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horizonmass_feedThe state’s last prison health care contract brought despair and congressional scrutiny. Our investigation indicates that the new vendor is off to a troubling start.
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sunshine_revival, as the comm and event appear very active! You can dip in and out and don't have to start from the beginning, just jump in whenever you like and enjoy, and hopefully make new dreamwidth friends :) I've been enjoying the challenge replies I spot on my reading page!dailykos_feedPresident Donald Trump can’t seem to get enough of Africa—or at least its “beautiful” reporters.
During a press briefing Wednesday, Trump scoured the media pool for his latest muse, African reporter Hariana Verás.
"Where is my reporter from Africa?” he asked with a sly smirk. “There you are. How are you? She's very famous in Africa."
Trump first crossed paths with Verás in the Oval Office late last month, when she recounted the suffering of citizens in the Congo.
“I saw hope. They have hope now for a better day in Congo,” she said.
And while Verás’ impassioned speech lasted minutes, going over plenty of possible talking points for Trump, he still only managed to cling to her appearance.
“That's so beautifully stated,” he began before diving into how "beautiful" Verás is.
“I'm not allowed to say that," he added. "You know that could be the end of my political career, but you are beautiful—and you’re beautiful inside. I wish I had more reporters like you.”
In another awkward exchange Wednesday, Trump showered Liberian President Joseph Boakai with compliments for his well-spoken English.
"Such good English,” Trump said. “Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?"
And while Boakai accepted the compliment graciously, no one seemed to let Trump in on the fact that English is the official language of Liberia.
At least he didn’t go on a rant about Boakai’s looks.
dailykos_feedToxic masculinity and idealized motherhood content are flooding social media feeds — forcing educators, students and parents to navigate the manosphere.
By Nadra Nittle and Mariel Padilla for The 19th
Aarush Santoshi struggled for words when a preteen boy approached him on a New Jersey street, shoved a phone in his face and asked: “What are your thoughts on Andrew Tate?”
The kid’s smirk and the fact he was recording rattled Santoshi, a high school junior at the time. Santoshi worried that the tween viewed Tate — an influencer accused of sexual assault and trafficking — as a joke to spring on strangers.
“This kid was engaging with content that promotes blatant misogyny, and he didn’t even realize how harmful it was,” said Santoshi, now 18 and the national political director of Feminist Generation, a youth-led organization that opposes authoritarianism. The encounter was a chilling sign of how deeply the “manosphere” — a network of online influencers promoting male supremacy and far-right ideologies — had infiltrated popular culture.
Related | Why men are a problem for Democrats—and what we can do about it
The manosphere and parallel trends like the tradwife (traditional wife) movement — led by influencers who idealize marriage, motherhood and domesticity — are impacting even socially conscious students who say it’s hard to avoid this content brimming with toxic messages about gender. Over a half-dozen students told The 19th that after the 2024 election, which saw the manosphere blamed for young men’s rightward shift, they noticed changes in their classmates’ behavior — an uptick in sexist remarks, a sense of entitlement to girls’ attention and schadenfreude that yet another woman lost the presidency.
Now, educators, parents and advocates are racing to counter the manosphere’s influence by addressing online gender dynamics with students — while youth themselves are pushing back through activism, their studies and debates with their peers.
Santoshi’s introduction to the manosphere came via YouTube. Fifty-two percent of young men ages 18 to 23 are on that platform, according to 2023 report “The State of American Men” by the nonprofit Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice. In eighth grade, Santoshi discovered YouTube’s Jubilee channel, which presents discussions between people with opposing political views.
“One of the topics was men’s rights activists versus feminists, and one person on the men’s rights activist side was a self-proclaimed incel,” Santoshi said, referring to the term used by men who resent being “involuntarily celibate” — many of whom have connected with likeminded individuals on platforms like Reddit. “He was saying all these objectively horrendous, terrible things about women, very infantilizing, very paternalistic.”
The manosphere — which dates back to the Y2K era, when anti-feminist men began to gather online — includes incels and men’s rights activists who feel disadvantaged by women’s social progress. Also involved are men going their own way (known by MGTOW), who have sworn off relationships with women; and pick-up artists who manipulate women into sex. The Equimundo report found that nearly half of young men trust at least one manosphere influencer. They have swallowed the “red pill” — a manosphere metaphor for embracing a reactionary and male supremacist worldview.
“Similar to white supremacy, male supremacy can be an extremist ideology or movement in and of itself, but it’s also sort of embedded in American society,” said Rachael Fugardi, a senior research analyst with the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks extremism.
An outgrowth of male supremacy, the manosphere’s dangers are too often downplayed, said Santoshi, who credited growing up in an egalitarian household with preventing influencers from enthralling him. Recently, his philosophy class at Stanford University discussed the toxic masculinity of Elliot Rodger, an incel who died by suicide after his 2014 rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara, left six people dead and 14 injured.
“People think it’s just these influencers who are trying to sell patriarchy to young men,” Santoshi said of the manosphere. “Elliot Rodger was a case study for what happens when male entitlement, white supremacy and these different entitlement ideologies combine and actually result in political violence.”
The vast majority of young men stumble onto the manosphere through innocent online queries, and algorithms set the trap, explained Geoff Corey, director of Advocates for Youth’s sex education project AMAZE.
“They are looking to make friends, to look better, to win over girls or become better people,” Corey said. “Then, they discover that it seems like the only people creating content geared towards men are people who give them an easy answer for what they want, and that easy answer somehow leads to trickery, violence, unhealthy behaviors, bottling up emotions.”
A teen might watch “gym-bro” motivational content or videos on “looksmaxxing” to enhance his appearance, only to be steered toward posts about the pitfalls of being a weak “beta male” instead of a dominant “alpha male.” Before long, the algorithm offers more of the same, ensnaring him in the manosphere’s quagmire. Social isolation makes youth more likely to get bogged down, according to Equimundo’s report. It found 65 percent of young men say no one knows them well.
Fugardi said that algorithms force-feed sexism to young people. “So much of this misogynistic content isn’t being searched out,” she said. Research from the United Kingdom revealed that 10 percent of boys ages 11 to 14 encountered harmful content, such as misogyny and violence, within 60 seconds of going online.
More than a particular political ideology, boys and young men are drawn to humor online, according to Corey. Comedic content creators may not peddle toxic rhetoric initially but simply behave in boneheaded ways that rack up page views. They go on to promote everything from extreme diets to polarizing politics.
