The Curious Case of Acceptable Festivities
Why some imported traditions become “culture” in the West, while others remain forever foreign
Cymposium
The annoying people that bring up politics at dinner
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It's Not Who You Know Anymore
Why the networking playbook that built the twentieth century may no longer be enough in the twenty-first.
The Cure for Being Alive
We were sold the friction-free life as the route to contentment. It arrived exactly as promised, and that turned out to be the problem.
The Enemy We Decided to Keep
For most of our history the danger arrived from outside. We won. The danger now is the winning.
The Creditor We Keep Choosing
Governments talk about the bond market as though it were weather. It is a relationship, and there are others.
Aligned to Whom
There is no setting marked everyone. There never was, for any system we have built. We are only now constructing one powerful enough to make the omission matter.
King of the North
Andy Burnham did not beat Reform. He beat a plumber. Everything reassuring about his coronation is the reason Farage gets in.
Nobody Felt It Go
Every population in history that stopped having children was forced to feel it. We have built the first machine that spares us the pain.
Someone to Point To
Every society reaches for a strongman eventually. It happens after the wreckage, and the cultures that think themselves immune are only the ones not yet frightened enough.
Evil Is a Measure of Strength
The West forgives the useful and bombs the weak. China's offence is that it is neither.
Welcome to the Queue
As Western nations harden their borders, reciprocity becomes the only coherent principle left