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The Guardian
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Mum, I can't think straight any more': the mother who filmed her son's entire childhood
There's a scene in the documentary Motherboard in which life as a lone parent is very much going off the rails. While film-maker Victoria Mapplebeck is having treatment for breast cancer, her 14-year-old son Jim is partying hard and refusing to do his homework. After a huge row, he storms out. His mother recorded their subsequent phone call. 'When he said he couldn't wait to be old enough to move out, that was like a dagger through the heart,' she says. 'That cancer year was when life's difficult stuff was happening and I was filming the process all at the same time.' The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Back in 2004, when Mapplebeck found herself pregnant after a short romance with a man who wasn't keen on being a father, she was all too aware of the Cyril Connolly quote about there being no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall. 'So I trained my camera on that pram in order to find a way to combine life as a film-maker and a mother,' she says. Filmed over 20 years on a succession of phones, Motherboard is a doc that comes with equal amounts of jeopardy, trauma and humour. We first meet Jim as a foetus on an ultrasound screen, giving his mum-to-be the thumbs up. Over the following 90 minutes we see him grow into a warm-hearted young man with a gift for comedy. As a longitudinal project, the film has been compared to Michael Apted's influential 1964 TV series Seven Up!, which followed the same 14 children over the years to see how their lives changed. It has also been likened to Richard Linklater's 2014 coming-of-age feature Boyhood, made over 12 years with the same actors. But where those films were made by invisible directors seamlessly stitching together a narrative, Motherboard puts Mapplebeck centre frame with Jim, and shows her toggling between being a parent and a film-maker. Mapplebeck was a 38-year-old freelance TV director when she became pregnant. As this was hardly the most financially stable of jobs, she moved into teaching when she realised she would be bringing up a baby up on her own. As an innovator who had made the first C4 webcam series, Smart Hearts, back in 1999, her experience with virtual reality, self-shooting and using iPhones as cameras led to her becoming professor of digital media at Royal Holloway, University of London. Realising she missed film-making, Mapplebeck made the 2015 short 160 Characters, about the relationship that had led to Jim's conception, using old text messages found on her redundant Nokia phone. 160 Characters was followed by another short, Missed Call, about Jim's wish when he was 13 to meet his absent father. That film won a Bafta in 2019, but footage of the two of them going up on stage to collect the award doesn't tell the whole story. Mapplebeck had been undergoing treatment for breast cancer and was worried she wouldn't live long enough to see Jim grow up. She had already started filming her year-long treatment as a VR project for the Guardian: 'I've always looked at painful experiences through a lens and on the whole it's helped. With cancer, you've got no control over it and you have to lean into that. It's not about whether you've got a positive attitude as to what your outcome is, it's in the lap of the gods. I wanted some sense of agency and decided to document this whole year of cancer treatment and explore its effect on family life.' Jim wasn't sure at first: 'Even if I was putting myself in her shoes, it still didn't make sense. But what I slowly learned was that for every person, therapy looks very different. And I realised that putting a camera in front of it was my mum's way of getting through it. I saw how positive it was for her, so then I was backing it.' Jim is now 21 and studying drama at university. He still lives in the south London flat his mother moved into before he was born. Closely involved with the film-making process throughout, he is credited as creative consultant on Motherboard. Talking alongside his mother, he remembers the 18-month edit: 'It was quite a funny time because I'd have my life and you'd have yours. And I'd come back home and it'd be pitch black; you'd just been so busy all the lights would be off except the illuminated screen. And you would go, 'Oh, could you watch this?' I was regularly watching cuts and giving feedback about what I did and didn't like. It was really cool.' Mapplebeck is at pains to stress the care taken to ensure that making the film didn't add to Jim's worries about the future: 'The bad stuff and the very difficult moments, they're not recorded