title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: The exact number of German women and girls raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation is uncertain, but western historians estimate their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands and possibly as many as two million. The number of babies, who came to be known as "Russian Children", born as a result is unknown. However, most rapes did not result in pregnancies, and many pregnancies did not result in the victims giving birth. Abortions were the preferred choice of rape victims, and many died as a consequence of internal injuries after being brutally violated, or due to untreated sexually transmitted diseases because of a lack of medicine or badly-performed abortions. Many women committed suicide after rape, mostly due to being unable to cope with their traumatic experience, although some were forced to by their fathers because of their "dishonor", while others were shot and killed by their husbands for "consenting to sexual relations with Allied soldiers". Many German women were verbally abused by German soldiers on the streets or in their homes for being "Allied whores", while a lot of them even received threatening letters from German men. In addition, many children died in postwar Germany as a result of widespread starvation, scarce supplies and diseases such as typhus and diphtheria. The infant mortality in Berlin reached up to 90%.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: West Berliners and women of the wartime generation refer to the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park, Berlin, as the "tomb of the unknown rapist" in response to the mass rapes by Red Army soldiers in 1945 during and after the Battle of Berlin.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: Hannelore Kohl, the wife of former West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, had been gang-raped at the age of 12 by Soviet soldiers in May 1945, according to her biographer. As a consequence, she sustained a serious lifelong back injury after she had been thrown out of a first-floor window. She suffered long and serious illnesses, which experts thought to be the consequences of childhood trauma. Hannelore Kohl took her own life in 2001.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: Initially, East German and Soviet propaganda suggested that most of the rapes were being conducted by Germans disguised as Soviet soldiers, including Werwolf battalions. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn took part in the invasion of Germany and wrote a poem about it, "Prussian Nights". Parts of the poem read, "Twenty-two Hoeringstrasse. It's not been burned, just looted, rifled. A moaning by the walls, half muffled: the mother's wounded, half alive. The little daughter's on the mattress, dead. How many have been on it? A platoon, a company perhaps? A girl's been turned into a woman, a woman turned into a corpse... The mother begs, 'Soldier, kill me! Records of sexual violence were found in works of other Soviet authors, mostly in the form of war memoirs mentioning particular incidents witnessed by the authors, such as Lev Kopelev, Vladimir Gelfand, Mikhail Koryakov, Eugenii Plimak, David Samoilow, Boris Slutskii, Nikolay Nikulin, Grigorii Pomerants, Leonid Ryabichev and Vassily Grossman. Vera Dubina and Oleg Budnitskii were among those few historians who investigated the subject more systematically.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: As most women recoiled from their experiences and had no desire to recount them, most biographies and depictions of the period, like the 2004 German film "Downfall", alluded to mass rape by the Red Army but stopped shy of mentioning it explicitly. As time has progressed, more works have been produced that have directly addressed the issue, such as the books "The 158-Pound Marriage" and "My Story" (1961) by Gemma LaGuardia Gluck [reissued as "Fiorello's Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck's Story (Religion, Theology, and the Holocaust)" (2007, Expanded Edition)], or the 2006 films "Joy Division" and "The Good German".


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: The topic is the subject of much feminist discourse. The first autobiographical work depicting the events was the groundbreaking 1954 book "A Woman in Berlin", which was made into a 2008 feature film. It was widely rejected in Germany after its initial publication but has seen a new acceptance, and many women have found inspiration to come forward with their own stories.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: In "Taken by Force", J. Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany to be 11,040. As in the case of the American occupation of France after the D-Day invasion, many of the American rapes in Germany in 1945 were gang rapes committed by armed soldiers at gunpoint.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: Although policies against fraternization were instituted for the Americans in Germany, the phrase "copulation without conversation is not fraternization" was used as a motto by United States Army troops. The journalist Osmar White, a war correspondent from Australia who served with the American troops during the war, wrote:


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: A typical victimization with sexual assault by drunken American personnel marching through occupied territory involved threatening a German family with weapons, forcing one or more women to engage in sex, and putting the entire family out on the street afterward.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: As in the eastern sector of the occupation, the number of rapes peaked in 1945, but a high rate of violence against the German and Austrian populations by the Americans lasted at least into the first half of 1946, with five cases of dead German women found in American barracks in May and June 1946 alone.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: Carol Huntington wrote that the American soldiers who raped German women and then left gifts of food for them may have permitted themselves to view the act as prostitution rather than rape. Citing the work of a Japanese historian alongside that suggestion, Huntington writes that Japanese women who begged for food "were raped and soldiers sometimes left food for those they raped."


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: White American soldiers in Germany were responsible for mass rapes, but the Black soldiers of America's segregated occupation force were both more likely to be charged with rape and severely punished. Heide Fehrenbach writes that while the American Black soldiers were in fact by no means free from indiscipline,


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: In 2015, the German news magazine "Der Spiegel" reported that German historian Miriam Gebhardt "believes that members of the US military raped as many as 190,000 German women by the time West Germany regained sovereignty in 1955, with most of the assaults taking place in the months immediately following the US invasion of Nazi Germany. The author bases her claims in large part on reports kept by Bavarian priests in the summer of 1945." However the author of the "Der Spiegel" article concluded her total "is an extrapolation" which "hardly seems plausible" and is "unlikely".


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: Sean Longden states that while not on the scale of the Red Army in the Soviet Zone, the British Military Police regularly investigated reports of rape. However the numbers were small compared to the number of desertions:


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: Longden mentions that some rapes were carried out by soldiers either suffering from post traumatic stress or who were drunk, but that these were not considered as serious as the less common premeditated crimes.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: Longden mentions that on 16 April 1945, three women in Neustadt am Rübenberge were raped, however he does not make clear if this was one incident or three separate ones. He also does not make clear if they were spontaneous or premeditated. He gives an example of a premeditated rape: In the village of Oyle, near Nienburg, an attempted rape of two local girls at gunpoint by two soldiers ended in the death of one of the girls when, whether intentionally or not, one of the soldiers shot her. In a third example, Longden highlights that not all British officers were willing to punish their men. When a German woman reported a rape to a British Army medic, two British soldiers were identified by the woman in a line up as the perpetrators, but their commanding officer declined to take any action because "they were going on leave".


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: Clive Emsley quotes a senior British Army chaplain as reporting that there was "a good deal of rape going on, those who suffer [rape] have probably deserved it". However, he adds that probably referred to attacks by former slave labourers (displaced persons) seeking revenge. Longden also mentions such incidents and highlights that for a time Hanover, in the British zone, was in a state of anarchy with displaced persons raping and murdering German civilians. Initially when German family members approached the overstretched British authorities about murders they were told "we only have time for living people here".


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: French troops took part in the invasion of Germany, and France was assigned an occupation zone in Germany. Perry Biddiscombe quotes the original survey estimates that the French for instance committed "385 rapes in the Constance area; 600 in Bruchsal; and 500 in Freudenstadt." French Army soldiers were alleged to have committed widespread rape in the Höfingen District near Leonberg. Katz and Kaiser, though they mention rape, found no specific occurrences in either Höfingen or Leonberg compared to other towns.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: According to Norman Naimark, French Moroccan troops matched the behaviour of Soviet troops when it came to rape, in particular in the early occupation of Baden and Württemberg, provided the numbers are correct.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: German academic historians at Jena and Magdeburg contend that only France supported the children of her occupying armies resulted from the mass rape of German women. In the four occupied zones, however, many children of German mothers were ignored their entire lives. Children of French troops were regarded as French citizens. At least 1,500 children in France and her colonies were given up for adoption. Others never overcame the apparent flaw, while some "occupation children" gradually made their way in the divided society of Germany.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: It has been frequently repeated that the wartime rapes were surrounded by decades of silence or, until relatively recently, ignored by academics, with the prevailing attitude being that the Germans were the perpetrators of war crimes, Soviet writings speaking only of Russian liberators and German guilt and Western historians focusing on specific elements of the Holocaust.


title: Rape during the occupation of Germany

text: In postwar Germany, especially in West Germany, the wartime rape stories became an essential part of political discourse and that the rape of German women, along with the expulsion of Germans from the East and the Allied occupation, had been universalized in an attempt to situate the German population on the whole as victims. However, it has been argued that it was not a "universal" story of women being raped by men but of German women being abused and violated by an army, which fought Nazi Germany and liberated death camps.


title: Merkle tree

text: In cryptography and computer science, a hash tree or Merkle tree is a tree in which every "leaf" (node) is labelled with the cryptographic hash of a data block, and every node that is not a leaf (called a "branch", "inner node", or "inode") is labelled with the cryptographic hash of the labels of its child nodes. A hash tree allows efficient and secure verification of the contents of a large data structure. A hash tree is a generalization of a hash list and a hash chain.


title: Merkle tree

text: Demonstrating that a leaf node is a part of a given binary hash tree requires computing a number of hashes proportional to the logarithm of the number of leaf nodes in the tree. Conversely, in a hash list, the number is proportional to the number of leaf nodes itself. A Merkle tree is therefore an efficient example of a cryptographic commitment scheme, in which the root of the tree is seen as a commitment and leaf nodes may be revealed and proven to be part of the original commitment.


title: Merkle tree

text: Hash trees can be used to verify any kind of data stored, handled and transferred in and between computers. They can help ensure that data blocks received from other peers in a peer-to-peer network are received undamaged and unaltered, and even to check that the other peers do not lie and send fake blocks.


title: Merkle tree

text: Hash trees are used in hash-based cryptography. Hash trees are also used in the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), Btrfs and ZFS file systems (to counter data degradation); Dat protocol; Apache Wave protocol; Git and Mercurial distributed revision control systems; the Tahoe-LAFS backup system; Zeronet; the Bitcoin and Ethereum peer-to-peer networks; the Certificate Transparency framework; the Nix package manager and descendants like GNU Guix; and a number of NoSQL systems such as Apache Cassandra, Riak, and Dynamo.


