The real-life story of how I was stalked by a foreign spy. — I never expected that, of all the people in the world, I would be the one to find myself in what looked like the prologue of a Cold-War era spy thriller. But, last week, it happened. Reality imitated fiction. First of all, a disclaimer: for my personal safety’s sake, I…

A discussion about the perils of moral absolutism, propaganda, and philosophy. And also Star Wars, lots of it. — One of the biggest problems with most Hollywood movies is that they present morality in absolutes. For example — in Revenge of the Sith, Anakin Skywalker goes from good guy to maniacal homicidal dark lord in around 20 minutes. …

The invasion of Ukraine has strengthened NATO’s role in Europe. But its future should be exempt from either Russian or American influence. — The occupation of Ukraine and the threat from Russia leave Europe with a new problem. And now the Western left is similarly divided while facing a new dilemma. What solution should be defended when both the contenders seem to be backed by different sides of similar imperialistic agendas?

In the land of the free, the liberty to own firearms is seemingly more important than the liberty to live. — The nearly total absence of mass shootings in European countries teaches us that limiting the sales of firearms is effective in preventing tragedies like the recent one in Uvalde. But such a solution is never implemented in the U.S. …

Besides dehumanizing working conditions, Amazon delivery drivers are now dancing at the request of customers — a sign of the precarious fragility of their position. — In the U.S., there is a new fad: Amazon customers are putting requests on their doors for delivery drivers to dance, so they can film it via surveillance cameras to post the footage on TikTok. Some accede, for fear of complaints and bad reviews. At first glance, it appears that…

The United Nations called for the release of Scottish Sikh Jagtar Johal after concluding there is no valid evidence to support his imprisonment in India — yet the UK Government refuses to act. — It was November 2017. When British marketeer Jagtar Singh Johal traveled to Punjab, India, to attend his marriage, nothing could foresee the trip would mark the beginning of his real-life Kafkaesque nightmare, under which he would be detained, tortured, and imprisoned for the following five years without a trial and…

Are we reaching the singularity, and could this be our very own Skynet? — When Google engineer Blake Lemoine signed up for the job of testing the LaMDA, a machine-learning AI chatbot developed by the company, he never expected he would end up having long and complex conversations about liberties, individuality, philosophy, and spirituality with it, much less even to be persuaded to reconsider…

If the side effects of unbridled capitalism spread out to the final frontier, a chain reaction called the Kessler effect may inadvertently trap our species on a dying planet with no escape. — Imagine, a few decades into the future, living on a planet ravaged by climate change and nuclear warfare. After close to half of Earth’s population has vanished, firestorms rage on our land and large portions of it become uninhabitable. …

With the ownership of Twitter on his hands, the wealthiest man alive is set to gain a whole new form of political power — one that can interfere with the rules of the democratic debate itself. — If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’re probably aware of the brand new drama on Twitter, which this time is about Twitter itself, after Elon Musk announced a few weeks ago that he will be buying the platform for 44 billion dollars.