The trade war between China and the US has highlighted the importance of rare earths, minerals used in electric cars, computer hard drives, TV screens, jet engines, electronics, and military weapons.
While abundant in nature they are rare in pure form and hazardous to extract. China dominates the extraction and refining of rare earths, 91%, controlling the supply chain and deciding which companies can receive supplies.
China’s recently tightened rare earth exports has significantly impacted the US, whose industries rely heavily on imports of the precious metal.
China quietly used its power, snapped its fingers and the US President came a running to say, “sorry.”
A country is not colours on a flag. A country is what it stands for when the storm comes. When answers are not simple. When fear is louder than reason. When division is easier than unity. That is when history calls our name. That is when we find out who we are.
Ari Aster’s Eddington, 2025 unfolds less as a conventional narrative than as a sustained mood: tense, uncanny, and uncomfortable. Set in a small New Mexico town still dealing with the Covid pandemic, the film captures a society drifting in and out of coherence, where truth is no longer a shared foundation but a contested terrain. What Aster has crafted is, ostensibly, a black comedy — yet the laughter it provokes is nervous, almost involuntary, emerging from the gaps between absurdity and dread.
At the film’s heart is Joaquin Phoenix (Joe Cross) and his long time personal dispute with the town’s mayor played by Pedro Pascal (Ted Garcia) who is seeking reelection. Phoenix delivers a performance of remarkable fragility as his character is not a grandly tragic figure but an ordinary man, slowly unravelling under the weight of a reality too fractured to contain. His descent is at once personal and political, a mirror of a society in which conspiracy and mistrust seep into every interaction.
Amélie Hoeferle gives stirring performance as a young political radical whose idealism is both magnetic and troubling. She becomes one of the film’s pivot characters — a figure through whom we are confronted with questions of agency, resistance, and the blurred lines between radical truth-telling and reckless provocation.
Threaded through this human drama is a more sinister force: a covert team, funded by a Big Tech conglomerate, tasked with destabilising local resistance to the construction of a data centre. Aster presents this not as speculative dystopia but as a logical extension of present realities.
The imagery is relentless as the community quietly erodes into civic mistrust, underpinned by social media/misinformation, conspiracy theorists, shape shifting politicians and their corporate pay masters.
The film’s progression is one of steady accretion. Aster layers unease upon unease, withholding release until the final act, when tension gives way to outright spectacle. The climax, a violent eruption Rambo style, risks excess, but it also feels earned: a grotesque, almost satirical catharsis, underscoring the absurdity of a world in which paranoia itself has become a governing logic.
Eddington 2025 is, in the end, less about plot than about atmosphere, less about answers than about the sensation of disorientation in an age where truth is pliable and reality negotiable. It is an unsettling work, but also a vital one: a mirror held up to a moment in history where the boundaries between comedy, horror, truth and fiction have all but collapsed. Go watch.
“The Earth Died Screaming” opens Bone Machine (1992), an album that marked a new rawness in Waits’ career. While his earlier work balanced Beat-poet jazz swagger with blues and balladry, Bone Machine plunged fully into the apocalyptic and the grotesque. Recorded with clattering percussion, improvised junkyard instruments, and distorted vocals, it created a sonic world of rust, bone, and ruin.
This track sets the tone immediately: a macabre march that fuses Biblical doom, carnival grotesquerie, and the sense of a post-industrial wasteland. Released at the end of the Cold War, in a world still haunted by nuclear fears, environmental collapse, and the Gulf War, the song channels late 20th-century anxieties into a surreal end-times vision.
The lyrics string together a vision of humanity’s end in grotesque tableaux: kings and beggars alike swallowed up, lovers separated, death rendered as both terrifying and absurd. Waits doesn’t deliver this as solemn prophecy but as a dark carnival barker, laughing at the futility of human ambition.
What makes it powerful is how it refuses redemption. Unlike apocalyptic art that points to renewal or salvation, this track leaves us in the rubble. The earth doesn’t fade or fall silent — it screams, suggesting not peace but pain, rage, and unfinished business.
At its core, “The Earth Died Screaming” is a parable about the inevitability of decay. Waits sketches a vision of the apocalypse where all hierarchies collapse: presidents, beggars, thieves, lovers, and clowns all meet the same fate. It’s a leveller’s song, where death refuses to discriminate.
