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Suitable for ideas on Descriptive Writing, The Joy of Autumn

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Suitable for ideas on Descriptive Writing, The Joy of Autumn

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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/sep/23/autumn-fall-mania-pumpkin-spice-lattes

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Louise O'Neill: We have a culture of people afraid to change but who secretly want to

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I saw a cartoon recently in which a butterfly and a caterpillar (stay with me) are sitting at a table, having a drink together, when the caterpillar says to the butterfly, "you've changed". To this, the butterfly responds "we're supposed to".

It caught my attention because recently I've seen, "you've changed" being levelled at people as the worst insult possible, as if no offence could be graver than daring to change.

We see this a lot with those in the public eye; as I mentioned in last week's column, we demand a certain level of authenticity from our favourite celebrities, we watch them closely, looking for proof that they have remained 'real', that they are, beneath the expensive clothes and perfectly toned abs, 'just like us'.

And while it goes without saying that celebrities are mere human beings and are no more special than any of us, (except for our saviour, Beyoncé), it seems almost ludicrous to demand that they remain completely unaffected by, say, performing in front of 100,000 people, screaming their name, or having their start-up valued at twenty billion dollars.

When we were young ... 😂 #Caterpillar #butterfly #chance #time #past #aging #fun #cartoon #OldProfilePic #oldpic #maturing #whenwewereyoung pic.twitter.com/57xt9LeQRi
- Sabine Mueller (@sabine_mueller1) September 23, 2017

It doesn't excuse someone turning into a tantrum-throwing monster but wealth and success on that kind of massive scale is such a rarefied occurrence, how could it not change you?

All major life changes have a similar impact - the unexpected death of a loved one, for example. A long-term chronic illness. Enduring a traumatic event such as sexual violence, abuse, or a near-death experience. Even with the help of a good therapist and the support of friends and family, how could you expect to emerge exactly the same as you had been before? Such incidents shape us, subtly shifting our futures, creating new selves in which to inhabit, and that doesn't have to be a negative thing. It's just different.

I find it interesting that people seem to be simultaneously terrified of change - viewing it as a disruption of their desire to see the world as something they can control, and disasters as something they can safeguard against if only they try hard enough -while still striving to become a New You, a Better You.

New Year's Resolutions are predicated on the desire to change your life; to earn more money, to find a partner, to stop losing your temper with the kids, drink less, go to the gym more.

The dieting industry wouldn't exist without stoking the fires of those desires, promising that if you lose weight and change your body, you will finally achieve that which, in the end, we are all seeking for -- happiness.

(As an aside, I don't believe this to be true. True, sustainable happiness comes from within, it cannot be maintained from external markers such as your appearance.)

It appears to me that we have a culture of people who are afraid of change but who secretly want to change - and then, just to make matters more complicated, don't actually believe that change is possible at all.

It takes a huge amount of cognitive dissonance to A) tell others they've changed, and mean it as an slight, B) write down 'lose weight' as your resolution every January 1st, and C) shrug your shoulders and say "a leopard never changes its spots" when someone repeats a certain pattern of behaviour, over and over again.

Of course, we are capable of real change. (Even on a physical level, we essentially become a new person every seven years because in that time, every cell in our bodies is replaced by a new cell. Isn't that wild?!) I have seen this is in my own life.

The events that others might assume would have enacted the greatest change - books being published, film rights being sold, etc - have been lovely, but the shift in consciousness that has had the greatest impact on my day to day has been my recovery.

Sometimes I look at my life now and I am stunned by how different it is to even two years ago. I've reclaimed so much free time because I'm not using up hours of my day to engage in eating disorder behaviours, I have more energy, I am capable of radical honesty in my relationships because I'm don't have to lie about my eating.

I go to the gym as a way of managing stress rather than burning fat, I eat dessert when I'm out for a meal with my boyfriend and think nothing of it afterwards except that it was delicious, I make a snack for myself when I am hungry and I move on with my day.

To most people reading this, what I've described will seem simple, every day. For me and for others who have suffered from disordered eating, they are acts of revolution. For the first time in my adult life, I feel free.

Yet, for all that, I am essentially the same person.

Before, I thought that recovery would mean a metamorphosis of the sort experienced by the aforementioned butterfly, a St Paul of the Road to conversion into someone entirely different. I have begun to wonder if, perhaps, real change happens when you become more of you really are, inhabiting fully who you were put on this planet to be. Maybe the only thing we need to do is take a deep breath and say, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference".

