Six weeks, 10,000 miles, dozens of countries, and one little vehicle: this is the Mongol Rally. Teams from around the world pile into improbable cars and attempt the only-barely-probable – the long drive from London to Ulanbataar. Our correspondent is updating from the road.

We can’t count on much these days. But we can rely on one thing: whenever there is a speech to be made, a vote to be won, a crowd to be wooed, a country to be saved, there is a man wearing a tiny flag lapel pin ready to get the job done – and he’s from the country represented by that flag.

“Don’t let your emotions make you their bitch,” “because everything looks good on a skinny girl,” or “I want to be skinny so I can finally feel comfortable in my own skin”: three examples of fitspiration, a problematic motivational trend that David Moscrop deconstructs.

Words have power, especially to shape our political landscape, says David Moscrop. He then goes on to use the power of words to cuss and tell dirty jokes.

"This is the way the world ends," mused end of days wacko T.S. Eliot, "not with a bang, but with millions of bangs, mutant fish, organic kidney beans by the crate, top-shelf liquor, and a bear eating a fire hydrant." David Moscrop doesn't want to see you get hurt, so he's written you a to-do list in preparation of our mutual impending doom.

David Moscrop reflects on his time teaching in South Korea, looking at the disturbing hatred of Japan harboured by a number of his students, and offers some thoughts on how young hatred might be overcome.

My mother had worked hard while I was growing up, sometimes working a few jobs at once so that me and my brother could do things that other kids do: play sports, wear new running shoes, go to camp, participate in school trips, and eat food. She struggled in the ways that single mothers struggle, and in some ways that many don’t, and while growing up I never connected feminist movements and struggles to my mother’s day-to-day life.