#i just heard about the breakthrough in the european rights

[frauenfootball]

Italian national broadcaster Rai will stream the Women's World Cup! (Don't know if you knew this already, and I admit I was losing hope we'd watch the competition anywhere 🥲)

https://www.figc.it/it/nazionali/news/alla-rai-i-diritti-di-trasmissione-del-mondiale-in-australia-e-nuova-zelanda-gravina-siamo-felici-importante-per-la-promozione

Alla Rai i diritti di trasmissione del Mondiale in Australia e Nuova Zelanda.

from the article:

Rai, as part of the agreement between FIFA and the EBU, representing the European public televisions, has acquired the multiplatform broadcasting rights, exclusively free-to-air for Italy, of the 2023 Women's Soccer World Cup, in schedule from 20 July to 20 August 2023 in Australia and New Zealand. The broadcasting rights concern 15 matches of the world championship event, including all the matches of the Italian national team, the opening match, the two semi-finals and the final. In addition to those on the 2023 Women's World Cup, the agreement with FIFA also provides for the broadcasting rights of the "FIFA Other Events 2024/2027" package, i.e. the U20 and U17 Youth World Cups, both for men and women, and some documentaries produced by FIFA and dedicated to the Women's World Cup.

[anncanta]

Veduta of Venice

Fandom: Dracula (2020)

Characters: Count Dracula, Zoe Van Helsing, Agatha Van Helsing

Relationship: Dracula/Zoe Van Helsing, Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing

Rating: Explicit

Veduta (Italian veduta - seen, view, picture, point of view) is a genre of Western European painting and graphics, especially popular in Venice of the 18th century.

@alma37 @hopipollahorror @ravenathantum @flutteringphalanges @ladyhaley28​ @dragatha @khyruma​

Read on AO3

Or read below

The hotel was damp and cold, but the view was magnificent. Rising from the chair, Zoe wrapped herself tighter in a wide woolen scarf and went out onto a tiny balcony made of openwork stone.

As far as the eye could see, there was water ahead – pinkish, blue, green. Zoe had never seen so much water before. The water has never been so close. Leaning over the balcony railing, Zoe stared down at the low waves intersecting at odd angles.

Such a strange city. When she bought a tour at the agency, she was offered a choice – Verona or Venice. Zoe rejected Verona at once. And she looked at the glamorous, deliberately beautiful photos of Venice for a long time as if looking for something – either a crack in the ideal porcelain world captured on the image or ugly everyday flaws. In the end, she decided – she has nothing to lose.

The flight never seemed to end. The large iron bird seemed to hang in the sky forever, spreading its immovable wings and holding the half-asleep Zoe either in its paws or in a steel silver beak. When, to her surprise, the bird let her go, Zoe still had to get from mainland Italy deep into the archipelago. So she arrived at the hotel completely exhausted.

She burst into a spacious room that smelled of rain and prickly nights, dropped her suitcase on the floor, and stretched out on an obscenely wide bed.

And when she woke up, the sun, mother-of-pearl gray skies, and water looked out of her windows.

Zoe wasn't going to take a vacation. She worked hard and monotonously, with stubborn, dull dedication, unlike many of her workaholic colleagues – not for the sake of her own reputation and career, and not at all for show. The fact is that there was really nothing more in her life.

Zoe didn’t realize it right away. She just worked, day after day, not even always overtime. Like everyone else, she played bowling on Thursdays and had fun in pubs on Fridays. But when her friends and colleagues hurried home to their families at the end of a stormy evening Zoe, starting her old Renault, every time fought the temptation to return to the laboratory.

This went on for a long time. Months. Years. Until one day, on the eve of her fortieth birthday, Zoe realized that the desire to go back to work after a party with friends was her only temptation.

For some reason, this understanding frightened her so much that the next morning she was already sitting in the office of the head of the medical research center in which she worked, with an application for a vacation, and a week later – on a plane on her way to Italy.

Zoe straightened and looked at the bright scarlet sun sinking into the bay. Self-pity is not the best feeling to approach the second half of your life, she thought. Well, in general, she had nothing to feel sorry for herself. She was lonely – but she always had more or less enough of her own company, with the rare addition of a friend or two to chat with over the weekend. She did not have an impressive career – although many of her colleagues at the center, who discussed at tea the young doctor, who had managed to make several breakthrough discoveries by the age of thirty-five, could argue with this. Success in science is an unpopular success. Nothing to brag about. Zoe chuckled out of the corner of her mouth. And she had absolutely no idea what to do next, and for that matter – why all this was needed.

On the other hand, why not?

Would she have died of some kind of blood cancer, she would have made a sort of a romantic heroine, Zoe thought irritably as she closed the balcony.

At the foot of the building, somewhere far, far away, muddy water was rustling and foaming.

***

Zoe bought a complete tour, which included a full package of services, so she did not choose a hotel. Maybe if she did, she would spend time looking for something more comfortable and not so boring, she mused as she walked down to the restaurant for lunch. During the week and a half that Zoe spent here, nothing happened in the hotel that could conditionally pass for entertainment. Don't consider the other guests as such, she chuckled mentally. On the stairs and in the corridors, there were mostly gloomy gray-haired couples and girls of dubious appearance. Sometimes a jazz band played in the lobby in the evenings.

There wasn`t a soul to be seen in the bright and quiet hall – except for a tall man in black, sitting in the far corner at the piano. Leaning over the keyboard, the man absentmindedly fingered the keys, pulling out the notes one at a time. Zoe smiled at the metaphor that crossed her mind and turned around and headed there instead of the restaurant.

In the niche in which the piano was hidden, only one small lamp burned, giving a soft yellow-orange light. Falling obliquely on the keyboard and the lid, it snatched out of the half-light a man's back and shoulder, tightened in a classic black suit, the outlines of the profile and hands with large fingers.

Approaching, Zoe leaned on the piano and for a while, just stood listening to the music. Now, being near, she could finally understand what was wrong with this music – the stranger played skillfully and cleanly, but the melody, its very fabric, seemed... vulnerable and fragile as if the pianist was painfully remembering it or composing it on the go. Zoe watched as his hands gently touch the keys as if asking about something – and finding no answer.

‘You haven't played for a long time,’ she said softly.

‘Very long,’ he raised his head. For a moment, his face – beautiful, pale, with dark eyes and well-defined lips – remained relaxed. Then he brushed aside a straight strand of black hair that had fallen on his forehead and looked at Zoe. And then a strange expression appeared in his gaze – bewildered, amazed... looking. This happens with those who have met someone whom they have long lost hope of seeing. Zoe could bet that he was about to say something, but at the last moment, he resisted. He turned away again and continued to play.

‘My… teacher was pretty good,’ an ironic note slipped through his low voice, ‘but I'm afraid I’m lacking in practice. What do you think?’ The stranger again raised his eyes to Zoe.

‘I like your manner,’ she said carefully. ‘Have you just arrived?’ she asked for some unknown reason.

‘Yes, yesterday,’ said the man. ‘Always wanted to go to Venice,’ he added slowly. ‘To this... city of dreams.’

Zoe smiled involuntarily. Looking at his hands, which were still on the keyboard, she suddenly imagined with amazing clarity how fingers stroking the keys touch her skin. Imagined how they touch her neck, shoulders, pass along the shoulder blades, move to the waist, barely noticeable, but confidently increasing the pressure. Turning away, Zoe blinked.

The momentary rush of embarrassment, however, disappeared as quickly as it had arisen. What are you here for, Zoe, she asked herself. Not to sit in the room in the evenings with a glass of Tokaj and picture suffering, are you? Take a look at this piece of masculine beauty and make the most of what he promises. If he promises, of course.

‘ – at dinner tonight?’ Zoe woke up and looked at her interlocutor. Judging by his look, he was perfectly aware of what she was thinking and did not seem to mind. ‘If I understood correctly, there will be dances after dinner.’

Zoe nodded.

‘It's always like this here on Fridays. If you're looking for entertainment, there is hardly a better case,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘The season has just ended.’

The man silently shook his head.

‘I’ll come,’ he answered, standing up. He bowed graciously, intending to leave, and suddenly turned around. ‘What is your name?’

Again this strange seeking expression, a poignant mixture of despair and hope. And mockery – not at her, at himself.

‘Zoe Van Helsing,’ she said. Amazement flashed in his dark eyes but then disappeared.

‘Count Dracula,’ he said, shaking her outstretched hand. ‘See you at dinner, Zoe Van Helsing.’

***

For the upcoming evening, Zoe prepared carefully. After scrapping several spectacularly low-cut dresses, she settled on blue jeans and a light blue blouse. ‘If he is a real Count,’ her pride chuckled, ‘you will hardly be able to surprise him.’ Well, she didn't intend to.

‘I want to have a good time,’ Zoe muttered, glancing at herself in the mirror of an antique carved dressing table. She washed off the mascara from her eyelashes, which she diligently dyed five minutes ago, then, after short thinking, wiped a thin layer of lipstick from her lips. Zoe used makeup a little and only on special occasions, but it was not a lack of habit or awkwardness that made her get rid of it now. She could not explain to herself why, but she was sure that the best choice for meeting the Count was naturalness.

The hotel restaurant was unusually full: probably dancing inspired not only her, moving to one of the few free tables – at the exit to the terrace – Zoe thought. Sitting at the table and ordering a glass of Chianti, she turned her face to the light wind blowing from the ajar doors.

The bay shone in shades of blue, pink, and dove. Small waves broke up, catching the lighted lanterns. Zoe heard how music was born and tried its power in the hall. The wind became a little cooler. The waiter brought her Chianti.

She could have sat like that all evening, Zoe thought after the third or fifth sip. The music became louder and a little braver. Zoe decided that she might need more wine.

‘You promised me a dance.’

‘When did I?’ Zoe turned around.

Pause.

‘One hundred twenty-three years ago.’

She chuckled.

‘What a precision. And what a tactlessness!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

He was dressed in the same classic black suit as when they first met, and just like when they first met, she wanted this suit off him immediately. Zoe nodded to his questioning glance in the direction of the chair opposite and said, putting down her glass:

‘You just hinted at my age?’

‘No way,’ Dracula responded with mock horror. His eyes flashed with a mixture of irony and melancholy. ‘Never mind, this is... a personal joke.’

The orchestra fell silent behind them. One by one, the instruments stopped playing, as if they were disappearing into the shadows, yielding to the only remaining violin.

Zoe finished her wine. She felt like crying. Determination and frivolity vanished, and anger with herself remained.

‘I –’ she began, but Dracula interrupted her.

‘You promised me a dance.’

She watched him get up and walk over to her. Taking his hand, she rose and allowed him to lead her to a small dance floor in the opposite corner. She saw him making a sign to the musicians, heard the first chords sounded, then he pulled her to him and velvetly ran his hand along her back.

Everything floated somewhere: Venice, the damp smell of canals, a shade of raw plaster, which seemed to cover everything and everyone in this city, a draft coming from everywhere; pink-blue sky. Closed, sharply defined lips and dark, demanding eyes.

Music came from somewhere with dry clicks, crumbling on them beat by beat and measuring their steps. Piano – thunderstorm, monotonous rain, wet asphalt, water on San Marco. Pigeons flutter out from under her feet. Fractional flashes of droplets gather in puddles, a violin steps carefully over them, creeps in, displaces other sounds, and again remains alone. Freezes, kissing her forehead. And everything freezes with it.

...They took the elevator for ages. Squeezing his hand, Zoe watched the numbers change on the scoreboard on the wall. When the number three finally lit upon it, it seemed to her: a little more, and she simply could not stand it. They got to the room, and holding the key card to the door, she was surprised – it does not open until it dawned on her: not her suit. The door opened, closed behind her. Zoe leaned back on it, lifted her head.

Dracula leaned over to her and took her face in his hands. Zoe stood silently, motionless. Closing her eyes, she held her breath, feeling the touch of his lips, then – the tongue. Snuggling up to him, she grabbed him by the neck. He ran his hands over her body, finding, squeezed the nipples through the fabric. He pulled her blouse from the belt and ducked under it with his palm. Exactly how she fantasized... a long time ago... yes, this... afternoon. Twitching impatiently, Zoe swung her hips, her jeans button digging into his stomach. He pulled away, turning her, pressed her to the door again, tore off the button, zipper, and put his hand into her panties. Zoe buried her forehead against the door with a groan. His fingers caressed her harshly and roughly, without ceremony, tormenting her, not allowing her to escape. Zoe finished, breathing out a soundless scream.

Grasping her from behind, Dracula waited until she calmed down, turned her around, ran his fingers over her cheeks, erasing the lines of tears. He pulled her into the room, along with him, to the bed.

Lying on her back, Zoe listened to the disturbed world rebuilding within her body. She smiled at Dracula, who had time to put his clothes somewhere and bent over her. Now his touch was gentle, fleetingly teasing as if he was asking for forgiveness for the recent explosion. Zoe lifted herself up and slid into his arms – and gasped as he rolled onto his back, swapping them.

Zoe loved sex and found partners easily. Many of them were passionate and skillful. But she never really wanted to be on top. She shifted in embarrassment. She wasn't even sure she understood how...

She did not have time to think out the thought: grabbing her by the waist, Dracula slowly lowered her onto himself. And it was so good and... accurately, that Zoe bit her lip with acute pleasure. Dracula waited a couple more moments, lifted her, froze. Zoe frowned in bewilderment. He smiled and moved his hips. Once, twice. The third – slower, then faster, and in the same order – again. Arching, she trembled – and when his fingers found her clitoris, everything became unimportant, there were only moans and sighs in the darkness.

…

‘Would you like some coffee?’ Zoe asked. Dracula, hugging her with both arms and absentmindedly running his fingers over her stomach, shook his head.

‘I don’t drink... coffee,’ he replied, and there was distant anxiety in his voice. Zoe nodded nonchalantly as she climbed out of bed, wrapped her dressing gown, and walked over to the table.

‘It's cold,’ she said, looking into the coffee pot. Well, the coffee was brought in yesterday. She turned to Dracula, who was sitting on the bed. He was disheveled and looked at her in a strange way. ‘I'll order a new one.’ Stepping to the balcony, Zoe opened the glass door and breathed in the morning air.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dracula get up and approach her.

The sky was still gray, but somewhere in the distance birds were already awakening. Zoe turned to Dracula – and froze, bumping into a sharp, focused gaze.

He stood naked in front of her, and there was something very familiar about it – not because of last night, but different.

‘Sorry.’

He grabbed her with lightning speed, so that she did not have time to recoil or cry out, hugged her again – and something happened.

Zoe felt herself trembling and swaying, slipping and falling into an unknown direction. Everything blurred, and before her eyes flashed pictures – an iron grate, a torch thrown to the ground, the smell of burnt wool, a nun's dress, and blood. Swaying, salty air, captain at the helm, shouts, shadows on the deck, and another fire. An explosion, the smell of fresh gunpowder tickling her nostrils, a man's face distorted by rage bending over her.

Agatha recoiled, gasping for air, and finally screamed when she realized what he was doing.

‘Agatha, it`s over!’ Reality fell on her and struck from all sides at once, stunning. ‘That's all, Agatha!’ Dracula hugged her, holding her. She struggled, trembling, bursting into sobs. ‘Sorry,’ he repeated when she was exhausted and quieted down. ‘Sorry, I had to make sure.’

He let her go, and she, moving away, climbed onto the bed, huddled like a wounded animal. She wrapped herself tighter in her dressing gown, which miraculously still remained on her. She leaned back on the pillow and cried softly. Dracula silently sat down on the other side of the bed.

‘You survived,’ Agatha said without looking at him.

‘I did,’ said Dracula. ‘I just slept for a hundred and twenty years. Then I woke up and saw around... all this. But I liked it, you know.’

Agatha didn't answer. She didn't want details. She wanted to close her eyes and not open them for another hundred years.

‘How many have you eaten?’ she said dismissively.

‘Agatha, you worked at the research medical center,’ Dracula's voice sounded annoyed. ‘Do you know who the donors are? These are special people who donate blood, eggs, and sperm.’ He paused. ‘And there is Tinder, besides.’

Agatha felt her head begin to throb heavily.

‘How is this possible?’ she asked hoarsely. Turning, she looked at Dracula. Dracula didn't answer. ‘It’s the twenty-seventh of October two thousand and twenty,’ Agatha said with an effort. ‘I ate toast for breakfast. My blood type is the first negative. I don't like grapes and I love bananas. Last year I went to Islamabad. I remember the life of Zoe Van Helsing!’ she shouted; her voice rang out again.

Dracula was silent, and somehow that silence helped calm the storm that was raging inside her. Agatha looked around the room, looked at the bed, and at Dracula. She breathed in without a sound. Her body was still agitated, still keenly aware of what they were doing together. How could she do this – with him?

‘You remember the life of Zoe Van Helsing because you were her,’ she heard Dracula's voice. Agatha looked at him incredulously. ‘Her life was real. From the very first day. And at the same time, from the very first day, it was you.’

Getting up, Agatha walked to the balcony and leaned against the glass of the door. She frowned at Dracula.

‘It is believed that reincarnation,’ he said, ‘is always a new personality. In rebirth, a person begins a completely different life. And in most cases, apparently, it is. But it happens... it happens very rarely that the former personality turns out to be so strong that it displaces or does not let the new one in, and a conflict arises between them. I heard about this maybe two hundred years ago from some Arab doctor.

