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Finance

TikTok accused of helping to promote sex industry to girls

Researchers say popular performers covertly market OnlyFans content and tell followers about wealthy lifestyle TikTok is helping to promote and normalise the sex industry, allowing “sexfluencers” to post videos aimed at marketing pornographic content they have uploaded elsewhere on sites such as OnlyFans, a report indicates. After studying non-explicit content posted on TikTok over the course of a year by some of OnlyFans’ most popular young female performers, researchers said the women buried coded references to pornography in “girly lifestyle content” that showed them shopping, playing with

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Narrative threads: How to write a Booker-shortlisted novel, by Marlon James, Douglas Stuart, Elizabeth Strout and more

A trip to the Scottish islands, a psychological experiment, a chance encounter in a drugstore… the finalists for this year’s Booker prize reveal their inspirations Who knows where a novel really comes from? I spend years gathering loose threads and then, when I feel like the cloth will hold, I start to weave them into a narrative. I suppose I began internalising John of John back in 1994, the year I went to college and chose to become a weaver myself. Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Politics

‘Finally there’s hope’: UK weighs up opportunities and risks after Trump’s midterms disaster

Senior British politicians and officials highlight potential to end Iran war but warn US president is not yet ‘a spent force’ Andy Burnham was having dinner at the Commonwealth summit in Antigua when the results of the US midterm elections started rolling in. UK government officials in the Caribbean with the prime minister scrolled through their phones with growing incredulity as the scale of the Republicans’ defeat became clear. Continue reading...

The Guardian
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