{"id":554106,"date":"2026-03-21T03:15:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T03:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/554106\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T03:15:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T03:15:08","slug":"five-great-reads-90s-bassists-at-war-with-ai-slop-and-a-secretly-gay-footballers-extraordinary-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/554106\/","title":{"rendered":"Five Great Reads: 90s bassists, at war with AI slop, and a secretly gay footballer\u2019s extraordinary story |"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear readers, we have this week been so blessed on the celebrity profile front that this typically rambling, profanity-laced Shaun Ryder interview<\/a> didn\u2019t make the cut. Before we get to what bumped him out: men behaving terribly, war zones, West Hollywood solitude and Washington DC chaos. Enjoy.<\/p>\n

1. Why are men abandoning their partners on hikes?Women are being abandoned by their partners on hiking trails. Illustration: Kimberly Elliott\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

This week in \u201cmen don\u2019t deserve women\u201d, the concept of \u201calpine divorce\u201d<\/a> \u2013 so named by women who have gone on a hike, climb or other outdoor adventure with a male partner, only to be abandoned or left behind.<\/p>\n

Breakups have quickly followed. TikTok posts of bawling women, alone in the woods, have gone viral. And in one case an amateur mountaineer was found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter for leaving his exhausted girlfriend to find help.<\/p>\n

Why men in a hurry should slow down: \u201cIf you invite someone on a hike, you\u2019re basically acting as their de facto guide,\u201d says David Webb, the editor of an outdoor adventure magazine. \u201cWould a guide just storm off on their clients? Of course not.\u201d<\/p>\n

How long will it take to read: Four minutes.<\/p>\n

2. AI\u2019s battle to tell fact from fiction in the Iran warGraves being prepared for the victims of an airstrike on a school in Minab in southern Iran. Photograph: Iranian foreign media department\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Sifting truth from propaganda is more difficult than ever. Take the above photo of the cemetery of Minab \u2013 verified as authentic \u2013 as it prepares to bury more than 100 of the Iranian town\u2019s young girls after a school was bombed.<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s Gemini AI service or X\u2019s Grok chatbot will both assure you the photo is not from Iran at all. The \u201cfactchecks\u201d are just one example of the tidal wave of AI-generated slop<\/a> \u2013 from nonsense analysis to faked images \u2013 engulfing coverage of the Iran war.<\/p>\n

A matter of trust: A 2025 study found about half of all AI-generated news summaries had at least one significant sourcing or accuracy issue \u2013 with some tools, like Gemini, that rose to 76%.<\/p>\n

How long will it take to read: Three minutes.<\/p>\n

3. \u2018I just wanted to be who I am\u2019Tony Powell spent 25 years at the Holloway Motel \u2013 \u2018I miss it. It was a fun place.\u2019 Photograph: Christie Hemm Klok\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

The film-maker Ramiel Petros regularly walked past a motel in West Hollywood to see a \u201cserious and grumpy\u201d man sitting alone on the balcony, glass of wine in hand. While kicking around ideas for a new project, Petros decided to yell \u201cwho are you?\u201d his way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a professional soccer player when I was younger,\u201d Tony Powell replied. \u201cLook it up.\u201d A new documentary unravels the story of the secretly gay former Norwich defender<\/a> who abandoned his family to continue his career in the US \u2013 then spent 25 years as the manager and eventual final occupant of the run-down hotel.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s too difficult to come out and get accepted, especially in the Premier League. Nothing\u2019s really changed. It\u2019s still a homophobic league.\u201d \u2013 Tony Powell<\/p>\n

How long will it take to read: Four minutes.<\/p>\n

4. How Elon Musk tried to gamify governmentElon Musk and his team of teenage coders set out to defeat the enemy of the United States: its people. Illustration: Anais Mims\/Guardian design<\/p>\n

Elon Musk defied the logic of the automotive and aerospace industries by disrupting the incumbents. Tesla and SpaceX were successful ventures, so why couldn\u2019t he do the same in government?<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s so-called department of government efficiency (AKA Doge) dominated the discourse in the early stages of Donald Trump\u2019s second term. Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian break down how the Doge team, steeped in gaming and rightwing culture wars, attempted to slay the \u201cthe woke parasite in the government\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Success or failure? When Musk left Doge after 130 days, its website claimed $170bn in government savings. A Financial Times investigation could verify \u201conly a sliver of that figure\u201d.<\/p>\n

How long will it take to read: Nine minutes.<\/p>\n

5. Melissa Auf der Maur on playing with Courtney LoveMelissa Auf der Maur with Courtney Love in Los Angeles in 1997. Photograph: Lindsay Brice\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

When Melissa Auf der Maur joined Hole in 1994 after their previous bassist died of a heroin overdose, she was the only band member who wasn\u2019t a junkie. Courtney Love, the frontwoman, was according to Auf der Maur \u201ca raging, rolling tornado\u201d after the death of her husband, Kurt Cobain, by suicide four months earlier.<\/p>\n

Auf der Maur\u2019s memoir<\/a> details how she jumped ship to join the Smashing Pumpkins, started a relationship with Love\u2019s enemy, Dave Grohl \u2013 and why meeting Love for the first time after being summoned to Seattle \u201cfelt like destiny\u201d.<\/p>\n

How long will it take to read: Six minutes.<\/p>\n

Further reading: On the less conventional end of the bass-player spectrum, the frontman of Primus, Les Claypool<\/a>, discusses his new project \u2013 a concept album with Sean Ono Lennon about a robot turning the world into paperclips. And, on the hippest end of the bassist scale, the Sonic Youth alumnus Kim Gordon<\/a> answers readers\u2019 questions.<\/p>\n

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