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Noa-Lynn van Leuven: ‘I think darts is helping me to be the best of myself’

Dutch darts player will become first trans woman to play in a televised PDC tournament after long road back to a sport she loves

Before everything that happened, before the desolation and the despair, before life changed for ever, there was a set of darts. Her parents gave them to her at the age of eight, and when she picked them up she felt a rare and powerful contentment. She threw and she threw. She threw her way into the Netherlands youth team. She devoured Raymond van Barneveld games on television. She dreamed of playing professionally, travelling the world, her name on the big screen. She was Noa-Lynn van Leuven, even if nobody called her that yet.

“I just had a feeling with the game,” she says from her home in Heemskerk, just outside Amsterdam. “I like the whole fight around it. I love watching darts, I love playing darts, and even if I wasn’t on the level I am now, I would still love it. I work long days in a kitchen as a chef de partie, and try to practise for an hour every day, so I don’t do much else. I work, I play darts and I sleep.”

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3F0lub9

Why do women love true crime so much? I have a theory | Nancy Jo Sales

The explosion of interest in true crime coincides with the rise of online dating. I suspect those things are more linked than they appear

Women love true crime. Studies over the last few years report that women overwhelmingly make up most of the audience of the explosion of true crime podcasts, books and TV shows. It’s almost a cliche, the image of a woman sitting with a glass of red wine and consuming with rapt attention one of the countless choices in the genre, from Dirty John to Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.

Researchers have offered a number of theories about why women are so attracted to tales of serial killers, murder and rape. One possible reason, they say, is that women identify with the victims of violent crimes, as women are often victims of such crimes themselves. In the US, nearly three women are killed every day by intimate partners. According to the CDC, over half of women have experienced sexual violence. And women make up 70% of the victims of serial killers.

Nancy Jo Sales is the author, most recently, of Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/EGKmC3R

Greater Manchester worst city in Europe for clean and green transport says new report

City region is branded worst in Europe for eco-friendly transport

“I’d hoped we could take a Bee bike to Salford,” said Sarah Rowe of the Clean Cities Campaign after meeting the Observer at Piccadilly station in Manchester. “But look.”

Her app shows that none of the docks nearby has any bicycles, so we take a taxi. The driver gets £12 and the people of Manchester get 15 more minutes of exhaust fumes.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/ajAG91f

Mauricio Pochettino starts life at Chelsea swept up in winds of change | Jacob Steinberg

While manager will have to contend with a squad in flux, he will get the chance to mould a core group of gifted young players

Mauricio Pochettino begins his new job on Monday and he may not have too much time to get to know some of his new players. The big Stamford Bridge clearout is well and truly under way and, with Todd Boehly, Behdad Eghbali and a bulky recruitment team happy to rip it all up and start again, it is impossible to predict what Chelsea team will walk out against Liverpool on the opening weekend of the new Premier League season.

Only a few certainties remain. Enzo Fernández joined for £106.8m in January and is going nowhere, Thiago Silva has signed on for another year and Reece James is untouchable at right-back. As for the incomings there is excitement over the £58m signing of the France forward Christopher Nkunku, hope that Malo Gusto will provide strong cover for James and, if all goes well during negotiations with Brighton, plans for Moisés Caicedo to partner Fernández in a young and energetic midfield.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/Ml1aL4d