The small crack in a running influencer’s foot was declared by my FYP page with the importance of a new political bill: Mary McCarthy has a stress fracture. What does this mean for you? My algorithm was suddenly overwhelmed by content reacting to this injury. Critics declared that an outcome like…

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

In 2022, everything changed for Tom Misch. The London-based singer-songwriter had been at the height of his powers: his easygoing blend of hip-hop-influenced beat-making with soulful guitar melodies and yearning vocals led his self-released and self-produced 2018 debut album Geography to chart at No…

Margaret Qualley walks into Clark’s, a diner in Brooklyn Heights, carrying her little dog, Smokey, in her arms and is immediately intercepted by an employee who tells her she can’t have a dog inside. “I’ll be back in 10 minutes” is the first thing she says. She lives nearby with her husband, the…

The realities of being a pop star

Greg Squire can never forget the video that opened his eyes to what child sexual abuse could mean. It was a Sunday and he was at his home in New Hampshire, sitting out on his deck, his two young children running around, playing. This was 2008, about a year into Squire’s career as an agent for…

Brooding Deep thoughts on modern family life from Kathryn Jezer-Morton. Illustration: Hannah Buckman New York subscribers got exclusive early access to this story in our Brooding newsletter. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. Over the past few months I’ve been thinking about how the idea of…

A Look Back at Atom and His Package, the One-Man Band That Made Punk Uncool Again

https://youtu.be/n36R8xlhe1U?si=9DBY5ufg77mRDEyF

With white-wired headphones endorsed by celebrities including Lily-Rose Depp, Paul Mescal, Bella Hadid and Apple Martin, a growing number of people are breaking away from wireless listening. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate…

Yangang Xing had never heard of organ-tuning books, but his colleague Andrew Knight often played the pipe organ at churches as a teenager. When the pair, who are researchers at Nottingham Trent University, set out to study how environmental conditions in churches had changed over time, Knight…

The two men chop peppers, slice aubergines and giggle into the camera as they delve into the art of vegan cooking. Both are wearing ski masks and T-shirts bearing Nazi symbols. The German videos – titled Balaclava Kitchen – started in 2014 and ran for months before YouTube took down the channel for…

There is a particular kind of literary deja vu that strikes sometimes. Seemingly out of nowhere, the same book starts appearing across multiple social media feeds. On the bus, you’ll spot two copies of the same title in one day. A friend says, “Have you read this yet?”, to which you respond,…

Not long ago, after a day of work, a colleague and I met for a friendly game of racquetball at our university gym. In the newly designed locker room, I began pulling off my shirt to change when he quickly stopped me: “You can’t do that here.” Undressing, it turned out, was now permitted only in…

If life had worked out differently, Serena would by now be coming to terms with an empty nest. Having brought up seven children, she and her husband might even have been enjoying a little more money and time for themselves. But as it is, three of their adult children are now at home: the 23-year-old…

In his four decades as a curator, publisher and gallerist, Matthew Higgs has supported many artists’ careers, including those of his contemporaries Jeremy Deller, Martin Creed and Peter Doig when they emerged in the early 1990s. Higgs also champions artists from alternative backgrounds – those who…

“I don’t want Big Tech to sell my data.” “I don’t want employers to stalk me.” Not wanting to be watched is a valid reason to be anti-social media. We often compare social media to Orwell’s surveillance state of 1984, but here’s what’s different about our telescreens: our screens do not exist to…

The great resignation has freed some of us back into shackles. Our culture likes escapism: First, we quit our jobs to escape from offices. Then, we make our own jobs to escape from freedom. We leave one cage only to find ourselves in another, some completely made by our own hands. Under the…

One morning in January, I woke up and it was like a spell had been broken the way I looked around my room and saw how dull everything was, not because it was lacking but because of how full it was of stuff. Stuff I didn’t particularly love. Stuff with no serious meaning to it. Stuff I didn’t care…

Goon, the 2015 debut album by Canada-born LA musician Tobias Jesso Jr, was one of the revelations of the 2010s. An album of heartfelt, earnest ballads in the vein of 70s singer-songwriters such as Randy Newman and Harry Nilsson, it instantly established Jesso as a rising indie star and was one of…

Quitting your job in your 30s with no solid plan is generally considered poor decision-making. Doing it because you watched The Big Lebowski is probably even worse. But as I faced up to what would be my eighth year in an IT role, I watched Jeff Bridges meandering his way through the chaos of life in…

