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‘Defeat clarifies so much’: Chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley on the power of losing
Tue, 11 Jun 2024 08:00:38 GMT
The American has seen the best players brought down during his career among chess’s elite. And he does not necessarily see losing as a bad thing
As college and high school commencement speakers counsel the next generation, how about this advice? Embrace defeat.
This doesn’t mean playing to lose, but rather, if and when you lose, seek to learn from the experience in hopes of improving in the future. This approach has been adopted by NBA greats past and present, from Kobe Bryant to Giannis Antetokounmpo – as well as by American chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley, who writes about it in his new book, Move by Move: Life Lessons On and Off the Chessboard.
Continue reading...The board had proposed appending a statement that would have undermined a Palestinian scholar’s article. The students rejected it.
The post Columbia Law Review Is Back Online After Students Threatened Work Stoppage Over Palestine Censorship appeared first on The Intercept.
Researchers tested for bias in Facebook’s algorithm by purchasing ads promoting for-profit colleges and studying who saw them.
The post One Facebook Ad Promotes a For-Profit College; Another a State School. Which Ad Do Black Users See? appeared first on The Intercept.
The narrative that took hold ignored inland campuses, like in the Rust Belt and into Appalachia, where students formed their own encampments.
The post Not Just Coastal Elites: Here’s How Three Rust Belt Colleges Protested Israel’s War in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.
“It’s hard to see this wildly disproportionate response as anything other than an attempt to chill speech on this issue.”
The post Columbia Coincidentally Rewrites Disciplinary Rules Just in Time to Screw Over Student Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.
Claudia Sheinbaum, a former climate scientist and Mexico City mayor, has often led with politics over the environment
The month before Mexico’s 2 June presidential vote the country was bedeviled by water cuts and blackouts as a record heatwave took the country beyond red and into an ominous purple on the weather map.
As dehydrated monkeys dropped dead from trees, the landslide victory of Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist, might look like salvation. But her record paints a more complicated picture – one where climate convictions have often, and may still, come second to political pragmatism.
Continue reading...In Gainesville, Florida, children are on the front lines of the hazards long ignored by local and state government officials.
The post For Decades, Officials Knew a School Sat on a Former Dump — and Did Little to Clean Up the Toxins appeared first on The Intercept.
This blog is now closed.
Murray Watt says the opposition has “started the new climate wars” after Barnaby Joyce and Keith Pitt, two senior Nationals, called for Australia to pull out of the Paris agreement. You can read more on this from Karen Middleton below:
Speaking to ABC News Breakfast, Watt said:
We’re back to the same old climate wars in the Coalition. I saw overnight that [Joyce and Pitt] openly called for the Coalition to pull out of the Paris agreement. They’ve spent the last couple of days trying to paper over the cracks in the Coalition, saying that they can withdraw the target without withdrawing from the agreement. Now it’s out there in the open for everyone to see. And you can set your clock by Barnaby Joyce causing new climate wars within the Coalition. It’s seem like we’re back to the bad old days.
We’re on track to get to 42%, which is only 1% short of the 43% target.
Continue reading...Reality of the crisis is making its mark on our game but a rise in awareness can spark environmentally conscious change
The topic of the climate crisis is not one we often associate with football, especially not with women’s football. However, as a professional player who has had the privilege of engaging with my fellow colleagues on this pressing issue, I’ve come to realise the deep concern and untapped potential within our community.
I joined Planet League, the football climate action platform for fans, as an ambassador last year and wanted to focus my efforts on leadership in the women’s game. At the end of May we launched Women’s Football and Climate Change: The Players’ Perspective – a report that sheds light on how our sport intersects with the climate crisis and what we, as players, think needs to be done.
Continue reading...The bedroom antics of two couples 50 years apart drive the cultural critic’s debut novel, a cerebral comedy full of insights into art, womanhood and ethical quandaries
Set in pre-Covid Paris, Lauren Elkin’s first novel is a brainy sex comedy narrated by Anna, a Franco-American psychoanalyst on medical leave in the wake of a miscarriage. Her lawyer husband is away from home on a job in London, leaving her to oversee the long-planned knocking through of a wall in their Belleville apartment. It’s August – all her friends are out of town – and she’s drifting until she gets a new neighbour: Clémentine, an art history postgraduate who has just moved into a nearby building with her boyfriend, Jonathan – the name, coincidentally, of Anna’s most serious ex, the son of a famous psychoanalyst whose books turned her on to the discipline.
The first third of the novel ambles amiably in exploratory chat between the two women, despite a crackle of ambient dread in ominous signs of climate change (record temperatures in the city; wildfires in Corsica) as well as, more immediately, the mounting toll of French women murdered by men – an outrage highlighted by a guerrilla poster campaign Anna notices on her daily run. But Scaffolding’s real action comes in the bedroom: first when, a third of the way through the book, Elkin winds back the action nearly 50 years to toggle between Florence and Henry, an unfaithfully married couple who used to live in Anna’s flat, and then, in the novel’s final part, when we follow the narrator’s own bed-hopping in the present, as Clémentine widens Anna’s sexual horizons.
Elkin gives us two versions of an adultery plot, the second a self-consciously queered retread of the first. Clémentine, who says she spends her days “writing poetry and masturbating”, functions in the novel as a kind of constant question for Anna, loosening her view of monogamy, prodding her guilt as a slightly self-loathing gentrifier as well as needling her about the assumptions of psychoanalysis and its “Mommy-Daddy-Me structure, like there’s no one else in the world who affects who we become, or the binary take on gender... It’s, like, patriarchy, bottled and distilled”.
