********** TRAVEL **********
return to top
Briefly Noted Book Reviews
Mon, 29 Apr 2024 10:00:00 +0000
“Knife,” “A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages,” “Neighbors and Other Stories,” and “Butter.”
Match ID: 0 Score: 68.57 source: www.newyorker.com age: 3 days
qualifiers: 38.57 travel guide(|s), 30.00 travel(|ing)
A trail of two cities: an alternative guide to Salford and Manchester
Fri, 03 May 2024 06:00:31 GMT
Sunday’s Sounds from the Other City festival is a joyful celebration of Greater Manchester’s leftfield culture
On the first Sunday of May every year, Chapel Street, where central Manchester and Salford meet, comes alive with DIY art, music and spectacle at the Sounds from the Other City festival. It is a vibrant public celebration of the “community spirit and collaborative working” which co-director Emma Thompson says sustains much alternative culture in the region.
“Collaboration is core to what we do, to Greater Manchester as a city,” Thompson says. “People come together, and it crosses genres and art forms. Sounds from the Other City wouldn’t be turning 20 next year if it wasn’t for that. The fees we offer aren’t huge but people really get behind it, do it for the love of it.”
Continue reading...The government wants to scrap England’s 50% cap on ‘faith admissions’. It will just lead to religious discrimination
To gain admission to the local church school near my home, parents were always advised to attend church. Otherwise, they were told, they should try elsewhere. The result was local antagonism: cars and buses filled with local children were ferried to more distant schools. It was a bad system in every sense.
In 2010, in an attempt to stem the growth of sectarian free schools, the Cameron government imposed a 50% cap on “faith admissions” where schools were oversubscribed. Now Rishi Sunak is proposing to end that cap. To encourage their creation, new faith-based schools – Anglican, Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, whatever – can be as exclusive as they want. Since most faith schools tend to become socially selective and thus enjoy parental preference, the move has been welcomed by church leaders. They have something to sell. Anything will do to counter plummeting church attendance.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
From excessive travel to food waste, weddings can have a huge carbon footprint. Here’s how to plan an eco-friendly celebration
A wedding is a couple’s big day. Unfortunately, it can also have a big carbon footprint.
The average American wedding creates around 60 metric tons of CO2 – the carbon equivalent of 71 round-trip flights from New York to LA. You’d need to plant roughly 60 trees and let them grow for 100 years to sequester that amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And with more than 2m marriages taking place in the US alone in 2022, the wedding industry’s environmental impact adds up.
Continue reading...We would like to hear from people who have been affected by postponements and cancellations at the Co-op Live arena
The Co-op Live arena has postponed or cancelled several of its music and comedy shows in recent weeks due to technical problems at the venue. Olivia Rodrigo, Peter Kay and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie are among the performers whose gigs have been disrupted.
We would like to hear from people who have been affected by the disruptions at the Co-op Live arena. Had you planned to travel to see the show? Will you make it to a rescheduled show?
Continue reading...The far right are on the march in Germany and the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany has become the most popular party in several states. Immigration and a sense of being economically left behind have been driving factors in the rise in popularity but the Green party and the federal government’s climate policies have also borne the brunt of public anger. The Guardian travelled to Görlitz, on the German border with Poland, to find out to what extent Germany’s green policies are fuelling the far right
• How climate policies are becoming focus for far-right attacks in Germany
Continue reading...For years, the political establishment opportunistically railed against sex trafficking. Then came Pizzagate.
The post QAnon Was Born Out of the Sex Ad Moral Panic That Took Down Backpage.com appeared first on The Intercept.
A measure passed by the House seeks to block Americans from traveling to Iran on U.S. passports.
The post House Responds to Israeli-Iranian Missile Exchange by Taking Rights Away From Americans appeared first on The Intercept.
The web has become so interwoven with everyday life that it is easy to forget what an extraordinary accomplishment and treasure it is. In just a few decades, much of human knowledge has been collectively written up and made available to anyone with an internet connection.
