Beyond Kegels: I found a fix for a common type of incontinence – why don’t more women know about it?

After years of worrying that running or sneezing would leave me needing fresh underwear, a quick, minimally invasive procedure changed my life

Some of my earliest memories feature my mother’s leotard-encased body bouncing to Jane Fonda with abandon. A similar carefree fluidity prevailed a decade later, as her feet struck hard-packed sand on a shorebreak jog. Twelve-year-old me panted alongside, so desperate to be made in her image that I tolerated heated cheeks and shaking quads. Their trembling barely subsided during the one stop we made, for her to wade into the waves and pee.

But it got easier to keep up after she gave birth to my youngest brother, with her squatting in the bushes every 10 minutes or so. Soon, even that wasn’t enough to staunch the flow. She gave up and switched to hiking. “I should have done more Kegels,” she quipped.

Published: December 30, 2025, 5:00 pm

The perfect lunch break: how to get away from your desk – and seize the day

There might not be time for a full exercise class, but what about a short, brisk walk? Here is how to introduce the small, helpful habits that suit you

• Sign up here to get the whole series straight to your inbox

My quest for the ideal lunch break is definitely a triumph of hope over experience. From inventing endless super-soups that might banish the mid-afternoon snack attack, to wildly optimistic lunchtime to-do lists, I have tried and failed countless times. The executive coach Zoe Thomson is not surprised. “One of the biggest things for people is they overestimate how much time and energy they are going to have in their lunch hour,” says Thomson, who previously had a 20-year career with the Avon and Somerset police. “And they underestimate how much time and energy they might need to achieve it.”

I tell her that this has been the flaw with most of my doomed lunchtime masterplans. “The problem is, unpredictable things happen. Say you plan to do a 45-minute spin class in a 60-minute lunch break, but your last call overruns by 10 minutes. Your plan is no longer feasible. If you decided instead to do a 10-minute walk around the block every day, and then have a nice cup of tea after your sandwich, you’re winning. Even if something urgent comes up, the 10-minute walk is still possible. And on a really good day you could walk four times around the block.”

Published: December 30, 2025, 4:00 pm

The perfect working day: how to get everything done – without getting stressed

From writing lists to taking a walk, it can be possible to gain clarity and perspective, even when faced with the most daunting tasks

• Sign up here to get the whole series straight to your inbox

“Perfection,” the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once wrote, “is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” The Little Prince author was talking about elegance in design, but it’s not a bad principle to apply to having a productive day. Rather than thinking about how many things you can cram in, perhaps it’s better to ponder how few you really need to do, and focus on doing them really well.

Where do you start? With a list, obviously. To the chronically overstressed, taking the time to handwrite all the stuff you already know you need to do can feel like a waste of time, but it’s always worth the effort. “You can’t prioritise tasks if you feel overwhelmed,” says Graham Allcott, the author of How to Be a Productivity Ninja, “but you can be totally overloaded and still not feel overwhelmed. The key to this is getting all the various things you have to work on out of your head so you can start to make sense of them. Get a piece of paper, and write on it all the things you need to make progress on, all the stuff that feels unfinished, everything you care about that isn’t done. It will take you longer than you think, but the very act of getting it all out of your head will help you get clarity, perspective and a sense of control.”

Published: December 30, 2025, 11:00 am

Threesomes, rough towels and ‘lesbian bed death’: 23 of the best Sexual Healing columns

The Guardian’s sex advice column is coming to an end after 20 years. Here are some of the most memorable questions and answers
• Pamela Stephenson Connolly on two decades of solving readers’ sex problems

My wonderful new wife is everything I have always looked for in a woman. The issue is that she is openly and proudly bisexual. When we first became involved, she even joked that she didn’t want me getting mad when it was time for her to visit her friend on girls’ trips. A threesome with a bisexual woman has always been my fantasy. She even gave me permission to go online and find a “unicorn” for us. But when I set up a meeting, she didn’t seem to want to follow through with it, so I stopped looking. Recently, on holiday, she made a sexual comment about a girl in a bikini, so I again brought up the idea of a threesome. But she said she might have grown out of that phase of her life and just wants to be with me. She also said that adding another person would ruin the marriage, and I worry that things might change between us if we get together with another girl. I am at a loss as to what to do. If she is truly bisexual, I am worried that if those desires are not met, she may pursue them without me. My only rule is that if she is with a girl, I am also present. Most guys would love my situation – am I making this harder than it is?

