When I was a younger man and surviving on budget liquors and hot dogs, getting a “nice” bottle of liquor was a pretty big deal. My natural instinct was to save these gifts; after a sample, I would reverently put the bottle on a high shelf and limit my interactions to gazing lovingly at it and breaking it out for extra-special occasions. This practice led directly to the harshest lesson of my young life: Liquor does, in fact, have an expiration date. Or, if not always strictly an expiration date, a pretty solid use-by date.The moment your alcohol starts to turn varies depending on a few data points: the type of liquor we’re talking about, whether the bottle’s been opened or not, and your storage practices. The outcome is also pretty variable—some liquor will simply taste worse and be less potent over time, while some will literally go bad. Here’s a quick guide to how much time you have to enjoy your alcoholic treasures after you open that bottle.How air affects opened bottles of liquorAlcohol is a fickle product. Wine, for example, can continue to mature in the bottle, becoming richer and more interesting over time, but this isn’t the case for most hard liquors. Whiskey in a properly sealed bottle will be pretty much exactly the same whether you drink it today or 100 years from now. But once you do open that bottle, demon oxygen dives on in there and starts transforming your booze. And while the initial stages of this transformation can be positive (especially with whiskey, which can often improve slightly a few weeks after opening), eventually the oxidation process will rob you of your liquor.

Source: How Long Does Liquor Last After You Open a Bottle?

This year may well be remembered as the moment the world woke up to the power, the potential and the world-inverting threat of artificial intelligence. OpenAI’s humble, free-to-use chatbot has made it clear: life will never be the same after ChatGPT.

Source: ChatGPT: The friendly face of your AI replacement

In a controversial town hall interview on CNN, former United States president Donald Trump said if re-elected he would consider pardoning “a large portion” of the rioters who were convicted for their roles in the attack on the U.S. Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump announced last November that he would run again for the presidency in 2024. His campaign launch came just a few weeks before the Jan. 6 House Committee finalized an 845-page report which included a recommendation that the U.S. Department of Justice should investigate Trump. The former president’s role in inciting or assisting an insurrection figured prominently among the list of crimes committed.

The Capitol Hill insurrection prompted questions about the resilience of American democratic institutions.

Since 2016, right-wing populists in Europe have revered Trump as an inspiring role model and leader. However, the insurrection may have tested the resolve of his European cheerleaders.

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Will they support Trump again in the next election?

Reactions to the Capitol Hill Insurrection

In order to answer this question, my colleagues and I studied European right-wing populists’ reactions to the Jan. 6 insurrection. Our analysis focused on statements made by prominent right-wing populists shortly after the Capitol Hill riots.

We analyzed more than 400 statements from eight European countries, examining the rhetoric of politicians in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Hungary and Poland.

Did these individuals denounce the violence? Did they see Trump as an inciter? Or did they exonerate him?

After the insurrection, Geert Wilders, leader of the right-wing Dutch Party for Freedom, could not hide his shock. In a tweet, he stated that “the outcome of democratic elections should always be respected, whether you win or lose.”

The U.K.‘s Nigel Farage, a key leader in the Brexit movement, was also critical but referred to those who stormed the Congress as “protesters.”

Santiago Abascal, leader of the right-wing Spanish political party Vox, blamed the political left, noting that it “has spent years blowing up institutions, controlling the media and supporting violence throughout the West.”

In France, the leader of the far-right National Rally, Marine Le Pen, also expressed her shock and said: “violence that aims to undermine the democratic process is unacceptable.”

In Italy, right-wing populist Matteo Salvini and current prime minister Giorgia Meloni denounced and condemned the episodes of violence in Washington without openly criticising Trump. Nicola Procaccini, a member of the European Parliament from the populist Fratelli d’Italia party, compared the rioters to a “series of fanatics who in some cases border on the ridiculous, starting with that one who seemed to have come out of the Village People.”

In Germany, Jörg Meuthen, former co-chair of the Alternative for Germany party (AFD) described the events as “frightening, disturbing and completely out of the question,” reaffirming his party’s aversion to violence and anarchy.

