Hello :) 📚☕🍁

Introduction

My name is V (short for my real name), and I'm 26 years old. My pronouns are she/her.

I've had this blog for about four years, but recently returned from a quite long tumblr hiatus. I graduated with a Master's degree in Visual Communication in England and did an internship in Australia while I was gone!

I thought I'd reintroduce myself to y'all since it's been so long since I'd been an active studyblr on here! <3

Who/what I am:

a graphic design graduate (BA & MA)

living on the countryside not far from a city in Northern Germany (I want to move back to England though)

former student in the UK 🇬🇧

former graphics intern in Wales and Australia

fluent in German and English

I also speak basic French and I'm a beginner in Spanish (planning on learning more languages)

a shy introvert (I feel more confident talking online though!)

bigender (about 60 - 70% female, the rest feels male deep down). I don't make a big deal out of it though. She/her is what I go by 100% of the time, but I don't mind he/him either!

What I love:

music (metal & rock) + concerts

travelling - I especially loved travelling through Australia! 🌏

goth-y and witchy stuff 🦉

collecting vinyl, CDs and DVDs

books - I buy more books than I read though haha

art, design and museums

languages - however I wish I didn't lack motivation to study most of the time!

food & going to restaurants

coffee, tea & cosy cafes

nature, the sea and space

animals - especially dogs and birds!

stationery & pretty journals

decorating my home

Harry Potter (proud Ravenclaw!)

summer & autumn

the UK

ancient Egypt

philosophy, psychology & paleontology

old typewriters

more stuff that I can't think of atm

What I want to achieve:

become an art director at some point in my design career

learn more about these topics: marketing, art history, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, astronomy, ancient Egypt, etc. (I love learning!)

read more books, esp. British classics 📚

draw & paint more

overcome depression

be less anxious

post more original content on here

spend less time on my phone - I'm not a social media person and only use WhatsApp and Tumblr

not be a perfectionist all the time

I might add a few more points later.

Thank you for reading! I look forward to getting to know more of you lovely people and reuniting with old friends! 💕🌻

P. S.: I follow (back) from my main blog @hardwired-to-self-destruct.

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day.

Pumbaa was the first ever character to fart in a Disney movie.

The heaviest human ever recorded weighed 1400 pounds (100 stone).

Thomas Hargrove, a homicide archivist, estimates that there are over 2000 serial killers at large right now.

The average human attention span has almost halved since 2000 decreasing from 20 seconds to 12 in 2018.

Sir Isaac Newton was just 22 when he discovered the universal law of gravity. He also died a virgin.

Scientists discovered traces of cannabis on the pipes found in William Shakespeare's garden.

Bill Gates changed his school's program codes so he was placed in class with mostly female students.

The day after Thanksgiving is generally the busiest day of the year for American plumbers. It's called ‘Brown Friday’.

Adidas will cancel any sponsorship deal that they have with a player if it turns out they have anything to do with Scientology.

Pleonasm is the term for a redundant expression, like ‘ATM machine’, ‘hot water heater’, ‘free gift’ or ‘lying politician’.

Experiments show that male rhesus macaque monkeys will ‘pay’ to look at pictures of female rhesus macaques' bottoms.

The deadliest female serial killer in US history, Clementine Barnabet, had murdered 35 people with an axe by the time she was 18 years old.

In the Tasmanian Devil mating season, the male has to beat the female into submission if he wants to mate. If the male is too weak, the female proceeds to beat up the male.

In 2016, a 70-year-old man robbed a Kansas City bank and then sat down in the lobby, saying he'd rather live in jail than with his wife. He was sentenced to six months of house arrest.

In the 1980s, Nintendo employed ‘game counsellors’. If you were stuck in a game, you could call them, and they would coach you through it.

Thomas Wadhouse was an English circus performer who lived in the 18th century. He is most famously known for having the world's longest nose, which measured 7.5 inches (19 cm) long.

Orgasms were thought to treat 'hysteria’ in women during the 19th century, but doctors were tired of fatiguing their hands, so the modern-day vibrator was created.

In 1939, the New York Times predicted that the television would fail because the average American family wouldn't have enough time to sit around watching it.

Having bridesmaids in a wedding wasn't originally for moral support. They were actually intended to confuse evil spirits or those who wished harm on the bride.

A man named László Polgár developed a method to raise child prodigies. He wrote a book on it, married a language teacher, and they raised the world's best and second-best chess players.

During the Iranian embassy siege in London, back in 1980, when given the choice of who from the group of hostages would be released, they chose Ali Guil Ghanzafar, whose loud snoring was keeping them awake.

When trains were introduced in the U.S, many people believed that women's bodies were not designed to go at 50 miles an hour, and that their uteruses would “fly out” of [their] bodies if they were accelerated to that speed.

In 1978, Richard Branson wanted to impress his girlfriend by pretending to buy a private island. The island was listed for $6 million and he offered $100k as a joke. The owner settled for $180k, and Branson bought Necker Island.

A writer by the name of Lisa Holst created an article in 1993 stating that “around 8 spiders crawl into your mouth every year whilst you sleep”, but the whole thing was made up to prove that the internet was gullible and doesn’t fact check its sources. It's actually more like 20.

In 1140, when King Conrad III of Germany captured a castle, the women of the castle were granted free departure and allowed to take what they could carry on their backs. Thinking quickly, some women carried a man on their backs. The king kept his word and let the men go.

A woman who developed a strange addiction to eating mattresses vowed to stop after she wound up eating not only her own bed but also her mother's. This story comes from the TLC series ‘My Strange Addiction’ and focuses on a woman named Jennifer who was 26 at the time she was featured on the show in 2013. According to the documentary Jennifer used to eat .09 square metres of a mattress a day and had consumed 8 mattresses within 20 years. She admits that she began eating her mother's mattress after she finished eating her own and usually gets the urge around 2 o'clock in the afternoon or after sex.

Okay, that’s enough information for one day. Have a tremendous and tumultuous Tuesday! I love you all.

Bad to Worse

A very poorly written thing because I’m tired and tried to finish this for today. It also is probably not going to get used in the final version, but I wanted it written anyway.

Anyway, meet Tomasz! I have @cirianne to thank for the creation of this kind boy. I’M SORRY I HAD TO GET THIS OUT OF ME OK.

WIP: Angel

POV: Tomasz

Date: Monday, May 4th 2026

If exam preparations have taught me one thing, it’s that I really should listen to past me when they say go to bed on time, because it is now 8:52am, and I am going to be late for class if I don’t hurry up.

I look a mess, I know, I’m wearing yesterday’s jeans, a t shirt I found on the top of my clean clothes pile, and my backpack is slung over my shoulder as I hurried to grab it on my way out of the halls. I hadn’t even had the chance to grab anything real for breakfast yet. Urgh, I can’t be like this. Not when I have an exam tomorrow. I should be better than this.

It’s fine, calm down. I think I’ve still got that chocolate bar in my bag from yesterday. That’ll do until I can grab something else later.

The journey from halls to my lecture hall isn’t that far, about a 10 minute walk at most, but if I run like I am now, I can probably be there for just about 9am. I hope.

I had been awake until almost 4am this morning, so I’m running on nothing but will power at the moment. I’ve been so carefully diligent with my work this year, I don’t know why I thought studying at 3am was a good idea. I know that it isn’t an option tonight, not when one of my final exams is tomorrow morning. 9am sharp!

I make it into the lecture hall with barely a minute to spare, and find my seat with my friends, already seated and waiting.

“Running late, Tomasz?” Heidi smirked as I practically threw my bag down beside my seat, panting like a dog.

