See you next time!
That’s almost all from us today – thanks for joining a lively debate in the comments, which took in almost everything from Brexit (what conversation doesn’t, these days?!) to retro technology in our pockets. A couple of polls we posted gave a reasonable indication that you are forward thinking when it comes to both that tech and equality with your date in settling the bill ... highly scientific and significant, of course.
If you’re coming late to this dive in, scroll back and feel free to get in touch with any suggestions. We’d be delighted to hear from you, particularly if you’d like to suggest things you’d like to talk about next time. You can continue to comment or email matthew.holmes@theguardian.com or sarah.marsh@theguadian.com (or see us on Twitter @matthewailin or @sloumarsh
Until then, have a nice weekend!
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A mammoth week in science
This week, extinction has been on my mind, which may seem a little morbid but that’s just the way these past few days have been.
Obviously, the headline news this week in science seems to be that a team of Harvard scientists could manage to create hybrid mammoth-elephant embryo within the next couple of years. Now, as a fan of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels, in which re-engineered mammoths cause havoc during their annual migration, I long to see mammoth herds tramping through the streets.
Fears about the cost of future insurance aside, there are obviously many technical and ethical barriers to this becoming a reality. So in fact, the piece that really got me thinking was a more modest affair. Dental analysis of some rare fossils dinosaur embryos has shown that they may have taken many, many months to hatch from their eggs. This of course has major implications for dinosaur behaviour and ecology and might have been a contributing factor to their extinction (that and the asteroid, obviously). It’s a quiet reminder that understanding the drivers of extinction is just as important as reversing it.
Here are a couple of comments we enjoyed on our science coverage this week – very much showing your ability to cross topics ...
Shouldn't we worry about animals facing extinction today that could be preserved for future generations? .. Western Black Rhino is a good example .. recently extinct.
When they're done resurrecting the mammoth, can they try resurrecting the Labour Party?
We rather suspected this might be the case for many of you ...
In theory, I'm nostalgic about my robust nokia (which lasted 6 years). In practice, I want to be able to access the whole world on my smartphone.
Considering what I use my phone for now an old style Nokia would basically be a useless brick to me.
I rarely make calls and spend more time browsing the internet, reading emails, playing games, watching TV etc on my phone then anything I could do on my Nokia.
Likewise I would not be willing to trade my car in for a horse and cart, or my house for a nice comfortable cave
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Would you go back to the future with an old-style Nokia phone?
In a comeback bid somewhat more welcome than the intervention of Tony Blair into the Brexit debate, this week there were rumours that a Finnish manufacturer would be bringing back that popular old workhorse, the Nokia 3310.
The original version is believed to have sold 126m units, and was discontinued in 2005, when the first iPhone was still a couple of years away. The robustness and utility of the old Nokia model made it tremendously successful. In some families, of course, it has never gone away. My mum has still got one of these old Nokia’s, resolutely refusing to upgrade to anything with a touchscreen since her phone “does calls and texts and that is all she needs”.
But I do wonder, as fondly as people recall playing Snake on it, how many people in the smartphone saturated-developed world would really be willing to switch back to a model like this.
It will be a tough ask – figures from Gartner this week show that sales of new handsets are dominated by Android, taking over 80% of the market, with iOS in second place at around 20%. BlackBerry’s share has dropped officially to 0.0%, with the Windows Phone making up 0.3% of the market.
Simplicity may be a selling point for the reissued Nokia model though. Do you feel nostalgic for owning a phone that didn’t need constant app and operating system software updates, and which had a decent battery life?
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One last reader on dating before we move on.
Ok, totally honest and selfish reasons.
If the date went badly and she offered to pay, I would 100% accept. If it went good, I would go out of my way to pay it. The middle ground is a trap.
I think in principal it should be 50/50... But I'm not going to crash my date because of principals.
Our photos of the week: from swooning Ivanka to Beyonce at the Grammys
Picture editor Joanna Ruck talks us through some of her images of the week.
The World Press Photo awards were announced this week. The controversial winning image of the murder of the Russian ambassador to Turkey even split the judging panel. The Guardian’s sport photographer Tom Jenkins won the top prize for sports photos with this.
Beyonce at the Grammys was always going to be a visual spectacle and she didn’t fail to deliver.
Photos of Ivanka Trump ‘swooning’ over Justin Trudeau went a bit viral this week even if it was just the internet’s imagination
More on dating ...
But then he said “Let’s guess how much the bill is, and whoever is closest pays.” I guessed £80 and he guessed £100. I went home with a receipt for £125.
Don't take a bet if you're not prepared to lose.
Seems fair! How about this? To us it does rather make the whole affair seem like a “transaction”?
Going Dutch seems to be having it in our poll, with a few of you either unsure or presumably thinking “it depends”. The poll is too simple to tell us, unfortunately, but we wonder whether there are any differences based on your gender and orientation?
Who should pay the bill on a date?
