If you love to get free games on Steam, a new Steam update has just made the process of claiming free-to-play games and free DLC add-ons a little easier. The new addition may not sound like much at first, but it makes building up that backlog pile in your Steam library much smoother, meaning you can commit to even more games that you know, in your heart of hearts, that you probably don’t have time to get around to.
The new update adds a blue “Add to Library” button to free games and DLC next to the usual green “Install Game,” “Play Game,” or “Download” buttons that appeared previously. This means that you can now quickly add the free content to your Steam library without having to kick off the installation process. Previously, the method to claim free games required you to start the installation process – you could cancel the installation afterwards and the game would remain on your account, but it was nevertheless a hassle, so this is a welcome quality of life change.
Similarly, this makes picking up free DLC and add-ons for your games smoother – ordinarily, many games automatically launch when you attempt to claim free DLC. This is perhaps an even more useful change in this case, because many games such as Dying Light 2 and Monster Hunter: World that have offered numerous free add-ons split up into separate Steam store listings would launch the game every time you wanted to add one of them to your account.
PC gaming data coordinator Alejandro LL (who goes by Morwull on Twitter) highlighted the new feature, which was quickly picked up by users on the Steam subreddit. Many were quick to celebrate the announcement, while some joked about how it’s taken almost twenty years of Steam to add this feature. That’s not much of an exaggeration – the platform first launched in September 2003, with the first game to require it (Half-Life 2) arriving in November 2004.
Other users expressed bemusement at the positivity of the reactions, given that you could always cancel out of the installation process – but anything that makes filling up your library with those juicy free games a little easier is bound to be welcome, and the ability to quickly toss all the free add-on content for a game into your account without having to boot the game up is very welcome.
Personally, I hadn’t claimed half of the free cosmetic add-ons for Monster Hunter: World, despite spending hundreds of hours in-game, because the process was so clunky. Previously, every time you clicked “download” the game would boot up, whether you wanted it to or not. Now, with just a few clicks, all of those extra hairstyles that I’ll likely never use are mine forever. After all, clogging up your Steam backlog with cheap and free goodies has been a long-standing tradition ever since the service first launched all those years ago.
If you’re looking for the best way to play all your new freebies, Valve has implemented official Steam Joy-Con support for the Nintendo Switch controllers. If you prefer the PlayStation or Xbox pads, you can take advantage of the Steam controller lighting options. Meanwhile, you might have noticed a recent change to Valve’s storefront as new rules come in enforcing a ban on reviews and awards in Steam game art – although when you’re grabbing free games, you don’t have much to lose anyway.
When Tania O’Donnell was dating, she met a man online and went back to his place … where he proudly showed off his book collection.
“It was about 20 books on Nazi Germany and 10 Andy McNab novels,” says O’Donnell, an author. “I could feel my vulva constructing its own chastity belt.”
A more edifying tale: Hannah Love, senior publicity manager at the children’s book publishers Scholastic, met a man online. He asked her about her de ella favorite book de ella (The Last Unicorn by Peter S Beagle) and read it before their first real-life date, to which he brought his favorite book to lend to her (from the Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce), thus securing at least a second date for her to return the book.
Reader, she married him.
Reading taste can make or break a relationship for the bookish-minded, and literary preferences are highly subjective. But a new app in development is aiming to remove the uncertainty about literary tastes when meeting new people. Klerb has already been dubbed Tinder for bookworms because it matches you with people in your area according to your shared interests in books.
For those looking for love, a prospect’s bookshelves can be a minefield. What if they just read the wrong books? “I generally don’t care, but I did once go back to a guy’s house post-date, and the only book I could see was Fifty Shades of Gray,” says Alice Furse, publicity manager at a publisher.
“To be clear, I was more concerned about his taste than the possibility of kinks.”
Or even worse, what if they don’t have any books at all? The film-maker John Waters famously said: “If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck ’em.”
With Klerb, you don’t even have to date them. You can just meet up with people who like the same books as you, or form a book club.
“It’s not a hook-up app,” insists Abe Winter, the New Yorker who is developing Klerb, which is still being tested. “Or a dating app of any kind. But Tinder, which is not without its problems, delivers real value to communities by connecting strangers in geographical proximity. I’m trying to bring that model to reading.
“Readers are hungry for discussion, and introverts are hungry for social outlets. It’s easy to socialize if you like partying or sports; it’s harder if you have academic interests.