“I am not late, thank you very much,” I replied. “Class hasn’t started yet, has it?”

“Close enough,” Bruno nodded in the direction of the door, tapping his pen against his notebook, where the Professor was just coming into the room. “What did you do, sleep in?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I’m here, and that is what matters,” I pulled out my laptop, turning it on and tapping it impatiently. I really need an upgrade for this, but it’s all I can afford at the moment. It does its job well enough, just when I am a little more punctual.

I settle into the rhythm of the lecture quickly enough, sat with the friends I’ve come to know and learn with for the past seven months.

The time does pass ridiculously quickly during these formal-informal study sessions in preparation for our exams, but even I was surprised that Heidi actually looked at her phone when it buzzed.

Heidi was a student from southern Germany, somewhere bordering Austria I think. She’s a lovely girl, even if she is easily distracted. I can’t fault her though, she does well in classes and tests.

Bruno is quite the opposite. He is normally the one telling us to stop slacking and get studying. He’s technically German, but his family lived over in Kosmos for a few years when he was younger. I have to say, it’s very comforting to have someone from home here, even though he and his family left a few years ago.

She passes her phone aside to me, whispering aside “Look, Tomasz. You’ve still got family over there, right?”

The screen was a breaking news report, something that had happened in the last ten minutes.

Terrorist attack in Kosmosian capital.

I took it from her, skimming through the article. An explosion rocked the main street in the capital city as the citizens partake in their independence day festivities… there are dozens of confirmed casualties and at least 7 deaths…

Explosion. Casualties. Deaths!

Oh, no!

Terrorist attacks in my country are virtually unheard of. I don’t think there has been one, ever! At least, in my lifetime. What is going on there? I had totally forgotten that today was the Flower Festival, especially since my attempts at staying up until the early hours of this morning, but that’s a despicable strategy in order to ensure a lot of victims. Everyone is out in the streets today, it’s tradition for many of them.

“Not… in the capital, thankfully. But that’s awful.” I whispered, being careful not to distract the other students here.

That’s not entirely true though. I don’t have family there, true.

“I’ve got a friend there, in the capital.”

“Maybe you should give them a call?”

“She won’t have her phone, she’s not allowed it during the day,” I tell her as I pull out my phone, scrolling through my instant messages to find her contact. Słoneczka, I have her noted as, the picture is of her smiling back at me, taken the day she left Obokplaży before she started her shiny new job.

“Not allowed? Why wouldn’t she be allowed her phone?” Bruno joined in.

“She works for the Royal family. It’s kind of, a rule. She’ll see it later, I’m sure.” I told them as I started typing my message. Hey, Słoneczka. I saw the news, I hope everything’s okay over there. Stay safe.

I feel awful that I don’t try and call her, but I know it’s useless to even try. She just won’t be able to answer the call, so there’s no point. I hope she’ll see my message later, though. Maybe she’ll be allowed her phone to call her parents when things have calmed down, and she’ll see my message then.

“Oh yeah, I remember you saying. She’ll be fine. They’ve got tonnes of security, though, right?”

“Yeah, yeah…” I murmured, waiting for the confirmation that the message had been successfully delivered. It had.

I sent a message to my parents too, even though they’re home in Obokplazy, so I know they’ll be safe, but I wanted to be sure. It’s a terrible thing to happen.

“Tomasz, if you need to go, just go,” Heidi whispered to me, obviously aware that I hadn’t been paying attention for the last few minutes.

“No, I’m fine, I’ll be fine.” I said dismissively, putting my phone away and finally getting back to my lecture.

--- 

Date: Monday, May 4th 2026

By the time our morning break arrived, it seemed more frightful news reared its ugly head.

Something had happened at the castle, it seemed, due to the sudden arrival of the military and the total communication breakdown. One of the most unifying days in our calendar and it’s chaos over there, it seems. The last update was over an hour ago, and we had heard no more.

All I can think about it Matylda, over there in that castle. Whatever’s going on, she’s in the thick of it. I find myself staring at the message I sent her – still unread, and I just wish she would answer me. The rational part of my brain knows that if something is going on inside the castle, her last priority will be returning to her bedroom to fetch her phone and answer a half-hearted text from me, sent when I wasn’t aware that this had happened. I am also aware that even if she had her phone, the chances of her calling me are slim. I know what she’s like, she’ll call her parents first. In fact, should I call them? Should I just let them know that I am thinking about her? Ask them to let me know if they hear anything from her?

No, I shouldn’t. It would be rude and presumptuous of me. She’ll let me know in her own time, I’m sure. Besides, what Bruno said earlier is true. They’ve got the best security they could possibly have against any potential threat. She will be fine.

I still can’t shake the feeling, though, that something catastrophic has happened there. The radio silence is not helping either.

And of course this is happening around exam time.

There was one other Kosmosian national beside myself in our class, and she was shaken by the news, but her family live in Wgórach, so they’re safe from all the chaos. I’m thankful all the same that my family aren’t involved in any way.

Hey Słoneczka – I begin typing again – I hope you read this soon, and that everything is okay where you are.

I send the message before I even process what I wrote, and I am aware that the message I sent is probably… not the best way to end that.

I mean, I know it’s not. But I hope you and everyone else is alright. Let me know when you can.

The messages are still left unread, marked “Delivered”. It seems like an insult, mocking me, that I don’t know any more. Damn it, I’m worried about her. I haven’t seen her in almost a year, and I hope that the events over there haven’t taken her away from me. Of course I’ve spoken with her, and had conversations with her, but it’s not the same.

I don’t want to say there was something special in that kiss she gave me, because I am probably thinking too much into it, but there was something. The way she had stood on her tiptoes just to reach my cheek, and how scared she looked afterwards. I remember being stunned by her action, and could do no more to make her feel better than to return the kiss.

It was wonderful to share that with her. I just hope she’s okay.

---

Date: Monday, May 4th 2026

By the time 4pm rolls around – a whole 6 hours since the first reports of a terrorist attack – things have gone from bad, to very bad.

The headline this time is simple.

Kosmosian monarchy overthrown.

---

Date: Tuesday, May 5th 2026

I tried to focus on my exam, I truly did, but I knew it was a lost cause all the same. I was too distracted from the task at hand. I had hoped that my endless studying would prove an effective enough way to keep me occupied until things had calmed down, but it’s not working. It’s a plague eating at me, and I can’t help but worry about the implications.

Heidi thinks I shouldn’t even try the exam, not when all this is going on, but I wanted to give it a try anyway, hoping that the distraction is enough.

But it’s not, it’s really not.

Things were bad, over there. I promised myself that I wouldn’t read any news articles until after my exam, but that was a fruitless endeavour from the start. Someone who had read the news this morning said that the only airport in the entire country had been closed. No flights in or out. Same with the ports, no boats leaving the country anymore. Total radio silence too.

What is going on? It’s been totally closed off.

I really shouldn’t have tried to do this exam. I can’t think clearly. My mind is filled with these painful thoughts. I previously, naively, stupidly thought that my family would be okay because they aren’t in the capital, but now I am not so sure. Total isolation, and I haven’t heard a thing from them. Not even since yesterday.

The worst part of this is the implications for me now. I am a student here, yet still a Kosmosian national. I am expected to return home for the summer after term has ended, but that seems unlikely. That headline last night made sure to strike that fear into me, well and truly. How am I supposed to get home if they’ve closed the borders? Will I be allowed to stay here? Just what can I do from here, when my country is in turmoil just across the sea? Barely a two hour flight from here?

