#TenThingsLearnt w/c March 31🧵

#TenThingsLearnt w/c March 31🧵

1. In 2030, Ramadan will happen twice! In January and late December. 🤲🏿

2. At the current growth consumer rate of 3%, we will run out or copper in 70 years. ⛏️

3. An Israeli soldier said anonymously, that In Gaza, human shields are used by Israeli soldiers at least six times a day. 😤

4. At current growth costumer rate, 2052 is when we will run out of oil. 🛢️

5. After the IDF blew up all the bakeries, Gazan women made ovens out of clay. ❤️🧕🏽

6. The Jamaican flag is the ONLY flag that doesn’t contain red, white or blue.🇯🇲

7. When the Fred Perry company realised the Proud Boys had adopted their black polo shirts with yellow stripes as uniforms, they stopped making them. ✊🏿

8. Dr. Márcia Alves Marques Capella and her team found that Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 destroyed up to 20% of cancer cells in lab tests - leaving healthy cells untouched, suggesting certain musical vibrations may carry healing potential. 🎶❤️‍🩹

9. Like Jesus, Osiris, Dionysus, Adonis, Inanna, Ishtar, Balder, Shiva, Krishna, Vishnu, Quetzalcoati and at least 9 other Biblical characters came back to life from death.

10. ‘Aikido’, the Japanese martial art, translate in English to ‘The Art Of Peace’; its underlying philosophy is ‘to make the heart of the universe one’s own’.🧘🏿‍♂️

April Newsletter

4 news items + something to watch…

1 / Poetry Review Spring Launch / LDN (Online)

I have a new poem in the spring edition of Poetry Review, and I’ll be reading it (and selections from my next book) at the launch, with Rashed Aqrabawi, Tiffany Atkinson and Joe Carrick-Varty. I was kinda surprised it was published actually, first poem I’ve written in a while. It’s spurred me to recommit, to carve out time and put ink to leaf – for the love of word.

10 April ‘25 / 7 - 8:30pm
Free / Book here!

2 / Doctor Who / Premier  

So, I got to cerebrate with the cast and crew of Doctor Who at the premier on Monday, and I didn’t know my buddy Clara would be hosting! I grabbed her to snap this photo on the TARDIS-blue carpet, before we watched the first Ep. It was brilliant. Brilliant. I hope y’all make time to watch over the coming months. My episode, episode 5, will transmit on May 10th, please don’t miss it! Gather friends, make a watch-night of it.

Season 2 launches on Sat 12 April
on BBC iPlayer and BBC One
in the UK and Disney+
more info here. 

3 / SEARCH PARTY / Alberta, Canada

Thanks for the lovely audiences who poured out for the Search Parties in Belfast and Dublin. The next one will be at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, in a 246-seat studio theatre, extensively used for dance, drama, intimate music and events, but which I will use for poetry and storytelling. As you know, each performance is different. So if you’ve been and are passing by, come along again.

2 May
 ‘25 / 7:30pm
Margaret Greenham Theatre
107 Tunnel Mountain Drive
Banff, Alberta, Canada
T1L 1H5.
Tix here.

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4 / NATURE MATTERS / New Anthology 

What we know is that climate change will affect far more people from the global majority, than from the Western minority; that those least deserving will be the most punished by our continual destruction and desecrations of nature’s sacred places and precious jewels. Nature Matters, and this is the topic and lens through which this forthcoming anthology, discusses all we are doing. I have a few poems included and I imagine you’ll know a few of the others:

Victoria Adukwei Bulley, John Agard, Jason Allen-Paisant, Moniza Alvi, Anthony Anaxagorou, Raymond Antrobus, Mona Arshi, Andre Bagoo, Khairani Barokka, Dzifa Benson, Jay Bernard, Sujata Bhatt, Malika Booker, Kamau Brathwaite, Elizabeth-Jane Burnett, Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Mary Jean Chan, Kayo Chingonyi, David Dabydeen, Fred D’Aguiar, Kwame Dawes, Imtiaz Dharker, Tishani Doshi, Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, Inua Ellams, Richard Georges, Lorna Goodison, Mina Gorji, Will Harris, Ranjit Hoskote, Sarah Howe, Ian Humphreys, Sharan Hunjan, Ishion Hutchinson, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Anthony Joseph, Bhanu Kapil, Jackie Kay, Mimi Khalvati, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa, Zaffar Kunial, Hannah Lowe, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Roy McFarlane, Nick Makoha, E. A. Markham, Momtaza Mehri, Kei Miller, Daljit Nagra, Karthika Naïr, Grace Nichols, Selina Nwulu, Gboyega Odubanjo, Oluwaseun Olayiwola, Nii Parkes, Sandeep Parmar, Pascale Petit, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Alycia Pirmohamed, Nina Mingya Powles, Taz Rahman, A. K. Ramanujan, Nisha Ramayya, Shivanee Ramlochan, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Roger Robinson, Denise Saul, Seni Seneviratne, Olive Senior, Warsan Shire, Jeet Thayil, Marvin Thompson, Derek Walcott, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Rushika Wick, Jennifer Wong and Benjamin Zephaniah.