live. And that was a very conscious decision. I didn't come back from the oncologist and say to Jim, 'OK, this is the diagnosis', with the camera in his face. All of that is off-camera. But then days, weeks later, we'd record a kind of recap. I always felt it was a myth that it's only going to be good if it's live and you're doorstepping. Having a bit of time to reflect made for really good material.' Jim comes through as a natural performer, whether singing his made-up songs as a charming toddler or acting in a school play. He admits: 'I like being the main character – as an actor that is nice. And I feel lucky we can talk honestly.' Not everything seen on screen was filmed by Mapplebeck. Snatches of Jim's life outside their flat – wading through muddy music festivals or partying with his friends – come from footage shot on his phone. Jim remembers: 'Mum would be like, 'Oh, could I get this?' And it was nice including a lot of my friends because they will always be a very big part of my life, especially those years.' Motherboard also weaves in telephone calls and texts between mother and son, even when their relationship is at its most fraught during the cancer treatment and Covid restriction years. At one point Jim texts: 'I can't think straight any more, this year needs to fuck off'. Unlike mom influencers with their 'sharenting' videos that stream their children's antics almost-live online – and too often without their consent – Mapplebeck makes it clear that there were lengthy negotiations between her and Jim: 'There were three years of showing Jim cuts. Asking, 'What do you think? How would you feel about using this?'' She would put the phone in selfie mode and film them talking side by side: 'You see us going back and forth about consent. There was the scene where Jim says, 'Nineteen minutes you've been recording. Nineteen minutes gone! You're a thief!'' They agree that the toughest discussions were about using that phone call, recorded after their biggest argument: 'You had stormed out and I didn't know where you were and you were supposed to be going to your grandma's and it was pre-vaccine. I was worried you'd infect her and you were screaming, 'Shut up, shut up!' It's so visceral. Both of us knew it was really powerful. You kept on saying to me, 'I think that people might hate me when they hear me talk to you like that.'' But at a test screening, Jim was reassured that the scene worked in the way that his mother intended: 'It was quite a rite of passage because I think Jim really felt the love in the room. And he realised that people have either been that teenager or they've been that parent – or both – and that everybody got it. Nobody was judgmental or down on him, and that was a real turning point. Jim said to me, 'You can't make a film about parenting unless you show the shit stuff.'' 'People can say I did the film to please my mum,' adds Jim, 'but there was no devil on my shoulder saying, 'Do this for her.' If I hadn't wanted to do the film, it wouldn't have happened.' Mapplebeck received guidance from OKRE (Opening Knowledge across Research and Entertainment) about protecting Jim, as well as legal advice on ensuring his father's anonymity on screen. 'I would not want internet sleuthery and I've never been interested in naming or shaming, or even being judgmental of his decisions. It was a real lightbulb moment for me when I thought, 'I don't want to try and get into his head.' 'I will never understand his own experiences and what led him to these decisions. The advice we've always had from lawyers and compliance people has been: 'Yes, you can tell your story. You've got a right to your truth, a truthful and honest account of how this situation affected you.'' A 2013 study found that 13% of fathers report having no contact with their non-resident children. Jim was 14 by the time he met his dad. They saw each other three times that year, and haven't met since. Jim expresses ambivalence about him: 'I don't hate him at all. Don't even dislike him. I just have a very neutral view, which is that he did what he did in his life. I've done what I've done in my life. I don't want him to watch the film and regret anything. We all make choices, and I think, yeah, he might someday think that wasn't the best choice, but I wouldn't want him to feel like he should regret anything he's done. I know I've got a dad out there, but I am very, very happy with my current family and there's no guarantee that I would be who I was if he was in my life.' Motherboard is in cinemas 15 August. This article was amended on 29 July 2025 to clarify that the 13% figure for fathers who reported having no contact with their children was in relation to circumstances where the children did not live with their fathers.
