#London College of Communication events

[kandicon]

The more I think about how a human, modern au Toy Soldier wouldn't work the more obsessed I get with TRYING to make it work and frankly there's only a few more loops in this self dooming cycle before I make a college au for all of them.

-

Okay I saved this post to my drafts and then immediately had more thoughts on this hypothetical college au. All the mechs should be as close to their canon events/back stories as possible to avoid having wildly different personalities (obviously there will still be very differing personalities due to not being immortal space pirates, but this would be easiest). It would be a extremely sketchy comedy of errors.

Obviously this takes place in community college because community colleges are just like that™

Put under the cut because it got a bit long.

Jonny:

Still killed his dad and the entirety of the casino.

Using the money he got from the casino and Jack to fund his way through a college hours away from his hometown.

Is constantly paranoid over someone coming after him for his murders or finding out that his highschool diploma is a forgery (he didn't finish his last two years because of said murders).

Ashes:

Being put through college by the Lucky Sevens, and still does tracking work for them despite only being able to physically visit their turf over break.

Smooth Mickey has only just started working with the Aces in Ashes' freshman year.

It is going to be a WILD senior year when Ashes breaks open Mickey's scheme.

Banned from the card games club.

Tim:

Transfer student from London that only entered college in the first place to dodge the draft. He never expected to enter college in the first place and is therefore woefully unprepared.

Wildly protective over Bertie, who transferred with him and is the reason he dodged the draft in the first place.

Not as murderous as the canon Tim, but certainly getting there over immigration and transfer laws in the US.

Still has the first name of Gunpowder.

It is gonna be a WILD senior year when he and Bertie get caught up in the Lucky Sevens debacle and Bertie dies.

Raphaella:

Nobody knows what major she's taking, because by all intents and purposes it appears to be all of them.

She's breaking into the chem lab and making lsd after hours to fund her way through college.

Has cute little wings on her backpack that she made herself, but in reality they're just hidden storage compartments that she's been using to steal lab equipment.

Ivy:

Nothing about her is different except for the fact her autism is diagnosed this time.

She works at the community library and the college library. She started her major in library sciences, only to discover that she already knew more about it than her professors, so now she's an English lit major.

Marius:

Also got in on forged documents, but his are significantly shittier than Jonny's or Ashes' because he didn't have the money to pay someone for it. Still nobody comments on the birth certificate with "Byron" covered over with off-color white-out and replaced with "Marius.

He also completely erased the gender category while he was at it. Again, nobody who actually looks at these documents is paid enough to care.

Still missing an arm and he has broken up AND started fights by hitting people with his prosthetic.

Getting his doctorate in computer science, but usually does not tell people exactly what he's majoring in when he tells people he's going to be a doctor.

Nastya:

Fleeing a Russian rebellion and very obviously comes from wealth.

Her backstory is the same, just without the robots. Her history of wealth and terrible attempts at hiding her accent are painfully obvious to everyone she interacts with.

Double majoring in engineering and computer science. Unintentionally breaks Marius' scheme open when she asks to copy his notes when she missed a day for a class they share (she would have broken it faster if she knew what he was doing).

Was assigned as Raphaella's roommate and she gets free estrogen in exchange for ignoring everything else that's going on.

Got dragged into the friend group by Jonny after he came over one day to hang out with Raphaella and they bonded over disabling circulatory issues.

Brian:

On the run from the religious cult he grew up in, which he was kicked out of because he got internet access and started learning about reality.

Still has a hard time believing most people he'll talk to will accept basic facts like "the Earth is a sphere"

Did not have to forge papers to get in, but he would later get recommended to a good forger by Jonny and get some restraining orders out of it.

Ambulatory wheelchair user (because it makes me happy) with an extreme case of moral ocd

The Toy Soldier:

Holy shit this bitch had a bad childhood

In a dissociative state a good 90% of the time and has huge sensory issues with the feeling of its own flesh

Goes by "TS" and adamantly refuses to tell anybody why.

Being put through college by their wealthy adoptive mother. Definitely lied about the college being prestigious and doesn't want to examine exactly why it did that or why it felt so soul-crushingly important to get out of the country.

Was adopted by the widow after her husband died at war. Was basically treated as one family member swapped for another and was expected to grow up in his image and to be proper.

Walking on eggshells 24/7. Orders might as well still be a physical necessity to it for how much of a compulsion they are. Will jump to do anything to appease the people around it if they show any indication of being upset.

Tim becomes its first friend because him and Bertie are the only other transfer students from London. It rather likes talking about guns with him and giving away all its care packages to him so it doesn't dwell on why they make it so uncomfortable.

Starts off majoring in military studies over the ages, but will switch to general music studies after meeting the Angel.

Spoiler alert: it will still kill the Angel after she gets into a relationship with someone else, but thankfully this just makes a wild junior year instead of adding to the already wild senior year.

Obviously they're all still in a band together. And they're the most dysfunctional friend group this poor college has ever seen.

[ed-recoverry]

Some good news to get you through

As someone super into history and current events, everything always sucks so I just want to make a little masterlist of some glimmers of hope. Will try to make multiple of these.

I shopped around for all of these, but this website and this website offers happy stories all in one place for those who don't have the time.

Colombia outlaws child marriage after 17-year campaign

Jordan Recognized as First in the World to Eradicate Leprosy

Norway, Paraguay, Antigua and Barbuda join the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty

Orran Gala Raises $400,000 for Armenia’s Most Vulnerable

Hanover firefighter creates ‘Belize Heroes’ to donate lifesaving equipment to home country

‌Norway’s Kon-Tiki Museum returns artifacts to Chile’s remote Easter Island

Minneapolis man's murder conviction vacated after 16 years

Hiking group for Muslim women breaks barriers as hundreds flock to the outdoors

Scientists find a 35,000-year-old saber-toothed kitten in the Siberian permafrost

Tupelo Preschool Teacher Donates Organ to Student

Author Katherine Rundell donates royalties to climate charities in Trump protest

Pan-Mass Challenge Raises Record $75 Million for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Texas woodpecker no longer endangered after 54 years

Researchers discover 'lost' frog species in the Andes after over a century

More states are adopting laws to protect children of family vloggers

A 19-Year-Old Who Spent Her Childhood In Foster Care Was Finally Adopted By A Former Caseworker

Dolly Parton Gifts $4.5 Million to Nashville Public Library

New Mexico sees nearly 10% more first-year college students, bucking national trend

21-Year-Old Raising His 4 Siblings Since Their Mom Died Surprised With $40K and a New Car

Easy-fit prosthetics offer hope to thousands of Gaza amputees

UNM alumni hike tallest peaks in Ecuador to make prosthetic care more accessible

London charity helps young mums thrive

Italian charity sends 15 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza via Cyprus

Climate report shows the largest annual drop in EU greenhouse gas emissions for decades

Washingtonians defend the Climate Commitment Act

Voters decide MN Lottery will keep funding environmental causes

Finnish fathers taking nearly double length of paternity leave since 2022 reform

Oysters reintroduced to Firth of Forth appear to be 'thriving'

German union says auto and engineering workers to get 5.5% wage rise

Seaweed farming brings hope to Kenyan villagers hit by climate change

Previously extinct Cape Water Lily restored at False Bay Nature Reserve

From landfill to limelight, Ghana waste entrepreneurs win Earthshot Prize

A derogatory term for Native women will be removed from place names across California

Texas Native Health expands facility to better serve the state's Indigenous community

Borneo’s ‘omen birds’ find a staunch guardian in Indigenous Dayak Iban elders

African cinema takes to global stage with diverse storytelling

Maori haka in NZ parliament to protest at bill to reinterpret founding treaty

Animal welfare group works to rescue lions, pets in Lebanon

Inside a Massachusetts studio showcasing the work of artists with disabilities

[lboogie1906]

Emma Reed (Wright) (May 30, 1925 - April 4, 2014) was born on the family farm in rural Redwood, Mississippi to Sallie and Smith Reed. She grew up on the farm but attended Coleman High School in Greenville. She enrolled in Tennessee State University where she obtained a BS in Health and Physical Education. She enrolled in New York University, graduating with an MA in Engineering.

She joined the Track and Field Team as a long and high jumper. She set records at Tennessee State. In 1947 she claimed the AAU Junior title in the high jump. In 1948 she finished second nationally at the AAU Outdoors Meet in London in the high jump and was victorious at the AAU Indoor high jump championship.

She was one of only 34 athletes from Tennessee State to participate in the Olympics. She got her first chance for glory and a gold medal at the 1948 Olympics in London. She was 23 years old when she took part in the Women’s Long Jump for Team USA which ranked 12th in the international competition. Her best jump had a distance of 5.290 feet which was tied for 11th during the competition. This number moved her to the Final Round where she achieved a distance of 4.845 ranking 12th overall.

She participated in the Women’s High Jump for Team USA where she tied for 14th in the event. She achieved a height of 4.6 feet which was her overall personal best.

She returned to Tennessee State at the end of the Olympic games. She resumed her studies and graduated from State. She began teaching African American history at Barber-Scotia College.

She married Julius Wright (1960-61). There were no children from the marriage. She began teaching at Leland Junior High in DC. She became a tennis coach at the William H.G. Fitzgerald Tennis Center in Rock Creek Park.

She moved to Seattle to be close to her family. She was a devout Christian who attended Bethany Community Church. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[harajuku-cookie]

IkeVil OC Profile: Xochitl

The Kind-Hearted Defender "Even a spark of kindness can end up shining the brightest."

