Category Archives: New Utopia

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! COO Vanessa Pappas explains TikToks popularity; the Muse makes an acquisition; and a new story charts the rise and fall of the Wing. Have a relaxing weekend.

How it happened. A mere 18 months after the Wing embarked on an ambitious relaunch, the once popular womens coworking company shuttered its doors for good.

In a recent feature for Fortune, I spoke to former employees, members, and investors to chart the meteoric rise and tumultuous fall of the Wing, which its founders once billed as a womens utopia.

Cofounded by Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan in 2016, the Wing blossomed from its original idea as a pit stop for on-the-go women to a full-fledged coworking startup with a mission to empower women through community. By late 2018, it had raised a whopping $117 million from investors like NEA, Kleiner Perkins, SoulCycles cofounders, and WeWork. The company was valued at about $365 million that same year.

The Wing brought in visits from household names like Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jennifer Lopez. At its peak, the coworking company had 11 locations globally, 12,000 members, and a 35,000-person wait list.

But tensions were bubbling under the surface. One former executive told me there wasnt a lot of transparency around what the strategy was at all, and an early investor said Gelman, the companys CEO, seemed reluctant to ask for help. A 2019 lawsuit forced the Wing to drop its ban on membership for men, who were previously only allowed to visit as guests. That same year, criticism emerged over its handling of an incident in Los Angeles, where a white guest harassed a Black member and her guest.

Soon after, hourly employees, most of whom were Black or brown women, went public with reports of mistreatment that contradicted the Wings uplifting, empowerment brand.

Gelman resigned as CEO in June 2020, kicking off a round of CEO musical chairs.

In February 2021, flexible-office-space pioneer IWG bought a majority stake in the startup. Under new ownership, the Wing staged an ambitious reopening of six locations in 2021 that lasted just months. Problems with members returned as well. While 80% of members were pleasant, former employees told me, the remaining 20% either treated you like you were the help or said things that were not appropriate.

In August, the Wing permanently closed its doors. The company couldnt shake off past scandals and suffered from a combination of poor business management and a troubled, post-pandemic coworking industry. As one former member told me when describing its often vacant San Francisco space: I was thinking, How is this going to stay around?

You can read my full feature about the Wings demise here.

Paige McGlauflinpaige.mcglauflin@fortune.com@paidion

The Broadsheet is Fortunes newsletter for and about the worlds most powerful women. Todays edition was curated by Emma Hinchliffe. Subscribe here.

Joining forces. The Muse, the jobs marketplace run by cofounder Kathryn Minshew, has acquired recruitment platform Fairygodboss. Its the Muses first acquisition. TechCrunch

Mining deep. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is cracking down on energy consumption by crypto miners in Texas. The senator wants to know whether crypto mining contributed to the states power grid failures during last years extreme winter storm. The Verge

Sing for change. The next Grammy Awards will include an award for a song for social change. More than 80% of the submissions received so far are for Shervin Hajipours Baraye, a protest anthemabout 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, whose death in police custody sparked widespread protests in Iran. Hajipour was arrested after the song went viral.Variety

Not optimistic. Now in the ninth month of Russian detention, Brittney Griner is not convinced the U.S. will succeed in getting her home. The basketball star is afraid she will have to serve the entirety of her nine-year sentence in Russia, her lawyer says. New York Times

Clocking in. At the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit this week, TikTok COO Vanessa Pappas answered questions about keeping U.S. user data out of the hands of the Chinese government and the effects of screen time on young children. The former YouTube executive called TikTok the last sunny spot on the internet. Fortune

A true maverick. Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynt Marshall was brought in to overhaul the NBA teams culture after a 2018 report uncovered rampant sexual harassment within the franchise. Initially skeptical about taking the job, she says she ultimately decided to do so for the sisterhood. Fortune

Chipping away. Advanced Micro Devices CEO Lisa Su says that overseeing the chipmaker is like running a different company every two years. Since taking over in 2014, the company has gone from a market cap of $2 billion to $93 billion. Fortune

Midterm predictions. Rep. Katie Porter says shes not sure whether the reversal of Roe v. Wade will lead to wins for Democrats in the November midterm elections. Some voters may believe abortion restrictions wont reach their stateeven though a Republican Congress is likely to pass a national abortion ban. Fortune

Cuba Gooding Jr. will serve no prison time after plea in sex abuse caseNew York Times

I wanted revenge. What I got was betterVogue

Ciaras lasting career is a testament to her community Allure

FBI monitored Aretha Franklin for years, file showsNew York Times

There wasnt an aha moment. There were thousands of them.

Peloton star Robin Arzn on how she decided to quit her job as a lawyer and pursue a career in fitness

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Why the Wing, a once buzzy womens coworking startup, shut down - Fortune

US-based cruise company Royal Caribbean Group has revealed its plans to open a new cruise terminal at the Port of Galveston that will generate 100% of its needed energy through on-site solar panels.

In developing the new $125 million terminal, Royal Caribbean Group approached design strategies that aligned with its environmental goals, its focus to advance the development of sustainable infrastructure as well as the decarbonization strategy.

To remind, in May this year, the company joined the Mrsk Mc-Kinney Mller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, a nonprofit, independent R&D centre focusing on decarbonisation strategies.

During the construction, materials and transportation processes were used that produce less carbon. Furthermore, the company minimized interior sources of pollution through the installation of materials with low or zero volatile organic compounds (VOCs) content, and enhanced air filtration media, focusing on occupant thermal comfort and controllability.

We are focused on innovating across all aspects of our company, especially in our work to advance sustainability in the communities we visit, said Jason Liberty, president and CEO, Royal Caribbean Group.

Specifically, the terminal will rely on 30,000 square feet of on-site photovoltaic solar panels, enabling the ports self-sufficient energy usage. Any remaining energy not used by the terminal will be sent to the local power grid, according to the company.

The new cruise terminal at the Port of Galveston will be the first in Texas to achieve LEED Gold certification, an industry-leading certification expected to be received within the first two quarters of 2023. This makes the terminal, which will be used by the companys Royal Caribbean International brand, the first LEED Zero Energy facility in the world.

The Galveston terminal marks the cruise companys fourth LEED certified facility and its first Gold certified.

The previous projects include Terminal A at PortMiami; the Springfield, Oregon campus; and the Innovation Lab at Royal Caribbean Groups corporate headquarters in Miami.

We deeply value both the oceans we sail and the communities we visit and operate in, and the modern design and development features at our terminal in Galveston will work in service of both, Liberty added.

The opening of the terminal will mark the first time Galveston welcomes Royal Caribbeans Oasis class vessels, the worlds largest cruise ships.

The keel-laying ceremony for the first LNG-fuelled Oasis class ship Utopia of the Seas was held in July this year.

Read the original:

World's first zero-energy cruise terminal to be opened at Port of Galveston - Offshore Energy

These letters published in the Oct. 16, 2022print edition of the Las Cruces Sun-News.

We're all prone to confirmation bias, such as casting recent floods in Pakistan as evidence of climate change. "Climate weirding" is not a scientific term, but "baroclinic instability", meaning the atmosphere flows in waves which vary chaotically, is. One such chaotic variation is that of El Nio and La Nia. Of La Nia, NASA writes: "... Indian monsoon rainfall tends to be greater than normal, especially in northwest India." We are currently experiencing La Nia.

Things are multi-factoral, the concept of global warming appears valid, and one cannot preclude changes in precipitation. However, the year to year variability of the Indian monsoon is large while modeled trends of precipitation to date are small. This suggests that La Nia was much more significant than climate change in flooding Pakistan. Because "baroclinic instability" occurs regardless of CO2, reducing CO2 will not prevent events such as monsoon floods, nor any other weather events that occur from fluctuations of motions.

Nietzsche lamented that through science we had killed god but also warned that we would seek replacements to shelter us from uncertainty as previous gods had. Climate change may be one of these religions, with fossil fuels unambiguously evil and low CO2 a supposed utopia. But with its forcing limited as logarithmic, CO2 is not such a potent devil, and satellites indicate that with increased CO2, plant life has increased globally. While global warming is a kernel of truth, many presumed resultant adverse phenomena are increasingly contradicted by the observational record.

Be wary of absolutist ideologies, especially those dripping with moralism.

Steve McGee, Las Cruces

Doa Ana County needs and deserves a sheriff who will go beyond the average in serving our communities. As our sheriff for the past four years, Kim Stewart has proven that she is effective, compassionate and brave.

Sheriff Stewarts policy of community policing has created countywide trust in her office (DASO). Part of that success comes from her personal responses to community issues and frequent involvement in community events. Because DASO is now very aware of the needs and concerns of our communities, Sherriff Stewart has redirected its fiscal and organizational resources to advance their effectiveness in addressing crime.

In support of DASOs staff, Sherriff Stewart initiated a Peer Support Program and drastically expanded training opportunities for both certified and noncertified staff. During the COVID outbreak, she defended DASO's administrative staffs ability to work from home, fighting intense political pressure to force them back into the office. Responding to the need to protect DASO's staff by providing them with a stable and defensible structure, she updated a 21-year-old policy and procedures manual.

Working to solve todays problems using todays strategies, and acting on the knowledge that the sheriffs office exists as a part of a system of law enforcement, Sheriff Stewart has successfully developed and participated in cooperative, effective, and cost efficient teamwork with municipal, state, and federal agencies. She has also implemented better uses of existing technologies while seeking out and adopting new technologies.

Sheriff Kim Stewart is not just a full-time sheriff; she is a hands-on, all-the-time, all-the-way sheriff.

Ronald G. White, Las Cruces

More letters to the editor:

See the original post:

Letters to the editor: On baroclinic instability - Las Cruces Sun-News

Not so long ago any damp bell tent in an unloved corner of a farm could be called a glampsite, but in recent years there has been a dramatic upgrade of rustic accommodation across the UK a trend that was accelerated by the pandemic. Holidaymakers craving the outdoors are now willing to pay more for a back-to-nature experience, but we want our nature accessorised with a wood-fired hot tub, stargazing deck or oak-barrel sauna.

This new breed of yurts, treehouses, pods, gypsy caravans and safari tents are simply too sumptuous to confine to the summer months. Many sites have responded to increased demand by extending their seasons into winter, shutting only for a few weeks of maintenance.

The glamping and rustic-accommodation specialists Canopy & Stars says that it has seen a trend towards all-season camping properties, with bookings overall 42 per cent higher during September and October than in 2019, the year before the emergence of Covid. So heres our selection of glampsites worth booking beyond the summer months open year-round unless otherwise stated.

