Independent journalism
How people live, think and relate to one another — and how culture shapes modern life.
On Sincerity, Integrity, and the Ethics of Character Almost everyone knows a situation like this: a friend has promised to help with a move. Saturday, eight in the morning, carrying boxes. The promise was made casually, weeks earlier, while saying goodbye at the door. On Friday evening, something else comes up at the last minute:...
Why We Spend So Much on Flowers Maybe they are on the dining table. Maybe on a sideboard, or by the window. It hardly matters where they are. You walk into the room, and you notice them. You admire them. You may even say something nice about them. The object of all this attention?Not a...
Why people are deliberately seeking out spaces without smartphones. Around 200 people meet in the morning to do something together that, just a few years ago, was completely normal but now seems almost unimaginable: they come together to read. They read books and place their smartphones and electronic devices in a small locker before entering...
Recently, I was sitting with friends, talking over pizza and wine about developments in world politics, when someone said something that stayed with me: "These days, countries don't just conquer and annex other countries anymore. That happened in the past. Not today." It's true. Today we have international law, the United Nations, and democracy. We...
Imagine it's 1995. You leave your house, walk to a newsstand, and buy a daily newspaper. Afterwards, you meet a few friends at a café, spend a pleasant afternoon together, and then browse through a bookstore before heading home. Sounds a lot like today, doesn't it? Yet, aside from a handful of people you happened...
Seeking Freedom, Finding Verification... Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform formerly known as Twitter has reshaped the world of microblogging. Companies, politicians, celebrities, and private users have turned their backs on the platform, now called X, and have since been wandering through the digital landscape searching for a new home. Some have settled on Mastodon...
Every day, we read articles, listen to interviews and podcasts, and scroll through social media. Yet what most of us fail to notice is this: what we read and hear shapes the way we think as a whole - because words have power. More power than most of us realize. Words shape our reality. And...
When you imagine yourself thinking, where do you see yourself? Probably sitting still, in a quiet room, a café, or on a park bench, quietly lost in thought. That image is familiar to many of us. Aristotle, however, imagined thinking differently. He did not believe that thought emerges best in silence. He believed it arises...
For Plato, thinking began where the visible world ends. Born around 427 BCE in Athens, Plato grew up during a time of political change. Athenian democracy was already declining, and power struggles and internal tensions shaped public life. One event, however, stood out above all others and shaped Plato’s thinking for the rest of his...
For most people today, philosophy feels disconnected from real life. It belongs in libraries. In footnotes. In thick books that are never fully read… What few people realize is this: philosophy does not begin only in books. It begins in moments of discomfort. And in moments of happiness. In doubt. In loneliness. In anger and...