Agatha listened in silence.

‘The problem is,’ Dracula continued, ‘that two consciousnesses cannot get along in one human body. Such a split cannot last forever.’ He made a pause. ‘Have you ever been diagnosed with... what is it called now... cancer?’

‘Some years ago. I was in the hospital. Suspicion of leukemia,’ Agatha said in surprise. ‘Not confirmed. Zoe... I've seen the tests. But Z... I'm not an oncologist. I figured it was just a mistake. Someone confused the tubes.’

Dracula stared at her wordlessly.

‘Now, yes, that's a mistake,’ he said and stood up. In the split second after his words, something changed in his face and gaze, and in the room. Standing in place, Agatha watched him approach, stretches out his hands to her, opens her dressing gown. Already when he is very close, holding her between himself and the glass, raises her hips, and enters, she remembers that he is still naked.

Looking into her eyes, he pushes into her body, hard, rough, and deep. She has nowhere to go, not to hide, she should be disgusted and ashamed, she should be hurt, in the end, but she only moans and, shuddering, leans back.

The despair in his movements melts, smears out, he gets out of her, carries her to the bed. He enters again, leaning on his hands, continues, at the only point in contact with her. Agatha cums from this alone, and sweet spasms are still poured in her – while he lets her go, while he searches for his things, finds them, while dresses and, buttoned-up, walks to the door.

Agatha is unable to move, she feels at the same time heavy and light, but her thoughts and feelings are more clear than ever. She turns and holds out her hand.

‘Don't go.’

[elinaline]

Why is no one talking about this ? or a guide to making the difference between scientific breakthrough and predatory bullcrap on Tumblr

First of all, I want to preface this by saying that I am myself doing a PhD in material science, so I know what I’m talking about, and I also know that academia tends to advantage senior scientists that are already well-known for their research, and that some countries are still under-represented despite their brilliant researchers (it is for example well-known in the field of soft matter that Indians and Chinese know what they are talking about, and yet most of the citations will be Western Europeans and Japanese people). However, I too often see tumblr posts showing the allegedly revolutionary findings of a random scientist that paradoxically no one has heard about, eliciting a strong emotional response and many reblogs, to turn out to be a fake published in a predatory journal that has been refuted years ago. It’s tiring, it creates distrust towards science which is the last fucking thing we need right now (looking at you, anti-vaxxers and 5G fear mongers), and it endangers people as it promotes pseudo-science bullshit (looking at you essential oils fans, and Didier Raoult).

So how to know if the thing you are sharing is truly a cool albeit under-promoted discovery, or if it is someone trying to sell you something dangerous and unethical ?

Without getting in the details of the article, a first easy thing to do, especially if the findings are presented as a huge scientific breakthrough, is to Google it. If it is truly so big, you can be guaranteed that some news outlet will have talked about it, so you can search some key words and the name of the authors to find what is said about it.

For example this post claimed Pr Ezeibe in Nigeria found a cure to HIV, so I went and googled “ezeibe nigeria hiv cure” and here’s what the headlines look like: 

Lots of articles from newspapers of different political sides, half of them written by Nigerian authors, all of them suspicious of this finding, for valid reasons.

Now if you don’t believe news websites (I mean, me neither on some topics but not on everything, but that’s another subject entirely), you can examine the articles more in detail.

The first thing you want to search then is in which journal was the article published ? If you come from a news website you will have to go back to the original article, it’s sometimes a bit of a hassle because newspapers can be shit at citing their sources, but every scientific finding is published in a journal in a very codified way. However not all those journals are equal ! If you can be pretty trusting of any journal published by Springer, Elsevier or Wiley, some more independent ones will require further examination. Indeed in science, whether it be STEMs or humanities, there is the notion of predatory journals. Those journals that send hundreds of emails to researchers, and will publish any article as long as the authors are paying, like this Chinese journal publishing last week a joke article linking electric scooters accidents and hydroxychloroquine without checking it. Luckily, you can find lists of predatory journals that are updated and checked regularly, here are three of them: [x] [x] [x]

Now, not all articles published in those journals are false science however. And some journals are balancing on an edge between pseudoscience and really cool weird findings that could find no other publisher, like PLOS One which has some really interesting publications, and some others with a more -ah- discutable review I’d say. At this point if you still are not sure of how accurate the article is there is only one solution: you have to read it.

When reading an article to try and fact-check it, you are basically doing the job of a reviewer, and that is searching for some specific items. First of all look at the references: how many are they ? Are the citations concentrated in the introduction, as if the author was just trying to show how relevant they are, or are they disseminated throughout the text to explain some models and comparisons and draw common points and differences with other systems ? What proportion of the references are self-citations ? In those citations is the author working alone ? or are they in a team ? Are the co-authors always the same and if yes is it the continuation of a project ? or are they changing, and from various labs working on a similar domain and sharing their expertise ? I would say if the author is quoting themself a lot (as in maybe over one third of the references being themself), if the team never changes when the subject does and everyone seems to be in the same lab, I would be wary, but it can also mean that they are leading the way on a particular topic (that was the case of my team director last year, the lab had conceived a new composite material and was naturally the first to publish on it regarding different aspects), in which case if you’re really curious you can go even further and see how many citations in other works those references have. If it’s a lot of self-reference on different topics that are almost not cited by other authors that’s a huge red flag.

Other things to look for are the sample sizes, the statistics and the calculation for the error margins, especially if the sample sizes are small (small being generally under 100 for complex systems), if  there are figures how are the axes ? Are there error bars ? How are these error bars calculated ? Are there guides for the eyes ? do those look coherent or could any other guide be placed instead and the conclusion would change ? If there are models are those deducted over a hundred data points or just three ? Where do these models come from ? If you’re feeling in a math mood you can try to look up the scientific units in the formulae to see if they’re homogeneous or full bullshit but that’s getting a bit too invested.

With all those hints you should get a better idea of how precise the researchers were and whether the article is interesting or if it is full of false claims ! Of course it cannot prevent genuine error like when we thought we’d proved the existence of superluminal neutrinos, but at least it should stop you from reblogging sensationalist titles leading to a general distrust in scientific research.

If you’ve come this far thank you so much for taking the time to read this !

[spidergvven]

Hi! im rly sorry if this is a dumb question feel free to ignore it if it is! i saw ur food sovereignty post and i thought it was rly cool bc i had nvr heard of the term yet i agreed w it vry much! that being said im a little confused with part of the post! specifically the line that says “The phrase "culturally appropriate" signifies that the food that is available and accessible for the population should fit with the cultural background of the people consuming it." What exactly does that mean?

its not a dumb question at all! i had to read a lot of different real life examples of what this meant before i understood it. keeping in mind that im not an expert, just someone who has tried to educate myself on this topic, but my understanding is that it means people should be able to eat their own cultures food without laws/stigma against it and we need to deal with problems like food deserts that make getting any food impossible. so people from south asia should be able to eat south asian food, people from poland should be able to eat polish food, indigenous people should be able to eat whatever their particular nation or tribes traditional diet is etc etc.

when i first heard of food sovereignty, i thought well no duh different ethnic and cultural groups can eat their own foods why is that an issue? but the reason this is specifically singled out is because their are a lot structures in place currently that prevent this from being possible. the most prominent example i can think of is that there are many laws that prevent indigenous americans, especially first nations people in northern canada, from hunting/fishing/farming in the way their people traditionally have for centuries. some of these laws are the result of stolen land being occupied which obviously prevents people from doing anything on that land and others are specifically restrictions on indigenous peoples hunting.

a lot of hunting laws that limit first nations peoples right to hunt are partially the result of animal rights activists who knew that big corporations have too much power over the government and would not allow their activities to be limited and so instead choose to go after the easier target of indigenous hunting practices so they could get some sort of “win”. obviously their are limitations forced on indigenous people that predate the modern animal rights movement, indigenous americans have faced restriction after restriction in all aspects of life since europeans first landed on this continent. there is a long history of oppression at play here but it also cant be ignored that for years there was an active attempt by animal rights groups to smear indigenous american hunting practices as particularly barbaric and cruel. luckily there’s been a lot of work done by both animal welfare activists and indigenous activists to refocus the movement on big corporations instead of attacking people in isolated northern areas where it is not only traditional to hunt but also there is no other source of food (i apparently have to mention not all v*gans and not all animal rights activists otherwise im not allowed to talk about the very real problem of various groups and individuals that call themselves vegans and/or animal rights activists attacking indigenous hunting)

heres a semi recent example of these kinds of stigmatizing attacks:

another example of culturally appropriate food being available (or not available as the case may be) is the way many immigrant populations tend to be poorer and live in food deserts which means they cant get access to good grocery stores where they could buy the ingredients needed to make their cultural food. unfortunately i cant find the particular study i read since it was two years ago that i found it 😔😔 but the gist of it is that when immigrant populations can get the ingredients to make their own traditional foods they have better health. this is a huge breakthrough when it comes to the so called “obesity epidemic” because the data shows that its not just a matter of eating one type of Healthy™ food. when people can regularly eat their own cultures’ traditional diets they have better heart health, less chance of diabetes, and tend to have more stable weight (i personally believe that weight does not equal health but there’s no denying that people in poverty in the us and canada tend to weigh more and its because of the limited availability of nutritious, regular meals combined with the stress of poverty). basically there’s a huge number of immigrants who are not able to cook their cultures’ traditional diets because of poverty and poverty itself perpetuates a lot of health problems related to diet.

last example is that a lot of foreign food aid provides generic staples that are cheap but not necessarily nutritious and they have no concern for what people in that part of the world actually eat. it creates a negative feedback loop where people are dependent on that aid but also unhealthy because of it. there’s also a lot of corporate bullshit where big companies will provide “aid” but really its just an opportunity for them to contractually lock farmers in the global south into growing their brand of say rice or whatever. those farmers will then be obligated to grow only that grain or produce and a lot of times they will end up indebted to the company and then have little to no money to buy food and no land available to grow their own food because it’s all being used for whatever crop the big company wants. that of course leads to starvation which causes a whole host of health issues.

i feel like maybe this is too long an explanation 😰 but i hope this helps 


[rahenning]

Forgotten and Overlooked Cartoon Movies

On this week’s discussion we will explore two cartoon movies that you either may have watched when you were a child and got you disturbed giving you nightmares or you watched as an adult but probably had the same reaction as if you were a little kid. Or maybe it was just me who felt very confused watching it. This brings to my mind a thought. Are cartoons/ animation movies strictly designed for a young audience? Can a cartoon that is designed for children bring themes that may bring valuable discussions at home and teach good lessons to a little mind in development? Finding Nemo suggests to kids that step out of your comfort zone is important and to never give up even having so many obstacles on your life journey. Mulan is a great representation and inspiration for little girls to know that they can and should fight for their rights with confidence and independence. The list of animation movies that can be very inspiring for children is extensive. Although not all the cartoons/ animations movies have a young audience target. Titles such as “Fritz the Cat” (1972), “South Park” (1999) and the outstanding autobiographical “Persepolis” (2007) are definitely movies that probably wouldn’t be a good idea to have your child sitting next to you in the living room while you watch it.

   Some movies sometimes either get forgotten or overlooked in the history of cartoon movies. Today we will give the attention necessary and deserved to two adult cartoon masterpieces; “Fantastic Planet” (1973) directed by Rene Laloux and “Watership Down” (1978) directed by Martin Rosen. Both movies are incredible on bringing to the table topics such as violence and power, authoritarian leaderships, division of social classes, democracy, the seek of home and belonging. We will cover that in a moment but excuse me on giving you some spoilers first. Both movies are modeled and gives to the audience historical lessons about specific times, events, and political aspects in society.

“Fantastic Planet” (1973) was a landmark in the history of European animation directed by Rene Laloux. The movie is a completely though-through science fiction vision which may be for many breathtaking or an unnecessarily experimental miserable detour. The movie resonates with historical allegories and radical politics based on European aesthetic principles. I personally find the aesthetic of this movie very surrealistic and resembles Salvador Dali’s artworks. The film takes place on the planet Ygam and shows two tribles of organisms that live against each other. The gigantic, intellectual, and blue Draags and the small and pinkish Oms that were removed by their masters Draags from their planet. The Oms are domesticated and enslaved by the Draags. The story unfolds and is narrated by Terr, one of the members of the Oms who grows and matures being domesticated next to the Draags. Terr learns about the culture of the Draags and their strange rituals of learning, meditation, wisdom, and development. Through mental inducement devices to transmit knowledge to future generations the Draags open the collective wisdom of their race. Terr escapes his captors and joins a renegade group of Oms. As the Draags try to control the radical Oms the film concludes in the final confrontation between the two groups and a satellite known as the Fantastic Planet.

In 1968 the film faced obstacles in the middle of its production. Soviet tanks invaded Prague, where the film was being produced, and occupied the city. After the invasion, the production of the film was extended for four years and was only released in 1973. In many ways the film represents these events. The communist occupation not only in Czechoslovakia but also in other Eastern European countries, is directly reminiscent of the convenient enslavement of the Oms by the Draags. In addition, the analogy of the relationship between owner and animal is effective between representing the relationship between the Soviet Union and its satellite states. While animals and Oms experienced modest degrees of autonomy, this was always monitored and limited by their masters. In both cases these masters maintained the fate of their servants. During that time, the illusion of this need was fabricated and often promoted to praise the positive attributes in the master. Besides that, the illusion of freedom has always been available at a distance, but it was collected in small doses. The masters reinforced and affirmed the hierarchical relationship that subordinates had with their servants. Two other elements are also symbolic of social and historical phenomena. Firstly,the tactics and techniques used by the Draags to destabilize the Oms and the camps where they lived that resemble the Nazi concentration camps and gas cameras. The film does an excellent job portraying the terror that the Draags cause in the Oms. The threat is greater than the attacks themselves. Didactically shows how to psychologically demoralize a society. Fear and oppression can have much greater causes and penetrate the coincidence of their victims. The film is then a provocative incursion into the state-sponsored psychological terror and its behaviors.

The second movie in discussion is “Watership Down” (1978) by Martin Rosen. The movie is a British animation based on the novel “Watership Down” by Richard Adams. The film was successful in the UK but not so much in the US. The controversy around it is what brings more attention. At first the audience may think it is a movie about cute bunnies living on a field. Well, its not extremely wrong but it goes far beyond it and its sensitive and explicit content is what labels the movie as an adult animation. The plot focuses on a group of rabbit living in the countryside. The group learns that their land is being invaded and poisoned by a construction company. They try to persuade the chief to evacuate. The chief refuses and they make a breakthrough with other members of their community. Many altercations happen between the group and makes the plot more excited and intriguing. The violence and the rage of the rabbits are shocking for many viewers. This film was U rated, which means it is suitable for all ages. And that’s what makes it more controversy. It creeps adults out and I can only imagine all the nightmares kids would have after watching it. The story is simply enough to follow with some tips of comedy in between the dramatic violent and swearing scenes.

 What most of the viewers may not know is that “Watership Down” was inspired by its novel author Richard Adams real life personal experiences. He revealed that many of the animals in the movie were designed and based on officers that he, as a lieutenant, commanded in the World War 2.  Not just the characters but many of the stories lived by the bunnies were also based on his real-life experiences and specifically the Battle of Arnhem, which he fought for over nine days in September 1944.  Many soldiers were killed, and it answers why we see so many deaths and violent scenes in the movie. The character Hazel was inspired in his commanding officer Gifford. Gifford survived the war, and so did Hazel. According to the author, Bigwig was based on Captain Desmond “Paddy” Kavanagh. Adams describes him as “afraid of nothing and sensationalist”. “Good stories ought to be exciting and if they are exciting, they are inevitably scary in parts”- Richard Adams.

Learning more about the two films and its context, I believe it is easier now to understand and visualize the shared topics prior mentioned. Both movies are a tremendous critic to abuse of power and the use of mental and physical violence by the leaders in both fictional and real society. Our contemporary society lived and still experiences all these aspects. The movies simple used real-life events to base their narrative on. The division between social classes is clearly visible specially on “Fantastic Planet”. In todays age we still see and fight against this variance. Socio-economics class division happens in every and each country around the globe and it can be even more endured when we add race and sexual orientation for example. The seek of home and belonging are also very well covered in both movies. All the groups in both films wanted a place to be free from oppression and without fearing for their lives. I believe that everyone around this planet first goal in life is to feel secure, free and have a place that they can finally have this feeling of belonging inside their hearts.

Movements such as the Black Lives Matter are a great example of an oppressed community who is (and has always been) standing up for themselves, making them and their stories heard and fighting against an oppressive system in order to gain equality, safety and freedom.

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

In reference to the movie “Watership Down” I would like to also use the MST (Landless Workers Movement) as an example of fighting for the right of obtaining living and a sense of belonging. The Brazilian social movement defines it’s as goals access to land for the poor workers through land reforms.

