Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, Egypt football team, New Zealand, World Cup, Football, Sport
Title – Egypt claim their first World Cup win after roaring from behind to beat New Zealand | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author – Reuters
Link – Egypt claim their first World Cup win after roaring from behind to beat New Zealand | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T03:11:14.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/22/new-zealand-egypt-world-cup-group-g-match-report

Mohamed Salah inspired Egypt to their first-ever World Cup win as they came from a goal down ⁠to beat New Zealand 3-1 with a brilliant second-half display, moving top of Group G and boosting their hopes of reaching the knockout stage.

After ⁠a relatively quiet first ⁠half that saw ​them go in behind at the break, Egypt and Salah turned up the heat in the second period as the 34-year-old winger showed he ⁠is still capable of conjuring magic from his boots.

“It’s a great achievement for all the players,” Salah said as he took the plaudits among his teammates. “It’s a great win. It’s a great vibe. The next game is very ⁠important.”

Egypt, who drew 1-1 with Belgium in ​their opener, moved top of the group with ‌four points from two matches. ‌The All Whites, held 2-2 by Iran in their opener, are bottom with one point. Belgium were held ‌0-0 by the Iranians earlier on Sunday.

New Zealand’s first-half gameplan was as simple as it was effective, kicking long when they needed to and keeping possession when they could, and defender Finn Surman broke the deadlock from a corner, losing marker Ahmed Fatouh before steering a powerful header into the net.

“At half-time I told the players we were not going back out on to the pitch unless we were determined to win, and to draw confidence from the pride we feel from that support,” Egypt coach Hossam Hassan said.

“To the Egyptian football community, we needed time to ‌build confidence, to capitalise on our strengths and reflect on our journey to qualification, as well as the hard work of previous generations ​who tried to create these opportunities.”

The stern half-time message appeared to work. Though Callum McCowatt had a glancing header tipped over the bar early on for New Zealand, Egypt ‌piled on the pressure after the break and they levelled through Mostafa Ziko, who headed home Mohamed Hany’s cross from the right in the 58th minute.

Salah then finally ​gave the crowd what they wanted nine minutes later, breaking forward down the right and playing a one-two with Ziko before slotting the ball into the far corner.

Salah almost scored his second in the 81st minute, cutting in from the right and firing a deflected shot over, but he notched an assist from the resulting ⁠corner as substitute Trézéguet dived to head home at the near post.

The New ​Zealanders gave it all they ​had to reduce the deficit and ​Hossam Abdelmaguid had to be replaced late on with a suspected concussion, his eye ​swelling up as he ‌left the field.

By the ​10th minute of stoppage ​time, the Egyptian fans were whistling loudly for the referee to end the game.

When he did, an ear-splitting roar went up as Salah and company made history with the country’s first World Cup win and Hassan lapped the stadium with an Egyptian flag.

“Salah worked hard on the pitch ​and this is something you should know,” Hassan said.

“I am maybe ​the first coach ‌to let him ​play in a ​position that matches his danger, that matches his capabilities and qualities. We worked on so many things and I am sure we are going to see more from him.”

New Zealand coach Darren Bazeley rued his side’s poor second-half display.

“It’s frustrating,” he said. “We played ​so well in the first half. We scored ‌a great goal, created lots ‌of chances, felt like we were dominating possession a lot of the time in the first half, and ‌we were comfortable. We weren’t really getting hurt.

“We talked well at half-time, looked at some things we can do a little bit better, we went out second half and we just weren’t able to recreate the tempo and quality that we showed in the first half.“

Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Brexit, Ireland, Europe, European Union, Politics, UK news, World news, Foreign policy
Title – The aftershocks of Brexit’s failure could be gaining strength – a fearful prospect for Ireland | Fintan O’Toole | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/fintan-o-toole
Link – The aftershocks of Brexit’s failure could be gaining strength – a fearful prospect for Ireland | Fintan O’Toole | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T04:00:51.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/22/aftershocks-brexit-failure-fearful-prospect-ireland

F or Brexit’s true believers, Ireland will always be the spoke in the wheel that set everything off course, the green tarnish that took the shine off the golden age. Without the vengeful and malicious obstructionism of the Irish, all the promises of freedom and prosperity would have been fulfilled.

