Rebecca Smith is the MP for South West Devon.
For too long, our national debate has assumed that decline is inevitable. As something to be managed, rather than reversed. We block housing instead of building more homes. We ration energy instead of producing more power. We restrict infrastructure instead of unleashing more growth. And increasingly, we are rationing water on an island famed for its rainfall.
Britain cannot build a prosperous future on a politics of scarcity, which tells the public to consume less, build less, and expect less. This mindset assumes that Britain’s best days are behind us and that the Government’s role is simply to manage decline as fairly as possible.
Central to our plans for renewal of both our party and our nation, the Conservatives must reject this managed decline and instead champion abundance. And, from the food we grow to the data centres we want to attract, securing an abundant supply of water now and for generations to come must be central to this vision.
However, water infrastructure currently takes decades to deliver. If we do not act swiftly, Britain risks sleepwalking into chronic shortages that will damage growth, push up food prices, constrain housebuilding, and undermine national resilience.
As I have seen first-hand with farmers and the Westcountry River Trust in my constituency, water storage, such as ponds, could provide much-needed relief when water is in short supply and play a vital role in irrigating crops during heatwaves. Too often, however, farmers are forced to navigate a regulatory headache to create ponds, on top of facing the financial pressures from droughts, heatwaves, and Labour’s war on rural communities.
The Environment Agency has already tried to block thousands of homes around Cambridge because of water shortages. Meanwhile, water-intensive businesses in my constituency and across England are being told additional supply cannot be guaranteed. Data centres, essential for the future of artificial intelligence, are increasingly constrained by water stress.
At the same time, climate change is making rainfall less predictable. We face wetter winters, drier summers, and more severe droughts. Despite these realities, Britain has not built a major reservoir since 1991. This statistic alone should shame us all.
Rather than respond to rising water demand and greater weather uncertainty by expanding supply and prioritising resilience, Britain instead has constructed a labyrinth of regulators, obstacles, and rules that make almost any meaningful infrastructure project painfully slow, prohibitively expensive, or outright impossible. This makes managing scarcity appear to be the only viable option.
The problem is not a lack of rainfall, expertise, or private capital. It is a regulatory culture built around pessimism, risk aversion, and the assumption that growth itself is the problem. That mindset is embedded most clearly in the EU-derived Habitats Regulations, which increasingly operate as barriers to resilience rather than tools for sensible environmental stewardship.
Wanting abundance is not anti-environment. In fact, scarcity is often what destroys nature. The current framework is failing both the economy and our natural world. Conservatives should be honest about this.
The system we have is littered with perverse incentives that have distorted investment decisions, by encouraging box-ticking compliance over genuine environmental improvement. This bureaucratic rigidity has resulted in water scarcity, leading to bottlenecks for homes, infrastructure, and economic growth. This is decline dressed up as environmentalism.
Conservative environmentalism should be about stewardship, resilience, and abundance. Just as we should strive to supply our economy with the water it requires, we should be striving for biodiversity in abundance, not conserving dwindling quality and quantity of habitats and species.
We must, therefore, replace these EU-era rules and pursue a more flexible, outcomes-based regulatory system that looks at entire landscapes, rather than try to address what is going on in isolated individual sites.
The current system also plans water supply around politically aspirational assumptions and a belief that “there is no longer a strong link between non-household water demand and economic activity.” The rapid growth of sectors such as artificial intelligence, hydrogen production, carbon capture, and gigafactories strongly suggests the opposite may now be true.
And yet, the Environment Agency continues to require water companies to plan future supply on the assumption that the target will be achieved, despite growing evidence to the contrary. This reckless approach creates the illusion of water resilience without actually delivering it.
Successive governments have pursued ambitious demand reduction targets while avoiding the trade-offs required to achieve them. Unable to easily increase supply, such as by building reservoirs, those responsible with delivery reductions in consumption have limited powers to influence demand.
Again, with a clear pressure to act, governments have pursued piecemeal policies that tinker at the edges, like water efficiency standards and product labelling. While striving for water abundance should not encourage unnecessary waste of resources, equally it should not be an excuse for managing scarcity through ever tighter restrictions on demand because it is easier than increasing supply.
A country that cannot provide enough water for new homes, new industries, and future generations is a country that has accepted decline. Conservatives should reject that future because, ultimately, the choice is not between prosperity and sustainability. It is between managing scarcity and creating the conditions for both to flourish.
Between Oppenheimer and The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s big-screen epics have become synonymous with their sprawling, A-list casts.
In his latest offering alone, Matt Damon takes the lead alongside a supporting cast that includes fellow Oscar winners Anne Hathaway, Charlize Theron and Lupita Nyong’o, Nolan-verse regulars Robert Pattinson and Elliot Page and exciting names like Tom Holland, Zendaya and Samantha Morton.
The British director’s luck with casting Hollywood stars recently prompted talk show host Jimmy Fallon to question if the filmmaker has “ever gotten a no” – to which he admitted that he had to graft hard to win over a certain icon.
Nolan claimed: “The only no I would cop to is David Bowie for The Prestige. He was my great idol and everything, and I thought he’d be perfect to play Nikola Tesla. We sent him the script and everything, and he said no.”
