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...The court of justice said Portugal had committed serious infringements of EU environmental law
Portugal has been fined €10m (£8.7m) by the EU’s court of justice for failing to comply with environmental laws that require it to protect biodiversity. It has also been ordered to pay €41,250 a day until it complies with a previous court order in 2019.
The court said it was imposing the maximum fine possible to “encourage” Portugal to bring the infringement to an end.
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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.”
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Heel raar en heel diepzinnig: Rob van Essen heeft in zijn nieuwe roman weer iets briljants te pakken
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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.
NEW YORK (ANP) - Broadcom behoorde donderdag tot de winnaars op de beurzen in New York. De chipmaker boekte afgelopen kwartaal meer omzet en winst dan verwacht, dankzij de aanhoudende sterke vraag naar chips voor kunstmatige intelligentie (AI). Ook de omzetverwachting voor het huidige kwartaal viel hoger uit dan voorzien.
Broadcom voorspelt daarnaast dat de omzet uit de verkoop van zijn AI-chips volgend jaar de 100 miljard dollar zal overschrijden. Het aandeel werd daarop bijna 3 procent hoger gezet. Branchegenoot Marvell Technology, die na de slotbel met cijfers komt, klom een kleine 2 procent.
De algehele stemming op Wall Street was terughoudend door de aanhoudende oorlog van de Verenigde Staten en Israël tegen Iran, die de zesde dag is ingegaan. De Dow-Jonesindex noteerde kort na opening van de markt 0,5 procent lager op 48.492 punten en de brede S&P 500-index verloor 0,2 procent tot 6855 punten. Techbeurs Nasdaq speelde 0,1 procent kwijt op 22.790 punten.
LONDEN (ANP) - Het Verenigd Koninkrijk stuurt nog eens vier straaljagers van het type Typhoon naar Qatar. Dat maakte de Britse premier Keir Starmer bekend op een persconferentie. Hij benadrukte daar dat veel wordt ondernomen om Britten in het Midden-Oosten te beschermen.
De premier zei te begrijpen dat er grote bezorgdheid is over het lot van landgenoten in de regio en de mogelijkheid dat het conflict verder escaleert. Hij stelde dat zich honderdduizenden Britse burgers in landen bevinden die momenteel worden bestookt door Iran.
De premier noemde het beschermen van Britten topprioriteit en zei dat ruim voor de oorlog al versterkingen naar de regio waren gestuurd. Het VK zou later bij de uitbraak van vijandelijkheden snel in actie zijn gekomen om bondgenoten en burgers te beschermen.
De Typhoon-straaljagers gaan een eskader versterken in Qatar, een van de Golfstaten die ook onder vuur ligt. Ook bevestigde Starmer dat Wildcat-helikopters die drones kunnen uitschakelen vrijdag op Cyprus arriveren.
Euro productivity suite appears to be hosted Nextcloud and Collabora Online
In the battle of the online office suites, a new contender has entered the ring... but under the wrestler's mask, we think there may be a familiar face.…
“The entire Sun oscillates in a globally coherent way, and the oscillations are formed by sound waves trapped inside the Sun that make it resonate just like a musical instrument.”