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7 August, 2023

Ministers have resurrected plans to send illegal migrants to Britain’s overseas territories if the Rwanda scheme falters. Ascension Island, a volcanic rock in the south Atlantic, is being considered in the hope that its remote location would put people off crossing the Channel. Barbie has become the first film directed by a woman to generate more than $1bn at the box office. Greta Gerwig’s feature is the fastest-ever Warner Bros movie to hit the milestone. The Royal Mint is making jewellery out of silver extracted from old x-rays. Metal will be taken from the hundreds of tonnes of images currently in NHS storage, and fashioned into pendants and bracelets celebrating sustainable design.

Trump insisting his inauguration crowds were bigger than they were

Trump’s narcissism renders him “effectively insane”

In trying to understand Donald Trump, says Andrew Sullivan on Substack, I often think back to his very first day in office. At his inauguration in 2017, the crowds were large, but understandably not as huge as the masses who had turned up to see the first black president swear his oath in 2009. “This was not in dispute by any sane person.” Anyone could compare photos; the National Park Service confirmed it. Yet Trump “insisted his crowds were larger”. He persuaded his spokesman to go out and reiterate the lie again and again. It’s likely he still believes this obvious falsehood, with “absolute certainty and mindless passion”.

Trump’s “pathological narcissism” is so intense that it renders him “effectively insane”. He is “beyond truth and lies”: his ego is everything; there is nothing outside it. That’s why the latest indictment, which relies on proving his “knowing mendacity”, will be so hard to make stick. The journalist Michael Wolff, “who has observed Trump close-up”, says everyone who spoke to the president after his 2020 defeat was “at least a little shaken by his absolute certainty that the election really was stolen from him”. But it ought to be irrelevant whether he believed it or not. What matters is that he acted on his belief in a bid to overturn an election result, “ending the American experiment in self-government”. Unless he is successfully prosecuted, we risk entering “late-stage democratic collapse”, where tribalism overwhelms reason, debate is gone, and all that matters is “who can win power by any means”.

The winners of this year’s iPhone Photography Awards include snaps of a flamboyance of flamingos in San Diego; a pink synagogue in Sydney; life inside a tube-shaped building in Chongqing, China; sunbathers under lockdown in Málaga, Spain; and a close-up of a Ken doll clutched by the head in Orange County, California. See more here.

Elon Musk’s motivation for renaming Twitter is to create a so-called “super app” – a single platform on which users can chat to friends, book a taxi, order food, share images, and much more. These one-size-fits-all apps are huge in China, where the likes of WeChat and Alipay dominate the market, says Jeremiah Johnson in Foreign Policy. But Musk will struggle to do the same in the US. Super apps are dependent on mobile payments, which are already part of everyday life for most Chinese – in 2021, 87% of citizens used them, “almost double the next highest nation”.

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This recently resurfaced video of yellow varnish being removed from an early 17th-century portrait has racked up almost two million views on X (formerly Twitter). As one user says, “that must be so satisfying to do”.

Come on, mum, stop being lame. Getty

Gen Z are more like Boomers than they realise

Wandering around the Hunterian Museum, says Janice Turner in The Times, I couldn’t for the life of me read the artefacts’ tiny caption cards. Despite the building’s £4.6m refit to boost “diversity and inclusion”, there was no thought for the over-40s and their dodgy eyesight. It’s a clear pattern: from dimly lit exhibitions to “fashionably moody” darkened restaurants, “ageism is now the only acceptable discrimination”. A Singapore study found that TikTok is “brimming” with videos mocking Boomers (over-58s) for their regressive views and technological hopelessness. “To anyone with adult children, this will be no shock.”

Young people disdaining their elders is of course the “story of human history”. What’s different now is that we Boomers already share so much with Gen Z (under-24s): they listen to “our” music, and hold the same liberal beliefs on gay rights, feminism and racism. That, for my money, explains all the “baffling identity politics, extreme policing of language and eco-protests”. The young need to do something radical to “get a reaction” – and because our views are already so liberal, they really have to push the boat out. This can be maddening at times. “I know of a girl who pulled the cloth off the table, mid-dinner, because her father had ‘misspoken’.” But “creative tension” between generations is still something we should embrace: it keeps older folk “engaged with the future” and gives young people “perspective on their problems”. Even if it is maddening to be left “squinting in the dark”.

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A few weeks ago, says Dennis Lee on Substack, Burger King Thailand unveiled “The Real Cheeseburger”: a sesame seed bun, containing no burger and 20 slices of American cheese. Desperate to try this “dumb” culinary invention, I asked my local Burger King in Chicago to make a knock-off version. Weighing nearly 330g, it’s a “weapons-grade sandwich”. All the layers of cheese fused together, creating one giant blob, and the plasticine-like surface reflected so much light I “briefly considered putting on sunglasses”. As for the taste? All I can say is that it was “prohibitively salty” – a single bite “made me feel like I’d just shoved a tablespoon of salt in my mouth”. Sorry, Thailand. You can keep this for yourselves. 

Liz Truss has put 14 people on her resignation honours list, says The Times – one for every four days she was in office. The list could have been longer: two people reportedly turned down a nomination, one feeling it wasn’t deserved, another that receiving a honour from the shortest serving prime minister in history would be “humiliating”. 

It’s a red admiral butterfly, of which there are now at least 170,000 in the UK – five times more than last year. The surging numbers are almost certainly due to global warming making British temperatures more bearable all year round. If you spot one yourself, you can record the sighting here.

“Choice usually isn’t choice, only what you’re left with.”

American novelist Richard Ford

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