Friday 26th April 2024

Love Anyway

You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that…Continued here

Between Psyche and Cyborg: Carl Jung's Legacy and the Countercultural Courage to Reclaim the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age

“A reanimated world is one in which spirit and matter are not just equally regarded but recognized as mutually dependent.”Continued here

The politics stopping the UK from opening a youth mobility scheme with Europe

Earlier this week, it seemed possible that young people in the UK might soon be able to travel freely to work and live in Europe again. The European Commission laid out proposals to open mobility to millions of 18- to 30-year-olds from the EU and UK, allowing them to work, study and live in respective states for up to four years.

But the government swiftly rejected the offer, saying that “free movement within the EU was ended”. The Labour party followed suit, saying it has “no plans for a youth mobility scheme”. This has already provoked an angry response from Britons young and old who are “furious” about the rejection of the scheme.

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Tarantino abandons his tenth film - five other times Hollywood giants cancelled big projects

Quentin Tarantino has reportedly scrapped what was supposed to be his tenth and final feature film, The Movie Critic, deep into pre-production.

This decision is one in a long line of cancelled or unproduced projects left by the Hollywood wayside. For every film that makes it to our screens, hundreds if not thousands fail to make it – be it due to financial reasons, personal differences, or just the whims of the creatives involved.

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Jordan has long been a beacon of stability in the Middle East - but that looks to be changing

Sat in the Wadi Araba in the baking midday sun, senior Jordanian officials and their Israeli counterparts signed a historic peace agreement in 1994 that ended decades of conflict between the two states. Witnessed by the then US president, Bill Clinton, it was just the second peace agreement that Israel had signed with an Arab state, coming over a decade after it made peace with Egypt.

At the same time, artillery fire from southern Lebanon hit targets in the north of Israel in protest, a barrage credited to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Party of God. Now, 30 years later, Hezbollah’s barrage of northern Israel continues amid a devastating conflict in Gaza and escalating tensions between Israel and Iran. Across Jordan, people have taken to the streets demanding that King Abdullah tears up the peace agreement.

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Male baldness is often trivialised - our research shows it should be taken seriously

Male pattern baldness, or hereditary hair loss, has not always been taken seriously. Celebrity hair loss and transplants are greeted with fascinated amusement while, in popular media, bald men have often been absent, mocked or maligned.

The everyday lives of ordinary balding men are often punctuated by comments, jokes and an expectation to laugh along.

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To tackle climate change Labour must rebuild the planning system - not 'bulldoze' it

The UK’s planning system is the primary means by which the public decides how land is used. These decisions will be paramount for addressing the climate crisis; after all, land can store carbon that would otherwise heat the atmosphere and host renewable energy installations that can replace fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, planning departments, as extensions of local government, are also among the most depleted by austerity.

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US drugs regulator gives LSD 'breakthrough' status for treating anxiety - why this is so significant

LSD was accidentally discovered by Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz pharmaceutical company in Switzerland in 1938. It was apparently useless, but from 1947 it was marketed as “a cure for everything from schizophrenia to criminal behavior, ‘sexual perversions’, and alcoholism”. It failed to find its niche.

Now, over 80 years later, it may finally have found one – other than expanding consciousness, that is. A new study shows that it is highly effective at treating generalised anxiety disorder for up to 12 weeks with just a single dose. And it is fast acting.

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I contributed to the Misogyny In Music report - it's sadly unsurprising that its recommendations have been rejected

The Misogyny In Music report, published in January 2024 by the Women And Equalities Committee, was the first major report into the working conditions of women and girls working across the UK music sector.

The scope of the report, which I contributed to, was ambitious. It covered performers, songwriters, audio engineers, major music companies and institutions and both classical and popular music education. The report revealed the level of inequality across the music supply chain and the sexism, misogyny, bullying and sexual abuse that women and girls experienced in their working lives.

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Spotify just made a record profit. What can the platform do now to maintain momentum?

It is not much of an exaggeration to say that Spotify saved the music industry. Global revenue for recorded music reached its zenith in 1999 – the same year that the seeds of the industry’s near destruction were sown.

When Napster launched that year it gave music lovers around the world access to an almost limitless catalogue of songs for free. To millions of young people, it would take more than legal action against Napster and others to persuade them that they should return to analogue modes of listening. Spotify’s emergence in 2006 demonstrated that it was possible to monetise streaming in a way that was both legal and attractive to music lovers.

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