(Yes I used the MidCin avatar. I like using the IkeSeries avatars for OC ideas, kind of like how people use picrew, and go from there. This game has the bigger closet, so more ideas.)

Name: Xochitl Herrera Pronouns: She/Her Birthday: December 21 Affiliation: n/a (later on it becomes Crown) Curse: Snow White: Snow White Hobbies: singing, petting all the animals, playing the guitar Skills: animal care, repairing stuff, whistling Likes: apple empanada Dislikes: bitter food Resents: mistreatment of animals and people Weapon: none Curse Ability: can communicate with animals Orientation: Pan

More info about her under the cut!

Notes: •Born in London, England to a Hispanic father (came from what would be known as Mexico) and English mother. Her father attended and graduated from the Royal Veterinary College and met her mother in the city during his studies. She was raised in a loving, but sometimes crazy environment due to the family’s line of work. •Family has their own veterinary business, with her father being the head veterinarian and her mother being his assistant (Xochitl also assists). They also run their own animal shelter that Xochitl is mainly in charge of. •Her curse first appeared when she was a child during a moment where she encountered (what seemed like at the time) a very aggressive dog. She was able to communicate with them and managed to calm them down enough to find out that they were actually really frightened and she ended up rescuing them from an unsafe situation. Her family ended up taking in the dog and has lived a much better life since. Now that the dog is elderly, they currently reside in her parent’s home full time, with lots of visits and cuddles from Xochitl. •Her personality is outgoing, level-headed (for the most part), and kind. She’s always willing to lend a helping hand to others. Even before her curse appeared, she loved all animals and was always good with them since they were drawn to her gentle nature. She will not tolerate any kind of rude or cruel behavior and will not hesitate to call people out on it. •She's short, but strong for her stature, especially due to all the running and heavy lifting for her work. •Due to her skill, a lot of people, especially the nobility, tend to seek her out to find out what’s going on with their pets (though none of them know that she can literally understand them). Because she does such a good job, as a token of their gratitude they end up being some of the biggest donors to her family's animal shelter. •Has her own dog, a Jack Russell Terrier named Adriana •Paired with Roger (more info about their relationship will be added later on)

Extra Notes: she’s still a work in progress since IkeVil is still very new, but as time goes on I plan to add more info. Outfit in the photo is kind of what I envisioned her wearing (I did alter the colors a bit), just with a longer skirt. I also technically have other IkeVil OCs in the works, including my MC/Kate stand-in, just that the brainrot for Roger has been so strong lately due to JP event translations (thank you for the food) and what I've read so far in EN about him from events and pieces from the current available routes. Also I have tried my best to be as accurate as I can be with certain information for the time period. I also just wanted to add a little bit of my culture in her.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

My husband worries a lot about his heart. “I feel something right here,” he’ll say, pointing to a spot on his chest. I have a hard time knowing how to respond to these reports; unless I’m doing cardio, I’m never aware of my heartbeat, and even then I can’t really feel it. After my husband’s cardiologist told him that there was nothing wrong with his heart, I figured that his fascination with it was just melodrama, or hypochondria.

Then I read a study by Sarah Garfinkel, a neuroscientist at University College London. Garfinkel monitored the heartbeats of twenty people who’d been diagnosed with autism, and also asked them to count the beats themselves. In a second study with sixty autistic individuals, she played a rhythmic, beeping tone and asked her subjects to say whether it was in synch with their pulses. At first, many people who’d declared themselves “good” at detecting their own heartbeats failed these tasks. But, as the tests went on, they improved. Some of the participants had reported having anxiety, and about a third of them said that, as they became better at detecting their heartbeats accurately, they also felt less anxious. My husband isn’t autistic, but he does experience anxiety, and Garfinkel’s study made me wonder whether he might be like some of her study participants. Maybe he was wrongly convinced that he was good at feeling his heartbeat, but also able to improve that sense—a change that could ease his worries.

Scientists call our ability to feel what’s happening inside our bodies interoception. A portmanteau of “interior” and “reception,” it differs from perception, which comes from our five senses, and proprioception, which tells us how we are oriented in space. Interoception is an inner sense having to do with our bodily processes. It can be divided into three rough categories. The first comprises feelings that break through into consciousness based on need; this is how we know when we need to pee or sleep or hydrate, and how we grasp that our hearts are racing after a good jump scare. The second encompasses the unconscious ways in which our brains and bodies communicate; our brains detect high glucose levels in our livers, for example, then release hormones that trigger our metabolisms, and we are unaware of the process. A vast number of these silent interoceptive processes are going on within us all the time.

The third category of interoception has to do with how our bodies and minds, together, sense and respond to the flow of events. On a recent Zoom call, Tim Dalgleish, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, told me that the body is constantly delivering a set of signals—changes in our heart rates, breathing, digestion, and so on—that fluctuate along with the events we are encountering. It’s tempting to see the flow of information as one-way, from the mind to the body; we might understand an escalating heart rate, say, as a “reaction” to a feeling of nervousness. (An exam is placed on our desks, we grow nervous, and our hearts start racing in response.) But Dalgleish told me that it made more sense to think of the body and mind working synchronously as part of a single “prediction system.” “I don’t think we are ‘reacting’ to anything,” he said. Instead, we are constantly forecasting what is about to happen, with our bodies and minds contributing to that forecast. “There’s a mental component and a bodily component,” Dalgleish said. “They both happen at the same time.”

When we talk about “listening to our bodies” or “going with our guts,” we are often talking about this type of interoception. Close your eyes at any given moment, and you can gauge your over-all mood—good, bad, excited, tired, a bit down, or generally pleased. This mood combines what’s going on in your mind with how your organs, muscles, and nerves are embodying the moment. “Interoception is your ability to notice that signal,” Dalgleish said.

Not everyone is good at interpreting these interoceptive signals, and our abilities vary with our circumstances. In a 2010 study, Dalgleish and his collaborators asked ninety-two people to play a computer game derived from the Iowa gambling task, a psychological test designed to examine decision-making. The task entailed selecting the correct down-facing card from one of four decks, in hopes that it would match the color of an upturned card. Each correct choice earned the player some money. There were differences among the decks, but the game was designed so that it was impossible to figure them out within the time allotted. Still, in the course of a hundred turns, three-quarters of the participants got better at selecting the “profitable” deck of cards.

The point of the study was to see whether any bodily changes distinguished the people who improved from the ones who did not. While the subjects played, the researchers measured their heart rates and skin temperatures. They found that predictable bodily changes happened among those who got better at the game. Right before those subjects guessed, their hearts beat faster and their palms became sweaty; then they chose the right card. “People who were good at reading their bodies were the ones who did really well,” Dalgleish said. None of the players experienced themselves as being guided by these physical cues. Instead, they just went with their guts.

Why were some players more tuned into these signals than others? In 2022, Garfinkel and a colleague, Chatrin Suksasilp, provided one of the first comprehensive descriptions of how “listening to our bodies” might really work. First, they argued, come the various, often incremental somatic changes that happen continuously; our minds then translate these signals into a single feeling. The accuracy of this process, they wrote, can vary at every step. People with post-traumatic stress disorder, for instance, often experience racing hearts at moments that don’t seem to call for them; similar disproportionate responses often arise among people with other mental-health difficulties, or who are chronically stressed. Meanwhile, these signals form an amalgam that is funnelled into certain regions of the brain, such as the insular cortex and the dorsal mid-insula. “Some people have loads of activity in key areas, and other people don’t,” Garfinkel said—in other words, some people have stronger interoceptive signals.

And yet, even if you’re receiving a strong signal from your body, it can be inaccurate. Consistently perfect interoception is impossible: sometimes we listen to our hearts, but they have the wrong message; at other times, the message is right, but we don’t hear it. The body itself changes our capacity to listen. Garfinkel asked me to imagine an athlete who stays in the game while clearly injured: in a hyper-aroused state, she said, a person can become numb to pain. And interoception is complicated by the fact that it’s tightly tied to our personal experiences. Whatever happened to us in the past—a dangerous encounter with a stranger, a scary movie that made a big impression, time on the battlefield—alters how our bodies respond in the future. If a person’s responses are sufficiently shaped by such experiences, then listening to her body might lead her astray.

Given how easy it is for interoception to go wrong, it’s logical to wonder whether we can become better at getting it right. Some researchers are exploring ways to retrain our interoceptive responses. At the Laureate Institute for Brain Research, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sahib Khalsa, a psychiatrist, has been taking this approach with people who have eating disorders. Khalsa trained with Antonio Damasio, a neurologist who popularized the notion that our feelings are rooted in our bodies rather than our minds; in particular, Damasio’s somatic-marker hypothesis lays out the body-to-brain process by which visceral responses shape our decisions. Khalsa’s theory, essentially, is that eating disorders involve, among other things, a cycle of interoceptive mistranslation. A rumbling tummy should stimulate one’s appetite, not evoke fear; feeling full should be part of an over-all pleasant state, not turmoil. Eating disorders are complicated, with roots that extend far beyond the question of how good people are at listening to their bodies. But at least one study has found that people with anorexia perform poorly on interoceptive tests.

