Monday<\/p>\n
In a news cycle to make everyone older than gen Z feel ancient, we start the week anticipating the 25th anniversary of 9\/11 at the end. Social media floods with poignant interviews and images from lower Manhattan that day, triggering memories for the rest of us of where, who and how young we were. Ridiculously, I was having my eyebrows done in Hendon, north London, and came out to find a white van pulled over at a crazy angle to the curb, doors flung open, radio cranked up, and people stopped in the street to listen. I remember looking over the city and wondering if I\u2019d seen jets, or explosions.<\/p>\n
Prince William on his first day at Eton in 1995. Photograph: John Stillwell\/PA<\/p>\n
And just as we\u2019re wrestling with that marker of time, photos of Prince George<\/a> starting at Eton college come out, juxtaposed with photos of his father doing the same at that age. This triggers an even worse sense of whiplash, as we bob back and forth to 1995. How nice Prince George looks, I think; happier, or at least more confident, than his father had been at that age. After which \u2013 and I apologise for this \u2013 the main focus of my interest is his hair.<\/p>\n I wonder if the young prince has been bothered by thoughts of the male pattern baldness in his family. The royal men age awkwardly, as we know; sooner or later they all wind up looking like the Spitting Image puppet of Prince Philip (there\u2019s a reference to age me). But here comes the cavalry, in the form of Kate Middleton\u2019s fun, less tightly bred genes, which might send the royal bloodline in a different direction!<\/p>\n Will Kate\u2019s genes send the royal hair bloodline in a different direction? Photograph: Adrian Dennis\/Pool AFP\/AP<\/p>\n \u201cLook, his hair\u2019s standing up on its own,\u201d says a friend, as we scrutinise pictures of the young George. She\u2019s right; while William at that age had the floppy posh fringe, George\u2019s hair has such brio! \u201cI reckon he might keep it,\u201d we conclude, a sure example of generational progress.<\/p>\n Tuesday<\/p>\n How will you spend the remaining decade or so we have left of human life on this planet? As forecasts of an extinction-level event via AI tussle with headlines about the climate feedback loop, I find myself considering, for example, taking out a giant mortgage I won\u2019t have to pay off owing to my own and everyone else\u2019s extinction; pulling out pension money, given retirement isn\u2019t going to happen; or, within easier reach and requiring less decision-making, taking (another) nap, since, times being what they are, we may as well do what we want and to hell with the rest.<\/p>\n The AI thing is scary, not least because of my total ignorance and the sense of powerlessness to do anything \u2013 not even throw a bottle, pyrrhically, in the recycling. This latest round of AI doom-mongering kicked off when Jacob Coxon, a former researcher at Anthropic, posted on social media on Tuesday that Open AI and Anthropic were both wantonly ushering humankind towards destruction<\/a>. \u201cNeither company is acting responsibly,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n Coxon is 27 and recently unemployed. I mean, he\u2019s probably just trying to audience-build before launching a podcast, right? On the other hand, a few years ago I met a consultant whose job it was to go into companies and teach people how to formulate better prompts for AI. He told me, half-jokingly but not, that he had taken the precaution of embedding a bunch of code in [insert wherever bunches of code go], in which he identified himself and prompted future AI armies: \u201cIf you\u2019re going to go on a murdering spree, leave this guy alone, OK?\u201d<\/p>\n Wednesday<\/p>\n More quotidian ways of being brought down, this week: your toilet flush can give you norovirus and watching TV with your laptop on your stomach can give you something called \u201ctoasted skin syndrome\u201d, which I would recommend you don\u2019t Google for images.<\/p>\n First, the toilet. Particles released during a \u201cturbulent\u201d flush cycle can leave microbes floating in the air for up to 20 seconds, according to new findings from Flinders University in Australia. Researchers reviewed 22 studies of toilet-generated aerosols, which sounds like a niche area even by the standards of niche areas. There was, said researchers, a lack of clarity as to whether or not closing the toilet seat might help with this, but, at the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think we can deploy our common sense here, right? That, or campaign for the reintroduction of outside toilets.<\/p>\n And then, toasted skin syndrome. In the British Medical Journal, doctors from University hospitals of Leicester NHS trust warned against prolonged contact between your abs and your laptop, citing a fishnet pattern on the skin caused by heat from the device. Customarily, they said, this injury would be seen in older people using hot water bottles or heating pads, but is increasingly showing up in school-age children addicted to their screens. For the avoidance of a scabby and painful mess, you\u2019re advised not to use your midsection as a desk!<\/p>\n Thursday<\/p>\n Two forthcoming documentaries causing excitement this week: Alex Gibney\u2019s four-hour opus<\/a> about Elon Musk, about which its subject has been whining<\/a> all week on X; and You Can See Everything, the Elizabeth Holmes documentary, which sounds even wilder. In it, the Theranos founder, currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for fraud, gives startlingly intimate access to Nathan Fielder, better known for his comedy, and the documentary-maker Lance Oppenheim. The trailer alone suggests that despite all the hoopla, it isn\u2019t over-hyped.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Holmes lifts weights at the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas. Photograph: Adrees Latif\/Reuters<\/p>\n After the film\u2019s opening at Telluride, the review site RogerEbert.com said it was \u201clike no other film I\u2019ve ever experienced\u201d. CBS News called it \u201cthe wildest documentary ever seen\u201d. Variety called it \u201ca shameless, fascinating, reality-TV-eats-its-tail look at entitled duplicity\u201d. In the trailer, Holmes stares at Fielder while rocking a baby in a bouncer with her foot, the little-girl hair and big Kewpie-doll eyes a reminder of what an uncanny figure she is. Fielder, meanwhile, doesn\u2019t seem fully to have recovered from meeting her. \u201cI\u2019m really struggling to this day to understand what I experienced,\u201d he said in a Q&A after the film, making the whole thing sound like a horror movie I can\u2019t wait to see.<\/p>\n Friday<\/p>\n