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Ask a Book Critic: Autumnal books to get you ready for fall

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Welcome to the latest installment of Vox’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/ask-a-book-critic">Ask a Book Critic</a>, in which I, Vox book critic Constance Grady, provide book recommendations to suit your very specific mood: either how you’re feeling right now or how you’d like to be feeling instead.
If you prefer your recommendations in audio form, you can listen to <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vox-quick-hits/id1549029999">Ask a Book Critic</a>, part of <a href="https://www.vox.com/22219152/vox-quick-hits-short-form-podcasts">Vox Quick Hits</a>. Hear a new episode of Ask a Book Critic — always under 15 minutes long — every two weeks wherever you listen to podcasts, including <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vox-quick-hits/id1549029999">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vVk1QMzM5MzU0NjAwMQ">Google Podcasts</a>, and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/1f0Iedxo7ITTKo0SnSK3jI?si=7hODSL6ZS7ia9mdtZB5Qyg">Spotify</a>.
Now let’s get started.
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I’m looking for a fiction book with amazing prose, specifically set in autumn. Preferably from a female point of view. Some of my favorite books are <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/6/14/11925192/girls-emma-cline-cults-teen-girl-friendships">The Girls</a> by Emma Cline and <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/9/3/20807728/sally-rooney-normal-people-conversations-with-friends">Conversations With Friends</a> by Sally Rooney. I’m currently enjoying <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21498963/elif-batuman-interview-idiot-either-or">The Idiot</a> by Elif Batuman (one of your recommendations) but really looking for something cozy, or maybe a little spooky, to get into the fall season!
The obvious pick for you is Ali Smith’s <a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fautumn-9781101870730%2F9781101969946" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/autumn-9781101870730/9781101969946\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/autumn-9781101870730/9781101969946","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Autumn</a>. It’s the first book in her seasons quartet, which is thematically all about the state of the UK post-Brexit. Smith writes impeccable, playful, very allusive prose that should meet your standards, and her main character is a woman in her 30s, working precariously in academia, who is best friends with a 101-year-old man.
You also strike me as someone who would appreciate A.S. Byatt. She writes very rich, beautiful, Victorian-inflected prose, often about women intellectuals. Her most famous book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Possession-S-Byatt/dp/0679735909?&linkCode=ll1&tag=voxdotcom-20&linkId=933bfda7da8c7664e8d4631bfb149260&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://www.amazon.com/Possession-S-Byatt/dp/0679735909?linkCode=ll1\u0026tag=voxdotcom-20\u0026linkId=933bfda7da8c7664e8d4631bfb149260\u0026language=en_US\u0026ref_=as_li_ss_tl\u0026ascsubtag=[]vx[p]22412729[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":99,"subtag_delim_length":2,"subtag_key":"ascsubtag","subtag_data":{"linkCode":"ll1","tag":"voxdotcom-20","linkId":"933bfda7da8c7664e8d4631bfb149260","language":"en_US","ref_":"as_li_ss_tl","ascsubtag":"[]vx[p]22412729[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Possession</a> begins in summer, but I hold it to be spiritually autumnal: It’s about two Victorian literature scholars who begin to suspect their subjects secretly had an affair, and also about critiquing Freud. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous book.
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Online learning has left me seeking fiction with the aesthetics of academia and I generally like to read things with some speculative fiction elements, but there’s been a real glut of “school for magic” stories that I’m burnt out on. I’ve enjoyed <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tam-Lin-Pamela-Dean/dp/014240652X?&linkCode=ll1&tag=voxdotcom-20&linkId=b12382604d4124a35729e6b53bf691be&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://www.amazon.com/Tam-Lin-Pamela-Dean/dp/014240652X?linkCode=ll1\u0026tag=voxdotcom-20\u0026linkId=b12382604d4124a35729e6b53bf691be\u0026language=en_US\u0026ref_=as_li_ss_tl\u0026ascsubtag=[]vx[p]22412729[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":99,"subtag_delim_length":2,"subtag_key":"ascsubtag","subtag_data":{"linkCode":"ll1","tag":"voxdotcom-20","linkId":"b12382604d4124a35729e6b53bf691be","language":"en_US","ref_":"as_li_ss_tl","ascsubtag":"[]vx[p]22412729[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Tam Lin</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/10/11/20908510/ninth-house-review-leigh-bardugo">Ninth House</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009O3ZNB0?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1&linkCode=ll1&tag=voxdotcom-20&linkId=da642cd04860c1de2dcb76f7505a9d95&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009O3ZNB0?_encoding=UTF8\u0026btkr=1\u0026linkCode=ll1\u0026tag=voxdotcom-20\u0026linkId=da642cd04860c1de2dcb76f7505a9d95\u0026language=en_US\u0026ref_=as_li_ss_tl\u0026ascsubtag=[]vx[p]22412729[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":99,"subtag_delim_length":2,"subtag_key":"ascsubtag","subtag_data":{"_encoding":"UTF8","btkr":"1","linkCode":"ll1","tag":"voxdotcom-20","linkId":"da642cd04860c1de2dcb76f7505a9d95","language":"en_US","ref_":"as_li_ss_tl","ascsubtag":"[]vx[p]22412729[m]m-placeholder[s]s-placeholder[t]w[c]c-placeholder[r]r-placeholder[d]d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Waking the Moon</a>, and (back in the day) <a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Ffrankenstein-revised-9780141439471%2F9780141439471" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/frankenstein-revised-9780141439471/9780141439471\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/frankenstein-revised-9780141439471/9780141439471","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Frankenstein</a>. Can you recommend other fantastic stories set in, at least at surface level, ordinary-seeming universities?
You might try <a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fthe-lightness%2F9780062905321" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/the-lightness/9780062905321\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/the-lightness/9780062905321","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>The Lightness</a> by Emily Temple. It’s a bit off the dark academia path as it’s set in a school for meditation and is aesthetically pretty light-filled (like the title suggests!), but it has the structure and thematic play of a campus novel. It is also about teen girls being witchy, which is truly the best plot.