The Prestige was one of Nolan’s earlier films, released in 2006 off the back of Batman Begins.
It starred Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as two rival magicians in Victorian London, with Nolan having envisaged David Bowie for the role of the real-life pioneering inventor Nikola Tesla.
Francois Duhamel/Touchstone/Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock
Eventually, the Space Oddity performer did relent and agree to play the role – but not without making Nolan work for it.
The filmmaker revealed: “I went back and said, ‘can I just go and meet him? Can I try and convince him in the room?’.
“And they agreed, and I hastily wrote him a better speech for his first appearance, turned up with a new script, and basically begged. And I got him to do it!”
Primarily known for his game-changing music career, Bowie did rack up a number of acting roles in his lifetime, including a brief appearance as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s controversial The Last Temptation Of Christ and playing the Goblin King Jareth in Jim Henson’s dark fantasy movie Labyrinth.
Meanwhile, he isn’t the only one to have tried to give Christopher Nolan the brush-off.
Will Smith has claimed he turned down the lead part in Inception before Leonardo DiCaprio joined the project, as he “didn’t get” the plot.
“Those movies that go into those alternate realities… they don’t pitch well,” the Oscar winner suggested.
Nicolas Cage also alleged earlier this year that Nolan now refuses to work with him after he pulled out of his 2002 film Insomnia.
Outer Banks fans have finally said goodbye to the Pogues, after the gang’s final adventure in the last ever season. But many fans have still been left wanting more.
Throughout the show’s run on Netflix, its creators and executive producers, Jonas Pate, Josh Pate and Shannon Burke, have always maintained that they envisioned Outer Banks as a five-season story.
In November 2024, they confirmed “with a little sadness, but also excitement,” that season five of the YA drama would, indeed, be the last, saying they wanted “to bring our beloved Pogues home in the way we imagined and planned years ago”.
However, there is good news for fans hoping for more from the series – because its creators aren’t quite done with Kildare Island and its inhabitants, yet.
So what’s next for the Outer Banks universe? Well, while the main show may be ending, there’s apparently more to come from the fictional world…
Co-creator Josh Pate revealed as far back as December 2024 that he was writing an Outer Banks prequel, which will be called Kildare.
Although little is known about the prequel just yet, the show is expected to follow the founding of the Kooks and Pogues in the show’s fictional Figure 8 setting.
“We’re looking to film it in Wilmington, [North Carolina],” Josh revealed about the series.
While Outer Banks was set in North Carolina, it actually rarely filmed there, preferring locations in South Carolina.
The spin-off is still in its early stages, but is expected to feature a whole new set of young actors and, like the original show, the spin-off will also be a Netflix original production.
JACKSON LEE DAVIS/NETFLIX
While season five marks the end of Outer Banks, Jonas Pate, Josh Pate, and Shannon Burke aren’t fully ready to say goodbye to the world they’ve created.
The trio built Outer Banks fans’ hopes up when they hinted to Deadline in 2024 that there are “other stories in this universe down the line” beyond season five.
Since Netflix loves a spin-off, let’s hope Outer Banks follows in the footsteps of The Lincoln Lawyer, The Witcher and Bridgerton, all of which have expanded their universe with prequels and sequels.
When asked by Elite Daily who she thought should get an Outer Banks spin-off, Madison Bailey – who played Kiara in the Netflix drama – gave a surprising answer.
“I’d watch a Rafe spin-off,” she responded. “I just feel like, ‘What does he do when we’re not around? What is he up to?’.”
Madison also pointed out that Drew Starkey, who plays Rafe, had been “more [emotional] than usual” when they wrapped filming the final season.
JACKSON LEE DAVIS/NETFLIX
Drew himself confirmed on The Tonight Show that he cried “for a solid two hours” on the last days of filming.
“The last shot of my last scene, right when they yelled ‘cut,’ I was just weeping. Like, constantly,” he told talk show host Jimmy Fallon.
Both Rafe and the actor who plays him have become fan favourites since the show began streaming, and the character’s position on the sidelines of the Pogues leaves plenty of potential to explore in a future project.
Meanwhile, Madelyn Cline told Screen Rant that she’d be game for returning to Outer Banks in whatever capacity the production wanted her in.
“I would love to come back and do a little cameo,” said the actor, who plays Sarah in the drama. “I’ve already told [co-creator Jonas Pate] – ‘anything in the Outer Banks universe, let me come back and do something really fun and silly’.”
Anthony Crane, who appears as the villainous Chandler Groff in seasons four and five of the series, said Netflix would be “fools not to” make a prequel showing the adult cast in their younger years.
He told The Direct that a spin-off would not necessarily need to be about treasure-hunting, which he said “carries the show” in its current iteration, but could take a new, exciting direction, instead.
“I do know people are invested in these characters and they could definitely see how these origin stories play out,” he enthused.
JACKSON LEE DAVIS/NETFLIX
If you’re already missing Outer Banks, it might interest you to know that one spin-off has already been made.
In September 2025, the short-lived eight-part drama The Runarounds began streaming on Prime Video, following a North Carolina rock band trying to make it in the music industry.
