last time more than the living presence standing in front of them now.

This is one of the dangers that quietly sneaks into long-term faith. We replace surrender with routine. We replace humility with habit. We replace listening with memory. And over time, we assume that what once required prayer can now run on autopilot.

Jesus shuts that down gently but clearly.

The mustard seed illustration is not about volume. It is about placement. Faith is not powerful because it is strong. Faith is powerful because of where it rests. When the smallest trust is placed in the greatest authority, transformation becomes inevitable.

And then Jesus does something that feels almost cruel to fragile human hearts—He again reminds them of His death.

This happens right after a mountaintop moment. Right after a victory. Right after a deliverance. Right after a lesson on faith. And still He says, “I will be betrayed. I will be killed. I will be raised.” This is not bad timing. This is perfect timing. Because God knows how quickly we try to build permanent residence on temporary breakthroughs.

Jesus refuses to let the disciples confuse success with destination.

The Kingdom is moving forward.

The suffering is not canceled.

And neither is the resurrection.

Their sorrow is understandable. They cannot yet imagine a future where death doesn’t win. They do not yet understand that the darkest sentence in the story is never the final one. And until the resurrection actually happens, fear will always sound more logical than hope.

Then comes the tax scene—quiet, practical, almost anticlimactic after everything else. But it may be the most revealing moment of all.

Jesus explains that, as the Son, He does not owe the tax. And yet He chooses to pay it anyway. This is not weakness. This is restraint. This is intentional humility. Power that insists on its rights becomes tyranny. Power that lays down its rights becomes redemption.

And how does He do it?

Not through spectacle. Not through argument. Not through dominance.

Through provision.

A coin in a fish’s mouth.

Enough for both of them.

Not abundance. Not excess. Just enough.

This same pattern appears again and again in the life of Jesus. He rarely gives more than is needed. He rarely withholds what is necessary. He teaches us to trust provision instead of panic. To move forward without demanding certainty. To obey without pre-negotiating outcomes.

If Matthew 17 teaches us anything, it is that faith is not built by avoiding fear—it is built by walking through fear with eyes fixed on Christ.

The disciples come out of this chapter changed in ways they may not even realize yet. Their understanding deepens. Their illusions weaken. Their dependence increases. Their fear is still present—but so is their faith.

And that is the Christian life.

Not fearless.

Faith-filled.

There is also something quietly comforting about the way this chapter flows. God’s glory does not eliminate daily responsibility. It strengthens us to carry it. The spiritual does not replace the practical. It empowers it. The mountain does not cancel the valley. It prepares you for it.

We do not live on mountains.

We learn from them.

We do not grow in spotlight moments.

We grow in surrender moments.

And surrender almost never looks dramatic from the outside.

It looks like obedience. It looks like patience. It looks like forgiving again. It looks like praying when you feel nothing. It looks like trusting provision when the numbers do not add up yet. It looks like walking forward when fear still whispers.

Matthew 17 also quietly dismantles our obsession with spiritual spectacle. The transfiguration is breathtaking—but it is not the climax of the chapter. The real power shows up in compassion. In restraint. In provision. In faith that keeps moving.

This chapter refuses to turn Jesus into a symbol. It insists on keeping Him a Savior.

Not a memory. Not a metaphor. Not a myth.

A living King who still touches trembling hearts and speaks into fear.

If you ever feel like your faith is small, this chapter welcomes you. If you ever feel like you failed after seeing God move, this chapter understands you. If you ever feel like your life is suspended between glory and chaos, this chapter was written with you in mind.

Because Matthew 17 is not about perfect disciples.

It is about a perfect Savior walking with imperfect people.

And that is the Gospel in its truest form.

You do not need to build Jesus a shelter to keep Him near.

He already walked down the mountain with you.

You do not need louder faith.

You need anchored faith.

You do not need permanent emotion.

You need daily obedience.

And you do not need to fear the valley.

Because the same Christ who shone on the mountain still walks beside you in the dust.

That is not symbolic hope.

That is living hope.

And it is still moving forward—one quiet step of faith at a time.

— Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube

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a lull in the air. patience in the sky between rainfall. softly covered grey, and i, alone in the house. a rare treat. we enjoy the passing river and watch in trepidation as it floods the grounded ones, the falls, hoping despite destruction this might be an end to a years-long drought. hoping the reservoirs catch enough. hoping it feeds what needs to be fed, and the carrionslink of capital stays well away.

i am alone in the house, but grandfather maple outside is being mended. a winter storm blew through on early schedule, before the sunset-plum leaves had a chance to fall, and shattered his trunk. i say mending because the arborist knows, says we can trim away around his scar and let it heal over clean. that it will matter, and grandfather maple can remain sturdy, if shorn, next to this house he loves so much. isn't that the best we can hope for, in these times: to perhaps have a thimbleful of beings who care enough to stitch us into a future where we remain with our loved ones, however changed?

despite letters being the same and words being what we have, writing begins to me to feel like the ship of theseus.