You could also give Tana French’s <a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fthe-likeness-9789573325932%2F9780143115625" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/the-likeness-9789573325932/9780143115625\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/the-likeness-9789573325932/9780143115625","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>The Likeness</a> a try. It’s mostly a mystery, but the inciting incident is lightly supernatural: A grad student has been murdered, and the detective assigned to her case looks exactly like her. There’s never an explanation for their shared appearance, but the detective goes undercover as the murder victim, which allows French to play around with doppelgängers and the idea of a shadow self. (Incidentally, French’s other campus novel, <a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fthe-secret-place-9781467686518%2F9780143127512" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/the-secret-place-9781467686518/9780143127512\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/the-secret-place-9781467686518/9780143127512","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>The Secret Place</a>, is also about teen girls being witchy, but it feels much less magical in that book than in either The Likeness or The Lightness.)
Finally, the new companion trilogy to the Dark Materials books, <a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fthe-book-of-dust-la-belle-sauvage-book-of-dust-volume-1%2F9780553510744" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/the-book-of-dust-la-belle-sauvage-book-of-dust-volume-1/9780553510744\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/the-book-of-dust-la-belle-sauvage-book-of-dust-volume-1/9780553510744","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>The Book of Dust</a>, takes place primarily in a fantasy version of Oxford. I’m thinking it could break through your “school for magic” doldrums — fantasy Oxford exists in a magical world, but it is not a school where people teach magic.
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I’m a voracious reader with very eclectic taste and never normally short of a book, but I’m beginning to feel like what I’m looking for might not exist. I really just want to see someone like me in my fiction.
I became disabled as an adult (fibromyalgia and now use mobility aids) and it just wasn’t the end of my world. There have been some tough times, sure, and letting go of some things, but it was neither the absolute personal disaster I often see in fiction or the inspirational overcoming of adversity you see in a lot of memoirs.
I’m looking for something fictional that has a disabled protagonist where their disability is treated as a facet of their lives and not either their entire personality or the thing the plot revolves around. Some of my favorite authors are Neil Gaiman, Agatha Christie, and Sharon Kay Penman, which shows a bit of the wide range I’m happy to look at to find a book about someone just like me.
Here are a few possibilities.
You might consider the <a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fthe-cuckoo-s-calling-9781478980865%2F9780316206853" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/the-cuckoo-s-calling-9781478980865/9780316206853\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/the-cuckoo-s-calling-9781478980865/9780316206853","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Cormoran Strike books</a> by Robert Galbraith. Galbraith is J.K. Rowling’s pen name, so if you decide to read them you have to figure out how you feel about <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21285396/jk-rowling-transphobic-backlash-harry-potter">her transphobia</a>, but on their own merits they compose a pretty solid detective series. (Excluding the most recent volume, <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/21449215/troubled-blood-review-jk-rowling-transphobia-controversy">Troubled Blood</a>, which is hellishly boring and also has a transphobic subplot.) The main character, Cormoran Strike, is a vet who had part of his leg amputated in the war, and while that obviously affects his life (e.g. he has to figure out how much weight he can put on his prosthetic, and when his leg is too irritated to deal with the prosthetic at all), it’s not at all his defining characteristic.
<a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fsix-of-crows%2F9781250076960" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/six-of-crows/9781250076960\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/six-of-crows/9781250076960","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Six of Crows</a> and <a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fcrooked-kingdom%2F9781250076977" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/crooked-kingdom/9781250076977\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/crooked-kingdom/9781250076977","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Crooked Kingdom</a> by Leigh Bardugo are a fantasy duology set in the same universe as her Shadow and Bone trilogy, but they’re both much better than the main trilogy. Bardugo is one of those writers who becomes a more interesting author with every book she writes, and with Six of Crows she’s really reaching her peak. These two books make up a heist story, and they’re really fun. The main character, Kaz, has a bad leg and walks with a cane, but his main thing is being a criminal prodigy.
Hillary Mantel’s <a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fwolf-hall%2F9780312429980" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/wolf-hall/9780312429980\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/wolf-hall/9780312429980","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>Wolf Hall trilogy</a> has a recurring subplot about chronic illness. These books cover the life of Thomas Cromwell, chief fixer to Henry VIII, and one of the many issues Cromwell has to deal with is that he has a recurring fever. He first picked it up as a young man in Italy, and at various times throughout these three books he’ll find himself confined to his bed by it. The series is also just extremely beautiful and immersive, and I think they have one of the most interesting approaches to interiority I’ve seen in contemporary fiction.
<a href="https://go.skimresources.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbookshop.org%2Fbooks%2Fthe-seamstress-9780060738884%2F9780060738884" has-subtag="true" data-cdata='{"rewritten_url":"https://go.skimresources.com?id=66960X1516588\u0026xs=1\u0026url=https://bookshop.org/books/the-seamstress-9780060738884/9780060738884\u0026xcust=___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder","subtag_max_length":50,"subtag_delim_length":3,"subtag_key":"xcust","subtag_data":{"id":"66960X1516588","xs":"1","url":"https://bookshop.org/books/the-seamstress-9780060738884/9780060738884","xcust":"___vx__p_22412729__m_m-placeholder__s_s-placeholder__t_w__c_c-placeholder__r_r-placeholder__d_d-placeholder"},"encode_subtag":false}'>The Seamstress</a> by Frances de Pontes Peebles is a favorite novel of mine. It’s about two sisters in Brazil in the 1930s, one of whom becomes a great seamstress; the other becomes an outlaw and in the process loses her hand. There’s a lot about how she learns to live her life without her hand, and it’s also just a really lovely, exciting book.
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If you’d like me to recommend a book for you, email me at constance.grady@vox.com with the subject line “Ask a Book Critic.” The more specific your mood, the better!
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22648688/autumn-ali-smith-possession-as-byatt-lightness-emily-temple-likeness-tana-french-secret-place">https://www.vox.com/culture/22648688/autumn-ali-smith-possession-as-byatt-lightness-emily-temple-likeness-tana-french-secret-place</a>

vox Ask a Book Critic: Autumnal books to get you ready for fall

Welcome to the latest installment of Vox’s Ask a Book Critic , in which I, Vox book critic Constance Grady, provide book recommendations to...

