news – Page 5 of 11 – The Orbital

The Nightmare Before Christmas – The Return of Thomas Cramer

14Nov

By Shreya BeekarryNo Comments

News

The Nightmare Before Christmas – The Return of Thomas Cramer

Cramer's criminal behaviour report - via Surrey Police With the nights getting darker as winter approaches and headlines in the media warning of increased injection spiking, worry and insecurity is considered at an all-time high for university students looking to celebrate the first winter in two years without a lockdown. Unfortunately, there’s a pressing, returning worry for the student body of Royal Holloway. It takes the form of Thomas Cramer. The 29-year-old was discovered in the third term of last year taking unsolicited pictures primarily of the female populace on campus. He subsequently posted these images to social media. In response to those taking a punch at him in the comments for his perverted actions, he used derogatory comments, which included racial pre...

Mark Zuckerberg and the Metaverse: science fiction or (virtual) reality?

31Oct

By Hannah ArmourNo Comments

News, Science & Technology

Mark Zuckerberg and the Metaverse: science fiction or (virtual) reality?

Mark Zuckerberg, no stranger to controversy, has announced a change in the branding of the parent organization of his media technologies empire. Facebook, originally designed as a social networking website where Harvard students would rate each other’s attractiveness, is now universally recognisable and impossible to escape. Its namesake company Facebook, Inc. is a social media giant owning Facebook (surprise, surprise), Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp. And now they will be attempting to digitally extend the physical world, through social media involving virtual and augmented reality - with a name change to Meta Platforms. Inc. to boot. This rebrand accompanies a series of recent public relations crises including the revelations brought by whistleblower Frances Haugen about Fac...

Orbital’s Madelaine Gray Covers Royal Holloway’s XR Protest: How It Happened & What Next?

30Oct

By Madelaine GrayNo Comments

Features, News

Orbital’s Madelaine Gray Covers Royal Holloway’s XR Protest: How It Happened & What Next?

“Climate change isn’t stopping,” says one of today’s protesters on location at Royal Holloway. “It isn’t slowing down for anyone. There’s no time to delay.” And so it would seem. It’s a chilly day on campus, one of the first on which you’d be hard pressed to find a student without a coat or scarf. There’s been the threat of rain all morning, from both the forecast and the ominous-looking clouds. But the protesters are undeterred. After all, with climate change comes the promise of more rainy days, even in perpetually sodden Britain. Since launching three years ago, Extinction Rebellion has been catapulted to the forefront of British media coverage of climate change. Their bold statements and radical approach, based on the historic practice of civil disobedience, has caused both a hu...

Which Undergraduate are you: Miracle Child or Hustler?

18Oct

By Bridget OSullivanNo Comments

Features, Opinion

Which Undergraduate are you: Miracle Child or Hustler?

The ‘Are They Still Alive?’ One Whether you’re a halls resident plagued nightly by the 2am orchestral onslaught of returning Medicine and SU drunkards or living in a private house on the Shott where the thump of electro-beats is never far off, there’s no way you’re letting anyone interrupt your slumber. Throughout sixth form you were consistently deprived of sleep; you look back on those days and shudder. You’ll never take the bliss of an alarm-less morning for granted again. You’ll never feel anything but earnest gratitude on those cold, January mornings when you have the privilege of attending your lecture from bed (thanks to Royal Holloway’s adoption of the Open University model). You exploit the minimal university schedule for all it’s worth - midday begins to feel like 7am. When y...

The Future of Afghanistan and its Women under Taliban Rule

18Oct

By Courtney BridgesNo Comments

Features, News

The Future of Afghanistan and its Women under Taliban Rule

‘The women in this part of Kabul were a different breed from the women in the poorer neighbourhoods’, Khalid Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khalid Hosseini an Afghan-born American novelist, outlines a mother-daughter story within the context of a contemporary Afghan society when published in 2007. As the above quote demonstrates, Hosseini tries to reflect what he recognised as a 'thriving city' that ‘by the standards of a conservative religious country… was quite liberal’ in his memory of living in Afghanistan in his early years. Like the rest of the world, Hosseini saw the gradual reclaiming of Afghanistan; as ‘Kabul had fallen’, he watched woefully. Hosseini now comments that he has ‘no idea what the future holds’. That he is 'deeply sc...