To understand how nonsensical this is, it is necessary to go back five years before the referendum of 2016. Back, that is, to the sense of an ending. In May 2011, Queen Elizabeth made a four-day state visit to Ireland. This should not have been remarkable – the heads of state of neighbouring countries visit each other all the time. But no reigning British monarch had set foot in what is now the Republic for almost exactly a century .

The weight of too much history pressed on these formalities – too much condescension, too much resentment, too many raw nerves. But the queen’s visit, when it finally came, was an exquisitely choreographed exercise in statecraft. It was obvious that the British state had thought very deeply about how it would make clear that Ireland and the UK now related to each other as equals.

For many of us in Ireland, this felt like an exorcism. The ghosts of a colonial past were banished and with them went the demons of Anglophobia. The ordinary experiences of adjacent islands whose people’s lives are deeply entwined through family and friendship, through culture and commerce, could now be the political realities too.

This moment didn’t come from nowhere. Two big things had made it possible. One was the extremely close cooperation between the two states in the Northern Ireland peace process. Dublin and London had understood that the Troubles could be ended only if they worked together as inseparable partners. They had to learn to speak with one voice.

The other was the European Union . Its peculiar nature is that it gives small nations most of the same rights as big ones. Over nearly half a century, Irish and British officials discovered how to work together to advance their countries’ mutual interests. They were not merely sitting at the same tables – they were often arguing for the same things.

The shock of Brexit for most Irish people wasn’t so much the event itself. We know too much about the distorting logic of certain kinds of nationalism on our own island to feel superior to anyone else who is in the throes of such passions. We also know that deciding to leave a larger union (which is what most of Ireland did a century ago, after all) is not a simple calculation of economic losses and gains – emotional satisfaction and collective pride matter, too.

The shock came, rather, from the sheer recklessness of the Brexiters. It was obvious in the referendum debates: any time Northern Ireland came up (which was rarely enough) they simply changed the subject. The Irish question wasn’t even a question. It was at best an afterthought, to be settled after the fabulous UK-EU trade deal (“the easiest in human history ”, according to Liam Fox) had been wrapped up.

David Davis’s assertion that there was “no downside to Brexit at all, and considerable upsides” was, from an Irish perspective, terrifying – not because he was lying but because he actually believed it to be true. Such confidence was possible only if it was rooted in blithe ignorance.

Only those who knew nothing of Ireland (or of the great success of British-Irish cooperation over many decades) could believe that turning the meandering, uncontrollable Irish border into one of the EU’s main external frontiers had no downside. Only those who had no sense of the human price that had been paid to get to a point where the people of Northern Ireland believed that they would be left in peace to decide their own destiny could think it was fine to drag them out of the EU against their will.

The Irish state thus had little choice but to enter damage limitation mode. Strikingly, the Irish government and diplomatic service prepared for Brexit far more thoroughly than their British counterparts did. They got in ahead of the referendum to convince all the other EU members that avoiding the reimposition of a hard border must be a precondition for any exit agreement.

Hence, of course, the tortuous (and tedious) crisis over the backstop and the eventual concession that Northern Ireland would remain, in effect, in the customs union and the single market and that the border would be in the Irish Sea.

This was a dreadful outcome for unionism – and in the tribal mentality of the zero-sum game that had to mean that Irish nationalism won. There is, it must be admitted, a limited sense in which Ireland did win. For the first time ever, it was (because of the solidarity of all the EU member states) in a stronger position than Britain in a crucial tussle.

