Sometimes we feel threatened by bids for closeness, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. It can help to consider if you’re being true to yourself
When I was 17, I was quiet, an observer on the fringes. That was often mistaken for being wise. Now 70 (and, by the way, gay), I am chatty and opinionated with a tendency to talk over others in conversation. I have come by the changes honestly, so I don’t whip myself over it because I am enjoying expressing myself. But I do wonder if this is a normal progression, the loss of filters with ageing, or if I am simply losing my sociability – going off the rails in some way.
While I like being friendly to all and enjoy the company of women especially, I recognise how easily they can be hurt. I seem to put out a strong “new-best-friend” vibe, but then sometimes, when they step close, I feel crowded and back off. The flip-flop clearly offends and I don’t want to be doing that, but I frame it as being true to myself. Is this a destructive habit and if so, should I dial down the friendliness?
Eleanor says: How responsible are we for the ways other people see us?
Experts say 2023, 2024 and 2025 the three hottest years in 176 years of records, with 1.5C Paris agreement target now ‘virtually impossible’
A triple-whammy of hottest years ever recorded threatens “irreversible damage”, the UN has warned as the world’s nations prepare to meet at the Cop30 climate summit in Brazil.
This year is on course to be the second or third hottest ever, in records that stretch back 176 years, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said. It means 2023, 2024 and 2025 will be the three hottest on record, demonstrating that the world is now deep into the climate crisis.
Almost all of Hatchie’s music could slot frictionlessly into a coming-of-age film. Her songs, mostly, are misty-eyed ruminations on puppy love and its ensuing devastation; they yearn for a redamancy that feels both fated and vexingly out of reach. You can imagine Harriette Pilbeam’s millefeuille harmonies soundtracking a high school prom dappled with a disco ball’s refractive glimmer, or picture her fleecy guitars over a montage of light teenage debauchery. These are tracks prefabbed for telegraphing big feelings; everyone knows the outsize melodrama of a first, second or 20th crush.
Liquorice, the title of Pilbeam’s potent third album, winks at her 2018 breakout EP Sugar and Spice. That formative work was a candy blast of dreampop, emphasis on pop – indebted as much to Carly Rae Jepsen as Cocteau Twins, whose co-founder Robin Guthrie ended up providing a remix of Pilbeam’s single Sure. Liquorice, meanwhile, is more mature and less immediately palatable, eschewing the fairyfloss hooks of Pilbeam’s earlier work.
This week’s action saw Vincent Kompany’s men roll on, upset results and a brilliant performance from a Liverpool defender
• Vincent Kompany’s Bayern Munich. They rule supreme in Germany and are on a 16-match winning streak. Beating the defending champions, Paris Saint-Germain, on Tuesday was further proof of Bayern’s credentials. Luís Diaz, whose combativeness is sorely missed by Liverpool, scored two, but he took the aggression too far when his challenge on Achraf Hakimi led to a first-half red card. That meant the second-half became a test of defensive credentials that Bayern passed. “I also want us to enjoy it when we have to defend,” said Kompany. He was by no means his club’s first-choice as coach in the summer of 2024 – relegation from the Premier League with Burnley had damaged his reputation. But in Bavaria, the noise from the boardroom has been quelled – for now – by the brilliance of his team’s play.
Security services believe state actor, ‘probably Russia’, to be behind drone flights at military bases and airports
EU’s digital spokesperson Thomas Regnier said the European Commission “takes note of the decision taken in France” regarding the Chinese online retailer Shein (10:42), noting that the EU had already expressed similar concerns before.
“We are in touch with Shein, but we will also be in touch today with the French authorities.
I can confirm now, as we speak, that in the next two hours, [executive vice-president] Virkkunen will meet with the digital minister of France Anne le Henanff.
Bipartisan proposal follows reports Trump administration is considering land strikes within the country
It’s now day 37 of the ongoing government shutdown, the longest on record, with both parties continuing to blame the other for the lapse in funding.
For his part, Donald Trump has turned his attention to the filibuster – the procedural mechanism that requires 60 votes in the Senate to end debate on a piece of legislation and bring it to the floor for a vote. He’s hammered home his wishes on Truth Social, and in front of lawmakers at a White House breakfast on Tuesday.
‘Humiliating’ groping of Claudia Sheinbaum by drunken man prompts widespread condemnation
The groping of Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum by a drunken man has sparked outrage among women, many of whom saw their own fears and experiences reflected in her plight.
“If the president suffered assault with that level of protection and those guards it means that all of us women can be assaulted at any moment,” said Patricia Reyes, a 20-year-old student.
From female founders to master distillers, the whisky world is finally recognising women’s role within the industry
Why wait for International Women’s Day to celebrate women? A commemorative day is a good excuse, true, but we don’t need to wait to recognise the contributions of female and female-identifying individuals to the drinks industry. Right? Right.
