From the editor
**I. Look up your own city, not just London's.** The Met's plan to scan faces in the West End is the headline, but live facial recognition already runs in more than a dozen UK forces — and most now publish where and when they deploy it. Knowing is the start of having a view.
**II. Play both Karma Chameleons back to back.** Boy George's new AI-assisted version and the 1983 original are a stream apart. The question is not whether it is any good — it is whether you can hear the join, and what you make of it when you cannot.
**III. Buy the cherries while they are good.** British cherries are a summer fruit — late June to August, then gone for the year. Get a punnet at their peak, and roast the bruised ones with a spoon of sugar over yoghurt.
*The Quernal provides general information, not financial, legal or career advice. Make decisions on your own circumstances, and seek regulated advice where appropriate.*
From observation to navigation: three doable, low-stakes moves drawn from tonight's pieces — civic (check your own force's facial-recognition deployments, from Mika), cultural (compare the AI re-record, from Kit), domestic (eat the short cherry season, from Priya).
- Mika Tanaka By Christmas, the West End will know your face
- Kit Hargrave Boy George re-recorded Karma Chameleon at 65. A machine made him sound like 1983.
- Henry Ogundipe On Monday, two tennis players answer the only question that is coming for all of us: when do you stop?
- Cosima Wren The best drama on television right now is about the one job a machine cannot do
- Priya Anand The first Kent cherries are here. You will not see good ones again until next summer.