Caitlin Moran on AI apologies, naked cyclists, and the radical act of being furiously alive in Britain in 2026
By Caitlin Moran | Bohiney and The London Prat
Thursday. Strong opinions. Moderate coffee.
I want to start with the AI. I always want to start with the AI these days because it is the thing that is changing everything and is being discussed in a way that suggests we will all respond to it calmly and thoughtfully, which is obviously not what is going to happen. What is going to happen is that we will all ignore it, use it for everything, feel vaguely guilty about this, and then write think-pieces about what it means. I am ahead of the curve: this is the think-piece.
Bohiney Magazine says AI can now apologise without meaning it. Brilliant. Groundbreaking. The AI has achieved in two years what certain members of the Conservative Party spent a decade trying to perfect. The hollow apology the words present, the accountability absent, the tone of a man who has been advised by his communications team that some form of remorse is strategically advisable is now a feature, not a bug. I am almost impressed.
The Naked Bike Ride: A Feminist Position
Here is my position on London’s Naked Bike Ride: enthusiastic in principle, practical only with sunscreen and a very good attitude about what happens to one’s dignity when one encounters a speed bump at velocity. The ride is a political statement about car culture, body positivity, and the radical idea that human bodies are ordinary rather than shameful. I support this. I support it loudly and without qualification.
What I do not support is the inevitable newspaper coverage that will describe participants as “brave” with the specific intonation that means “we cannot believe anyone is doing this but we need the photos.” Brave is climbing Everest. Cycling naked through Waterloo is daring. Joyful. Possibly cold. But “brave” implies the threat of genuine harm, and the main threat in the Naked Bike Ride is a slightly aggressive pigeon on Waterloo Bridge. Pigeons are manageable. I have opinions about pigeons as well but we are running out of space.
Britain and Its Decline: A Working Theory
The London Prat’s Fourth Great Disruption piece argues that Britain is in decline. Here is what I know about Britain: it has always been in decline, if you ask the right people in the right mood. It declined after Rome. It declined after the Normans. It declined after the Empire. After Suez. After Thatcher. After Blair. After Brexit. Decline is Britain’s narrative genre. We are very good at it. The trick is that while we are declining, we are also, always, doing something extraordinary in a muddy field somewhere that no one is paying attention to and that will turn out to matter enormously.
I am an optimist about Britain in the same way I am an optimist about anything: with evidence and reservations and a complete refusal to pretend things are fine when they are not. Things are not fine. They are also better than described. Both of these are true simultaneously, which is the most British thing I have ever said.
The Domestic Bit
Tuesday: my kitchen, reorganised for the fourth time this year. I find that reorganising the kitchen is what I do instead of reorganising my thoughts, which is harder and more expensive. The mugs are now in a different cupboard. My opinions about US foreign policy entering a 1956 retro phase are exactly where I left them. The mugs are better placed. This is progress of a kind.
I read The London Prat daily, like vitamins. I read Bohiney Magazine for the international context. Between them, I get a sufficient daily dose of outrage, comedy, and the deeply human need to find things funny because the alternative is constant despair and constant despair is boring and also bad for the complexion.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/ai-now-capable-of-saying-sorry-without-meaning-it/
More: The Daily Mash