Elkin’s date-stamped sign-off tells us the novel was begun in 2007 and completed last year – there’s a list of five Paris addresses where she wrote it – and it’s interesting to think of how the landscape of modern fiction changed in that period. In putting property at the centre of a novel about womanhood and sexuality, Scaffolding joins books by Rachel Cusk (Transit) and Deborah Levy (Real Estate), and as an erudite lust quadrilateral interested in ethical quandaries, it may put you in mind of Sally Rooney (even if Clémentine didn’t at one point mention watching a television series “based on an Irish novel”, which is “kind of annoying... Like, sleep together, don’t sleep together, do your thing”). Indeed, the rapid tying up of loose ends, embracing social norms given side-eye by the rest of the novel, bears resemblance to the left-turn conclusion of Beautiful World, Where Are You. Instead of a blocked writer in the wake of a breakdown, we’ve got a blocked analyst in the wake of grief re-envisioning life from the ground up (“Something Clém said has stuck with me for weeks now and I don’t know what to do with it; something like whether psychoanalysis ought to be socially transformative to justify its existence”).
Elkin, as well as being a prolific translator, has previously published cultural criticism and experimental memoir (No 91/92: Notes on a Parisian Commute), and in many ways Scaffolding is a critic’s novel, full of insights that could seamlessly appear in Elkin’s nonfiction. Anna and Clémentine exchange views of Hans Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors or Chris Kraus’s novel I Love Dick; in a conversation near the end of the novel, when its emotional freight is heaviest, Anna looks up a word’s etymology on her phone. “In The Symposium, early on, Plato talks about...” or “At the beginning of Encore, Lacan’s twentieth seminar, which he gave in 1972-73, he says that...” aren’t untypical ways for Elkin to open a sentence.
The social media star on performing to silent audiences, turning spite into success and still having to prove herself as a ‘proper’ comedian
Can you recall a gig so bad, it’s now funny?
I was once booked for an outdoor, family friendly village fete where none of the comedians had been warned that the jokes would have to be child-appropriate. In the early days of your comedy career, you only have five minutes of jokes so we didn’t have tamer ones we could swap in. The section of field directly in front of the stage had been roped off for the dog show later in the day (the main event), meaning anyone wanting to watch the comedy would have to watch from about 10 metres away with a whole load of nothing between us. Only five people stood behind the rope to watch, including an adult in a full Peppa Pig costume who heckled throughout. I performed five minutes to silence, before the next act got their microphone disconnected and the comedy cancelled after saying the C word.
What is your upcoming show, (Role) Model, about?
It’s about 55 minutes long … 57 with a good audience. I want it to feel like an incredibly fun conversation with your toxic best friend. But I guess it’s also a show about what it’s like to go viral overnight, or even worse, going viral for dancing with your parents. I’m trying to work out who I want to be versus what other people want me to be, and asking why are both impossible.
Abi Clarke: (Role) Model is at Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, 29 July-25 August
Continue reading...Ian Sample hears from Linda Geddes about her recent trip to the Netherlands to try cultivated meat sausages, courtesy of the company Meatable. Advocates say that cultivated meat could be the future of sustainable and ethical meat production. Linda explains how they’re made, how their carbon footprint compares with traditional meat and most importantly … what they taste like!
Read more from Linda Geddes on her trip to the Netherlands
Continue reading...Technology was once simply a tool—and a small one at that—used to amplify human intent and capacity. That was the story of the industrial revolution: we could control nature and build large, complex human societies, and the more we employed and mastered technology, the better things got. We don’t live in that world anymore. Not only has technology become entangled with the structure of society, but we also can no longer see the world around us without it. The separation is gone, and the control we thought we once had has revealed itself as a mirage. We’re in a transitional period of history right now...
SEMrush and Ahrefs are among
the most popular tools in the SEO industry. Both companies have been in
business for years and have thousands of customers per month.
If you're a professional SEO or trying to do digital
marketing on your own, at some point you'll likely consider using a tool to
help with your efforts. Ahrefs and SEMrush are two names that will likely
appear on your shortlist.
In this guide, I'm going to help you learn more about these SEO tools and how to choose the one that's best for your purposes.
What is SEMrush?
SEMrush is a popular SEO tool with a wide range of
features—it's the leading competitor research service for online marketers.
SEMrush's SEO Keyword Magic tool offers over 20 billion Google-approved
keywords, which are constantly updated and it's the largest keyword database.
The program was developed in 2007 as SeoQuake is a
small Firefox extension
Features
Ahrefs is a leading SEO platform that offers a set of
tools to grow your search traffic, research your competitors, and monitor your
niche. The company was founded in 2010, and it has become a popular choice
among SEO tools. Ahrefs has a keyword index of over 10.3 billion keywords and
offers accurate and extensive backlink data updated every 15-30 minutes and it
is the world's most extensive backlink index database.
Features
Direct Comparisons: Ahrefs vs SEMrush
Now that you know a little more about each tool, let's
take a look at how they compare. I'll analyze each tool to see how they differ
in interfaces, keyword research resources, rank tracking, and competitor
analysis.
User Interface
Ahrefs and SEMrush both offer comprehensive information
and quick metrics regarding your website's SEO performance. However, Ahrefs
takes a bit more of a hands-on approach to getting your account fully set up,
whereas SEMrush's simpler dashboard can give you access to the data you need
quickly.
In this section, we provide a brief overview of the elements
found on each dashboard and highlight the ease with which you can complete
tasks.
AHREFS
The Ahrefs dashboard is less cluttered than that of
SEMrush, and its primary menu is at the very top of the page, with a search bar
designed only for entering URLs.
