Category Archives: New Utopia

Park Seo Joon is the latest star to grace the cover of fashion magazine Marie Claire!

During the photo shoot, the actor managed to pull off both classy and casual looks that showed his sophisticated and trendy side.

Park Seo Joon is busy filming various movies, like Dream (working title) and Concrete Utopia. The actor also recently went toEngland to film The Marvels,the upcoming sequel to Captain Marvel.

Concerning the new challenges he takes as an actor, he commented, I tend to trynew things even if its just a little, and I choose characters andprojects that I will be able to express well. I want to try all the rolesthat I can do well at my current age.

Park Seo Joon also expressed his desire to become a better person. He shared, When I hear that people gained strength after seeing myproject, I feel proud, and when I realize that I could have a good influence on someone, I have a stronger sense of responsibility. I always think that I should think about whether Im on the right path and how I should be a better person for those who watch my projects.

Park Seo Joons full interview and pictorial will be released in the December issue of Marie Claire.

Check out Park Seo Joon in the film The Divine Fury:

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Park Seo Joon Shares His Thoughts About Taking On New Roles And Becoming A Better Person - soompi

If youre a progressive, you might think that its no problem identifying the right side of history. Anything that promotes social justice is on the right side. Any innovation that promises to conquer the limits of human nature is on the right side. Anything that expands the empire of rights is on the right side.

President Obama was particularly fond of distinguishing the right side from the wrong side, invoking the phrase over and over in his weekly addresses. His political opponents, as a rule, were on the wrong side. Republicans could use Leninist language too, albeit ironically, as when Ronald Reagan used to claim that various statist policies would eventually be left on the ash heap of history, consumed by fire and brimstone like the cities of the plain.

Being on the right side of history is a way of thinking about the future that descends from Hegel via Marx. The future, inevitably, is going to be better than the past, perhaps after a revolutionary struggle, and those who stand in the way of utopia will be condemned by history. Progressives who think in this Marxoid way seem not to realize that historians will not always be on the same side of history as most of them now are. Future historians may someday, perhaps quite soon, reject the whole idea that history has a right side.

Real historians know that historiographic models change along with history.We know that since the ancient Babylonians human beings have imagined their histories to unfold in many different patterns. Graeco-Roman antiquity, for example, saw history as a tragic cycle rather than as a shining path to an illimitable future. Empires rose, empires fell; another empire would inevitably take the place of the current one. Precise predictions of the future were difficult, too, since you never really knew where you were on the cycle. The Roman historian Sallust in the first century b.c.was sure Romes ruin was imminent. He was off by only five hundred years. Machiavelli, who knew better, was skeptical that you could ever tell whether your own republic was rising or declining.

Since the Renaissance, Western models of historical change have been more upbeat. The Renaissance itselfin the person of Flavio Biondo, the great historian and papal officialinvented the concept of a Middle Age, a period of some centuries when barbarism reigned before the humanist Revival of Antiquity. The medieval period, as Christian humanists like Erasmus saw it, was a dark valley between the twin peaks of antiquity and the present.

In the early modern period, historians and philosophes switched the Golden Age from antiquity to the future. The French Enlightenment saw a future where science and reason triumphed over superstition; the Scottish Enlightenment believed that economic and political freedom could usher in a new and higher civilization. Both models assumed that present times, with their comparative ignorance and unfreedom, would recede backward into a medieval period of darkness and barbarism as humanity advanced. Better not be barbaric or superstitious or history would condemn you.

Lately Ive been toying with the idea that the champions of woke could wake up one fine morning and find themselves to be medieval. Polite opinion would regard them as backward and uncivilized. Their jargon would sound in educated ears like the jabbering of barbarians. Implausible? History never unfolds the way we think it will, but heres one possible scenario.

Lets assume, a decade hence, that current trends in American K-12 education have continued and intensified. Educators adhering to the successor ideology in public schools and prestige private schools go on teaching a caricature of American history, no dissent allowed. They prohibit the study of Western civilization, alleging that it is an instrument of white supremacy. Most literature written before the year 2000 is banned. Children continue to be trained by DEI consultants and are required to attend politicized courses in ethnic studies, such as those recently imposed on California schools. Even mathematics is pressed into the service of eradicating Old Think. Any genuine, open-ended search for truth and self-knowledge continues to be discouraged. Students dont need to think for themselves; their teachers already know what they should think. Any desire to distinguish oneself, to acquire honor and merit, is suppressed as an affront to equity.

Now lets assume that the classical education movement continues to grow and mature into a parallel educational system, as seems to be happening at present. The trend of parents choosing homeschooling or hybrid schooling over district public schools, or classical schooling over woke private schools, intensifies. Currently classical schools educate about 2 percent of K-12 students; classical homeschooling and hybrid schools account for another 2 percent. Lets assume that these alternatives continue to expand at the current rate and, ten years hence, are educating, say, 10 percent of school-aged children and teenagers.

How are the two populations of high school graduates going to compare after a decade of independent development? The graduates of woke K-12 education are going to be incurious ignoramuses. Even if they possess a lot of raw intelligence, they will be intellectually torpid because a system of schooling that aims at indoctrination must smother natural curiosity and a sense of wonder about the unknown, the spring of all true education. They will lack creativity because knowledgeknowledge inside your head, not merely retrievable dataprovides the raw material of the imagination.

Meanwhile, children brought up in classical schools will know stuff. They will have a much fuller grasp of the amazing story of America. Having taken courses about Western civilization, they will have a grasp of the broad sweep of history, and they will be able to compare Western achievements fairly with those of other civilizations. They will have been brought up on a rich diet of Western art, architecture, music, and literature. They will have been taught that good character is a persons most valuable possession. They will have been taught logic (the art of reasoning) and rhetoric (the art of eloquence and persuasion).

So ten years from now, which group of high school graduates will constitute the elite? I dont mean the credentialed elite, but the true elitethe young men and women with the best characters, the best skills, and the best, most creative minds? I think we know the answer to that question.

If it seems fanciful that a new elite could arise beyond the control of the present oligarchy, consider what happened in the early Renaissance. Back in the fourteenth century, the followers of Petrarch came to believe that the education offered in Italy was too rigidly vocational. Schools taught literacy and accounting; universities taught law and medicine. (Only a tiny minority in the religious orders studied theology.) Law schools taught litigiousness and avarice rather than justice; the science of the medical schools was a learned ignorance. The dog Latin used in schools was utilitarian and full of jargon, lacking beauty and a personal voice. The Christian humanists who followed Petrarchs lead founded a new kind of education: the humanities, which taught eloquence, good character, and a command of great literature. Within seventy-five years of Petrarchs death, that education had conquered the schools of Italy. Those educated in the humanities constituted a new elite; they had true nobility, not a nobility based merely on inherited social rank. History was no longer hurtling downhill; it was on an upward trajectory toward a new Golden Age.

Real educational revolutions are rare, but they are possible. A day may well come when a new elite that deserves the name will regard their woke peers, possessing credentials but no virtue, with a mixture of pity and disgust. History will once again have waved its magic wand and declared that the evil age we have been living through was an age of barbarism. Maybe, just maybe, in the future of America there lies not some woke utopia but a Renaissance of the Western tradition.

James Hankins is a professor of history at Harvard University.

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How to Be on the Right Side of History | James Hankins - First Things

Hilary Mantel

In the 1990s Musa Okwonga was a Ugandan scholarship boy at Eton, the school that turned out scores of politicians as well as Bertie Wooster and Captain Hook. His memoir, One of Them (Unbound), sheds light on the present disconnect between those who govern and those who suffer the consequences.

