Worried about winter? 10 ways to thrive – from socialising to Sad lamps to celebrating the new year in April

The temptation is to sit at home and hibernate, but beating the winter blues can be done. Here’s how to embrace the coldest and arguably most beautiful season

Stephanie Fitzgerald, a chartered clinical psychologist, used to dread winter. Like many, she coped by keeping busy at work and hibernating at home, waiting for the cold, dark days to be over. But this approach wasn’t making her happy. So she sought out the science that would help her embrace the winter months, rather than try to escape them. In her resulting book, The Gifts of Winter, she writes: “I fell deeply in love with winter … It is a captivating and truly gorgeous season.”

How did she change her mindset – and can the 42% of us who say summer is our favourite season learn to love winter too?

Published: December 17, 2025, 5:00 am

How do I talk to my conservative grandsons who dismiss my politics as fuzzy thinking? | Leading questions

You could try showing them the depths of what they don’t know, says advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Knowing what they’re missing could be a path to mutual respect

• Read more Leading questions

How do I talk to grown grandsons who have different political beliefs and dismiss mine as fuzzy thinking, since I am old?

They are conservative and believe they “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps”. They didn’t. They had parents and family and help with university. They are lovely men and kind to me, but I cannot converse with them on the issues of the day.

They have had setbacks, but nothing that makes them realise how very difficult life can be. I want to tell them that they cannot always control life, and also that I disagree with them. What can I say?

The reader’s letter has been edited for length

Published: December 18, 2025, 2:00 pm

Parents of sextortion victim sue Meta for alleged wrongful death

Exclusive: Lawsuit is the first UK case of its kind, with Ros and Mark Dowey accusing Meta of ‘putting profit before our young people’

The parents of a 16-year-old who took his own life after he fell victim to a sextortion gang on Instagram are suing Meta for the alleged wrongful death of their son, in the first UK case of its kind.

Murray Dowey died in December 2023 at his family home in Dunblane, after being tricked into sending intimate pictures to an Instagram contact. He thought it was a girl his own age, but it turned out to be overseas criminals involved in financially motivated sexual extortion.

Published: December 17, 2025, 7:52 pm

AI boom has caused same CO2 emissions in 2025 as New York City, report claims

Study author says tech companies are reaping benefits of artificial intelligence age but society is left to pay cost

The AI boom has caused as much carbon dioxide to be released into the atmosphere in 2025 as emitted by the whole of New York City, it has been claimed.

The global environmental impact of the rapidly spreading technology has been estimated in research published on Wednesday, which also found that AI-related water use now exceeds the entirety of global bottled-water demand.

Published: December 18, 2025, 11:15 am

MPs warn that UK agreements with Donald Trump are ‘built on sand’

Exclusive: UK government’s ‘naive belief’ that Trump is a good faith actor ‘could cost UK taxpayer billions’, says health select committee chair

Ministers and senior MPs have warned that the UK’s agreements with Donald Trump are “built on sand” after the Guardian established that the deal to avoid drug tariffs has no underlying text beyond limited headline terms.

The “milestone” US-UK deal announced this month on pharmaceuticals, which will mean the NHS pays more for medicines in exchange for a promise of zero tariffs on the industry, still lacks a legal footing beyond top lines contained in two government press releases.

Published: December 17, 2025, 7:42 pm

Third of UK citizens have used AI for emotional support, research reveals

AI Security Institute report finds most common type of AI tech used was general purpose assistants such as ChatGPT and Amazon Alexa

A third of UK citizens have used artificial intelligence for emotional support, companionship or social interaction, according to the government’s AI security body.

The AI Security Institute (AISI) said nearly one in 10 people used systems like chatbots for emotional purposes on a weekly basis, and 4% daily.

Published: December 18, 2025, 9:00 am

UK actors vote to refuse to be digitally scanned in pushback against AI

Equity says vote signals strong opposition to AI use and readiness to disrupt productions unless protections are secured

Actors have voted to refuse digital scanning to prevent their likeness being used by artificial intelligence in a pushback against AI in the arts.

