There are many tech irritants that are a scourge of modern life, yet we have lacked the vocabulary to describe them ... until now

The “dickover” is the scourge of the modern age. Coined in May by John Gruber, a tech writer, it is defined as “a modal panel, popover, or curtain presented by a website or app, deliberately obscuring its own content to frustrate the user”. Essentially, it is the thing (or more often, things) you have to click away in order to read the thing you wanted to read. It is the “accept cookies” box, the “allow notifications?” box, the “sign in with Google” box, the pop-up video box, etc.

We shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that dickovers are the only terrible thing about technology in 2026. Until now, though, we have lacked the vocabulary to describe them, so here are some suggestions.

A movement with safety, dignity and equality at its heart may now be blamed for the rightwing backlash. But within it were principles worth carrying forwards

Every once in a while, the discourse gods send a tablet down to the people, announcing that a previous era is dead and a new age is upon us. Recently, it was the “vibe shift” – a post-pandemic change in culture that encompassed everything from fashion to politics. The vibe shift consolidated with Donald Trump’s second election, a harbinger of the end of fragility and of movements for racial and gender equality – a rejection of the long 2010s with their hashtags and pink pussy hats and women’s marches and protests. The vibe shift has recently been followed by a calling of time on what has come to be known as “Woke 1.0” – a term that represents what is now seen as a culture of hysterical overreach triggered by the momentary breakthrough of movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. “Woke 1 was crazy,” said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this month, quoting a New York City councilman. And there we have it, time to walk back some things said and done in the giddy heat of those moments. It was crazy!

This rush to the future away from what some perceive to be an embarrassing past groups together various disparate phenomena. But I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Woke 1.0 (or “peak wokeness” – I wish the gods would use less trivialising ways to refer to roiling social tides, but there we are) was about politics and culture and also about the behaviours and trends it triggered. It was about concrete problems: policing of minority communities, the right of women not to be sexually harassed or violated, the systemic racism and sexism that damaged both. And it was about reforming the cultural structures that created and perpetuated those systems; asking university curricula to expand and diversify intellectual sources, recognising the long shadow of glorified imperial histories, and updating institutions – from the media to the academy – in order to enfranchise change. None of this is “crazy”.

Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

A vivid and hopeful study of how culture endures in the midst of extreme violence

Towards the end of her subtly piercing book about art in wartime, Charlotte Higgins recounts an autumn visit to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, in the north-east of the country, a short drive from the Russian border. In a tranquil park, she sees a man standing in a stream, making stones balance on top of each other in a teetering tower – “a metaphor of life in that city,” she writes, “that would have seemed too obvious for a novel”.

Still, as a good novelist would, Higgins doesn’t seem to beg telling details from a place so much as have them leap to her open eye and ear. The cartoons a boy is watching that fall silent in a power cut, allowing the distant boom of explosions on the frontline to be heard. A cityscape tattooed on a young poet’s arm that cuts off suddenly where skin from his leg was grafted after he was torn up by shrapnel. Cataracts of larkspur, as Higgins describes them, in a field in the frontline Donbas region, “pouring down the hill, pooling at the bottom into a great lake of blooms … Larkspur thrives on ground where there has been recent disturbance.”

Many hoped that the march of technology would usher in an egalitarian utopia – but some foresaw the threat it would pose to liberal society. Why did nobody listen?

One of the stranger things about this dizzying, headlong moment in time is that it doesn’t have much of a past. Everything is about the future of this, the future of that: the future of work, the future of humanity, the future of the planet. It’s as if everyone is screaming (some ecstatically, most terror-stricken): robots are taking over the world! Meanwhile, you can’t put down your phone, unplug, delete your AI apps, tell Zoom to piss off; it feels as if you are racing toward something, and can’t stop, or look back, or think straight.

But of course this weird moment in history does have a past. It comes from somewhere. It wasn’t inevitable. Things could have turned out differently. They still can. And if you look back, one thing you’ll see is that a lot of people saw this all coming. They foresaw our present when it was still the future. They thought it might turn out fabulously, a computer utopia. And they worried it might turn out disastrously. Above all, they issued warning after warning about the rise of what I call the artificial state, the replacement of the liberal democratic nation-state, the consent of the governed, with the rule of people by machines. They warned of a future in which democratic deliberation would be replaced by prediction by calculation, the public sphere would be supplanted by data-driven commerce, and drones would take the place of the demos. Why didn’t anyone listen?