Meuthen’s party colleague Gottfried Curio downplayed the insurrection as just a “demonstration that escalated.” He also expressed concern that the events in Washington could be “instrumentalized to draw egregiously false comparisons” that undermine the credibility of AFD itself.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Victor Orbán invited Hungarians to refrain from passing judgment and expressed confidence in the U.S. political system’s ability to settle disputes.

Poland’s right-wing populists did not blame Trump for the attack on Congress. Similarly to Orbán, Polish President Andrzej Duda stated the events in Washington were an “internal affair,” adding that “Poland believes in the strength of the American democracy.”

Uneasy choice

Our findings revealed that European right-wing populists found themselves facing the uneasy choice of either condoning an ideological ally or condemning the subversive acts at the Capitol. Some got themselves out of this quandary by denouncing the violence against the institution but leaving Trump out of it.

Right-wing populists across Europe faced a difficult balancing act trying to maintain a correct position on the insurrection without fully rejecting Trumpism. The varying responses revealed a cost-benefit analysis on the part of each populist leader.

For power-holders such as Poland’s Duda and Hungary’s Orbán, rejecting Trump was unnecessary. For power-seekers such as Meuthen or Le Pen, the political cost of remaining silent and losing votes would have been too much to bear.

Keeping Trump at arm’s length is more of a pragmatic, rather than ideological, deliberation. The European populists who want to be in government can’t outright condone the insurrection. That would portray them as obstructers of the democratic process. This predicament is particularly constraining for parties like France’s National Rally which is trying to soften its image after decades of racism.

Currently, European right-wing populists who are in power and zealously endorsed Trump’s reelection efforts are hedging their bets and cozying up to Ron DeSantis. Thus far, only Nigel Farage has showcased unwavering support for Trump and given him “more than a 50 percent chance of winning.”

A New York court recently found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation. That could constitute the final nail in the coffin, resulting in populists abandoning or at least distancing themselves from Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Gordon Lightfoot, Hitmaking Singer-Songwriter, Is Dead at 84

His rich baritone and gift for melodies made him one of the most popular artists of the 1970s with songs like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “If You Could Read My Mind.

By William Grimes

Published May 1, 2023 Updated May 2, 2023, 6:02 a.m. ET

Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian folk singer whose rich, plaintive baritone and gift for melodic songwriting made him one of the most popular recording artists of the 1970s, died on Monday night in Toronto. He was 84.

His death, at Sunnybrook Hospital, was confirmed by his publicist, Victoria Lord. No cause was given.

Mr. Lightfoot, a fast-rising star in Canada in the early 1960s, broke through to international success when his friends and fellow Canadians Ian and Sylvia Tyson recorded two of his songs, “Early Morning Rain” and “For Lovin’ Me.”

When Peter, Paul and Mary came out with their own versions, and Marty Robbins reached the top of the country charts with Mr. Lightfoot’s “Ribbon of Darkness,” Mr. Lightfoot’s reputation soared. Overnight, he joined the ranks of songwriters like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton, all of whom influenced his style.

When folk music ebbed in popularity, overwhelmed by the British invasion, Mr. Lightfoot began writing ballads aimed at a broader audience. He scored one hit after another, beginning in 1970 with the heartfelt “If You Could Read My Mind,” inspired by the breakup of his first marriage.

In quick succession he recorded the hits “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which he wrote after reading a Newsweek article about the sinking of an iron-ore carrier in Lake Superior in 1975, with the loss of all 29 crew members.

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For Canadians, Mr. Lightfoot was a national hero, a homegrown star who stayed home even after achieving spectacular success in the United States and who catered to his Canadian fans with cross-country tours. His ballads on Canadian themes, like “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” pulsated with a love for the nation’s rivers and forests, which he explored on ambitious canoe trips far into the hinterlands.