Wantisden Park is 15 minutes from the sea

Hidden away on a private estate near Suffolks heritage coast, a 15-minute drive from the sea, these sleek, modern pods, train cabins and cottages overlook ancient woodland, rivers and lakes. Many are equipped with kitchens, bathrooms and outdoor hot tubs, while the on-site farm shop and caf is another upgrade for campers who want their winter camping to be heavy on the holiday element.Details One nights self-catering for two from 140, with a two-night minimum stay; closed Dec 21-27 and Jan 3-Feb 13 (wantisden.co.uk)

The Quiet Site is an award-winning campsite

JO CROMPTON

This award-winning campsite has been offering a tranquil Lake District base to lovers of the outdoors for more than 50 years. Near Ullswater, it was one of the UKs first zero-waste campsites, but its luxury credentials are as inviting as its eco credentials. The on-site bar, housed inside a 17th-century barn, is the perfect village pub, with exposed low beams and roaring open fires. The 15 Glamping Burrows partially buried underground and reminiscent of hobbit homes, with underfloor heating are perhaps the best winter option, with views over the lakes.Details One nights self-catering for six from 80 (thequietsite.co.uk)

Sperrinview is perfect for stargazing

Dramatically positioned in the foothills of Northern Irelands majestic Sperrin Mountains are four dinky but stylish pods, featuring a viewing window for stargazing in this designated Dark Sky Park. Theres a communal hub with a library and larger kitchen facilities, while the A-frame cottages are heated and have private bathrooms. With your own outdoor barbecue and fire pit, solitude and staring at the skies are the main pastimes here.Details One nights self-catering for five from 110; closed Dec 25-26 and Jan 1 (sperrinviewglamping.com)

Get cosy in a Trecombe Lake heated lodge

These heated lodges and pods occupy a woodland waterside setting less than five miles from Falmouth, making it perfect for campers who like to balance out the bucolic back-to-nature vibes with all the delights of a seaside town the proximity of indoor attractions is a real bonus out of the summer months. The lakeside setting makes this a delight for wild-swimming fans, plus you can return to a breakfast hamper full of the best Cornish produce.Details One nights self-catering for five from 145, with a two-night minimum stay (trecombe-lakes.co.uk)

Lawnsgate Camping has on-site llama-trekking

LAWNSGATE CAMPING

A lovely yurt, gypsy caravan and cabins Lawnsgate Camping in the North York Moors offers options that stretch the season. This has been a family-run working farm for generations, so its the real deal. On-site llama-trekking and picturesque nearby villages means that there are plenty of activities outside the peak summer months. The farm shop vending machine isnt to be missed either. Logs are provided for the wood-fired stoves in all cabins.Details One nights self-catering for two from 85 per night, with a two-night minimum stay (lawnsgatecamping.com)

Best luxury glamping in the UK

Loveland Farms geodome is ideal for families

Inspired by hanging tree pods that are a fixture in the forests of Canada, Loveland Farms eco pods are a treat for design-loving, eco-minded travellers. The owners, Jeff and Karina, are successful designers who abandoned London for north Devon, and their credentials are on show everywhere in this six-acre farm on the idyllic Hartland peninsula. The large geodome is the best out-of-summer option for families a futuristic glass and canvas structure perched high on a wooden platform and heated by wood-burners; theres even a projector screen so you can host your own cosy film nights on the wall of the pod.Details One nights self-catering for two from 149, with a two-night minimum stay; closed Nov 21-Apr 5 (lovelandfarmcamping.co.uk). Note it closes for much of winter and early spring

Fforest Farm is set in 500 acres

Fforest Farm, an ecologically minded site on the Pembrokeshire-Ceredigion border, sets the standard for modern British glampsites. The collection of crofter-style cottages (crog lofts), domes, bell tents and shacks around an old farmhouse set in 500 acres is owned by a design-obsessed local family. The most winter-friendly options have private onsen baths, wood-burning stoves and underfloor heating. Communal areas are a highlight, with a spa, cedar-barrel sauna, huge lodge with a deck and even an atmospheric pub a 200-year-old snug cosied up with rugs and lanterns.Details One nights self-catering for four from 171, with a two-night minimum stay; closed January and some February dates (coldatnight.co.uk)

Brook House Woods has an outdoor cinema

BRUNA BALODIS/SAWDAYS

With an outdoor cinema, tennis court, in-room massages and home-cooked-meal delivery service, this is as swish as British glampsites come. The cluster of luxury treehouses, cabins and handcrafted wooden huts some with underfloor heating, others with wood-burners makes a charming base for exploring the nearby Frome Valley and Malvern Hills. A roster of events including gin-botanicals foraging, yoga and chocolate making adds to the appeal for families, groups of friends and individual campers.Details One nights self-catering for two from 127 (brookhousewoods.com)

Swap Sussex for Scandinavia at Downash

SAWDAYS

An hour from London, this collection of five treehouses and cabins is set on 33 acres of secluded farmland near Ticehurst. Outdoors there are all-season touches such as Swedish baths and hot tubs, plus fire pits and log-burning barbecues; indoors expect underfloor heating, plus projector screens and popcorn makers for cosy film nights. The Scandi-style interiors also feature wood-cladding, unique lampshades, well-equipped kitchens and picture windows to make the most of the views.Details One nights self-catering for two from 155 (canopyandstars.co.uk)

A treehouse at Beudy Banc

SAWDAYS

For hikers and mountain bikers, Beudy Banc is a sort of utopia a converted barn sleeping up to eight and a duo of treehouses (with wood-burners), offering uninterrupted views of south Snowdonia and immediate access to a series of world-class biking trails crisscrossing the undulating landscape. The owner is an architect, and it shows in the sleek, contemporary design details, but the zero-carbon status is equally impressive; the installation of a wind turbine provides clean renewable power throughout the year with minimal environmental impact.Details One nights self-catering for two from 110; closed Jan 10-Feb 20 (beudybanc.co.uk)

Enchanted Glade is a collection of bell tents and converted wagons

BETH MERCER

Lying back in a steamy wood-fired hot tub looking up at autumnal treetops, then skipping across the leaf-strewn ground into the barrel sauna is the big sell at this hippyish site in the rolling West Sussex countryside near Ardingly. As well as the wild spa which is open for day visits (from 15 for a two-hour hot-tub experience) this collection of bell tents and converted wagons (all with wood-burners) has a heated treatment room for massages and often hosts events such as therapeutic womens circles.Details One nights self-catering for four from 145, with a two-night minimum stay; open until the end of October, then group bookings over Christmas and new year (enchantedglade.co.uk)

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Why autumn is the new glamping season | Travel | The Sunday Times - The Times

Stan Grant, a white guy who is a leading commenter on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Oz's BBC), believes that China's hegemonic brutality is -- wait for it -- a manifestation of Whiteness. He writes:

It is not possible to understand China without understanding race and racism. Specifically, without understanding whiteness.

Yet far too often the conversation around the rise of this new superpower is in predominantly geo-political terms,about authoritarianism versus democracy, about human rights or whether we will go to war.

But race sits at the heart of it all.

But Stan, you might be thinking, if Chinese nationalist thinking in the Xi era is built around Han Chinese superiority, how on earth is this the fault of white people? Ah, Stan's way ahead of you:

In some ways, Xi's China may represent the end of whiteness. Except that the Chinese Communist Party itself mirrors whiteness.

The irony is Xi has also become what he opposes. He is a Han nationalist his idea of Chinese power is ethnic Han superiority persecuting non-Han, non-white people in his own country.

If whiteness is power, Xi Jinping is its champion.

The continuation of white power, in darker skin.

David Rieff tries to make sense of this in his Substack newsletter. Excerpt:

Imperialism is a White Supremacist construct, and therefore to be an imperialist power is to be a white power, even if you are, well, non-white. And say what you will about Grant, he carries this argument to its logical conclusion. Xis China might have represented the end of whiteness, he laments, but instead the Chinese Communist Party itself mirrors whiteness. How can this be? Well, it has turned out that Xi is a Han nationalist, committed to the idea that Chinese power is ethnic Han superiority.

Grant is probably right about this. But instead of this leading him to question his own efforts to put all forms of capitalism, including the Chinese, indeed, arguably all forms of power, into the Procrustean Bed of White Supremacy, Grant doubles down, insisting that Han persecution of non-Han is nothing less white people persecuting non-white people.

One feels as if one has entered a lunatic asylum. The Han are not white, and somehow they are. But in Grants world, and in this he is in no sense expressing a fringe view but rather is an emblematic figure of a very wide current of an opinion, whiteness is a synonym for power, full stop. Thus, for Grant, the tragedy of Xis China is that it has become what he believes historically its opposed, whiteness, of which, he says, Xi Xinping is its championthe continuation of white power in darker skin.

Whiteness as metaphor, in short. It is this metaphorization of understanding, no is the deepest intellectual, and in some ways, the deepest philosophical ill that afflicts us.

This is not one of those things you can roll your eyes at ("Look at those lunatic liberals, ha ha!") and move on. As Rieff -- a man of the Left -- notes, Grant's view is not on the fringe, but represents "a very wide current of an opinion" among Western elites -- particular white Western elites.

Where do these liberals -- white and otherwise -- think all this "blame whitey" stuff is going to go? It is one thing to examine the racial dynamics within society and culture; it is quite another to blame another race entirely for the evils of the world, as if it were an expression of their racial being ("whiteness"). There is a reason why people can say whatever vicious thing they want about white people as a group, and not only will there be no consequences for their racism, but they may even be promoted within the elite system -- but nobody would dare speak ill of non-white peoples as a group. So you get the absurd claim that Xi Jinping's racism is really white racism.

Again, where do they think this going to go? David Brooks was shocked by the closet anti-black racism of some Latino members of the Los Angeles City Council, revealed in a secretly recorded and released tape. Brooks wrote:

Besides being offended by the racist comments made by members of the Los Angeles City Council as so many people were I was also struck by the underlying worldview revealed during their leaked conversation.

Council President Nury Martinez who has since resigned from the Council along with two colleagues and a labor ally talked about a range of subjects, including redistricting, but two assumptions undergirded much of what they said. Their first assumption was that America is divided into monolithic racial blocs. The world they take for granted is not a world of persons; its a world of rigid racial categories.

At one point Martinez vulgarly derided someone because hes with the Blacks. Youre either with one racial army or youre with another.

The second assumption was that these monolithic racial blocs are locked in a never-ending ethnic war for power. The core topic of their conversation was to redraw Council districts to benefit Latino leaders.

