In European cities, flowers on windows are not uncommon. Bright pelargoniums or begonias delight not only the owner, but also passers-by, and at the same time, they do not take away the useful area in the house. Good soil and properly selected plants are all that is needed to create a flower garden on a windowsill.
The indisputable advantage of flower boxes on the windows is their size: the capacity is enough for using gardening skills, but it is compact enough to fit in a modest area. It is a good idea to choose flowers that will bloom for several years and will not require peculiar attention. Check special offers on perennial plants on Dutch-bulbs.com and choose several plants to arrange on your window.
Here are several tips to follow in order to successfully grow various plants:
Color spectrum
It is difficult to resist the desire to plant everything at once, but a harmonious composition will turn out only when using combined shades. Otherwise, you run the risk of getting something that looks like weeds. Red, yellow, orange, white, and bright pink flowers look best from a distance. Close up, petals of blue and purple tones, as well as rich greens, are more advantageous.
Composition
An obvious rule, which for some reason many overlook: in flower boxes on the windowsill, taller plants should be planted from the side of the window so that they do not obscure miniature specimens. Ampel flowers have the most place at the outer edge of the container.
By the way, it is generally better to be careful with tall plants: if the calculation turns out to be inaccurate, the flowers will interfere with the penetration of light into the room where it is required by house plants.
Plants
Many plants, including indoor ones, are suitable for growing in a box on an external windowsill. Annual flowers feel more than comfortable under such conditions. It is also a great place to grow herbs and even some vegetables on a modest scale.
If you have not yet decided on the plants, you can do it easier: put indoor flowers right with the pots in the box – it is possible that you will not have to invent anything else.
Substrate
You may be surprised, but you can do without earth, using a mixture of ingredients that will promote good aeration of the roots and maintain optimal moisture. Regular fertilization will stimulate root growth and prolong the flowering period.
Try mixing peat, perlite, and other ingredients that will provide nourishment and moisture to your plants. Using a mixture of vermiculite and moss will not make the box unnecessarily heavy, and the top drain can be laid out of stones to prevent moisture from evaporating too quickly.
Pot
Choosing a pot for flowers on an external window sill is perhaps the easiest task, although the range of sizes and styles is quite large. Just follow your taste and environment.
Stick to these tips and don’t hesitate to experiment and your window will attract a lot of admiring glances.
They call football ‘The Beautiful Game’. However, it isn’t just this sport that has moments of beauty to it. There are many skilled photographers out there who are capturing points in all sports that highlight the complex and graceful prowess that athletes display with each performance.
Sports photographers have the ability to forever encapsulate the things that an audience wouldn’t usually get to see. Here are some stand-out sports photographers who shine in their field.
Richard Heathcote
Making the viewer really feel like they’re at the scene, Richard Heathcote’s approach to photography is fresh and innovative. By using fascinating robotic technology, Heathcote manages to go to places where people can’t usually physically go, like alongside swimmers or boxers in the ring. This results in breath-taking images, to say the least. His photography echoes the cultural need for immediacy and immersion, and this is reflected by the different ways fans get involved with their chosen sports. Whilst not everyone can get as close to sports as Heathcote, there are other ways for fans to participate.
Betting and using a sportsbook, for example, is a great way to interact with sports as it allows you to follow a team closely and show support. If you’re wondering how to get started with barstool sportsbook, you can simply sign up and find all manner of sports, teams, and bonuses. Alternatively, even doing something like wearing your team’s football shirt or discussing analysis with fellow fans shows support and gives a feeling of greater involvement which fans fully embrace.
Stefan Wermuth
Stefan Wermuth’s work is all about subjects and people. Although this photographer doesn’t focus primarily on sports, his action shots stand out for having personality and excitement. The pictures almost become otherworldly in the way that they capture the emotion on people’s faces, as well as the electricity around them.
Although it’s taken Wermuth years to train, there are ways that people can take their first steps in learning about sports as a subject in art. Skillshare, for example, has many options in this area. If you’re wondering about ways to get involved with skillshare sports pages, there are different levels of classes with various areas of focus to get you started.
Al Bello
It’s the timing mixed with the ability to capture distinctive facial expressions that makes Al Bello’s sports photography stand out. The American photographer has a playful aspect to his work whilst also showing the seriousness of the sport he encapsulates. But it isn’t just the moments that he manages to focus on, it’s the powerful light within the image too.
With the skill that Al Bello has to bring still sports images to life, it’s almost as the viewer is at the scene alongside them. A similar experience would be doing something like listening to live events on the radio. BBC 5 Live is one of the most popular ways of following live sports. If you want to get going with BBC sports radio, then you can either listen through your TV, radio, or phone.
These three artists take photographs of some of the best moments in sports. Whether getting up close in the action or capturing expressions, they show sports in a wonderful and enticing way.
Babygirl, the Toronto-based duo of Kirsten “Kiki” Frances and Cameron “Bright” Breithaupt, make music that sits at the crossroads between Death Cab for Cutie, Alvvays, and Taylor Swift. It’s their shared admiration for artists operating both within and outside the mainstream – as well as their mutual love for Lil Wayne, whose stylings are admittedly harder to trace in their songs – that initially inspired them to write music they’ve described as “bubblegum emo,” or more simply, “pop songs with sad guitars.” Having gained traction with their debut single, ‘Overbored’, in 2016, they released two EPs, As You Wish and its 2018 follow-up Lovers Fevers, which caught the attention of Charlie Puth songwriter Jacob Kasher, who subsequently signed them to Sandlot Records.
