US capitalism casts millions of citizens aside, yet Badenoch and Farage still laud it | Phillip Inman

Next month, Donald Trump will welcome a poverty-stricken family to peruse his plans for a $300m glitzy state ballroom in the White House. The event will be staged as part of National Poverty in America Awareness Month, the time every year when charities document the number of US residents surviving on low incomes.Of course, the president will do no such thing, preferring to summon the press to watch him rub shoulders with the billionaire class as he did at last month’s black tie dinner for the Saudi ruler and his entourage.Trump can be expected to ignore calls for policies to reduce poverty and to dismiss the annual awareness campaign, leaving him unencumbered by any guilt that past presidents might have felt looking in the mirror and seeing Louis XIV starring back at them.US poverty levels matter in the UK and across continental Europe because the rising level of poverty in the States – a trend that dates back to the turn of the century – is the direct result of a particular form of capitalism that increasingly popular rightwing parties say should be adopted

No longer ‘unloved’: retailers investing more in physical stores, UK data shows

UK retailers are investing more in bricks and mortar, with shopping centres and food stores leading a revival, according to research.Retailers and property investors are reallocating capital back into physical stores, according to the property group Knight Frank.The switch represents a fillip for high streets and shopping centres after a difficult decade, which culminated in the shutdown of most stores during pandemic lockdowns and an accompanying surge in online shopping.The growth in online retail has fallen back and flatlined at between 26% and 28% of overall retail sales since a peak of 35% in mid-2020.Retail has outperformed all other types of commercial property this year, with 9

From shrimp Jesus to erotic tractors: how viral AI slop took over the internet

Flood of unreality is an endpoint of algorithm-driven internet and product of an economy dependent on a few top tech firms In the algorithm-driven economy of 2025, one man’s shrimp Jesus is another man’s side hustle.AI slop – the low-quality, surreal content flooding social media platforms, designed to farm views – is a phenomenon, some would say the phenomenon of the 2024 and 2025 internet. Merriam-Webster’s word of the year this year is “slop”, referring exclusively to the internet variety.It came about shortly after the advent of popular large language models, such as ChatGPT and Dall-E, which democratised content creation and enabled vast swathes of internet denizens to create images and videos that resembled – to varying degrees – the creations of professionals.In 2024, it began to achieve peak cultural moments

More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds

More than 20% of the videos that YouTube’s algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found.The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop.Together, these AI slop channels have amassed more than 63bn views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117m (£90m) in revenue each year, according to estimates.The researchers also made a new YouTube account and found that 104 of the first 500 videos recommended to its feed were AI slop. One-third of the 500 videos were “brainrot”, a category that includes AI slop and other low-quality content made to monetise attention

I was there: Red Roses lifted the Rugby World Cup with a roar like no other

Recalling the moment that England’s captain, Zoe Aldcroft, lifted the Rugby World Cup still brings goosebumps. Twickenham was bathed in September sunshine, there was not one empty green seat and when the Gloucester-Hartpury star raised the silverware with gold streamers and fire pyrotechnics, the roar from the crowd was a sound unmatched at any other women’s rugby game I have attended.England had rewarded the home fans as they executed the perfect gameplan against Canada, the in-form team who were the underdogs despite knocking out the six-time champions New Zealand in the semi-final. The stadium was sold out with a women’s rugby record of 81,885 creating an electric atmosphere. Future World Cup finals will be sell-outs with a party-feel celebration but I am unsure if anything will be able to replicate the feeling on 2025 final day for everyone invested in women’s rugby

MCG curator concedes pitch went ‘too far’ in favouring bowlers amid criticism over short Boxing Day Test

The MCG’s head curator has conceded staff went “too far” in preparing a pitch that favoured the bowlers too heavily in the Boxing Day Test, saying he was in a “state of shock” while watching the match unfold.But the stadium’s chief executive is standing by the under-fire curator after the Test match between Australia and England finished within two days.Cricket Australia is bracing for a heavy financial loss from the match, only a month after the Ashes opener in Perth also ended with three days to spare.It is the first time the same series has had multiple two-day Tests in 129 years.Millions of dollars in refunds will be handed to patrons who had purchased tickets for day three, which had been sold out and could have attracted a third successive crowd of more than 90,000