Pre-order from here.

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5 / Something to watch / Card On The Table!

Earlier this year, I got to break bread with Stanley Tucci, Professor Brian Cox and Sophie Turner. We had the chillest - we were too chill - conversation and the vibes were just right. It was part of a series called Cards On The Table, and you can watch my episode, right here. It’s only 25 mins long. Enjoy!

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#TenThingsLearnt w/c March 24🧵

1. Because of impossible beauty ideals in Russia, many women there apply permanent blusher to their lips; tattooing red, pink, or nude colours to appear fuller and more defined.

2. In 2024, China unveiled the BV100 battery. It uses Nickel-63 as its radioactive source and has an estimated lifespan of 50-years!

3. There were five Brontë sisters. Three were writers. Charlotte was the most prolific.

4. Last year, a whole spoonful of micro-plastics was discovered inside a human brain.🧠

5. A Greek politician was once given an entire island 🏝️ as a bribe!!!

6. The Telegraph has a dedicated section for anti-woke stories, and it is utterly pathetic. 🤭

7. 104 million Americans have a reading level equivalent of 11–14 years old. Which means over a third of country is functionally illiterate.

8. According Northern Ireland urban myth, Catholics kept their toaster on the kitchens counter. Protestants kept in the cupboard.

9. In Norther island, ‘Soup Drinkers’ is a derogatory term for Catholics who, driven to starvation, accepted soup from Protestant-run soup kitchens in exchange for converting to Protestantism. 🥣

10. Because carbon is the fourth most common element, diamonds are abundant in the universe. Wood, which only grows on earth, is significantly rarer! 🪵

#TenThingsLearnt w/c March 17 🧵

1. Inverted pink triangles were symbols of oppression used by Nazis during the Holocaust. Gay men were forced to wear them in concentration camps, to be marked as enemies of the state. Many were imprisoned, tortured, or killed. 😕

2. Fascists across the world tend to target the same groups: Leftists & political opponents, Intellectuals & Academics and Ethnic & Racial minorities, LGBTQI & Disabled People, aka “DEI”. 😩

3. Sometimes crystals in your inner-ear come loose and trigger vertigo. 🥴🤢

4. The asteroid, Ceres, has more fresh water than Earth! 💧

5. China has revealed a quantum supercomputer chip, Zuchongzhi 3, that is a million times faster than google’s supercomputer chip, Willow* 😧

6. *Willow, performs computation tasks in under 5 mins, that would the fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years to complete. That's 10 with 24 zeroes, a timeframe that exceeds the age of the universe - China’s chip is a million times faster than this one!😧😧

7. Global human population growth, is projected to peak at 10 Billon in 2060, then begin to decline and plateau at 6 billion around 2300.

8. 2.1 is the global total fertility needed to replace ourselves. 2.3 is the global average, which is a significant decline from 4.2, the rate in the 1950s.

9. The fertility rate is plummeting faster in rich / western countries. The U.S’ is at 1.7, the UK’s is at 1.4, and South Korea’s is at .6! All are desperately in NEED of people; in need of immigrants. In 50 years they will be FIGHTING to attract immigrants.

10. No country that has dipped below replacement rates has ever climbed above. As of right now, the decline is permanent.

#TenThingsLearnt w/c March 10 🧵

1. PNut the Squirrel’s owner, Mark, makes content on Only Fans to generate money for the upkeep of his Animal Sanctuary.

2. Botanically speaking, bananas are berries.🍌=🫐

3. Anhedonia is from the Greek words ‘an’ and ‘hedone,’ which collectively mean ‘without pleasure’ - is a state of being common among mice and men.

