Ivan, 28, activist, meets Ethan, 23, masters student/waiter
Ivan on Ethan
What were you hoping for?
Someone I could enjoy a meal and good conversation with, and maybe a second date.
Category Archives: Life and style
Do long jail sentences stop crime? We ask the expert
Penelope Gibbs, former magistrate and founder of Transform Justice, on whether harsher sentences are effective
Until recently, the subject of criminal punishment hasn’t been a massive concern for the public (putting aside that small demographic committed to a “hang ’em all!” approach). But in the wake of Sarah Everard’s murder, calls for misogyny to become a hate crime have gone from a whisper to a roar. That change would give judges the power to increase sentences when misogyny was found to be an aggravating factor in a crime. But would harsher sentences do much to stop such crimes happening? I asked Penelope Gibbs, former magistrate and founder of Transform Justice, a charity campaigning for a more effective justice system.
Did you hear about the Thai fraudster who was sentenced to jail for more than 13,000 years? I guess they needed a number to describe ‘throwing away the key’. Are long sentences becoming more common?
I don’t know about across the world, but I can tell you that in England and Wales sentences have been getting steadily longer over the past decade, by roughly 20%.
‘Diagnosis is rebirth’: women who found out they were autistic as adults
Women from around the world describe the life-changing impact of finally receiving a diagnosis
Less than 20 hours after asking women who had received a late diagnosis of autism, we received 139 replies from around the world.
There were women whose lives had been scarred by victimisation, from bullying to rape, because without a diagnosis they did not know they were highly vulnerable to manipulation and abuse.
Continue reading...‘It’s like a cemetery’: the trend turning San Francisco’s colorful houses ‘gentrification gray’
More and more, the pastels and gold-leaf embellishments have given way to the contemporary, but unimaginative, tungsten hue
Richard Segovia’s house is as loud as the Latin rock music he teaches children to play in his basement studio. With colors ranging from jungle green and royal blue at the pavement to a red and yellow sunburst at the ridge, the otherwise modest Spanish-style home is essentially one enormous mural, a crowded portrait of long-gone musicians, Segovia’s family members, social activists, various psychedelia, and the odd jungle animal.
Segovia has lived in San Francisco’s Mission district since 1963, and he sees himself as a custodian of the neighborhood’s culture, specifically as the birthplace of Latin rock. (Carlos Santana, a family friend, grew up nearby.) But increasingly the 68-year old “Mayor of the Mission” finds himself face to face with a stark representation of all the color that has been bled out of the city over successive waves of tech-fueled gentrification.
Continue reading...Man’s severe migraines ‘completely eliminated’ on plant-based diet
Migraines disappeared after man started diet that included lots of dark-green leafy vegetables, study shows
Health experts are calling for more research into diet and migraines after doctors revealed a patient who had suffered severe and debilitating headaches for more than a decade completely eliminated them after adopting a plant-based diet.
He had tried prescribed medication, yoga and meditation, and cut out potential trigger foods in an effort to reduce the severity and frequency of his severe headaches – but nothing worked. The migraines made it almost impossible to perform his job, he said.
Continue reading...Dining across the divide: ‘I think some of the ideas are horrible – but it’s nice to sit and talk’
One is a Belgian resident in the UK, the other was a Ukip candidate: can two strangers find any common ground?
Stijn, 47, Norwich
Occupation Humanitarian aid worker
Continue reading...A moment that changed me: ‘After 102 days in intensive care, I finally came home’
A year after I left hospital, I’m still getting over the Covid that almost killed me. But I’m not going to waste another minute of my life
I was in a wheelchair when they brought me home at the end of September 2020. I had been in intensive care for 102 days. For the first two months my wife, Plum, had not been allowed to visit, instead receiving daily reports on my condition – recurrent delirium, two heart attacks, stents, kidney dialysis, pneumonia, memory loss and tracheotomy – all brought on by Covid.
Three times she was told I wouldn’t be resuscitated if I suffered any further deterioration and she had come to dread the ringing of the phone. But only when I got home did I fully realise how much she and the families of other Covid patients had suffered.
Continue reading...Gaga, Gucci and prison ferrets: how true crime conquered the world
Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci stars Lady Gaga in a tale of fashion and murder. But is true crime – once the soul of cinema, from thrillers and horrors to westerns – now outgrowing the big screen?
What took you so long, House of Gucci? This story was destined to become a movie from the moment the bullet left fashion heir Maurizio Gucci dead outside his Milan office in March 1995 – shot, a witness said, by a hitman with a “beautiful, clean hand”. The film by Ridley Scott now finally arrives dripping with star power, and Lady Gaga as Gucci’s ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani. But the story alone was enough: a glittering tickbox of money, revenge and a villainess kept company in jail by an illicit pet ferret called Bambi.