title: Merkle tree

text: The initial Bitcoin implementation of Merkle trees by Satoshi Nakamoto applies the compression step of the hash function to an excessive degree, which is mitigated by using Fast Merkle Trees.


title: Merkle tree

text: A hash tree is a tree of hashes in which the leaves (i.e., leaf nodes, sometimes also called "leafs") are hashes of data blocks in, for instance, a file or set of files. Nodes farther up in the tree are the hashes of their respective children. For example, in the above picture "hash 0" is the result of hashing the concatenation of "hash 0-0" and "hash 0-1". That is, "hash 0" = "hash"( "hash 0-0" + "hash 0-1" ) where "+" denotes concatenation.


title: Merkle tree

text: Most hash tree implementations are binary (two child nodes under each node) but they can just as well use many more child nodes under each node.


title: Merkle tree

text: Usually, a cryptographic hash function such as SHA-2 is used for the hashing. If the hash tree only needs to protect against unintentional damage, unsecured checksums such as CRCs can be used.


title: Merkle tree

text: In the top of a hash tree there is a "top hash" (or "root hash" or "master hash"). Before downloading a file on a P2P network, in most cases the top hash is acquired from a trusted source, for instance a friend or a web site that is known to have good recommendations of files to download. When the top hash is available, the hash tree can be received from any non-trusted source, like any peer in the P2P network. Then, the received hash tree is checked against the trusted top hash, and if the hash tree is damaged or fake, another hash tree from another source will be tried until the program finds one that matches the top hash.


title: Merkle tree

text: The main difference from a hash list is that one branch of the hash tree can be downloaded at a time and the integrity of each branch can be checked immediately, even though the whole tree is not available yet. For example, in the picture, the integrity of "data block L2" can be verified immediately if the tree already contains "hash 0-0" and "hash 1" by hashing the data block and iteratively combining the result with "hash 0-0" and then "hash 1" and finally comparing the result with the "top hash". Similarly, the integrity of "data block L3" can be verified if the tree already has "hash 1-1" and "hash 0". This can be an advantage since it is efficient to split files up in very small data blocks so that only small blocks have to be re-downloaded if they get damaged. If the hashed file is big, such a hash list or hash chain becomes fairly big. But if it is a tree, one small branch can be downloaded quickly, the integrity of the branch can be checked, and then the downloading of data blocks can start.


title: Merkle tree

text: The Merkle hash root does not indicate the tree depth, enabling a second-preimage attack in which an attacker creates a document other than the original that has the same Merkle hash root. For the example above, an attacker can create a new document containing two data blocks, where the first is "hash 0-0" + "hash 0-1", and the second is "hash 1-0" + "hash 1-1".


title: Merkle tree

text: One simple fix is defined in Certificate Transparency: when computing leaf node hashes, a 0x00 byte is prepended to the hash data, while 0x01 is prepended when computing internal node hashes. Limiting the hash tree size is a prerequisite of some formal security proofs, and helps in making some proofs tighter. Some implementations limit the tree depth using hash tree depth prefixes before hashes, so any extracted hash chain is defined to be valid only if the prefix decreases at each step and is still positive when the leaf is reached.


title: Merkle tree

text: The Tiger tree hash is a widely used form of hash tree. It uses a binary hash tree (two child nodes under each node), usually has a data block size of 1024 bytes and uses the Tiger hash.


title: Merkle tree

text: Tiger tree hashes are used in Gnutella, Gnutella2, and Direct Connect P2P file sharing protocols and in file sharing applications such as Phex, BearShare, LimeWire, Shareaza, DC++ and gtk-gnutella.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: 25 is the third studio album by English singer-songwriter Adele, released on 20 November 2015 by XL Recordings and Columbia Records. The album is titled as a reflection of her life and frame of mind at 25 years old and is termed a "make-up record". Its lyrical content features themes of Adele "yearning for her old self, her nostalgia", and "melancholia about the passage of time" according to an interview with the singer by "Rolling Stone", as well as themes of motherhood and regret. In contrast to Adele's previous works, the production of "25" incorporated the use of electronic elements and creative rhythmic patterns, with elements of 1980s R&B and organs. Like when recording "21" (2011), Adele worked with producer and songwriter Paul Epworth and Ryan Tedder, along with new collaborations with Max Martin and Shellback, Bruno Mars, Greg Kurstin, Danger Mouse, the Smeezingtons, Samuel Dixon, and Tobias Jesso Jr.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: "25" received generally positive reviews from music critics, who commended its production and Adele's vocal performance. Issued nearly five years after the release of her second album, the internationally successful "21", the album was widely anticipated and Adele's record labels promoted the album with an extensive marketing campaign. "25" became a massive commercial success, debuting at number one in 32 countries and breaking first-week sales records in multiple countries, including the United Kingdom and United States. In the US, the album sold over 3.38 million copies in its first week of sales, marking the largest single-week sales for an album since Luminate Data began tracking point-of-sale music purchases in 1991. "25" was the world's best-selling album of the year for 2015, with 17.4 million copies sold within the year, and has gone on to sell over 22 million copies worldwide, making it the fourth-best selling album of the 21st century, the second-best selling album of the 2010s (behind "21"), and one of the best-selling albums of all-time. Following "21", it was certified Diamond by the RIAA, making Adele the only artist of the 2010s to achieve this certification with two albums.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Four singles were released to promote the album, with "Hello" becoming an international number one song and the fastest selling digital single in the US, with over a million copies sold within a week of its release, "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" charted within the top 10 and "When We Were Young" and "Water Under the Bridge" charted within the top 20 across Europe and North America.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Credited for impacting the music industry by encouraging a renewed interest in buying physical releases rather than downloading or streaming and much like "21", for saving the dwindling sales of the global music industry, "25" won the 2016 Brit Award for British Album of the Year, and the 2017 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. To promote the album, Adele embarked on her third worldwide concert tour, Adele Live 2016. It started on 29 February 2016 and ended on 30 June 2017. The concert broke numerous attendance records across the globe and grossed $167.7 million.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Following the release of "21" (2011), Adele was considering quitting music. However, in early 2012 she announced she was simply taking a hiatus from music in order to "take time and live a little bit". Her hiatus from music came to an end after the birth of her first child in October 2012, with Adele stating her son inspired her to start recording music again in order for him to "know what I do". Before the album's recording came under way, Adele made a conscious decision not to try and create another "21" and would not make another "heartbreak record".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Prior to the album's release, "25" was listed as one of the most anticipated albums of 2015. "Billboard", "Fuse", "The Sydney Morning Herald" and numerous others placed the album at number one on their most anticipated list, with the latter stating "if Adele releases her third album in 2015, she could dominate the year." Prior to the album's official announcement, music journalists and fans speculated that the album would be titled "25" continuing the age theme from Adele's previous releases "19" and "21". On the eve of her 26th birthday in May 2014, Adele posted a message via her Twitter account which prompted media discussion about her next album. The message, "Bye bye 25 ... See you again later in the year", was interpreted by outlets including "Billboard" and Capital FM as meaning that her next album would be titled "25" and released later in the year.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: On 10 February 2013, Adele confirmed that she was in the very early stages of her third album and was having meetings while staying in Los Angeles for the 85th Academy Awards. Initially recording sessions for "25" were unsuccessful, in which Adele suffered from writer's block. Adele rescheduled the album's recording stating she did not feel "ready", but returned to the studio when her son was eighteen months old, which inspired her to write an album about motherhood. In an interview on BBC One, it was revealed that a whole album about being a mother was written and scrapped because she thought the material was "too boring".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Adele stated that the album took a long time to write, saying she did not think the album was ever going to be finished. During the initial recording Adele ran out of ideas and lost the ability to write songs, but her team encouraged her to go back to the drawing board and keep writing. After what seemed like a very arduous process to the singer, who feared she may have lost the inspiration for her writing, the material that eventually became "25" manifested. Adele attempted to write "25" numerous times, but struggled; after taking time off due to motherhood Adele returned to the studio but stated she was not ready to start writing. She then went on to take more time off, repeating this process "a couple of times".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In 2013, Adele began recording once again, contacting friend and producer Kid Harpoon. Adele and Harpoon went to his recording studio, however the session was unproductive with Adele saying: "I don't know why I wasn't ready, I just couldn't access myself."


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: A few months passed and Adele travelled to New York to begin working with long time collaborator Ryan Tedder, but the sessions with Tedder were also unfruitful. However, Adele did use one of the songs from the sessions entitled "Remedy", which was written about her best friend, her grandparents, her boyfriend, and her son, and was the easiest song on the album for her to write. Adele was excited by the song and believed she was finally creating music that she liked and felt confident about. After recording the song along with others she flew producer Rick Rubin to the studio who was displeased with the songs that she had written, and encouraged Adele to go back to the "drawing board".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Adele continued to suffer with writer's block, until she met with producer Greg Kurstin. During the meeting with Kurstin, Adele had a breakthrough: "It all poured right out of me." "Hello" was written by Adele and Kurstin and produced by the latter, who also played bass, guitar, piano and keyboards, with Adele being credited as a drummer. The song was written in Chiswick, London, something not normally done by Adele, who said she likes to write her music at home. The writing process for the song was slow, taking six months to complete. Initially Adele and Kurstin started writing the first verse; finishing half of the song, six months later Adele contacted Kurstin to finish the song with her, with Kurstin stating he was not sure "if Adele was ever going to come back and finish it."