To learn more about the movement please visit their page.

https://mst.org.br/english/

We already know that in “Fantastic Planet” the system the Draags kept the Oms in is oppressive and limit their capability of learning. They were labeled as savage and domesticated Oms. This system pretty much reflects the society we live in. The system intentionally takes out the chances of the less fortunate on learning and growing as people. It creates a division either in the movie and in our society between the “intellectuals” and the “anti-intellectuals”. What happens is that most oppressed group does not even have the eager of gaining more knowledge and that is all a consequence of the system they live in. It is all meticulously orchestrated by the system and it only makes the so called “intellectual” group of society more powerful over the other groups.

  To be able to overcome their reality, the Oms had to finally come together and unite against the Draags. They had to listen to the domesticated and now more educated Oms who had more information and knowledge at the time. Without uniting, the Oms would not be able to defend themselves and attack the Draags.

Back to “Watership Down” we also see how internal conflicts inside a group or community may ruin or delay a common goal. In the movie we have characters that could fall into the label of intellectual and anti-intellectual. The protagonist of the movie, Hazel, may fall into the label of “intellectual”.  He is the lead of the group and his actions were always to benefit all the band of rabbits and specially protect the small ones. Blackcherry is Hazel’s main source of knowledge and guidance. For this reason, he can also be called an “intellectual” in the group. In other hand we have Strawberry, a large rabbit but with no knowledge of how to live in the wild. He wanted to learn, although his lack of understanding of the wilderness could always affect their group.

   To make a quick correlation to our society, we could divide the rabbits into a younger and older group. For example, in the younger group we have Hazel, Fiver, Strawberry and Dandelion. A group of young but very loyal and fierce rabbits. All of them with their specific positive characteristics that could be substantially important to a success of a group. In the older group we have General Woundwort, Captain Campion, and Captain Holly. Although they may be strong and experienced some of their actions may be destructive to the well being of the group. The older group often questions if the younger really knows what they are doing by their lack of experience. It is often seeing in our society too. An example is how our society keep only trusting in old candidates for important positions in our government. Why not to trust in new faces and new ideas for our society? The chances to keep repeating the problems are high. Maybe new minds and new ideas can make a lot of positive changes.

[natromanxoff]

Queen live at Palace Theatre in Manchester, UK - October 30, 1974

(x)

This is the beginning of Queen's first full-scale European tour.

Tonight are the first performances of new songs from Sheer Heart Attack: Now I'm Here, Flick Of The Wrist, In The Lap Of The Gods, Bring Back That Leroy Brown, and In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited (Stone Cold Crazy had already been performed as far back as 1970). Now I'm Here would be a staple in their set, performed at virtually every show hereafter, making it the song they performed most frequently throughout the years - it was clearly a unanimous band favourite, as it is the only song they performed more than Bohemian Rhapsody.

This is the first show where Queen employed the use of delay on Freddie's voice - at the beginning of Now I'm Here. The band sound a bit nervous at the beginning of the show tonight, so Now I'm Here isn't quite the most brilliant version ever played. Still, the band are surely happy to be back on stage, especially Brian May who has made a full recovery from his health issues.

On the Sheer Heart Attack tour, Freddie would be seen singing the line "Now I'm here" on one side of the stage amidst the darkness and dry ice, and a few bars later, at "Now I'm there," he would "appear" on the other side of the stage (a member of the crew would be dressed in an identical Zandra Rhodes outfit to the one worn by Freddie), giving a very dramatic effect.

Although they no longer open the show with Father To Son, the first few bars of the song are still on playback.

Brian, introducing Flick Of The Wrist, the other side of the Killer Queen single (it was a double A-side): "You probably may know, we have a little single out at the moment, and this is the one you don't usually hear on the radio."

These also the earliest known live performances of White Queen and The March Of The Black Queen. White Queen would be a bit stripped down when played live (like the BBC session recorded on April 3), and only a small portion of The March Of The Black Queen would be performed on stage as part of the medley. Queen would perform a medley of songs on most tours from here onward, and tonight it would debut in their set.

The medley on this tour consists of In The Lap Of The Gods, Killer Queen, The March Of The Black Queen, and Bring Back That Leroy Brown (including Brian playing the banjo solo, as heard on the album). For this tour and the 1975 North American tour, Killer Queen is a very abbreviated version, as it is only one verse and a chorus, leading right into the guitar solo (which was never performed in full, as it was physically impossible to reproduce all of those layers of guitars live). They began performing the second verse of the song in Japan. In an interview for "Disc" with Rosemary Horide just prior to the tour, Brian May frankly said, "I'm not sure whether we'll be doing Killer Queen because it could be rather an unexciting number to stage, but we'll certainly do some of the others." Indeed, there was a certain delicacy of the song that they never were able to replicate live.

Brian now uses two analog delays when performing his solo spot in Son And Daughter, something that has become a trademark of his. Even though the guitar solo was heard in Brighton Rock on the Sheer Heart Attack album, the song wouldn't be heard on stage until late 1975.

On this tour, Freddie sings the verses of In The Lap Of The Gods...Revisited in falsetto in the higher octave, as on the studio version. A great example of this can be seen on the Live At The Rainbow video. For the next few years, the song would be performed with dry ice, and it also introduced pyrotechnics to their show, as on the very last note, it would very dramatically signal the end of the set proper. The song would remain in Queen's show into 1977, and would be revived for their final tour in 1986.

The encore on this tour is a medley of Big Spender, Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll, and Jailhouse Rock. See What A Fool I've Been would be used as a second encore a few times the following spring in Japan.

Queen now use their own recorded version of the British national anthem, God Save The Queen, as their exit music - although on this tour it plays about minute after they've left the stage. Brian May's arrangement (recorded just a few days earlier on October 27) would also close out their international breakthrough album, A Night At The Opera. The ritual of leaving the stage to this piece of music would last well over 40 years, into the Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert eras.

In addition to his Fender Strat, Brian now has an additional spare guitar - a Les Paul. But Brian ultimately wouldn't be satisfied with its sound. After this tour he would have a copy of the Red Special built for him by luthier John Birch. Brian used the Birch copy as his backup until he smashed it at a concert in 1982.

The third photo was taken by Howard Barlow.

Fan Stories

“To be honest, I can't remember much about the concert but the build up and after effects have stayed with me to this day. It was 1974 and Glam Rock was in its swan song. I was a nine year old boy who loved seeing bands like Slade and The Sweet on Top of the Pops and had decided to buy 'Tiger Feet' by Mud. On the way to purchase my first single with my 17 year old brother, he suggested that 'Tiger Feet' was for 'teenyboppers' and that I should get 'Seven Seas of Rhye' by a new band called Queen instead, who I had never heard of. After much deliberation, I put my trust in his judgement and bought the Queen single. At first it seemed a bit heavy, but later I began to love it and all things Queen. When my brother suggested going to see Queen in concert, I jumped at the chance. The concert was to promote their latest album, Sheer Heart Attack, and Manchester was the first date. Imagine that now, not one but two superb albums released in the same year (Queen II and S.H.A.) with tours to match! Ahh, those were the days. At the Palace Theatre, I wondered why nobody seemed very interested in the support band Hustler, but we found our seats, caught their set, then waited through the break for Queen to come on stage. My memory is of the theatre rapidly filling up in the following 30 minutes or so, and as it did, so did my feelings of excitement and anticipation. When the house lights suddenly went off, there was a huge roar from the audience and everybody stood up, meaning that this 9 year old couldn't really see much of the stage! I wasn't familiar with many of the songs but I do remember three aspects of the concert in particular. Firstly, the music was the loudest thing I had ever heard, and secondly, the sound was punctuated throughout the gig with huge explosions and flashes of light, accompanied by clouds of white smoke. The other thing that caught my eye was Freddie Mercury himself. He started the concert dressed all in white, finished it wearing all black attire, and never stood still for a single second of it, apart from when he was sat at the piano. He was constantly cavorting from stage left to stage right, then from the front of the stage towards the back and up onto Roger's drum riser and back down again. When I also considered his powerful voice and proficient piano playing, even as someone still at Junior School, I realised I was watching somebody very special indeed. When the concert finally ended and the house lights came on, everyone poured out onto the street, and I experienced mixed emotions on the way home. On the down side, I was upset at the ringing in my ears, but my brother assured me that it would pass. Much more enduring was the feeling that I had just experienced my first rock concert and what an astonishing experience it had been. After this gig, I believe that I had cramped my brother's style and he never took me to see another concert. I had to wait until I was 16 to go and see Queen again, which was on 6th December 1980 in Birmingham. That was the concert that truly blew my mind and converted me into a lifelong Queen fan. But the seed had been sown six years before and will stay with me forever.” - Lee Unal

[handsofdarkness]

Sharon of Within Temptation opens up about her darkest day

Since Within Temptation breakthrough, Sharon den Adel life was one big pink day. Until that one message.

DARKEST DAY

Leather jacket, glasses on top of her head, fresh and cheerful. This is how Sharon enters the grand café. Sunlight falls through the windows on the wooden floor and shines on the earring in her right ear, a dragonfly. Outside the trees rustle. She lives in Soest, but this cafe in Baarn is close by. And it does not matter: it is equally beautiful everywhere. An oasis of peace and green, something for a singer of a world famous metal band. No loud guitars, no busy tour schedule.

No, the band life is not always easy. Sharon really experienced that on her darkest day. It is the year 2015. She had just flown back to the Netherlands after having been on holiday with her family. Her family stayed for a while, but for Sharon and Within Temptation a few European shows were booked. She had one day in the Netherlands.

When she came home that day, she was told that someone in her immediate family was seriously and probably incurably ill. “Now it turns out that medical science is very far with new means and treatments, but for him it was unfortunately too late. He was still there, but his life was hanging on a silken thread.” Her family did not want to tell her when she was on vacation. And now, after this news, after the ground had been swept away under her feet, she had to go straight to the tour bus. Canceling was not an option: Within Temptation has become a company, with many employees, still apart from the concert halls and fans who expected her. "It was unreal. I did not want to leave, even though my family told me that I should go. I told everyone directly in the bus. On the way I was reading about the disease and what to do about it. I could not accept it."

On stage, during the shows after the news, the atmosphere was different than usual. “Music is a catalyst for me, so the emotion was interwoven with everything I sang. I missed my husband and children. I wanted to go back to my family, drink wine with my parents, talk about life."

The disadvantages of international fame. If something happens, chances are that you are abroad. The show must go on. “Sometimes that goes wrong, and that is what happened to me. When we were back in the Netherlands, I no longer had any inspiration for new music, at least not for Within Temptation. We make bombastic, tough music. There is victory in it, and I did not need that, I did not have that emotion, I was locked up.”

There was a road out of the impasse, but that road was outside the belt. "Of course the members were shocked, they were looking forward to making a new record." The songs Sharon wrote felt good, but did not fit into the standard genre. They were smaller, more sensitive. “The producer with whom I wrote them also immediately noticed. With these songs we had to do something else." This was her solo project: My Indigo. She made a record that made her blood and creativity flow again, even in such a way that she could write for Within Temptation again.

PINK DAY

She drinks her fresh mint tea, eats the biscuit and stares out of the window. The dragonfly sparkles and distracts from her frown. “A beautiful day, a beautiful day ...” When she hears that childbirths are no longer allowed, because otherwise almost all the candidates in this category would choose, she goes for the day when Within Temptation really broke through.

"It was at Pinkpop in 2001." Laughing: "Very long ago. I was 21. We were about five years old. We were already big in the underground, and we already played in large halls, but we were still in that niche of metal and alternative. The gig at Pinkpop was overwhelming. The tent was packed and popped apart. Everyone sang along. That was the tipping point, we felt that something had changed. After that we also saw people who did not belong to the metal subculture at performances and signing sessions. People of all plumes, say."

The radio stations and music channels on TV, however, still did not have it. "Nobody wanted to play us. When we drove home after Pinkpop, we heard callers on the radio requesting us, but we were not played. I remember that we were played at Radio 3 for the first time at night. You also had The Box, a music channel on TV. We had told our fans that they could request our video clip there, but that was not possible at all. We were not in the package. We got a phone call, if we would please rectify the news to our fans, because they were called flat. But it was not to stop, a few months later you could request us and we were immediately played a lot.”

It was a shift in the landscape of pop music. You did not hear metal until Within Temptation. Then suddenly. "Besides, I was a woman. You also had little to no bands with singers in metal." In other words, they actually had no chance of success. But it had happened: Within Temptation was broken by the general music lover. “That was great, but also alienating. We have always remained faithful to our music, and to what we wanted to make. I have always believed in it. We went full. And suddenly we broke through with music that people said it was not possible. We were full." They still make the music they want to make. The success remains as great as ever. Soon they will be in the AFAS Live twice in succession, and then we are only talking about the Netherlands, because they are also popular in Germany, Finland, Russia and even the USA.

She has to go, Sharon. Soon the children will be out of school. She walks outside, where the sun shines and where the squirrels and birds know nothing about loud guitars and success.

The Netherlands got to know Sharon den Adel (43) as front woman of the metal band Within Temptation. Last year she announced her solo project: My Indigo. Her first (eponymous) album is now a fact. Sharon has a relationship with guitarist Robert Westerholt, with whom she has a daughter and two sons.

Translation by Hands of Darkness

[snowpatrolfanclubbrazil]

Before Snow Patrol vanished, they were ubiquitous.

The Scottish/Irish band's song "Chasing Cars" went supernova when it was prominently featured in the 2006 season finale of Grey's Anatomy. According to PPL, a UK-based music licensing company, "Chasing Cars" was the most played song on UK radio during the first decade of the millennium. Between them, the Snow Patrol albums Final Straw, Eyes Open, A Hundred Million Suns, and the compilation Up to Now yielded "everyone can hum them" hits such as "Run," "You're All I Have," "Take Back the City," and "Just Say Yes."

The title of the band's sixth record Fallen Empires (2011) turned out to be prophetic. Though it entered the Billboard charts at number five, the album and its singles didn't make as big a splash as earlier successes. Snow Patrol disappeared like a trail of boot prints in a blizzard.

Six years later, the band has returned with a new record, Wildness. Snow Patrol has just begun an epic, three-month tour of the U.S. So, what accounts for Snow Patrol's protracted absence? Singer and principal songwriter Gary Lightbody offers a candid explanation: writer's block. It stemmed from deeper problems in his life, mainly alcoholism. It's been over two years since his last drink.

"There's a lot of reasons I'm sober and a lot of people have got me there and kept me there and I couldn't have done it without [them]," Lightbody says in a phone interview. "The culture that has helped sustain it is kind of an Eastern one. I meditate. I do Qigong. Those practices appeal to me and that lifestyle appeals to me."

In facing up to his addiction, Lightbody was able to begin writing again. Wildness is Snow Patrol's first album in six years. Gone are the romance and breakup songs that the band once specialized in. Lightbody looks outward at the state of the world as well as inward at the state of his life.

Yet Wildness isn't a downer. "Empress" could soundtrack a confetti parade. On the anthemic "Wild Horses," a cantering acoustic verse becomes a galloping electro-groove chorus. Lightbody's lilting voice buoys the somber piano ballad "What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get?" Snow Patrol's longtime producer Garret "Jacknife" Lee (R.E.M., U2, Silversun Pickups) stripped back the layers of electric guitars from previous albums in favor of more elemental, acoustic-based instrumentation. That approach is particularly effective on epic album opener "Life on Earth." Its six-string chimes are as hushed as a nursery lullaby until startling drum fire introduces a punchy chorus in which Lightbody laments, "It shouldn't need to be so fucking hard/This is life on Earth."

The band-which is rounded out by Nathan Connolly (guitars), Jonny Quinn (drums), Paul "Pablo" Wilson (bass), and Johnny McDaid (guitar, keyboards)-is now on tour in the U.S. with a mix of headlining shows and stadium dates supporting Ed Sheeran. Afterward, Snow Patrol will cross the Atlantic to tour Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, and Europe through February. (See U.S. tour dates at the end of the article and visit www.snowpatrol.com for the European itinerary.)

Under the Radar chatted with Lightbody from his home in Los Angeles.

Stephen Humphries (Under the Radar): There's a teaser video for the album of you sitting on a raft in the ocean. There's a piano on the raft. I saw that image and it got me thinking of your song "Lifeboat"! Which song is the video for and can you tell me about filming that?

Gary Lightbody: We shot a video on the Irish Sea for a song called "What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get?" It was shot on a raft, with me playing piano. It was January. The shoot was postponed four times because of the weather. We get a phenomenon in Ireland, sideways rain, a combination of rain and wind that hits you in your face in a way that makes it impossible to do anything outside. We had four days of that. On the day that we filmed it wasn't wet, but it was freezing cold. It was really fun, actually.

Floating on the ocean, what's the metaphor?

It connects with the song, particularly that song, because of the isolation. That's what the album's about as well, that sort of isolation we all feel and I have certainly felt in recent times. With "What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get?" it's a song about feeling completely isolated and yet all we need to do is reach out to someone. All we need to do is pick up the phone, go around and see a friend. You know what I mean? It's me telling myself, it's me telling my friends, it's me telling everybody, "I've been in this place, too. I know what it's like. I know how it feels. I can share this with you. We can feel in this together."

What did writer's block feel like?

