We spoke to protesters in Togo, Kenya, Nepal, Madagascar and Morocco about how their actions helped shape the world in 2025
Mass protests in Nepal and Madagascar toppled both governments this year, even when the young people at the forefront of the demonstrations were faced with heavily armed police and the threat of arrest.
Many called 2025 the year of the protest although the revolution in Bangladesh in 2024 that unseated the authoritarian leader Sheikh Hasina is often credited withinspiring young people to take to the streets across parts of Asia and Africa. Although not all achieved the change they wanted, from Sri Lanka to Timor-Leste they shared a common factor: gen Z was the driving force.
From Carrie Bradshaw cleaning up mess in And Just Like That to Kim Kardashian’s zero-star clanger and Bonnie Blue’s sexcapades, here are the biggest duds of 2025
Where to begin with the love/hate Sex and the City spin-off? The show was plagued with woeful writing, cringe-inducing character development (justice for Miranda!) and just 71 seconds of fan-favourite Samantha. But for a moment there, as the third series started, it looked like And Just Like That had finally hit its stride. Then came an episode all about Seema’s natural deodorant. No wonder creator Michael Patrick King announced that this would be the final series. It ended on a bum note; the closeup of Miranda’s toilet flooded with poo was just way too symbolic. Still, there’s no denying that fans have had a hoot dissecting every single “wtf?” episode. And as Carrie – a single woman once more – danced around her palatial townhouse to Barry White’s You’re The First, The Last, My Everything, who didn’t let out a little sob?
Being blasted into space or taking over Venice no longer cuts it. The rich and famous are being punished for their conspicuous vacuity
When Katy Perry and five other women were launched into space in Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket, no doubt they expected to be celebrated as trailblazers. Cast your mind back to April, and the event was getting wall-to-wall news coverage. The crew, also including Bezos’s then-fiancee Lauren Sánchez and CBS presenter Gayle King, were in space for about 11 minutes, during which Perry sang a rendition of Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World and revealed the setlist for her Lifetimes tour. On their return, the pop star kissed the ground and showed a daisy to the camera – a tribute to her daughter, Daisy.
Well, talk about crashing back down to earth. Instead of being hailed as a giant leap for 21st-century feminism, the voyage turned into a colossal PR failure. It was ridiculed for being tone-deaf, an out-of-touch luxury ride for the super-rich during a time of economic hardship. There were so many mocking memes and hot takes that Perry later admitted feeling “battered and bruised” at being turned into a “human piñata”. “I take it with grace and send them love,” she said, “cause I know so many people are hurting in so many ways and the internet is very much so a dumping ground for the unhinged and unhealed.”
But the Blue Origin backlash reflected a broader cultural shift. As the now-viral refrain from Kourtney Kardashian goes, “Kim, there’s people that are dying.” The public’s tolerance for the promotion of celebrity as an end in itself is disappearing fast. In a world beset by economic uncertainty, political upheaval, wars and environmental breakdown, is it any surprise we increasingly want to see those with big platforms use them for something more than self-promotion?
Of course, Jeff Bezos’s Venice wedding this summer, estimated to have cost £37m, was uber-glamorous, and any A-lister worth their buck was invited. We saw the photos of Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, Ivanka Trump and the Kardashians boarding water taxis to tour the Venetian lagoon. Once these images would have inspired envy or aspiration; now they arouse anger and feed “eat the rich” narratives.
Our celebrities were once distant figures whose lives functioned as escapism. Social media has eroded that distance, drawing stars into the same feeds, crises and conversations as everyone else. Now, when they appear indifferent, it reads as disdainful.
Nadia Khomami is the arts and culture correspondent at the Guardian
Ice cubes offer a slower form of watering, reducing the risk of soggy soil – but are not suitable for most tropical houseplants
The problem
Many a houseplant is killed with kindness; watering every time you look at them can be terminal. Using ice cubes for watering promises slower, more controlled hydration. But does it work?
The hack
Place one or two ice cubes on the soil. The idea is that as the ice melts it slowly releases water, giving the roots time to absorb it and avoiding soggy soil.
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.”
Elite junior tennis players are flocking to online schools. The model offers flexibility and focus – but raises deeper questions about growth, pressure and childhood
In a major study released recently in Epidemiology, conclusions were drawn – yet again – regarding how shutdowns and online learning were ultimately very damaging to kids’ emotional and mental health (obviously some cohorts of kids were more affected than others with financial security a big part of the calculation). This is no major surprise as parents and students alike weren’t happy with the remote learning environment.
Yet despite this general consensus about online schooling not being as healthy as regular school, a new trend has exploded since Covid: the rapid growth of online schooling for tennis players and other athletes. Parents and their junior athletes feel that by being able to play several hours in the day instead of after school it will accelerate their progress in the sport while still leaving room for academics. And from my perspective, as a parent of a competitive tennis player who attends a “regular” school, it appears to be the rule, not the exception, that most advanced junior players are in online school and not in a physical building. I often find myself bonding with the few other parents whose kids remain in regular school as we’re a rapidly dwindling species.
How do you photograph darkness? A question Sarah Lee considers with her work as the nights draw in: ‘I’ve always been drawn to photographing the darkness as the winter months draw in after the clocks go back and we head towards the solstice. I wondered why that was given that the world itself seems so dark at the moment. I realised this year that it is not the darkness I’m photographing, but, rather, the light. Always the light.’
America must make 2026 the year antisemitism becomes unacceptable again, argues this compelling analysis of rising hatred since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
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