Self-help hacks such as ‘cooking from scratch’ or ‘meeting your friends’ may seem ridiculous. But there’s something deeply human at the heart of this trend

Does life, of late, feel just too easy? Are you keen to make it harder than it already is? If that sounds like a genuinely demented question in the week that the world came close to threatened Armageddon, then fair enough. I bridled too when I read last week about friction-maxxing, the supposed trend for doing things in slightly more effortful, time-consuming or analogue ways – cooking from scratch instead of ordering a delivery, finding your way using road signs instead of just plugging in the satnav, or reading a book rather than half-listening to the audio version of it – as a form of creative resistance to the inexorable march of big tech through our lives. Times are tough enough for a lot of people without being made to feel lazy for taking shortcuts.

Besides, the list published this week by the Washington Post of ways to friction-maxx – which included such superhuman feats as seeing your friends in person rather than just WhatsApping them, and actively trying to remember something rather than just falling back on Google – sounds suspiciously like the rebranding under an irritating new name of what used to be considered merely living. Your grandparents would have scoffed at the idea that any of these things were remotely difficult, or that making an effort to do them could somehow make you a better, more resilient person.

The 73-year-old has been at the cutting edge of US independent cinema since the 1980s. As Father Mother Sister Brother opens in the UK, he talks about grief, greed and ‘doing crazy shit’ with Steve Coogan

In 1991, Jim Jarmusch was casting for his anthology film Night on Earth. The premise was simple: five taxi drivers in five cities pick up passengers, set to a soundtrack by Tom Waits. The writer-director wanted Gena Rowlands to play a passenger, but she took some persuading. “Night on Earth was the first film she’d made since losing John [the director John Cassavetes, her husband] and she wasn’t sure. Eventually she said: ‘OK, I’ll be in this film for you.’” Jarmusch does a perfect impression of Rowlands, as he does with everyone he quotes – it’s quite a talent.

In the first vignette, Winona Ryder picks up Rowlands, who plays a casting director. Ryder, chewing gum, baseball cap on backwards, lights a cigarette; Rowlands, all old-school Hollywood elegance, sits in the back, asking Ryder about her hopes and dreams. Ryder turns down Rowlands’ offer of potential stardom, declaring that her dream is not to act, but to be a mechanic.

Forty years on from the release of their Victorialand album, we rank the Scottish band’s 20 best tracks, from goth beginnings to weightless masterpieces

At first, Cocteau Twins gave every impression of being a goth band: check out Wax and Wane’s Banshees-esque ambience – the guitar is very John McGeoch – flanged bass and drum machine. But the chorus soars out of the metaphorical cloud of dry ice, and Elizabeth Fraser’s voice is already outpacing her influences.

Former Viktor Orbán loyalist and his Tisza party have enjoyed meteoric rise as opposition movement grows

As a child growing up in Budapest, Péter Magyar had a poster of Viktor Orbán – at the time a leading figure in the country’s pro-democracy movement – hanging above his bed. Orbán was one of several political figures that adorned his bedroom, Magyar told a podcast last year, hinting at his excitement over the changes sweeping the country after the collapse of communism.

Now Magyar, 45, is the driving force behind what could be another momentous political change in Hungary: the ousting of Orbán, whose 16 years in power has transformed the country into a “petri dish for illiberalism”.

The madness is contagious – and nowhere has this been more evident than in the newly minted two-week ceasefire with Iran

The Madness of King Donald. Unless you’ve spent most of the last few years on a silent retreat – and who could blame you? – it can’t have escaped you that the American president is both not that bright and borderline sociopathic. A lethal combination. Posting “Open the Fuckin’ Strait you crazy bastards or you’ll be living in Hell” on his social media account is not the action of a well man. Certainly not when the Middle East is on a knife-edge.

But what you may have missed is that the madness is contagious. It also affects many of those who come in contact with him. Trying to deal with the madness makes them mad too, as they try to behave as if things that are most definitely not normal are all quite usual. All in a day’s work.

The 79th edition of the influential festival boasts an auteur-heavy lineup – with one, very big, country conspicuous by its almost total absence

• Gillian Anderson and Cara Delevingne to hit Cannes as auteur heavyweights dominate festival lineup

Has Europe fallen out of love with the US? Has Cannes fallen out of love with Hollywood? Will the festival, like Nato, become a non-American institution? Either way, the annual announcement of the Cannes selection has revealed a list that skews away from Hollywood towards a renewed dominance of world-cinema auteurs and heavy hitters, including Pedro Almodovar, Cristian Mungiu and Asghar Farhadi. There’s certainly nothing to compare with last year’s Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible extravaganza, although there are directorial offerings out of competition for Andy Garcia (also starring) with his crime drama Diamond, and John Travolta directs Propeller One-Way Night Coach, expressing his love of aviation, based on his own novel. There are no British directors announced (as yet), although Polish auteur Paweł Pawlikowski, in competition with his Thomas Mann movie Fatherland, could be cheekily claimed for the UK as he lived here for a long time.

Festival watchers and Cannesologists will be looking for the contemporary relevances and the now familiar talking points. The festival, under director Thierry Frémaux, has stuck to its refusal to admit streamer-only movies and won the argument by seeing its films do well at the Oscars. On the AI debate, perhaps Cannes is less purist. Steven Soderbergh’s documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview is based on John and Yoko’s final three-hour interview for RKO Radio shortly before Lennon’s murder, and for the visuals Soderbergh has reportedly used AI to reconstruct and reimagine the encounter. Some are intrigued, others uneasy.

Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade strikes as Trump tells US media he has asked Netanyahu to be more ‘low-key’ in Lebanon. Follow live news

• Netanyahu says there is no ceasefire in Lebanon as Israel launches fresh strikes

The streets of Islamabad are on strict lockdown as Pakistan’s capital prepares to play host to historic negotiations between Iran and the US that have dangled the promise of an end to war that has devastated the Middle East.

Even as the US-Iran ceasefire looked increasingly precarious, amid Israel’s continued bombardment of Lebanon and disputes over the terms of the talks, Pakistani officials insist that the make-or-break peace negotiations will be going ahead over the weekend as planned

It will be the second time Japan, which is heavily dependent on Middle East oil, has dipped into its strategic reserves since Iran war began

Japan will release additional oil reserves early next month, the prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, said on Friday, as concern grows over energy shortages caused by the crisis in the Middle East.

It will be the second time that Japan, which is heavily dependent on Middle East oil, has dipped into its strategic reserves since the US-Israel war on Iran started in February.

Beirut residents and officials say civilians were main casualties in operation that bombed 100-plus targets in 10 minutes

• Middle East crisis – live updates

It took Israel only 10 minutes to carry out one of the worst mass-killings in Lebanon since the end of the country’s civil war in 1990.

Omar Rakha heard the war planes but did not feel the explosions; it was only when he woke up face down on the street, bleeding, that he understood what had happened: the building next to his in the Barbour neighbourhood of central Beirut had been destroyed by two Israeli bombs. He then ran through the flaming wreckage to find his sister, screaming.

Seafarer tells of ‘impossible’ situation, with strait still so unsafe that crew would not cross even if told to sail

• Maritime and port workers: how is the Middle East conflict affecting you?

‘You can try to minimise the impact that this situation has on your mental health but it’s becoming impossible.” After six weeks stranded in the Gulf, one of the 20,000 seafarers trapped by Iran’s chokehold on the strait of Hormuz is reaching their limit.

Yet with the fragile Middle East ceasefire already fraying, the oil tanker worker – who first spoke to the Guardian a month ago – said any hope they may soon be free to leave had already evaporated, if it ever felt real at all.