Its real simple, one of the participants in the conversation said at one point. You got 100 people, right? Fifty-two of them are Mexicano. I feel pretty good about it. I feel pretty good about my chances of beating your ass.

Those two assumptions didnt come out of nowhere. We have had a long-running debate in this country over how to think about racial categories. On the one side there are those, often associated with Ibram X. Kendi and others, who see American society as a conflict between oppressor and oppressed groups. They center race and race consciousness when talking about a persons identity. Justice will come when minority group power is used to push back on white supremacy. The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination, is how Kendi puts it.

On the other side, there are others, like Thomas Chatterton Williams, Coleman Hughes and Reihan Salam, who argue that racial categorization itself can be the problem. The concept of systemic racism is built upon crude racial categorization. As Williams puts it, America should fight racism while over the long term getting rid of the categories that come out of the collision of Africa and Europe in the slave trade and the New World.

You do that by emphasizing how much all humans have in common and by emphasizing how complex each persons identity is that it includes race but so many other things, too. The last thing you want to do is traffic in the sort of racial essentialist categories that were so rampantly on display during that conversation among the City Council members.

That conversation is what happens when the assumptions of the former school of thought are embraced as a matter of course. You dont get a righteous struggle against oppression. You get a bunch of people who assume that public life is a brutal struggle of group against group, and who are probably going to develop derogatory views of people in rival groups.

Well, yeah, but it's a little late for that, don't you think? We have been through at least ten years in this country of the demonization of white people as a group, by elite culture -- including elite media culture, which has magnified these outrageous, racist claims of people like Ibram X. Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, and others. And by Woke Capitalism, which has empowered these race radicals within corporate life. Here in Central Europe, where I now live, it's common to hear Europeans working for US multinationals express frustration that their American bosses have introduced American cultural politics into their European workplaces.

About fifteen years ago, when I was at The Dallas Morning News as a columnist, I mentioned in a piece -- maybe I quoted somebody, or said it myself, I can't recall -- that in Dallas, there was a lot of conflict between blacks and Latinos. One of my then-colleagues, a white liberal, appealed to our boss to get the piece spiked, on grounds that it wasn't true and it would cause problems. Though more liberal than I was, my boss let the piece go, because she knew it was true, though liberals in Dallas officially did not notice these things. One of my good friends, a raging white liberal, a gay man who lived in a mixed white-black-Latino neighborhood, wrote in to say that OF COURSE IT'S TRUE, and it's a reality that has to be dealt with. But our elites -- again, particularly white elites -- refuse to do it. They prefer to live in their ideological bubble.

The truth is, tribalism is basic to human nature. Classical liberalism's creation of the Individual as a political unit was a great achievement of justice in most (but not all) respects. This is where Martin Luther King stood: on calling for black people in America to stop being treated by white-dominated society as a monolithic group, but to be granted justice on the same terms as everybody else. He was right. But now "justice" has been redefined as equality of outcome, and branded "equity". Which is why we now have people from favored ethnic groups being massively favored, and others massively disfavored, based not on their actual talent and performance, but based on their race. Take a look at this:

Related, this insane University of Minnesota doctors' graduation rite in which the new physicians vowed to fight structural racism and the usual suspects in their profession:

Also related:

You know what this is going to do, in the long run? Drive people to seek out Asian doctors for the best medical care. That is to say, it will diminish the faith people have that their physician, whatever his or her color, is about as competent as any other physician. Now we know that doctors were admitted to medical school on the basis of ideological categories that included privileging race over intellectual capabilities.

If we talked about "blackness" in America the way we talk about "whiteness," you would hear endless discussions in the media about how "blackness" is making cities uninhabitable because of crime. Never mind that the victims of black crime are overwhelmingly black people; such complicating factors don't trouble the minds of liberals, who prefer Theory over messy Reality when it comes to social issues (conservatives tend to be this way about free-market economics). We hear little talk about the many factors contributing to multigenerational black poverty, which itself drives crime. No talk about the collapse of the black family, and of the kinds of values internal to any community that make it possible for the young (and not so young) to flourish. There is only one acceptable response to the culture framed by the media and other elites: somehow, this is the fault of Whiteness.

I mentioned in this space the other day, I think, that a Baton Rouge cop said recently that crime in the majority-black Louisiana capital has never been as bad there as it is today, and for the first time, it has become general in the city, not confined more or less to the black neighborhoods. That's bad, but the worst part was his saying that he can't imagine anything that's going to make it better. You can't have stricter policing, not after the Summer of Floyd (Baton Rouge was where the Alton Sterling event played out; even though the Obama Justice Department investigated and found the two white officers had behaved properly in that killing, bad feeling is everywhere). And, said the officer, there don't seem to be any forces internal to the city's impoverished black community that work towards social stability. I did mention a despairing white Boomer liberal friend in Baton Rouge, a former juvenile court judge who said that if you want to see why things are so horrible in our city, go spend some time in juvenile court. He went on to explain that the total collapse of the black family, and the social consequences thereof, are shocking, and inescapable. Middle-class professional white people there don't talk about it if they share any doubt about the liberal narrative, because we either don't want to be seen as racist, or we genuinely wonder if noticing some of this stuff is racist. Middle class professionals of all races can afford to push that out of mind, because their kids don't go to school with the ghetto kids, and the ghetto, being far away, keeps its problems to itself. Not anymore, at least not in my former city.

But these realities are certainly escapable by people who don't have to face these unpleasant facts, and by liberal elites who manage the Narrative. You would think that history would have shown us the great evil of scapegoating people on the basis of race and religion. But here are our liberals, doing it as a matter of course -- even to the point of blaming Chinese racism on white people. Tell me, how does this mentality differ from this letter from Martin Latsis, head of the Soviet secret police in Ukraine, to his agents, explaining to them how to carry out Lenin's campaign of Red Terror:

Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.

We have seen what that did in the Soviet Union. And in Nazi Germany. And in the segregated South. And in Rwanda. And all over Europe in ages past, when Christians carried out pogroms against Jews. Tribalism, which is hard to distinguish from racism, is fundamental to human social groupings. It's in our nature. We can try to overcome it, but it's always going to be there, and is always going to emerge in times of great social stress. The Latino, anti-black tribalism we saw in Los Angeles is the way most of the world works. The de-tribalization wrought by liberalism is in one sense one of its greatest achievements. (The down side is the loss of the capacity for social solidarity, but that's a different topic.)

And yet, the Left and its Establishment-Right allies, have thrown it all away. Somehow, they really do believe that only white people are racist, and that if we can only contain and suppress the whites, who carry within their whiteness the polluting seed, then racial utopia will emerge. They're scandalized, then, to hear Latino politicians talking in raw, racial terms behind closed doors. Do they not think that black pols in L.A. do the same thing? More to the point, do they not think that black voters and Latino voters outside of polite middle class settings, think and talk in the same way? Working-class whites do. This is the way of the world. Learning to see all people are morally equal, and to treat them that way, even when it strains tribal loyalties, is an achievement of civilization. Atticus Finch, Harper Lee's fictional white small-town lawyer who stood against his own tribe to defend a black man in a Jim Crow Southern court, is a symbolic hero of the classical liberal tradition. No more: according to liberals like this black law professor, Atticus is a "white savior" and a "dangerous myth" because of the concept of justice that he symbolizes.

Today's liberals see justice not at Atticus Finch did, but as Karl Marx did. And they are counting on all the whites of the United States to behave as whites on campus do: with guilt-ridden docility. I do not believe it's going to go down that way, not if there's any kind of serious economic collapse. This is why for years I've been banging on about how leftist identity politics inevitably calls up demons among whites that the leftists will not be able to control. Last week, I heard a lecture by Carl Trueman, who spent some time in it talking about the erotic pull of Evil, and mentioning the Nazis being absolute masters of aesthetics. Sitting in the audience, I thought about how one thing that has kept wokeness from realizing its full potential as a tyrannical totalitarian ideology is the fact that it is not sexy. Or at least they haven't found a way to make it sexy yet. If the radical Right, white tribalist types ever manage to master aesthetics, we could be in real trouble in this country.

I think what gets to me most about that moronic Stan Grant piece is what it demonstrates about the need for our intellectual classes -- media, academic, scientific, etc. -- to avoid seeing the world as it is, and instead construe it in such a way that reassures them in their prejudices. Eventually, a system that lies to itself about reality is going to collapse. What Stan Grant wrote in that column has no value as serious analysis about contemporary China and its ambitions, but as David Rieff observes, Grant's approach to understanding reality is quite common among his class. This is how these people really do see the world. Once you spend enough time among them, and come to see that there are entire areas of human experience that they don't want to know about, because it violates their internal model -- well, you realize that our society is more fragile than you think, because the people who run it live by therapeutic lies.

When that social order breaks down, it will be back to blood for everybody, as a matter of survival -- thanks in large part to the postliberal American Left, which did so much to raise consciousness of racial identity, and make that the most salient political characteristic in American life today. That they have done this in a highly diverse society, where we have to find a way for all of us to live together in peace, is unforgivable.

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Hannah Arendt said in her 1951 book The Origins Of Totalitarianism that a shared characteristic of the pre-totalitarian liberal elites in both Russia and Germany was a carefree willingness to knock down pillars of civilization, simply for the pleasure of watching those who had been unjustly excluded in the past rush in to claim a place for themselves. When the history of our own civilization's decline and fall is written, note will be taken of the Western elites -- not all leftists, not by a long shot -- who destroyed the moral and legal pillar rejecting collective guilt, and, along that spectrum, those who destroyed the liberal principle of judging people not by the color of their skin, but the content of their character.

The Stan Grant idea of equating power with whiteness is a stupid, ideological way of reading the world. But Stan Grant is a big deal in Australia -- and, as David Rieff said, Grant's orientation towards the world is common, at least among the ruling class. People like Grant have a lot of power to set the Narrative for the way we all come to understand the world. It is important to understand that they cannot be trusted.

UPDATE: Australian readers write to say that Stan Grant identifies as Aboriginal, not white. So noted.

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The East Is ... White? Xi Jinping Is A Cracker? - The American Conservative

There are two sorts of travelers: those who flee the cold and those who enjoy it. If youre a seasoned skier, theres no better time to hit the slopes than during winter. Skiing excursions, snow-capped mountains, and evenings spent by the fire? Sounds like paradise to us!

Here are the best winter wonderland vacations in the USA if youre wondering where to head next this winter.

Vail is, without a doubt, the most quintessential of winter towns. While there are lots to do in Colorados mountainous northern region all year, its definitely the most unique time of year to visit this alpine jewel.