Time of India
7 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
From New Delhi to Singapore: How SIM Global Education Shaped Devanshi Soni's Global Journey
When Devanshi Soni first visited Singapore in 2017 as a teenager on vacation, she felt an instant connection. 'I remember thinking, 'I want to live here one day,'' she recalls. Years later, that vision became reality. Today, Devanshi is a proud graduate of the University of London (UOL)'s Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Business and Management programme at SIM Global Education (SIM GE) and is now building a purposeful career as a Sustainability Consultant at Sustainable Living Lab (SL2) in Singapore — a transformation deeply shaped by her academic and personal experiences in Singapore and at SIM GE. SIM: A Leader in Global Education For over 60 years, the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) has evolved as an International Institute of Higher Learning, committed to empowering individuals and strengthening talent and employability for all seasons of life. By maximising learners' potential and providing accessible, flexible learning pathways, SIM enables individuals, businesses, and society to Learn for Life and Thrive for Life in a fast-changing world. As a key entity of SIM, SIM GE has been at the forefront of private higher education, offering over 140 diploma, undergraduate, and postgraduate programmes in partnership with top universities from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. With globally recognised qualifications and a vibrant, multicultural learning environment, SIM GE equips students with industry-relevant skills, global perspectives, and the confidence to thrive — whether they are starting their first degree or advancing to postgraduate study. It remains a top choice for students across Asia seeking a global education. Today, SIM GE is home to over 16,000 students annually from more than 50 countries and boasts a global network of over 200,000 alumni. Its tagline, 'Learn for Life, Thrive for Life, ' reflects SIM's commitment to lifelong learning, leadership development, and global career readiness. 'SIM wasn't just where I studied — it's where I found my voice.' Devanshi's decision to pursue her degree at SIM was influenced by both academic and personal factors. 'The University of London programme was academically rigorous, and SIM's vibrant campus life promised opportunities for holistic development,' she shares. Her journey, however, began in an unusual way — 10 days in COVID-19 isolation. 'It was overwhelming at first, but SIM supported me from day one. That is when I first felt the warmth of the SIM community.' She quickly immersed herself in campus life, becoming a Student Ambassador and taking on leadership roles in student clubs such as the SIM Young Entrepreneur Network, the Investment & Networking Club, and the SIM Economics Society. She also represented SIM at international events such as the ESSEC Hackathon, where her team won first place for a sustainable saltwater lamp prototype. From Campus to Community Impact Beyond academics, SIM empowered Devanshi to lead with purpose. Volunteering with Youth Corps Singapore, she befriended elderly residents and participated in grassroots sustainability outreach. She also founded the Paalan Foundation, a youth-led NGO in Delhi that champions menstrual hygiene and educational access. 'These experiences taught me that young people don't need permission to lead change,' she reflects. 'SIM gave me the confidence to take that first step.' Real-World Preparation and Career Success SIM's academic environment challenged Devanshi to think critically and communicate effectively. 'It wasn't just about memorising facts — it was about developing real-world skills,' she says. Through SIM's career development centre, Career Connect, she received mentorship, career support, and placement opportunities, eventually receiving two job offers upon graduation — both through her own initiative. 'In my role today, I'm doing purposeful work I care deeply about — and I credit SIM for laying the foundation,' she says. Her proudest moment? Receiving the SIM EDGE Award, a holistic recognition of excellence in academics, university and community involvement, leadership, and professional development. 'It validated my growth and reminded me how far I've come.' A Parent's Perspective: "She Became a Global Citizen" Devanshi's parents were initially apprehensive about sending their daughter abroad. 'Safety was our top concern,' they share. 'Singapore offered peace of mind, a high standard of living, and a nurturing multicultural environment.' What reassured them most was SIM's structure — clear communication, strong academic credentials, and a comprehensive student support system. 'SIM's partnership with the University of London gave us confidence in the academic quality. We saw Devanshi transform into a self-assured, articulate young woman.' Their advice to fellow Indian parents? 