Last week, the duo returned with the 6-track collection Losers Weepers, their strongest outing yet, along with a video for highlight ‘Million Dollar Bed’. Featuring contributions from Phoebe Bridgers collaborator Marshall Vore (Babygirl also co-produced Lauv’s Alessia Cara-featuring ‘Canada’, which was co-written by Bridgers and Vore), the EP leans more firmly on the duo’s pop influences while showcasing their artistic versatility, from the infectious ‘Easy’ to the fittingly dreamy ‘You Were in My Dream Last Night’ and the intimate ‘A Little Bit Closer’. At the core of Babygirl remains a focus on playful, melodic songwriting that’s as catchy as it is resonant.
We caught up with Babygirl for this edition of our Artist Spotlight interview series to talk about their first attempts at songwriting, Losers Weepers, being famous, and more.
I’m curious what role music played early on in your life. Cam, I read that you grew up in a very musical household, and Kiki, you started writing songs whenyouwere around nine years old.
Kiki: I was always just really drawn to it. I loved singing and performing and I loved watching people sing and perform. And yeah, I started writing pretty young, mainly just because I wanted to be a singer, and I knew that some of my favorite singers wrote their songs. I wasn’t really thinking about writing good songs, that’s for sure [laughs]. But I just started playing around and kind of mimicking things that I was hearing and trying to learn how to do it.
Cam: I think growing up with music in the family basically informed my entire identity as a person, honestly. It was everywhere, at all times, on both sides of the family. My dad did some music journalism when I was a kid, so he would get advanced copies of albums and play them around the house and we would have, like, inside scoop. So he had like, Kid A, promotional copy; Fountains of Wayne’s Welcome Interstate Managers was a big one, with ‘Stacy’s Mom’ on it, of course, we had that before it came out. So I think that was very exciting to me, the idea that we had some sort of insider thing going on with music, which probably inspired me to want to become an insider myself in music. And here I am, deep inside the belly of the beast.
Kiki: [laughs] The belly of the beast…
Did you start writing early on as well? And did you feel more pressure sharing your songs in that environment?
Cam: The earliest song I can specifically remember writing was for a school thing. Everyone at school had to write a play and we decided to make ours a musical, so me and my friends wrote this, like, terrible Sum 41 knockoff song, and I brought it to my dad to have him notate it so that one of the people who was taking piano lessons could play it on piano. So no, I was very eager to share. And then, probably around 12 or 13, I made my first full-length album, self-produced, that I sold – the school had this thing called the Entrepreneurial Fair, where all the eighth graders got to build a booth in the gym and sell their wares to the sixth and seventh graders. So, you know, something like, “I made these cupcakes,” or whatever. And mine was like, “Yeah, I have 50 copies of my debut album.” And it was really unusual music that I think disturbed a lot of people. One of my friends’ older sister, I think she was in 10th grade at the time, and I thought she was so cute –
Kiki: [laughs]
Cam: She had gotten a copy of the album, and then he showed me her texting later that day being like, “What is this weird meditation music? This sucks!” [laughter] So, I think that definitely informed my trajectory as someone trying to make music that’s gonna, like, resonate with as many people as possible, was being like, “Aw, cool older girl didn’t like my experimental music, I gotta make it a little more down the middle.”
It was probably the early exposure to Kid A.
Cam: Exactly. It was a bad approximation of Kid A by a 12-year-old boy.
So, you then met while studying at the same music program. What were some things you bonded over?
Kiki: Well, just being in an environment like that already is kind of a bonding experience because everyone that you’re there with is really obsessed with music. So, meeting on that basis I think set us up to be likely to work together at some point. But yeah, just one day we were talking about pop music and just had a really fun time talking about all the songs that we mutually admired, and that made us want to try writing together.
Cam: It’s not 100% a jazz program – they definitely touch on all corners of contemporary music, but definitely more towards the latter half. The first couple of years are super jazz intensive, so you’re hanging out all day just talking about Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, and then we start talking, it’s like, blink-182 and Taylor Swift, you know. I think it was validating – you know, you’re taking these sort of more commercial forms seriously, as they have to be taken.
Was there a reason that you gravitated more to songwriting as opposed to performing at first? How did that come later on?
Cam: I think by the time we met we both self-identified as writers.
Kiki: Yeah, and we were surrounded by so many performers that were so good at performing, and I think that I kind of started to realize that my thing that I could be really good at was writing, like, “I love performing too and I obviously want to be great at that, but what if the thing that I get really really great at is writing?”
Cam: Yeah, realizing, like, “I’m not gonna sing the highest or the loudest or do the fastest runs, but the content of what we’re singing, it can carry equal weight.”
Was there a moment where your mindset changed or you gained a bit more confidence in terms of performing?
Kiki: Totally, yeah. It’s just about getting to know yourself as an artist and accepting who you are and choosing to lean into the strengths that you have and not try to force anything that doesn’t come naturally. I mean, I really wanted to sing like Hayley Williams for a long time; I wanted to just be able to belt out these huge high loud notes, and I just kind of realized over time that that’s not my voice’s sweet spot. So I think it’s just about embracing the things about you and about your voice or your style that help you carve out who you are.