“From an informal survey, around 10% of age 30-plus dating app profiles talk about books or reading. This is a neglected category for socialisation. Goodreads is great at the book side of this, but it is not a geo-radius social tool, and I’m guessing doesn’t want to be.”
Winter says he’s a solo founder with “low expenses and no investment”, and is trying to make this work without the criticisms leveled at advertising-based apps that harvest users’ data.
He has a waiting list, and plans to roll out the app when he reaches enough interested users in enough geographical locations to make the algorithms work.
For people like Abbey Heffer, a PhD candidate in Germany with a penchant for dystopian fiction, Klerb could be a godsend. “I wouldn’t use the app to look for a romantic relationship – I’m happily married! – but I love the idea of vetting potential friends based on their taste in books,” she says.
“It would make the hunt for literary friends so much easier for people like me: immigrants who read in other languages, mums looking to talk about something other than babies, or just introverts who want to socialize… but gently.”
Last month, Justin Longmuir was asked an interesting question about his spearhead Matt Taberner and provided an interesting answer.
On whether Taberner could become a liability at some point given his ongoing injury issues, Longmuir responded: “Maybe at some point, but we’re definitely not there yet.”
Six weeks on, the management of not just one, but three injury-affected forwards is looming as the defining issue of Fremantle’s finals campaign.
If they’re available, Taberner, leading goal kicker Rory Lobb and captain Nat Fyfe all appear automatic selections in an individual sense.
But it will be fascinating to see whether the cumulative risk is something the Dockers might baulk at.
If Fremantle take Taberner, Lobb and Fyfe into their first final, it would mean having three players in their forward line who have each broken down during their previous two games.
Throw in Sam Switkowski off a long-term back injury, and that’s four forwards with compromised preparations.
Since first hurting his shoulder against Sydney in round 18, Lobb has played a starring role against the Western Bulldogs, with four goals under the Marvel Stadium roof in round 21, to go with two goalless games in the wet.
Fremantle’s leading goalkicker Rory Lobb injured his shoulder in the second half of this season. Credit: Jackson Flindell/The West Australian
Regardless of whether he is physically comfortable with rucking in the finals, Lobb has been Fremantle’s most viable forward target this season.
He’s kicked a career-high 34 goals in 19 games to be the leading goal kicker for a team that will enter September as the lowest-scoring finalist.
In other words, he’s pretty indispensable.
Approaching 31 and with more than 20 operations behind him, Fyfe is no longer the dual Brownlow Medal-winning midfield wrecking ball he once was.
His return from a double shoulder reconstruction followed by serious back surgery was always likely to be a rocky road, and when he had just one kick, to go with 14 handballs, in the loss to Sydney in round 18 it was a pothole.
A week earlier, Fyfe kicked three goals to go with 21 touches in the win over St Kilda. He also took four marks inside 50 and had 10 score involvements that night in a hybrid forward-midfield role.
It was the kind of performance that showed even the 2022 version of Fyfe is capable of having a fair say in the club’s final fortunes.
Nat Fyfe has been battling injuries for a number of seasons. Credit: Iain Gillespie/The West Australian
Mick Malthouse infamously left John Worsfold out of a final in 1998, but the captain being told he’s not wanted is not a scenario that will be repeating here.
Which leaves Taberner.
When the key forward booted seven goals against Essendon in round five, it was the biggest bag kicked by a Docker since Matthew Pavlich a decade ago.
As Longmuir recently noted, Freo aren’t exactly overflowing with players who are capable of kicking bags.
Since then, Taberner has kicked 12 majors in 10 games and been subbed out with injury three times.
Should the Dockers take care of business against 16th-placed Greater Western Sydney in the final round, they will enter their first final off three straight wins but with Taberner having played just 67 minutes of those three games.
An injured Matt Taberner passes on advice to Fremantle teammate Jye Amiss and Peel’s Blair Bell at the weekend. Credit: daniel wilkins/The West Australian
Complicating the equation is the fact Taberner impressed with eight marks and two goals in those 67 minutes before getting injured in round 21 against the Bulldogs, a team Fremantle could end up facing in an elimination final.
And muddying the waters further still is that a Taberner recall for the first final could require a brutal selection call on somebody else.
If you want to play Taberner, Lobb, Fyfe and Griffin Logue forward, with regular smalls Michael Walters, Michael Frederick, Lachie Schultz and Sam Switkowski, then eight into the normal seven places allotted won’t go.
The Dockers might feel more comfortable about bringing Taberner in for their first final if he got through a WAFL game on the pre-finals bye weekend.