'Choose a university where your child will be supported, seen, and stretched. For us, SIM was that place.' Why More Indian Students Are Choosing SIM Singapore has increasingly emerged as a popular study destination for Indian students — offering safety, proximity to home, cultural familiarity, and world-class education. Within this ecosystem, SIM Global Education stands out for: Partnerships with globally ranked universities Strong career services and alumni networks Student clubs and experiential learning A campus community that values diversity and inclusion As Devanshi puts it, 'SIM gives you the platform — but it is up to you to make the most of it. Everything you do here adds up.' In Conversation: Devanshi and Her Family Reflect Devanshi and her parents shared candid insights into their journey: Q: What drew you to SIM for your undergraduate studies? Devanshi: The University of London degree, combined with SIM's vibrant campus life and diverse student clubs, made it the ideal place for both academic growth and personal development. Q: How did being a Student Ambassador shape you? Devanshi: It gave me confidence and purpose. Mentoring new students taught me to lead with empathy and authenticity. Q: What will you miss most about SIM? Devanshi: The people — especially my professors and peers. And, of course, the comforting mala noodles at Food Clique! Q: As parents, what stood out to you about SIM? Devanshi's Parents : The organised structure, focus on student wellbeing, and global recognition of the degree gave us peace of mind. More importantly, we watched our daughter grow in confidence, compassion, and capability. A Launchpad for Life Devanshi Soni's story — from New Delhi to Singapore, from student to sustainability consultant, is a powerful testament to the transformative impact of a purpose-driven education. With global exposure, real-world experiences, and a deeply supportive community, SIM GE empowers students to thrive in an increasingly complex world. For Indian students seeking a future-ready education in Asia's innovation hub, SIM GE offers more than a degree — it offers a launchpad for life. Find out more about SIM Global Education via or contact Ms. Tricha Vasta, Country Manager (India), SIM at trichav@ Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
Daily Mirror
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
'I'm a social media guru - here are my top tips to avoid doom scrolling all day'
Eknoor Soni and his brother Arsh have millions of followers on the likes of YouTube, Snapchat and other apps, but the siblings, from London, recognise the pitfalls of technology A social media expert who helps manage influencers who get over 100 million views a month has shared his top five tips to stop wasting hours of your day doom scrolling. Eknoor Soni, 21, has been obsessed with social media since he was 16 and has gained millions of views with his older brother Arsh, 28. The University of London business graduate has since set up an agency that manages the Snapchat accounts of creators including YouTubers Jake Sweet (12.9 million subscribers) and Jamie Nyland (15.6m subscribers). And while creating and helping others create content is his passion, he also believes that people can spend too much time on it. He said: "Social media has been designed to keep you hooked and trapped on your phone. 'The rise of short form content from platforms like TikTok has kept people, including many from younger generations, glued to their phone watching an infinite amount of videos without realising hours have passed. 'While there's nothing wrong with watching some videos, if it's sapping your productivity so much that you're not getting things done you should address that sooner rather than later. 'I wouldn't recommend going cold turkey and completely cutting yourself off, but if you think your social media usage is too much I'd recommend following some of the following tips to reduce it to more manageable levels.' Here are Eknoor's top five tips: Use social media for a purpose: One of the first ways to avoid wasting time on social media is to use it with intention. For example, if you are focusing on the gym and have a goal to build bigger muscles, then use platforms like TikTok to tailor your algorithm to only provide you with gym content. You can simply tailor your algorithm by liking, commenting, sharing and engaging with gym content which results in TikTok showing you similar content. Suddenly, the for you page becomes a free personal trainer instead of a distraction allowing you to reach your goals and benefit from social media. Clean up your social media feed: A simple way to do this is when you see content you don't like or want to see then you can press on the video and an option will pop up saying 'Don't recommend me this content'. This will let the platform know not to show you this content allowing you to focus on only watching valuable content that doesn't drain your energy or waste your time. Create content: One of the best ways to stop wasting time on social media is to flip the script, so instead of just consuming content, start creating instead. Rather than doom-scrolling, use that time to make content. So many people have built careers simply by documenting their lives, sharing their favourite food spots, or showing their personality online. Short-form content has levelled the playing field allowing people to get millions of views on the first video they have posted. If you're already spending hours on these apps, why not use that time to build something, make money and provide value. Turn off notifications: Social media apps are constantly pining you with likes, tags, stories and random updates to get you back on the app to consume content. By turning off everything except the essentials, you'll reduce distractions and be able to focus on the things you are actively doing. The less you are interrupted by valueless notifications the more you can focus on things that actually matter. Set time limits: This is one of the most effective ways to stop wasting hours on social media as most phones allow you to set daily screen time caps. This means if you cap yourself to one hour of social media scrolling a day it can help you become aware of how much time you are spending and how fast it goes. Once you hit the time limit, treat it as a signal to log off and do something productive. This way you can create healthy boundaries so social media works for you, not the other way round
