Have you taken the pickle pill? Pickles and the liquid in which they often come are proliferating across western cuisine. They have been praised for their health qualities, with gut-pleasing, sodium-rich pickle juice becoming a post-workout favourite in Britain and America. It’s even being incorporated into cocktails and beer. ‘Putting a pickle in cheap beer
The English teacher abroad is a generally peripatetic animal. He moves somewhere for a year or two and then gets bored, runs out of money or fathers an illegitimate child before moving along. Meet him and he has a thousand stories about Mexican border guards, Thai prostitutes and Russian oligarchs. Enjoy the conversation. He won’t
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the maaaiiin event of the eeevening. In the red corner, fighting out of Boca Chica, Texas, Eeeeelon ‘the Execuuutioner’ MUUUSK! And his opponent, in the blue corner, fighting out of Palo Alto, California, Maaaark ‘The Madman’ ZUCKERBEEERG! Sadly, we might never get the fight between Elon Musk of Twitter and
Hunter Biden is a great cinematic character: the loser son of an elite career politician who bounces between semi-powerful jobs on the strengths of his contacts and his name while inhaling mountains of drugs and banging prostitutes. How can you make a bad film about that? Well, somehow the creators of My Son Hunter have
A common theme among America’s spree killers is a fondness for rambling online. Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger griped about his inability to get a girlfriend. Troy Sesler made videos about anime that grew increasingly dark before he flipped out and killed his family. Randy Stair made numerous sketches and vlogs detailing his fondness for
In a typically baffling column in the New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman has said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might represent ‘our first truly world war’ because, among other reasons, ‘virtually everyone on the planet can… observe the fighting at a granular level.’ This is primarily absurd because it implies that being able to
The saga of ‘West Elm Caleb’ will make you wish that you had never used the internet. It will make you wish that you had never heard of the internet. It is the sort of thing that would make Ted Kaczynski feel vindicated, if his prison guards forced him to look at social media as
A plague of apes has spread across social media. Wherever you look, blank simian faces stare back at you. Their features? Sickening. Their prices? Equally so. The apes have brought in more than $1 billion (£750 million) in sales. Eminem, Mark Cuban and Shaquille O’Neal are just some of the famous names who own an
Jimmy Carr was once the smug face of shock comedy. As a stand-up comedian, and a host of various comedy shows, he used to joke with his trademark poker face about looks, disabilities and sexual violence. The Welsh, the Scots and obese women and children were also targets. When controversy inevitably came, Carr stood his ground. He caused
The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell has kicked off in New York and rich and powerful men across America and Europe are doubtless biting their nails and whispering to their lawyers. Ms. Maxwell is on trial on charges of sex trafficking of a minor and sex trafficking conspiracy, but others are being caught in the crossfire.
You already know that State of Terror, Hillary Clinton’s new novel, written in collaboration with the best-selling author Louise Penny, is going to be awful. You want to why. If the novel is a corpse then let this critic be the coroner. To be fair, State of Terror offers as much literary competence as you
As soon as he had beaten Deontay Wilder last weekend, Tyson Fury gave thanks “to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ”. He said that he was going to pray for his fallen opponent. He has said that when he was recovering from depression and mental illness he “couldn’t do it on [his] own” and got down
Donald Trump has consistently supported Britain’s departure from the European Union. ‘Countries want their own identity,’ the president has said, ‘and the UK wanted its own identity.’ Indeed, Trump has been such a forceful advocate of the Leave position that he has announced that he should be called ‘MR BREXIT’. Trump has assured Britons that
The tragic case of Gabrielle Petito attracted international interest for various reasons: the mystery of her disappearance, the double mystery of her boyfriend disappearing and, perhaps most significantly, the fact that the pair had been traveling together and documenting their journey on social media. People had an almost proprietorial interest in the case. Somehow, it
Do you ever catch yourself thinking, ‘You know, I need to spend less time in the real world and more on the internet’? If so, Mark Zuckerberg has good news for you! The Facebook founder is promoting the development of the ‘metaverse’ – a virtual reality world, or virtual reality worlds, that would allow us
An opinion columnist should have some self-awareness in life. When your job is to sit behind a laptop droning on about politics, for example, one should be very careful before casting aspersions on the mental and physical performance of one of the most decorated Olympians of all time. Simone Biles, who transcended poverty and abuse
The narrowness of President Andrzej Duda’s victory in this weekend’s Polish presidential elections, where he defeated Rafał Trzaskowski, the Mayor of Warsaw, by less than 2 per cent, was God’s gift to opinion commentators. What with Brexit, Trump et cetera we can write 800-1200 words about a nation being ‘divided’ and ‘polarised’ in our sleep.
It’s kind of amazing. For weeks we have been arguing about the minute details of viral transmission. Can you be outside? How often can you be outside? Can you be with other people? How many? And how much distance should you keep from each other? Then masses of people gather in cities across the world
Kazik Staszewski, a grizzled 57-year-old, does not look like the kind of singer who would top the charts. Nor does his recent accordion-heavy song ‘Your Pain Is Better Than Mine’ sound like the kind of song that sells. Nonetheless, the song took Poland by storm, topping the Radio Three charts and racking up millions of
An extraordinary row between Russia and Poland over the second world war is refusing to die down and threatens to overshadow commemorations for the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has suggested Poland is partly to blame for the war’s outbreak. Poland’s president Andrzej Duda has hit back, accusing Putin of an