What about my parents? My friends? Matylda? I have no idea if they’re even alive. Matylda was there, she must still be in the castle, at best. She could be dead right now, if that takeover was as violent as the article sounded –

Stop it. Don’t think like that. She’s fine.

But it’s still sickening to think about. I can’t be here, but if I miss this exam I doubt I will have the student visa to allow me to stay. I have to at least try. Heidi and Bruno seem certain that I could have missed this exam with zero repercussions because of what’s happening, the turmoil, but as I said to them – I want distracting whilst everything calms down.

I don’t think that will be happening.

I should probably just admit to the professor what a terrible piece of work this essay is becoming. We’re barely an hour into this exam and it feels like I have been here for almost a day. My head is throbbing, and I can’t focus anymore on this.

I somehow managed to make it to the end of the exam, not that I am proud of the little I did write, but when I turned my phone back on, what I saw made me physically ill.

Someone had livestreamed what was going on, and a news reporter had picked it up. Just two hours ago, whilst I was still in that hall, was the live, public execution of the King.

The news station couldn’t show the actual regicide, of course, but it was more than enough for me to be sure of one thing.

Matylda is probably as dead as he is.

congrats on 300 omg that’s amazing!!! please could i have 🪴 (romantic)?

i’m a total extrovert and a massive history/english lit nerd!! i’m frequently found talking my friends ears off about whatever i’m learning about in history whether it be the political structure of weimar germany or britain’s membership of the eec. i’m very academic and terrified of missing deadlines!! and i have a very analytical brain, which applies itself to literally any form of media (i send my friends video messages or voice notes of me ranting about things i’ve analysed, atm it’s the amelie uk cast recording)!! i want to be a teacher when i grow up because i know the impact good teaching has had on me, so i want to take what i’ve learned from my teachers (especially my current history teacher) and help future students. i’m frequently described as the mum friend because i’m over prepared for any situation and i dress in a very grandma/librarian/art teacher manner. i love baking, crochet, reading and music (particular the beatles, taylor swift, and anything from the 60s/70s/80s) and i have been know to challenge people to random debates just for the fun of it!! i’m also a total sci fi nerd (despite not really looking like one) and i love films like star wars and back to the future!!

thank you so much!! and congrats again!! 🎉

thank you for the ask!!

my 300 follower celebration ;)

I ship you with Cameron!!

You two would totally meet at a debate

Cameron would be tense around you at first. Maybe even thinking of you as kind of a competition, trying to outsmart you at every chance he got

Eventually during a debate things got personal and heated - leading to an angry love confession

Cameron was in shock when you said you felt the same way

Like it took a few minutes of him just standing there gaping at you for him to fully process it

Cameron would love to listen to you talk about your interests; he could listen to you all day

Watching your eyes light up with passion as you go into depth on the topic you so carefully analyzed

He knows and understands how you feel about deadlines, which leads to many study sessions in his dorm

Cameron is your biggest supporter, he would do anything for you

So when you told him you wanted to become a teacher he was overjoyed

He knows that you're meant to be a teacher, with your compassion, empathy, and love for learning

You two spend as much time together as possible

You've spent multiple nights reading side by side, dancing or baking together, even sitting silently enjoying one another's company

Cameron begged you to teach him how to crochet, he thought it seemed so cool

Although he could never get the hang of crocheting, he's just as happy drawing while you crochet

Cameron will go watch any sci-fi movie you like- and sometimes he'll set one up, prepared for you when you get back home

He is such a romantic, although he'd never admit it

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Global defense spending, led by US and China, hits new high (Stars & Stripes) The U.S. and China led the growth in global defense spending, which hit a new high in 2020 despite the economic stress brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, a report said Thursday. In its annual report on military power, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said total military expenditures added up to $1.83 trillion in 2020, a 3.9% increase over the previous year. “This came despite the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent contraction in global economic output,” the London-based think tank said in a statement. The United States remained the top spender, accounting for 40.3% of global spending. But China and other Asian powers concerned about Beijing’s rise also spent more, albeit at a somewhat slower pace than in 2019 because of the pandemic, IISS said in its “Military Balance” report. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute pegged Chinese defense spending at $261 billion in 2019.

Almost a fifth of ALL US dollars were created this year (City A.M./UK) About 20 per cent of all US dollars were created this year. The Federal Reserve has printed unprecedented amounts of money to support the coronavirus-stricken economy. It has sparked debates about inflation and helped asset prices soar. Data from the Fed shows that a broad measure of the stock of dollars, known as M2, rose from $15.34 trillion (£11.87 trillion) at the start of the year to $18.72 trillion in September. The increase of $3.38 trillion equates to 18 per cent of the total supply of dollars. It means almost one in five dollars was created in 2020. The huge growth in the stock of dollars reflects the massive interventions in the economy by the Fed, which is in control of the US’s money supply. Although it is often described as printing money, the Fed in practice creates digital dollars to buy up government bonds and other securities in the secondary market. The policy, known as quantitative easing (QE), aims to flood the markets with cash to keep borrowing cheap. Banks also create money when they lend. Most money in the economy is created this way. Only about $2 trillion are in circulation as physical currency.

Countries call on drug companies to share vaccine know-how (AP) In an industrial neighborhood on the outskirts of Bangladesh’s largest city lies a factory with gleaming new equipment imported from Germany, its immaculate hallways lined with hermetically sealed rooms. It is operating at just a quarter of its capacity. It is one of three factories that The Associated Press found on three continents whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccines on short notice if only they had the blueprints and technical know-how. But that knowledge belongs to the large pharmaceutical companies who produce the first three vaccines authorized by countries including Britain, the European Union and the U.S.—Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca. The factories are all still awaiting responses. Across Africa and Southeast Asia, governments and aid groups, as well as the WHO, are calling on pharmaceutical companies to share their patent information more broadly to meet a yawning global shortfall in a pandemic that already has claimed nearly 2.5 million lives. Pharmaceutical companies that took taxpayer money from the U.S. or Europe to develop inoculations at unprecedented speed say they are negotiating contracts and exclusive licensing deals with producers on a case-by-case basis because they need to protect their intellectual property and ensure safety. Critics say this piecemeal approach is just too slow at a time of urgent need to stop the virus before it mutates into even deadlier forms.

As School Closures Near First Anniversary, a Diverse Parent Movement Demands Action (NYT) Aquené Tyler, a mother and hair stylist in North Philadelphia, has been disappointed in her neighborhood’s public schools for many years. There were too few books and computers. Even before the pandemic, some schools were shuttered for asbestos removal. Now, her 9-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter have been learning online for nearly a year, even as masked children gather boisterously at local private schools. Ms. Tyler’s children are lonely, and Mya, who is in eighth grade, seems depressed and overwhelmed by her class work. She has begun seeing a counselor remotely. So Ms. Tyler is planning a radical change: moving her family to Florida, where the Republican-controlled state government has mandated that all districts provide in-person learning five days per week. A niece there is attending traditional public school in Sarasota, complete with sports, arts and music. A year into the pandemic, less than half of students nationwide are attending public schools that offer traditional, full-time schedules. Now many parents are beginning to rebel, frustrated with the pace of reopening and determined to take matters into their own hands. Some are making contingency plans to relocate, home-school or retreat to private education if their children’s routines continue to be disrupted this fall—a real possibility. Other parents are filing lawsuits, agitating at public meetings, creating political action committees, or running for school board seats.