IOL News
15-07-2025
- General
- IOL News
The memories of diaspora: a South African family story
Vilashini Cooppan with her mother dressed in a sari Image: Supplied Professor Vilashini Cooppan is the granddaughter of Dr Somasundaram Cooppan, who was among the first three students to matriculate from Sastri College in 1930. He was a British Council Scholar at the University of London's Institute of Education and completed a PhD in Education at UCT in 1949. Somasundaram taught at Sastri College, Springfield Training College, the Presidency College in Triplicane, Madras, and Macquarie University in Australia. He subsequently joined the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His son Ramachandra, Professor Vilashini Cooppan's father, also matriculated from Sastri College and studied medicine at the University of Natal, before doing a Fellowship in Diabetes in the United States and joining the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, and being appointed Clinical Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Below is an extract of a lecture delivered by Professor Vilashini Cooppan at the 1860 Heritage Centre last Sunday. WE IN SOUTH Africa are the descendants and inheritors of the Indian diaspora. To inherit is to be given a gift, indeed many gifts: the riches of culture, history, tradition, memory, family, community, love. To be inheritors is also to be time-travellers, to live simultaneously in the present (here and now); in the past (the places and people we came from), and in the future (the unfolding of what we are becoming, people both old and new). Diasporic becoming happens over and over again. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ First, leaving the homeland, and second, creating new homes, new ways, new lives, that bind a community in multiple ways, within itself, to its new land and that land's people and histories, and also to the memory of the homeland. We here are Indian by ethnicity, like one and a half billion people on the planet. We are South Africans, part of this country's ethnic and racial mix, sharing the land and the nation, our rights and our futures with black Africans, with so-called coloureds, with whites, both English and Afrikaner, and with new migrants from elsewhere in Africa and Asia. And finally, we are South African Indians, a thin, unique piece, torn from the Indian diaspora's round roti. Professor Vilashini Cooppan Image: Supplied The word "diaspora" means the scattering of peoples like seeds, roots, airborne, and falling to the earth to germinate in new soils. Here in South Africa, we are situated at the continent's tip, where at Cape Point the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean, those two great world-systems of centuries, for the Indian Ocean world, millennia, of trade. Well before Western imperialism, the Indian Ocean World was a zone of circulation. Noun. 1. Movement to and fro or around something, especially that of fluid in a closed system … similar: flow, motion, movement, course, passage. The noun circulation invites verbs: flowing in a closed circle or circuit, like blood in the body or sap through a sugar cane plant or goods in an economy built on them; encircling, as a border might if the unity it contained was also porosity; pouring, as in something that exceeds the containers that would catch it, like holds that spill forth and things that come in waves - ships, slaves and indentured labourers, migrants, cultures, histories, memories. Stacks and sacks of pearls, cowrie shells, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, tea, opium, rice, cloth; bulk goods and luxury objects, the stuff of the Indian Ocean world, the material history of so many peoples, including our South African Indians of the diaspora. Dr Somasundaram Cooppan Image: Supplied In our house in Wellesley sits a round brass pot. It has been there for as long as I can remember. It belonged to Amma and Amma's mother before her, and maybe even to Pati's Amma. At some point, perhaps 150 years ago, that pot crossed the Kala Pani, the black waters off the eastern coast of India, along with the other goods, the chappals, the saris and dhotis, the small bags of spices, the rice and okra and eggplant seeds, the brass velkas or prayer lamps and the flash of a bangle's gold carrying all the family wealth. There is memory in objects, a dense layering of time so that the dust of the past and the solidity of the present share a single plane. Today, the gold around my neck is my Amma's pendant, bought in Mombasa on a long-ago visit, and my mother's wedding jewellery chain. I also wear my Amma's sari, which she inherited from her own mother. I wore it the day I graduated from Yale with a bachelor's degree. My father ironed it the morning before my Ph.D. graduation from Stanford. And a month ago I wore it again, for my son Rohan's BA and MA graduation from the University of Chicago. In this sari, I carry the memories of our family's history, the paths of culture and education that led our grandfather's father's father to the work of teaching in the sugar cane days, and our grandfather, Papa, to study in Cape Town, then in England, to become the first non-white person in South Africa to earn a Ph.D. Someday, I will wear this sari when my nephews and niece graduate from college, if I live long enough, and when my own grandchildren graduate from college. I have