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Good morning. We live in trying times, feels everyone who has ever lived – especially this week, I think to myself most weeks. Sometimes, however, it’s better to stop catastrophising, take the high road, and focus on finding something good to read.

Here are my picks from around the Guardian this week, digging into the world in all its messy, interesting glory.

1. Death threats, danger and dread after accusing Israel of genocide

As Julian Borger eloquently puts it: “The untreated wound of Israel-Palestine has shown its capacity every generation to give the rest of the world a fever.”

Our senior international correspondent has interviewed Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Sitting in a cafe in Geneva, the 49-year-old tells him about a “rollercoaster” existence in the wake of her March 2024 report Anatomy of a Genocide.

Why has she become such a lightning rod? “Albanese was not the first person to describe the Israeli military campaign in Gaza as a genocide, but she was the first person with the initials UN in her title to do so,” Borger says. She has been criticised by many, demonised by the Trump administration, and become something of a hero to others – using her public visibility “not just to condemn the Israeli government and its military, but also the constellation of western states and corporations that have abetted them”.

How long will it take to read: six minutes

2. Dabbling in tradwife culture

As “tradwife” influencer accounts grow in popularity and a slew of novels emerges to chronicle the moment, features writer Lucy Knight has spent a month finding out what makes this culture so compelling to young women.

What did she do? Read the novels, made some focaccia and went deep on the online content (of which there is … a lot).

What did she find? That – as usual – it’s less about wanting to make pies and have babies, and more about a yearning to escape the brutal stressors of contemporary life.

“The problem,” Knights writes, “is that none of the fantasies sold to women as the thing that will make their lives better actually work for most people.”

(Topically, there’s a new Mark Fisher documentary out soon.)

How long will it take to read: about six minutes

Further reading: While we’re leaning into gender norms, here’s a male author calling for straight male authors to rediscover writing about sex. (Be careful what you wish for, I say.)

3. ‘Young men are allowed the grace of learning how to behave’

With the release of Lena Dunham’s tell-all memoir, the Girls wunderkind spoke to Emma Brockes about what forced her retreat from the spotlight and her “lost decade”.

***

“Just when you think no one cares, someone does something creepy, so you have to watch out.” – Lena Dunham, on why she still uses aliases.

The book covers a huge amount of terrain: excruciating public exposure; health and addiction struggles; creative, romantic and family relationship breakdowns; and being cancelled “too many times to count”.

But life in the UK suits her: Partly, Dunham tells Brockes, because she enjoys watching British women get old. “They lean into their eccentricity … And it’s not just artistic people – it’s a woman who you see walking her dog on the road in the countryside in funny boots.”

How long will it take to read: 11 minutes

Further reading: One former Dunham hater wants to say he’s sorry. And if you’re curious to read a section of Dunham’s memoir, try this.

4. What does Orbán’s fall mean for Europe?

Viktor Orbán was stunningly defeated in the Hungarian election last weekend, after almost 16 years in power. The country’s return to democracy will be hard, our panel of experts has observed – but the impact of Péter Magyar’s decisive victory could be profound, inside the country and beyond.

Zsuzsanna Szelényi, program director of the CEU Democracy Institute: “Even entrenched illiberal regimes are not invincible.”

Nathalie Tocci, Guardian Europe columnist: “It removes a thorn in the EU’s side.”

Zselyke Csaky, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform: “The EU needs to act fast.”

How long will it take to read: four minutes

Further reading: Magyar understood that Hungarians care more about the cost of living than conspiracies, writes commentator Tibor Dessewffy. But as Jon Henley reports from Europe, it may be too early to celebrate the end of the continent’s far right.

5. Stop trying to optimise everything!

Reading helps you become a better person. Art makes you live longer! Singing helps with stress! Orgasms can … stop cancer?! There’s no mistaking the ongoing trend of justifying good things with material “benefits” and the writer and philosopher Julian Baggini has had enough. This instrumentalisation, he writes, “is most pernicious when it applies to things we do with and for others”.

“Intrinsic human goods include all the things that make life worth living without need of any further justification. To ask of them: ‘What’s the point?’ would be to miss the point. They are the point.”

Gardening, cooking, camping, swimming, campaigning, volunteer work, keeping a diary, laughing, saying “thank you”, learning a language … Baggini’s catalogue of hijacked pastimes is also a lovely reminder of the many things that make life joyful.

He really did not like The Happiness Project. Baggini recalls one passage from the 2010 book he had the “misfortune” to review. In it, author Gretchen Rubin recounted hugging her husband for six seconds, or in her words: “the minimum time necessary to promote the flow of oxytocin and serotonin, mood-boosting chemicals that promote bonding”.

Baggini writes: “I was left with the chilling image of a woman holding her husband not only out of love or affection but in order to release hormones and reduce her stress.”

How long will it take to read: about nine minutes

Further reading: Here are 25 other books to read completely and utterly for their own sake. (The headline suggests reading them before 25, but in my view they’re good for any time.)

Have a good weekend.

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