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guardian.co.ukHe was 23 years old and knew no one. He slept in pig pens, haystacks and freight trains. He ate whatever he could find. He stole and traded on the black market. He was helped, exploited and betrayed. His legs hurt and he was hungry and cold, yet he was exhilarated. He felt like an alien fallen to earth.
Estimated reading time: 21 min
Grace Jones: 'God I'm scary. I'm scaring myself'
guardian.co.ukHelmut Newton adored her – from a distance. "When I was modelling, he would call me all the time to work and then, when I got there, he would say, 'Oh my God, I forgot you don't have big tits', and send me back. Then we ended up working together quite a lot, and my tits didn't matter any more because he loved my legs. Hehehehe!"
Estimated reading time: 12 min
News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier
guardian.co.ukNews is irrelevant. Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you. But people find it very difficult to recognise what's relevant.
Estimated reading time: 7 min
Top five regrets of the dying
guardian.co.ukThere was no mention of more sex or bungee jumps. A palliative nurse who has counselled the dying in their last days has revealed the most common regrets we have at the end of our lives. And among the top, from men in particular, is 'I wish I hadn't worked so hard'.
Estimated reading time: 3 min
Creepshots and revenge porn: how paparazzi culture affects women
guardian.co.ukPaparazzi culture has been a problem for decades, but it has taken on an especially sinister, sexualised hue in recent years. In 2008, for instance, a photo agency announced that Britney Spears definitely wasn't pregnant – by posting pictures of her in period-stained knickers. Emma Watson has said that on her 18th birthday she realised that "overnight I'd become fair game ... One photographer lay down on the floor to get a shot up my skirt. The night it was legal for them to do it, they did it. I woke up the next day and felt completely violated."
Estimated reading time: 9 min
The rise of mobile phone photography
guardian.co.ukSuddenly, thanks to the social platforms, photography has a purpose. People have started taking more aesthetic photos that connect (thanks to hashtags) with complete strangers across the globe. What's more, the apps have released enormous creativity in people who might otherwise never have got involved with photography.
Estimated reading time: 8 min
Why the world needs introverts
guardian.co.ukIntroversion – along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness – is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man's world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are.
Estimated reading time: 8 min
Why the world needs introverts
guardian.co.ukBut we make a grave mistake to embrace the Extrovert Ideal so unthinkingly. Some of our greatest ideas, art, and inventions – from the theory of evolution to Van Gogh's sunflowers to the personal computer – came from quiet and cerebral people who knew how to tune in to their inner worlds and the treasures to be found there. Without introverts, the world would be devoid of Newton's theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of relativity, WB Yeats's The Second Coming, Chopin's nocturnes, Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Peter Pan, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Cat in the Hat, Charlie Brown, […]
Estimated reading time: 8 min
Evgeny Morozov: 'We are abandoning all the checks and balances'
guardian.co.ukI have a lot of respect for these people as engineers but they are been asked to take on tasks that go far beyond engineering. Tasks that have to do with human and social engineering rather than technical engineering. Those are the kind of tasks I would prefer were taken on by human beings who are more well rounded, who know about philosophy and ethics, and know something about things other than efficiency, because it will not end well.
Estimated reading time: 9 min
Michael Moore: I was the most hated man in America
guardian.co.ukI'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it … No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out [of him]. Is this wrong? I stopped wearing my 'What Would Jesus Do?' band, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, 'Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore', and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realise, 'Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death.' And yo[…]
Estimated reading time: 2 min
The new rules of the dancefloor
guardian.co.ukDon't harass the DJ. This isn't a 21st birthday. They don't take requests. There's a reason they are being paid to play music and you are paying to see them. You don't like their choice of tunes? Tough. Bad clubbing experiences are as formative as great ones.
Estimated reading time: 5 min
The challenge of retelling Grimms' fairy tales
guardian.co.ukThe speed is exhilarating. You can only go that fast, however, if you're travelling light; so none of the information you'd look for in a modern work of fiction – names, appearances, background, social context, etc – is present. And that, of course, is part of the explanation for the flatness of the characters. The tale is far more interested in what happens to them, or in what they make happen, than in their individuality.
Estimated reading time: 16 min
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