All posts tagged: Standing

Sophie Standing There by Meg Mason- Book Review by Bookish elf

Sophie Standing There by Meg Mason- Book Review by Bookish elf

Published by Jenni Sidey

It is past one in the morning and Sophie Pattison is in the bath of a rented flat that belongs to the husband who asked her to leave. The fan drones, the light is the colour of an autopsy, and she is rehearsing how she would introduce herself to a famous novelist she has never met. Just her first name, tried three different ways, as though the wording is the thing standing between them. Sophie is thirty-seven, a sound technician on the literary festival circuit, and she has spent years kneeling at authors’ feet to clip battery packs to their waistbands without any of them glancing back. Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason is about what grows in a person when nobody is looking at her at all, and it is by turns hilarious and very hard to read. The Author in Her Head The thread the whole novel hangs on is a relationship that exists in exactly one mind. After the festival, a stray list of dream guests Sophie rattles off at the crew …

Laura Loomer is MAGA’s last woman standing

Laura Loomer is MAGA’s last woman standing

Published by Sam Flores

Over the years, the MAGA movement has littered its path with the political carcasses of ambitious women who believed their public self-abasement would insulate them from the inevitable backlash. Karoline Leavitt is out. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was sent running back to Arkansas. Kellyanne Conway and Kayleigh McEnany landed safely at Fox News, the traditional waiting room for Republicans who remain useful to the party but no longer belong in Trump’s orbit. Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem and Marjorie Taylor Greene have all been thrown from the MAGA train in one form or another. SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler and Education Secretary Linda McMahon remain in the Cabinet, but neither occupies the feral, conspiratorial essence that Trump has increasingly made central to his movement. Every one of these women hitched her identity to Trump’s approval and every one of them eventually discovered what that approval is actually worth.  Loyalty has never been a two-way street for Trump. In his political universe, women are routinely promoted as avatars of showy devotion. No matter how badly they savage his enemies …

‘We are standing alone right now’

‘We are standing alone right now’

Published by Daniella Wilson

What’s the role of children’s television? Children are affected by what they see. You need to give them something that doesn’t just entertain but helps them grow, develop their identity and their own sense of the world. I think society has lost understanding of the importance of this genre. Should parents be concerned about reducing screen time? The struggle now is that, with the bombardment of all kinds of content coming our way, parents haven’t really understood the difference between content made specifically with children in mind, and content that might look like it’s for children but hasn’t been made for them properly. It’s not just about stopping kids using screens, it’s what’s on the screens. Screen time can be enriching if it’s the right kind of content and done in moderation. What do you think of some of the children’s content on YouTube? We worry about that all the time. There’s a huge amount of influence from the US. The majority of content won’t be culturally relevant. The cast of Balamory. BBC Does children’s television …

Who won Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing?

Who won Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing?

Published by Daniella Wilson

Over the last three weeks, viewers have flocked to Channel 4 each night to test just how difficult – or easy – it can be to be handcuffed to a complete stranger. Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing kicked off earlier this month, as Jonathan Ross challenged 18 brave Brits to remain handcuffed to a total stranger as long as they could manage, for a chance to win £100,000. As the episodes went on, pairs dropped one-by-one, and it all came down to three pairs: Charlie and Rob, Tilly and Anthony and Morag and Angie. They were challenged to a Mr and Mrs-style quiz to determine who knew each other best, before they then competed in a handcuffed race from Scotland, to Wales and on to London – with only a train ticket, no money and no phones. And it was Charlie and Rob who were crowned the winners! You can watch their winning moment below. Rob, an adult content creator, went into the experiment to challenge himself mentally and was handcuffed to Charlie, a practical homemaker, …

The L.A. newsstands that are still standing and the people behind them

The L.A. newsstands that are still standing and the people behind them

Published by Sam Flores

This story is part of Image’s March Outside issue, a celebration of the Los Angeles outdoors and the many lives to be lived under its unencumbered sky. In the midst of roaring buses, crisscrossing skaters and streetwear devotees lies a portal on Fairfax Avenue. Between a thrift store and a synagogue, the gateway to a past decade when time moved more slowly beckons. A bedazzled sign pasted to the wall reads, “Magazines?!” Serendipitously, a passerby says, “Wow, they still have these?” Once, a newsstand was a working Angeleno’s morning tradition: their daily copy of, say, the L.A. Times, as essential as an espresso. Today, newsstands are rare gems we stumble upon, reminders of the connection we feel when we flip through a magazine, or meet a stranger. The feeling they stir is comparable to that of a record store, where the weight of vinyl remains a comfort even as streaming services provide instant music. Newsstands are no longer our main source of information, yet they’ve evolved into a place of fascination. This particular stand on …

Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing review – Jonathan Ross’s experiment is a dismal exercise in culture-war needling

Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing review – Jonathan Ross’s experiment is a dismal exercise in culture-war needling