Claire Keegans novel, Small Things Like These (Faber & Faber), wastes not a word in its depiction of a small Irish town guilty of collective blindness about the nuns who run a training school for young women. Keegan is an exquisite writer, who can enclose volumes of social history in one luminous phrase.

Ian Rankin

Hyde by Craig Russell (Constable) is set in 19th-century Edinburgh, where a detective called Hyde must hunt a ghoulish, possibly occult serial killer while wrestling with demons of his own, including mood swings and blackouts. Its an ingenious slice of gothic that does something newwith the Jekyll and Hyde trope. Hyde is the bestScottish crime novel of 2021, according to the McIlvanney Prize, but I wont hold that against it

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In The Beresford by Will Carver (Orenda Books) a maze-like boarding-house becomes a scene of carnage as the tenants are dispatched in grisly fashion one by one. What is going on and who can bring an end to the bloodshed? Carver writes in the tradition of the Theatre of the Absurd, but with added grue. Shocking, compulsive and persuasive. Its one hell of a ride for those of a mind to jump aboard.

Bernardine Evaristo

Joelle Taylor has produced one of the most astonishing and original poetry collections of recent years. C+nto & Othered Poems (Westbourne Press) is a partly autobiographical exploration of the lives of butch lesbian counterculture. It challenges imprisoning notions of womanhood by celebrating and foregrounding those who face a hostile society when they are only being true to themselves.

Also taking us into new literary territory are two impressive debuts. Poor by Caleb Femi (Penguin) zooms in on the lives of young black men on the south London housing estate of his own childhood; while Caleb Azumah Nelsons first novel, Open Water (Viking), is a short, poetic and intellectual meditation on art and a relationship between a young couple, which also has Peckham and south London as its primary backdrop.

Ed Smith

I read Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages by Dan Jones (Head of Zeus) and The World According to Colour by James Fox (Allen Lane) in tandem it was like watching two great and complementary half-backs in rugby. Jones drives his story upfield. Empires come and go, religions form and break up, ideas clash and mingle 1,100 years, 16 sweeping chapters, 700 pacey pages, and. . . hes done it, arms aloft, hes scored under the posts. Masterly, muscular and direct Gareth Edwards in full flow.

In contrast, Fox glides into intellectual spaces; colour becomes a philosophical feast astrophysics, the origins of civilisation, a palette of moral associations. Though dazzling, everything has a point: when Fox shoots, he scores. You never see it coming, then suddenly all the pieces fit together as though they were meant to be Barry John, running into space.

Philip Pullman

In 2009 Iain McGilchrist published The Master and His Emissary, a densely researched and entirely thrilling examination of the difference between the two kinds of thinking typical of the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Now comes his new book, The Matter with Things (Perspectiva Press), which takes that basic idea much further and demonstrates, with an immense range of learning and beautifully clear prose, how important it is to be aware of the whole and not merely the parts, how analysis should come after insight and not before it, how right-hemisphere thinking, with its openness to experience, is a better guide to reality than the narrowly focused, rule-based way the left hemisphere regards the world.

I have spent a decade absorbing the vision of McGilchrists previous book; I shall be happy to spend the rest of my life with this one, and still be learning things when I get to the end.

Damon Galgut

Most of my reading is retrospective, which is to say I dont read a lot of stuff thats been recently published. I like to wait for the dust to settle. But Claire Keegans new novella, Small Things Like These (Faber & Faber), is absolutely exquisite. Her work is exceptional.

I really liked Burntcoat by Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber). I think shes a marvellous writer. She used the scenario of an unnamed plague and the lockdown it sets up to create a psychological mystery. Were probably going to get a whole new genre of Covid fiction opening up, and Hall is right at the vanguard.

Marina Warner

As we lived isolated in lockdown, I found Kazuo Ishiguros Klara and the Sun (Faber & Faber), about an Artificial Friend destined for a slow fade, uniquely poignant as well as prescient. The pandemic cut short the run of The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and the Cosmic Tree (Camden Arts Centre London), but the curators, Gina Buenfeld and Martin Clark, produced a feast of a book exploring the visionary tradition across continents and centuries. In Swirl of Words/Swirl of Worlds: Poems from 94 Languages Spoken Across London (Peer), the poet and editor Stephen Watts draws us into hear the citys magnificent hubbub.

David Hare

Ninth Street Women (Back Bay) is 700 pages long, so you need lots of time not just to read but also to think. Mary Gabriel recreates that extraordinary moment in the 1950s in Greenwich Village when Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning and Lee Krasner were all young painters who came upon unforeseen fame and fortune. The book is both entertaining and inspiring.

Raven Leilani, in her debut novel Luster (Picador), makes fun of super-smart people being perverse. Im not sure I wholly understood her intent, but oh my goodness, the writing is beautiful.

John Gray

The book that engrossed me the most this year was Continents of Exile (Penguin Modern Classics), the 12-volume memoir of the Indian-born writer Ved Mehta (1934-2021), who lost his sight at the age of three after suffering from meningitis and went on to try to live as far as possible as a fully sighted person. The series seems to me one of the supreme works of modern autobiography. Much of it has to do with a sense of homelessness, but Mehtas story is full of the joy of life. I followed him through his early years with his family in India to a school for the blind in Arkansas, then to Pomona College in California, Balliol College, Oxford, Harvard and his 33 years as a writer for William Shawns New Yorker. Mehtas turbulent romances and years of psychoanalysis, his travails building a house on an island off the Maine coast and the hidden side of his father that came to light at a New York party complete an absorbing account of an astonishing life.

Mark Cocker

Great field guides are a rare species but at their best they are portals to a richer relationship with the rest of life. It is exceptional that two such groundbreaking books have appeared in a single year. Europes Birds: An Identification Guide by Rob Hume, Robert Still, Andy Swash and Hugh Harrop, and Paul Brocks Britains Insects: A Field Guide to the Insects of Great Britain and Ireland (both Princeton University Press) are models of compression, synthesising a mountain of fresh data in an easy-to-use format. But they are also beautiful to hold and to ponder and each is a glorious piece of political advocacy for its chosen organisms.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett

I was proud of the shortlist we judges chose for the 2021 International Booker Prize, but there were books I loved that didnt make the cut. Among them were A Perfect Cemetery (Charco Press) a collection of haunting, witty stories by the Argentinian writer Federico Falco and Philippe Claudels Dog Island (Maclehose Press), a parable about modern migration that is also the kind of detective story that Mikhail Bulgakov might have written: visionary and darkly humorous.

My favourite novel of the year, though, is a re-issue, Elspeth Barkers O Caledonia (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). A book as outrageous and clever as its teenaged heroine, it is fiercely gothic, constantly surprising and wildly funny.

Mark Haddon

Ive been unwell for the past year and reading has been often impossible. Consequently I am more than usually grateful to the few books that drew me in and held me. The Prophets by Robert Jones Junior (Riverrun) is a gripping, luminous novel about the many tangled lives on a Louisiana plantation, centring on two enslaved teenage lovers, Samuel and Isiah. Reviews invoking Toni Morrison were absolutely justified.

The Idea of the Brain by Matthew Cobb (Profile) is a thrilling history of our rapidly expanding understanding of the brain, made even better by having no theoretical axe to grind. It also explores the fundamental role of metaphor in neuroscientific theory the brain is a system of hydraulics! The brain is a telegraph network! and the unique challenges faced when trying to understand an object that is like nothing else in the universe.