The Other Sara Morrisons are ruining my inbox

A long time ago, I got some prime email real estate: saramorrison@gmail.com. No middle initial, no extra numbers at the end. Clean, simple, easy to remember. I was truly blessed.
Today, Gmail is the most popular email service in the world, which has created a seemingly limitless number of what I collectively refer to as the Other Sara Morrisons: people who share my name and who, for whatever reason, enter my Gmail address when they mean to use their own. Their frequent invasions of my inbox have made me realize how much trust many of us put in a system that wasn’t designed to do some of the things we’ve come to use it for.
Email isn’t just a communication tool; it’s also an identifier and a security measure. Companies use it to create profiles of you when you start accounts with them and it often doubles as your username. Your email can also serve as your account recovery tool when you forget your username or password. All of this from something that doesn’t require you to verify your ID and that most people get to use for free, provided by a giant corporation that wants to harvest our data. In premium email provider Hey’s <a href="https://www.hey.com/security/">words</a>, email is the “skeleton key to your digital life.” Well, I have a skeleton key to a lot of other people’s digital lives, too.
Emails sent to me that were meant for Other Sara Morrisons have given me a good deal of insight into — and a disturbing amount of access to — the lives of the many people who share my name. I know when and where their medical appointments are. I know when they give birth and am kept apprised about what their child ate and how often she pooped at daycare. I know when and where they’re going on vacation, what car they’re renting, and I get tickets to the theme parks they’ll visit when they get there. I’ve been part of a monthslong job hunting process for one Other Sara Morrison and received the renewed occupational license for another … twice. I know their property tax payment issues. I know their addresses. I know their credit card numbers.
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<aside><q>Email is the “skeleton key to your digital life.” Well, I have a skeleton key to a lot of other people’s digital lives, too.</q></aside>
</div>
In short, I have become the center of an international network of Other Sara Morrisons who can’t get their email address right. My blessing has become a curse.
Think of how many emails you get and what they say. Think of all the services that use your email address to grant you access to your account and reset your password for it. Think of all the information about you that those accounts contain. Now think of what could happen if those emails went to someone else.
Mat Honan doesn’t have to imagine that, because a version of it <a href="https://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/">happened to him</a> in 2012. A hacker tricked Apple into giving him access to Honan’s iCloud account, which was the recovery email for his Gmail account, which was the recovery email for his Twitter account. Honan’s Apple and Google accounts were erased, his Twitter was taken over, and his MacBook and iPhone were remotely wiped. Unsurprisingly, Honan has some thoughts on this topic.
“Having email be your unique identifier has been such a bad idea for such a long time,” said Honan, whose relatively common name and email domain means he, too, gets “weird, misdirected stuff all the time,” including many emails related to a social networking site for doctors he believes his address was erroneously signed up for several years ago.
“It’s just completely preposterous to me that it is still used in that way,” he added. “It’s obviously so fraught and so easy to send the wrong stuff to the wrong people.”
Despite decades of <a href="https://www.emailisnotdead.com/">pronouncements</a> that email is dead, it is very much alive. Technology research firm Radicati Group <a href="https://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/Email_Statistics_Report,_2021-2025_Executive_Summary.pdf">estimates</a> that 4.1 billion users worldwide send 319 billion emails every day.
“For all of its flaws, email is still, by most measures, the most effective communication tool ever devised in human history,” Andy Yen, CEO of ProtonMail, told me. “It’s one thing that everybody has.”
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And it’s been around for longer than you might think. The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), a branch of the Defense Department, created a precursor to the internet in the 1960s by remotely connecting computers in order to exchange data. It didn’t take long to realize that this network could also be used to send messages to the people who used those computers.
“It wasn’t as if somebody began by saying, ‘What we need is a means for secure messaging, some basic transmission, and that ought to have secure identification of sender and recipient.’ That wasn’t part of the equation,” Paul Duguid, a professor at the University of California Berkeley who studies the history of information, told me. “I think we’re still living, to some extent, with the consequences of that.”
Duguid added that while he couldn’t quite relate to my particular problem (there aren’t many Other Paul Duguids in the world), he was sympathetic.
Ray Tomlinson is <a href="https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductees/raymond-tomlinson">widely credited</a> as the inventor of email, but the technology evolved in a piecemeal fashion, over time, with additions and improvements from a lot of people. Dave Crocker worked on an early effort to create email standards in 1977 and spent the rest of his career creating or contributing to internet mail standards, which he is <a href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9078">still doing today</a>. Crocker told me that email was the result of a “massive amount of increments,” most of which were reactive; each iteration was a solution to an existing problem, or someone just coming up with “a cool idea.”
“These have typically not been orchestrated in a way you’d call planning,” he said.
By the end of the ’70s, email was pretty similar to what it is today in form and function, and a small but unamused list of recipients had received the <a href="https://www.edn.com/1st-spam-email-is-sent-may-3-1978/">first known spam email</a> — an early sign of its potential for abuse. But when the internet was only accessible to a small community, even the rare instance like that was on a small and manageable scale. Crocker, who said he occasionally gets emails meant for Other D. Crockers, including a particularly troublesome repeat offender in Wales, compared the scenario to a small town where no one locks their doors.
“It’s not that there was no concern for security, it’s that it didn’t have quite the same concerns,” he said. “And then the internet blew up into the global service that it is now.”
So did email. In 1983, MCI <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1983/09/28/mci-begins-electronic-mail-service/e82ac5fb-56b4-4d13-a08a-9094044ffa8e/">began a service</a> that let its customers communicate with each other electronically at the low, low price of $1 per 1,000-word message.
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As more people got personal computers for their homes, subscription-based, closed online networks like Compuserve, Prodigy, and AOL grew in popularity. Those were how <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/before-the-web-online-services/">most consumers</a> — millions of them by the early ’90s — got online and where they got their email addresses. When email was provided to you by a service you dialed into from a telephone number and paid for with a credit card, whatever you did with that email could easily be tied back to you by its provider. Which is why, when I “broke the rules” and “caused a significant disturbance” in the Homework Helpline chatroom, AOL could attribute that to my parents’ account and ban my entire family. And back then, if you canceled or otherwise lost your access to your AOL account, you lost your email address, too.
That’s not the case anymore. The invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 and free web browsers to navigate it meant that people could get their email addresses through websites, rather than paid online services. This began with Hotmail, which was released in 1996. It was free and browser-based, so you could log into your Hotmail account from any internet connection and you didn’t have to provide any identifying information to anyone to get it. Yahoo launched its own browser-based email service soon after. Hundreds of millions of people around the world had email addresses by the end of the century.
Gmail <a href="https://time.com/43263/gmail-10th-anniversary/">showed up</a> in 2004. Like its competitors, it was free and ad-supported. Unlike them, it scanned users’ emails to better target ads to them, a practice it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html">only stopped</a> in 2017. By 2012, Gmail was the <a href="https://venturebeat.com/2012/06/28/gmail-hotmail-yahoo-email-users/">most popular email</a> service out there. Google wouldn’t give me any user numbers (nor would it comment for this story), but it <a href="https://twitter.com/gmail/status/1055806807174725633">tweeted</a> in 2018 that it had 1.5 billion of them.
All of this means that what has become a hugely important part of our lives is built on a decentralized system of suggested standards and protocols that is owned by no one but is largely operated by a few of the biggest companies in the world. Email is also a <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/phishing-continues-to-be-one-of-the-easiest-paths-for-ransomware-report/">major vector</a> for cyberattacks (even presidential campaigns are <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/10/28/politics/phishing-email-hack-john-podesta-hillary-clinton-wikileaks/index.html">not immune</a>). If people and companies don’t take the right precautions, their security can be compromised by clicking on the wrong link or making a simple typo.