Prince Philip moved to specialized London heart hospital (AP) Prince Philip was transferred Monday to a specialized London heart hospital to undergo testing and observation for a pre-existing heart condition as he continues to be treated for an unspecified infection, Buckingham Palace said. The 99-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth II was moved from King Edward VII’s Hospital, where he has been treated since Feb. 17, to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, which specializes in cardiac care. The palace says Philip “remains comfortable and is responding to treatment but is expected to remain in hospital until at least the end of the week.” Philip married the then-Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and is the longest-serving royal consort in British history. He and the queen have four children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

France’s Sarkozy convicted of corruption, sentenced to jail (AP) A Paris court on Monday found French former President Nicolas Sarkozy guilty of corruption and influence peddling and sentenced him to one year in prison and a two-year suspended sentence. The 66-year-old politician, who was president from 2007 to 2012, was convicted for having tried to illegally obtain information from a senior magistrate in 2014 about a legal action in which he was involved. The court said Sarkozy is entitled to request to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet. This is the first time in France’s modern history that a former president has been convicted of corruption.

China Appears to Warn India: Push Too Hard and the Lights Could Go Out (NYT) Early last summer, Chinese and Indian troops clashed in a surprise border battle in the remote Galwan Valley, bashing each other to death with rocks and clubs. Four months later and more than 1,500 miles away in Mumbai, India, trains shut down and the stock market closed as the power went out in a city of 20 million people. Hospitals had to switch to emergency generators to keep ventilators running amid a coronavirus outbreak that was among India’s worst. Now, a new study lends weight to the idea that those two events may well have been connected—as part of a broad Chinese cybercampaign against India’s power grid, timed to send a message that if India pressed its claims too hard, the lights could go out across the country. The study shows that as the standoff continued in the Himalayas, taking at least two dozen lives, Chinese malware was flowing into the control systems that manage electric supply across India, along with a high-voltage transmission substation and a coal-fired power plant. The discovery raises the question about whether an outage that struck on Oct. 13 in Mumbai, one of the country’s busiest business hubs, was meant as a message from Beijing about what might happen if India pushed its border claims too vigorously.

Rogue ATMs (Nikkei Asia) Fully 2,956 ATMs out of 5,395 machines operated by Mizuho Bank in Japan have gone rogue, with the machines unable to dispense cash and devouring cards. The bug is related to an issue that popped up when the bank was updating its data, and 55 percent of Mizuho’s branches have been forced to shut down.

Pope’s risky trip to Iraq defies sceptics (Reuters) Rockets have hit Iraqi cities and COVID-19 has flared, yet, barring last-minute changes, Pope Francis will embark on a whirlwind four-day trip starting on Friday to show solidarity with the country’s devastated Christian community. Keen to get on the road again after the pandemic put paid to several planned trips, he convinced some perplexed Vatican aides that it is worth the risk and that, in any case, his mind was made up, three Vatican sources said. The March 5-8 trip will be Francis’ first outside Italy since November 2019, when he visited Thailand and Japan. Four trips planned for 2020 were cancelled because of COVID-19. “He really feels that need to reach out to people on their home ground,” said a Vatican prelate who is familiar with Iraq and who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The pope knows where he is going. He is deliberately coming to an area marked by war and violence to bring a message of peace,” Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil told reporters on a recent conference call.

Iran insists U.S. lift sanctions first to revive nuclear deal talks (Reuters) Iran said on Monday the United States should lift sanctions first if it wants to hold talks with Tehran to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that former President Donald Trump abandoned. President Joe Biden has said Washington is ready for talks about both nations resuming compliance with the pact, under which Tehran secured an easing of sanctions by limiting its nuclear work. But each side wants the other to move first. The West fears Iran wants to build nuclear weapons, while Tehran says that has never been its goal.

Netanyahu accuses Iran of attacking Israeli-owned cargo ship (AP) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday accused Iran of attacking an Israeli-owned ship in the Gulf of Oman last week, a mysterious explosion that further spiked security concerns in the region. Without offering any evidence to his claim, Netanyahu told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that “it was indeed an act by Iran, that’s clear.” “Iran is the greatest enemy of Israel, I am determined to halt it. We are hitting it in the entire region,” Netanyahu said. The blast struck the Israeli-owned MV Helios Ray, a Bahamian-flagged roll-on, roll-off vehicle cargo ship, as it was sailing out of the Middle East on its way to Singapore on Friday. The crew was unharmed, but the vessel sustained two holes on its port side and two on its starboard side just above the waterline, according to American defense officials. It remains unclear what caused Friday’s blast on the Helios Ray. Iran responded to Netanyahu’s statement saying it “strongly rejected” the claim that it was behind the attack. In a press briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Netanyahu was “suffering from an obsession with Iran” and described his charges as “fear-mongering.”

Thousands flee rebel violence in Central African Republic (AP) Monique Moukidje fled her home in Central African Republic’s town of Bangassou in January when rebels attacked with heavy weapons, the fighting killing more than a dozen people. “I ran away because the bullets have no eyes,” the 34-year-old said sitting in the shade while waiting for water purification tablets, a tarp, and other supplies to help her in Mbangui-Ngoro, a village where she and hundreds of other displaced people are sheltering. She is among an estimated 240,000 people displaced in the country since mid-December, according to U.N. relief workers, when rebels calling themselves the Coalition of Patriots for Change launched attacks, first to disrupt the Dec. 27 elections and then to destabilize the newly-elected government of President Faustin Archange Touadera. The rebels’ fighting has enveloped the country and caused a humanitarian crisis in the already unstable nation. Hundreds of thousands of people are also left without basic food or health care, and with the main roads between Central African Republic and Cameroon closed for almost two months, prices have skyrocketed leaving families unable to afford food.

Nigerian governor says 279 kidnapped schoolgirls are freed (AP) Hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls abducted last week from a boarding school in the northwestern Zamfara state have been released, the state’s governor said Tuesday. Zamfara state governor Bello Matawalle announced that 279 girls have been freed. The government last week said 317 had been kidnapped. Gunmen abducted the girls from the Government Girls Junior Secondary School in Jangebe town on Friday, in the latest in a series of mass kidnappings of students in the West African nation.

Okay, I need to open up. I live in Finland if someone did not know and it's a quite small country. So anyway, in 2013 I went study to Sweden for a year as an exchange student and that year there were 3 other finns that left also to Sweden. I was the only one who got family from Northern Sweden and I loved it. But we still had to meet the other exchange students like 2-3 times in that year because of the company. So when we first met in Stockholm, there was every exchange student (from Australia, Italy, Germany etc.) and one of these 3 finnish students decided to target me, and he bullied me the whole weekend that we spent in Stockholm. He made those three days like a living hell for me (I'm strongly school bullied from first grade till this day in uni). He made fun of my english, he made fun of my swedish and then he insulted me in finnish in front of everyone and told that the word means something good so he taught the word to others so they would call me by that word.

So no big deal, I survived BUT this dude is now popular youtuber here in Finland and he makes music and etc. He is popular ok. And now I read that he had given an interview that how great of a person he is, how he has been bullied for all his life for no reason and he is against it 100%.

Well let me just tell you my blood is boiling atm.

LA / The Family Room Collective: Paper Over

The Family Room Collective: Paper Over Todd Moellenberg + Sylke Rene-Meyer + Matt Savitsky (aka Minty) April 20 - May 11, 2019

Session 01:  April 20 12-5 PM Opening Reception: April 20    6-8 PM Session 02:  April 27, 12-5 PM Session 03:  May 4, 12-5 PM Session 04:  May 11, 12-5 PM Closing Reception: May 11, 6-8 PM

[Images]

In Paper Over, The Family Room Collective will present a series of open work sessions over the course of four weekends. The gallery will double as our film set, evolving from an installation of newspaper cutouts and backdrops, where we will improvise live films using an online video chat room. Our movements within TSA, the Bendix building, its inhabitants, and the surrounding streets in downtown Los Angeles will be fed into the space, continuously projecting images and sounds we encounter. We will process phrases we read and overhear into cut-up texts and Markov chains to build sonic loops through our speaker system. Lastly, at different points in time, live performers will reference the visuals caught on our cameras to act out dramatic scenes. The addition, live looping cameras will expand, contract, and distort the scale of all material inside the installation.

