The Joy of Six 1604

Lucy Siegle is not impressed by the Guardian's attempt to play down its long and close involvement with Russell Brand: "My favourite evidence suggesting a deeper relationship ... is the stuff on its own website including photographic evidence of young Russell perched next to former editor Alan Rushbridger at Guardian conference. This is framed as one of Alan Rushbridger’s highlights on leaving in 2015."

"As I started to step outside of the MAGA media bubble, I started to gradually realise that so much of what I believed turned out to be false. I spent a lot of nights in solitude with my thoughts going through this year-long personally tumultuous time, where I had to examine ... what had been sincerely held beliefs that were false." Rich Logis talks to Byline Times about the organisation he has created to help others exit from the extremist group.

"When you open Speed Grader to confront another bland but competent assignment, suspiciously devoid of grammatical or spelling errors, your heart sinks. You know that, in all probability, the document you're reading was composed not by your student (whose contribution likely extended no further than dropping the essay question into Claude’s interface and adding 'make it sound human'), but by a legion of absent (and, quite probably, deceased) authors, whose forgotten texts enabled an algorithm to stitch together an essay that is at least passable and often reasonably good." Jeff Sparrow on what AI is doing to universities.

Mira Ptacin speaks up for feral children: "These kids already spend most of their weekdays indoors, where bells regulate their movements and adults regulate their voices. The ferry ride is one of the few unsupervised stretches left in their day: 20 minutes on the ocean suspended between island and mainland when they can be loud, loose, ridiculous and wholly themselves."

Peter Asher looks back on his 60 years in the music business.

"It’s a magnificent sweep, hardly noticed by most passengers as they alight from their train – minding the gap between the train and the platform edge, of course – and hurry to the exit and whatever has brought them to York in the first place." English Buildings celebrates the curved trainshed at York station.