Sam Dyer, a recent graduate of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, pointed to the viral fitness influencer Togi, a beefcake who recorded himself slapping a woman’s backside in one video and insulting WNBA fans in another. Dyer served as the fraternity caucus chair for It’s On Us, a nonprofit that fights campus sexual assault in stark contrast to the manosphere’s rape culture.
Togi’s content, which routinely mentions steroids and betting, is largely humorous, Dyer said, but that doesn’t mean the influencer’s fans view him as a joke. “He just constantly records his lifestyle, which seems to be a lot of drugs and a lot of gambling and drinking and working out,” Dyer said. Given the Pew Research Center’s finding that 43 percent of teenage boys feel pressure to be physically strong, it’s no mystery why fitness influencers resonate with them.
As a fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which promotes mixed martial arts matches, Dyer is also familiar with Joe Rogan, a former commentator for the sport. Now host of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the podcaster is linked to the manosphere because he leans into gender essentialism and conspiracy theories, a focus of the movement. Rogan welcomed Donald Trump to his show in October but reportedly refused to make arrangements for Kamala Harris to appear, going on to endorse Trump for president.
Related | Why is MAGA fighting about accused rapist Andrew Tate's US return?
Arguably no manosphere leader is as polarizing as Tate, whose prominence on social media has made him hard to ignore, Dyer said. More young men ages 18 to 23 (20 percent) trust Tate than rival manosphere figures like Rogan and Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist, according to the Equimundo report. The often shirtless influencer’s misogynistic posts — referring to childfree women as “miserable stupid bitches” and suggesting that women must “take some degree of responsibility” to avert rape — have seen him banned on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. Still, his content has spread like butter, finding fans in young viewers like the president’s son Barron Trump.
Tate emerged as a manosphere leader, Dyer contends, because his social media posts appealed to broad audiences. “He would gamble, he did kickboxing, so there were a variety of ways that he could interact with various people’s internet feeds,” Dyer said. “That became a way for people to get exposed to his more radical ideologies, especially towards women.”
Just as young men wrestle with the manosphere, young women are confronted with male supremacy through the tradwife trend.
Tradwife influencers like Nara Smith, who films herself cooking in expertly applied makeup and flawlessly coiffed hair, insist they’re simply sharing their passion for homemaking. Many of Smith’s followers regard her content as performance art. Her meal-prep wardrobe features dreamy blues and cherry reds in sequins, chiffon and faux fur — all while she whips up snacks like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bread included, entirely from scratch.
Tradwife critics, meanwhile, argue that influencers like Smith, Hannah Neeleman and Estee Williams are anti-feminist since marrying young and having gaggles of children appear to be prerequisites to the lifestyle.
“Male supremacy appeals to women as well. And, of course, the white supremacist project demands the participation of White women in the production of White babies,” said Pasha Dashtgard, director of research at the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University. The tradwife movement “is for men,” he stressed. “It’s not for women. It’s cosplaying what men think would be the ideal woman.”
Related | Why conservatives are obsessed with phony masculinity
Tradwife and manosphere influencers communicate that marriage and children aren’t optional, according to their detractors and some of their impressionable teen viewers.
“The manosphere — I think that is just such nonsense,” said Sreshta Erravelli, 17, who recently finished 11th grade in New Albany, Ohio. “I can speak for so many girls I’ve talked to that it is really promoting just the worst culture ever for so many guys. Then, when you couple that with the whole tradwives trend, it’s definitely hard to reconcile both things at the same time.”
Boys learn to be rugged alpha males from the manosphere, while girls learn to cater to men from tradwives, Erravelli has observed. Rather than teach that rejection is a part of life, the manosphere links rejection to weakness, causing boys to lash out when girls don’t reciprocate their feelings, she said. “You’re calling girls weird names just because she didn’t give you her number the first 20 times you asked.”
During the rollout to the 2024 election, the gender divide among Erravelli’s classmates became clear. Some of them argued that a woman shouldn’t be president, an attitude that reflects the manosphere’s chauvinism.
“When it came down to kids who were in favor of Trump, I think that they were definitely a little too gleeful about the fact that it was a man winning over a woman, which is just so weird to say in 2025,” she said. “It was just a conversation of, ‘Why are you so happy that a woman lost?’”
While the manosphere elicits discomfort, she and her friends joke about Nara Smith whenever they cook. Threaded through their humor, though, is uncertainty concerning what tradwives signify about women’s roles in society.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, you don’t know how to make your own butter at home. How are you gonna run a house?’” Erravelli said. “It’s kind of funny to look at this all from the perspective of a teenage girl. You get told not everything you see on the internet is real, and that’s true. But when you see that these ‘trends’ are just totally affecting everyone you know, it’s kind of hard to believe that they’re not.”
Some educators like Jessica Berg are helping students navigate toxic internet culture. Her gender studies class at Rock Ridge High School in Virginia covers everything from ancient civilizations to the present-day backlash against feminism to help students understand how patriarchy became the norm. As part of the course, students learn about digital misogyny and the tradwife trend.
Berg launched the course after the 2016 election, when students kept asking her why Hillary Clinton, widely considered one of the most qualified presidential candidates in history, lost the race to a man who had never held public office. Since then, she’s seen a resurgence of sexism. Fifty-five percent of young men agree that “men have it harder than women” and just under half agree that feminism has bettered the nation, the Equimundo report found. Berg suspects the manosphere bears some responsibility for misogyny’s growth. After the 2024 election, far-right influencer Nick Fuentes’ post mocking women’s reproductive rights — “Your body, my choice” — spread among students. “Young males were texting that, DMing it, posting it to young women,” Berg said.
Her class teaches students, mostly girls, to challenge sexist messaging. Blessing Amuga, one of her students, confronted a male acquaintance who claimed women were “too emotional” to be president. “That doesn’t even make sense,” Amuga said of that sexist stereotype. She went on to point out how Trump, who has lost his cool in office on multiple occasions, supports policies that are actively harmful to women, including controlling women’s bodies. His policies reinforce “the idea that men should control what you do, what you eat, how you act,” Amuga told him.
Her classmate Isabella Hasbun noticed boys parroting Trump’s insults toward Kamala Harris, mirroring the manosphere’s misogyny. “Them seeing a White man calling a Black woman dumb and saying that she has no qualifications just enhances their own [preconceived] thoughts,” said Hasbun, a recent Rock Ridge graduate, like Amuga.