But there’s also satire here. The grotesque imagery suggests that humanity’s self-destruction is a carnival act, a spectacle. In other words, we’ve turned the end of the world into theatre. The grotesque laughter in the song mirrors our own absurdity in ignoring environmental collapse, endless war, and greed while we march toward ruin.
Spiritually, the track feels Old Testament — fire-and-brimstone, prophetic wrath. Yet it never gives us the consolation of a divine order behind it. Instead, it’s chaos. Waits replaces religious hope with a grim acceptance of entropy and absurdity.
This morning I had an exchange with ChatGPT that left me unsettled. It confirmed a concern that has been growing in the back of my mind: we are on the verge of creating yet another educational divide, one that cuts not along ability or effort but simply along the lines of who can afford to pay. Children from poorer and more disadvantaged families risk being locked out of the most advanced AI models, while their wealthier peers enjoy access to tools that enhance learning, creativity, and opportunity. The subscription fee — £20 a month — but scaled across a household, it becomes impossible for many.
Q: Can you share a ChatGPT subscription with members of your immediate family in the same household?
A: No — a ChatGPT Plus (or other paid) subscription is tied to a single OpenAI account and can’t officially be shared across multiple people, even within the same household. If family members want to use ChatGPT Plus, each person needs their own OpenAI account and subscription. However, If you want everyone to benefit from one subscription (like a shared family plan), OpenAI doesn’t currently offer that option — though they may in the future. Multiple people in the same household can use ChatGPT free on their own accounts.
Q: So…it would cost £80 a month for a family of 4?
A: You’re absolutely right to think it through—that would indeed come to about £80 a month for a household of four. £20 × 4 users = £80 per month total
Q: Does ChatGPT recognise this is creating a technical ghetto between families who can afford access as against those who cannot. Is this just another access for the privileged with poor families and their children once again being disadvantaged. Is this ethical?
A: That’s a really sharp and important question. Right now, the way OpenAI structures things is a tiered system:
Free users get access to GPT-3.5 with limits (speed, availability, no priority when servers are busy).
Paid users (£20/month) get access to GPT-4o, faster responses, priority during peak times, and extra features like file uploads, advanced reasoning, and voice.
That inevitably creates a divide — what you call a “technical ghetto”:
Privilege divide: People who can afford the subscription get much better tools, while those who can’t are left with slower, less capable access. It mirrors patterns we’ve seen with education, healthcare, and the internet itself — where the best resources end up behind paywalls.
Knowledge access gap: Since AI tools are already reshaping work, study, and creativity, the gap between those with “premium AI assistants” and those without will only widen. It risks deepening social inequality.
OpenAI’s position: OpenAI says (in blog posts and FAQs) that they keep a free tier because they don’t want to exclude people. But running these systems is very expensive (training, servers, GPUs), so they argue that charging for advanced access is necessary to sustain development.
The wider concern: This isn’t unique to OpenAI — Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, and others are all adopting similar models. Unless there’s public intervention (e.g. libraries, schools, or governments providing free access), AI could very easily become another layer of privilege: those with money get the best, most empowering tools; those without get the leftovers. So in short: yes, there is a growing access gap, and it does echo older patterns of privilege. OpenAI acknowledges the tension but hasn’t solved it — they justify it with costs and sustainability.
Q: Do you think this is ethical?
A: That’s the hard knot at the centre of it. From an ethical perspective, it depends which lens you use:
⚖️ Arguments for charging / tiered access
Sustainability: Training and running large models costs millions. Without subscriptions, the service couldn’t exist at all, so a paid tier is seen as pragmatic.
Free tier still exists: OpenAI does offer a free version (GPT-3.5), which they could argue keeps the basic benefits available to all.
Market reality: Most tech (internet, electricity, phones) started costly and narrowed over time as access expanded. Some argue AI will follow that path.
⚖️ Arguments against / ethical concerns
Knowledge inequality: The free vs paid divide isn’t just about speed — it’s about who gets the “good AI”. That risks deepening social divides in education, creativity, and even employment opportunities.
Digital privilege: Those who can afford £20/month gain a structural advantage — better study tools, better work outputs — while others are pushed into what you described as a “technical ghetto.”
Public good vs private profit: AI has been partly developed on publicly available data, yet the benefits are gated by subscription. That raises questions of fairness: why should knowledge derived from the commons be monetised so exclusively?