worn this sari one other time, in 2015, to give a lecture in Thirunvanathapuram at a conference at the Kerala Women's College on the senses and the emotions. I remember landing in the monsoon-wet morning at Trivandrum airport, checking into the hotel, crossing the room's cold white marble tiles aglow with moonlight to open the tall dark cupboards with their slight smell of wet wood into which air heavy with rain has seeped. Showering off the 24 hours of travel and, without really thinking, rubbing in the hotel's neem body lotion and then dusting my body with the hotel's sandalwood talcum powder. And then it hit me. This is Amma's smell rising from her lace blouses, sweetly lingering in the munthani of her sari. We would smell it when she cuddled us as babies, children and girls, and adults. I entered the conference room still thinking of Amma, the Mysore talc's white glow on the brown of my skin (did it really, as I'd read somewhere, contain stray bits of ground glass?). Diamonds on skin, moonlight on marble tiles, hints of gold thread lighting up the saris I hung in the cupboards. I have no saris that are not a little bit fancy. In my diasporic Indianness, saris are for graduations and weddings and births and deaths, for prayers and rituals and ceremonies and parties. And whenever I wear a sari, I remember how much I loved to watch two women tie them, my mother and her sister, both of them so graceful as they moved, wearing the sari as effortlessly as a second skin. I love especially an old sari, one whose pleats fall with the luscious heft of fine old silk, its wearing a recompense for long languishing in a kist or cupboard. I remember the never-worn-ness of so many of the saris that my mother carried in her steel trousseau trunk from South Africa to Australia to Canada to the United States. The saris I would unfold and admire as a young girl in the afternoon quiet preceding a teatime without visitors, the saris that, in her diasporic loneliness far from home, my mother slowly gave away. Aunties, please don't get rid of those old saris; they are our history, our memory, ourselves and our ancestors, and our future generations. That day in Thiruvananthapuram was the first time I wore a sari to give a paper. Today is the second. Then and now, I wonder what happens when I use a sari for thinking. What Salman Rushdie once called 'the migrant's eye view' is, for all its many tragedies, for all the desperate losses and deprivations and dangers that cause people to leave their homelands, in the end still also a hopeful eye. Because the migrant's story tells us that in the end, no wall is strong enough to stop cultures from changing, from absorbing differences, from reinventing themselves, from becoming bigger. We are the children of the movements of many diasporas, of slavery and colonialism and indenture and apartheid, so many histories run in our veins, mix in our blood, along with those new families and cultures we have added. Vilashini Cooppan is Professor of Literature and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media. THE POST
The South African
10-07-2025
- Science
- The South African
Here's why Wednesday may have been the shortest day of your life
Wednesday, 9 July could have been the shortest day of your life – literally. Earth's rotation has been accelerating, and this week's date is among several projected to be fractions of a millisecond shorter than usual. Atomic clock measurements show that 9 July, 22 July and 5 August are expected to be between 1.3 and 1.51 milliseconds shorter than the standard 24-hour day – an unusual but increasingly frequent phenomenon. The shortest day on record occurred on 5 July 2024, when Earth completed its rotation 1.66 milliseconds faster than the standard solar day of 86 400 seconds. While the cause isn't fully understood, scientists say the acceleration could be influenced by several natural forces: Melting glaciers , shifting mass away from the poles , shifting mass away from the poles Changes in atmospheric pressure and wind patterns Motion in Earth's molten core A weakening magnetic field According to Graham Jones, an astrophysicist at the University of London, and data from the US Naval Observatory, the Earth's Length of Day (LOD) is being monitored to millisecond accuracy by atomic clocks, which track the vibrations of atoms to keep time. 'Earth's spin is like a figure skater – when mass is pulled in, it spins faster,' explained Richard Holme, a geophysicist at the University of Liverpool. Seasonal changes in mass distribution – like trees leafing out during northern summers – can also subtly shift the planet's rotational balance. Although these time differences are imperceptible to humans, they have critical implications for: GPS navigation systems Telecommunications Financial transaction timing Satellite operations Tiny time discrepancies can lead to technical glitches in highly synchronised systems. Traditionally, scientists adjust for Earth's slower spin by occasionally adding a leap second to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). But if Earth's faster spin continues, we may eventually need to remove a second – creating a 'negative leap second' for the first time in history. Ironically, while Earth's spin has sped up in recent years, long-term trends predict the opposite. The moon's gravitational pull is slowly causing Earth to spin more slowly. According to geoscientist Stephen Meyers, Earth days could stretch to 25 hours – but not for another 200 million years. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1 Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