If you recognise the cast of The Runarounds, it’s because they made a cameo in season three of Outer Banks, with William Lipton, Axel Ellis, Jeremy Yun, Zendé Murdock and Jesse Golliher all seen playing music in the background of Kiara’s parents’ anniversary party.
Even though The Runarounds is technically a separate project, the musical drama is an Outer Banks cross-over from the same creator, set in the same universe.
If you want to know what life was like for the original two members of the Pogues, John B and JJ, their story was told in a 2021 YA prequel novel based on the Netflix show.
Outer Banks: Lights Out, written by Alyssa Sheinmel, follows the pair in an adventure set before season one of the series.
The book follows John BB and JJ during Spring Break as they plan a fishing getaway in the dangerous Flying Pan Shoals. On their trip, they meet a Kook named Savannah, who ends up hitching a ride after the weather changes for the worse.
All five seasons of Outer Banks are streaming on Netflix now.
The star-studded blockbusters just keep coming in 2026.
After a year that’s already brought us big-screen epics like The Odyssey, Disclosure Day and the latest Spider-Man film Brand New Day, Dune fans are readying themselves for a return to Arrakis when the third instalment in the series hits cinemas this winter.
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune saga will conclude in December, with the third and – for now! – final film in the epic sci-fi trilogy.
An adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune Messiah, the film follows the massive momentum of the first two instalments, which have already collectively earned more than $1.12 billion at the box office.
With just months to go until Part Three, we’re breaking down everything you need to know about the latest film…
Before we get into the third instalment, maybe we should start by recapping where we are up to in the epic story.
Dune is set on the harsh desert planet of Arrakis, the universe’s only source for spice, a drug vital for interplanetary travel.
The films’ central figure, Paul, is the heir to House Atreides, which was given control of spice production by the Emperor, as part of a conspiracy by rival House Harkonnen.
Warner Bros/THA/Shutterstock
Paul and his mother, Jessica, fled to the desert, where the native Fremen took them in. In this new harsh landscape, Paul embraced his psychic powers and became the chosen messiah of the Fremen, all while falling in love with Chani and avenging his father.
Dune: Part Two concluded with his victory over the Harkonnen, and the Emperor of Arrakis… although it was not exactly a happy ending for Paul and his beloved Chani.
As is the case with Frank Herbert’s novel Dune Messiah, Part Three picks up 17 years after the last film. Paul has seized the throne, and is now worshipped as the godlike emperor of the universe thanks to his special abilities.
During his time in charge, he has watched over a massive Fremen holy war, which has claimed billions of lives, and created a complex web of political intrigues.
The threequel will follow the conspiracy against Paul, as various factions grow fearful of his growing power, and secretly plot to overthrow him.
It will also deal with Paul’s relationships with both Princess Irulan and Chani, the latter of whom bears his children.
As part of an IMAX special reveal event, director Denis Villeneuve said that the upcoming film has “a time gap, 17 years, where we see Paul dealing with the consequences of having too much power and him trying to figure out how to get out of this cycle of violence”.
“And of course he’s an emperor who can see the future, so he’s kind of invincible,” the filmmaker added.
He also teased that this third instalment in the franchise is ”a more action-packed and more tense film, more muscular than the two others”, claiming that the movie takes place in “a very different world” where Paul’s “nightmares became reality” and he’s left to face “the consequences of his decisions”.
Describing Dune: Part Three as “a redemption story”, he added that “the heartbeat of the film is that love story between Chani and Paul, [albeit] more of a broken love story”.
As we’ve mentioned already, Dune: Part Three is based on Dune Messiah, the 1969 sequel novel written by Frank Herbert – the second book in the six-part original sci-fi series.
As filmmaker Denis Villeneuve observed to Entertainment Weekly: “In [Frank Herbert’s] mind, Dune was a cautionary tale – a warning against charismatic figures. He felt that Paul was perceived as a hero, when he wanted to do the opposite.”
The upcoming James Bond director added: “So in order to correct that, he wrote Dune Messiah, a kind of epilogue that makes it very clear this story is not a victory; it’s a tragedy.”
Timothée Chalamet will reprise his role as Paul Atreides, the titular messiah, while Zendaya is back as Chani. Also returning are Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck, Javier Bardem as Stilgar and Florence Pugh as Princess Irulan.
Anya Taylor-Joy – who made the briefest of appearances at the end of the last movie – is taking a more central role in the third film as Paul’s younger sister, Alia.
Opening up about her character at the IMAX event, Anya teased: “Alia has a very intense blessing/curse situation. She carries the weight and the wisdom of generations and generations in her head.
“She’s never in a singular conversation. It’s kind of everything everywhere all at once.”
Fans can also look forward to Jason Momoa’s comeback as Duncan Idaho – which may come as a surprise to some, given that his character died in the first film.
“He comes back just at the right moment in the story,” the director teased. “And it’s a very, very important comeback.
“Paul is struggling with his identity and having that kind of strong Atreides figure coming back from the past will have a tremendous impact.”
Back in June 2025, it was announced that Nakoa-Wolf Momoa, the 16-year-old son of Jason Momoa and Lisa Bonet will be joining the cast (and naturally, it didn’t take long before the “nepo baby” discourse started).
He’ll play Leto II, Paul and Chani’s son, while Ida Brooke is to play his twin sister, Ghanima.