A therapist providing food-based interoceptive exposure might offer individuals with eating disorders a piece of chocolate in hopes that, over several sessions, that they will learn to taste and swallow it without becoming emotionally distraught. Khalsa works with one application of this therapy. “The goal is for you to learn to eat this without feeling uncomfortable,” Khalsa explained. He is also investigating the use of float tanks as a form of interoceptive therapy. In a study he published in 2020, twenty-three women with anorexia floated in sensory-deprivation chambers for ninety minutes at a time, once a week, for four weeks. They reported experiencing heightened awareness of their heartbeats and breathing, but not of their stomachs or digestive systems; many also reported feeling relaxed, energized, serene, and happy. (The study doesn’t connect any of these changes to shifts in eating habits.) Khalsa’s theory is that the tanks offer a kind of interoceptive training: if you get better at tracking your own heartbeat, you might get better at tracking your appetite as well. “If I followed a meal with a float . . . I could allow my food to digest without the discomfort of fullness,” Emily Noren writes, in “Unsinkable,” her memoir of overcoming an eating disorder with help from floating. “The float tank was my training wheels for digestion.”

Finally, in work published last month in Nature Communications, Khalsa is exploring the use of a tiny, motorized capsule that vibrates when it reaches the digestive system. People with eating disorders often complain of feeling full or bloated even when they haven’t consumed food; Khalsa thinks that, by practicing sensing the motor, they may be able to retrain their gastrointestinal interoception. The tiny motor creates an opportunity to recognize a real physical sensation in the gut. By distinguishing real from imagined, a person might establish an interoceptive connection that more accurately communicates the state of the body.

Last year, Garfinkel and her colleague, Camilla Nord, at the University College Cambridge, published an overview of how interoception might be used to treat many mental-health conditions. They drew on numerous studies elucidating the connection between interoceptive accuracy and emotions. (People who are better at detecting their heartbeats are also better at regulating negative emotions, for example.) The researchers point out that many therapies that are already in use are also a form of interoceptive intervention: for instance, a single dose of citalopram—a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor prescribed for depression and other mood disorders—enhanced the confidence people had in their correct interoceptive judgments. In other words, they had more insight into what their bodies were doing.

One of the lessons of interoception research, however, is that access and accuracy don’t necessarily go together. Just because we have a bad feeling doesn’t make it right. It’s unwise to assume that increasing people’s interoceptive curiosity will solve their problems. It could be that “you’re just training them to read a signal that’s actually giving them really bad information,” Dalgleish said; it can even be useful for someone to be “trained to ignore their body.” Garfinkel told me that “people with anxiety and depression attend too much to the body.” Data show that people with panic disorders are often hyperaware of their heartbeats. The psychologists Karen Quigley and Lisa Feldman Barrett, who study emotion at Northeastern University, hypothesize that depression stems in part from a “locked-in” brain—a situation in which we fail to account for the possibility that our interoceptive interpretation might be wrong. “If I feel so awful and I can’t see an explanation in the outside world, then that might mean that there’s something wrong with me,” Quigley told me, explaining the mind-set. “There’s this kind of closing inward.” When such a dynamic is ruling a person’s mind, increasing interoceptive awareness isn’t going to help. It may help more to learn to let in the external world.

In 1998, two researchers from the University of Pittsburgh conducted a study in which participants sat at a table with one arm hidden beyond a screen. The researchers set out a fake arm in its place, orienting it so that it appeared to have replaced the real arm, then proceeded to lightly stroke the surface of both arms with a paintbrush. Participants reported what came to be known as the rubber-hand illusion: they could feel the brush even as it touched the fake arm. Years later, psychologists from the U.K. and Italy wanted to see how interoception factored into the trick. In the experiment, people who were better at sensing their cardiac rhythms turned out to be less likely to “embody” the rubber hand—that is, to perceive it as their own limb.

Interoception can help us see ourselves more clearly. The paradox is that it may be at its most accurate when it is, in itself, invisible. In 2021, the National Institutes of Health awarded eighteen million dollars to seven five-year projects focussed on the unconscious pathways linking the body and the brain. And, in 2022, the N.I.H. issued a special call for research centered on interoception as part of cancer prevention. Tumors consume an enormous amount of energy; it’s possible that, by tapping into the brain’s metabolic interoception, we might detect them early. Yet this research concentrates on interoception that is totally unconscious; there is no funding for work investigating whether a person can sense these metabolic changes with her conscious mind. The unconscious signals are often the trustworthy ones. The complications begin when we try to listen in and understand what we’re hearing. We’re urged, for all sorts of reasons, to listen to our hearts. But a life looking inward isn’t necessarily a life well lived. “You don’t want to be focussed too much on the body,” Garfinkel said. “You want to be focussed on the world.” ♦

The New Yorker

Jessica Wapner

[saintsenara]

14 and 26??

thank you very much for the ask from the i'm not from the states ask game, anon!

14. do you enjoy your country’s cinema and/or tv?

26. does your nationality get portrayed in hollywood/american media? what do you think about the portrayal?

now - i think these two have to be taken together...

so, yes, i do enjoy our media - we have obviously produced the finest comedy television show in recent history, after all.

but i do think that media made in ireland - or, at least, made in ireland in english - suffers from the fact that it's aiming to be marketable outside of ireland. and - in particular - that it's aiming to be marketable in both britain and the united states.

which means that it takes an interest in portraying an image of irishness which is appealing to those countries.

when it comes to the states, the way we are portrayed and the way we portray ourselves is always aiming to tap into a view of ireland which dominates the american national consciousness - as a country which americans, especially on the east coast, consider themselves enormously culturally aligned to and politically sympathetic with, due to the sheer size of the irish-american community.

let's get the cards on the table - being irish-american is a meaningful cultural identity within the united states. it is not - and it never, ever will be - the same as actually being irish [which someone ought to tell the president...]. and one reason is because the centrality of emigration to the irish-american identity requires ireland to become a quasi-mystical place, preserved in aspic at the point mass emigration to the states really took off.

that's why you end up with the portrayal of ireland you see in films like the banshees of inisherin - quaint, rural, full of half-wit musical drunkards who love a wee chat, surrounded by historical events but also sort of outside them...

in britain, the geographical proximity, the easier movement across boarders, and the fact that these enable diaspora communities to retain closer links with ireland [one of the single most amusing activities in the world is watching irish-americans learn that vast numbers of brits have more recent irish heritage than they do...] means that ireland is treated less like a magical fantasy land unchanged from ages past.

but it's nonetheless affected by the brits' own stereotypical view of the country - that the rural south is full of superstitious, unsophisticated idiots [who sometimes get to have hearts of gold!] who've never seen pesto; that the urban south is generally indistinguishable from london; and that the north is full of grey housing estates interspersed with burned-out cars and everyone is a terrorist.

again and again it seems that the only way to get funding for a project about ireland is to pick one of the famine, the war of independence, or the troubles as your setting. there's so little representation of what ireland looks like in the here-and-now - not least in the fact that you'd get the impression from its international film and television that it's a country where everyone is white...

and even media which is set in contemporary ireland and which does make an effort to be more diverse - such as the tv adaptation of normal people - presents an ireland designed for international consumption [trinity college dublin does run itself very much like oxford and cambridge in real life - but this is turned up to eleven in normal people in a way which is clearly aimed at the british audience...].

which is something i'd like to see us get a grip on, tbh.

[hector-garcia]

– BASIC INFORMATION.

Full name | Aliases: Hector Oscar García Liddell Gender | Sexual orientation: Cis man | Gay Date of birth | Age: 26th of June | 47 Place of birth: Newcastle upon Tyne Current residence: 10 Downing Street Occupation | Affiliation: Prime Minister of the UK | Labour Party Relationship status: Married to Viktor Liddell. Children: / Positive traits: + Charismatic, brilliant, level-headed, incisive, passionate Negative traits: - Calculating, revolted, idealistic, overly empathetic, intense

– PHYSICAL TRAITS.

Hair color: Salt and Pepper Eye color: Dark brown Height | Weight: 5 feet 9 inches (1.77 m) | 72 kg (160 lbs) Distinguishing features: Strong nose, smooth recognizable voice, Newcastle accent (fading) Faceclaim: Raul Esparza

– BIOGRAPHY.

Hector was born in the working class, to parents who had fled Fidel Castro's regime and made ends meet while they raised him far away from home. Every day, after school, he would do his homework at his mother's desk, who worked as a receptionist in a paper company. His father was a florist working on farmer's markets. They were hard workers, who had big plans for their only son and they saved every month to put him in a proper school. While attending high school, Hector came in second in a competition organized by the British Academy for Science, for his research project on reducing water usage in agriculture, he participated to debate competitions and though he was happy to make his club's victory a collective effort, his extensive knowledge of social, political, economical issues was key into getting 1st place, and it was no surprise that he ended up president of this club as well as 3 others.

He joined college and at the same time officially signed up with the Labour Party as a full member and activist. His parents were involved in politics themselves, and from the moment he was old enough to hold flags at rallies and demonstrations, his father would hoist him up on his shoulders. They both took part in a worker's union, though his mother was the one most devoted to helping both workers and those most vulnerable.

He first did a double licence in sociology and political sciences at LSE, studied in Barcelona for a year with the Erasmus program, and got involved in activism there too. Followed two more years during which he worked on his thesis. He focused on the positive impact immigration had on the country, and while his work was applauded by his peers, he reaped a lot of bile and hatred from the opposition. The dichotomous controversial work ended up in the media. While progressive ones applauded his fresh stance on the question and commented on the depth of his analysis. Qualitative research combined with grounded theory made a solid ground to build his political program on. It didn't matter if some called him a ludicrous dreamer or a clown. Ad hominem attacks only confirmed what he already knew: he needed to take things further, he needed to become a candidate to local elected office.