When I put out a call on my social media to ask for the contacts of inspiring women who work in whisky, my inbox was flooded with names, press releases and, most hearteningly, whisky professionals commending their contemporaries and friends. “The industry is getting better at giving women credit for the work they do,” whisky educator and writer Kristiane Westray told me, noting that blender Margaret Nicol at Whyte & Mackay, who started in the industry way back in 1974, has only recently been in the spotlight. Similarly, Maureen Robinson, who worked in whisky for more than 45 years, was inducted into the Whisky Magazine Hall of Fame as recently as 2020. “There are also more women studying Stem subjects [science, technology, engineering and mathematics], which is usually a requirement in roles such as distilling and blending.”
US leaders have long shown some responsibility to help poor people meet basic nutritional needs. That era appears over
In October, millions rallied across America to remind Donald Trump that this nation obeys no kings. Last week, however, a scene worthy of Versailles unfolded: While Trump built his $300m ballroom, the US prepared to face widespread hunger.
With Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) funding scheduled to run dry due to the government shutdown, the Trump administration not only refused to prevent the crisis – it fought in court to deprive 42 million Snap recipients of their grocery money. Thankfully, a federal judge ruled against the government and ordered that Snap payments proceed. On Monday, the administration said it would fund just half of recipients’ typical benefits. And 2.4 million people soon risk losing their benefits nonetheless, as the $186bn Snap cuts in Trump’s benighted budget bill begin taking effect.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a contributor to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times
Autumn may be the most social season of all, and these elevated but not exhausting ideas make every get-together a small celebration
The golden light lingers a little longer now, and somehow the evenings are full again. Autumn feels like the true social season of the year: the guest bedroom (for which we have an informal booking system) is full through to the end of the year, and suddenly every weekend and many weekday evenings are wrapped around company. Even if it’s just dinner at home for house guests, the rhythm has changed.
When it’s just us for dinner, anything goes – it is very relaxed and informal, and the emphasis is on ease of execution and speed of service. For a dinner party, meanwhile, we go all out: trips to the butcher and speciality deli, and as much time in the kitchen as is needed. But cooking for, and indeed with, house guests falls somewhere delightfully in between: cosy and welcoming, elevated but not exhausting. The kind of food that says: you’re here, you matter, let’s linger.
It is a pleasure to see Day-Lewis back on screen, and he dominates a movie of big scenes and big performances, co-written with and directed by his son
The absolute authority and force of Daniel Day-Lewis carries this movie in the end, and what a pleasure to see his return to the screen. Without him, though, it might have been harder to take this film’s rather redundant, laborious dramatic gestures and its macho-sensitive narcissism. Even with Day-Lewis, in fact, there are tricky moments in the dialogue, and at the end of each of the two big speeches you might imagine a drama teacher saying: “… and … scene!”
Yet Day-Lewis’s instinctive command of the moment and address to the camera – that fascinating theatricality and artifice visible in even his most realist performances – make him endlessly watchable. He is supposed to be playing a former army sergeant here. I’d put his rank higher than that. It is a movie that Day-Lewis co-wrote with his son Ronan, who also directs. It’s about a father coming to terms with his neglect of his son. We must make of that what we will.
Forget the medium and focus on the New York City mayor-elect’s message – centrists can’t compete with rent freezes, free buses and support for Palestine
While there are many reasons for Zohran Mamdani’s success, the New York City mayor-elect’s meteoric rise was in no small part down to his campaign’s blazing social media game. Across TikTok, Instagram and X, his ads have racked up tens of millions of views, turning his charismatic potential into an electoral earthquake that has shaken the foundations of the Democratic party. Many politicians on both sides of the Atlantic will be asking: what is his secret formula?
For me, the answer is clear. Since I was only 14, I’ve been an online leftwing commentator, building a platform of more than 700,000 followers on Instagram with no money or institutional backing. On social media, radicalism isn’t a potential liability – it’s your strongest selling point. This is a reality that the most adept politicians – from Mamdani to Donald Trump – understand very well. Above all else, what matters online is your authenticity and commitment to standing by the things you believe in, no matter how many outraged headlines they may produce.
Rohan Sathyamoorthy is a 20-year-old writer from south-west London
The actor answers your questions about slipping swearwords into Disney shows, breakfast with Terrence Malick and lunch with Richard Griffiths
Your funeral speech in Andor was a huge highlight of a show surprisingly packed with anti-fascist sentiment (we all know that when you said “Fight the Empire!” you really wanted to use a different f-word there). Did you know at the time just how apt the whole show would be in the US political climate?notanauthority I did say a different word in my speech, and the writer hoped that Disney were OK with it, so we kept the strong f-word right to the end. And then I think some executive buckled, so it became “fight the Empire”. It was filmed after the first Trump incumbency, when there was another president, so it wasn’t overtly connected to the America that is now.
When I performed that speech, I was filmed by about 200 cameras so they could make a hologram. I was alone in a huge studio, no director or crew inthe room with me. There was a “God” mic – somebody spoke to me remotely saying, “We’ll do that again”. It was quite scary.
Hosts fail to capitalise on good start chasing 168
Last nine wickets go for 52 in Gold Coast
India’s spinners trapped Australia in a web of despair to secure a 48-run win in the T20 international on the Gold Coast to take a 2-1 series lead.
