Latest news with #Anglosphere
The Guardian
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Hustling is out, healing is in: what I learned following 400 online gurus
Some years ago, I started writing a novel. The novel satirises the world of executive coaching and, as part of my research, I began to follow some coaches and motivational speakers online. It started with corporate leadership coaches preaching banal management advice. But it slid quickly into chaos as I surrendered – with dreadful compulsion – to the algorithm. Within months I was following every kind of online coach in the Anglosphere, from divorce coaches, parenting coaches and habit-stacking coaches through to neurolinguistic programmers, flow-state TEDx gurus, money-manifestation mentors and Ponzi-style coach-coaches. I was inside a teeming ecosystem; a lawless jungle of competing advisers, all of them hawking prerecorded masterclasses. Now I'm sharing my key learnings from this confusing period – but with one caveat: I am much stupider now than I was when I started this journey. Hear me out! I implemented the one-touch rule for a tidy house recommended by a habit coach. It really helped with my household overwhelm and despair, until I stopped doing it. A wellness coach told me to give myself a gold star on a physical calendar for every day I exercised – and it worked. I was motivated. I resisted the urge to drop $399 on a pdf handbook written by the same coach; I may be desperate, but I'm not rich. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning This is especially true in the world of dodgy business coaches. Who signs up for a pricey passive-income content portal run by a seasoned grifter? Aspiring grifters. Although the offer is actually pretty enticing. Who wouldn't want to learn how to build an evergreen sales loop? Now if I were rich … Punters have grown cynical about charlatan coaches with their luxury lifestyles and super-polished Instagram feeds. In response, many coaches have pivoted hard into realness, setting up cameras to film themselves blubbering in their most vulnerable moments. 'Truth is: even after building the life I dreamed of, I STILL get impostor syndrome.' Every time I think we have reached peak internet mucus, someone ups the ante. Coaches want to be raw and real. They'll teach you to 'get shit done'' and 'unfuck the world'. My favourite example was a Denver-based wellness expert who stormed a TEDx stage shrieking, 'Time to get holistic as fuck!' Even before the pandemic, the #riseandgrind lifestyle promoted by leading Silicon Valley coaches – 5am wake-up followed by treadmill, breath work, supplements and back-to-back strategy meetings – was starting to look tired. Today self-care is ascendant. Self-discipline is for chumps. Most coaches now teach us to navigate boundaries and comfort zones, avoid burnout, process our past, regulate our nervous systems and be kind to ourselves. Tedcore reigns supreme, with its soothing blend of therapy-speak and pop-philosophy, its confusing mishmash of science and pseudoscience, its incessant pathologies and its endless cult of the self. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion This is especially big among the feminine embodiment types but also, interestingly, among the money-manifesters. And – look – I wish them well in their erotic endeavours, I really do. It's the logical conclusion of the cult of the self, after all. But it is hilarious to imagine the pre-production work that goes into their spiciest aspirational and erotic content. Imagine arranging candles, flower petals and some rented Louis Vuitton handbags around your bedroom, then pressing record to film yourself either actually wanking or delivering a breathy lecture about why it's such an enriching pastime. I'm suss on the self-care gurus who always lure me into luxurious self-pity. Is my procrastination a sign of laziness? Of course not. Coach Katy says it's just my chronic perfectionism. Or maybe a trauma response. Take me back to the biohacker guys with their growth mindsets and solemn data-driven daily protocols. Now I've finished researching, I don't need all these advisers any more. I have slowly begun to purge them from my feed, burrowing myself out of the unsavoury self-improvement hovel I've built for myself. I am emerging like a blinking mole into the daylight, an over-counselled, disoriented mole – unsure if she needs to heal or habit-stack. A post-truth mole who sniffs the air and finds her instincts totally scrambled. My nose – once keen and reliable – can no longer distinguish between TEDx horseshit and actual horseshit, let alone pseudoscience and actual science, queasy therapy-speak and solid advice. God help me. Sophie Quick is the author of The Confidence Woman (Allen & Unwin, $32.99)
India Today
19-06-2025
- Politics
- India Today
Zia-Musharraf-Munir: Why the US needs Pakistan's dictators