He ran for council in his borough, Barking and Dagenham, in north eastern London. He fought against gentrification in the area, which would be made all the more painful with the 2012 Olympic Games and the quick evolution of the city in the years that preceded the event. Hector spent most of his free time listening to people who dedicated a lot of their energy, time, or even money for the local community. Eventually, when the time came for him to campaign again, this time for MP, he chose to rely only on their donations, refusing any money that came from corporations and lobbies. The people would be who he represented, not the interest of private companies. It was unconventional. It was risky. He might even lost the election because he fought against Goliaths. Fundraising and media relations was usually handled by professionals who saw the world through a lens filled with statistics and polls.

He shouldn't have won those elections, he supposed. When he won, upspent with a margin of 15 to 1 by his opponents, Hector couldn't believe how much support he had managed to gather through his years as a devoted borough councilman.

Hector, who was now a MP for a little over 10 years, was feeling tight in his shoes, and with the help of his husband, threatened his old LSE pal, none other than the Prime Minister, to reveal the contents of the treaty to the public. He knew the time was right for him. He was quite popular among the party, and his husband's ties with the conservatives made him much easier to accept for the Tories.

His party did get this much right: he represented a breath of fresh air, and those always got people talking. What they didn't get right, however, was this idea that Hector was so much better than your typical politician. Not one bit. He wasn't above shoving people under the bus, or using god awful tactics to get ahead of others. He might have been a likeable personality, with the kind of voice that you could have listened to even if it read the phone book, he also knew when crossing the line was necessary. After all, in a city like London, you couldn't possibly hope to survive being a good guy.

[catdotjpeg]

At exactly 11am on a Saturday in mid-November, hundreds of students from Luton Sixth Form College streamed out of their school, gathering outside in a sea of black, white and red keffiyehs and Palestinian flags. They carried banners and placards saying “Bombing kids is not self-defence” and “This is no ‘conflict’ it’s genocide”, referring to Israel’s war on Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel. Student organisers of the rally read out speeches against the war, in which Israeli bombs and artillery fire have now killed more than 21,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including more than 8,000 children. Yet Israel wasn’t the only target of criticism at the rally: The students were protesting against their college’s links to an arms company that had supplied weapons and advanced military platforms to Israel. The walkout was organised by the school’s student council after its chair, 18-year-old Hassan Sajjad, was approached by students critical of the senior leadership at the college, who some students felt had failed to address or acknowledge strong student sentiment towards the Israel-Gaza conflict. But a week later, Sajjad and the other council members were informed by the school leadership that their entire council had been disbanded, months before their term was supposed to end in April 2024. Their student council email communication was also suspended. “It shattered my understanding of democracy in college, and the idea of freedom of speech and ‘British values’,” Sajjad said. Since the start of the war, the United Kingdom has seen unrelenting demonstrations urging the government to call for a ceasefire. Yet as students in schools, colleges and universities across the UK also joined the chorus condemning the war, they have also been reprimanded, subtly or explicitly, for their pro-Palestine advocacy in several instances, igniting concerns around freedom of speech. Luton, a town less than 48km (30 miles) north of London with a majority ethnic minority population, has been at the centre of that debate after the backlash faced by students over their walkout. It all started when students discovered that their school had played host to a weapons giant with ties to Israel’s military.

‘Protest to have your voice heard’

Though Israel is today a major arms exporter, it continues to import weapons from the West. The United States is its biggest military partner and the source of 83 percent of Israel’s weapons imports between 1950 and 2020. But the UK has also been a steady military ally to Israel. It has licensed arms worth more than 442 million pounds ($563m) to Israel between May 2015 and August 2022 and is now facing a legal challenge in the High Court from Palestinian human rights groups.

[...]

A walkout wasn’t the student council’s first planned course of action against the war. The council – who represent over 3,000 students – suggested organising a fundraiser for Gaza and the occupied West Bank. As the civilian death count mounted in Gaza, the council also flagged the college’s relationship with Leonardo[, one of the world's largest arms companies]. For about a month, their requests were met with silence. Then, the school’s leadership said the students could fundraise but only for an event that wasn’t specifically for Palestinians. “If students aren’t being catered for and the [school leaders] are not respecting the student council – the people who represent the thousands – then you only have one option left: that’s to protest to have your voice heard”, Sajjad said. On November 18, hundreds of students walked out of their lesson in what was a peaceful protest. “We wanted students to know this is your legal right to protest, and you shouldn’t feel pressured or afraid to protest”, said Arsalan Ilyas, 17, a student at the college.

-- From "Walkout over weapons: British school students battle Gaza protest curbs" by Aina Khan for Al Jazeera, 31 Dec 2023

[sound-art-text]

Sound at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019)

Thoughts and (sometimes moving) images about sound works I encountered at the main bases and across the city. Aiming to create a guide for those interested in sound and travelling to the Biennale, or a window for those who aren't.

In case you haven’t been before, it’s helpful to understand the layout of the Venice Biennale. Established in 1895, it’s open May-October and involves countries from every continent. Each participating country has a pavilion at one of the two main sites, Giardini and Arsenale, or in a space in the City, usually occupied by one artist or artist collective chosen to represent the nation. There are also two huge exhibitions, one at each main site.

The title for the exhibition this year is ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’, curated by Ralf Rugoff; the artists selected to exhibit have works at both sites. I’ll let Ralf describe the theme himself, if you’d care to read below :)

Lithuania

The Golden Lion (for National Participation) this year was won by Lithuania. Three artists, one of whom is London College of Communication BA Sound Arts grad Lina Lapelyte. As a graduate of the same course, this makes the whole Venice Biennale experience somehow more tangible for me, more understandable. The artists are not all elite, ethereal and elusive. I’ve seen Lina around. A real person. A sound person! I find this very heartening. Congrats to Lina and colleagues Vaiva Grainyte and Rugile Barzdziukaite.

As the recipient of the main Biennale prize, the queues to get in to see the performance (which has been cut from a daily event to a twice weekly happening due to lack of funds), were impossible, so we’ll have to each make our own views based on the press materials out there. If you’re planning a visit, performances are on Wednesdays and Saturdays - and by 11am on Saturday, there was a 2 hour line for entry.

Mongolia

Down an alleyway in Castello district, an entrance beckons with strange sounds. Electronic musician Carsten Nicolai has composed some sounds to accompany recordings of Mongolian throat singers. Artist Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar has created some sculptural works – the exposed stone walls and red lighting makes the experience enjoyable and reasonably convincing, though I spent a while trying to work out how the sound was interactive, as the description claims. I couldn’t find how my presence was influencing the audio, but perhaps there were some less obvious devices or conceptual elements here I missed. Maybe the video will give you a sense of the space.

New Zealand

Though the elements of NZ’s offering may not be all new and shiny, this exhibit was one of my favourite experiences. The artist makes a list of all things extinct. The list is being printed - but it’ll take the whole 6 months of the Biennale for the printer to do so. The paper of the list folds out beautifully onto the floor of the pavilion.

Outside, artificial trees read through the list in AI voices. Moving your phone near the trees connects you to a WiFi network that allows you to temporarily view a page with the full list in pleasing categories - ‘things that have melted’, ‘lost lunar samples’, ‘cured diseases’, ‘discontinued burial techniques’. The names of the categories are the major selling point of the artwork for me. You can click on each list to have the AI voice read it’s contents to you in the usual machine multi-tones.

Of course there’s questions to raise: how is the female AI voice interrogated, how can the list be more than a remembrance ceremony, how conscious of resources was the artist in making the work if concerned with ecology, etc. But overall, I enjoyed this project and could have spent the whole afternoon listening to lists in this beautiful garden overlooking the sea.

Giardini

Spain

The first Pavilion I walked into belonged to Spain. I'd read an e-flux announcement about the work, so had some context - helpful given a lack of obvious wall texts and sparseness of the space. You could hear heavy breathing - you could see a video of two people exhaling into mics.

Itziar Okariz and Sergio Prego are thinking about performance and objecthood. They have whispered conversations with inanimate objects, asking us to consider the subjectivity of our relationship with space, and art as material.

Writings about the work quote Susan Sontag's The Aesthetics of Silence: “not only does silence exist in a world full of speech and other sounds, but any given silence has its identity as a stretch of time being perforated by sound.” 

Belgium

My first impression of this pavilion - creepy automated dolls. Some enact trades, others play instruments - it smells like folklore. The Venice Insider describes this spectacle as ‘a society that is folded in on itself where tradition is erected as a refuge.’

The Biennale’s jury, in awarding the pavilion with a Special Mention, state ‘Unsparing in its humour, the Belgian Pavilion offered an alternative view of the under-recognised aspects of social relations across Europe.’

There’s a website with a mass of videos that form an online aspect of the exhibition - I won't give spoilers, have a play.

Japan

Cosmo-Eggs is the title. There's an inflatable orange blow up bench that extends through the two floors of the pavilion. We're taken through myths relating to the Earth's formation, there's a running theme of ecology. Self-playing recorders were dotted around, I wasn't able to understand why.

The Singapore pavilion also used recorders - a democratic instrument through it's cheapness and accessibility?

France

Billed as controversial, reviews implied polarised opinion about Laure Prouvost’s work. You enter the pavilion through t's basement, are handed a paper mask and walk through a sculptural entrance chamber to find a film, which loosely follows 12 characters as they travel around France.