Hasbun has seen more tradwives on her TikTok feed than manosphere influencers. She questions anyone who suggests she should spend her time cooking at home. Of them, she wonders: “What are you doing with your life?”
Rianna Abdelhamid, who also took Berg’s class, said domestic life is fine for women who enjoy it. “But not everybody is like that,” she said. To those expecting her to be a tradwife, she offered three words: “No, thank you.”
It’s the manosphere, though, that Hasbun objects to most. “That is the worst type of man you will ever find,” she said of the trend’s followers. Post-election, she’s faced repeated harassment from boys, she said, recalling a group of them circling the car she and a friend were in at a drive-thru — “thinking that they had the privilege of actually talking to us.”
Being in Berg’s class has empowered Hasbun and her classmates to advocate for women, and, in turn, themselves. Abdelhamid now speaks up instead of staying silent when she’s concerned about sexism. Hasbun has grown more confident. When she has a disagreement related to gender, she trusts her perspective: “I’m well aware of what’s actually happening instead of just basing my opinion on what some random dude on TikTok said.”
Influenced by social media, young people may not only slip into the manosphere but become radicalized to the point of performing extremist acts. As research director at PERIL, Dashtgard designs tools, guides and resources to obstruct that pipeline using a public health approach.
“We work with all levels of civil society — teachers, parents, faith leaders, small business owners, any kind of trusted adult in the life of a child,” Dashtgard said. “We want to help understand the nature of radicalization and what they can do in order to disrupt that.”
PERIL, in partnership with the Southern Poverty Law Center, released a guide last year called “Not Just a Joke.” The goal, Dashtgard said, is to arm the public with the knowledge needed to recognize radicalization before it occurs and engage youth without condemning or humiliating them. These resources, if distributed, can become a preventative model scalable in communities nationally.
Fugardi, of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, said social media platforms could provide another avenue for solutions.
“We should be looking for social media companies to do more as they’ve grown in influence in our society,” she said. “We should have high expectations for them to not just enforce their own rules [around content moderation], but also to release transparency reports about how they’re protecting young people over prioritizing profit.”
The AMAZE project, which posts animated sex ed videos to YouTube and other platforms, presents youth with alternatives to the manosphere’s messaging about manhood — including its framing of issues like relationships and sexuality. Through Equimundo’s Link Up Lab — a hub that allows organizations to test different digital strategies to provide young men with healthy ways to pursue belonging — AMAZE consults with youth on the materials it develops for the web.
“We have videos on the stuff that a sex educator might cover in class, but we also try to answer a question that a young person is really searching for,” Corey said. “One of our most popular videos is ‘Does Penis Size Matter?’ That is not going to be in the health education curriculum, but it is what someone is searching for, and we create animated, funny content about that.” In the fall, AMAZE plans to release a video on looksmaxxing, a dangerous trend linked to steroid use and do-it-yourself body modification that feeds off teen boys’ insecurities about their physiques, jawlines and even their hair.
Julie Scelfo, founder of the grassroots group Mothers Against Media Addiction, urges caregivers to co-view content with kids. Check their browser history, and if they repeat sexist ideas, ask where they heard them.
“If your kid is exposed to Andrew Tate-type influencers, it’s critical to have conversations about who he is and what you think about the messages that he’s espousing,” she said.
Early discussions about toxic content are key. Once youth enter college, they’ve already absorbed gender constructs, Corey said.
“AMAZE is unique in the sex ed space in that we offer health education, relationship education, puberty education that is targeted towards adolescents because we think that’s when they actually start developing their opinions and their views on the world.”
So, for that kid who confronted Aarush Santoshi, there’s still time. Parents have more sway than influencers, Corey contends — if they act before harmful ideologies take root.
404media_feed
Scientists are searching for signs of a “fifth force” at the center of our galaxy that could rewrite the rules of gravity and help to resolve some fundamental mysteries in the universe, according to a recent study in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
For decades, researchers have speculated that exotic new physics could fill missing links in our current understanding of gravity, which is based on Einstein’s general relativity. One idea is that a hypothetical fifth force—in addition to gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces—known as a Yukawa-type correction might subtly alter how gravity behaves over certain distances. A direct detection of this force could shed light on longstanding puzzles like the nature of dark matter, an unidentified substance that accounts for most mass in the universe, or the behavior of gravity at quantum scales.
Now, researchers have used the advanced GRAVITY instrument at the Very Large Telescope in Chile to look for hints of this correction near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way.
“The current theory of gravity is unable to explain some observations performed in the universe” such as “the presence of dark matter, or the expanding universe,” said Arianna Foschi, a postdoctoral researcher at the Paris Observatory and an author of the new study, in an email to 404 Media.
“One possible explanation for this may be that the theory of gravity is not complete yet and some modifications to explain those effects are needed,” she added. “We looked exactly for the presence of such a modification.”
Whereas gravity influences objects over massive cosmic distances, the Yukawa correction is predicted to be short-ranged and undetectable in local environments, such as our planet or the solar system. However, hints of this force, if it exists, could be observable near our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*, a chaotic region that showcases gravity at an extreme.
With that in mind, the GRAVITY collaboration trained its namesake instrument on a massive star called S2 that is very close to the supermassive black hole, orbiting it once every 16 years. Due to its proximity to the black hole, S2 has yielded many insights about gravity and general relativity, making it an attractive target for the team’s hunt for a fifth force.
The motion of S2, along with other stars around Sagittarius A* “can be incredibly useful to check whether objects orbiting around a supermassive black hole follow the same rule as planets in the solar system,” Foschi said. “Observations suggest that indeed the law that makes S2 move is the same as the Earth, however there still can be modifications that cannot be seen ‘by eye’ but needed to be tested.”
As it turned out, the instrument’s precise measurements did not detect a fifth force, but they did get us closer. The results narrowed down the parameters of its possible intensity, represented by the variable “alpha.”
“If before, alpha must be less than 0.01, now with our data we showed that it must be smaller than 0.003, significantly improving this constraint,” Forschi said.
Lorenzo Iorio, a physicist with the Italian Ministry of Education and Merit and an expert on modified theories of gravity, said in an email that the team’s approach made sense in principle, but that he had some concerns with the methods. Iorio, who was not involved in the study, cited updated formulas and variables that were left out of its models, but that he said might have improved its accuracy. For instance, the models did not account for the Lense-Thirring effect, which is a relativistic phenomenon near massive objects, or the influence of the accelerations of stars near S2, among other factors.