Additional features of the Ahrefs platform include:
SEMRUSH
When you log into the SEMrush Tool, you will find four
main modules. These include information about your domains, organic keyword
analysis, ad keyword, and site traffic.
You'll also find some other options like
Both Ahrefs and SEMrush have user-friendly dashboards,
but Ahrefs is less cluttered and easier to navigate. On the other hand, SEMrush
offers dozens of extra tools, including access to customer support resources.
When deciding on which dashboard to use, consider what
you value in the user interface, and test out both.
If you're looking to track your website's search engine
ranking, rank tracking features can help. You can also use them to monitor your
competitors.
Let's take a look at Ahrefs vs. SEMrush to see which
tool does a better job.
The Ahrefs Rank Tracker is simpler to use. Just type in
the domain name and keywords you want to analyze, and it spits out a report
showing you the search engine results page (SERP) ranking for each keyword you
enter.
Rank Tracker looks at the ranking performance of
keywords and compares them with the top rankings for those keywords. Ahrefs
also offers:
You'll see metrics that help you understand your
visibility, traffic, average position, and keyword difficulty.
It gives you an idea of whether a keyword would be
profitable to target or not.
SEMRush offers a tool called Position Tracking. This
tool is a project tool—you must set it up as a new project. Below are a few of
the most popular features of the SEMrush Position Tracking tool:
All subscribers are given regular data updates and
mobile search rankings upon subscribing
The platform provides opportunities to track several
SERP features, including Local tracking.
Intuitive reports allow you to track statistics for the
pages on your website, as well as the keywords used in those pages.
Identify pages that may be competing with each other
using the Cannibalization report.
Ahrefs is a more user-friendly option. It takes seconds
to enter a domain name and keywords. From there, you can quickly decide whether
to proceed with that keyword or figure out how to rank better for other
keywords.
SEMrush allows you to check your mobile rankings and
ranking updates daily, which is something Ahrefs does not offer. SEMrush also
offers social media rankings, a tool you won't find within the Ahrefs platform.
Both are good which one do you like let me know in the comment.
Keyword research is closely related to rank tracking,
but it's used for deciding which keywords you plan on using for future content
rather than those you use now.
When it comes to SEO, keyword research is the most
important thing to consider when comparing the two platforms.
The Ahrefs Keyword Explorer provides you with thousands
of keyword ideas and filters search results based on the chosen search engine.
Ahrefs supports several features, including:
SEMrush's Keyword Magic Tool has over 20 billion
keywords for Google. You can type in any keyword you want, and a list of
suggested keywords will appear.
The Keyword Magic Tool also lets you to:
Both of these tools offer keyword research features and
allow users to break down complicated tasks into something that can be
understood by beginners and advanced users alike.
If you're interested in keyword suggestions, SEMrush
appears to have more keyword suggestions than Ahrefs does. It also continues to
add new features, like the Keyword Gap tool and SERP Questions recommendations.
Both platforms offer competitor analysis tools,
eliminating the need to come up with keywords off the top of your head. Each
tool is useful for finding keywords that will be useful for your competition so
you know they will be valuable to you.
Ahrefs' domain comparison tool lets you compare up to five websites (your website and four competitors) side-by-side.it also shows you how your site is ranked against others with metrics such as backlinks, domain ratings, and more.
Use the Competing Domains section to see a list of your
most direct competitors, and explore how many keywords matches your competitors
have.
To find more information about your competitor, you can
look at the Site Explorer and Content Explorer tools and type in their URL
instead of yours.
SEMrush provides a variety of insights into your
competitors' marketing tactics. The platform enables you to research your
competitors effectively. It also offers several resources for competitor
analysis including:
Traffic Analytics helps you identify where your
audience comes from, how they engage with your site, what devices visitors use
to view your site, and how your audiences overlap with other websites.
SEMrush's Organic Research examines your website's
major competitors and shows their organic search rankings, keywords they are
ranking for, and even if they are ranking for any (SERP) features and more.
The Market Explorer search field allows you to type in
a domain and lists websites or articles similar to what you entered. Market
Explorer also allows users to perform in-depth data analytics on These
companies and markets.
SEMrush wins here because it has more tools dedicated to
competitor analysis than Ahrefs. However, Ahrefs offers a lot of functionality
in this area, too. It takes a combination of both tools to gain an advantage
over your competition.
When it comes to keyword data research, you will become
confused about which one to choose.
Consider choosing Ahrefs if you
Consider SEMrush if you:
Both tools are great. Choose the one which meets your
requirements and if you have any experience using either Ahrefs or SEMrush let
me know in the comment section which works well for you.
A clever, meat-free pasta sauce using soffritto, red wine, plus maybe a smidge of Marmite, to create a deceptively dense flavour
While today’s recipe is from Tuscany, it is also thanks to a girl who went to my school. She lived outside town, in a big house with both a swimming pool and chickens. I never actually saw the house, or jumped in the pool, but I did hear about the chickens that lived in a cage at the bottom of the garden and laid more eggs than the family could eat. There was also the story about how, one day, this girl stopped her uncle from killing one of the chickens, which meant that for Sunday lunch they had roast potatoes, fried eggs and gravy made from Marmite. I remember being thrilled by this story, the idea that she had put herself between an uncle (with a gun, knife, rope, his bare hands? I had no idea) and the hen, therefore saving its life; and that, while the family ate Marmite gravy, the chicken ran free.
