Primary School Bangers caused a sensation on TikTok, then at Glastonbury, and now it’s gone nationwide. Is it harmless nostalgia – or a symptom of an increasingly conservative culture?
He’s got the whole Warwick Arts Centre in his hands. It’s Friday night and the 550-capacity venue is sold out. The theatre is full of adults singing the school assembly hymns you may remember from childhood. They are rising and shining, conducting gleeful hand actions of wiggly worms and fish in the sea. Just what is going on?
James B Partridge’s Primary School Bangers is the hit show that is storming UK arts centres, originally a viral video that has become a defiantly IRL phenomenon. “It just brings back memories of primary school, sitting in the hall,” enthuses Hayley, 40. She is one of many teachers attending tonight. “We don’t sing in primary schools much any more,” mourns Katie, 33. She is right: in the 2010s, funding cuts, Conservative policy and a crisis in teacher retention caused an ongoing fall in music at primary level. At her school, children sing just once every three weeks. Some of tonight’s pull is communal. “You go to a show and you have to sit and watch,” says Frank, 61, “but you’re actually participating in this, that’s the big difference.”
Continue reading...Actor Katie Leung narrates this genre-bending debut in which an Victorian Arctic explorer is catapulted into our brave new world
The Ministry of Time opens in the middle of a job interview. The applicant, a nameless British Cambodian civil servant, is in line for a role that involves working with expats of “high-interest status and particular needs”. When she asks where these expats come from, she is told: “History.” The interviewer adds, casually, “We have time travel.”
Listeners concerned about the practicalities of this time-hopping tale will be reassured by our protagonist’s observation that contemplating the physics leads to a “crock of shit”, so it is best not dwelled upon. “All you need to know is that in your near future, the British government developed the means to travel through time but had not yet experimented with doing it.” Her job, then, is to act as minder or “bridge” to individuals removed from their eras and bounced into the present.
Continue reading...In his new book, the celebrated author explains why we need ‘consciousness hygiene’ to defend ourselves from AI and dopamine-driven algorithms
Each day when you wake up, you come back to yourself. You see the room around you, feel your body brush against your clothes and think about your plans, worries and hopes for the day. This daily internal experience is miraculous and mysterious, and the subject of Michael Pollan’s new book, A World Appears.
It also may be under siege, Pollan said. He recently suggested that people need a “consciousness hygiene” to defend our internal world against invaders that are trying to move in. Our ability to sit with our thoughts and perceive the world, he argues, is increasingly disrupted by algorithms engineered to tickle our dopamine receptors and capture our attention. Meanwhile, people are forming attachments to non-human chatbots, projecting consciousness on to entities that do not possess it.
Continue reading...
Ruim 3,5 miljoen Nederlanders kregen vorig jaar bij de apotheek te horen dat hun medicijn er niet was. In Haren moeten de apothekers patiënten teleurstellen: „Het spijt mij meneer, ik kan u ook niet helpen.”
/s3/static.nrc.nl/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/02125341/030326BIN_2031683627_apotheek1.jpg)
Heel raar en heel diepzinnig: Rob van Essen heeft in zijn nieuwe roman weer iets briljants te pakken
In zijn nieuwe roman speelt een schoonmaakmiddel op pootjes een hoofdrol. Het is een eigenzinnige toevoeging aan zijn oeuvre van autobiografische sciencefiction en nuchter magisch-realisme.
/s3/static.nrc.nl/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/05141223/050326BOE_2031965957_Rob-van-Essen.jpg)
schwit1 shares a report from Slow Boring: A new report (PDF) from the Center for Global Development documents that most of [the decentralized solar/battery systems used in poor countries in sub-Saharan Africa] use lead-acid batteries, like Americans use in cars. Lead-acid batteries work for a while and then need to be recycled. If they're recycled safely, that's fine. But in poor countries, most lead-acid batteries are not recycled safely and they become a huge source of toxic lead poisoning. C.G.D. believes that decentralized solar systems are currently generating somewhere between 250,000 and 1.5 million tons of unsafe lead-acid battery waste per year, a number that could grow much higher.
Americans have mostly heard about lead issues in recent years due to the tragic situation in Flint, Michigan. But on the whole, lead exposure via faulty water pipes is a relatively minor issue. Across American history, the biggest culprits for lead exposure have been lead paint and leaded gasoline. Both were phased out decades ago, but old paint chips and lingering lead in soil have remained problems for years, albeit at diminishing rates.
The global situation is quite different and much worse, to the point that in low- and middle-income countries, half of children have blood lead levels above the threshold that would trigger emergency action in the United States. It sounds fantastical to cite numbers this high. But there is credible (albeit somewhat uncertain) research indicating that five million people per year die as a result of lead-induced cardiovascular impairments. And roughly 20 percent of the gap in academic achievement between poor and rich countries is due to lead's impact on kids' cognitive development. The report goes on to note that lead-acid batteries dominate solar storage in poorer countries because they're far cheaper than lithium-ion alternatives. When these lead batteries reach end-of-life, they are often recycled unsafely, creating significant lead pollution.
It's difficult to determine the scale of the problem due to limited data and minimal attention from policymakers, but researchers say it could become massive as solar adoption accelerates. Since safer battery technologies and proper recycling methods already exist, the issue largely stems from cost and lack of regulation. In other words, the problem is solvable if addressed early.
Americans have mostly heard about lead issues in recent years due to the tragic situation in Flint, Michigan. But on the whole, lead exposure via faulty water pipes is a relatively minor issue. Across American history, the biggest culprits for lead exposure have been lead paint and leaded gasoline. Both were phased out decades ago, but old paint chips and lingering lead in soil have remained problems for years, albeit at diminishing rates.
The global situation is quite different and much worse, to the point that in low- and middle-income countries, half of children have blood lead levels above the threshold that would trigger emergency action in the United States. It sounds fantastical to cite numbers this high. But there is credible (albeit somewhat uncertain) research indicating that five million people per year die as a result of lead-induced cardiovascular impairments. And roughly 20 percent of the gap in academic achievement between poor and rich countries is due to lead's impact on kids' cognitive development. The report goes on to note that lead-acid batteries dominate solar storage in poorer countries because they're far cheaper than lithium-ion alternatives. When these lead batteries reach end-of-life, they are often recycled unsafely, creating significant lead pollution.
It's difficult to determine the scale of the problem due to limited data and minimal attention from policymakers, but researchers say it could become massive as solar adoption accelerates. Since safer battery technologies and proper recycling methods already exist, the issue largely stems from cost and lack of regulation. In other words, the problem is solvable if addressed early.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Er is een akkoord over een derde vlucht om gestrande Nederlanders op te halen, meldt het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken donderdag. Komende zaterdag zal in samenwerking met Corendon een vliegtuig van Muscat (Oman) naar Amsterdam vliegen.
Eerder op de dag kondigde het ministerie ook al twee vluchten aan om Nederlanders op te halen. Dat ging om vluchten vrijdag uit Muscat en Sharm-el-Sheikh (Egypte).
Het kabinet kondigde woensdag aan reizigers te gaan repatriëren. Er zitten in de regio vermoedelijk duizenden Nederlanders vast door de oorlog in Iran.
Het is volgens het ministerie de bedoeling dat er nog meer vluchten die kant op gaan om Nederlanders op te halen. Zij moeten zich dan wel bij het ministerie hebben gemeld en voldoen aan voorwaarden. Ook moeten zij een deel van de kosten dragen.