These live events comprise our working methods, which, in this iteration, combine live theatrical improvisation with automated online tools. This structure allows us to quickly process and combine visual and textual debris to build narratives of the present day. These narratives reflect our positions in time and space as well as interpersonal relationships that are constantly evolving. The audience will thus inhabit our echo chamber of information overload, as we investigate what it means to collectively record the present moment.

SCHEDULE of EVENTS

Session 01:  April 20 12-5 PM Opening Reception: April 20    6-8 PM Session 02:  April 27, 12-5 PM Session 03:  May 4, 12-5 PM Session 04:  May 11, 12-5 PM Closing Reception: May 11, 6-8 PM

THE FAMILY ROOM COLLECTIVE (TFRC) formed as a queer performing artists group in 2018. We got to know each other in the context of group relations processing, and understand our practice as interpersonal investigations of group dynamics. Our primary interest is to expand the idea of participatory performance art into the realm of the practices of everyday life. 

TODD MOELLENBERG is an interdisciplinary artist based in LA. He has published two chapbooks: Flood (2016) and Signs of Affection (2017). In 2017, he served as poet-in-residence for Parkeology, which published the Fruit Loop Field Guide, observational poetry from a cruising spot in San Diego. A classically-trained pianist, he received a Doctorate in music performance from UCSD. His dissertation, “Time and Again,” shows how dodecaphonic music can generate poetic forms.

SYLKE RENE MEYER is a writer, director, media artist, performer, educator, and co-founder of the performance group Studio 206 in Berlin, Germany. In 2018, she co-founded the performance group ‘The Family Room Collective (TFRC)’ in Los Angeles. Sylke studied theater, philosophy and law at the Free University of Berlin. After graduating from law school, she studied screenwriting and dramaturgy at the Konrad Wolf Potsdam-Babelsberg Film and Television University, and graduated from the Munich Screenplay Workshop at the University of Television and Film Munich in 2000. She has been Assistant Director at the Living Theater, and worked as a film editor, production designer, writer and director worldwide. Her practice is informed by and engages with film, media history, theory, and criticism, and encompasses feature and documentary filmmaking, as well as writing and collaborative experimentation across theater, new media and digital platforms. Her work has garnered numerous awards such as an Emmy Award, and Best Film Awards at major festivals such as Seattle, Chicago, and Montreal. She is a Professor of Creative Writing, and Director of the Institute for Interactive Arts, Research, and Technology at California State University in Los Angeles.

MATT SAVITSKY, aka Minty (b. 1982), is a multidisciplinary performance artist who lives and works Los Angeles. He received his MFA from UC San Diego in 2015 and his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2005. His video works have been screened in various programs, including Migrating Forms Film Festival (NY) and have been shown internationally in the Galeria Alternativa Once in Monterrey, Mexico and the Universidad del Pais Vasco Bilbao, Spain (2014). He has debuted performances at LACE (LA), NADA New York, and most recently at the ICA in Philadelphia. He was a selected to attend performance residencies hosted by Kembra Pfahler (Performance Art 101 and Incarnata Social Club) and La Pocha Nostra (Highways, LA and UABC, Tijuana, MX). He recently produced a solo show at Shoot the Lobster, LA and has shown his work nationally. His work has been included in exhibitions at; Torrance Art Museum; and Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York (2016); Highways, Los Angeles ; Fest Zoco, Tijuana; American University Museum, Washington DC (2015); Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles (2014); Foxy Production; ATM Gallery, and John Connelly Presents in New York (2013); Vox Populi and Little Berlin(2013) in Philadelphia. He is the third member of The Family Room collective, an interdisciplinary group comprised of Todd Moellenberg and Sylke-Rene Meyer. They have created and debuted their work with students at Cal State Los Angeles and will have their first exhibition at Tiger strikes Asteroid, LA this spring. He currently hold positions as a lecturer of film & video at the University of San Diego and of Photographic Practices at Cal State Fullerton.