4. Boxing predates Karate in Japan. 🥊

5. Astronomers found 128 new moons around Saturn, bringing its grand total to 274.

6. Micro plastics - which doctors think affect fertility - have been found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific, in untouched snow in Antarctica and deep inside the human brain. 🧠

7. Whilst most countries are loosing land to rising sea level, The Netherlands expanded their territory by 18%, reverse-drowning the ocean.

8. Japan has 72 weather seasons!

9. The seven big oil companies were warned, way back in 1959, about global warming and climate breakdown. Instead, they buried and discredited the science and scientists. 🤬

10. ‘Devour Feculence’ means ‘eat shit’. 💩

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Feb 25

1. One of the best horse in the world is called United Touch. It’s called so because its parents are brother and sister. The horse was bred this way. 🤢🤮

2. You can’t look at someone’s genes and from that, identify their race. This is what “Race is a social construct” points to.

3. Air b’n’b advertised 760 rooms built in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. 🤬

4. Brazil was the first country to win the World Cup three times. 🇧🇷

5. Cambodia's Khmer language has 74 letters, making it the world's largest alphabet. 😳

6. In original Statue of Liberty design, the was holding broken chains, but this explicit reference to slavery was deemed too controversial, so they swapped it for a torch. 😩

7. Ken Warby has held The water speed record (WSR) of 317mph for the past 46 years with his Spirit of Australia hydroplane. He is the only person to have exceeded 300mph on water and survived.

8. Silent movies never used to have soundtracks. The film would travel and local musicians would improvise live scores.

9. Charlie Chaplin was one of the first composers to soundtrack films.

10. Indiana University has the largest Black film archive in the world.

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Feb 17

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Feb 17

1. The asteroid flying towards Earth now has a 3% chance of making impact. Previously it was 2% 😳…

2. …we can only observe the asteroid until April 2025. Then, it’ll disappear and reappear in 2028… which might be too late.

3. There was once a gathering of people with sea-life surnames. The event was hosted by legendary weather man, Michael Fish, at a Sea Zoo, and the guest were gifted the fish they were named after.

4. Over the past 20 years the insect population in the UK has declined by 60% 😳

5. Microsoft's new "topological qubit" chip is not built on a solid, liquid or gas surface, but on a phase of matter many experts did not think was possible.

6. Janet Jackson has been married 3 times. Her Husbands include a former backing dancer who directed the iconic ‘That’s the way love goes’ video.

7. Malcolm X visited the English town of Smethwick in February 1965. Shortly afterwards they had - what is described as - the most racist election campaign in British history.

8. Ireland is the ONLY country to have been colonised in Western Europe. This is why they’ve always stood with Palestine; they DEEPLY understand wtf is happening. The privilege of whiteness has never blinded them from the truth.

9. Under the reign of The Third Reich people began having nightmares in which The Third Reich had made dreaming illegal. They’d wake up screaming.

10. Thailand means ‘land of the free’.

#TenThingsLearnt Feb 10

1. Women from different cultures have different symptoms for the menopause! 😳🩸

2. The asteroid flying towards Earth has a 2% chance of making impact in 2032…

3. …the Countries at risk are: sIndia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria 😳, Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador.

4. One in six people on earth are Indian.

5. One is six people on earth are Chinese.

6. The Norwegian government suppressed the language and culture of the Kven people.

7. Isaac Newton believed the world would end in 2060.

8. Up until recently, Doctors didn’t believe it was possible to have ADHD & Autism simultaneously.

9. Lavatory comes from the verb ‘lave’, which means ‘to wash’.

10. Tesla is suing drivers who complain about their cars after accidents – and winning.

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Feb 3

1. Almost 200 American prisons have closed in the past 20 years. Some have been turned into stylish apartment buildings! 🎉🥳

2. The Wangari Maathai Award for Environmental Leadership is given by various organizations to young environmental activists.

3. Koalas smell like cough syrups and sleep for 18 hours a day.

4. In Oct ‘23, there were 2.3million folks in Gaza. Trump announced wanting to resettle the “1.8million Gazans” remaining to Jordan & Egypt. This means 500,000 people were killed or ‘cleansed’.

