Books Max Porter’s Lanny is a story of our fraught relationship to the countryside A missing child (the eponymous Lanny); a traumatised village; and a strange, chorus-like narration. Max Porter’s Lanny has rather a lot in common with Jon McGregor’s… By Sarah Ditum
Books Lucy Ellmann’s 1000-page novel Ducks, Newburyport is funny and unapologetically difficult By Sarah Ditum
Science & Tech How Netflix’s algorithm can find exactly what I like – despite knowing nothing about me By Sarah Ditum
Feminism In a country where #MeToo is censored, China’s feminists have to be creative online By Sarah Ditum
Science & Tech How YouTube’s algorithms to keep us watching are helping to radicalise viewers By Sarah Ditum
Yes, my phone can do everything but life is better with a watch, a book and a paper map Who wears a watch now? There’s a Luddite stubbornness to their persistence when the smartphone has taken over their… By Sarah Ditum
Why we are in danger of entering a digital dark age, losing huge amounts of online information There are things I’ve written that no longer exist, the sites that published them now defunct, and the original… By Sarah Ditum
How an online knitting forum taught me how suffering can be exploited on the internet The bigger the trauma, the greater the harvest of “vibes”: cancer was a banker, a job loss would do OK, your cat… By Sarah Ditum
The first book from “Cat Person” author Kristen Roupenian is full of the horror of sex Roupenian bites unsparingly into the darkest chambers of the human heart. By Sarah Ditum
Are women biologically adapted for infidelity? Whatever else we think of them, women who reject monogamy are brave. By Sarah Ditum
How the lack of borders on social media and the dominance of the US means we all speak “American” online British speakers are importing terms and analytical frames from the US, regardless of how well they actually fit our… By Sarah Ditum
Fat activists want to reclaim their bodies but it is not “fatphobia” to recognise the risks of obesity How ridiculous, how self-deluding to suggest that any problem with fat is irrational and not because being fat is… By Sarah Ditum
The militant fandom of the “Beyhive“ has nothing on #WeAreCorbyn Online attacks from superfans of pop stars have become the norm – now the same is true in the political sphere. By Sarah Ditum