Samuel Hunt

Features writer & documentary filmmaker. Work in @FT @theeconomist @newhumanist and others.

[Samuel Hunt @SamuelHunt]

Inside Spartan Fight Club, the UK’s only bare-knuckle promotion to fight in an 8x8 foot hay bale pit.

It’s a story about violence, mental health and community.

My latest feature for the @ft in the @ftweekend magazine today.

https://t.co/CPfhDYUBqC

[Liz Cookman @liz_cookman]

Foreign correspondence has a problem.

What has happened at the @washingtonpost is awful, all job loses are terrible, and a shock to the whole industry. But the majority of international reporters have been operating for years without support, respect or pay. 1/5

[New York Magazine @NYMag]

Tech companies are succeeding in making us think of life itself as inconvenient and something to be continuously escaping from, into digital padded rooms of predictive algorithms and single-tap commands: Reading is boring; talking is awkward; moving is tiring; leaving the house is daunting. These are all frictions that we can now eliminate, easily, and we do.

Once we’ve adopted a habit of escaping from something, whether it’s Uber-ing dinner five nights a week or using AI for replying to texts, the act of return, which is how we might describe no longer using a tool of escape, feels full of irritating friction. In these moments, we become exactly like toddlers in the five minutes after the iPad is taken away: The dullness and labor of embodied existence is unbearable.

“This is why I have resolved to commit to make 2026 a year of friction-maxxing, as an individual but more importantly as a parent,” Kathryn Jezer-Morton writes.

There are some obvious places to begin your friction-maxxing journey. Stop sharing your location with your kids and your partner. Stop using ChatGPT completely. No, it does not have good ideas for meal planning. Buy a cookbook. Text your friends for advice. Go to Trader Joe’s. Invite people over to your house without cleaning it all the way up.

Friction-maxxing is not simply a matter of reducing your screen time, it’s the process of building up tolerance for “inconvenience” — and then reaching even toward enjoyment. And then, it’s modeling this tolerance, followed by enjoyment and humor, for our kids.

Read Jezer-Morton’s full column: https://t.co/AnrXfBWrIz

[Samuel West 💙💛 @exitthelemming]

‘The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it.’

Tom Stoppard 1937 - 2025

[richard brooks @rbrooks45]

How @PrivateEyeNews first covered Michael Gove’s appointment as Orwell prize judge two weeks ago -

[Boris Dralyuk @BorisDralyuk]

Declan Ryan’s newest in @NewYorker is the most accomplished poem I’ve seen in a major mag in some time—a poem that dignifies the little intimacies of one couple’s growing bond (watch the rhymes), and in so doing dignifies the inner spaces of all our lives. https://t.co/7iZbIZK9eI

[Atul Gawande @Atul_Gawande]

Today @TheNewYorker released our short documentary “Rovina’s Choice."

It traces the ongoing effects of the sudden shutdown of US foreign aid through the story of one mother in Kenya as she seeks to save her daughter from sickness and starvation. 🎥 1/ https://t.co/Isbu12utdD

[Des Freedman @lazebnic]

The % of newspaper columnists who went to private school has risen from 43% in 2014 to 44% in 2019 and now to 50% in 2025. Given that only 6% of kids are privately educated, this may explain why commentators are so out of touch. Thanks to @suttontrust https://t.co/GyPktbRvkH

[Yousra Elbagir @YousraElbagir]

Incredibly concerning developments in Al Fashir today - civilians are fleeing en masse as the RSF celebrate their capture of the 6th infantry division in the heart of the city.

SAF, civilian resistance fighters and residents have been squeezed into western neighbourhoods.

[Matthieu Aikins @mattaikins]

This month the @NYT devoted an entire issue of its Sunday mag to my 26,000-word story on war crimes and lawlessness by the Special Forces, and how a vigilante ethos that developed overseas has been adopted by leaders in the US. With stunning photos by @victorjblue. Free links:

[dalliasd (@dalliasd.bsky.social) @dalliasd]

There is nothing edible left in El Fashir.
Read that again.
Nothing edible left to eat.
Civilians are dying daily.

[+972 Magazine @972mag]

By understanding each act of violence as fulfilling a discrete mission, from targeting a Hamas operative to securing a perimeter, many Israeli soldiers have avoided confronting their role in the mass slaughter of civilians.

https://t.co/S2VMrHlft6

[Rob Newman @RobNewmanLab]

Reform: “Nobody in this government has ever run a business! They don’t know what they’re doing! What a disgrace!”

Also Reform:

[Samuel Hunt @SamuelHunt]

For a conservative politician to wade in here, after her party ignored the approaches of the IICSA for years and failed to implement a single one of its recommendations, is beyond contemptible.

Victims deserve better than point scoring politicians like this.

[Katie Lam @Katie_Lam_MP]

Nine months since we were promised local inquiries on grooming and rape gangs.

No progress.

Four months since the national inquiry announcement.

Nothing but delay.

Victims deserve better. We all deserve better.

I wrote in @TheSun about the national reckoning we need 👇

[Christiaan Triebert @trbrtc]

Our reporting project on Assad's top enforcers is on today's frontpage. Gift link: https://t.co/mCYo8ca4Bp

[Kenneth Roth @KenRoth]

Palestine’s most popular leader, Marwan Barghouti, the man most capable of leading negotiations for a Palestinian state, was beaten unconscious by eight Israeli prison guards on September 14 as he was being transferred between prisons. https://t.co/HlSID1uSRx

[Nathan Thrall @NathanThrall]

Spoke to @NewYorker's @IChotiner about the absence of accountability for Israel, the Gaza ceasefire that is being mistakenly described as peace, and the West's embrace of the perpetrators of a genocide.

https://t.co/0KAo84epTa

[Jonathan Karl @jonkarl]

The journalists who cover the Pentagon had to choose today between signing a pledge that would make it impossible to do independent journalism and turning in their Pentagon press badges. Almost all of them turned in their badges and left the building.

[BBC Newsnight @BBCNewsnight]

“We had almost no engagement about any of it…”

Alexis Jay, the former chair of a national inquiry into child sexual abuse, tells #Newsnight that the previous Conservative government lacked engagement over the implementations of her 20 recommendations.