But in truth nobody won anything. Damage limitation is not victory. Ireland managed to make the best of a bad job. Yet very few people on the island were unaware of what had been lost – the trust that had been built over decades, the deep sense of common purpose, above all that feeling in 2011 that a lot of bad history was now properly acknowledged and therefore capable of being transcended.

In fairness to Keir Starmer (not a phrase much used in Britain now) the departing prime minister’s government has done a great deal to rebuild trust. The dominant feeling about Brexit in Ireland is, I think, not anger but sadness. There is no pleasure in being proved right about the economic stasis and political instability it created. If Britain wants to move back into a closer relationship with the EU, Ireland will be there to help in every possible way.

But there is the fear in Ireland that one of the delayed consequences of Brexit could be Nigel Farage in Downing Street. It feels from our side of the Irish Sea like the aftershocks of Brexit – and of its comprehensive failure – may be not diminishing but strengthening. Having seen what a reactionary British government can do to the delicate fabric of our relationships, we cannot be complacent about that prospect.

Fintan O’Toole is a columnist with the Irish Times and the author of Heroic Failure: Brexit and the politics of pain

Keyword – UK news
Trefwoorden – UK news, Cambridge
Title – Wowcher apologises for email referencing toddler crocodile attack | UK news | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/harry-taylor
Link – Wowcher apologises for email referencing toddler crocodile attack | UK news | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T21:34:51.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/21/wowcher-apologises-for-email-referencing-toddler-crocodile-attack

The discount voucher website Wowcher has apologised after appearing to make reference to a crocodile attack on a toddler at a zoo in an email promoting its offers.

A spokesperson for Wowcher said it was urgently reviewing its marketing content after the subject line of an email on Saturday urged customers to “Snap up these deals quicker than a croc can catch a kid!”

A three-year-old was taken to Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, after an incident at Old Hurst zoo in Huntingdonshire on Thursday lunchtime during which the boy ended up in an enclosure with Nile and saltwater crocodiles.

The toddler was taken to hospital with serious injuries. He is in a critical but stable condition. A 30-year-old man from Norfolk has been bailed while further inquiries take place.

Wowcher said it was “extremely sorry” for the “unacceptable” wording.

In a statement a spokesperson said: “It should never have been written, it was never approved for use. The responsibility sits with us and we are urgently reviewing how our processes failed.

“We recognise the hurt and distress it has caused, particularly for the young child’s family at this unimaginably difficult time.”

They added: “We are reviewing all scheduled marketing content while we urgently strengthen our creative, approval and signoff safeguards.

“There is no excuse for this. We apologise unreservedly and will take the necessary steps to make sure this does not happen again.”

The Times reported on Sunday that detectives were scrutinising CCTV from the zoo to establish whether they would take further action.

The man arrested on suspicion of attempted murder has been released as detectives believe he is not fit to be interviewed, police said on Friday.

He was not known to the alleged victim. He has been bailed until 18 September.

Keyword – Sport
Trefwoorden – Jack Draper, Andy Murray, Wimbledon 2026, Wimbledon, Tennis, Sport
Title – Jack Draper energised for return at Eastbourne with inspiration from coach Murray | Jack Draper | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/tumaini-carayol
Link – Jack Draper energised for return at Eastbourne with inspiration from coach Murray | Jack Draper | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T18:02:44.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jun/21/jack-draper-energised-for-return-at-eastbourne-with-inspiration-from-coach-murray

Jack Draper believes his “very special” relationship with Andy Murray and the faith the Scot has in him will help him to find a way through the toughest period of his career as he returns to the circuit at Eastbourne after an injury-ravaged 11 months.

Draper is due to compete for the first time in two and a half months at the Eastbourne International on Monday after being sidelined for the vast majority of the past year due to chronic arm and knee injuries. As he tries to be ready for Wimbledon , which begins next a week on Monday, this will also be his first tournament since asking Murray, his childhood idol and a friend, to join his team as coach.

