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Spin ices are magnetic materials in which geometrically frustrated magnetic interactions between the spins prevent long-range magnetic order and lead to a residual entropy similar to in ice (solid water).Spin ices provide a beautiful example of many aspects of emergence, including how surprising new entities can emerge at the mesoscale. I think the combined experimental and theoretical work on spin ice was one of the major achievements of condensed matter …

Favourite stage direction: “The Three Flats, Bow, East London. Canary Wharf and the financial buildings of the City are visible in the distance yet out of reach, like another country on another shore.” (Beru Tessema’s Wolves on Road) The post Wolves on Road appeared first on Aleks Sierz.

Two nights ago I went with my two brothers to hear a reading of Louis MacNeice’s great poem Autumn Journal. It was read beautifully by the Irish actor Éanna Hardwicke, who had clearly memorised many of the 3000 lines. The poem was written between August and December 1938, a fraught time in Britain when people despised the government but passionately supported the appeasement of Hitler—because they remembered well the slaughter …

It’s been an unusual autumn so far. A very notable lack of sun from the end of October into November was followed by an early cold snap before Storm Bert brought flooding chaos to parts of south Wales, the West Country and elsewhere. Just before the beginning of every winter I have a crack at predicting what winter will be like; the results often being very mixed. However, on looking …

Thanksgiving Drawing from a Scrapbook circa 1940 Collection Jim Linderman

By: Luke StrangeFor those that have followed us for a while, you may have seen our Council Homepage Website Emissions tracker. Every few weeks, we update the data on the site to see how council websites are performing. We measure the size of the web page in bytes, and we use Website Carbon Calculator to estimate the amount of CO2 that loading each page produces. We get in touch with …

Photo by FlyD on Unsplash “At the 83rd UN General Assembly, UN Special Envoy on Future Generations Celebrates Four Years of Global Transformation.” This paper was developed in October 2024 by the School of International Futures, to lay out a vision for a successful implementation of the Declaration on Future Generations up to the next review. The paper is set in 2028, as a Keynote Speech from the 1st Special …

As one who has felt strongly about this for many years this was welly before I was diagnosed with my Terminal liver disease added to my respiratory problems after living with it for several months. My health changes day to day most mornings I feel sick, my back aches most of the day despite pain killers I get dizzy spells, I hardly sleep at the most 2 hours plus the …

In central Brixton, near the library and facing the Town Hall, there is a huge ghostsign advertising Bovril*, a beef extract product that is still available today. Bovril was created by John Lawston Johnson in 1897 – its popularity and success enabled him move into and adapt a house that can be found a few stops along the railway line from Brixton, at Kingswood House, Sydenham Hill. Indeed the house …

Believe it or not, I’ve only read one Georgette Heyer before – I listened to April Lady and really enjoyed it. In the three years since, I’ve bought quite a few Heyer novels but haven’t actually got around to reading any of them. A little while ago, I thought I’d see if any of the Heyer titles on my shelves matched gaps on A Century of Books – and landed …

A view from my studio window over Hastings’ West Hill. Photograph by the author. This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird. From Joe Crawford at ArtLung - Dune and Colonialism: I notice that Al has …

From Secret Cars by François Mercier (via)

Crystal Eye Centre were first out the gate to say “come see us!” when I started this series of buying one thing from every shop on the Crystal Palace triangle, a year ago today. They also said I don’t have to buy anything but excuse me I think you’ll find I do, it’s all clearly documented in the rules. So I’ve been waiting for my eyes to deteriorate some more …

A year ago today I was in Seville at the end of a fantastic trip with my eldest son. These are some of the notes I put down on the hoof in my pocket notebook. (video at the end of this post) 23rd November 2023The smell of jasmine draped over an old sandstone wall near the cathedral, cascading into a narrow street. The beautiful garlands with the giant fig tree, …

A guide for Debian and Ubuntu on how to install PHP 8.4 on a new server or how to upgrade an existing PHP setup to PHP 8.4.