13-minute read Last week the pop singer Taylor Swift made headlines with an otherwise-unremarkable live performance. She was considered to have stolen some of her moves and production from the singer Beyoncé, and because Beyoncé is black, there were calls of ‘cultural appropriation’. Only a few short years ago this strange phrase would have […]
China’s ticking timebomb
11-minute read On 13 March 2015 Mihrigul Tursun arrived at an Egyptian airport with her eight-week-old triplets. She boarded a plane to China, hardly imagining that she was making the biggest mistake of her life. Mihrigul had planned to visit the children’s grandparents in the western province of Xinjiang, but when she arrived […]
Social Justice Warriors: a cult by any other name
14-minute read “It was the darkest chapter of my life… I’ve pinned down four core features that make it so disturbing: dogmatism, groupthink, a crusader mentality, and anti-intellectualism… Every minor heresy inches you further away from the group. People are reluctant to say that anything is too radical for fear of being seen […]
The conflict at the heart of science
11-minute read The Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson only eats beef. Literally just beef, he says, and nothing else at all: no vegetables; no fruit; no carbs; no meat that isn’t beef. Peterson has been following the example of his daughter Mikhaila, who suffers from an autoimmune disorder so severe that she needed hip and ankle […]