But all of this is coming to an end. The advent of AI threatens to destroy the complex online ecosystem that allows writers, artists, and other creators to reach human audiences.
To understand why, you must understand publishing. Its core task is to connect writers to an audience. Publishers work as gatekeepers, filtering candidates and then amplifying the chosen ones. Hoping to be selected, writers shape their work in various ways. This article might be written very differently in an academic publication, for example, and publishing it here entailed pitching an editor, revising multiple drafts for style and focus, and so on...
The White House brushes off accusations of hypocrisy, courting TikTok while seeking to ban it.
The post As Biden Cheers TikTok Ban, White House Embraces TikTok Influencers 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...Songwriting courses are exploding in popularity, with everyone from Mark Ronson to Alicia Keys as teachers. On a retreat in north Wales, our folk music critic tries to write her first song
Imagine you’ve spent the past 20 years writing about songs but never had the chops to write one. This is my penance: sitting in a room in north Wales, with a tiny keyboard and notebook spidery with attempted lyrics, the only rhythm in my ears my rave-energy heartbeat, the only melody in my mind the lilting panic of my inner critic going: “Argh!”
It’s the final day of a four-day songwriting course at Literature Wales’s 16th-century HQ, Ty Newydd Writing Centre, led by Brian Briggs of folk band Stornoway and Welsh poet and songwriter Paul Henry. Tonight, I have to perform an original song with two relative strangers, in front of people I didn’t know four days earlier. This particular terror is the climax of a bigger endeavour on my part: to explore the growing popularity of songwriting courses, and to find out if they work.
Continue reading...US president says ‘immigrants are what makes us strong’ and criticizes countries, plus China and Russia, over migration policy
Joe Biden has called Japan and India “xenophobic” countries that do not welcome immigrants, lumping the two with adversaries China and Russia as he tried to explain their economic circumstances and contrasted the four with the US on immigration.
The remarks, at a campaign fundraising event on Wednesday evening, came just three weeks after the White House hosted Fumio Kishida, the Japanese prime minister, for a lavish official visit, during which the two leaders celebrated what Biden called an “unbreakable alliance”, particularly on global security matters.
Continue reading...Shortlisted for the Women’s prize, this epic account of a country and a family torn apart combines the intimacy of a memoir with the urgency of reportage
American writer VV Ganeshananthan’s devastating second novel, Brotherless Night, has recently been shortlisted for the Women’s prize for fiction. Mainly set in Jaffna during the long, blood-drenched years of the Sri Lankan civil war, fought between the Sinhalese-dominated state and Tamil separatist groups, the book is an unforgettable account of a country and a family coming undone.
At its heart is the narrator, Sashi Kulenthiren, an aspiring doctor whose brothers Seelan and Dayalan join the militant Tamil Tigers after their eldest sibling is killed in anti-Tamil riots. In her grief, anger and confusion, Sashi is heartbreakingly human. In one scene, Seelan and Dayalan come home after a training stint in India and we see Sashi pained by their new reserve and fazed by their temerity. “We have been taught to think that Tamil children should only be that obedient to their parents, and it was strange to see another loyalty.” To their mother’s livid and anguished queries – “Why did you leave us? Where did you go? Who took you there? Were you safe? How did you come back here? How long will you stay?” – Seelan and Dayalan give only terse, evasive answers.
Continue reading...University faculty have put their bodies and livelihoods on the line amid a brutal, violent response to student protests for Gaza.
The post From UCLA to Columbia, Professors Nationwide Defend Students as Politicians and Police Attack appeared first on The Intercept.
Ships evacuating 12,000 islanders over fears that side of Mount Ruang might slide into sea and cause tsunami
Eruptions at a remote Indonesian volcano have forced more than half a dozen airports to close with ash spreading as far as Malaysia, according to officials, while authorities rushed to evacuate thousands due to tsunami fears.
Mount Ruang erupted three times on Tuesday, spewing lava and ash more than 5km (three miles) into the sky and forcing authorities to issue evacuation orders for 12,000 people.