Members of the performing arts union Equity were asked if they would refuse to be scanned while on set, a common practice in which actors’ likeness is captured for future use – with 99% voting in favour of the move.

Published: December 18, 2025, 2:44 pm

From Nvidia to OpenAI, Silicon Valley woos Westminster as ex-politicians take tech firm roles

Commons committee monitoring revolving door that gave jobs to George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Tony Blair

When the billionaire chief executive of AI chipmaker Nvidia threw a party in central London for Donald Trump’s state visit in September, the power imbalance between Silicon Valley and British politicians was vividly exposed.

Jensen Huang hastened to the stage after meetings at Chequers and rallied his hundreds of guests to cheer on the power of AI. In front of a huge Nvidia logo, he urged the venture capitalists before him to herald “a new industrial revolution”, announced billions of pounds in AI investments and, like Willy Wonka handing out golden tickets, singled out some lucky recipients in the room.

Published: December 17, 2025, 6:02 pm

Hackers access Pornhub’s premium users’ viewing habits and search history

ShinyHunters group reportedly behind the hack affecting data of 200m users thought to be from before 2021

Hackers have accessed the search history and viewing habits of premium users of Pornhub, one of the world’s most popular pornography websites.

A gang has reportedly accessed more than 200m data records, including premium members’ email addresses, search and viewing activities and locations. Pornhub is a heavily used site and says it has more than 100m daily visits globally.

Published: December 17, 2025, 1:16 pm

‘Uniquely evil’: Michigan residents fight against huge data center backed by top tycoons

Locals band together in David v Goliath battle against facility they say would jack up bills, increase pollution and destroy area’s character

A who’s who of the nation’s most powerful politicians and tech tycoons are forcing through a proposal for a massive data center in rural Michigan as locals from across the political spectrum have come out in force against it, with one calling it “uniquely evil”.

Saline Township, Michigan, residents fear the $7bn center would jack up energy bills, pollute groundwater, and destroy the area’s rural character. The 1.4 gigawatt center would consume as much power as Detroit, and would help derail Michigan’s nation-leading transition to renewable energy.

Published: December 18, 2025, 12:00 pm

The best LED face masks in the UK, tested: 10 light therapy devices that are worth the hype

They claim to fix fine lines, blemishes and redness – but which stand up to scrutiny? We asked dermatologists and put them to the test to find out

• The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatments

LED face masks are booming in popularity – despite being one of the most expensive at-home beauty products ever to hit the market. Many masks are available, each claiming to either reduce the appearance of fine lines, stop spots or calm redness. Some even combine different types of light to enhance the benefits.

But it’s wise to be sceptical about new treatments that are costly and non-invasive, and to do your research before you buy. With this in mind, I spoke with doctors and dermatologists to find out whether these light therapy devices actually work.

Best LED face mask overall:
CurrentBody Series 2

Best budget LED face mask:
Silk’n LED face mask 100

Published: December 17, 2025, 3:09 pm

‘Music needs a human component to be of any value’: Guardian readers on the growing use of AI in music

AI promises to have far-reaching effects in music-making. While some welcome it as a compositional tool, many have deep concerns. Here are some of your responses

AI-generated music is flooding streaming platforms, and it seems to be here to stay. Last month, three AI songs reached the highest spots on Spotify and Billboard charts. Jorja Smith’s label has called for her to receive a share of royalties from a song thought to have trained its original AI-generated vocals on her catalogue, which were later re-recorded by a human singer.

With this in mind, we asked for your thoughts on music composed by AI, the use of AI as a tool in the creation of music, and what should be done to protect musicians. Here are some of your responses.

Published: December 17, 2025, 11:00 am

Karts, cakes and karaoke: the eight best party games to play with family this Christmas

Whether your household is in the mood for singing, driving, quizzing or shouting, here are our top choices for homely holiday fun

Multiplayer hand-to-hand combat games are ridiculously good fun and there are plenty to choose from, including the rather similar Gang Beasts and Party Animals. I’ve gone for this one, however, which lets everyone pick a cake to play as before competing in food fights and taking on mini-games such as roasting marshmallows and lobbing fruit into a pie. If you ever wished that the Great British Bake Off was ever-so-slightly more gladitorial, this is the game for you.

