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All scenery and no sweat: an e-biking adventure in the New Forest
Sun, 24 Nov 2024 11:00:09 GMT
The New Forest is a haven for cycling – and whizzing through the trees on an e-bike leaves more time for ice cream and cake breaks
‘No one,” says Clare, grinning broadly and handing me a cycle helmet, “comes back sweating from one of our rides.” Looking at the Super Monkey I’m about to clamber on to – a gleaming black machine, modelled rather like a Chopper bike from the 1970s, only with triple-width tyres and the (all-important) powerbox attached to the main stem – I can believe it. Synch ebikes, available to rent from Clare and Lisa at Jaunt-E Bikes, are the last word in effort-free cycling, and the best way to delve into the depths of the New Forest.
It’s a grey, drizzly morning when I set off from my Brockenhurst bolthole, Cottage Lodge, cycling gingerly up the busy A337 before turning down a gravel track into the forest. At first the bike feels a bit like being on a horse – raring to go every time I put my foot down – but I soon get used to it, whizzing happily past runners and analogue cyclists, the wide, “comfort” saddle shielding me from the worst of the uneven, gravelly track. Within minutes, I’m immersed in the forest; waves of ferns rippling out beneath towering oak and beech trees.
Continue reading...Love, death, grief, power, revenge: Greek tragedies get to the essence of the human experience. Here, writers and artists select their favourite plays, music and films inspired by the classics, from The Hunger Games to a Santana hit
Greek myth is not a stable thing. There is no such thing as a canonical, “original” version of a Greek myth. The stories that remain to us – the material of classical plays and poetry, and of visual culture from pottery to pediments – are already elaborations and accretions. In the ancient Greek and Roman world, stories were adapted and remade to serve the needs of the moment. The Greek tragedians often took the germ of an idea from the Homeric epics, and built an entire plot from it. Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, for instance, is in dialogue with Homer’s Odyssey: both are stories of a warrior’s return from war, but with entirely different outcomes. Euripides’s subversive play Helen proposes that the entire Trojan war was fought not in the cause of a real woman, but of an illusory, fake version sent by the gods, while the “real” Helen of Troy sat out the siege in Egypt.
Seen in this light, as novelist Pat Barker points out below, the modern appetite for working with (and maybe sometimes against) Greek myth is a part of a long continuum, rather than an innovation. Sometimes stories retold in the modern, or early modern, era have taken remarkably circuitous routes: Barker’s choice, Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, a love story from the Trojan war, came to the playwright not directly from a classical source, but indirectly through a winding lineage including Chaucer and Boccaccio that substantially transforms the story in the process. The artist Chris Ofili, who illustrated my book Greek Myths: A New Retelling, is one of the most mesmerising “retellers” of classical mythology. His deep artistic engagement with this world of stories began for him with Ovid’s epic poem about mythical transformations, Metamorphoses, more than a decade ago. Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer’s Odyssey has also been important for him. But his paintings and drawings are, at the same time, deeply personal, infused with the landscapes and stories of the Caribbean, where he lives and works. Greek myths can travel endlessly through cultures, time and space. Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire, set in modern Britain, Islamic State-controlled Syria and Pakistan, is a reworking of Sophocles’s tragedy, Antigone. Constantine Cavafy – the great Greek poet who lived in Alexandria, Liverpool and Constantinople – infused Homer with his restless spirit in his great poem Ithaka, which is chosen by Stephen Fry, below.
Continue reading...Lithuanian tourist pack rafting on Franklin River still fighting for life in Tasmanian hospital
A 69-year-old Lithuanian man has been praised for his “extraordinary resilience” after emergency service workers were forced to amputate his leg during a 20-hour rescue operation in remote south-west Tasmania.
The man, who remained in a critical condition in Royal Hobart hospital on Sunday evening, had been travelling with a group of 11 tourists on a multi-day rafting trip on the remote Franklin River.
Continue reading...In 1900, there were 600 Turkish baths in Britain and Ireland. Today, only a handful survive. We enjoy a revived hammam in Newcastle and take a look at 10 more around the country
My sister and I are lying on slabs like flounders in a fishmonger’s. Instead of a bed of ice, though, we’re stretched out on heated marble. We move between three hot rooms, each resembling little chapels with vaulted ceilings, chatting quietly in the cooler one, applying face and hair masks in the middle one, and simply lying still, sweating, in the hottest one. Later, we will be scrubbed and massaged. In between, we cool off under a rain-mist shower, or retire to a bed in our own private mahogany-panelled booth beneath a glazed dome.