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: The main inspiration behind the record came from her motherhood, as well as singer-songwriter Madonna's 1998 studio album, "Ray of Light", and its song "Frozen". Although Adele clarified that she "wasn't exposed to Madonna's catalog earlier" in life, she loved Madonna's electronic musical foray after hearing it. "I believe everything she says on it. Some of the songs on it are an ode to her first kid, and I needed that to challenge me." Along with "Ray of Light", Adele also listened to musician Moby's fifth studio album, "Play".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: You know what I found so amazing about ["Ray of Light"]? ... That's the record Madonna wrote after having her first child, and for me, it's her best. I was so all over the place after having a child, just because my chemicals were just hitting the fucking roof and shit like that ... I was just drifting away, and I couldn't find that many examples for myself where I was like, 'Fuck, they truly came back to themselves,' until someone was like, 'Well, obviously, "Ray of Light".'


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: During the album's recording Adele travelled to Los Angeles in order to give the recording sessions "one last push". Adele spent two months in Los Angeles, and was determined to move forward with the album. During the sessions in Los Angeles she also wrote "When We Were Young" alongside Tobias Jesso Jr., the track was written at a rented house where Adele used Philip Glass' piano. Adele also worked with singer-songwriter Bruno Mars, initially the pair had attempted to create an uptempo song, however they created a "dramatic ballad" entitled "All I Ask".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: After unfruitful sessions with Tedder, the pair went to lunch where Adele heard Taylor Swift's single "I Knew You Were Trouble". Tedder informed Adele that the song was produced by Max Martin, and sent her clips of his work. Shortly after this, Adele began work on the track "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)", reworking a skeleton of a song she had written when she was thirteen years old after being inspired by the release of "Frank" by Amy Winehouse. Kurstin also co-wrote and produced the song "Million Years Ago". The song was not set to be included on the record, but was added three days prior to the album's mixing at Electric Lady Studios in New York.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Adele co-wrote a song called "Alive" with Jesso and Sia. Initially written for "25" along with "Bird Set Free" and another track, Adele decided not to include any of the songs on the album. Following Adele's decision, Sia asked her permission to send the track to Rihanna, which Adele agreed to as long as her vocals were taken off the record, stating: "I don't want my vocal floating around out there on a demo." Sia eventually recorded it herself for her seventh studio album "This Is Acting".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: "Bird Set Free" was recorded by Adele, but she decided not to include it due to it being too similar to Sia's work; it too was subsequently included on "This Is Acting".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Before beginning work on the album, Adele met with Phil Collins to discuss a collaboration. "I had this song in mind," she told "Rolling Stone", "and I can't remember if I gave him a copy of the song or if I gave him a chorus or something, and then I just chickened out of everything." "She's a slippery little fish…" Collins remarked subsequently. "She got hold of me and asked if I would write with her. She gave me a piece of music to finish and at first I didn't know if I'd failed the audition as I didn't hear from her. Then she said, 'No, no: I'm moving house and the baby's taking up a lot of my time. I'm not actually doing anything at the moment.' And now I've heard there's a "29" [sic] coming out. I'm not on it, I know that."


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Consisting of eleven tracks, Adele aimed to depart from the "young-fogey" sound of her second album "21" and added synths and drum pads in order to modernize "25"s musical style. The album's production incorporated the use of electronic elements and creative rhythmic patterns, unlike its predecessor, with elements of 1980s R&B and organs. Described as a collection of "panoramic ballads and prettily executed detours", Leah Greenblatt of "Entertainment Weekly" noted the album's "stately production" characterizing it as being built over minor-key melancholy, stylistic flourishes and simplicity. Leonie Cooper of the "NME" summed the album's production up as changing from "moody balladeering to smoky jazz bar grooves" whilst a reviewer from "Us Weekly" stated the album was built upon piano ballads, R&B grooves, minimalistic arrangements, gospel, blues and acoustic guitars.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Her vocals were noted by Samantha O'Connor of "The 405" as ranging from "thunderous roars and rib-cracking falsettos over large dramatic piano swells to fuzzy, warm lower-register rumblings", and were characterised as having a raw delivery, with minimal engineering, leaving "her vocal idiosyncrasies to crackle, croak and coo, bringing more depth" to the album.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Bruce Handy of "Vanity Fair" stated that Adele's throat surgery had not impacted her voice, continuing to say her voice still contained character and power: "brassy yet husky, smoky yet clarion, she still sounds like the result of a genetic experiment fusing Amy Winehouse's vocal chords with Céline Dion's lungs, or even Tom Jones'."


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Described by Adele as a "make-up album", she attempted to move away from the theme of break-ups that dominated "21"s lyrical content. Adele stated that "25"s lyrics focuses on themes of her "trying to clear out the past," and moving on.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: She continued to say that the album's lyrics are a reflection of the frame of mind she was in during that age, describing the time as a "turning point" where she was in the centre of adolescence and adulthood and the start of a time where she would "go into becoming who I'm going to be forever without a removal van full of my old junk."


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Lyrically, the album touches upon various themes including the singers fear of getting older, her childhood, regrets, longing for her family, nostalgia and her role as a mother.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Mark Savage of the BBC, noted the album's themes were a departure from the anger and heartbroken themes that dominated "21", stating that the lyrics were "reflective" allowing the singer "to re-examine her past relationships". Savage continued to state that songs such as "When We Were Young" introduce the album's key theme of Adele's "uneasy acceptance of adulthood." The album is focused at a broad popular music appeal, where her former releases, were made with a concoction of "gospel, R&B, jazz, [and] folk" styles, elements, and audiences in mind.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: "25" opens with "Hello", a piano ballad that borrows heavily from soul music. During the chorus Adele is heard singing the lines over layers of backing vocals, piano and drums which were described by the "Telegraph" as leaning "towards a very luscious wall of sound". The track also contains drums which Adele was credited for providing. Lyrically, the track focuses on themes of nostalgia and regret and plays out like a conversation. The follow up, "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)", has been compared to the work of singer Taylor Swift due to its "upbeat, poppy" sound. Adele describes it as a "happy you're gone" song, which was inspired by an ex-boyfriend.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: The drum-filled folk song "I Miss You" has been described as "explicitly seductive" due to the lyrics: "Bring the floor up to my knees/Let me fall into your gravity/And kiss me back to life to see/Your body standing over me." "When We Were Young", another piano-led ballad, is "a reflective serenade about treasuring the moments you will look back on in years to come", while the ballad "Remedy", was written about Adele's best friend, her grandparents, her boyfriend, and her son.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: "Water Under the Bridge" is a mid-tempo pop song, featuring an electro-drum beat and a tropical, trip hop riff, with Adele proclaiming to her lover "If you're gonna let me down, let me down gently/Don't pretend that you don't want me/Our love ain't water under the bridge". The gospel-tinged "River Lea" talks about the singer growing up in Tottenham, London, England,


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Adele sings about The Lea, a river in London. During the song Adele speaks of how the river's polluted waters have seeped into her blood causing her relationship failures.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: "Million Years Ago", an acoustic tune accompanied only by guitar, finds the singer pining "for the normality of her not-so-distant childhood. Entwined with Middle Eastern twists of background hums that suggest Madonna's 'Frozen'".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: The song's lyrics touch upon themes of fame, and how it "frightens", the song's lyrics talk about how fame has personally affected her and everyone around her, singing about how she misses the air, her mother, and her friends, but her "life is flashing by and all I can do is watch and cry."