Robert Pattinson also confirmed his participation in the threequel in November 2025, after months of rumours. It was later revealed that he was playing the chameleon villain Scytale.
Robert told Deadline that Scytale is “an unusual character in the book and when you can’t really tell who’s side he’s on, that’s what makes it quite interesting”.
“I wouldn’t say he was a kind of conventional bad guy as such. I don’t think he is. He might even be a good guy. Who knows? I will also find out when I see the movie. It’s an extremely fun character to play and the look for it is quite Incredible. Extraordinary,” Rob said during a March interview.
This marks the third time Robert Pattinson and Zendaya have shared the screen in 2026, following The Drama and The Odyssey.
The cast has been hyping up Dune: Part 3 for the best part of a year now.
During the cast’s appearance at CinemaCon in April 2026, Timothée teased that Paul has “become his worst vision and he’s struggling to figure out how to protect those he loves while becoming the all-powerful dark emperor of the universe,” according to Deadline.
“The years don’t seem to have been kind to anyone in Dune. [It’s been] a really difficult, challenging, ungentle and unkind few years,” though there’s “so much left still to fight for,” Zendaya agreed.
The Euphoria star noted that her character, Chani, is “at a very different place in her life where that youthful outlook is completely gone” when we meet her in Part Three.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter in August, Anya said making the third Dune film had been “everything that I hoped it would be”.
“I cannot say more wonderful things about Denis. It was so deeply inspiring to be in these really harsh elements and know that every person is doing their absolute best work because they believe, trust and adore the person that’s leading the ship,” the Emma actor said.
Javier Bardem was also full of praise for the sci-fi film while speaking to Entertainment Tonight in June, calling it a “masterpiece”.
“Because Denis really wants to go farther and farther from the last movie. It’s like what he did with the second movie compared to the first one,” the Spanish actor added.
However, newbie Robert Pattinson was seemingly less impressed with the filming conditions.
“It was so hot in the desert that I just couldn’t question anything,” he admitted during an interview with IndieWire last year.
Zendaya’s The Drama co-star noted that being in the heat was so “relaxing” he “did not have a single functioning brain cell” during production.
Denis Villeneuve had previously gone on record saying he would only be up for adapting the third part of the Dune franchise if he could make it “better” than Part Two.
In fact, he was actually supposed to work on another film before Dune: Part Three – but inspiration took hold of him.
He recalled during a Q&A in March 2026: “I went back home. I said to my crew, ‘I’m taking a break. That’s it. Bye-bye.’ And I went back home and I kept awaking in the middle of the night with those images.
“I was supposed to do another movie in the meantime, but the image of Dune: Part Three, inspired by Dune Messiah, kept coming back… and I said, ‘Oh, all right, let’s do it’.”
With his work on Dune: Part Three behind him, the Canadian will next get to work on the upcoming 26th James Bond film.
Although Dune: Part Three is planned as the final film in Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi series – the director has said he hopes that someone else will take over at the helm of the sci-fi epic.
“It will have been many years for me on Arrakis, and I would love to do something else,” he told Deadline in September.
He also noted that he wanted to make sure there are “seeds” in the third film which another filmmaker could pick up on and use in a later project set in the Dune universe, although he conceded that the latter books in Herbert’s literary series – which his son took over writing – will be harder to adapt.
“They become more and more esoteric. It’s a bit more tricky to adapt, but I’m not closing the door. I will not do it myself, but it could happen with someone else,” the he added.
He also confirmed to Collider that the upcoming story will “finish the Paul Atreides arc”.
There certainly is. In fact, just this week, a new teaser for Dune: Part Three launched.
While only 30 seconds long, this latest video includes loads of new footage including, for the first time, Edric’s voice – and if you’re a fan of the Dune books, you’ll know how important that character is.
Give it a watch for yourself below:
Meanwhile, a more full trailer dropped earlier in the year.
This one hinted at Paul’s megalomania, and included clips of a pregnant Chani and the return of Jason Momoa’s character, who warns Paul: “You’ve destroyed thousands of worlds. I think you’re way beyond redemption.”
It was also gave audiences a good look at bleach-blond Robert Pattinson as Scytale, who revealed his plans for a “regime” change to Florence Pugh’s Princess Irulan.
Dune: Part Three is scheduled to be released in cinemas on December 18, 2026.
This is, indeed, the same day as the latest Marvel movie Avengers: Doomsday – so get your popcorn ready for what’s already been billed as Dunesday in the press.
Nearly 40 campaign groups, individuals and media outlets have released a statement of total solidarity with independent investigative journalist Ravi Nair. He’s currently facing relentless harassment and attacks from the oligarchic Adani Group.
South Asia Solidarity Group, UK, International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India), India Labour Solidarity UK, and South Asian Diaspora Action Collective (SADAC), Canada, issued the statement, along with nearly 35 other diasporic and international human rights groups.
The joint statement demands an immediate end to the harassment of Ravi Nair by Indian courts and police. It calls for the withdrawal of cases against him and an end to the misuse of criminal defamation and draconian laws to silence journalists and activists in India. And it demands protection of press freedom and free speech, and accountability and transparency in matters involving corporate-state relations.