Jason Cowley

I admired the cool, restrained style of Katie Kitamuras Intimacies (Jonathan Cape), which probes the tangled emotional life of a young unnamed American-Japanese woman working as a translator at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. It is less a novel than an exercise in self-erasure, mysterious and compelling.

I loved Jonathan Bates Bright Star, Green Light (William Collins), a deeply romantic exploration of the work and parallel lives of John Keats and F Scott Fitzgerald, both destined to die young and both enraptured by beauty and beautys inevitable loss.

Ali Smith

Its quite hard to get hold of a copy of Eileen Agars memoir A Look at My Life (Methuen). It was published in 1988 and I read it this year when I couldnt get to London to see the Whitechapel retrospective of her work. But what a book. Spirited, funny, candid, as irreverent, textured and cornucopic as her art. It begins: Head first I tumbled out of my mother in December 1899. It ends: I hope to die in a sparkling moment. Agar makes a fleeting appearance, too, in Jennifer Higgies brilliant The Mirror and the Palette (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), which reveals an until-now hidden history of womens self-portraiture and is pretty cornucopic itself, a gift that keeps on giving.

But my book of the year is a debut, a slim collection of poetry called Forty Names (Carcanet) by the young Afghani poet Parwana Fayyaz. No one ever wanted to know/what the real story was. As clear as unruined water, as courageous as a poet can be in these times, as haunting as the brutal history it records and as marvellously summoned as the lives it celebrates, its a calm reclamation and a tour de force.

Nicola Sturgeon

Spanning the globe and a century, Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead (Doubleday) is an epic tale of daring and adventure. The character and determination of two fearless women, living in different times but connected by fate, is as inspiring as it is entertaining. I hugely enjoyed this novel.

I love everything Colm Tibn has written and The Magician (Viking) is another masterpiece. The rise of Nazi Germany and the horrors of the Second World War are viewed through the eyes and experiences of the complicated and multilayered writer and Nobel prize winner Thomas Mann. Historical fiction at its best.

Preti Taneja

Niven Govindens Diary of a Film (Dialogue Books) a novel about cinema, age, gender, fame and creativity infused with the spirit of Federico Fellini and Luca Guadagnino stole my heart this year. Set during an international film festival as a jaded director is about to launch his masterpiece and told in the first person as an extended conversation over a few nights it captures a sense of the fragility and intimacy of human endeavour, but also the silence and resilience needed to survive as a woman, a man, as lovers and as artists in a market-driven world. Lola Olufemis Experiments in Imagining Otherwise from the independent Hajar Press is also an extraordinary book written with compassion, fearlessness and determination to imagine a more equal world into being. A joy to read and to think with.

Jim Crace

William Palmers In Love with Hell (Robinson) is a masterful insiders account of how alcohol ruined and sustained the careers of 11 writers, including Kingsley Amis, Dylan Thomas and Jean Rhys (with whom I endured an intoxicating lunch in 1974). It is a both sad and joyful reminder of why the British pub is such a lure but also why, once trapped inside, it is mostly wise to stick to just a single pint. It also led me to the works of the greatest of all celebrants of bars and booze, Patrick Hamilton. Is there a kinder, wittier, sharper, tipsier novel than his wartime masterpiece, The Slaves of Solitude?

Alan Johnson

Its amazing how eruditely Robert Douglas-Fairhurst manages to illuminate our history through a microscopic focus on one brief period. The Turning Point (Jonathan Cape) transports us to 1851. The books principal subjects are Charles Dickens as he embarks on Bleak House, and the Crystal Palace, first assembled in all its sparkling glory for that years Great Exhibition.

Since the publication of Failures of State (Mudark) in March the governments maladroit handling of Covid-19 has been exposed by Dominic Cummings (willingly) and Matt Hancock (less so). No account can match this forensic analysis by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnot, who have presented us with a disturbing first draft of history.

David Reynolds

In Devil-Land: England under Siege, 1588-1688 (Allen Lane) Clare Jackson offers a bracingly revisionist view of our history in the century after the Armada. Viewed from across the Channel, Angel-Land during this century of succession crises, religious turmoil, civil wars, regicide and republican government looks like a failed state teetering between comedy and tragedy. You may not buy the whole argument, but after reading Devil-Land this sceptered isle and demi-paradise is unlikely to look quite the same ever again.

Paul Collier

The book that members of the Labour Party most need to read is The Dignity of Labour by Jon Cruddas (Polity). He understands why Labour has lost the trust of the working class: why isnt he in the shadow cabinet? Turning from politics to ideas, the new book that I have found most insightful for my current research is Matthew Cobbs The Idea of the Brain (Profile). It recounts how analogies between the brain and the fashionable technology of the era ours being the brain as a computer have repeatedly sent neuroscience down rabbit-holes.

Melissa Harrison

Literature lovers like me are fond of saying that reading promotes empathy; it feels true, though you might struggle to prove it. However, The Devil You Know (Faber & Faber) by the forensic psychiatrist Gwen Adshead with Eileen Horne has permanently recalibrated my empathy dial. As she helps offenders understand and take responsibility for their actions in the wake of terrible crimes, Adshead quietly, humanely shows us that people remain people, despite their actions.

In its aftermath I read Gordon Burns unforgettable Happy Like Murderers (Faber & Faber), about Fred and Rose West, and thought about the professionals tasked with working with them. I hope they were supported in turn.

Geoff Dyer

Harald Jahners Aftermath (WH Allen) is a transfixing account and subtle analysis of Germany after the Second World War has ended. A scrupulous investigation of the past, it reads, constantly, like a prelude to what is still unfolding. But the greatest joy this year has come from my belated discovery of the dark, light, unexceptional and exquisitely twisted world of Elizabeth Taylor, starting with A Game of Hide and Seek and Angel and continuing apace. A shame that the pretty and bland covers of the latest Virago reissues of this perennially under-rated writer do little to lure new readers into the skewed delights within.

Sue Prideaux

Locked down, I craved perilous adventure. Julian Sanctons The Madhouse at the End of the Earth (WH Allen) delivered. The Belgicas 1897 South Pole expedition is pure horror. Clueless captain, rat-infested ship frozen into the ice, scurvy, darkness, hunger, insanity. Last-ditch escape! Young crewmember Roald Amundsen assumes captaincy and dynamites a channel through the ice! No wonder he stuffed Scot. Terrific stuff.

So is Looking for Trouble (Faber & Faber), the memoir of the trailblazing war correspondent Virginia Cowles. Taking tea with Hitler, gossiping with Winston Churchill, eating reindeer with Finnish guerrilla skiing squads, reporting on everything objectively. Her writing is sparkling; her life, seen from envious lockdown, completely thrilling.

Rowan Williams

For me the choice is already made in any year in which a new book by Alan Garner is published. Treacle Walker (Fourth Estate) is very much in Garners late style spare and allusive (a wealth of folkloric hinterland), luminous and understated. Its about seeing and healing; any more by way of summary would be useless. Nigel Tubbss Socrates on Trial (Bloomsbury) is also about these things, and is also built mostly through dialogue. Its an impassioned challenge to the stupidities of current educational practice from the UKs best educational philosopher, and it nails the basic problem as lying in our obsession with property the myth of knowledge as something we own and trade. Human freedom is the liberty to learn, and, in the process, to be dispossessed of this fiction. Tubbs argues this with astonishing subtlety and nimbleness.

