Technology
Heart’s content
According to Pliny the Elder, Scipio Aemilianus was the first man to shave daily. The origin of the name Boeing…
Aesopian
To evade algorithms that hunt down forbidden words, users of platforms like TikTok employ cryptic synonyms. So deadbecomes unalive, and…
Gif
The man who invented gifs, Stephen Wilhite, has died, aged 74. Controversy survives him – over how to pronounce the…
Monopoly rules
Here’s a useful tip. Go to the Royal Mail websiteand you can ask your postman to collect letters or parcels…
End of the line
The premature death of the home phone
‘I fear people adapt too much’
The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer on how to stay ahead of the algorithms
Two reasons not to let Sir Tony rest on his Garter laurels
I’m picturing Sir Tony Blair enjoying a fitting of his Garter robes after watching Boris Johnson stagger through PMQs. ‘I’m…
Real life
After launching an investigation into my missing phone, Vodafone informed me it could not deal with me any further until…
Will our future lives be like a video game?
A few years ago, the software company Owlchemy Labs released a computer game called Job Simulator. Its premise was simple.…
Old money
In defence of hard cash
Real life
‘Can I ask you why you don’t want a smart phone?’ said the chirpy manager, as I stood blinking in…
Sole traders
My strange encounter with the foot fetishists
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter ban is nothing to celebrate
Marjorie Taylor Greene is nuttier than M&M World. Not your garden-variety conservative, or even a conservative at all, but a…
The hypocrisy of Elon Musk
Tesla’s sleek, if expensive, electric cars are leading the battle against climate change. Its batteries are moving renewable energy into the…
Reality check
The philosopher David Chalmers on whether the universe is a simulation
Sense and sensibility
Steven Pinker and Rory Sutherland on reason vs instinct
The meeting of minds
I learned a great deal at university, about half of it from a man called Raymond Foulk. Ray was not…
Low life
For early humans there was no distinction between spirit and matter. There was no idea of self; no barrier between…
Fresh hell
Prepare for the ‘metaverse’
The changing face of war
The strategic bankruptcy of the West has twice so far this century demanded that our brave soldiers risk their bodies…
What will you buy that others won’t?
In 1966, the legendary adman David Ogilvy set out to buy a home in France. He boarded a transatlantic liner…
Wake-up call
Why is it so hard to live without a mobile phone?
An idea whose time has come – at last
Thornton Wilder remarked that there are individuals who fall in love with an idea long before its appointed rendezvous with…
The problem with ‘David’s law’
Two members of parliament have been killed in the past five and a half years. This, one long-serving MP laments,…
Banning anonymity creates more problems than it solves
There are growing calls to end internet anonymity in the wake of Sir David Amess’s death. The Tory MP Mark…