Scappato means run away, escaped, scarpered. It’s a nice thought that this recipe for penne con pollo scappato, or pasta with chicken that has fled the coop, was the result of a feisty young girl and a fortunate hen somewhere in Tuscany. It is probably more likely, though, that it was the result of no chickens at all. Along with Sicilian pasta con le sarde al mare (pasta with sardines still at sea) and Neapolitan spaghetti alle vongole fujute (spaghetti with clams that have fled), penne con pollo scappato is part of a family of recipes brought about my resourceful necessity. I have a book about Tuscan food that calls such recipes cucina del’ inganno, which translates as “cooking of deception”, but I think the meaning is slightly different in Tuscan – cunning, and also protective, something you do in order to make something as good as you can with whatever you have to hand. This one is certainly a clever recipe, the well-cooked soffritto of carrot, celery, onion and wine, mixed with rosemary, tomato concentrate from a tube and a long cooking time result in a flavour so deep that it is every bit as good as meat.
Discover Rachel’s recipes and many more from your favourite cooks in the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun
Continue reading...Deep-sea divers feel the pressure, Stephen King returns with some masterly tales, a mother fears her own son, and a Dorset resort isn’t as restful as it seems
A thriller plot line is barely needed in Will Dean’s The Chamber (Hodder & Stoughton); the real-life terrors of the world he describes are enough to have any even vaguely claustrophobic heart racing. Dean, the author of the excellent Tuva Moodyson thrillers as well as a handful of standalone novels, sets his latest in the world of saturation diving in the early 00s. Here, deep sea divers work at more than 100 metres below sea level, living for up to a month in a pressurised, immensely cramped environment and breathing a mix of helium and oxygen so they can continue diving at depth without needing to decompress and thus risk nitrogen narcosis (the bends). Dean’s protagonist is Ellen Brooke, one of the few female saturation divers; she and five others will live for a month in a chamber “about the size of the back section of a bus” while they take shifts diving beneath the North Sea, fixing oil pipes. But then one of them dies. And then another. Are the people providing them with food and gases to breathe harming them? “In some ways, this is similar to an academic experiment that got out of hand: the lack of control we have, and the enormous list of ways in which they could inflict harm upon us if they so desired.” Or is the danger inside the chamber? As those in charge start the days-long decompression process, Ellen and her colleagues try to survive. “One might be an accident,” she writes on a piece of paper. “Two is a crime.” Horribly, claustrophobically compulsive.
“You like it darker? Fine. So do I,” writes Stephen King in the afterword to a new collection of short stories, You Like It Darker (Hodder & Stoughton), which range from the deliciously creepy (Willie the Weirdo, reminiscent of one of King’s best short stories, Gramma), to novels-in-miniature. Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream is one of the latter. The premise is a paranormal twist: a man has one prescient dream, and discovers where a body was buried. As his efforts to let the truth be known backfire on him, and spin out of control, this becomes a gripping story of an obsessively dangerous cop. My favourite, though, is Rattlesnakes, which made me jump for joy with its links to two previous King novels (no spoilers here, because it was too much fun to discover), while also chilling me to the bone. “Dusk, you know. Real things seem thinner then, at least to me.” Some of these stories are supernatural; some are not; many feature older protagonists; all are worth a read, as King continues his self-described project to “show the real world as it is, and to tell the truth about the America I know and love”.
Continue reading...Union claims Whitbread, which also owns Premier Inn, has not consulted properly with restaurant staff
More than 1,500 workers from restaurants including Brewers Fayre, Table Table and Beefeater outlets are threatening their parent company Whitbread with legal action over alleged poor consultation on planned job cuts and closures.
The Unite union has written to Whitbread, which also owns Premier Inn hotels, saying it is considering launching employment tribunal claims for unfair dismissal. It says some of the 3,000 workers potentially affected by the company’s moves to exit more than 200 restaurants have yet to be told which sites will close despite evidence that plans have been in place since December last year.
Continue reading...Ian Sample hears from Linda Geddes about her recent trip to the Netherlands to try cultivated meat sausages, courtesy of the company Meatable. Advocates say that cultivated meat could be the future of sustainable and ethical meat production. Linda explains how they’re made, how their carbon footprint compares with traditional meat and most importantly … what they taste like!
Read more from Linda Geddes on her trip to the Netherlands
Continue reading...Katherine Ryan joins Grace this week to share her favourite comfort foods. The Canadian comedian, writer, presenter and actor is best known for her deliciously wicked comedy, delivered with a side dish of couture. Katherine shares memories from her past, including her father’s attempts to bring Indian food to Canada via Ireland, her difficult early days in London as a single parent trying to makes ends meet, and the deep fried delights on offer at her first place of work: Hooters. Now, Katherine has had two Netflix Comedy specials, and is a regular on the UK panel show circuit. But the question is – what is fuelling her funny?
New episodes of Comfort Eating with Grace Dent will be released every Tuesday
Continue reading...The spread of the avocado is a story of greed, ambition, corruption, water shortages, cartel battles and, in a number of towns and villages, a fierce fightback
Phone service was down. A fuse had blown in the cell tower during a recent storm. Even though my arrival had been cleared with the government of Cherán in advance, the armed guard at the highway checkpoint, decked out in full fatigues, the wrong shade to pass for Mexican military uniform, refused to wave me through. My guide, Uli Escamilla, assured him that we had an appointment and that we could prove it if only we could call or text our envoy. The officer gripped his rifle with both hands and peered into the windows of our rental car. We tried to explain ourselves: we were journalists writing about the town’s war with the avocado, and had plans to meet with the local council. We finally managed to recall the first name of our point person on the council – Marcos – and after repeating it a number of times, we were let through.