Colm Tibn

Derek Mahons The Poems 1961-2020 (Gallery Books), published a year after his death, displays a rich talent, formalist and casual, witty and melancholy, minimalist and expansive. Claire Keegans Small Things Like These (Faber & Faber), written with precision and rhythmic care, is a story about an ordinary life in a small place and slowly becomes a brave and piercing exploration of a most difficult public matter. The Works of Guillaume Dustan Volume 1 (Semiotext) contains three short, engrossing novels that centre on sharp and accurate descriptions of gay sex, the sensibility and inner world of the protagonist emerging richly, by implication. This is a great book for gay boys on winter nights.

Gary Younge

Nadifa Mohameds The Fortune Men (Viking) is an elegant portrayal of life in the racial, cultural hub of Cardiffs Tiger Bay in the early Fifties. Eschewing a simple morality play for complex vivid characters, it centres on the plight of Mahmood Mattan, who finds himself in the shadow of the hangmans noose for a murder he didnt commit. Amelia Gentlemans The Windrush Betrayal (Guardian Faber) sat on my shelf for far too long because I thought I knew the story. I didnt. At least, I had not sat with it beyond the news cycles for the length of time necessary to witness the full scale of the injustice unfold in a single narrative thread. A book that keeps you informed and makes you angry.

Joan Bakewell

The Gun, the Ship and the Pen by Linda Colley (Profile) is an account of how constitutions have come about through history and is written with Colleys usual erudition, insight and style. She transforms what sounds like the dry matter of paper documents into an enthralling account of how warfare, national identity and colonial exploitation follow each other in the emergence of constitutions across the world. A work of thrilling scholarship.

Spike: The Virus vs the People by Jeremy Farrar with Anjana Ahuja (Profile) tells how the news of Covid-19 first reached the worlds scientists, how the pandemic unfolded and how governments reacted and failed to cope. It reads like a thriller.

Colin Kidd

How many serious books on politics are pitch-perfect comic classics? Until this year I could think of only two: Edward Luttwaks Coup dEtat: A Practical Handbook and Christopher Hoods analysis of buck passing, The Blame Game. But these are now joined by Michael Wolffs Landslide (Bridge Street Press), an account of the last days of the Trump presidency. The humour in Luttwak and Hood derives from the authors wry subtlety of approach. Wolff, by contrast, is the vessel into which the Trump White Houses chaotic, Marx-brothers cast of panicked but competitively craven staff and hangers-on copiously leaks. Amid the anarchic din, however, Wolff demonstrates exquisite Groucho-like timing.

Frances Wilson

Two bespoke studies of literary prophets stand out this year. Alex Christofi describes Dostoevsky in Love (Bloomsbury) as a reconstructed memoir in which he blends Dostoevskys autobiographical fiction with his fantastical life. Crafted with novelistic skill, it is a book to fit the vast complexity of the man and his work. In William Blake vs the World (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), John Higgs argues that we have absorbed Blake into our national consciousness without having the faintest idea of who he was or what he believed in. Higgss mission, to return to the cockney visionary and his essential strangeness, is Blakeian in its singularity.

Ian Leslie

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders (Bloomsbury) consists of close commentaries on short stories by Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev and Nikolai Gogol, based on a creative writing course he teaches. Saunders approaches the stories as a fiction writer, not a critic, gently illuminating their mechanics without diminishing their magic or mystery and crucially, the stories themselves are included. Saunders is warm, playful and acutely perceptive, and even when I disagreed with him I was grateful to him for making me pay such close attention to these inexhaustible works.

This year I re-read White Noise by Don DeLillo (Picador) and marvelled at its uncanny blend of ironic commentary on our media-saturated world with deeply felt lyricism about marriage and family. Above all, it made me laugh; few great novels are as funny.

Sandeep Parmar

Three books that redefine what life writing means this year are Stephanie Sy-Quias Amnion (Granta), Fred DAguiars Year of Plagues (Carcanet) and Preti Tanejas Aftermath (Transit Books, to be published in the UK by And Other Stories in 2022). Sy-Quias bold Knstlerroman mesmerisingly transports us across continents and through the longing of diasporas, arriving in England, a deep bone-knowing country/Albion. DAguiars electric prose vividly recounts a cancer diagnosis and treatment in the Covid year, a private suffering amid a collective one. Tanejas brave and haunting retelling of the terror attack at Londons Fishmongers Hall in 2019 intermingles a clear-eyed understanding of the roots of terror with personal stories of those involved.

Im also deep in Polina Barskovas Air Raid (Ugly Duckling Press), translated by Belarussian-American poet Valzhyna Mort, which retells the Siege of Leningrad with breathtaking interventions into history, silence and the violence between

Peter Wilby

David Kynastons On the Cusp (Bloomsbury), the latest volume in his marvellous series on post-1945 Britain, recalls the state of the nation in 1962 when the country was outside the EU but aspired to join. He skilfully captures the sense of new horizons being glimpsed as Britons struggled to escape the long shadow of the Second World War. And the state of the nation now? For that, I turned belatedly to Jonathan Coes novel Middle England (Penguin), published in 2018. Nothing has yet surpassed Coes evocation of the sour, restless, resentful mood that, in contrast to the spirit of the 1960s, led Britain to turn inwards.

Elif Shafak

Hassan Akkads Hope Not Fear (Bluebird) is an extraordinary story that deals with the urgent issues of our era, including the Syrian War, systemic torture and dehumanisation ongoing in countries where authoritarianism has taken hold. Akkad also takes on the tragedy of the refugee crisis, the pandemic and its social repercussions, and the layers of xenophobia, racism and inequality in societies. But it is also a story about resilience, renewal and humanism.

I also recommend Burning the Books by Richard Ovenden (John Murray), the director of the Bodleian Library. This fascinating and moving book should be read at schools and translated into languages all around the world. In a digital age that abounds with snippets of information, this is a glorious celebration of physical libraries and nuanced knowledge

Alexander McCall-Smith

A scientific meal this year: Richard Dawkins writes with admirable clarity and Jana Lenzov illustrates in much the same way. Their collaboration bears fruit in Flights of Fancy (Head of Zeus), a masterly investigation of all aspects of flight, human and animal. This is a beautifully produced book that will appeal across age groups. And as a second course, Madelaine Bhmes Ancient Bones (Greystone) is a gripping account of how early hominids may have evolved in Europe: a controversial thesis, but one that could change our ideas of where we came from.

Stuart Maconie

I began listening to Susanna Clarkes Piranesi (Bloomsbury) on audiobook at bedtime but soon found that it was simply too mesmerising, funny and strange to ever lull me to sleep. What begins as fantasy becomes, in a series of hints and echoes and rug-pulling revelations, a detective story, a satire and a witty take on male egoism. Daring and dazzling stuff.

Paul Morleys writing has been delighting and exasperating me since his NME work in the late 1970s. His biography of Anthony H Wilson TV presenter, music entrepreneur and evangelist, provocateur From Manchester with Love (Faber & Faber) is by far his best book; the narrative of the mans life keeps Morleys wildly digressive style taut(ish). It is not just a biog but the story of a citys history and culture and a unique and disappearing figure: the engaged working-class intellectual challenging the dominance of entitlement and privilege with wit and aesthetics.