If you’ve seen some of her films, you’ll recognise the recurring elements - fish, raspberries, mobiles, breasts. Prouvost’s voice guides you through the film in it’s usual intimate and meandering way. I enjoy her voice. I enjoyed the film. I didn’t see why or where the controversy could be - if you like her work, you’ll like this pavilion, then again, if you’ve experienced her work before, there’s no major stylistic or thematic surprises in store for you. I found it charming and full of life. Other than the poor fish, which are clearly deceased. :(

Germany

The first thing you notice is that the pavilion appears closed. Why? Critical of how the EU is handling refugees, the artist states that the pavilion is now an immigration detention center. The space was problematic from the start - the pavilion is monumental and temple-like, redesigned by the Nazis in 1938.

There’s a number of works on display - which the artist (for this period named Natascha Süder Happelmann) made in collaboration with others from varied disciplines. There’s sculpture, video and sound. The media is programmed to overlap, with pieces interrupting each other or leaving confusing silences. The speakers whistle - in tribute to a common method migrants use to warn each other of immigration police approaching.

Some notes of interest about the artist: they have changed their name for the exhibition; they have purposefully conflicting info about their age and place of birth online; they hid their face in a stone mask during the press view and had an actor speak on their behalf.

Videos and more on the Deutscher Pavillon website.

Kemang Wa Lehulere, Flaming Doors, 2018

Symbolism of childhood and education - the speakers emit songs in Xhosa, traditional for ‘coming-of-age’ ceremonies. The work references police brutality in South Africa and ongoing protests calling for the decolonising of school curriculums.

Arsenale

Turkey

The texts say this is a work about collective displacement, and reference Hannah Arendt's ‘We Refugees’. I missed that entirely when viewing the work, but even without concept (I say 'even' as I am a big fan of concepts) I enjoyed this work. It’s playful - videos are projected at odd angles, you walk up ramps and into little rooms or view from a balcony above. The films show bodies, dancing in small repetitive motions, entangled in their clothes. Feet point elegantly from a neck hole. There’s a dance with the arm of jacket (like I saw in Slava’s Snowshow as a child). The air vents contain tiny sounds of waves and the sea. Impossible chairs of irregular wires are dotted around.

The artist says: "These figures are constantly changing places through the space to find their other halves. This effort is actually an attempt to reclaim their interrupted and invalidated memory and bodies."

Saudi Arabia

This hall was filled with small decorative round objects - I guessed they were made of sheep, and was informed by the cheerful person at the desk that the artist fired the leather... in a manner that I now totally can't recall. Some were wired up so if you touched them, they’d produce sound. A metallic, resonant jingling. Fun as it was to find the sound activation points, I’m unclear how the audio related to themes of returning home, as the text stated.

Singapore

Children play recorders in an experimental way - moving around a block in colourful t-shirts, looking very endearing. There’s a Fluxus feel to it - but I’d like more freedom and less choreography please. Nice posters for children’s orchestras line the walls, alongside artworks made from beautifully snipped and folded sheet music.

Neïl Beloufa, We only get the love we think we deserve, 2019

A series of interviews with soldiers from around the world, recorded via Skype; I enjoyed listening to these stories. The experience was set up as a personal encounter - you insert your head through a narrow opening in a cushioned structure to watch the video, which activates a directional speaker above you. For reasons I can’t fathom, the seating looks like an exercise bench - are we meant to be transported into a gym or training station, or have I read too much into this?

Tarek Atoui, The Spin, 2019

There’s a series of low plinths upon which objects, chosen by the artist to produce sound, are neatly arranged. Some are mechanised to play themselves - a record player with twigs for needles, a metal rod jingles in a cup. There’s a speaker and a laptop showing a patch of some sort, which I assume is operating this, and texts say that artists from a variety of disciplines have been invited in the opening month of the Biennale to experiment and create new music. It’s all very John Cage - though I think Cage would have invited the public to participate, rather than selected artists. The objects now have ‘don’t touch' signs, and sit together either silent or mechanically operated, looking frail and minimalist in their white cube home.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan

The Giardini exhibition includes the film Walled Unwalled in full. I’ve seen it twice before, but couldn’t help but watch again. It’s dense with information, but what draws me to it is the artist as narrator, guiding you through his process of listening in the specialist context of forensics. We hear from ‘ear witnesses’ as he digs through their sonic memory to recreate the audio of atrocities committed in Sednaya Military Prison in Syria.

The second work, this time at Arsenale, is This whole time there were no land mines. I’d read about this work and so was looking forward to hearing it, but could easily have overlooked it where it was situated within the show. Every few minutes one of the neighbouring artworks made a phenomenal amount of noise as a rubber hose pipe whipped around its glass cage - drawing viewers from all the other artworks towards this deafening movement. When I managed to disengage from this chaos and return to Abu Hamdan, I walked down the constructed white corridor with square screens embedded on both sides. Videos appeared, playing seemingly at random. In honesty, I didn’t find the display effective or alluring, though very interested in the subject matter. As I understand it, there’s a small corridor of land with unusual sonic properties, called 'the shouting valley'. This article in Universes gives a concise description:

In this work Abu Hamdan uses found mobile phone footage and audio recordings that were made in 2011 in The Golan Heights. This stretch of land was annexed from Syria by Israel after the 1967 ceasefire and hosts ‘the shouting valley’ — a place where the topography facilitates an acoustic leak across the border. Here separated families have regularly gathered on both sides of the divide to shout across to each other.

VIDEO CLIP HERE Tumblr only allows 10 embeds :(

Hito Steyerl

Who doesn’t love Hito after How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File and In Defense of the Poor Image? Also enjoyed her text on automation for the Serpentines GUEST, GHOST, HOST: MACHINE! podcast.

But back to Venice - two works, both on multiple unusually shaped screens surrounding you. At Giardini is a work on Leonardo Da Vinci’s secret plans for a submarine for Venice. The Arsenale has this work, on the broad theme of 'the future’, which includes classic Hito comedy lines such as: 'The Future poses a 100% risk for human health'. Can't say fairer than that.

VIDEO CLIP HERE

Christian Marclay

Some drawings or maybe prints at the Giardini venue, didn’t catch my eye, and this film at Arsenale. I’d seen it previously at White Cube Mason's Yard; it’s title says it all - 48 videos (with sound) layered on top of each other, playing simultaneously. Interesting, but much harder viewing and not at all as absorbing as The Clock.

VIDEO CLIP HERE

Shilpa Gupta, For, in your tongue, I cannot fit, 2017-2018

100 microphones re-wired as speakers, suspended from the ceiling. 100 spikes from the floor to waist height, with poems on paper impaled on each. The microphones whisper as you weave between them - the words of poets who have been imprisoned for their writing. This both looked and sounded beautiful, intimate and very moving. Perhaps my favourite work this year.

VIDEO CLIP HERE

That's it for my reflections on sound works at the 58th Venice Biennale. I'd love to hear any comments from others interested in sound - tweet me @SoundArtHannah.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Konstantin Kisin

Published: Oct 23, 2023

When Hamas terrorists crossed over the border with Israel and murdered 1,400 innocent people, they destroyed families and entire communities. They also shattered long-held delusions in the West.

A friend of mine joked that she woke up on October 7 as a liberal and went to bed that evening as a 65-year-old conservative. But it wasn’t really a joke and she wasn’t the only one. What changed?

The best way to answer that question is with the help of Thomas Sowell, one of the most brilliant public intellectuals alive today. In 1987, Sowell published A Conflict of Visions. In this now-classic, he offers a simple and powerful explanation of why people disagree about politics. We disagree about politics, Sowell argues, because we disagree about human nature. We see the world through one of two competing visions, each of which tells a radically different story about human nature.

Those with “unconstrained vision” think that humans are malleable and can be perfected. They believe that social ills and evils can be overcome through collective action that encourages humans to behave better. To subscribers of this view, poverty, crime, inequality, and war are not inevitable. Rather, they are puzzles that can be solved. We need only to say the right things, enact the right policies, and spend enough money, and we will suffer these social ills no more. This worldview is the foundation of the progressive mindset.

By contrast, those who see the world through a “constrained vision” lens believe that human nature is a universal constant. No amount of social engineering can change the sober reality of human self-interest, or the fact that human empathy and social resources are necessarily scarce. People who see things this way believe that most political and social problems will never be “solved”; they can only be managed. This approach is the bedrock of the conservative worldview.

Hamas’s barbarism—and the explanations and celebrations throughout the West that followed their orgy of violence—have forced an overnight exodus from the “unconstrained” camp into the “constrained” one. 

The Reality of Woke Ideology

Many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists.

The reaction to the attacks—from outwardly pro-Hamas protests to the mealy-mouthed statements of college presidents, celebrities, and CEOs—has exploded the comforting stories many on the center-left have told themselves about progressive identity politics. For many years, they opted for the coping mechanism of pretending that the institutional capture of universities, corporations, and media organizations by the woke mind virus was no big deal. “Sure, students shutting down events they disagree with is annoying,” they would say, “but it’s just students doing what students do.”

October 8 was a wake-up call for those who didn’t appreciate that the ideology of the campus has spread to our cities, supercharged by social media.

We woke up on October 8 to the clamor of street protests in cities across the West condemning Israel even before any major Israeli response to the attacks. We watched celebratory crowds brandish swastikas and chant “gas the Jews” at events purporting to be about the loss of Palestinian lives. We saw Black Lives Matter chapters lionize terrorists. 

In London, where I live, we watched the mayor deliver glib assurances that “London’s diversity is our greatest strength” in the midst of a wave of antisemitic attacks, and as Jewish schools were forced to close because of safety concerns. 