The last album was plagued by writer's block. This one was, too. I've spent my musical life writing about love, or the lack of love, or the warmth of love or the disintegration of love. I haven't been in a relationship since the last album. It's not something I could have drawn from on this record, so I had to think what else do I want to write about. Because I can't just drag up old love from the past that I've already written about. It just doesn't feel right. So I have to think about all the things that were in my life that I've never really addressed. My father's dementia, which I write about in the song "Soon." The world in general, the way the world has been, the way it was. I think this album looks inward further and looks outward further. I tried to address a lot of things I haven't spoken about.

I read an interview with the BBC in which you said you wrote pages of notebooks of lyrics.

Yes, I hope I don't die before I burn them all. There's a lot of gibberish in there. There's a lot of stuff that makes no sense at all. But every album has, the way I write it, you write a bunch of stuff that doesn't make the album.

So what was the breakthrough moment for you in the end?

The breakthrough on this record came with a song "A Youth Written in Fire," which is about my youth, obviously, was spent drinking and even my not-so-youth was spent drinking into my late 30s. I guess it's a song about realizing that you're not a young man anymore, or realizing that you don't recover as quickly as you used to and maybe this is not the path for you.

That song was written after listening to Nick Cave's "Jesus Alone" about eight times in a row. I hadn't heard the new Nick Cave album yet—it's the first track on the album and Garret put it on in the studio as he is wont to do. We listen to a wide range of records and Garret has an extraordinary music collection. I was trying to write and not getting anywhere and took a break. He put that song on and it was myself and Nathan and Garret in the studio at the time and we all kind of went into a trance. I said, "Put it on again," and I picked up my pile of paper and I said, "Put it on again," "Put it on again," "Put it on again." It was on vinyl, so he had to physically put it on again. I started to feel something happening. It was like something was about to happen. I said, "I think I've got something." Garret said, "Okay, me and Nathan will just head down to get some lunch and bring you back some lunch." He left me there a half hour and when he came back, the song was finished. From lyric one to the end was written. It felt like the way I used to write, which was always like that. I mean, I edited a bit, but I never really had to worry too much about words failing me.

In the past, many Snow Patrol songs are about love relationships. This time out, this album seems to be more about you facing yourself.

I think that was part of the problem. Not going deeper as well. It caused its own problem because you think, "Oh that's done," because you don't think about it because it came so easily. On this record, everything was eked out. It just kept coming in drips. And therefore you pore over every word, you pore over every sentence, you don't let anything be nonessential. In my eyes, anyway.

That was the first song that came out like that. But there were also all these pages before it. It was 20-30 pages of writing before it. It wasn't like, "I wrote that in 30 minutes." I wrote that in three months. I just started and finished it in 30 minutes. So it's a strange thing to happen. But it took a long time to write it in an instant. And then other things started to happen. Other songs started to come into view. I finished "Life on Earth." I finished "Heal Me." I finished "Empress." Things started to fall into place.

I don't have album credits in front of me. Did you write all the songs or were there any co-writes?

The lyrics are all mine but musically we all share a credit for the music. Myself and Garret spent a lot of time together writing initially. We'll get together initially. I'll bring in my ideas, melodies, verses, choruses and he's extraordinarily good at song arrangements, song developments, making it make sense. I can bring in a bunch of stuff and everything's in the wrong order, upside down, left where right should be and right where left should be, and he'll put it in the right place.

Sometimes I'll bring in a song and it'll be almost finished in terms of his initial stages and then he will grow the song. He's the best song developer that I've ever heard about. He's not just a producer. He's a co-writer and he's a musician. He can play everything. Initially, Garret and I will get together and we'll put a rough demo together. We'll work into the song so that, to the casual listener it may sound like we've got something close to done. And then everyone else will come in and add their bits. Everybody in the band played out of their skins on this record. I mean, the drums! Johnny Quinn's drums are nothing like he's ever done before. It's extraordinary. The drums are a big feature on this record. I'm not sure they'd been quite as primarily featured on any Snow Patrol record before.

Take me into how you changed-up the sound of this record.

That's Garret's purview, really. He had a vision for the sound of the record. I knew that I wanted to play the acoustic guitar rather than play the electric. I guess it's a holdover from having done the Tired Pony record. I did a solo tour of my own around America just playing acoustically. I just felt very comfortable with an acoustic. I didn't ever really feel like picking up an electric guitar at any point on the record. It just didn't feel right. There's an inherent space and percussiveness in an acoustic that is missing on an electric because you're feeding the sound into the system rather than the whole machine being the sound. Which is what happens on an acoustic guitar. You hear the plectrum on the strings, you know. It gives it many different textures and virtues. It's something we haven't explored in Snow Patrol that widely.

Listeners will hear that right away on songs like "Don't Give In" and "Dark Switch," acoustic-based but widescreen and big four-on-the floor kick drum sounds.

It really did give us a good start to maintain that space. On previous albums, where one guitar might have done, we put 10 on it to create a wall of sound. But it also tends to fill every space when you approach it like that and there's nothing left to the imagination.

Songs like "What If This Is The All The Love You Ever Get" and "Don't Give In" are very exposed, naked vocals. The vocal on "Don't Give In" almost doesn't sound like you.

I had a cold that day in the studio. My voice was sounding like it was wrecked. But I recorded it like a guide. When I went to sing it properly, Garret's daughter—who is my goddaughter, both his daughters are my goddaughters—she came in when I was re-recording the vocals, you'd better not re-record that. So give her credit for keeping that on the record. I really love it now.

During Snow Patrol's hiatus, your bandmate, Johnny McDaid, co-wrote hit songs for Ed Sheeran and P!nk. Did all the various side projects help the band members bring something back to Snow Patrol?

Everybody went off and did their own thing. Seven years, we weren't being dormant. We weren't in mothballs on other stuff. Johnny Quinn runs a publishing company, called Polar, which Nathan, Johnny, and myself own, but he runs it day to day. He was always really good at that. Of anyone in the band, he was the guy that rather incongruously for a musician, knew about logistics about keeping a proper job as well. Johnny McDaid has written and produced a lot of amazing records and worked with a lot of incredible artists. Nathan started his own band, Metal Matador. He's from a heavy rock background, so he got to more than scratch that itch being the frontman of that band and working that rock muscle a little harder than he does with us. Pablo, same as Johnny McDaid, has worked with a lot of great pop and dance artists, producing, and writing. Paul is also in Nate Mendel from Foo Fighters' side project, Lieutenant. Myself, you know, I was with Tired Pony and I wrote with Ed [Sheeran] and Taylor [Swift] and One Direction and got that perspective. I'm perhaps lumping it in with pop music but I think that he does something that has become pop music because it's popular, but I don't think that's his background. Getting the perspective of what it takes to make those records was really interesting to me. I don't know that it informed too much of what we did on this record, but it was interesting time in my life to work with all those people who are so driven, so interesting, so exciting to work with.

You co-wrote some songs during Snow Patrol's hiatus. What's the story behind the collaboration with Taylor Swift on "The Last Time Come About"?

She was making her Red album. Her and Ed were recording the song they did on the record together in Santa Monica, about two blocks away from where I am standing right now. Ed invited me, with Taylor's permission, to come into the studio and say, "Hi." I'd never met Taylor. She said she was a fan. Apparently, the night before, she and Ed had been playing and singing "Set the Fire to the Third Bar" together. It was lovely to hear that she knew our music, you know. I can't remember if I was bold enough to ask if she wanted to work with me. But it might well have been me. Or if it was her who said, "Do you want to write a song together?" I can't remember. We wrote "The Last Time" together and that was great. The three of us collaborated on it really well. I got to go on tour with her for a gig and we did a few TV shows together. She's lovely.

So, you're no longer adrift, safely back on shore?

I hope it's easier next time. But I'm also not sure it should be easier. It is the reason why it feels so good to me. I'm so proud of it because I put so much work into it. I put so much effort into it. It broke me over and over again and now, when we're in rehearsals as we are, when we're playing those songs, it feels like they mend me. They put me back together. So yeah it's worth it in those moments, when you realize what you've done is what you're proud of. It's something that can sustain you. But going through the actual process is probably always meant to be hard.

Finally, can you offer any recommendations of what to see and do in your native Ireland?

Dublin is a great city to have a lot of fun in. Great bars, great nightlife, great restaurants. A lot of fantastic history and great museums, too. But you'll want to see Ireland outside of Dublin. I'm from Belfast. Go to Belfast. Go to Northern Ireland. Go to the West of Ireland. Galway is a beautiful place. The Southwest of Ireland and Kerry is stunning. That's where we wrote the album "Eyes Open." We wrote the album "Hundred Million Suns" in Galway. Cork is beautiful. Kinsale is a beautiful place near Cork. Wicklow, Wexford, Waterford that's the greenest part of Ireland and Ireland is famous for being green—obviously it's the Emerald Isle—but those three counties are the most spectacularly green place outside of New Zealand. I would suggest that even though Dublin is a great place—it's really fun, it's very cosmopolitan and a very modern city—I would suggest spending a little time there and spending more time traveling around Ireland because you're going to meet some really interesting people. It's famous for its hospitality. You can literally rock up in the middle of nowhere to a street in Ireland and probably get an offer of someone cooking you a homemade dinner.

[sending-the-message]

You complete me by blankdreamer

My earliest and best friend from childhood, Mark, was the complete opposite of me. I think that’s why we got on so well. He was incredibly smart and an utter book worm. I would drag him outside to play and explore the world and he would tell me why trees grew the shape they did or describe the entomology of the bugs we caught. We swore when little even if we split up later in life we would write letters to each other regularly. I know letter writing is old fashioned but a childhood pact is a childhood pact. Even though Mark worked around the world as a high-energy particle physicist, we have (by and large) written to each other once a month consistently. However Marks letters have taken a strange turn recently that has me concerned and I wanted to see what others thought:

23 January 2017

Happy New Year Buttface! I’m concerned for you Hazza. Can’t believe you fell for one of those icky girls. Yuck. Brooke sounds like a great girl for you. Don’t screw this one up you schmuck. I shouldn’t tell you this as its classified but I am BURSTING! We’ve have a major breakthrough at Cern in our search for the Higgs-Boson particle with the Large Hadron Collider – you know the one the media call the "God Particle" (eye roll) because it adds mass to matter. We think we found the damn thing! It will be months before we can release any confirmation or data publicly so for gods sake (heh heh) keep it under you hat Harold or I’ll give you an atomic wedgey next time I see you. Write soon Hazman.

25 February 2017

Loved your last letter my friend. That Brooke is sticking around hey. Good for you dork. Our research on the Higgs-Boson is not as straight forward as we thought. It’s providing some strange data that doesn’t fit our model. But that is science for you – our models are always only temporary as we dig deeper into reality. I find myself getting frustrated and grumpy which is really unlike me. Anyway take care you slob and let me know how your work is going.

19 March 2017

Things sound like they are going great for you H. I’m jealous. Can’t remember the last time I had a girl. Makes me a bit angry when I think of how stuck up the women here are. There is a lot of tension at the facility at the moment. We think the particle we discovered is not the Higgs-Boson now. It’s way too different. We are all working at fever pitch on it. We come in on our days off and some even sleep in the lab. We are all suddenly possessed with a craving to discover what this damned particle is.

5 May 2017

H-man – I actually got into fist fight the other day. Yes me! Me! One of my colleagues, Watson, was trash talking my hypothesis on the particle (he says he was just critiquing it with a colleague) and I confronted him. Things got heated he pointed his finger at me, I pushed him lightly, he pushed me back and then I DECKED HIM. Seriously. One punch and the little wuss went down. I still can’t believe I did it. After speaking with HR they put it down to overwork and stress and have strongly recommended a month’s leave. But I spoke to my manager and we both agreed I needed to keep working as we feel we are right on the verge of a breakthrough with this particle. And you know something? I’m kind of proud of what I did. I freaking enjoyed smacking down that fuckwit Watson with the hot wife and nice suit. Even though my hand hurts the feeling of pain and humiliation I inflicted on him felt damn good. I might try and chat up his hottie of a wife next time she’s in. I’m sure she gave me a come-on look the other day.

18 July 2017

Sorry I haven’t written for a while Harold but we’ve had a HUGE BREAKTHROUGH! You know how I’ve told you that there is both matter and anti-matter in the universe? How every particle has an opposite? Well we think – only think at this stage mind you – that what we discovered is actually the anti-particle for the Higgs-Boson. We nick-named it the “Devil Particle”. Yes, not in the slightest bit witty but hey we are scientists – what do you expect? You should have seen the meeting where we tried to award credit to who discovered it. 20 scientists all wrestling and punching each other in the conference room like a WWE royal rumble. You think I’m exaggerating but I’m not. It was insane. I’ve got a black eye and bruised knuckles on both hands. When we got our sanity back we all agreed not to make any complaints to HR or the police so we can keep our work going. Ps I fucked Watsons wife. She was well up for it the little slut.

6 September 2017

I’ve just come from the police station Harold. My colleague Watson was found dead. He was found hanged in his home. The police presume suicide but wanted to talk to all his colleagues. I won’t pretend I have much sympathy for him. I hated him. A strange thing I’ve found Harold. It’s amazing what strength you have when you really hate someone. Hate is kind of thrilling. Its lets you take care of problems quickly and easily without the worry of “morals” or “ethics”. Write soon if you wish.

27 November 2017

Dark Matter. Dark Energy. You won’t know much about this being quite stupid yourself Harold. This anti-particle we found is powerful. More powerful than anyone dared dreamed of. Unlimited energy, unlimited power. I am sure it is what makes up the 70% of unknown matter and energy in universe. Darkness is what the universe is made of Harold. And hence so are we. Darkness is the truth. The pitiful sparks of stars in the sky are immensely outweighed by the darkness between them. I have become as cold and as empty as the space between the stars. It is what tears things down and destroys that has the true power. Something is growing inside me, taking me over, and changing my atoms. I feel a huge sense of destiny. I have a strange rash on my forehead. I swear I can see a 6 in it.

25 December 2017

It is very late Harold. I have the laboratory to myself. I am going to go into the particle collider and turn it on. This should kill me and in a way it will. My body shall be crucified on this technological cross. But I have faith I shall be reborn. My particles become anti-particles. My true self shall emerge. Merry Anti-Christmas Harold.

NEWSPAPER REPORT dated 2 January 2018

Massacre at Cern Laboratories, Switzerland

18 Scientists were found massacred yesterday at Cern Laboratories in Geneva Switzerland. Cern is the European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world including the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The area is sealed off as police investigate. A cleaner who discovered the bodies spoke to our reporter. She claims that the scientist’s bodies were torn apart and disemboweled. Some bodies were pinned to the wall with steel shafts. There were strange phrases in an unknown language written in blood on the walls.

28 January 2018 [This letter is written in a dark substance]

It is now the year prophesied. The Beast has risen from the earth. I am the destroyer. I shall summon a dark age for mankind. Pathetic human laws will have no place. Blood, sacrifice, pain and torment shall be the rulers of this world.

I remember you told me when we first became friends Harold that we would do amazing things together. I was the smartest kid in the world you said, but I needed you to take action in the world and change it. You didn’t say whether it would change for the better or worse. As kids, what first attracted me to you Harold was your goodness. You were kind, you would stick up for kids against bullies and try to help people when you could. And you know what they say. Opposites attract. Join me my old friend, and let us rule together. Don’t bother writing. I shall see you soon.

Little children, it is the last hour: and as you have heard that Antichrist cometh, even now there are become many Antichrists: whereby we know that it is the last hour. — 1 John 2:18

[depechemodespiritera]

At 56, Depeche Mode bandleader Martin Gore no longer feels the need to pull any lyrical punches. So he gets right to the prickly, political point on the band’s latest Spirit set, starting with its clickety-clacking rhetorical question of a lead single “Where’s the Revolution,” with a grim societal accusation intoned in unusually ominous fashion by frontman Dave Gahan: “You’ve been kept down/ You’ve been pushed ‘round/ You’ve been lied to/ You’ve been fed truths/ Who’s making your decisions?” And the album – in scathing indictments of our corrupt, fossil-fuel-favoring, technology-dependent, extinction-bound culture – just gets angrier from there, in “Fail,” “Scum,” “Poorman,” “The Worst Crime,” and the drone-warfare-damning “Going Backwards,” which posits that “We can track it on a satellite/ See it all in black and white/ Watch men die in real time/ We have nothing inside.”

Gore didn’t set out to pen a set of turbulent protest songs that throb with the dark zeitgeist pulse of our post-Brexit-and-Russian-influenced-Trump-election times. It all arose from an instinctive gut feeling he had two years ago that something had gone wrong with humanity. Something horribly, perhaps irreversibly wrong. When he began composing the Spirit material at the end of 2015, none of these startling global U-turns had happened yet, he recalls. There were serious forebodings, to be sure. “The Syrian crisis was going on, which obviously led to the refugee crisis, the Russians had invaded Crimea, and there was a war going on in the Ukraine,” he sighs, in uncomfortably 20/20 hindsight. “It just seemed like we were getting into bad situations everywhere you looked. And there was that whole spate of police shootings in America – black people getting shot – so maybe I was feeling particularly sensitive or something. But I could feel something in the air that did not feel good.”

