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Sep 8, 2024 | 
emmarowley.substack.com | Emma Rowley |Laura Brown |Melanie Ehrenkranz
Hello! I am back, recovered from the plague (well, a plague) with a pitstop to recuperate at the ultimate cliché of Londoners in the Countryside, (Soho) Farmhouse. Which poses the modern-day version of the question: if a tree falls in the forest, with no one watching, does it make a sound? Which is: if you’re at Farmhouse and don’t post a selfie on your socials, did you really go? Let’s find out.
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Aug 30, 2024 | 
wislawjournal.com | Laura Brown
The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Minnesota is suing major social media giants for their alleged contribution to a mental health crisis affecting Native American teenagers. Represented by Robins Kaplan, plaintiffs allege that Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube have negatively rewired adolescents’ brains.
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Aug 27, 2024 | 
atlantic.ctvnews.ca | Laura Brown
The New Brunswick Teachers’ Association says the province is still short about 174 teachers, with the return to school just one week away.
President Peter Lagacy says the NBTA has been sounding the alarm over the shortage of teachers for some time, and is concerned schools are having to lean on community members without an education degree to fill in the gaps.
“The shortage has just compounded the problems.
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Aug 3, 2023 | 
laurabrown99.substack.com | Laura Brown
Before I was born, my Mum and Dad went on a grand, four-year tour of the US and Canada (often with cattle in a trailer behind their truck because my dear late Dad was, in fact Farmer Brown). And man, they really did it, criss-crossing the country and exploring its furthest fields and plains and reaches before heading back to Australia and making me. Goodbye freedom, Ma and Pa! My apologies. My parents divorced when I was five and Mum and I moved to Sydney.
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Jul 6, 2023 | 
laurabrown99.substack.com | Laura Brown
When you visit Everytown’s website, you are greeting by a rolling script: “We have a plan to end gun violence. One volunteer at a time. One donation at a time. One policy at a time. One survivor at a time. One statistic at a time. One law at a time.”The work really is that incremental, that deliberate. For all the numbing, wearying tragedy of gun violence, Everytown has more powerful ammunition: deep strategy and extraordinary patience.
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Jun 22, 2023 | 
laurabrown99.substack.com | Laura Brown
People often ask me why I left Australia for New York, and I always reply, half joking, “Delusions of grandeur.” Specifically, fashion, which formed me, and hastened my impatience to get out into the world. Of course, in Australia we couldn’t access global fashion shows like we can now, by hitting a button on Instagram and watching Pharrell Williams’ debut for Louis Vuitton live.
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Jun 15, 2023 | 
laurabrown99.substack.com | Laura Brown
I don’t know if you know this, but I’m Australian. In case the above picture (more on that later) and my general daily existence didn’t give it away. Australia is famously referred to as “the lucky country,” and that’s largely right. In fact, the term comes from a book written by author Donald Horne in 1964, but it was originally a pejorative, a diss:“Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck.
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Jun 7, 2023 | 
laurabrown99.substack.com | Laura Brown
My last post was about women’s relationship to pride; I couldn’t have expected that I’d be on to dudes and hubris seven days later. In the dictionary, “hubris” has a tidy definition: “excessive pride or self-confidence.” And that’s what’s been on display, billboard style, in the media this week. Now this is a bit inside baseball (which is, after all, the media’s favorite sport), but I’ve been absolutely riveted by the Chris Licht situation at CNN.
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May 22, 2023 | 
laurabrown99.substack.com | Laura Brown
I was on a plane the other day (just for something new) when I came across a Washington Post article called, “Why birds and their songs are good for our mental health.” The plane was making plane noises, so I popped in my AirPods and hit a little play-the-birdsong button in each section: a Meadowlark, a Warbler, a Bobolink (never heard of the little guy, but goodness he was cheery), a Woodpecker (oddly without the wood pecking part, but still charming).
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Apr 29, 2023 | 
laurabrown99.substack.com | Laura Brown
I’m on a plane from Johannesburg to Cape Town as I write this after a “hectic” (common slang here, and perfectly descriptive) two days touring health facilities and care organizations with (RED) and The Global Fund. I’ve known the folks at (RED) for a while, after meeting Bono (who founded (RED) with Bobby Shriver in 2005) and Ali Hewson through their former sustainable fashion brand, Edun, over a decade ago.