We, the undersigned groups, condemn the shrinking space for freedom of expression and press freedom in India. We stand in total solidarity with independent investigative journalist Ravi Nair who is currently facing relentless harassment and attacks from the Adani Group.
On 11 February 2026, Nair was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for his posts on X that allegedly suggest the “political patronage”, “financial irregularities” and “unethical conduct” of Adani Enterprises, the flagship firm of the Adani Group. Nair’s lawyer argued that the posts and comments were based on publicly available material and constitute fair comment and criticism.
CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Kunal Majumder noted:
The conviction of journalist Ravi Nair for criminal defamation sets a dangerous precedent for press freedom and free speech in India. Laws that allow imprisonment for defamation stifle public interest reporting and deter scrutiny of powerful actors. The Indian government must ensure these provisions are not used to prevent legitimate journalism.
With this case pending appeal, the Adani Group, acting through the Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, has brought another case against Nair. This time it centres round his social media posts about an article he co-wrote in the Washington Post alleging that the government of India directed the Life Insurance Corporation, an Indian publicly funded organisation, to invest in the Adani group. An Ahmedabad Court quashed Nair’s appeal against the FIR (First Information Report). This was followed by a raid on Nair’s home by Gujarat Police, accompanied by their Delhi counterparts. They seized two of his phones, his son’s laptop, and the laptop and iPad of a colleague who happened to be at the house and who is not an accused in the case. The police refused to provide a hash value for the items taken away. Without a hash value, it is impossible to know whether a device has been tampered with after seizure.
Clearly journalism is a crime in today’s India, with free speech and freedom of expression increasingly under attack since 2014. India’s ranking in the World Press Freedom Index has steadily worsened, with a rank of 140 out of 180 countries in 2013 down to 157 in 2026.
A number of draconian laws are being employed to thwart fundamental freedoms. Additionally, street vigilantes have been emboldened to carry out attacks on journalists reporting on and exposing Hindu supremacist fascism (Hindutva) or reporting on corporate crimes.
The harassment of Ravi Nair is occurring against a background of challenges to legitimate reporting and commentary about the Adani Group. In September 2025, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry used a court order to remove a couple of hundred YouTube videos and instagram posts about the Group (Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)).
According to the Free Speech Collective’s latest findings, India saw over 300 violations of free speech in the first quarter of 2025, from murdered journalists to banned films.
The restriction on free speech comes from a government whose ministers and other elected officials spew hate speech in the public sphere with impunity.
In the fascist corporate-aligned state that India is today, journalists like Ravi Nair are being punished for reporting injustices and speaking truth to power.
We call upon the Indian diaspora across the globe, civil society and workers’ organisations, journalists, activists and all conscientious people to stand against state repression and the impunity of corporate billionaires like Adani.
We demand an immediate end to the harassment of Ravi Nair by the courts and police and the withdrawal of cases against him. We also demand an end to the misuse of criminal defamation and draconian laws to silence journalists and activists; the protection of press freedom and free speech; and accountability and transparency in matters involving corporate-state relations.
Justice for Ravi Nair! Journalism is not a crime!
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
This article contains spoilers for Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma.
So far, 2026 has been an exciting year for the horror genre.
Following the double-punch of Obsession and Backrooms, Hacks’ Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson can now be seen in action in Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma, a new slasher film that tips its hat to some of the horror movies many of us watched in our formative years – in all their problematic glory.
The latest offering from I Saw The TV Glow director Jane Schoenbrun, the film winds up taking a turn just as surreal as their previous works, with the whole thing serving as an allegory for sexual repression, particularly for those who identify as trans and gender non-conforming.
Speaking to HuffPost UK ahead of Camp Miasma’s UK release, Hannah Einbinder has lifted the lid on some of the movie’s themes and more complicated scenes…
Hannah recalls: “When I read the script, there was an author’s statement before the script, which provided some context for that. Also, I had met with Jane and understood that their films were allegorical for their experience.
“I [interpreted the film] in a way where I felt like this was them coming to terms with their sexuality, and embracing desire and sort of trying to feel liberation from shame. And so, my understanding of that only deepened as we had more conversations, as we were shooting the movie.”
After Kris and Billy’s dramatic sex scene, they’re skewered by “Little Death” only for it to emerge the whole thing was, as Gillian’s character says earlier in the film, “all play”.
From there, they take a giddy stroll out of Camp Miasma to pick up some sweet treats (all while soaked in blood, naturally).
“My take on the ending is that it symbolises the idea that you could be walking around, covered in blood,, people looking at you like you’re a freak, and you just don’t care,” Hannah suggests, referring to her final scene with Gillian Anderson.
“You’re totally blissed out and in love and safe and comfortable in your skin.”
“It just represents, to me, freedom,” she notes.
Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma ends with Kris revisiting the gas station she visited earlier in the film, but this time, a new woman, after her encounter with Billy.
She’s even served by the same cashier in both scenes, with whom she has a very different conversation second time around.
“I don’t think that Kris hears the compliment in the first scene, and then, in the second scene, it’s kind of this thing of, like, she gets that validation from [Billy] and it feels like perhaps she is a little bit of an audience surrogate.