If youre looking for a world-class mountain resort with everything you could ask for, look no further than Vail. Nestled beneath the Gore Range, Vail offers winter sports, outstanding restaurants, and luxurious accommodations.

During the winter months, Vail is bustling with skiers and snowboarders from all over the world. The town is home to some of the best ski slopes in the country and a variety of other winter activities.

If youre not into skiing or snowboarding, dont worry theres still plenty to do. You can go ice skating, dog sledding, snowmobiling, or even take a scenic gondola ride to the top of the mountain.

And when youre ready to thaw out, there are plenty of cozy fireplaces and aprs-ski bars to enjoy.

Known for its world-class ski resorts and unbeatable winter sports (think activities like wild snowmobiling, dog sledding, and ice skating). Park City in Utah offers a (mountain) range of things to do that youve got to experience at least once in your life.

Walking through this quaint little town will make you feel like youre wandering inside a real-life snow globe as you gawk at the century-old buildings and mansions that line the valleys.

Tip: January hosts the towns annual Sundance Film Festival, which is THE place to be if you want the chance to see some of your favorite celebrities (hey, you might even run across them at your hotel!).

Known for its snowy peaks and scenic beauty that will have your jaw dropping to the ground, Telluride is one of Colorados most picturesque mountain towns and a must-visit if what youre after is winter outdoor adventures galore.

While in Telluride, dont miss out on exploring a few of its hiking trails (make sure to check the weather conditions before you venture in), getting those Instagram vibes on at Hotel Madelines ice-skating rinks, and sledding down the San Juan Mountains.

If youre up for some serious mountain adventure, you can try your hand at ice climbing (yes, its a thing!) or venture deep into the mountains in a cross-country ski adventure.

If youd rather not break a sweat and would much prefer a relaxing vacay (or a combo of adventure and luxury), Tellurides surroundings host plenty of insanely beautiful hot springs where to can relax your muscles after a day of snowy adventures!

Whitefish is a charming town located in northwestern Montana, surrounded by the Rocky Mountains. The Whitefish Mountain Resort is one of the states top ski destinations and its perfect for all levels, from beginners to experts.

With 3,000 acres of skiable terrain and 300 inches of snowfall each year, Whitefish offers something for everyone with its myriad of activities, from skiing and snowboarding to dog sledding and ice skating.

Theres something incredibly charming about New England in winter, and Camden is the king of winter wonderlands in the area. Located on the charming Penibscto Bay, Camden Harbor feels like it came straight out of a Thomas Kinkade painting.

While visiting, make sure you book a unique ski adventure at Camden Snow Bowl, where youll get to get your shred on with the views of the ocean backdropping your every move.

Another must is to search for all the lighthouses in the area, which look as though they came straight out of a fairytale when dusted by white snow!

Nestled in the San Juan Mountains, Ouray in Colorado is your go-to if you want to feel as though youre walking around in Europe rather than the USA. Popularly dubbed the Switzerland of America, Ouray is the perfect place to head to for some serious wintery vibes and that fairytale feeling deep in the mountains.

Aside from its endless array of outdoor mountain adventures (and hot springs galore to relax your muscles in!), Ouray knows how to make the most out of the colder months with events like the Ouray Ice Festival and San Juan Skijoring, both of which celebrate winter sports and the importance they have on this gorgeous little town in the heart of the Colorado mountains.

Yellowstone National Park is a gem of a place any time of the year, but during the winter months, it becomes a mecca for those in search of a snowy utopia. Think snow-capped landscapes, forests dusted in snow, frozen lakes, and steaming geysers that make the landscapes look out of this world.

Another thing that makes this national park worth the trek? Yellowstone is set right next to Jackstone Hole, which means you can combine your visit to the national park with some serious aprs-ski scenes and luxury stays to relax in after a day spent adventuring!

If youre an outdoor enthusiast or looking for some excitement, consider taking a snowmobile tour of the park. If staying warm is more your style, but you want to see attractions like Old Faithful, then a snow coach tour is perfect for you if you want to explore the park on your own. Drive over to Mammoth Hot Springs!

This section of Yellowstone is open all year (weather permitting) and has unique thermal features and food and lodgings.

More popularly known for being the base to explore the Great Smoky Mountains, Gatlinburg in Tennessee has a ton more to offer for those who linger a while at this quintessential mountain town.

Aside from its classic alpine vibes, countless theme parks, and incredible food scene. Gatlinburg burst to life with several winter festivities, such as the Anakeestas Enchanted Winter festival, where youll find twinkling lights every step you take and delicious food to help you beat the winter blues.

Once youre done exploring Gatlinburg, head into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where youll find an array of winter sports to choose from and cozy cabins and chalets to experience winter in the middle of nature. Seriously, it doesnt get more magical than waking up and having a hot cup of cocoa in the middle of nowhere!

Although Shenandoah National Park is beautiful any time of year, it really comes alive in the winter. With its rolling hills and valleys blanketed in snow, the park looks like something out of a postcard.

If youre looking for a winter wonderland thats not too far from home, look no further. Just a few hours from Washington D.C., this national park is teeming with wildlife and offers incredible views of the Appalachian Mountains.

There are over 500 miles of trails to explore, and many of them are perfect for cross-country. There are also a number of ranger-led programs offered during the winter months, so you can learn more about the park and its wildlife.

Crested Butte, Colorado, is a quaint small town located in the Rocky Mountains. This town is well known for its excellent skiing and snowboarding and charming Victorian downtown area.

Crested Butte is the perfect place for you if youre looking for a winter adventure vacation with plenty of outdoor activities. In addition to skiing and snowboarding, you can also go snowshoeing, ice skating, and dog sledding.

And if you need a break from all the outdoor activities, be sure to check out Crested Buttes charming downtown area. This district is home to many unique shops and restaurants, as well as a few art galleries.

McCall, Idaho has two large ski resorts within 45 minutes of downtown. These resorts offer a variety of slopes for skiers and snowboarders of all levels. You can also participate in many other winter activities such as tubing, cross-country skiing, and ice skating.

If youre looking for an adrenaline rush, snowmobiling is a popular thing to do in McCall. There are many different companies that offer tours of the surrounding area. This is a great way to see the beautiful scenery of McCall while getting your heart pumping. We absolutely love heading out to Burgdorf hot springs on our snowmobiles. If you do choose to head out to Burgdorf, be sure to reserve your tickets in advance because Burgdorf now operates off of a reservation system.

McCall is still a great choice if youre looking for a more low-key winter vacation. This charming small town is on Payette Lake, making it the perfect place to go for a scenic walk or snowshoeing. And when youre ready to warm up, head to one of McCalls many breweries or coffee shops.

Insider Tip: When visiting McCall be sure to take Hwy 55 also known as the Payette River Scenic Byway its a beautiful drive along the river.

Leavenworth, Washington has two ski resorts within an hours drive. It is considered the outdoor recreation mecca of the Pacific Northwest. There are cross-country and downhill skiing, snowboarding, sledding, tubing, sleigh rides and snowmobiling opportunities. The town has a Bavarian theme, with nutcrackers, gingerbread houses, and hot spiced wine with making it a popular destination for visitors worldwide.

The Cascade Mountains provide a beautiful backdrop for all the outdoor winter activities available in Leavenworth. If youre looking for a winter wonderland vacation with plenty of outdoor activities, Leavenworth is the perfect place!

Theres no better place to enjoy the great outdoors than Grand Teton National Park. The views are simply breathtaking, and theres so much to do! From cross-country skiing and snowmobiling to ice fishing and dog sledding, youll never get bored. Just be sure to pack your warmest clothes!

With its glacial lakes, alpine meadows, and towering mountains, Grand Teton National Park is an outdoor paradise all year round. But in winter, the park really comes alive. The snow-covered landscapes make for some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. And with plenty of trails to explore, it

Theres nothing quite like seeing the Northern Lights in person. These natural phenomena are truly a sight to behold, and theres no better place to see them than Alaska.

Head to Denali National Park for some of the best views in the state. You can also try your luck in Fairbanks, where you have a higher chance of seeing the lights since its located under the aurora oval.

Lake Placid is a popular tourist destination in upstate New York, and for good reason. This picturesque small town is located in the Adirondack Mountains and is a great place to enjoy all kinds of outdoor activities. The town is home to the 1980 Winter Olympics and many other winter sports facilities.

In addition to skiing and snowboarding, you can also go ice climbing, dogsledding, and cross-country skiing. And when youre ready to warm up, head into town for some shopping or to enjoy a meal at one of the many restaurants.

If youre looking for a winter wonderland vacation with plenty of opportunities to try new things, Lake Placid is the perfect place!

Lake Tahoe is a popular tourist destination in California and Nevada, and for a good reason. This large lake is located in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and is a great place to enjoy all kinds of outdoor activities.

In addition to skiing and snowboarding, you can also go ice skating, sledding, and cross-country skiing. And when youre ready to warm up, head into one of the many towns that surround the lake for some shopping or to enjoy a meal at a restaurant.

If youre looking for a winter wonderland vacation with plenty of opportunities to try new things, Lake Tahoe is the perfect place!

Although most National Parks close during the winter months due to dangerous conditions, Yosemite National Park stays open all year round. This is good news for those of us who love to hike and explore in the snow!

One of the best things to do in Yosemite in winter is to go cross-country skiing or snowshoeing . There are miles of trails to explore, and you might even spot some wildlife along the way.

I hope that this list of places to explore has inspired you to get out and enjoy the winter wonderlands that are waiting for you! No matter where you go, youre sure to create memories that will last a lifetime.

The post Winter Wonderland Vacations- Places You Have To Visit This Year appeared first on Outside Nomad How To Travel.

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Winter Wonderland Vacations- Places You Have To Visit This Year - msnNOW

One of the many glitteringly clever quotes circulated in the wake of Hilary Mantels death last week was something she said about history. The longer version is wonderful (what did she ever say that wasnt?), but well clip this bit: Facts are not truth, though they are part of it And history is not the past it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. Its the record of whats left on the record. Yet using these fragments a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth Mantel could transport you so completely that you felt you were breathing the air of another century, feeling the emotions of other people, moving through other times.

This has an intense value. And yet, there is a certain type of historian who concerns themself or himself, lets face it very little with emotion, even though that is all anyone ordinary who was forced to live through events was feeling at the time. Anger, shock, hope, bewilderment, laughter, exhaustion, betrayal these are the trifling human offcuts of some loftier story, largely unmentionable byproducts of the grand machinations of greater men than them.