Nat Fyfe and Matt Taberner are not certain to be fit for finals. Credit: JOEL CARRETT/AAPIMAGE
But if pushing for that contributed to any sort of setback, his final series would be over before it began.
The old adage about not taking injured players into finals is pretty hollow. Important players bravely play through injury all year to get their side into the finals in the first place.
Brisbane famously won the 2003 flag after using 18 vials of painkillers on players.
And the medical sub rule might provide the Dockers with an added layer of comfort about rolling the dice with their forwards.
There’s plenty of water to go under the bridge and a fresh injury to somebody against the Giants might mean all of the pieces fall into place.
Regardless, Fremantle’s selection meeting leading into their first final is shaping as their biggest of the year.
Wake up, eat, go to work, come home, eat, sleep, repeat.
Living the dream, huh?
“Personally, I believe I’m not meant to work. I’m meant to do this all day,” says an audio track on TikTok that went viral for its candid message: working a 9-to-5 job is no longer the ideal lifestyle for many.
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One video that uses this audio shows a woman sitting at a cafe, enjoying a coffee and croissant. Ella’s phone camera pans around, revealing a dozen others leisurely doing the same.
It has over three million views.
The video-based app has become a hub for Gen Zs and Millennials to create apathetic and pessimistic commentary about their disillusionment towards work.
What’s fueling this? Toxic workplace culture, minimal flexibility, no work life balance and of course, the pandemic.
Deloitte’s Global 2022 Gen Z & Millennial Survey revealed four in 10 Gen Zs and nearly a quarter of Millennials would like to leave their jobs in two years.
Roughly a third would do so without another job lined upthe report found.
However, if you love what you do, is it true that you’ll never work a day in your life?
Engineer-turned-career-development practitioner Naishadh Gadani said the dream job is “an overly simplistic and misused term”.
“Rather than thinking of it as a dream job, we should be questioning whether it’s a fulfilling job,” Mr Gadani told ABC News.
“Questions like: What fulfills me? What brings me happiness? What kind of workplace or organization do I like? – [these] can help us.”
Juliette had ‘golden ticket’ job but quit and now works casually in hospitality
Juliette, 22, from Victoria, landed her first white-collar job from her sister’s roommate at the time, who worked in the public service.
After hearing that she was looking for trainees who required no qualifications, Juliette applied and was offered the job.
“It was a golden ticket because I was 20, had no qualifications past a mediocre ATAR, and was now working full-time and getting paid a decent wage.
“I received a lot of praise from friends and family. It was a job that my family could gloat about,” she said.
After nine months into the job, Juliette quit. She said she felt like a failure.
Juliette on her first day of her public service job. (Supplied: Juliette Melody Grace)
“I had spent months toying with the idea of whether money or my mental health was more important,” she said.
Four months after she quit, Juliette traded full-time work for a casual job in hospitality and she has never been happier.
“My job isn’t who I am. I don’t base my worth on my productivity within capitalism.”
Despite her reduced working hours, coupled with a rising cost of living, Juliette remains “optimistic” about the future.
“As bad as things are economically, it’s just a cycle. There are bigger problems than my wallet.”
Alex’s dream was to play in a band. I realized it was not as glamorous as it sounded
Alex, 32, was in his first year of university when a friend asked what he wanted to do for a career.
“She said to ignore the money and say the first thing that came to mind. I blurted out: ‘I want to play in a band.’
“That’s the moment I decided playing in a band was my ‘dream job’,” he said.
While it’s not his “dream job”, Alex’s day job is in the aerospace industry.(Supplied: Alex Carrette)
However, as Alex became more involved in Brisbane’s music scene, he saw how the life of a band member wasn’t as glamorous as their fans might suspect.
“Playing shows to hundreds of fans sounds incredible, but this is only a small part of a touring musician’s life,” he said.
Over the years, Alex decided he wouldn’t let a job consume his identity, so he allowed himself to simply “have a job.”
His current “day job” is working in the aerospace sector. But he hasn’t given up on ditching the 9-to-5 routine.
“I’ve recently gotten into making my own YouTube videos as well as editing them for clients. So, that’s another possibility,” he explained.
Alex said his ideal situation would be to play local shows in small venues, as opposed to touring nationally or internationally.
“I don’t see that as a failure. So long as I’m enjoying playing music, that’s a success in my mind,” he said.
Owning a home is ‘unachievable’ for Ishara, but she believes this is no longer the dream for young people
During primary school, Ishara Sahama, 23, dreamed of becoming a vet.
It wasn’t until her final years of high school — when she gravitated towards the humanities and social sciences field.
