Sunday, April 26, 2026

Innovative architectural / Designing healthcare solutions for rural communities

 

Yves Marre's péniche, serving as a floating clinic in Bangladesh
Yves Marre's péniche, serving as a floating clinic in Bangladesh


Designing healthcare solutions for rural communities

Innovative architectural approaches to improve access, efficiency, and sustainability in remote areas

26 SEPTEMBER 2025, 

Access to quality healthcare is a fundamental right, yet rural areas worldwide often struggle with limited medical facilities and resources. Bridging the accessibility gap in rural healthcare requires innovative architectural solutions tailored to the unique challenges of these regions. From modular clinics to community-driven healthcare hubs, the design of rural medical facilities can profoundly impact the well-being of underserved populations. Beyond addressing medical needs, these structures can serve as community anchors, promoting education, social interaction, and economic growth.

The rise of brain-responsive architecture

 

Modern office lobby with floor-to-ceiling windows, green chairs around round tables, and ribbed planters holding lush indoor plants. Bright and airy with a contemporary feel
Modern office lobby with floor-to-ceiling windows, green chairs around round tables, and ribbed planters holding lush indoor plants. Bright and airy with a contemporary feel


The rise of brain-responsive architecture

A speculative but grounded vision of an architectural future where buildings don’t just shelter us

26 OCTOBER 2025, 


Consider if your office could tell that you were losing focus and adjusted the lighting to revive you. Or if your home could notice tension in your body and muted its acoustics and temperature to relax you. This is the new universe of brain-sensitive design—a union of neuroscience, AI, biometric monitoring, and adaptive systems that has the potential to redefine our relationship with the built environment.

Biophilic design and the brain / Why we thrive in nature-inspired spaces

 

Fallingwater is a house museum in Stewart Township in the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania, United States. Designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright
Fallingwater is a house museum in Stewart Township in the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania, United States. Designed by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright


Biophilic design and the brain

Why we thrive in nature-inspired spaces

26 APRIL 2026, 

As we become increasingly urbanized, spending nearly 90% of our lives indoors, the divide between human beings and the natural world grows more pronounced. Yet, neuroscience tells us that our brains are still wired for nature. This is the premise behind biophilic design — a design philosophy that seeks to reconnect people with the natural environment through architecture. Far more than a passing aesthetic trend, biophilic design draws from evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and environmental psychology to create spaces that support mental, physical, and emotional health. It is one of the most potent tools in the emerging field of neuroarchitecture.

Saturday, April 25, 2026

The new flesh / Modern body horror beyond gore

 

Margaret Qualley as Sue in Substance, the younger, polished alter ego that turns beauty into a haunting split identity
Margaret Qualley as Sue in Substance, the younger, polished alter ego that turns beauty into a haunting split identity


The new flesh: modern body horror beyond gore

How Substance, The Ugly Stepsister, and Together redefine the genre

23 OCTOBER 2025, 

It begins with a body that doesn’t behave, and not in a cute “I tripped on my way to the bar” way. In Substance, skin glistens like a luxury product fresh from its packaging, promising perfection at a cost you won’t see on the label. In The Ugly Step-sister, the Cinderella fairy tale you thought you knew gets warped until limbs and features reshape into something unrecognisable, yet painfully human. In Together, love becomes an act of merging so complete it erases the border between “me” and “you”, a relationship goal only if your idea of romance involves shared internal organs.

Game over for bad adaptations / Why "The Last of Us" and "Fallout" finally broke the curse

 

Fallout, an American post-apocalyptic drama television series, was created for Amazon Prime Video by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet
Fallout, an American post-apocalyptic drama television series, was created for Amazon Prime Video by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dwore

Game over for bad adaptations

Why "The Last of Us" and "Fallout" finally broke the curse

23 NOVEMBER 2025, 

For decades, video game adaptations had one job: disappoint everyone. Studios would slap a recognizable title on a film (Super Mario Bros. 1993, Prince of Persia 2010, Uncharted 2022) and hope nostalgia alone would cover the plot holes. It didn’t. What they served up wasn’t the thrill of gameplay; it was like being forced to watch your older cousin hog the controller and then narrate his moves badly.

Laughing through the apocalypse / The rise of existential comedy

 


Set in a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles devastated by nuclear fallout, Fallout follows citizens forced to live in underground bunkers to survive radiation, mutants, and roaming bandits
Set in a future, post-apocalyptic Los Angeles devastated by nuclear fallout, Fallout follows citizens forced to live in underground bunkers to survive radiation, mutants, and roaming bandits


Laughing through the apocalypse 

The rise of existential comedy

23 APRIL 2026, 


From The White Lotus to Don’t Look Up, Hazbin Hotel, and Fallout, we’re no longer crying about the end: we’re cracking jokes.