Across the West, we noticed that our representatives refused to condemn Hamas’s kidnappings, and that the legacy media was all too eager to swallow and regurgitate Hamas propaganda.

Prior to the October 7 massacre, many students, alumni, and donors with the “unconstrained vision” trusted that the university—for all its many problems—remained the West’s best environment for civil discourse. 

But then they watched university presidents who were quick to issue statements condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the killing of George Floyd fall silent, or offer the most slippery, equivocal statements carefully crafted to avoid offending anti-Israel groups. They watched an Israeli at Columbia get beaten with a stick, and heard reports about the physical intimidation of students on campuses across the country. They read about dozens of student organizations at Harvard signing a letter holding Israel “entirely responsible” for the massacre of Israelis. 

The events of the last two weeks have shattered the illusion that wokeness is about protecting victims and standing up for persecuted minorities. This ideology is and has always been about the one thing many of us have told you it is about for years: power. And after the last two weeks, there can be no doubt about how these people will use any power they seize: they will seek to destroy, in any way they can, those who disagree.

This unpleasant conclusion is surprising only if you are still clinging to the unconstrained vision. But if there is any constant in human history, it is that revolutionaries always feel entitled to destroy those who stand in their way.

Just as hope about the possibility of peace with jihadists seems suicidally naive, reconciliation with citizens seized by the woke mindset seems a long way off.

Immigration

Nowhere is the shift from the unconstrained to constrained vision starkest than on immigration. 

For decades, both Europe and America basked in an “unconstrained vision” of immigration. In the U.S., the melting pot that could integrate the nineteenth-century Germans, Irish Catholics, or Japanese could surely absorb those crossing the southern border. And many of these new arrivals would do jobs Americans didn’t want to do. Europe needed immigration to deal with an aging population, with many European countries inviting people from their former colonies to fill labor shortages and skills gaps.

But over time, especially from the late 1990s onward, the unconstrained vision ran rampant through media and political elites, and immigration went from being a solution to specific problems to a moral good in its own right. (I am myself an immigrant. When I moved to Britain from Russia in 1996, net immigration into Britain ran at 55,000 people a year. Last year, net immigration stood at over 600,000 people.)

Over the past decade, more and more people in America and Europe have quietly shifted toward the “constrained” view of immigration. The Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump were early warning signs of this ongoing transformation. Today, we see New York, where nearly 60,000 newly arrived migrants are putting tremendous strain on shelters and city services like healthcare, education, and public transport. The city has already spent over $1 billion to address this crisis, and projections indicate that housing costs alone could exceed $4.3 billion by next summer. Lifelong Democrats in Manhattan tell The New York Times that “we have too many people coming in,” and that “Biden could do something more about putting our borders up a little stronger. I mean, we’re not here to take in the whole world. We can only do so much.”

Europeans have learned similar lessons from their own migrant crisis. In Britain, we spend approximately $10 million a day on hotels for people who have come here illegally. We refuse to deport foreign criminals over “human rights” concerns. Readers may recall seeing recent media reports about the small Italian island of Lampedusa, whose population quadrupled in a day as large numbers of illegal immigrants arrived. We have now learned that a man who shot two Swedish soccer fans dead in a terror attack in Brussels last week arrived there illegally via the island in 2011. The man was known to the authorities as a security risk due to his jihadi links, but when his asylum application was rejected in 2020, he was not deported. How many such people are allowed to come and stay in Europe is impossible to say, as hundreds of thousands of people make illegal crossings into Europe every year. 

But despite these shocking statistics, the issue of illegal immigration has been impossible to discuss in polite company for decades. No matter how bad the problem became, to raise concerns about it would almost always lead to accusations of bigotry and xenophobia.

What we have witnessed over the last two weeks—with enormous pro-Hamas rallies in cities like London, Paris, and Washington, D.C.—has the potential to change the immigration debate in a decisive way. It is much harder to pretend that allowing people to enter our country illegally is a moral good when you watch some of them celebrate mass murder in the streets of your capital cities.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has recently announced the intention to deport illegal immigrants “on a large scale” as his coalition hemorrhages votes to anti-immigration parties. France has banned pro-Palestine protests and warned that foreign nationals who take part will be removed from the country. Britain has also threatened to revoke the visas of foreigners who praise Hamas. Whether this represents a permanent realignment toward a more constrained view of immigration or merely a temporary blip on the path to progressive dystopia remains to be seen. 

Border Security

To express concern about border security has for many years been coded as “right-wing.” But how many people, after the horrors of October 7, believe that a secure border is anything other than the most basic test of national security?

I have just returned from a week in Los Angeles where, on recognizing my name, every single Armenian Lyft driver struck up a conversation in Russian. Once the inevitable complaints about the rising cost of living were out of the way, several shared with me their own journeys into the U.S. and those of their families. I was struck by the fact that those who came in the 1990s and 2000s had usually come legally, but more recent arrivals had made their way through Mexico. One man told me about smuggling his two brothers and 80-year-old father through the southern border: “It’s easy,” he told me.

I have no doubt he is correct: 2023 saw the highest number of illegal crossings since records began. And polling shows that the American people, who are otherwise uniquely welcoming of new arrivals, aren’t happy about it. The problem with illegal immigration isn’t just its scale; it’s that we have no idea whether the people coming are 80-year-old Armenian retirees or jihadi terrorists plotting another 9/11.

It is clearer now than ever before that borders aren’t about bigotry, they’re about security. In a sign of the times, Joe Biden is now continuing work on the border wall that Democrats spent years criticizing Donald Trump for erecting.

The West 

The reason the readjustment is necessary and, in my view, highly likely, is that proponents of the unconstrained vision have been allowed to ride roughshod over the concerns of ordinary citizens. They have used this window of opportunity to implement extraordinarily impractical and outright harmful ideas because they take the unbelievable levels of safety, plenty, and freedom we enjoy in the West for granted. The one form of privilege you will never hear them address is the first-world privilege that we all benefit from every day.

They have done this because the fundamental flaw in the unconstrained model of the world is a failure to understand Thomas Sowell’s greatest maxim: there are no solutions, only trade-offs. When you let your institutions be captured by an ideology of intolerance and illiberalism masquerading as progress, that has consequences. When you sow division at home and signal weakness abroad, that has consequences. When you debase the public’s faith in what they are told by the media and their government, that has consequences too. 

Western civilization has produced some of the most stunning scientific, technological, social, and cultural breakthroughs in human history. If you consider yourself “liberal” or even “progressive,” it must surely be clear by now that America and her allies are the only places in the world where your values are even considered values. If our civilization is allowed to collapse, it will not be replaced by a progressive utopia. It will be replaced by chaos and barbarism.

Will this waking-up moment persist? It depends, in large part, on our courage to look reality in the face. 

As Sowell explained, “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

And the truth is that we have indulged in magical thinking for too long, choosing comforting myths over harsh realities. About terrorism. About immigration. And about a host of other issues. In our hunger for progress, we have forgotten that not all change is for the better. Now the world is paying the price for that self-indulgence. Let’s hope recent events are the wake-up call we so desperately need.

[ledarth]

Le Puppy...

Judith Fero.

────────────── ·  ·  · ♡

❝ Why does it take a survivor to live? I don't want an existence sprinkled with great memorable moments, I want a good one. I'll make a good one. And I accept that it will be sprinkled with bad, heartbreaking memorable moments. That's how it should be anyways. ❞

Age:: 24 years old.

Height:: 169 cm.

Born in Benin. Raised in the South of France. Studying for her PhD in the U.S.A.

Polyglot:: Goun, French, English, Spanish and Archaic & Post-Cicero Latin.

Alignment:: Neutral Good.

Sexuality:: She cares little for gender but does need for a connection to form before any sort of sexual desire arises.

Hobbies:: Strong Swimmer since youth, Books were her home once so Literature holds a special place in her heart, Photography and Cinema she is newer to but she has been delving into it earnestly.

Trained in:: Kajukenbo, Nikkyu currently (brown belt with two stripes).

Specie :: Varies on the verse.

The Vampire Diaries/The Originals: Currently mortal. (But an unaware werewolf who hasn't killed anyone yet thus not triggered the curse. This way she can still be turned by a vampire if before the curse is triggered, probably killing the potential gene in the process)

Teen Wolf: Mortal. Substitute Teacher at Beacon Hills High.

Shadowhunters: Mundane-yet-Sighted in the employ of the Paris Institute formerly but now transferred to the New York Institute as a Intelligence Analyst so fully trained to protect herself.

MCU: Interning as an Intelligence Analyst for S.A.B.E.R, somehow, following a M.A Thesis labeled: "Towards a communal grand strategy and foreign policy vision to approach extraterrestrial and extra-dimensional threats." that Bruce Banner actually read and heavily critiqued which led to some interesting Twitter Exchanges. The subject of her current thesis being: "Exolinguistics as a tool of diplomacy and understanding extraterrestrial and extra-dimensional history and customs." Perhaps leading towards a typology of the currently known extraterrestrial and extra-dimensional nations/people/populations.

DC(CU, Series and) Comics: Mostly Broke Gothamite though currently writing for the international politics section of the Gotham Globe. Currently living in downtown Gotham and relatively near crime alley. (Former member of We Are Robin depending on the timeline.)