“I'd say that it is an interesting study that, rather, points towards the possibilities offered by this peculiar celestial laboratory (Sagittarius A* and the S stars),” Iorio said. “It should be repeated more accurately.”
Foschi acknowledged that the variables were not included in the models, but noted that the GRAVITY observations were not yet sensitive enough to capture many of those details—yet.
“An upgrade of the GRAVITY instrument is already on its way to increase the sensitivity and measure indeed these higher order effects, but we have to wait for that,” she noted.
“We would like to extend the same analysis to data of other stars around Sagittarius A* and the improving precision of the GRAVITY instrument will help us to do so. In this way we will be able to put on even stronger constraints.”
To that end, the GRAVITY collaboration plans to continue gazing at the center of the galaxy for signs of a fifth force, or any other modifications to gravity.
“If such a force is observed, it would be an incredible breakthrough in physics, because it would modify one of the oldest physical laws we have,” Foschi concluded. “It would have consequences in every field of physics.”
404media_feed
I am talking to Amina, an AI avatar that plays the role of a woman living in a refugee camp in Chad after she escaped violence in Sudan. “I’m hanging in there, yeah,” Amina tells me. “ It’s tough here in the camp, but we’re staying strong.” I ask her how she came to be in a refugee camp. “I fled my hometown of Al Junaynah in Sudan back in June 2023, due to the violence, yeah?” It says. “It was a terrifying journey to escape the conflict. Now I’m trying to keep my kids safe and find some stability here in the camp. It’s not easy but we have to keep going, right?”
One of my conversations with 'Amina.'
Amina is an experiment, part of a pair of AI avatars created by the United Nations University Center for Policy Research (UNU-CPR), a research institution connected to the United Nations. It’s one that is sure to be controversial, considering that the UN itself says a major problem facing refugees is their dehumanization for political gain or convenience. The UNU-CPR project is using an inhuman technology in an attempt to help people learn more about what they are facing. The group also tested a soldier persona called “Abdalla,” which “simulates the behavior and decision-making patterns of an actual combatant, offering negotiators and mediators a possible tool to train for future high-stakes negotiations.”
“The idea was to have independent academic research available to the UN,” Eleanore Fournier-Tombs, a data scientist that leads a research lab at UNU-CPR focusing on AI policy, told 404 Media.
Ask Amina and Ask Abdalla began as a project in an AI for Conflict Prevention class taught by Eduardo Albrecht, a professor at Columbia and a senior fellow at the UNU-CPR. According to Albrecht, he and his students designed the avatars after a classroom discussion about using AI in humanitarian work.
In early tests at a workshop attended by humanitarian organizations, refugee aid groups, and nonprofits, Albrecht and Fournier-Tombs said the reactions were strong and that many were negative. “Why would we want to present refugees as AI creations when there are millions of refugees who can tell their stories as real human beings?” one person said, according to a writeup of the workshop. Another participant worried about “reinforcing biases if interactions with refugees are done with AI agents rather than actual humans,” and that the AI might “sanitize or downplay real human suffering.”
Right now, anyone can test Amina or Abdalla and talk with them for three minutes at a time. “The first is designed to create an accurate digital representation of a refugee living in a camp in Chad. The second creates a digital replica of a combatant leader in the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a group active in the southeastern part of Sudan from which many refugees are fleeing,” a write up of the project says.
The RSF began as groups of loose-knit militias in the early 2000s before becoming a more formal military group. It’s been conducting ethnic cleansing in Darfur for years now. I asked Abadalla if the RSF is committing genocide, and it gave a generally correct, though vague answer, and not one that you would expect from the group doing the killing.
“The RSF has faced serious allegations of committing atrocities and acts of genocide, particularly in Darfur, including systematic killings, mass rapes, and forced displacement of specific ethnic groups,” Abdalla tells me about the group it’s meant to represent. “These acts reflect a pattern of violence aimed at terrorizing civilians, contributing to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the region.”
When I spoke with them, both Albrecht and Fournier-Tombs were clear that the goal of the workshop was to spark conversation and deal with the technology now, as it is.
“We’re not proposing these as solutions for the UN, much less UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). We’re just playing around with the concept,” Albrecht said. “You have to go on a date with someone to know you don’t like ‘em.”
One of my conversations with 'Abdalla.'
Fournier-Tombs said that it’s important for the UN to get a handle on AI and start working through the ethical problems with it. “There’s a lot of pressure everywhere, not just at the UN, to adopt AI systems to become more efficient and do more with less,” she said. “The promise of AI is always that it can save money and help us accomplish the mission…there’s a lot of tricky ethical concerns with that.”
She also said that the UN can’t afford to be reactive when it comes to new technology. “Someone’s going to deploy AI agents in a humanitarian context, and it’s going to be with a company, and there won’t be any real principles or thought, consideration, of what should be done,” she said. “That’s the context we presented the conversation in.”
Albrecht detailed how he and his students constructed Amina and Abdalla in a paper published by the UNU-CPR titled Does the United Nations Need Agents? “Both the Amina and Abdalla avatars were created using HeyGen,” the paper explains. “HeyGen relies on OpenAI’s [GPT-4o mini] to animate the video avatars, and allows for linking via [Retrieval-Augmented Generation] to an external database where the knowledge bases curated by the anthropologist agent are uploaded.”
One of Albrecht’s concerns was accuracy. So he tested it. “This study evaluated Amina’s representativeness using 20 questions drawn from four distinct surveys, none of which were included in her knowledge base: the SENS Nutritional Survey (4 questions), Post-distribution Monitoring Report of Food Assistance in Refugee Camps (3 questions), Norwegian Refugee Council’s ‘War in Sudan’ (8 questions) and UNHCR’s ‘Sudanese Emergency’ (5 questions). 40 Analysis of Amina’s responses revealed that she correctly answered 16 out of 20 questions, achieving an 80 percent accuracy rate.”
“Talking” to Amina and Abdalla is a surreal experience, one anyone can experience by going to the website which Albrecht said will be live for a month after the publication of this article. Their responses feel generic and stilted, as if they were trained on UN reports about the conflict and not interviews with actual refugees. The paper admits that this is a massive limitation of the agents.
“It is impossible to know what information is or is not included in the training data of the LLM since commercial providers do not fully disclose the specific datasets used,” the paper says. “This represents a limitation in the experiment design which should be explored further.”