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In the final piano ballad "All I Ask", "Adele addresses a lover on what she knows will be their final night, processing the end of an affair in what feels like slow motion." "25" closes with "Sweetest Devotion", an "uplifting" number written as a tribute to her son.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: A release date for "25" was first suggested in early August 2014, when Paul Moss suggested that an album would be released in 2014 or 2015. However, accounts filed by Adele's label XL Recordings in October 2014 ruled out the possibility of a 2014 release. In August 2015, "Billboard" reported that Adele's label had intentions of releasing her third studio album sometime in November 2015. In October 2015, the album was rumoured to be released on 20 November 2015, after which numerous journalists speculated that other musicians had brought forward their albums in order to avoid chart competition with her, with artists such as One Direction, Justin Bieber, Fleur East, and 5 Seconds of Summer releasing their albums before Adele's, so that their sales and chart placements would not be affected. The fourth quarter was also set to have releases from Rihanna, Kanye West, and Coldplay, and all except Coldplay backed out from coinciding with the release of Adele's album.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: On 18 October, a 30-second clip of "Hello" was shown on UK television during a commercial break on "The X Factor". It teased a new song from Adele after three years, with viewers hearing her singing the first verse of "Hello" with its lyrics appearing on a black screen. Three days later, Adele released a letter to her fans through social media addressing the album, in which she confirmed that the album would be titled "25". Adele stated that the title is a reflection on her age and the frame of mind she was in during that age, describing the time as a "turning point" where she was in the centre of adolescence and adulthood and the start of a time where she would "go into becoming who I'm going to be forever without a removal van full of my old junk." She added: "My last record was a break-up record and if I had to label this one I would call it a make-up record. I'm making up with myself. I'm making up for lost time." Adele confirmed the next day "25" would be released on 20 November 2015, and revealed its cover simultaneously on her social media.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: On 27 October, BBC One announced plans for a one-hour television special presented by Graham Norton in which he would talk to Adele about her new album. "Adele at the BBC" was recorded before a live audience on 2 November and transmitted on BBC One on 20 November, coinciding with the album's release. A short extract of the programme was previewed during an edition of BBC One's "The One Show" aired on 5 November; it shows Adele performing "Hello" and chatting to Norton. On 27 October it was also announced that the singer would make an appearance on the US entertainment series "Saturday Night Live" on 21 November. On 30 October, Adele confirmed through her Facebook page that she would be performing a one-night-only concert titled "Adele Live in New York City" at the Radio City Music Hall on 17 November. Subsequently, NBC confirmed they will air the concert special on 14 December.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: On 19 November 2015, "The New York Times" reported that the album will not be released on streaming services, such as Spotify and Apple Music. It was later announced that "25" would be made available through streaming services from 24 June 2016. Also in November, Adele appeared on the NRJ Awards, NPR, and "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In January 2016, she sang some of her greatest hits so far during her carpool karaoke video on "The Late Late Show with James Corden". The following month, Adele performed at the 58th Grammy Awards, the 2016 Brit Awards, and "The Ellen DeGeneres Show". Adele also conducted interviews with and appeared on the covers of "Time", "Vanity Fair", "Vogue", "i-D", "The Observer", and "Rolling Stone". Adele performed "Hello" again at the 59th Grammy Awards in 2017.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: On 23 October 2015, "Hello" was released as the album's lead single and was made available for purchase and streaming, with its music video released on the same day. It compiled over 100 million views on YouTube within 5 days. It is the second-fastest video to hit 100 million YouTube views ever and the fastest to reach 100 million on Vevo previously held by "Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus back in 2013. 87 days after its release "Hello" had received a billion YouTube views, beating Psy's "Gangnam Style", which had accumulated the same number of views over 158 days. The song reached number one in the UK Singles Chart on 30 October, with a combined first week sales of 330,000 copies. The figure was the largest opening week sales for a single since James Arthur's "Impossible", which achieved a volume of 490,000 sales in 2012. The song sold 1,112,000 digital downloads and 61.2 million streams in its first week, resulting in "Hello" debuting at number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100 (becoming Adele's fourth number-one single in the United States) on the issue dated 14 November 2015. By the end of 2015, it had sold 12.3 million units globally and was the year's 7th best-selling single.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: On 14 December 2015, "Billboard" reported that "When We Were Young" is scheduled as the second single from "25". The song had already charted at number 29 on the UK Single Chart and number 22 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, and sold 150,000 digital copies in the United States. The song was released on 22 January 2016, eventually peaking at number 14 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: iHeartRadio reported on 27 April 2016 that "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" had been selected as the album's third single and that it would be serviced to radio stations on 17 May 2016. The song peaked at No. 8 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the United States, No. 5 in the UK and No. 10 in Canada.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: On 4 November 2016, "Water Under the Bridge" was released as the fourth single from the album. The single peaked at No. 26 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the United States, No. 39 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 37 on the Canadian Hot 100.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Adele embarked on her third concert tour titled Adele Live 2016, which ran from February to November 2016. The first leg started in Belfast on 29 February 2016 in the SSE Arena before moving throughout mainland Europe and concluding in Antwerp at Sportpaleis on 15 June 2016. The second leg began on 5 July at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota and continues throughout the United States and Canada with multiple dates at each venue. The tour concluded on 2 July 2017 in London, UK. Demand for the tour was extremely high and all shows sold out within minutes of going on sale. Over 500,000 fans registered at Adele.com to purchase tickets, with 57,000 tickets sold for the 12 shows that were put on sale in the UK.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: "25" received positive reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 75, based on 35 reviews. Bruce Handy, writing a review for "Vanity Fair", regarded the music as traditional R&B and modern pop music, with songs that are mostly ballads. Reviewing for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine comments, "Fittingly, "25" also plays better over the long haul, its march of slow songs steadily revealing subtle emotional or musical distinctions", where "all 11 songs are ... a piece ... [of] shaded melancholy gaining most of their power through performance", and arguing that the "cohesive sound only accentuates how Adele has definitively claimed this arena of dignified heartbreak as her own". Neil McCormick from "The Daily Telegraph" stated that the album, covered the same "musical and emotional terrain" as "21" and continued to call it an "equal of its predecessor." Jon Dolan of "Rolling Stone" commented that the album's "nostalgic mood is the perfect fit for an artist who reaches back decades for her influences, even as her all-or-nothing urgency feels utterly modern" and also praising her "incredible phrasing – the way she can infuse any line with nuance and power", which he argued served as "more proof that she's among the greatest interpreters of romantic lyrics". Leah Greenblatt of "Entertainment Weekly" called it "a record that feels both new and familiar—a beautiful if safe collection of panoramic ballads and prettily executed detours". "Billboard" praised Adele's vocal performance writing that it's "swathed in echo, sounding like she's wailing beneath the vaults of the planet's most cavernous cathedral, they hit hard." Amanda Petrusich from "Pitchfork" praised Adele's vocal delivery, arguing that "[her] instincts as a singer remain unmatched; she is, inarguably, the greatest vocalist of her generation, an artist who instinctively understands timbre and pitch, when to let some air in".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In a less enthusiastic review for "The Independent", Andy Gill said the songs "River Lea" and "Send My Love (To Your New Lover)" were "isolated moments of musical intrigue scattered here and there through the album", which he said gradually became "swamped by the kind of dreary piano ballads that are Adele's fall-back position". Leonie Cooper from "NME" felt Adele and her team of songwriters/producers did not take any risks musically, instead "following a formula that has so far resulted in 30 million album sales". Jude Rogers found the "25" bogged down by the emotionally weighty themes of Adele's previous records, comparing the singer to "a friend who you've helped countless times but who won't listen, who actually enjoys being in a mess, whose sparkle gets dampened – gets drowned – as a consequence".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked the album at number two on its "The 50 Best Albums of 2015" year-end list. American newspaper "Newsday" also ranked the album at number two on their list of 2015's best albums, UK publication "Complex" listed the album at number four on their list of The Best Albums of 2015 and "Entertainment Weekly" listed the album at number three.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: At the Brit Awards 2016, Adele was nominated for five awards, in which she won four including British Album of the Year for "25" and British Single of the Year for "Hello". With her wins, Adele equalling the record for most wins by an artist in one night, firstly set by Blur in 1995. At the 2016 "Billboard" Music Awards, the singer was nominated for nine categories, winning five, including Top Billboard 200 Album for "25" and Top Selling Song for "Hello". At the 2016 Juno Awards, Adele won International Album of the Year for "25" and Xavier Dolan won Video of the Year for "Hello". Adele received four American Music Awards nominations, including Favorite Pop/Rock Album for "25" and Favorite Pop/Rock Song for "Hello" at the American Music Awards of 2016 but lost to "Purpose" and "Love Yourself" respectively, both by Justin Bieber. Adele also won "Attitude"s Album of the Year for "25". At the 59th Grammy Awards, the album won six Grammys: Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album for "25", while "Hello" won Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance. Adele became the first artist in history to win all three general field awards in the same ceremony twice, previously winning all three categories in 2012. Also Adele was the first artist to win Album of the Year with back-to-back studio albums since Stevie Wonder took top award with three consecutive albums in the 1970s. In addition, her producer Greg Kurstin won Producer of the Year, Non-Classical.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In the United Kingdom, "25" debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and sold 800,307 copies in its first chart week, overtaking Oasis' "Be Here Now" (1997) to become the fastest-selling album of all time in the UK. Of that total, 252,423 copies were digital downloads, breaking the record for most digital copies sold in a week, and 548,000 were physical copies. In its first week, "25" sold more copies in the UK than the combined sales of the last 19 number-one albums in UK on their debut week. It also outsold that week's other 86 highest-selling albums combined. After ten days on sale, it became the fastest million-seller in the UK, surpassing "Be Here Now", which achieved this feat in 17 days in 1997. In its second week, "25" sold 439,337 copies, which broke the record for highest second-week sales in the UK and also was the sixth biggest weekly sales of all time. In its third week, "25" sold 354,000 copies, which represents the second highest third-week sales since Take That's "The Circus", which sold 382,000 copies in its third week, and was also certified quintuple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry, with total UK sales at 1,593,530 copies. On 18 December, 29 days after its release, the album surpassed sales of 2 million copies in the UK, becoming the fastest 2 million-seller in the country. In its fifth week of release, the album sold another 450,000 copies in the UK, becoming the Christmas number one. The album has spent 13 non-consecutive weeks at number one and, as of November 2016, had sold 3.12 million copies, being later certified 11× Platinum. In December 2016, it became only the third album to be the UK's biggest-seller two years in a row, after Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Water" (1970 and 1971) and Simply Red's "Stars" (1991 and 1992). It has sold over 3.50 million copies as of October 2018, making it the tenth biggest selling studio album in the UK in history.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In Europe, "25" also opened atop of the German charts after selling 263,000 units, the largest weekly sale for a record since Herbert Grönemeyer's 2007 release "12". In France, "25" became the fastest-selling album of 2015 after it sold 169,693 copies, of which 26,295 were downloads. The album sold another 129,200 copies in France in its second week, bringing its two-week total to 300,000 copies. In its third week, "25"'s sales rose to 132,200 copies in France, bringing its total sales to 430,000 copies, which made it the third best-selling album of the year. In its fourth week of sales in France, sales of the album further rose to 133,000 copies, bringing its total sales to 565,000 copies in the country, earning it a diamond certification there. In 2015 "25" had sold 785,000 copies in France and was the biggest selling album in France. As of November 2021, "25" has sold over million copies in France. In the Netherlands, the album debuted at number one with first week sales of over 120,000 copies. The album also sold over 180,000 copies in the Benelux in its first week of release. In Spain, the album debuted atop the charts selling 20,000 copies in its first week, while in Portugal it also debuted at number one with sales of 3,200 copies. "25" also entered the charts at number one in Switzerland, selling over 40,000 copies in its first week, receiving a double platinum certification there.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In the United States, "25" sold 2.3 million after three days of availability, becoming the fastest-selling album of the 21st century and the best-selling album of 2015. The album reached sales of 2.433 million early on its fourth day, surpassing the single-week record for an album since Nielsen Soundscan began tracking sales in 1991, set by NSYNC's "No Strings Attached" in March 2000 when it debuted with 2.416 million copies. In total, it sold 3.38 million copies in the US in its first week, becoming the first album ever to sell over 3 million copies in a week. The album earned 3.48 million album-equivalent units in the US in its first week of release, which is the largest registered figure since the "Billboard" 200 began tracking weekly popularity based on overall units in December 2014. "25" also achieved 96,000 in track-equivalent album units in the US in its debut week, and another 8,000 in streaming-equivalent album units, all of which came from streams of the single "Hello", as it was the only song from the album available on streaming services.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In the first three days of its second week, "25" sold over 650,000 units, surpassing 4 million sales, ending the week with 1.11 million copies. In its third full week, the album sold 695,000 copies, surpassing 5 million sales, becoming the first album to do so in a calendar year since Adele's own album "21" in 2011. By its fourth week sale of 790,000 copies, "25" became the best-selling album in any calendar year since Usher sold 7.98 million in 2004 with "Confessions". It sold 1.16 million copies in pure album sales in its fifth week, and became the first album to sell over one million copies in three different frames. In its sixth week, the album sold another 307,000 copies at number one on the "Billboard" 200, becoming the first album to sell over 300,000 copies in consecutive six weeks since 2001 when Creed did so with "Weathered". By the end of 2015, "25" had sold a total of 8,008,000 equivalent album units, 7,441,000 of which were pure album sales. It also sold 2,310,000 digital copies by the year end, making it the third best-selling digital album of all time behind Adele's own "21" and Taylor Swift's "1989". "25" was also the second biggest-selling album of a calendar year by a female artist in Nielsen history, only trailing behind Britney Spears' "Oops!... I Did It Again" which sold 7,890,000 copies in 2000. In its seventh week, the album remained at number one, selling another 164,000 units, becoming the first album by a female artist to top the "Billboard" 200 in its first seven weeks since Whitney Houston's 1987 album "Whitney". In total, the album spent ten non-consecutive weeks at the top of the chart, becoming the fifth album released since 2000 to achieve at least 10 weeks at the summit. In the year of 2016, it sold 2.37 million copies and equivalent units, of which 1.7 million were pure sales, ranking as the best-selling album of the year in pure sales and second best including equivalent albums. As of January 2020, "25" has sold 9.517 million copies in pure sales, making it the decade's 2nd best sold album.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In Canada, the album debuted at number one with sales of 306,000 copies, breaking the record for highest first-week sales, which was previously held by Celine Dion's "Let's Talk About Love", which had sold 230,000 copies. In its second week "25" sold another 145,000 copies in Canada, bringing its two-week total to 451,000 copies. This represents the eighth-highest weekly sales in Canada, as well as the second highest second-week sales for an album, just behind the 146,000 copies sold by the Canadian compilation "Big Shiny Tunes 2" in its second week in 1997. The album sold 1.09 million copies across the nation as of 2019.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In Mexico, the album sold 60,000 copies and debuted at number one in Mexico Top 100, certificating Platinum, making it the 10th best selling album in Mexico of 2015. By January 2020, the album had sold 210,000 copies, making it certified as triple platinum.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In Australia, the album sold more than 210,000 copies in five days, passing the triple platinum mark there. It was the best-selling album of both 2015 and 2016, and achieved decuple platinum certification (700,000 units) there in May 2017. In New Zealand, "25" broke the record for highest first week sales, selling 18,766 copies. The previous record holder was Susan Boyle whose "I Dreamed a Dream" sold 17,435 copies in its first week. By the end of the year, "25" became the best-selling album of 2015 in New Zealand. In South Africa, "25" achieved double platinum sales in five days through physical and digital vendors.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: In October 2015, numerous journalists speculated that other musicians had pushed back their album releases to avoid chart competition with Adele; artists such as Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Sam Smith, and One Direction all did this so that their sales would not be affected. Columbia Records shipped 3.6 million physical copies of "25", across the United States, making it the most CDs shipped for a new release since the shipment of 2.4 million copies of NSYNC's "No Strings Attached" in 2000. One million copies of "25" were shipped to UK retailers, including HMV and Tesco. Ian Topping, chief executive of HMV, stated that the company had a great start with the album, and sales had exceeded their expectations, continuing to say it was their "fastest-selling album for many years."