“His tennis knowledge is incredible,” Draper said of Murray. Of his own circumstances, he said: “My tennis is actually in a really, really good spot. [I have] lost a lot of confidence in my body over the last year that I’m rebuilding back again.

“Having someone who believes in you as a person, as a player who’s one of your biggest inspirations … I have a great relationship with him off the court – our relationship is very special – and that gives me a bit more energy, especially in a moment where I’m coming back and I need to have that good energy around me.”

A year ago, it seemed as if Draper had finally found his way, a lengthy period of good health allowing him to rise up the rankings to a career high of world No 4. Instead, he has spent the past 11 months stuck in a cycle of injuries and pain. The 24-year-old last competed in early April at the Barcelona Open, where he retired because of knee tendinitis. His knee injury had come soon after a seven-month layoff due to a bone bruise in his left arm. He has fallen to No 113 in the rankings.

Although he always thought he would come back, Draper admitted he was “absolutely not” mentally OK over the past year. “It’s been an incredibly difficult year,” he said. “I’m someone who’s all-in with my tennis. I’m obsessed with improving and getting better and being the best in the world and doing all the right things.

“Outside of tennis, there’s not a lot going on for me. So it’s obviously been very difficult, very isolated, a lot of tough days, a lot of training. As a competitor, all you want to do is feel the buzz of being out there competing. I’ve had to be incredibly patient with my body.”

Draper has had to come to terms with the fact his arm injury “might never go away” but he is adamant he can have the career he deserves. “I was top 10 in the world, doing great things, and you’re losing your ranking every week,” he said.

“It’s not like a football team where you can have a substitute come in and take your place. It’s like you’re watching your decline. So it’s tough, but I think I’ve learned a massive amount about my body in the last year and my recovery.”

The silver lining for Draper is that he believes this period will give him the edge against his rivals. “Before, in the position I was, I still felt like maybe there’s mental levels I needed to go to to get to where I wanted to be,” he said.

“And even though my ranking slipped and I haven’t played, when you go through a lot of struggles and a lot of setbacks, it definitely gives you the mental fortitude to think: ‘I’ve got something a little bit extra to these guys because of what I’ve gone through.’”

Keyword – Games
Trefwoorden – Games, Fighting games, Sports games, Culture, MMA
Title – UFC 6 review: a bloody, brilliant MMA fighting game | Games | The Guardian
Author – Kirk McKeand
Link – UFC 6 review: a bloody, brilliant MMA fighting game | Games | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T09:00:28.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/jun/17/ufc-6-review-mma-fighting-game-ea-sports

B ecoming a professional fighter takes years of repetition, drilling techniques and training footwork until everything is instinctual. Your body needs an automatic answer for every limb, from every angle. In MMA , which encompasses every martial art, it’s even harder.

EA Sports’ UFC 6 realistically captures the grind of this brutal discipline. Throw on Career Mode and you spend most of your time working on combos and techniques. It’s all about making the complex controls feel second nature, increasing the effectiveness of every strike thrown by your fighter. With simulated six-week-long training camps between bouts, you can sometimes spar 12 times before a fight that could be over in a matter of seconds.

It’s an authentic fighter experience. In real life, these athletes spend relatively little time actually trying to take each other’s heads off with a shin, and most of their time training. In a game, however, it’s a bit of a slog. Once you’ve proven that you can ace these drills you can skip them, but you get fewer benefits. And it’s still laborious, as is tending to your inevitable injuries.

Happily, the fighting itself is excellent. UFC games have had a bit of a rock-’em’-sock-’em quality to them, but this latest instalment does a great job at creating more natural animations, flowing beautifully between the different levels submissions, wrestling, and stand-up — of an MMA fight. It looks almost worryingly realistic, too. From the pores on their skin to the wrinkles on the soles of their feet, these character models are the most detailed I’ve seen in a sports fighter, as impressive as Fight Night was when we saw HD video games for the first time. You can even tell who’s a standup fighter and who’s a wrestler by who has the most disfigured ears.

