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SattarBuksh wins trademark case against Starbucks

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Sattar Buksh, a Karachi-based café owner famous for his humorous menu items like the “Besharam Burger”, LOC Pizza, got into trademark branding dispute with Starbucks. The multinational claimed that the resemblance in logo and name could confuse customers, dilute its brand and potentially infringe on trademark laws. When you think Starbucks, the multinational, you picture the iconic green siren. In Karachi two Pakistani entrepreneurs Rizwan Ahmad and Adnan Yousuf, opened a café called Sattarbuksh,  (buksh, meaning servant). They think it is parody not piracy. Although at first glance their logo resembled like a cheeky twin of Starbucks, except instead of mermaid, … Continue reading SattarBuksh wins trademark case against Starbucks

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Who Knows What: The Paradoxes of human behaviour

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Harvard psychologist, one of the world’s greatest thinkers, and cognitive scientist, Steven Pinker, in When Everyone Knows that Everyone Knows, explores common knowledge- a concept deriving from game theory that describes the state in which not only does everyone knows something, but everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone knows. This idea according to Pinker “illuminates many enigmas of our public affairs and personal lives” and constitutes “a keystone in understanding the social world”. Pinker shows us how we think about each other’s thoughts, ad infinitum, it sounds impossible, but we do it all the same. This awareness which we … Continue reading Who Knows What: The Paradoxes of human behaviour

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Old spies are more dangerous

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The 9th book in the series behind slow horses, an Apple original series now streaming on Apple TV+. Jackson Lamb and the bad spies of Slough House are caught in a deadly battle between MI5’s secret past and its murky future in this gripping heart breaking and hilarious thriller by Mick Herron, with a degree in English from Balliol College, Oxford. The Slow Horses are MI5 officers who have been put out to grass at Slough House, a drab office building in central London. Foremost among the team of boozers, good for nothing, and walking wounded is their boss, Jackson Lamb, … Continue reading Old spies are more dangerous

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Sex worker who makes a Faustian pact with the tycoon

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A woman meets a man on a train in Copenhagen and agrees to visit him in London, While she sits out a two-week Covid quarantine in his apartment, she begins to tell her story. Years ago and desperate for money, she sold herself to a stranger called T. She becomes his captive, holed up in a swanky apartment for total control of her body and severed from the outside world, in exchange for any material possession she desires. In the bed between them lay a large kitchen knife and the promise of an iconic death. She aborted the treacherous game … Continue reading Sex worker who makes a Faustian pact with the tycoon

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Sentimental history

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Ferdinand Mount in Soft, delves from Middle Ages to now, the ebb and flow of sentimentality in literature, art, politics, law and society through three “revolutions”. The first sentimental revolution was all about troubadours and courtly love, medieval piety and its love of saints and ritual. The monasteries provided hospitals for the poor and hospitality for the pilgrim stranger. This was all demolished by harsh Protestantism. Mount likens Calvin’s chilling austerity to “the diatribes of right-wing Tory MPs against slackers and freeloaders’. The 19th century brought a swing against sentimentality towards manliness, emphasising not only reason, but also courage in battle, … Continue reading Sentimental history

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Vanishing skills and traditions

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Craft Land Britain was once a craft land and for generations what we made with our hands shaped our identities, built our communities and defined our regions. Historian and fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, James Fox travels the length of Britain to seek out the country’s last great craftspeople in Craftland and chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that used to govern every aspect of life on these shores. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and Coopers, thatchers, bellfounders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life, one that is not yet … Continue reading Vanishing skills and traditions

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Robert Redford dies aged 89

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16.9.25 Award winning actor Robert Redford dies at home aged 89.Acclaimed and universally loved actor Robert Redford started his career in artand travelled round Europe as a very young man, sleeping rough, meeting andfraternising with people and doing lots of drawings. When he returned to theUSA he began doing set painting only to be told he was on the wrong side ofthe camera and swiftly moved into acting. He was so popular and talented, hemade a very successful movie career and married twice spawning fourchildren. At least one of them is deceased but he leaves the other children andfour grandchildren. … Continue reading Robert Redford dies aged 89

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Photography celebrates its bicentenary in 2026

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Flashes of Brilliance is the story of the wildest experiments in early photography and the wild people who undertook them. Spare a thought when you take photos from an airplane window, or using a camera underwater, watch a movie or view an X-Ray. These inventions made such things possible were experimental revelatory, and sometimes dangerous- and many of the innovators, entrepreneurs, and inventors behind them were memorable eccentrics. Did you know, the earliest photographers didn’t just take snaps in the studio, or did dull sepia plats of formal gardens, or took staged portraits, but they were detectives, baloonists, deep-sea divers.  … Continue reading Photography celebrates its bicentenary in 2026

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AI-based firefighting helmet

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Amirhussain Kamran Karkaj, an Iranian inventor wins gold medal at the US Silicon Valley International Invention festival for AI  firefighting helmet. His invention is a smart firefighting helmet equipped with a heads-up display and an AI-based vital signs analysis system. The helmet equipped with alert sensors, camera, display and artificial intelligence, and through a control centre it could pinpoint the exact location of the firefighter enabling colleagues to quickly assist during emergency. It was designed with unique features to enhance firefighting safety, using advanced technology to deliver real-time monitoring of vital signs and displays environmental data in critical situations. Karkaj said … Continue reading AI-based firefighting helmet

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Political conflict amid age of AI

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As open internet is fragmenting and democracies aim to control Big Tech, Silicon Valley adopts an American-first agenda, and authoritarian regimes like China and Russia to isolate their populations from the internet, the most powerful tool for bringing us together risks being dismantled. Nick Clegg, Meta’s former President of Global Affairs, reveals where Big Tech has faltered, how Silicon Valley’s insularity has led to mistakes, and the necessary radical reforms for global platforms to ensure their future. While new regulations are crucial, imposing national borders on the internet would undermine its capacity for sharing knowledge collaboration, education, trade and research, … Continue reading Political conflict amid age of AI