Continue reading...In history, as in romance, beginnings matter – so what we do now will be crucial in shaping the future
In these times of planetary polycrisis, we try to get our bearings by looking to the past. Are we perhaps in The New Cold War, as Robin Niblett, the former director of the foreign affairs thinktank Chatham House, proposes in a new book? Is this bringing us towards the brink of a third world war, as the historian Niall Ferguson has argued? Or, as I have found myself suggesting on occasion, is the world beginning to resemble the late 19th-century Europe of competing empires and great powers writ large?
Another way of trying to put our travails into historically comprehensible shape is to label them as an “age of …”, with the words that follow suggesting either a parallel with or a sharp contrast to an earlier age. So the CNN foreign affairs guru Fareed Zakaria suggests in his latest book that we are in a new Age of Revolutions, meaning that we can learn something from the French, Industrial and American revolutions. Or is it rather The Age of the Strongman, as proposed by the Financial Times foreign affairs commentator Gideon Rachman? No, it’s The Age of Unpeace, says Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, since “connectivity causes conflict”.
Continue reading...Threats from the state have led many journalists across the world to flee their home countries to report from elsewhere. But for many the intimidation did not stop when they left
Illustrations by Joe McKendry
Fardad Farahzad, journalist, Iran International
Continue reading...The launch of the uncrewed Chang’e-6 is part of China’s effort to put a human on the lunar surface by 2030
China will attempt another mission to the far side of the moon on Friday, the first of three planned over coming years as part of its goal to land a human on the lunar surface by 2030.
The launch of the uncrewed Chang’e-6 is expected sometime between 8.30am GMT and 11am GMT and the mission – if successful – would go far to bolster China’s ambitions to put a man on the moon by 2030.
Continue reading...  | submitted by /u/PeteWenzel [link] [comments] |
Former NSW premier’s threat to sue comes amid debate about whether New Zealand should join pillar two of Aukus pact
Australia’s former foreign minister and New South Wales premier, Bob Carr, says he intends to sue New Zealand’s deputy prime minister, Winston Peters, for allegations made about Carr’s closeness to China as debate about Aukus ramps up.
Peters called Carr “nothing more than a Chinese puppet” on the national broadcaster RNZ on Thursday morning.
Continue reading...Move seen as continuation of Pacific country’s policy of growing closer to Beijing
Solomon Islands lawmakers have elected as their new prime minister Jeremiah Manele, a former foreign minister who has pledged to continue the Pacific country’s policy of embracing China.
Manele said outside parliament on Thursday “the people have spoken” and called for calm.
Continue reading...Freedom to Write index says there are 107 people in prison for published content in China, with many accused of ‘picking quarrels’
The number of writers jailed in China has surpassed 100, with nearly half imprisoned for online expression.
The grim milestone is revealed in the 2023 Freedom to Write index, a report compiled by Pen America, published on Wednesday.
Continue reading...The famed scholar on why reducing Hamas to a terrorist label sanctions Israel’s war on Palestinians.
The post Judith Butler Will Not Co-Sign Israel’s Alibi for Genocide appeared first on The Intercept.
Zhang Yongzhen stages sit-in protest, as government attempts to avoid scrutiny over handling of outbreak
The first Chinese scientist to publish a genomic sequence of the Covid-19 virus, in defiance of government orders, staged a sit-in protest after claiming he was locked out of his laboratory over the weekend.
Zhang Yongzhen, a virologist, said in an online post on Monday that he and his team had been given a sudden eviction notice from their lab, and guards had barred him from entering it over the weekend. The post, published on Weibo, was later deleted, Associated Press (AP) reported.
Continue reading...The former world champion fears for the current holder, who is out of form before title defence against 17-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju
Magnus Carlsen fears that Ding Liren may have been “permanently broken” following the world champion’s poor performances at Wijk aan Zee in January and in the Freestyle event in Germany in March. Carlsen, who remains the world No 1 despite abdicating the title in 2023 after a 10-year reign, made his comments on a podcast last week in which he and David Howell also discussed the Candidates at Toronto and the surprise victory for India’s Gukesh Dommaraju, 17.