After graduating university with a major in geography in 2019, Ms Sahama spent a few years volunteering and gaining work experience.
She now works part-time in the social enterprise and entrepreneurship space.
“Ever since I started working, I’ve seen people who are either in their mid-20s-30s, or in their 40-50s, resign from the public sector and move to private, or vice-versa,” Ms Sahama said.
Ishara Sahama says “the Australian dream” is a luxury that doesn’t reflect the realities of young people. (Supplied: Ishara Sahama)
“Pushing young people to pick a dream job — or will it into existence — can be detrimental to their personal growth.”
“The past two years have changed the way work is conducted. A 9-to-5 job, five days a week can be condensed to four days,” she said.
“And, yet, people who do or don’t have this work structure may still struggle to keep up with Australia’s rising cost of living.”
Ms Sahama saves on certain costs by living with her family, paying for petrol and groceries, costs that have only increased over time.
While these costs are manageable for her, Ishara feels indifferent when it comes to buying a home.
“The idea of owning, or leasing, a property in the future is now unachievable for me, considering current economic circumstances,” she said.
“The ‘Australian Dream’ is a luxury and a privilege. It doesn’t reflect everyday realities of young people who must change and adapt to the workforce in a post-COVID world.”
As 2-in-1 laptops go, 16 inches is pretty huge. Most convertible laptop/tablet hybrids have screens measuring 12 to 14 inches for more comfortable carrying in tablet mode. A 16-inch tablet isn’t one you’ll use all the time, but a 16-inch desktop replacement laptop that can pivot for presentations or become a tablet for annotating or sketching? That’s a combination that may make more sense, and that’s where the Lenovo Yoga 7i 16 Gen 7 ($1,399.99) comes into the picture. Launching alongside the more mainstream Yoga 7i 14 Gen 7, the bigger model gives users a little more elbow room, a slightly beefier CPU, and a larger battery. It’s got the slick, feature-filled design and rock-solid performance we love about the 14-inch model, but in giant economy size. Bigger may not always be better, but in this case it’s not half bad.
The Biggest Convertible Since Mary Kay’s Cadillac
Like its smaller sibling, the Yoga 7i 16 is available in two colors, Storm Gray and Stone Blue, both anodized shades to dress up the CNC milled aluminum chassis. The Lenovo measures 0.76 by 14.2 by 9.8 inches, more or less matching its 2-in-1 archrival the HP Specter x360 16 (0.78 by 14.1 by 9.7 inches), but is lighter—the Lenovo tips the scale at 4.19 pounds to the HP’s 4.45.
Our $1,399.99 review unit combines Intel’s 12th Generation Core i7-1260P processor (four Performance cores, eight Efficient cores, 16 threads) with 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, a 512GB PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive, and a glossy IPS touch screen with 2,560-by -1,600-pixel resolution and 400 nits of brightness. No other screen is available (ie, you can’t match the Specter x360 16’s OLED panel), but other models at Lenovo.com offer a 4GB Intel Arc A370M GPU instead of our unit’s Iris Xe integrated graphics.
There are a few design changes that come with the increase in bulk from the Yoga 7i 14 to the 7i 16. The wider chassis provides room for a compact numeric keypad squeezed in at the right of the keyboard. The keys of the number pad are a little narrower than the primary keys, but not so much that they feel cramped when entering spreadsheet data.
Another change is a different position for the speakers, with a speaker grille between the screen and keyboard. With four stereo speakers, two 3-watt woofers, and dual 2-watt tweeters, the sound offered by the 16-inch laptop is superb, with robust volume and great clarity. It’s enhanced with Dolby Atmos support and automatic amplification.
Given the slim, streamlined design of the Yoga 7i 16, the convertible offers an impressive selection of ports. It’s a welcome departure from the current minimalist chic that relies on just a few Thunderbolt 4 ports plus adapters or dongles, for most ports, and it makes the Yoga 7i a versatile choice for users on the go. On the left, you’ll find an HDMI video output, two USB Type-C/Thunderbolt 4 connectors, a USB 3.2 Type-A port, and a full-size SD card slot.
On the right are a 3.5mm headphone jack and a second USB-A port, along with the power button. The Lenovo also has up-to-date wireless support, with Wi-Fi 6E in lieu of Ethernet and Bluetooth 5.2 for quick connections to peripherals and audio devices.
