“You better stay out of our country. The more Russians you send to Ukraine, the more of them we will kill, and the more death you will bring back to your homes.” Nataliya Zubar, native of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, …
You are already in the metaverse
The metaverse is going to change everything. And it’s already here. But what the hell is it?
In 2021, it seemed that every major technology executive took a stance on the metaverse, a new concept for the internet. Mark Zuckerberg …
Welcome to Philip K. Dick’s dystopia
Philip K. Dick, whose novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspired the film Blade Runner, did not live to enjoy his Hollywood success. He died on March 2, 1982, three months before the film was released.
In the years …
Welcome to Hustler’s University
Imagine if you could get a university education for a fraction of the cost. Imagine if you could complete your studies in a few months rather than a few years. And imagine if, once you graduated, you could walk away …
There’s nothing Punk about autism
After months of staff allegations of toxic bullying at Scottish beer company BrewDog, the company’s chief executive has finally explained the cause of his “intense and demanding” behaviour: he suspects he has “light-level autism”. In an open letter published last …
The paranoia driving office politics
Picture a huge, poisonous fruit falling to the ground, its skin splitting open, the rancid pulp pouring out. Picture the ants discovering the mess, swarming over it, drunk on the abundance in front of them — and far too preoccupied …
We are parading our virtue
What are processions for? Last Thursday evening, around a thousand people of all ages gathered in my local market square, and processed across the playing fields to light a beacon in honour of the Platinum Jubilee. My daughter was near …
Jihadi John created online censorship
It’s unclear how far Elon Musk’s pledge to restore free speech to Twitter will go; it wasn’t long ago that you could easily stumble upon entire ecosystems of online jihadis and their fanboys on the site. As one surrealist Twitter …
How the elites lost the Twitter war
Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is a litmus test of where you stand in the online ecosystem. To some, it means a dawn of “free speech” on a platform that has increasingly cracked down on unwanted views. To others, it …
Why Libs of TikTok terrifies the media
It’s an unmasking worthy of a demented superhero story: the exposure, after months of intrigue, of the elusive political operative known as Libs of TikTok. You may have missed this story — part secret identity drama, part media gatekeeping controversy, …
Do we need Caesar Elon Musk?
In 1515, Pope Leo X issued a papal bull stipulating that all published material translated from Hebrew, Greek, Arabic and Chaldaic into Latin, or from Latin into the vernacular, should be moderated by sensitivity readers. Without such precautions, the document …
How the Guardian enables Owen Jones
One of the greatest moments of my life was when I stood up to Susan Cuthbert. She ran our school playground and, yes, that is her actual name. (So sue me, Susan.) Every lunchtime, Susan assigned us a role to …
The myth of online misinformation
Just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine consumed the media, New York Times columnist Jay Caspian Kang and Substacker Matthew Yglesias published near-simultaneous critiques of the notions of “disinformation” and “misinformation”. This convergence among prominent liberals was significant. These and …
Is this Ukraine’s last chance for peace?
Nearly two weeks into the invasion of Ukraine, observing from a distance, it still feels as if there are two different wars, which barely overlap, taking place.
The first is the war on social media: in this war, a combination …
Escaping American tribalism
One summer afternoon when I was 23 — this was in 1987 — I was twiddling the dial on the radio in the apartment I was subletting on 114th St. when I stumbled on a station that was unlike anything …