Cam: I think, especially on the performance side for us, feeling like we can embrace that we’re subdued and we don’t have to be jumping around or rocking the hardest. The live performance is a vehicle to present the songs to people who hopefully are familiar with them, and if not, present them in a way that’s going to make people want to check out the recordings. I think one of our first shows, if not our first show, everyone sang along with one of the songs, ‘Overbored’, and that was a real moment for me to feel like we wrote the song well enough that we honestly could have stopped singing and everyone would’ve sung for us. That was a really powerful moment, to be like, “The performance is about the relationship between you and people who’ve been living with the songs,” not necessarily blowing everyone’s head off with virtuosity.
Kiki: There are other bands that will do that, and thank God for that.
How did you come up with the name Babygirl?
Kiki: Babygirl was the name of an acapella girl group thing that I was in when I was in grade five. I use all that very loosely, it was just me kind of starting to write songs and then singing them with two girls at my school.
Cam: Insisting that they would –
Kiki: Yeah, insisting that they would be in my band. So I just told Cam that one day and he was like, “Oh, that’s actually a really good band name.” So it was one conversation and then we were like, “Okay.”
Cam: “Let’s start a band and use that name.”
There’s obviously this whole pattern now with indie projects having names like Soccer Mommy and Adult Mom.
Kiki: Totally, yeah, we’ve noticed that too.
Cam: Dad Sports… We should do a big tour with all of us.
Kiki: Oh my god.
Cameron: The Family Reunion Tour.
Kiki: The Family Reunion Tour [laughs]. I love it.
Cam: Mom, Dad, and Baby. We can also get Sir Babygirl.
That would be awesome. I remember seeing one of the early write-ups having to clear up any confusion between you and Sir Babygirl specifically. And I also wanted to bring this up because back then, you described your aesthetic as “bubblegum emo.” And while I think there’s still an element of that on this EP, there’s definitely a shift to a more pop-leaning sound, which maybe goes back to what Cam was saying about wanting the music to resonate with as many people as possible. First off, how do you look back on that record, and what does Losers Weepers represent for you in terms of the band’s evolution?
Kiki: Lovers Fevers for me has some really high points and some low points, and I think that Losers Weepers has fewer low points. I think with Lovers Fevers, we were still learning so much about what we wanted to sound like. There are so many songs on there that I’m obsessed with, but there are moments that I’ve learned from, that I wasn’t so sure about. Going into Losers Weepers, I felt more sure of what I didn’t want to do and there was more clarity of what we did want to do. And I think Losers Weepers definitely leans more pop, but then also, a song like ‘Today Just Isn’t My Day’ is a bit more of an outlier in that sense. We’re always going to do both, because we love pop music, but our main goal is just to have writing that feels compelling and genuine to us. And however we dress it up, at the end of the day, we’re really just caring about that melody and lyric.
Cam: But I definitely think sonically, it’s just a narrowing down – like you were saying, realizing what we don’t want to do. Listening to Lovers Fevers, ‘Soft’ was definitely a touchstone moment on that project of us learning how to make electronic drums fit in with our sound, and that sort of opened the door for songs like ‘Easy’, or for the first half of ‘You Were in My Dream Last Night’ to sound the way that they did, so I think it’s seeing the things that really worked and leaning into those.
Could you share some personal highlights or memories from the recording process?
Kiki: One funny moment was when we were recording the vocals for ‘You Were In My Dream Last Night’. We actually went to my mom’s house – she was out of town, and we recorded the vocals in my little sister’s closet because she had a bunch of clothes and stuffed animals and stuff in there, so it was actually a really absorptive environment, which is really good for recording vocals. So I remember just sitting on the floor of my little sister’s closet and recording this song that we’ve been working on for years and it was just kind of a funny weird moment to be in an environment that was just so adorable.
Cam: One that sticks out to me – I don’t know if it’s necessarily a good memory, but it was a learning experience – was when we were producing ‘Nevermind’. We’re working with Marshall Vore in his studio – it ended up being my brother Miles, who drums on all the songs on the EP, drumming on the final version, but at the time, it was Marshall. And we had this big drum solo section at the end of the song, like, 30 seconds of just going completely nuts. For the rest of the session, he had been engineering, but for this part of the session, since he was gonna be drumming, I had to engineer. And were running Pro Tools, I’m a Logic user, I was not familiar with the environment, and I was accidentally deleting takes as I was recording new ones; I was overwriting them. So he played this amazing drum solo ten times over, gave us all these options, just went nuts on the drums, came in all sweating, and he was like, “Alright, let’s hear what I did.” And it was all gone except for the most recent one. So I think that was just a learning experience for me to slow down and take inventory of what I’m doing while I’m engineering, especially if it’s a new environment, because… [laughs]
Kiki: You might not be recording.
Cam: You only get one first take and then it’s gone, especially with improvisatory elements like that.
That must have felt horrible.
Cam: I get a pit in my stomach just telling this story.
You mentioned Marshall Vore – I was going to ask you about the different collaborators you worked with on this EP. What was that process of opening up your songwriting to other people like?