To reach Cherán’s militarised outskirts, we had driven for hours on the two-lane highway that laces through the cool, mountainous highlands of Michoacán, in south-central Mexico. We passed through clumps of pine, rows of corn and patches of raspberry bushes. But mostly we saw avocado trees: squat and stocky, with rust-flecked leaves, sagging beneath the weight of their dark fruit and studding the hillsides right up to the edge of the road. In the small towns along the way, there, too, were avocados: painted on concrete walls and road signs, atop storefronts and on advertisements for distributors, seeds and fertilisers.
Continue reading...GMB poll receives reports of workers being stabbed, punched and threatened with syringes
One in three Asda staff have been attacked at work, according to research that included reports of workers being stabbed, punched and threatened with syringes.
The poll of almost 1,000 members of GMB, one of the UK’s biggest unions, returned stories of delivery drivers being chased by people in cars, while store workers had food thrown at them. More than half (58%) of respondents said they had suffered injury or illness on the job.
Continue reading...Blue crabs with no natural predators have been disrupting prized shellfish populations on Italy’s coast. So revenge is on the menu
In a down-to-earth suburb of Catania on Sicily’s east coast, smoke billows from street stands selling traditional grilled horse meat, and local youngsters gather around kiosks selling the region’s unique handmade drink, seltz limone e sale (seltzer with lemon and sea salt). It is here that a family of charismatic ex-fishers have opened a seafood restaurant that bravely challenges long-held regional conventions.
The Salamone family sell all the usual local specialities in their slick new business “La Fish”, such as Sicily’s famous swordfish, sardines and tuna. However, the feature of tonight’s tasting menu – attracting customers who range from local families to food connoisseurs – is a relative newcomer to these shores and to Sicilian tables: the Atlantic blue crab.
Continue reading...Repairs complete but security concerns after Israeli operation to free hostages mean food has not yet been distributed
Humanitarian assistance has begun to come ashore in Gaza from a US-made pier once more, two weeks after the short-lived sea corridor was suspended due to storm damage, but security concerns after one of the bloodiest days of the war meant the aid was not distributed.
The head of the World Food Programme (WFP), Cindy McCain, said the food distribution from the pier had been “paused” because she was “concerned about the safety of our people”. An Israeli military operation on Saturday freed four hostages but killed 274 Palestinians and left one Israeli commando dead. McCain told CBS’s Face the Nation programme that two of WFP’s warehouses in Gaza had also been rocketed and a staffer injured.
Continue reading...Andrew Bailey’s office has a losing record of fighting against exonerations recommended by local prosecutors — but it’s not giving up.
The post Missouri’s Attorney General Is Waging War to Keep the Wrongly Convicted Locked Up appeared first on The Intercept.
Technology was once simply a tool—and a small one at that—used to amplify human intent and capacity. That was the story of the industrial revolution: we could control nature and build large, complex human societies, and the more we employed and mastered technology, the better things got. We don’t live in that world anymore. Not only has technology become entangled with the structure of society, but we also can no longer see the world around us without it. The separation is gone, and the control we thought we once had has revealed itself as a mirage. We’re in a transitional period of history right now...
A weekly email from Yotam Ottolenghi, Meera Sodha, Felicity Cloake and Rachel Roddy, featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas
Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from Yotam Ottolenghi, Nigel Slater, Meera Sodha and all our star cooks, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent and Jay Rayner.
Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.
Continue reading...Michelle Roach bought a used ice-cream van in order to bring cheap, affordable food to Liverpool's struggling communities. She wanted a vehicle with freezers built in for frozen food, and also something cheerful that was able to break down stigmas around food poverty. Using a '10 items for £5' model, Michelle sources discount food from supermarket surplus and donations.
The Guardian's Christopher Cherry follows Michelle and the van on its rounds, with the service struggling to meet overwhelming demand as the cost of living crisis deepens, and the UK's general election fast approaches.
Continue reading...South Africa's case against Israel over allegations of genocide before the international court of justice has raised a central question of international law: what is genocide and how do you prove it? It is one of three genocide cases being considered by the UN's world court, but since the genocide convention was approved in 1948, only three instances have been legally recognised as genocide. Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks back on these historical cases to find out why the crime is so much harder to prove than other atrocities, and what bearing this has on South Africa's case against Israel and future cases
What is the genocide convention and how might it apply to the UK and Israel?
‘Famine is setting in’: UN court orders Israel to unblock Gaza food aid
On the last day of his Huginn mission, ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen takes us on a tour of the place he called home for 6 months: the International Space Station. From the beautiful views of Cupola to the kitchen in Node 1 filled with food and friends and all the way to the science of Columbus, the Space Station is the work and living place for astronauts as they help push science forward.
Style, with substance: what’s really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved, direct to your inbox every Thursday
Style, with substance: what’s really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved, delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday
Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you
Continue reading...Imagine a world in which you can do transactions and many other things without having to give your personal information. A world in which you don’t need to rely on banks or governments anymore. Sounds amazing, right? That’s exactly what blockchain technology allows us to do.
It’s like your computer’s hard drive. blockchain is a technology that lets you store data in digital blocks, which are connected together like links in a chain.
Blockchain technology was originally invented in 1991 by two mathematicians, Stuart Haber and W. Scot Stornetta. They first proposed the system to ensure that timestamps could not be tampered with.
A few years later, in 1998, software developer Nick Szabo proposed using a similar kind of technology to secure a digital payments system he called “Bit Gold.” However, this innovation was not adopted until Satoshi Nakamoto claimed to have invented the first Blockchain and Bitcoin.