Louise Says

READ: The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary. Two strangers. Eye watering rental prices in London. A solution? Tiffy and Leon will share a bed - he has solo occupancy during the day, she has it while Leon is working the night shift - but they never meet. This is uplifting and joyous; I fell in love with Tiffy and Leon.

GO: The stage adaptation of Maeve Binchy's seminal novel, Light A Penny Candle, comes to the Everyman Theatre from April 16 to April 20 (it plays at Dublin's Gaiety Theatre from April 23). Get tickets at everymancork.com

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We have a culture of people afraid to change but who secretly want to

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I saw a cartoon recently in which a butterfly and a caterpillar (stay with me) are sitting at a table, having a drink together, when the caterpillar says to the butterfly, "you've changed". To this, the butterfly responds "we're supposed to".

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Louise O'Neill: When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realise that one cannot eat money

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I was listening to 'Still Processing', an excellent podcast presented by two culture writers with The New York Times, when they introduced that week's guest. It was David Wallace-Wells, the climate columnist for New York Magazine, and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth, a devastating look at what our future will look like on Earth if global warming continues unabated. The article he wrote by the same name, which went viral in 2017, made for terrifying reading, and the book, with its chapter headings like 'Heat Death' and 'Plagues of Warming' doesn't appear any more cheerful.

Wallace-Wells predicts that we have approximately 12 years before we reach a catastrophic level of environmental destruction that will be almost impossible to come back from. At that point, I had to switch the podcast off because I felt so anxious. Twelve years is soon. There's something quite bittersweet about the fact that so many of us have fought for a world in which we are equal, where basic human rights are afforded to all people, regardless of their gender, sexuality, race, or religion, and after all that, there might not even be a world left to save.

I don't claim to be an expert in this field - shamefully, I must admit I find the material too anxiety-provoking to read enough of it to even call myself 'well-versed' - but I do trust the experts who have dedicated their lives to measuring and monitoring the impact that global warming has had.

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When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realise that one cannot eat money

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I was listening to 'Still Processing', an excellent podcast presented by two culture writers with The New York Times, when they introduced that week's guest. It was David Wallace-Wells, the climate columnist for New York Magazine, and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth, a devastating look at what our future will look like on Earth if global warming continues unabated.

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A hard Border makes return of violence to Northern Ireland 'inevitable' - stark new report warns https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/a-hard-border-makes-return-of-violence-to-northern-ireland-inevitable-stark-new-report-warns-37825461.html

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https://www.google.ie/amp/s/blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/full-text-theresa-mays-conference-speech/amp/

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Fintan O’Toole: ‘There is no future in England’s dreaming’ via The Irish Times https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-there-is-no-future-in-england-s-dreaming-1.3703135

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The 100 million city: is 21st century urbanisation out of control?

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The 1960 street map of Lagos, Nigeria, shows a small western-style coastal city surrounded a few semi-rural African villages. Paved roads quickly turn to dirt, and fields to forest. There are few buildings over six floors high and not many cars.

No one foresaw what happened next. In just two generations Lagos grew 100-fold, from under 200,000 people to nearly 20 million. Today one of the world's 10 largest cities, it sprawls across nearly 1,000 sq km. Vastly wealthy in parts, it is largely chaotic and impoverished. Most residents live in informal settlements, or slums. The great majority are not connected to piped water or a sanitation system. The city's streets are choked with traffic, its air is full of fumes, and its main dump covers 40 hectares and receives 10,000 metric tons of waste a day.

Overstretched Cities is an in-depth look at how urbanisation has seen cities all over the world mushroom in size, putting new strain on infrastructure and resources - but in some cases offering hope for a more sustainable relationship with the natural world.

Over the course of the week, Guardian Cities correspondents will look beyond the numbers to tell the stories of people affected by the 21st century's population and consumption boom. From sprawling cities in the developed world that are consuming more than their fair share of energy and water, to less wealthy cities unequipped to handle the rapid increase in geographical and population size, we will interrogate this global phenomenon by talking to the people who are trying to mitigate its worst effects - and shine a light on the upside of our population boom by exploring the social and environmental advantages of urban density.

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But new research suggests that the changes Lagos has seen in the last 60 years may be nothing to what might take place in the next 60. If Nigeria's population continues to grow and people move to cities at the same rate as now, Lagos could become the world's largest metropolis, home to 85 or 100 million people. By 2100, it is projected to be home to more people than California or Britain today, and to stretch hundreds of miles - with enormous environmental effects.