Cam: We had been co-writing for other artists for a while already, so I think we started doing that and had a lot of fun with the process and we’re like, “There’s no reason we can’t now apply this to our thing just because of some ‘We’re an indie band’ authenticity thing, like let’s just do whatever is gonna get us the coolest songs.”
Kiki: Yeah, we try not to have an ego about that kind of thing. There are parts of Losers Weepers, some of my favorite moments, where it was just us writing and producing, so we’re never going to stop doing that, but I think that we’re also never going to stop getting in the room with other people and seeing what happens.
What do you think makes your dynamic unique?
Cam: Willing to be meticulous, thorough, even sometimes to the point of it slowing us down. Which I think is part of the benefit of when we co-write. We feel like, “Alright, there’s people here, we can’t sit here and hum and haw over this one line all day.” But when it’s just us, we have the privilege of patience –
Kiki: Or the insanity.
Cam: [laughs]
Kiki: I think something that happens a lot for us is, when it comes to Babygirl music, we have kind of the same radar of when something clicks; we both feel it, and no one else can really understand that in the exact same way.
Cam: It just happens to be our shared sensibility. Sometimes it’s a good thing when we have each other to bounce off of in a co-writing situation to be able to go, “You know what, everyone else in the room thinks this line sucks but we believe in it, so we’re gonna stick with it.” And it’s important for us to sort of hone that with just the two of us so that we can make sure we always have that shared understanding of what Babygirl as a band would or wouldn’t say.
I wanted to ask you about ‘Million Dollar Bed’, which deals with the idea of fame and success in the context of a relationship. Is being famous something that you often find yourselves thinking about?
Kiki: I wouldn’t say it’s something that I think about often. I think that we want our music to be heard on a level where fame would be a result of that, but it’s not… I really value just being able to, like, go for a walk, go to the grocery store, all those things. So the thought of real, actual fame happening to me seems pretty horrible [laughs]. But I also really want our songs to exist in the world in a really meaningful way. It’s kind of a complicated thing. I think there are some people that have a sweet spot, and I would really love to be in that sweet spot, where maybe sometimes someone says, “Hey, I really like that song of yours,” and I go, “Oh, that’s really nice, thanks,” but I’m not getting, like, harassed. I think there are some people that are successful musicians but aren’t necessarily dealing with some of the worst aspects. [Looks at Cam] I don’t know, what do you think about fame?
Cam: [sighs] I’ve definitely always wanted to be famous since I was a little kid. And I think part of that song is reckoning with what that would actually look like and maybe understanding that it wouldn’t solve everything. But it’s easy to idealize what that would look like from a distance as a kid.
Kiki: Oh yeah, when I was a kid I want to be famous, for sure.
Cam: Now I definitely think of it more in the terms you’re talking about, which is, it would be a really meaningful validation of the work that we’re doing, artistically, because it would mean a lot of people like it. And it would be a really useful vehicle to share new stuff.
Kiki: Unless we got famous for them hating it.
Cam: Yeah, sometimes you can get famous for being the worst thing on the planet.
Kiki: [laughs] That would suck.
This makes me think of Radiohead again, you know, because it nearly destroyed them and then they made Kid A.
Cam: I could definitely see us taking that path.
What feeling do you get when you see the reaction your music has been getting from listeners?
Kiki: Oh, it’s great. It’s so amazing now that there are ways for us to see in almost real time where people are listening to the music and what playlists we’re being put in.
Cam: Having people reach out and say like, “Hey, this song is me and my partner’s love song,” that’s super meaningful. Also, it can sound kind of dry, like, the streaming analytics stuff, but when you think about, if you could time travel back to the 80s or 90s and tell people, “Every time someone makes a mixtape, a cassette with your song on it, you’re gonna know what the name of the mixtape was.” That’s incredibly romantic! That we can go to Spotify and see someone’s thing that says ‘Rainy Day Mood’ and our song is on there, you know, that used to just be sharpied onto a $1 cassette that the artists would never have a way of knowing about. So I feel like it’s a really intimate relationship with the fans, where you really get to see how has this become a part of people’s lives in a way that maybe people weren’t always able to do.
With that in mind, what are your ambitions now that the EP is out?
Cam: Getting famous!
Kiki: [laughs] Yeah, exactly. Uh, the debut album, our first album. We’ve started – I’m sure it’s going to take us a bit of time.
Cam: Yeah, for me, creatively, I want us to make the best body of work we’ve ever made – most cohesive, highest bar for the songs, all killer no filler, you know. I think our ambition is mostly towards quality and authenticity at this point.
Kiki: And having a good time. It’s been a bummer of a year and hopefully shit’s gonna start opening back up and we can all maybe start to live a little bit again.
Cam: Yeah, that’s definitely the other ambition for the band, is just touring. Really seeing the world and meeting people who are listening to our music, you know, smelling their sweat and all that.
Going on that family tour…
Kiki: Going on that family tour, yeah. Let’s make it happen.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
These days, is a movie even a proper movie if it is not part of a franchise?
From Marvel to Tomb Raider, James Bond to Jason Bourne, characters and complete universes are being turned not into a two-hour film, but TV series, video games and sprawling epics set across three, five or in the case of the Marvel Universe, 23 films, 169 video games and 22 TV series. Approximately.
