Evening all,

Carole here, tapping into my phone while en route to the Borris festival, a small but brilliant literary fest in the rolling Irish hills.

That’s a slightly pastoral intro to the theme of today’s newsletter, the unassailable power of the Silicon Valley tech giants and their creeping control over our lives.

Ireland is the low-tax European home for most Silicon Valley tech companies, and the inside account of how Facebook captured the Irish government and regulator was a highlight for me of Sarah Wynn-Williams’s rollicking book, Careless People.  

It was published last year and blows the lid on her time working directly alongside Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. 

Anyway, you may have seen headlines earlier this week from the Hay festival where Wynn Williams sat mutely on stage as I was supposed to interview her. Awkward! She’d been silenced by Facebook’s legal team but came on stage anyway, unable to even smile, nod or shake her head.

It was petty and ridiculous but nonetheless chilling. Read about it here.

I’m also delighted that we’re running a piece about a new doc that’s coming out, Ghost in the Machine, by director Valerie Veatch. 

I met Valerie at Sundance where she was the plucky underdog with a handmade, low-budget, truly indie film, and I’ve been cheerleading for it since. It’s a much-needed corrective to the AI hype that floods our newsfeeds every single day and is not just misleading, but dangerous.

Valerie’s AI doc was up against a much bigger budget film – The AI Doc: Or How I Became An Apocaloptimist – that had access to the likes of Sam Altman and platformed his sales spiel. In Veatch’s telling, AI has its roots in eugenics and race science and even the name “artificial intelligence” was some early marketing hyperbole.

A side note before the team brings you the rest of the newsletter. We promised you part two of the Harborne Receipts. It’s coming, but we’ve also had a tennis match back-and-forth with a partner at Schillings, one of Britain’s most expensive libel lawyers, this week. 

Now handing over to the rest of the team … Thanks, Carole.

Stewart Lee column delay. Yikes! Our columnist is currently in Ireland performing a sold-out run of his hit show Stewart Lee vs The Man-Wulf. After two dates in Dublin at the start of week he was at the Tommy Leddy theatre in Drogheda on Wednesday before driving on to Derry and Wexford … at which point he apologetically emailed to say: “I’m not going to hit this deadline.” He promises to file his column over the weekend and we’ll send it direct to your inboxes on Monday.

“What is the difference between being in the pocket of Big Tech and being an independent voice?” asks rebel film-maker Valerie Veatch. “Well, a lot!” Her latest work, Ghosts in the Machine, looks unblinkingly at the dark heart of the AI industry, especially as it encroaches on Hollywood and the creative industries. But while other documentaries, more favourable to Silicon Valley, have recently got major distribution deals, she’s had to fight to get her film in cinemas. She feels the struggle has been worth it, though – “because what’s happening with AI is so urgent”. Read the piece here.

Covering everything from his “rookie nerves” at making his directorial debut to unexpected stage snogs, rude reviews and his favourite reality TV shows, our Q&A today with James McAvoy is an absolute treat. One of Britain’s most prolific actors – starring in everything from Shameless to X-Men – McAvoy recently directed his first film, the hilarious music biopic California Schemin’, about how two Scottish lads fooled the music industry into believing they were California rap duo Silibil N' Brains. On a break from filming, he spoke to writer Hanna Flint – you’ll never guess his favourite swear word … Read the Q&A here.

Hay festival audiences have heard a lot of authors speak over the years, but never one before who was forced to sit in silence. But when Carole was video-calling Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of the explosive Facebook memoir Careless People, in preparation for an interview at the event, it emerged there was going to be a problem. “‘I can't talk to you,’” Sarah said. Huh? On the call or on the panel? ‘Both.’” Nonetheless, the event, with a silent panellist, went ahead; read Carole’s account of a truly surreal conversation here.

On the bill for Harry Styles’s hotly-anticipated Meltdown festival this month, the brilliant British singer-songwriter Nilüfer Yanya is three albums into an acclaimed career and selling out venues across the globe. For the Recommender slot this week she talks about loving Lena Dunham’s new memoir, a “perfect” coastal art gallery – and reveals why she’s got into “nerdy garden videos”. Read Nilüfer’s tips here.

“While Kendrick Lamar and Drake are busy bickering in their bars,” writes Nerve music critic Kate Hutchinson, “the California rapper Vince Staples’s new album narrows its sights on the real menace to society. The titular Cry Baby is sitting on the cover with a tuft of blond hair, wearing the US flag as a nappy. It’s uncannily reminiscent of a certain someone.” Find out why Kate thinks Staples is “one of music’s most incisive, and subversive, wordsmiths” and why she loves his new album. Read the full review here.

Ella Risbridger’s debut cookery book Midnight Chicken was a bestseller and won awards. Now she is back with The Kitchen Book – subtitled Good Food for Every Day. She believes that “however bad your day has been, however good, having something nice to eat has the power to improve it by a solid 10-15%”. The curry recipe she shares here is typical of her easy, flexible style. Get the recipe here.

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