Marginalisation Of The Kurdish Identity: a human rights violation

18Oct

By Ilayda KaplankiranNo Comments

News

Marginalisation Of The Kurdish Identity: a human rights violation

Amongst all these humanitarian agencies who seek to protect and aid those suffering or victims of mistreatments, it is unbelievable to think that there are still constitutional restrictions entrenched to eradicate a cultural identity. Especially when it comes to a sensitive issue such as the Kurdish Question; a minority ethnicity that has fought endlessly to protect their rights, with many activists, politicians and lawyers currently imprisoned as a result. The spiralling political crisis that the question elicits today stems from nothing more than a backlash from the past. Following the break-up of the Ottoman empire in 1922, the many different ethnic groups living in the newly formed Republic of Turkey were forced to comply with ‘Turkification’ policies: a homogenising stance t...

Say his name: how Candyman’s sharp social commentary exposes the horrors of reality

16Oct

By Kianna BestNo Comments

Features, Film & TV

Say his name: how Candyman’s sharp social commentary exposes the horrors of reality

Nowhere near as sweet as he sounds, the urban legend of Candyman is rooted in the bitter realities of racism at the hands of white supremacy, birthing a monster and personifying the terrors of oppression. Arguably ahead of its time, the origins of the frightful hook handed menace stem from the realities of a history not so long ago, placing the slasher film and systemic racism alongside each other to induce the greatest levels of fear. The son of slaves and a product of the sinister consequences of the Jim Crow era, Bernard Rose’s Candyman (1992) places on the big screen the constantly perpetuated message that the Black man must be feared. Told from the perspective of graduate student Helen Lyle, the motivations of the Cabrini-Green bogeyman are touched upon but fall back to the ...

15Oct

By Luz Sanchez-Real ZielniewiczNo Comments

Science & Technology

Much Ado About Sleeping

The end of summer feels like the end of a dream. Lie-ins morph into morning lectures; you never seem to win the daily battle with your alarm clock; and all you really want is to finish that dream about the llama and the-- never mind... Sometimes, it seems that getting a good nights’ sleep (and then waking up again) is harder than getting your actual degree. You’re likely aware that there are different stages of sleep which affect how you’ll feel when you wake up. However, it’s difficult to get the timing just right. To paraphrase Shakespeare, ‘the course of true rest never did run smooth’. If we break it down, though, you might just figure out how to wake up feeling fresh as a daisy and ready for all of those 9AMs... The first step to a solid sleep is the non-REM (REM = Rapid ...

Hycean Worlds: A Possible New Frontier in the Search for Life Beyond Earth

15Oct

By Jessica CopelandNo Comments

Science & Technology

Hycean Worlds: A Possible New Frontier in the Search for Life Beyond Earth

The search for extraterrestrial life has conventionally been focused on Earth-like exoplanets -- terrestrial planets orbiting within the habitable zone of their host stars. This method is based on the premise that as life has risen in Earth’s conditions, somewhere with similar conditions could also give rise to life. As such, various exoplanet surveys over the years, including the Kepler and TESS satellites, have catalogued a few thousand Earth-like candidates for further investigation, finding that 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone. However, the candidate pool may have just expanded. In August this year, researchers at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy proposed a new hypothetical class of habitable exoplanets and dubbed them Hycean worlds, a ...

UCU Announces 8 Day Strike Affecting 60 Universities

8Nov

By Kaelin DignamNo Comments

News

UCU Announces 8 Day Strike Affecting 60 Universities

Two days ago the day this article was written the University and College Union announced eight days of strike starting this month, which will affect 60 universities across the country including Royal Holloway. The strike will take action between Monday 25th of November to Wednesday 4th of December. The action has been called in response to concerns regarding member contributions to the USS pension scheme, pay and conditions. There have been talks which could indicate the dispute could be resolved without industrial action, however this so far seems unlikely. Last week UCU members backed strike action in two separate legal disputes, one on pensions and one on pay and working conditions. Overall, 79% of UCU members voted for strike action in the ballot over changes to pensions. In the ball...