No Sacred Cows

Scepticism served medium rare

Category: Culture & Collapse

  • The Miracle Exemption: Mehdi Hasan and the Horse in the Room

    I regularly watch Mehdi Hasan on his Zeteo channel. I have always admired him. He is quick-witted, combative, incisive, formidably well informed and, at his best, almost impossible to evade. He has a particular gift for pinning politicians to facts when they would much rather disappear into rhetoric, and for spotting the evasions, sleights of…

  • The Shops Without Prices

    I spent a night recently at the Sofitel Le Faubourg in Paris, invited by someone I am very fond of and respect. The hotel is next door to the American Embassy, in that small and polished part of the city where wealth, power, diplomacy and fashion seem to have gathered together for mutual reassurance. Approaching…

  • Building a Better Britain

    What kind of Britain are we trying to build? Before answering that, it is worth asking what happened to the Britain many people once thought they were living in. For much of the post-war period there was a growing assumption that life would gradually improve. Not in a straight line and not for everyone, but…

  • The Robot Made Me Do it. I Blame Musk.

    There was a time when ordering a meal involved an exchange between two human beings. One stated what one wished to eat, another pretended to be interested, and eventually something resembling it arrived. The system was not perfect. It depended upon memory, goodwill, language, competence and, occasionally, even eye contact, all notoriously unreliable technologies. Fortunately,…

  • Sanctioned Stupidity

    Today’s attack at Bondi Beach was, according to early reports, aimed at a Hanukkah celebration. If that is confirmed, it will be yet another example of something humanity has failed to confront honestly. Religion has repeatedly given stupid people an excuse to commit unspeakable atrocities against their fellow humans. Not because faith uniquely creates violence,…

  • Message In A Bottle We Refuse To Read

    A beach that once held shells and seaweed now spits back our own rubbish. What would have shocked those of us who grew up before the plastic age barely registers today.

  • How to Tell If You’re Caught in the Dunning-Kruger Trap

    Learn the signs of the Dunning-Kruger effect — the cognitive trap where confidence outruns competence — and how to spot if you’re caught in it.

  • Influencer Interruptus

    Influencer Interruptus

    When even solitude needs a tripod. One man’s dawn swim meets the selfie apocalypse. After an hour’s swim at dawn in glorious solitude, the sea smooth as glass, the horizon glowing like molten silver – I thought I had the beach to myself: two kilometres of unspoilt quiet. Then, inevitably, modern civilisation arrived. A lone…

  • When the Brain Breaks

    In May 2025 Jia Tolentino wrote in the New Yorker about what she calls her “broken brain”. She means the fog that settles when words slip out of focus, when news feeds pile horror upon horror, and when reality itself feels unreliable. “I feel a troubling kind of opacity in my brain lately – as…

  • Tattooed Eyebrows, Vegan Dogs, and the Heat Death of Thought

    Looking through my crystal ball… Democracies will erode under the weight of attention spans shorter than a hamster’s. The planet will heat, then hiccup, then wheeze, then expire, because the best we can do is redesign shampoo bottles to save the turtles. And we will still waste time arguing over the colour. Eventually, we might…