Friday, April 24, 2026

21st-century fascism and the antichrist

 

A silent crowd gathers beneath an illuminated cross, their candlelight flickering under the watch of cameras and drones, capturing the uneasy convergence of faith, surveillance, and collective power in the modern age
A silent crowd gathers beneath an illuminated cross, their candlelight flickering under the watch of cameras and drones, capturing the uneasy convergence of faith, surveillance, and collective power in the modern age

21st-century fascism and the antichrist

Apocalyptic politics, religious extremism, and the transformation of fascism in the age of technological power

13 APRIL 2026, 

A two-headed Hitler

 


Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Triumph of Death
Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Triumph of Death 

A two-headed Hitler

War and peace as dual strategies of domination in contemporary global politics

20 APRIL 2026, 


In what is perhaps the best book on Hitler, Allan Bullock wrote in Hitler: A Study in Tyranny that Hitler’s philosophy is the natural philosophy of the doss-house, the philosophy of homeless shelters – a philosophy he learned while living in those shelters in Vienna for some time. Of course, Bullock forgot to apologize to the homeless because among them there is more than one philosophy, and above all there are philosophies contrary to the one he identifies. But the one he identifies is no less true for that. As evident in Mein Kampf and Hitler’s subsequent speeches and practices, the main elements of this philosophy are as follows:

Machiavelli’s conception of power and agency in 'The Prince'


Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito
Portrait of Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito


Machiavelli’s conception of power and agency in 'The Prince'

The role of fortune in political success

8 FEBRUARY 2026, 

This analysis explores how Niccolò Machiavelli conceptualizes fortune (fortuna) in the success or failure of a political leader in The Prince. Drawing upon key historical references and philosophical reasoning, it examines how Machiavelli balances the unpredictable nature of fortune with the decisive qualities of virtù—an individual’s capacity to act wisely, courageously, and decisively in ever-changing political landscapes. Through the lens of Renaissance politics and human nature, the text reveals how rulers can, and must, bend fortune to their will to secure political stability and personal power.

The Rwandan genocide: causes and global response



Skulls displayed at the Nyamata Genocide Memorial Site in Nyamata, Rwanda
Skulls displayed at the Nyamata Genocide Memorial Site in Nyamata, Rwanda


The Rwandan genocide: causes and global response

A tragic legacy of colonialism and international indifference

8 MAY 2025, 

The continent of Africa is considered the birthplace of humanity, it has become a continent where crimes against humanity have been committed extensively. Crimes against humanity committed on the African continent, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, also commonly known as Black Africa, have often been seen by the world community as a familiar, usual, and customary part of tribal conflicts and civil wars. In 1994, the press described the genocide in Rwanda as a tribal war between ethnic groups. This definition, which was often seen in the Western press in those years, makes clear the West's stance and its unresponsiveness to crimes against humanity in Rwanda or anywhere else in the world outside of its interests. The genocide in Rwanda took place in a very short period of about 100 days in 1994. 

The Cat by Juan Carlos Onetti



Illustration by Triunfo Arciniegad


The Cat
By Juan Carlos Onetti

Many unpleasant things can be said or imagined about John. But I never suspected him of lying; he had too much disdain for others to invent a fable that would put him in a favorable light.

Joe Dunthorne / ‘Growing up in Swansea, I developed an allergy to Dylan Thomas’


‘Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting made me want to be a writer’ … Joe Dunthorne.
Photograph: Hayley Benoit

The 

Books

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life


Joe Dunthorne: ‘Growing up in Swansea, I developed an allergy to Dylan Thomas’

The author on feeling Thomas Hardy’s pain, being duped by Donna Tartt and how reading his sister’s copy of Trainspotting made him want to write


Joe Dunthorne

Friday 24 April 2026


My earliest reading memory
I only realised how well I knew the Alfie stories by Shirley Hughes when I started reading them to my own children. Every time we read one now, I’m suddenly back in my attic room in Swansea 40 years ago, watching my dad turn the same pages.

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Susan Choi and Lily King shortlisted for Women’s prize for fiction

 

Susan Choi and Lily King shortlisted for Women’s prize for fiction

The US writers join four debut authors in demonstrating ‘the complexity and beauty of the female experience’, said chair of judges Julia Gillard

David Malouf, Australian author of Remembering Babylon and Ransom, dies aged 92



David Malouf
Ulf Andersen

David Malouf, Australian author of Remembering Babylon and Ransom, dies aged 92

Acclaimed Brisbane-born writer was known for his work exploring his own childhood, great myths and colonial Australia


Sian Cain

Thursday 23 April 2023



David Malouf, the acclaimed Australian author of books including Ransom, An Imaginary Life and the Booker prize-nominated Remembering Babylon, has died aged 92.