The Display: Skinny Screen Sides, With a Bump
The 16-inch touch screen looks great, with crisp details thanks to 2,560-by-1,600 resolution, good contrast, and full support for both touch and active pen. (Unfortunately there’s no pen in the box.) But it’s all the more impressive when you stop to notice the slim bezels around the display—if you don’t look for them, you might miss them completely, since Lenovo boasts the laptop has a 91% screen-to-body ratio in tablet mode.
It’s also impressive that despite the narrowness of the screen borders, you never feel like you’re missing a place to hold the Yoga when in tablet mode—the rounded edges of the chassis provide enough of a finger and thumb grip to hold on comfortably without encroaching on the display real estate.
Above the screen is the slight protrusion of what Lenovo calls the communications bar, the housing for the 1080p webcam, dual microphones, and Windows Hello-compatible IR face recognition sensors for the laptop. It’s sort of a reverse approach to Apple’s infamous notch, raised above the display instead of dipping down into it. There’s a sliding privacy shutter for the webcam (although it’s so small you might not notice it) and the bar itself provides a handy ridge to help you open and close the lid despite the smoother rounded corners.
Performance Testing the Yoga 7i 16: A High-End Laptop Contest
For our benchmark charts, we matched the Yoga 7i 16 Gen 7 against two other 16-inch deluxe notebooks, the directly competing HP Specter x360 16 convertible and the AMD-powered Asus Vivobook Pro 16X OLED. We also compared it to another plus-size convertible, the 15-inch, business-oriented Dell Latitude 9520 2-in-1.
Our main productivity benchmark for Windows systems is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates everyday tasks like word processing, spreadsheet analysis, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10’s Full System Drive test to assess the responsiveness and throughput of a laptop’s boot drive. Geekbench 5 is another test that simulates popular apps including PDF rendering and speech recognition with a bit more of a focus on processing power.
Two other CPU-intensive benchmarks that stress all available cores and threads are Maxon’s Cinebench R23, which uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, and the open-source video transcoder HandBrake, which we use to convert a 12-minute clip of 4K video to 1080p resolution (lower times are better). Our final productivity test is workstation vendor Puget Systems’ PugetBench extension for Adobe Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud 22 version of the famous image editor to execute a variety of general and GPU-accelerated tasks ranging from opening, rotating, and resizing an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters. Like HandBrake, the test rates a PC’s suitability for digital content creation and multimedia jobs.
All of these systems sailed past the 4,000-point mark in PCMark 10 that indicates excellent productivity for the likes of Microsoft Office and Google Workspace, but they swapped victories in specific benchmarks, with the Asus claiming most of the CPU honors but the Yoga 7i 16 winning in Geekbench. The bigger picture shows that they’re all high-performance productivity and creative machines.
We test PCs’ graphics capabilities with two game-like animations a piece from two benchmark suites. The DirectX 12 tests Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, ideal for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs) hail from UL’s 3DMark, while GFXBench contributes the 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase subtests, rendered off-screen to accommodate different display resolutions. The latter two tests focus on high-level image rendering and low-level routines like texturing respectively.
The HP and Asus dominated these tests, which was predictable since they have discrete Nvidia GeForce GPUs that outperform both the Dell’s 11th Gen and the Lenovo’s 12th Gen Intel integrated graphics.
Finally, we test laptops’ battery life by looping a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting off. We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and software to measure the screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its brightness in nits (candelas per square to put).
The Lenovo’s battery life was impressive, exceeding 18 hours in our video rundown. That outlasted the Dell by nearly two hours and crushed the runtimes of the OLED-screened Asus and HP. Those systems got their revenge in our color coverage measurement, showing more vivid hues and spanning virtually all of the various gamuts compared to the laptops with IPS panels. The Yoga 7i’s screen brightness was a little lower than we like to see in a high-end notebook (the same number of nits look more brilliant with an OLED rather than IPS display), but perfectly acceptable. The screen supports Dolby Vision HDR, reserving max brightness for smaller portions or application windows rather than the full screen that our test measures.
Verdict: More Room to Maneuver, If You Want It
Generally speaking, 15.6-inch and 16-inch convertible laptops are awfully unwieldy for use as tablets, but they shine when pivoted to easel or kiosk more for presentations and can take touch interaction further than a smaller notebook. If your budget permits we prefer the HP Specter x360 16’s dazzling OLED display, but the Lenovo Yoga 7i 16 Gen 7 is a great alternative and a superbly well-made solution for anyone seeking a larger 2-in-1.