Every fight takes its toll on their bodies, too, with bruises and cuts appearing in direct response to your strikes. Blood droplets fly through the air and stain the canvas. When you land a knockout punch, the slow motion replay cranks up the volume so you hear the crunch of bone on bone and see cheeks wobble like a basset hound barking at a hairdryer.

A welcome new addition is The Legacy, a story mode that mythologises the rise of an up and coming fictional wrestler who’s trying to escape the shadow of his famous father, while brewing up a rivalry with another prospect at the same gym. It’s fully acted-out melodrama, your very own Rocky story, shining a light on how violence occasionally spills outside the Octagon and stains careers; inbetween fights, you attend press conferences and respond to provocations on social media.

The story does a great job of pulling you along for the first few hours as you go from rivals to friends and back to rivals again. It gets you invested in the action and raises the stakes, but the narrative climaxes near the beginning of your UFC career and then fizzles out. It feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to keep you engaged when you reach the top and have to defend your belts. Nonetheless, between the fluid fighting and the story-mode razzmatazz, this is the best version yet of EA’s fight-sim series.

UFC 6 is out now; £69.99

Keyword – Fashion
Trefwoorden – Fashion, Life and style, Women, Women’s trousers
Title – Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: elegant but practical, capri pants are a perfect summer look | Fashion | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jesscartnermorley
Link – Jess Cartner-Morley on fashion: elegant but practical, capri pants are a perfect summer look | Fashion | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T13:00:33.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/jun/17/jess-cartner-morley-fashion-capri-pants-audrey-hepburn-vibes

I think we can probably agree that Audrey Hepburn would not have been seen dead in jorts. The baggy, grunge-adjacent knee-length denims that were everywhere last summer and are creeping back around are definitely cool. Totally a vibe. But elegant they are not.

The capri pant is an undeniably elegant solution to the problem of what to wear when jeans or tailored trousers are too hot and cumbersome, but you don’t want to wear shorts. For instance, when it is sunny while you are getting dressed, but you are going to be out all day and the forecast looks dodgy later on. Or when there is a heatwave but you still have to go to the office, so Daisy Dukes are not going to work.

Capri pants were invented in Munich in the late 1940s. Diminutive German designer Sonja de Lennart was frustrated that the Katharine Hepburn style of blousy trouser didn’t flatter her shape. She came up with a below-the-knee crop, ending with a little kicker of a slit at the hem and elongated at the top with a high waist. Presumably because she recognised that Munich pants was not the most alluring moniker for her new style, particularly in postwar Europe, she named them instead after the Italian island, to capture their sunny sprezzatura . American film costume designer Edith Head was an immediate fan, and dressed Audrey Hepburn in de Lennart’s capris for the 1954 film Sabrina.

Capris kicked happily around the south of France for a couple of decades before fading from vogue, but enjoyed a renaissance in the 2000s, when their retro glamour became a signature look for Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and The City, showing that the capri can work as well on city streets as on the beach.

They haven’t been around for a while, so we need to figure out how they fit into our wardrobes. It’s all about balance. You don’t want to go too literal on the 50s nostalgia, or they can get a bit cutesy. On the other hand, they have a specific set of proportions that need to be considered when putting your look together. You want your capri outfit to look intentional, not like you rolled your trousers up to go paddling.

It works kind of like this. Go sparingly on the milkshake-drinking-bombshell stuff. If you want to wear gingham, I would do a boxy short-sleeve gingham shirt but maybe not a gingham lace-up bodice top. Or you could wear a broderie anglaise top with your capris, but then I’d suggest a casual flip flop or thong sandal rather than kitten heels or mules. Just so that it’s not too cherry-on-top pretty, if you know what I mean.