Gore also had the unusual vantage point of being a British expatriate who now resides in Santa Barbara, California. Gahan lives in New York, but keyboardist Andy Fletcher has remained in London, where his favorite non-touring activity is going down to his local pub every night and – having been kept up to date on world affairs by the less-biased coverage of BBC News – discussing political frustrations with his good mates. “That’s his thing, and I suppose once you’re a few pints in, those discussions get very lively,” Gore says of his childhood chum, who first formed Composition of Sound with him back in 1980, before adding Gahan (who changed their name to Depeche Mode) and releasing their frothy synth-pop debut Speak & Spell a year later. Whereas in America, he adds, “I do get into discussions with people, but they’re not quite as lively. But I have a 14-month-old and a six-week-old at the moment (with second wife Kerrilee Kaski; he has three kids with first wife Suzanne Boisvert), and the song “Eternal” on the new album I wrote for Johnnie Lee, my 14-month-old daughter, reflecting the EPA and climate change and stuff. And it was kind of serious, but almost meant to be a black comedy, as well, when it mentions the ‘black cloud rising’.” Considering the giant miasma of pollution hovering over China, and the current arms-proliferation posturing of North Korea, he sighs with parental chagrin. “But unfortunately, right now we’re in the middle of that. I mean, I’m not old enough to remember the Cuban missile crisis. But I feel that now we’re in a situation that’s almost as scary as that. Well, scarier because now it’s actually happening.”

When Fletcher first heard his friend’s thought-provoking new compositions, he remembers being somewhat taken aback. Especially considering the fact that Gore traditionally writes on acoustic guitar, which must have made the music sound even more like Dylan-skeletal protest anthems. “At the time, I think me and the producer (multi-instrumentalist James Ford, who also contributed drums on every cut) were a bit worried,” he says. “But then, as we recorded the album, the world situation got worse and worse. We had Brexit. And then Trump actually winning? And then Marine LePen, this hard right-winger, running for election in France, which is not good in a country that is so cosmopolitan? By the time we finished the album, we all thought it was a perfect time to release it. And I’ve always been interested in politics – it’s what I studied at school. So for me, everything that’s happened has been really interesting, and I have to admit that the chatter in the pub has gotten very good because of it.”

Fletcher gets his information from the London Times, the Financial Times, and, of course, the BBC, which he swears by. “The news in Britain is so much better than the news in the States, because you’re really only covering one thing at the moment, and that’s Trump. And all the other things happening in the world? They’re not really covered.” One of the toughest hurdles he ever had to deal with was when Gore relocated to far-off California, and the pair could no longer hang and ruminate on the day’s events, Earth-shattering or otherwise. “It’s weird, because Dave and I sort of connnect as brothers, but – like brothers – you don’t want to be in their company all the time,” he explains of how the Depeche Mode dynamic works. “But Martin is different – he’s been my best friend since age 11, and him moving to America was terrible for me, because it’s difficult, calling someone from London to Santa Barbara, when one person has just woken up and the other’s going to bed.”

What else is in Gore’s livid litany of pet peeves? “Hey – what have you got?” He chuckles. “Trump defunding the EPA and putting a man in charge who doesn’t even believe in climate change? It’s lunacy,” he growls, menacingly. “And unfortunately, he’s not the only one who’s a denier – you find them everywhere you go. And I always say to people, ‘Well, if you don’t believe in climate change, then why don’t we – just for caution’s sake – say that maybe it is happening? What do we have to lose?’” This directly inspired the deceptively gentle Spirit march “The Worst Crime”, which proposes public lynching as penance for ignoring, or harming, the environment (“Once there were solutions/ Now we have no excuses… we are all charged with treason”). “For me, the worst crime is destroying the planet,” Gore declares. “We have this great opportunity to change things, and we’ve had so much evidence, so much scientific proof for so long, but we keep choosing to not do anything about it. And it’s not just destroying the planet for us. It’s destroying it forever. And the system in America is just very, very flawed. I mean, I can’t quite work out when lobbying was a good idea, and why it still exists – and is accepted – I don’t understand, because it’s just so corrupt and so… so wrong. It must happen in other parts of the world, but nowhere near the extent that it does here.”

Even the most sonically-uplifting Spirit number, “Scum,” calls an unspecified antagonist on the carpet for being ‘hollow, shallow, and dead inside.’ Could it be a Wall Street hedge fund manager who bilked the middle class out of millions then walked away, scot free? Gore snickers. “That song is far more powerful if I don’t tell you who my ‘scum’ is,” he elaborates. “Because if I say, ‘It’s this person,’ then it kind of detracts from it, because when a listener hears a song, they put their own imagination to work on it, and then it becomes far more powerful.” But in the “Black Celebration”-ish thrummer “Poorman,” (“Hey, there’s no news/ Poorman’s still has got the blues/ He’s walking around in worn-out shoes/ With nothing to lose,” Gahan murmurs in his classic catacomb-cryptic croon), he demands more accountability. “Again, I think the system is completely screwed and flawed,” Gore says. “People should have gone to jail, but instead they’re getting called into the White House. And the song “Fail” is kind of the synopsis of the whole album, really.” As a species – mistakenly thinking it’s the entitled end product of evolution, “we’re not doing a very good job. We need to start finding the path again.”

Hence the ethereal album title, Gore adds. Some naysayers might describe the record as unequivocally pessimistic, but he respectfully disagrees – pay close attention to what Gahan is singing, and you might fidget uneasily in your seat. “But Spirit is quite realistic – I’m being realistic about what’s going on at the moment, and kind of pointing things out. And by naming it Spirit, I’m hoping that it gets people to think, and maybe somehow rediscover that sense of spirit that we once had, but now seem to have lost.” Mention that DEVO predicted this – humanity’s atavistic de-evolution – four decades ago, and he laughs softly, almost to himself. Everyone’s obsession with their personal device is not only a mass distraction, he believes, but an omen of some kind of impending Apocalypse. “With all of our technological advances and the way we’re using them, it’s, uh, not turning out so well for humankind,” he says. “The only thing that’s headed in the right direction at the moment is medicine. We are getting breakthroughs in medicine, although if we end up in some nuclear holocaust, the medicine’s not going to help us as much.  So I think that if we don’t destroy ourselves, we could get to a point where we’re actually able to live for a lot longer.” He pauses to let out a protracted sigh. “But I don’t know what that would actually do for our species, either.”

Fletcher is more optimistic. From an almost scholarly distance, he analyzes England’s recent Brexit snafu, wherein non-London outliers were roiled into enough of a xenophobic frenzy, they essentially voted against their own self-interest to leave the European Union. “The crazy thing is, it was all the villages across Britain – who don’t have any migrants – who voted for Brexit,” he says. “And the fact is, it was a 50/50 vote, and I think any major constitutional change should be more like 60/40, or even 70/30, not 50/50. But I’m not that doom-y about all this stuff. You get stages where things like this happen, so I don’t think the world is any closer to coming to an end.” He has hope, then? “I do, really,” he replies. I mean, what will Trump be able to achieve? Not much through Congress. The only way he can cause a bit of trouble is as Commander in Chief. So yes, this album is pretty angry, but we do normally write about these subjects, but we usually use sex and religion to get the point across. It’s just that Spirit is very direct, although we had one album, Construction Time Again, which was this direct, as well.”

Fletcher also secretly enjoys all of the intrinsic irony involved. Whereas Depeche Mode began as a percolating danceable outfit, it gradually streamlined itself into a sleek, undulating serpent of a synth-rock machine that purred like a long, black hearse leading a funeral procession, aided immensely by Gahan’s ebony-garbed, drone-voiced stage persona. Gore-sculpted songs like “Strangelove,” “Personal Jesus,” “Behind the Wheel,” and “Shake the Disease” straddled the aesthetic line between Goth, New Wave, and industrial, and the band’s diverse audience grew accordingly. And – no matter how grim the trio gets – Fletcher says, “there’s always a lot of people clapping their hands and singing along. And in fact, we got the best reviews we’ve ever had in our career for Spirit, and Depeche Mode generally doesn’t get good reviews. The way our music is made, you need to listen to it a lot of times – you can’t just listen to it twice and then do a review of it. I remember our album Violator – which is a 10 out of 10 record in anyone’s book – just getting average reviews when it came out.

“But we put on good shows, we make good records,” he continues, “And for some weird reason, we’re in our 50s but we seem to be more popular than we ever were. So we’re in a very lucky position – we’ve got loads of our old fans, and they still buy CDs. And then we’re picking up young fans, as well. I mean, we can’t do anything wrong! This American tour sold out faster than our last two tours, and I can’t work out why – I mean, it’s a similar tour, but it’s just gone through the roof. And we’re not a high-profile band – we’re not on the magazines or in newspapers. I just can’t work it out.” And Depeche Mode is one of the few bands from the post-punk era that’s not currently out on an advertised retro tour, playing some vintage cornerstone from its decades-old past, note for note. The group is as relevant – and thought-provoking – as ever these days.

And the three musicians still work well together as a collective. Gahan – who also put out the occasional solo effort – co-wrote four less-political tracks on Spirit, “You Move,” “Cover Me,” “Poison Heart,” and “No More (This Is the Last Time).” “And I used my usual range of analog synths, guitars, and everything came together really fast – we mixed the record on our third session,” Fletcher says, citing Ford’s studio assistance as crucial. But I think technology makes your job harder, not easier, because it gives you hundreds more options. And now there’s this situation with all the superstar DJs,” adds the musician, who still books old-school DJ gigs himself. “In the old days, a promoter would have gotten some young bands to play, but now it’s some superstar DJ who just uses his laptop. And the fact is, it’s replacing bands now – it’s a very unhealthy situation, and for young bands at the moment, it’s just terrible now. Record sales are embarrassingly low, you’re not given any tour support from record companies, so the income available is almost nonexistent. That’s why we no longer get hundreds of great rock bands around the place.”

Gore has yet to see Mike Judge’s hilarious satire Idiocracy, in which Luke Wilson – playing a man of average intelligence from our era – is accidentally frozen in cryogenic slumber for 500 years, during which so many stupid people keep mindlessly breeding that, when he’s awakened in the Great Landfill Collapse – he’s the smartest man in the world. The director’s vision for the future is as grimly dystopian as Gore’s on Spirit, save the public execution “Worst Crime” part. But he has one thing to thank for the album’s relevance, which increases every scandal-beset day. “The American electoral process is so long, the beginning of it had only just started when I began writing this record,” he says. “And it just takes soooo long over here, doesn’t it? It gets so long and dragged out that everyone’s just completely bored with it by the end.” It gave the dirges time to grow, take on even creepier, bigger metaphorical meaning. Or, as Fletcher succinctly puts it, “it’s not like every one of our albums is like this. But I think it’s good that a band like Depeche Mode does a record like Spirit. And people can’t say that we’re jumping on a bandwagon, because, Hey – the songs were written two years ago!”

– By Tom Lanham

Appearing 8/30 at Hollywood Casino Amphitheater, Tinley Park.

[epacer]

Classmates

Yale Strom, Class of 1975 and Elizabeth Schwartz

‘National treasure’ Yale Strom to be featured at 26th annual Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival

When Yale Strom had his big musical and cultural epiphany while attending San Diego State University, the door that opened for him — figuratively, if not literally — was slammed in his face less than two hours later.

Experiencing both in rapid-fire succession irrevocably changed the life of this acclaimed maverick.

Strom had already earned degrees from SDSU in American Studies and Furniture Design. His musical epiphany inspired him to quickly abandon his plans to attend law school. Instead, he spent a year crisscrossing Eastern Europe as a backpack-toting violinist and amateur cultural ethnographer.

The Mission Hills resident has since become an award-winning performer, composer, photographer, documentary filmmaker, author and playwright. One of this country’s foremost scholars on Jewish klezmer music, which originated in Eastern Europe in the 17th century, Strom has performed around much of the world, played at the White House for President Obama and written a symphony.

Between May 26 and July 11, he will be featured in three performances during the 26th annual Lipinsky Family San Diego Jewish Arts Festival, including two with his wife, noted singer Elizabeth Schwartz. The festival is the latest chapter in Strom’s career, which traces its roots to the almost concurrent opening and slamming of that figurative door.

“Yale went to a concert here by The Big Jewish Band and he had never heard a live klezmer group before,” recalled longtime friend and collaborator Todd Salovey, who is the Associate Artistic Director of the San Diego Repertory Theatre and has overseen the Lipinsky festival since its inception.

“Yale was mesmerized. At the end of the concert, he asked if he could join The Big Jewish Band. The leader, (San Diego Symphony cellist) Ron Robboy, said: ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you’!”

Strom remembers this memorable encounter with Robboy, now a friend, as if it took place last week, not 38 years ago.

“It was March 1981 and The Big Jewish Band was playing downtown at Sushi (Performance & Visual Art),” Strom said. “Ron didn’t welcome me with open arms when I asked to join, but he did me a big favor. I went home, and said: ‘OK, I’m not going to join this band, so I’ll form my own!’ Then I went to the library and dug into the archives.

“At the end of the summer of 1981, I bought a one-way ticket to Vienna, Austria. I thought I would go to Europe for a few months. I stayed a year.”

Storm traveled through Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Soviet Ukraine. He spoke Yiddish and some Swedish.

But it was music — and his four-stringed instrument, specifically — that enabled him to open doors and communicate with Eastern European Jews wherever he went. He learned first-hand about klezmer music and about the struggles and triumphs of Jews in countries where the horrors sowed by World War II remain palpable.

‘The language of our hearts’

“I often say that Yiddish is the language or our minds, and the violin is the language of our hearts,” Strom said.

“I was able to make myself understood in Europe. But the key for me is that I was doing ethnography — and I didn’t even know the word at the time. I just did it from my gut.”

Strom is now one of the foremost ethnographers on klezmer and an authority on the Roma music favored by European gypsies. Since 2006, he has been a professor at SDSU, where he serves as artist-in-residence in the Jewish Studies program and teaches classes in the school’s history and anthropology departments.

He has written a dozen books and made nine documentaries. His latest film, 2018’s “American Socialist: The Life and Times of Victor Debs,” profiles a pioneering World War I protester. Strom also composed and arranged all of the music for the film, which features a folk and Americana soundtrack.

More recently, he and internationally celebrated San Diego jazz saxophonist Charles McPherson were commissioned to compose separate pieces of music for San Diego Ballet’s “Song of Songs.” It debuts May 24-26 at downtown’s Lyceum Theatre. The May 26 performance will kick off this year’s Lipinsky festival.

“To share the bill with Charles McPherson is quite the honor,” Strom said. “I’ve been a follower of his musical genius for years. So to be part of this ballet with him is something I am very proud of.”

Strom’s multifaceted talents and devotion to his craft are a matter of record. Yet, even some of his closest friends and collaborators — including bassist, composer and arranger Jeff Pekarek — note that his success was hardly a given.

“No, it wasn’t,” said Pekarek, who befriended Strom when both were students at Crawford High School. They have been musical partners since they started playing bluegrass together in the 1970s.

“Being a musician is hard,” Pekarek said. “Being an independent filmmaker is hard. I don’t think anything Yale has done has been less than hard, because it’s all been uphill. I’m pleased and proud to be his friend. But it wasn’t like there was a big breakthrough moment that made me say: ‘Oh, here comes the sun, breaking out through the clouds for Yale’!”

With or without a breakthrough moment, Strom’ has worked at a seemingly nonstop pace. He is so busy that his wife, Elizabeth, half-jokes: “if I didn’t work with Yale, I wouldn’t see him that often.”

Growing more serious, she said: “Before I met Yale, I was a film executive in Hollywood and worked with a lot of creative people, especially writers. I think you can be honest, in a kind of polite way. But people ask your opinion because they want their work to be as good as possible. With Yale, I’m kind of the in-house singer, editor and producer.”

Schwartz will sing with Strom at two of this year’s Lipinsky festival performances, both as a member of his band, Hot Pstromi.

“Elizabeth is a really terrific collaborator and a great artist in her own right,” said San Diego Repertory Theatre veteran Salovey. He has featured Strom and Schwartz in the festival’s annual Klezmer Summit concert for the past 18 years.

“What’s also fun about Yale and Elizabeth working together is they don’t always agree; they have different perspectives and they are not afraid to share them with each other,” Salovey said.

“I think Yale is a national treasure. There are very few people in the U.S. today who have as broad a knowledge of music history and the people who have created the Jewish music of the last 100 years. He’s a bridge between the music of Eastern Europe, before World War II, and music today.”

Strom and Schwartz have a 21-year-old daughter, Tallulah, who is a senior in cultural and social anthropology at UC San Diego.

Beginning Wednesday, Strom will be in Czechoslovakia to teach his anthropology class, Music & Culture, to SDSU students in Prague. After that, he and Elizabeth will resume work on their next film documentary, “Recordially Yours,” which profiles recently deceased San Diego music legend Lou Curtiss.

“I like to have one or two projects to work on, as well as being a husband, father and teacher,” Strom said. “And I’ll play at weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and parties. They’re fun to do and bring pleasure to others.” *Reposted article from the UT by George Varga of May 18, 2019

[opedguy]

Fauci Created Deadly Coronavirus

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), June 5, 2021.--Saber-rattling before the U.S.-Russian summit in Geneva June 16, 78-year-old President Joe Biden warned Russian President that he will hold the Kremlin accountable for recent ransomware attacks on U.S. industries, including the Colonial Pipline, and, most recently, JBS Foods, the Brazillian-owned largest meat packer in the United States.  FBI Directory Christopher Wray, 54, compared the spate of ransomware attacks to Sept. 11, where Osama bin Laden flew jetliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.  Comparing rasomware attacks to Sept. 11, Wray mirrored the Biden Administration approach that views cyber attacks as acts of war. If Biden enters the Geneva summit accusing the Kremlin to sponsoring ransomware attacks on the United States, it won’t the summit will deteriorate quickly.  Putin has signaled that he won’t let the summit plunge into a name-calling session.     