True crime gold. So why, now that the film is actually here, does the Gucci case feel a strange fit for a movie after all? Put it down to timing. The film’s development began in entertainment prehistory: 2006. Back then, a lavish movie was still the grand prize for any news story, and true crime – that trashbag genre – would simply be glad of the association. Now though, film and true crime have the air of an estranged couple. Had Maurizio Gucci been gunned down on Via Palestro last week, Netflix would already have the rights and the podcast would be on Spotify.
Continue reading...‘I don’t blame customers for getting annoyed’: a coffee house owner on life without EU workers
Anas Zein Al-Abdeen owns a chain of four Middle Eastern coffee houses around Birmingham. But, the 40-year-old says, while customers are plentiful, staff are another matter
Anas Zein Al-Abdeen doesn’t want to close his business for three days a week – but, increasingly, it looks like his only option. He simply can’t get the staff. “It’s horrific,” he says. “We can’t plan for anything.”
The 40-year-old British-Syrian businessman runs Damascena, an independent chain of four Middle Eastern coffee houses in and around Birmingham. All of his cafes are affected, but the one in central Birmingham is the most short-staffed, with 25 workers instead of the usual 30. “It’s very stressful,” he says. “Most businesses worry about getting customers. But I’m just worried if we can serve them or not.”
Continue reading...Can I give you a call bark? DogPhone lets pets ring their owners
When dog moves ball containing device it sends a signal to a laptop and launches a video call
Whether it is a silent stare or simply a rousing bark, dogs have found myriad ways to communicate with humans. Now researchers have created a hi-tech option for canines left home alone: a ball that allows them to call their owners on the old dog and bone.
The device – nicknamed the DogPhone – is a soft ball that, when moved, sends a signal to a laptop that launches a video call, and the sound of a ringing telephone.
Continue reading...This is Pleasing: Harry Styles sets out to ‘dispel the myth of a binary existence’
The musician’s newly launched beauty brand is an extension of his trailblazing look
With Lady Gaga, Pharell Williams, and Selena Gomez all in on the act, the marker of success in 2021 is not a star on Hollywood Boulevard, it’s the launch of a beauty line. Trust Harry Styles to blow the rest out of the water.
Yesterday, the boyband star turned cultural and style juggernaut announced the launch of Pleasing – described as a “life brand”. Styles’s first business venture includes a range of nail polishes, an illuminating primer serum, and a dual-purpose eye and lip oil.
Continue reading...Guests at a Kerala wedding included Marx and Lenin. Guess the groom’s name?
Newlywed Engels was also joined by Ho Chi Minh at southern India ceremony highlighting popularity of communist names
Marx, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh gathered in southern India at the weekend to watch Engels tie the knot.
But there wasn’t a German, Russian or Vietnamese in sight as members of the local Communist party in Kerala state attended the wedding at a boutique tourist destination.
Continue reading...3D-printed steak, anyone? I taste test this ‘gamechanging’ meat mimic | Zoe Williams
Marco Pierre White is championing Redefine Meat’s products, but do they live up to the hype?
Across four capitals – London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Tel Aviv – a new meat was born, containing precisely no animal. The London champion of the company, Redefine Meat, is the celebrity chef Marco Pierre White. At Mr White’s in Leicester Square, chefs, investors and barbecue and burger connoisseurs – as well as former winners of MasterChef – gathered to taste it.
The tone of the event was set by the offering of a pipette of “blood” – “Doesn’t it taste like blood, though?” asked an excited waiter. Well, yes. But memo from the world of carnivore: blood is more something we put up with than something we actively want to drink.
Continue reading...‘It’s the biggest open secret out there’: the double lives of white-collar workers with two jobs
Remote working has made it easier than ever for staff to moonlight. But how do they cope with clashing meetings and two bosses? And can the rewards be worth the lies?
Second jobs can be incredibly lucrative – just ask any of the MPs who gained at least £6m collectively from their side gigs since the start of the pandemic. But it’s not only MPs benefiting from second jobs: ordinary white-collar workers have been getting in on the act. And these workers aren’t just taking on positions that might require a couple of days’ work a month. Instead, they are juggling several traditional full-time jobs, and keeping each one a secret from their other employers – leading, in effect, multiple lives
Among them is Jamie, a 25-year-old based in the UK. Over lockdown, Jamie found himself spending a significant amount of each working day playing video games. His role as a software engineer is undemanding and barely monitored by his company. It allowed him to live comfortably, but he was on what he considered a modest salary.
Continue reading...‘If I can get a plane into the sky, I can do anything’: female Afghan pilot refuses to be grounded
Months after Mohadese Mirzaee became Afghanistan’s first female commercial airline pilot, the Taliban took Kabul. Now a refugee in Bulgaria, she is determined to fly again
Sitting alone in her small flat in Bulgaria, Mohadese Mirzaee contemplates the future. Three months ago, she left behind her family, and her dream job, in Afghanistan. At 23, Mirzaee was the country’s first female commercial airline pilot.
“Today, I don’t know where to go, but I’m not giving up. I’ve started applying for pilot jobs anywhere because I know I need to get back to flying,” she says by phone from the capital, Sofia.
