As part of the Guardian’s Against the tide series, readers aged 18 to 30 share what they love about living in their coastal town, the challenges and why they often choose to leave

Megan, a 24-year-old from the Isle of Wight, is very familiar with saying goodbye. She decided university wasn’t for her and remembers how, one by one, she waved off her friends who left the island to study. Many never came back.

From shock Strictly news to shock flatulence, plus a roundup of the most hilarious news fails, here are the year’s wildest bits of television

One of the most critically acclaimed and most watched shows of the year was Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s staggering Adolescence. At the heart of the plot: why did an innocent-looking kid called Jamie (Owen Cooper) commit such a brutal murder? The third episode lifted the lid. As Jamie is interviewed by psychologist Briony (Erin Doherty), we see him slowly reveal that he’s not an innocent kid, but warped by misogyny and a twisted sense of entitlement. The episode was captivating in its acting, but it stayed with you: from Jamie’s sudden switch from vulnerability to manipulation, to the moment the camera zooms in on Briony’s face as she registers who Jamie really is. Horrifying.

Feted birth of bambina Lara in Pagliara dei Marsi highlights sticky national debate over country’s ‘demographic winter’

In Pagliara dei Marsi, an ancient rural village on the slopes of Mount Girifalco in Italy’s Abruzzo region, cats vastly outnumber people.

They weave through the narrow streets, wander in and out of homes, and stretch out on walls overlooking the mountains. Their purrs are a consistent hum in the quiet that has come with decades of population decline.

Our circadian cycle doesn’t just affect our sleeping and waking, but our motivations, mood, behaviour and alertness. Whether you are a lark or an owl, here’s how to recognise your own rhythm

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It’s easy to hate clocks. Their unstoppable forward churn wakes us up and shames us for running late. They are a constant reminder that every enjoyable moment, just like life itself, is ephemeral. But even if we rounded up all our time-telling devices and buried them deep in the earth, we could never escape clocks. Because we are one.

We don’t need to have studied the intricacies of circadian rhythms to know that we are ravenous at certain times and not others, that the mid-afternoon slump is real, and if we party until 4am we’re unlikely to sleep for eight hours afterwards, because the body clock has no sympathy for hangovers. But to better understand this all-encompassing daily cycle is to truly know our animal selves.

René Groebli took portraits of Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney and pioneered new modes of photography. But it was his tender, erotic pictures taken in a Paris hotel room in the 50s that really caused a stir

In 1952, two young honeymooners checked into a small hotel in Montparnasse. An everyday story in the City of Light, perhaps. But the Swiss photographer René Groebli and his wife, Rita Dürmüller, spent their time in Paris cocooned in their room producing a series of photographs – sensual, intimate, enigmatic – that would first shock then beguile viewers, works that can now be seen in a new exhibition in Zurich.

In the honeymoon pictures, Groebli’s camera traces Dürmüller’s movements – as a shirt drops from her shoulders, the turn of her neck – which, he explains, was a deliberate “artistic approach not only to intensify the depiction of reality but to make visible the emotional involvement of my wife and of me.” Dürmüller is often nude, but not solely, and never explicitly posed. It is clear that she is playing with her husband, that this is fun. And we explore their shared space: the bed curved like a cello, the windows with their opaque lace curtains. There is one graceful snap of Dürmüller hanging up her laundry like a ballerina at a barre.

Since the Enlightenment, we’ve been making our own decisions. But now AI may be about to change that

This summer, I found myself battling through traffic in the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat told me to turn right toward a spot known for its fish soup. But the navigation app Waze instructed us to go straight. Tired, and with the Renault feeling like a sauna on wheels, I followed Waze’s advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A trivial moment, maybe. But one that captures perhaps the defining question of our era, in which technology touches nearly every aspect of our lives: who do we trust more – other human beings and our own instincts, or the machine?

Joseph de Weck is a fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute

Exclusive: Imran Ahmed says US companies are ‘corrupting the system’ of politics by seeking to avoid accountability

A British anti-disinformation campaigner told by the Trump administration that he faces possible removal from the US has said he is being targeted by arrogant and “sociopathic” tech companies for trying to hold them to account.

Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), is among five European nationals barred from the US by the state department after being accused of seeking to push tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.

Pete Hegseth says ‘more to come’ as Nigerian minister confirms his country provided intelligence for first wave

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The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has warned of new strikes against Islamic State targets in north-western Nigeria, hours after the US military took action against militant camps in what Donald Trump has characterised as efforts to stop the killing of Christians.

Hegseth wrote on X: “The president was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end. The [Pentagon] is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight – on Christmas. More to come …

One man in his 40s and one in his 60s missing after going into the water at Budleigh Salterton on Christmas Day

A coastguard search for two men who went missing in the sea off Devon during a Christmas Day swim has been called off.

Emergency services were called to Budleigh Salterton at 10.25am on Christmas Day after concerns were raised for people in the water.

Many victims and families advising inquiry’s legacy project are highly suspicious of idea of Postal Museum exhibition

Victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal have dismissed a planned exhibition on the affair at the Postal Museum as a PR stunt that they are refusing to endorse.

The inquiry into the wrongful convictions of hundreds of post office operators announced in September that it was working with the Postal Museum as part of a legacy project to commemorate the devastating impact of the scandal.