"The area of Pakistan is strategically the most important on the continent of India and the majority of our strategic requirements could be metby an agreement with Pakistan alone. We do not therefore consider that failure to obtain an agreement with India (Hindustan) would cause us to modify any of our requirements... We have the use of strategic airfields, primarily in Pakistan, in the event of a major war".advertisementThis extract from a Top Secret assessment prepared on 7 July 1947 by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee in Whitehall clinically stated why Pakistan and not India suited British imperial interests. The creation of Pakistan was a geopolitical coup for the departing British.A pliant state with a 909 km border with Iran, a 2,640 km border with Afghanistan, which was on the southern flank of the Soviet Union, and a short hop away from the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula, which the British called "wells of power". India's access to Afghanistan and Central Asia was severed when a British sleight of hand saw Gilgit-Baltistan, part of the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, go over to Pakistan in 1948. The occupation of Gilgit-Baltistan led to the creation of a 596 km border with the 1947 assessment was prepared in the afterglow of World War 2, the US had already displaced Great Britain as the head of the informal Anglosphere — white majority Anglo-Saxon-ruled countries, the 'Five Eyes'.It also inherited British global interests, including those that created Pakistan. In 2025, US President Donald Trump, the head of his informal alliance, sits down for lunch with the most powerful man in Pakistan, Field Marshal Asim Munir. Pakistan's strategic location matters more than ever. The Israel-Iran war has been on for nearly five days now with Israeli jets overflying Iran with impunity, bombing targets including its nuclear US bombers, carrier strike groups and fighter jets are moving in for what many believe will be decisive action to destroy Iran's underground nuclear enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow. The Trump-Munir lunch menu is not known, but the main course will undoubtedly be a long list of demands by both sides-assistance for the US-Israel war, the use of airfields and bases and most importantly, steering clear of a fellow Muslim country, in return could ask for advanced weapons and for US intervention in mediating Jammu & BELOVED DICTATORSThe US is the world's oldest democracy, but it loves doing business with dictators. 'He's a b*****d, but he's our b*****d,' President Franklin D Roosevelt is believed to have said of Dominican dictator Rafael was the military factor in Pakistan that brought it closer to the US. India and the US were in opposite camps during the Cold War. But Pakistan has been a willing accomplice ever since Field Marshal Ayub Khan's 1958 then, the Army, Allah and America are the three As which it is said that have guided the destiny of a rentier state which has historically rented itself out to the US. What transpires over the Munir-Trump lunch could help answer the puzzle of how bankrupt Pakistan bounced back into favour in the White House in the first six months of the Trump followed was assistance from the western-dominated IMF and World Bank and the de-listing of the FATF. For New Delhi, the US's pro-Pakistan tilt possibly explains the West's reluctance to condemn Pakistan's state-sponsored terror, the direct cause of the May 22 massacre of Indian tourists in Pahalgam, Jammu and Delhi will recall how Pakistani dictators have always leveraged global crises to their advantage. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Pakistan's dictator, General Zia ul Haq, turned his country into a frontline state in the West's proxy war against the Soviets. When Al-Qaeda struck the US on September 11, 2001, General Musharraf speedily became a major non-NATO ally against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, ironically, organisations his army actively created and murderous attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023 has now culminated with Israel's direct attack on Iran. This is where Field Marshal Munir and his rentier state enter the picture. The past two engagements resulted in short-term gains for the Pakistan Army but long-term devastation for their country. General Headquarters Rawalpindi, which runs Pakistan, sees these as acceptable risks because they help in their long war against 1979, the West turned a blind eye to Zia's nuclear weapons programme because of the dictator's strategic utility. Pakistan obtained nuclear weapons in the mid-1980s when it was a Western ally. When the US withdrew after the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, the Pakistan Army redirected the massive weapons stockpiles from the CIA's Operation Cyclone into Punjab and Jammu and Musharraf, it welded terrorists and strategic weapons to craft a unique strategy of nuclear blackmail — bleeding India through terror attacks and threatening nuclear weapons use if India retaliated militarily. When Pakistan's dictators are mollycoddled by the White House, they begin to develop an over-inflated view of themselves, just like the Aesop's Fable where a frog, deeply envious of an ox, begins to fill himself with could explain the startling turnaround in Gen Munir's behaviour this year, beginning with his infamous and blatantly communal 'Two Nations' speech on April 16, which led to the slaughter of Indian tourists in Pahalgam six days later, on April 22. Aesop's fable ends with the frog exploding. Munir reached that point when India unleashed a storm of missiles shattering Pakistani military bases on May 12. India put the 65-year-old Indus water treaty in abeyance, with Prime Minister Modi calling out Pakistan's nuclear blackmail and ending the distinction between state and non-state Pakistan Army called for a ceasefire on May 12, which India acceded to. Munir's salve was a Lazarus-like resurrection, anointing himself Field Marshal and declaring victory. Now in Washington, the Field Marshal is preparing himself for his big day with Trump, the star of another fairy tale — the Grimm's story of a nasty frog that turns into a handsome Prince after being kissed by a princess. Will President Trump play ball?advertisement(Sandeep Unnithan is an author and senior journalist. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Chakra Newz, a digital media platform)(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)Must Watch
