Meta is under fire after lowering age restrictions for WhatsApp users in the UK and EU from 16 to 13. The campaign group Smartphone Free Childhood has accused the social media company of putting “profits first and children’s safety second”, amid concerns the messaging app fosters cyberbullying, sleep deprivation and the spread of harmful content. OJ Simpson, the former NFL star whose murder trial gripped America in 1995, has died of cancer aged 76. Simpson was controversially acquitted of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman, but later found liable for their deaths in a civil trial. A bird’s impression of a police siren was so accurate it made officers think their cars were faulty, says BBC News. Thames Valley Police’s roads team said they were left “a little bit confused” by the two-tone tweet, before noticing the culprit in a nearby tree. Listen to the clip here.

The West is a victim of its own success

In the modern Western world, “life can be too good for our own good”, says Janan Ganesh in the FT. Take the “strong, if not quite conclusive” argument that smartphone use damages children. This problem only exists because we’re rich enough to have invented such a device, and for the device to be widely affordable. Another “disease of success” is the “woke” movement, which developed in America, “more or less the richest nation on Earth”, during the economic expansion between 2008 and 2020. “Pronoun protocols; statue-toppling: this is what happens when the brain has nowhere to go, no material crisis to solve or fret about.” If woke politics is the “howl of the dispossessed”, why didn’t we see it in southern Europe after the euro crisis? Because it’s “a winner’s dogma”.

These “problems of success” are tricky to tackle, because “almost by definition” we don’t want to remove their underlying causes. Low birth rates occur because people no longer need to have three children “to ensure that one survives”; fewer of us believe that using birth control “is a ticket to Hell”. To undo this, you must “undo modernity”. The “ultimate problem of success”, populism, came about because people became rich enough to take a risk with their vote. The election of Donald Trump was a symptom of American wealth as much as the woke movement. “The Brexit campaign won most of England’s affluent home counties.” It’s no surprise we struggle with these issues – after all, modernity came along “about five minutes ago” in the history of civilisation. “It would be strange if such abrupt and profound change hadn’t had some unintended consequences.”

European hard-right leaders including Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, and Slovakia’s Robert Fico are trying to make the EU adopt a more hardline stance on immigration, says Wolfgang Münchau in The New Statesman. They won’t get far. Politicians much more formidable than them have “tried to change the EU and failed”. Margaret Thatcher couldn’t stop further integration in the 1980s. The following decade, German politicians failed to establish a “core Europe” that would exclude the south. David Cameron couldn’t renegotiate Britain’s own relationship with the bloc in the 2010s, “resulting in Brexit”. Even Charles de Gaulle, who tried to maintain his veto by boycotting the whole thing in 1965 and 1966, ended up with a “face-saving” compromise in which he received “almost nothing”.

A growing number of influencers are turning their attention to cleaning, says The Cut. These self-professed “cleanfluencers” make a living by filming themselves decluttering drawers, restocking pantries and even deep-cleaning hotel rooms. On TikTok, you can find Julie Kay showing her 5.2 million followers her dizzying array of neatly packed wipes (“teeth-cleaning wipes, ‘Wipe That Tush’ wipes, Wet Ones, deodorant wipes”), and Cat Ben, who has 13 million followers, repacking crisps into Tupperware containers. On Instagram, Rochelle Stewart provides her 2.8 million followers with a tour of her “obvious vacation essentials”: a portable door lock, disposable bedsheets, and “multiple travel-size disinfectants”.

Follow the money… out of Britain

People don’t seem to have noticed, says Simon Nixon on Substack, but a “national disaster” is unfolding in Britain’s stock market. Other indices are booming this year: America’s S&P500 has risen almost 10%; Japan’s top shares 18.2%. The FTSE 100, by contrast, is up just 2.4%. This isn’t a recent phenomenon. If you’d invested £100 in the FTSE 100 in June 2016, it’d be worth £118 today, compared to £198 if your money had been in German stocks, and £250 in the US. As you’d expect, all this is making boards reluctant to take their companies public in Britain. The number of listed firms is down nearly 50% since 1997. The combined value of shares issued via initial public offerings fell from £12bn in 2011 to £338m last year, and a “paltry” £18.5m so far this year.

What’s behind all this? Simple: investors dislike the political chaos and uncertainty we’ve experienced since Brexit. This isn’t just an issue for “a few highly paid bankers in the City”. The stock market played a critical role in the making of modern Britain. It created lucrative jobs not just for bankers, but also for lawyers, accountants, consultants, and all the secondary services catering to their needs, from hospitality to retail. Sure, there will be few tears shed for these already well-off individuals. But the financial services industry generates about 10% of the UK’s GDP, and 12% of its tax revenues. “What is bad news for the City is inevitably bad news for the Exchequer.”

John Tyler, the 10th US president, was born in 1790 and took office in 1841, says Mental Floss. And incredibly, one of his grandsons is still alive today. The Tyler men “had a habit of having kids very late in life”. One of Tyler’s 15 children, Lyon Gardiner, was born in 1853, when the former president was 63. Lyon Gardiner and his second wife had two sons, the younger of whom was born in 1928, when he was about 75. That son, Harrison Ruffin Taylor, is still going strong at 95.

It’s a “HELP” sign that led to the rescue of three sailors stranded on a remote Pacific island. The trio scrambled on to the uninhabited Pikelot Atoll, part of Micronesia, after the motor on their fishing boat was damaged. They used palm fronds gathered from the 31-acre outcrop to spell out their message, and a week later – during which they lived off coconuts and water from a small well – they were spotted by a US Navy reconnaissance jet. Chelsea Garcia, the rescue coordinator, said the rudimentary sign had been “crucial” to finding them, in a search area spanning more than 103,000 square miles.