        Speaking at an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Putin said that arms control, climate change, coronavirus pandemic and global conflicts would be on the table.  But Putin also knows that Biden will crossover into human rights, especially persecution of 44-year-old Russian dissident Alexi Navalny, now serving a two-year-eight-month prison sentence in a Russian penal colony.  “We need to find ways of luck for a settlement in our relations, which are at an extremely low level now,” Putin said, signaling to Biden to tread lightly on June 16.  Putin won’t sit and be lambasted by Biden for cyber attacks, human rights abuses or Russian military build up near Ukraine.  Putin expressed hope that U.S.-Russian relations could be repaired but not if Biden starts hurling accusations about Russian meddling in past U.S. elections or even recent cyber attacks from apparently Russian criminal gangs.   

          Putin’s ready for any attack on Russia’s human rights record, ready to bring up Washington brutal crackdown on Jan. 6 protesters.  “They weren’t just a crowd of robbers and rioters.  Those people had come with political demands,” Putin said, something 100% rejected by Biden and Democrats.  Whatever Putin did with Alexi Navalny, the U.S. Congress treated former President Donald Trump with equal contempt, impeaching him for “incitement of insurrection,” a preposterous charge when you think the Jan. 6 rabble rousers spent more time on selfies than destroying government property.  Biden will never agree with Putin about the civil rights of Jan. 6 protesters because the Democrat Party accuses them of insurrection, trying to overthrow the U.S. government.  When House Democrats tried to make that case in the Senate trial, it was roundly rejected by U.S. Senators.      

       Putin followed closely the March 18 summit between the U.S. and Communist China in Anchorage, Alaska.  Secretary of State Tony Blinken, 58, and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, accused Beijing on genocide on Muslim Uyghurs in China’s Western provinces.  China rejected the charges out of hand, accusing the U.S. of a long history of abusing African Americans.  So if Biden raises Russia’s alleged human rights abuses, Putin’s likely to fire back at U.S. hypocrisy.   Putin told Russia’s Channel 1 that he doesn’t expect any breakthrough at the summit with Biden.  Putin said he hopes to “create conditions for a taking further steps to normalize Russian-U.S. relations.”  Putin rejected out of hand any involvement by Russian hackers in the Colonial pipeline and more recently Brazillian-based JBS meatpacking.  “I heard something about the meat plant—it’s sheer nonsense . . .,” Putin said.   

          Putin plans to respond sharply to any suggestion that the Russian government is involved in recent cyber attacks on the Colonial Pipeline or JBS meatpacking plant.  “We all understand it’s just ridiculous.  A pipeline?  It’s equally absurd,” Putin said, reminding the U.S. delegation not to get to caught up in anti-Russian propaganda coming from certain media circles.  “It means that inside the American society, media and political class there are people who want to find ways to repair U.S-Russian relations,” Putin said.  Putin and Biden can find much in common with climate change, where Putin expressed concerns about the melting of permafrost in Siberian cities.  Biden’s made climate change an integral part of his national and global agenda, agreeing to stop selling the internal combustion engines in the U.S. by 2035.  Putin and Biden can find common ground on climate change.       

      Biden’s being influenced by anti-Russian war hawks in his State Department and on Capitol Hill.  If Biden wants to roll back the doomsday clock, he needs to park all the accusations at the door and find areas of agreement, especially about climate change and other potential global conflicts.  Putin sees the new hacking allegations to “provoke new conflicts before our meetings with Biden,” warning Biden’s handlers to steer clear of topics bound to ratchet up tensions between Russia and the U.S.  Putin plans to highlight the cooperation between the Kremlin and Berlin on the Nordstream 2 Pipeline, nearing completion to supply Germany with natural gas for years to come.  Biden opposed the Nordstream because it gives the Russian Federation real leverage over Germany, and indirectly over the European Union [EU].  Before it’s too late, Biden’s agenda with Putin should be tightly limited to common ground.

 About the Author  

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

[componentplanet]

CES 2020: Highlights in Photos

With a nearly unimaginable array of products and concepts on display spread across all of Las Vegas, it is hard to pick out a final few each year for our wrap-up. But here are those we found of particular interest.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 “Many-in-1” Foldable

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold is the world’s first folding display tablet. (There are obviously several designs that have separate displays on each section, but not a single folding display.) I got to demo one this week and I’m really impressed with the design. The display is protected front and back by an integrated leather cover. That prevents a lot of the issues that arose with the original Samsung Fold. You can’t get under the screen — neither can your sandwich crumbs — and the back of the hinge is solidly protected. I saw no evidence of a crease when folding and unfolding it. Lenovo rates the display for 3-4 years of life, as tested by their industrious robots. For the full specs, you can read our coverage of the announcement here.

Given concerns over the plastic screen scratching, I asked Lenovo about that. They said it is actually harder to scratch, and have been testing it in pockets with keys and other sharp objects. With the keyboard tucked inside, there really isn’t any room for something to get in once it is folded, but without the keyboard, there is a tiny gap. I offered to trade them my Surface Pro for one on the spot, but Lenovo was not amused. It looks like a great ultra-portable if you can afford the $2,499+ price when it ships later this year. Not everyone wants a Windows tablet, but it worked quite nicely as a 13-inch display with the optional Bluetooth keyboard that you can fold into the tablet.

On the lighter folding side, Lenovo’s new Razr features a fully functional retro mode that works exactly the way the original Razr phone did.

ShiftCam Aims To Put Another Nail in Camera Company Coffins

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of clip-on lenses and filters for smartphones. But unless they are specced very tightly for a particular model phone, they are hard to align. The problem is worsened if you need to swap between them for different effects. ShiftCam has come up with an ingenious solution: The company puts a number of lens and filter modules into a phone case that has a sliding section. So you can simply slide the correct lens or filter over your phone’s camera. Right now it is understandably iPhone-only, as the bewildering variety of form factors for Android phones makes building something like this for them difficult.

Living Packets Sustainable e-Commerce

Our modern lives full of “1-click ordering” come with many costs. One is the huge amount of packaging required. Some, like cardboard boxes, are at least fairly easy to recycle. Others, like many foam peanuts or other petroleum-based packing materials, aren’t. Living Packets aims to totally up-end both the physical reality of product shipping and its economics. I can’t do the company’s aspirations justice in these few sentences, but they’ve constructed an easy-to-fold, reusable box that in the shipping version will be equipped with GPS, cellular connectivity, an inward-facing camera for inspecting package contents, an e-Ink display for addressing, and even temperature and humidity sensors for quality tracking.

Customers who get a product in one of the company’s boxes can use the box to return products, or donate or sell other items they own in a user-friendly way. Or they can return them to a participating retailer for a small credit. There is a lot more to the vision of Living Packets, but overall the team describes a utopian vision of how product shipments and returns almost certainly should work in a perfect world. So I’m happy to wish them every success, but making this vision a reality will be a long and challenging enterprise. The company has been doing testing with a French retailer, and is planning a broader European launch later this year. The US isn’t on their radar until next year.

The Massive Black Multi-Rotor Copters Are Now Friendlier-Looking

Last year, the Bell multi-rotor passenger helicopter prototype looked like it belonged in a dystopian science fiction movie: sheer black, accented with blue neon. Apparently the company got the message, as this year it was dolled up in much more reasonable garb. Hyundai also showed a massive prototype this year. The color is fine, but unlike the Bell that has shrouds around its props, the props on the Hyundai look like they could double as killing machines. Of course, they are quite high up, but the effect is still a little disconcerting.

Far From the Madding Crowds: Outside Las Vegas

It’s easy to forget that the neon and concrete of Las Vegas sits in the middle of one of the most beautiful areas anywhere. The immediate area is desert (the Mojave), but there are plenty of mountains. This is a view coming down from Sequoia National Forest past Lake Isabella on our drive to the show.

Finally: An Ultra-Short-Throw Projector for Consumers

Whether it is because you like the relative softness and easy-on-the-eye feel of a projected image, or because you can’t afford a zillion-dollar, super-big-screen TV, projectors are an obvious solution. Until now, though, they have required a large area and fancy mounting. Or, like the Sony ultra-short-throw on display a couple of years ago, cost as much as a low-end Tesla. Vava, better known for lower-end consumer electronics, has introduced a really impressive 4K (pixel-shifted using a TI DLP) UST that can project a 150-inch display. The model I demoed was projecting 100 inches onto a special UST-friendly ALR (Ambient Light Rejecting) screen. While it doesn’t have quite the color gamut of a similarly priced home cinema projector, it is a lot more convenient.

F1: The World’s Highest-Tech Sport

Top Formula 1 teams employ well over 1,000 people and spend as much as $400 million a year to field just two cars in about 20 races (21 last year, 22 this year). So, of course, F1 had an exhibit to hype the massive amount of data produced, transmitted, and consumed by the cars. Each race venue has to be fitted with about 60 km of fiber optic cables, for example. For show and tell, you could play F1 2019 in a really nice cockpit (review samples were unfortunately not available) and see Sebastian Vettel’s 2011 title-winning Red Bull car redecorated in the team’s 2019 livery.

GaN: The Secret to Fast Charging

A couple of years ago, I wrote about how EPC’s GaN semiconductor technology was the secret sauce to most high-speed lidar units. It turns out that GaN is also the secret to super-fast, high-power, compact USB-C chargers. If like me, you’d never heard of Navitas, you may still have used a charger powered by its chips. Well over a dozen brands use the company for its high-end USB-C chargers, including Aukey, Ravpower, Anker, and ASUS. The photo shows the size reduction possible by going from a traditional to GaN approach for a 300-watt power supply.

Jeep Combined VR With the Real World in This Ride

Finally, on the fun side, Jeep offered show-goers a turn in this hydraulically-lifted Jeep Rubicon as they traversed an off-road course in virtual reality — competing for the best time.

[Image Credit: David Cardinal]

Now Read:

CES 2020: A Breakthrough Year for Digital Health Wearables

For Self-Driving Cars, Lidar Amps Up at CES 2020

Intel at CES 2020: 10nm++ Tiger Lake, Comet Lake-H, and an Upgradeable NUC on Tap

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/304155-ces-2020-highlights-in-photos from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/01/ces-2020-highlights-in-photos.html

[tkmedia]

Harry Kane is as timeless as his purple patch is endless

At some point Tottenham hero Harry Kane just totally dedicated himself to being the best and pursued that goal with intensity and ruthlessness. Who’s this then? Harry Edward Kane is 28 in a couple of weeks and is currently a striker for Spurs but perhaps won’t be for much longer. And in case you’ve been off your head on mushrooms for the last few days, he has just led England to a European Championship final for the very first time, scoring the rebound from a saved penalty that took them there. A 6ft 2ins Walthamstow boy, growing up 15 minutes from White Hart Lane, he spent a year on Arsenal’s youth books before Liam Brady got rid saying he was a chubster and not athletic enough. He joined Spurs in 2009 when he was 16 but only made a single appearance until the 2013/14 season, being famously sent out on loan to Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester where he ‘learned to play football with grown men’ as the grizzled old warhorse managers always put it, with just a hint of the homoerotic. He played 65 games for those clubs and scored 16 times. On returning to Spurs there were still a lot of doubts about him. ‘Kane Not Able’ was a headline someone must surely have written after a barren spell in front of goal. But in 2014/15 it all changed. Suddenly he dropped weight, his body seemed to get far bigger and harder. He seemed to get much wider, much more well-developed. Whether this was simply his body growing into adulthood, or whether he’d been on the beef tea and chicken giblets, I don’t know. But the change was remarkable. He netted 31 in 51 that season and from the chubby, dull caterpillar had emerged the bright elusive butterfly of Kane love. Since that season he’s scored 216 times for Spurs in 310 games with 2017/18’s remarkable 41 goals in 48 games being his best campaign total to date. Now with his own personal chef to make sure the chicken and pasta is just the right temperature and to make sure he doesn’t, like the rest of us, eat a bucket of Mackie’s salted caramel ice cream because he’s depressed at the state of the country with a charlatan like Boris Johnson getting a large parliamentary majority despite being a useless, duplicitous, lying bastard. His (Kane’s, not Johnson’s) assists stats now impress massively, too, as he has transformed himself into two players: one a striker, one a playmaker. Spurs, of course, continued not to win anything under the guiding bucket-on-a-stick that is Daniel Levy and yet relied on Kane to make them look like a serious club involved in a serious project to be serious about coming somewhere in the top ten every season. The result is the Kane trophy cabinet is full of personal honours but entirely empty of actual trophies. The Queen even took sympathy on Harry and in 2019 gave him an OBE to play with, which he no doubt looks at wistfully in the silence of a long night. Inevitably Harry has got a bit fed up with having the piss taken out of him, but despite this he still signed an extension which was very, very silly but then contracts are worthless totems and he has already phoned a cab to go to what I insist on still calling Maine Road and being stroked like a pro by Pep Guardiola. His goal tally for clubs now stands at 237 in 401 games. Meanwhile, for England he’s reached 38 goals in 60 games and looks odds-on to break Wayne Rooney’s record of 53 goals without any hair. He’s about to surpass infamous movie-hating-because-they’re-not-real, Michael Owen and his record of 40 goals. It’s not far-fetched to think he could finish with 65-70 goals for England.