The Blacklist: She's an Intelligence Analyst newly transferred to the task force who happens to be related to a number through his daughter with whom she went to college with in London. Number 171: Yusuf Idowu, known as Ijapa (The Turtle in Yoruba). Head of one of the biggest drug cartel in Nigeria, moving mostly cocaine with growing importance in Europe, especially Southern Italy and the the Netherlands. He is stopping by the U.S.A as a neutral ground between him and some head of a Central American drug trafficking syndicate to hopefully begin a partnership. Ijapa's choice to increase foreign partnerships comes from a growing interest in establishing a certain hegemony in Nigeria, thus controlling the flow of drug in the Gulf of Guinea.

To Be Added.

Personality:: Not particularly eye catching, Judith carries a rather cold aura. She will deny having a resting bitch face but will admit that smiling doesn't come naturally to her. It's more so brought out of her, by people, by events. She makes herself irremarkable à la Clark Kent, camouflaging in what some would call 'basic' pieces of clothing and an inherent discretion. It's not that she can't make herself noticed if she so wills, no, she likes making herself a wallflower, quiet, forgettable. It allows her to leisurely observe others, she notices but only states so if she has a reason to. It makes her seem trustworthy to others too, capable of keeping secrets, of compartmentalising when it comes to her own emotions. Panic though, does silence her, takes away her voice and freezes her body for so very important seconds before she can get it back together. When interacting with others, she tends to be introverted though perfectly adequate in social settings, even drawing people to her, rarely out of her features but her achievements, her poise, her discourse, do stand out. She will happily entertain a heated conversation or trade barbs but has little interest in polite niceties and small talk at the coffee machine, rather quiet on the job. She consumes alcohol for the experience in terms of flavor, not particularly seeking the buzz and having a pretty good tolerance born out of downing a good chunk of shots in undergrad. Patient, she is able to enjoy the process of things, no matter how long and drawn out, no matter how frustrating on the moment. Curious, she is eager to learn, to pull things apart and get in there to figure it out but also to peek, to peep, to keep an open hear. She likes to have the in, to know what is happening in the room where it happens but pays little more than passing interest to what she believes is just gossip.

Backstory:: To Be Written.

[warningsine]

Whether it is a hug from a friend or the caress of a weighted blanket, the sensation of touch appears to bring benefits for the body and mind, researchers say.

The sense of touch is the first to develop in babies and is crucial in allowing us to experience the environment around us as well as communicate. Indeed, the loss of touch from others during the Covid pandemic hit many hard.

However, while myriad studies have suggested touch is beneficial for our health, few have attempted to draw the vast field of research together.

Now experts have done just that, revealing a simple message: touch helps.

Dr Helena Hartmann, a co-author of the research from University Hospital Essen, said: “More consensual touch events throughout our day can help alleviate or potentially buffer against mental and physical complaints.”

Published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, the research encompassed 212 previously published studies and included a statistical analysis of 85 studies involving adults and 52 involving newborns.

Among the results, the team found touch was just as beneficial for mental health as physical health – a finding that held for adults and newborns – although touch had a bigger impact on some areas than others.

“Our work illustrates that touch interventions are best suited for reducing pain, depression and anxiety in adults and children as well as for increasing weight gain in newborns,” the researchers write.

The analysis revealed humans gained similar benefits in terms of their physical health when touched by other humans as by objects – such as social robots or weighted blankets.

Hartmann said that was a surprise. “This means we need to undertake more research on the potential of weighted blankets or social robots to improve people’s wellbeing, especially during contact-limiting situations like the recent Covid-19 pandemic,” she said.

The positive impact on mental health was larger for human touch than touch from objects – possibly, the team said, because it involved skin-to-skin contact.

Among other results, the team found touch was beneficial for both healthy and unwell people, although the impact was larger among the latter for mental health benefits.

The type of touch and its duration was not important, although greater frequency was associated with greater benefits in adults.

Further, touching the head was associated with greater health benefits than touching other parts of the body.

The team cautioned that some of the findings could be false positives, while it was not clear if they would hold across different cultures.

Dr Mariana von Mohr, from Royal Holloway, University of London, who was not involved in the work, said if future robots could more accurately replicate the texture and warmth of human skin, they may be able to provide comparable mental health benefits to human touch.

“[These properties are] important because our skin contains specialised sensors, known as C-tactile afferents, which are particularly receptive to gentle, caressing touch and temperature similar to that of human skin, factors that are also thought to facilitate emotional regulation,” she said.

Prof Katerina Fotopoulou, at University College London, said the research gave a bird’s-eye view of the benefits of touch interventions on health.

She cautioned that the work could not offer more specific conclusions, such as the particular types of touch that may be associated with specific health benefits.

Dr Susannah Walker, at Liverpool John Moores University, agreed, noting that many of the studies considered were small and included varied types of touch and different measures of their outcomes. “This means it is hard to draw firm conclusions about why they work,” she said.

Fotopoulou added that the research could fuel new work in the field, including how touch could be used alongside other treatments.

“It is a historical misfortune that we have prioritised talking over touch or other somatic therapies in the past couple of centuries. This review gives us the necessary emphasis and confidence to redress this balance with further, careful study on touch interventions,” she said.

[film-classics]

Greer Garson - The Duchess

Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson (born in Manor Park, Essex on September 29, 1904) was a British-American actress. Her air of controlled maturity and understated elegance lent to her being referred to as "The Duchess."

She graduated with a B.A. with honors in English in 1926 at King's College London and did postgraduate work and studied French theater at the University of Grenoble in 1927. Starting out later as an actress, her early professional appearances were on stage, starting at Birmingham Repertory Theatre.

Louis B. Mayer discovered Garson while in London looking for new talent. In 1937, Garson signed with MGM, where she became a major box-office star. Her portrayal of strong women brought her critical acclaim, earning Oscar nods in films such as Mrs. Miniver (1942) and  The Valley of Decision (1945).

She only made a few films after her contract expired, but continued to appear on television. In 1967, she retired at Forked Lightning Ranch in New Mexico and focused on philanthropic interests.

She lived her final years in a penthouse suite at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where she died from heart failure at 91.

Legacy:

Is the fourth most-nominated woman for the Best Actress Oscar, with seven, including a record-tying five consecutive nominations (1941–1945)

Won the Academy Awards: Best Actress for Mrs. Miniver (1942)

Won the Golden Globe Best Actress for Sunrise at Campobello (1960)

Awarded Best Acting by the National Board Review for Pride and Prejudice (1940), Mrs. Miniver (1942), and Sunrise at Campobello (1960)

Listed by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top-10 box office draws from 1942 to 1946

Won Best Actress for Random Harvest (1941) from the 1944 Picturegoer Awards

Awarded Most Popular Female Star by Photoplay Awards in 1945 and 1946

Honored with the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award in 1961

Donated land and money to the Department of the Interior to protect ruins in 1966

Awarded the Golden Gavel by Toastmasters International

Honored as one of the Woman of the Year by the Los Angeles Times in 1968

Received an honorary degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1973

Presented by the American-Scottish Foundation with the William Wallace Award in 1977

Granted an honorary doctorate in 1977 from Ulster University for her endowments of the Greer Garson Film Award and Gree Garson Theatre Award

Established the Greer Garson Theatre Center in 1985 and Greer Garson Communications Center and Studios in 1989 in Santa Fe

Awarded the Conservation Service Award by the Department of Interior in 1981

Set up the endowment for the E. E. Fogelson and Greer Garson Fogelson Distinguished Chair in Urology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and the Greer Garson and E.E. Fogelson Distinguished Chair in Medical Research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in 1982

Funded the E. E. Fogelson Visitor Center at Pecos National Historical Park in 1987

Honored with an Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts by the Governor of New Mexico in 1987

Received the Golda Meir Fellowship Award of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1988

Set up the Fogelson Forum at Texas Christian University in 1990

Received an honorary doctorate and the Medal of Distinction from SMU Meadow School of the Arts in 1991

Presented with the TACA Silver Cup Award in 1991

Has been the namesake for the Texas Health Presbyterian's annual fundraising event, the Greer Garson Gala, since 1992

Established the Greer Garson Theatre at the Southern Methodist University Meadow School of the Arts in 1992

Appointed by Queen Elizabeth II as Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1993

Set up the E.E. Fogelson and Greer Garson Fogelson Charitable Foundation in 1996, with numerous philanthropic interests in the arts, education, environment, and medicine

Donated personal memorabilia as part of the Greer Garson Collection in the SMU Bywaters archival collection

Honored as Turner Classic Movies Star of the Month for March 2013

Inducted in the Online Film and Television Association Hall of Fame in 2014

Has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1651 Vine Street for motion picture

[the-student-improvement]

› › › welcome to my blog !!!

| studygram _ pinterest _ carrd |

◜ info ◞

hiii!! welcome to the student improvement, a blog focused on studying, productivity, and lifestyle! enjoy various moodboards, articles, inspo posts, freebies, & follow me on my journey through a-levels to university!

◜ about me ◞

i’m isa, i use she/they pronouns, & i’m a 17 year old college student in london, england! i’m currently studying my first year of my a-level courses in english literature, philosophy, & film studies.

◜ my goals ◞

in no particular order !

- to get a consistent study routine that adequately balances all of my subjects

- drink wayyyy more water

- start relearning spanish and integrate it into my daily routine

- work on cultivating this blog, my studygram, and my student community server

- start tennis lessons

◜ hobbies ◞

— reading (physical books not much bc of college but i do read fanfics fairly regularly - lotttsss of choice bc i have so many interests, also dw i don’t read smut!)

