A sex scene can be payoff for budding romantic tension, the climax (in both senses) of a story arc between two people. Many period pieces, chic flicks, and superhero movies of vastly varying quality favour this treatment of sex and sexuality.

The curated photo-dump carousel, polite and unintrusive, is dead; posting 15 individual photos to your main grid in one day is what freedom feels like. —

The city of Ottawa is massive. Amalgamation has made the city so bloated that it’s difficult for a progressive candidate to win the mayoral seat — as we saw in last fall’s election — even with the strong support of the central wards of downtown Ottawa. This problem compounds disastrously as Doug Ford passes bills that divert power away from city councils into the hands of “strong mayors.”

Just how big is Ottawa? A graphic created by the city shows that the cities of Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver could all fit together inside the Ottawa municipal boundary.

I think about a lot of things this way. I can’t handle when things are good because it reminds me of how empty I’ll feel in their absence; I’d rather just force the good out, tell myself it was my choice all along, assume no risk because I’ve kept no hope.

These changes stand in stark contrast to the promises employers made two and a half years ago to prioritize diversity, social responsibility, and employee well-being. As companies continue to deal with labor market unpredictability, they may find that cuts to HR and DE&I leave them ill-equipped to handle the workforce challenges created by layoffs and economic uncertainty, sources told HR Brew.

Filings Google made in California show that the company laid off dozens of directors across various divisions in the state.

There is a brief dating montage—trips to sneaker stores and museums, lunch, midday strolls, a few extremely chaste kisses and one single suggestion of sex. But there is little in the way of chemistry, mostly because the couple—particularly Amira—are so shallowly realized as individuals. There is no room for chemistry because the couple is incidental and maybe even irrelevant to the film; their purpose is to symbolize a political issue and catalyze the antics of Ezra’s clueless white liberal mom (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Amira’s pro-black, Louis Farrakan-loving dad (Eddie Murphy).

And this isn’t just the lead and the love interest: supporting characters look this way too, and even villains (frequently clad in monstrous makeup) are still played by conventionally attractive performers. Even background extras are good-looking, or at least inoffensively bland. No one is ugly. No one is really fat. Everyone is beautiful. And yet, no one is horny. Even when they have sex, no one is horny. No one is attracted to anyone else. No one is hungry for anyone else.

Actors are more physically perfect than ever: impossibly lean, shockingly muscular, with magnificently coiffed hair, high cheekbones, impeccable surgical enhancements, and flawless skin, all displayed in form-fitting superhero costumes with the obligatory shirtless scene thrown in to show off shredded abs and rippling pecs.

But old films still featured recognizable human bodies and human faces—bodies that could theoretically be achieved by a single person without the aid of a team of personal trainers, dieticians, private chefs, and chemists.

A tight, transparent seal separated the competition from its setting: as long as you were in a place only in order to debate there, you could expect to encounter only the same privileged, English-speaking university students you had seen on the previous trip.

Though I was slightly embarrassed at this posturing, I didn’t do anything about it. We all felt overwrought, not because the accident itself was so bad, but because something we had taken for stable was now not stable; the little seal of protection had ruptured. This didn’t feel like something we had agreed to.