India made 8-167 after being asked to bat on Thursday and Australia were tracking nicely at 1-67, but spinners Axar Patel (2-20) and Varun Chakravarthy (1-26) sent the required run rate skyrocketing as the pressure built on the hosts.
United States men’s national team coach Mauricio Pochettino has admitted he misses the Premier League and would like to return there in the future.
“The Premier League is the best league in the world,” he told the BBC in an interview published on Thursday. “Of course I am missing it. I am so happy in America but also thinking one day to come back to the Premier League. It’s the most competitive league.”
This year marks 100 years since the birth of the photo booth. We would like to see your favourite pictures
This year marks 100 years since the birth of the photo booth. Guardian writers have shared their favourite photo booth pictures – now we’d like to see yours. You can share your photos, old and new, and the stories behind them, below.
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Gianni Infantino has a new idea, and like most of his ideas it’s not one many are going to like, except maybe Donald Trump
A perfectly friendly-looking American guy, sharp suit, early 50s is wandering around Miami. He tells me that in the last 10 years the city has turned into a “magnet for dreamers, doers and visionaries, a launchpad where ideas take flight, where connections spark movements, where legacies are born”.
I nod sagely, pretending to know what that means before clicking the X in the top right of the YouTube tab. The man in question is in fact the mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, encouraging me and other leaders of industry to pay lots of money to attend the America Business Forum. The website tells me “America Business Forum comes to the United States for the first time” – which begs the question where they’ve held it previously. I’m no CEO, I don’t keep a diary, but I’d have put America right up there as locations to hold a forum on American business.
Bellingham was left out in October after injury return
March is the only other England camp before World Cup
Thomas Tuchel has decided to give Jude Bellingham an England recall on Friday for the World Cup qualifiers against Serbia and Albania, the Guardian understands. The head coach sparked a major sideshow in October when he did not select Bellingham for the friendly with Wales and the qualifier against Latvia.
Bellingham was not in prime physical condition having returned to the Real Madrid squad after shoulder surgery only a couple of weeks before Tuchel’s announcement. It was nonetheless a bombshell call given Bellingham’s ability and status, with Tuchel doubling down on it when he said he might have excluded him even if he had been 100% fit.
(Warp) The Detroit rapper feared his music would get dull after he went sober, but no-one could be bored by this guest-stuffed, chaotically swaggering new album
When Danny Brown spoke to the Guardian in 2023, he was promoting the near simultaneous release of two albums, his own Quaranta and Scaring the Hoes, a collaboration with Jpegmafia that commenced with perhaps the year’s most diverting opening lyric: “First – fuck off, Elon Musk.” Both albums had been recorded in what sounded like desperate circumstances.
Brown had long played on his image as a drug-guzzling maniac, too crazed to be contained by any of hip-hop’s standard generic boundaries: posing for photographs with his hair wildly backcombed, his missing teeth on full display, his tongue out and his fingers in devil’s horns, telling interviewers “I’m just waiting to die – everything after this point is, like, whatever”; referring to his songs as “trauma dumps” and calling them things like Adderall Admiral, White Lines, Dope Fiend Rental, Need Another Drink and Die Like a Rockstar. By the time he made Quaranta and Scaring the Hoes, however, he was in serious trouble: “blackout drunk” when recording the former, “in pain all the time, throwing up and shit” during the making of the latter. By the time of the interview, he’d been to rehab and got sober: ostensibly a happy ending, but Brown struck a note of caution. “I’ve seen so many artists get sober,” he said. “And their music sucks.”
Strangulation during sex damages young women’s brain health and breeds deep gender inequality. But the real test will be its enforcement
This week marks a turning point in the UK’s approach to violent porn. The government has announced it will make publishing or possessing pornographic depictions of strangulation or suffocation – often known as “choking” – illegal. This bold move could transform the porn that appears on porn sites and social media platforms.
Strangulation in porn was once niche.Indeed, studiesinvestigating the content of porn 20 years ago found hardly any instances of it.Yet an independent review of pornography released this year found that it was rife on the most popular porn sites. This summer the children’s commissioner released a report revealing that 58% of young people had seen strangulation in pornography, even though only 6% had searched for it. As renowned porn producer Erika Lust puts it, strangulation has become the “alpha and omega” of “any porn scene”.
Clare McGlynn is a professor of law at Durham University and author of Exposed: The Rise of Extreme Porn and How We Fight Back (out in 2026)
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Report says proven technology could benefit thousands in poor quality housing and help UK meet carbon reduction targets
Flooded disused coalmines could be a significant source of energy and provide cheap heat to thousands of homes, a new report argues.
Mine water geothermal heat (MWGH) systems use the water in flooded coalmines, which is warmed by natural processes, to supply low-carbon heat. Heat exchangers and pumps recover the heat, which is distributed via district heating networks to homes and buildings, providing low-cost, long-term, stable energy.
The structure, variously known as the border fence or border wall, is not continuous and only covers sections of the almost 2,000-mile boundary between the two countries. It consists of a series of obstructions designed to discourage illegal entry into the US
Connexion