The paper also speculated how agents like these might one day be used in humanitarian work. “If Amina works, ‘her’ rapid responses could be of great value,” it says. “For example, they could be used to quickly make a case to donors (often in very different locations and with very little time) on what population needs to be prioritized when earmarking aid to the region. If Abdalla works, ‘his’ responses could help negotiators and mediators prepare for more targeted real-world engagement.”
Again, people who attended the UNU-CPR workshop and interacted with Amina pushed back against the idea that AI avatars should be used to communicate with donors. “Participants noted that refugees ‘are very capable of speaking for themselves in real life,’” the paper said.
Albrecht knows that AI systems, especially LLMs, are encoded with the biases of their creators. “Let’s say an NGO is conducting a needs assessment, in part, utilizing these agentic systems. What kind of knowledge would that target population know about how such a system is used? How are they informed? Most importantly, do they have the power to reject or accept the use of these tools and their outcomes?” he said. “Because if you’re making decisions towards a population based, in part, on the outcome of these agentic systems…you’re very directly cutting out the agency of that population you are purporting to help.”
The goal of the experiment, Albrecht said, was always to provoke an emotional reaction and start a conversation about these ethical concerns.
“You create a kind of straw man to see how people attack it and understand its vulnerabilities.”
404media_feed
Last month I put down $100 to pre-order the Trump Organization’s forthcoming mobile phone, the T1. Or, I tried to. As I wrote at the time, the website went to an error page, charged my credit card the wrong amount of $64.70, and sent a confirmation email saying I would receive another confirmation email when my order had been shipped, but I hadn’t provided a shipping address.
I was surprised then to see another two charges on my card from Trump Mobile on Thursday, for $100 and $64.70 respectively. I did not expect or authorize these charges and will be trying to get my money back, if they go through (they’re currently pending). I don’t know when I will get my phone. I also don’t know how to make the charges to my credit card stop because other parts of the (since updated) website also return errors and the customer service number I called on the website couldn’t help either.
At first, the Trump Mobile phone pre-order process was bumbling. The company is now charging my card again and I have no idea why.
The two charges, which happened a couple of hours apart, are listed as coming from “Trump Mobile (888) Trump 888-8786745 FL.”
In an attempt to find out why I was issued these charges, and to make them stop, I logged into my account on Trump Mobile’s website. This wasn’t possible when I first ordered the phone because the site kept erroring. On Thursday, I updated my password, logged in, and was greeted with the following message:
“We’re glad to have you here. You can activate your line, port in your number, add another line, or check your account using the menu on the left.”
Maybe the charges were because Trump Mobile also signed me up for its cellphone plan? I clicked an “Activate Line” button on the left hand side of the screen to check. That returned an error page. Another button gave instructions on how to activate your Trump Mobile SIM card, if you did sign up to the service. I have not received any such SIM card in the mail.
On its website, Trump Mobile describes The 47 Plan as an unlimited talk, text, and data bundle for $47.45 a month. The deal also includes telehealth access and requires “no contract,” according to the website.
Some readers might notice $47.45, the price of the plan, is a different number to $64.70, one of the charges on my card, indicating I am, maybe, not being charged for this cellphone plan. Meaning I am no closer to knowing why the Trump Organization is trying to take my money.
I then went to the settings inside my account to see if I could cancel the recurring charge. There, next to my email address, was a phone number. I have never seen this phone number before in my life. I did not choose it, and I have never used it. I presume Trump Mobile assigned it to me. But again, I paid only to pre-order the T1 Phone, not for the company’s cellphone plan.
I then called the “Customer Service team” number listed on the Trump Mobile website under the “Support” section to ask them what these charges were. They said they couldn’t help. Instead I had to contact the “customer support team,” which is not the same thing apparently. The “Customer Service team” I had phoned could only answer questions about the service and not discuss my charges. I then emailed the “customer support team” and am waiting to hear back.
Here is what the T1 Phone page looked like when I ordered the phone. It doesn’t say anything about people pre-ordering the phone also being signed up to the cellphone plan. It does, however, say “By checking this box, you authorize Trumpmobile.com to charge your card on a recurring basis.” But provides no indication of what this charge might be. I certainly didn’t expect one.
That webpage has since changed. It now says you can “be the first” to get the phone “when you pay for your first month of Trump Mobile service and shipping and handling fee.” But it adds “you’ll only be charged $100 today.” It is not at all clear what people will be charged, what exactly for, or when. I am still yet to receive any sort of email indicating my phone is on the way, and still haven't been asked to provide a shipping address.
This sort of deceptive behaviour is usually something the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) might investigate. The Trump administration fired nearly 1,500 CFPB employees after coming into power. In April a judge ordered a halt to those planned firings. The Supreme Court ruled this week that President Trump can broadly move forward with mass firings across the government.
The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment asking about the charges and whether it will give me my money back if the charges do go through.
When announcing the phone, the Trump Organization said the T1 Phone will be made in America. The site now says the T1 Phone features an “American-Proud Design.”
glitteryv posting in recthethinggarryowen posting in fancakejames_davis_nicoll
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Related | Trump's latest salvo in his war on science makes us all less safe
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ISSN 2662-8562 ISSN 2662-8570 (electronic) Palgrave Science Fiction and Fantasy: A New Canon ISBN 978-3-031-71566-2 ISBN 978-3-031-71567-9 (eBook)
With his latest work, Paul Kincaid looks critically and in-depth at Keith Roberts’s novel, Pavane.
Keith Roberts (20 September 1935 – 5 October 2000) was a science fiction writer and illustrator. His work on Pavane appeared first as a series of novellas from 1966 and then as a collected book in 1968.
Kincaid notes that Roberts’ work is often admired by his fellow writers but neglected more widely as science fiction. In part, this could be due to reactions to the artist rather than his art itself. While his work is respected by those already familiar with it, Roberts’s personality probably damaged his wider lasting recognition. Kincaid observes that Roberts may have been “incapable of friendship, someone who distrusted everyone on principle, and fell out with everyone who became close to him.”
We must go back a generation to find writers discussing Roberts’ work. Both AJ Budrys and Kingsley Amis lavished praise on Roberts. Trillion Year Spree by Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove also cites him positively, but Roberts is otherwise “almost entirely absent from other surveys of the genre.”