Johanna Thomas-Corr

It was a wonderful year for novels about ugly mother-daughter relationships. Gwendoline Riley specialises in savage emotional reckonings and in My Phantoms (Granta) we hear the story of Bridget, who has been keeping her perpetually disappointed mother, Hen, at arms length ever since she left home. The dialogue is superb theres always a tragi-comic gap between what is being said and whats really going on. I love Rileys merciless wit. Jeremy Coopers Bolt from the Blue (Fitzcarraldo) breathes new life into the epistolary novel, with postcards charting 30 years of fraught relations between an earnest artist and her estranged mother, who is miles more interested in sex than art. Very little actually happens in either book and yet I was gripped by the way each depicts the psychological battlefield of mother-daughter relationships.

Daisy Johnson

Burntcoat by Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber) is a slim and beautiful masterpiece exploring art and relationships in a pandemic. I felt it surging over my head, lingering in my dreams, troubling me even when I wasnt holding it. Hall has always had my heart when it comes to writing about sex and isolation, but here she surpasses even herself.

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson (Viking) is another slight book which wrestles with relationships and art. The voice of the narrator feels almost Mrs Dalloway-esque as it moves around London, fluid and swift. Nelson has, with this novella, put down a new, exciting marker for what fiction can achieve.

William Dalrymple

Alex Rentons Blood Legacy (Canongate) is a moving, timely, well-written and strikingly thoughtful book that makes an important contribution to the growing debate about the horrors that accompanied Britains empire-building. Rentons remarkably honest analysis of his own familys slave plantation papers and the darkness they contain highlights our continuing failure to acknowledge the extreme toxicity of so much of our imperial history. It makes a good counterpart to Sathnam Sangheras brilliant Empireland (Viking) and, like it, reminds us how deeply impregnated the British present still is with our half-forgotten imperial past.

Better to Have Gone by Akash Kapur (Scribner) is a forensic reconstruction of two deaths set against the background of the flawed tropical utopia of Auroville. It is beautifully written and structured, deeply moving, and realised in wise, thoughtful, chiselled prose. In River Kings (William Collins), the Scandinavian archaeologist Cat Jarman writes about the Vikings with great skill, clarity and narrative drive. Rather unfashionably, Jarman likes her Vikings violent, and her tale replete with witches, human sacrifice, Greek fire and funeral orgies is at least as lively as any Netflix Viking romp, and a great deal more intellectually satisfying.

Philippe Sands

Continued here:

Books of the year - New Statesman

One of the biggest all-star lineups ever will celebrate the 2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees this weekend. The ceremony filmed October 30 in Cleveland, Ohio, and now airs this Saturday, November 20, on HBO and HBO Max.

The event clocking in at 3 hour and16 minutes honors Foo Fighters, The Go-Gos, Jay-Z, Carole King, Todd Rundgren and Tina Turner in the performer category. Kraftwerk, Charley Patton and Gil Scott-Heron were chosen for early influence induction. LL Cool J, Billy Preston and Randy Rhoads were honored in the musical excellence category. Clarence Avant received the Ahmet Ertegun Award.

King had been previously inducted as a songwriter. Turner is now a solo artist inductee after going in with Ike Turner the first time around.

While the order of inductions was different during filming, here is the complete rundown of every performer and presenter for the HBO telecast on Saturday.

Carole King inducted by Taylor SwiftTaylor Swift Will You Still Love Me TomorrowJennifer Hudson Natural WomanCarole King Youve Got a Friend

LL Cool J inducted by Dr. DreLL Cool J Go Cut Creator Go and Going Back to CaliLL Cool J and Eminem Rock the BellsLL Cool J and Jennifer Lopez All I HaveLL Cool J Mama Said Knock You Out

Randy Rhoads inducted by Tom Morello (video tribute only)

Billy Preston inducted by Ringo Starr (video tribute only)

Tina Turner inducted by Angela BassettH.E.R. and Keith Urban Its Only LoveMickey Guyton Whats Love Got to Do with ItChristina Aguilera River Deep, Mountain High

Clarence Avant presented with the Ahmet Ertegun Award by Lionel Richie

Todd Rundgren inducted by Patti Smith (video tribute only)

Charley Patton inducted by Gary Clark, Jr. High Water Everywhere

Kraftwerk inducted by Pharrell Williams (video tribute only)

The Go-Gos inducted by Drew BarrymoreThe Go-Gos VacationThe Go-Gos Our Lips Are SealedThe Go-Gos We Got the Beat

Gil Scott-Heron inducted by Common (video tribute only)

In Memoriam segment honoring Charlie Watts (The Rolling Stones), Hilton Valentine (The Animals), Sylvain Sylvain (New York Dolls), Michael Stanley, B.J. Thomas, B.B. Dickerson (War), Bob Moore, Ronnie Wilson (The Gap Band), Sarah Dash (LaBelle), Jim Tucker (The Turtles), Chad Stuart (Chad and Jeremy), Charley Pride, Mary Wilson (The Supremes), Pervis Staples (The Staple Singers), K.T. Oslin, Nanci Griffith, Phil Spector, Lloyd Price, Ronnie Tutt, Charles Connor, Roger Hawkins, Chuck E. Weiss, Paddy Moloney (The Chieftains), Joey Ambrose (Billy Haley and His Comets), Dennis Dee Tee Thomas (Kool and the Gang), Brian Travers (UB40), Alto Reed (Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band), Danny Ray, Pee Wee Ellis, Biz Markie, Shock G (Digital Underground), MF Doom, Chick Corea, Prince Markie Dee (Fat Boys), John Ecstasy Fletcher (Whodini), Bruce Swedien, Chucky Thompson, DMX, Mike Mitchell (The Kingsmen), Leslie West (Mountain), Dusty Hill (ZZ Top), Ralph Schuckett (Utopia), Robby Steinhardt (Kansas), Alan Lancaster (Status Quo), Jeff Labar (Cinderella), Joey Jordison (Slipknot), Alan Cartwright (Procol Harum), Tim Bogert (Vanilla Fudge), Jim Steinman, Herbie Herbert, Walter Yetnikoff, Lee Scratch Perry, Bhaskar Menon, Russ Thyret, Marsha Zazula, Billie Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker, Hal Ketchum, Bunny Wailer (The Wailers), Joe Long (The Four Seasons), Jay Black (Jay and the Americans), John Lawton (Uriah Heep), Ken Hensley (Uriah Heep), Rupert Neve, Malcolm Cecil, Al Schmitt, Graeme Edge (Moody Blues), Jamie Oldaker, Kenny Malone, Ron Bushy, Rusty Young (Poco), Paul Cotton (Poco), Gerry Marsden (Gerry and the Pacemakers), Don Everly (The Everly Brothers)

All I Have to Do Is Dream Brandi Carlile

Jay-Z inducted by Dave Chappelle

Foo Fighters inducted by Paul McCartneyFoo Fighters Best of YouFoo Fighters My HeroFoo Fighters EverlongFoo Fighters and Paul McCartney Get Back

Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify record executives and music stars. Dont miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where thousands of showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?