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: Following the album's release, journalists reported that "25" was able to encourage the public to return to buying physical copies, compared to streaming. Adam Sherwin of "The Independent" stated that ""25" sent casual purchasers back to the remaining physical stores and may even have introduced a new generation to the delights of ownership." The album was described as saving the music industry, which was seeing dwindling profits with downloading and streaming as the popular methods of music consumption. The album was also noted for boosting sales of retailer Target, which sold the extra track edition of "25", during Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Target Chief Executive Brian Cornell stated that "25" was "the biggest release we've ever had – this is going to break all the records for us" and that "the combination of Adele dropping when it did, the weekend before Thanksgiving, really helped bring in people".


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: The album's first-day sales in the US were 1.49 million, averaging at 62,000 copies per hour, and 1,000 copies per minute, while on iTunes, "25" sold 900,000 copies on its first day becoming the fastest-selling album in iTunes history, breaking the record previously held by Beyoncé's self-titled album. The album sold more copies in the US in its debut week than the previous number-one albums had sold in the previous 22 weeks combined. Additionally, it sold more copies in its first week than any album sold in an entire calendar year in three recent years (2008, 2009, and 2013). "25" sold more copies in the US in its opening week than the next two best-selling albums of the year combined (Taylor Swift's "1989" and Drake's "If You're Reading This It's Too Late", which combined to sell 2.885 million copies in 2015). "25" sold more copies in its first week than the next two fastest-selling albums by female artists combined—Britney Spears' "Oops!... I Did It Again", which sold 1.319 million in its first week, and Swift's "1989", which sold 1.287 million in its first week.


title: 25 (Adele album)

text: It was stated by "Billboard" on 5 January 2016 that in 2015, overall album sales both digital and physical experienced a 6% decline compared to 2014. "25" is credited with having eased the decline of album sales. It was also noted that if it was not for the success of "25", the 6% decline would have been 9% as the album made up 3.1% of the entire album sales total of 2015.


title: Derealization

text: Derealization is an alteration in the perception of the external world, causing those with the condition to perceive it as unreal, distant, distorted or falsified. Other symptoms include feeling as if one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional coloring, and depth. It is a dissociative symptom that may appear in moments of severe stress.


title: Derealization

text: Derealization is a subjective experience pertaining to a person's perception of the outside world, while depersonalization is a related symptom characterized by dissociation towards one's own body and mental processes. The two are commonly experienced in conjunction with one another, but are also known to occur independently.


title: Derealization

text: Chronic derealization is fairly rare, and may be caused by occipital–temporal dysfunction. Experiencing derealization for long periods of time or having recurring episodes can be indicative of many psychological disorders, and can cause significant distress. However, temporary derealization symptoms are commonly experienced by the general population a few times throughout their lives, with a lifetime prevalence of up to 26–74% and a prevalence of 31–66% at the time of a traumatic event.


title: Derealization

text: The experience of derealization can be described as an immaterial substance that separates a person from the outside world, such as a sensory fog, pane of glass, or veil. Individuals may report that what they see lacks vividness and emotional coloring. Emotional response to visual recognition of loved ones may be significantly reduced. Feelings of "déjà vu" or "jamais vu" are common. Familiar places may look alien, bizarre, and surreal. One may not even be sure whether what one perceives is in fact reality or not. The world as perceived by the individual may feel as if it were going through a dolly zoom effect. Such perceptual abnormalities may also extend to the senses of hearing, taste, and smell.


title: Derealization

text: The degree of familiarity one has with their surroundings is among one's sensory and psychological identity, memory foundation and history when experiencing a place. When persons are in a state of derealization, they block this identifying foundation from recall. This "blocking effect" creates a discrepancy of correlation between one's perception of one's surroundings during a derealization episode, and what that same individual would perceive in the absence of a derealization episode.


title: Derealization

text: Frequently, derealization occurs in the context of constant worrying or "intrusive thoughts" that one finds hard to switch off. In such cases it can build unnoticed along with the underlying anxiety attached to these disturbing thoughts, and be recognized only in the aftermath of a realization of crisis, often a panic attack, subsequently seeming difficult or impossible to ignore. This type of anxiety can be crippling to the affected and may lead to avoidant behavior. Those who experience this phenomenon may feel concern over the cause of their derealization. It is often difficult to accept that such a disturbing symptom is simply a result of anxiety, and the individual may often think that the cause must be something more serious. This can, in turn, cause more anxiety and worsen the derealization. Derealization also has been shown to interfere with the learning process, with cognitive impairments demonstrated in immediate recall and visuospatial deficits. This can be best understood as the individual feeling as if they see the events in third person.


title: Derealization

text: Derealization can accompany the neurological conditions of epilepsy (particularly temporal lobe epilepsy), migraine, and mild TBI (head injury). There is a similarity between visual hypo-emotionality, a reduced emotional response to viewed objects, and derealization. This suggests a disruption of the process by which perception becomes emotionally colored. This qualitative change in the experiencing of perception may lead to reports of anything viewed being unreal or detached.