The new underworld is made up of innocent and well-intentioned people who work with slide rules and calculating machines and computers which can retain an almost infinite number of bits of information as well as sort, categorise, and reproduce this information at the press of a button. Most of these people are highly educated, many of them are PhDs, and none that I have met have malignant political designs on the American public. They may, however, radically reconstruct the American political system, build a new politics, and even modify revered and venerable American institutions – facts of which they are blissfully innocent.

Trip-prepping shouldn’t be a grim exercise in minimising your milligrams. Take day outfits, night outfits, gymwear, swimwear – and prepare for an adventure

If you’re on the hunt for a streamlined way to travel internationally while only packing a toothbrush, an iPad, a single white T-shirt made of technical fabric and a lukewarm sachet of Huel, then keep scrolling. I simply couldn’t care less.

Packing for travel shouldn’t be a grim logistical exercise in minimising the milligrams of mass one must transport. It should be a prelude to an adventure – and an adventure in itself!

Max Olesker is a writer and comedian. His show Max Olesker: Making the Cut is playing at the Edinburgh fringe, until 30 August 2026

Nearly a decade after fighting ended in northern Iraq, the climate crisis has brought extreme heat and a water shortage, making life almost impossible

The first thing that strikes visitors arriving in Faka, a small village in Sinjar district, northern Iraq, is the silence. No children play in the streets. No shops are open. Roofless houses stretch across the hillside, their walls pockmarked by shellfire, while weeds and wild grasses grow through collapsed living rooms.

A decade after Islamic State (IS) swept across the region, war remains visible everywhere. But according to the people who returned, another enemy has quietly taken its place.

Rajab Mohammed says the problem in his village of Faka is no longer Islamic State but water and jobs

Ministry of Defence rebuffs threats, saying UK ‘committed to providing equipment Ukraine needs to defend itself against Putin’s illegal invasion’

Moscow has threatened the UK with “consequences” after reports that British drones have been used to strike targets on Russia’s mainland for the first time.

Ukraine used drones made by two UK companies as part of a so-called deep-strike campaign, the Sunday Times reported.

Chris Wormald received unprecedented payment after serving as cabinet secretary for just 14 months

The former head of the civil service Chris Wormald received a record payout, in the region of £500,000, when he was forced out of the top job in Whitehall by Keir Starmer, it has emerged.

The unprecedented payment was made after Wormald served just 14 months in the role of cabinet secretary before being replaced by Antonia Romeo.

The prime minister says the ‘absolutely massive’ move would protect thousands of jobs

Moscow has threatened the UK with “consequences” after reports that British drones have been used to strike targets on Russia’s mainland for the first time.

Ukraine used drones made by two UK companies as part of a so-called deep-strike campaign, the Sunday Times reported.

Buses in Manchester and London are franchised (ie owned by a private company but operated under a local authority brand.) It seems strange that the Government didn’t try and facilitate this or encourage another private operator to take over the enhanced partnership operation in the West Midlands but instead transfer c. £100m of liabilities to local taxpayers backed by The UK Govt & ultimately UK taxpayers.

Woodland Trust says trees struggling in drought stress, with older ‘survivors’ disproportionately affected

England’s ancient oak trees are dying in the summer’s extreme heat and dry weather, according to the Woodland Trust, with trees and ecosystems unable to adapt fast enough to the changing climate.

The heatwaves across much of Europe this summer have had a notable impact on crop growth and plant health. To cope with the extreme conditions, many trees are undergoing “early autumn”, wilting and losing their leaves early.

Crow Leasow oak, Shropshire.

Tea Party oak, Suffolk.

King John oak, Devon.

Enmore oak, Somerset.

Lydham Manor oak, Shropshire.

Old Knobbley, Essex.

Pwllpriddog oak, Carmarthenshire.