It is fair to say there is plenty of mileage in a good franchise, and it does not just apply to the world of comic books either. Across all manner of genres, finding a good franchise is a route to financial success, although perhaps not always critical acclaim. That is even the case in the horror genre, where a popular antagonist can help carry a single slasher film into several sequels, video games and other manners of digital media.
So with that in mind, here are five horror franchises that have spread throughout pop culture, and given fans some delight at the same time.
Saw
Saw is a relatively new horror franchise, one of the few from the modern world of cinema that has created a character that interests cinemagoers and video game fans alike. The story of John Kramer, known as Jigsaw, started in 2004 with his series of clever traps capturing audiences worldwide. From a budget of around $1.2m (£860,000), Box Office Mojo reports it ended up taking more than $100m (£71.8m) worldwide. That success has seen it spawn a further eight films, as well as two video game releases, neither of which lived up to the franchise’s early success.
Halloween
John Carpenter’s Halloween was the catalyst for the slasher genre of movie, a film held up by many as the father of them all. Telling the story of Michael Myers, it meanders through 12 different movies spanning 43 years. The original saw Myers stalking and killing teenage babysitters on Halloween night, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence. A 1983 Atari game did use the Halloween branding, but you could not play as Myers, although you could unlock him as a playable character in Call of Duty Ghosts.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
The slasher genre was already a big success when Wes Craven entered the fray in 1984 with a Nightmare on Elm Street. The monstrous Freddy Krueger became an overnight success, perhaps as much because of his distinctive appearance and razor gloves as anything. Eight further films followed, but like any successful franchise that was only the start. Krueger featured as the antagonist in novels adapted from the films, comic books and even a TV series called Freddy’s Nightmares. There was even a video game released on Nintendo, and Krueger even featured as a playable character on fight simulator Mortal Kombat.
Gremlins
Gremlins was the first really good comedy horror film, a genre which has since developed. Described as horror fantasy, it told the story of a young man who received a Mogwai as a pet, which later spawned the villainous and murderous Gremlins of the title. It had a relatively big budget at the time, $11m (£7.9m), but made more than $200m (£144m) worldwide. Oddly for a horror movie, the film not only spawned a sequel but a range of action figures, trading cards and a 2019 Christmas collectable featuring Gremlins singing! There were video games too, the last of which was Gremlins: Unleashed! On the Gameboy Colour, although you can find them featured on mobile devices right now. There is a slot title on Gala Bingo based on the original 1984 film, and bearing the same name: Gremlins, and if you wish you can find them in the Lego Batman Movie and as part of a specially released pack for Lego Dimensions. A third film, titled Gremlins 3, is expected if the animated HBO series Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai, is a success this year.
Friday 13th
The story of Jason Vorhees was not the first slasher story to hit the big screen, it probably was not even the best, but for some reason, the hockey mask-wearing villain has captured the imagination of many around the world. He was not even the antagonist in the first film, but from 1981 onwards he has been terrifying and delighting in equal measure. Such was the character’s appeal he spawned a crossover film with A Nightmare on Elm Street, namely Freddie v Jason in 2003, as well books, merchandise and the excellent 2016 game Friday the 13th: The Game. The fact more than 16,000 backers helped get the game off the ground, 36 years after the first film was released, shows the strength in the Friday 13th franchise.
So, you’ve decided to clear out your wardrobe, but have you ever wondered what happens to your clothes after you donate them? Is it all sustainable fashion?
Many people first think to donate their old clothes to charity shops; with roughly 11,200 charity shops in the UK, charity shops are readily accessible. The donated clothes are sorted, cleaned, and sold to raise money for charity. Some charity shops such as Oxfam sell their products online, especially more desirable items such as vintage pieces and wedding dresses.
Yet, charity shops are often given clothes in unsalable condition, which they sell by the kilo to sorting firms where they sort the clothes for their next stage of life.
Sorting Plant
The clothes arriving at the sorting plant come from a wide range of sources such as charity shops, door to door collections and textile banks, with some sorting facilities seeing around 100,000 garments a day.
The clothing is then sorted by hand into categories such as condition, garment type and colour and then packed into bales. The best quality clothes are kept for re-sale, and damaged clothes and waste are sent to recycling plants or incinerated for landfills.
Exported
Many people assume their donated clothing will stay in the UK. However, over half of the UK’s donated clothing ends up abroad in Africa and Eastern Europe. Wrap estimates that around 60% of second-hand clothing is exported abroad to be sold, compared to 32% of clothing sold in UK charity shops.
Clothing (also known as Mitumba) is sold at markets worldwide, serving as cheap, quality clothing to buyers. However, many of the clothes exported are simply sent abroad to be recycled or put in a landfill, causing social, economic, and cultural problems for the receiving countries.
Recycling
The fabric being recycled is separated into colours and fabric type. Labels and fastenings are removed and then broken down into fibres and processed into a thread to be made into new materials.
Cotton and natural fabrics may also be recycled into industrial wipers and filling materials. Wrap estimates that only around 3% of the UK’s clothes are recycled, believed to be caused by several factors including cost, accessibility to facilities, difficulty in recycling fabrics with mixed blends and un-reliable source trains.
Landfill
Unfortunately, around 350,000 tons of clothing is sent to the landfill each year, with the majority still wearable. Today, many of our clothes are made with synthetic fibres such as polyester; it can take Non-biodegradable fabrics such as synthetics around 20-200 years to break down.