You might consider a silk scarf, but perhaps tie it around the handle of your bag or in your hair, not jauntily at the neck. If you want a simple starter outfit, you won’t go wrong with head-to-toe black: a cap sleeve T-shirt, your little capris, and ballet flats. (Head and Hepburn knew what they were doing.) But if this all feels a little too midcentury and costumey for you, capris also work well with a bomber jacket or a zip-up windbreaker.

The right shoe is crucial. Anything too heavy throws the silhouette off, and showing some skin below the bend of the ankle makes the line much more graceful. The v-shape of a flip flop works well. For a little more coverage, a slender lace-up jazz shoe beats chunky trainers.

The joy of a capri pant is that it feels kind of snazzy, but is practical at heart. This is a piece that understands summer. You can run for a train. You can sit cross-legged on the grass. You can cycle (they are not also known as pedal pushers for nothing, after all). They may not have the ironic cool of a pair of jorts, but they have a founding myth, a film star and a sun-drenched Italian island behind them. They have summer romance in their DNA. They make life feel slightly cinematic. Jorts may have the edge, but capris have the pedigree.

Styling: Melanie Wilkinson . Model: Maria Diaz at Milk. Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Sam McKnight and Dr Sam’s . Styling assistant: Charlotte Gornall. Earrings , £25.99, Pilgrim. Coat , £395, The Fold. Shirt , £110, With Nothing Underneath. Scarf belt , £22 Next. Trousers , £99, and shoes , £99, both Mint Velvet.

Keyword – News
Trefwoorden – World news, UK news
Title – Twins marrying twins and summer solstice celebrations: photos of the weekend | World news | The Guardian
Author –
Link – Twins marrying twins and summer solstice celebrations: photos of the weekend | World news | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T12:27:08.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2026/jun/21/a-kyiv-far-right-protest-and-summer-solstice-celebrations-photos-of-the-weekend

Keyword – US news
Trefwoorden – US news, Health & wellbeing, US healthcare, Health, Pharmaceuticals industry, Drugs
Title – The peptide boom: how the US got hooked on unregulated ‘miracle’ drugs | On the Ground | US news | The Guardian
Author – Adam Gabbatt
Link – The peptide boom: how the US got hooked on unregulated ‘miracle’ drugs | On the Ground | US news | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T09:16:37.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2026/jun/16/the-peptide-boom-how-the-us-got-hooked-on-unregulated-miracle-drugs-on-the-ground

Keyword – Books
Trefwoorden – Science and nature books, Books, Culture, AI (artificial intelligence), Technology, Computing
Title – The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow review – the real price of artificial intelligence | Science and nature books | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/dorianlynskey
Link – The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI by Cory Doctorow review – the real price of artificial intelligence | Science and nature books | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T06:00:52.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/22/the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai-by-cory-doctorow-review-the-real-price-of-artificial-intelligence

A s former Google CEO Eric Schmidt  could tell you, AI is a hard sell these days. Last month, he tried talking up the AI revolution during a commencement address at the University of Arizona and was loudly booed by students about to enter an AI-ravaged job market. His discombobulation was telling.

Schmidt is not the only AI booster to crash out with students recently as the popular backlash grows. Every week brings a new story about some writer, publisher or academic who has torched their reputation by using an unreliable chatbot. Most US voters are opposed to the construction of vast, resource-guzzling new datacentres. A majority believe AI will negatively impact not just jobs but creativity and human relationships. In some quarters, saying that AI has any benefits at all is akin to saying that biological warfare gets a bad rap. As a New York Times column put it : “AI populism is here. And no one is ready.”

A decade ago, when the likes of Elon Musk and Sam Altman were still passionate advocates of heavily regulated ethical AI (ha!), the technology’s most widely discussed downside had an apocalyptic glamour: superintelligent AI could one day destroy the human race. But since Altman’s company OpenAI released its large language model ChatGPT in November 2022, AI’s public image has fallen to earth: it’s now widely seen as a job crusher, a fact mangler, a slop maker, a privacy invader, a climate trasher and a general pain in the neck. Never before has a new technology been rammed down our throats with such speed, determination and complete disregard for public opinion. Cory Doctorow’s book pithily explains why.