When dates go wrong they can go really wrong. We found this out after asking our readers to talk about their dating disasters this week, resulting in some hilarious and somewhat “tragic” stories you can read here. The project was prompted by the story of singleton Lucy Brown, who was asked for money back by a man she rejected after one date. He wanted a refund for the drinks and dinner he had bought her when she refused to meet up a second time.
Have you had a similar experience while dating? What is your approach to splitting the cost? What are your stories of dating gone wrong? Share them with us below the line and vote in our poll!
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We’re going to change topics again above the line here, but you can join readers discussing Brexit, fact checking and Donald Trump – as well as important things like what they had for lunch – in the comments.
A point on Trump’s handshake, now.
What do you make of Trump’s signature move? What does it tell us about his personality?
Well jeez now, let's extend in every way possible the obsessive cult of personality by analysing, headlining, and considering in great detail every minutiae of a person, instead of covering issues like ooh, I don't know - the Oroville dam - if you really want to stay in the US.
Ya know, things which actually happened.
Personally I couldn't give a flying bat's plop about his handshake or "what that tells us". Hehe.
Here’s a story related to the point on Oroville:
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How can we fact check the fact checkers?
Writing about the treatment of facts online (as I did this week) is always tricky. One person’s incontrovertible truth is often another’s “fake news”. That was inevitably reflected in some of the responses to my piece, which was about sites presenting themselves as neutral fact checkers despite clear biases.
Some commenters attacked the Guardian’s own reporting, though many also defended its integrity. Others questioned whether any fact checker could be unbiased, including some of those known for good practice.
The thing is that even Snopes can be biased, whether consciously or unconsciously. People need to realise that fact-checkers are only people, in the end. Best solution (albeit somewhat time-consuming) is to do one's own digging, reading from sources which are divergent ideologically and checking the information they are based on.
Some suggested media organisations should add broader context, others said they should restrict themselves to the bare simple facts with less interpretation.
Whatever the opinions, it is especially heartening to see people engage with what is not only a huge issue for journalism and politics, but also one that makes a critical approach to everything you read vital. Guardian commenters, whether they agree with us or not, seem well aware of the importance of assessing sources of information carefully, which can only be a good thing.
What would you like to talk about? Don’t be afraid to tell us in the comments.
Brexit and Trump, it's Friday, can't we have something light and fluffy to natter about instead?
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What does Donald Trump's handshake tell us about him?
Seven days in Trump-land is befuddling – a constant stream of stories, all seemingly more confusing than the next. But it was the handshake that captured the imagination earlier this week. This short film, in fact, was one of the most viewed pieces on the Guardian in the last few days:
I’d first noticed it at the announcement of his Supreme Court nominee – the odd forceful pull he engages in, dragging his victim near to those beady eyes, no doubt squeezing as hard as his tiny hands can manage. But it was Justin Trudeau’s ability to resist that focused minds.
The Canadian PM had already demonstrated his core strength with his remarkable plank – but the bicep power to deny the “yank-shake”, as body language expert Peter Collett termed it, is quite something. So what does it mean? Collett provided some expert analysis that gets to the heart of Trump’s bizarre greeting:
It enables Trump to impose himself on the situation by catching the other person unawares and doing something that they hadn’t anticipated. After all, when they’re shaking hands with the president, who would expect to have their arm almost wrenched out of its socket? It’s noticeable that Trump’s “yank-shake” has a lot in common with his political pronouncements – they’re erratic, unpredictable and self-serving, and they don’t always conform to the other goals that he’s trying to achieve.
What do you make of Trump’s signature move? What does it tell us about his personality?
A last couple of points for now on the Brexit debate which continues below the line following Abi Wilkinson’s earlier post (see here).
Let's give the Northerners a bit of respect. Maybe those folk have actually done their homework and have gained a better understanding of the internal workings of the European institutions than the southerners, and - after much careful consideration - they have deduced that the EU is a less promising model for peace and prosperity than what May, Johnson, Fox and Davis can offer us. They could be right and in a few years' time the southerners will actually be thanking the northerners for their inspiration.
There is no North-South divide on Brexit. The figures show that the only sector of society who had a majority voting to remain in the neo-liberal EU were households on £60k plus. All other sectors had a majority for Leave, with the biggest majority to leave among the low-paid.
The "divide" is between those who benefitted from the neo-liberal status quo and those whose lives and communities were destroyed by it.
We’re going to move on and introduce a few other topics up here, but you can continue to debate the issues already raised – and indeed anything else you think worth talking about – in the comments.
This reader lives in the Copeland constituency, in Cumbria, where a byelection takes place next Thursday.
I'm not sure that the fundamental premise - of a north-south divide on Brexit - is correct. Scotland and Manchester disprove the simple geography of it. The issue is about the 'left behind' communities. I live in the Copeland constituency, and have a by-election next week. All candidates are understandably talking about jobs, but only in the context of propping up the flagging (and already heavily subsidised) nuclear industry. None of the candidates have ideas for how to create wealth, how to stimulate local innovative companies, or where the new generation of jobs might come from. At a national level, this is true whether you're in an ex-mining area (like mine) or an ex-pottery area (like Stoke). The key is the 'ex'. It is those communities that have seen the progressive decline and withdrawal of heavy industry that have so comprehensively rejected old Labour's corporatist approach, and aligh that more generally with a perception of a metropolitan, urban elite, and therefore with the EU. It is not surprising that there is such a debate about the role of the service sector (and financial services in particular) in relation to Brexit, so much of which is concentrated in the south-east.
