‘Get up, get breakfast, noise’: the teen going viral for enduring all 400 of Merzbow’s ear-splitting albums

1 September 2026 at 16:00

The infamous Japanese noise artist has a vast and forbidding catalogue that commands a cult fandom. Sam Andrews, 18, is vlogging his way through the lot – and taking a stand for deep listening

An Instagram Reel that looks like an 80s coming-of-age movie pops up on your feed. It’s four teenage boys in an American-style basement – comfy sofas, guitars, ping pong table – jeering and laughing. But they aren’t secretly drinking beer or planning on sneaking out. They’re brandishing a vinyl copy of Pulse Demon, the most popular album from the cult Japanese noise artist Merzbow, and subjecting themselves to its brutally harsh sound in full, for fun. “I think this is the Book of Revelation: The Soundtrack,” one guy blurts out, a vague look of fear in his eyes.

Merzbow, real name Masami Akita, is the world’s most renowned noise artist. Since 1979, Akita has released more than 400 recordings, which range from a 10-hour long album misleadingly titled Merzbient (it’s anything but ambient) to a free-noise supergroup called Flying Testicle. Since February, Sam Andrews, the video’s 18-year-old creator, has been attempting to listen to every one, and is documenting his progress online each day. “I think of my day in album-size chunks,” he says, laughing. “It’s like, get up at seven, get breakfast and then headphones in: noise.”

‘Demonic oppression’ and ‘girly convos’: the podcast wooing young women back to Christianity

The Guardian

By: Alaina Demopoulos

1 September 2026 at 15:00

Girls Gone Bible is on tour in the US, touting a regressive ideal of femininity through discussions of abstinence and mental health struggles

At first glance, the crowd gathering outside a music venue in Red Bank, New Jersey, could have passed for a group of sorority rush hopefuls – or Ella Langley fans on their way to the country star’s show. Most of them were under the age of 30. They wore cowboy boots, maxi sundresses and soft, bouncy blowouts, scrolling on their phones outside the doors as they waited for friends to arrive.

But one accessory gave them away: the Bibles they toted. These women were there to pray.

China Censors and Punishes to Shape Narrative on Floods in Tibet, a Contrast to Nepal

NYT > Top Stories

By: Alexandra Stevenson

1 September 2026 at 13:44

While journalists can report freely on grief and anger in Nepal, China’s official media have presented a sanitized disaster aftermath in Tibet.

A broadcast in Beijing last week showing state media coverage of the flood aftermath in Tibet.

Press freedom advocates alarmed by $300,000 defamation verdict against Louisiana newspaper

World news | The Guardian

By: Ramon Antonio Vargas

1 September 2026 at 13:00

Experts say ruling could undermine the ‘actual malice’ standard and make publishers more wary of critical reporting

A $300,000 jury verdict won recently by a Louisiana supreme court justice who sued the Advocate, the state’s largest newspaper, for libel over an editorial has caused concern among some US press freedom advocates.

One said the decision demonstrated a misunderstanding of a key legal principle governing such cases. And another worries the verdict could have a chilling effect on the media industry’s efforts to report on powerful people and institutions.

Life after Maga: the group offering an ‘exit ramp’ for rightwingers questioning Trumpism

The Guardian

By: Fabiola Cineas

1 September 2026 at 12:00

The non-profit Leaving Maga is built on the premise that abandoning the Trump-built movement is like fighting a disease or breaking an addiction

Four Maga defectors on what led them to walk away: ‘I’d been addicted to fear and rage’

Stephania Messina kept birthing boys. In the Quiverfull conservative Christian church she belonged to outside Detroit, Michigan, that made her a community celebrity. Your quiver, as the church taught it, is your womb, meant to be filled with as many arrows – a metaphor for children – as you can shoot unto the Lord. She shot five. “They treated me like I was Mother Mary, like I was this gift to the church,” she said.

But while she was quickly pushed into leading worship and Bible study groups for women and children, she wasn’t permitted to talk about politics.

Anger as BBC withdraws jobs promise for apprentices amid sweeping cuts

World news | The Guardian

By: Michael Savage Media editor

1 September 2026 at 11:14

Exclusive: Some staff call decision a betrayal of young apprentices who are often selected to increase diversity

The BBC is facing internal anger after a group of apprentices were told they could no longer expect jobs they had been promised, as a result of the corporation’s sweeping cuts.

In a sign of the pressure the BBC is under to find savings, apprentices working with BBC News were told that “exceptional circumstances” meant the broadcaster could no longer stand by its pledge to find them permanent positions.

Thinktank reports epidemic of loneliness among England’s ‘disconnected’ young

World news | The Guardian

By: Denis Campbell Health policy editor

1 September 2026 at 10:00

Youth club closures, unaffordable housing and social media cited as factors contributing to a sharp decline in wellbeing

The number of young people with no close friends has risen fivefold since 2014 as a result of growing up in a “bleak world” dominated by austerity, the pandemic and social media.

New research paints a sobering picture of how 11- to 24-year-olds in England are increasingly lonely, isolated and “disconnected” from themselves, peers and wider society.

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