Continue reading...‘They could be the visionaries of our world’: do ‘overemotional’ people hold the key to happiness?
One in five of us struggle to cope with everyday smells, sounds and images. Rather than a weakness, this extreme sensitivity could be a strength in everything from the pandemic to the climate crisis
“I feel I’m too sensitive for this world,” says Lena, who can’t cope with crowds or bright lights. Melissa gets her husband to watch films before her to see if she will be able to handle any violence, gore or scariness. When their grownup children bring the grandchildren round, she has to retreat to another room because their “loud laughter, the talking over each other, their swearing and their smells overwhelm me”. Lucia says she can feel “each and every fibre of her clothes” and it feels very ticklish or uncomfortable at times. Sometimes, she has to stop during sex with her partner because it becomes “too ticklish”.
Lena, Melissa and Lucia would all describe themselves as highly sensitive, a label that could be applied to up to 20% of us, according to the US-based psychologist Elaine Aron, who started studying high sensitivity in the early 90s, and published her influential book The Highly Sensitive Person in 1996.
Continue reading...Rob Delaney on love, loss and married life: ‘No, my wife is not having an affair with her karate teacher’
The star of Catastrophe and Home Sweet Home Alone answers your questions on everything from family tragedy to the value of comedy
Rob Delaney – comedian, actor, writer, tweeter, activist – co-wrote and co-starred in the Channel 4 sitcom Catastrophe with Sharon Horgan. Now he has a starring role in the film Home Sweet Home Alone. He has also written and spoken movingly about the death of his two-year-old son, Henry. Here, he answers questions from readers about all of this, as well as being an American in London – and how he keeps his hair looking so great.
When you were offered the role in Home Sweet Home Alone, did you hesitate and think that maybe another remake of a successful movie would be pointless? Bernard Hautecler, Brussels, Belgium
Continue reading...I used to hate exercise, but with support from my parents, I’m now jumping for joy
I was turning 40 and very unfit. Now my super-healthy parents, both in their 70s, have inspired me to exercise and I love it
It’s Saturday morning and I’m standing in the middle of Osterley Park, west London, between my mum and dad, getting ready for the weekly parkrun. My dad is jogging on the spot, my mum is doing the same. I am thinking how do I get out of this? Both of them are full of energy, encouraging me to get warmed up. All I want is a chocolate and nice masala chai – my favourite spicy tea. I hear the countdown, getting nervous now, and off we go. My dad has sped ahead and with his hand he signals to me to keep up. Behind me is my mum. I can’t go anywhere, they are both watching me and I will have to finish this run stuck between them. Finally, we get to the finishing line and I’m shattered. My dad can do a 5km in 33 minutes. I can barely do it in 45. My mum and I walk and run together.
Later on my dad will encourage me to do some skipping, and Mum will get me hula-hooping. This, along with their nutritional advice, has been my daily routine for the past six months. Who needs expensive personal trainers when I can turn to Mum and Dad?
Continue reading...The agony of choosing termination for my baby who had foetal anomaly
There is a silence around the death of a baby, and a greater hush around the issue of termination for foetal anomaly. Laura Doward shares her life-changing experience
I’m looking at my name, handwritten in capital letters, neat as a button. Considering asking for another form to rewrite it, make it shakier.
“Foeticide,” the doctor is saying.
Continue reading...Dan Savage: ‘When politicians leave sex alone, I’ll leave politics alone’
Dan Savage is the world’s most influential sex columnist, who regularly offends both conservatives and liberals with his radical views. On the 30th anniversary of his column he tells Eva Wiseman how, for all the controversy, what he’s really interested in is how to make long-term relationships work
Dan Savage is not easily shocked, but recently, well. A few weeks ago he got a letter. A 24-year-old man wanted advice – he’d taken his partner, bisexual, older, to meet his parents for what both thought would be the first time. Except, it turned out he’d met them a decade earlier, when he’d joined them for a threesome. On Zoom from Seattle, Savage chuckles darkly and adjusts his cap. “I was like, oh God,” he says. “It’s all my fault! I felt implicated. Because I helped create a world where middle-aged, married, straight couples can have threeways.” He shrugs. He’s right.
His advice column started as a joke; soon it cracked open, and revealed a map to new ways of living. When Savage Love launched 30 years ago in Seattle’s alternative weekly newspaper The Stranger, the idea was that a gay man – Savage, then 26 and working in a video shop – would give sex advice to straight people. “Hey Faggot!” each letter began. Early questions were easy. “Things like, what’s a butt plug? How do you give a good blowjob?” Straight people had always intuited that their gay friends knew more about sex than they did, “which is true, not because gay people are magic, but because we have to communicate about sex. Straight people get to consent and then… stop talking.” “Use your words!” he tells straights today, often. With the 1990s came the internet, and suddenly most of the answers were immediately Googlable. But the letters kept on coming. “Right away, it was no longer a ‘how to’ column but a ‘why?’ Why did they do that? Why did I do this? And what happens now?”
Continue reading...