This deficit of attention has only grown in the years since Roberts’ death, which makes Kincaid’s literary appreciation particularly relevant. Kincaid speculates that Pavane may suffer in genre terms from being neither fish nor fowl. It does not sit easily “in the technological territory of science fiction,” yet it is also not modern fantasy. Pavane is a particularly British work, a book made up of a cycle of stories, and one imbued by religion, sense of place, and the mythical past of the English countryside.
Kincaid notes that, while much of Roberts’s output appears “nominally the future, what we see of it is redolent of the past” and that Roberts is one of a group of British writers who “write within the future historic, whose inspiration comes more from the depths of English literature than the glittering surfaces of American science fiction.” The challenge with this type of fiction is that “Roberts sets himself in opposition to how science fiction commonly perceives itself.” To engage with Pavane therefore requires the reader to commit to a similar opposition to what “normal” science fiction is doing.
This in itself suggests that a clear analysis of Pavane requires us to step away from familiar genre referents to unpick the tonality and mood of the book. Two names that come up regularly with Roberts, and which Kincaid cites early on in his Critical Companion, are not genre authors at all, but writers “whose work resonates with the landscape of southern England” — Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling.
Pavane was written in the 1960s, and it now competes for attention in a distinctly changed genre market. As book’’s’ reputations often precede the reader opening them, Pavane may be well-known as a work of alternative fiction (where Britain is dominated by the Catholic Church) instead of science fiction. Putting aside that this is inaccurately reductive, I’d note that since Pavane’s writing, and in the intervening decades, alternative world fiction has become so well-established that it has slipped its genre bonds and become respectable. It has been confirmed as palatable in the mainstream by being renamed and tidied up for literary consumption under the nom de plume “counter-factual fiction.” Pavane is therefore ripe for rediscovery by readers who wish to know more about SF’s antecedents, alternative world fiction, or to gain a window on one of the more distinct and singular interpretations of “what if?”
Pavane’s particular “what-if” speculation is built from the early death of Elizabeth I, a successful invasion by the Spanish Armada and a world dominated by a globalCatholic Church. After Elizabeth’s death, King Philip of Spain’s Armada lands successfully and his army squashes both the English army and English Protestantism. In short order, Dutch Protestantism is also suppressed, and Europe becomes a majority Catholic continent. The colonies in America and Australia are now also outposts of Catholicism, and the Church deliberately restricts scientific advancement in each nation. Britain becomes a stifled backwater, culturally and technologically.
Roberts’s book is perhaps best explored as both a novel and as a collection of interconnected stories developed and published individually. John Clute’s terminology for this type of work entered the canon long ago: the “fixup.” Kincaid prefers the term “mosaic novel,” and both terms describe the structure of a series of stories that are linked thematically but also stand alone from each other (mostly).
Pavane might be considered a paragon of this form, as each part of the book not only focuses on particular characters, but also defines an aspect of the world. Kincaid tells us that: “‘The Signaller’ explained the semaphore stations; next “The Lady Anne” is concerned with steam-powered road trains; “Brother John” gives attention to the role of the Catholic Church. The last of this initial set of Pavane stories to be written was “Lords and Ladies,” which carefully provided the link between “The Lady Anne” and “Corfe Gate”.”
Just as the map is not the territory, so too, the alternative world conceit is not the whole story. Both the alternative setting and each individual story allow Roberts to also explore the mythic in the English landscape. Faery magic, a component of a specific form of British myth and fiction dating back to before Shakespeare, features in “The Signaller” and “Lady Margaret”. Roberts mines the English countryside, and often specifically Dorset, to explore a hidden faery world, creating an emotional resonance for the reader with the landscape itself.
Kincaid divides his Companion into six easily digestible chapters. He guides the reader through the structure of the novel, then maps its worldbuilding (which was, he notes, arrived at aggregately, as new stories were written, not worked out systematically in advance). Kincaid unpacks “the network of semaphore signal stations and the Fairies” and then discusses the complex religious history. Religion dominates an entire chapter, as it should given its significance as the Catholic Church rises and both English Protestantism and older faiths fall away. Kincaid notes that “an inescapable feature that has to be central to any evaluation of the book, is the role of religion. This is not just the fact that the Catholic Church plays the part of the villain in this story, something that Roberts would later come to regret, but ranged against the Church and the social and economic system it has created, are other belief systems.”
Religion is the spine through each element of Pavane, both in favour of the new Catholic majority and through resistance to it. Kincaid observes that “Anglicanism survives as an underground movement, but here it works in concert with folk beliefs, with the Fairies, and with a survival of Norse mythology.”
Religion as a motivating force in genre fiction is a two-edged sword, giving context and impetus to characterisation and driving the plot. But when the religion that the writer settles on is not itself fictional, it brings a host of other issues with it. As Kincaid observes, Roberts later regretted a narrative where the Catholic Church was the antagonist, stifling both progress and dissent, and working against the benefits of the modern world that we enjoy.
The cycle of stories contains hidden references to religious resistance that the casual reader is unlikely to notice. In “The Signaller,” Kincaid notes that when the protagonist Rafe “graduates from the College of Signals he is required to spend a full day in the physically arduous task of transmitting “the Book of Nehemiah.”
Kincaid explains that the Book of Nehemiah is a codified reference. It is a book of the Bible, but crucially, only Protestant Bibles refer to this book by this term. Rafe has fought to join the Guild of Signallers and is presumably unaware that it is a covert, Protestant body.
Kincaid tells us that Roberts became discontented with Pavane, going so far as to see it as an albatross around his neck. Kincaid’s conclusion is that Roberts’s discontent sprang from his own approach to the Catholic Church in the story.
Roberts stated that his position was neither for or against religion and that “I was rather sorry when I did Pavane, I felt I’d dragged the Catholic Church in by the scruff of its neck, screaming.” His regret infused his later works, and Kincaid observes that this is most notable in another novel, The Chalk Giants. Roberts addressed his own feelings in Pavane’s final story, “Coda.”
The thematic aspects of Pavane’s story cycle include the overt: an alternative world, the religious triumph of Catholicism, the deformed nature of technology (slowed but not stopped by the Church), and the covert activities of religious resistance and old gods hidden in the landscape. However, less explicit is the idea that this is not an alternative world story at all, but one where history repeats in cycles.
Kincaid summarises this development by stating that “read as alternate history, therefore, Pavane suggests that Catholic domination might have retarded both technological and social advance, rendering fragile our familiar modern world. But the Coda tells us something else; here we learn that there were no concentration camps, that many of the horrors of the twentieth century were thus avoided.”