title: Derealization

text: The instances of recurring or chronic derealization among those who have experienced extreme trauma and/or have post-traumatic stress (PTSD) have been studied closely in many scientific studies, whose results indicate a strong link between the disorders, with a disproportionate amount of post traumatic stress patients reporting recurring feelings of derealization and depersonalization (up to 30% of those with the condition) in comparison to the general populace (only around 2%), especially in those who experienced the trauma in childhood. Many possibilities have been suggested by various psychologists to help explain these findings, the most widely accepted including that experiencing trauma can cause individuals to distance themselves from their surroundings and perception, with the aim of subsequently distancing themselves from the trauma and (especially in the case of depersonalisation) their emotional response to it. This could be either as a deliberate coping mechanism or an involuntary, reflexive response depending on circumstance. This possibly not only increases the risk of experiencing problems with derealization and its corresponding disorder, but with all relevant dissociative disorders. In the case of childhood trauma, not only are children more likely to be susceptible to such a response as they are less able to implement more healthy strategies to deal with the emotional implications of experiencing trauma, there is also a lot of evidence that shows trauma can have a substantial detrimental effect on learning and development, especially since those who experience trauma in childhood are far less likely to have received adequate parenting. These are factors proven to increase susceptibility to maladaptive psychological conditions, which of course includes dissociative disorders and subsequently derealization symptoms.


title: Derealization

text: Some neurophysiological studies have noted disturbances arising from the frontal-temporal cortex, which could explain the correlation found between derealization symptoms and temporal lobe disorders. This is further supported by reports of people with frontal lobe epilepsy, with those with epilepsy of the dorsal premotor cortex reporting symptoms of depersonalization, while those with temporal lobe epilepsy reported experiencing derealization symptoms. This implies that malfunction of these specific brain regions may be the cause of these dissociative symptoms, or at the very least that these brain regions are heavily involved.


title: Derealization

text: Derealization can possibly manifest as an indirect result of certain vestibular disorders such as labyrinthitis. This is thought to result from anxiety stemming from being dizzy.


title: Derealization

text: An alternative explanation holds that a possible effect of vestibular dysfunction includes responses in the form of the modulation of noradrenergic and serotonergic activity due to a misattribution of vestibular symptoms to the presence of imminent physical danger resulting in the experience of anxiety or panic, which subsequently generate feelings of derealization. Likewise, derealization is a common psychosomatic symptom seen in various anxiety disorders, especially hypochondria. However, derealization is presently regarded as a separate psychological issue due to its presence as a symptom within several pathologies.


title: Derealization

text: Derealization and dissociative symptoms have been linked by some studies to various physiological and psychological differences in individuals and their environments. It was remarked that labile sleep-wake cycles (labile meaning more easily roused) with some distinct changes in sleep, such as dream-like states, hypnogogic, hypnopompic hallucinations, night-terrors and other disorders related to sleep could possibly be causative or improve symptoms to a degree. Derealization can also be a symptom of severe sleep disorders and mental disorders like depersonalization disorder, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, and other mental conditions.


title: Derealization

text: Cannabis, psychedelics, dissociatives, antidepressants, caffeine, nitrous oxide, albuterol, and nicotine can all produce feelings of derealization, or sensations mimicking them, particularly when taken in excess. It can also result from alcohol withdrawal or benzodiazepine withdrawal. Opiate withdrawal can also cause feelings of derealization, often alongside psychotic symptoms such as anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations.


title: Derealization

text: Interoceptive exposure exercises have been used in research settings as a means to induce derealization, as well as the related phenomenon depersonalization, in people who are sensitive to high levels of anxiety. Exercises with documented successes include timed intervals of hyperventilation or staring at a mirror, dot, or spiral.


title: Derealization

text: Derealization, as a concept, is referenced in the 2021 comedy special by Bo Burnham called ""; specifically, it is mentioned in the song "That Funny Feeling".


title: Colin Hay

text: Colin James Hay (born 29 June 1953) is a Scottish-Australian musician, singer, songwriter, and actor. He came to prominence as the lead vocalist and the sole continuous member of the band Men at Work, and later as a solo artist. Hay's music has been used frequently by actor and director Zach Braff in his work, which helped a career rebirth in the mid-2000s. Hay has also been a member of Ringo Starr's Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.


title: Colin Hay

text: Hay has made appearances in movies such as "Cosi" (1996) and in television shows such as "The Larry Sanders Show", "JAG", "The Mick Molloy Show", "A Million Little Things", and "Scrubs". In "Scrubs" he performs an acoustic version of the Men at Work hit "Overkill". His music also appeared in television series "What About Brian", "The Black Donnellys", "Cane", and the BBC medical drama "Casualty".


title: Colin Hay

text: Colin James Hay was born on 29 June 1953 in Saltcoats, a town on the west coast of North Ayrshire, Scotland to James and Isabela Hay. In 1967, when he was 14, the Hays emigrated to Melbourne in Australia. His parents owned a small music shop; his father, a piano tuner, had been a stage singer and dancer in Glasgow.


title: Colin Hay

text: In 1978, Hay met Ron Strykert and they formed an acoustic duo. In 1979, Hay and Strykert added Jerry Speiser and Greg Ham started composing songs for what would become Men at Work.


title: Colin Hay

text: The band released their debut studio album, "Business as Usual", in 1981, which was followed by "Cargo" (1983) and "Two Hearts" (1985) before breaking up in January 1986.


title: Colin Hay

text: In 1986, Hay joined as guest vocalist with the Incredible Penguins in for a cover of "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)", a charity project for research on little penguins, which peaked at No. 10 on the Australian Kent Music Report in December 1985.


title: Colin Hay

text: Following the break-up of Men at Work in 1986, Hay released his debut single "Hold Me" in January 1987. The song peaked at number 40 on the Kent Music Report. His debut studio album, "Looking for Jack" was released in March 1987 and peaked at number 58.


title: Colin Hay

text: Hay relocated to Los Angeles in 1989. He settled in the Topanga region of the city and has resided in the United States since. In January 2016 he became a US citizen.


title: Colin Hay

text: In March 1990, Hay released "Into My Life", the lead single from his second studio album, "Wayfaring Sons", which was released in April 1990. Neither single nor album reached the ARIA top 100. The album was credited to the Colin Hay Band which consisted of Gerry Hale, Paul Gadsby and Robert Dillon.


title: Colin Hay

text: In 1992, Hay released the acoustic album "Peaks & Valleys". The album featured Hay's sister, Carol on vocals.


title: Colin Hay

text: At the ARIA Music Awards of 1994, Hay was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame as a member of Men at Work.


title: Colin Hay

text: In 1994, Hay established his own recording label, Lazy Eye Records, and released his fourth studio album, "Topanga".


title: Colin Hay

text: In 1996, Hay reunited with Men at Work and toured South America, which led to the live Men at Work album, "Brazil".


title: Colin Hay

text: In October 1998, Hay released his fifth studio album, "Transcendental Highway" and in 1999 recorded and released the song "Misty Bay" with his girlfriend, Cecilia Noël.


title: Colin Hay

text: On 1 October 2000, Hay performed with Men at Work at the 2000 Summer Olympics closing ceremony. In 2001, Hay released his sixth studio album, "Going Somewhere".


title: Colin Hay

text: In 2002, Hay released his seventh studio album "Company of Strangers" and the video album "Live at the Continental" recorded in 2000.


title: Colin Hay

text: In July 2003, Hay released his eighth studio album, "Man @ Work", re-recording some Men at Work hits and his solo songs. Hay toured North America with former Beatles Ringo Starr, as a member of his Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band.


title: Colin Hay

text: In April 2007, Hay released his ninth studio album, "Are You Lookin' at Me?". In 2008, Hay plays the role of Nick at the horror movie "The Uninvited".


title: Colin Hay

text: In May 2009, Hay performed at the Artist for the Arts Foundation benefit at Barnum Hall, Santa Monica High School, Santa Monica, California. Performing alongside Curt Smith of Tears for Fears, Fee Waybill of the Tubes, Venice, and over 70 members of the Santa Monica High School Orchestra and Girls Choir, the benefit helped to provide funds for the continuation of music education in public schools.


title: Colin Hay

text: In 2010, Hay released the live album, "Live at the Corner", filmed in 2007 at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne, Australia.


title: Colin Hay

text: In August 2010, Hay performed in Missoula, Montana with a Los Angeles roots rock band named Patrolled By Radar.


title: Colin Hay

text: In May 2011, Hay released his eleventh studio album "Gathering Mercury". In 2011, Hay commented on his early solo career, stating, "After Men at Work, for the better part of a decade, I was stumbling around being unfocused. It was pre-internet; I really had to try to find my audiences by going out on tour. Men at Work really didn't build a foundational audience. We came in as a pop band with enormous radio success; once that goes away and the band breaks up the audience tends to go away with it. You're left with what you want to make of it. When you start out doing those tours, you start again [and] you tend not to attract a very big number of people. I'd play to a hundred people or sometimes less."


title: Colin Hay

text: In December 2013, Hay announced on his website that he was done touring "for the time being" and would spend 2014 writing and recording.


title: Colin Hay

text: In February 2015, Hay released his twelfth studio album, "Next Year People". The album was preceded by the single "Trying to Get to You".


title: Colin Hay

text: On 4 August 2015, "Colin Hay: Waiting for my Real Life", a documentary film about Hay, debuted at the Melbourne International Film Festival.


title: Colin Hay

text: On 27 January 2017, he released the first single, "A Thousand Million Reasons", from his thirteenth studio album "Fierce Mercy", released in March 2017. "Fierce Mercy" debuted at number 44 on the ARIA chart, becoming his second solo chart entry in Australia. The album was promoted with his segments on "Julia Zemiro's Home Delivery" and "Sunday Night".


title: Colin Hay

text: Also in 2017, Hay released his first audiobook, "Aesop's Fables with Colin Hay", published by Devault-Graves Digital Editions, for which he narrated 24 of Aesop's Fables written by author Tom Graves.


title: Colin Hay

text: In August 2021, Hay released his fourteenth studio album, "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself". The album features 10 versions of some of Hay's favourite songs from the Beatles (Norwegian Wood, Across the Universe) Blind Faith, Del Amitri, Dusty Springfield, Faces, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Glen Campbell (Wichita Lineman), Jimmy Cliff (Many Rivers to Cross) and the Kinks (Waterloo Sunset).