Hannah adds: “Fun fact – that incredible actress was actually, I believe, a costume designer who Jane interviewed for the film and was like, ‘you are incredibly captivating’ – and cast her! I think that was her first time acting!
“She was a riot, she was a blast. Shout out to her.”
“Well, first of all, Jane loves candy,” Hannah reveals. “I also love candy in a way that I would say is adjacent to drug use, the way that I do it.
“And the way that Jane does it, I would say it is not normal. I’d say it is above normale. So, like, we really bonded over that.”
She goes on to say that she thinks the sweets scattered throughout the film represent “a safe place for pleasure”.
“It’s a way to access pleasure in a sort of safe way,” she opines. “I also think [candy is] obviously a big part of movie-watching, and this is a cinephile’s film. And so I think there’s a lot there with the candy.”
Hannah continues: “It also speaks to what we want the movie to feel like – which is just like fun and like you’re staying up late and doing something you’re maybe not supposed to be doing. So yeah, there’s a lot there, I think.”
Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma is in cinemas now.
There are many different types of intelligence, according to some research. Yes, there’s the kind that helps you score well on exams (linguistic intelligence may be useful for remembering written content, while the logical/mathematical kind could assist in solving sums).
But others, like spatial intelligence, might be overlooked.
Other theories, like the Triad of Intelligence, suggest we can break smarts down into three broad groups: cognitive intelligence, emotional intelligence, and integrative intelligence.
That last kind has been called the “rarest” form of intelligence, though that’s hard to prove for sure.
However, Lee Chambers, psychologist and CEO of Male Allies UK, told HuffPost UK that “it’s fair to say that modern life doesn’t often support this type of thinking and the practice of it”.
Integrative intelligence involves being able to connect seemingly unrelated things together. It’s linked to analogical reasoning, or the ability to apply the rules of one field or discipline to another.
It’s “not about having knowledge across many domains, it’s how we connect that knowledge in useful and meaningful ways,” Chambers said.
“It appears as being able to hold multiple ideas and perspectives, to spot the connections and conflicts between them, to join dots others don’t see to solve problems and challenges and to see how things relate.”
Some examples could include “taking a concept from psychology and applying it to leadership, [or] noticing a connection between biology and technology design”.
In the past, scientists have used crochet to understand complex geometry and economics to explain species change. Processes like these may fall under the umbrella of integrative intelligence.
“Ultimately, it’s not a type of intelligence we can wave around as superior. It’s much more about how we structure our thinking and how we come to judgements,” added Chambers.
It’s not like there’s a test you can take to see whether you have integrative intelligence, the psychologist shared. Instead, “it requires you to reflect on how you think and interact”.
He advised asking yourself the following:
Lee also stated that people with integrative intelligence “can be seen as the person who goes off on tangents… The person who doesn’t stay in their own lane”.
The expert added that while those with integrative intelligence might see connections between seemingly unrelated topics, often, “it’s hard to get that message across to someone who can’t”.
In fact, he continued, he often finds that the “environments that need this kind of thinking most, struggle to recognise it because it doesn’t fit neatly into a single box”.
And though he doesn’t think we can tell for sure whether integrative intelligence is dying out, Chambers said that a focus on specialism and curated algorithms could make it harder to achieve.
“We do now have a world where the ability to learn about different fields and perspectives is greater than ever before,” he ended.
“But if we don’t step outside of our algorithms and actively seek to diversify what we consume and the space we create to practice integrating and connecting, we will limit our ability [to] foster this type of intelligence. We need time, depth and friction to cultivate it.”
Iran has redrawn the US military footprint in the Middle East, locking the US out of 15 of its colonial bases — potentially permanently. This includes a major military base in Bahrain, the damage to which has forced the US to stretch its supply lines to breaking point.
The Iranian strikes have led to the Trump administration clamping down on accurate coverage of the war. Bothersome reporters are now being placed on a black-list.
Former US general and security analyst Barry McCaffrey posted on X on 23 August:
In my judgement, the US Armed Forces have probably permanently lost access to 15 Persian Gulf bases. Iran now poised to control access the Gulf States. US will have to negotiate new access in western Saudi Arabia, Israel, southern Europe. https://t.co/oG4aeEshab
— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) August 22, 2026
The US naval base in Bahrain was struck repeatedly. Footage from early 2026 show blazing fires within the facility:
Two reporters and the editor-in-chief of the partially Pentagon-funded outlet, Stars and Stripes, were recently sacked without explanation. Critics have inferred that the unceremonious firing was possibly linked to their reporting on Iranian strikes against the US military base in Bahrain.
Wonder why Hegseth fired senior staffers at Stars and Stripes? It’s because of reporting like this:
“Nearly six months after the U.S. Navy evacuated 1,300 family members from Bahrain at the start of the Iran war, officials are saying the evacuees cannot return for the… — Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) August 23, 2026
CNN reported on 22 August:
Journalism advocacy groups decried the firings and criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for trying to manipulate independent news coverage of the military.
The outlet added that:
Reporter Lara Korte confirmed to CNN that she was fired on Friday along with publisher Max Lederer and editor-in-chief Erik Slavin. CBS News and The Washington Post first reported the separation notices.
