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If it weren’t so serious, it would be rather funny. No, strike that. You have to admit, there is a degree of humour in watching the world’s richest man falling out with the world’s most powerful man. It’s like the political equivalent of Godzilla v King Kong. What makes it even more piquant is that while the digital age has made it possible for people to feud publicly on social media – a veiled insult here, a passive aggressive comment there, with mutual unfriending to follow – these two men actually run their own social media platforms. Nobody’s taking down their posts.
We thought the best thing for all concerned would be to consult a psychologist. And so we did: Geoff Beattie runs a professional eye over the Trump-Musk match-up and wonders, where will it all end?
Here in the UK, we’ve seen our own, slightly smaller, falling out of the big beasts of Reform. Party chairman Zia Yusuf, a self-made billionaire, has resigned after apparently clashing with Nigel Farage over the party leader’s support for a national debate on banning the burqa. Like Musk with Trump’s Republicans, Yusuf has been one of Reform’s biggest donors. So his departure – along with that of Daniel Fried, who was brought in to head up a Doge-style efficiency drive in Reform-run local councils – may not augur well for the insurgent political movement.
This week saw the release of the UK’s latest strategic defence review, which aims to tackle the way the country faces an increasingly hostile global environment. While the thinking of the review’s authors is clearly heavily influenced by the war in Ukraine and the use of drones, remote systems and digitised targeting, our defence expert believes that the review underplays the continuing need for what is known as “mass”. And that the notion Britain can defend
itself with smart technology rather than many more boots on the ground than we have at present is wishful thinking.
That said, my story of the week was the jaw-dropping drone attack launched by Ukraine on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet at airbases sitting deep inside Russia. It was a masterpiece of intelligence and smart planning. But Vladimir Putin has vowed vengeance, and Russia has been developing its own rather advanced drones as well.
There’s a new fitness trend doing the rounds. Japanese walking involves three minutes of higher intensity walking, followed by three minutes of lower intensity walking. Rinse and repeat for at least 30 minutes, four times a week. Does it work? You can find out here.
Now this will sound desperately ignorant, but I’ve always laboured under the illusion that humans are the highest expression of the evolutionary process. As Shakepeare wrote, we are “the paragon of animals”. But it turns out that we’re actually such a bundle of genetic risks and mutations it’s a wonder we made it through to the anthropocene era at all. Our geneticist explains.
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