Conclusion
Your donated clothing is most likely to be enjoyed by someone else, either in the UK or abroad. Nevertheless, vast quantities of clothing are being disposed of in landfills, causing enormous environmental problems.
To help make your consumption and donation of clothing more sustainable, it’s worth considering:
Donating clothes to local charity shops
Selling your old clothes online
Keeping your clothes for longer by buying quality clothes you love
Upcycling damaged fabric into something new, such as facemasks or cleaning cloths!
Always donating your clothes so they can be sorted rather than disposing of them in the bin!
In our current moment, the music that rises to the top of culture’s echelons is that which finds enough inspiration from other genres to become more than the sum of its parts. This is certainly what American singer, songwriter, and producer Ade has attempted on his debut album, Midnight Pizza. The 10 tracks move swiftly from style to style, rarely settling in one place before urgently moving onto a fresh set of ideas.
What the album boasts in imagination, however, it lacks in cohesive arrangement. Ade’s broad sweeps of heartfelt songwriting incite feelings of pure euphoria at points, but when listened to as a collective whole, Midnight Pizza suffers from emotional whiplash. Sending its listener from the lowest rung to the highest peak, often in the same song, one can’t help but wonder whether the album could have benefitted from a policy of less is more.
Album opener, ‘The City’, is a sumptuous collection of moody synths, brought to life by Ade’s pained reverb-soaked delivery. Moving seamlessly from chord to chord, ‘The City’ paints an epic picture of cinematic scale that stands up as a bold yet unconventional opening track, thanks to the way Ade injects a strange air of finality to the piece.
Indeed, the rest of Midnight Pizza follows in much the same thematic style. Each song is executed with a clear sonic vision in mind, resulting in an emotional landscape that is vast and personal in isolation. But when considered in the wider context of the album, there is a somewhat disjointed feel. There are, however, moments of consistently bright adventurism from Ade. The ironically anti-club club track, ‘Another Weekend’, is infectious right from the start, falling somewhere between Darwin Deez and Disclosure. ‘Feel A Thing’ provides a mysterious yet frenetic dimension to the album, brimming with claustrophobic breaks and chest-bursting synths. Meanwhile, ‘Happy Birthday’ is a gorgeous shot of nostalgia, sensitively arranged and intuitively produced to ignite feelings of intense warmth.
The clear peak of the album, though, comes in the second to last song. ‘Moving Slow’ is a warm and endearing cut, with the moving arrangement of strings and keys playing the perfect host to Ade’s witty lyricism. “Scatterbrain/ Will you ever calibrate?” he asks in the opening line, neatly combining images of the analogue and the digital to create an effect both pleasing and contradictory. It’s here that the fruits of Ade’s labours bear their greatest reward; the pureness of his sensitive songwriting is striking throughout, but with just enough well-chosen lyrics, he builds a tension that draws our ears further in.
For all the inventive songwriting here, Midnight Pizza ends on a somewhat tentative and unsure note. The eponymous track is a slow-moving 80s-style ballad to messy nights out, but rather than grand and gothic, it plays out as somewhat necessary and constituent. A continually shapeshifting record, Ade’s debut is hard to pin down. Somewhere within the ven diagram of pop, indie, and dance is perhaps its most natural home, but come the end of the LP, you wish that his concoctions were a little simpler.
Sandra Bullock stars as Dr. Ryan Stone, an engineer working in space, in this sci-fi thriller directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The intense filming process involved Bullock spending hours every day in isolation, much like her character does in the film. When their space shuttle is hit by flying debris, Stone and her commander Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) are sent flying through space.
The only two survivors, they must come up with a way to get in touch with Mission Control and return to Earth. While isolated in space, Stone ponders the things that make a person human, and what she has left that ties her to her own humanity. In this way, much of the film is intimate, though it is punctuated with intense action sequences and gorgeous shots of Earth as it orbits just out of Stone’s reach.
The film won numerous awards for its sound, editing, visual effects, and cinematography, including an Academy Award for Best Cinematography. Isolating as it is, the story is delivered in such a way that viewers can identify with Stone and her journey from the comfort of their homes.
The music of rock’s most reliable guitar bands often ends up sounding dated and painfully generic, or worse, steeped in irony. This isn’t the case with Dinosaur Jr., who are well into the fourth decade of their career and whose output in the 21st century has remained incredibly consistent without feeling overly indebted to their classic albums in the late 80s and early 90s. The Massachusetts group’s latest LP, Sweep It Into Space – their 12th overall and first since 2016’s Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not – is another solid addition to their formidable catalog. Recorded at Amherst’s Bisquiteen in late 2019 with co-producer Kurt Vile, and completed by J Mascis during quarantine the following year, the album finds the trio – rounded out by bassist Lou Barlow and drummer Murph – doing what do they do best, and doing it in a way that feels refreshing and more enjoyable than it has in a long time.
