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Gene Hackman, wife Betsy Arakawa, dog found dead in bathroom

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Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman (95), his wife classical pianist Betsy Arakawa (63, and their German Shepherd dog was found dead in their bathroom, at Old Sunset Trail in Hyde Park, on 26th February 2025, around 1:45am, in the US state of New Mexico, according to the  Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office.  Gene Hackman who played more than 100 roles during his career, including Lex Luthor in the Chrisopher Reeve-starring Superman movies in the 1970s and 1980s, won two Academy Awards for his role as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in William Friedkin’s 1971 thriller, The French Connection and best supporting actor for playing Little … Continue reading Gene Hackman, wife Betsy Arakawa, dog found dead in bathroom

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Has Silicon Valley lost its way?

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Palantir Technologies, a company that is intertwined with the national security state, Silicon Valley’s utopian tech thinking was always untethered from reality and it’s a good thing that it is now ending. Palantir’s co-founder and CEO Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska claims that in order for the West to retain its global edge – and preserve the freedoms we take for granted – the software industry must renew its commitment to addressing our urgent challenges, including the new arms race for artificial intelligence. Government, in turn, must embrace the most effective features of the engineering mindset that have … Continue reading Has Silicon Valley lost its way?

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The giant Trauma

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The German Peasants’ War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the 1789 French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The peasants took control of vast areas of southern and middle Germany, torching and plundering the monasteries, convents, and castles that stood in their way. But they would prove no match for the forces of the lords, who put down the revolt by slaying somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand peasants in just over two … Continue reading The giant Trauma

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Have we lost ability to make things?

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We live in a manufactured world, Unless you are floating naked through space, you are right  now in direct contact with multiple manufactured products. How ofoten we stop to think: where do the things we buy actually come from? American President, Donald Trump, promised in his recent inaugural address, America would soon become “a manufacturing nation once again”. His planned tariffs, will encourage some global companies to relocate factories back to the US.  Academic expert on innovation and technology at Cambridge University, Tim Minshall’s Your Life Is Manufactured is about perils of losing touch with the art of making things .  This … Continue reading Have we lost ability to make things?

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Entangled pursuit of a fulfilling life

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Ohio-born fiction writer, Sittenfeld has a gift for making daily events of regular people compelling moment by moment, and take the readers in from the start and make them want to keep turning pages.  In “White Women LOL”, a woman urges a group of black restaurant patrons to take their drinks elsewhere, because they are crashing her friend’s birthday party in a private room – not realising that the period for which the room was rented has run out. The encounter is filmed which goes viral online, and tars the protagonist as a racist. She is also helping her friend … Continue reading Entangled pursuit of a fulfilling life

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Cruelty and Trauma 

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Carrion Crow is Glasgow-based Heather Parry’s fourth book, set in London’s Chelsea in the late 19th century, where  Marguerite Périgord, a 19-year-old  daughter of once aristocratic French family, is confined to the attic by her mother “for the sake of her well-being”. Her mother Cécile doesn’t believe she is quite ready for married life. So she leads Marguerite to the attic, where the lack of light will allow her to “acquire the upper-class Pallor” required of a new wife, and the small meals that Cécile delivers on a tray will help Marguerite “establish within herself the reserved palate and physical restraint of the … Continue reading Cruelty and Trauma 

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Toxic side of the global recycling trade

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We in the west should think we’ve become more responsible about our waste and the way it’s managed. In Britain, government pats itself on the back for reducing the amount of thrash going to domestic landfill sites by more than half over the past quarter century.  Millions of tonnes of garbage generated every day have given rise to waste wars, cons and cover ups across thousands of mile and multiple oceans, as dumps and landfills around the world are overflowing. Running across five continents, Alexander Clapp delves inside the world of Javanese recycling gangsters, cruise ship dismantlers in the Aegean, … Continue reading Toxic side of the global recycling trade

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Smells evoke strong memories

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The smells evoke such strong memories? How much body odours control who you fall in love with. How sensitive is the human sense of smell? Ability to arouse hunger, thirst, attraction and disgust The modern man collectively underestimate the power and importance of our sense of smell -and its role in enriching our lives in ways we rarely think  about. Stockholm University, psychology professor, John Olofsson, has been engaged in olfactory research for 20 years, and his work has inspired a mission to lead a “smell revolution” and elevate the status of his favourite sense in an age overwhelmingly dominated by … Continue reading Smells evoke strong memories

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Impulsive decision

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Spiky Cece who is in love, has arrived early at her in-laws’ beautiful lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planner her wedding to Charlie, a cardiac anaesthesiologist with a brilliant future. Charismatic and generous doctor Charlie Margolis, a Swede Levov descendant asks Garrett, a depressed baggage handler at the local airport and his best friend from college, to officiate the wedding. Great-hearted Charlie hopes to reinvigorate melancholic, near misanthropic Garrett, and he wants him and Cece to hit it off, so encourages to spend time together before he arrives for the wedding. Quirky Cece immediately don’t like Garrett, but … Continue reading Impulsive decision

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Hot-air balloons, drifting through a dazzling harlequin sky

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Diana Evans who was catapulted overnight into the role of culture editor, going on to interview a roster of stars like Lauryn Hill, Viola Davis, Alice Walker and Edward Enninful. We watch as she dances on stages in London and travels through Cuba. We walk by her side as she navigates the world- her family and the midlife sandwich, reflections on fashion, yoga, the British monarchy and lockdowns, and the lasting impact of George Floyd and Grenfell. Evans’s “All the Notes”, where she demonstrates just how far she departed from that minimalist utopia to which she has aspired. As artists … Continue reading Hot-air balloons, drifting through a dazzling harlequin sky