Ding won the crown one year ago this week by defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi in a tense match which went to tie-breaks. Shortly afterwards he stopped playing for six months, citing lack of motivation plus an unspecified illness, which some sources said was anxiety or depression. At one stage he considered retirement.
Continue reading...As the climate crisis forces people to abandon their land in Rajasthan, a new industry has sprung up in the desert state, with thousands of gaily decorated vans setting off to sell ice-cream across the country
The parched villages of Gangapur in the desert state of Rajasthan have a new season in their calendar. Between November and February, car workshops along the town’s dusty mile-long market open before sunrise, cylindrical stainless-steel food containers are put on display, and traders stock up on chocolate and strawberry syrups.
Come March, the villagers start preparing to migrate. In the workshops, thousands of vehicles are converted into vans for selling a variety of ice-cream, from plain condensed milk flavoured with cardamom to chocolate, vanilla and pistachio, while local farmers turned dessert makers have their old mini-trucks serviced in readiness for the drive to distant towns and cities, where they will sell the sweet treat for the next nine months.
Continue reading...Birthplace and parents’ names are being removed from passports and birth certificates as Mauritius stakes claim to the island
Exiled islanders from the disputed British-owned Chagos Islands are finding their heritage has been removed from new identity documents in an apparent move by Mauritius to stake its claim to the territory.
British ownership of the Chagos Islands has long been challenged by Mauritius, where most islanders were shipped in the 1960s after being evicted from their Indian Ocean homeland to make way for a US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island.
Continue reading...Meta has threatened to pull WhatsApp out of India if the courts try to force it to break its end-to-end encryption.
Like countless other hostilities, the stealthy Israeli missile and drone strike on Iran doesn’t risk war. It is war.
The post Israel Attack on Iran Is What World War III Looks Like appeared first on The Intercept.
Israel’s uncompromising attitude and worsening situation in Gaza prompted Turkey to halt trade, minister says
Daniel Hurst is Guardian Australia’s foreign affairs and defence correspondent.
The Australian government faces a decision next week on whether to support admitting Palestine as a full member of the UN and is swapping notes with allies including South Korea and Germany.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Intense negotiations under way as Penny Wong backs two-state solution after meeting Germany’s Annalena Baerbock
The Australian government faces a decision next week on whether to support admitting Palestine as a full member of the UN and is swapping notes with allies including South Korea and Germany.
A copy of the draft resolution, seen by Guardian Australia, expresses “deep regret and concern” that the US used its veto power to block the proposal at the UN security council last month.
Continue reading...Warnings of dangerous temperatures across parts of Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh and India as hottest months of the year are made worse by El Niño
Millions of people across South and Southeast Asia are facing sweltering temperatures, with unusually hot weather forcing schools to close and threatening public health.
Thousands of schools across the Philippines, including in the capital region Metro Manila, have suspended in-person classes. Half of the country’s 82 provinces are experiencing drought, and nearly 31 others are facing dry spells or dry conditions, according to the UN, which has called for greater support to help the country prepare for similar weather events in the future. The country’s upcoming harvest will probably be below average, the UN said.
Continue reading...A bureaucrat in near-future London finds love with a Victorian Arctic explorer in a thrilling debut that takes a deep dive into human morality
For a book to be good – really good, keep it on your shelf for ever good – it has to be two things: fun and a stretch. You have to need to know what happens next; and you have to feel like a bigger or better version of yourself at the end. Airport thrillers are almost always fun; much contemporary autofiction is just a stretch, largely because it’s very hard for a book in which not much happens to be a page-turner. What a thrill, then, to come to Kaliane Bradley’s debut, The Ministry of Time, a novel where things happen, lots of them, and all of them are exciting to read about and interesting to think about.
