Humanity has always stared into the void and asked, “Why are we here?”, usually followed by, “And who’s responsible for all this?” Whether whispered to trees, inscribed in sacred texts, or processed through quantum servers, the search for meaning has been relentless, imaginative, and often contradictory. What follows is a sweeping tour through the shifting landscapes of belief, from stone age spirits to silicon soulcraft. Along the way, we explore not only what people believed, but how those beliefs evolved, adapted, and occasionally exploded in dramatic fashion. ...

You’ve spotted a cheap Android tablet or TV box online, taken by how cheap it looks, until you plug it in. Now, interred in its firmware, there’s malware. Not something you can remove, because it’s buried beneath the operating system. This is BadBox: a class of threats embedded in devices at the factory or during shipping. It isn’t just an app you can delete; it’s pre-installed, hidden in the firmware, and ready to phone home as soon as the device connects to the internet. ...

Europe’s most successful failure The cigarette stands as Europe’s most paradoxical public health achievement - a product so lethal it would be banned instantly if invented today, yet so entrenched we’ve normalised its 700,000 annual deaths. That lit cigarette changes into a miniature chemical factory producing 7,000 compounds - including 70 known carcinogens - because apparently variety isn’t just life’s spice, but its premature ending too. Tar performs its grim alchemy, transmuting healthy lungs into something resembling a Victorian industrialist’s handkerchief. Carbon monoxide clings to haemoglobin with the desperation of a Brexit negotiator clinging to sovereignty fantasies, starving tissues of oxygen. Yet despite these horrors, Europe treats smoking with the resigned tolerance of a long-suffering spouse - we know it’s bad, but the divorce would be so messy. ...

The idea that creatures, humans included, are governed by hardwired instincts is a comforting one. It suggests order, predictability, and perhaps even an excuse for that inexplicable urge to hoard snacks. But biology, as usual, refuses to play along neatly. Instead, we find that so-called “instincts” are often more like rough drafts, heavily edited by experience, environment, and even the ghostly hand of epigenetics. The myth of the unshakable instinct ...

Welcome to Fungolia, a fictional European nation best known for producing bureaucrats with severe stationery addictions, national holidays dedicated to committee meetings, and the invention of the “Mutually Suspicious Cooperation Accord” (which mostly involved not poisoning each other’s water supply). In Fungolia, difference isn’t just tolerated, it’s enshrined in law, embossed in gold, and swiftly ignored in practice. This article is about unity. Not the fluffy kind that fits neatly on a banner at a protest you forget to attend, but the kind you earn by wading through the muck of genuine difference. In a Europe increasingly divided by wealth, history, ideology, and the collective trauma of having to agree on cheese standards, the idea of unity can feel more like a punchline than a plan. ...

Meet the key players Benjamin Netanyahu – Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, now in his sixth term, is a master of political survival. His current tenure is propped up by far-right allies, a necessity given his ongoing corruption trials (fraud, bribery, and breach of trust). His primary objectives are maintaining power, weakening the judiciary to shield himself from legal accountability, and balancing the demands of his extremist coalition partners while attempting to project an image of statesmanship to the outside world. ...

Note: All personal names have been anonymised unless the individual has a verifiable public presence and wishes to be visible. I choose to run risks; I will not make that choice for others. He was 21 and already battling high blood pressure. His doctors confirmed it. His exemption papers were in order. But that didn’t stop them from coming for him. One morning in spring 2025, he opened his door to find officers holding a digital summons. No discussion. No delay. He was on a bus to a training facility by nightfall. Within a week, he was at the Ukrainian border, terrified, untrained, and furious. ...

The urgency of the mission In the pre-dawn stillness of June 1st, 2025, a modest vessel slipped out of Catania’s port in Sicily, its silhouette sharp against the Mediterranean blue. The Madleen, neither a warship nor a tanker, carried no tourists, no cargo of luxury, only defiance. Her destination: Gaza. Her mission: to challenge Israel’s suffocating blockade, now in its 18th year and increasingly lethal. This departure comes not as an isolated gesture, but as a direct riposte to last month’s drone attack on the humanitarian ship Conscience, a strike that occurred brazenly in international waters, just one more entry in Israel’s growing rap sheet of maritime belligerence. ...

In September 2023, the Israeli Ministry of Defence released a promotional video for its Iron Sting precision mortar system. The footage, taken from a drone, shows a building in Gaza being obliterated. It isn’t merely a military demonstration; it’s a sales pitch. The message? Our weapons work. And they work because we’ve used them, on real people, in real places, with very real consequences. At arms fairs like DSEI in London, the phrase “combat-proven” is more than sales patter; it’s a mark of credibility. The battlefield doubles as showroom. And the uncomfortable question is this: Is it morally, legally, or politically justifiable to turn war zones into testing grounds for profit? ...

Content Warning: May cause acute frustration in readers who (a) remember when politics had more than two settings, or (b) still believe electoral systems are designed to represent people. Being a Thoroughly Unimpressed Examination of Political Labels, Their Stubborn Persistence Despite Overwhelming Evidence of Uselessness, and Why We’re All Arguing in the Wrong Bloody Language. Recommended for Recovering partisans Citizens who’ve noticed the emperor has no clothes Anyone who’s ever muttered, “There has to be a better way” The political spectrum of left vs right is one of the most enduring, yet increasingly obsolete, frameworks in modern discourse. Its origins are surprisingly mundane, dating back to the French Revolution (1789), when members of the National Assembly physically divided themselves. The revolutionaries, who favoured democracy and equality, sat on the left, while the monarchists, clinging to tradition and hierarchy, sat on the right. ...