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2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Every performer and presenter for Saturdays HBO ceremony - Goldderby

In the end, it comes down to a difference in political philosophy. Like their Marxist forebears, the green activist community believes that the complexity of the world can be distilled down to one clear problem, with one clear policy solution. Marxists saw the capitalist world system as the problem and, armed with this monocausal view of the world, they believed a class-based analysis of capitalism would lead to an overthrow of that system, ushering in the proletarian Valhalla. One hundred years and 100 million deaths later, communism in all its brutal forms has been utterly discredited.Undaunted, the global left has moved seamlessly onto the green agenda. Here, global warming is the worlds pre-eminent problem, one whose solution requires the sacrifice of whatever else comes to hand, in order to prevent a ring of fire from engulfing the world. Yet, this over-wrought monocausality shares a great deal with its Marxist ancestors. Indeed, the general green solution to global heating amounts to Marxism by the back door to combat this worldwide emergency, governments must take over the commanding heights of the global economy, enforce public mandates on private individuals and industries alike, and engage in economic dislocation if necessary, all to solve the worlds one overriding issue.The problem with this leftist fairy tale view is that, when push comes to shove, the member states of the world that still retain the lions share of the globes power, not the politically and economically illiterate Greta Thunberg and her ilk all rightly see the world in more complex terms. Predictably, the latest leftist monocausal fairy came up against the wall of political reality at Glasgow. Just as unsurprisingly, reality won.The key issue at the conference became the desire of the activist world to begin nothing less than the abolition of fossil fuels, particularly the winding down of the use of coal as a primary energy source, as it is responsible for much of the carbon dioxide emitted into the air, causing a significant portion of global warming. In typical leftist, Wilsonian fashion, the initial wording of the final communique at Glasgow called for the worlds member states to agree to phase out coal. It was anticipated that this general pledge would be followed up in the next of this endless series of conferences with more specific pledges on how to get to utopia from where we are now. But the activist left had not counted on the very real interest calculations of the great powers that are the primary users of coal: China, India and even the US.

The activists had not counted on the very real interest calculations of the great powers that are the primary users of coal.

Dr. John C. Hulsman

It turns out that both India and China think the worlds problems are a little bit more diverse and complicated than the monocausal fairy tale beloved by the green activist left. In the case of New Delhi, economic growth amounts to its primary aspiration moving ahead. After centuries of the most wrenching poverty, the Indian economy is set to boom with all that this will mean for the country socially and politically thanks to its very favorable demographic catch-up growth over the next generation.To put this bounty in peril by agreeing to give up coal without putting anything in its place to make some Westerners feel better about islands sinking into the Pacific struck many there as the height of fancy. For India, the ultimate human right is high rates of growth over a generation transforming the country once again into a great power. It turns out the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi thinks there are other primary issues and interests out there besides global heating.Likewise, following the tumult of the later days of Mao Zedongs reign, Deng Xiaoping rebranded the Chinese Communist Partys political legitimacy as being based on delivering on both capitalism and nationalism, two traits inherent in Chinese culture. Dengs bold political risk was rewarded with the greatest of success as the CCPs grip on power was bolstered by its triumph on both key counts.Now, with energy supplies as tight as they have been in memory, President Xi Jinping fears that the north of his country may experience rolling blackouts in the winter ahead a disastrous possibility. Immediately, Xi ordered that Chinese collieries should work around the clock to head off this economic disaster. The timing could not have been worse for the Western activist left to, in an otherworldly fashion, ask Xi to part with his coal, even as his government sensibly accepted the need to do exactly the opposite. For perfectly understandable reasons of social growth and political stability, both India and China great powers both illustrated for the frustrated left that life is just a little more complicated in terms of competing interests than they had thought.In the end, the worlds new big three the US, China and India brokered a deal on the floor of the Glasgow conference site, even as the toothless EU and the green activists watched haplessly from the sidelines. The wording phase out was replaced by phase down, which means almost nothing. But what the failure of the Glasgow conference truly portends is the truism that, when complex reality meets activist simplicity, count on reality to win.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

Excerpt from:

Greens sing the blues as reality triumphs at COP26 - Arab News

Supplied

Portersheds quarter pounder burger is a popular item on the Lincoln Rd cafes menu.

November is World Vegan Month, so its the perfect opportunity for people to try some delicious plant-based dishes they might not already know about.

Vegan food is one of the fastest-growing areas in the food industry and there are now plenty of places around Christchurch that offer great options for those who dont eat meat, want to reduce how much meat they eat, or just want more variety in their diet.

Here are five delicious and completely vegan dishes everyone in Christchurch (vegan or not) should try.

Whats your favourite vegan dish in Christchurch? Or do you have another food or beverage story to share? Email reporters@press.co.nz

READ MORE:* Mind Your Temper: Vegan and dairy-free chocolate delights* Never heard of pierogi? It's time to get on the Polish dumpling bandwagon* 'I'm very partial to an almond croissant': A Christchurch food diary* Local Likes: Canterbury's favourite local businesses celebrated

Portersheds signature burger is one to take your time with and one youll need to hold in both hands as you make your way through it.

Its stuffed with a hearty hemp burger patty that tastes just like a smoky beef patty with the texture to match.

Lettuce, tomato and gherkins, and melted cheese are stacked on top of it alongside dollops of vegan mayonnaise and chutney and then sandwiched between a soft burger bun.

Ella Somers/Stuff

The light and fluffy pancakes at The Origin on Cranford St come with coconut cream, crunchy seeds and fresh fruit.

The Origins vegan pancakes are so large and fluffy youll have no idea they dont have a single egg in them to give them their cloudy texture.

The lightly sweetened pancakes come piled with a variety of fresh fruit, a big spoonful of coconut cream, and garnished with a variety of seeds that give the dish a satisfying crunch.

Supplied

Ramen Ria has two kinds of vegan ramen, including miso ginger ramen, pictured.

The menu at Ramen Ria at Riverside Market features two delicious vegan ramen dishes spicy vegan tantanmen ramen and miso ginger ramen as well as vegan dumplings and bao.

Both ramen options have a great mix of hearty broth, fresh vegetables, noodles, and a decent kick of spice.

Theyre satisfying bowls of ramen, with salty and slightly sweet flavours and multiple textures in each bite.

The portion sizes are large and come with an excellent soup to noodles ratio that will make you want to go back for more.

Supplied

Utopia Ices waffles and icecream are available at both its High St and Sumner branches.

Utopia Ices vegan waffles and icecream which are both also gluten-free look just as delicious on the plate as they are to eat.

Crisp and crunchy on the outside and sweet and soft on the inside, the waffles come with a scoop of your choice of icecream.

Topped off with a swirl of whipped cream, fruit poached or fresh and a sprinkle of toasted nuts, this dish makes the perfect sweet treat that is fresh and fulfilling at the same time.

Ella Somers/Stuff

Good Time Pies award-winning vegan sausage rolls are stocked at Karma Free Cafe in New Brighton.

People looking to get their sausage roll fix need to look no further than Karma Free Cafe, which stocks Good Time Pies award-winning vegan sausage rolls (these rolls are also available at Z petrol stations around New Zealand).

The rolls have the perfect flaky pastry and such flavourful vegan sausage stuffing that youll have to resist the urge to check you definitely got the vegan version.

Regardless of whether youre an enthusiastic carnivore or sausage roll connoisseur, it would be very hard not to be won over by this sausage roll.

RYAN ANDERSON/STUFF

Reporter Josephine Franks went along to the 2019 vegan pie awards to see how the judges were getting on. (First published November 1, 2019)

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Five vegan dishes to try in Christchurch this World Vegan Month - Stuff.co.nz

American drama web television series

Utopia is an American science fiction drama television series adapted by Gillian Flynn from the 2013 British original series of the same name. It was released on September 25, 2020, on the Amazon Prime Video streaming service.[1]

In November 2020, the series was canceled after one season of eight episodes.[2]

A group of young adults and a boy get ahold of Utopia, a cult underground comic book, which not only pins them as the target of a shadowy organization, but also burdens them with the dangerous task of saving the world. The titular comic is the conclusion of Dystopia, of which the group members are fans and believe it to contain clairvoyant information about diseases that have already struck the world.

