Author: Overcoming Adversity | Buteau’s Odyssey

Wake up, college football fans. A new College Football Playoff expansion model just dropped — and it’s one that FOX Sports lead college football analyst Joel Klatt is a fan of. A 24-team College Football Playoff format seems to be picking up steam ahead of the Dec. 1 deadline for the committee to either expand from the 12-team format or not. In the 24-team CFP format, the four power conferences (ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC) would each get four automatic qualifiers, while there would also be two total automatic qualifiers from the other conferences (American, Conference USA, MAC, Mountain West, Sun…

Three major US airports issued ground stops or delays Thursday, all attributed to staffing shortages amid the federal government shutdown. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) near Washington, DC, was the first to issue a ground delay program Thursday, noting flights were pushed back an average of 30 minutes due to staffing issues. Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) in New Jersey and LaGuardia Airport (LGA) in New York later issued ground stops due to staffing, halting all departures from the two major airports. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the probability of the ground stops being extended is “medium,” or 30% to 60%. Earlier this…

October invites us to play with fear. We tour haunted houses, watch jump-scare movies, and swap ghost stories for fun. But for too many Black and other marginalized youth, “spooky season” doesn’t end when the credits roll. The tricks that linger after Halloween (like someone dressing up in “Blackface” or appropriating your culture, microaggressions in the hallway, exclusion at lunch, racial jokes in a group chat) aren’t pretend. They’re real stressors with real effects on mood, sleep, motivation, and learning. As a clinician, mentor, and aunt/big cousin, I’ve heard dozens of versions of the same story: a student steels themselves…

“Do You Know What It Means to Be Loved by Death” begins with a stunning image of Louis and Claudia silhouetted atop the gilded winged equestrian statue called Renommee des Arts, the city unfurling behind them like a promise. This is their new home, their rebirth. But from the very first moments, we sense it: they’re being watched. In modern day Dubai, Armand describes Paris as “an awakening ” for Louis, saying so with a quiet kind of pride. The pair — still performing the strangest kind of domestic bliss for Daniel Molloy’s recorder — finish each other’s sentences like…

Buck Showalter did just about everything in baseball. One thing he never did was get to a World Series. The same could have been said for his former minor league teammate, Don Mattingly — until now, as the Blue Jays open the World Series against the Dodgers on Friday in Toronto with Mattingly as the bench coach. And Showalter — who played with Mattingly at Double-A Nashville in 1981 in the Yankees farm system and later was his coach and then manager in The Bronx from 1990 until Mattingly retired after the ’95 season — understands how important it is…

A passenger aboard a Delta Airlines flight to the Big Apple feared for her life and thought she would “piss” herself as the plane experienced engine issues and was forced to land in Iceland. Lohanny Santos was aboard Delta Flight DL45 from Dublin to JFK Airport on Tuesday when she said the plane experienced harsh turbulence, leading the cabin to shake wildly with the lights cutting in and out. “I kid you not, I thought I was going to die,” Santos said in a TikTok video after landing in Iceland. “… I was literally shaking, about to piss myself.” Lohanny Santos…

It was a big week for Nazis here in the United States. On Monday, Politico published a slew of leaked text messages from Paul Ingrassia, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, in which the attorney said he had a “Nazi streak.” Ingrassia’s incendiary posts, culled from a Republican chat group, also denigrated black people, stated that “white people built this country” and said one should “never trust a Chinaman or Indian.” When someone in the chat pushed back, telling Ingrassia he was coming across like a white nationalist, he replied, “Nah it’s fine . .…

On October 20, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit issued a per curiam (unsigned and issued for the court as a whole) order in Oregon v.

As a gastro horror connoisseur and someone who writes about such topics, I’d be remiss if I didn’t treat you all to a bit of horror featuring candy just in time for Halloween! After all, who doesn’t miss the days of walking miles just to fill a pillowcase with treats? Not to mention, Halloween candy has its own set of urban legends, which makes it a perfect gastro horror topic!  A Brief History of Trick ‘r Treating  Trick ‘r treating began in the United States around the 1930s/40s with mainly homemade treats and goodies. By the 1950s when candy manufacturers…

War-torn Gaza is covered in a deadly “minefield” of hidden unexploded devices that has already killed more than 53 people and could take 20 to 30 years to clear, according to experts. Nick Orr, an explosive ordnance disposal expert at the Humanity & Inclusion humanitarian aid group, described the Gaza Strip as a “horrific, unmapped minefield,” likening it to British cities following World War II. “If you’re looking at a full clearance, it’s never happening,” Orr said of the effort to clear the mines. “We will find it for generations to come.” It would take 20 to 30 years to…