A blockchain is a distributed database shared between the nodes of a computer network. It saves information in digital format. Many people first heard of blockchain technology when they started to look up information about bitcoin.
Blockchain is used in cryptocurrency systems to ensure secure, decentralized records of transactions.
Blockchain allowed people to guarantee the fidelity and security of a record of data without the need for a third party to ensure accuracy.
To understand how a blockchain works, Consider these basic steps:
Let’s get to know more about the blockchain.
Blockchain records digital information and distributes it across the network without changing it. The information is distributed among many users and stored in an immutable, permanent ledger that can't be changed or destroyed. That's why blockchain is also called "Distributed Ledger Technology" or DLT.
Here’s how it works:
And that’s the beauty of it! The process may seem complicated, but it’s done in minutes with modern technology. And because technology is advancing rapidly, I expect things to move even more quickly than ever.
Even though blockchain is integral to cryptocurrency, it has other applications. For example, blockchain can be used for storing reliable data about transactions. Many people confuse blockchain with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.
Blockchain already being adopted by some big-name companies, such as Walmart, AIG, Siemens, Pfizer, and Unilever. For example, IBM's Food Trust uses blockchain to track food's journey before reaching its final destination.
Although some of you may consider this practice excessive, food suppliers and manufacturers adhere to the policy of tracing their products because bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella have been found in packaged foods. In addition, there have been isolated cases where dangerous allergens such as peanuts have accidentally been introduced into certain products.
Tracing and identifying the sources of an outbreak is a challenging task that can take months or years. Thanks to the Blockchain, however, companies now know exactly where their food has been—so they can trace its location and prevent future outbreaks.
Blockchain technology allows systems to react much faster in the event of a hazard. It also has many other uses in the modern world.
Blockchain technology is safe, even if it’s public. People can access the technology using an internet connection.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had all your data stored at one place and that one secure place got compromised? Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to prevent your data from leaking out even when the security of your storage systems is compromised?
Blockchain technology provides a way of avoiding this situation by using multiple computers at different locations to store information about transactions. If one computer experiences problems with a transaction, it will not affect the other nodes.
Instead, other nodes will use the correct information to cross-reference your incorrect node. This is called “Decentralization,” meaning all the information is stored in multiple places.
Blockchain guarantees your data's authenticity—not just its accuracy, but also its irreversibility. It can also be used to store data that are difficult to register, like legal contracts, state identifications, or a company's product inventory.
Blockchain has many advantages and disadvantages.
I’ll answer the most frequently asked questions about blockchain in this section.
Blockchain is not a cryptocurrency but a technology that makes cryptocurrencies possible. It's a digital ledger that records every transaction seamlessly.
Yes, blockchain can be theoretically hacked, but it is a complicated task to be achieved. A network of users constantly reviews it, which makes hacking the blockchain difficult.
Coinbase Global is currently the biggest blockchain company in the world. The company runs a commendable infrastructure, services, and technology for the digital currency economy.
Blockchain is a decentralized technology. It’s a chain of distributed ledgers connected with nodes. Each node can be any electronic device. Thus, one owns blockhain.
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, which is powered by Blockchain technology while Blockchain is a distributed ledger of cryptocurrency
Generally a database is a collection of data which can be stored and organized using a database management system. The people who have access to the database can view or edit the information stored there. The client-server network architecture is used to implement databases. whereas a blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, stored in a distributed system. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, timestamp and transaction information. Modification of data is not allowed due to the design of the blockchain. The technology allows decentralized control and eliminates risks of data modification by other parties.
Blockchain has a wide spectrum of applications and, over the next 5-10 years, we will likely see it being integrated into all sorts of industries. From finance to healthcare, blockchain could revolutionize the way we store and share data. Although there is some hesitation to adopt blockchain systems right now, that won't be the case in 2022-2023 (and even less so in 2026). Once people become more comfortable with the technology and understand how it can work for them, owners, CEOs and entrepreneurs alike will be quick to leverage blockchain technology for their own gain. Hope you like this article if you have any question let me know in the comments section
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Groups issue call to next government amid criticism of online fashion retailer’s labour practices and accusations of copying
Workers rights campaigners have called for the UK’s next government to oppose the online fashion business Shein joining the FTSE, arguing that a London listing would be “yet another betrayal to working people everywhere and the planet”.
Alena Ivanova, campaigns lead at Labour Behind the Label, said it had heard the news of senior British politicians courting Shein’s £50bn listing “with dismay” given what she claimed was a lack of transparency about its supply chain and ethical concerns.
Continue reading...Workers for US defence contractor KBR concerned after colleagues die on island with no hospital-grade health facility
Migrant workers employed by the US defence contractor KBR on the British-owned island of Diego Garcia have expressed concerns for their safety after the recent deaths of two of their colleagues, the Observer has learned.
The most recent death on Diego Garcia, which is host to a strategic American military base in the British Indian Ocean Territory, came on 5 January. Relemay Fabula Gan, 41, from the Philippines, died after suffering a collapsed lung following several weeks of illness after a Covid diagnosis, her family said.
Continue reading...Beverley McLachlin’s decision comes after British judge Lord Sumption quit court of final appeal, condemning ‘impossible political environment’
A former chief justice of Canada’s supreme court has announced she is stepping down from Hong Kong’s court of final appeal – the latest in a string of departures amid concerns about judicial independence from China.
Beverley McLachlin, 80, said she would be leaving the territory’s top court when her term ends next month to spend more time with her family, but that she still held “confidence in the members of the court, their independence and their determination to uphold the rule of law”.