Synopsis:[3] A group of comic book fans discover an unpublished manuscript for a graphic novel and come to believe that the manuscript foretells future events. Dark forces are also searching for the manuscript. The comic book fans discover a global conspiracy. The comic book contains clues of future events because is written by one of the architects of a plan designed to prevent ecological disaster as the Earth's population rises and resources are depleted. The plan consists of: (1) Convincing the world's population that there is an outbreak of a deadly new virus, (2) Once convinced of the narrative of the faux-pandemic, announce to the public the creation of a new vaccine, (3) Through the coordination between global elites and non-governmental organizations, governments move quickly to inject the world's population with this vaccine. (4) Once the population is injected, it turns out that the vaccine is designed to sterilize almost all of those people that take it, causing the global population to drop from 7.8 billion to about 500 million, and ushering in a new era of plenty.

Utopia was ordered direct-to-series on April 19, 2018, with an order of nine episodes.[6] It had originally been set up at HBO with David Fincher to direct, but was never produced after a financial dispute.[7][8] On April 19, 2018, Utopia was ordered to series by Amazon.[9] On July 23, 2020, during the San Diego Comic-Con@Home, the first teaser for the series was released and was confirmed to be released in the fourth quarter of 2020.[10] On August 6, 2020, at the TCA virtual panel, showrunner Gillian Flynn announced that there would be less violence than in the British original.[11] The series was released on September 25, 2020.[1] On November 27, 2020, Amazon canceled the series after one season.[2]

In June 2018, it was announced the series would start filming by the fourth quarter of 2018.[12] On August 8, 2018, it was announced the series would consist of nine episodes, and probably have three different directors at work, one every three episodes, although it was later confirmed that there would be eight episodes in the first season. Flynn stated, "It wont have a single director the entire way through. I think well probably have multiple directors. Its nine episodes, so I think well do it in blocks of three, three and three, and not one director, the whole time through."[13]

On October 16, 2019, the creator of the show, Gillian Flynn, announced that the series' filming was completed.[14]

On August 10, 2020, it was revealed that Jeff Russo would compose the music for the series.[15]

During its initial development in 2015, the cast included Rooney Mara, Colm Feore, Eric McCormack, Dallas Roberts, Jason Ritter, Brandon Scott and Agyness Deyn.[16]

In January 2019, Sasha Lane joined the cast of the series.[17] In February 2019, Rainn Wilson, Dan Byrd, Cory Michael Smith, Ashleigh LaThrop, Desmin Borges, Farrah Mackenzie, and Christopher Denham joined the cast of the series.[18][19][20] In April 2019, John Cusack and Jeanine Serralles joined the cast of the series.[21][22] In May 2019, Jessica Rothe, Felisha Terrell and Dustin Ingram joined the cast in recurring roles.[23][24]

Many reviews were critical of the poor timing of the release of the show with the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as its level of violence. Positive marks were given to the pacing and twists in the plot. On Rotten Tomatoes, as of March26, 2021[update], the series holds an approval rating of 50% based on 46 reviews, with an average rating of 6.17/10, with the 16 top critics giving it a 5.43 (out of 10) and an approval rating of 37%. The site's critical consensus reads, "Utopia's cast and mystery at times transcend its overtly cynical and overly violent tendencies, but even those willing to look past the torture may find the whole thing too timelyin a bad way."[25] On Metacritic, the series has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100 based on 19 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[26]

See more here:

Utopia (2020 TV series) - Wikipedia

SEOUL, Nov 16 (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited a new city being built near the border with China and a sacred mountain revered by his family, state media reported on Tuesday, in his first public appearance in more than a month.

The northern alpine town of Samjiyon is being transformed into a massive economic hub, called a "socialist utopia" by officials, equipped with new apartments, hotels, a ski resort and commercial, cultural and medical facilities.

The developing city is near Mount Paektu, the holy mountain where Kim's family claims its roots, and he has made multiple visits since 2018, with the official KCNA news agency touting it as "epitome of modern civilisation."

KCNA said Kim's latest trip was designed to inspect the third and last phase of construction, due to be completed by the end of this year after delays caused by international sanctions and the coronavirus pandemic.

KCNA did not give a date for Kim's visit, but it is the first report of public activity by the leader for 35 days, since he gave a speech at a defence exhibition, his longest absence since 2014.

The young, reclusive leader's disappearance from state media often sparks speculation over his health or whereabouts. South Korea's intelligence agency said late last month that he had no health issues.

"He said Samjiyon has turned into an example of a mountainous modern city under socialism and a standard of rural development thanks to the workers' steadfast struggle despite the unfavourable northern environment," KCNA said.

Kim said building the new city provided experience in construction, design and technologies that would boost economic growth for other regions.

The city is one of the largest initiatives Pyongyang has launched as part of Kim's push for a "self-reliant" economy as the country faces international sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes.

Nearly two years after sealing borders to head off COVID-19, North Korea has recently resumed rail freight with China, the latest sign that they could reopen the border soon.

Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; editing by Jane Wardell

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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N.Korea's Kim visits new city in first public outing in over a month - Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO and HELSINKI, Nov. 11,2021 /PRNewswire/ --Consumer research platform PickFu and AI-based moderation specialist Utopia Analytics have partnered to publish a report based on insights drawn from 1,000 U.S.-based gamers, which lays bare the concerning state of online gaming in 2021.

The report, Playing games online in 2021: Toxicity, misogyny and missing moderation, asked gamers to share their first-hand experiences of toxicity in online games. It found that 38% have been the direct target of abusive remarks from other gamers, and a further 32% had witnessed abuse but had not endured it themselves. In total, a worrying 70% of the gamers polled had been negatively affected by the behavior of other gamers.

With the levels of abuse and toxicity across social media reaching endemic levels, toxicity in games is still represented in the mainstream media as something affecting only a minority of gamers playing 'hardcore' FPS titles such as Counter Strike or Call of Duty. However, the experiences of the gamers polled in this report suggest that online abuse is far more widespread, and effective moderation of game communities and online play is sorely lacking.

Key findings include:

"People turn to gaming to escape, assuming the virtual worlds they enter will be safe and fun. The reality, in gamers' own words, is that these negative interactions significantly impact their mental health and enjoyment of games. This should be a wake-up call for the industry to make gaming a safe space for everyone," said John Li, co-founder of PickFu.

"With so many people turning to games as a way to get through a year of lockdowns and upheaval, there is a risk that many of these new players will be bitterly disappointed if we cannot do more to reduce the ability of this toxic minority to disrupt the enjoyment of the majority, and as an industry take the issue of moderation far more seriously," said Dr. Mari-Sanna Paukkeri, CEO of Utopia Analytics.

Using PickFu's online platform, the poll collected feedback from 1,000 U.S.-based adults between ages 1874 who self-identify as gamers across console, PC, and mobile platforms. The poll collected responses from May 6, 2021, to June 5, 2021. The data was analyzed jointly by PickFu and Utopia Analytics

The report is free to download from: https://www.pickfu.com/resources/toxicity-in-gaming

About PickFu

PickFu is a consumer research software company dedicated to helping businesses make better-informed decisions through instant online polls. With PickFu's readymade panel of survey respondents, companies across industries like e-commerce, gaming, software, and marketing gather insights on product features, graphic design, user interfaces, copywriting, and more.