Children’s authors disliking children has become a thing. It’s been said of Enid Blyton, AA Milne, Dr Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein … and now we hear that the late, dear Raymond Briggs, the sweet grumpy writer and illustrator who became National Grandpa to millions of us who never met him, was another. Interviews with Briggs, who died last week aged 88, could be heard on the radio, saying for all to hear: “I’ve no interest in children. Didn’t want to have any.”
It’s dismaying. How could they?
As a writer, and daughter, partner and mother of writers, I can tell you: no writers like children – if said children are wanting things from the writer when the writer wants to be writing. This isn’t exclusive to any particular kind of writer, nor even to creative people. It’s true of everyone, as we know now after lockdowns requiring people to simultaneously work and school at home. (I avoided this with my child by making her a writer too, via the noble tradition of child labour. We wrote five books together, which were published in 36 languages and optioned by Spielberg, twice. Boom!)
But I don’t believe in this so-called dislike. First, of all the possible reasons for liking or disliking an individual, was there ever a dafter one of her age? And second, having no interest in children per seor not wanting kids yourself, isn’t dislike.
In 2015, in a Guardian interview with Sarah Hughes, Briggs points to a photo of the grandchildren of his late partner, Liz. “This one used to want to sit on my head,” he told her. “’I want to sit on his head,’ he’d say and climb up. It was lovely.” Then, she wrote, “I have stared into space for a moment.” Is this someone who dislikes children?
When Briggs was suggested as Children’s Laureate, the answer was “no, thank you… all that running all over the country, all the bookings and bed and breakfasts and railways. I don’t want to go to schools and give talks on children’s books. I don’t actually know anything much about children. I try to avoid them whenever possible.”
I suspect that individual or known children can be OK, but a mass of tiny maniacs and fuss is alarming to people who work in quiet. So is it really children that these writers aren’t keen on? Perhaps AA Milne just disliked that the success of his children’s books outshone the reputation he really desired, as a playwright. His son wasn’t happy with being Christopher Robin, writing of “toe-curling, fist-clenching, lip-biting embarrassment” and how “it seemed to me almost that my father had … filched from me my good name and had left me with the empty fame of being his son”. But there’s no suggestion Milne senior did that on purpose.
On the day of Sendak’s barmitzvah in 1942 in New York, his father learned of the destruction of the family in Europe. This was only part of the trauma that made his parents of him, in Maurice’s word, “crazy”. His dark topics about him were sometimes taken as an aggression to a young readership, an indication that he did not care for them. He said himself that if he’d come from a happy home he wouldn’t have become an artist. “I refuse to lie to children,” he said, apropos “the great 19th-century fantasy that paints childhood as an eternally innocent paradise”, and described his job as “the idiot role of being a kiddie book person”. He and his partner of him Eugene did not build a family because he was certain, from his family history of him, that he would mess it up. Again, I’m not convinced it’s children that he didn’t like.
Raymond Briggs, who created and illustrated the Snowman, said he tried to avoid children. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Guardian
Shel Silverstein, author and illustrator of The Giving Tree, didn’t like dull children’s books and was not initially keen to write for children. Plus he was a satirical Sixties guy with an eminently misunderstandable sense of humour, and a very sad story with his own daughter, who died young in the care of her relatives after the death of her mother. Heaven forbid that a children’s author be complex! (To some people he’ll always be the guy who wrote Sylvia’s Mother.)
The myth that Dr Seuss (Theodor Guisel) disliked children seems based on childlessness, which in the 1950s was pretty much held as evidence of disliking them – when in fact his wife, Helen Palmer, also a children’s writer, couldn’t conceive. During their lives they did have an imaginary daughter, Chrysanthemum-Pearl, who appeared on the Seuss Christmas cards.
Enid Blyton, we’re told – by her own daughter – was “without a trace of maternal instinct”. But we’re also told – by her other daughter of her – that she was a wonderful companion who could “communicate with children in a quite remarkable way, and not just on the page”.
But it doesn’t matter if writers can handle children’s more riotous aspects or not. They just need to have a handle on a child’s point of view – as they do on any character’s.
Humbug and sentimentality are greater enemies; books written to appeal to adults. I don’t mean books that naturally appeal to people of all ages: those are magic.
Briggs said: “People are always saying, ‘Well, who did you aim this at?’ and I keep replying, ‘Books are not missiles, you don’t aim them at anybody’.”
In wise words from US writer Edward Eager’s novel half-magic: “The four children divided all grownups into classes. Last and best and rarest of all were the ones who seemed to feel that children were children and grownups were grownups and that was that, and yet there wasn’t any reason why they couldn’t get along perfectly well and naturally together, and even occasionally communicate.”