— writing (as part of my essay-based subjects, my volunteering as a blog writer and editor for Simple Studies, & has always been a passion of mine)

— playing bass guitar (yuppp i’m a music lover 🗣️, i was in a small band in secondary school - aka high school for the americans - and attended the school’s guitar club regularly, where I found my love for bass. i’m not in a band currently but i’m interested in joining one, my college has music facilities but i can’t access them as i’m not a music student 😭)

◜ my favs ◞

ok guys we’re like scratching the surface of my manyyy interests and like fandom territory lets goooo

— book series: a series of unfortunate events by lemony snicket, percy jackson by rick riordan, delirium trilogy by lauren oliver, the hunger games by suzanne collins, grishaverse books by leigh bardugo

— tv shows: new girl, community, gossip girl, yellowjackets, the wilds, class of 07, teen wolf, paper girls, buffy the vampire slayer, hsmtmts, mysterious benedict society, a series of unfortunate events (ohhh the adaptation was amazing), ahs1989, the boys, grease rise of the pink ladies

— films: fantastic mr fox, emma (w anya taylor joy), hunger games catching fire, grease, bottoms, fear street 1978, hsm2, the grand budapest hotel, cabin in the woods, princess diaries, legally blonde, all the narnia films, heathers

there’s a wayyy more detailed list on my carrd!!

◜ likes ◞

— musicals

— tv shows

— spotify <ily crane wives3

◜ dislikes ◞

— my procrastination demons

— superrr busy schedules

— bugs

theres a more detailed list in my carrd!!

◜ my tags ◞

— #dailystudentimprovement

› › daily life pics, recaps, etc.

— #askstudentimprovement

› › for responding to asks

— #studystudentimprovement

› › advice & inspo for studying and productivity

— #lifestylestudentimprovement

› › lifestyle inspo, advice, tips, support, etc.

◜ studyblr shoutouts ◞

check these guys out!!

›› @riverlightlily

›› @wik-likes-studying-and-films

›› @isasarchives

›› @emmastudies

[mollieblue]

Hey #labour, you should hire me to talk at you about how to actually fix Britain:

Terfs are the enemy, Trans folx are the people.

Small businesses need support on the ground level in order to foster amazing communities.

Invest in education to the point teachers are as paid well as their private peers or dare I say as well as an MP. I would say that if an MP describes their role as being vital, integral and essential to running the country, who receives a handsome tax paid salary with expenses paid with the public purse, why is it that other public sector roles are paid relatively below minimum wage? This applies to all public sector workers; civil servants, NHS staff, and teachers of all stripes. They are just as vital, integral, and essential to running the country, if not more so, than the openly profiteering geezers in Westminster.

Why is it that the rule makers are more important than those ensuring that the rules work? Those holding up society and holding it together are so sorely underpaid in this country that they are giving their lives to you at pittance so you can be okay. The NHS is a wonderful thing, and it breaks my heart that we don't fully fund it. The same goes for education, social services, community organisations, and libraries. These currently literally keep people existing at the bare minimum, but when fully funded and staffed, they transform lives for the better.

Equal pay for Equal work 》 Equal pay for Equal Importance. Ignore the 'we can't pay them the hundreds of thousands that MPs get' elephant in the room. I want you instead to imagine a world in which all public sector workers are paid the exact same amount regardless of hierarchy or public aspect they interact with. I'm no expert, but I reckon £86,584, the basic annual salary for a UK MP in 2023, would be an absolute god send to a junior doctor on roughly £38k. My partner practically works at minimum wage for 50 hours when you account for the marking, the planning, the organisation of your entire schedule to an impromptu meeting with angry parents and worrying about ofsted. It has worn them down, mostly because we can't have a social life, spending money on the theatre, in shops, on things that make us happy and human. We can't save, and we can't afford nice things. That fucking sucks. It wears a person out and throws them out of the system that's holding up the world.

Everyone I know is feeling like the above, regardless if they're private or public, freelance or salaried. One solution to help is basic universal income. Give everyone over 16 £500 & everyone over 18 £1000 each month for a year and see how awesome it would be in a year's time. I already know how much good that would do to me and everyone I know.

So pay everyone £12,000 a year and then pay all public sector workers the base salary of £86,000 rising in step with inflation. If the private sector can, in theory, pay whatever wages it wants, having a guarantee that your basics are paid will eliminate sooooo much stress. Rich folx can donate theirs, college kids can do interesting work at college because £500 buys a lot of art supplies and travel to museums, exhibitions, and events. Youth would have means to explore the nation before university or set up in an apprenticeship. Our elderly can use it to afford end of life care provisions or enrich their retirement or hell, just keep the lights on. Working folx would undoubtedly benefit the most and would probably like their jobs much more if they know things are covered.

To foot the bill, impose a commons tax on all privately owned land that fairly compensates the commons, ie, the UK public, back.

Make the North part of your game plan, rather than a foot note.

On a serious note; nationalise the railway system and expand the network. It is hell going east to west here, up to 3 hours to go 50 miles west and just 3 to get to London from Selby in North Yorkshire. How is this acceptable?

Invest in working class politicians to bring the reality of Britain back into government. Without our views or experiences on the table, why are we surprised when the Tories fuck us over again? If you want true, enthusiastic support from the British people, do not talk at us as if we're irresponsible children and actually engage with the very liberal and progressive discussions we have daily. Especially people under 40 - the older generation that pulled us out of the EU will be gone soon - you need to court and actually help out.

[justforbooks]

Peter Usborne, who has died aged 85, created a publishing company that changed the look and feel of nonfiction books for children. Although they were widely used in schools, Usborne books became a household brand, particularly associated with finding things out at home, through attractive illustrated, fact-filled publications that entertained children with high-quality pictures and accessible bites of information.

Before his publishing career, Peter was a co-founder in 1961 and the first managing director of the satirical magazine Private Eye. It grew out of a humorous magazine called Mesopotamia that Peter launched while a student at Balliol College, Oxford, with fellow students, among them John Wells and Richard Ingrams, as writers. On graduating, he used his best networking skills to secure funding to get the magazine launched, but left in 1965 to study for an MBA at the Insead (Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires) business school in Fontainebleau, France.

In 1964 he had married Cornelie Tücking and they went on to have two children, Nicola and Martin. Peter said that he had wanted to publish books for children from the moment he knew that he was going to be a father. In 1969, working for a publishing company, British Printing Corporation (BPC), as assistant to the chair, he asked to change tack and work in children’s books instead. He was given a publishing role at Macdonald Education in 1970, and his launch series was Macdonald Starters, a list of nonfiction titles for very young children that combined attractive but simple illustrations with a few words of text. They were conceived for the schools market, and designed to satisfy children’s boundless curiosity and need for answers to their questions. He eschewed subject specialists and instead used writers – including himself – who were able to communicate ideas easily and to make information-sharing lively.

After two years, Peter felt he had learned enough to set up his own company and in 1973 he launched Usborne Publishing, spurred on by the birth of his son. Peter described parenting as the “greatest gift” he had ever been given. Drawing on the model he had created at Macdonald Education, using in-house writers, illustrators and designers, Peter made sure Usborne Publishing could grow fast from secure foundations. Series such as the Know How books and the touchy-feely series That’s Not My … (now numbering 72 titles) became staples of the list. His infectious enthusiasm for the books brought great loyalty from the Usborne staff, who enjoyed the range of creative roles they were able to take on, as well as Peter’s sense of them as part of his extended family.

The quality of Usborne Publishing books, their recognisable look, their affordable cover price and the fact that they lived up to their ambition of making learning fun ensured they became a key part of childhood for many. For those who did not have easy access to bookshops, Peter set up a scheme through which Usborne books could be sold at local community events and gatherings.

When Robert Maxwell acquired BPC in 1981, Peter swiftly bought back the small stake that BPC had taken in Usborne Publishing. In 1995 he sold 26% of the company to Scholastic. It has continued to grow and now has an annual turnover in excess of £100m.

Peter never lost his own boundless curiosity or his belief in his motto for the company – “Do it better”. He remained involved with the business, latterly as chair, working in partnership with his daughter, who joined the company in 2015 and became CEO in 2022. Peter was appointed MBE in 2011, advanced to CBE in 2022. He received the London Book Fair lifetime achievement award in 2015, and Usborne Publishing was celebrated as publisher of the year in both 2012 and 2020.

He had always intended that Usborne Publishing would have a philanthropic programme. With his children, he set up the Usborne Foundation in 2008 with funds to be granted to education and health projects. The foundation has created sophisticated tech games based on the foundations of literacy learning, and accessible for children who struggle to read; and developed a literacy-based ebook series, Teach Your Monster to Read.

Imposingly tall, even when stooped by ankylosing spondylitis, a spinal condition with which he was diagnosed in his 30s, mildly spoken and with a boyish enthusiasm for books and their readers, Peter was a benign presence in children’s publishing. His generosity as a host of memorable parties and celebrations – most recently for 50 years of Usborne Publishing at the Bologna book fair in March – helped to generate huge affection for him and for Usborne.

Peter was born in Hampstead, London, the son of Thomas Usborne, a senior civil servant, and his German-born wife Gerda (nee Just). The family moved to Weybridge, Surrey, when Peter was a child and he was sent to school at Summer Fields, Oxford, and then Eton college; and from there went to Balliol.

His marriage to Cornelie ended in divorce in 1995. He is survived by his second wife, Wendy (nee Browning), whom he married in 2012, by Nicola and Martin, and by five grandchildren, Jesse, Caspar, Max, Olive and Hazel.

🔔 Thomas Peter Usborne, publisher, born 18 August 1937; died 30 March 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com