fierce

It’s beginning to seem like Binyavanga Wainaina’s satirical essay How to Write About Africa might be, after the Bible, the most read English-language text on the African continent. It skewered cliched writing with a roll call of stereotypes that appear to be obligatory in descriptions of the continent. “Readers will be put off,” he writes, “if you don’t mention the light in Africa. And sunsets – the African sunset is a must.”The essay touched a nerve, and alongside the short story Discovering Home, which won the Caine…

In 1962 Heinz Stolp, a researcher in Berlin, was searching for new viruses when he ran out of the filters that sieved them from his samples. So he substituted filters with slightly larger holes: 1.35 microns instead of 0.2 micron. No viruses, which normally reproduce very quickly, grew on the glass plates he had coated with bacteria to use as virus chow, and at that point, the contents should have been tossed. But he didn’t get around to it, and a few days later, tantalizing signs appeared: holes in the lawn of bacteria.…

Donal Ryan’s latest novel is a book of opposing forces. It begins with an ending – the abrupt loss of a character we have only just met – yet concludes with a hope for the people he left behind. Between those events lies a coming-of-age story that explores the challenges of growing up in a tight rural community in 1980s Ireland, and the broader landscape of prejudice, misogyny and family conflict.Ryan won the Guardian first book award in 2013 for The Spinning Heart, set in rural Ireland after the collapse of the Celtic…

Amazon. AMZN 1.52% com Inc. wants to bring healthcare into the “Everything Store.” It may become one of the most difficult expansions in the company’s history.The technology giant’s acquisition of 1LifeHealthcare Inc., which operates a primary-care practice under the name One Medical, will give Amazon more than 180 clinics with employed physicians across roughly two dozen U.S. markets. The $3.9 billion deal, including debt, also gives Amazon a larger foothold in selling…

House of the Dragon key art is here. On Wednesday, HBO shared a new poster from the Game of Thrones spin-off, set two centuries before the events featured on the show, to introduce fans to Australian actress Milly Alcock's Rhaenyra Targaryen, a dragon rider fighting for the right to occupy the coveted Iron Throne during the bloody war dubbed the “Dance of the Dragons”. She is seen sporting a red dress and a golden cape. It features several swords, which appears to be a reference to the Iron Throne. We also get a glimpse…

Pranshu Verma / Washington Post: The US military is embracing video gaming culture to attract and retain talent, but faces internal challenges and fierce outside criticism for doing so — The military is embracing video gaming culture, but faces internal challenges and outside criticism for doing so — In May, the U.S. military created a new rivalry. Pranshu Verma / Washington Post: The US military is embracing video gaming culture to attract and retain talent, but faces internal…

Events have lent an explosive new significance to this prophetic movie about the agony of exile from debut director Elie Grappe, which showed at Cannes last year and is now being released in UK cinemas to raise money for Ukrainian refugees. It concerns Olga, a dedicated teenage Ukrainian gymnast, excellently played by the real-life Ukrainian gymnast Anastasia Budiashkina, who herself last week arrived in Poland after escaping Kharkiv.In the movie, Olga leaves her homeland for Switzerland during the 2014 Maidan revolution…

Iranian film-maker Saeed Roustayi delivers a big, absorbing, character-driven family drama in the Italian-American style with fierce performances, a huge set-piece wedding scene and touches of Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Coppola’s The Godfather. There’s even some Arthur Miller amid the angry, painful recrimination.We get a blistering turn from Taraneh Alidoosti – known for her work on movies by Asghar Farhadi – playing the Leila of the title: a woman driven to distraction by the indolent, incompetent patriarchy.…

These Massachusetts rockers had intended their previous full-length album, 2019’s Final Transmission, as just that – a last hurrah, completing material begun with late bassist and vocalist Caleb Scofield who was killed in a car crash in 2018. But, says singer and guitarist Stephen Brodsky, the healing process of its production led to this seventh album together.Cave In: Heavy Pendulum album artworkHeavy Pendulum is certainly the sound of a renewed band and is, like everything they’ve recorded since 2003’s Antenna (their…