As AI job losses rise in the professional sector, many are switching to more traditional trades. But how do they feel about accepting lower pay – and, in some cases, giving up their vocation?

California-based Jacqueline Bowman had been dead set on becoming a writer since she was a child. At 14 she got her first internship at her local newspaper, and later she studied journalism at university. Though she hadn’t been able to make a full-time living from her favourite pastime – fiction writing – post-university, she consistently got writing work (mostly content marketing, some journalism) and went freelance full-time when she was 26. Sure, content marketing wasn’t exactly the dream, but she was writing every day, and it was paying the bills – she was happy enough.

“But something really switched in 2024,” Bowman, now 30, says. Layoffs and publication closures meant that much of her work “kind of dried up. I started to get clients coming to me and talking about AI,” she says – some even brazen enough to tell her how “great” it was “that we don’t need writers any more”. She was offered work as an editor – checking and altering work produced by artificial intelligence. The idea was that polishing up already-written content would take less time than writing it from scratch, so Bowman’s fee was reduced to about half of what it had been when she was writing for the same content marketing agency – but, in reality, it ended up taking double the time.

In Cardinham, which has had 366mm of rain this year, there’s little need to check the weather forecast: more rain

• Tell us: how have you been affected by the rainy weather in the UK?

“I’m thinking of building an ark,” said Sarah Cowen, an artist and cafe owner. “It’s been horrendous. We’ve never known anything like it. The mud, the silt, the endless rain.” Cowen is one of a hardy, if soggy, bunch who live or work in and around the parish of Cardinham, on the edge of Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, which has endured 41 consecutive days of rain – and counting.

“This is definitely global warming. You get either baking sun or continuous rain,” Cowen said. The locals don’t have to look at the weather forecast here at the moment. “You know it’s going to be rain,” Cowen said.

The party’s MPs know their leader is failing but they are paralysed by fear of a contest with no obvious successor

Westminster time is counted in scandals, resignations, rebellions, U-turns and leadership crises. All the things that aren’t good government age a regime. Keir Starmer has presided over a lot of woes in 18 months, making a young government look old.

The premature decrepitude is more advanced, and more disturbing to Labour MPs, because it feels like continuity from the turbulent Tory regime that came before. The policies and personnel are different, but to the casual passing voter the sound of screaming and breaking crockery around Downing Street is familiar as a sign of a political problem family in residence.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Monday 30 April, ahead of May elections join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat is Labour from both the Green party and Reform and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader of the Labour party
Book tickets here

Whether it’s Zendaya in tennis-inspired shoes, Cynthia Erivo dressed in green, Margot Robbie as Barbie or Jenna Ortega in shredded black leather, today’s movie stars rarely disappoint on the promo circuit

‘Have you ever heard of a female actor that was method?” Kristen Stewart said last year, the implication being that method acting is the exclusive preserve of a particular type of man, unburdened by caring responsibilities or needing to be agreeable. But what is available to all actors (without getting their teeth pulled, taking magic mushrooms or demanding to be spoon-fed on set) is method dressing: that is, promoting a film in an outfit inspired by their character.

Everyone seems to be doing it, particularly in the past few months as Wicked: For Good and now Wuthering Heights have hit the red carpet. Why? It’s a low-stakes way to offer an extra endorsement for the film the actor is promoting (they liked it so much they’re willing to stay in character) and to drum up column inches and excitable TikTok commentary. It can also be a knowing wink – a gift, even – to fans. Some actors (or their stylists) include subtler sartorial semiotics and Easter egg accessories in their outfits that only the hardcore fandom and fashion nerds can appreciate. Either way, there’s a lot of it about. But who are the Daniel Day-Lewises and Robert De Niros of promo tour dressing?

Whether making microtonal pop or playing Renaissance instruments with sheep bones, a crop of bold artists are making genuinely strange music go mainstream – but are they at the mercy of the algorithm?

Chloë Sobek is a Melbourne musician who plays the violone, a Renaissance precursor to the double bass. But instead of playing it in the traditional manner, she puts wobbling bits of cardboard between its strings or uses a sheep’s bone as a bow, and these weird interventions have become catnip for Instagram’s algorithm, getting her tens of thousands – sometimes hundreds of thousands – of views for each of her self-made performance videos. “Despite how it might appear, I’m a reasonably shy person,” she says.

When Laurie Anderson’s robo-minimalist masterwork O Superman hit No 2 in the UK charts in 1981, thanks to incessant airplay on John Peel’s radio show, it was a signal of a media outlet’s power to propel experimental music into the mainstream. That’s now happening again as prepared-instrument players such as Sobek, plus experimental pianists, microtonal singers and numerous other boundary-pushing solo performers, are routinely breaking out of underground circles thanks to videos – generally self-recorded at home – going viral on TikTok and Instagram.

From grown men eating ice cream – gasp! – to Noël Coward sweating in the desert and a baseball team without pants – a new exhibition celebrates images from the era-defining magazine

PM likely to face questions about his position after a turbulent week that saw some in Labour call for his resignation

Families of nurses and carers have said they fear being torn apart under an immigration crackdown condemned as “an act of economic vandalism”, Josh Halliday reports.

Q: You are here being hosted by UK Finance. But the financial services sector does not like your plans for a windfall tax on banks. Have you dropped your support for that?

More than 25 people are injured, including two with life-threatening injuries, after shooting at secondary school and local residence

• Tumbler Ridge school shooting: latest updates

• What we know so far about the Tumbler Ridge shooting

Nine people have been killed and dozens injured after an assailant opened fire at a school in western Canada, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in the country’s history. The suspect was later found dead from what appeared to be a self-inflicted injury.

Police found six dead inside the high school in the remote town of Tumbler Ridge in British Columbia, with a further two bodies found at a residence believed to be connected to the incident. Another person died on the way to hospital, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said.

Russian attacks show no sign of slowing as fourth anniversary of full-scale invasion approaches

in Berlin

Germany is facing waves of industrial action as the country struggles to extend an anaemic recovery after two years of economic contraction.

• Club five points above drop zone after Newcastle defeat

• Spurs have not won in the Premier League in 2026

Thomas Frank has been sacked by Tottenham, the final straw for the head coach coming on Tuesday when his team lost at home to Newcastle, leaving Spurs 16th in the Premier League, five points above the relegation zone.

The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium crowd again rebelled against Frank, booing him and chanting that he would be sacked in the morning.