“We have to face the fact that this is a problem that’s been brewing for decades,” Marc Rogers, executive director of cybersecurity at Okta, an identity authentication technology company, told me. “Email was not designed to be a secure medium.”
And while Rogers says that some of the blame for this rests on the people who don’t type their email addresses carefully, the bulk of the responsibility is on companies that send those emails.
“They need to realize that email should not be used for sensitive activity unless they’ve taken steps to prove they know who’s ‘residing’ there,” he said. “You have to prove who controls that email.”
And yet, you don’t have to prove anything to get that email in the first place. I’ve had that Gmail address longer than I’ve had any one physical address in my adult life, or any phone number or any driver’s license number. The only identifier I’ve had for longer is my Social Security number. I got that from the federal government after my parents submitted proof of my identity and citizenship status. I just had to fill out a few prompts on a website to get my email address.
As I’ve become more aware of my online identity and its vulnerabilities (<a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/28/21080122/avoid-hack-hacker-theft">getting hacked</a> and almost losing $13,000 will do that to you), I’ve been trying to cull my accounts, only for a parade of Other Sara Morrisons to sign me up for many more. Removing my email from them isn’t easy.
Here’s an example:
One Other Sara Morrison ordered three pairs of mid-rise capri pants from J.C. Penney. She accidentally used my email address for her new J.C. Penney Rewards account. J.C. Penney’s website didn’t give me a way to delete my email from the account, so I did it through Twitter DMs, where the company made me provide the phone number and physical address on Other Sara Morrison’s account — I had to log into her account to get that. While looking for the required information, I saw her credit card number, which she had saved to make future purchases fast and easy.
This all seemed pretty bad, so I asked J.C. Penney why it didn’t have an email verification system or an easy way to change email addresses on accounts. J.C. Penney declined to comment. J.C. Penney’s Twitter account assured me that it deleted my address from Other Sara Morrison’s Rewards account. Two months later, I received a fleet of emails tracing the journey of the five V-neck T-shirts she just ordered.
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<aside><q>I have become the center of an international network of Other Sara Morrisons who can’t get their email address right</q></aside>
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Not all companies are this bad. Some will use a process called confirmed or <a href="https://mailchimp.com/help/single-opt-in-vs-double-opt-in/">double opt-in</a> to verify that their emails are going to the person who solicited them. But they don’t have to do that. According to the <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business">CAN-SPAM Act</a>, one of the few laws in the United States that regulates email, they only have to give people a way to opt out of receiving their emails. But they’re under no obligation to remove your email address from an account.
Some places do have laws that give you the right to demand that companies delete your data. But they don’t apply where I live, so all I can do is be envious of my friends who live in states like <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/30/21030754/ccpa-2020-california-privacy-law-rights-explained">California</a> and <a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/art-17-gdpr/">countries in Europe</a> and have rights I don’t.
Meanwhile, most of the Other Sara Morrisons have no idea that their accounts are compromised, and I can’t tell them because the only contact information I have is the email address they supplied — which is mine.
In the process of reporting this article, I realized how casually and even haphazardly I’ve treated email. Years ago, I got a free email account from a company known for its search engine. It served my basic needs so it didn’t occur to me to change it, even as that search engine company — and email itself — became so much more.
Some of the experts I spoke to suggested starting fresh with a new email address and using this as a chance to think about what I wanted out of my email experience — a remodel of my digital home, if you will. There are other email services out there, some of which have features that those major consumer email services don’t. A couple examples are ProtonMail and Hey. ProtonMail’s selling point is its privacy and security. Emails are end-to-end encrypted, so even Proton can’t access their contents (which means the government <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22565926/police-law-enforcement-data-warrant">can’t get anything</a> from the company, either). Meanwhile, Hey’s mission is to make your email experience more pleasant and customizable, and to give users greater control over whose emails they receive and whose they reject.
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Even Big Tech companies are trying to sell an improved email experience. Apple <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/6/7/22522994/apple-ios15-privacy-icloud">now lets you</a> conceal your iCloud email address when you sign up for accounts and newsletters, which gives you more control over who knows your email address.
But all of these features come at a cost. ProtonMail’s basic service is free but limited, with more features and storage space for paid accounts starting at $5 a month or $48 a year. Hey’s email service starts at $99 a year. You have to have an Apple device to have an iCloud email address, and some of Apple’s new email features require an iCloud subscription, which starts at 99 cents a month.
But most of us have been using free email providers for our personal addresses for decades and don’t think or care about the trade-offs we’ve made for them. Will people really want to pay for email? The founders of ProtonMail and Hey think the answer is yes, saying that more people want to preserve their privacy and avoid Big Tech than ever before. Yen, of ProtonMail, said his service has 50 million users, though most of them use the free version. David Heinemeier Hansson, of Hey, said the company amassed 30,000 paid users in its first three months.
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<aside><q>Email really is an amazing, miraculous technology. But at the end of the day, it’s in the hands of humans who are always going to screw it up.</q></aside>
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For even more money and with a certain level of tech savviness, you can get your own domain with its own email address — your very own internet home, rather than a Gmail rental. That’s what Niels ten Oever, who studies <a href="https://www.fordfoundation.org/work/learning/research-reports/human-rights-are-not-a-bug-upgrading-governance-for-an-equitable-internet/">internet infrastructure, governance, and human rights</a> at the University of Amsterdam, suggested. That would go a long way to reduce misdirected emails because there will be a very limited number of people who use that domain in the first place, as opposed to the more than 1.5 billion who share the Gmail domain name now.
Most email providers will let you use your personal domain with their email services, so you don’t have to choose between, say, ProtonMail’s privacy protections and having your own domain address. If you don’t want to leave Google, you can even use Gmail with an address from your own domain. You can have the best of both worlds, as long as you can pay for them.
Perhaps there will, one day, be a new type of identifier that doesn’t have email’s flaws but is just as ubiquitous. Crocker said there’s probably some effort out there involving blockchains — “there’s almost always an effort involving blockchains for almost anything.” Some companies are starting to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/05/biometrics-future-of-digital-cyber-security.html">incorporate biometrics</a> into their identity authentication systems. Companies like Rogers’ Okta offer single sign-on services that verify users without passwords. But it’s hard to believe they’ll have the widespread adoption of email anytime soon.
“Email addresses just keep plodding on and on being useful,” Crocker said.
Email really is an amazing, miraculous technology. But at the end of the day, it’s in the hands of humans who are always going to screw it up. If you have a common name and an email domain that’s used by billions of people, you’re going to be on the receiving end of a lot of those screw-ups for the foreseeable future. There doesn’t seem to be a way to both keep my Gmail address and avoid the Other Sara Morrisons’ incursions. I wasn’t sure if it was worth the hassle of switching everything over to a new email address just to get rid of them.
But then ten Oever asked me: “Do we really want the world’s biggest post office to be run by an American corporation?” No, I didn’t.
On this journey, I’ve come to realize that saramorrison@gmail.com never truly belonged to me, to one Sara Morrison. It belonged to Google. But also, in a greater and more philosophical sense, it belonged to all Sara Morrisons. And so it belonged to no one.
I cede it back to the digital ground from which it came. The inbox will lie fallow, collecting whatever email seeds happen to drift its way, take root, and grow. It will become a jungle of newsletters, password resets, and order confirmations — intertwined, unabated, unread, and reclaimed by the virtual Earth.
I will build a new home somewhere else. The Other Sara Morrisons are not invited.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/22620276/what-to-do-when-you-get-someone-elses-email-security-vulnerabilities-gmail-inbox-invasion">https://www.vox.com/recode/22620276/what-to-do-when-you-get-someone-elses-email-security-vulnerabilities-gmail-inbox-invasion</a>

