Author: Andrei Navrozov

It stands to reason that the piloting of a banana republic should be in the hands of banana republicans, but unfortunately we’re not in Latin America and it’s Republicans with a capital R who are at the helm.

I want to sound a note that at first appears incongruous or frivolous but is in fact deeply relevant, namely, how the habitual lie seeps into the national character and becomes an inalienable part of it.

Great Britain finally gave up the ghost in the early days of this rainy March, but I shall not now dwell on the immediate cause of her passing, which was, of course, the extirpation of hereditary peerage in the House of Lords.

Don’t you know there’s a war on, as the reprimand went in the last big one. Detached from reality though I am by disposition, I ought to acknowledge that yes, something like a war is going on there, in fact more than one.

The other day I replied to a Twitter post by Secretary Hegseth in which he had accused Anthropic, a leading AI developer, of trying to seize power over the Pentagon.

Today I want to step away from the sonata form and do things the other way round. First the development, then the exposition.

The prison workshop scene is a staple of Hollywood filmmaking. Though most often it is the run-up to some dramatic development like an escape or a riot, once in a while we get a glimpse of the daily routine.

The other night I couldn’t fall asleep, and scrolling through Twitter news feeds was only making the insomnia more virulent – as virulent, come to think of it, as the news – so I decided to watch a movie.

“A spoonful of tar,” goes the Russian proverb, “spoils a barrel of honey.” Such was my instinctive response to a Twitter poll I happened on while scrolling aimlessly as one does.

The gentle reader may recall the famous moment in the film comedy The Gods Must Be Crazy when a Coca-Cola bottle falls from an airplane and lands in a bushman camp in the Kalahari.