- Facebook (Wikipedia)
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities. Since 2006, Facebook allows everyone to register from 13 years old (or older), except in the case of a handful of nations, where the age limit is 14 years. As of December 2022, Facebook claimed 3 billion monthly active users. As of October 2023 Facebook ranked as the 3rd most visited website in the world with 22.56% of its traffic coming from the United States. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.
- Anthony Burgess on A Clockwork Orange (anthonyburgess.org)
A Clockwork Orange (1962) is Anthony Burgess’s most famous novel. Its themes of free will and individual responsibility are still urgent today, and its uncompromising violence and dark humour remain powerful. He returned to it in print and on air throughout his life, especially after Stanley Kubrick’s controversial 1971 film adaptation. Here are recordings of Burgess reading the opening sequence of the novel, in the Manchester accent of his youth; part of an unbroadcast, candid interview about its themes and concerns for the Italian media; a well-lubricated after-dinner speech accepting a prize for his work from the Writer’s Guild of America; and the overture and opening number of Burgess’s own 1986 adaptation of his novel as a stage musical, performed in 2017 by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra.
- Manchester (Wikipedia)
Manchester is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of over 589,000 in 2024. It borders the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the city of Salford to the west. The two cities and the surrounding towns form one of the United Kingdom’s most populous conurbations, the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, which has a population of 2.87 million.