The Joy of Six 1491

Mariano delli Santi is concerned by the Information Commissioner's Office and its enthusiasm for age-verification: "The ICO are actively encouraging platforms to adopt more invasive verification technologies, at a time when privacy violations and malpractice are starting to emerge within the industry. Further, the ICO characterisation of age assurance technology as 'advanced' and 'readily available' comes as hundreds of computer scientists call for a moratorium on the roll out of this technology and warn about the technical limitations and infeasibility of this approach."

"The parental rights movement frames the conflict as parental rights versus government control, completely disregarding children's rights, but the actual constitutional balance has never been between parents and the state alone. It is more of a triangular structure in which the child is a distinct rights-bearing person, the parent exercises authority in trust, and the state acts as a backstop when that trust is fundamentally breached." Steve Kennedy examines the American right's enthusiasm for parents' rights.

Brian McHugh welcomes the growth of repair café culture in the UK.

Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri pays tribute to Jürgen Habermas by highlighting his study of the coffee houses of Georgian London.

"Watkins' film has only gained in relevance, with the US once again caught in endless foreign conflict, the undermining of civilian freedoms by the Patriot Act, the untold horrors of US detention compounds in Guantánamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan, and an Administration exploiting the politics of polarisation to its own ends ('You're either with us, or you're against us') in a land where domestic 'Culture Wars' continue to reflect bloodier struggles abroad." This article by rantbit on Peter Watkins' film Punishment Park was written 10 years ago, but it and the film sound even more relevant today.

"Craven House, a fledgling novel by ... Hamilton, fits right into this groove, set as it is in a West London boarding house during the early part of the 20th century. While Craven isn’t as polished as Hamilton’s later work – he was only twenty-two when the book was first published in 1926 – there is still much to enjoy here, particularly in the use of the setting as a vehicle for fiction." Jacquiwine looks at Craven House by Patrick Hamilton.