What we owe ourselves On 30th January 2026, the American Department of Justice released “the last batch” of evidence in connection to Jeffrey Epstein’s conviction of federal sex trafficking charges. I will not be looking at these files. I have absolutely no interest in seeing evidence of children getting abused, raped, and murdered. The files include not only photographs that the investigators working with the DOJ took; they also include photographs and videos taken by Jeffrey Epstein and his...

The wellness industry's new flagships are dubious There is a particular kind of optimism required to believe your body image issues will be resolved by something Kourtney Kardashian is selling as Lemme Burn, Lemme Curb, or Lemme Tone.  The modern supplement aisle is arranged to be a chapel: soothing labels and soft colours mixed with words that imply both science and behavioural absolution. Cleanse. Burn. Detox. Reset.  The promises are vague enough to evade scrutiny and specific enough to...

The most powerful tool against authoritarianism is a dictionary It begins, as it always does, with language. Before the uniforms, before the marches, before the disappearances, there is a subtle reshaping of words. Totalitarianism, in every form it has taken, begins by narrowing the range of what can be said — therefore, what can be thought.  Complexity becomes suspicious, vocabulary becomes a casualty of ideology, complexity is replaced by slogan, and precision yields to repetition. In the...