It sounds like a luxury spa, with prices to match. In fact, we’re at a century-old public bathhouse. The City Baths in Newcastle reopened in April after an £8m restoration – and a decade-long campaign. A two‑hour Turkish bath session here costs about £20, which includes a swim in the pool upstairs.
Continue reading...Party figures have voiced concerns that next month’s visit will be dominated by the PM seeking investment
Keir Starmer is being urged to speak up for human rights and push for cooperation over a Middle East peace deal when he travels to Saudi Arabia next month, amid concerns on Labour’s left that his efforts to attract investment will dominate the trip.
The prime minister’s visit is seen as his latest attempt to secure the inward investment necessary for the economic growth that is the central aim of his government. It is expected that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, will also visit London next year.
Continue reading...Civic pride meets glorious cooking at a remarkably fair price
The Martlet, Rochdale Town Hall, OL16 1AZ. Lunch plates £10; main courses £14 – £21; desserts £5; afternoon tea £21. Evening menu: three courses £35. Wines from £22 a bottle
It’s easy to imagine the ways by which the Martlet in Rochdale could have gone so very wrong; how the perceived demands of civic responsibility and the innate grinding conservatism of bureaucracy could have resulted in a dull, mediocre offering for the town. It wouldn’t even have been worth rolling your eyes at. It would have been understandable. The Martlet is a new restaurant inside Rochdale’s magnificent Town Hall. Since 2021, the building has undergone an equally magnificent restoration, to bring this slab of Victorian gothic revival by William Henry Crossland, into a golden, glowing focus. There is finely chiselled stonework, stained-glass windows and wood-panelled chambers with intricate foliage-strewn wall coverings recalling the work of William Morris. Ceiling panels are decorated with branch and leaf, upon which perch fully plumed peacocks and illustrations of the martlet, a mythical bird that was forever on the wing. Whatever you do, make time to drift slack-jawed through these chambers. Perhaps while wearing a pale, lace-fringed linen smock dress and kohl eyeliner. I could rock that look.
Continue reading...Once frozen out by the New Labour elite, John Prescott fought his way in from the cold to become a loyal deputy leader. Toby Helm recalls a bruising political career
It was normally Friday evening when he would ring. There was never a “hello, how are you?” or any pleasantry like that. He just dived straight in. “What you up to for Sunday?” he would ask, meaning he had a story for me. Normally the call would come from his car phone on the A1 while he was driving to his Hull constituency. He tended to travel alone, so business could be transacted in total secrecy.
Once – it must have been 1994, after John Smith had died and Tony Blair had become leader – I remember he suddenly broke off and roared some expletives mid-conversation which made me almost drop the phone. “What the hell was that about, I asked?” “Ohhh … Just some fucking moderniser overtaking on the inside lane,” he replied. “Bloody Mendelson [he would always deliberately mispronounce the name Mandelson, sometimes calling him Meddlesome] or someone.”
Continue reading...Series against familiar foes New Zealand, where they haven’t won 16 years, is taster for even bigger challenges ahead for England
The way the cricket calendar is carved up sounds a bit absurd; a kind of speed-dating event for the chief executives and chairs of the full-member nations that is hosted every four years by the International Cricket Council. Not that the ICC – more events company than governing body – gets involved. Its officials apparently have to leave the room before the bigwigs start schmoozing at the tables and operations types plumb the fixtures into their spreadsheets.
The men’s future tours programme emerged from one of these opaque lock-ins in 2022 and even at the time England’s winter of 2024-25 stuck out as slightly unimaginative. Test tours of Pakistan and New Zealand were scheduled for the second winter in two years, the latter for the third time in five. This despite England’s entire four-year block featuring no Tests in Sri Lanka or the West Indies and the gap between Tests in South Africa – a third favourite of their travelling supporters – set to be seven years when they return in late 2026.
Continue reading...On assignment in South Sudan, the Croatian photographer used a natural framing device for this award-winning image
Before he arrived for his three-day stay, Jurica Galić knew that the South Sudanese Mundari people set fire to dried cow dung before sunset to repel mosquitoes. What the Croatian photographer and travel journalist didn’t know was the depth of harmony between the tribe and their cattle, nor how he would capture it.
“Ankole are breeds of domestic cattle originating from east and central Africa, characterised by their huge horns,” Galić says. “My goal was to capture the relationship between man and nature, and while staying in the camp I came up with the idea of taking some photos through the horns of one of the animals. They became the frame, leading the viewer to the scene. Meanwhile, the smoke rising, in combination with the setting sun and the remaining rays, created the most magical backdrop.”
