Dear readers, we have this week been so blessed on the celebrity profile front that this typically rambling, profanity-laced Shaun Ryder interview didn’t make the cut. Before we get to what bumped him out: men behaving terribly, war zones, West Hollywood solitude and Washington DC chaos. Enjoy.
1. Why are men abandoning their partners on hikes?
This week in “men don’t deserve women”, the concept of “alpine divorce” – so named by women who have gone on a hike, climb or other outdoor adventure with a male partner, only to be abandoned or left behind.
Breakups have quickly followed. TikTok posts of bawling women, alone in the woods, have gone viral. And in one case an amateur mountaineer was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter for leaving his exhausted girlfriend to find help.
Why men in a hurry should slow down: “If you invite someone on a hike, you’re basically acting as their de facto guide,” says David Webb, the editor of an outdoor adventure magazine. “Would a guide just storm off on their clients? Of course not.”
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
2. AI’s battle to tell fact from fiction in the Iran war
Sifting truth from propaganda is more difficult than ever. Take the above photo of the cemetery of Minab – verified as authentic – as it prepares to bury more than 100 of the Iranian town’s young girls after a school was bombed.
Google’s Gemini AI service or X’s Grok chatbot will both assure you the photo is not from Iran at all. The “factchecks” are just one example of the tidal wave of AI-generated slop – from nonsense analysis to faked images – engulfing coverage of the Iran war.
A matter of trust: A 2025 study found about half of all AI-generated news summaries had at least one significant sourcing or accuracy issue – with some tools, like Gemini, that rose to 76%.
How long will it take to read: Three minutes.
3. ‘I just wanted to be who I am’
The film-maker Ramiel Petros regularly walked past a motel in West Hollywood to see a “serious and grumpy” man sitting alone on the balcony, glass of wine in hand. While kicking around ideas for a new project, Petros decided to yell “who are you?” his way.
“I was a professional soccer player when I was younger,” Tony Powell replied. “Look it up.” A new documentary unravels the story of the secretly gay former Norwich defender who abandoned his family to continue his career in the US – then spent 25 years as the manager and eventual final occupant of the run-down hotel.
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“It’s too difficult to come out and get accepted, especially in the Premier League. Nothing’s really changed. It’s still a homophobic league.” – Tony Powell
How long will it take to read: Four minutes.
4. How Elon Musk tried to gamify government
Elon Musk defied the logic of the automotive and aerospace industries by disrupting the incumbents. Tesla and SpaceX were successful ventures, so why couldn’t he do the same in government?
Musk’s so-called department of government efficiency (AKA Doge) dominated the discourse in the early stages of Donald Trump’s second term. Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian break down how the Doge team, steeped in gaming and rightwing culture wars, attempted to slay the “the woke parasite in the government”.
Success or failure? When Musk left Doge after 130 days, its website claimed $170bn in government savings. A Financial Times investigation could verify “only a sliver of that figure”.
How long will it take to read: Nine minutes.
5. Melissa Auf der Maur on playing with Courtney Love
When Melissa Auf der Maur joined Hole in 1994 after their previous bassist died of a heroin overdose, she was the only band member who wasn’t a junkie. Courtney Love, the frontwoman, was according to Auf der Maur “a raging, rolling tornado” after the death of her husband, Kurt Cobain, by suicide four months earlier.
Auf der Maur’s memoir details how she jumped ship to join the Smashing Pumpkins, started a relationship with Love’s enemy, Dave Grohl – and why meeting Love for the first time after being summoned to Seattle “felt like destiny”.
How long will it take to read: Six minutes.
Further reading: On the less conventional end of the bass-player spectrum, the frontman of Primus, Les Claypool, discusses his new project – a concept album with Sean Ono Lennon about a robot turning the world into paperclips. And, on the hippest end of the bassist scale, the Sonic Youth alumnus Kim Gordon answers readers’ questions.
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