Bradley’s book is also serious, it must be said – or, at least, covers serious subjects. The British empire, murder, government corruption, the refugee crisis, climate change, the Cambodian genocide, Auschwitz, 9/11 and the fallibility of the human moral compass all fall squarely within Bradley’s remit. Fortunately, however, these vast themes are handled deftly and in deference to character and plot.
Continue reading...After a long spell of intense heat and little rain, water levels have fallen to reveal parts of a sunken church, tombstones and foundations at Pantabangan
Ruins of a centuries-old town have emerged at a dam parched by drought in the northern Philippines.
After a prolonged spell of intense heat and little rain, water levels in the dam have fallen to reveal parts of a sunken church, tombstones and the foundations of structures from the 300-year-old town in Nueva Ecija province.
Continue reading...When police attacked student protesters, a lone trash can was the only damaged property I saw around City College of New York.
The post I’ve Covered Violent Crackdowns on Protests for 15 Years. This Police Overreaction Was Unhinged. appeared first on The Intercept.
Parties clash over communal issues in increasingly charged campaign amid concerns unseasonably hot weather affecting voter numbers
India has held the second phase of the world’s biggest election, with prime minister Narendra Modi and his rivals hurling accusations of religious discrimination and threats to democracy amid flagging voter turnout.
Almost 1 billion people are eligible to vote in the seven-phase general election that began on 19 April and concludes on 1 June, with votes set to be counted on 4 June.
Continue reading...Evidence points to Absolute Standards as the source of a lethal drug the Trump administration used to restart federal executions after 17 years.
The post “Little Home Market”: The Connecticut Company Accused of Fueling an Execution Spree appeared first on The Intercept.
The White House brushes off accusations of hypocrisy, courting TikTok while seeking to ban it.
The post As Biden Cheers TikTok Ban, White House Embraces TikTok Influencers appeared first on The Intercept.
Supporters worry Khan’s life is in danger and with good reason: The military has a long history of killing deposed leaders.
The post Chuck Schumer Privately Warns Pakistan: Don’t Kill Imran Khan in Prison appeared first on The Intercept.
Despite eventual visa backflip by authorities, ABC’s south-Asia correspondent Avani Dias left after being made to ‘feel so uncomfortable’
The south-Asia correspondent for Australia’s national broadcaster, Avani Dias, has been forced out of India after her reporting fell foul of the Indian government, in a sign of the increasing pressure on journalists in the country under Narendra Modi.
Dias, who has been based in Delhi for the ABC since January 2022, said she felt the government had made it “too difficult” for her to continue to do her job, claiming it blocked her from accessing events, issued takedown notices to YouTube for her news stories, and then refused her a standard visa renewal.
Continue reading...Opposition says prime minister targeting Muslim minority with ‘hate speech’ and violating election rules
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been accused of hate speech during a campaign rally where he called Muslims “infiltrators” who had “many children” and claimed they would take people’s hard-earned money.
The opposition accused Modi of “blatantly targeting” India’s 200 million Muslim minority with comments made while addressing voters at a speech in Rajasthan on Sunday.
Continue reading...Last year I logged into iFollow to watch Cambridge maintain their League One status. This year I did exactly the same
As middle age creeps along, I am continually finding new, and less interesting, ways to measure the passing of time. For much of my 20s and all of my 30s I lived on a street with a food market and after a couple of years of burritos and Turkish flatbreads, I realised the greatest advantage was the refuse collection. Every day was bin day.
I took this freedom and wild abandon for waste completely for granted. I didn’t have to plan or think or tear cardboard boxes to shreds. Just toss a plastic bag on the street before 5pm and it was whisked away. I was truly alive. Now it’s a Sunday evening ritual: peer down the street – is it recycling or garden waste? That time again, eh, Frank? Feels like it was only last week we were dragging the yellow bin on to the curb. Do you have space in your green bin, Janet? I’ve been doing some pruning. There we all are, wheel them out and wait for the 6am trash-truck Monday morning chorus. Another week closer to death.
