filthy

Now, before you accuse me of being an agent of the Great Horned Rat, I just want you to hear me out when I say that Skaven rule and Stormcast drool. The good news for us both is that Games Workshop has announced an upcoming fourth edition of Age of Sigmar, and it will center around shenanigans from everyone’s favorite rat-men. The Skaven are returning to the fray in a major way, streaming from the shadows and darkened places into the light. The day of the rat has come, and it’s time to usher in the age of Vermindoom.…

Ammonia is perhaps best known as a household cleaner or the chemical that makes your pee smell. Few might realise, however, that half of the world’s food production relies on ammonia-based fertilisers produced in just a handful of countries.  This clear, foul-smelling chemical is largely made by superheating water, air, and natural gas under pressure — a process that emits vast quantities of carbon dioxide. Ammonia synthesis is by far the dirtiest chemical manufacturing process in the world,…

When the social historian Emily Cockayne first came across an old newspaper article about some “indescribably filthy” letters that were sent to residents of Littlehampton in the 1920s, she knew immediately that she wanted to write about it.But she never dreamed that recounting the extraordinary real life events she had uncovered in a scholarly book about the history of neighbours would one day net her a film deal for a movie starring Olivia Colman, Timothy Spall and Jessie Buckley.Penning Poison by Emily Cockayne.…

Like countless singer-songwriters before her, South Tyneside-born auteur Nadine Shah has used her lived experience as a springboard. Love Your Dum and Mad, her 2013 debut, channelled her grief after two friends took their own lives. Kitchen Sink, Shah’s 2020 outing, pilloried the absurdities of thirtysomething womanhood. Between records, she has been outspoken on racism and musicians’ dwindling incomes. Filthy Underneath is, though, her most personal statement yet. Topless Mother details a sub par therapy experience with…

While her name is an awful mouthful, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon remains something of a Zelig figure. Pick up almost any book about Victorian literary circles and she’ll be in it somewhere. You see her here, you see her there, this much-admired artist and co-founder of Girton College, Cambridge, this cousin of Florence Nightingale and friend of George Eliot. In as much as she sticks in the mind when your attention is really supposed to be elsewhere, she is a pleasing, bustling kind of figure: independent, cheery, rather…

Ninety years before the Lady Chatterley trial, the Old Bailey was tying itself in knots trying to decide whether The Fruits of Philosophy was the sort of thing that would corrupt wives and servants. Written in simple, unshowy language by an American physician, Fruits set out the basics of contraception, principally by means of “the female” self-administering a spermicidal douche post-coitus. The tone was sensible and brisk, and about as far from a turn-on as could be imagined.Still, as far as the British authorities were…

Schematic illustration of micro/nanoplastics captured by algae-based biohybrid robots. Credit: Diogo Pinheiro This week, we reported on new developments in lithium-ion batteries, and a real industrial pollution hat trick with stories on coal, lead and microplastics. Batteries changed In a display of Monday-morning quarterbacking of…

Saturday’s demonstrators targeted South Korean auto giant Hyundai. In addition to criticizing the company’s reliance on coal-powered steel plants, which a report from climate groups linked to 506 pollution-related premature deaths in 2021, they also denounced the company’s reported labor practices. Last December, a Reuters investigation found undocumented children working in the automaker’s supply chain in Alabama.“Hyundai does not condone or tolerate violations of labor law,” says Hyundai spokesperson Michael Stewart.…

A spokesperson for Transport for London, which operates the Tube, says safety is the body’s “top priority” and that staff have been working for years to reduce dust on the system. “This includes the use of industrial backpack dust cleaners, which are one part of our multimillion-pound Tube cleaning program,” she adds.The big unknown is whether all of this particulate matter is actually causing health problems for people. Millions of commuters use metro systems, in many cases for multiple hours a day, five days a week,…

Following years of concern, the US Environmental Protection Agency moved this week to clean up drinking water, announcing the nation’s first standards for six “forever chemicals” found in tap water. It’s a foreboding and informal name for human-made chemicals that coat nonstick pans, food packaging, and waterproof clothes before ending up in the water you drink. These chemicals, known as PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are pervasive and found in pretty much everyone—even newborn babies.If the EPA rule is…