Im glad this isnt an affliction suffered by the documentary maker Adam Curtis, perhaps the BBCs last great maverick, whose landmark series on Russia between 1985 and 1999 arrives on iPlayer in two weeks. Last year, Curtis was handed a treasure trove: every piece of raw footage shot by the BBC in Russia since the 1960s. Tens of thousands of hours, only the tiniest fraction of which had ever made it to air. Out of this hoard and other material lying in the BBC archive, he has created seven brilliant and deeply empathetic films that cover what happened to Russia between 1985 and 1999 (the year Vladimir Putin took power). Its called TraumaZone: What It Felt Like to Live Through the Collapse of Communism and Democracy.

The films bring that world right up against your eyeballs, and prove themselves essential to our understanding of the Russia we have now, of the Russia from which Putin emerged, and of the staggering human cost of it all. And, perhaps, of what it feels like on the ground when ideologues with a plan decide to jolt the people towards a new utopia. Anyway, more on the UKs week in economic shock therapy in a minute.

We already know the historical facts of the Russia story: the hideous iniquities of communism, its tumultuous collapse, the grotesque corruption and betrayal that followed, the vast scale both ideological and geographical of the various cataclysms. These films take us from the Kremlin to the Siberian mining villages, from the Chechen frontline to peoples apartments, immersing us in every layer of Russian society. I showed Curtis the Mantel quote this week and he loved it. I found this extraordinary material tens of thousands of fragments of experience, he explained. What Im doing is taking these fragments and Im trying to create a world for you to get lost in, a sense of what it was like to live through that world. At the end of it, I hope you think and feel differently about what Russians went through and understand how Putin could emerge from that strange cataclysm.

This I can definitely confirm. I watched the films in early summer, yet seeing last weekends mostly female protest against Putins Ukraine mobilisation in Moscow, I was immediately transported back to Curtiss agonising footage of the mothers whose sons are conscripted into the Chechen war. The women in TraumaZone are what will stay longest with me the struggling babushkas, the sex workers in Moscows Cosmos hotel, the state toothbrush factory employees, the reformatory teens, the idealistic first Avon ladies, the extraordinarily charismatic young girl who begs at car windows in the Moscow traffic the women break your heart.

TraumaZone is a definite departure from Curtiss previous style. There is no Adam Curtis voiceover, no music unless its part of the original footage itself, no provocative central thesis. He feels the hot-take industry has swallowed up everything since 2016 and Im one of the worst offenders! and what the series offers instead is much more compelling and unusual. You can hear the flies buzzing on the steppes. You are in the middle of riots brutally suppressed by state police. You are watching as gangsters loot cars straight off the production lines. You are in the queue to be told there are still no potatoes in all of Moscow. Its difficult not to conclude that the hardline free marketeers had about as much empathy for the ordinary people as the Marxist intellectuals.

Which I accept might be starting to sound familiar closer to home. Dont worry, this isnt some glib bollocks about how were all the same underneath. Russians are not similar to us, because they have been through a totally different experience. In the 90s, they had the accelerated and frequently catastrophic collapse of not one but two of the dominant ideologies of the 20th century. We had Britpop.

Not that that stops some pointed jokes. A Russian journalist who recently fled Putins regime reflected sardonically to Curtis: You in Britain are Moscow in about 1988. Everyone knows the system isnt working. Everyone knows that the managers are completely looting it. They know that you know that they know, but no one has any concept of a possible alternative. The only difference is youve already tried democracy. Youve got nothing else left.

Ouch. It has certainly felt like a rather idiosyncratic form of democracy this week, watching a government without a mandate pursue radical economic shock policies on the basis of pure dogma, no matter the forecast human fallout. Over the course of TraumaZone we get to know Yegor Gaidar, the ultra-free marketeer architect of the shock therapy designed to radically remake Russias economy, who became despised by the Russians who bore the brunt of his malfunctioning ideals even as the oligarchs used them as cover to steal an entire country. There is an arresting closeup of Gaidars face at the funeral of Galina Starovoitova, the democratic reformer assassinated in her apartment building in 1998. What is his expression? Is it a flicker of an epic personal reckoning?

I kept wondering if I saw a flash of it on Kwasi Kwartengs face this week, when the cameras followed the chancellor on some no-comment walk out of the Treasury as the financial crisis he caused was playing out in real time. Or whether well see it when Kwarteng or Liz Truss is forced to encounter an ordinary victim who experiences their ideology as a repossessed house or hungry child, rather than something that sounds good in a pamphlet.

But perhaps these are the fleeting emotions we wish ideologues to feel, and not the ones they do. The one thing we can say with a general election possibly more than two years away is that no one but a tiny selectorate of 81,000 voted for this radical experiment. Is that democracy? Is that what keeps people believing in politics? Or are we entering a trauma zone of our own?

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Marina Hyde will join Guardian Live for events in Manchester (4 October) and London (11 October) to discuss her new book, What Just Happened?! For details visit theguardian.com/guardianlive, and order the book from Guardian Bookshop

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A new series immerses us in Russias 90s trauma and the human cost of economic shock - The Guardian

A mans black beard tickles my face. Were lying on a dirty carpet, in a gigantic hallway. He squeezes my seven-year-old-hand. Look up, he says. Above us a grand staircase turns, coiling in three wooden flights. Landings with balustrades lead to corridors, to 60 rooms, attics and basements. Since we arrived this morning, Ive run through the dark mansion, opening shutters, letting in light.

A girl pulled my hand, took me outside past a naked, white woman doing yoga, her nipples like red wine gums. An angry man shouted: Bloody kids! We became horses in an ancient apple orchard, cantered past sequoias as tall as the sky. In a vegetable garden, a boy gave me a Chinese burn. A little lost girl wailed. It might have been me. Everything here feels like it will never stop. My shoes have disappeared, along with my mum, my brother and my sister.

Look up, says the man with the beard. Hordes of men and women carry old mattresses down the staircase, emptying out the house. They have come from around the world London, the States, India and Africa to make this place into a community. I catch their conversation: Previously this dilapidated house, outbuildings and land was an old peoples hostel, an army base, and originally an English country house. It is 1979. It is tabula rasa! A black woman in a boiler suit walks past. She says: Every single thing will change!

If I climb up past their words and faces, beyond the staircase, there is a stained-glass ceiling: green, yellow, blue and crimson glass encased in lead. The ceiling is a turning kaleidoscope, an ever-changing view. It whirls.

You have a beautiful smile, the bearded man whispers in my ear. His hair touches my cheek, and I dont like it. Everyone here has long hair. Suddenly, I long for our old house, our quiet Sussex street, for my father who has left us, and for my books. When I look down, away from the ceiling, the man has gone. I am alone on the carpet, in the crowd, in the house. I stay there for 15 years.

In the months prior to our arrival, the community-building group, mainly socialists and Marxists, meets in Liverpool. Most members contribute to purchasing the mansion, forming a housing co-operative. The young South African journalists, academics, London feminists, German filmmakers, Californian ballet dancers, Indian writers, American dropouts and drop-ins have rejected capitalism and the patriarchy. Armed with worn paperbacks on Karl Marx, kibbutzim, yoga, rebirthing, alternative education, ecology, and radical feminism, in each of them is a small page of world history. Most of them are postwar boomers, propelled here by global demonstrations for peace and womens rights, by the anti-apartheid movement, May 1968 and constant strikes. In Britain, newspapers grumble about the winter of discontent. Drums beat for change, and we follow their beat.

When we move in, we are assigned a unit. Over the course of a neverending meeting, tea grows cold. Adults argue: What do we do with this space? The house, an Indian man insists, is an egalitarian cake to be sliced into equal parts. A woman (called Deidre who has re-named herself Eagle) shouts above the rest: The ground floor kitchen, lounge, yoga room, dining room, store rooms and the rest will be communal; the second and third floors, divided into private living spaces: units. Everyone agrees.

Our first unit, just off the second-floor landing, has bedrooms for my sister, brother and me, and a rundown bathroom (with no hot water). Our mums bedroom (she is still called mum then) is also our living room; as well as containing a bed and a sofa, theres a table with a kettle. Along our corridor are other units, and a communal bathroom that an angry man paints pink. Turn right or left, we are interconnected, and no door has a lock, nor person a key.

Every Friday evening, meetings are held; our home and way of life are designed, every decision taken by consensus. Crouched between a strangers legs, during a discussion about washing-up, I hear a man explain that Le Corbusier believed the house was a machine for living in. Furious, a woman rushes out, slamming the door. Another woman yells: George Kateb said utopian thought was a tradition about the perfect society, harmony, perpetual peace all human wants satisfied Everybody nods. Despite the emphasis on consensus, I begin to notice that certain voices rule the roost. Power is grabbed by the domineering, the scary, by those who claim to do the most communal work. Group dynamics create a de facto elite, a nomenklatura, a steeled hierarchy.

The Adults live the adventure of chosen austerity, and so the Kids grow up in semi-poverty

As time passes, influenced by the adults hodgepodge of textbook utopias, we undergo linguistic enculturation. Old things are re-named. New words dreamed up. Our mum must be called by her first name, C, freeing her from the patriarchy. She becomes one of the Adults, a powerhouse in dungarees. The other social group is the Kids. From now on, I am in this independent gang, playing British Bulldog, climbing trees, watching the suicide scenes in the film Harold and Maude (1971) on repeat. We must be hard, tough. If the Kids overhear someone using the terms Mum or Dad, the child is ridiculed. Needing a parent is weak. We are all individuals. We are equal, we spout precociously.

Our language is classified, and Adults correct us when we get it wrong. Belief becomes dogma. On the bad list: nuclear family (mother, father, 2.5 children), capitalism, femininity, pink Barbies, and any type of individual success. Good words include: group, feminism, working-class struggle, revolution, and poor. It is good to be poor, and no one has much money, despite most of the Adults coming from affluent, middle-class homes. In the community, the Adults live the adventure of chosen austerity, and so the Kids grow up in semi-poverty, with little heating, toilet water freezing over (I sleep wearing a woollen hat and gloves in winter), clothes shared between 20 children, no school trips, and free school dinners. People bullied me every day at school, my sister tells me afterwards. They said I didnt wash, which was true, that I smelt, which was also true, and that we were poor. It was true as well.

