This week, an app with a name most of us wouldn’t put on a greeting card topped the paid iPhone charts in China — Are You Dead? — and it’s worth stopping to watch what that says about this moment we’re in. You scroll through the story, and it’s almost…
Category: Society
Culture
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Bureaucratic Absurdity Has Entered Its Leaf Era
A Leaf, a Fine, and Bureaucratic Absurdity The scene is painfully ordinary: an 86-year-old man sitting outside in Skegness, England, minding his business, when a rogue leaf — dry, brown, doing what leaves do — blows straight into his mouth. He spits it out. The state intervenes. This is bureaucratic…
Culture
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A Shopping Mall Solves Smoking With Humiliation
A shopping mall in Shenzhen has started installing bathroom stall doors that turn transparent if they detect cigarette smoke. Usually, the glass is opaque. Frosted. The kind you stop noticing the moment the door closes. But if someone lights up inside the stall, a sensor triggers and the glass clears….
Culture
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Why Passengers Keep Grabbing Bags During Evacuations
The evacuation slide is deployed. The cabin lights are screaming red. Smoke is doing that low, theatrical crawl along the ceiling. Somewhere up front, a flight attendant is shouting words that should not require interpretation. And yet — arms go up. Not in surrender. In retrieval. This is the problem…