US-Israel attacked Iran first on 28 February without provocation. Iran was offering unprecedented concessions in negotiations at the time. The Pentagon has since stated there was no imminent threat from Iran. And the UN’s atomic watchdog, the IAEA, has said there is no evidence Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
The US has achieved none of its original war aims. Iran predictably closed the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil channel, once attacked — creating a global energy crisis. Iran has said the war will continue until:
the enemy’s inevitable and permanent humiliation, disgrace, regret, and surrender.
Trump came to power on an anti-war ‘America First’ ticket. He now faces worldwide humiliation.
US president Donald Trump’s administration has countered solid reporting with threats. As the Canary reported on 7 August, this includes over questions about the US running out of missiles:
Trump recently threatened “long-term jail sentences” for anyone leaking information about alleged munition shortages facing the US, accusing them of making “treasonous statements”.
He said:
Long-term jail sentences will be sought!
Yet while Trump dismisses reports of shortages, his administration has moved to restrict exports of tungsten scrap and black mass — two materials critical to weapons production.
Intercept investigative reporter Nick Turse reported on 24 August:
U.S. Central Command maintains a secret directory of journalists who have been blacklisted by the press office.
Turse added:
Under self-styled War Secretary Pete Hegseth, the U.S. military has mounted the most aggressive assault on press freedom in memory, from an effort to outlaw “unauthorized” questions from reporters to imposing unconstitutional restrictions on journalists’ access to the Pentagon.
The Trump administration is knows Iran has redrawn the map of US colonial influence in the Gulf. Iran has humiliated the US. Trump’s MAGA bluster counts for little. The president has assured American decline.
Featured image via the Canary
By Joe Glenton
Great news, everyone – Scottish Labour has finally worked out how to talk to the people of Scotland. This video featuring the party’s MP Melanie Ward just appeared on the Scotland Office’s LinkedIn page, and it explains the complexities of the interlinked Scottish and UK economies in terms that the UK government hopes all of you awful thick Jocko plebs might be able to understand. Enjoy.
And tomorrow morning, do remember to eat your cereal, won’t you?
President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, denied accusations of racial profiling when carrying out the administration’s mass deportation agenda despite the Supreme Court opening the door last year for ICE to use certain racial factors as grounds for immigration stops.
Homan was responding to comments made by Democratic Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon.
“We’re Black, [ICE is] gonna profile us, too,” Nixon said on the Miami Community Newspapers Podcast.
“They can’t tell the difference between an African-American or, you know, a Black American that is a descendant of slaves here in this country, or someone from Jamaica or Nigeria. Like, they are going to racially profile us, and they are going to escalate things, and they are going to shoot and kill us,” she continued.
When asked by Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany on Saturday about Nixon’s comment she called them a “ridiculous statement.”
“Look, we don’t racially profile. Everybody we talk to we have reasonable suspicion of aliens to talk to them. And to arrest them, we need probable cause,” Homan said. “That’s what the law says and that’s we do. We don’t arrest people based on the colour of their skin.”
Homan then called himself an “equal opportunity deporter.”
“I deported people to 180 countries last year. So, I don’t care if you’re from Asia, you’re from Europe, or you’re from other countries. If you’re in the country illegally, you’ll be deported, regardless of the color of your skin,” Homan said.
Despite Homan’s comments, the Trump administration explicitly asked the Supreme Court last year to block a lower court’s order prohibiting immigration officers in Los Angeles from using racially loaded factors as justification for arrests.
The 6-3 decision in Perdomo v. Noem reversed a lower court’s ruling that prevented officers from considering factors such as apparent ethnicity, language spoken or accent, presence at a location where immigrants were believed to gather, or working in a particular kind of job, when making arrests.
Homan’s statements on Saturday run contrary to the high court’s ruling, as it found that agents may rely solely on just one of the four aforementioned factors, without any other “reasonable suspicion.”
Watch Homan’s full comments on Fox News’ Saturday In America here:
Everyone frets about teen boys who are lured into the manosphere. I’m more worried about the grown-ass adults who have tumbled down the moral toilet of Israelophobia. At least the dim kids who hang on Andrew Tate’s every word have the excuse of being at the mercy of their own hormones. What excuse do the Gazaholic grown-ups have for gorging so ferally from the digital trough of anti-Israel bullshit?
Exhibit A: Gary Lineker. His grey matter has sizzled to a crisp on the bonfire of Israel-hate. Now he’s sharing posts likening Zionism to Nazism. He has been so radicalised by the anti-Israel slop that clogs up the digital highway that he’s echoing the vilest of all the anti-Zionist tropes – namely, that the Jewish nation has become the moral mimic of history’s most notorious Jew killers.
It was on his Instagram page. He reposted a speech by the anti-Israel nutjob, Tony Greenstein. Greenstein had been charged with inviting support for Hamas, which is a proscribed organisation in the UK. He was cleared at Kingston Crown Court last week. On the steps of the court, he let rip in his usual histrionic fashion against the Zionist project. ‘Zionism’, he squeaked more than thundered, ‘is in the tradition of the Nazis’. Imagine seeing such dribbling bigotry and thinking: ‘I should share that.’ That’s what Lineker did.
