Laugh (or cry) at the absurdity of the news
(Spoiler: It’s “Fury.”) At 2:27 a.m. Central Time on Saturday, February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a wave of strikes on Iran under the newly focus-grouped banner of Operation Epic Fury—a name that sounds less like a regional war and more like a limited-edition Doritos flavor. President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu solemnly…
LONDON—In a bold act of understatement, Fitch Ratings announced this week that climate risk might become “increasingly important” to sovereign credit ratings, particularly as large portions of the planet become uninsurable, intermittently on fire, or underwater. To track this unfolding inconvenience, Fitch has unveiled Climate Vulnerability Signals (Climate.VS), a sophisticated tool that assigns countries a helpful number…
UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS—In a bold new move that shocked absolutely no one who has ever looked at a drying riverbed, UN scientists announced this week that Earth has officially entered an “era of global water bankruptcy,” meaning the planet has been living beyond its hydrological means and is now emotionally, financially, and geographically underwater. According…
I sat down this week with a clickbait-bot (at least that’s what it introduced itself as) though it asked me to phrase it as “the Internet’s Most Honest Content Optimization Entity.” The interview took place in a browser tab I did not remember opening, beneath a headline that promised “Answers That Will Change Everything,” which turned out…
Back in 1982, Jeremy Leven — psychiatrist, novelist, and part-time prophet of digital damnation — published Satan: His Psychotherapy and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S. In it, Lucifer didn’t show up with horns, hooves, or a blues riff. He booted up. The Prince of Darkness manifested as a computer. Behold: the Original Algorithm. Forty years…
Over the past week the headlines have been coming in like biblical plagues, if the Bible had been written by CNN’s breaking news ticker: Spain battles record wildfires even as the end of a heat wave brings lower temperatures Fire Season Is Starting Earlier Thanks to Climate Change, New Study Finds Four years after war…
Yes, friends, while sea levels rise, wildfires torch continents, and earthquakes toss cities like a toddler with a Lego set, Wall Street has cooked up yet another high-yield thrill ride for investors who like their portfolios shaken, not stirred—with a tsunami chaser. According to a paywalled Financial Times article that somehow managed to keep a…
In the wreckage of World War II, amid bombed-out cities and broken economies, the United States emerged as the world’s banker. The old gold standard, too fragile and limited for the rising demands of postwar global trade, was shelved. The dollar, backed by the U.S. Treasury and a well-armed smile, stepped in to assume gold’s…
A political consultant leans in close to a tired-looking voter in a swing state Waffle House and says: “Okay, here’s our act. First, we spend thirty years promoting the slow abandonment of the working class, privatizing everything Reagan didn’t get to, and apologizing every time the Republicans call us ‘socialists.’ We say ‘compromise’ but mean…
By now, you’ve probably read that the United States—once famed for putting people on the Moon and inventing Pop-Tarts—is doing a rather enthusiastic job of canceling science. Not accidentally, like when you spill coffee on a lab notebook, but actively, gleefully, and with the sort of techbro gusto usually reserved for buying up a failing…