title: Colin Hay

text: In late 2021, Australian producer Christian "Luude" Benson (from the Tasmanian electronic dance music duo Choomba) remixed Men at Work's "Down Under" as a drum and bass track, with Hay re-recording the vocal for the track's release on the Sweat It Out record label. "Down Under" by Luude featuring Colin Hay charted at number 32 on the UK Singles chart on 7 January 2022 and at number 48 in Australia (ARIA Top 50 Singles for


title: Colin Hay

text: Hay is married to singer Cecilia Noël, who often provides backing vocals at his shows. Noël has also helped with production on Hay's solo studio albums. Hay said of his ninth solo studio album, "Are You Lookin' at Me?" (2007) that "She was really crucial. She was a really great sounding board for me. She's a really good producer in the sense that she's very musical and has a great sense of song structure and so forth. So she was great to bounce ideas off. And she sang on nearly all the songs. So she was really a great part of this record". Hay and Noël live in Topanga Canyon in the Los Angeles area.


title: Colin Hay

text: On 13 February 2009, former Men at Work band member Ron Strykert was arrested for allegedly making death threats against Hay.


title: Colin Hay

text: After performing in Men at Work, Hay performed in a number of films and TV shows, usually in small roles.


title: Colin Hay

text: "Countdown" was an Australian pop music TV series on national broadcaster ABC-TV from 1974 to 1987, it presented music awards from 1979 to 1987, initially in conjunction with magazine "TV Week". The TV Week / Countdown Awards were a combination of popular-voted and peer-voted awards.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: William Jay Bowerman (February 19, 1911 – December 24, 1999) was an American track and field coach and co-founder of Nike, Inc. Over his career, he trained 31 Olympic athletes, 51 All-Americans, 12 American record-holders, 22 NCAA champions and 16 sub-4 minute milers.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman disliked being called a coach, and during his 24 years at the University of Oregon, the Ducks track and field team had a winning season every year but one, attained 4 NCAA titles, and finished in the top 10 in the nation sixteen times. As co-founder of Nike, he invented some of their top brands, including the "Cortez" and "Waffle Racer", and assisted in the company moving from being a distributor of other shoe brands to one creating their own shoes in house.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Born in Portland, Oregon, Bowerman's father Jay was a former governor; his mother, Elizabeth Hoover Bowerman, had grown up in Fossil. The family returned to Fossil after the parents divorced in 1913. Bowerman had an older brother and sister, Dan and Mary Elizabeth "Beth"; and a twin brother, Thomas, who died in an elevator accident when he was two years old.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman attended Medford and Seattle schools before returning to Medford for high school. He played in the high school band and for the state champion football team his junior and senior years. Bowerman first met Barbara Young, the woman he married, while a high school student in Medford.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: In 1929, Bowerman attended the University of Oregon to play football and study journalism. At the suggestion of longtime track coach Bill Hayward, he also joined the track team. He was a member of Beta Theta Pi Fraternity. After graduating, he taught biology and coached football at Franklin High School in Portland in 1934. In 1935, Bowerman moved back to Medford to teach and coach football during which won a state title in 1940.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman married Barbara Young on June 22, 1936. Their first son, Jon, was born June 22, 1938. William J. Bowerman, Jr. ("Jay") was born November 17, 1942. Their third son, Tom, was born May 20, 1946.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman had been in the ROTC and Army Reserve, and then joined the United States Army as a 2nd Lieutenant in the days following the Pearl Harbor attack. He was assigned to Fort Lawton in Washington and served a year there before being assigned to the 86th Mountain Infantry Regiment at Camp Hale in Leadville, Colorado. He was in the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, the regiment became apart of the 10th Mountain Division.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman's duty entailed organizing the troops' supplies and maintaining the mules used to carry the supplies in the mountains. On December 23, 1944, the division arrived in Naples, Italy and soon moved north to the mountains of northern Italy. During his tour of duty, Bowerman was promoted to commander of the 86th Regiment's First Battalion at the rank of Major. Bowerman negotiated a stand-down of German forces near the Brenner Pass in the days before the surrender of the German army in all of Italy. For his service, Bowerman received the Silver Star and four Bronze Stars. He was honorably discharged in October 1945.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: After the war, Bowerman returned to his position at Medford High School. The family then moved to Eugene where he became the head track coach at his alma mater, the University of Oregon, on July 1, 1948.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman's "Men of Oregon" won 24 NCAA individual titles (with wins in 15 of the 19 events contested) and four NCAA team crowns (1962, 1964, 1965, and 1970), and posted 16 top-10 NCAA finishes in 24 years as head coach. His teams also boasted 33 Olympians, 38 conference champions and 64 All-Americans. At the dual level, the Ducks posted a 114–20 record and went undefeated in 10 seasons. In addition, Bowerman coached the world record setting relay team in 1962. This team consisted of Archie San Romani, Dyrol Burleson, Vic Reeve, and Keith Forman with a time of 16:08.9. Six years later, another Oregon team of Roscoe Divine, Wade Bell, Arne Kvalheim and Dave Wilborn improved the record to 16:05.0. Among athletes that Bowerman coached are: Otis Davis, Steve Prefontaine, Kenny Moore, Bill Dellinger, Mac Wilkins, Jack Hutchins, Dyrol Burleson, Harry Jerome, Sig Ohlemann, Les Tipton, Gerry Moro, Wade Bell, Dave Edstrom, Roscoe Divine, Matt Centrowitz, Arne Kvalheim, Jim Grelle, Bruce Mortenson, Phil Knight and Mel Renfro. Renfro was a track and football All-American, had a successful NFL career with the Dallas Cowboys and is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman disliked being called a coach; he saw himself as more of a teacher. He expected his squad to excel in the classroom, and urged his charges to apply the lessons they learned on the track to everyday life.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: In 1972, Bowerman stepped back from day-to-day coaching activities to conduct fundraising for renovating the Hayward Field grandstands that would be necessary for the consideration of hosting the U.S. Olympic Trials again in 1976. He also ran unsuccessfully for a House seat in the Oregon Legislature in 1970 as a Republican, losing by only 815 votes out of 61,000 cast.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman officially retired as head coach on March 23, 1973, and assistant coach Bill Dellinger was immediately promoted.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman created a training program for adjusting athletes for the high altitude that they would experience at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games. This successful program led to his selection as the 1972 Munich Olympic track and field head coaching position, even though American miler favorite Jim Ryun lost to Kenyan Kip Keino, citing altitude as part of the reason for this upset. Bowerman coached members of teams from Norway, Canada, Australia, and the United States.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: During the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics in West Germany, where Bowerman was frequently blamed for a dismal performance by the U.S. track team, Israeli race walker Shaul Ladany escaped the PLO terrorists, and then awakened Bowerman and alerted the West German police. Bowerman called the U.S. consulate for a detachment of Marines to protect the U.S. Olympic compound, in which lived two high-profile Jewish athletes: swimmer Mark Spitz and javelin thrower Bill Schmidt.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: During a trip to New Zealand in 1962, Bowerman was introduced to the concept of running as a fitness routine, including people of an advanced age, through a running club organized by his friend and coaching colleague Arthur Lydiard. Bowerman brought this concept back to the United States, and began to write articles and books about running. He also created a running program in Eugene that became a national model for fitness programs. "A Jogger's Manual", a three-page guide, was published shortly after Bowerman returned from New Zealand. In 1966, along with cardiologist W.E. Harris, Bowerman published a 90-page book titled "Jogging". The book sold over a million copies and was credited with igniting the jogging phenomenon in the United States. The new crop of older athletic people contributed to the evolution of the sport of track and field to create a new division for these masters athletes. Due to the popularity of "Jogging", Harris and Bowerman published a 127-page book in 1967.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Athletics West is an American running team formed by Bill Bowerman, Phil Knight and Geoff Hollister in 1977. At the time, America had no definitive running program for young athletes to continue competing outside of college. The formation and success of Athletics West, together with the success and popularity of American runners like Craig Virgin (charter member), Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers helped inspire the 1970s running boom.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: According to Otis Davis, a student athlete who Bowerman coached at the University of Oregon, who later went on to win two gold medals at the 1960 Summer Olympics, he was one of the guinea pigs for whom Bowerman customized shoes prior to being a cofounder of Nike. Davis states ‘I didn't like the way they felt on my feet. There was no support and they were too tight. But I saw Bowerman make them from the waffle iron, and they were mine."


title: Bill Bowerman

text: In 1964, Bowerman entered into a handshake agreement with Phil Knight, who had been a miler under him in the 1950s, to start an athletic footwear distribution company called Blue Ribbon Sports, later known as Nike, Inc. Knight managed the business end of the partnership, while Bowerman experimented with improvements in athletic footwear design. Bowerman stayed in Eugene, keeping his coaching job at the University of Oregon, while Knight operated the main office from Portland. Bowerman and Knight initially began importing the Onitsuka Tiger running shoes from Japan to sell in the United States. Initially, the partnership was 50-50, but shortly afterwards Bowerman wanted it changed to 51–49, with Knight having the higher ownership. He did this to avoid potential gridlock and have one of them be in charge of final decisions.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman's design ideas led to the creation of a running shoe in 1966 that was ultimately named "Nike Cortez" in 1968, which quickly became a top-seller and remains one of Nike's most iconic footwear designs. Bowerman designed several Nike shoes, but is best known for ruining his wife's Belgian waffle iron in 1970 or 1971, experimenting with the idea of using waffle-ironed rubber to create a new sole for footwear that would grip but be lightweight.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman's design inspiration led to the introduction of the so-called "Moon Shoe" in 1972, so named because the waffle tread was said to resemble the footprints left by astronauts on the moon. Further refinement resulted in the "Waffle Trainer" in 1974, which helped fuel the explosive growth of Blue Ribbon Sports/Nike. While Bowerman was experimenting with shoe design, he worked in a small, unventilated space, using glue and solvents with toxic components that caused him severe nerve damage. The nerve damage to his lower legs left him with significant mobility problems; as Kenny Moore notes in his book "Bowerman and the Men of Oregon", Bowerman had rendered himself unable to run in the shoes that he had given the world.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman was obsessed with shaving weight off his athletes' running shoes. He believed that custom-made shoes would weigh less on the feet of his runners and cut down on blisters, as well as reduce the overall drag on their energy for every ounce he could remove from the shoe. By his estimation, removing one ounce (28 g) from a shoe, based on a six-foot gait for a runner, would translate in a reduction of 55 pounds (25 kg) of lift over a one-mile (1.6 km) span.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Knight once said of Bowerman's importance to the company, "If coach (Bowerman) isn't happy, Nike isn't happy."


