All posts tagged: Eccentric

Eurovision 2026: Meet Look Mum No Computer, the UK’s eccentric finalist singing Eins Zwei Drei

Eurovision 2026: Meet Look Mum No Computer, the UK’s eccentric finalist singing Eins Zwei Drei

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter The UK’s Eurovision entry, Look Mum No Computer, knows that the odds are, quite literally, stacked against him when he competes in this year’s final. The bookies have him down at 80/1 to win, but the musician and YouTuber born Sam Battle has said he’s “happy to be an underdog” in the annual song contest, as he responds to calls to boycott the event. Battle, 37, is representing the UK in Vienna, Austria, with his song “Eins, Zwei, Drei”, amid controversy surrounding the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) decision to allow Israel to compete. Speaking to The Independent this week, Battle seemed acutely aware of the challenge he faces, but wasn’t bothered by predictions that he might fare poorly. Look Mum No Computer, real name Sam Battle, walks on the turquoise carpet during the official start of the Eurovision Song Contest week …

The Niche-Riche Shopping Guide: 11 Brands and Designers for the Eccentric Aesthete

The Niche-Riche Shopping Guide: 11 Brands and Designers for the Eccentric Aesthete

Published by Sam Flores

Shopping is so anesthetized these days. See it, click it, buy it has taken all the folie out of dressing ourselves. What if there were another way? It turns out there is, and the .001% has known about it all along. (Quiet luxury was a red herring.) It’s what we are calling niche riche, the clothes, accessories, and objets for people with actual personalities and actual taste. Or who just want to seem that way. Chris Brock — Ojai-based ceramics artist. Desert Vintage — Vintage clothing store that carries everything from Edwardian cotton shirts to Phoebe Philo–era Celine, with locations in Tucson, New York City, and Paris. Dosa — Go to its LA showroom for the slip dresses and skirts, but stay for whatever Christina Kim has picked up on her travels to sell. Galerie Estrada — Miami-based gallery inspired by Paris couture salons of the early 20th century that has a deep specialty in real-deal Fortuny gowns, but sells everything from Chinese hairpins to Babani silk robes. Lucchese — The ultimate Western bootmaker based in El …

Astronomers discover the first neutron star–black hole merger with an eccentric orbit

Astronomers discover the first neutron star–black hole merger with an eccentric orbit

Published by Jenni Sidey

In 2020, astronomers discovered a violent cosmic event that has led them to rethink how extreme pairs of astronomical objects form. These pairs are capable of producing powerful cosmic collisions. The event, referred to as GW200105, involved two of the most extreme objects in the universe: a neutron star and a black hole. The two objects were locked in a spiraling path toward one another until they finally merged. For a long time, scientists had assumed that any system consisting of a black hole and a neutron star would have merged along an almost perfectly circular path by the time the two objects collided. However, this discovery shows that GW200105 followed an elliptical path. This elliptical orbit indicates that the two objects that created this signal likely had a much more chaotic history than previously thought. Artist’s impression of an eccentric neutron star–black hole binary. The neutron star’s path is shown in blue and the black hole’s motion in orange as the two objects orbit each other. The eccentricity shown here is exaggerated compared to …

Catherine O’Hara Found the Eccentric in Anyone

Catherine O’Hara Found the Eccentric in Anyone

Published by José Betancourt

In 1988, shortly after the release of his film Beetlejuice, the director Tim Burton highlighted a cast member who he felt stole the show: Catherine O’Hara, who played the snobbishly over-the-top matriarch Delia Deetz. “Catherine’s so good, maybe too good,” he marveled in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “She works on levels that people don’t even know. I think she scares people because she operates at such high levels.” O’Hara, who died today at the age of 71, spent much of her career being the kind of star Hollywood underestimated. Before Beetlejuice catapulted her to greater fame, the Toronto-born O’Hara was best known for being a cast member at the improv theater the Second City, which led to her being cast as a regular on the beloved Canadian sketch series SCTV. The actor was an unparalleled comic performer who could push her most flamboyant characters—spoiled Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek, wobbly Cookie Fleck in Best in Show—to their theatrical extremes. Yet the work she put into her career often went beyond the confines …