Stueyman has added a photo to the pool:
The Harvey delta in all its glory, manual 4 shot pano, developed in capture one and then stitched with hugin.
After years of governments and tech vendors banging the digital sovereignty drum, most large organizations have concluded that true technological independence is beyond their reach. That's according to new research from Capgemini, which found that 59 percent of organizations regard complete digital sovereignty as unrealistic. Instead, two-thirds define it in terms of what the consultancy calls "resilient interdependence" – accepting continued reliance on outside technology providers while trying to ensure those dependencies do not threaten critical operations. It's a pragmatic conclusion, though perhaps not surprising given how thoroughly tangled those dependencies have become. Digital sovereignty broadly refers to an organization's ability to retain control over its data, infrastructure, software, and critical technology operations, including where they are hosted and whose laws govern them. Capgemini surveyed 1,300 business and technology executives in April 2026, covering companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue and government departments with budgets above $1 billion. Its separate Digital Sovereignty Index, based on an analysis of 866 organizations, found that 86 percent had significant exposure to foreign or externally controlled supply chains. Across the research, just 14 percent reported end-to-end visibility into dependencies throughout their wider technology ecosystems. Getting out of those relationships isn't necessarily straightforward either. Some 36 percent said moving away from a critical technology provider would take more than a year, while another 10 percent said they had no viable alternative. That leaves organizations trying to work out how much independence they actually need, rather than rebuilding their entire technology stacks closer to home. European respondents appeared particularly receptive to that compromise. Three-quarters defined sovereignty in terms of resilient interdependence, compared with half of respondents in the US. The UK also tended to view sovereignty through the lens of risk: 56 percent of British respondents primarily associated it with resilience and risk mitigation. This doesn't mean the subject has disappeared from the corporate agenda: 93 percent of respondents said it had been discussed at board level, and 44 percent ranked it among their board's top priorities. AI is adding another dependency for those boards to worry about. Three-quarters of organizations identified AI as a key focus of their sovereignty efforts, ahead of cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, data, and software. Money presents another problem. Just under half said they would pay extra for sovereign technology. Among those willing to do so, the acceptable premium averaged 23 percent. Perhaps the more uncomfortable finding concerns what happens when those carefully accepted dependencies actually fail. Among organizations that had recently suffered an operational disruption, just 42 percent had contingency plans in place. Almost two-thirds of US organizations were prepared, compared with slightly more than a third in Europe and Asia-Pacific. Capgemini argues the answer isn't complete technological independence, but deciding which systems and capabilities matter enough to keep under tighter control, while building alternatives and recovery plans around everything else. Given that one in 10 organizations cannot currently replace a critical provider at all, this may be less a philosophical embrace of interdependence than an acknowledgment of where the exits actually are. ®
Manfred Karge’s play about a woman acting as her dead husband was a cause célèbre in the 80s. It remains a bracing portrait of a divided person in a divided culture
It was Pierre Audi, the much-mourned founder of the Almeida, who way back in 1986 sent me a coffee-stained copy of Jacke wie Hose.
Manfred Karge’s one-woman play is a study of female survival in a terrifying world. Ella is a working-class woman who takes on the identity of her dead husband, Max, to endure what Brecht memorably dubbed “the dark times”: the 12 years of Nazi rule. But Karge extends this to include the division of Germany into two nation states (one communist, one capitalist) and the reconstruction that followed.
Continue reading...A film about sisterhood with fifty- and sixtysomething female leads is something to cheer – but would it have been made if its stars had aged like mere mortals since the 1998 original?
Would Hollywood have brought Practical Magic back from the dead if the intervening 28 years looked more visible on Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman? An awkward question, as it risks subjecting their faces to the invasive scrutiny older female actors already endure. Their return as leads in their late 50s and early 60s should count as progress. Yet it reveals a condition of female stardom: age can increase a female actor’s nostalgic value, provided it does not show too clearly on her face.
