In The Convergence of the Twain, Thomas Hardy’s 1912 poem on the loss of the Titanic, the great liner and the iceberg are presented as predestined to meet in their fatal embrace: “Alien they seemed to be/ No mortal eye …
The football hooligans fighting for Ukraine
“Tottenham were hard. They fought well.” Vitalii Ovcharenko pauses and sips his tea, having earlier refused my offer of a beer. “I remember it clearly. There weren’t many of them and they were heavily watched by the police. But, still, …
Is the Government spying on you?
“Government cracks down on spread of false coronavirus information online,” announced a UK Government press release on March 30, 2020. “Specialist units” are tackling dangerous misinformation, disinformation, criminal fraudsters, and “false and misleading narratives”, we were told.
But, as Big …
Musk will never tame Twitter
Elon Musk and Twitter seem to be circling the drain. When Musk banned any links to Twitter competitors on Sunday, prompting criticism even from former allies and a humiliating climbdown later that day, it appeared as if Musk had fully …
What I discovered at Twitter HQ
One name at the centre of the story about Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” is that of Jay Bhattacharya. A professor at Stanford’s medical school, he rose to prominence as a co-author of the “Great Barrington Declaration”, which opposed Covid lockdown …
The virtues of Twitter
If you spend any time on social media, you’ve probably seen a cartoon of a stick figure hunching feverishly over a computer. A voice calls: “ARE YOU COMING TO BED?” The response comes: “I CAN’T, THIS IS IMPORTANT… SOMEONE IS …
Elon Musk must destroy Twitter
If there is anything more dull than listening to acquaintances relating their dreams, it can only be reading journalists complaining about Twitter. Yet since Elon Musk spent $44 billion on becoming its main character, the topic has become inescapable. As …
Open letter to Facebook for de-platforming and ripping off PANDA
Dear Mr Zuckerberg,
PANDA – Pandemics Data & Analytics is an independent grass-roots civil society organisation formed in 2020 by a large multidisciplinary group of concerned professionals. PANDA’s central mission was to analyse the cost-benefit of the COVID-19 response. Encouraged …
Open letter to Facebook for de-platforming and ripping off PANDA
Dear Mr Zuckerberg,
PANDA – Pandemics Data & Analytics is an independent grass-roots civil society organisation formed in 2020 by a large multidisciplinary group of concerned professionals. PANDA’s central mission was to analyse the cost-benefit of the COVID-19 response. Encouraged …
Selfies have made you ugly
Modern man, wrote the social psychologist Erich Fromm in 1956, “has been transformed into a commodity”. Scroll through social media, and you will see this transformation is absolute. On one side, we are asked to rate glamorous, increasingly similar-looking people …
Why Ukraine’s counter-offensive is working
“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 …