Doctorow, who writes like he talks and talks like he writes, is not somebody who needs AI to fill pages. Counting fiction, nonfiction and graphic novels, this is, by my calculation, his 36th book, hard on the heels of last year’s Enshittification . That polemic expanded on his own neologism to describe why Big Tech’s grow-or-die business model has made online platforms so much worse. This tawdry contempt for its customers is one of the reasons AI is so reviled. The Silicon Valley oligarchs telling us that AI will change the world are the last people we trust to change the world for the better. As a technology, AI has pros and cons; as a rushed project of rapacious elites, it is transparently obscene.

Doctorow speeds through this entertaining primer with his usual vivid analogies, righteous ire and snarky asides – OpenAI, currently valued at $852bn, is parenthetically dismissed as “a grossly overhyped and terrible firm”. But as the central metaphor illustrates, this is not an anti-AI polemic and Doctorow is no purist. A centaur, in automation theory, is someone assisted by a machine, whether using a hearing aid or driving a car. A reverse centaur is someone whose freedom is diminished by the demands of a machine, like an Amazon warehouse worker. The technology of AI theoretically allows every worker to be a centaur, but the business model demands the reverse. Take radiology. In the centaur scenario, a human radiologist works with an AI radiologist to produce more accurate analysis, but that costs the hospital money. In the reverse centaur version, the AI radiologist demotes the surviving humans to the level of results-checking drones who are more likely to make mistakes. Much cheaper, but you see the problem.

Doctorow, who has written several science fiction novels, cites one of the genre’s defining messages: “The most important thing about the gadget isn’t what it does, it’s who it does it for and who it does it to.” Just as the Luddites weren’t angry with machines per se, most anti-AI sentiment is really anti-capitalist rather than anti-tech. Doctorow uses a framework a 19th-century socialist would recognise: the bosses will pull every trick to avoid paying workers more unless workers unionise to fight back.

The problem with the AI business is the same thing that drives enshittification. The improbable price-to-sales ratios of tech companies are based on the promise of future growth, hence high-stakes bets like the Metaverse or the failed social media platform Google+. The AI sector’s colossal valuation derives largely from the salaries of the human workers it aims to replace – Morgan Stanley predicts it will add almost a trillion dollars a year to the S&P 500. And because the net worth of tech bosses is tied to stock value rather than actual profits, they have a personal incentive to keep investors excited: today AI may be a money pit, but just you wait. If the investor is the real target of the AI industry’s marketing, then the consumer becomes simply a cog in the hype machine. Individuals using chatbots are not so much a crucial revenue stream as unwitting salespeople for the message that the machines will replace us any day now, as are journalists who cover such snake-oil absurdities as the AI-generated “actor” Tilly Norwood.

Doctorow despises the doctrine of “inevitabilism”, which he explains by way of Margaret Thatcher’s slogan “there is no alternative”. When Eric Schmidt told students, “[If] someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on,” that was inevitabilism. The idea is that revolutionary new technology gives you, the worker or consumer, no choice but to get on board. Yet the technology is shaped by the choices of people like Schmidt, and they aren’t inevitable at all. If you give people an ultimatum – use our product or suffer – then booing is the very least you can expect.

One thing to give anti-AI hardliners pause is Doctorow’s suggestion that the industry is deliberately juicing outrage about things like AI-generated art as a form of hype: if people are this scared and angered, then the promise of replacing human labour must be real. In this book, at least, he isn’t animated by the headline-grabbing concerns, whether existential risk or AI psychosis, deepfake porn or election disinformation, because those are unintended consequences. His target is the revenue model and the bubble it has created: “To be an effective AI critic, you need to strike at the source of AI’s power, which is the investment capital it attracts.”

