Latest Stories from Jamie
ai music’s guilty pleasure + sports’ geopolitical reckoning
mace windu fell out of a window (yeah). where did he go? It’s been a week, and I can’t get Anakin’s smooth buttery voice out of my head. Turns out I’m not alone. Millions are feeling the pull of the dark side – or AI, if you prefer. Music videos featuring Anakin Skywalker’s face-tatted alter-ego, ‘Lil Vader’ are all over the social media sites. Original generated trap songs such as ‘Mace fell...
stanford prison experiment rebooted + ozempic equals divorce?
chow time, maggots One of the most notorious practical disasters ever in the history of psychological study. Fuck it, let’s do it again… but for Netflix. If you’ve studied either criminology or psychology in any capacity, you’ll no doubt have heard about the Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971. While teaching at Stanford, the now-notorious Philip Zimbardo was still making his name in psychology. In his clamour for clout among his...
sweeney sports meltdown + sheeran drops macklemore
Same shit, less denim Sydney Sweeney has pissed people off again, which means two things: 1) she got nude, and 2) I get to spend the morning looking at the photos – for research purposes. The latest brand to discover Sweeney’s uncanny ability to wind up half the internet is Novig, a sports betting platform that recently enlisted the Euphoria star for a campaign centred around ‘just sports.’ The ad plays out...
Deep Dive: Has Gen Z lost energy for social change?
When it comes to social change in 2026, Gen Z has lost all the vim of yesteryear. When and where was this energy lost? Let’s break it down. In the late 2010s Gen Z was synonymous with social change, a broad catch-all term encapsulating the desire for a more equitable and just world. In 2026, however, the cohort is now more likely to be mentioned in the same breath as subjects...
AI agents are heisting + influencers are hot on uncontacted tribes
You can’t park there mate Aren’t AI agents supposed to be doing ‘deep work’ for those of us who’re either lazy or intuitive, depending on who you ask? Well, it turns out they may also tend to procrastinate, and though they aren’t mincing around coffee machines in actual offices, they still appear to enjoy shooting the shit amongst themselves. In a slightly disconcerting turn of events this week, a swarm of OpenAI...
dystopian sports betting farms + gta gooners run riot online
the beautiful game, it aint There are certain things you stumble on when mindlessly scrolling that are so dystopian you assume they’re either made up for engagement or grossly exaggerated. Sports betting farms were that for me. In a curtained-off gym or warehouse, four young blokes are playing a two vs two match as Real Madrid and Arsenal. There aren’t any spectators or fans, no ref, and a single camera films from...
How Russia’s invasion reshaped the story of Metro 2039
Ukrainian studio 4A Games has endured arguably the worst set of circumstances a game development cycle has ever seen. The war with Russia not only made work on Metro 2039 incredibly difficult, but also fundamentally changed the game the team wanted to make. There’s something uniquely grim about developing a post-apocalyptic game while occasionally having to stop and hunker down because of real-life air-raid sirens. That was the reality endured by...
£29bn of oil, £336bn of damage + Cat in the Hat stalkers
deal or no deal? I didn’t want to read about it, you don’t want to read about it, but it’s the biggest news of the week. So let’s bathe in existential dread together. Doomscrolling is all 2000-and-late, but occasionally we have to bear witness. Climate change is among the sorest of subjects for younger folk, because we feel basically helpless to have any bearing on the situation. We spent our adolescent energy...
Does ‘nickel-and-diming’ make Gen Z stingy?
‘I’m bad at maths, let’s just split it three ways!’ After a delayed train you rock up later than your pals to the bar, and see everyone is already tucking into posh burgers with added Canadian bacon. Having had a hearty breakfast, you opt for a handful of mozzarella sticks and a simple pint. Before wrapping up, you return to the table after a quick trip to the urinal and see...
looksmaxxing wasn’t so toxic? + doing better for kid stars
When did ‘we’re gonna make it, brah’ become ‘you’re chopped’? This isn’t what Zyzz wanted for us. There are certain historical figures whose importance only becomes apparent years after their death. Van Gogh. Kafka. That bloke from the ‘Succulent Chinese Meal’ video. I’m throwing Aziz Shavershian, known to everyone other than his mother as Zyzz, in that list. Before the term looksmaxxing had any online traction, the Australian bodybuilder was the...
