There was a time when “the future” meant something specific: fully automated luxury communism, or the withering away of the state, or at least a council meeting where the people who actually cleaned the streets got to decide what happened on them. Now it mostly means an app that nudges
Anthony Bourdain once asked, on air, whether it would displease anyone if he walked over and punched Henry Kissinger in the face. What initially seemed like a harmless joke quickly revealed its darker side—the threat was all too real. Bourdain, arguably one of the world’s most well-travelled people,
A few weeks ago, American Eagle ran a denim ad with Sydney Sweeney, in which she chirpily announced, “My jeans are blue.” Within hours, it seemed, vast corners of the internet had decided it was a secret handshake for eugenics, a fashion ad as fascist manifesto. The White House weighed
There was a time when my words came out stiffly, as if they feared my readers would laugh if they dared to take up space. I remember practising my writing style with newspaper clippings and books when I started out as a philosophy student, and three semesters later, when I
Two actors – Matthew McConaughey and Sir Michael Caine – have sold their voices, quite literally, to a machine. Profiteer is a company called ElevenLabs that allows corporations to rent the echo of once-living voices for whatever marketing purposes best suit their needs. The firm already offers synthetic versions of Judy Garland
We have reached a peculiar moment in technological "progress" where we can purchase convenience on the explicit condition that we remain willfully blind to its mechanics. Before we get into it: Have you heard of NEO, the humanoid robot you can now buy? The marketing promise is cleanly
Open a social media app of your choice, and you’ll soon be assailed by a strange, anaesthetising spectacle: AI-generated videos starring impossibly cheerful children who wax lyrical about their carefree “lives” in eras they never lived through. These digital infants assure us that times were far simpler, freer, and
UK's former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has found his true calling: defending AI overlords' right to hoover up the world's art without so much as a "by your leave." Clegg, until recently a well-compensated alumnus of Meta's global affairs circus,
In 1998, The Lancet published a study so flimsy it should have blown away in a light breeze. Andrew Wakefield, a now former British doctor with dubious methods and undisclosed conflicts of interest, implied a link between childhood vaccines and autism. The scientific community quickly shredded the work. Yet for
Today, I will ask you not just to read what I have to say but also to do something, to take action: Print it all out. Not my newsletter, but everything that we want for posterity. Save what's worth saving—before it's too late. What do
I was there when it began. Long before Trump, before Brexit, before the word “MAGA” meant anything, the far-right was quietly learning how to take over the internet. There are, in my opinion, two key online events that, in hindsight, we can call the blueprint for how today’s Nazis
As “Odds & Sods” grows, I thought it wise to switch the newsletter to its own website—more control, less dependence on the whims of platform landlords. The migration, predictably, has proven complicated. The result? This edition appears a day late; apparently, independence comes with its own technical delays. Speaking
Did you miss me? For five months, I rattled off a weekly newsletter—observations, irritations, the odd stray thought. Then, quite without warning, I vanished for a hundred days. A silence, but hardly restful. Because the truth is, I missed the outlet. As I once confessed in those earlier newsletters,
Today, we will dig deeper into what I wrote last week. There’s no need to write an introduction: The Rise of Viral Nothingness This week, I found myself yelling at a Tiktok trend. A man in Manchester, microphone in hand, accosting strangers with the question, “What is the worst
This week, I’m sharing my most personal story yet—something a bit closer to the bone than usual. And just below, you’ll find a fresh new idea I’m trying out for the newsletter. No need for preamble or padding—let’s get straight to it. iPhone, Therefore
“Really? You perceive your newsletter as leftist?” my lunch date, a work-related contact I respect dearly, asked me on Tuesday. I was taken aback. We were sitting in a fancy restaurant in Berlin; she had travelled from New York, and I had come from my sweet, tiny hometown of Bremen.