He grew up on a farm in Indiana, the son of a factory worker and eldest of five children. He studied at Liberty, a Christian university founded by the conservative pastor and televangelist Jerry Falwell, and recalls wearing a T-shirt expressing opposition to Democratic presidential candidate John…

Kyle Chayka’s recent column on the new prestige of having barely any followers

As dawn spread over San Antonio on September 9, 2021, almond-colored smoke began to fill the sky above the city’s Far West Side. The plumes were whorling off the top of a 132-foot-tall cell tower that overshadows an office park just north of SeaWorld. At a hotel a mile away, a paramedic snapped a…

Annals of Fashion The brand conceives of itself as a distribution system for utopian values as much as a clothing company. Can it become the world’s biggest clothing manufacturer? September 15, 2025 Uniqlo, founded in Japan in 1984, is the universal donor of fashion, intended to go with any…

“My life, my choice,” said a tiny voice in the dark. They’d been studying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in reception. “Why did you have a child if you don’t want to look after me?” she added, from the cabin bed. She’d been going for an hour and 40 minutes, as she did every…

Haven’t you heard? CDs are back! They’re not quite enjoying the same renaissance as vinyl, and they still haven’t managed to gain the quirky hipster cachet of cassettes, but the dear old compact disc is once again seeing a resurgence as certain corners of the consumer market turn their attention…

It should probably be said, up front, that emo isn’t a genre. It doesn’t refer to one specific sound, era, or movement. The term sprang out of Washington D.C’s mid-80s hardcore punk scene as shorthand for “emotional hardcore”, but it didn’t really mean anything. It was just semantics – a militant’s…

For years, Field Music playfully toyed with the idea of forming a hybrid cover band called AC/BGs, featuring one set of AC/DC songs done in a Saturday Night Fever-style and one set of rock-heavy Bee Gees numbers. “These things are a joke until they stop being a joke,” says David Brewis, one half of…

Millennials straddle the technological divide. We grew up without social media and smart phones, but were the earliest adapters of that technology when it became mainstream. Our childhoods were mostly tech-free (shout out to AIM), but our adult lives have been saturated with daily (hourly!) tech…

It has been ubiquitous in middle class British bathrooms since a flush of growth during the Covid pandemic. Now Who Gives a Crap is aiming to wipe out the Andrex puppy, Cushelle’s koala and Little Duck’s little duck with a more ethical version of toilet roll. Its product, made from recycled paper or…

Artist still enjoying life as she turns 107 2 August 2025 George ThorpeBBC News, South West Penny Lees Mollie Silver is marking her 107th birthday with a party An artist from Cornwall who is celebrating her 107th birthday has said being yourself is the key to a happy life. Mollie Silver, who was…

Location: Halsey under the 84 Bridge in Hollywood. This was the first one that caught my attention. Also, it’s MASSIVELY high up! JEEEZE I love those clouds! Since the beginning of the summer, I’ve literally pulled over to take pictures of these colorful, playful, hand-painted signs nailed to a…

Wellbeing August 13, 2025 Story Highlights Americans’ self-reported drinking down to 54% after consecutive declines Belief moderate drinking is bad for health rises to a new high of 53% Drinkers report drinking less, and less frequently WASHINGTON, D.C. — The percentage of U.S. adults who say they…

Early on in Confessions of a Brain Surgeon, a crew member pipes up from behind the camera. Would Henry Marsh mind saying something, anything, to see if the microphones are working? “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,” Marsh says instantly, not pausing for a moment to gather the words, “I…

Author Allan Ahlberg, who delighted generations of children with colourful characters and nimble rhymes, has died aged 87. Working with his wife Janet, an award-winning illustrator, Ahlberg produced a host of bestselling nursery classics including Burglar Bill, Peepo!, and Each Peach Pear Plum.…

Until she was six, Philippa Barnes was surrounded by things that were hers. She had a favourite pair of red-and-white-striped dungarees and a long garden with a strawberry patch. She had a close-knit family: a mum, dad, two brothers and a sister, and grandparents who lived near the family home in…

People have always used books to assert their sophistication and affluence. You need only visit the library of a National Trust property to see that. The novelist F Scott Fitzgerald famously critiqued the shallowness of the super-rich via his character, Jay Gatsby, who lined his shelves with books…

I am in hospice care and reflecting a lot on what a good life is. Writing is hard, this will take me days rather than just one morning or afternoon. But I want to share these thoughts. You can’t take it with you, yet we often feel ourselves immortal and act as if we can. The richest man on earth is…