The FIA has finally broken its silence on the Oscar Piastri contract saga, confirming the ongoing dispute between McLaren and Alpine will be resolved without having to go to court.
Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo became embroiled in F1’s mid-year silly season following reports he will be replaced by young compatriot Piastri at McLaren next year.
The news erupted last week after two-time world champion Fernando Alonso blindsided the F1 world and jumped into Sebastian Vettel’s vacated seat at Aston Martin.
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Alpine then announced Piastri would be the man to replace Alonso, only for the 21-year-old Melburnian to reject the seat — a bold move for someone who is yet to drive in F1.
Alpine believes that Piastri should respect the contract, but the Victorian believes the commitment is not valid.
The French team threatened to file a civil lawsuit to recover the millions of dollars in training it has spent on Piastri this season.
“Going to the High Court is over 90 per cent certain that’s what we’ll do,” Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer told Reuters.
“If the CRB (Contract Recognition Board) says, ‘Your license is only valid at Alpine’, and then he (Piastri) says, ‘That’s great, but I’m never driving for them, I’ll just sit out a year ‘, then you’ve got to go to the High Court for compensation.”
McLaren Chief Executive Officer Zak Brown and Otmar Szafnauer. Photo by Andy Hone/Pool via Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images
On Friday, FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem claimed the issue would be solved through their own means instead of in the courtroom.
“The FIA’s Driver Contract Recognition Board (CRB) was set up to deal with contract priority issues between drivers and F1 teams,” he tweeted.
“That’s why we rely on their decision to resolve any conflict.”
According to French publication Auto Hebdothe CRB has found that both Piastri’s Alpine and McLaren contracts are valid.
The CRB, a group made up of independent lawyers, was set up to determine the legality of driver contracts and settle disputes between teams.
The body was founded in 1991 after seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher signed for Benetton despite having agreed to discuss a contract with Jordan.
Oscar Piastri of Australia. Photo by Clive Mason/Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images
Szafnauer also hinted at a potential collusion between Piastri’s manager Mark Webber, Alonso and his manager Flavio Briatore.
Webber and Alonso are close friends after their time in F1, while Briatore, who was a former team boss at Bennetton and Renault, has been Alonso’s long-term manager.
“Look, I have no record of it, but this is Formula 1 and maybe in a couple of years someone says that they have evidence of shared information, I would not be surprised,” Szafnauer said.
“I always tell everyone that in Formula 1 you have to act as if everyone knows everything. That there are no secrets in these things. When you ask someone not to say anything, they act like everyone knows.
“That’s how I’ve run my business in Formula 1 for 25 years. And if this (information sharing) has happened, you should not be surprised.”
Meanwhile, former F1 driver turned pundit Christian Danner said Piastri’s tactics “clearly has the handwriting” of Briatore.
Mark McGowan and more than half of his ministers have been caught speeding, incurring thousands of dollars in fines and hefty demerit points.
Some of the high-profile MPs who fell foul of the law are the Premier’s closest allies, including Attorney-General John Quigley, Police and Road Safety Minister Paul Papalia, and Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson.
Mr McGowan admitted to speeding twice in four months in 2021 — including during a double demerit period for the Queen’s Birthday long weekend last September.
Despite strong government public messaging about the dangers of speeding — especially during double demerit crackdowns — Mr McGowan exceeded the speed limit by between 10 and 19km/h, copping four demerit points and a $400 fine.
In April last year, Mr McGowan’s lead foot saw him handed another $100 fine for exceeding the speed limit by not more than 9kmh.
Mr McGowan’s speeding ends came as WA recorded its highest road toll in five years in 2021 — 166 people losing their lives. So far this year there have been 87 fatalities, including a horror period when young drivers and passengers died or were seriously injured.
In June this year, 17-year-old Dale Martin and his passenger Ryleigh Land, 17, were killed after the car rolled in wet and windy conditions near Wagerup.
In July, a horror crash in Wye, just south of Mt Gambier, killed a 38-year-old WA woman and injured a five-year-old girl, eight and six-year-old boys and a 36-year-old man .
The Premier yesterday unreservedly apologized for speeding.
“There’s no excuses,” Mr McGowan said. “It was clearly a lapse in concentration and I should have done better. I was on a family camping trip at the time.”
And it would appear that the threat of double demerit points did not deter other ministers from speeding.
Finance Minister Tony Buti was the worst lead foot of the group, burning a $400 hole in his pocket after being caught speeding by no more than 9kmh over the speed limit four times in two years.