(Bloomberg) -- The death toll from the new coronavirus topped 51,000 in the U.S., with the epicenter of the global outbreak now accounting for more than a quarter of all fatalities. Cases spiked among crew members on a passenger-less cruise ship docked in Japan, while some theaters were poised to re-open in South Korea.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned patients about taking malaria medications touted by President Donald Trump. The president now claims he was being sarcastic on Thursday when he suggested that injecting disinfectants might ward off the coronavirus. Disinfectant chatter soared on Twitter.China reported 12 new cases Friday, with 11 of them imported. Spain and Italy had their fewest deaths in five weeks. Germany had its worst day in almost a week, while Belgium plans to ease its lockdown starting in May. Key DevelopmentsVirus Tracker: Cases top 2.7 million; deaths approach 196,000Trump riff on disinfectant shows peril of improvised briefingsPence says outbreak could be over by Memorial DayGlobal meat shortages loom as plants shut downEurope’s slowing deaths a welcoming sign for leaders eager to reopenTycoon running 500 hotels from Thailand has never seen it so bad‘Rice ATMs’ Dispense Free Food to Out-of-Work VietnameseNurses’ Children in Japan Excluded From Day Care on Virus FearsSubscribe to a daily update on the virus from Bloomberg’s Prognosis team here. Click VRUS on the terminal for news and data on the coronavirus. For a look back at this week’s top stories from QuickTake, click here.South Korean Movie Theaters Poised to Re-open (10:30 a.m. HK)Movie lovers in South Korea will soon have more options. CJ CGV Co., a major cinema operator, said it will re-open 36 theaters that had been closed since the end of March, including in the capital Seoul and Daegu city, according to a statement posted on its website.Although the company says it will be still difficult for most people to venture out to see a movie, it may provide a boost to the economy and help cafes and restaurants, according to a text message Saturday. The theaters will open April 29.Gilead Poised to Upend Market With Covid-19 Study Data (10:05 a.m. HK)Gilead Sciences Inc., whose Covid-19 treatment has whipsawed markets amid conflicting early reports about its efficacy, is set to report the first results from a company-sponsored study of the experimental drug.Data from the first 400 severely ill coronavirus patients being treated with remdesivir in an open-label study are expected before the end of next week. While not expected to provide a definitive answer on efficacy, the report is likely to again trigger wide swings in Gilead’s shares and the broader market. Options prices show investors expect a more than 9% move in the drugmaker’s stock price over the next week.Mysterious Outbreak of Coronavirus Grows on Cruise Ship in Japan (8:55 a.m. HK)Coronavirus cases are mounting among crew on a passenger-less cruise ship docked in Nagasaki, Japan, raising alarm among local health officials just months after another large outbreak in their waters.The number of confirmed Covid-19 infections on the Costa Atlantica had climbed to 91 as of Thursday from 48 a day earlier, the Nagasaki prefecture said.The Atlantica is operated by CSSC Carnival Cruise Shipping, a partnership between Carnival Corp. and state-owned China State Shipbuilding Corp. The Chinese entity is the majority owner.Snubbed in U.S. Rescue, Cruise Lines Get Relief From Germany (8:45 a.m. HK)After missing out on U.S. emergency aid, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. are benefiting from a debt-holiday initiative by Germany’s export credit agency, Euler Hermes Aktiengesellschaft.Norwegian said the 12-month debt holiday -- which applies to debt used to finance ships -- will provide about $386 million in additional liquidity through April 2021. Royal Caribbean said it will add $250 million through debt holiday agreements with Euler.Air France-KLM to Get $12 Billion State Rescue (8:05 a.m. HK)Air France-KLM became the latest carrier to get a state-backed bailout, with the French and Dutch government shareholders pledging as much as 11 billion euros ($11.9 billion) in loans and guarantees to help it weather the coronavirus pandemic that has brought global air travel to a near standstill.France agreed to extend 4 billion euros of state-backed commercial funding and 3 billion euros of direct government loans, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on TF1 television Friday. The funds will be destined for the French arm, Air France, the group said in a statement.Japan Airlines Co. meanwhile is seeking 300 billion yen ($2.8 billion) in financing from banks as it braces for the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on travel, the Asahi newspaper reported without citing anyone.U.K. Committee Head Urges Insurers to Pay Virus Claims (7:50 a.m. HK)Insurers need to pay out on more claims related to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the head of the U.K. parliamentary committee that oversees the financial industry.“We are concerned that the insurance sector goes the extra mile in meeting claims wherever possible, for example where there may be gray areas within policies,” Mel Stride, chairman of the Treasury Committee, said in a statement on Saturday.Stride’s comments echo the stance taken by the main U.K. markets regulator, which sent insurance companies’ shares tumbling last week after it told them to pay valid claims quickly. The issue came to the fore after insurer Hiscox Ltd. rejected claims filed by policy holders who had coverage for business interruptions caused by contagious disease.Dyson Says U.K. No Longer Needs Its Ventilators (6:44 a.m. HK)The company owned by billionaire James Dyson won’t supply the U.K. government with medical ventilators it was developing because they’re no longer required.Dyson Ltd. had spent 20 million pounds ($25 million) on the project and won’t be seeking any government money to pay for it, the founder said in a statement. The company didn’t explain why the order, which it said last month was for 10,000 units of a prototype ventilator called the CoVent, was canceled.Florida Expands Testing (5:30 p.m. NY)Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he is directing the state’s surgeon general to allow pharmacists to order and administer Covid-19 tests, explaining that testing will be critical to safely reopening.Speaking at a press conference Friday afternoon in Tallahassee, DeSantis declined to say when he expected to move into the next phase of reopening. His Re-Open Florida Task Force just finished a week of meetings on how the state should proceed.DeSantis also described his efforts to acquire serological tests that indicate whether people have Covid-19 antibodies. He said he expects 200,000 tests as soon as Friday; hundreds of thousands more are on order.Belgium to Ease Lockdown in May (5:15 p.m. NY)Belgium will start relaxing the lockdown measures on its citizens and companies, now in their sixth week, with a plan to progressively reopen businesses in the first half of May as Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes warned the timing will be fully dependent on the strength of the epidemic.“We have never before tried out an exit strategy like this,” Wilmes said at a briefing in Brussels late Friday. “Nothing will be carved in marble, especially not the target dates.”Companies with business-to-business operations and industrial activities will reopen May 4, to be followed a week later by retailers and all companies with a business-to-consumer focus, except those that can’t possibly avoid physical contact such as hairdressers. Schools will progressively open for students ages 6 to 18 from May 18, split by age groups. Bars and restaurants will have to remain closed until at least June 8, and leisurely cross-border travel will stay banned before that date.The death toll in the country of 11.4 million stands at 6,679, with more than half occurring in senior-care homes. But the restrictions on social contacts have a crippling effect, with a third of the Belgian economy at a standstill.Small Business Relief Resumes Monday (4:40 p.m. NY)The U.S. Small Business Administration will restart a government coronavirus relief loan program for small businesses Monday morning with an additional $320 billion, after the first round of funding was exhausted in just 13 days.“We encourage all approved lenders to process loan applications previously submitted by eligible borrowers and disburse funds expeditiously,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza said in a joint statement.Many small business owners were shut out from financial aid after the Paycheck Protection Program, launched April 3 with an initial $349 billion, was depleted in less than two weeks. Congress passed a relief bill that President Donald Trump signed Friday with more funding for the program and a separate disaster loan and grant initiative whose funding also expired last week.The initial program launch was rocky, after guidance for lenders to process loans wasn’t issued until the night before and some large banks didn’t participate initially or only took applications from customers with existing loan accounts. The SBA’s processing system was inaccessible at times because of the volume of applications.U.S. Cases Rise 3.5% (4 p.m. NY)U.S. cases rose 3.5% from the day before to 886,213, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg News. That was higher than Thursday’s growth rate of 2.5% but below the average daily increase of 3.8% of the past week. Deaths reported over the past 24 hours rose 7.4% to 50,780.New York’s cases rose 0.7%, according to the Johns Hopkins and Bloomberg News data.New Jersey reported 3,047 new cases, pushing its total past 100,000, according to the state’s health department. Deaths increased by 253, to 5,617.Texas cases rose to 22,806, up 3.9% from Thursday, according to the state’s Health and Human Services division. The 862 new cases represented the first daily decline this week.Florida reported 30,174 cases on Friday, up 4.7% from a day earlier, according to the state’s health department. Deaths among Florida residents reached 1,012, an increase of 5.4%. The increase in cases marked a slight acceleration over upticks in previous days.Nebraska had the biggest daily increase in cases, which rose 21.5% to 2,202, according to the Bloomberg News and Johns Hopkins data.Europe Deaths Fall (3:15 p.m. NY)Italy and France reported the fewest coronavirus deaths in weeks and Germany’s sick beds continued to empty, providing welcome signs for European leaders ahead of wider steps to restart the economy.Spain, which has the most cases in Europe and remains on an almost-total lockdown, reported 367 new deaths on Friday, the least since March 21, though confirmed cases rose by the most in almost three weeks. Italy’s daily death toll was the lowest since March 17 and France’s declined to the lowest in almost four weeks.With European governments eager to ease confinement measures that have crushed the economy, the latest data also hinted at the volatility that makes relaxing restrictions difficult. Italy’s new cases reported on Friday outstripped the number of recovered patients, reversing a trend begun the day before.“We have to maintain our vigilance,” Jerome Salomon, France’s director general for health, said at a briefing. “The epidemic is not over.”In Germany, about 103,000 of some 148,000 people reported to have contracted the virus have recovered. Europe’s largest economy kept its so-called reproduction number below 1, according to official data, meaning the number of new Covid-19 infections is declining.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

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MIT Physicists Create a Superfluid in a Record WiFi  -High Magnetic Field

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Equipment used by the Ketterle Group to create superfluids. Photo: Bryce Vickmark

Physicists from MIT have created a superfluid gas, the so-called Bose-Einstein condensate, for the first time in an extremely high magnetic field.

The magnetic field is a synthetic magnetic field, generated using laser beams, and is 100 times stronger than that of the world’s strongest magnets. Within this magnetic field, the researchers could keep a gas superfluid for a tenth of a second — just long enough for the team to observe it. The researchers report their results this week in the journal Nature Physics.

A superfluid is a phase of matter that only certain liquids or gases can assume, if they are cooled to extremely low temperatures. At temperatures approaching absolute zero, atoms cease their individual, energetic trajectories, and start to move collectively as one wave.

Superfluids are thought to flow endlessly, without losing energy, similar to electrons in a superconductor. Observing the behavior of superfluids therefore may help scientists improve the quality of superconducting magnets and sensors, and develop energy-efficient methods for transporting electricity.

