I’m standing near the foot of a mountain that looms over Has in north-eastern Albania, staring at a bright red phone box that appears to have been transported here from the streets of Nineties London. To one side, a row …
The Love Of Money is…. / Hugo Talks
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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 …
How conservatives misunderstand grooming
Philosophers sometimes like to talk about “technological affordances” — basically, the possibilities of action that a new technology affords. Twitter’s affordances include the capacity to destroy one’s enemies without leaving the platform or otherwise breaking a sweat. This is the …
The men who worship Yukio Mishima
In some ways it’s strange that the online bodybuilding community idolises a slender, unathletic, literary youth. But given his knowledge of weakness, Yukio Mishima, real name Kimitake Hiraoka, understood the addictive pursuit of strength.
Mishima examined strength and weakness in …
This is the end of Trump
On Thursday, Donald Trump made the “major announcement” on Truth Social that he’d teased the day before. Since declaring for the 2024 presidency in mid-November, he’s done precious little campaigning; many expected him to release rally dates or issue some …
Harry and Meghan’s moral exile
Harry and Meghan divide opinion very much along the lines of whether one believes we have obligations beyond our control. I still remember a Christmas family row, me a stroppy teenager, that concluded with me insisting: “I didn’t ask to …
Can the Tories survive a Right-wing insurgency?
“Reform? Reform? Aren’t things bad enough already?” It’s unlikely this 19th-century phrase was uttered by any of the Tory leaders it is commonly attributed to, so perhaps we should give it to Rishi Sunak. He may have slightly raised the …
The curse of Northern stereotypes
Here are some snapshots of modern Britain, taken by a well-known broadcaster, playwright and social commentator. The railways are dying; car traffic is thriving. To the drivers, who interact with their fellow human beings mainly by injuring and killing them, …
UK Govt To Decode DNA of 100,000 NEWBORN BABIES / Hugo Talks
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Humans will defeat the chatbots
I have always written for a living. But most of that wasn’t the fun kind. Before my first essay for UnHerd was published, just over three years ago, I mostly did the other kind of writing: the anonymous stuff that …
Why do we pretend to be working-class?
Are we, to quote New Labour in the Nineties, “all middle-class now”? Do we all want to be? Not according to recent polling; far from middle-class norms pervading, British people disproportionately see themselves as working-class.
To understand why, it’s worth …
The art world’s lost sense of humour
“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better, but the frog dies in the process.” Truer words than these famous ones of E.B. White’s have rarely been spoken, and so requiring an explanation for jokes has …
How New York can survive
In 1912, James Weldon Johnson wrote that New York City is “the most fatally fascinating place in America”. The city, he explained, “sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding …
Will the people blame the strikers?
There is nothing like extreme weather to snap a crisis into focus. During the icy winter of 1978-79, the government’s attempts to tackle inflation, and the ensuing wave of pay strikes, all played out amid snowdrifts, burst pipes and icebound …