vox The Other Sara Morrisons are ruining my inbox

A long time ago, I got some prime email real estate: saramorrison@gmail.com. No middle initial, no extra numbers at the end. Clean, simple, ...

What an enormous global study can tell us about feeling better during the pandemic

During the pandemic, I’ve spent a lot of time alone. I live by myself. I work from home. At times, I experienced fits of fidgetiness and restlessness, contributing to feelings of burnout.
Here’s what helped: reappraising the situation.
What I was feeling was isolation, and the loneliness that comes with it. Instead of letting it gnaw at me, I tried to remember: <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/6/7/11844724/loneliness-explained">Loneliness is normal</a>, sometimes even <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/6/7/11844724/loneliness-explained">useful</a>. I remembered that sadness existed in part to remind me of something I really value, the company of other people. I knew, when the opportunity arose, I’d reorient myself to immersion with others. And when that time came, I’d embrace it; it was a reminder that I was still capable of feeling the joy I had been lacking. And as a consolation, that felt good.
Cognitive reappraisal — sometimes called cognitive reframing — is most commonly encountered in therapy, where it’s used to regulate emotions. It’s a component of cognitive behavioral therapy, a whole suite of strategies that can encourage positive patterns of thinking and behavior.
Reappraisals are useful. But they’re not something people learn exclusively in the context of clinical care. It’s arguably a skill we all can benefit from. And by “we all,” I mean just about everyone, all across the globe.
Recently, hundreds of researchers in 87 countries <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01173-x">published the results</a> of the largest cognitive reappraisal study to date in Nature Human Behavior. They were asking a simple question: Could they make people feel better about the pandemic, if only for one moment in time, by teaching reappraisals? The study, which amassed data on more than 20,000 participants, came back with a resounding answer: yes.
The new study validates the concept of reappraisal. But it also suggests that it could potentially be feasible to deploy as a large-scale global health intervention.
It’s a simple skill, but it could help many people foster resilience in a chaotic world.
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<figcaption>During the pandemic, I was experiencing isolation and feeling the loneliness that comes with it. Instead of letting it gnaw at me, I tried to remember: Loneliness is normal, sometimes even healthy.</figcaption>
<cite>Getty Images</cite></figure>
The peer-reviewed paper in Nature Human Behavior is the most recent project from the <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22360363/replication-crisis-psychological-science-accelerator">Psychological Science Accelerator</a>, a group of hundreds of researchers who combine their resources to pull off psychological studies with massive participant pools and an unusually rigorous methodology.
Near the start of the pandemic, the group put out a call for project proposals to test psychological interventions that could, simply, help people feel better.
“The reason why we choose cognitive reappraisal is because it has been the most widely studied and well-understood strategy,” <a href="http://jenniferlerner.com/people/ke-wang/">Ke Wang</a>, the Harvard Kennedy School doctoral student who first proposed this massive project, explains. It’s also a strategy that people don’t always use <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24999912/">spontaneously on their own</a>: It helps to be taught.
(The group has two other papers testing different psychological interventions, on how public health messaging in the pandemic can influence behavior. Of note: They’re testing whether “<a href="https://psysciacc.org/studies/psacr-1-2-3/">loss aversion</a>,” an influential idea that suggests people respond more strongly when they think they have something to lose, encourages people to protect their health during a pandemic.)
Cognitive reappraisal works because “there’s a link between our thoughts and our feelings,” <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=igOYGOYAAAAJ&hl=en">Kateri McRae</a>, a University of Denver psychologist who studies emotion and who was not involved in this study, says. “A lot of times, our feelings are preceded by certain thoughts.” So when we shift our thoughts, that can precipitate a change in our emotions.
It can be a strategy to cope with a bout of anxiety or depression, or it can just be used to foster mental health resilience. “Individuals who report greater amounts of well-being and daily positive emotion report using reappraisal more frequently than people who report daily negative emotion,” McRae says — though she adds that “there is a little bit of a chicken-and-egg thing here.” What comes first: Do positive people reappraise, or do reappraisers become positive people? “But I certainly think that most people consider it to be something that might serve as a buffer.”
Once you get the hang of the technique, it’s easy to apply reappraisal thinking to many different situations. For instance, sometimes when I felt the excruciating boredom of the pandemic winter lockdown, I tried to reappraise the feeling of boredom as peacefulness, the absence of a bad thing. “I’m lucky to be bored,” I’d think. It would make the bitter pill go down more easily.
Wang and the hundreds of other authors wanted to see if they could teach thousands of people around the world similar coping strategies, to help deal with the stress of the pandemic.
They conducted a preregistered study — meaning a study where the methods and analysis plans are locked into place before data collection begins, to help ensure rigor — and tested two subtly different reappraisal methods, targeting negative emotions associated with living through the pandemic.
The first method is called “refocusing.” It might be better described as “looking on the bright side.”
Let’s say you’re feeling sad, staying home during a lockdown. You can refocus your thoughts to some of the more positive aspects of staying at home. Like: “Staying at home is not that bad,” as Wang explains. “You may find more time to spend with your family, or do things you may not have had time to do, such as cooking.”
Another is called “reconstruing.” This goes a little beyond just looking at the bright side of any particular burden, trying to find an overall less-negative narrative to tell ourselves about the pandemic. It’s less about finding the positive in our individual circumstances and more about looking at the big picture in a new light.
In reconstruing the burdens of the pandemic, for example, you could think: “In the past, people have overcome many challenges that seemed overwhelming at the time, and we will overcome Covid-19 related challenges too,” as the study text suggested to participants.