But superfluids are temperamental, and can disappear in a flash if atoms cannot be kept cold or confined. The MIT team combined several techniques in generating ultracold temperatures, to create and maintain a superfluid gas long enough to observe it at ultrahigh synthetic magnetic fields.

“Going to extremes is the way to make discoveries,” says team leader Wolfgang Ketterle, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Physics at MIT. “We use ultracold atoms to map out and understand the behavior of materials which have not yet been created. In this sense, we are ahead of nature.”

Ketterle’s team members include grad Industrial IoT Router/Gateway  uate students Colin Kennedy, William Cody Burton, and Woo Chang Chung.

A superfluid with loops

The team first used a combination of laser cooling and evaporative cooling methods, originally co-developed by Ketterle, to cool atoms of rubidium to nanokelvin temperatures. Atoms of rubidium are known as bosons, for their even number of nucleons and electrons. When cooled to near absolute zero, bosons form what’s called a Bose-Einstein condensate — a superfluid state that was first co-discovered by Ketterle, and for which he was ultimately awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in physics.

After cooling the atoms, the researchers used a set of lasers to create a crystalline array of atoms, or optical lattice. The electric field of the laser beams creates what’s known as a periodic potential landscape, similar to an egg carton, which mimics the regular arrangement of particles in real crystalline materials.

When charged particles are exposed to magnetic fields, their trajectories are bent into circular orbits, causing them to loop around and around. The higher the magnetic field, the tighter a particle’s orbit becomes. However, to confine electrons to the microscopic scale of a crystalline material, a magnetic field 100 times stronger than that of the strongest magnets in the world would be required.

The group asked whether this could be done with ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. Since the ultracold atoms are not charged, as electrons are, but are instead neutral particles, their trajectories are normally unaffected by magnetic fields.

Instead, the MIT group came up with a technique to generate a synthetic, ultrahigh magnetic field, using laser beams to push atoms around in tiny orbits, similar to the orbits of electrons under a real magnetic field. In 2013, Ketterle and his colleagues demonstrated the technique, along with other researchers in Germany, which uses a tilt of the optical lattice and two additional laser beams to control the motion of the atoms. On a flat lattice, atoms can easily move around from site to site. However, in a tilted lattice, the atoms would have to work against gravity. In this scenario, atoms could only move with the help of laser beams.

“Now the laser beams could be used to make neutral atoms move around like electrons in a strong magnetic field,” added Kennedy.

Using laser beams, the group could make the atoms orbit, or loop around, in a radius as small as two lattice squares, similar to how particles would move in an extremely high magnetic field.

“Once we had the idea, we were really excited about it, because of its simplicity. All we had to do was take two suitable laser beams and carefully align them at specific angles, and then the atoms drastically change their behavior,” Kennedy says.

“New perspectives to known physics&rdquo emark certified  ;

After developing the tilting technique to simulate a high magnetic field, the group worked for a year and a half to optimize the lasers and electronic controls to avoid any extraneous pushing of the atoms, which could make them lose their superfluid properties.

“It’s a complicated experiment, with a lot of laser beams, electronics, and magnets, and we really had to get everything stable,” Burton says. “It took so long just to iron out all the details to eventually have this ultracold matter in the presence of these high fields, and keep them cold — some of it was painstaking work.”

In the end, the researchers were able to keep the superfluid gas stable for a tenth of a second. During that time, the team took time-of-flight pictures of the distribution of atoms to capture the topology, or shape, of the superfluid. Those images also reveal the structure of the magnetic field — something that’s been known, but never directly visualized until now.

“The main accomplishment is that we were able to verify and identify the superfluid state,” Ketterle says. “If we can get synthetic magnetic fields under even better control, our laboratory could do years of research on this topic. For the expert, what it opens up is a new window into the quantum world, where materials with new properties can be studied.”

Going forward, the team plans to carry out similar experiments, but to add strong interactions between ultracold atoms, or to incorporate different quantum states, or spins. Ketterle says such experiments would connect the research to important frontiers in material research, including quantum Hall physics and topologica industrial LTE router l insulators.

“We are adding new perspectives to physics,” Ketterle says. “We are touching on the unknown, but also showing physics that in principle is known, but at a new level of clarity.”

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office for Scientific Research, and the Army Research Office.

Publication: Colin J. Kennedy, et al., “Observation of Bose–Einstein condensation in a strong synthetic magnetic field,” Nature Physics (2015); doi:10.1038/nphys3421

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URUGUAY POST!!!!!!!

So on Tuesday I got back from my first trip outside of Argentina!!! Uruguay was absolutely amazing. Montevideo is a beautiful city, the air was much cleaner and the streets felt safer. We rented bikes and rode to the southern most point of Uruguay which was really beautiful and tranquil. On our slow trek back to Buenos Aires, we stopped in Colonia for another 2 days and that was beautiful as well! My favorite part of the trip was being able to sit by the water on my last night and watch the sunset. It gave me time to be alone with my thoughts and process my travels so far and think critically about the things I have observed. 

The biggest theme that arose in Uruguay, I would say, was the HUGE economic differences between Argentina and Uruguay right now. To be quite honest I didn’t know much about the country of Uruguay before going there, but quick research in my spare time led me to learn that Uruguay is considered by many to be the most developed and progressive country in Latin America (it also has really high rankings on an international level as well). For example, did you know that 95% of the country’s energy use comes from renewable resources? Wow! 

What I don’t understand is why Uruguay is doing so visibly better than Argentina. In Uruguay, it was a luxury that we could take money out of ATM machines without a hassle. In Argentina it is a long process to withdraw money because a lot of the machines are empty- the country physically does not have the cash to fill them. This leads to the government printing more money, which leads to inflation, which leads to people not being able to pay for the things they used to factor in easily into their budget. A family from La Plata told us that this year their salary gets them about 80% of the things they used to be able to buy in previous years. In Uruguay life was much easier because we were able to pay with our credit cards- in Argentina many places don’t except them for fear of people not being able to pay the bill later. I took US dollars out while in Uruguay and already sold some to my host mom- she, along with many other Argentinians right now, prefers to keep her money in a more stable currency. 

Obviously I have seen tough economic times before- I lived through the 2008 collapse. But never have I actually experienced inconveniences caused by the economy of the government. It’s yet again another example of my previous thinking- “bad things happen, but they don’t happen to me.” or “government policies can hurt people, but they never really will affect me.” This mindset is the epitome of privilege- something that before coming here I thought I did a good job of taking into account. But it’s clear now that I haven’t. Not even close. I know in December I will come home and I will be in a country where the cash is stable and my house will always be warm and I can drink a big glass of milk (in Argentina, the cattle capital of the world, inflation has affected the price of dairy so much that I haven’t had milk in over a month!) and I will read something about the unstable government of Argentina in the New York Times and I will think about this experience. Something about this image makes me feel guilty and gives me the constant question of “what did I do to deserve being born a white rich american?” 

PART 2: DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ*

*Unless you’re reading this blog 

Yet another interesting aspect of my life here has been the constant questioning of things I used to swear were true. For example- the New York Times would never lie to me and would always give me (while albeit liberal) an informed and complete story. What I didn’t expect was for this trust in my favorite paper to be challenged while talking about the elections in Venezuela. While talking with a professor about the current situation there, the starvation and unrest against Maduro, the professor cut me (and the other W&M students) off and asked us “what’s your source?” 