Continue reading...We recommended them in the Filter; now we’ve sifted through all the offers to find the genuinely good discounts on our favourite products
Black Friday is still a few days away on 29 November, but stores are already dropping prices to compete for our attention and cash – and they’re offering some delectable discounts on products we’ve recommended in the Filter.
We cautioned against getting carried away too early in our guide to not getting ripped off in the sales, because many prices continue to fall until Cyber Monday (2 December). However, some of the most popular items can sell out even before Black Friday comes around. So, if there’s something here you’ve had your eye on, this may be your best chance to grab it for significantly less than you’d normally pay.
Continue reading...The U.S. has a long tradition of shielding Israel (and itself) from war crime allegations — and threatening The Hague.
The post War Crimes Have Never Stopped the U.S. Before appeared first on The Intercept.
Nine health care workers at UCSF report censorship or punishment for speaking out about human rights for Palestinians — or simply wearing a pin.
The post San Francisco’s Biggest Hospital System: Don’t Talk About Palestine appeared first on The Intercept.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors. You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
From biking adventures to city breaks, get inspiration for your next break – whether in the UK or further afield – with twice-weekly emails from the Guardian’s travel editors.
You’ll also receive handpicked offers from Guardian Holidays.
Continue reading...
The WWE icon, already one of Hollywood’s highest-paid film stars, has shown himself to be ‘focus group-proof’
It’s proving to be a busy period for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, sometime WWE professional wrestler and Hollywood film star. Well, another one. Red One, a Christmas-themed action movie (Johnson plays Santa Claus’s bodyguard), was released earlier this month. The Disney animation, Moana 2 (for which he voices the tattooed demigod Maui) is about to be released. He is also in the process of filming the new live-action version of Moana, and embarking on another Disney movie, Monster Jam.
If anyone is surprised by Johnson’s repeated donning of the cinematic mouse ears, or by his general presence in children’s films, they shouldn’t be. While he is probably still best known for the Fast & Furious film franchise, and other flexes of his big-screen muscle, he has long been a staple in family movies. With his reputed $50m fee for Red One, and with an estimated net worth of about $800m, he has become one of Hollywood’s highest paid stars. Johnson also made the Time magazine 100 list of influential people – not once but twice, in 2016 and 2019.
Continue reading...The American director on the 20-year project he is just beginning, how hitmen don’t exist in real life and why his career would not be possible today
The American director Richard Linklater has one of the great, eclectic film-making CVs: from classics such as Dazed and Confused to School of Rock, Before Sunrise to Boyhood, which was filmed with the same cast over 12 years. That versatility is seen again in his latest movie, Hit Man, released earlier this year to critical and audience acclaim and now on Netflix. A rare foray for him into the comedy-thriller genre, it tells the trueish story of a nondescript college professor (an excellent Glen Powell) who has a side hustle as an undercover operative for the New Orleans police, pretending to be different hitmen in order to illicit arrests. Next year he releases Nouvelle Vague, shot entirely in French. Linklater is 64 and lives in Austin, Texas.
There’s a line early on in your latest film: “Hitmen don’t really exist.” You mean that they are, essentially, an invention of Hollywood films. Were you surprised by this fact?
No, I’m completely amused and thrilled by it. I’ve known this for 25-plus years: hitmen are like snuff films, they don’t really exist. There’s not one record of a hitman being arrested. This is a myth, but one people believe so thoroughly because of pop culture – movies and TV mostly. [A hitman] is just a great character and we love the idea of them too much – even though shouldn’t we be relieved that there aren’t any?
One of Britain’s most prolific actors, Stephen Graham is the face of countless hard-to-forget TV and film characters, a regular Scorsese collaborator and good mates with Leo DiCaprio. He talks about living it up in Leicestershire – and why he’s in the shape of his life
Stephen Graham likes to quote that very famous saying in acting, “There are no small parts, only small actors” – though it has nothing to do with the fact that the 51-year-old stands a power-packed 5ft five-and-a-half inches. When in 2020 he set up his own production company, Matriarch Productions, after a storied career as one of our great character performers, he made it one of the company’s founding principles.
Graham established Matriarch with his wife, the actor Hannah Walters. Their first project was the 2021 film Boiling Point, which created history as the first British single-take movie. Graham won a Bafta nomination for his portrayal of head chef Andy Jones, whose life unravels in real time during one frenzied service in the kitchen. But he was determined that Boiling Point would be just as radical behind the camera, too. Typically on TV and film productions, each actor is assigned a cast number, which functions as an unspoken hierarchy of their importance on the set. Graham decided he didn’t want that.
