• Don Charles says: ‘It was more of a cultural gathering’

• Trainer also praises Tyson Fury for backing his boxer

Daniel Dubois’ trainer Don Charles has played down reports that a party at the fighter’s home hours before his world heavyweight championship bout with Oleksandr Usyk at Wembley on Saturday night disrupted the boxer’s preparation.

Dubois was knocked out in the fifth round by Usyk and Charles does not dispute that his charge did not arrive until 8.20pm at the arena, 90 minutes before his scheduled ring walk time. Footage of what Charles describes as more of a “cultural gathering” than a party emerged on Tuesday, but the trainer insisted that Dubois and his entourage arrived within their allocated time, and had ample time to undergo all pre-fight preparations necessary to face Usyk.

From rebelling against a religious upbringing by memorising Beastie Boys lyrics, to soul-stirring discoveries about dead loved ones – Guardian readers share the musical compilations that defined them

It was 2005, and I had just started going out with a girl who was way out of my league. I called on an old trick – the mixtape. Having been a music nerd all my life, I decided I could use some help from Miles Davis, Cinematic Orchestra, Stereolab and more to woo her. Making the perfect mixtape is an art form. You have to start strong, but you don’t want to cram all the best bits into the first 10 minutes. I needed to show myself as a man of the world – some more obscure choices, a bit of jazz. I sequenced them so they all flowed together nicely, and all this was done in an era where I had to rip the tracks from CDs. And in a final touch, I had to put in a track from a band that were playing very shortly – in this case, The Go! Team! – so I could invite her to the gig.

• Live updates from the first day’s play at Old Trafford

• County cricket – live | Read The Spin | And mail Daniel

Is this the best series in England since 2005? To borrow Shenseea’s line, “that’s a no for me” – I’m going for South Africa 2012, as that was two great teams playing for the mace, not to fine teams playing for the trophy – but it was only three matches, and we’ve got two more for this to usurp it.

On Kuldeep, Athers notes that England were always going to bowl – and when did describing it that way replace calling it fielding in the cricketing lexicon –if they won the toss, so Gill could’ve guaranteed having him wheeling away in the fourth innings. I bet England are pleased he’s not there.

A fascinatingly uneasy debut from Ryan J Sloan has hints of Lynch and Cronenberg with star and co-writer Ariella Mastroianni radiating suppressed anguish and rage

Here is a paranoid noir chiller from the US, shot on 16mm on the mean streets of Jersey City; it is a fascinating debut for first-time feature director Ryan J Sloan that premiered at Cannes last year and is now getting its much-deserved UK release. A genuine skin-crawling unease seeps out of the screen for every second of its running time, helped by a brooding, moaning electronic score by Steve Matthew Carter. This ineffably creepy, often unbearably tense and disquieting film has a little of early Christopher Nolan (the Nolan of Following and Memento), with hints of Lynch and Cronenberg in its hallucinatory episodes.

Sloan’s co-writer and partner Ariella Mastroianni (reportedly a very distant relative of Marcello) stars as Frankie, a woman living on the edge of poverty, suffering from the neurogenerative disorders ataxia and dyschronometria. This means that she is disoriented and cannot accurately judge the passing of time, a condition she attempts to manage by listening to 30-minute tapes on an old-fashioned Sony Walkman, and by gazing in at the windows of total strangers. Her pinched, sharp, intelligent and discontented face dominates the screen; she radiates suppressed anguish and rage at everything that has happened and will happen to her, and at the idea that her condition means she will have to resign herself to an assisted living facility. The scene in which a harassed doctor puts this to her is itself a masterly set piece of grimness.

Let’s try a pragmatic populism, with the stirring ideas of an AOC and the plainspoken appeal of a Marie Gluesenkamp Perez

“How the Democrats lost the working-class vote”, ran the headline on the New York Times’s front page on 6 January. According to the Times, the Democrats’ estrangement from the working class was decades in the making. The party’s enthusiastic embrace of trade and globalization led to the closure of factories across industrial America, eliminating jobs that had been a prime source of stability, identity and prestige.

While many Democrats attributed Trump’s success to the left’s embrace of “woke” language and causes like transgender rights, the Times observed, the economic seeds of his victories “were sown long ago”. A longtime AFL-CIO official was quoted as saying that “one of the things that has been frustrating about the narrative ‘the Democrats are losing the working class’ is that people are noticing it half a century after it happened”.

Don’t ask what’s the matter with Kansas.

Don’t ask how Trump voters can vote against their interests.

Don’t ask evangelical Christians how they can support someone like Trump.

Don’t claim that the facts and science are on your side.

Don’t claim that Trump voters are victims of disinformation.

Don’t blame the Democrats’ unpopularity on Fox News and other rightwing outlets.

Don’t campaign with celebrities.

Don’t sermonize when discussing climate change.

Don’t call Trump supporters stupid.

Michael Massing is the author of Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind. He is writing a book about money and influence