The Critical Commentator

  As I apply for yet another job, I look at the company's website for context. I've now read their "what we do" section four or five times, and I have a problem - I can't figure out what they do. There are two possibilities here. One: they don't know what they do. Two: what they do is so pointless and embarrassing that they dare not spell it out in plain English. "We forge marketing systems at the forefront of the online wellness space" translates to something like "we use ChatGPT to sell dodgy supplements. But understanding what so many businesses actually do is the least of my worries. I'm currently among the 5% of Brits who are unemployed. In my six months of job hunting, my total lack of success has begun to make me question my own existence. About one in five of my job applications elicit a rejection email, usually bemoaning the sheer number of "quality applicants" for the position. For the most part, though - nothing. It'...

 Some of Berlin's most renowned clubs have long insisted that the camera lenses on their clientele's phones must be covered up to ensure that everyone is present in the moment and people can let go without fear of their image suddenly appearing somewhere online. Venues in London, Manchester and New York now enforce the same rules... phones will either be stickered or forbidden. "People need to stop taking pictures and start dancing to the beat," said one of the club's original founders. The Dance of Spring Edward Atkinson Hornel (1864-1933) Photo credit: Glasgow Life Museums. [CC BY-NC-ND] He is right, but it seems the zeitgeist might be aligning in that direction anyway. If 2025 has had any kind of defining cultural theme, it perhaps boils down to people's increasing sense that a life completely beholden is no life at all. To this, add two connected trends: a drop in millions of people's use of social media, and a rising yearning for experiences that are ...

  MPs have accepted almost £300,000 of tickets to sports matches, concerts, red carpet film awards and theatre trips in the last year, prompting questions about how such freebies could influence their decision making. Included in the gifts handed to politicians were Glastonbury tickets from Google, FA Cup final hospitality from the Football Association (FA), and a gift hamper from a Middle Eastern dictatorship. Politicians attended concerts by artists including Dua Lipa, Ed Sheeran and Sam Fender. There is no limit, beyond public criticism, of the value of gifts that MPs can claim from individuals and companies from the UK as long as they are declared on the members register of interests. Charing Cross Bridge Claude Monet (1840-1926) Photo Credit: Museum Wales [Public Domain]  Some gifts on the register, such as attendance at industry dinners or tickets to local festivals, could be reasonably argued to be part of MPs' community work. Others are harder to justify, such as the £...

  Nnena Kalu has won the 2025 Turner prize for her colourful drawings and sculptures made from fabric and VHS tape . Here's an art critic describing her work. Nnena Kalu's forms come at you with their almost alien presence. ( What?) They bulge and bifurcate and multiply. ( Really?) The viewer gets caught up in all the roaring, spilling, snagging details, and you begin to wonder about your own boundaries, the body's beginnings and its endings. ( I am beginning to wonder but not about boundaries, beginnings and endings, yet.) The closer you get to Kalu's endless sinewy trails of old VHS tape, their spews of filigree plastic webbing, their bound-up, sometimes cable-tied suturings, the harder it is to know where their forms stop and the space around them begins. ( Am I on an operating table?)  Their containment is precarious.(  I think I must be and  things don't look too good.) So full of life and energy, you think they might burst. ( Sweet Lord, I haven't mad...

  The White House spokeperson Karoline Leavitt today furiously attacked the failing news media for editing together two clips of Donald Trump in order to try and make him look like a misogynist bully. The clip, which appeared on live television, shows the President of the United States snapping at a female reporter "Quiet, Piggy!" Gloucester Old Spot Pig Page (active  19th C) Photo Credit  Museum of English Rural Life [CC BY-NC-SA] Said Miss Leavitt, "This was two separate sections of the President's reply spliced together into a disgraceful and defamatory soundbite. He firstly said, 'Quiet please, everyone, I'm trying to listen to this excellent female reporter's very good question about the Epstein files'. He later made a key policy statement in which he said, 'Fozzy Bear is okay, Kermit not a nice frog, but the only Muppet character I have any time for is Miss Piggy'." Miss Leavitt continued, "Quiet Piggy is the worst piece of mal...

  Social media platforms such as TikTok are hosting AI-generated deepfake videos of doctors whose words have been manipulated to help sell supplements and spread health misinformation. The factchecking organisation Full Fact has uncovered hundreds of such videos featuring impersonated versions of doctors and influencers directing viewers to a US-based supplements firm. The Charlatan Franz van Mieris the elder (1635-1681) Photo Credit:  City of London Corporation [CC BY-NC]  All the deepfakes involve real footage of a healthcare expert taken from the internet. However, the pictures have been reworked using AI so that the speakers are encouraging women going through menopause to buy products such as probiotics and Himalayan shilajit... "This is certainly a sinister and worrying new tactic," said Leo Benedictus, the Full Fact factchecker who undertook its investigation, which it published yesterday. Prof David Taylor-Robinson, an expert in health inequalities at Liverpool Un...