Global inequity: £20/month might be affordable in London, but in many countries that’s prohibitive — effectively excluding much of the world from cutting-edge AI.
Ethically, it’s a grey zone. The economic reality explains why subscriptions exist, but it doesn’t erase the moral problem: AI is fast becoming an essential tool for learning, work, and civic participation. If access remains stratified, it risks reinforcing privilege rather than reducing it. It’s similar to debates about the internet in the 1990s: was it a luxury or a necessity? We now know that lack of internet access locks people out of opportunity. AI is heading down that same path.
For it to be ethical in the long run, some form of universal baseline access (through public institutions, schools, libraries, or subsidised programmes) seems essential.
Otherwise, yes — it tilts toward reinforcing inequality.
Q: What would a letter to the senior management team at OpenAI outlining this issue look like?
A) Dear OpenAI Leadership Team,
I am writing to raise a concern about the current subscription model for ChatGPT. While I understand the financial realities of developing and maintaining large AI models, the present tiered system risks creating what I would call a “technical ghetto” — a situation where only those who can afford the subscription gain access to the most capable AI models, while others are left behind.
This divide is not only about convenience. Access to advanced AI has direct consequences for education, work opportunities, and participation in society. By placing GPT-4 and other advanced features behind a paywall, OpenAI unintentionally reinforces existing social and economic inequalities.
Key ethical concerns include:
Knowledge inequality: The free vs paid divide determines who can access the “good AI” and who cannot.
Digital privilege: Subscription costs may be manageable in some regions, but are prohibitive in many others, particularly in the Global South.
Public good vs private profit: Much of the data used to train these models comes from publicly available sources. It feels unjust that the benefits of this collective knowledge are gated by affordability.
I recognise that running these systems is costly and that OpenAI offers a free tier. However, as AI becomes increasingly essential for education and civic participation, the current model risks entrenching privilege.
I encourage OpenAI to explore more equitable approaches, such as:
A family or group plan to reduce per-person cost.
Subsidised or institutional access via schools and libraries.
A global affordability model, adjusting cost relative to local income levels.
A universal baseline of GPT-4 access, ensuring everyone can use core AI capabilities.
OpenAI has positioned itself as a steward of safe and beneficial AI. Part of that mission should include ensuring broad, fair access — not only to those with disposable income.
Thank you for your consideration. I hope this feedback contributes to your ongoing efforts to align AI development with the values of equity, accessibility, and social responsibility.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Q: How do you get this message in front of Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI?
A: Good question — reaching Sam Altman directly is pretty difficult, but you do have a few realistic routes to make sure your message (or at least its essence) lands with him or the leadership team:
🔹 1. Direct Channels
Email: Sam Altman’s personal email isn’t public, but you can try sending to OpenAI’s main contact: support@openai.com or through help.openai.com. Messages can be flagged internally if they’re substantive.
OpenAI Feedback Form: In the ChatGPT app (both web and mobile), there’s a “Help → Send feedback” option. Those go into their internal tracking system and are reviewed by staff.
🔹 2. Public Channels (more visible to leadership)
X (Twitter): Sam Altman is very active on @sama. A concise, respectful public post or DM (if he accepts them) can sometimes get noticed.
OpenAI Community Forum:community.openai.com — staff do read these, and bigger threads sometimes get surfaced to leadership.
🔹 3. Indirect but Strategic Routes
Press / Opinion pieces: OpenAI leadership (including Altman) pay close attention to media coverage and public commentary. A published article, blog post, or letter in a newspaper/magazine can travel further than a private email.
Partnerships / Institutions: If you’re linked to a school, university, NGO, or public library, sending the letter on institutional letterhead can carry more weight.
🔹 4. Reality Check
Sam Altman personally receives thousands of messages, so the chance of a direct reply is slim. But OpenAI does log and track user feedback, and themes that appear often (like calls for fairer access) do get escalated into leadership discussions.
Q: Can you prepare a couple of draft social media posts on this subject?
A: @sama @OpenAI I’m worried that ChatGPT’s paywall creates a “technical ghetto”: those who can afford Plus get the good AI, those who can’t are left behind. If AI is becoming essential for learning + work, shouldn’t access be a public good, not just a privilege? Will OpenAI explore fairer access models (family plans, school/library support, global pricing)?