It gets worse. The Greenstein clip was posted by CAGE International, an iffy outfit that campaigns on behalf of Muslims affected by the ‘war on terror’. These are the weirdos who once called Mohammed Emwazi, also known as ‘Jihadi John’, a ‘beautiful young man’. He’s the British-Muslim traitor who trekked to Syria to become chief executioner for those sworn foes of our civilisation, ISIS. One of his victims was a British cabbie called Alan Henning, who’d gone to Syria to deliver food to the war’s victims. Emwazi sawed off his head on camera.
Are we going to talk about this? About the fact that Gary Lineker, footballer turned podcast impresario, for years one of the highest-paid talking heads at the BBC, is sharing a post from a group that said the Islamist butcher of ISIS had been a ‘kind, gentle’ soul? Worse, a post containing flagrant Holocaust inversion, where the Jewish homeland is grossly reimagined as the moral heir to Nazism? No? We’re just going to let it slide?
It is a testament to the virulence of Israelophobia, to its almost total conquest of the bourgeois mind, that stuff like this barely makes a ripple these days. There was a time when if a well-known public figure had hyped a CAGE post and platformed the noxious idea that the Jewish State is Nazi-like, people would have said: ‘Oh, what’s going on here?’ Not anymore. So thoroughly has polite society been colonised by bug-eyed anti-Israel animus that Lineker’s antics provoke no emotional response at all. Except perhaps haughty nods of approval.
Lineker has form. He parted ways with the BBC last year over what the press rather politely called ‘an anti-Semitism controversy’ – he had reposted a delirious rant about Zionism that was illustrated with a rat. Zionists as vermin? Classy. And then these people have the nerve to call others Nazis, despite their own giddy rehashing or reposting of the Nazi-era notion that Jews are the rodents of humanity.
Equating Zionism to Nazism is not clever political critique – it is raw, unadulterated bigotry. As the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance says in its working definition of anti-Semitism, it is racist to ‘[draw] comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’. Howard Jacobson said it best. There are untold wars from history that the Israel-Hamas War could be compared with, he said. The reason they compare it with the Holocaust is because their lowlife aim is ‘to wound Jews… to punish them with their own grief’. It’s Jew-shaming masquerading as pacifism.
Lineker sums up the commenting class’s pathological loss of moral proportion. The way these people talk, you’d think Israel’s pursuit of the Islamofascists of Hamas was the worst war of modernity, a ‘crime’ as racist and insane as the Nazis’. Yet Lineker himself is pals with a bloke – Alastair Campbell – whose political fabulism helped to launch a war in Iraq that on every moral metric was worse than what’s happened in the Middle East these past three years. I wonder if Lineker has ever called Al a rat-like killer of kids who’s not dissimilar to Hitler?
Lineker’s descent from dull but knowledgeable sports fella into the Zio-rat guy is proof that Israelophobia turns your mind to mush. The spotty kid who watches hours of Tate has nothing on these Boomers and geriatric millennials who brainlessly lap up every hyper-edited, context-free clip from Gaza as hard proof that Israel is a monstrous entity. This is real online radicalisation: the frying of a million middle-class brains by algorithmic bigotry and the moral pornography of war.
We are witnessing the great cognitive collapse of the Western liberal elite. A media establishment that once prided itself on scepticism and intellectual rigour now acts like an army of mind-wiped converts to a digital cult. Lineker and the rest of the Israel-wary class are not leading a moral awakening – they’re the latest victims of an internet ecosystem that rewards superficial emotionalism and punishes nuance. We need a Gazaholics Anonymous, stat.
Weekend Open Thread: Madewell – Corporette.com
SMA Solar Technology AG (SMTGY) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
anatomy of crypto’s biggest liquidation event since 2021
Musk’s Tesla, SpaceX Confirm $16.8 Billion ‘Terafab’ Chip Plant as World’s Largest Building in Texas
Qwen3.8-27B runs frontier-class coding agents and reasoning locally, no cloud API required
OCC Greenlights Trump Family Crypto Firm for Trust Charter
6 months on, Irish renters crushed by effects of government housing bill
The ‘Lucky Dip Gang’ causing carnage for clicks: After five thugs were killed speeding in the wrong direction on a motorway, GUY ADAMS investigates a sick new trend… and why police aren’t even allowed to pursue them
NAVI Prime launches institutional lending framework on Sui
GLM-5.3 hits the API at $1.4/$4.4 per million tokens
Don’t Leave Your Financial Future To Chance | August 19, 2026
5 Of The Most Reliable Car Brands To Consider If You’re Buying A Used SUV
Dow’s 3-Year Winning Run Isn’t a Crash Signal, Still 49% Odds of Double-Digit Gains
Keychron K8 Ultra 8K review: a great value keyboard with comfort issues
Nvidia discloses $21B stake in SpaceX
Stock Market Today: Tech Futures Slide As Treasury Yields Jump; Nvidia, Micron, Sandisk Sell Off
Marvell Shares Jump 7% as Google Chip Deal Confirms Custom AI Silicon Partnership, Analysts
Five Below: Kids Discount Retailer Reaps Rich Rewards
Mystery AI Model ‘Ox Alpha’ Draws Developers With Free Access as Chinese Lab Origins Remain Debated
Fabrinet (FN) Q4 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
You must be logged in to post a comment Login