Six great reads: Virginia Giuffre’s story, the truth about chatfishing, and Peter Thiel’s search for the antichrist

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1. ‘Prince Andrew believed having sex with me was his birthright’: Virginia Giuffre on her abuse at the hands of Epstein, Maxwell and the king’s brother
Photo of Virginia Roberts Giuffre as a teenager, around the time that she met Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Photograph: Courtesy of Virginia Roberts Giuffre
“Then one steaming hot day some weeks before my 17th birthday, I was walking toward the Mar-a-Lago spa, on my way to work, when a car slowed behind me. Inside was a British socialite named Ghislaine Maxwell … ”

Our exclusive extract from Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir paints a devastating picture of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and his friends.
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2. ‘Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth’: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump
Wang Jian, also known as Ki, is a Chinese-American YouTuber. Photograph: Faith Ninivaggi/The Guardian
The long read published a funny and revealing portrait of how a Chinese journalist on YouTube is covering the chaos of life under Trump. Wang Jian shared his fascinating outsider’s view with writer Lauren Hilgers.
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3. ‘These men think they’ve done nothing wrong’: the philosopher who tried to understand Gisèle Pelicot’s rapists
Feminist philosopher Manon Garcia, who attended the Dominique Pelicot trial, speaks to Zoe Williams about her new book. Photograph: Natalia Kepesz/The Guardian
French feminist philosopher Manon Garcia attended the Dominique Pelicot trial for weeks and wrote about Gisèle Pelicot’s rapists in a new book. Her conclusion was stark: “There’s something about what it is for them to be a man [that makes them] deeply convinced that they haven’t done anything wrong,” she told Zoe Williams.
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4. ‘Our world is combustible’: Kathryn Bigelow on AI, Andy Warhol and nuclear Armageddon
‘Our world is combustible’ … Kathryn Bigelow. Photograph: Alexi Lubomirski/Netflix
“Bigelow has long staked out her own place in cinema. Singular and self-made, she is one of the few working film-makers to have climbed Kilimanjaro. She is also still among the most controversial of directors,” wrote Danny Leigh, “but only a fool would dispute her gifts as a film-maker: a virtuoso of action, tension and release.”
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5. Peter Thiel’s off-the-record antichrist lectures reveal more about him than Armageddon
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel has hosted a series of off-the-record lectures about the antichrist and Armageddon. Illustration: Guardian Design/Images via Getty Images
Tech reporters Johana Bhuiyan, Dara Kerr and Nick Robins-Early uncovered a very strange story about rightwing tech billionaire (and JD Vance backer) Peter Thiel. The PayPal founder has been giving a series of off-the-record lectures in San Francisco warning about the threat of the antichrist and a pending Armageddon. In this exploration of what Thiel said, Adrian Daub concluded “the picture of Thiel that emerges in these lectures is someone desperately trying to disidentify from their own power.”
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6. ‘I realised I’d been ChatGPT-ed into bed’: how ‘Chatfishing’ made finding love on dating apps even weirder
‘Wherefore art thou, Robot Romeo?’ … Illustration: Guardian Imaging/Getty Images
Where once people were duped by soft-focus photos and borrowed chat-up lines, now they have to watch out for computer-generated charm. But it’s one thing to use a witty phrase – another thing entirely to build a whole fake persona …
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