The Age
18-06-2025
- Politics
- The Age
Albanese is pulling away from the US – and Australians seem to love it
That's why the sooner the institutional perception of not just Trump, but the United States, adjusts itself, the better off Australia will be. The America that Australia regarded as its great friend and protector is not what it used to be, and it is not going to come back. Americans knew that Trump oversaw a deadly, failed insurrection to overturn the result of the 2020 election that he lost, but still elected him last November. He won 31 states to Kamala Harris' 19. This suggests Albanese needs to confront some big issues within the American relationship. How willing is he to spend some of his political capital to deal with them? It's four years since the AUKUS pact was announced jointly by Boris Johnson, Joe Biden and Scott Morrison – none of whose careers came to a happy end – as a way of getting the old Anglosphere gang back together to stave off the strategic rise of China. What amounts to Labor's original sin in opposition of endorsing AUKUS sight unseen is a mistake from which it will have to find a way to either extricate itself or initiate a renegotiation. AUKUS is crushingly expensive, with unreasonably long timelines, and is almost certainly undeliverable. And it did not countenance a reborn and rampant Trump. Loading There are signs that the government is at least trying to moderate its reliance on this ill-begotten agreement. It's slowly, slowly edging towards a strategic position that is less dependent on the US. When Albanese talks about 'an Australian way' of doing things and highlights his deeper engagement with Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, our two northern neighbours that stand between us and China, he's signalling a slow movement out of the American orbit, or at least some hedging of bets. At the same time, the government has worked hard to normalise its relationship with China. The Labor Party, before its embrace of AUKUS, had a long history of a more independent security stance, going back to the Fisher government establishing the Australian navy before World War I, and John Curtin bringing troops back from Europe to defend Australia after the fall of Singapore in World War II. Labor also controversially opposed our involvement in the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Whether Albanese has the will and intestinal fortitude to continue to create a new path remains to be seen. But what is clear is that to some degree, he understands that his job for the next three years will be to try to ensure that neither China, our biggest trading partner and source of much of our prosperity, and the United States, our legacy security partner, do not individually paint a target on us to prove a point to each other. In other words, his main task will be to mostly play a dead bat and protect us from both of them. Albanese is right to leave open the possibility of being able to catch up with Trump next week on the sidelines of the NATO summit in the Netherlands. There are so many uncertainties about an Australian leader getting time with America's leader. That says much more about the latter than the former – and about Australia's future.
Sydney Morning Herald
18-06-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Albanese is pulling away from the US – and Australians seem to love it
That's why the sooner the institutional perception of not just Trump, but the United States, adjusts itself, the better off Australia will be. The America that Australia regarded as its great friend and protector is not what it used to be, and it is not going to come back. Americans knew that Trump oversaw a deadly, failed insurrection to overturn the result of the 2020 election that he lost, but still elected him last November. He won 31 states to Kamala Harris' 19. This suggests Albanese needs to confront some big issues within the American relationship. How willing is he to spend some of his political capital to deal with them? It's four years since the AUKUS pact was announced jointly by Boris Johnson, Joe Biden and Scott Morrison – none of whose careers came to a happy end – as a way of getting the old Anglosphere gang back together to stave off the strategic rise of China. What amounts to Labor's original sin in opposition of endorsing AUKUS sight unseen is a mistake from which it will have to find a way to either extricate itself or initiate a renegotiation. AUKUS is crushingly expensive, with unreasonably long timelines, and is almost certainly undeliverable. And it did not countenance a reborn and rampant Trump. Loading There are signs that the government is at least trying to moderate its reliance on this ill-begotten agreement. It's slowly, slowly edging towards a strategic position that is less dependent on the US. When Albanese talks about 'an Australian way' of doing things and highlights his deeper engagement with Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, our two northern neighbours that stand between us and China, he's signalling a slow movement out of the American orbit, or at least some hedging of bets. At the same time, the government has worked hard to normalise its relationship with China. The Labor Party, before its embrace of AUKUS, had a long history of a more independent security stance, going back to the Fisher government establishing the Australian navy before World War I, and John Curtin bringing troops back from Europe to defend Australia after the fall of Singapore in World War II. Labor also controversially opposed our involvement in the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Whether Albanese has the will and intestinal fortitude to continue to create a new path remains to be seen. But what is clear is that to some degree, he understands that his job for the next three years will be to try to ensure that neither China, our biggest trading partner and source of much of our prosperity, and the United States, our legacy security partner, do not individually paint a target on us to prove a point to each other. In other words, his main task will be to mostly play a dead bat and protect us from both of them. Albanese is right to leave open the possibility of being able to catch up with Trump next week on the sidelines of the NATO summit in the Netherlands. There are so many uncertainties about an Australian leader getting time with America's leader. That says much more about the latter than the former – and about Australia's future.