The inexplicit conceit of Pavane is then made explicit in “Coda” — that history loops and repeats, rather than runs here in a parallel and alternative track to the real world. The Catholic Church, armed with this knowledge of cycling history, has chosen to manipulate the world from the sixteenth century onwards in order to avoid the horrors of the twentieth century. This is a redemptive arc for the institution. They had humanity’s best interests at heart.
As Kincaid observes, “this new information does not fit within an alternate history scenario, because if the concentration camps never happened in this reality, there would be no knowledge of them.”
Kincaid offers two further observations about the revelation of the cyclical story. The first is that Roberts is clumsy in his execution. The explicit revelation is addressed to the reader rather than the characters. As Kincaid notes above, how can the character John, reading a letter that he has received, discover the good news that the Catholic dominion has meant that “there was no Belsen. No Buchenwald. No Passchendaele.” This would not be a celebratory revelation for John. If the horrors associated with these places did not occur, then the place names would not resonate for him and give him a sense of relief that they were avoided. This scene is therefore a “fourth wall-breaking” address from the writer directly to the reader. It inevitably jars.
However, Kincaid tempers his criticism of this flaw. The flaw is the overt declaration of the cyclical conceit, not the conceit itself. The cyclic history was always intended as an aspect of the book, and is not thrown in in a last minute surprise. “Anyone reading the book with even a modicum of attention would have seen references to cyclic history crop up all the way through.”
Kincaid brings his detailed analysis to a close by turning to two key figures in Roberts’s work. The first is an actual person, the late Paul Nash, a landscape painter and official war artist. Roberts was both a writer and an illustrator himself and was strongly influenced by art, and landscapes in particular, and by an appreciation of Dorset. Nash enabled him to visualise the physical environment around Dorset.
Also, Nash often painted surreal landscapes, which would logically appeal to a genre writer.
The second person is a character and, in particular, a female character. Kincaid notes that Roberts was unusual from the 1960s onwards in that he featured women in his work as protagonists. They were also more active and powerful than male characters. Roberts stated that he was not seeking to create powerful female characters, but more that the sexist nature of much science fiction meant that treating women “as human beings rather than angels or demons, made them stand out.”
As Kincaid notes, discussing Roberts’s female characters is to enter a cultural minefield. While attempting to rescue women from “from the male gaze, his own descriptions of women would often centre upon (their) sexual characteristics. Moreover, few if any of his female characters were individualised, he presented them rather as aspects of some universal, archetypal form.” As with any writer, Roberts’ presentation of women is inextricably linked to his own evolution as an artist and to the formative experience he had, born in 1935, coming of age in the 1950s, and finding his voice as a writer in the 1960s.
Roberts’s particular evolution includes the importance to him of Nash’s art, the English landscape, and the body of his own work, which would have both entrenched his thinking and offered him opportunities to experiment. In exploring these factors, Kincaid provides greater depth and context to Roberts’s themes around women in Pavane.
As mentioned earlier, Roberts has become obscure, so Kincaid does a significant service to the writer and to those readers who may be unfamiliar with him through this critical analysis. Kincaid speaks with authority and, crucially, enthusiasm, about his subject. His passion is both infectious and well-informed, and carries through to the reader. He considers Pavane, and by extension, Roberts, as extraordinary. This is likely to win Roberts posthumous attention and new readers. Kincaid sets out his argument for why Roberts is entitled to them, and he brings an old writer together with a new readership. His Critical Companion is a triumph and worth the time readers will invest in it.
Kincaid concludes his work by stating that “I hope I have demonstrated how these consistent themes were all laid out in Pavane, how they were responsible for the particular richness and complexity of that extraordinary work, and consequently why Pavane remains an essential work in the history of science fiction.” He has achieved that goal and he contextualises the art through the artist’s life. This reinforces why Pavane remains a crucial text for genre readers and an unexplored pleasure for those readers unfamiliar with it.
fred_mouseFor Reasons, I'm looking for fiction books--preference for kids, but any age will do--with anything that looks a bit like generative AI. Chatbots in particular would be a win. I've been doing a fascinating dive into the librarything tag cloud*. Note that at this point it doesn't have to be a well written or readable book
adding: I'll take recommendations for artificial general intelligence as well; I'll care about the line between them later, when I've used them to generate the relevant keywords
What I've found so far
Not found, but remembered: "Better Living Through Algorithms" by Naomi Kritzer, which is questionable because it is probably meant to be artificial general intelligence rather than generative AI, but at this point I'm not being that picky because the hit rate is so low.
also! the closest I've got at this point in kids books is Wild Robot and the sequels; failing to work out where to find more. (in english. I've found a book that looks perfect in Chinese)
*so thankful that people put all sorts of tags on their books; I'm having a great time working out what maps to what tag. If I get it together I'll write a post off the clock about what I found that was truly batshit
the_comfortable_courtesanAnd had not been idle, for while dear Gussie had been following in his father’s footsteps by studying upon the botany of those parts, she had begun learning the local tongue, and talking to the maidservants &C. While doing this, had come across the folktales of those parts, that she put herself to gathering, and also some of the songs. Finding her doing this, her father had sent for ancients from the villages thereabouts, and now she fancied she had quite enough to put together in a pretty volume when they returned to Town.
But much as they had enjoyed their time there and the more than generous hospitality, as it came towards spring, Rozovsky had groaned and declared that he supposed he should be making his way to St Petersburg – where one of his sons was in the Imperial Page Corps –
Gussie had sighed and said, had been thinking himself that they should be on their return to England. Sure his father was by no means old and in the halest of health, but news took a deal of a while to reach 'em where they were.
So they had all come to an entirely amicable agreement that the party should break up, and that Gussie and Verena were ever welcome, and Gussie extended a mutual invitation to come visit Dambert Chase was Rosovsky ever in England.
They decided to travel back southwards, by way of the Mediterranean – let us, Gussie remarked, make this a really extensive honeymoon voyage – have we not been quite exhorted to call at Lady Bexbury’s villa at Naples? – that indeed seemed a very pleasing prospect.
And here they were, so much sunlight, thought Verena, as she sat upon the terrace of the Villa Bexburi, looking over its magnificent vista of the Bay of Naples.
Had not quite anticipated to encounter the company they found there: here was Emma Reveley, that was, had married that most romantic figure, Bernardo di Serrante, half of antient Neapolitan aristocracy and half of Boston Quaker breeding, that one had heard had fought with Garibaldi in ’48, but now turned to the arts of peace and studied with the agrarian reformer, Marcello Traversini. Nardo was, she supposed, some connexion of her own? for was the son of Reynaldo di Serrante that was her elder sister Cara's father.
