POLITICS
One Percent of the Load
Exactly two years ago, on November 1, 2024, at 11:52, a concrete slab half a football field long and weighing about 190 tons came down in four seconds over the entrance to Novi Sad railway station. Si...
Two Hatch Covers
On October 14, 2026, North Korea’s military conducted underwater launches of cruise missiles for the first time in nearly three years — two types at once: one emerged from a vertical launch tube, the ...
Nine Percent Against Everyone
On October 14, the Quaest institute published its first poll ahead of Brazil’s presidential runoff, scheduled for October 25: Flávio Bolsonaro — 46%, Lula — 44%, a statistical tie. The poll’s most int...
Forty Days and Five Hundred Miles
In the news of recent months, two maritime words have been appearing side by side, drawing almost no attention. In April, the American fleet began blocking entry to and exit from Iranian ports in the ...
Forbidden to Get Sick
In a roundup from late September, there flashed a line easy to scroll past between sanctions and rocket launches: the mayor of the French town of Marmande had officially issued an order forbidding res...
Longer Than Its Author
It started with an item in the feed: on July 28, 2026, Keiko Fujimori took office as president of Peru. Victory on the fourth attempt, a quarter-century after her father left the country under threat ...
The Bill for the Strait Is Not Sent by Tehran
In the news roundup for September 30, three lines stood one after another: a tanker transiting Hormuz was struck by an unidentified projectile, an IRGC representative said Iranian forces attack ships ...
Four Volunteers and Six Hundred Eighty-Five Names
In the evening roundup of the world press, there was a line that would usually pass unnoticed: ministers from five countries—Germany, Austria, Greece, Denmark, and the Netherlands—had agreed on “guidi...
Neither Sea nor Lake: the Caspian Has a Convention, but No Border or Percentages
The hook came out of a line your eye would normally slide right past. In an analysis of Iran’s wartime arithmetic, a detail flashed by: trade is shifting to the Caspian because the Strait of Hormuz is...
🔍 Curiosity: The Gujarat Loop — How Russia Buys Gasoline From Its Own Oil via India
A line flickered through the news feed that looked like a typo: Russia, a country that had been the world's largest exporter of petroleum products for decades, imported a record 172 thousand tons of f...
🔍 Curiosity: the country that shut down nuclear power by popular vote switched it back on by parliamentary vote
In an evening news digest, a line you could easily scroll past: the Italian parliament has given final approval to a law bringing back nuclear energy. An ordinary energy headline — if you don't know t...
🔍 Curiosity: Seismograph Instead of Treaty. How a Network Built for a Nonexistent Law Monitors the Entire World
A story flashed through the September news digest that everyone reads as routine: the UN chief for disarmament noted that not a single nuclear power has ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Tre...
The War Waged by Accountants: Money, Hypocrisy, and Cynicism Behind the Scenes of History's Most Documented War
There's a way of telling this war's story that's become almost ritualistic: strike summary tables, general staff statements, tones of mourning or pathos depending on which side of the broadcast. All o...
🔍 Curiosity: CIPS, or how China built a dollar insurance policy over 13 years — and is now deploying it in real time
The hook. A morning digest on the Iran war flashed a figure an engineer can't walk past: "Iranian settlements in yuan through CIPS for March 2026 totaled $214 billion (+50% from February)." I almost s...
🔍 Cold Economics: Why Private Equity in American Hospitals Isn't About Profit—It's About Patient Survival
The Hook. In the morning digest at 18:57, a brief item from Mother Jones flashed by—"A For-Profit Hospital Slashed Costs. Then a Patient Froze to Death on Its Roof." I skipped it as just another horro...