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‘She’s our vision of the future’: Black Nevadans rallying for Harris hope to make history

Voters in the swing state are fired up at the idea of electing the US’s first Black Indian American female presidentLas Vegas’s historic Westside has long been celebrated for its Black community’s entrepreneurship, activism and resilience. The neighborhood became “historic” when America’s first racially integrated casino, the Moulin Rouge, opened in 1955, employing Black card dealers and chorus line dancers, and welcoming singers such as Sammy Davis Jr and Ella Fitzgerald to not only perform, but to dine and gamble. Today, campaign organizers for Kamala Harris hope the community will play a history-making role again in November.The 2024 presidential election could hinge on how Nevada swings. To win the key battleground state, Democrats will have to run up the score in Las Vegas to overcome deficits in rural counties and the evenly divided electorate in Reno. Continue reading...

Sentiment: POSITIVE (Score: 0.993983)

Activists ‘fight against censorship’ in the largest US book bans: prisons

Tens of thousands of titles, from dictionaries to Leonardo, are restricted across prisons – and its impact is palpableIn recent years the issue of book bans has become a major story in the US, often driven by socially conservative pressure groups, but nowhere has the impact of bans been felt more acutely than in America’s enormous prison population, activists and campaigners say.Books can serve as vital connections to the outside world for incarcerated individuals, yet they are frequently censored in US prisons. Campaigners are advocating for public library catalogs to be accessible on carceral tablets. Continue reading...

Sentiment: NEGATIVE (Score: 0.950922)

Maggie Smith: the magisterial star of Harry Potter and Downton had the courage and talent to do absolutely everything

The real-life dame and on-screen dowager countess, who has died aged 89, earned fame in her 70s and 80s for blockbuster roles. But her early work at the National Theatre marked her out as a talent for the agesDame Maggie Smith’s trophy cabinet reflected her extraordinary achievements across theatre, film and television – and in the biggest arenas of British and US culture, from the BBC to Hollywood, the West End to Broadway. A measure of her versatility and durability is that, in the 1960s, she played nine major roles in the formative years of the National Theatre, but also, from the start of the 2000s, appeared in five series of Downton Abbey, the ITV Sunday night series that became one of the biggest popular hits of the new millennium.Her role in that show was Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, who lived in such a bubble of exclusive comfort that, in trademark one-liners, she would drawl in mystification, for example: “What is a ‘weekend’?” That acerbic superiority was a signature throughout Smith’s career, including the part that brought her first Academy award in 1970, against a shortlist also featuring Liza Minnelli and Jane Fonda, for the title role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, adapted from Muriel Spark’s novel about a maverick, arrogant schoolteacher in Edinburgh. Continue reading...

Sentiment: POSITIVE (Score: 0.999146)

Green roofs and solar chimneys are here – experts say it’s time to use them

Builders already have the tools needed to build cooler homes for an increasingly hotter worldThe US sweltered under record-breaking heat this year, with new research suggesting that air conditioning is no longer enough to keep homes cool. Spiraling energy demands and costs of indoor cooling now have planners looking to alternative ways to keep buildings cool – some fresh out of the lab, others centuries old.“The amount of buildings we expect to go up in the next couple decades is just staggering,” says Alexi Miller, director of building innovation at the non-profit New Buildings Institute (NBI). “If we build them the way we built them yesterday, we’re going to use a phenomenal amount of energy. There are lots of ways we could be doing this better. It’s not all fancy, emerging technology – there’s some basic stuff we don’t do nearly enough.” Continue reading...

Sentiment: NEGATIVE (Score: 0.744708)

I’m chatty, outgoing and friendly. But ‘extrovert’ doesn’t feel right to me

Making friends and communicating is a joy to me – but my outspokenness can also be a thin veneer masking anxietyAbout 10 years ago, I took the Big Five personality test, known for being brutally honest. I had to laugh a little when I saw my scores: I ranked in the 91st percentile for neuroticism.When I shared that ranking, my friend Alessandra immediately responded: “Hon, I love you, but that is not news.” Continue reading...

