Clint Mansell

New research, drawing on an extraordinary data set from Argentina's Dirty War in the 1970s and '80s, suggests ... that the kinds of career pressures familiar to employees everywhere — the desire to revive a stalled career or obtain a minor promotion — can be enough to incentivize lower- and midlevel officials to violate professional obligations, fundamental norms and even basic morality. The people who make those decisions, the research suggests, are neither extremists nor victims. They are often just middling workers looking for a way to get ahead.

A review of "Making a Career in Dictatorship," by political scientists, Adam Scharpf and Christian Glassel.

Tehran condemns ‘definitive violation’ but announces no specific reprisals as negotiations near decisive stage

• Middle East crisis – live updates

A proposed peace agreement between Iran and the US seemed to still be on the table on Tuesday despite US bombings of Iranian targets – the first military action by Washington since the 8 April ceasefire.

The Iranian foreign ministry denounced the US attack – aimed at missile launchers and efforts to lay fresh mines in the strait of Hormuz – as “an act of bad faith” and “a definitive violation of the ceasefire” and said it would not leave aggression unanswered. But it conspicuously did not pull out of the talks that were continuing under the joint mediation of Pakistan and Qatar.

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Home to some of London’s most iconic landmarks, the City of Westminster sees around 25 million of tourists every year. Add that number to residents and professionals who transit through central London daily, and we’re talking lots of people using the Underground, a.k.a. the Tube. Fortunately for travelers, eight stations are getting restroom upgrades with a big assist from Hugh Broughton Architects.

When the Victorians established the first underground train network in the mid-to-late 1800s, they incorporated arched details and tile work that is preserved today, often augmented with contemporary nods to the city’s history and culture. Opened in 1863 along the Metropolitan Line, Baker Street is one of the oldest stations. In a design convention seen throughout the Underground, decorated tiles added later feature a silhouette of Sherlock Holmes—a tribute to the character’s fictional address on the station’s titular street.

Tile designs are richly embedded throughout the system. An architect named Leslie Green is known for a slew of deep red tile facades on more than a dozen central stations. Some interiors are covered practically top to bottom with the material, with the location names and “Way Out” signs made entirely from ceramic. Bethnal Green station features fantastic relief tiles of London icons, and a few years ago, a design student named Jeffrey Miller even repurposed the Tube’s own waste into Art Nouveau-style tiles modeled on historic versions.

Hugh Broughton Architects’ redesign continues this tradition, but it also serves the practical purpose of making these spaces safer, more inclusive, and more accessible. “There is a clear demand for public toilets across London, and many councils struggle with the costs surrounding maintenance and issues around antisocial behaviour,” says a statement. “To address this issue, the council is creating a series of inclusive facilities that demonstrate high-quality design and enshrine as much civic pride as the Victorians displayed when they first started looking at a proper sanitation system for the general public in the 19th century.”

The facilities at Victoria Embankment, Parliament Street, Piccadilly Circus, Green Park, Carnaby Street, Westminster Pier, Covent Garden, and Leicester Square are all getting vibrant makeovers. The tiles incorporate designs by artist and illustrator James Lambert, who interprets the distinctive character of each location through historical motifs and iconography. Among numerous playful references, you’ll find patterns consisting of the King’s Guards in their iconically tall, black, furry helmets and a tribute to George John Vulliamy’s giant sphinxes that guard Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment.

The restrooms are being refurbished in succession. Victoria Street opened in February 2025, followed by Parliament Street, and now Piccadilly Circus and Green Park. The next will be Carnaby Street and Westminster Bridge. Follow updates on the firm’s Instagram.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Eight London Underground Restrooms Get Vibrant Refurbs with Illustrated Tiles appeared first on Colossal.