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Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the most popular digital assets today, capturing the attention of cryptocurrency investors, whales and people from around the world. People find it amazing that some users spend thousands or millions of dollars on a single NFT-based image of a monkey or other token, but you can simply take a screenshot for free. So here we share some freuently asked question about NFTs.
NFT stands for non-fungible token, which is a cryptographic token on a blockchain with unique identification codes that distinguish it from other tokens. NFTs are unique and not interchangeable, which means no two NFTs are the same. NFTs can be a unique artwork, GIF, Images, videos, Audio album. in-game items, collectibles etc.
A blockchain is a distributed digital ledger that allows for the secure storage of data. By recording any kind of information—such as bank account transactions, the ownership of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), or Decentralized Finance (DeFi) smart contracts—in one place, and distributing it to many different computers, blockchains ensure that data can’t be manipulated without everyone in the system being aware.
The value of an NFT comes from its ability to be traded freely and securely on the blockchain, which is not possible with other current digital ownership solutionsThe NFT points to its location on the blockchain, but doesn’t necessarily contain the digital property. For example, if you replace one bitcoin with another, you will still have the same thing. If you buy a non-fungible item, such as a movie ticket, it is impossible to replace it with any other movie ticket because each ticket is unique to a specific time and place.
One of the unique characteristics of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is that they can be tokenised to create a digital certificate of ownership that can be bought, sold and traded on the blockchain.
As with crypto-currency, records of who owns what are stored on a ledger that is maintained by thousands of computers around the world. These records can’t be forged because the whole system operates on an open-source network.
NFTs also contain smart contracts—small computer programs that run on the blockchain—that give the artist, for example, a cut of any future sale of the token.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) aren't cryptocurrencies, but they do use blockchain technology. Many NFTs are based on Ethereum, where the blockchain serves as a ledger for all the transactions related to said NFT and the properties it represents.5) How to make an NFT?
Anyone can create an NFT. All you need is a digital wallet, some ethereum tokens and a connection to an NFT marketplace where you’ll be able to upload and sell your creations
When you purchase a stock in NFT, that purchase is recorded on the blockchain—the bitcoin ledger of transactions—and that entry acts as your proof of ownership.
The value of an NFT varies a lot based on the digital asset up for grabs. People use NFTs to trade and sell digital art, so when creating an NFT, you should consider the popularity of your digital artwork along with historical statistics.
In the year 2021, a digital artist called Pak created an artwork called The Merge. It was sold on the Nifty Gateway NFT market for $91.8 million.
Non-fungible tokens can be used in investment opportunities. One can purchase an NFT and resell it at a profit. Certain NFT marketplaces let sellers of NFTs keep a percentage of the profits from sales of the assets they create.
Many people want to buy NFTs because it lets them support the arts and own something cool from their favorite musicians, brands, and celebrities. NFTs also give artists an opportunity to program in continual royalties if someone buys their work. Galleries see this as a way to reach new buyers interested in art.
There are many places to buy digital assets, like opensea and their policies vary. On top shot, for instance, you sign up for a waitlist that can be thousands of people long. When a digital asset goes on sale, you are occasionally chosen to purchase it.
To mint an NFT token, you must pay some amount of gas fee to process the transaction on the Etherum blockchain, but you can mint your NFT on a different blockchain called Polygon to avoid paying gas fees. This option is available on OpenSea and this simply denotes that your NFT will only be able to trade using Polygon's blockchain and not Etherum's blockchain. Mintable allows you to mint NFTs for free without paying any gas fees.
The answer is no. Non-Fungible Tokens are minted on the blockchain using cryptocurrencies such as Etherum, Solana, Polygon, and so on. Once a Non-Fungible Token is minted, the transaction is recorded on the blockchain and the contract or license is awarded to whoever has that Non-Fungible Token in their wallet.
You can sell your work and creations by attaching a license to it on the blockchain, where its ownership can be transferred. This lets you get exposure without losing full ownership of your work. Some of the most successful projects include Cryptopunks, Bored Ape Yatch Club NFTs, SandBox, World of Women and so on. These NFT projects have gained popularity globally and are owned by celebrities and other successful entrepreneurs. Owning one of these NFTs gives you an automatic ticket to exclusive business meetings and life-changing connections.
That’s a wrap. Hope you guys found this article enlightening. I just answer some question with my limited knowledge about NFTs. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in the comment section below. Also I have a question for you, Is bitcoin an NFTs? let me know in The comment section below
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