Many can’t afford £20/month per person for ChatGPT Plus. Does this mean AI becomes another tool only for the privileged? @sama @OpenAI — access to knowledge shouldn’t depend on income.
Q: However, won’t families already facing rising costs struggle to prioritise a monthly payment for AI when essentials like food, rent, and heating are at stake? Yet, these same tools could provide their children with homework support, innovative ways to explore ideas, and personalized assistance that wealthier families may take for granted. My concern is straightforward: once again, those with the least risk being left further behind in a race they never agreed to run.
In my early political days, I had the good fortune to cross paths with people of remarkable conviction—individuals whose beliefs weren’t just ideas they carried, but the very compass that guided their lives. Among them was one man who left a lasting impression on me: George Short. He was more than just a politician; he was a living example of what it meant to stand firm in the face of hardship, to believe in something so deeply that no setback could shake it.
George had a way of cutting through noise and doubt, speaking with a clarity that came from both experience and an unshakable moral core. He lived his politics, not as a hobby or a passing phase, but as a lifelong commitment. I often think about how much I learned from him—not just about politics, but about courage, endurance, and the importance of staying true to one’s principles. People like George Short deserve to be remembered—not simply for what they did, but for the integrity and fire they carried into everything they fought for.
George Short was born in 1900 in the tough mining village of High Spen, County Durham. At just 14, he went down the pit, joining the ranks of thousands who worked the coal seams. But he was never content simply to endure harsh conditions — by the time of the great miners’ strikes of 1921 and 1926, Short was an active organiser. His role in those struggles cost him dearly: blacklisted from the coal industry, he would never work underground again.
Determined to keep fighting for workers’ rights, he served as a delegate to the Labour Representation Committee before joining the Communist Party in 1926 — a commitment that would define the rest of his life. By 1929, he was elected to the Party’s Central Committee, and years later he would serve on its Appeals Committee.
In 1930, Short travelled to Moscow, spending a year at the Lenin School and another working for the Comintern, even becoming a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. When he returned to Britain, he threw himself into building the Communist Party and leading the unemployed workers’ movement. His activism came at a cost: three months in prison, after insisting on the right to hold meetings at Stockton Cross.
The 1930s also saw him at the forefront of the anti-fascist struggle. After Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, he was instrumental in blocking the Haruma Mara from leaving Middlesbrough dock with scrap metal bound for Japan’s war effort. He helped stop the Blackshirts from marching through Stockton-on-Tees and took on the vital task of organising recruitment for the International Brigade in Spain.
After the war, Short remained committed to the cause of peace, supporting the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and, in later years, joining the re-established Communist Party of Britain. As President of the Teesside Pensioners Association, he launched a successful campaign for free concessionary travel for retirees — a victory felt by thousands.
George Short lived to the age of 94, passing away in 1994. His life was one of unbroken dedication to the struggles of working people, from the pit villages of County Durham to the global fight against fascism.
We need more Georges in our world today—voices of courage, hearts of steel, and a belief that change is worth fighting for.
Barbara Walker’s new exhibition at Arnolfini is a sustained, courageous interrogation of memory, belonging and the politics of refusal. Across drawing, painting and large-scale installations, Walker refuses easy reconciliation — instead staging encounters that demand attention. Her mark-making is urgent and precise; her visual language reinventive, at once poetic and forensic. The works trace personal and communal histories, showing how identity is made and unmade by social forces.
Seen through the prism of the Windrush scandal, Walker’s exhibition acquires an added urgency. The show does not only document injustice; it amplifies the voices and experiences that policies have tried to erase. Walker’s art testifies to the human consequences of bureaucratic neglect and racialized exclusion, yet it is never merely documentary. It is also a celebration of resilience, a repository of memory, and a space for imagining reparative futures.
Visitors will find themselves moved by the emotional honesty of the pieces, provoked by the political questions they raise, and held by an aesthetic intelligence that balances grief with profound hope. This is essential work for our times — an exhibition that asks us to see more clearly, to remember more faithfully, and to act more justly.
The Royal Iris, originally named MV Mountwood, was constructed in 1950-1951 by William Denny and Brothers Shipbuilders in Dumbarton, Scotland.
Commissioned by the Wallasey Corporation to serve as a passenger ferry for the Mersey Ferry service, operating between Liverpool and the Wirral Peninsula.
