Friday 24 July 2026 The European Union has long defined itself as a peace project. It emerged from the ruins of the Second World War upon the deceptively simple premise that economic integration would make armed conflict between its members not merely undesirable but practically impossible. Enlargement has therefore never been solely an exercise in economics or bureaucracy. It has always been a geopolitical instrument, extending the zone within which disputes are settled by l

Friday 24 July 2026 The contemporary debate over whether large language models might one day become conscious has drawn upon an extraordinary range of intellectual traditions. Neuroscience, computer science, philosophy of mind and cognitive psychology all contribute competing perspectives. Yet one of the twentieth century’s greatest logicians, Kurt Gödel, is increasingly invoked as an unlikely participant in this discussion. Although Gödel never encountered artificial intelli

Thursday 23 July 2026 Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, released in 1982 and set in a brooding vision of Los Angeles in 2019, remains one of the most influential cultural texts through which modern societies imagine artificial intelligence. Although the word AI is scarcely used in the film itself, the narrative is saturated with questions about the boundaries between human and machine, the duties of creators towards their creations, and the instability of identity once human-like

Thursday 23 July 2026 Every war acquires its own mythology. Those searching for guidance instinctively reach backwards, looking for historical analogies that promise clarity amidst uncertainty. The wars that accompanied the disintegration of Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001 have become one of the most frequently invoked comparisons with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Diplomats speak of “another Bosnia”; military analysts recall Croatia’s reconquest of occupied territory; lawye

Thursday 23 July 2026 Few national stereotypes are as casually repeated as the assertion that Russians are unusually prone to infidelity. Like most stereotypes, it contains fragments of observable social reality mixed with exaggeration, selective memory and cultural misunderstanding. The more interesting question is not whether Russians cheat on their partners more than anyone else but why this perception has become so widespread. Human beings everywhere form romantic attachm

Thursday 23 July 2026 The war in Ukraine has repeatedly demonstrated that no military innovation enjoys a monopoly for long. Every battlefield success invites a countermeasure, every technological advantage provokes an answer and every apparent revolution in warfare soon becomes merely another stage in an endless cycle of adaptation. Russia’s deployment of jet-powered variants of the Shahed attack drone represents the latest chapter in that process, forcing Ukraine to rethink