Continue reading...Lord Sumption, who last week quit territory’s top court, speaks out on ‘paranoid atmosphere’ under Chinese rule
A British judge has described the “paranoid atmosphere” in Hong Kong as he explained his decision to step down from the territory’s top court.
Jonathan Sumption, along with another British judge, Lawrence Collins, last week resigned from Hong Kong’s court of final appeal (CFA).
Continue reading...Group from Cornell College were visiting a temple in Jilin city when they were attacked by a man with a knife, Iowa state representative Adam Zabner says
Four US college instructors teaching in China have been stabbed while visiting a public park, US officials have said.
The tutors from Cornell College in Iowa were at the park in Jilin province, north-eastern China with a faculty member from Beihua University on Monday when the attack occurred, college president Jonathan Brand said in a statement. The private college in Iowa partners with the university near Jilin City.
Continue reading...Experts believe Beijing will retaliate with measures that could hit European exports from cheese to cognac
The EU is expected to notify China that it will impose tariffs on electric vehicle imports this week, firing the starting gun on a potential summer trade war with Beijing.
A formal pre-disclosure of tariffs could happen as early as Wednesday, after a lengthy investigation into China’s state subsidies for its car manufacturing, which is predicted to conclude that massive support continues to be concentrated on the EV sector.
Continue reading...Katherine Ryan joins Grace this week to share her favourite comfort foods. The Canadian comedian, writer, presenter and actor is best known for her deliciously wicked comedy, delivered with a side dish of couture. Katherine shares memories from her past, including her father’s attempts to bring Indian food to Canada via Ireland, her difficult early days in London as a single parent trying to makes ends meet, and the deep fried delights on offer at her first place of work: Hooters. Now, Katherine has had two Netflix Comedy specials, and is a regular on the UK panel show circuit. But the question is – what is fuelling her funny?
New episodes of Comfort Eating with Grace Dent will be released every Tuesday
Continue reading...FBI chief condemns Peltier, 79, who denies killing agents on Pine Ridge reservation in 1975, as ‘remorseless killer’
Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who has served nearly 50 years in prison for the killing of two FBI agents, was due to have his first parole hearing since 2009 on Monday, his lawyer said.
Peltier, 79, has maintained that he did not kill the FBI special agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Advocates, including figures such as the late Nelson Mandela and a former prosecutor and judge involved in his case, have long said he should be freed because of what they call legal irregularities in his trial.
Continue reading...Reverend, pastor and professor, who was a close adviser to Martin Luther King Jr, dies in Los Angeles after short illness
The Rev James Lawson Jr, an apostle of nonviolent protest who schooled activists to withstand brutal reactions from white authorities as the civil rights movement gained traction, has died, his family said on Monday. He was 95.
His family said Lawson died on Sunday after a short illness in Los Angeles, where he spent decades working as a pastor, labor movement organizer and university professor.
Continue reading...Australia meet Scotland in St Lucia on Saturday with the potential for a 1999 World Cup-style controversy in the air
They were showing India v Pakistan in the bar at Bridgetown airport on Sunday, this World Cup having been pleasingly visible in the Caribbean. But as England supporters watched that nail- biter unfold over a cold bottle of Banks before the flight to Antigua, Scotland were already in the land of sea and sun, gleefully lining up a week at the last-chance saloon for the Auld Enemy.
Coming 24 hours after England were out-thought and outplayed by Australia at Kensington Oval, and staged in parallel to Pakistan’s big flop in the Big Apple, that seven‑wicket victory against Oman at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium has put Richie Berrington’s side on the verge of swiping their boarding passes to the Super Eight phase. Knocking off a target of 151 with 41 balls to spare, supercharging their net run-rate in the process, they could scarcely have done more.
Continue reading...Modi becomes second leader in Indian history to win three consecutive terms, but opposition leaders snub ceremony
Narendra Modi has been sworn in as prime minister of India for a historic third term, ushering in a new era of coalition politics for India’s strongman leader.
The ceremony, which took place at the presidential palace on Sunday evening, marked Modi’s return to power, only the second leader in India’s history to win three consecutive terms.
Continue reading...Campaigners say election shows rejection of ‘hate politics’ after marginalised groups vote to deny BJP a majority
It was widely described as the week that India’s beleaguered democracy was pulled back from the brink. As the election results rolled in on Tuesday, all predictions and polls were defied as Narendra Modi lost his outright majority for the first time in a decade while the opposition re-emerged as a legitimate political force. On Sunday evening, Modi will be sworn in as prime minister yet many believe his power and mandate stands diminished.
For one opposition politician in particular, the humbling of the strongman prime minister was a moment to savour. Late last year, Mahua Moitra, one of the most outspoken critics of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), found herself unceremoniously expelled from parliament and kicked out of her bungalow, after what she described as a “political witch-hunt” for daring to stand up to Modi.
Continue reading...Indian high commission made claim bronze depicting Tirumankai Alvar which it believes may have been looted
Oxford University has announced it is to hand back a 500-year-old sculpture of a Hindu saint to India.
The almost 60cm-tall bronze statue, which depicts Tirumankai Alvar, had been on display at the university’s Ashmolean Museum.
Continue reading...The US Justice Department has dismantled an enormous botnet:
According to an indictment unsealed on May 24, from 2014 through July 2022, Wang and others are alleged to have created and disseminated malware to compromise and amass a network of millions of residential Windows computers worldwide. These devices were associated with more than 19 million unique IP addresses, including 613,841 IP addresses located in the United States. Wang then generated millions of dollars by offering cybercriminals access to these infected IP addresses for a fee...