this is not the first instance the fabled ship has sailed through my mind this year (last two years? three, maybe). and writing isn’t the only place i begin to feel battered, mended, grafted, something economic once again. thinking: another blog space (will it work out this time? am i crafting well? will i take on water and sink, from my own taper or from sellouts, yet again?); another city (17 years of regularity sanded down into gangly limbs and learning to walk different streets); another year in the perpetual pandemic (another box of masks, another phone call to doctors to find ones who care enough for precautions, another round of vaccines and reading research that i try to feel hopeful about and can’t); more people cut away, more people met and befriended, friendships strengthened (that’s life, babe); another year learning in this specific way (too slow? not attentive enough? dissatisfied with it and wondering why i keep chewing on it? teeter-totter); another season (sad i will get less than a hundred autumns, maybe ninety if i’m lucky); another moon cycle (oak moon, dark moon, quiet moon, half-cut offerings, trying my best to keep a rhythm and the hollow doesn’t fill anymore); worldbuilding still (same world? different world? layers and layers and spirals and spirals, maybe it’s all the same, but maybe it’s not, and what matters and what doesn’t?').

on the one hand, yes, that’s life, babe. we orbit and pace and flare in a more or less steady rhythm. but, ugh. rhythms should make you feel like dancing, yes?

what i think i mean is: i remember various milestones not feeling quite so damaging. feeling like i was stepping up, speeding down a current, flying along, growing stronger. i mull things over and wonder: was that true? i wonder: what feels different now? why?

a lack of answers. just the same eyes of resin, slow blinking from where i perch at the second story windows as clouds twirl and puff, each different every time, and yet still a cloud, every time.

#wonder #2025dec the 9th

Es hat sich gelohnt mich heute zur Arbeit zu zwingen. Ich hatte ein ganz zauberhaftes Beratungsgespräch mit einer sehr angenehmen und spannenden Person. Ich glaube ich konnte ein wenig hilfreich sein.

Dann habe ich noch ein positives Feedback zu einem Flyer den ich entworfen habe bekommen. Darüber habe ich mich sehr gefreut.

Die BPD Selbshilfegruppe ist leider ausgefallen. Dafür habe ich die share pics für den trA*vent fertig bekommen.

Ein paar Stunden hatte ich richtig gute Laune.

Leider bin ich jetzt wieder völlig erschöpft und will einfach nur noch ins Bett. Mich nervt das so, so wenig belastbar zu sein.

#job #erschöpfung #borderline #adhs

There is now a nice, simple, and minimal settings screen for the app. I will extend the capabilities here later. For now it is good to have it here and be able to sign out so I can test the auth better.

I'm really happy with how this all turned out. The only things that cost me the most time are the colors. Finding the right ones that work well together.

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67 of #100DaysToOffload
#log #AdventOfProgress
_Thoughts?

On Bandcamp. On MusicBrainz.

It¦s December, which means it¦s that time of year when people start composing their “year in review” playlists. Consequently, it¦s a good time to start recommending albums released this year that I really think you should listen to!

Leading off that list is Phonetics On And On by Horsegirl. I loved Horsegirl¦s previous album (Versions Of Modern Performance), and was a little uncertain how to feel about this one, considering its much softer, more mellow sound. After a year of listening to it: I feel good. The simple, rhythmic basslines and percussion; the soothing vocal harmonies; the willingness to just sit with a vibe for three or four minutes of running time —⁠: I have come to love all of these things, and they have brought me peace in a year full of stressors. I am glad that Horsegirl has not felt constrained to the harsher noises of their previous output and have instead directed that technical excellence in a more open, airy, and loving direction.

If you ever played HUGPUNX in 2013, back when the internet was dominated indie games and indie game developers were going thru their “cutie” phase, this album is like that minus the Twitter threads and problematic cultural ambassadors. It is not, and makes no pretensions of being, punk, radical, or subversive. But it also is all of those things, in the way that just being yourself always is.

Favourite track: There are so many good ones; I really don¦t think this album has duds. But I¦ll pick “Sport Meets Sound” as my favourite. I will say, going thru the process of buying a house and getting engaged this past year, that “Julie” was often playing in my head as well 😜.

#AlbumOfTheWeek

Durante a pandemia de COVID-19, e no pós pandemia, surgiram vários casos de pessoas relevantes na mídia, médicos, políticos… muitos deles, anti vacina – e o presidente do país na época? Era a favor da ivermectina e da cloroquina…

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Muitas pessoas classificavam a vacina como “um risco” (mas que na verdade, foi a nossa salvação, ou você não estaria lendo este artigo).

O risco, em teoria, na maior parte dos pseudocientistas, era o não conhecimento da vacina porque ela foi desenvolvida “rápida demais”, (2~4 anos). O laboratório AstraZeneca fez um trabalho de venda de todas as doses a preço de custo, sem lucro, para todos os países, até todo o planeta ser vacinado. Depois iriam reaver o lucro, quando a pandemia estivesse sob controle. E foi o que fizeram.

Deu certo.

Hoje estamos vivos graças às vacinas desenvolvidas “rápidas demais”.

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Hoje, nós vivemos uma epidemia de canetas emagrecedoras, que são caríssimas, pouco estudadas, e drenam a vida do paciente. O curioso é que as mesmas pessoas anti vacinas são as usuárias dessas canetas.

Saxenda, Victoza, Ozempic, Mounjaro, entre dezenas de outras.

E em relação ao Mounjaro ainda é pior: sendo caro demais, muitas pessoas compram no mercado ilegal, sem conhecer a procedência.

Ora, perder peso faz bem, e se imunizar é um risco?

Fica a reflexão.

Vivemos numa sociedade altamente hipócrita.