Hundreds of far smaller cities across Asia and Africa could also grow exponentially, say the Canadian demographers Daniel Hoornweg and Kevin Pope at the Ontario Institute of Technology. They suggest that Niamey, the barely known capital of Niger - a west African country with the highest birth rate in the world - could explode from a city of fewer than one million people today to be the world's eighth-largest city, with 46 million people, in 2100. Sleepy Blantyre in southern Malawi could mushroom to the size of New York City today.

Under the researchers' extreme scenario - where countries are unable to control fertility rates and urbanisation continues apace - within 35 years more than 100 cities will have populations larger than 5.5 million people. By 2100, say the authors, the world's population centers will have shifted to Asia and Africa, with only 14 of the 101 largest cities in Europe or the Americas.

What happens to those cities over the next 30 years will determine the global environment and the quality of life of the world's projected 11 billion people. It's impossible to know how exactly how cities will grow, of course. But the stark fact, according to the United Nations, is that much of humanity is young, fertile and increasingly urban. The median age of Nigeria is just 18, and under 20 across all Africa's 54 countries; the fertility rate of the continent's 500 million women is 4.4 births. Elsewhere, half of India's population is under age 25, and Latin America's average age is as high as 29.

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The 100 million city: is 21st century urbanisation out of control?

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The 1960 street map of Lagos, Nigeria, shows a small western-style coastal city surrounded a few semi-rural African villages. Paved roads quickly turn to dirt, and fields to forest. There are few buildings over six floors high and not many cars. No one foresaw what happened next.

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Joe Brolly: Despair behind the empty plea to 'have a great day' https://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/joe-brolly-despair-behind-the-empty-plea-to-have-a-great-day-36666481.html

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‘Well, how are you?’ When an unoriginal conversation does just fine (via @IrishTimes) https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/well-how-are-you-when-an-unoriginal-conversation-does-just-fine-1.3382136

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Fintan O'Toole: Irexit would be the end of Irish nationalism (via @IrishTimes) https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-irexit-would-be-the-end-of-irish-nationalism-1.3389695

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‘One solace I have had over the past terrible year is the knowledge that John was – and is – deeply loved’ (via @IrishTimes) https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/one-solace-i-have-had-over-the-past-terrible-year-is-the-knowledge-that-john-was-and-is-deeply-loved-1.3357788

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From feminism to broflake: the words of 2017

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Can you sum up 12 months in a word? At the end of 2017, it might be difficult to think beyond expletives, but a year in world events is also a year in the language used to describe them. And the contests over what language is appropriate can become events in themselves.

Was it appropriate, for example, to describe predatory male behaviour as "inappropriate"? This adjective saw a global upswing in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations. Various powerful men committed "inappropriate" acts, and it was also deemed "inappropriate" for Michael Gove to joke about them on the radio. "Inappropriate", though, is the kind of word one uses to softly rebuke a child, so in this context it seemed rather a hedge, or an umbrella term with too wide a canopy. Better in many cases, people decided, to say "abuse" or "harassment". If one can consider it a word in its own right, the hashtag "#MeToo", used by women describing their own similar experiences, was the year's most powerful lexical novelty.

Of the nominations for word of the year by the major dictionaries, Merriam-Webster's was the most on point in this regard: they named " feminism", searches for which had spiked in sync with news events throughout the year. People searched more for "feminism", for example, when the White House aide Kellyanne Conway declared that she didn't consider herself a feminist "in the classic sense". (Whether she considers herself a feminist in the modern sense, or the postmodern sense, remains a mystery.) In 2017 there were 70% more searches on Merriam-Webster's site for the meaning, classic or otherwise, of feminism than in the previous year. The very fact that people still have to look the word up demonstrates the continued necessity of the idea.

Quick guide
Who are the key Russian players in the Trump collusion accusations?

Natalia Veselnitskaya

A Russian lawyer whose work has focused on ending US sanctions on Russia and who met with Trump representatives Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort at Trump Tower in June 2016. Read further.

Sergey Kislyak

Until recently, the Russian ambassador to the US. A hub for contacts with Trump representatives including Kushner, attorney general Jeff Sessions, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and the president himself. Read further.

Sergey Gorkov

The Kremlin-connected head of Russian state investment bank Vnesheconombank. He met with Kushner during the presidential transition, but "no specific policies were discussed", according to Kushner. Read further.

