Extra Credits
Published on 14 Nov 2017Frankenstein’s monster discovered three books that shaped his understanding of the world, including the Sorrows of Young Werther. Werther’s unrequited love for a woman eventually leads him to commit suicide. Frankenstein’s monster wants to experience love as well, but Mary Shelley has her own critique of this idea of love.
November 16, 2017
Frankenstein: The Sorrows of Young Werther – Extra Sci Fi – #3
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Housing woes in the downtown core
A timely and clearly heartfelt plea by Eleanor Shaw that only needs a brief preface from Colby Cosh:
Some of you will read this without ever knowing it is satire, despite this helpful disclaimer https://t.co/uPSqMrCrts
— Colby Cosh (@colbycosh) November 15, 2017
All I want are the same things my parents wanted – a good job, a loving partner and a two-bedroom live/work space with balcony in a nice area of the world’s third-richest city.
It’s easy for the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. To them, with low property prices in areas considered ‘undesirable’ at the time and interest rates between five and 15 per cent, getting a mortgage was easy.
But for us, those opportunities have gone. To live anywhere in London, even somewhere unsexy, is prohibitively expensive. All the nice houses are already owned by older people with better jobs, a situation surely unique in the history of the world.
And it’s not just London. In all the other cool cities around the UK – Edinburgh, Bristol, Manchester – stylish city-centre properties suitable for fashionable twentysomethings are priced far, far beyond our reach.
[…]
The government must act now to build affordable properties for millennials, and support us during our tough first decade in the capital as we work our way up in our careers until we have cleared our debts and are pulling in seven figures.
Then, and only then, can we sell our London homes to developers and move to massive houses in the country.
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15 British Sweets Everyone Should Try – Anglophenia Ep 22
Anglophenia
Published on 7 Jan 2015From Cadbury Flake to jelly babies, Siobhan Thompson shows us the British candies we should all try at least once.
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QotD: Carrier cynicism
If you are a follower of UK defence matters, then it seems to be traditional that you must be find a reason, any reason, to naysay and be downbeat about something good. The recent sailing of QUEEN ELIZABETH (QEC, and of course, not yet an HMS), is a good example of this. There were tweets and moans aplenty about an aircraft carrier supposedly without aircraft, about it being empty for years across a barren flight deck with tumbleweed and adrift deck hockey quoits the sole occupants, and of course that’s assuming a 17-year-old hacker hadn’t somehow taken charge of the ship using its SHOCK HORROR Windows XP system that’s not actually connected to the internet to somehow do something bad. This is without mentioning the near orgasmic levels of excitement the media wound themselves up into with the prospect of the vessel running into the side of the dockyard or being stuck under the Forth Bridge.
In reality the opening days of the QE’s sea trials could not have gone better for the Royal Navy and the MOD. An outstandingly effective PR operation managed to secure a great deal of national media coverage of this event, and most of the main papers had photos of the ship at sea. Some highly astute programming ensured that a pair of Type 23 frigates and a pair of Merlin helicopters were immediately available to ostensibly provide cover, but arguably in reality provided the nation with several years of stock footage of British carrier groups at sea. Within a couple of days the first landing was achieved, thus slaying the ‘but she’ll have no aircraft’ argument, and the internet is awash with glorious photos of the biggest warship ever built outside of the United States of America at sea. To top it all off, some sharply pointed jibes towards the Russians by the Secretary of State for Defence managed to elicit a strong reaction, suggesting the Bear is not as thick skinned as it wishes to portray itself to be.
Sir Humphrey, “Some Brief Thoughts on QUEEN ELIZABETH sailing”, Thin Pinstriped Line, 2017-07-03.
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