Published: December 30, 2025, 2:00 pm

AI showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be ready to pull plug, says pioneer

Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio warns against granting legal rights to cutting-edge technology

A pioneer of AI has criticised calls to grant the technology rights, warning that it was showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be prepared to pull the plug if needed.

Yoshua Bengio said giving legal status to cutting-edge AIs would be akin to giving citizenship to hostile extraterrestrials, amid fears that advances in the technology were far outpacing the ability to constrain them.

Published: December 30, 2025, 5:00 pm

The office block where AI ‘doomers’ gather to predict the apocalypse

Safety researchers feel excessive financial rewards and an irresponsible work culture have led some to ignore a catastrophic risk to human life

On the other side of San Francisco bay from Silicon Valley, where the world’s biggest technology companies tear towards superhuman artificial intelligence, looms a tower from which fearful warnings emerge.

At 2150 Shattuck Avenue, in the heart of Berkeley, is the home of a group of modern-day Cassandras who rummage under the hood of cutting-edge AI models and predict what calamities may be unleashed on humanity – from AI dictatorships to robot coups. Here you can hear an AI expert express sympathy with an unnerving idea: San Francisco may be the new Wuhan, the Chinese city where Covid originated and wreaked havoc on the world.

Published: December 30, 2025, 5:00 pm

Facebook slow to act on posts celebrating Bondi beach massacre, anti-hate group says

Exclusive: CST highlights volume of IS-supporting accounts and says social media firms ‘putting all of us in danger’

Facebook hosted terrorist propaganda that celebrated the murder of Jews and praised Islamic State, a leading anti-hate group has alleged.

The posts included celebrations of the Bondi beach massacre that the Community Security Trust says Facebook has been too slow to take down. The posts were still on Facebook on 16 December, two days after the attack, and received shares and likes.

Published: December 30, 2025, 9:57 am

‘Data is control’: what we learned from a year investigating the Israeli military’s ties to big tech

Our reporting revealed a symbiotic relationship between the IDF and Silicon Valley – with implications for the future of warfare

In January this year, Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham first reported that Microsoft had deepened its ties to Israel alongside other major tech firms. Since then, the Guardian has published an award-winning series of investigations – in partnership with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call – that has revealed a symbiotic relationship between Silicon Valley and the Israeli military.

One investigation exposed an Israeli mass surveillance program scooping up virtually all Palestinian phone calls and storing them on Microsoft’s cloud services – setting off an inquiry that ultimately prompted the company to cut off Israel’s access to some of its technology. Another story revealed that the Israeli military created a ChatGPT-like tool to analyze data collected through the surveillance of Palestinians. Yet another revealed that Google and Amazon had agreed to extraordinary terms to clinch a lucrative contract with Israel.

Published: December 30, 2025, 2:00 pm

We still don’t really know what Elon Musk’s Doge actually did

Calculating the actual savings and impact of the bulldozing US department that vowed to cut $1tn in waste is difficult

• Elon Musk, AI and the antichrist: the biggest tech stories of 2025

When Elon Musk vowed late last year to lead a “department of government efficiency” (Doge), he claimed it would operate with “maximum transparency” as it set about saving $2tn worth of waste and exposing massive fraud.

Today, with Musk out of the White House, Doge having cut only a tiny fraction of the waste it promised, and dozens of lawsuits alleging violations of privacy and transparency laws, much of what the agency has done remains a mystery.

Published: December 30, 2025, 1:00 pm

‘Move fast, break stuff’: how tech bros became Hollywood’s go-to baddie in 2025

From Stanley Tucci’s imperious tech titan to Lex Luthor’s distractingly hot CEO and Elon Musk-esque blowhards, films this year took us inside the billionaire mindset

Between the slash-and-burn US government reboot led by a dank meme fan and the relentless pushing of AI by venture capital-backed blowhards, 2025 has felt like peak obnoxious tech bro. Fittingly, jargon-spouting, self-regarding digital visionaries also became Hollywood’s go-to baddies this year in everything from blockbusters to slapstick spoofs. Spare a thought for the overworked props departments tasked with mocking up fake Forbes magazine covers heralding yet another smirking white guy as “Master of the Metaverse” or whatever.