.NET product manager Richard Lander has written a lengthy post describing how the team intends to improve the memory safety of C# by introducing a new model and redefining the existing unsafe keyword, making the language more like Rust, though without giving up automatic memory management. "We envision a future where C# is among a set of languages chosen and noted for the type- and memory-safety enforcement," said Lander. Many C# developers never use unsafe, but it has been part of the language from its first release. "Writing unsafe code is like writing C code within a C# program," said an early book called The C# Programming Language, written by its inventor Anders Hejlsberg and others. Examples of where unsafe code is necessary include interop with the underlying operating system, accessing memory-mapped devices, or implementing time-critical code. Unsafe code allows the use of pointer types, which are not tracked by the .NET garbage collector, and pointer operators. Other than that, the existing unsafe modifier has no effect on a type or member. This will change in C# 16, which is two versions in the future and will be released in late 2027, according to the usual annual .NET cycle, along with .NET 12, which will be a long-term support (LTS) release. Developers can also expect a preview in C# 15 and .NET 11. In the new model, marking a method as unsafe will "also mark it as requires-unsafe, meaning callers must be in an unsafe context and overrides cannot be unsafe if the base members is safe," states the current language proposal. This means that the unsafe designation propagates to callers until it is suppressed by including an unsafe context within a method, but not marking the method as unsafe. Some have questioned why the team will rely on the absence of unsafe to suppress propagation, rather than using the safe modifier. "I've been advocating the design team for just this thing," said Lander. It will no longer be possible to mark a type as unsafe; the unsafe scope moves down to individual methods, properties, and fields. Another change is that the use of pointer types and some pointer expressions will no longer be considered unsafe; it is only dereferencing a pointer and therefore accessing unmanaged memory that will require an unsafe context. The changes will be opt-in for C# 16, meaning that developers can continue with the C# 1.0 model, but the .NET runtime libraries will opt-in, said Lander. In addition, Microsoft is considering adding badges on packages in NuGet, the .NET package repository, to show whether they have opted in and to encourage adoption. A future version of C# may make the model opt out instead. "Our intention is to make the new C# safety model the new normal," said Lander. The idea is not to make unsafe code less dangerous, but rather to make it more visible and easier to review. This extends to safety documentation, via a comment on an unsafe member that defines a contract for its use, which will be encouraged by static code analyzers. Developer reaction so far is largely positive. "I'm both a C# and Rust dev, and I really welcome it ... I wouldn't hate it if C# became closer to a managed Rust," said one. One odd thing about this proposal is that C# developers working on business applications will not notice any change, as they never use unsafe code. Nevertheless, Lander stated that "this feature is among the highest-leverage changes that we can make" to improve confidence in C# code safety. ®

Nederland stond met dank aan de Mocromaffia natuurlijk al lang en breed bekend als narcostaat, maar de ondermijnende onderwereld krijgt nog altijd meer en meer grip op de bovenwereld. Dat staat in het Dreigingsbeeld Ondermijning Nederland van het Strategisch Kenniscentrum Ondermijnende Criminaliteit: "De rol van georganiseerde criminaliteit in Nederland neemt toe doordat criminele samenwerkingsverbanden voorzien in maatschappelijke behoeften zoals wonen en zorg, doordat burgers en bedrijven een oogje dichtknijpen en doordat politici en beleidsmakers zich bewust en onbewust laten manipuleren." Een soort staatsgreep, die in alle delen van het land ingrijpende gevolgen kent, zoals extreem jonge crimineeltjes, bijzondere bijbaantjes, advocaten die tot waanzin worden gedreven en gestoorde ghetto's terwijl de gevangenissen vol zitten en jeugdreclassering jankt om geld voor een softere aanpak.

Om aan te geven hoe ziek we ervoor staan: "Op middelbare scholen, en in een enkel geval zelfs op basisscholen, worden jongeren op geraffineerde wijze geronseld of verleid om een klus te verrichten waarmee ze snel geld kunnen verdienen." Criminele organisaties dringen alle haarvaten van de samenleving binnen en krijgen bemoedigend genoeg ook steeds meer invloed op het bestuur. Tel daarbij op dat het gezag sowieso al niet uitblinkt in gezag en je hebt een serieuze crisis die mooi achteraan de lange Rij der Crises kan aansluiten. Tja, criminelen zijn de baas en Nederland is het nieuwe Italië, met veel minder lekker ijs, maar goed, dat is weer een andere crisis.