Often in those years, I experience a glorious sense of freedom. It courses through my veins. Anything is possible. I wander through the woods, imagine building houses, read feminist manifestos and Carlos Fuentes and survival books, and talk to everyone I meet. I learn to avoid the nextdoor unit where the couple writhes beneath a sheet. Instead, I climb the stairs to see a musician, and ex-convict. I sit on his lap, beside a photograph of Woodstock, and he repeatedly tells me that he loves me and will marry me. Later, another man invites me, when his wife is away, to stay overnight in his unit. All of this continues for years.

Decades on, I see myself, a little bookish girl, opening door after door, and often closing them again quickly, shocked by a weeping woman, a father slapping a son, a couple having sex. I am profoundly troubled, in the Freudian sense of the uncanny; the grotesque sensation of what is intimate being revealed anew. But, quickly, I adapt, and learn to shrug it off, normalise things. One day, a therapist will tell me it is like the pride felt by a child soldier given a gun a defence mechanism.

Months after we move into the community, journalists and visitors arrive at our door. We become efficient guides. Aged eight, chaperoning a couple of potential members, and wound up like a radical clockwork doll, I theorise on our three-floored home: We are not income-sharing. People have jobs outside. There is a weekly cooking rota. One communal vehicle. I explain temporal organisation, how gongs announce meetings, meals, schedules for cleaning, garden work, renovating outbuildings, and milking cows. We are not hippies, I say. This distinction is vital. The Adults insist: we are more serious. Equally, the word commune is forbidden, we must always say community. Our image to the outside world is regulated, controlled.

Communal food (I do not tell visitors) involves daily queues, eating en masse, and continually being seen. The institutional panopticon provides an incessant gaze. Sometimes, meals are feasts of roast dinners made with produce from our smallholding (chickens, lambs, goats, cows). Devouring Laura Ingalls Wilders books, I feel the pages have come to life. Like her, we are pioneers.

But often food is inedible, burnt or raw: a brown swamp of peanut butter soup, homemade bread oozing uncooked dough. Few Adults have the skill to cook for 40-plus mouths. When we are starving, C occasionally makes us boiled eggs, and in the kitchen people glare when we scoop up yolks, as cooking non-communal food is against the unwritten rules. But these eggs are precious, an exception. For a moment, we become more important than the crowd.

I feel myself pinned beneath glass, an object prodded and dissected, displayed in a collection of freaks

Youre so brilliant, one Adult tells me. So mature. A year after joining, we are filmed for a documentary. As I dream of being on TV, I strategically make a fried egg for my breakfast, wearing what I believe is a cool blue anorak.

Over the years, were regularly interviewed for radio, newspapers, Channel 4 and the BBC. As I get older and the lure of stardom fades, I realise that each reporter has an agenda; our utopia is either heaven or hell. People project their fantasies about harmony, freedom, drugs, orgies, rock and roll. For decades afterwards, when I talk about the community, I feel myself pinned beneath glass, an object prodded and dissected, displayed in a collection of freaks. Societys mirror reflects a distorted view, but its one I cannot escape. This home may have no locks or keys but we are stuck here.

In communities such as these, children are the product of the utopian dream. We carry the weight and responsibility of the social experiment, the adults fantasy. We must not demand wiped noses or regular bedtimes. Our job is to glow with pastoral, Rousseauesque light, running free. In our community, Kids politics are maintained with informal interventions. In the dusty Kids Room where we never play a skinny white woman, Firefly, puts us in a circle, screeching: Today, you get the power to decide about life. What do you want? Bewildered, we remain silent. What do you want? She screams. Ban the Royal Family, one of us tries. She nods: Yes! Make women equal to men. She nods again, laughing loudly. Suddenly, we are laughing with her, the laughing we do when we raise fists to fighter planes, support the miners, or mock beauty queens. Our laughter is radical. We are free.

Information is given to us regardless of age. We must use the word vagina, stick our finger in chicken intestines examining excrement, understand economic theories, tied aid, nuclear war, our rent prices, MCPs (male chauvinist pigs), every man as a potential rapist, and Nicaraguas destabilisation by the CIA. We must face the real, in Lacanian terms, related to that which is strictly unthinkable. There is no application of child development theory or safety belts provided for the knowledge that the real is a tunnel that has no end. The poet Ren Char wrote in Leaves of Hypnos (1943-44): Lucidity is the wound closest to the sun. Often, like Icarus, I fly too close and I am burnt.

I am being led, blindfolded, down a corridor. Feel, a familiar voice says; excited, I obey. My nine-year-old fingers touch something silky. Smell, and there is the scent of roses, a balmy cloud. Stop. Someone whispers. Jump! I hesitate, my heart beating, and then leap, landing on something wobbly. My blindfold is ripped off, and I am in the yoga room. A bouncy castle is inside, and we giggle, Adults and Kids, bouncing up and down. It is a party.

As in many institutions, our parties concentrate culture, carnival and rituals. Together, we decorate, dress up, imagine and invent. As Elias Canetti observed, these crowds are irresistible. From the age of 10, I learn to construct majestic empires from nothing, write my own plays, act and sing. Sorting through piles of old clothes at jumble sales, I make costumes from rags, vintage suits and diamant brooches. The pastel jewels sparkle.

But there is no respite from communality. Even on regular days, there is little calm. The stimulation can be overwhelming, like being trapped inside a utopian fairground, whirling on rides, turned inside out, upside down, every day.

Years later, having developed an international career in hospitals as a therapist and consultant, I read Erving Goffman and Michel Foucault, and begin to draw lines of commonality between the way the community and institutions function. In their work on prisons, psychiatric hospitals and religious retreats, both thinkers analyse the power in insular social establishments estranged from the outside world. In Asylums (1961), Goffman writes:

The barrier to the outside world, built into their physicality and practices, symbolises their total character. Goffmans interest in total institutions stems from their nature as forcing houses for changing persons; each is a natural experiment on what can be done to the self.

Attempting to build an alternative anti-capitalist home, an equally repressive institution has been established

Yet this is not what our utopia was intended to be, and Foucaults words (quoted by Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow in 1982) come to me: People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they dont know is what what they do does. It is necessary to differentiate between theory and practice, intention and impact, to examine what these utopian machines did to certain childrens sense of self.

As I grow up, I experience two languages, two value systems and ways of being, an inside and outside. At school, and with my dads family, no one uses the same words to describe home, meal, bedtime, adult, parent, child. My dad comes to visit. When I call him by his first name, his face falls. I never do it again. We live in units, but a unit is a number, not a home. It is as though, while attempting to build an alternative anti-capitalist home, an equally repressive institution has been established. As Hannah Arendt writes in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), the self-compulsion of ideological thinking ruins all relationships with reality. Institutional power structures get replicated, their impact ignored.

Initially, I invite school friends to the community. When a seven-year-old girl comes to play, I accidentally electrocute myself (there is bad wiring in the house), then we stumble upon a home birth. My friend bursts into tears. No one from school is ever allowed to come again. Aged nine, I confide to another pupil: I am going to marry a man at the community. He loves me. My words spread around the class, and I am bullied for weeks. In a misguided attempt to get sick and miss school, I take solitary cold baths in the communal bathroom. Nobody notices. I dont fall ill.

Slowly, I learn to adapt, to change my colours like a chameleon. It is necessary, for there is little movement between the interior and the exterior. Estranged from the outside world, I experience the dangers of power and group dynamics victims and aggressors in confined spaces. Professionally, I will later specialise in group therapy and team-building, influenced by the paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, avoiding closed, totalitarian groups and opting instead for holding people, encouraging permeable, creative spaces where individuals can evolve inside groups connected to other groups. In this work, I am ethically engaged in the wellbeing and safety of the people in my care.

Our utopia was hard work for children. In writing this essay, I have been struck by my childhood sense of deep solitude, the paradox of a child alone in crowd. Living among the horde of Kids is often harsh and cruel. We must not rely on our parents when we fall, are bullied, or are just tired and sad. Deal with it, the Adults say. Curiously, rather than attempt to share childcare between men and women, in a move to free women from the domestic care, we are abandoned to each other, ourselves. Often, I take care of two or three children while still a child myself. In their respective studies of the kibbutz the largest utopian movement in history Melford Spiro and Bruno Bettelheim in the 1950s and 60s examined the effects of children living separately from parents. Bettelheim quotes a nursery worker, who cared for children for more than 30 years, saying: Lets face it, the kibbutz wasnt built for children, but to make us (the adults) free.

Interestingly, many community adults come from military and boarding-school backgrounds, and have been cut off from their own parents at an early age. It appears, as Lily Dunn writes in her memoir Sins of My Father (2022) about her membership of a cult in the 1970s, that these adults are replacing one institution for another. They reproduce another generation of children left to fend for themselves.

Our small, childrens bodies are also political. As Foucault writes: The human body is the principal actor in all utopias. Yet liberation can become a form of control. Hairy is necessary because women have body hair. Mud is also required because it is egalitarian and natural. One day a man says: The Kids dont need to be washed. Were going back to zero. In his essay The Great Relearning (1987), Tom Wolfe focuses on the San Francisco hippy movement and its relationship to dirt, how it encouraged people to share cups, toothbrushes and beds. Wolfe describes a local doctors shock at the lack of hygiene and the return of fungal diseases. The hippies disregarded the basic practices of cleansing alongside the laws of morality. For years after we leave the community, I dont understand daily bathing.

Our bodies are interchangeable, constantly exposed. The Kids form one creature with multiple heads: fed together, sharing clothes, sleeping in each others beds. Until I am 15, I do not own my own swimming costume. Likewise, we must conform to a certain aesthetic. A little girl, I am in awe of the community womens bodies, carrying bales of hay like men. They are like machines, and I long to have an unadorned body like this, that I think is like a boys. No make-up or jewellery. As Spiro saw in the kibbutz, socialist clothing must be utilitarian, pragmatic. Yet, secretly, I also dream of ribbons and flummery. My biggest inspiration is when hundreds of punks gatecrash a community house party, a riot of DIY, made-up glory.

Someone at the community jokes (or not) that we should all leave school and work in a factory

Sometimes, I just long to fit in. As a teenager, in the pink communal bathroom, I find an old, blunt razor left in a dirty sink, and I drag it over my leg hair, my bikini line and my armpits. Afterwards, I find out my sister did the same thing. It burns and cuts but we will do anything to feel normal.

In his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Milan Kundera offers Terezas words in relation to communism and intimacy:

Her mother sees the world as a vast concentration camp of bodies.

In the communal utopia, there is an institutionalised loss of intimacy, from the imbruted bodies to the open doors.