Why the love? In the interests of full disclosure, for years I never thought Kane was a top-rank footballer. I remember seeing him huff and puff his way around the pitch in 2013/14 as Spurs gave him 19 games in the first team that season, during which time he scored just four times. He looked a bit useless and it was hard to know what role suited him. He was too slow, sometimes to the point of lumbering, to play on the shoulder, but didn’t seem to know how to play a lone striker and didn’t have the ball game to be a No. 10. I fully expected him to drop down the leagues and be playing for Southend by now. This went so deep that even as he started scoring and playing fantastic football, I still expected this to be a blip, a purple patch and nothing more and that his form would recede to the mean soon enough. Of course this never happened, though when he goes through one of those periods of looking like his legs are made out of night storage heaters and he is running through peanut butter, that thought always returns. Indeed, I can’t think of any supreme striker that is capable of looking so exhausted, washed out and anaemic, only to suddenly turn up the saturation and bloom into a bloody brilliant goal machine. He is, of course, a gift to the awful tabloid and right-wing press in general. Here’s a nice boy who married his childhood sweetheart and does right by everyone. He won’t be found at a Kyle Walker sex party, indeed it is hard to imagine Harry even knows what sex is, despite having two children. Not an ounce of that sort of twinkle in the Kane eyes, oh no. The press seem to have turned him into some sort of cartoon English character who has just returned from the Crusades or something and they vaunt his every move at every opportunity whilst overlooking the similar or greater achievements of others. Even on Wednesday night it took Ian Wright to query why he had got Star Of The Match and not Raheem Sterling who, by any stretch of the imagination, or any perusal of the statistics, deserved it more. Hard not to think the worst about such things. Not that it is Harry’s fault, or indeed, anything to do with him at all. His commitment to his game and to his club and country has always been exemplary. He’s developed into not just a phenomenal striker but also a brilliant provider. This isn’t a role that many, if any, perform well. To state the obvious, it is hard to create goals for others and score them yourself as well but last season’s 14 assists and 23 goals in the Premier League show that is exactly what he does. Some players seem like instinctively great footballers who are born to it. Harry doesn’t. His success seems purely the product of incredible hard work and dedication. At some point he just totally dedicated himself to being the best and pursued that goal with intensity and ruthlessness. For a very modern player, playing a very modern role, there is nonetheless something quite timeless about him. Maybe he is a familiar sort of archetype: the big lad up front who scores loads of goals. However, he has refined the role massively and very much made the dual role of scorer and assist machine all his own. What the people say A bursting mailbag this week, as everyone wants to share their Harry love. We start, as ever, with a lovely 4_4_haiku: Draws you in too deep Swivels, bursts, dissects the lines Now he’s free – and scores — 4_4_haiku (@4_4_haiku) July 9, 2021 ‘He’s really good at manufacturing fouls.’ ‘When he first broke into the first team, I thought that if you were to combine Andros Townsend and Harry Kane you would end up with 2 players: one quick and tricky with an excellent shot and brilliant decision making, and one with the opposite characteristics. Wven as a youngster his decision making was invariably spot on even if the execution wasn’t.’ ‘A player who is easy to like, perhaps because he is more of a hardworking Harry than a Flash Harry.’ ‘On tour before his breakthrough season, he saw a senior pro ask the press officer to bat away media requests. Kane said: “Never tell the media I’m too busy – I want to learn how to be the best I can at every aspect of this.”  And he has been true to his word ever since. #Respect.’ Kane is one of our own. Means so much to Spurs fans. All about the team. As a young player, he and Ryan Mason took on established players in a dressing room clash, punches thrown allegedly, because they weren’t pulling their weight. Changed the whole ethos at the club — Alan Fisher (@spursblogger) July 8, 2021 ‘Genuinely nice bloke.’ ‘Won Young Player of the Season at Millwall in 2012. Was very humble during his time at the club and never let the success go to his head; he’s clearly been working hard on his game ever since!’ ‘His mental resilience is wildly underestimated.’ ‘Something about him that is not very aesthetically pleasing about how he plays.  But by Christ is he good? If Mbappe is Gower, then Kane is Boycott. Hope that makes sense.��� Beautiful technique, should be at an elite club (he would have scored a trillion goals if he played for Bayern Munich). Also his face looks like a sepia photo of somebody from WW1 (“…and this is your great, great uncle Harry, who fought in the Somme…”) — Stuart Dennis (@Stuart_Dennis) July 9, 2021 ‘Someone’s opinion on Kane is very much a barometer for their football knowledge/worth as a person.  If they slag him off, one or both of those things is probably defective.’ ‘Ever since we first heard the name Harry Kane he’s not been good enough for some people, he just shuts them up one after another with goals, goals, goals. Seems likeable and intelligent. Manager material for sure if he wants it.’ ‘Kane was written off by 70% of Spurs fans when he first broke through. Too slow and not exciting, it was said. Hard work, determination and natural striker instinct made many of us look like muppets and deservedly so. The best Spurs player for a generation and deserved legendary status.’ ‘He’s a genuinely elite player, who obviously just loves playing football. Definitely won’t see him falling out of a club at 3am. Does boil a lot of peoples p*ss, never sure why to be honest.’ He’s like a combination of Shearer and Sheringham. And that’s wasn’t a bad combination. — Rob Michael-Phillips (@RobMP73) July 9, 2021 ‘His career has an interesting arc. Clearly worked hard early on and showed an underrated ability to adapt, accepting and acknowledging gaps in his own game. Suspect he’s always had to think how he can best impact games and it’s become a real virtue as he’s lost some of his pace and earlier physicality.’ ‘He’s a good example of natural talent only being part of the package. There will have been plenty of players in his age group touted as being more talented yet his mentality has seen him excel.’ ‘Maybe be nice to see him fall over a bit less mind!’ ‘His finishing is the difference, head, left foot, right foot. He hits the inside netting. Not a wonder kid, not a big signing, he impressed in training. A classic case of a player succeeding against the odds.’ 25th August 2011, a young striker starts a 2nd leg Eufa Cup play off game with Spurs 5-0 up from the away leg After half hour he takes and misses a pen, the game finishes 0-0 We experts knew he’d never score for us Fortunately Harry knew better — Brian (@LukaMoric14) July 8, 2021 Three great moments THAT penalty, shot from the crowd. I thought David Baddiel’s idea was good, that this showed the conscious and the subconscious player. Self-conscious, inhibited and pressured into taking the penalty poorly, but then the subconscious kicks in and without evening thinking, he pounces on it and slots home without even looking: His first goal for England back in 2015 v Lithuania, and look who set it on a plate for him: The assists impress as much as the goals: Future days If he does join Manchester City, it is hard not to see him scoring at least 85 goals per season and making 65 assists, so dominant will he be. Traditionally, players are said to reach their peak at 27 and 28, so is it all downhill from next year for Harry? That seems doubtful given his fitness regime. However he has, by common consent, been flogged like an old carthorse by Spurs and England too. As a result, there is always a moment in each season when he conks out, something goes ouch and he has to be out for a few weeks, then tends to come back too early and goes into the plodding through treacle mode while he gets some oil in his engine again. Hopefully, Guardiola will have spotted this Groundhog Day tradition and will rest him appropriately so that he breaks the cycle. Harry’s an easy man to like. There appears no side to him and you won’t find him with rope and an orange in his mouth in a hotel room, unless it’s for a bit of extra vitamin C. And there is nothing at all wrong with being decent and respectable. In that, Gareth Southgate must see some of his own quiet sensibilities in his captain and notably kept faith with him when he was out of form and struggling. On Radio 4’s ‘Deadringers’ programme, the fella doing the impression of Harry portrays him as a sort of simpleton, mouthing meaningless PR with an exaggerated (what we used to call) speech impediment. That always seemed a bit unfair and awkward. No-one could have served his country better than Harry and to take the piss out of him for not being the reincarnation of Peter Eustinov (ask your grandpa) seems a little shallow. He currently sponsors Orient. Which is a unique sort of thing to do to help support the club that gave him his professional start. The sponsorship has been donated to charities which will receive 10% of the proceeds of shirt sales. The home shirt shows a thank you message to the NHS frontline workers tackling the pandemic, the away shirt sporting a logo of Haven House Children’s Hospice, while the third kit features the mental health charity Mind. Aw.

At almost 28, he can reasonably expect to have a good eight to ten years in the game to rack up more records. In his later career, clearly he can drop deeper and dedicate himself to being some version of a 10. It’s not like he’s got bags of pace to lose and that should ensure his career is a long one. He also seems like the sort of player that would happily play on, even slipping down a division or two just to keep playing, as he doesn’t have a grain of the Billy Big Bollocks about him. The last ten years have seen him rise to the peak of the English game. The next ten should see him consolidate his legend and ensure his place in history. Read the full article

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Bercow scuppers PM’s hopes of a third ‘meaningful vote’

John Bercow was accused of trying to sabotage Brexit last night after he blocked another vote on Theresa May’s deal.

In a dramatic intervention, the Commons Speaker ruled that the EU withdrawal agreement could not be put to a vote again without substantial changes.

He gave Downing Street no notice of his announcement, which came just 24 hours before the Prime Minister was expected to ask the Commons to decide on the issue for a third time following two crushing defeats.

As well as sparking a constitutional crisis, Mr Bercow’s move all but killed any prospect of a vote before Mrs May heads to an EU summit on Thursday.

Mr Bercow’s move all but killed any prospect of a vote before Mrs May heads to an EU summit on Thursday

It also means she may have to ask Brussels for a delay of up to 20 months. A senior Government source said the Speaker, who is an outspoken critic of Brexit, wanted to wreck Mrs May’s plan of limiting the delay to three months.

‘It seems clear that the Speaker’s motive here is to rule out a meaningful vote this week,’ the source added. ‘It leads you to believe what he really wants is a longer extension, where Parliament will take over the process and force a softer form of Brexit.

‘Anyone who thinks that this makes No Deal more likely is mistaken – the Speaker wouldn’t have done it if it did.’

With just ten days to go until Britain is scheduled to leave the EU, the Prime Minister was last night locked in crisis talks with her closest advisers to try to come up with a new strategy.

Ministers proposed a string of radical options – including asking the Queen to open a new session of Parliament – in the hope of getting round Mr Bercow’s ruling.

‘It seems clear that the Speaker’s motive here is to rule out a meaningful vote this week,’ a source said

In a bleak assessment, solicitor general Robert Buckland said: ‘We’re in a major constitutional crisis here, a political crisis we want to try and solve for the country.

‘The Prime Minister’s doing everything she can to try to break that impasse.

‘There are ways around this – a prorogation of Parliament and a new session. We are talking about hours to March 29.

‘We could have done without this. Now we have this ruling to deal with, it is clearly going to require a lot of very fast but very deep thought in the hours ahead.’

In a private message to Tory MPs, Brexit minister Chris Heaton-Harris suggested the EU would exploit the chaos to demand a five-year delay to the UK’s departure, ‘giving the Commons all the time in the world to steal Brexit’. He added: ‘Game over.’

As Mr Bercow sparked further controversy by suggesting he might allow MPs to vote on soft Brexit options:

Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng told MPs that Mrs May would this week ask Brussels for a long delay to Brexit;

Sources said the PM would seek a ‘break clause’ to allow Britain to leave before the European Parliament elections this summer if her deal is approved;

Mr Bercow, who acts as judge and jury on Commons rules, suggested a ‘new political agreement’ with the EU or the promise of a referendum would be needed for him to allow another vote;

Hopes that the DUP would swing behind the deal in the next 24 hours faded, with sources suggesting there would now be no breakthrough this week;

Leading Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg, however, hinted he could back the PM, saying: ‘Mrs May’s deal, however bad it is, takes us out of the European Union’;

Government sources suggested a final attempt to get her plan through could still be made next week if the DUP and leading Eurosceptics come on board;

EU sources suggested Brussels could delay a decision on extending Article 50 until March 29 – the day the UK is due to leave;

Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom clashed angrily with Mr Bercow, accusing him of failing to treat MPs with ‘courtesy and respect’;

Boris Johnson faced a backlash after savaging the PM’s deal again.

Mr Bercow’s decision was welcomed by some Brexiteers, who believe it could bring No Deal closer, and by supporters of a second referendum, who think it could result in Brexit being blocked altogether.

Hardline Brexiteer Owen Paterson said: ‘If the withdrawal agreement cannot be put to the Commons again, we must leave the EU on March 29, as the law demands.’

Labour MP Angela Eagle welcomed the ruling, saying it was wrong to allow MPs to be ‘either strong-armed, bullied or bribed’ by the Government into backing Mrs May’s plan. But Mr Bercow enraged some mainstream Tories.

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at Downing Street today

Neil O’Brien MP accused the Speaker of double standards, pointing out that he had allowed multiple votes on plans hatched by Remainers trying to block Mrs May’s strategy.

And he warned that voters would not understand why MPs were being banned from voting on a deal negotiated with 27 EU countries.

Mr O’Brien said: ‘If the Speaker were to block a solution, which many of my constituents favour, from even being discussed, on the basis of no principle other than his preferences, then my constituents will be furious with him.

‘It is for Parliament to decide what it wants to do in order to respect the will of the British people, not for one man to decide what should or shouldn’t be on the table.’

A ‘Boll**** to Brexit’ sticker can be clearly seen in photographs of Mr Bercow’s black 4×4, which has a personalised numberplate

Pro-Brexit protesters demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament today

James Gray MP said: ‘Thanks to this announcement Brexit will not now occur. The people of Britain, the people who voted for Brexit, but also the Remainers who want to see democracy done, will be absolutely furious that their views will not be allowed to be heard in the House of Commons.’

Mr Bercow’s ruling centred on the longstanding principle that MPs should not be asked to vote twice on the same issue in a single session of Parliament.

He said he had allowed a second vote on the deal because it had changed after Mrs May secured fresh concessions from Brussels.

A tourist takes a selfie next to placards placed by anti-Brexit supporters stand opposite the Houses of Parliament in London

But he added: ‘What the Government cannot legitimately do is resubmit to the House the same proposition – or substantially the same proposition – as that of last week, which was rejected by 149 votes.’

Ministers pointed out that Mr Bercow had torn up Commons rules in January to allow Dominic Grieve, a Tory remainer, to throw another spanner in the Government’s Brexit plans.

Mr Bercow last night suggested he might let MPs use an emergency debate – possibly as soon as this week – to stage votes on soft Brexit options, such as staying in the customs union and single market. Votes on emergency debates are normally restricted to ‘neutral’ motions.

So what DOES Speaker Bercow’s shock move mean for Brexit?

Q&A by Ian Drury 

What happened yesterday?

Commons Speaker John Bercow announced, without warning, that MPs could not vote on the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement for a third time unless it was ‘substantially different’ from before.

Downing Street was stunned, insisting it had no notice that the statement was coming.

Mr Bercow might argue he is behaving honourably. But at a time of national crisis, when the Government is trying to pick a way through the impasse, his intervention will be seen by ministers as profoundly unhelpful. The EU has already said it will not re-open the deal to provide the kind of changes that would satisfy the Speaker.

What had been the Prime Minister’s plan?

After two humiliating Commons defeats for her Brexit deal – one by a record 230 votes in January, the second by 149 last week – Theresa May wanted to bring her agreement back for approval by MPs for a third time before March 29.

Ministers had pencilled in today or tomorrow to hold the vote ahead of the next meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday. Westminster watchers dubbed this ‘Meaningful Vote Three’ (MV3). Mrs May had hoped enough hardline Tory Brexiteers would hold their noses and support her deal, fearing the alternatives: a long delay to leaving the EU, a soft Brexit or, worst, no Brexit at all.

How can the Speaker justify his move?

Having been asked by Labour MPs Angela Eagle and Chris Bryant whether the Government was allowed to vote on the same motion repeatedly in a short space of time, the Speaker said he had consulted Erskine May, the Parliamentary procedural handbook. He cited a 415-year-old precedent – not used for nearly 100 years – to rule the PM could not bring back broadly the same deal ‘during that same [Parliamentary] session’.

But didn’t he flout parliamentary convention himself?

He did indeed. In January, Mr Bercow tore up centuries of Commons procedure and helped frustrate Mrs May’s attempts to win a better deal from the EU.

He allowed an amendment by the former attorney general and Remain campaigner Dominic Grieve that forced the PM to come back within three sitting days if her withdrawal agreement was voted down.

This ruling by the Speaker was made against the advice of Commons Clerk Sir David Natzler and meant the Government lost an element of control over Parliamentary business.

Is Mr Bercow right to make it harder to hold a third vote?

Legal experts and MPs were divided yesterday over his interpretation of procedure.

But last October Sir David told MPs: ‘If it was exactly the same document and they came back three months later for another bite, I do not think the procedures of the House are designed to obstruct the necessary business of government in that way in such a crucial thing.’

So is Mrs May’s deal dead – or is it still on life support?

If it becomes clear that there is a majority for the deal, the Government can probably put it to a vote.

The PM still has to travel to Brussels on Thursday to ask the EU for an extension and MPs will have to vote on that, plus alternative outcomes.

While leaving the bloc on March 29 is still the default legal position – with or without a deal – there is zero chance that Parliament, which is overwhelmingly Remain-supporting, will allow that.

But the Speaker has certainly inserted yet another unwanted obstacle for the Government to overcome.

What happens next?

There will not be a third vote this week, meaning MPs could be voting on Brexit next week, days before the March 29 ‘exit day’. Mrs May will now have to find something substantially different to allow her to even put a vote before the Commons.

Solicitor general Robert Buckland stated succinctly yesterday: ‘We are going to have to put all our thinking caps on and come up with some quick answers.’

A nuclear option would be ejecting Mr Bercow from the Speaker’s chair using a no-confidence motion. However, Remainers – especially Labour MPs – turn a blind eye to his antics because they see an ally in thwarting Brexit.

A second option is proroguing Parliament – ending the session. Public Bills can be carried over from one session to the next. But this would require a new Queen’s Speech and take time, yet the Brexit clock has only ten days to tick.

As Bercow sinks May’s hopes of sealing EU deal this week, will Britain be in limbo for 20 months?

By John Stevens Deputy Political Editor

Theresa May will be forced to ask the EU for a long delay to Brexit after John Bercow yesterday wrecked her chances of getting her deal passed this week.

MPs voted overwhelmingly last week to instruct the PM to ask Brussels for an extension to the two-year Article 50 process.

Mrs May had said a short technical delay until June 30, giving enough time to pass necessary legislation, would be possible if her deal is passed before March 29.

But if MPs do not back it, there would have to be a much longer extension – delaying Brexit for up to 20 months – requiring the UK to take part in European Parliament elections in May. After Commons Speaker Mr Bercow yesterday ruled the PM could not bring her deal back to the Commons unchanged, Downing Street sources last night said it was ‘very unlikely’ a vote on it would be held this week.

Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, arrives at the Chancellery to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel today

Instead they said Mrs May will write to EU leaders ahead of a Brussels summit on Thursday requesting a lengthy delay. Some Brexiteers yesterday rejoiced at Mr Bercow’s decision, believing it has actually increased the chances of a No Deal Brexit because MPs will not stomach a prolonged extension.

In a sign of their optimism, one group of Eurosceptics was even heard whistling the Great Escape theme in the Commons tea room.

But if the EU agrees to offer the Prime Minister an extension, it is unlikely to be turned down by a Commons that voted against a No Deal departure.

European Council President Donald Tusk (L) waves to German Chancellor Angela Merkel (R) at his departure in front of the chancellery in Berlin

MPs voted overwhelmingly last week to instruct Theresa May to ask Brussels for an extension to the two-year Article 50 process. Merkel and Tusk pictured in Berlin today 

It means MPs now face a showdown next week – the last before March 29 – when they are likely to be asked to vote on Mrs May’s deal again if she wins the Speaker’s permission, and if that fails, on the offer of a delay. It means that although the referendum was almost 1,000 days ago, Britain’s future will go right down to the wire.

Last night, sources suggested Mrs May could try to seek a ‘break clause’ in any delay she negotiates at the European Council this week. That could potentially allow the UK to leave early – before the European Parliament elections – if MPs have a change of heart and approve her deal.

If that attempt is unsuccessful, Britain faces up to 20 months in the EU while a new plan is negotiated.

However, some Brexiteers are convinced that when presented with this prospect next week, the Commons may yet decline to formally approve a delay – and that Britain will leave on time with no agreement. Mark Francois, deputy chairman of the European Research Group of hard-Brexit MPs, told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme: ‘The legal position is that unless something changes, under the EU Withdrawal Act that Parliament passed last summer, we leave on March 29 at 11pm. That has not changed.’

Mr Francois suggested No Deal could happen if the EU refuses to give an extension to Article 50.

He added: ‘All 27 nations must agree unanimously. I am not saying for definite that they won’t, but it is not axiomatic that they will. So it is a moot point and we will have to wait and see.’