Learn more at https://www.pickfu.com/

About Utopia Analytics

Founded in 2014, Utopia Analyticscomprises text analytics, artificial intelligence and software development experts. With several doctoral scientists and masters-level professionals in our team, our heritage is solidly rooted in a background of academic research. Our vision is to change the way user-generated content is used and managed.

Find out more at http://www.utopiaanalytics.com

For more information, please contact:

PickFuAmy BallantyneEmail: [emailprotected]

Utopia AnalyticsJanne HuuskonenEmail: [emailprotected]

SOURCE PickFu and Utopia Analytics

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Online gaming in 2021: A new survey of gamers shows toxicity, misogyny, and a lack of effective moderation risks becoming normalized - PRNewswire

This article is the final feature ina week-longCBC Hamiltonseries entitled, How should cities grow?Hamilton's boundary dilemma,examiningurban sprawl and boundary expansion.

Doug Ramsey spent Tuesday morning walking around a dream of a bustling city that was never fully realized.

Wide parkways run through it, arriving atstop signs surrounded by green spaceand hundreds of houses.

There's anartificial lake, a sprawling retirement home, and the top of a largegovernment building can be seen peeking over the tops of trees. Everything is connected by a network of trails.

Itwas noticeablyquiet. Awoman could be seenwalking her dog near the water. The odd car or truck droveup, slowing slightly beforerolling through, on to somewhere else.

Welcome to Townsend, Ont.

Born in the 1970s, the community just under an hour's drive southwest from Hamiltonwas pitched as an Ontariogovernment-sponsored development that would transform a rural section of Haldimand and Norfolk counties into a "megalopolis" to house hundreds of thousands of people drawn to the area by industrial employers.

Now it's home to fewer than 1,000, said Ramsey, citing data from the 2016 census.

It boasts plenty of parkland and amenities, but not a single store.

It exists as a sort of island of sprawl, a suburb without a city.Residents, experts and an artist who tracked Townsend's legacy say it's a communitythatoffers lessons for Hamilton,as it wrestles with the question of whether itsurban boundary should be expanded, and other cities that are looking to grow.

For some, Townsend is a perfect place to call home, so long as you have access to a car. For others, it exists as a curious case and a cautionary tale of government planning gone wrong.

"On the drafting board, this is utopia," said Ramsey, who is from nearby Simcoeand spent three years working in Townsendfor the regional planning department.

He even wrote a thesis on it back in 1991 titled "Townsend, Ontario: The Case of Failed New Town Development."

Now, he's aprofessor in the Department of Rural Development at Brandon University in Manitoba, where he still uses Townsendto teach students how having a vision doesn't mean it will be properly implemented.

Ramsey returned to Townsend this month for a visit.

"For this [community], it was just the timing was off, the dreams were off," he said, gesturing around him during a tour with CBC Hamilton.

Before it was Townsend, it was farmland, much like the areas Hamilton is currently considering expanding into.

Ramsey said that in the 1960s and 1970s, the Ontariogovernment was concerned about growth along Lake Erie, particularly around the "Big 3" industrial sites in Nanticoke Stelco, the Essorefinery andOntario Hydro's coal-fired plant.

The idea was that they would act as "anchors" that would result in a massive expansion and a population spike in the otherwise rural area.

Townsend was the government's solution, with as many as 100,000 residents projected to live there by 2001, according to Ramsey's thesis.

Firms scooped up thousands of hectares of farmland, but the people never came.

Decades later, Stefan Rose was one of three artists who chronicled what was left behind ina project called Townsend Retraced, which details the impacts of urban expansion on rural residents.

One of his photos sumsup both the scale of the vision for the community and its reality.

"Townsend, designed with you in mind..." declareda billboard. The picture is in black and white; the sign appears faded.

"It seemed like there was a big gulf between what was imagined and what the reality actually was," said Rose."It is like an island. Insular and isolated."

Rose said he found that while a large amount of money and planning had gone into the community, a lot of people, particularly farmers, had their lives disrupted when they were pressured to sell land.

After numerous visits paid,photos taken and poems written, he said one thing became clear.

"Top-down development, for government to say, 'Hey we're going to sort of plunk something onto a site,' doesn't work very well."

Ramsey also pointed to what happened to Townsend as an example of what can go wrong when bureaucrats and politicians make decisions without consultation.

"It is a big lesson learned," said the professor."You have to have buy-in."

Ramsey also said the project is proof a community needs more than just houses. Hepointedto otherreasons the city never took off: climbing mortgage rates, aplanned four-lane highway that never materialized and thelack ofbasics such as aschool.

It's an interesting parallel as Hamilton grapples with a housing shortage and the question of how it should grow.

The decisionabout what to do with the urban boundary was delayed until Nov. 19,after hundreds of residents wrote in or spoke to council, leading to a meeting that stretched over 12 hours on Tuesday.

Ultimately, the choice may be taken out of council's hands. The provincial government is requiring municipalities to meet density targets through options, includingallowingconstruction on urban outskirts, saying it will enforce such a measure if municipalities don't do it themselves by July 2022.

Don Flicker also isn't a fan of government-led initiatives.

"Keep governments out of things," he said with a laugh. "They spend tons of money and usually the conclusions they reach are wrong."

Still, when he looks around him he admits he feels like he "lucked out."

The 65-year-old has lived in Townsend for 27 years.

He and his wife first drove through the communitywhen it was built "out of curiosity, as everyone did," he said.

Flicker is one of many proud residents who won't stand for Townsend being maligned, including what he said is the most common criticismthat it's in the middle of nowhere.

"It's out in the country, but it has basically the city amenities," he said, adding he's a short distancefrom two hospitals, restaurants and major stores inSimcoe and Jarvis.

Flicker compared that drive to the time it takes to travel across a large city like Hamilton.

"We're really not in the middle of nowhere;we just don't have all those subdivisions between us and where we want to go."

He saidTownsend is a "bit odd," but it makes up for any peculiarities with its trails, parks, and peace and quiet.

Rev.Junior Spoonerwas also struck by the serene setting when he began serving as the pastor of the community'sonly church just over two years ago.

He recalled his first view of Townsend, a few years before, as a place that "just kind of disappeared into bush and nothingness" as he drove out of it.

But now he sees it as a unique place where a church can serve a congregation and as a community centre.

"There's this mystique about it and how it's here, and how it continues to survive without any of these modern amenities."

Still, as he grows older, Flicker said he's starting to wonder what he and his wife will do if they lose the ability to drive.

Without a store they could walk to for supplies, they'd have to rely on others, something he's not sure he'd becomfortable with.

Ironically, the answer to his concernsmightbe more development.

Work is underway on a townhouse project that could bringmore people to the community.

Flicker said he's in favour of seeing the population rise slightly, enough to support a store or coffee shop, but like everyone else he's worried about unchecked expansion.

"I think here we have mixed feelings about it," he said.

"Do we want to see a lot of the parkland, the greenspace taken over by condominiums? At the same time it's going to add a couple hundred people to our population."

This series, How should cities grow?Hamilton's boundary dilemma, runs Nov. 5-13.

Read more:

What other cities can learn from development of Townsend, Ont. a planned 'utopia' gone wrong - CBC.ca