This isn’t about becoming a blinkered robot that’s only allowed to think positive thoughts. “In our intervention, we’re not forcing them to feel positive all the time,” Wang explains. “We’re teaching them to use it to regulate emotions.” It’s about intervening when thoughts become distressing.
It’s not about never acknowledging negative thoughts, either. “I think there’s a really delicate balance between acknowledging the reality, allowing people to sometimes sit with negativity, but also realizing that positive interpretations of things are possible,” McRae says.
In the study, participants were assigned to read about refocusing, reconstruing, or two control conditions. Participants took a survey before they learned the technique to assess their baseline emotional state. Afterward, they were measured again and asked to assess their feelings overall about the pandemic, and how they are responding to it.
Notably, both techniques fared equally well in decreasing people’s negative emotions, and the effects, the authors report, aren’t just statistically significant — they seemed to make a big practical difference for people.
The difference in feelings between those who learned reappraisals, compared to those who did not, was as big as the difference between people who had faced extreme hardships due to the pandemic, compared to those who had not. That’s a notable improvement. (Of course, the interventions are not “guaranteed” to work for any particular individual. The study reported changes on average.)
Also, the interventions didn’t seem to decrease willingness to engage in Covid-safe behaviors like masking. “Some people may worry that if you improve emotions, people may be less cautionary,” Wang says. “But we don’t find that in our study.”
Notably, too, the interventions — which were translated <a href="https://psysciacc.org/2021/08/02/releasing-the-results-of-the-psas-covid-rapid-project/">by a team of hundreds of people</a> into 44 languages — broadly worked in every country tested, though there was some variability. The interventions were most effective in Brazil, Germany, and Hungary, and they were least effective in Russia, Romania, and Egypt. “So far, we haven’t found anything that can systematically explain what country can benefit more or less,” Wang says. (The researchers didn’t have representative samples in all the countries studied, so there could be a lot of reasons why they found the variation.)
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<figcaption>“A lot of times, our feelings are preceded by certain thoughts,” says Kateri McRae, a University of Denver psychologist. So when we shift our thoughts, that can precipitate a change in our emotions.</figcaption>
<cite>Getty Images</cite></figure>
The narrower conclusion of this study, that cognitive reappraisal works, is not super surprising. “The finding that reappraisal decreases negative emotion and increases positive emotion is something that has been replicated over and over and over ad nauseam,” McRae says. “I couldn’t just get that finding published if I really wanted to, because it’s been so well-established.”
But there were aspects of the study that are new and significant. “I think this scale, scope, and timeliness to speak to the crisis we’re in right now were the most impressive parts about it,” she says.
There’s a burgeoning <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/9/17/20827011/teen-depression-anxiety-treatment-single-session">research movement in psychology</a> dedicated to testing out single-session interventions, delivered either online or remotely. Mental health care is often inaccessible and expensive, so the more psychological interventions that can be unbundled from a whole suite of intensive therapy, the more good they can potentially do around the world. Many people whose distress doesn’t rise to the level of a mental health diagnosis could still benefit, the study suggests.
That said, there’s still more work to do here. Other researchers not involved in the project wish it had studied these participants over time, to see if the intervention had a lasting effect.
“A study this large would have provided a particularly informative test of whether a single-session universal intervention could exert lasting, more generalized effects,” says Jessica Schleider, a Stony Brook University psychologist who specializes in studying single-session psychological interventions. “I do think it’s scientifically valuable to know that reappraisal can provide in-the-moment support this broadly, and it can be recommended as one coping option to try for folks in distress.”
The authors of the paper acknowledge this limitation, and some others. The study had people view photos reminding them of Covid-19 stresses, which “might not represent local situations for different groups of participants,” the authors report. It also doesn’t represent all the myriad emotional triggers we encounter living during a pandemic. But most of all, they see this work as foundational for other questions.
The <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22360363/replication-crisis-psychological-science-accelerator">Psychological Science Accelerator</a>, the group behind the massive undertaking of the paper, was launched in response to psychology’s “replication crisis.” Over the past decade, many famous psychological theories have collapsed under rigorous re-testing. As many as 50 percent of all psychology papers might not be replicable, though no one knows the true extent of the rot in the foundations of psychology. There have also been some high-profile cases of outright <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/19/17879102/brian-wansink-cornell-food-brand-lab-retractions-jama">data fraud</a> <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemlee/dan-ariely-honesty-study-retraction">related</a> to some of psychology’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication">most popular findings</a>. The Accelerator, which operates on a shoestring budget (it reports that this study of tens of thousands of people cost only $17,000, much of which came from individual lab members), is seeking to rebuild the field on a firmer foundation.
It’s a “credibility crisis,” Patrick Forscher, a psychologist and member of the Accelerator who worked on the reappraisal paper, says. “Because there are more issues rather than just replicability. So my personal view is that you can look at a lot of psychological findings and just put a question mark on them — not that they’re definitely false. We know that some of the practices that were used to produce a lot of those findings are, themselves, not all that credible.”
The latest test of cognitive reappraisals puts the science of mental health interventions on a firmer foundation. Psychology encompasses a lot of flimsy ideas that claim to make your life better. Here’s one that seems to actually work.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22641291/global-mental-health-covid-19-cognitive-reappraisal-study">https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/22641291/global-mental-health-covid-19-cognitive-reappraisal-study</a>

