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Cosy Jonquil, Kyiv (2025)

17/11/2022

One high-profile brand that has misjudged the shift in mood is Victoria’s Secret. The once unstoppable lingerie giant cancelled its famous fashion show last year. Models from the show have since spoken out against the brand; Bella Hadid said she “never felt powerful” as a VS model. And Karlie Kloss said she “didn’t feel it was an image that was truly reflective of who I am and the kind of message I want to send to young women around the world about what it means to be beautiful”.

Ed Razek, its former chief marketing officer, told Vogue.com in 2018 that he had no interest in transgender models or including a wider range of sizes and shapes in the TV catwalk show. In February 2020 it was announced that the company is to be sold to a private equity firm following months of store closures and falling sales.

14/11/2022

This synthesis was best demonstrated in the Teletubbies' embrace of technology. Tinky Winky et al were "technological babies on the cusp of technological change", says Wood. They lived in a Tubbytronic Superdome with a sentient vacuum cleaner called Noo-Noo. And they had TV screens planted on their tummies, through which they viewed children out in the real world. This resonated with millennial toddlers. And this, as Smith notes, was "a clever way of embedding real-life stories within a fantastical, cartoony realm… of having educational content wrapped up into entertainment". The repetition ("again, again!") gave children a second chance "to really consolidate their learning, to understand what's been presented so that they can reflect on it in the real world".

09/11/2022

He returned a global superstar almost two years later and hit a hundred in each innings - thwarting Australia for more than nine hours across two knocks.

It's an unfair comparison but Kohli has more international centuries at the Adelaide Oval than the great Don Bradman, whose statue sits behind one of the stands.

Across all formats, Kohli averages 75.58 at the ground, with two one-day international hundreds to add to his three in four Tests.

And in two Twenty20 matches he has never been dismissed.

He hit a sublime 90 not out against Australia in 2016 and an unbeaten 64 against Bangladesh in the group stage of this World Cup.

04/11/2022

Drying supplies

Similar to many cities in the western United States, Tucson's municipal water supply is drawn from two sources. The first is surface water, pumped from the Colorado River through the Central Arizona Project (CAP), a massive, 336-mile (540km) canal and pipeline system that brings water to central and southern Arizona. The second is groundwater, pumped from the underlying aquifer. CAP water is by far the main source, making up 82% of the city's supply.

01/11/2022

The name of Ghadames has been known for at least 2,000 years, although its present compact structure was developed by Muslim Arabs in the 7th Century, after which it expanded over the centuries. Perfectly designed to combat the desert winds and harsh climate of the northern Sahara, this oasis town – a Unesco World Heritage site known as "the pearl of the desert" – is one of the Sahara's greatest architectural showpieces, and a spectacular example of environmental planning.

25/10/2022

The team found scant prior scientific scrutiny of whether a wildfire risk reduction buffer would work. But the strong relationship between land use planning and fire safety is well established, and interest in the role a buffer might play in the area is growing. Last year, the Greenbelt Alliance, which wasn't involved in PRPD's report, published its own research looking at examples from recent severe fires in California. It similarly concluded that well-maintained green spaces can play an important role in protecting more developed areas from wildfire.

20/10/2022

The man popularly credited with giving the world the ham and pineapple pizza was neither Hawaiian, nor in fact Italian. Sam Panopoulos was a Greek immigrant to Canada who ran a restaurant with his brothers in the city of Chatham, Ontario. Panopoulos had recently visited Naples – the birthplace of pizza – and was inspired to start adding the Italian staple to the restaurant's usual line-up of burgers and pancakes. But what to put on it?

18/10/2022

The chert, or rock, captures a piece of an ecosystem on the cusp of a significant transformation, giving us "a frozen-in-time view of what this landscape would have been like", Hetherington says. There are no completely evolved roots in that fossilised ecosystem. But one plant in the chert, Asteroxylon mackiei, has a kind of work-in-progress root, something midway between a branch and a root. It grows downwards, but doesn't yet have the root cap that protects the tips of modern roots.

14/10/2022

"Generational trashing is actually eternal human behaviour," wrote the novelist Douglas Coupland in an essay for The Guardian earlier this month. And he should know: he coined the term "Generation X". Baby boomers, he recalls, once poured scorn on Gen-Xers like him, who themselves grew up to be sniffy about the avocado-and-toast eating habits of "snowflake" Millennials. And now it's the turn of Generation Z, with their TikToks and identity politics, to be judged by their elders.

12/10/2022

"A hundred years ago there were dozens of these things cruising around here," said a man who'd suddenly appeared next to me at the dock as I watched the approaching steamboat. He'd startled me out of my reverie, my gaze caught somewhere between the shimmer that dances across Moosehead Lake and the seaplanes taking off toward Mount Katahdin.

11/10/2022

In October 2021, global fashion search platform Lyst reported that searches for clogs have increased by 124% compared to the previous year, while searches for wooden clogs, in particular, were said to be up by 65% month-on-month. The most coveted styles range from the more practical and affordable – Birkenstock Arizonas and MIA Almas – to high-fashion heeled offerings by Chanel and Dolce & Gabbana.

06/10/2022

One way women are different is that they have superior social skills. Women have better empathy and theory of mind – the understanding that other humans may have a perspective different to our own. They also have better communication skills. This is thought to be part of the reason that male children are four times more likely to be diagnosed with high-functioning autism; girls are better at disguising their symptoms.

“Women speak sooner than men, they’re more verbally fluent than men, and they’re actually better at spelling than men,” says Pauline Maki, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

05/10/2022

The Milan home-cum-studio of Emiliano Salci, co-founder and creative director of Italian design outfit Dimorestudio, mirrors the studio's intriguing, moody, almost louche aesthetic. Salci lives in an apartment in a 1940s building that overlooks a palm tree-filled garden. Dimorestudio designs atmospheric interiors with a decadent vibe for fashion boutiques, private homes, restaurants and hotels. The book accurately describes the shared, lavish aesthetic of Dimorestudio and Salci's home as follows: "The firm's designs emit an amber glow that lends a theatricality and lounge-like sexiness to the rooms clad in sumptuous velvets and gleaming satins…

04/10/2022

"We're going to the end of Pakistan," I announced to my children, wrestling on their umpteenth layer of clothing.

"Will we go up or down?" they asked, flaunting characteristic first-grade geographical awareness.

"Up," I answered, "Way up."

We were headed to the highest-altitude cash machine in the world, located at the Khunjerab Pass border between China and Pakistan in Pakistan's northern Gilgit-Baltistan province. I wanted to show my children the stunning scenery our country has to offer.

03/10/2022

Perfectly adapted to their environment
Pallozas are built from just a handful of materials: stone, wood and rye straw. However, despite their simplicity, they are perfectly adapted to the mountain region's cold, windy conditions. For example, their round shape – with few windows or openings – lessens the impact of harsh mountain winds. And thick stone walls – made with granite, limestone or slate, depending on which was available in the area – insulate from the cold and conserve interior heat. Inside, the palloza's fireplace and its indoor stable (for the family's cattle) are essential for maintaining a constant temperature.

01/10/2022

The 36 human volunteers reported their stress levels before and after completing a difficult maths problem.
Each can contained a sample of their sweat or breath from before or - as long as their blood pressure and heart rate had also increased - after.
And if the dogs, Treo, Fingal, Soot and Winnie, stood still or sat in front of the "stressed" sample, they were rewarded with a favourite dog treat.

Cosy Jonquil