A childless woman flees into the forest and emerges with a swollen belly in director Didier Konings’ short, sharp fable

Before fertility tourism, the only option for your average medieval serf struggling to conceive was heading to the nearest foreboding woods and summoning weird, antlered dryads. Or so it seems from Didier Konings’ short but memorable folk-horror debut, in which wide-eyed villager Frieda (Anneke Sluiters) flees into the trees after escaping an attempted rape by local butcher Gelo (Léon van Waas). He has already told her, after scoffing a pig foetus, that he likes his meat weak and defenceless.

The dryads beat IVF hands down. Previously chided for her lack of childbearing by husband Hikko (Len Leo Vincent), Frieda emerges with a swollen abdomen. But the villagers fear it is the devil’s work, especially after finding Gelo in the woods, dismembered but freakishly still conscious. That’s about the extent of the story here, but Konings pares the focus effectively down to the essentials of this obscurantist hole: the crawling fear of evil among the villagers, and the necessary projection of it on to everything outside their control – female bodies and emotions, the natural world. Though her character verges on symbolic, Frieda – as well as the “wise women” of the forest, as per the original Dutch title – allow this fable’s feminist credentials to howl out unmistakably.

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Oscar-winning film-maker Barry Levinson’s docuseries Bucks County, USA examines the political divide in one town in a revealing and infuriating manner

Like many teenage best friends, Evi and Vanessa have a penchant for finishing each other’s sentences. Whether enmeshed on a couch or telling a story, one, a red-headed musical theater nerd with a personality nearly as boisterous as her signature puffy skirts, collides with the other, darker in hair and disposition, their speech bubbling with indecipherable affirmations and giggles. In a heady chorus of “duuude” and “no, you!”, it can be difficult to tell where one girl ends and the other begins.

Except, that is, at their respective homes. Evi’s mother, Lela, who like her daughter, espouses views considered left of liberal in the US context, speaks in support of LGBTQ students at local school board meetings and advocates for fact-based history lessons. Vanessa’s father, Paul Martino, is a right-leaning venture capitalist who likes to brag about installing school board members by spending $500,000 on local campaigns, an effort triggered by what he saw as unjustified school closures in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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It’s becoming obvious to many Americans that corporations have been raking it in while workers take it on the chin

Last week, the unlikely duo of Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon both spoke before a Washington group demanding a stop to AI and its datacenters.

Notably, both lambasted the corporate oligarchs behind AI.

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Australian scientists found unequal impact of the climate crisis would not be reversed even if implicit goal of the 2015 Paris agreement is achieved

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The unequal impact of the climate crisis on the world’s poorest people has been highlighted by new research that finds the tropics will be among the last places to feel the benefits if the global community cuts greenhouse gas emissions to net zero.

Temperatures have risen more significantly in tropical areas relative to historic levels than at higher latitudes, including in wealthier countries in Europe and North America.

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Juist niks voor Rob Jetten dit. Terwijl je zelf je social media account zonder enige transparantie laat voltikken door AI en dan samen met allerlei internationale hotemetoten zoals de president van Kenia en de minister van Buitenlandse Zaken van de VAE een of andere verklaring over AI opstellen. In die verklaring wordt opgeroepen tot transparantie over AI en JA we snappen dat dat gaat over het naar buiten brengen van dingen als dat Hugging Face incident maar kom op Rob Jetten, je hebt maandenlang stiekem AI gebruikt voor je social media berichten, dat is twee weken geleden uitgelekt en nu deel je zonder een spoortje zelfreflectie dit soort inhoudelijk lege statements. Het is dat we geen VVD-minister zijn, anders zouden we nú het AD bellen om te vertellen dat Rob Jetten geen enkele inhoud heeft en alleen maar bezig met beeldregie.

Huh, driekwart van Nederland gebruikt toch AI tegenwoordig?

Kennelijk belangrijker dan zijn bezoek aan Kamp Westerbork.

DEN HAAG (ANP) - Justitieminister David van Weel (VVD) heeft de Tweede Kamer "op het verkeerde been" gezet met zijn uitleg aan de Tweede Kamer over 10.000 aangiften van ernstige misdrijven die niet zijn behandeld, vindt de Algemene Rekenkamer. Afgelopen zomer zei de bewindsman in een overleg in de Tweede Kamer dat het voor een groot deel gaat om meldingen, terwijl dat bij slechts 10 procent het geval is. Ook een toelichting die de minister later gaf op de cijfers schiet volgens de rekenaars tekort.

SUSE has offered "voluntary separation" to eligible employees as the veteran Linux vendor reshapes its business, The Register can confirm. One source said People, Strategy and Transformation Executive Lisa Sherwell contacted them with the offer after an online company meeting broadcast from Singapore, during which executives joked about being past their own sell-by dates. Asked about the program, a SUSE representative told us: "As part of our ongoing efforts to align our business structure with long-term strategic priorities, SUSE has introduced a voluntary separation and early retirement option for eligible team members. Participation is completely voluntary for both employees and the organization, with no predefined targets. Our people remain our key differentiator, supported by industry-leading staff retention globally of 6 percent in core operational areas and an overall rate of 12 percent." The separation program follows another staffing development at SUSE's Czech operation, although there is no evidence that the two are connected. Employees in Prague unionized earlier this year, forming the SUSE Workers Union. The new union is part of the Czech ICT Union, which also organizes a group of Microsoft staff in the country. The ICT Union represents workers in the IT and call-center industries, an important part of the Czech economy. International technology companies with substantial operations in the country include IBM and Red Hat – even before the former acquired the latter – Oracle and its subsidiary NetSuite, Amazon, and Motorola. Indeed, that is why this vulture moved to Czechia just over a decade ago and went on to work for several such companies. The Reg FOSS desk is a former SUSE Prague staffer who thoroughly enjoyed his time there. Until he joined The Register full time in 2021, SUSE was the longest-serving employer of his career. We are not implying any sort of cause or effect here, but a month after learning about the union from one former colleague, this writer heard about the separation program from another. Multiple sources confirmed that SUSE had approached long-serving employees, particularly some with more than ten years at the company, about voluntary separation. One said they were contacted shortly after the Singapore meeting. Toward the end of this writer's stint at SUSE, the company acquired container-wrangler Rancher. Several Rancher executives later took senior positions within SUSE, accompanying a broader change in the company's direction. When we examined the release candidate of openSUSE Leap 16, we found that several longstanding SUSE tools had disappeared. Some were replaced by alternatives associated with Red Hat, including the Cockpit web management interface. Leap 16 may be the most legacy-free release of a traditional Linux distribution we have yet encountered: no X.org, no 32-bit compatibility libraries, no YaST, and an entirely new installer. SUSE is now asking at least some of its longest-serving employees whether they too are ready for a change. ®

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo: