View online

18 July, 2023

The government’s migration bill, which gives the home secretary an obligation to expel anyone entering the UK illegally, has been approved by the House of Lords. Plans to house 500 asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm barge are also under way: this morning, the ship docked in the Dorset port where it’s to be stationed. A new Alzheimer’s drug can slow cognitive decline by over a year, according to a recent clinical trial. Donanemab, which targets the buildup of the harmful protein amyloid in the brain, could help the disease eventually be treated like diabetes or asthma. Cocaine use is up by a quarter in British cities including London and Birmingham, according to a National Crime Agency analysis of urban wastewater. The large bump in the drug’s consumption is likely due to a supply glut last year, lowering prices.

Margot Robbie in Barbie

What’s so fantastic about life in plastic?

“At the risk of sounding like a humourless old bat,” says Sarah Vine in The Mail on Sunday, “what is all this Barbie hysteria?” Grown women are “gushing like pre-pubescent fangirls” at the idea of Margot Robbie playing the part of an “anatomically impossible plastic doll”. Everywhere you look, “it’s Barbie this, Barbie that”; Barbie as a “postmodern ironic feminist icon”. Even my daughter has painted her nails a “particularly lurid shade of pale yellow” in celebration of the film’s release. “Have people suddenly developed pink candyfloss for brains?”

You’d think that to all these super-woke Gen Zs, a “global marketing juggernaut” that encourages young girls to be “thin, white blondes with size-three feet, perky breasts, a tiny waist and a fixed white smile” would be anathema. But even my uber-clever friends seem to have been won over. Apparently, because director Greta Gerwig is an ardent feminist, it’s all a bit of fun. Excuse me if I’m not convinced. Barbie is a “pernicious plastic representation of impossible womanhood”: if you translated her proportions into a real human, “she’d only have room for half a liver”. She’s every little girl’s “gateway drug to a lifetime of self-loathing”, and when they started producing “inspirational” versions – doctors, astronauts, presidents and so on – it “just made things tougher”. Not only were girls expected to look like a supermodel – they had to be “some sort of genius philanthropist” too. “Gee, thanks.”

💄💣 Barbie and Oppenheimer, a gloomy biopic of the mastermind behind the atomic bomb, will both be released this Friday. The question, says The Economist, is whether audiences will pick “realism or escapism”. As war rages in Europe and countries like North Korea develop nuclear arsenals, Oppenheimer “may feel too real and raw”: director Christopher Nolan says “people leave the movie absolutely devastated”. History suggests viewers will opt for Gerwig’s pink-infused “dopamine generator” instead. In World War II, viewers flocked to watch Gone with the Wind; at the height of the Vietnam War, the biggest movie in America was Funny Girl. “Who wants reality when life in plastic is so fantastic?”

The Comedy Pet Photo Awards have unveiled this year’s shortlist, which includes snaps of two cats, one of which is sticking its tongue out at the camera; a border collie captured mid-jump in a New York park; a porky moggy known as “Big Boss” sitting by a Japanese port; and a Russian dog owner and her pooch, who have strikingly similar hair, posing nose-to-nose. See the rest here.

It’s a historic moment, says The Times. America’s most famous newspaper has done the unthinkable: “said something positive about Britain”. The New York Times – which normally prefers to report on our alleged diet of “porridge and boiled mutton”, and our depraved pagan ritual of “cavorting in swamps” – sent a correspondent to the Dorset town of Poole. She came back full of praise. A landlord there has waived rent for ten shops on a once down-at-heel street, rejuvenating the area and attracting new businesses and customers. That in a nutshell, says The Times, is the British character the NYT “too often overlooks for clichéd tales of warm beer and imperial nostalgia”: entrepreneurialism, municipal pride and community spirit. “They ought to acquaint themselves with it more often.”

Enjoying The Knowledge? Click below to share

Shaw just outside London

At his home in Hertfordshire, George Bernard Shaw had a writing shed that he called “London”, says QI on Twitter. The idea was that unwanted visitors could be honestly told by staff that he was “in London”.

Harvesting leeks near Jalalabad. Shafiullah Kakar\Getty

It’s time to re-engage with Afghanistan

Last week, says Tobias Ellwood in The Daily Telegraph, I visited Afghanistan and found it “totally transformed”. Just two years after Western forces scuttled from Kabul, life is bustling in the streets and the Taliban are no more visible than the Met police in London. Regions once rife with violence are now dotted with solar panels; fields of cotton, wheat and fruit are fed by new irrigation systems. “This, to put it mildly, was not what I was expecting.” After a dozen visits to the country on behalf of the Ministry of Defence, urging Nato and the UN to do exactly what the Taliban have now achieved, I am forced to grapple with the “harsh reality of the West’s strategic missteps”. But the real challenge is ahead of us: the decision whether or not to “re-engage with the victors” of this protracted conflict.

“I am no Taliban-appeaser.” My own brother, after all, was killed by Islamist extremists in 2002. But I recognise the need for a more pragmatic strategy. Afghanistan remains fragile. Some 70% of its population requires humanitarian aid; nine in 10 households face food shortages; half of the country’s nine million children under 11, male and female, have no access to schooling. If the West continues to shun the country, it risks pushing the nation to a “fiscal cliff” and potentially starting another cycle of instability, terrorism and mass migration. First, we need to open up our embassy, then we need to “get real”. Afghanistan’s future could be another war or life as a Chinese vassal. If we want to avoid both these outcomes, we must “rethink and re-engage” – “however queasy we feel about it”.

To find out more about advertising and partnerships with The Knowledge, click here

A video made by tower climber Kevin Schmidt, showing what it’s like to change a lightbulb at the top of a 1,500 ft TV antenna over the South Dakota plains, has racked up almost five million views on Twitter. See a longer version on YouTube here.

Getty

The idea that sea air is good for you has been around since the Victorian era, says the Daily Mail. Now, new research has proved that it really is true. According to a leading neuroscientist, coastal air includes ions that boost the “electrical functionality” of the brain by 47%, which helps you think more clearly. Dr Rachel Taylor adds that just one walk along the beach kickstarts the production of oxytocin – a feel-good hormone – making people feel energised and stimulating a sense of belonging. 💙🌊

It’s a nearby star, which Australian astronomers have found is no hotter than a campfire. The ultra-cool brown dwarf – catchily named T8 Dwarf WISE J062309.94−045624.6 – simmers away at a mild 425C some 37 light-years away. For comparison, the nuclear inferno that is our sun burns at 5,600C.

“The first 80 years are tough. Life gets better after that.”

Novelist Len Deighton

That’s it. You’re done.

To find out about advertising and commercial partnerships, click here

Been forwarded this newsletter?

Sign up for free to receive it every day

Unsubscribe from the newsletter