With such market saturation, the risk is that all these delusional dudes blend into one smarmy morass. It felt reasonable to expect that Stanley Tucci might sprinkle a little prosciutto on The Electric State, Netflix’s no-expense-spared alt-history robot fantasia. As Ethan Skate – creator of the “neurocaster” technology that quashed an AI uprising then turned the general populace into listless virtual-reality addicts – Tucci certainly looked the part: bald and imperious in retro Bond villain wardrobe. But even the great cocktail-maker couldn’t squeeze much out of sour existential proclamations such as: “Our world is a tyre fire floating on an ocean of piss.”

Published: December 30, 2025, 9:07 am

Snap decisions: why crowding into a photo booth with friends is still a magical experience | Nova Weetman

Whenever I’m out late with friends and we pass a photo booth, I drag them in so I can add to the gallery of faces I love seeing each day

Last New Year’s Eve, I was out with a friend. We had no plans, so we met at a local cinema and then wandered the long street between our houses, pausing for a drink or two in various bars and chatting to strangers doing the same. We stopped when we became hungry and shared a plate of curries and drank beer in the window of an Indian restaurant, watching the parade of partygoers outside. Then we walked to the top of the hill to watch the fireworks lighting up the sky.

It was after midnight as we strolled back but we weren’t quite ready to call it a night, and we found ourselves in a games arcade where a bunch of women were cramming into a photo booth to take a strip of black-and-white photos together. Their enthusiasm was infectious and so we waited until they were finished and did the same. I now have the strip of photos stuck on my fridge, secured under a magnet for a local plumber. In them, we are both grinning wildly at the camera, our faces squashed close, the years of friendship evident in our expressions.

Published: December 30, 2025, 2:00 pm

The 10 most anticipated video games of 2026

As 007 makes his gaming return, you can climb a mountain in Cairn, play a scaredy-cat in Resident Evil, and play a criminal couple in GTA VI

Live your mountaineering fantasies and brave the elements in a wonderfully illustrated climbing game. You must carefully place climber Aava’s hands and feet to make your way up a forbidding mountain, camping on ledges and bandaging her fingers as you go. Like real climbing, it is challenging and somewhat brutal.
• PC, PlayStation 5; 29 January

Published: December 30, 2025, 2:00 pm

Two new subtypes of MS found in ‘exciting’ breakthrough

Exclusive: Scientists uncovered biological strands using artificial intelligence and hope discovery will revolutionise treatment

Scientists have discovered two new subtypes of multiple sclerosis with the aid of artificial intelligence, paving the way for personalised treatments and better outcomes for patients.

Millions of people have the disease globally – but treatments are mostly selected on the basis of symptoms, and may not be effective because they don’t target the underlying biology of the patient.

Published: December 30, 2025, 5:00 am

Revisited: do medicinal mushroom products actually work? – podcast

More of us are turning to products containing mushroom extracts, with the medicinal fungi market worth billions of pounds. Promises of mental and physical health benefits have seen its popularity spill over from wellness influencers to the shelves of Marks & Spencer – but is there any scientific evidence behind these claims?

In this episode from June, Ian Sample chats to Madeleine Finlay about the appeal of mushroom drinks and supplements, and hears from the mycologist Prof Nik Money on what we really know about how fungi can affect our minds and bodies

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

Published: December 30, 2025, 5:00 am

Astronaut Amanda Nguyen says backlash from Blue Origin flight left her depressed

In a statement shared on Instagram, Nguyen says she faced a ‘tsunami of harassment’ after the all-female spaceflight

Amanda Nguyen, the Vietnamese-American astronaut who was part of the all-female Blue Origin spaceflight, has opened up about her depression after she experienced a “tsunami of harassment” after the trip, in which she became the first Vietnamese woman to go to space.

Nguyen, 34, was part of April’s historic 11-minute flight, whose crew included pop star Katy Perry, broadcast journalist Gayle King, and journalist and wife of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sánchez. The flight was heavily criticized for its environmental impact and critics questioned its purpose and use of resources.

Published: December 30, 2025, 6:03 pm