His personal style, reticent and self-effacing — he avoided interviews and flinched when confronted with praise — also went down well. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m being called an icon, because I really don’t think of myself that way,” Mr. Lightfoot told The Globe and Mail in 2008. “I’m a professional musician, and I work with very professional people. It’s how we get through life.”

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Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. was born on Nov. 17, 1938, in Orillia, Ontario, where his father managed a dry-cleaning plant. As a boy, he sang in a church choir, performed on local radio shows and shined in singing competitions. “Man, I did the whole bit: oratorio work, Kiwanis contests, operettas, barbershop quartets,” he told Time magazine in 1968.

He played piano, drums and guitar as a teenager, and while still in high school wrote his first song, a topical number about the Hula Hoop craze with a catchy last line: “I guess I’m just a slob and I’m gonna lose my job, ’cause I’m Hula-Hula-Hoopin’ all the time.”

After studying composition and orchestration at the Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles, he returned to Canada. For a time he was a member of the Singing Swinging Eight, a singing and dancing troupe on the television show “Country Hoedown,” but he soon became part of the Toronto folk scene, performing at the same coffee houses and clubs as Ian and Sylvia, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen.

He formed a folk duo, the Two Tones, with a fellow “Hoedown” performer, Terry Whelan. The duo recorded a live album in 1962, “Two Tones at the Village Corner.” The next year, while traveling in Europe, he served as the host of “The Country and Western Show” on BBC television.

As a songwriter, Mr. Lightfoot had advanced beyond the Hula Hoop, but not by a great deal. His work “didn’t have any kind of identity,” he told the authors of “The Encyclopedia of Folk, Country and Western Music,” published in 1969. When the Greenwich Village folk boom brought Mr. Dylan and other dynamic songwriters to the fore, he said, “I started to get a point of view, and that’s when I started to improve.”

In 1965, he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and made his debut in the United States at Town Hall in New York. “Mr. Lightfoot has a rich, warm voice and a dexterous guitar technique,” Robert Shelton wrote in The New York Times. “With a little more attention to stage personality, he should become quite popular.”

A year later, after signing with Albert Grossman, the manager of Mr. Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, Mr. Lightfoot recorded his first solo album, “Lightfoot!” With performances of “Early Morning Rain,” “For Lovin’ Me,” “Ribbon of Darkness” and “I’m Not Sayin’,” a hit record in Canada in 1963, the album was warmly received by the critics.

Real commercial success came when he switched to Warner Brothers, initially recording for the company’s Reprise label. “By the time I changed over to Warner Brothers, round about 1970, I was reinventing myself,” he told the Georgia newspaper Savannah Connect in 2010. “Let’s say I was probably just advancing away from the folk era, and trying to find some direction whereby I might have some music that people would want to listen to.”

Mr. Lightfoot, accompanying himself on an acoustic 12-string guitar, in a voice that often trembled with emotion, gave spare, direct accounts of his material. He sang of loneliness, troubled relationships, the itch to roam and the majesty of the Canadian landscape. He was, as the Canadian writer Jack Batten put it, “journalist, poet, historian, humorist, short-story teller and folksy recollector of bygone days.”

His popularity as a recording artist began to wane in the 1980s, but he maintained a busy touring schedule. In 1999 Rhino Records released “Songbook,” a four-disc survey of his career.

Mr. Lightfoot, who lived in Toronto, is survived by his wife, Kim Hasse, six children — Fred, Ingrid, Miles, Meredith, Eric and Galen — and several grandchildren, according to Ms. Lord, his publicist. His first two marriages ended in divorce. His older sister, Beverley Eyers, died in 2017.

In 2002, just before going onstage in Orillia, Mr. Lightfoot collapsed when an aneurysm in his abdominal aorta ruptured and left him near death. After two years spent recovering, he recorded an album, “Harmony,” and in 2005 he resumed his live performances with the Better Late Than Never Tour.

“I want to be like Ralph Carter, Stompin’ Tom and Willie Nelson,” Mr. Lightfoot told the CBC in 2004. “Just do it for as long as humanly possible.”