Social media platform Bluesky has acquired more than a million new users in the week since the US election, according to the company.

The influx, largely from the US and UK, comes as users seek to "escape misinformation and offensive posts on X", formerly Twitter, said The Guardian.

What is Bluesky?
Bluesky was launched as part of Twitter in 2019, but became an independent platform in 2021. Owned by CEO Jay Graber, Bluesky takes a "decentralised approach to social media, one where different platforms and communities can inter-operate" rather than all being under a single corporate banner like Twitter/X or Facebook, said Sky News.

Why are people leaving X?
Users of X have increasingly complained of "more misinformation" and "offensive posts" since Elon Musk bought the platform for $44 billion (£34 billion) in 2022, said Sky News.

Fans of Taylor Swift, who endorsed Kamala Harris for president,  are among those moving to Bluesky in protest at Musk's support of Donald Trump and the "rhetoric that has erupted" on X following the Republican's win, said Wired. Although there are Swift fans on "all sides of the political spectrum", the community "prides itself on being a positive and accepting space".

For many, X had become the very opposite of that. "You were getting this awful timeline of far-right, white supremacist, conspiracy theory posts", Shannon C. McGregor, an associate professor at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina, told The New York Times. That is something "the great majority of people don’t want to interact with on a daily basis", she said.

Can Bluesky overtake X?
Bluesky has "become a refuge for people who want to have the kind of social media experience that Twitter used to provide", without the "far-right activism, the misinformation, the hate speech, the bots and everything else", social media researcher Axel Bruns told The Guardian.

Bluesky "appears to be courting users" who are concerned about the "ramifications" of Musk's "proximity" to Trump, said The New York Times. But the platform's new high of 14.7 million users is "still far fewer than Threads", Meta's competitor to X, which has reportedly reached 275 million monthly active users.

"Heavens above!" , said Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Times. "Finally a Booker prizewinner that we can all get behind." 

This year's winner, "Orbital" by Samantha Harvey, is the first book set in space to scoop the award. Harvey is also the first female author to win the Booker since Bernardine Evaristo in 2019. "It's bold, it's scintillating" and "gloriously imaginative", said Thomas-Corr, and "one of the most original novels I've read in a long time".

New horizons
Harvey was awarded the £50,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Monday and said she planned to spend her winnings on a new bike and a holiday to Japan. 

Her novel is set to go "stratospheric" after bagging the award, said David Sanderson in The Times. It was already the biggest-selling book on the shortlist, with "promising sales figures" of 29,000 copies so far this year. Yet the writer, who penned "Orbital" during Covid lockdowns while watching footage of Earth in orbit on her computer, almost threw in the towel.

"I've never been to space, I could never go to space, and there are humans who've been to space who write very lucidly about it so who am I to do this?" she told BBC Radio Four's "Front Row" programme. "I had a crisis of confidence and felt I was trespassing so I gave up." But then I "decided to persevere", she said.

A worthy winner?
"'Orbital' is no bad winner", said Cal Revely-Calder in The Telegraph. Harvey "sketches the personalities" of the astronauts "with ease" and the resources for her vivid descriptions "run pretty deep". But the novel's "strength is also its curse", as Harvey goes on "orbit after orbit, wondering anew at the same indescribable world". There's "something hollow beneath the style".

"But there's something heartening about 'Orbital''s triumph," said Thomas-Corr in The Times. As well as being a "serious, sometimes sombre meditation on environmental catastrophe", it contains some "surprisingly funny moments" and is "an appeal to the imagination". Despite having written a diverse range of books over the years, from a mediaeval crime story to a powerful tale about Alzheimer's, Harvey hasn't received much recognition. "This win changes her course."

"'Gladiator II' is by far the best popcorn film of the year," said Caryn James on BBC Culture. Ridley Scott's "exhilarating" sequel to the 2000 movie starring Russell Crowe has "swords, sandals, sharks in the flooded Roman Colosseum, Denzel Washington in flowing robes and Paul Mescal biting a baboon": what's not to love?

The action follows Lucius (Mescal), the illegitimate son of Crowe's Maximus and Lucilla (Connie Nielsen), and nephew of the first film's villainous Commodore (Joaquin Phoenix). After leading a relatively peaceful life as a farmer in northern Africa with his wife, Lucius is forced into slavery and ends up becoming a gladiator like his father.

The film "isn't quite as strong as its predecessor", said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph. The sequel "zig-zags madly from ribald comedy to sweeping action, then quivering melodrama". From the "shadowy plotting that threatens to bring Rome crashing down" to the spectacular Colosseum battle scenes, it's clear that "fun is Scott's primary aim".

I thought the sequel was "watchable and spectacular", said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. The Colosseum has been recreated as a "gobsmacking 1:1 scale physical reconstruction with real crowds", and though it's "impossible to avoid" parallels with the first movie, the "all-important gladiator set-pieces have the right hallucinatory quality".

"Gladiator II" is "in many ways as compelling and expertly staged" as the original, said Boyd Hilton in Empire. "There's a fearlessness to its big swings that has to be applauded. It's Ridley Scott Unleashed, and we're here for it."

How Trump will tackle climate change – and why it might work
Anne McElvoy for the i news site
Donald Trump "might not" do "all of the damage feared" on climate, writes Anne McElvoy. America "profits from exporting green technology", and many of those jobs are in the “red” states and therefore "not enticing for a Republican administration to attack". In addition, Elon Musk, the "all-purpose Trumpian", has "persuaded his protégé to drop a gut opposition to electric vehicles". It would "be a stretch" to say we should "be chill" about "the effect of Trump 2.0" on global warming, but he might not be "quite the thrust into reverse mode" that's feared.

Alastair Campbell is mansplaining what women have been telling him for a decade
Suzanne Moore in The Telegraph
Alastair Campbell is "rude, abrasive, bullying and often completely out of touch", writes Suzanne Moore. He's now said he "underestimated" how much trans issues were "getting through to people", even though "for 10 years" women have been "campaigning, losing their jobs and have been vilified for refusing an extreme trans agenda". Campbell is "deaf to women’s voices" and "deaf to the significant political realignments that are taking place".

Why we should really be outraged by the Boots Christmas advert
Katie Edwards for The Independent 
It's "that time of year" when "social media is losing its baubles over a perfectly charming Christmas ad", writes Katie Edwards. But as the latest offering from Boots shows, Christmas ads are "no longer simply Christmas ads", because "our reaction to them tells us an awful lot about ourselves". It "depresses me that we're almost at the doorstep of 2025 – a quarter of the way into the 21st century" and people are "still getting worked up about Black people featuring in adverts".