5. Sea Otters have favourite rocks and often sleep holding hands.

6. Nelson Mandela Place - in Glasgow - was given that name at the height of the anti apartheid protests, precisely because the South African Consulate was located there. It was expert trolling; it forced their address to become:

The South African Consulate

Nelson Mandela Place

Glasgow, Scotland. 😂✊🏿

7. Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-sweeping “Not Like Us” is at once a Drake-slaying diss track, a No. 1 single, a West Coast unity anthem, a Kamala Harris rally singalong, a World Series fight song, and a bar mitzvah dance floor party-starter.

8. Chang and Eng Bunker were co- joined twins fused at their sternum and livers. They were brought to the US as a circus act, settled in North Carolina, married sisters and fathered 21 children.

9. Temperatures at the north pole soared more than 20C above average, crossing the threshold for ice to melt.

10. Some Inuits believe the northern lights are the spirits of hunted animals.

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Jan 27

1. Kwame Nkrumah was on the cover of Time magazine, 9 February 1953.

2. Many Californian homeowners who don’t believe in climate change have insurance policies from companies that do. 🤷🏿‍♂️

3. German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who was vice president of the German Colonial Society told Ben-Gurion that Israel was a “fortress of the west”.

4. Knife crime is predominantly portrayed as a problem in Black and brown communities, but 69% of perpetrators are white.

5. Portugal was the first country in the world to decriminalise all drugs. 😎

6. The steam from erupting volcanoes sometimes melts the wings off birds. 😕

7. Denisovans are recently discovered *different breed of humans! They mated with Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.

8. AI designed computer chips that the human minds can’t understand. But they haven’t been built. Yet. 😳

9. The tiny planarian flatworm can regrow its entire body from just a tiny silver of tissue. 😃

10. Gay military personnel could still be jailed right up until 1994. The military thought they would have “a substantial and negative effect on morale, and consequently, on the fighting power and operational effectiveness of the armed forces” 🙄

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Jan 20

1. The new quantum computer chip, Willow, can perform a computation task in under 5 mins, that’d take the current fastest supercomputer 10 septillion years to complete. That's 10 with 24 zeroes, a timeframe that exceeds the age of the universe.

2. Grapes and apples can grow on the same tree - a combination fruit tree - which is created by grafting grapes and apple together.

3. Tik Tok does not pay content creators in Africa.

4. The Roman Salute is just another name for Hitler’s salute. Both are fascist. Besides, there is no evidence from the Roman art and paintings that survive, that ancient Romans ever used that gesture.

5. News Group Newspapers hired more than 100 private investigators, over 35,000 times in 16 years to snoop on Prince Harry.

6. Tunisia was the first Arab and Muslim country to abolish slavery on 23 January 1846. Their leader, Ahmad I ibn Mustafa, closed slave markets, banned their export and freedom all slaves born in Tunisia.

7. Over the last two years, Tunisia’s current president, Kais Saied, dismantled their democracy, jailed political opponents, crushed the independent judiciary and the news media, and rewrote the Constitution in his favour.

8. Kais Saied claimed that sub-Saharan African migrants were part of a secret plan to turn Tunisia into “a purely African country with no affiliation to Arab and Islamic nations.” Immediately, Black folk in Tunisia, students and work were evicted, fired, assaulted, robbed or forced into hiding.

9. Marcus Garvey, was falsely convicted of mail fraud more than 100 years ago. Joe Biden posthumously pardoned him.

10. Ken Saro-Wiwa was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

#TenThingsLearnt w/c Jan 13

1. The origin for the word ‘gossip’ was ‘god’ +’ sibb’, referring to a godparent or family friend…

2. …It evolved to mean female friends chatting, particularly during childbirth…

3. … conversations would drift to talking about others… and became ‘gossip’. (Thanks Hanan)

4. Giraffe can run at 65 mph.

5. Alfred Kinsey, who invented the Kinsey sexuality scale, also studied fruit flies.

6. Duck feathers are hydrophobic.

7. Loki, Shiva, Vishnu, Tiresias, Hermaphroditus, Atum, Hapi, Mahu, Ishatar, Lan Cahie - are Gender fluid characters that have been around for centuries. CENTURIES.

8. Accelerating anything to the speed of light would require an infinite amount of energy.

9. In 2023, Novo, the company that makes Ozempic, become the richest company in Europe, with a market cap of $424 billion.

10. In a single month – Oct 2023 – Israel dropped 25,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, equivalent to burning 150,000 tonnes of coal.