Malayali young men and their movie heroes

Here we bring together masculinities and popular culture to think about how they are configured within the arena of cinema, focusing in on Kerala's two major male movie stars and the relationship they have with their young male fans. In their relative lack of interest in female stars and turn towards male stars young men are playing out an approach towards gendering which does not take as its foundation hierarchic or compulsory heterosexuality. Young men's tentative (and illicit, difficult) relationships with young women lack the substance of their relationships with each other and with their male movie heroes. We consider cinema as a forum for collective fantasy which acts as a source of helpful orientations, stars being particular nodes within this arena, dense points of transfer of desire, belief, self-affirmation or transformation and so on. Film audiences receive or subvert cinematic messages and form relationships with stars - whether in fantasy or actually - and with each other, mediated through cinematic modes of being or styles of doing. Another effect of cinema-related activities is to provide adolescent and post-adolescent boys with a safe segregated social space in which they can socialise, share information, try out fledgling masculine identities and grapple with the demands of emerging sexualities. The star makes possible identifications with the self- (for Mohan Lal, one who is working class and in solidarity with the poor, in Mammootty's case a solidly bourgeoios self); transformations of the self - opportunities through fan association work to distribute largesse like a high-caste wealthy patron; and an extended sense of self - the possiblity that through the fan association one might participate in the star's power and reach. In Kerala, unlike other states, fandom is not a matter of rivalry, political partisanship or even life and death. While there is a 'hard-core' central group who remain partisan and always committed to 'their' star, in general young men frequently shift associations and change allegiances. Yet the two heroes seem to embody different styles of hero and to have different types of appeal to audiences; sociologically, their fan bases trace slightly different social groupings. Mammootty has an affinity with roles implying powerful and high-status men in control, strong in family drama; Mohan Lal is admired for his abilities in romance, song, dance and fighting. One might wish to be like Mammootty but often feels that one already is in some way like Mohan Lal. Despite considerable overlap and dispute, Mammootty and Mohan Lal embody and perform different styles of manliness, none of which one could dispense with in one's potential repertiore. Both Mammootty and Mohan Lal are necessary in a full fantasy life and a necessarily internally fragmented and shifting gendered identity. Cinema also relates to ethnicity. Mammotty allows young non-Muslim men to experience a fantasy relationship with a powerful mature Muslim man, a community coded 'other' in Kerala. A twist to this is that (similar to analyses of white anglo masculinities and work on the 'blackness' of Elvis) we find working class Hindu masculinity, while explicitly defined in opposition to the Muslim other, at another level actually relies upon an incorporation of aspects of masculinity especially associated in the cultural landscape with Muslimness. In a more mediated and disguised manner, Mohan Lal also plays with elements of fantasy identity culturally coded by young Hindus as 'Muslim'

Charity, philanthropy and development in Colombo, Sri Lanka

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Inversion dynamics of class manifolds in deep learning reveals tradeoffs underlying generalisation

To achieve near-zero training error in a classification problem, the layers of a feed-forward network have to disentangle the manifolds of data points with different labels, to facilitate the discrimination. However, excessive class separation can bring to overfitting since good generalisation requires learning invariant features, which involve some level of entanglement. We report on numerical experiments showing how the optimisation dynamics finds representations that balance these opposing tendencies with a non-monotonic trend. After a fast segregation phase, a slower rearrangement (conserved across data sets and architectures) increases the class entanglement.The training error at the inversion is stable under subsampling, and across network initialisations and optimisers, which characterises it as a property solely of the data structure and (very weakly) of the architecture. The inversion is the manifestation of tradeoffs elicited by well-defined and maximally stable elements of the training set, coined ``stragglers'', particularly influential for generalisation

Should I stay or should I go: South Indian artisanal fishers’ precarious livelihoods and their engagement with categorical ocean forecasts

Ocean State Forecasts contribute to safe and sustainable fishing in India, but their usage among artisanal fishers is often limited. Our research in Thiruvananthapuram district in the southern Indian state of Kerala tested forecast quality and value and how fishers engage with forecasts. In two fishing villages, we verified forecast accuracy, skill, and reliability by comparing forecasts with observations during the 2018 monsoon season (June–September; n 5 122). We assessed forecast value by analyzing fishers’ perceptions of weather and risks and the way they used forecasts based on 8 focus group discussions, 20 interviews, conversations, and logs of 10 fishing boats. We find that while forecasts are mostly accurate, inadequate forecasting of unusual events (e.g., wind .45 km h21) and frequent fishing restrictions (n 5 32) undermine their value. Fishers seek more localized and detailed forecasts, but they do not always use them. Weather forecasts are just one of the tools artisanal fishers deploy, used not simply to decide as to whether to go to sea but also to manage potential risks, allowing them to prepare for fishing under hazardous conditions. Their decisions are also based on the availability of fish and their economic needs. From our findings, we suggest that political, economic, and social marginality of south Indian fishers influences their perceptions and responses to weather-related risks. Therefore, improving forecast usage requires not only better forecast skill and wide dissemination of tailor-made weather information, but also better appreciation of risk cultures and the livelihood imperatives of artisanal fishing communities

Goodbye Hartmann trial: a prospective, international, multicenter, observational study on the current use of a surgical procedure developed a century ago

Background: Literature suggests colonic resection and primary anastomosis (RPA) instead of Hartmann's procedure (HP) for the treatment of left-sided colonic emergencies. We aim to evaluate the surgical options globally used to treat patients with acute left-sided colonic emergencies and the factors that leading to the choice of treatment, comparing HP and RPA. Methods: This is a prospective, international, multicenter, observational study registered on ClinicalTrials.gov. A total 1215 patients with left-sided colonic emergencies who required surgery were included from 204 centers during the period of March 1, 2020, to May 31, 2020. with a 1-year follow-up. Results: 564 patients (43.1%) were females. The mean age was 65.9 ± 15.6 years. HP was performed in 697 (57.3%) patients and RPA in 384 (31.6%) cases. Complicated acute diverticulitis was the most common cause of left-sided colonic emergencies (40.2%), followed by colorectal malignancy (36.6%). Severe complications (Clavien-Dindo ≥ 3b) were higher in the HP group (P < 0.001). 30-day mortality was higher in HP patients (13.7%), especially in case of bowel perforation and diffused peritonitis. 1-year follow-up showed no differences on ostomy reversal rate between HP and RPA. (P = 0.127). A backward likelihood logistic regression model showed that RPA was preferred in younger patients, having low ASA score (≤ 3), in case of large bowel obstruction, absence of colonic ischemia, longer time from admission to surgery, operating early at the day working hours, by a surgeon who performed more than 50 colorectal resections. Conclusions: After 100 years since the first Hartmann's procedure, HP remains the most common treatment for left-sided colorectal emergencies. Treatment's choice depends on patient characteristics, the time of surgery and the experience of the surgeon. RPA should be considered as the gold standard for surgery, with HP being an exception