In Practical Magic 2, Bullock, 62, and Kidman, 59, return as sisters Sally and Gillian Owens. Dianne Wiest, 78, and Stockard Channing, 82, are back too. Joey King and Maisie Williams play Sally’s adult daughters, but Sally and Gillian remain central.
Continue reading...Labelled a tourist tax, proposals would give mayors power to decide how revenue raised should be invested
Holidaymakers will face a nightly levy on hotel and Airbnb-style stays in England under plans ministers are due to outline to give mayors new powers.
The idea, labelled a tourist tax, was first raised by Keir Starmer’s government in November and is similar to a scheme running in Scotland. It would allow mayors to charge a fee to visitors staying overnight and decide how the revenue raised should be invested.
Continue reading...This year’s festival offers an unusual Patricia Highsmith thriller, an adaptation of a hit stage show, a harrowing prison drama and a new way into the Rocky franchise
Defining Toronto’s place within the fall festival season has become a little harder in recent years. As fewer studios and film-makers want to brave the risks that come attached to premiering on such a stage (last year’s best picture winner One Battle After Another skipped festivals entirely and went straight to cinema), those that do tend to prefer Venice, Telluride and, especially this year, New York.
Last year’s biggest Toronto breakout was Obsession, a micro-budget, up-for-sale horror that played as part of the midnight madness strand, and while that film is now being pushed as an awards contender, it’s not what crowds and pundits typically expect from the starry, prestige-first festival. Is it best viewed now as a rough-and-ready genre hub or maybe a sales market, where perhaps we can still expect some Oscar contenders to be unveiled. It can make figuring out what to see and what to avoid a little harder – but here are some films to keep an eye on over the next week or so.
Continue reading...The president’s latest warning barely registered, written off as typical behavior. But the threats have real-world consequences
As the US and Iran fought around the strait of Hormuz last week, Donald Trump issued one of his typical threats. In an interview with a Fox News correspondent, Trump said Iran would be “totally wiped out as a country” if it retaliated for the latest wave of US air strikes.
That threat by the US president to wipe out another country generated few headlines, even during a relatively slow news week by Trump administration standards.
Continue reading...It has become common for people to wait in long lines for cafes, bakeries and ice-cream shops. But why? And what do the owners think?
At 9.45am on a warm Saturday in September, a queue snakes down the pavement in Notting Hill, west London. Stretching for 20 yards past office blocks, estate agents and cafes, the line is waiting peacefully for an unusual morning snack: frozen yoghurt. The purveyor is the dessert shop Yo-Chi, which opened only a fortnight ago, one of the many hospitality businesses making queueing an increasingly common part of the British dining experience.
“We wait in line for everything now,” says 23-year-old Hannan Mahamud as she stands midway down the queue with three friends. “I queued for an hour the other week for a cookie, although it wasn’t worth it. We heard about Yo-Chi through a creator on TikTok who works in an office building across the road and posts queue updates. We thought it might be a fun day out.”
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Het is eigenlijk heel simpel. Als Rob Jetten en D66 geen zin hebben om tijd te verspillen aan het schrijven AL DIE MILJOENMILJARD social media posts, dan gaan wij ook geen tijd meer verspillen aan het lezen ervan. Wij hebben @MinPres, @RobJetten en @D66 op Twitter geblokkeerd, en @d66_insta en @minpres op Instagram. Op TikTok volgen we alleen Nicolas Keenan, maar die filmpjes zijn wel gewoon echt. Wij nemen aan dat Laurens Dassen (hoewel, is Laurens Dassen zelf niet volledig door AI gegenereerd?) en al die andere klootviolen die zich om de haverklap het schompes boycotten zich bij ons aansluiten. Stop met het lezen van Rob Jetten slop, zodat je meer tijd overhoudt om video's van Jade Anna en Arie Boomsma te kijken. Want hee. Als we door AI gegenereerde meuk willen lezen, gaan we wel naar LinkedIn. Da's ook toevallig trouwens: D66'ers zwaar oververtegenwoordigd op LinkedIn.
