|
Sean ThomasThe Spectator |
As locations go, they don’t get more humdrum than the address ‘Carrera 79B, #45D/94’. It is so anonymous it sounds encrypted. Nor, in reality,...
Whenever I write about AI on The Spectator (which is a lot) I always get comments like ‘Yawn. Wake me up when AI actually does something’. And, to...
It’s not easy being a Leaver, right now. For a start, the government that actually delivered Brexit – the present Tory government – is facing a...
Antioquia, Colombia If you’ve ever wondered what happened to drug lord Pablo Escobar’s enormous cocaine and occasional execution palace, as...
Do you remember those far off misty days of yore, when shocking, startling, amazing, disquieting revelations from the world of Artificial Intelligence...
Yeah, I know, ridiculous. Cambodia? How can that be the best country in the entire world? For a start, most people can’t place it on a map. This...
It’s difficult to remember a time before climate change – a time when our daily discourse, our newspaper front pages, endless movies and TV...
When they come to write the history of the AI revolution, there’s a good chance that the writers will devote many chapters to the early 2020s....
In 1988, I lived on the backpackery Khaosan Road, Bangkok, in a hotel which offered heroin on room service. It went like this: in the morning, you...
The haunted hotel. It’s a definite thing, isn’t it? From Stanley Kubrick’s classic The Shining to the slightly less classic I Still Know What...
It’s one of the hoariest cliches in popular culture: that every fading generation must, in flailing anger at its own imminent irrelevance, turn on...
It’s sometimes difficult to remember a time before Facebook, isn’t it? It’s like trying to remember a time before the espresso martini (invented...
Argentine President Javier Milei’s recent speech, to the World Economic Forum in Davos, has caused a stir for several reasons. First, it was someone...
Even in the long-shadowed depths of winter, Sicily can be a seductive place. From the hushed, hidden and time-polished marble piazzas of intricately...
It’s one of the greatest puzzles of the universe, and one that has vexed humanity ever since we first gazed at the stars and thought of other...
It’s hard to believe that only five years ago the word/acronym AI was barely seen outside the science pages, and even then solely in the most...
If you had to choose a political word of the decade you could do worse than ‘woke’. Because these days ‘woke’ – and its various subsidiary...
As a travel writer, you soon learn that there are countries which, when you mention them, elicit a polite smile of incomprehension, which says: er,...
Remember the lockdowns? I wish I didn’t, but I do. Especially that insanely grim third lockdown, the winter one, which went on and on and on and...
It was about a year ago when my dying father, diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, turned to me and said ‘Sean, can you get me some heroin?’. For...
There are many rituals surrounding the placement of a new Japanese Emperor on the Chrysanthemum Throne. Perhaps the most peculiar is the would-be...
From my desk, as I write this, in a lofty room in the Rosewood Hotel in Phnom Penh, I can look down at the bustling streets and see the concrete,...
I don’t know about you, but I love a bit of topical reading when I go abroad. That’s why, in my last week of travelling between lush, green,...
As phrases go, ‘Twitter analytics’ is not the most exciting, especially now we are, apparently, meant to say ‘the social medium formerly known...
There are plenty of reasons to visit Catania in Sicily, and some of them are positive. The town is impressively ancient – dating back to the 8th...
Back in June 2020, I attended a quasi-legal Black Lives Matter protest in London, and a widely reviled counter protest, by hard-right Tommy...
I’m in a car embarking on a road trip through one of the great foodie regions of the world, charged with the onerous task of scoffing and boozing my...
He must be a busy man, Rishi Sunak. When he’s not rescuing the country from inflation, sending the Royal Navy towards troublezones, making long...
As we all know, the last few days have been filled with terrible news out of Israel and Gaza, and this news – on mainstream or social media – has...
We’ve all been there, haven’t we? One minute you are sitting down, with a cup of tea, ready to listen to Sir Keir Starmer’s latest conference...
I don’t know about you, but my reaction to learning about the felling of that tree in Northumberland was, well, weird. For a start, unlike many...
I was writing a thriller in northeast Laos about 15 years ago near a town called Phonsavan, researching a mysterious megalithic site known as the...
When it comes to British railway history, I can say, without exaggeration, that few places are more iconically located than my own home. This is...
There are certain things that are so shocking they can only be said by close friends. And as the British have been in a close friendship – an...