vox What an enormous global study can tell us about feeling better during the pandemic

During the pandemic, I’ve spent a lot of time alone. I live by myself. I work from home. At times, I experienced fits of fidgetiness and res...

Britain's New HMS Queen Elizabeth In Japan On Indo-Pacific Mission

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Britain's New HMS Queen Elizabeth In Japan On Indo-Pacific Mission" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-09/d4isj6i8_britains-new-hms-queen-elizabethreuters_625x300_06_September_21.jpg" title="Britain's New HMS Queen Elizabeth In Japan On Indo-Pacific Mission" /></div>
The massive carrier, weighing in at 65,000 tonnes, is the largest surface vessel ever built in the UK
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Yokosuka, Japan:
Britain's new HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier has paid a port call to Japan, in a mission that adds to pressure from Tokyo, the US and allies on China over its increasingly assertive regional maritime presence.
The Queen Elizabeth is the flagship of the UK's Carrier Strike Group deployment, which has been making stops around Japan and carrying out exercises along with vessels from allied nations in recent weeks.
"This port call to Japan by the British carrier strike group and the joint exercises represent the intent of our two nations," Japan's Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi said Monday at Yokosuka base, where the British ship is visiting.
"Japan-UK defence cooperation contributes not only to the security of our nations but also to the peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific and the international community, while also dealing with global issues," Kishi added.
Both nations have voiced opposition to unilateral efforts to change the status quo in the disputed East China and South China seas and the importance of a free and open maritime order, he said.
In a statement, the British embassy in Tokyo said the deployment was "a powerful demonstration of the UK's close and enduring partnership with Japan and the UK's commitment to maritime security in the Indo-Pacific region."
The massive carrier, weighing in at 65,000 tonnes, is the largest surface vessel ever built in the UK and is leading a group of six British ships and a submarine, one US destroyer and a Dutch frigate.
The group is billed as "the largest concentration of maritime and air power to leave the UK in a generation" and has already prompted a blunt warning from Chinese state media.
In July, an editorial in the nationalist state-run newspaper Global Times warned China might feel compelled to respond to the flotilla.
Addressing the UK and allied strike force specifically, it said: "We seriously warn this group: They are obliged to remain restrained and obey the rules."
It came as the group entered the disputed South China Sea after exercises with the navies of India, Malaysia and Singapore ahead of the Japan stops.
Britain's defence ministry said at the time that the deployment was "confident, but not confrontational."
Beijing's claims to the entire South China Sea encompass uninhabited islets that lie barely above the waterline, as well as man-made islands built to house airstrips and military bases.
The CSG21 is scheduled to visit 40 nations on a deployment that will see it cover over 26,000 nautical miles.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/britains-new-hms-queen-elizabeth-in-japan-on-indo-pacific-mission-2531672">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/britains-new-hms-queen-elizabeth-in-japan-on-indo-pacific-mission-2531672</a>

news world Britain's New HMS Queen Elizabeth In Japan On Indo-Pacific Mission

The massive carrier, weighing in at 65,000 tonnes, is the largest surface vessel ever built in the UK Yokosuka, Japan: Britain's ne...