Dimitri Simes

President of the Center for the National Interest, a Washington thinktank, which hosted an April 2016 foreign policy speech by Trump. Trump, Sessions and Kushner appear to have met with Kislyak at the event, although both Kushner and Sessions have said any meeting was only in passing and they don't recall what was discussed. Read further.
By Tom McCarthy

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For its part, Oxford Dictionaries went in a rather eccentric direction by nominating as its word of the year, after 2016's evergreen "post-truth", the compound noun " youthquake". This is defined as "a significant cultural, political or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people", and was used a bit this summer to describe the surprisingly high turnout of young voters to support Jeremy Corbyn's triumphant loss in the general election. Later figures put youth turnout at 64%, as against 69% for the electorate as a whole, so this "youthquake" (a term that dates from the early 1960s and the invention of the teenager) was not quite so earth-shaking after all; more of a youth-tremor or youth-wobble.

Oxford's shortlist for words of the year was more fun than its winner, containing the splendid "broflake". Where "snowflake" is used by rightwing (or "alt-right") men to ridicule the sensitivities of liberals, "broflake" turns the insult back at them, when they complain about women-only screenings of Wonder Woman or the casting of a woman as the lead in Doctor Who. The year's most prominent broflake was James Damore, the programmer who wrote the notorious "Google memo", which begins with a whine about the scourge of a "politically correct monoculture" within his company, and then purports to offer a completely dispassionate overview of why science says that women probably aren't very good with computers, even though it was a woman ( Grace Hopper) who invented the very idea of a computer programming language, as used by tech broflakes ever since.

Q&A
Who are the 20 women accusing Donald Trump of assault and harassment?

Jessica Leeds

Ivana Trump

Jill Harth

Kristen Anderson

Lisa Boyne

Cathy Heller

Temple Taggart

Mariah Billado

Karena Virginia

Bridget Sullivan

Tasha Dixon

Melinda McGillivray

Jennifer Murphy

Rachel Crooks

Natasha Stoynoff

Ninni Laaksonen

Jessica Drake

Samantha Holvey

Summer Zervos

Cassandra Searles
Read the full details of the 20 accusations here

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Continuing dissatisfaction with the results of the 2016 US election led the website dictionary.com to choose "complicit" as its word of the year. It was looked up a lot in March, after a Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Ivanka Trump, played by Scarlett Johansson, selling a perfume called Complicit, and then again after Ivanka herself said, when asked whether she and her husband were complicit in the actions of Donald: "If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact, then I'm complicit." Similarly, if being a murderer is wanting to rescue kittens, then I am a murderer.

Not far semantically from complicity is "collusion", which the president spent the whole year denying: specifically, the idea that there had been any collusion between his campaign team and the Russians. Trump tweeted in October: "It is now commonly agreed after many months of COSTLY looking, that there was NO collusion between Russia and Trump. Was collusion with HC!" It's interesting to speculate as to why collusion, specifically, is the thing Trump has chosen to deny. It may be that, just as Bill Clinton operated with a private definition of " sexual relations" that did not include blowjobs, Trump is relying on a strict interpretation of "collusion" as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary: "Secret agreement or understanding for purposes of trickery or fraud; underhand scheming or working with another; deceit, fraud, trickery." Perhaps a loyal lexicographer has advised Trump that a secret pact with Russia would not be collusion if it was not for the purposes of trickery or fraud, but simply for the purposes of winning the election.

Lastly, among the major dictionaries, Collins stayed on the safest ground by choosing as its word (or phrase) of the year "fake news". We had all heard about this already in 2016, of course, but mysteriously it hasn't gone away. Its use, though, has subtly altered, at least at the tiny hands of Trump. Where he used to denounce particular stories as "fake news", he now refers to the entire news media (save a few favourite outlets such as Fox) as "the fake news". In other words, everything that counts as proper news is fake. This attempt to dismiss the authority of journalism as a whole has its resentful twin on the left, among those who dismiss the output of the "mainstream media" or MSM, and prefer to acquire their news from outlets set up by party activists or funded by Russia and libertarian billionaires. Of course, this column itself is part of the MSM, so I would say that, wouldn't I?

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From feminism to broflake: the words of 2017

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Can you sum up 12 months in a word? At the end of 2017, it might be difficult to think beyond expletives, but a year in world events is also a year in the language used to describe them. And the contests over what language is appropriate can become events in themselves.

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Russian interference in USA election- technological abuse

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Russian interference in USA election- technological abuse

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Quirky essay on young people and snowflakes

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Quirky essay on young people and snowflakes

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I find Prince Harry marginally less odious than the rest of his royal tribe (via @IrishTimes) https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/i-find-prince-harry-marginally-less-odious-than-the-rest-of-his-royal-tribe-1.3310899

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Eminem
https://open.spotify.com/track/4g2j0YZdGB8x5vQjXmJsKN