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My Only Boy by Rosa Rankin-Gee review – a darkly funny near-future dystopia

A surprising romance is set against a backdrop of climate crisis, political instability and corporate corruption in this bleak but witty novel Rosa Rankin-Gee follows her 2021 near-future climate-crisis dystopia, Dreamland, with a similar but more politically focused work. As I read My Only Boy, I kept having to remind myself that the nation it describes is not (yet) real, because, for a reader living abroad, the novel’s England seems unnervingly close to what might come next. Any political dystopia risks being overtaken by reality, but in this case the gap between truth and fiction feels claustrophobic. At the beginning of the novel, Elle is at a party held to mourn that day’s election of a far-right populist government. She’s the communications director for the almost too brilliantly named Gigr, a company connecting people seeking immediate shift work with businesses offering it. Elle is freshly upset by witnessing and immediately containing the reputational damage of a worker’s jump from a balcony. She knows how to do this, because “we’d had a death every four weeks, then every three weeks, then every two”: exhausted, starving people taking underpaid shifts from Gigr after finishing public sector jobs that no longer pay enough for survival. Almost everyone, in this slightly more desperate, divided and unfair nation, ends up doing some work for Gigr sooner or later, to buy faster access to emergency healthcare or food for crisis-stricken family, and Gigr has algorithms to ensure that each person is paid the least their particular circumstances oblige them to accept. Continue reading...

The Independent (World)

Googly-eyed robot gives dementia-stricken husband his freedom back - and his exhausted wife a much-needed break

The decades-long quest to build home robots that are both helpful and lifelike — spurred on by fictional machines like The Jetsons’ humanoid maid Rosie —- is still mostly a pipe dream, but some developers are getting closer

The Guardian Culture

The hill I will die on: Let me tell you the one big problem with art galleries. There’s too much art | Isabel Brooks

They often boast thousands of great works – but who needs that? I can only really engage with one or two before feeling exhausted Visiting an art gallery always goes the same way for me. I look at one artwork. I look at the next artwork. And then the next. What was the first one again? Was it of a farm? Who knows? I reach the inevitable conclusion: there are simply too many paintings. After about 15 minutes I’ve had enough and don’t want to look at any more art; by the time I reach the gift shop I have a powerful urge to lie face down on the floor and go to sleep. To be clear: I like art. I grew up drawing and painting, did GCSE art and still paint now. But when I go to a gallery now, hoping that this time I’ll feel something, I’m dismayed by the sheer volume of what’s on offer. The National Gallery displays more than 2,400 artworks and the Louvre up to 4,500 paintings. The New York Met boasts tens of thousands of artworks, but I wouldn’t know. When I visited, the rooms were so monotonous and numerous that I got lost, couldn’t find my friends, asked a security guard for help, went up and down in a lift, sat on a bench and then left early. I do not recall a single piece of art. Seeing as the average viewing time is only 27 seconds, that means an hour’s trip exposes you to a whopping 133 paintings. No wonder I can only remember a handful I’ve seen over the years (and those ones are already famous). Isabel Brooks is a freelance writer Continue reading...

The Guardian World

A broken economy and an emboldened regime: Iranians abandoned to endure fallout from war

Some Iranians hoped foreign intervention would unseat the regime but instead the US-Israel war has damaged livelihoods and strengthened those in power As Donald Trump swung this week between threats of new military action against Iran and predictions that a lasting ceasefire deal was imminent, many Iranians were left exhausted and gripped by uncertainty. Despite the partial lifting of an internet shutdown that began when the war started on 28 February, fears of worsening repression at home have also fuelled pessimism about the future among some of those to whom the Guardian spoke. Continue reading...

The Independent (World)

Ukraine war is at ‘turning point’ and Kyiv has six months to seize initiative, says senior commander

Brigadier General Andriy Biletsky said he believes the Russian military is exhausted

The Independent (World)

Ukraine war is at ‘turning point’ and Kyiv has six months to seize initiative, says senior commander

Brigadier General Andriy Biletsky said he believes the Russian military is exhausted

The Guardian Culture

‘It’s just not safe. It’s not OK’: can Married at First Sight ever be risk-free?

Many contestants have a positive experience on the reality show, but others say the format is unsafe It was about 1am. After a day of relentless filming in which he had met and “married” a stranger, the Married at First Sight UK cameras stopped rolling and Adrian Sanderson was left alone with his new TV partner. “Honestly, I’ll never ever forget that feeling – it was so difficult,” he says. “When those producers leave you and you’re, like: ‘I’m alone – I don’t get this. How is this about to happen?’ It would be daunting for anyone. You’re exhausted by this time. Continue reading...

Daily Mail (News)

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