3-Year-Old Found In Australian Bush 3 Days After Going Missing

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="3-Year-Old Found In Australian Bush 3 Days After Going Missing" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-09/tqruvidk_child-australian-bushtwitter650_625x300_06_September_21.jpg" title="3-Year-Old Found In Australian Bush 3 Days After Going Missing" /></div>
Australia: The boy was reported to have suffered some scrapes from a fall and a nappy rash.
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Australian emergency services rescued a three-year old boy on Monday three days after he went missing from his family's property.
Video footage released by New South Wales police showed the boy, Anthony 'AJ' Elfalak, desperately scooping water into his mouth in a creek in Putty, around 150 km (93 miles) northwest of Sydney, just before his rescue.
AJ was taken to hospital and was reported to have suffered some scrapes from a fall and a nappy rash.
Asked what had sustained him during the ordeal, the boy's relieved father Anthony Elfalak said: "Just to see my son, he's named after me."
It was unclear why the boy had wandered away from his parents' home on Friday.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/3-year-old-found-in-australian-bush-3-days-after-going-missing-2531575">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/3-year-old-found-in-australian-bush-3-days-after-going-missing-2531575</a>

news world 3-Year-Old Found In Australian Bush 3 Days After Going Missing

Australia: The boy was reported to have suffered some scrapes from a fall and a nappy rash. Australian emergency services rescued a thre...

Curtains, Strict Rules For Female Students As Afghan Universities Reopen

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="Curtains, Strict Rules For Female Students As Afghan Universities Reopen" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-09/5feipk98_afghanistan-universities-men-women-classrooms_625x300_06_September_21.jpg" title="Curtains, Strict Rules For Female Students As Afghan Universities Reopen" /></div>
University classes re-opened in war-torn Afghanistan on Monday
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New Delhi:
Private universities resumed functioning in war-torn Afghanistan on Monday with the Taliban - which has <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/taliban-government-formation-baradar-haqqanis-clash-holds-up-taliban-government-formation-sources-2531131" target="_self">promised a more moderate government</a>, including assurances of human rights, particularly those concerning women and children - allowing female students to attend classes.
The hardline Islamist group has still, however, imposed restrictions on the clothes they may wear, where and how they are seated in class, who can teach them, and even the length of their classes.
Photographs by the Aamaj News Agency (which NDTV has not been able to independently verify) reveal the 'new normal' for Afghan college students - divided classrooms, literally and figuratively.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
در تصویر: دروس دانشگاه با پرده جدایی آغاز شد <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/%D8%A2%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%AC_%D9%86%DB%8C%D9%88%D8%B2?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#آماج_نیوز</a><a href="https://t.co/2we0oqRnbS">pic.twitter.com/2we0oqRnbS</a>
— Aamaj News (@AamajN) <a href="https://twitter.com/AamajN/status/1434780194347302914?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 6, 2021</a></blockquote>
A document issued by the Taliban's education authority Saturday, prior to classes resuming today, ordered <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/women-attending-private-afghan-universities-to-wear-niqab-cover-face-taliban-2530780" target="_self">women to wear an abaya robe and niqab</a> (that covers most of the face) and that classes must be segregated by sex - or at least divided by a curtain.
There was no order for women to wear the all-enveloping burqa but the niqab effectively covers most of the face anyway, leaving just the eyes exposed.
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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="9vo9qq38" class="lozad" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-09/9vo9qq38_womanniqabunsplash_625x300_05_September_21.jpg" /></div>
Women have been ordered to wear an abaya robe and a niqab to attend classes (Representational)
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The document also ordered that female students should only be taught by other women. If this is not possible then "old men of good character" can fill in. "Universities are required to recruit female teachers for female students based on their facilities," the education authority said
Among other decrees from the Taliban are that men and women must use separate entrances and exits, and female students must leave five minutes earlier to stop men and women from mixing.
Female students must stay in waiting rooms till their male counterparts have left the building.
A university professor, who asked not to be named, told AFP "it is a difficult plan - we don't have enough female instructors or classes to segregate the girls... But the fact that they are allowing girls to go to schools and universities is a big positive step."
Girls and boys will also be segregated at primary and secondary schools, which was already common throughout deeply conservative Afghanistan.
Last month Abdul Baqi Haqqani, the acting minister for higher education, was quoted by AFP as saying the <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/women-allowed-to-attend-university-under-new-rule-taliban-acting-minister-2522994" target="_self">Taliban wants to "create a reasonable and Islamic curriculum</a>... in line with our Islamic, national and historical values and... be able to compete with other countries".
Whether women can work, freely attend school and college and be able to mix with men have been some of the most pressing questions since the Taliban swept into Kabul on August 15.
August's meeting of education officials offered a potential answer - no women were present at a meeting of elders in Kabul, although several senior Taliban officials were.
A lecturer who previously worked at a city university told AFP this showed "systematic prevention of women's participation" and "a gap between the Taliban's commitments and actions".
University admission rates have risen over the past 20 years, particularly among women who have studied side-by-side with men and attended seminars delivered by male professors.
The Taliban - feared for their brutal first regime - has promised to be more inclusive, particularly in regards to human rights and gender equality, but reports like the one that emerged earlier today - <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/taliban-shoots-afghan-policewoman-in-front-of-her-family-2531018#pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll" target="_self">a pregnant policewoman was shot dead</a> - have raised fears they will revert to type.
Promises women can also work have been viewed with scepticism too, given reports like Shabnam Dawran, a popular Afghan journalist who said <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/afghan-woman-news-anchor-barred-from-work-after-taliban-takeover-2514332" target="_self">she was barred from working at her TV station</a>.
With input from Reuters, AFP
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/afghanistan-universities-women-students-curtains-strict-rules-for-female-students-as-afghan-universities-reopen-2531559">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/afghanistan-universities-women-students-curtains-strict-rules-for-female-students-as-afghan-universities-reopen-2531559</a>

news world Curtains, Strict Rules For Female Students As Afghan Universities Reopen

University classes re-opened in war-torn Afghanistan on Monday New Delhi: Private universities resumed functioning in war-torn Afghanis...