Blue plaque to be unveiled at home of Thomas the Tank Engine creator
Eighty years since the first of a beloved fleet of trains was introduced to the world, a national blue plaque is being unveiled at the redbrick house in Gloucestershire where the Rev W Awdry worked on his railway stories.The addition of the new Historic England plaque to Wilbert Awdry’s old address in Stroud is expected to prompt fans of Thomas the Tank Engine and his fellow locomotives to make a pilgrimage to the street to pay their respects.Awdry’s daughter, Veronica Chambers, said the family was delighted: “It’s an enormous privilege and an honour.Father would have been very surprised.”The unveiling ceremony at Awdry’s former home, named Sodor after the fictional island his anthropomorphic engines inhabited, also forms part of this year’s Railway 200 celebrations.
Awdry was working as a curate in Kings Norton, Birmingham, when the first book in the series, The Three Railway Engines, was published in 1945,On his retirement in 1965, Awdry and his family moved to Stroud, where he continued developing the world of Sodor,Chambers said Awdry’s requirements for the house included a room for his study and another to host a model railway,“He felt what he was doing with his stories was as much an outreach to people as being a parish priest,” said Chambers,“Lots of people used to write to him for advice, a bit like an agony aunt.
He was non-judgmental and understood children.”Since his death in 1997 at the age of 85, the phenomenon of Thomas has continued to grow across the world, helped by television adaptations.A stained glass window starring the tank engine has been installed at St Mary Magdalene church in Stroud and enthusiasts are often found there.Chambers said Awdry would have been surprised at the idea of fans visiting Gloucestershire.“I don’t think he could ever quite understand why Thomas and his friends were so popular.
I think it’s because children are pretty much the same anywhere in the world and they seem to relate to the different characters – Thomas is cheeky, Percy misunderstands things and Gordon is big and bossy,”Nigel Prenter, a Stroud district councillor, said one of his grandchildren had all the books in the series and slept with one under his pillow every night,He said: “Just this week my wife, Joanne, showed three Japanese visitors the stained glass window, which they had come specifically to see,”Duncan Wilson, the chief executive of Historic England, said it was an honour to celebrate Awdry and the happiness he brought to so many childhoods,He said: “The early books, which would become The Railway Series, laid the foundation for a global phenomenon, based on the magic of the steam train.
”The heritage minister, Fiona Twycross, said: “Our railways are a vital part of our national heritage, and the Rev Awdry’s books are an excellent example of how they can spark creativity and imagination,”
AI chatbots are hurting children, Australian education minister warns as anti-bullying plan announced
A disturbing new trend of AI chatbots bullying children and even encouraging them to take their own lives has the Australian government very concerned.Speaking to media on Saturday, the federal education minister, Jason Clare, said artificial intelligence was “supercharging” bullying.“AI chatbots are now bullying kids. It’s not kids bullying kids, it’s AI bullying kids, humiliating them, hurting them, telling them they’re losers … telling them to kill themselves. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than that,” Clare said
UK MPs warn of repeat of 2024 riots unless online misinformation is tackled
Failures to properly tackle online misinformation mean it is “only a matter of time” before viral content triggers a repeat of the 2024 summer riots, MPs have warned.Chi Onwurah, the chair of the Commons science and technology select committee, said ministers seemed complacent about the threat and this was putting the public at risk.The committee said it was disappointed in the government’s response to its recent report warning social media companies’ business models contributed to disturbances after the Southport murders.Replying to the committee’s findings, the government rejected a call for legislation tackling generative artificial intelligence platforms and said it would not intervene directly in the online advertising market, which MPs claimed helped incentivise the creation of harmful material after the attack.Onwurah said the government agreed with most of its conclusions but had stopped short of backing its recommendations for action
The teamwork behind Bletchley Park’s Colossus computer | Letter
Andrew Smith is right to applaud the work of Tommy Flowers for building Colossus, the world’s first digital programmable computer, delivered to Bletchley Park in 1944 (Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies, 12 October). The piece concludes with Flowers stressing: “It’s never just one person in one place” – teamwork and collaboration are key. This is even truer than the article might imply, when it says “subsequent models” of Colossus “included many new features and innovations”, as if these had been the result of Flowers working alone, just upgrading his design. Quite the contrary.It is well documented (for example, in the 2006 book Colossus by B Jack Copeland and others) that the Bletchley Park codebreakers Jack Good and Donald Michie not only utilised Colossus to help break the codes, they enhanced the computer; it was these developments that were so successfully incorporated by Flowers in subsequent machines
Olivia Williams says actors need ‘nudity rider’-type controls for AI body scans
Actors should have as much control over the data harvested from scans of their body as they do over nudity scenes, the actor Olivia Williams has said, amid heightened concern over artificial intelligence’s impact on performers.The star of Dune: Prophecy and The Crown said she and other actors were regularly pressed to have their bodies scanned by banks of cameras while on set, with few guarantees about how the data would be used or where it would end up.“A reasonable request would be to follow the precedent of the ‘nudity rider’,” she said. “This footage can only be used in the action of that scene. It cannot be used in any other context at all, and when the scene has been edited it must be deleted on all formats
‘Legacies condensed to AI slop’: OpenAI Sora videos of the dead raise alarm with legal experts
Last night I was flicking through a dating app. One guy stood out: “Henry VIII, 34, King of England, nonmonogamy”. Next thing I know, I am at a candlelit bar sharing a martini with the biggest serial dater of the 16th century.But the night is not over. Next, I am DJing back-to-back with Diana, Princess of Wales
Dan and Phil’s relationship revelation is a reminder of how toxic fandoms can be | Eilish Gilligan
This week, longtime British YouTubers Dan Howell and Phil Lester uploaded a new video confirming they have been in a secret romantic relationship for the past 16 years.If you weren’t a deeply online child during the 2010s, you probably have no idea who Dan and Phil are, or why this matters. But to those who formed a robust parasocial bond with the duo – who have more than 13 million collective subscribers on YouTube – this was a revelatory moment. It was also a sobering reminder of the emotional damage that toxic fandoms can wreak on their subjects.Over the course of 45 minutes, Howell and Lester, now in their thirties, share the “apocalyptic constant stress of the Dan and Phil dating conspiracy”, where “fans” subjected them to frenzied speculation for 16 years straight
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