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Wednesday

Sean Thomas

It’s not just DeepSeek, all AI is censored

There are multiple reasons to be fascinated by DeepSeek, the Chinese AI chatbot that debuted last week, knocking Donald Trump off the headlines and $1 trillion off the US stock market. For a start, it represents yet another remarkable leap forward in the race to artificial general intelligence – which looks likely to arrive this decade, maybe this year. Brace. A second reason to gaze with intrigue at DeepSeek is the mysterious way it arrived. Was it really made for a mere six million bucks, as they claim? Or did they cut corners and steal the IP of ChatGPT, as OpenAI is alleging? If they did, it is quite the

Zak Asgard

Pity the perpetual student

I can’t remember the exact date of my departure from university. It was sometime in the summer of 2021. My flatmates and I packed up our things, had a sombre pint at the pub, hugged, and then went our separate ways. I boarded the train at Bristol Temple Meads with a degree in English and Philosophy and no feasible job prospects. I was also broke. Three years had come to a precipitous end, and it was time to move back home. I was worried about my future. The thought of becoming a bum terrified me: the sort of graduate who day drinks, listens to Limp Bizkit, starts a true crime

Colin Freeman

Other artists sing Dylan’s songs better than him

At the start of the new Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Dylan’s protest-singer mentor Pete Seeger implores him not to swap his trusty acoustic for a newfangled Fender Stratocaster electric. ‘A good song can get the job done without the frills,’ says Seeger – who, for all his progressive views, wasn’t very hip to the new sound of rock ’n’ roll. ‘Yeah, but sometimes they sound really good,’ retorts Dylan. It’s a brief exchange, but it shows how the times were indeed a-changin’ – and Dylan’s own music with them. Comercially, abandonment of his folkie roots in search of his inner Rolling Stone was to prove an astute decision.

Tuesday

Julie Burchill Julie Burchill

In praise of hospital food

I’ve been in hospital, bed-bound, for six weeks; because I can write it’s not so bad, but between deadlines time passes slowly, so landmarks in the day come to mean a lot. Most of all, I look forward to my husband visiting at 3 p.m.; secondly, the meds trolley trundling towards me like a dear old open-handed friend at 9 a.m. – but a close third must be the bell which announces the arrival of meals: breakfast at 7 a.m., lunch at 12 p.m., dinner at 5 p.m. In the first bay I stayed in, I always made my ward-mates laugh by squealing with genuine glee when I heard it.

Julie Bindel

I can’t stand Stanley Tucci

I love Italian food, and I love food writing and TV programmes, so you might think I’d love Stanley Tucci. And yet I find him creepy and his recipes are rubbish. I can’t be the only one. The actor, who I first saw in the brilliant film Big Night, about a Jersey Shore Italian-American restaurant, is probably best known for The Devil Wears Prada, a film I adore. His character in that film did wind me up, but it took a while before Tucci himself got on my nerves. I suppose it began with him coming over all cheffy, like he’s the new Anthony Bourdain. Who cares what Colin Firth

Robin Ashenden

Italy is most beautiful in winter

Monopoli, Puglia Monopoli is an elegant little seaside town in Puglia, the heel of the Italian boot, and in summer it’s unbearable. Tourists flock from everywhere. Squares you could normally zip through in a few seconds take ten minutes to cross, and the queues for Bella Blu, the ice cream parlour in Piazza Garibaldi, remind you of the Ryanair check-in desk. That struggling little pizzeria you patronised loyally throughout the autumn and winter now asks you to come back in an hour’s time and still can’t find you a table when you do. Monopoli, which seemed to be begging for it on every previous visit, suddenly has options. It’s offhand

Monday

Ameer Kotecha

In defence of British food

Recently in Spectator Life Rob Crossan laid bare ‘the unpalatable truth about British food’ – namely that it is, er, in some establishments he’s been to, done badly. Leaving aside the fact he’s looking for his fish and chips in the wrong place (outside the M25 it wouldn’t be such a struggle), encountering a few dodgy versions of British fare is not a good reason to sit idly by and allow our culinary heritage to disappear. British food can compete with the world’s best – if we allow it to. In many ways we have had to develop a thick skin when it comes to the loss of treasured bastions

Alec Marsh

The enduring charm of King Solomon’s Mines

How many people under 40 in Britain today do you think have read H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines? Five, six… 50? It’s hard to know. If you’re lucky – or unlucky, depending on your point of view – you might have bumped into the 1985 film version with Richard Chamberlain, Sharon Stone and Herbert Lom in the unloved crevices of the TV schedule when only insomniacs or household spiders are deemed to be a risk. I ask the question because this year marks 100 years since the death of Sir Henry Rider Haggard as he was then, having been knighted in 1919, apparently for services to the British Empire

Joanna Nolan

The year of the creep

It’s only January, but I’m ready to declare my 2025 word of the year. Creep. It’s everywhere (though true to form you may not immediately spot it). The online world is no longer merely parallel. It intersects, subsumes and fuels our real world. Siri, Alexa et al lurk. The internet, email and, above all, apps skulk silently but persistently, stealing away our ‘free’ time. We are never off duty. Social media has crept in as our number one and sometimes only friend (though of course the parasocial relationships delude us into thinking we have many more). AI is stealthily permeating every aspect of our lives, often with huge benefits, but