Unconditional equality also influences our activities and education. An academic child, aged 11, I am the only pupil in the village school to pass the 11+ exams. But I am not permitted to go to the grammar school where this distinction takes me. Someone at the community jokes (or not) that we should all leave school and work in a factory. As Khieu Samphan, a Khmer Rouge leader, reportedly once said: Zero for him, zero for you, that is true equality.

Despite my secret, desperate longing to go to the Grammar, I explain to my dad: The system is not equal and the words are stones in my mouth. Instead, alongside all the Kids, I go to a politically acceptable comprehensive. By 13, unable to fit in with the nice girls, I cut my hair short, bleach it blonde, and wear leopard skin, red lipstick and thick black eyeliner. An outsider, I become best friends with the dropouts and the estate kids whose parents vote for the National Front. Together, we bunk off school, smoke cigarettes, start drinking, taking drugs and self-medicating. At communal meals, my clothes and make-up are scorned, but the rest of my rebellion goes unremarked. C says nothing. I have been brought up to look after myself.

We call our mum C, but beyond this our connections with the other members of the community are ambiguous, and this is where our home differs greatly from the structured kibbutz. Are we objects formed by an ideology? Are we brothers, sisters, friends, comrades or family? When the sexual abuse occurs, is it incest? For 15 years, a river of Adults parents us, flowing in and out of our lives: therapists, gurus, journalists, academics and scientists. Each of them has something to tell us. They teach us to play an instrument, to code, or to make 100 jars of marmalade.

Yet, as Winnicott writes, in child development one of the vital components of the good enough parent is consistency. The Adults make pottery with us, shout, grumble and tickle us. Certain Adults love, hit, hate and abuse us, and then disappear. When people leave the community, we rarely ever see them again, and I miss some of them. It is as though our family has evaporated into the night as if we are all replaceable elements, as if horror can be processed by a living machine.

When I look back, it is at a childhood that was majestically free and patterned by incessant danger. We learnt to be articulate, challenge gender roles, tap the golden seams of creativity, dissect society, lead groups, and keep-calm-in-a-crisis. I am well versed in survival skills. But surviving is not living. The secure intimacy of home was a gaping hole, that locus and feeling described by Maya Angelou in 1986 : The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

In the community, there is regular trauma, sexual, physical and mental abuse. When these events are brought to light, such as an adult repeatedly hitting a child in a communal space, occasionally there is an emergency meeting. Conclusions are drawn: You know, no one is ever to blame, we are all damaged, and We are all essentially good. By the time I am ready to leave for university, the ambivalent stance of some members is hard to tolerate. Despite my adherence to the community and my belief in the politics, the paradoxes and dehumanisation become unbearable. Constantly, I compartmentalise, separating the different parts of my life, building impenetrable walls of silence. It is only later, after much writing, reading, therapy and forming my own family, that I finally begin to confront the disturbing blueprint of the utopian machine, and understand my spot on the assembly line.

Sunday evenings are the one time in the week where there is no communal meal and we choose our food. The crowd thins and the institution fades. C makes baked potatoes with grated cheese. The four of us take the meal to our unit. In her room, for a flimsy moment, we sit together as a family. Plates balanced on our knees, we watch TV, often Upstairs, Downstairs, a British period drama depicting the lives of a wealthy London family upstairs, and their servants downstairs. C passes around a jar of pickled beetroot. The beetroot juice dyes our meal, bleeding into potato and cheese. Hard as we try, we cannot stop the red juice flowing, it seeps into our food like the communal words, the lock-less doors and the river of people. Everything on our plates turns slowly pink and purple.

Names, dates and places have been changed.

Read more from the original source:

Why the communal utopia was hard work for its children - Aeon

For more of the latest and greatest product releases, check out our full collection of the best new gear.

September is in the books and yes, it's officially fall. But looking back on the month that was, there were a lot of new cool gadgets that were announced this month. From all the new iPhones to Bose's newest noise-canceling wireless earbuds, Sonos's first "miniature" subwoofer and a lot of cool soundbars and loudspeakers, we break it all down.

(For the best announcements of last month, August 2022, click here.)

The Bowers & Wilkins PX8 are the company's new pair of flagship noise-canceling headphones and, at $699, they are the most expensive pair you can buy (other expensive competitors are Apple's $549 AirPods Max and the Master & Dynamic $599 MW75.) The new headphones are essentially a higher-end model of the B&W's recently released PX7 S2 ($399), with superior drivers and made of more luxury materials. They are available in two finishes: black or tan.

Price: $699

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Teenage Engineering is well-known for its creative gadgets and its latest one is no different. The PO-80 Record Factory is a unique kind of turnable because it is capable of both cutting and then playing a vinyl record. That's right, you can connect it to an audio device (via a 3.5mm jack) and make a vinyl record. These are tiny 5-inch vinyl records, granted, so don't expect to record an entire album (although there is an adapter for making 7-inch records). The PO-80 Record Factory is powered by USB and has its own built-in speakers; you can also hook it up to an external speaker via a 3.5mm connection.

Price: $149

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One of the standouts from Amazon's big hardware event was the Kindle Scribe. It's the company's newest and most high-end e-reader, but it's most notable because it's the first Kindle to work with a stylus (called the Scribe Pen); it attaches to the side of the Kindle Scribe and you can use it to take notes, leave page markers or even draw.

The Kindle Scribe is available for preorder and is expected to ship before the holidays.

Price: $340

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The other big standout from Amazon's big hardware event was the Halo Rise, which is a bedside alarm and sleep tracking device. The Halo Rise has a built-in light and clock that will gradually warm (mimicking the sunrise) to gradually wakes you up. It also has integrated sensors for sleep tracking; it tracks your breathing patterns as well as room conditions like temperature, light levels and humidity, and then gives you information about your sleep that you can access in Alexa app. It is not a speaker does not come integrated with Alexa, but it will work with an existing Alexa smart speaker.

The Halo Rise is available for preorder and will ship later this year.

Price: $140

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The Freewrite Alpha is Astrohaus's most affordable smart typewriter to date. For those who don't know, a smart typewriter allows you to type on a monochrome screen and be free of the internet's many distractions (such as email). It connects to Wi-Fi and you can access the document you've typed afterward. Astrohaus is running an Indiegogo campaign for the Freewrite Alpha right now, and it's expected to ship in 2023.

Price: $249

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Skullcandy has announced its first gaming headsets in years. There are three different models PLYR ($130), SLYR Pro ($100) and SLYR ($60) and all are relatively affordable and compatible with PC as well as the latest consoles. The SLYR and SLYR Pro are both wired headsets, while the PLYR is a wireless headset and has some more advanced features and even a Tile integration to help you find it if it gets misplaced.

Price: $60 $130

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Logitech announced a new version of its popular wireless mechanical keyboard, the MX Mechanical Mini this time it's specifically made for Mac setups. The original model was compatible with Mac, but the new model is part of the "Designed for Mac" series. The only real difference is that it has the same key caps and configuration as a Magic Keyboard, plus the keyboard is available in either space gray or pale gray to match your Mac.

Price: $150

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Nothing didn't officially announced a new product, but it did release a teaser video and a bunch of lavish press photos of its upcoming pair of wireless earbuds called the Ear (stick). They are expected to be very different from the company's Ear 1, and they'll come in cylindrical and vibrantly-colored charging case. They are expected to be fully announced later this year.

Price: TBD

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The Victrola Stream Carbon is the first turntable that works natively with an existing Sonos speaker system. It's a collaboration between Victrola and Sonos and, after you set it up, it'll appear in the Sonos app just like any other Sonos component; from there, you just group it with your other Sonos speakers are boom you're rocking out to vinyl. There's no extra components needed. In addition to working perfectly with Sonos, it's also just a really gorgeous and high-end turntable.

Price: $799

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Polaroid is temporarily jumping out of the realm of instant film cameras and into... portable Bluetooth speakers. That's right, the company announced four different Bluetooth speakers the P1 ($60), P2 ($130), P3 ($190) and P4 ($290) (from left to right: starting from the smallest and most affordable to the largest) that each have a colorful-yet-retro flair.

They work like most other portable Bluetooth speakers (although none are rugged) but the kicker is that each works with the company's new companion app (Polaroid Music), which allows them to stream a number of different radio stations.

Price: $60 $290

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The Meze Audio 109 Pro is the Romanian hi-fi company's first pair of dynamic open-back headphones. They're designed to be super lightweight and comfortable, but yet they're also made with premium materials like wood, steel and leather so they'll feel pretty lavish.

The 109 Pro are modeled after the company's well-loved 99 Classics ($309), but they have an all-new beryllium coated dynamic driver that promises rich, detailed and accurate sound. At $799, they are open-back headphones for budding audiophiles looking to make the jump into the world of serious hi-fi.

Price: $799

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The Sony SRS-XV900 is the company's newest Bluetooth party speaker, and it's effectively a larger version of its existing SRS-XV700. At 58 pounds, it's a far-cry from being classified as a "ultra-portable" speaker, but it does have a built-in battery (that gets up to 25 hours of playtime) so you can move it around your backyard as you see fit. It has multiple analog connections and can be used to power your other mobile devices. And yes, you can customize its built-in LEDs to light up however you see fit.

Price: $900

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This is Mophie's newest portable power bank that doubles as a stand for your iPhone. It's fully compatible with MagSafe, meaning it can fast charge any iPhone 12, iPhone 13 or iPhone 13 at up to 15 watts. It has a 10,000-mAh capacity, which is enough to nearly double the battery life of your iPhone. Additionally, it has a USB-C PD input/output port that you can use to charge a second device along with your iPhone.

(Mophie also announced updated models of its other portable powerbanks, including the powerstation mini, the powerstation and the powerstation pro XL.)

Price: $130

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Focal announced an upgraded version of the super high-end Utopia headphones that it first released in 2016. The new open-back cans have an updated and more lightweight design (the earcups also have a new honeycomb pattern on them), but they also boast improved sonic performance thanks to new M-shaped drivers and M-shaped grills that, according to the company, enable "even clearer and more accurate musical reproduction." The only real downside is the Focal increased the price of the new models by about a grand.

Price: $4,999

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Logitech's Brio 500 is effectively an updated version of the company's c922 Pro. It delivers similar picture quality 1080p at 30 fps or 720p at 60 fps but it does have a new ultra-wide lens and more advanced autofocusing capabilities that can automatically keep you in frame. The Brio 500 also has a built-in microphone and a privacy shutter, and it comes in three different colors. It's positioned as a moderately affordable option for anybody looking to up their Zoom game (it's also compatible with Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts) with upgrading to a more expensive 4K webcam.