Our new readers' photography project
As part of this weekly blog we like to highlight some of the other ways you can get involved on the site, in addition to commenting below the line.
Here’s a new project we launched earlier in the week alongside editors on our picture desk, who want to see the results of your photography.
We aim, through the “readers’ picture desk” to showcase some of your best work on set themes, but also to publish advice and feedback from photojournalists and editors here. Do take a look – here are three of my favourite images so far, with different interpretations of the theme “walls and barriers”:
Climbers on Welsh cliff
I was walking around the coast and adjacent to the image when I saw the climbers
"A Wise Man" Wailing Wall, Jerusalem.
This image was captured at the wailing wall in the Old City of Jerusalem in December 2013. I stood and watched as the prayers took place at the wall for several hours and noticed "a wise man" sat in his chair.
Trespassing
Skateboarders are just as likely to be found exploring abandoned rural industrial estates as we are in towns and cities. This place was known as 'The Moon' due to its smooth white concrete floor being covered in craters.
Head of photography Fiona Shields shares some of her wisdom about what makes a great photo in the callout, here.
This reader disagrees with the point on PR and makes a point about media coverage.
It's not the lack of PR that's the problem in England and Wales. (Same mistake again - not all UK democracy has FPTP and that includes elections in Scotland and London, not sure about NI).
It's the other stuff. The lack of local government and redistribution that usually also goes with non-majoritarian systems.
I'm from the north east. That region had a referendum on regional assembly in 2004. It was heavily rejected. When offered that, this region said "no thanks" well take London FPTP rule.
I said this on Dawn's thread. Media commentators do need not just to fall for convenient lines they get spun about "the north" (which to a lot of them seems to be as local as the moon) or the "working class".
You need to remind yourselves of the less convenient realities, sometimes.
(here’s the piece by Dawn Foster they refer to)
A fair point on our headline there in an early comment?
Today we will discuss everything from that North-south (or indeed London vs the rest of the country) divide on the issue of Brexit,
The most northern part of the UK returned the most decisive vote in the EU referendum. Every Scottish region voted to remain. It is so Guardian to forget about Scotland.
And this reader addresses Abi Wilkinson’s points
It's not North - South, or is this an England only conversation? It's the squeezed, unloved and unrepresented middle. We're lucky we have a voice in Scotland, it's just not listened to in this "union of equal partners"
Leave voters are not all idiots – some Londoners still don't get it:
It's not patronising to point out to folk who have been had, that they've been had. Look, I'll do it gently.
Hiya, leave voters, how are you? Listen mate, you've been had.
Here’s the comment Abi Wilkinson references in full
I am glad to see a sympathetic article about this issue, the problem in this country has i believe been a lack of proportional representation, i think many working class voters in the north were angry that their voices were not heard in parliament but instead it was only the voices of the 36% of those who voted tory who get a mention.
If we are to have a fair country we must have PR as otherwise the governments will only tend to focus on their voters, in the tories case it is the affluent home counties types and older rural dwellers and in Labours case it is students, young professionals in cities and the London poor.
What do you think?
Leave voters are not all idiots – some Londoners still don't get it
Many of the responses to my column this week – about the condescending attitude towards leave voters amongs a small (but vocal) minority of affluent, metropolitan remainers – seemed designed to illustrate my point. Some readers repeated the insults and suggestions that London should stop “sending out” money to poorer regions. Not everyone was so negative, though.
One post that stood out to me, from reader Oliver Elkington, focused on our FPTP electoral system, suggesting it left “working-class voters in the North… angry that their voices were not heard in parliament but instead it was only the voices of the 36% who voted Tory who get a mention.”
I’d go a step further and suggest that many people living in safe Labour seats don’t even trust their own MP to advocate for their interests. The party has taken votes from certain demographics for granted in recent decades and people have been left with the feeling that all politicians are the same. For many of those people, the EU referendum felt like a unique opportunity to actually influence something.
What do you think? Share your views with us in the comments.
Welcome!
It’s that time of the week again – your chance to discuss the week with fellow readers and Guardian journalists below the line in the comments.
Today we will discuss everything from that North-south (or indeed London vs the rest of the country) divide on the issue of Brexit, going Dutch when dating, fact-checking the fact checkers in the age of Donald Trump (in the wake of his extraordinary recent press conference) and even the return of the Nokia 3210.
We look forward to hearing your views on all the above and more. Plus – if there’s anything you want to talk about, whether that stems from a piece you’ve seen in the Guardian or elsewhere, just let us know: we hope the conversation will be driven by you!
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That's sensible, resurrect an animal notorious for needing to live on the cold just as global warming kicks in.
If you're going to bring anything back from the dead it should be Brian Clough and make him England manager.