Mark Francois said: ‘The legal position is that unless something changes, under the EU Withdrawal Act that Parliament passed last summer, we leave on March 29 at 11pm’

Former Tory Cabinet minister Owen Paterson said Mr Bercow’s decision was a ‘huge opportunity’ for those who want the country to leave with No Deal.

He told BBC Radio 5 Live: ‘If the Withdrawal Agreement cannot be put to the Commons again, we must leave the EU on March 29 as the law demands. That has huge support across the country, that would satisfy the 17.4million people who voted to Leave, it would satisfy all those Conservative voters who were promised that we would leave the single market, the customs, the remit of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and it would put real pressure on the EU to come to discussions on a free trade deal.’

He added: ‘I think there is a lot of Project Fear nonsense about a so-called No Deal. We have already got lots of side agreements on aviation, airplanes, trucks.

‘I think what would happen is that it would trigger a really positive, constructive discussion.’

If an extension is agreed by the EU, Mrs May will have to bring it back before MPs just days before the country is due to leave the EU on Friday. Downing Street sources said they wanted it to include an exit clause the country can leave early if the Brexit deal is somehow passed by Parliament.

Mrs May had planned to hold a third vote on her Brexit deal this week and had been hopeful she could win around the DUP, which are seen as pivotal because of their influence on Tory Brexiteers. Leading Tory Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg yesterday said he would wait to see what the DUP decided before finally making up his mind which way to vote if the deal returns to the Commons.

However, last night sources said there was no chance of a breakthrough this week in talks with the DUP. MPs last Thursday backed the Prime Minister’s reluctant call to delay Brexit by 413 votes to 202. It came a day after they backed taking No Deal off the table by 321 votes to 278.

One expert’s damning legal verdict 

By Sir Stephen Laws QC, former First Parliamentary Counsel who advised the Cabinet Office on constitutional affairs

The Speaker is right to raise the question of whether a third vote on the Government’s Brexit deal should take place. The ‘same-question’ rule – under which a defeated motion cannot be brought back in the same form during the course of a parliamentary session – is well precedented.

But it would be quite wrong to apply it to disallow a third meaningful vote.

Since the deal was last put before the House of Commons, there have been two significant votes: one on preventing a No Deal Brexit and another on extending Article 50. The deal may look broadly the same – but those two votes have produced fundamentally different circumstances, and mean MPs are no longer facing the same question.

In addition, there has been time for a more considered look at the effects and implications of the legally-binding documents concerning the Withdrawal Agreement brought back by the Prime Minister from Strasbourg last week. The vote for a delay of the Article 50 deadline resulted in a resolution that specifically provided for a third vote, and so implicitly gave the House’s permission to have one. The Speaker should respect that.

If there is a majority for the deal, preventing the vote would be to frustrate the will of the House. It would be deeply concerning to see a Speaker act in such a way. Those who are opposed to the deal should want to win with a majority on the substance, not by procedural manoeuvring or on a technicality, and the Speaker should allow that.

The Speaker’s reputation for impartiality has already become questionable. It is difficult to see how it could survive the application of the same-question rule to a third vote on the deal when that same-question rule was not applied to prevent MP Dominic Grieve’s Remain-supporting amendments to motions to reopen questions that had been finally resolved in a more effective way during the passage of the Bill for the Withdrawal Act.

Parliamentary procedure exists to facilitate not thwart the wishes of the majority. The best test of what the majority wants is a vote, not a ruling from the Chair.

Sir Stephen is Senior Research Fellow at the Policy Exchange think-tank and was talking to Andrew Wilson.

Me, me, me… the twitchy windbag was at his despotic worst: HENRY DEEDES sees Speaker Bercow deliver Exocet to Mrs May’s Brexit strategy

When John Bercow rose to his feet shortly after 3.30 yesterday afternoon you could tell by his body language this was a moment he had been itching for all day.

As he surveyed the chamber with that sense of propriety which has become his staple in the Speaker’s chair, his face twitching with bristly anticipation, it was obvious this was to be no mundane procedural announcement.

What spewed forth from his mouth for the next twenty minutes of rhetorical windbaggery was met with incredulity on all sides of the House.

No forewarning had been given to any party what he was going to say.

Speaker John Bercow addressing MPs in the House of Commons, London where he has ruled out another vote on Theresa May’s Brexit withdrawal agreement if the motion is substantially the same as last time

The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition – they were all hearing it, like us, in real time.

Labour couldn’t believe their luck. The Government simply couldn’t believe what it was hearing. If Mrs May’s deal is to be put before the House for a third time, the Speaker ruled citing a Commons precedent from 1604, then it would have to be substantially different to the one MPs voted on last week. She could not simply ask members to vote on exactly the same deal.

Bang! An Exocet rocket straight to the core of what remained the Prime Minister’s Brexit strategy. No wonder Bercow was smirking.

Chief whip Julian Smith was so stunned his lower jaw was hanging open. Someone on the front bench really needed to lean over and pop it back up again.

Once again the Government had been done over by the chair. Frustrating ministers and torpedoeing Brexit. These are what get John Bercow out of bed in the morning. Rules? Procedure? The chap just seems to make ’em up as he goes along.

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May is seen at Downing Street, in London today 

The Speaker had been on unusually boisterous form for a Monday moments before making his statement during Pensions Questions.

He bantered with backbenchers. He joshed with his clerks. Plonked in the Speaker’s throne, his stumpy legs hammered up and down his footstool excitedly like a naughty toddler in a highchair.

When news emerged he would be making a statement once the session had finished it was swiftly obvious from his giddy behaviour the little goblin planned to drop a howitzer on the Government.

The House quickly filled as MPs rushed to hear what he had to say. How he seemed to enjoy that. He then rose to feet, clutching a stack of paper half an inch thick. Oh heck, we weren’t getting out of here in a hurry.

Here was the Speaker at his despotic worst. Putting himself at the centre of events and turning it into the John Bercow show, painting himself as Parliament’s fearless defender.

‘Part of the responsibility of the Speaker is to speak truth to power and I have always done that… I have never been pushed around and I am not going to start now… I am not a stickler for tradition but…’ I, I, I. Me, me, me. His oration became so florid and absurd at one point, works and pensions secretary Amber Rudd had to stifle her matronly giggles. The arch-Brexiteers were delighted. Sir William Cash (Con, Stone in Staffordshire) congratulated the Speaker on his judgment, saying his decision ‘made an awful lot of sense’.

Bercow returned the compliment, praising Mr Cash for always trying to act in the national interest. Priti Patel gave a beaming Cash a ‘well done’ pat on the back. Pass the sickbag stuff.

Jacob Rees-Mogg (Con, Somerset North) commended the Speaker for following protocol, quoting from the Bible: ‘There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.’ Bercow grinned and nodded his head enthusiastically. I’m not sure he realised this was a dig.

Once again the Government had been done over by the chair. Frustrating ministers and torpedoeing Brexit

Sir Hugo Swire (Con, East Devon) asked not unreasonably why the Speaker had made this call now, and not last week when it was clear Mrs May was going to try again. Tsk. And give the PM the weekend to adjust her preparations? Where would the fun have been in that?

Leader of the House and Bercow nemesis Andrea Leadsom briefly punctured his balloon when she coolly implied he couldn’t be trusted to treat colleagues with courtesy and respect. Cue collective sucking of wind around the chamber.

‘I treat the House with respect, I treat members with respect!’ The Speaker boomed, jabbing his forefinger at his accuser. Background: Bercow once called feisty Leadsom a ‘stupid woman’. Funnily enough, a caller to Rees-Mogg’s phone-in show on LBC earlier that morning had pre-empted Bercow’s ruling.

Samina from Tooting she was called. She had phoned to enquire why Mrs May was being allowed a third crack at her vote, asking: ‘Isn’t this tactic specifically barred to stop the Government from bullying the legislature. Shouldn’t this be ruled out of order?’

‘A brilliant question,’ purred the Moggster, referring her to page 397 of the Parliamentary rule book, Erksine May.

Samina certainly seemed to know her way around Parliamentary procedure rather better than your average LBC punter, traditionally a forum for London cab drivers and the over-opinionated. Could it have been Jacob’s nanny in disguise?

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[clothestop]

Hi, I'm not sure if this will be weird to ask but i've read that you have a math degree and knows how to code so i hope you can give me some advice regarding my career choice. If that's okay. Tbh i'm still not sure if i should take up computer science or pure mathematics. Math is my favorite subject in school and the more i study college-level theoretical math, the more i realize that i would want to do this professionally.

But i also considered computer science because i’m weighing the employability of both majors and i know that i could get a more stable job with comp sci. I’m so confused i’m sorry if my ask doesn’t make much sense but i have so many questions. May i ask what age did you start coding? And like my dilemma, i’m wondering why you went with pure mathematics and didn’t take up computer science. What put you off? Also, how did you start coding/ what made you start learning how to code? Did you take up comp sci classes? I’m a 17 yr old girl heading to university next fall but i just started learning how to code last year so i feel a bit left out. I’m really enjoying it so far but thinking of a possible career with it, i’m also scared as a woc in that kind of field. This may sound silly but like what the tumblr saying goes: i don’t want to be a sell out while i work for something i love. Lastly, i know that even if i’m still a beginner and there are a lot more things that i could learn in university. But in the meantime to prepare for that, what advice can you give to someone like me who is a beginner (words of encouragement, pros and cons, skills to develop etc etc)? Btw i’ve read that you lived in Southeast asian countries and i’m from SE asia currently living in the US so i relate to what i’ve been reading in your blog. Thank you for reading and sorry for

Hello there! No worries, I didn’t think that your ask is weird. And ofc, I’m more than glad to give you my advice :)

Well, I started with basic coding at around 12 or 11, eventually studied it extensively and moved to more complicated programming languages when I was 15 or 16—but I was already in uni during that time (uhm, yes I was younger than most of my peers). I play games a lot, and when I was younger, I dreamt of developing my own video game or website. And as a kid, you wouldn’t be surprised that I even thought of using my knowledge of coding with making cool stuffs™ like robots haha. To be honest, I wasn’t “put off” of taking up Computer Science; it’s just that my head had always been gravitating towards Pure Mathematics ever since. However, I admit that I did fancy taking up that degree because I was opting for another major that would *complement* my Pure Mathematics track, since my mum initially wanted me to have a degree that is “lucrative” to her standards. Basically, even if I didn’t end up pursuing Computer Science, we met at a compromise with me double majoring in Pure Mathematics and an applied maths major which relies on heavy programming as well. Despite being good at maths in school, programming was unarguably one of the most difficult things that I’ve studied. Not to mention that at the beginning, I was self-taught. After uni, I became more serious with my self-study, and even took up few short courses in Computer Sciences just because I’m really interested with it. Never considered to pursue it professionally, though.

If you look at the macro statistics of how students perform in different subjects, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and China (particularly Shanghai) has always ranked really high in maths and sciences. Yet, until recently, most of the technological breakthroughs are happening in the West.. Or perhaps, most technological advancements that happened in Asia (mind you, not only in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries) weren’t relatively discussed and/or recognized in a global scale during the past few years. Furthermore, living in Caucasian-dominated countries, I know that minorities would always have to go through the eye of a needle to have our voices heard and our efforts recognized and properly credited; otherwise the achievements we had produced would never see the light of day, or worse, People in the Position of Power™ would take credit for what we worked hard for. (Disclaimer: I don’t live in the US)

Additionally, two years ago, reports disclosed by large tech companies like Google and Facebook show that females make up less than 20% of technical employees. Unfortunately this figure drops to single digits for the larger tech community. But you shouldn’t be fazed with these facts. Yes, this is a sad reality but we can do something to change the system. At present, females working in most industries (not just in tech companies. Believe me *sighs*) should work twice as hard as a man to get to the same place, and it was made into a norm that we should just be prepared to do that. Thus, at least eventually in the tech sector, the more girls who learn how to code, the less unequal it would get. If you think about it, apps and websites like Instagram and Facebook (and uh well, Tumblr) have a wide female user base. And I truly believe that women need to be part of the voice in creating this technology to serve the users more effectively.

Yes I’m Southeast Asian as well currently living in a Caucasian-dominated country (again, not the US). But I lived in different Asian countries, so I also understand how tech startups in these regions lament the lack of local talent. Universities produce graduates who are well-versed in computer science, yet the latter go after paths that only require an understanding of programming languages suited for banking and finance. Conversely, startups use something much different and more modern—something that tech companies want to see more of. Moreover, a few years ago, tech giants like Microsoft, Facebook, and SAP appealed to the European Union education ministers to tackle skills gap in information and communications technology, saying that an estimated 900,000 jobs in Europe would be left unfilled by 2020 if not addressed. The UK has since implemented computing into the national curriculum. Again, Tumblr Politics™ could make an asinine analogy of this to Destroy Capitalism™, but the reality dictates that we need this to achieve growth in the foreseeable future. (Another disclaimer: I’m very much against classism and capitalism, but I can be level-headed as well to understand the global economic and political atmosphere that we live in. Less whining, more tangible actions to abolish these systems.)

Correct me if I’m wrong (this could easily be googled), but from what I’ve read, the average salary for a good fresh graduate programmer in the Silicon Valley is around 100,000 USD. So you can verify that this is indeed an in-demand job. But I definitely agree with your outlook as well. I quit my last job despite the high pay, advantageous position, connections and opportunities in the corporate ladder™ because I lost my passion and felt like I no longer learn something of value from it. I felt like I was just a small cog of a devious capitalistic machine, operating at an auto-pilot, and can never make an actual difference to society (contrary, I felt like I was actually working against it D:). BUT! Please. Please. Please. Never fully absorb everything you read in this hellsite as a clear reflection of how the world works. Always take everything you read with a grain of salt, because despite of the positive things we could see and the amazing people we could meet here, Tumblr is a very, very problematique™ place to take inspiration from. Of course I’m not generalizing, but sadly, some people here (despite their charisma and very persuasive convictions) proclaim revolutionary™ ideologies that only promote hateful agendas. Thus, even though I would always believe that money should never supersede passion, I also understand that the system is working against us and that it wouldn’t be as easy as we imagine it to be. So, I always seek to find balance in every decision that I make. It would also help to have a concrete plan of how you would like to see yourself in a few years (I know it sounds cliché, but I promise it’ll help), and to choose to work for a company that you know would create progressive measures to aid society as a whole, and would promote sustainable growth for the planet and the human race. Sorry if that sounds so cheesy and pretentious, but I mean it. I would like to think that that wouldn’t make us corporate sellouts™, rather, we are dreamers trying to survive and thrive in this very demanding society. [Hmm. To be honest I think corporate sellouts are the ones who exploit the society, and trample over others just to achieve their goals. Soulless creatures, I tellss ya. But yeah, maybe tumblr SJW vocabulary made another revolutionary™ breakthrough.]

That said, I know that you are already in the right track. And even though you seem to be in a dilemma, I could see that you’re geared towards computer science already :) Both maths and programming are your passions, and I’m glad that you discovered that at an early age. Don’t be afraid to take the leap. And if later on you realize that perhaps the degree you pursued wasn’t where your heart is, I can only assure you that you are not the first and last person who would feel this way—and that’s perfectly okay. Lots of people end up in jobs that are radically different from what they took up in uni, and they excel and feel really satisfied in those fields. And there are others who eventually go back to school to fulfill the academic approach that they had missed. Whatever happens, don’t be afraid to troubleshoot and start again. Don’t think that you had a late start on coding. I’m in my late 20s and I know that I still have a lot more to learn—not just with programming—and that really excites me. Remember, formal education isn’t the only place where we could learn and harness our skills. We’re so lucky to have lived in this digital age where everything could be presented to us with just a click or a tap of a button, so we should take advantage of that.

My last advice to you is to master BOTH the technical and creative skills needed in this science, both of which are essential to be a good programmer—bridging the technical side of coding with the creativity to solve problems. I know I still have a long way to go, but somehow, I think I could consider myself as someone who already has a good foundation and an in-depth knowledge of programming. This skill is something that does not only aid me in my career, but it also helps me with problem solving and thinking about issues structurally. With coding, I can solve problems and think of multiple solutions for the same problem, and can see the pros and cons for each solution. Further, I’m able to challenge my own assumptions in all of these solutions. However, like I’ve said, I don’t think that programming is something that I could do professionally. Despite excelling in the technical side of it, I believe that in this industry, the creative ability of a programmer is the one that is highly sought after. I totally concur that one should never underestimate how HARD programming is, and I guess that’s the beauty and challenge of this discipline. I know that I have the dedication and patience for this skill, but even if I master the complexities and technical skills needed in programming, admittedly, I still lack the creative elegance that I see in a professional programmer. But I hope that you could find the equilibrium in these factors and excel on them.

It will never be my intention to discourage you, on the contrary, I hope that with these information, you could objectively weigh the reality of the field that you would get yourself into. Which is why I’m glad that you did your research because it shows how serious and passionate you are to take time in educating yourself with these details. More importantly, I hope that you could talk to someone you look up to and trust in real life, because choosing a career is a serious life-changing decision. But feel free to DM me if you want to add or discuss something else :)

Thank you for your question, gotshineboc. I really hope that this could help you out. Very best of luck!