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
English-speaking countries more nervous about rise of AI, polls suggest
People in English-speaking countries including the UK, US, Australia and Canada are more nervous about the rise of artificial intelligence than those in the largest EU economies, where excitement over its spread is higher, new research suggests. A global split over what has been dubbed 'the wonder and worry' of AI appears to correlate with widely divergent levels of trust in governments to regulate the fast-developing technology. The polling of 23,000 adults in 30 countries, shared exclusively with the Guardian by Ipsos Mori, also showed a quarter of people globally still do not have a good understanding of what AI is, despite it being widely described as the most transformative technology in decades. On Wednesday, Abba's Björn Ulvaeus revealed he was writing a musical with the assistance of AI, describing it as 'like having another songwriter in the room with a huge reference frame'. Britons appear to be among the world's most worried people about the rise of AI, with two-thirds of people in Great Britain saying they are nervous about the technology being deployed in products and services, and less than half trusting the UK government to regulate AI responsibly. By contrast half or less than half of people in France, Germany and Italy said products and services using AI made them nervous. 'In the Anglosphere (US, Great Britain, Canada and Ireland and Australia) there is much more nervousness than excitement,' said Matt Carmichael, a senior vice-president at Ipsos Mori. 'In European markets we see less nervousness, but also just a mid-range of excitement. Some markets are much more positive than nervous, especially in south-east Asia.' Only Americans, Japanese people and Hungarians trust their governments less to regulate AI than Britons. The UK government recently delayed a bill intended to regulate AI companies in order to align itself with the stance of Donald Trump's administration in the US. Trust in government regulation is lowest in the US, where the president's election campaign was bankrolled by Silicon Valley technology oligarchs including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and he recently proposed a bill preventing new state-led regulations of AI. By contrast last June, the European Union passed the bloc-wide EU AI Act, which bans AI that poses an 'unacceptable risk', for example, systems used for social scoring, and requires systems to declare when AI has been used to manipulate or generate content. People in India, where the use of misleading AI-generated deepfake videos marked last year's general election campaign, are also among the most nervous about AI being used in products and services. The polling also revealed widespread opposition to AI's use in creating news articles, films and adverts but an equal acceptance that AI will become the primary producer of these things anyway. The highest levels of excitement about AI were found in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand where levels of trust in government regulation were also highest. Polling in those countries was only representative of the more 'connected' urban and educated populations but it showed almost double the levels of excitement as in the whole populations of the US and Great Britain. People in Great Britain were among the most pessimistic about how AI will worsen the job market, with nearly a third fearing AI will replace them entirely at work. Globally, just 31% of people think the job market in their country will improve because of AI and 35% think it will get worse. But perception of its impact varied widely. Nearly three-quarters of people in Thailand believe it is very or somewhat likely that AI will replace their current job in the next five years, compared with only 14% who believe their job will go in Sweden and one in four in the US, Great Britain and Australia. Across all 30 countries, the polling showed very few people want AI created-online news articles, films or adverts, but most people think it is likely AI will become the primary producer of all of these things as well as making television programmes, screening job adverts and even creating realistic sports content such as tennis matches between AI-generated players. Carmichael said this could play out either with increasing public acceptance as AI-generated content becomes more widespread or alternatively a 'backlash'. Some of that resistance is currently being seen with the campaign by musicians in the UK, including Kate Bush and Elton John, for greater protections against copyright infringement by technology companies building large language models (LLMs). There have also been lawsuits in the US where novelists from John Grisham to Ta-Nehisi Coates have been suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.