Published by Daniella Wilson

Handcuffed: Last Pair Standing is, says presenter Jonathan Ross, a “survival show – where you have to survive someone else”. Taking its cues, perhaps, from the classic prisoners-on-the-run movie The Defiant Ones, Channel 4’s new series sees people tethered to their ideological opposites in a feat of endurance: the pair who stay cuffed together the longest win £100,000. If the premise has the shape of a social experiment, then the execution renders Handcuffed little more than an exercise in unedifying provocation. The pairings make Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau’s Odd Couple look like a match made in heaven: we have a fusty right-wing aristocrat cuffed to a working-class ex-prison warden; a self-described “traditional homemaker” and “massive prude” cuffed to a towering, tattooed gay porn star; a Green Party councillor and a Reform supporter; a bar worker and a multimillionaire; a queer feminist and a manosphere-immersed “alpha male” – the sort of man for whom “gym” is a verb. The chaining together of these polar-opposite personalities is ostensibly a sort of test of empathy – maybe, …

Sundance Heats Up With Standing Ovations for ‘Wicker,’ ‘The Invite’

Sundance Heats Up With Standing Ovations for ‘Wicker,’ ‘The Invite’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Long a mainstay of the European festivals, standing ovations have been gaining traction stateside at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It could be the feelings of nostalgia for the final festival in Park City. Or the spirit of cinema. Or maybe it’s just the altitude. No matter the reason, it is undeniable that the 2026 iteration of the Utah festival is overindexing on rapturous responses. On Saturday afternoon, the Olivia Colman fantasy drama Wicker received a double standing ovation. The audience first got on their feet when the film ended and as credits were rolling, and again when the filmmakers and cast were welcomed to the stage by Sundance director of programming Kim Yutani. Right after that premiere in the Eccles was the Olivia Wilde-directed dramedy The Invite, which also had the crowd on its feet. During that ovation, Wilde was seen wiping away tears from the Eccles stage. But these Saturday screenings weren’t the first of the fest to get the audience out of their seats. Earlier in the day, Australian children’s offering Fing! …

Standing Together to Overcome the Darkness

Standing Together to Overcome the Darkness

Published by Sam Flores

By Rick Renner This know also, that in the last days perilous times will come.— 2 Timothy 3:1 I’ve dedicated numerous Sparkling Gems to Second Timothy 3 in this second volume (see May 10-18). The reason for this is that I am convinced we are entering the last of the last days and that the days ahead will be the most challenging period the Church has ever faced. In this verse, Paul prophesied, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times will come.” This word “perilous” is the Greek word chalepos, which means dangerous or difficult. It is translated in Matthew 8:28 as “exceedingly fierce.” So when Paul prophesied by the Spirit that the last days would be “perilous,” he was saying that the end times would be dangerous, difficult, and exceedingly fierce. This truth was reinforced in me several years ago as I traveled by airplane across the Atlantic Ocean. As I looked out the window of the plane, I saw a vision unfold before me. It was as if someone suddenly pulled a cord to draw back a curtain separating the natural realm from the spiritual …

Best Standing Desks of 2026

Best Standing Desks of 2026

Published by Miika Tikkanen

I tested the Seville Classics Airlift Height Adjustable Desk with Glass Top, the Seville Classics Airlift Pro S3 Electric Height Adjustable Standing Desk (no longer available), the Steelcase Solo Sit-To-Stand Desk, the Fezibo Height Adjustable Electric Standing Desk with Double Drawer and The Grovemade Desk but they didn’t make the cut. The Airlift with Glass Top came close to earning a spot above. It’s a beautiful, sturdy desk at a midrange price. It also features a small center drawer for holding the basics. Unfortunately, its built-in touchscreen wasn’t very responsive and the two USB-A ports, while theoretically a nice tech feature, are outdated for most of today’s phones and tablets. The Airlift Pro S3 was a decent desk, but it was a little tougher to install than the others in its size range, and it had a cheaper-looking finish than the overall winner for best standing desk (the Vari desk). The Steelcase Solo desk was surprisingly simple to install for its size (the same as the Vari desk). Instead of using screws to install the …

Neighbors are standing up for immigrants

Neighbors are standing up for immigrants

Published by Sam Flores

Everyone who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 knew that he was planning to deport massive numbers of immigrants. Some had, after all, held up pre-printed signs at the Republican National Convention that said “Mass Deportation Now.” The problem was that many voters either didn’t think he meant it, or they assumed it would be an orderly process that booted only the so-called “worst of the worst” who were already under deportation orders.  They were wrong.  When Trump said he planned to deport 15-20 million people, which could only mean undocumented immigrants with no criminal records, he meant it. The abusive, disorderly methods of grabbing people off the streets and detaining them for weeks and months in shameful conditions were always part of the plan.  What we have witnessed over the past 11 months has been vile. The federal government has deployed masked, armed men into the streets of American cities to brutalize people with impunity. Thousands of immigrants from Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean and Asia have been detained and deported, many of them …