Continue reading...Sunday’s Sounds from the Other City festival is a joyful celebration of Greater Manchester’s leftfield culture
On the first Sunday of May every year, Chapel Street, where central Manchester and Salford meet, comes alive with DIY art, music and spectacle at the Sounds from the Other City festival. It is a vibrant public celebration of the “community spirit and collaborative working” which co-director Emma Thompson says sustains much alternative culture in the region.
“Collaboration is core to what we do, to Greater Manchester as a city,” Thompson says. “People come together, and it crosses genres and art forms. Sounds from the Other City wouldn’t be turning 20 next year if it wasn’t for that. The fees we offer aren’t huge but people really get behind it, do it for the love of it.”
Continue reading...As the climate crisis forces people to abandon their land in Rajasthan, a new industry has sprung up in the desert state, with thousands of gaily decorated vans setting off to sell ice-cream across the country
The parched villages of Gangapur in the desert state of Rajasthan have a new season in their calendar. Between November and February, car workshops along the town’s dusty mile-long market open before sunrise, cylindrical stainless-steel food containers are put on display, and traders stock up on chocolate and strawberry syrups.
Come March, the villagers start preparing to migrate. In the workshops, thousands of vehicles are converted into vans for selling a variety of ice-cream, from plain condensed milk flavoured with cardamom to chocolate, vanilla and pistachio, while local farmers turned dessert makers have their old mini-trucks serviced in readiness for the drive to distant towns and cities, where they will sell the sweet treat for the next nine months.
Continue reading...From excessive travel to food waste, weddings can have a huge carbon footprint. Here’s how to plan an eco-friendly celebration
A wedding is a couple’s big day. Unfortunately, it can also have a big carbon footprint.
The average American wedding creates around 60 metric tons of CO2 – the carbon equivalent of 71 round-trip flights from New York to LA. You’d need to plant roughly 60 trees and let them grow for 100 years to sequester that amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And with more than 2m marriages taking place in the US alone in 2022, the wedding industry’s environmental impact adds up.
Continue reading...Despite the huffing of ideologues, the world has moved on. Voters and businesses are calling for more effective protections
As the sewage-filled waters start to close over the heads of Torydom, their Tufton Street thinktankers carry on like the orchestra on the Titanic. In three grand Westminster houses dwell the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the anti-migration Migration Watch UK, the climate crisis-denying Global Warming Policy Foundation, the anti-EU European Foundation, the Margaret Thatcher-founded Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and others, all very opaque about their sources of funding. Now they sink together, still playing the old songs painfully out of tune with the country of which they seem to know nothing.
I went to watch them on Wednesday in one of their lavish salons, as the CPS launched a report calling yet again for more state-shrinking deregulation. I waited until the very end, but no, there was not one line, not one mention in their report of the great regulatory failures of our time. Not a word about Ofwat letting water companies pour sewage into rivers and seas. Nothing about all the other failed regulators – rail, mail, buses, energy, environment, broadcasting and the rest.
Continue reading...The population of El Fasher, which includes thousands of displaced people, is in ‘dire need of food, medicine and water’
Water, food and fuel supplies for people in the largest city in the Darfur region of Sudan are being choked off as fighting intensifies, according to reports.
El Fasher has been encircled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group over recent weeks, besieging the population as well as the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and allied militias.
Continue reading...When police attacked student protesters, a lone trash can was the only damaged property I saw around City College of New York.
The post I’ve Covered Violent Crackdowns on Protests for 15 Years. This Police Overreaction Was Unhinged. appeared first on The Intercept.
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...Like countless other hostilities, the stealthy Israeli missile and drone strike on Iran doesn’t risk war. It is war.
The post Israel Attack on Iran Is What World War III Looks Like appeared first on The Intercept.
Video:
00:07:30
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
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER
RSS Rabbit links users to publicly available RSS entries.
Vet every link before clicking! The creators accept no responsibility for the contents of these entries.
Relevant
Fresh
Convenient
Agile
We're not prepared to take user feedback yet. Check back soon!