Price: $130

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The Bowers & Wilkins 700 S3 is the company's third-generation line of 700 series loudspeakers. The line includes a total of eight loudspeakers including three floor-standing speakers, three stand-mounted speakers and two center-channel speakers and they all borrow technologies of the company's high-end line of 800 Series Diamond speakers, but deliver them in a slightly more accessible package.

Price: $1,500 (center-channel) $7,000 (floor-standing)

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DJI announced the Osmo Mobile 6, its latest handheld gimbal designed to help you take more stabilized photos and videos with your smartphone. This sixth-generation model has a couple marked improvements over its predecessors. It has a new wheel control on the side of the handle that can help you quickly zoom-in (or out) and focus on your subject. There's a new "quick launch" feature that, as the name gives away, will help you quickly launch to the DJI camera app so that you can get shooting faster than before. And there's a new status panel screen that'll more easily show you how much battery the gimbal has left.

Price: $159

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The Sub Mini is a smaller and more affordable version of Sonos's exisiting Sub; it costs $429 and weighs 14 pounds, while the larger Sub costs $749 and weighs just over 36 pounds. The Sub Mini works much the same way as the Sub, adding bass to a Sonos home theater or speaker system, but it's specifically designed to be paired with Sonos's smaller soundbars and speakers, like the Beam (Gen 2), Ray or a stereo pair of Ones. The only downside is that you can only pair one Sub Mini with a Sonos soundbar, unlike the Sub which you can pair two with Sonos's flagship soundbar, the Arc.

Read our review of the Sonos Sub Mini, here.

Price: $429

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DJI announced its newest action cameras, the Osmo Action 3. It borrows the classic design of the 2019-released Osmo Action and pairs it with the sensor and shooting capabilities (maxes out at 4K at 120fps) of the 2021-released Action 2. Additionally, DJI has given the new camera significantly dual touchscreens, improved battery life (up to 160 minutes) and faster charging capabilities. It also has a new quick-release mounting system.

Price: $329+

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The Fujifilm X-H2 is the company's newest mirrorless camera and it's very similar to the recently-released X-H2S. It has the same processor, built-in image stabilization and electronic viewfinder. The big difference is that the Fujifilm X-H2 has a huge 40.2-megapixel APS-C sensor, which is the highest resolution that the company has put into any of its X Series cameras.

Price: $2,000 (body only)

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GoPro introduced its newest action camera and this year there are two to choose from. The Hero 11 Black is the company's newest flagship model, while the all-new Hero 11 Black Mini (pictured) is a shrunk-down version that's almost half the size. Compared to last year's model, the Hero 11 Black looks pretty identical, but GoPro integrated it with a larger sensor that enable some higher-resolution photo and video capturing capabilities. The "Mini" version is exactly the same, but lacks the dual touchscreen displays.

The GoPro Hero 11 Black is available now while the Hero 11 Black Mini will be available on October 25.

Price: $300+ (Mini); $400+

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Amazon introduced an updated version of its entry-level Kindle. It still costs $100, but has been upgraded with a nicer and brighter screen, improved battery life and it supports USB-C charging. That's right, micro-USB be gone! This 11th-generation Kindle will be available on October 12.

Price: $100

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Astell&Kern announced its new flagship portable hi-fi player, the A&ultima SP3000, and it is luxurious. It's made of high-end 904L stainless steel, just like a Rolex watch, and has gorgeous and large (5.46") touchscreen. It is decked out with a new high-end DAC (AK4499EX) and should support pretty much any lossless audio codec (up to 32-bit/768kHz). It runs an Android operating system so accessing your lossless service be it Qobuz, Tidal or Apple Music should be a breeze.

Price: $3,699

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The iPhone 14 is very similar to last year's iPhone 13. It's the same size and has a nearly identical 6.1-inch display. It also has the same A15 Bionic chipset. However, Apple did give it a few notable upgrades under the hood. It has improved rear and selfie camera systems for better low-light photography; there's a new Action Mode for improved image stabilization when shooting video. It has satellite connectivity which is a first for any iPhone. And maybe most notably, Apple has done away with the "mini" version and instead replaced it with a "plus" version, which has a 6.7-inch display similar to the Pro Max.

Read our review of the iPhone 14, here.

Price: $799+

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The new iPhone 14 Pros were probably the biggest standouts from this week's Apple's event. They have an all-new floating pill-shaped notch, called the Dynamic Island, that's interactive and designed to more-easily control apps (like Music, Timer or Maps) when they are running in the background. They have a vastly improved rear triple-camera system, including a 48-megapixel main camera with the largest sensor ever put in an iPhone. And they are powered by Apple's super new powerful chipset, the A16 Bionic.

Read our review of the iPhone 14 Pro, here.

Price: $999+ (Pro); $1,099+ (Pro Max)

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Bose announced the second-generation models of its noise-canceling wireless earbuds. Compared to the 2020-released QuietComfort Earbuds, the new models have a completely new design that's noticeably smaller, plus Bose has drastically improved the noise-cancellation and transparency modes; in fact, Bose claims that these have the "worlds best noise cancellation" of any true wireless earbuds.

Price: $300

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Apple announced the second-generation models of its AirPods Pro. The new wireless earbuds look pretty similar to their predecessors and cost exactly the same $249 but Apple has given them a more advanced H2 chipset, superior audio and twice as powerful active-noise cancellation. There are new capacitive touch controls on each earbud that allows you to adjust volume (a first for an AirPod). They have a more durable case that can wirelessly charge on a Qi charger, MagSafe charger or (most excitingly) an Apple Watch puck. They will ship with an additional size eartip that's "extra small." And the case has a built-in loop that you can attach a small lanyard that Apple will sell separately.

Read our review of the AirPods Pro 2, here.

Price: $249

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The Apple Watch "Ultra" is a completely new line of Apple Watch that's larger, more rugged, more sophisticated and more expensive than any other Apple Watch. It has a bigger and redesigned digital crown and an all-new "Action" button that can be customized to do things like quickly start specific workouts. It has a bigger battery that lasts 36 hours (or up to 60 hours when in low-power mode). And it has a new Compass app and an app specifically designed for recreational scuba divers called Oceanic Plus.

Read our review of the Apple Watch Ultra, here.

Price: $799

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Apple also announced new flagship and budget-friendly Apple Watches in the Series 8 and SE (Gen 2), respectively. Both look nearly identical to their predecessors, admittedly, but Apple gave both a few notable improvements. The new SE has a faster processor, comes in new colors and has a new $249 starting price (which is $30 cheaper than before). The Series 8 has new sensors for body temperature monitoring (which is mostly aimed at women's reproductive health). Both new Apple Watches also can detect if you're in a serious car crash and call for help.

Read our review of the Apple Watch Series 8, here.

More here:

The Best and Coolest New Gadgets of September 2022 - Gear Patrol

Halloween pumpkins: Alternatives to carving

Don't want to make a mess carving pumpkins this Halloween? Try these techniques instead.

ProblemSolved, USA TODAY

With the falling of leaves and spiced latte orders come the autumn feels, and despite the still summer-like weather, Austin is home to pumpkin patches, corn mazes, hayrides and pumpkin hunts.

Here's a list of farms and other places blooming with fall festivities. See websites for pricing and current hours, which can be affected by weather. Is your favorite spot missing? Email ehopkins@statesman.com and we'll add it to our list.

More:The ultimate list of Austin live music for the rest of 2022

Along with hundreds of domestic farm animals, Crowe's Nest is a utopia of fall festivities. Stop by the working farm and rescue wildlife sanctuary for fall festival every Saturday and Sunday through the month of October. (10300 Taylor Lane in Manor; crowesnestfarm.org)

This adventure farm is where visitors can find pig races, a large petting zoo and traditional pumpkin patch fare as part of the Georgetown-based farmstead's fall festival. The annual spree of all things harvest season runs through Nov. 20. Sweet Eats is cashless, and pets are not allowed. (14400 E State Hwy 29; sweeteats.com)

Indian Springs Ranch has it all: pumpkins to pick, animals such as American bison, zebras, white and water buffalo, face painting, fall-themed photo ops, kid's swings and food and craft vendors. (403 Elm View Way, Manchaca; indianspringsranchatx.com)

Home to hayrides, Candy Cornkid Maze, pumpkin paintings and scarecrow stuffings, this Marble Falls farmstead is one way to get your fall season fix. All visitors are welcome through Nov. 6. (1801 FM1980, Marble Falls; sweetberryfarm.com)

When autumn blooms, a pumpkin patch or festival is a must-do, and Dripping Springs Pumpkin Festival is among the best sites. The five-acre farm is the place for over 50 fall-inspired games, activities and attractions. (419 Founders Park Road in Dripping Springs; drippingspringspumpkinfestival.com)

Through Oct. 30, the family-run farm is a mainstay for pumpkin houses, farm animals, photo opps, axe throwing and an unlimited dose of fall fever. (2651 Bob White Road, Temple; therobinsonfamilyfarm.com)

Spend a day at this family-owned farm with Mama Mary, who provides a peek into rural Texas outside Austin's bustling metro area. Visitors can pick out the perfect pumpkin, ride hay wagons and barrel trains, and get lost (but not really) in the land's tractor tire playground or hay maze. (5701 Williamson Road, Creedmoor; mamamarysfarm.com)

Nestled inside the oak tree-filled hills of South-central Texas, stop by the four-generation farm for pumpkin picking and painting and other fall activities from through October. (3117 TX-159, La Grange; texasjersey.com)

Located 30 miles from downtown Austin, the 118-acre farm offers a five-acre corn maze, farm animals, live music, face painting, duck races and other activities. Through Nov. 6. (1115 FM 969, Bastrop; bartonhillfarms.com)

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Scour Evergreen Farms for the annual pumpkin hunt, along with a pumpkin launcher, train ride, a bounce house, fishing pond, kid zip line and other fall fare. (242 Monkey Road, Elgin; evergreen-farms.com)

The pumpkins "are rolling into town" (at Pioneer Farms to be exact), according to this event's website. Visitors are promised art, fire shows and thousands of hand-crafted pumpkin displays. Tickets are by time slot, with no walk-up sales, through Oct. 30. (Pioneer Farms, 10621 Pioneer Farms Drive ; http://www.pumpkinnights.com/austin)

Run wild at Texas Pumpkin Fest. The annual festival, now at a new location in Leander, has more space to explore the area's harvest and Halloween season activities. (8760 FM 2243, Leander; texaspumpkinfest.com)

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Here's a list of pumpkin patches in and around Austin - Austin American-Statesman