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    The digital revolution may have brought us instant communication and easy textual gratification, but it hasn’t exactly been a boon for romance. Nor, intriguingly, has it done much for clarity. While students of English literature may have spent centuries trying to decode the meaning of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 128 (hint: it’s filth, sheer filth), Generation Text is left with the equally demanding challenge of intuiting meaning from a string of abbreviated characters. An online industry has emerged to assist stressed paramours in demystifying those ambiguous texts received the morning after a romantic liaison. The leader in the field is hit website HeTexted.com. - read more on comment is free

    The digital revolution may have brought us instant communication and easy textual gratification, but it hasn’t exactly been a boon for romance. Nor, intriguingly, has it done much for clarity. While students of English literature may have spent centuries trying to decode the meaning of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 128 (hint: it’s filth, sheer filth), Generation Text is left with the equally demanding challenge of intuiting meaning from a string of abbreviated characters. An online industry has emerged to assist stressed paramours in demystifying those ambiguous texts received the morning after a romantic liaison. The leader in the field is hit website HeTexted.com.

    - read more on comment is free

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    One of the foremost challenges of expat life is that of identifying when you earn the right to criticise the country that has kindly provided you with a home. So it’s always very helpful when someone else does it for you. Following today’s important news that the UK is a world leader in taking a cavalier attitude to spreading infections, I feel that I can finally lay it on the line: Britain, I love you, and in many ways you are much better than America. But you could really learn something from the Yanks about dealing with your snot. Comment is free

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    She deserves a shot because she possesses three skills crucial to the office of the president: making lemonade out of life’s many lemons, learning from her mistakes and taking the heat. Case in point: she was demonised as the political wannabe who killed healthcare reform; she was publicly humiliated as a cuckolded spouse from one of the most visible perches in the world; she was kicked to the curb during the 2008 presidential primaries by the senior white guys in her party, the ones who had never succeeded in becoming president themselves, but would be damned if they’d ever see her do it either (with all due respect to the late Ted Kennedy). And yet she took it all in stride. makes the case for Hillary Clinton to become president on 2016 on Comment is Free

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    guardiancomment: Sam Wolfson on why your children are outsmarting you This week, Benetton tried to drum up a new knitwear controversy with an ad campaign that celebrates the number of unemployed young people in the world reaching 100 million. In the ads, sullen-faced young businesspeople clad in lambswool blazers and merino facial hair stare dejectedly into the middle distance like Apprentice contestants trying to think of a name for their pop-up courgette stall. They all stand under the tagline “Unemployee of the Year”. As part of the campaign, Benetton wants unemployed youngsters to pitch it ideas for community projects in return for a slice of a €500,000 (£400,000) fund. It says the aim is to motivate young people “to become actors of change against indifference and stigma”. Yeah, bog off indifference. Read the rest here Photograph: Smart kid: 16-year-old Tavi Gevinson has already published her first anthology. By Daniel Zuchnik Great piece worth reading

    guardiancomment:

    Sam Wolfson on why your children are outsmarting you

    This week, Benetton tried to drum up a new knitwear controversy with an ad campaign that celebrates the number of unemployed young people in the world reaching 100 million. In the ads, sullen-faced young businesspeople clad in lambswool blazers and merino facial hair stare dejectedly into the middle distance like Apprentice contestants trying to think of a name for their pop-up courgette stall. They all stand under the tagline “Unemployee of the Year”.

    As part of the campaign, Benetton wants unemployed youngsters to pitch it ideas for community projects in return for a slice of a €500,000 (£400,000) fund. It says the aim is to motivate young people “to become actors of change against indifference and stigma”. Yeah, bog off indifference.

    Read the rest here

    Photograph: Smart kid: 16-year-old Tavi Gevinson has already published her first anthology. By Daniel Zuchnik

    Great piece worth reading

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    The organic movement has arguably achieved a great deal. On the biggest issues, it has really won the debate. Most people now accept that you can’t just spray and inject your way to sustainable food production, that there is much to be gained from more integrated farming practices that deploy resources from the earth rather than from chemical factories. But as conventional farming adapts, the best way ahead becomes much less clear. If we want food that is good for humans, animals and the environment, the priority now is not to praise organics or to bury it, but to accept we must look beyond it. Why have we fallen out of love with organic food? - By Julian Baggini Photograph: Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty Images

    The organic movement has arguably achieved a great deal. On the biggest issues, it has really won the debate. Most people now accept that you can’t just spray and inject your way to sustainable food production, that there is much to be gained from more integrated farming practices that deploy resources from the earth rather than from chemical factories. But as conventional farming adapts, the best way ahead becomes much less clear. If we want food that is good for humans, animals and the environment, the priority now is not to praise organics or to bury it, but to accept we must look beyond it.

    Why have we fallen out of love with organic food? - By

    Photograph: Jeff Haynes/AFP/Getty Images

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    Studies suggest that about 1% of the world’s population identifies as asexual. So that accounts for a large number of people who don’t experience sexual attraction, but who do experience relationships in a variety of ways. Some of us are romantic and interested in intimate relationships. Others, like me, are aromantic and more solitary in nature. Some of us have a sex drive though it isn’t directed at anyone, and others don’t. The complexity of asexuality remains largely unstudied, something that I hope to see changing over the coming years as it becomes more widely recognised as an orientation in its own right. SE Smith on Guardian Comment: “Asexuality always existed, you just didn’t notice it”

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    The inclusion of the attempted rape scene raises some difficult questions. If the scene is playable, what exactly happens should the player fail? If it is not, why show it at all? Lara is already going through a lot – shipwreck, major injury, a friend’s kidnapping, the threat of death – and adding sexual assault to the mix might just be over-egging the pudding. Mary hamilton writes for Comment is free asking, ‘Does Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft really have to be a survivor of a rape attempt?’

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    Osborne U-turn on his own name…
    Ambitious thoughts linked to brain tumours in women…
    Anders Behring Breivik launches a fragrance…
    Old lady mugged for just £1.76…
    James Nesbitt lookalike files for bankruptcy…
    and Jeremy Hunt and James Murdoch secretly flatmates

    Read all about it! All the news you missed during the jubilee knees-up by David Mitchell

    (Source: gu.com)

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