In more than one image from 1900s Japan, they look hungover
Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email
We had gone to Japan, we told our daughter, to get her a maneki-neko: the good luck or beckoning cat. She is almost three. She would stay home with my mother, her grandmother. There is a maneki-neko that lives at the till of a manicure shop near our house, and she likes to stop and greet it. Japanese folklore has cats for many things, and we were grateful for this one. Before we left, we wrote letters outlining our progress towards this goal. I put the letters in envelopes for my mother to give to her, one each day. As the week passed, we would meet a mouse in the street, travel to Kyoto to catch goldfish in the river, buy a pizza – extra cheese – for the keeper of the cats.
Why we had actually gone there was to be cats ourselves: to do precisely what we felt like doing whenever we felt like doing it. We roamed the streets, we sat in sunny cafe windows. We hung out at an onsen, which cats would probably not do. We went to an exhibition about animals in arts and crafts and learned that in the late 1800s, people in Japan would affectionately greet cats and dogs using the honorific -san, like Mr or Miss.
Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads
Continue reading...
Breaking Waves: Ocean News
06/17/2024 - 10:00
Almost half of those surveyed said target was ‘unachievable and hurting the economy’ and Australia should instead focus on 2050
Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast
Voters are split on Peter Dutton’s controversial proposal to abandon Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction target, despite rejecting his plan to wait at least 15 years for nuclear power to help achieve net zero by 2050.
The latest Guardian Essential poll of 1,181 respondents suggests Labor’s efforts to boost renewable energy are popular, but the Albanese government is vulnerable to a Coalition campaign focusing on the scale of Australia’s ambition to fight global heating.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup
Continue reading...
06/17/2024 - 09:00
Group that runs Oasis Academy South Bank warns councils prioritise private housing over space for children to breathe
Children facing a ‘brutal’ loss of time and space for play at state schools
Revealed: students at top private schools have 10 times more green space than state pupils
Oasis Academy South Bank in Waterloo sits in a densely built-up corner of south London – so densely that the only space found for the school was in a recommissioned office block. There is no playground, no sports pitch, nowhere to play football at break time.
Steve Chalke is the founder of Oasis Charitable Trust, the organisation that runs the school, one of 54 in their charge across England. He admits it is a challenging environment.
Continue reading...
06/17/2024 - 09:00
Shorter playtimes and shrinking outside space in England have serious implications for children’s wellbeing and mental health
Revealed: students at top private schools have 10 times more green space than state pupils
Indoors at breaktime: the school in a London office block
Private schools in England should be made to share their green space, say campaigners
Children are facing a “brutal” loss of space and time for play in school, teachers, unions and academics have warned.
A combination of factors is eating into the time children spend outside, and will have serious implications for their wellbeing and mental health.
A Guardian analysis of the space available to state school children in England has revealed that thousands are attending schools with very little outside space, with government data showing that more than 300 schools have under 1,000 sq metres and at least 20 have no outside space. In nearly 1,000 schools, there is under 10 sq metres for each pupil.
New and unpublished research from the UCL Institute of Education seen by the Guardian showed a continued downward trend in the amount of time children have for playtime in the wake of the Covid lockdowns, with the youngest losing the most time.
The demands of the curriculum have increased, and continue to diminish time outside, while staffing shortages are reducing capacity to oversee playtime.
Across England and Wales schools face difficult financial decisions, which are having an impact on the funding to care for grounds. Headteachers in the state sector have said they are in desperate need of funding to improve basic facilities for children.
School buildings are crumbling, as many were built with Raac (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) that was not replaced within its usable lifetime, meaning in some cases playgrounds are being used to host temporary classrooms. This is squeezing out the little space some schools have for children to spend time outside.
Continue reading...
06/17/2024 - 09:00
Supporters of access to nature call for legal change after Guardian reveals 10:1 discrepancy with state sector
Revealed: students at top private schools have 10 times more green space than state pupils
Indoors at breaktime: the school in a London office block
Children facing a ‘brutal’ loss of time and space for play at state schools
All schoolchildren should have a right to green space to play in, with private schools made to share their extensive facilities, campaigners have said.
A Guardian investigation this week found that children at England’s top private schools have access to 10 times the amount of green space that the average state school pupil can use, while there are some state school pupils who have no access to playgrounds or playing fields at all.
Continue reading...
06/17/2024 - 08:00
Governments should use fiscal policies to atone for technology-related carbon emissions, urges report
Business live – latest updates
Governments faced with economic upheaval caused by artificial intelligence should consider fiscal policies including taxes on excess profits and a green levy to atone for AI-related carbon emissions, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF said unlike previous technological breakthroughs such as the steam engine, generative AI – the term for computer systems such as ChatGPT that can produce convincing, human-like text, voices and images from simple hand-typed prompts – can spread “much faster” and advances in the technology are happening at “breakneck speed”.
Continue reading...
06/17/2024 - 07:48
Cities in midwest and north-east brace for heatwave with some to experience highs of 105F – 25 degrees above normal
Extreme heat has begun to hit the US, delivered by a high-pressure weather pattern that the federal weather prediction center says will be “potentially the longest experienced in decades for some locations”.
According to meteorologists with WeatherBELL Analytics, about 265 million people in the US are forecast to see air temperatures reach or exceed 90F (32C), with many of them experiencing heat indices of about 105F by next Sunday.
Continue reading...
06/17/2024 - 07:12
Band say carbon emissions for vinyl production will be reduced by 85% thanks to new method, as they announce 10th studio album
Coldplay are aiming to make the most ecologically sustainable vinyl record yet, for their newly announced album Moon Music.
Each 140g vinyl copy of Moon Music, released 4 October, will be manufactured from nine plastic bottles recovered from consumer waste. For a special “notebook edition”, 70% of the plastic has been intercepted by the environmental nonprofit The Ocean Cleanup from Rio Las Vacas, Guatemala, preventing it from entering the Gulf of Honduras and the Atlantic Ocean.
Continue reading...
06/17/2024 - 06:30
The birds have not been seen for at least a decade – some for more than 100 years – but the authors of a new list of missing species have not given up hope
The coppery thorntail and New Caledonian lorikeet are among the 126 birds “lost” to science, having not been seen for a decade or more, according to the most comprehensive list of missing species composed to date.
The new tally is based on millions of records collected by enthusiastic birders and amateur scientists documenting wildlife in some of the planet’s most remote locations. To be part of the dataset, the bird must not have a recorded sighting in at least a decade, and not be assessed as extinct or extinct in the wild by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
Continue reading...
06/17/2024 - 02:49
With tickets doubling as public transport passes and recycled props, Hans Otto Theater is embracing a €3m federal project to make culture climate neutral
A handful of Spanish conquistadors fight through thick undergrowth to emerge in the ivy-clad ruins of a fallen civilisation during a rehearsal of Austrian playwright Thomas Köck’s Your Palaces Are Empty.
Premiered last month at the Hans Otto Theater in Potsdam, south-west of Berlin, the bleak and unforgiving drama probes the wounds of a shattered capitalist world that has exploited its people and the planet’s resources.
Continue reading...