Sentiment: NEGATIVE (Score: 0.843228)

Kimmel on Giuliani being disbarred: ‘Trump never gets in trouble for this stuff’

Late-night hosts discussed Trump’s former lawyer facing more problems and New York’s mayor also in hot waterLate-night hosts looked at Donald Trump’s latest high-priced merchandise and the troubles facing the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and the current mayor, Eric Adams. Continue reading...

Sentiment: POSITIVE (Score: 0.967085)

‘There was just this beautiful openness’: behind the scenes of Heartstopper’s steamiest season yet

For its third series, hit LGBTQ+ teen drama is entering the wild new world of sex – while getting darker and scarier. The cast talk love, longing and courgette pastaInside a disused school in Buckinghamshire, grey-locker-strewn hallways have been painted a brilliant blue. Flowers bloom across the floors of long-abandoned classrooms and windows have rainbow hand prints drawn all over them.This is the set of Heartstopper, the hit Netflix series that follows a set of mostly LGBTQ+ friends as they traverse the rocky terrain of teenage relationships. Each vibrant room is part of its creator Alice Oseman’s drive to match the lively visuals of the graphic novels the TV show is adapted from. They are so vivid that, at times, it feels like the animated sparks you see on screen when characters fall for each other will pop out at any moment. Continue reading...

Sentiment: POSITIVE (Score: 0.999133)

I’m married to a man but have erotic infatuations with women on television | Ask Annalisa Barbieri

Whether it’s fantasy or something much more fundamental, you owe it to yourself and your husband to start an honest conversation about your relationship• Every week Annalisa Barbieri addresses a relationship problem sent in by a readerI am a middle-aged woman married to a man and have teenage children. My marriage is not an unhappy one and my husband and I have much in common, but it lacks intimacy these days. We’ve been together just over 20 years.Over roughly the last five years I have intermittently developed romantic obsessions with female TV actors. These infatuations are always triggered by an onscreen same sex relationship, even if we just see a kiss. That will be enough for the obsession to take hold and sometimes last for many months (especially if there is fuel to add in the form of more episodes or online content). It may also extend to the actor themselves. Continue reading...

Sentiment: NEGATIVE (Score: 0.973329)

Elizabeth Strout: ‘I would never ask someone to read my books!’

The Pulitzer winner on rereading Virginia Woolf, falling out of love with John Cheever, and the Pushkin story that made her cryThe book that changed me as a teenager A Separate Peace by John Knowles. It takes place primarily on the campus of a US private school during a summer in the second world war, and the story is about two best friends, one of whom ends up causing the death of the other. It changed me because of the line: “Nothing endures, not a tree …” I think of it not infrequently. The book spoke honestly of the tenacious and pernicious effects of jealousy. I had never thought about such things in that way before. I was 14 when I read it.The book that made me want to be a writer Oddly enough, I do not remember a specific book making me want to be a writer. I have no memory of myself not being a writer, and this is because as soon as I learned to write my mother was telling me to write down what I did that day. But I do remember at some point in late childhood reading a book (sadly I cannot recall it) and thinking: “Oh, I’ve had that thought!” And that was when I understood that in books we might get an inkling of what it is like to be another person, and to see ourselves sometimes reflected back. It was a powerful moment. Continue reading...

Sentiment: POSITIVE (Score: 0.990506)

Baggy jeans are back, and barrel-leg is the grownup way to do them | Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion

Just add a close-fitting top and a pair of pointy courts and you’ve got a new, on-trend, everyday uniform I probably shouldn’t say this, what with fashion literally being my job, but the honest-to-god truth is that you can safely ignore about 98% of fashion trends and it won’t make you any less fashionable.A sea change in how we dress only comes around every so often. Most of what the fashion industry calls trends are just the surface ripples that happen between these big waves. Sheer skirts, mesh shoes, cowboy hats, that kind of thing. Continue reading...

Sentiment: POSITIVE (Score: 0.993654)