Imagine being doubted on something like that!!!!!!!!!!! And when we followed with NYT, her only remark was “don’t trust everything you read.” Upon further investigation, we learned that in the perspective of Argentina and other countries in Latin America, the fault lies not only in the tyranny and corruption of Maduro (and, from their eyes, much less so), but also in the United States for imposing NeoLiberal tariffs on food and other goods that would have helped the starving people. Once again, I am shook by how much I don’t think about the modern day economic imperialism that my country uses to manipulate smaller powers abroad. Still spinning off of Pence’s visit to Buenos Aires, she continued with “the only reason the US doesn’t put tarriffs on Argentina is because our president [Macri] is doing Trump’s bidding now. If we weren’t, the US could use the same reasoning [invalid elections] to starve our people too.” To clarify, the reasoning behind this is because Macri is exactly like Trump- rich boy, only cares about wealthy, favors big business, doesn’t care about human rights (which, considering the history Argentina has, should be a priority).  It is because of this that reading Pence’s speech in Buenos Aires made me feel physically ill. 

I’m lucky, though, because Argentine people here hate the US government but LOVE us american students. They think our accents are the funniest thing. When I went to volunteer at an elementary school last week, I was treated like a celebrity- people were taking pictures with me, asking me questions, surrounding me. It was a really really amazing day because I spoke with kids from the ages of 13-18 about the history of the dictatorship and what they can do now to be more aware of human rights violations in their communities. In one section, they had to write a list titled “NUNCA MAS...” followed by all the things they want to eliminate from their daily lives- things like homophobia, police violence, xenophobia. My most powerful moment was seeing a kid write “USA” on his paper, then remember I was in the room and cross it out. He doesn’t know I saw him do this, but I wish I told him he should keep it there. If he really feels that way, which he rightfully should, he shouldn’t have to censor himself in his own space for my benefit. It was a moment that I continue to think about over a week later. I think I am going to continue volunteering with the kids for my internship. I will help them plan the big event in November in which 20-30 thousand kids from all over Argentina will come present projects they have been working on that bring attention to human rights violations in the past and the present. I will mainly be organizing food and supplies and venues and other logistics because this is not my history to share, but being around all these passionate kids is really inspiring. I think what my education in the United States lacks the most is an open dialogue about these topics in schools. Why am I still learning the scope of my country’s history and the real effects of this imperialism now? Why did I describe the United States as “post-racial” until my freshman year of college? Why does the United States still do nothing to commemorate the horrible things that happened on our soil? I’ve been to a concentration camp in Germany. I have been to numerous torture sights and prisons since coming here and studying the dictatorship. Why don’t we have a plantation museum that shows the atrocities slaves had to live with? Why don’t we have a museum that commemorates the genocide of Native Americans instead of celebrating Columbus day every year? 

This blog post quickly turned into more of a rant than anything else, so I think I will end this here. I am looking forward to a week of enjoying university classes and napping while I can. Stay tuned for photos of my first finished scarf!

Physicists Observe and Control Quantum Mo magento web design  tion

www.inhandnetworks.com

For the first time, a team of physicists has discovered a way to observe and control quantum motion of an object that is large enough to see.

Consider the pendulum of a grandfather clock. If you forget to wind it, you will eventually find the pendulum at rest, unmoving. However, this simple observation is only valid at the level of classical physics—the laws and principles that appear to explain the physics of relatively large objects at human scale. However, quantum mechanics, the underlying physical rules that govern the fundamental behavior of matter and light at the atomic scale, state that nothing can quite be completely at rest.

For the first time, a team of Caltech researchers and collaborators has found a way to observe—and control—this quantum motion of an object that is large enough to see. Their results are published in the August 27 online issue of the journal Science.

Researchers have known for years that in classical physics, physical objects indeed can be motionless. Drop a ball into a bowl, and it will roll back and forth a few times. Eventually, however, this motion will be overcome by other forces (such as gravity and friction), and the ball will come to a stop at the bottom of the bowl.

“In the past couple of years, my group and a couple of other groups around the world have learned how to cool the motion of a small micrometer-scale object to produce this state at the bottom, or the quantum ground state,” says Keith Schwab, a Caltech professor of applied physics, who led the study. “But we know that even at the quantum ground state, at zero-temperature, very small amplitude fluctuations—or noise—remain.”

Because this quantum motion, or noise, is theoretically an intrinsic part of the motion of all objects, Schwab and his colleagues designed a device that would allow them to observe this noise and then manipulate it.

The micrometer-scale device consists of a flexible aluminum plate that sits atop a silicon substrate. The plate is coupled to a superconducting electrical circuit as the plate vibrates at a rate of 3.5 million times per second. According to the laws of classical mechanics, the vibrating structures eventually will come to a complete rest if cooled to the ground state.

But that is not what Schwab and his colleagues observed when they actually cooled the spring to the ground state in their experiments. Instead, the residual energy—quantum noise—remained.

“This energy is part of the quantum description of nature—you just can’t get it out,” says Schwab. “We all know quantum mechanics explains precisely why electrons behave weirdly. Here, we’re applying quantum physics to something that is relatively big, a device that you can see under an optical microscope, and we’re seeing the quantum effects in a trillion atoms instead of just one.”

Because this noisy quantum motion is always present and cannot be removed, it places a fundamental limit on how precisely one can measure the position of an object.

But that limit, Schwab and his colleagues discovered, is not insurmountable. The researchers umts   and collaborators developed a technique to manipulate the inherent quantum noise and found that it is possible to reduce it periodically. Coauthors Aashish Clerk from McGill University and Florian Marquardt from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light proposed a novel method to control the quantum noise, which was expected to reduce it periodically. This technique was then implemented on a micron-scale mechanical device in Schwab’s low-temperature laboratory at Caltech.

“There are two main variables that describe the noise or movement,” Schwab explains. “We showed that we can actually make the fluctuations of one of the variables smaller—at the expense of making the quantum fluctuations of the other variable larger. That is what’s called a quantum squeezed state; we squeezed the noise down in one place, but because of the squeezing, the noise has to squirt out in other places. But as long as those more noisy places aren’t where you’re obtaining a measurement, it doesn’t matter.”

The ability to control quantum noise could one day be used to improve the precision of very sensitive measurements, such as those obtained by LIGO, the Laser Interferometry Gravitational-wave Observatory, a Caltech-and-MIT-led project searching for signs of gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of space-time.

“We’ve been thinking a lot about using these methods to detect gravitational waves from pulsars—incredibly dense stars that are the mass of our sun compressed into a 10 km radius and spin at 10 to 100 times a second,” Schwab says. “In the 1970s, Kip Thorne [Caltech’s Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus] and others wrote papers saying that these pulsars should be emitting gravity waves that are nearly perfectly periodic, so we’re thinking hard about how to use these techniques on a gram-scale object to reduce quantum noise in detectors, thus increasing the sensitivity to pick up on those gravity waves,” Schwab says.

In order to do that, the current device would have to be scaled up. “Our work aims to detect quantum mechanics at bigger and bigger scales, and one day, our hope is that this will eventually start touching on something as big as gravitational waves,” he says.

These results were published in an article titled, “Quantum squeezing of moti iiot  on in a mechanical resonator.” In addition to Schwab, Clerk, and Marquardt, other coauthors include former graduate student Emma E. Wollman (PhD ’15); graduate students Chan U. Lei and Ari J. Weinstein; former postdoctoral scholar Junho Suh; and Andreas Kronwald of Friedrich-Alexander-Universität in Erlangen, Germany. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Physics Frontiers Center that also has support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Publication: E. E. Wollman, et al., “Quantum squeezing of motion in a mechanical resonato ATM Remote Diagnostic  r,” Science 28 August 2015: Vol. 349 no. 6251 pp. 952-955; DOI: 10.1126/science.aac5138

Image: Chan Lei and Keith Schwab/Caltech

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