Incident comes at time of heightened tensions between neighbours, as tit-for-tat actions increase after North Korea sent rubbish-filled balloons into the South
South Korea’s military has said it fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the border this week, amid rising tensions after Pyongyang sent rubbish-carrying balloons into the South and Seoul retaliated with a loudspeaker propaganda campaign.
“Some North Korean soldiers working within the DMZ on the central front briefly crossed the Military Demarcation Line,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff [JCS] said in a statement on Tuesday, referring to the line of control in the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas.
Continue reading...Microsoft recently caught state-backed hackers using its generative AI tools to help with their attacks. In the security community, the immediate questions weren’t about how hackers were using the tools (that was utterly predictable), but about how Microsoft figured it out. The natural conclusion was that Microsoft was spying on its AI users, looking for harmful hackers at work.
Some pushed back at characterizing Microsoft’s actions as “spying.” Of course cloud service providers monitor what users are doing. And because we expect Microsoft to be doing something like this, it’s not fair to call it spying...
Ian Sample hears from Linda Geddes about her recent trip to the Netherlands to try cultivated meat sausages, courtesy of the company Meatable. Advocates say that cultivated meat could be the future of sustainable and ethical meat production. Linda explains how they’re made, how their carbon footprint compares with traditional meat and most importantly … what they taste like!
Read more from Linda Geddes on her trip to the Netherlands
Continue reading...The airline has said that anyone who sustained serious injuries on SQ321 last month could be entitled to a larger payment
Singapore Airlines has offered US$10,000 compensation payments to passengers who suffered minor injuries during a flight last month that hit sudden, extreme turbulence.
On Tuesday, the airline announced that it had sent compensation offers to passengers who were on board flight SQ321 from London to Singapore on 20 May, which dropped 54 metres in altitude in less than five seconds while flying over Myanmar.
Continue reading...“One side or the other is going to win,” Alito told a person he thought was a right-wing activist.
The post Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Caught on Secret Audio appeared first on The Intercept.
Trump fans say his conviction is an overreach. But a close look at another recent fraud trial shows his case was run-of-the-mill.
The post To Understand the Trump Verdict, Look at the Case Against Shukhratjon Mirsaidov appeared first on The Intercept.
Muhammad Yunus tells the Guardian charges against him are politically motivated, and expresses concern about personal attacks from politicians
The Nobel peace laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus has said that years of fighting what he calls “dirty” politically motivated attacks on his work to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh have made life “totally miserable”.
Yunus told the Guardian he had come under 20 years of pressure from the Bangladeshi government for his work, which is credited with improving the lives of millions of poor people, particularly women.
Continue reading...Kuo Chiu, known as KC to his friends, teaches urban design at Tunghai University in Taiwan. He’s also one of many of the country's citizens who practises rifle skills in his spare time, in case of a Chinese invasion.
The population of Taiwan has long grown familiar with Beijing’s pledge to one day ‘unify’ what it claims is a breakaway province. But recently, there has been a significant increase in aggressive and intimidatory acts.
Taiwan’s 160,000 active military personnel are vastly outnumbered by China’s 2 million-member armed forces, leading many civilians to turn to voluntary medical and combat training to protect themselves.
The Guardian's video team spent time with KC to see how he is preparing
Continue reading...“It’s hard to see this wildly disproportionate response as anything other than an attempt to chill speech on this issue.”
The post Columbia Coincidentally Rewrites Disciplinary Rules Just in Time to Screw Over Student Protesters appeared first on The Intercept.
Ahead of the election in India, the Guardian’s video team travelled through the country to explore how fake news and censorship might shape the outcome.
Almost one billion people are registered to vote. The country's prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been in power for more than 10 years, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) is seeking a third term.
But critics of Modi and the BJP say his government has become increasingly authoritarian, fracturing the country along religious lines and threatening India’s secular democracy. At the same time, the space for freedom of speech has been shrinking while disinformation and hate speech has exploded on social media.
We know turbulence is a common part of flying – but are some routes more prone? And where is it the worst? Turbulence is the leading cause of in-flight injuries to crew and passengers and after the fatal Singapore Airlines incident and injuries to passengers above Turkey on a Qatar Airways flight, you might be wondering if flights are about to get bumpier. Incidents of severe turbulence are on the rise – increasing by 55% between 1979 and 2020 – and the climate crisis is thought to be a responsible factor
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Continue reading...Ban Khun Samut Chin, a coastal village in Samut Prakan province, Thailand, has been slowly swallowed by the sea over the past few decades. This has led to the relocation of the school and many homes, resulting in a dwindling population. Currently, there are only four students attending the school, often leaving just one in each classroom. The village has experienced severe coastal erosion, causing 1.1-2km (0.5-1.2 miles) of shoreline to disappear since the mid-1950s
Continue reading...Trent Alexander-Arnold is in line to accompany Declan Rice and Jude Bellingham in midfield when England face Serbia in their opening game at Euro 2024 on Sunday.
Gareth Southgate, who has a number of fitness concerns before his side travel to Gelsenkirchen for their Group C opener, faces a big call over who should take the third spot in central midfield. England are light on experience after leaving Kalvin Phillips and Jordan Henderson out of their squad and whoever is chosen to start with Bellingham and Rice will have plenty to prove.
Continue reading...Technology was once simply a tool—and a small one at that—used to amplify human intent and capacity. That was the story of the industrial revolution: we could control nature and build large, complex human societies, and the more we employed and mastered technology, the better things got. We don’t live in that world anymore. Not only has technology become entangled with the structure of society, but we also can no longer see the world around us without it. The separation is gone, and the control we thought we once had has revealed itself as a mirage. We’re in a transitional period of history right now...
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