But Environment Minister Reece Whitby put the most money back into public coffers after he was fined three times from June to November last year, costing him $600. Like Mr McGowan he ignored double demerit-point warnings, exceeding the speed limit by between 10 and 19kmh during the June Labor Day long weekend, which set him back $400.
He then copped another $100 fine for speeding four months later, and another $100 fine for speeding a month after that.
Mr McGowan and his ministers all get a taxpayer-funded car — and a driver, if they want one — meaning there is little reason to drive.
On the occasions Mr McGowan and his ministers were nabbed by the law, they were behind the wheel of their own cars.
The revelations come after The Sunday Times Mr McGowan and his ministers whether they had incurred any traffic infringements asked since January 1, 2020.
More than two-thirds of Cabinet — 10 out of 16 Labor Ministers — were caught speeding, some multiple times and during double demerit long weekends.
Lead-foot Labor ministers forked out $3,600 in speeding ends since the start of 2020.
Read more of what MPs had to say about their speeding ends in the full exclusive story at The West Australian
Red Dead Redemption 2’s total sales hit 45 million since the game released in 2018.
VIEW GALLERY – 2 IMAGES
Nearly four years after launch, Red Dead Redemption 2 has achieved powerful sales figures across all platforms. As of June 30, 2022 during Take-Two Interactive’s Q1 FY23 period, Rockstar’s cowboy epic has sold 45 million copies combined across digital and physical channels.
These gains are up 1 million units quarter-over-quarter and 7 million units year-over-year, and continue RDR2’s trends of selling 1 million units between Q4 and Q1 periods. These sales may punctuate a sunsetting of Red Dead franchise content for some years to come; Rockstar has effectively stopped updating Red Dead Online with new meaningful content so it can focus almost exclusively on Grand Theft Auto 6, and RDR2’s campaign is practically set in stone with no expansions in sight.
That being said, Take-Two Interactive still expects Red Dead Online to be a meaningful contributor to its annual net bookings. Red Dead Online delivers microtransaction revenues through live service purchases and has, to a lesser extent, buffered TTWO’s yearly digital revenues.
“We now expect to deliver net bookings of $5.8 billion to $5.9 billion. Our assumptions take into consideration some shifts in our pipeline for the year, as well as movement in foreign exchange rates and the uncertain macroeconomic backdrop. The largest contributors to net bookings are expected to be NBA 2K, Grand Theft Auto Online and Grand Theft Auto V, Empires & Puzzles, Rollic’s hyper casual mobile portfolio, Toon Blast, and Red Dead Redemption 2 and Red Dead Online. 45% Zynga, which includes our former T2 mobile titles, 37%, 2K; 17%, Rockstar Games; and 1%, Private Division.”
form neighbors star Ben Turland has teased more details about his upcoming role in new psychological thriller series Riptide.
“It’s going well and everyone’s nice – there are a lot of the same crew from neighbors working on it,” revealed Turland in an interview with Inside Soap.
According to the soap star, his new character is not dissimilar to the role he played on neighbors.
FremantleChannel 5
Related: form EastEnders star Jo Joyner signs up for new Channel 5 drama
“My character is quite misunderstood, he’s had it pretty tough, but he loves his family. He’s not too far away from Hendrix!”
Riptidea new prime-time Channel 5 drama set in Australia, is being made by neighbors‘production company Fremantle Australia.
Two more familiar soap faces will star in the show – former EastEnders star Jo Joyner and Turland’s neighbors co-star Peter O’Brien.
O’Brien, who recently reprized his role as Shane Ramsay for the Aussie soap’s final weeks, will play a main character in the drama.
ITV
Related: neighbors star Candice Leask on scrapped Rodwell stories and show ending
Joyner will play Alison, whose life is disrupted when her Australian husband vanishes after a morning surf.
It’s unclear whether he was caught up in a dangerous riptide, or whether there’s more to his disappearance than meets the eye as this intriguing mystery plays out.
Turland also addressed his final performance as Hendrix Grayson, who tragically died on the soap after battling with pulmonary fibrosis.
The actor revealed the positive response he had to his emotional exit from the soap and said “It was so beautiful.”
“I’ve had a lot of messages from people – I had a family member who was recently diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, and I have other relatives who’ve had friends pass away from it. They said it was a pretty accurate story of someone with that condition. Just hearing that was enough.”
neighbors has now come to an end, but catch-up episodes are available via My 5 (UK) and 10 Play (Australia).
Read more neighbors coverage on our dedicated homepage
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