La, Signore Traversini was not the vision one conjured up when thinking agrarian reformer! Not in the least like pudgy little Artie Demington, more like unto some classical figure in the paintings one saw when one went call on various local inhabitants to whom one had introductions! A demigod of grapes and olives one might fancy as he walked among his vines and groves.
Along with Nardo, that was very fine-looking himself! Not that she inclined to any fellow but darling Gussie, but one must admit that the men hereabout were very pleasing to the eyes. Even Mr White, that ran the printing-press that produced a journal and pamphlets on agrarian matters, and was English – one might even detect a slight Cockney note in his speech – was quite a handsome chap for his years.
Sure did she dabble in watercolours like Emmy she would find that a great inspiration to her brush! but there was Mrs di Serrante, conscientiously painting away at depictions of scenery, and ruins, and mayhap a quaint olive-tree or so. Well, mayhap in private she prevailed upon her husband to present as a sleeping satyr or such….
Verena, that was lying in a long chair on the terrace, a novel drooping from her hand, looked over to where Emmy di Serrante was leaning upon the wall with her sketchbook and colour-box, intent upon a seascape.
It was really somewhat vexing! Verena had been wont to consider the Reveley sisters as a pair of dowdy provincials that had been quite thrust into Town Society upon the death of the late Lord Raxdell – Verena, like possibly every other young woman in her set, had passed through a girlish passion for that dashing Viscount, so handsome, such a prime sportsman, a most noted whip, and while she had recovered, still felt a pang at his untimely demise. Their mother had been no use at all to 'em –
So unlike dear Mama! Mama that knew not merely all about dress and how to be in the crack o’style, but all the little tricks of manner that gave one a deal of assurance when going into Society. And indeed, my darlings, you will need that, alas, I fear.
(Because of the whispers that Cara – Adeline – Verena Zellen is not Sir Hartley’s daughter. Even if, in all matters of affection, they were.)
So darling Mama had conveyed 'em knowledge of Society and its conventions that had served 'em all well, and Cara and Adeline had married well, and Verena herself had made this quite spectacular and enviable match, to Gussie, that she had liked since childhood and come to love.
But the Reveley girls – so awkward – but then they were took up by Lady Bexbury, one supposed as it were as a bequest from Lord Raxdell – had long been give out that there were feelings 'twixt 'em of great affection – and had he not left her the famed pink diamonds? – though there had also been vulgar speculations concerning his feelings for Lady Ferraby –
That had conveyed 'em somewhat more of polish – and the elder of the two, Miss Harriet, received a most eligible offer from the Honble Brumpage Parry-Lloyd, heir to Lord Abertyldd, not perhaps the most thrilling of suitors but an excellent match.
Still, they might have improved considerable, but Verena had still been wont to consider 'em unsophisticated creatures compared to the Zellen sisters that had been brought up in Town Society from their earliest years. One was kind, of course, there was no need to be spiteful and cattish like that set that used to gather round Lady Trembourne before her disgrace, but in the way one was to visiting relatives or neighbours from Cornwall.
Yet, here was Emmy not in the least awkward – fluent in Italian, including the particular tongue of this region – on the easiest of terms with Signor Traversini and Mr White – and widely received in the very various social circles hereabouts.
Had, Verena discovered, the entrée to the local nobility by way of her husband – and also to the Americans that came here for assorted reasons – of course to English Society – also, one discovered, to a deal of savants through introductions from Signora Umberti, whose late husband had been an esteemed professor before fleeing into exile, and had been by way of a governess to the Reveley sisters.
And took this all with entire easiness and one could only say, aplomb.
Was, it appeared, in quite a constant whirl of routs, balls, excursions to sites of interest, invitations to come view this or that one’s villa or gardens, &C&C. One supposed she had to find some diversion while her husband went about with Signor Traversini or others learning about grapes and making wine with the intention of in due course setting up to do the like on American shores. Or going to meetings of agrarian reform societies.
Both couples were attending this ridotto at some palazzo: indeed, very fine, but such a mob of company, thought Verena, that found her head aching a little at the noise. Feeling a little chagrin at observing Emmy di Serrante quite the sparkling butterfly, flitting from group to group, demonstrating a little discreet flattering flirtatiousness to this or that older fellow. Nardo, Verena observed, was smoking on a terrace with a group of younger chaps – perchance former comrades?
Gussie took her hand and said, had a notion that there was dancing a little further on, and they were about to go there, for they danced together exceedingly well and it was quite of their greatest pleasures, when came bustling up to 'em some lady she had met in the English set with Emmy – fancied her husband was here for his health? – begging to make known to Lord and Lady Imbremere her American friends.
This was undoubtedly what Mama would consider encroaching presumption, but one could hardly go so far as to deliver a cut, so they conceded to have the Rutledges, from Virginia, introduced to 'em, that made exceeding effusive –
Had not Emmy said somewhat about 'em, and that for citizens of a democratic nation they were greatly dazzled by tinsel show?
One gleaned that impression!
Upon finding that Gussie was an earl and a botanist, Mr Rutledge launched into the tale of his father’s friend, that had also been a botanist, and had gone plant-hunting in the Virginia forests with an English earl some considerable while ago. And alas, the fellow was attacked and killed by a bear, did not know the ways of things with the wild animals in those parts –
Gussie said drily that that must have been his grandfather – his mother’s father – that died before he was born.
This put a considerable chill on the conversation.
The following morning Verena found herself feeling considerable qualmish – somewhat she had consumed perchance – and said she would lie in a little when Gussie rose. A little later, feeling no better, she got up to seek her smelling-salts. Her maid had not seen them, very tiresome.
She would go ask Emmy did she have such thing as a smelling-bottle about her.
There was Emmy, sitting out on the terrace, carefully shaded from the sun, writing at a lap-desk. Shielding her own eyes from the glare of light, Verena went over to make her request.
Why, certainly, cried Emmy, I will go fetch it immediate, as she closed the lid of the lap-desk, not before Verena had observed that she had been writing in what looked like cypher – had come across Gillie Beaufoyle about the like. Gillie, challenged about this, had shrugged and revealed that he had been desired to make use of his sojourn in the Ukraine by his superiors –
But Emmy, about secret communications?
mmmag