Published: December 18, 2025, 11:00 am

Inside Fallout, gaming’s most surprising TV hit

With ​a blend of retro-futurism, moral ambiguity and monster-filled wastelands, Fallout became an unlikely prestige television favourite. Now there is something a bigger, stranger and funnier journey ahead

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The Fallout TV series returns to Prime Video today, and it’s fair to say that everyone was pleasantly surprised by how good the first season was. By portraying Fallout’s retro-futuristic, post-apocalyptic US through three different characters, it managed to capture different aspects of the game player’s experience, too. There was vault-dweller Lucy, trying to do the right thing and finding that the wasteland made that very difficult; Max, the Brotherhood of Steel rookie, who starts to question his cult’s authority and causes a lot of havoc in robotic power armour; and the Ghoul, Walton Goggins’s breakout character, who has long since lost any sense of morality out in the irradiated wilderness.

The show’s first season ended with a revelation about who helped cause the nuclear war that trapped a group of people in underground vaults for a couple of centuries. It also left plenty of questions open for the second season – and, this time, expectations are higher. Even being “not terrible” was a win for a video game adaptation until quite recently. How are the Fallout TV show’s creators feeling now that the first season has been a success?

Published: December 17, 2025, 3:00 pm

Simogo Legacy Collection review – remember when phone games were this wonderful?

PC, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2; Simogo
A suite of iOS classics is lovingly preserved in this collection from the Swedish developer, early standard-setters of the meaningful smartphone game

Fifteen years ago in Malmö, Sweden, animator Simon Flesser and programmer Magnus “Gordon” Gardebäck left their jobs at the now-defunct games studio Southend Interactive to strike out on their own. Tired of the fussy nature of console development, the pair would stake their claim on Apple’s App Store, which in 2010 was regarded as one of the most exciting frontiers in games. Mashing their names together to form a portmanteau, Flesser and Gardebäck became Simogo, and a consistently wonderful and forward-thinking games studios was born.

Simogo Legacy Collection represents the Swedish indie studio’s first seven games, released across its first five years. Originally released for iPhone and iPad from 2010 to 2015, Apple’s constantly changing standards meant that Simogo, like all iOS developers, had to either regularly update their games to comply with the latest specifications, or see their games rendered unplayable. The only solutions are either to perpetually issue updates, or find a way to bring the mobile game experience to other platforms.

Published: December 17, 2025, 11:52 am

Study finds 10% of over-70s in UK could have Alzheimer’s-like changes in brain

Findings mean more than 1 million people could meet NHS criteria for treatment with anti-amyloid drugs

One in 10 people in the UK aged 70 and older could have Alzheimer’s-like changes in their brain, according to the clearest, real-world picture of how common the disease’s brain changes are in ordinary, older people.

The detection of the proteins linked with the disease is not a diagnosis. But the findings indicate that more than 1 million over-70s would meet Nice’s clinical criteria for anti-amyloid therapy – a stark contrast to the 70,000 people the NHS has estimated could be eligible if funding were available.

Published: December 17, 2025, 4:00 pm

Beachy Head Woman may be ‘local girl from Eastbourne’, say scientists

Exclusive: DNA advances show Roman-era skeleton, once hailed as first black Briton, came from southern England

Beachy Head Woman, a Roman-era skeleton once hailed as the earliest known black Briton and who scientists later speculated could be of Cypriot descent, has now been shown to have originated from southern England.

The mystery of the skeleton’s shifting identity was finally resolved after advances in DNA sequencing produced a high-quality genetic readout from the remains.

Published: December 17, 2025, 10:14 am

Life beyond Earth? Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock on the mysteries of space – podcast

Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock is a space scientist and science educator who has worked on a number of instruments that are revolutionising our view of the cosmos, including the James Webb Space Telescope. This year she will be giving the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, Britain’s most prestigious public science lectures, in which she will be exploring some of the big questions space science still has to answer.

