The darling of the far right recently appeared on The Breakfast Club and Joe Budden’s podcast – exploiting Black America’s willingness to forgive

As a provocateur, Candace Owens stands alone. The recently fired Daily Wire host built a reputation as one of the few Black voices in rightwing media by tossing Black culture and Black people under the conservative bus. She embraced Donald Trump’s lawlessness while castigating Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Black victims of police brutality as “thugs” and criminals . For Owens, the January 6 insurrection was “ virtually nothing ”, while the Black Lives Matter movement “ is about Black anarchy ”. She told a congressional subcommittee that “white supremacy and white nationalism is not a problem that is harming Black America”.

According to her, everything wrong with Black America is caused by Black culture and white liberals, but affirmative action is an affront to whites. Like her former bosses at the rightwing youth organization Turning Point USA, Owens doesn’t believe in systemic racism because she’s “ never been a slave in this country ”. When it comes to anti-Blackness, she is as remarkably consistent as the angry throngs that spat on third-graders desegregating schools while painting the civil rights movement as “ violent ”.

Despite the polls, the leader wants them on side for an endorsement. Yet why bother if it would make little difference to voter numbers?

• Archie Bland is the editor of the Guardian’s First Edition newsletter

Last week, I called a senior Labour figure loyal to Keir Starmer and asked him about his leader’s efforts to court the Sun and the Times. He spoke for 15 minutes about the risks of letting a possible endorsement from the Murdoch press influence Labour, and how far the media landscape has shifted since the Sun could claim to be wot won it . As I thanked him for his time, he interrupted me. “Can I just check,” he said, a little sheepishly. “Have you heard anything?”

My source admitted the contradiction: arguing for a new settlement in his party’s relationship with the press, but unable to shake off the habits of the old one. He is not alone. “Every other conversation with a shadow cabinet minister at conference last year came back to whether the Times would back Starmer,” a Guardian colleague says. “They are obsessed.” A reporter for News UK, the title’s owner, says junior Labour staffers regularly ask for updates on their newspaper’s stance. A rival lobby journalist grumbles that Labour gives News UK outlets “special treatment”. A thinktank staffer mentions a special adviser with a Google alert for “the Sun says” and “Starmer”.

Pouria Zeraati ‘ feeling better’ and recovering under supervision of Met police

The Iranian International TV presenter who was stabbed outside his home in west London last week has said he has left hospital and is staying in a safe place.

Pouria Zeraati, 36, said he was on the mend after his traumatic ordeal on Friday afternoon and thanked people for the kind messages and “love” they had sent him during his stay in hospital.

The royals are perennial clickbait, but the wild online bunkum over the Princess of Wales hints at new and darker forces

On TikTok, there is a short clip of what an AI voiceover claims is a supposed “ring glitch” in the video in which Princess of Wales reveals her cancer diagnosis. It has 1.3 million views. Others, in which users “break down” aspects of the video and analyse the saga with spurious evidence, also rack up millions of views and shares. I have then seen them surface on X, formerly known as Twitter, and even shared on WhatsApp by friends and family, who see in these videos, presented as factual and delivered in reporter-style, nothing that indicates that this is wild internet bunkum.

Something has changed about the way social media content is presented to us. It is both a huge and subtle shift. Until recently, types of content were segregated by platform. Instagram was for pictures and short reels, TikTok for longer videos, X for short written posts. Now Instagram reels post TikTok videos, which post Instagram reels, and all are posted on X. Often it feels like a closed loop, with the algorithm taking you further and further away from discretion and choice in who you follow. All social media apps now have the equivalent of a “For you” page, a feed of content from people you don’t follow, and which, if you don’t consciously adjust your settings, the homepage defaults to. The result is that increasingly, you have less control over what you see.

Forbes Masson stars in Gary McNair’s version of the gothic novella, Tim Key joins Kitson in an Old Vic two-hander and Jason Manford celebrates all musicals great and small

Robert Louis Stevenson’s ever-compelling “strange case” becomes a solo play, adapted by Gary McNair and performed by Forbes Masson at Dundee Rep earlier this year. Directed by Michael Fentiman, it is the latest addition to Original Theatre ’s impressive collection.

Lena Forsén’s picture has been used as reference photo since the 1970s, but Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers says it now breaches code of ethics

Cropped from the shoulders up, the Playboy centrefold of Swedish model Lena Forsén looking back at the photographer is an unlikely candidate for one of the most reproduced images ever.

Shortly after it was printed in the November 1972 issue of the magazine, the photograph was digitised by Alexander Sawchuk, an assistant professor at the University of California, using a scanner designed for press agencies. Sawchuk and his engineering colleagues needed new images to test their processing algorithms. Bored with TV test images, they turned to the centrefold, defending its choice by noting that it featured a face and a mixture of light and dark colours. Fortunately, the limits of the scanner meant that only the top five inches were scanned, with just Forsén’s bare shoulder hinting at the nature of the original picture.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

Why is alcohol advertised openly in the UK, without pictures on the packaging highlighting the medical effects, for example, when tobacco is treated so differently? John Fisher, by email

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com .

Do you shout your achievements from the rooftops, or ‘move in silence’ while waiting for the perfect moment to flex online? If only we could all sit this one out

I have belatedly discovered the phrase “move in silence”. Apparently, Lil Wayne instructed people to do it in 2011 with the line: “Real Gs move in silence like lasagne,” a lyric that prompted various polemics (is the G in lasagne actually silent ?). Even then, a music commentator told Billboard it was “such an old concept”. It hadn’t broken through in the south side of Brussels, where I was living then (despite lasagne, happily, being plentiful).

I was finally alerted to “moving in silence” by an Instagram post. The phrase grabbed me, since I am a cheerleader for silence. My take is: the more people move in silence, the better, especially if they are in coach H of the 8.02 York to London King’s Cross. It’s the “Quieter” coach! Don’t make me stare pointedly at the sign and sigh!

Royal Photographic Society says award reflects the support and encouragement McCabe showed for aspiring photographers

A bursary focusing on the theme of sporting endeavour and designed to help talented young photographers has been launched in honour of the memory of the award-winning Guardian and Observer photographer Eamonn McCabe.

The bursary, established by The Royal Photographic Society (RPS), The Guardian and Observer and McCabe’s family will give £3,000 to a photographer aged 25 or under to produce a project.