September 4, 2026
The investor swayed by a billboard that simply says “caffeine” knows they’re getting table scraps.
Money and Power
Adventures in Capitalism
“Ralwo Zgntry!” I gasped, because everybody’s heard of him
“This success then drove me to want something more, bigger, so next I funded a hospital, or really it was just a wing of a hospital. But walking past it gave me a different feeling than walking past my library, not serious and intellectual, but caring and humanitarian. I will be honest that I have never been very serious or intellectual, and I can’t say I’m particularly caring or humanitarian either. But having my name on these buildings made me feel like I was all these things, not really, of course, but in appearance.”
July 9, 2026
Real Canadian DNA
“I need to know what being Canadian means”
The Dove Fresh Clubhouse offers a series of photo ops after which you can take a misty refreshing shower and treat yourself to a stick of deodorant; Home Depot presents “David Beckham’s Backyard” which does not look like what you might imagine David Beckham’s backyard would look like, or any backyard really, but you can get your face painted in Home Depot–swatched colors (one imagines a child sweatily choosing between eggshell and ecru).
June 30, 2026
From Mexico 1986 to North America 2026
For a few weeks, Mexico, not the United States, was the center of the world
The contours of the 2026 World Cup serve as a clear indicator of just how much the footballing relationship between Mexico and the United States has evolved over the four decades since the Azteca Stadium last hosted the tournament. While much remains to be seen—the Mexican national team has so far exceeded expectations and could well outperform the US—one thing seems clear: Football is no longer an exceptional realm that inverts the hierarchy of Mexico’s subaltern relationship with its northern neighbor.
June 23, 2026
Wake Up and Smell the Reality
It's fitting that MoU is only one letter removed from IOU
Tacitly or openly, officials and observers on all sides of the deal—even those who otherwise seem to inhabit different universes—acknowledge that the US has lost the war. And should the war resume, as Israel hopes, the US will lose again. “You can’t kill your way out of . . . every national security problem”; but you can sure as hell die trying.
June 4, 2026
This study only recruited first-timers. Your body’s data was only valuable once.
In the Reality Lab
Looking Like a State
On Frederick Wiseman
As much as we may want their subjects to be actors in the historical sense, there are no individuals; there is only society, plainly laid out for us to see. There are always “characters,” but their significance lies in the way they intersect with and illuminate social structure. They never motivate action — what they do instead is perform (and sometimes declaim) the logics under which they operate.
Resort to Boulder
Last Sundance in Park City
Among filmmakers, dread over money seemed to outweigh any sense of buzz. By the first weekend the lack of major sales had already become a central topic of conversation. As it happens, two of the best films in Sundance’s slate confronted the industry’s distribution crisis head-on.
April 14, 2026
Cop-Killer Bullets
Blue Power arrives in Washington
Biaggi’s rise went hand-in-hand not just with law and order politics but with a shift in the balance of power within the police profession writ large—away from the respected chiefs, and toward the irascible rank and file and the unions that represented them.
March 26, 2026
The destruction is real. Israel and the US are deindustrializing Iran.
Night of the Two Suns
January 22, 2026
The Beast of Bentonville
Who needs the state, when Walmart provides?
In retrospect, the week of Donald Trump’s inauguration was an inopportune time for Walmart to hold the grand opening of its new corporate campus.
January 16, 2026
Iran's Three-Body Problem
Notes on the current uprising
The ongoing uprising is rooted in the political economy of structural adjustment, which forms the unstable medium through which revolt becomes contagious.