Nicola Davis sat down with Dame Maggie to discuss the lectures, why she is convinced there is life beyond our planet, and her dream of journeying to a distant exoplanet. Madeleine Finlay hears from them both in this Christmas special edition of Science Weekly.

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

Published: December 18, 2025, 5:00 am

MIT grieves shooting death of renowned director of plasma science center

Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, was shot multiple times at his home, and no details about a suspect or motive have been released

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is grieving after the “shocking” shooting death of the director of its plasma science and fusion center, according to officials.

Nuno FG Loureiro, 47, was shot multiple times at his home in the affluent Boston suburb of Brookline on Monday night. Loureiro was taken by emergency responders to hospital, and he was pronounced dead there on Tuesday morning, the Norfolk county district attorney’s office said in a statement.

Published: December 17, 2025, 7:00 am

Plantwatch: Pitcher plant’s sweet nectar is laced with toxic nerve agent

Nepenthes khasiana oozes an enticing liquid on the rim of its pitchers that tempts its prey into a deadly trap

A carnivorous pitcher plant has recently been found to use a chemical nerve agent to drug its prey and lead them to a deadly end, being consumed in digestive juices at the bottom of the pitcher traps.

The pitcher plant Nepenthes khasiana oozes an enticing sweet nectar on the rim of its pitchers for visiting insects, particularly ants, to feed on to lure them into the trap. But the nectar is laced with a toxic nerve agent called isoshinanolone, which strikes at the ant’s nervous system, leaving it with sluggish movements, weakened muscles, and causing it to groom itself excessively. Eventually the prey falls upside down in spasms, with the nerve agent sometimes killing it outright. But apart from isoshinanolone, the nectar also contains three types of sugars that can all absorb water and make the rim of the pitcher especially slippery, so the prey is more likely to slide down into the pitchers.

Published: December 17, 2025, 6:00 am

Don’t hold back, swearing can boost performance by lowering inhibitions, study finds

Study finds dropping an expletive can raise confidence and help people push harder during physically demanding tasks

It may not be in keeping with the festive spirit, but if you find yourself dropping the F-word while wrestling a Christmas tree up a flight of stairs, scientists say you could be on to something. A study has found that swearing can enhance physical performance by lowering inhibitions and pushing the brain into a “flow state”.

“In many situations, people hold themselves back – consciously or unconsciously – from using their full strength,” said Dr Richard Stephens, a psychologist at Keele University who led the research. “Swearing is an easily available way to help yourself feel focused, confident and less distracted, and go for it a little more.”

Published: December 18, 2025, 2:21 pm

US Senate confirms billionaire Musk ally Jared Isaacman as Nasa chief

Vote on Isaacman, private astronaut and Mars missions advocate, passes 67-30 for him to be agency’s 15th leader

The US Senate has confirmed the billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman to become Donald Trump’s Nasa administrator. The confirmation makes an advocate of Mars missions and an ally of the SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, the space agency’s 15th leader.

The vote on Isaacman, who Trump nominated, removed and then renamed for the post of Nasa administrator this year, passed 67-30, two weeks after he told senators in his second hearing that Nasa must pick up the pace in beating China back to the moon this decade.

Published: December 17, 2025, 10:07 pm

Rare pink fog blankets parts of UK with warning issued over poor visibility

The unusual phenomenon is caused by sunlight passing through layers of fog

The skies over parts of Britain turned a soft shade of pink on Wednesday morning as the low sun shone through layers of widespread fog to produce the rare atmospheric treat.

Meteorologists at the Met Office said the fog formed when temperatures dropped overnight. They issued a yellow warning across a large area of central and northern England where the fog would be slow to clear, which remained in effect until 10am.

Pink fog enveloped the countryside at sunrise in Oxfordshire.

Published: December 17, 2025, 5:23 pm

Trump administration to dismantle key climate research center in Colorado

Governor Jared Polis warned that breaking up Boulder’s NCAR would put ‘public safety at risk’

The Trump administration is breaking up a research center praised as a “crown jewel” of climate research after accusing it of spreading “alarmism” about climate change.

Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s office and management budget, said the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, would be dismantled under the supervision of the National Science Foundation.

Published: December 17, 2025, 4:59 pm