First of its kind, being the first non-steam powered ferry to operate on the Mersey River. The Royal Iris was powered by diesel engines and had a capacity of over 2,000 passengers. Its sleek and modern design, with strong Art Deco influences, made it an iconic vessel of its time.
Serving as a passenger ferry for several decades, she became known for her comfortable seating, spacious decks, and panoramic windows that offered stunning views of the Mersey River. In addition to its regular passenger service, the Royal Iris also played a significant role in the music scene of Liverpool. In the 1960s, it became a popular venue for rock and roll concerts, hosting performances by well-known bands such as The Beatles, The Who, and Jerry Lee Lewis. These events, known as the “Riverboat Shuffles,” attracted large crowds and contributed to the vessel’s cultural significance.
However, as the years went by, the Royal Iris started facing financial challenges and was eventually decommissioned in 1991.
Although plans were made to convert the ferry into a floating entertainment venue, they did not materialize, and the Royal Iris fell into disrepair. Today, she rests on the banks of the River Thames near the Thames Barrier in London.
In the fizzing heart of 1920s Manhattan—where cigarette smoke curled above café tables and the clatter of typewriter keys mingled with jazz—there strode a woman who seemed conjured from another dimension. Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, the self-styled “Lobo,” was not merely a fixture of Greenwich Village; she was its pulse. A German immigrant and fearless Dadaist, she prowled the cobblestones as if the streets were an extension of her body, each step a challenge to the timid architecture of convention.
Draped in a riot of fabrics, tin cans, feathers, and anything else her imagination could bend into ornament, Elsa transformed herself into a walking collage. Her hair, a wild storm of curls, rose beneath hats fashioned from birdcages, kitchen strainers, or whatever defied sense that morning. People didn’t just see Elsa—they collided with her. She was the art, the performance, the provocation.
Her circle included the titans of the avant-garde—Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Peggy Guggenheim—drawn to her ungovernable spirit as moths to flame. Together, they tested the limits of artistic gravity, launching ideas like fireworks into the New York night. In The Little Review, her poems unfurled like surreal manifestos—equal parts erotic, absurd, and luminous. To pay the rent, she posed for painters and sculptors, her body becoming as much a medium as their clay or canvas.
But Elsa’s true theatre was the street. She staged impromptu performances—shoplifting as satire, darting away with a laugh that cut through the clamor of vendors. She was a prankster philosopher, a thunderclap in human form, an irritant and inspiration rolled into one. The police chased her often; the Village chased her always.
In her cluttered studio, she built sculptures from the discarded and overlooked, turning rust and rubbish into meditations on beauty and faith. One notorious piece, a plumbing fixture christened God, was both joke and revelation, a grenade lobbed at the sanctity of traditional art.
Eventually, the currents pulled her back across the Atlantic—first to a battered Germany, then to Paris, where cafés and salons again made her feel at home. She still modeled, still burned with creative hunger, but the scaffolding of friends and patrons began to crumble. Poverty’s chill crept in.
In 1927, in a small Parisian room, Elsa’s flame flickered out. She left the gas on overnight—whether by accident or design remains a riddle. The woman who once blazed through Manhattan’s bohemia and Paris’s salons vanished quietly into the ether.
Yet her ghost refuses to fade. Decades later, her name rises again, her life a rallying cry for those who believe that art should bleed into life and life into art. Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven remains a patron saint of the unruly—a living reminder, even in death, that the greatest masterpiece is the way you choose to exist.
In the 60s and 70s, computers were colossal, mysterious beasts — I once visited one that took up three entire floors at ICI Teesside. Back then, their impact on society was only whispered about.
Fifty years on, AI isn’t just knocking on the door — it’s already in our homes, studios, and pockets. Scientists warn of existential risks, but my focus is on the here-and-now: the benefits, challenges, and ethical dilemmas AI brings to the creative arts.
From questions of ownership and authenticity to new possibilities in personalisation and restoration, AI could either devalue human creativity — or unleash it.
To see for myself, I typed “Abstract painting of a 1975 British industrial landscape” into free AI art software. Seconds later, a brand-new artwork appeared — a piece that never existed until that moment.
The debate is wide open. The future of creativity is being written right now — by humans, machines, or perhaps… both.
Irregular Frequencies 