It certainly looks like a bubble. Last year, two studies found that 90% of us are less likely to use a product if it is advertised as AI-enabled, and that 95% of generative AI pilot schemes are failing. In fact, many companies have been forced to hastily rehire employees that they had replaced with inadequate chatbots. For gen Zs, according to an NBC poll, AI has a favourability rating of minus 44. As Doctorow writes, “The tech platforms are desperate to convince Wall Street that you love AI, which is very different from convincing you that you love AI.”

Unfortunately, seven big tech companies alone account for one-third of the US stock market’s value, so the schadenfreude of watching the bubble burst would soon turn bitter – it is likely to cause an economic shock comparable to those of 2008 and 2020. This is the story of a remarkable new technology rolled out in the most reckless, self-serving way one could imagine, by the worst people, for the worst reasons. It’s not the machines you should be angry with.

The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It’s Too Late is published by Verso (£16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Keyword – Life and style
Trefwoorden – Cycling, Life and style, London
Title – Naked cycling: is it ever acceptable to ride a rental bike in the nude? | Cycling | The Guardian
Author – Guardian Staff
Link – Naked cycling: is it ever acceptable to ride a rental bike in the nude? | Cycling | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T14:51:29.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/jun/16/naked-cycling-ever-acceptable-rental-bike-nude

Name: World Naked Bike Ride.

Age: 22.

Appearance: A global celebration of potentially crushed genitalia.

Is it World Naked Bike Ride again already? Where does the time go? Well, the World Naked Bike Ride event in London already happened, last Sunday. I can’t believe you missed it.

Always the naked bridesmaid, never the naked bride. Don’t worry, though, because the repercussions of World Naked Bike Ride will carry on for weeks to come.

Really? Why’s that? Primarily because everyone is freaking out about the, er, let’s call them consequences of sharing a saddle with someone who has ridden it in the buff.

Oh. Oh . Yuck. I’m afraid so. Apparently, of the 1,000 cyclists who rode naked through the streets of London at the weekend, about half of them were using rental bikes. As such, social media is quickly filling up with people hyperventilating about saddle hygiene – issues such as sweat and fungal infections have been mentioned.

Well, World Naked Bike Ride sounds absolutely disgusting. That’s the thing, it really isn’t. This is the 22nd year that it has taken place in London, and nudity is always an optional aspect. People can take part fully dressed if they like.

Ah, World Ride a Bike With All Your Clothes On. That’ll grab the headlines. It’s held for an important reason, too.

Which is? Safety. In big cities that are dominated by cars, cyclists are physically vulnerable. Doing it with all your bits flapping around highlights this vulnerability as strongly as possible.

Why hasn’t there been this much fuss about it before? Oh, there has. Six cyclists were charged with public indecency when the event took place in Chicago in 2005. A man was removed from the event in Canterbury in 2015 after becoming too visibly excited. Last year, the Reform MP Lee Anderson called it a “freak show”.

That sounds like all the excuse I need to support it, then. However, this is the first time that hygiene has been used as a weapon. The rise of cycle hire schemes means that bikes now belong to everyone.

So now cyclists are also vulnerable to catching chlamydia from a saddle? No: from an infection control standpoint, the risk of catching a disease from a bike previously ridden by a naked person is vanishingly small.

Have the rental bike companies said anything? A spokesperson from Lime – one of the biggest e-bike rental companies in London – told the Metro: “As with any ride, we ask that people leave our bikes in the condition they’d want to find them. For safety reasons, we’d always encourage everyone to wear appropriate clothing when cycling.”

Do they at least clean them? According to the Metro, Lime bikes are “regularly” pressure-cleaned with recycled rainwater.

So it’s fine then? No, of course it’s not fine! It’s gross! Next time World Naked Bike Ride happens, bring your own bike. Or pop a shower cap over the saddle.

Do say: “Please leave your bikes in the condition you found them.”

Don’t say: “Drenched in someone else’s sweat.”

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