We use Stein’s method to establish the rates of normal approximation in terms of the total variation distance for a large class of sums of score functions of samples arising from random events driven by a marked Poisson point process on $\mathbb{R}^d$. As in the study under the weaker Kolmogorov distance, the score functions are assumed to satisfy stabilisation and moment conditions. At the cost of an additional non-singularity condition, we show that the rates are in line with those under the Kolmogorov distance. We demonstrate the use of the theorems in four applications: Voronoi tessellations, k-nearest-neighbours graphs, timber volume, and maximal layers.

Let G be a group that is either virtually soluble or virtually free, and let ω be a weight on G. We prove that if G is infinite, then there is some maximal left ideal of finite codimension in the Beurling algebra $\ell^1(G, \omega)$, which fails to be (algebraically) finitely generated. This implies that a conjecture of Dales and Żelazko holds for these Banach algebras. We then go on to give examples of weighted groups for which this property fails in a strong way. For instance, we describe a Beurling algebra on an infinite group in which every closed left ideal of finite codimension is finitely generated and which has many such ideals in the sense of being residually finite dimensional. These examples seem to be hard cases for proving Dales and Żelazko’s conjecture.

In 2003, the Botswanan Court of Appeal decided in Kanane v The State that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was not proscribed by the Botswanan Constitution because no evidence had been adduced showing that the society of Botswana was ready for gay individuals. After sixteen years, things changed: in 2019, in Letsweletse Motshidiemang and LEGABIBO (as amicus) v The Attorney General, the High Court held that the law criminalizing anal intercourse violated the fundamental rights of gay people. In 2021, the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court decision. This commentary briefly examines these three decisions. It argues that Kanane gave too much weight to public opinion to the detriment of constitutional interpretation. Through a robust approach to generous interpretation of fundamental rights, the Motshidiemang decisions partly remedied the flaw in Kanane. However, judicial clarification is still required on some aspects of the decision.

This article examines a long-standing association of Martin Luther's christology with that of Cyril of Alexandria. However, for all its heuristic promise, the designation ‘Cyrillian’, must in Luther's case be understood either as an overly generalised statement of a well-established grammar of christology – in which case it simply is Luther's foundation and, as such, explains nothing specific about Luther's christology and, moreover, fails to do justice to the reformer's crucial argumentative moves. Alternatively, when taken for a set of material similarities, the designation is simply inaccurate, for Luther is decidedly not a Cyrillian, despite some fundamental convergences with the thought of the Alexandrian patriarch. Luther's context, as we demonstrate, leads him not only to go beyond Cyril, but also to argue in a manner contrary to Cyril, in order to secure what for both theologians is a realist eucharistic backdrop of their commitment to the Word's incarnation.

The Neoplatonist scholarch Proclus defined three categories of poetry: inspired, ‘middle’ and mimetic. Traditionally it has been thought that he considered only Homer to have excelled in all three, while other poets could fulfil one or at most two functions. It will be shown that Proclus also conceived of Hesiod as excelling in all three types and thereby assimilated Hesiodic authority to Homeric. He also considered Orpheus but assigned his poetry to just one category, not all three. In doing this, he increased his own authority as a teacher-hierophant, contributing to the dialogue between pagan Platonism and Christianity over the inspiration of texts.

In this article, I analyze a rhythmic device in musical theater performance that is often used but rarely discussed: The sudden break into halftime. Breaking into halftime—a rhythmic shift that is performed and perceived as occurring at half the tempo (or speed) of the groove in preceding and subsequent sections—has the effect of abruptly stretching out and slowing down musical temporality. With a break into halftime, a song's groove is suddenly broader, more open, and expansive. When accompanied by lyrics, the move suggests deliberateness, calls attention to the lyrical address, and invites a considered response from the listener. It is a musical device akin to drastically slowing down a spoken cadence to ensure that the listener is fully grasping the significance of one's words. With or without lyrics, this temporal disruption has a powerful effect on listeners’ bodies as, suddenly, the established timing of one's musical experience is disrupted and immediately set to half the speed of the previous pace. By analyzing the use of halftime in three filmed musicals—Newsies, Rent, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show—I show how the rhythmic device carries with it social coding of solidarity and collective power among queer, marginalized, and/or otherwise outcast individuals and ultimately alters the broader narrative of the shows. Ultimately, I articulate how halftime serves to queer time and forge collective action, allowing us to reimagine what sort of politics, formations, collectives, and futures are possible.

Coronations in Great Britain previously offered an occasion for national civic and spiritual renewal. However, the recent crowning of Charles III threw a spotlight on some of the deepening dissonance, diversity and divisions within British society. This paper is an ‘in principle’ argument for change and development. As the clamour for constitutional reform in the United Kingdom continues, and the awkwardness of Church of England bishops sitting in the House of Lords becomes more apparent, the time is ripe to reconsider disestablishment. In particular, the power and privilege of one denomination over all others is interrogated in relation to a kenotic ecclesiology, and which may now require the intentional divesting of kingly power: not clinging to status any longer, but self-emptying and embracing equality.

Since the 1980s, the Nonesuch label, a longstanding subsidiary of the Warner Music Group (WMG), has become noteworthy for its steady market performance during a period of volatility for media multinationals. Nonesuch Records, having once been an adventurous boutique classical label under Teresa Sterne, has developed over the last three decades as a creatively idiosyncratic and commercially successful “adult” imprint under Robert Hurwitz, the erstwhile director of the Munich-based Edition of Contemporary Music jazz label.

Nonesuch has not historically been understood as a jazz label, though it has served as a home for a few jazz acts, including Bill Frisell, Fred Hersch, and the World Saxophone Quartet. By the early years of the new millennium, though, Nonesuch had become one of the few major label subsidiaries willing to maintain an active roster of jazz instrumentalists, harnessing its diversified roster as a source of strength.

This paper examines the Nonesuch label's cultivation of a distinctive jazz niche and situates this development against the backdrop of a period of structural turbulence for the WMG. The leveraged buyout of WMG in 2004, which precipitated the dissolution of the Warner Jazz subsidiary and the transfer of much of its jazz roster to Nonesuch, reflects a contemporary logic of financialization, where value extraction has become the overriding goal of corporate restructuring. Mergers and acquisitions enacted at the uppermost reaches of major label corporate hierarchies pass along significant costs to the label subsidiaries and their artist rosters, installing precarity at the core of the music industry's creative ecologies.

Several authors have shown that Kusuoka’s measure κ on fractals is a scalar Gibbs measure; in particular, it maximizes a pressure. There is also a different approach, in which one defines a matrix-valued Gibbs measure µ, which induces both Kusuoka’s measure κ and Kusuoka’s bilinear form. In the first part of the paper, we show that one can define a ‘pressure’ for matrix-valued measures; this pressure is maximized by µ. In the second part, we use the matrix-valued Gibbs measure µ to count periodic orbits on fractals, weighted by their Lyapounov exponents.

Let k be a field of characteristic zero and $k^{[n]}$ the polynomial algebra in n variables over k. The LND conjecture concerning the images of locally nilpotent derivations arose from the Jacobian conjecture. We give a positive answer to the LND conjecture in several cases. More precisely, we prove that the images of rank-one locally nilpotent derivations of $k^{[n]}$ acting on principal ideals are MZ-subspaces for any $n\geq 2$, and that the images of a large class of locally nilpotent derivations of $k^{[3]}$ (including all rank-two and homogeneous rank-three locally nilpotent derivations) acting on principal ideals are MZ-subspaces.