If the band’s post-reunion material has generally been marked by a shift towards cleaner arrangements while retaining Mascis’ knack for chugging riffs and searing solos, Sweep It Into Space fully leans into that dynamic, and the result is noticeably more vibrant than some of their previous releases. Part of this newfound lightness comes down to Vile’s production, which cuts away some (but definitely not all) of the fuzz to inject new life into Dinosaur Jr.’s trademark sound, from the 12-string acoustic guitar on ‘I Ran Away’ to the use of Mellotron on the funky ‘Take It Back’. ‘I Ran Away’ is a striking highlight, its warm, driving acoustic guitar overlayed with shining twin leads and a pleasant chorus that’s among the most memorable on the album; the bouncy feel of ‘Take It Back’, by far the biggest outlier on the record, is more incongruous but no less endearing in its attempt to switch things up while keeping the band’s signature touch.
But even without the slight variations in sound, Sweep It Into Space would stand out thanks to its greater focus on melodic songcraft and inviting, pop-leaning arrangements. Opener ‘I Ain’t’ swings right into that mode with its major chord progression and sweeping solos, exuding an air of excitement that makes its despairing lyrics (“It’s too late to/ Truly make it alone”) and Mascis’ typically laconic delivery sound like a positive affirmation of unity. ‘And Me’ is another track that bursts with colour, marrying Mascis’ love of the Cure with crunchy guitars that are quintessentially Dinosaur Jr. ‘Garden’, the better of the two tracks written by Barlow, harkens back to a few different musical eras, while the lyrics offer a poignant survey of the past as a way of getting through the present: “It takes time living on a razor blade/ To know the way.”
Sweep It Into Space feels like an earnest reflection of that mantra, which has guided – and grounded – the band’s music for more than a decade since the reunion that once seemed like an impossibility. It’s a deceptively simple record that adds a bit more texture to the band’s monolithic sound, but whose biggest accomplishment is capturing that familiar spark through a more gracious lens. It’s these moments that animate the album: the boisterous energy of ‘Hide Another Round’ on one end, the patient melodies of ‘To Be Waiting’ on the other – both driven by the same invigorating force. One of Mascis’ piercing solos seems to be a response to the song’s title: ‘I Expect It Always’. Over and over again, Dinosaur Jr. deliver.
To me, Red Dead Redemption – Rockstar Games’ sweeping, open-world western epic from 2010 – represents an unequaled gold standard in video gaming. I’m fairly certain every single new video game I’ve played in the years since has been (unfairly, probably) compared to it in some way – a variation of, “Yeah, this is great… but it’s no Red Dead”, has escaped my lips more times than I can count. Sometimes a work just clicks so thoroughly, so entirely, with your sensibilities, tastes, and preferences that it’s difficult to put into words exactly why you adore it as much as you do, such is your passion toward it.
That’s Red Dead Redemption to me.
Redemption was almost entirely unconnected to its near-mythical sixth generation ancestor, 2004’s Red Dead Revolver, with only the vaguest of vague references serving as connective tissue. Was there any particular need to revisit the cast of characters from Redemption in any capacity, especially when it served so well as a self-contained story? I didn’t think so – but the powers that be did.
Such was my concern when Rockstar revealed RedDead Redemption II would serve as a prequel to its predecessor. Taking place fifteen years prior to the first Redemption, the new game would chart the dying days of the infamous Van der Linde Gang, to which Redemption’s protagonist John Marston (Rob Wiethoff) once belonged, and whose exploits were only alluded to in the broadest of terms.
My concern stemmed from a simple belief I’d formed over the years – with the rarest of exceptions, prequels simply don’t work. They tend to produce one (or more) of three outcomes: they struggle to establish their own stakes and instead focus on connecting the dots to their predecessors (hello, George Lucas), exist as hollow, forgotten shadows of their forebears (I’m looking at you, Peter Jackson), or result in a complete mess when an attempt is made to be simultaneously separate and connected (is anyone really still clamouring for another Fantastic Beasts?). I was concerned the follow-up to my favourite video game of all time would suffer the effects of the same apparent curse.
To my delight, I was very wrong.
Red Dead Redemption II is a masterpiece of prequel storytelling, perhaps even the definitive prequel. As I write this, I’m currently on my second full play-through of the game, and I’m still consistently stunned at how well it establishes its own individual stakes while laying the groundwork for those of its predecessor. Writers Dan Houser, Michael Unsworth, and Rupert Humphries expertly use framework, characters, and allusions from the original Redemption to broadly expand what we thought we knew of John Marston’s past. Redemption II broadly embellishes the smatterings of backstory established in its predecessor while refusing to be restricted by them.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. Property of Lucasfilm.
There exists a tendency in prequels to present familiar characters as simply “the same, but younger”. Just think of Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi (as much as I enjoy that particular performance), or the crew of the Enterprise in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, who almost all arrive fully-formed and entirely familiar. This reliance on overt familiarity when re-introducing established characters perhaps points to a wariness to present beloved characters as anything other than what made them beloved in the first place. The result, however, is the nullifying of any potential character growth and development, presenting the audience (or player) with a character who is fully-formed on arrival, sailing exclusively on a pre-destined course.
Redemption II avoids this pitfall by treating its returning characters exactly how they ought to be treated – as people. Some otherwise-familiar characters are very different, almost irreconcilable people between the two games. It’s difficult and disheartening to accept the sleazy, crooked bandit Javier Escuella as we knew him in the original Redemption was once the handsome, romantic revolutionary we meet in Redemption II. Likewise, the demented and psychotic Colonel Kurtz-esque Dutch van der Linde was once the charming and charismatic leader of a merry band of outlaws worthy of Robin Hood (at least, that’s how he’d have you believe it). Rockstar understand that people change – not always for the better – and treats their characters accordingly.