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman reduced his role with the company in the late 1970s and began passing down his stake in the company to other employees shortly before the IPO launched.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: Bowerman is a member of the National Distance Running Hall of Fame, the USA National Track and Field Hall of Fame, the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame, Oregon's Athletic Hall of Fame, the RRCA Distance Running Hall of Fame, and the National Inventors Hall of Fame. His statue and stopwatch grace the northwest corner of Hayward Field, home of the Prefontaine Classic at the University of Oregon. A biographical film, "Without Limits", about the relationship between record-breaking distance runner Steve Prefontaine and his coach Bill Bowerman was made in 1998, and Bill Bowerman was played by Donald Sutherland. The headquarters for Nike is located on Bowerman Drive in homage to the company's co-founder. Also in his honor, the company created the "Bowerman Series" of performance running shoes, designed to provide longer-lasting, more training-focused products to compete with such running brands as Asics and Saucony.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: In 2009, the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association created The Bowerman, an award that is given to the most outstanding collegiate male and female track & field athlete in a given calendar year. Inaugural winners of the award were Oregon's Galen Rupp and Colorado's Jenny Barringer. The Bowerman trophy was designed by Tinker Hatfield, a Nike employee and former Oregon student-athlete coached by Bowerman.


title: Bill Bowerman

text: In declining health in late 1999, Bowerman died at age 88 at his home at an assisted care facility in Fossil, Oregon.


title: Bongcloud Attack

text: It is considered a joke opening, and is associated with internet chess humor. Being a poor move, its usage can suggest a self-imposed challenge. Twitch streamers such as Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura have used it in online blitz chess, including in games against high-level opponents, as has World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. The name has also been applied to other opening sequences in which a player moves the king on move two.


title: Bongcloud Attack

text: The opening's name is thought to originate either from Chess.com user "Lenny_Bongcloud", who used the opening with little success, or more generally in reference to a bong, a device used to smoke cannabis, a humorous assertion that one would need to be intoxicated to think that using the opening is a legitimate strategy. The opening's usage in chess humor was furthered by Andrew Fabbro's joke manual "Winning With the Bongcloud".


title: Bongcloud Attack

text: The Bongcloud Attack violates several accepted principles of chess strategy by forgoing castling, impeding the movement of both the queen and the light-squared bishop, leaving the king exposed, wasting a tempo, and doing nothing to improve White's position. The lack of any redeeming feature, unlike some other dubious openings, puts the Bongcloud well outside of conventional practice. In a Twitter post, English Grandmaster Nigel Short described the opening as an "insult to chess".


title: Bongcloud Attack

text: GM Hikaru Nakamura has used the Bongcloud Attack in online blitz games. He streamed himself using the opening exclusively on a new Chess.com account and reached 3000 rating. In 2018, Nakamura played the Bongcloud three times against GM Levon Aronian during the Chess.com Speed Chess Championship, winning one and losing two. Nakamura also played the Bongcloud against GM Vladimir Dobrov in the 3+1 section and GM Wesley So in the 1+1 section of the 2019 Speed Chess Championship, winning both of those matches. On September 19, 2020, Nakamura used the opening against GM Jeffery Xiong in the final round of the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz tournament which was played on Lichess with a 5+3 time control and won the game.


title: Bongcloud Attack

text: On March 15, 2021, Magnus Carlsen, playing white, led with the Bongcloud in a game against Nakamura at the Magnus Carlsen Invitational. Nakamura mirrored the opening with 2. ... Ke7, leading to a position nicknamed the "Double Bongcloud". The game was intentionally drawn by threefold repetition after the players immediately repeated moves, the particular sequence they used known as the "Hotbox Variation". The game occurred in the last round of the preliminary stage of the tournament, and both players had already qualified for the following knockout stage, making the game dead rubber. It marked the first recorded occurrence of 1. e4 e5 2. Ke2 Ke7 in a major tournament.


title: Bongcloud Attack

text: Despite its obvious disadvantages, usage of such a "joke" opening can also have a psychological impact: following Carlsen's win over Wesley So in a 2020 blitz tournament with a 3+2 time control where he played 1.f3 (the Barnes Opening) followed by 2.Kf2 – a variant also named the "Bongcloud" – So noted that losing the game after such an opening had a crushing impact.


title: Bongcloud Attack

text: The first use of the joke opening in a FIDE rated game between top grandmasters occurred during the Chess.com Global Championship finals in November, 2022 which was an in-person rapid event played on Chess.com. Trailing 3-0 in his knockout match against Hikaru Nakamura, Polish GM Jan-Krzysztof Duda essayed 1.e3 and 2.Ke2. Duda lost the game after missing some chances to equalise.


title: Maria Montessori

text: Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori ( , ; August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician and educator best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy. At an early age, Montessori enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome, becoming one of the first women to attend medical school in Italy; she graduated with honors in 1896. Her educational method is in use today in many public and private schools globally.


title: Maria Montessori

text: Montessori was born on August 31, 1870, in Chiaravalle, Italy. Her father, Alessandro Montessori, age 33, was an official of the Ministry of Finance working in the local state-run tobacco factory. Her mother, Renilde Stoppani, 25 years old, was well-educated for the times and was the great-niece of Italian geologist and paleontologist Antonio Stoppani. While she did not have any particular mentor, she was very close to her mother who readily encouraged her. She also had a loving relationship with her father, although he disagreed with her choice to continue her education.


title: Maria Montessori

text: The Montessori family moved to Florence in 1873, then to Rome in 1875 because of her father's work. Montessori entered a public elementary school at the age of 6 in 1876. Her early school record was "not particularly noteworthy", although she was awarded certificates for good behavior in the 1st grade and for "lavori donneschi", or "women's work", the next year.


title: Maria Montessori

text: In 1883 or 1884, at the age of 13, Montessori entered a secondary, technical school, Regia Scuola Tecnica Michelangelo Buonarroti, where she studied Italian, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, accounting, history, geography, and sciences. She graduated in 1886 with good grades and examination results. That year, at the age of 16, she continued at the technical institute Regio Istituto Tecnico Leonardo da Vinci, studying Italian, mathematics, history, geography, geometric and ornate drawing, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and two foreign languages. She did well in the sciences and especially in mathematics.


title: Maria Montessori

text: She initially intended to pursue the study of engineering upon graduation, then an unusual aspiration for a woman. By the time she graduated in 1890 at the age of 20, with a certificate in physics–mathematics, she had decided to study medicine, a more unlikely pursuit given cultural norms at the time.


title: Maria Montessori

text: Montessori moved forward with her intention to study medicine. She appealed to Guido Baccelli, the professor of clinical medicine at the University of Rome, but was strongly discouraged. In 1890, she enrolled in the University of Rome in a degree course in natural sciences, passing examinations in botany, zoology, experimental physics, histology, anatomy, and general and organic chemistry, and earning her "diploma di licenza" in 1892. This degree, along with additional studies in Italian and Latin, qualified her for entrance into the medical program at the university in 1893.


title: Maria Montessori

text: She was met with hostility and harassment from some medical students and professors because of her gender. Because her attendance of classes with men in the presence of a naked body was deemed inappropriate, she was required to perform her dissections of cadavers alone, after hours. She resorted to smoking tobacco to mask the offensive odor of formaldehyde. Montessori won an academic prize in her first year, and in 1895 secured a position as a hospital assistant, gaining early clinical experience. In her last two years, she studied pediatrics and psychiatry, and worked in the pediatric consulting room and emergency service, becoming an expert in pediatric medicine. Montessori graduated from the University of Rome in 1896 as a doctor of medicine. Her thesis was published in 1897 in the journal "Policlinico". She found employment as an assistant at the university hospital and started a private practice.


title: Maria Montessori

text: From 1896 to 1901, Montessori worked with and researched so-called "phrenasthenic" children—in modern terms, children experiencing some form of cognitive delay, illness, or disability. She also began to travel, study, speak, and publish nationally and internationally, coming to prominence as an advocate for women's rights and education for children with learning difficulties.


title: Maria Montessori

text: On March 31, 1898, her only child – a son named Mario Montessori (March 31, 1898 – 1982) was born. Mario Montessori was born out of her love affair with Giuseppe Montesano, a fellow doctor who was co-director with her of the Orthophrenic School of Rome. If Montessori married, she would be expected to cease working professionally. Instead of marriage, Montessori decided to continue her work and studies. Montessori wanted to keep the relationship with her child's father secret under the condition that neither of them would marry anyone else. When the father of her child was pressured by family to make a more advantageous social connection and subsequently married, Montessori was left feeling betrayed and decided to leave the university hospital. She was forced to place her son in the care of a wet nurse living in the countryside, distraught to miss the first few years of his life. She would later be reunited with her son in his teenage years, where he proved to be a great assistant in her research.