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I was standing at the traffic lights with the weight of the world on my shoulders when a man approached. He will probably never know the impact he had on my lifeRead more in the kindness of strangers seriesMy cousin had recently died in a terrible accident and I had been the one who had to identify the body. It was one of the darkest periods of my life, on seemingly every front: I was in the midst of a divorce; it was during the global financial crisis and the company I worked for was badly struggling, making every day feel heavy with uncertainty and stress. Everything was a mess and I was emotionally exhausted.One morning during rush hour, I stood at the traffic lights waiting to cross on my way to the office. I was lost in my thoughts but must have looked like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, because something unexpected happened. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsThis week’s question: Why is a child saying ‘Na-na, na-na-na!’ so annoying?Why are national anthems almost always orchestral? When – and by whom – was it decided that brass and strings best represent a country’s identity? Where are the power-pop or folk varieties? Ross Gomes, by emailSend new questions to [email protected]. Continue reading...

From ‘has flat buttocks’ to ‘likes brunettes with muscles’, the retailer’s About You pages offer some remarkable insights into customers’ lives and tastes. Naturally, I rushed to check out mine …There’s been a disturbing development in the surveillance capitalism space for me and other Amazon users: we can now find out exactly what the site thinks about us. The tax-agnostic shopping behemoth launched an “About You” function, which allows shoppers to see what assumptions and beliefs it has gathered from our purchases, in May, but last week things got interesting. Threads user Megan Montgomery found her “About You” page, and discovered Amazon thinks she “has flat buttocks”, prompting other shoppers to post the implacably devastating verdicts they uncovered: “husband has skinny legs”; “likes brunettes with muscles”; “cusses when scared”; “cannot keep real plants alive”; “too short to reach into a 40in-deep box” and “treats cats as biological children”. A TikTok user says hers includes “has a bad father”.By their fruits shall ye know them, if by “fruits” you mean compression socks, shapewear, cat carriers and self-help guides. Obviously, this is bad, but it’s a well-deserved kind of bad – we’ve sacrificed privacy for convenience and this is the result. It’s also bleakly funny, so just as obviously, I was over there like a ferret up a trouser leg to find out what the stuff Amazon has delivered here over the years has caused it to deduce about my household. The results were disappointing. You don’t need a particularly sophisticated algorithm to deduce “likely lives in York”; “feeds wild birds consistently” (not in summer! I follow RSPB guidance!) and “cycles recreationally” (absolutely not, but I live with a multi-bike-owning MAMNILYBOROD – that’s “middle-aged man not in Lycra yet because of risk of divorce”). Continue reading...

Could a drug intended to prevent painful rashes also protect our brains as we get older? The signs are promising – but not conclusive. Yet that’s enough to be driving a boom in shingles jabsWhen Jenny, a 50-year-old marketing and branding professional from Cambridge, went for her shingles vaccine last year, an entirely different disease was on her mind. Having witnessed three of her four grandparents succumb to dementia, with all the distress that brought, she wants to avoid the same fate. She hopes the shingles vaccine might help.Jenny is far from alone. Britain’s high street chemists have reported a rise in demand for the shingles vaccine, at least some of which is driven by people more worried about dementia than shingles. And while the vaccine is free for some on the NHS, most under-65s pay around £450 for the full two doses. Continue reading...

A touch of homemade scotch bonnet jam turns up the heat in this classic concoctionOur daiquiri sums up what All Roads is all about: familiar flavours with a little twist. Pineapple, rum and lime are a classic combination, and the addition of scotch bonnet jam brings a subtle warmth that makes this just as good for those first crisp autumn evenings as it is on a sunny day.Malika Green and Paschelle Brown, All Roads, London SW9 Continue reading...

A crisp surface and creamy core are the traits of this cheesecake with no base, here topped with spiced and sliced apples and a sticky, caramel sauceMy go-to cheesecake these days is a burnt Basque. It’s so good it doesn’t even need a biscuit base, which might be the very reason some people aren’t fans. But Basque cheesecakes are rarely too sweet, because the burnt top provides just enough bitterness to balance things out and the insides stay ridiculously creamy. If I can give you one tip, though, it’s to make sure you take it out of the oven while it’s still really wobbly, to get the best set. An overbaked Basque is no fun at all. Continue reading...

Refugee gig workers for tech companies don’t know how much they’ll be paid – if AI hasn’t already taken their jobs In a portable building in Kakuma, a refugee camp near Kenya’s northern border with South Sudan, Grace used ChatGPT to research translations of Christian hymns in languages she doesn’t speak. She didn’t know the client, the purpose of her work or whether she would be paid, but as a refugee unable to legally work in Kenya, she needed any opportunity she could get.Grace, who requested anonymity due to a nondisclosure agreement, prompted ChatGPT to translate the hymn’s English text into the assigned east Asian language. She then used the translation to search for existing versions and find information about its translator, author and Christian denomination. She fed those details to AOP Connect, a crowdsourced research platform owned by British AI enterprise software company RWS. Continue reading...

Women hold just a fraction of new AI jobs but are overrepresented in roles with high risk of AI disruptionThere’s a common fear among people who work in Silicon Valley: snag one of the fast-growing, high-paying jobs in artificial intelligence, or get trapped in the “permanent underclass”, a phrase describing the fate of those who won’t have upward mobility in the age of AI.The phrase usually describes a future in which AI automates human jobs. But for women in tech, it’s starting to look like the present. Continue reading...