On the other hand, Houser, Unsworth, and Humphries are smart enough to know familiarity has its place. Sometimes, there’s no need to greatly change a character who explicitly serves a purpose – as long as they aren’t who the story is about. To this end, antagonistic figures from the original Redemption like Bill Williamson and Edgar Ross are almost exactly the same when we meet them again (or for the first time?) in Redemption II. That’s fine. Some people change, some don’t. Certainly, it works for these characters, and others like them.
Crucially, John Marston is not Redemption II‘s primary playable protagonist. That title goes to Arthur Morgan (Roger Clark), the Van der Linde Gang’s long-term enforcer and third-in-command who is neither seen nor mentioned in the original Redemption, leaving players with a somewhat daunting sense of inevitability during their time spent with him. Regardless, this shift in focus away from the familiar gives both Arthur and John the space to breath and function independently as fully fleshed-out protagonists. Even if their stories are intricately intertwined, it’s all in the greater service of the saga they inhabit.
John himself – at least, in the prequel’s first six playable chapters – is about as far away from the man we knew in Redemption as possible, and that’s exactly how it should be. Rockstar isn’t interested in softly-retconning the character in ways we’ve come to expect from other prequels (“Actually, Han Solo had a good heart all along!”). They’re smart enough to know that we want to know how he became the man he was in Redemption – not that he just alwayswas that way. This freedom of characterisation allows not only for all-important development and change – it also grants the prequel the opportunity to enrich and enhance the emotional experience of the original work, instead of diminishing and demystifying it.
And that is an exceptionally rare feat for a prequel to achieve.
By presenting otherwise familiar characters as entirely different people to those we thought we knew, Redemption II allows players to be surprised and engaged in ways we thought we couldn’t be. Yes – these characters are inevitably heading down a familiar path. But how do they get there, and why do they do it? That’s all up in the air. And if the story is told well enough, it’s every bit as engaging.
Arthur Morgan (Roger Clark) and Sadie Adler (Alex McKenna) in Red Dead Redemption II. Property of Rockstar Games.
Players know how the overall Redemption saga concludes, but that’s beside the point – with so many additional and unfamiliar aspects in play, we don’t know how this chapter ends. That’s not to say Redemption II doesn’t set up the original Redemption – it does, big time. In the prequel’s last two playable chapters, Rockstar goes the extra to connect every single dot it has to, but – crucially – refuses to rely on excruciating contrivances in the process (a dire mistake so frustratingly made in another otherwise-excellent prequel, X-Men: First Class). For example: major characters from Redemption II like Arthur, Hosea Matthews, Charles Smith, and Sadie Adler are never once mentioned in the original Redemption, despite having prolonged, meaningful relationships and histories with that game’s characters – and that’s fine.
The absence of these characters and their of lack of mention are, funnily enough, not in-fact a result of lazy writing (as is so often – and unfairly – accused in cases like this), and has a simple, real-life explanation: these characters debuted in a game released in 2018, and simply didn’t exist in 2010. But if you want a narrative, “in-universe” reason for their absence – as so many fans of, well, anything these days seem to insist upon – Rockstar does provide one (the epilogue of Redemption II makes sure these characters are literally and geographically far removed from Redemption’s story). But equally – and maybe more importantly – it simply doesn’t matter. They’re just not relevant to the story the original Redemption tells.
When Redemption II released, I was astonished at just how many people I spoke to who were playing it having not played its predecessor. Ultimately, I think that’s indicative of Red Dead Redemption II’s unrivalled strength as a prequel: it embellishes and enriches the experience of its predecessor without ever making the mistake of being beholden to it. If Redemption II wants to do something with its story that doesn’t totally match up with the original Redemption, it’ll do it. It doesn’t matter. The story and characters come first. And to that end – for this player – it established a new gold standard in video gaming, just as its forebear did before it.
Red Dead Redemption II tells us continuity should be painted in lush, broad strokes, not in minute, excruciating detail.
Sadly, that’s not the way prequels tend to go – but it should be.
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this segment.
Last week, Sarah Tudzin’s “tenderpunk” outfit illuminati hotties returned with their first piece of new music since 2020’s FREE I.H.: This Is Not the One You’ve Been Waiting For, bringing back that insane energy on the sneering and infectiously chaotic ‘MMMOOOAAAAAYAYA’. Tudzin also produced Pom Pom Squad’s latest single, the fiery ‘Head Cheerleader’, taken from their recently announced full-length debut and featuring vocals from Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara. UK rapper Little Simz announced the follow-up to 2019’s GREY Area with the strikingly cinematic ‘Introvert’, in which she reflects on the events of the past year as well as her mental state with a mix of urgency and vulnerability; Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Rosie Tucker shared one of the strongest singles from their upcoming third album, Sucker Supreme, the charming and catchy ‘Barbara Ann’; New York City trio UV-TV also delivered a great teaser from their third LP with the driving ‘Back to Nowhere’; and finally, Wolf Alice previewed their forthcoming album Blue Weekend with its second single, the searing, grungy ‘Smile’.
