Sustainable desk accessory line bFRIENDS mixes practicality with style
Office furniture brand Bene has partnered with design and sustainability pioneers in both London and Amsterdam to bring us a fun, eco-friendly alternative to plastic desk organisers. Oh, the joys of being organised. It’s a quality most people strive to improve at in their day-to-day life, but without the right tools...
Current in Culture
Online scammers have earned billions through shoddy pandemic services
From unverified testing labs and fake vaccination appointments to the more recent forged COVID travel passes – the pandemic has presented endless opportunities for digital scammers to profit. Scamming, an illegal activity once limited to one’s immediate community, has been amplified by the wonders of the online world in recent...
The curious hair-filled implements helping with oil spills in Peru
The Peruvian government has declared an environmental emergency after 6,000 barrels of crude oil spilled off the coast of Lima. Citizens are now helping beach clean-up efforts in an ingenious, albeit strange way. If you weren’t already donating hair to help oil clean-up initiatives, you need to get with the...
Jay Z among artists calling for end to rap lyrics used as evidence
Vocalists, rappers, and musicians have backed a proposal to remove a state law in New York that allows for lyrics to be used as evidence in criminal trials. We could finally be seeing a change to current laws surrounding lyrical content within songs, namely hip-hop and trap, as a...
How Elizabeth Holmes pushed the limits of hustle culture
Once compared to Steve Jobs for her apparent breakthroughs in health technology, former entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes is now a criminal fraud. Her conviction reflects Silicon Valley’s relentless hype culture, and could have implications far beyond just her sentencing. For many tech enthusiasts and business hopefuls, Silicon Valley is the...
KSI and Logan Paul announce new business venture ‘Prime’
YouTubers, boxers, and all-round celebrities KSI and Logan Paul have announced a new energy drink brand called ‘Prime’, further pushing the monetary boundaries of Gen Z self-made entrepreneurs. If you’d told the average YouTube fan in 2018 that KSI and Logan Paul would eventually go on to create their own...
How pop-punk’s revival reflects modern Gen Z angst
2021 saw the return of guitar-driven, pop-punk orientated chart music. Its resurgence and angst-ridden aesthetic make perfect sense given the precarious nature of modern, lockdown living. This year was an odd one for nearly all of us, live entertainment industry included. On-and-off lockdowns, gig cancellations, and temperamental touring rules meant that most of us were only able to see live music a handful of times at most. As the new...
New exhibition sees 25 life-sized lions invade London’s South Bank
A pride of lions have made their home in Waterloo to raise awareness for animal conservation. It looks like London has a thing for lions - whether they be roaming around Regent’s Park Zoo, standing guard beneath Nelson's column, or singing on stage in the West End. Evidently the city is the perfect place for Born Free’s new outdoor exhibition, which has erected 25 bronze big cats in Millennium Green, just...
Gen-Z mocks news misinformation with conspiracy theory satire
Promoting a far-fetched theory that birds are government spies, young people are poking fun at conspiracy theory groups to cope with living in an age of endless misinformation. A movement called Birds Aren’t Real is picking up serious traction with Generation Z, particularly in the United States. Its members claim that birds do not exist and are instead drone replicas designed by the government to spy on national citizens. Massive billboards...
Poet turns Malcolm X’s prison cell into ‘freedom library’
The prison cell that was occupied by the civil rights activist has been transformed into the first of 1,000 planned ‘freedom libraries’. Poet and lawyer Reginald Dwayne Betts is using his MacArthur ‘genius grant’, worth $625,000 (£471,000) to set up 1,000 micro-libraries in US prisons through his charity, Freedom Reads, starting with Malcolm X’s cell. The first of these ‘freedom libraries’ is located in Norfolk Prison, Massachusetts where Malcolm X was...
