Economy

Dig into your desk drawers or the recesses of your closet and there’s a decent chance you’ll find an iPod you haven’t powered on since Michael Jackson’s last live tour. With Apple selling over 450 million since their inception in 2001, iPods were once the hottest tech item and fulfilled Steve Jobs’ promise of being able to carry an audio library in your pocket.How times have changed. Today, the average zoomer is likely to draw a blank when you say iPod, probably mishearing the word for the AirPods line of Bluetooth headphones. But, for a plethora of reasons, the iPod is once again becoming desirable. The r/iPod subreddit has over 70,000 readers and retro tech enthusiasts like Australian YouTuber DankPods attract millions of views.

In October 2024, a Montana rancher was sentenced to federal prison time and charged a hefty fine for illegally cloning a giant hybrid sheep, afterwards referred to as the “Montana Mountain King.” Using testicles and other tissues illegally imported to the United States from an argali Marco Polo (Ovis ammon polii) sheep hunted in Kyrgyzstan, the rancher contracted a laboratory to create cloned embryos which he then implanted to ewes on his ranch, eventually resulting in an impressive male specimen tailored for the captive trophy hunting industry. He then worked with co-conspirators to use semen from the cloned animal to impregnate various other sheep and create hybrid specimens of large body and horn size for illegal sale to captive hunting facilities in various other states.

Of all the policies proposed by Zohran Mamdani, the socialist winner of last week’s New York’s Next Top Mayor competition, the idea of city-run grocery stores has proved the most divisive. If you want to reduce prices at halal carts by taking away regulations on street vendors, you’re going to get 80-plus percent approval rating. But state-owned groceries are another story. Modern history is strewn with tales of state-owned grocery disasters.

Zohran Mamdani’s surprise win in the race to be the next mayor of New York City is not just a local upset – it’s the moment the progressive fringe officially took the keys from the Democratic establishment. The 33-year-old socialist unexpectedly seized the most first-choice votes in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary. And if symbolism mattered more than substance, he would already be crowned mayor of America's largest city. For years, the Democratic machine in New York managed to contain its most radical flank with centrist figures like Eric Adams and, before him, Michael Bloomberg. But that firewall has crumbled.

For the entirety of June each year, companies and institutions go rainbow for Pride. But this year, social media seems a little less awash with multicoloured flags – and fewer and fewer companies have bothered with their annual logo change. Could it be that we have all, finally, tired of this mandatory rainbow charade? Donald Trump has certainly made his feelings known. World Pride was held in Washington DC this year. An awkward stage for the annual global celebration considering that when asked what his position was on Pride, Trump’s spokesperson said that the president was "fostering a sense of national pride that should be celebrated daily". Eek.

Most cities, especially those whose survival depends on tourism, might welcome the multi-squillion-dollar wedding of the world’s third-richest man. Imagine the $500 million superyacht gliding in like a Bond villain’s aqua-lair. Think of two hundred almost-as-rich guests, spilling vintage Trentodoc. Consider the spectacular press coverage, the endless sparkle, and, not least, the 14,000 Aperol spritzes sold per hour. This event means a thousand cameras trained on the city’s finest hotels and restaurants: providing the kind of advertising that folding money cannot buy. There is probably only one city on earth that would disfavour such an opportunity, and it is, of course, the world’s most exquisite: Venice.

President Trump moved through the G7 Summit in Alberta like a blowsy uncle swinging by the house for a drink on Thanksgiving on his way to Vegas. He didn’t accomplish much, but, as always, he was the perpetual pot-stirrer in his real-life As The World Turns. He began yesterday by criticizing the G7 for tossing Russia out of the group, “even though I wasn’t in politics then. I was very loud about it.” Fact check: true. This expulsion was a “mistake,” Trump said, adding, “Putin speaks to me, he doesn’t speak to anyone else.” What was Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni rolling her eyes at in a moment soon to become a GIF? Probably that statement. Almost definitely that statement. But that was just the canapé, with the actual meal yet to come.

Well, well, well. After a week of breathless digital countdown timers and PR emails demanding that every journalist get on a plane to New York City for a 7 a.m. start, the Trump Organization has finally unveiled its earth-shattering announcement. And what world-changing revelation required Eric and Donald Trump Jr. to ceremoniously descend the golden escalator at Trump Tower this Monday morning? A cell phone service. Yes, the future of American telecommunications has arrived, and it's painted gold. Thank God I didn't book a flight to the Big Apple for this momentous occasion. The brothers Trump, clearly having exhausted the family's ventures into steaks, universities and cryptocurrency, have now set their sights on disrupting the mobile phone industry.

Elon Musk rarely bites his tongue. Just ask the Treasury Secretary, who the tech billionaire branded a “Soros agent,” or the UK’s Prime Minister, who Musk accused of going soft on grooming gangs in January this year. But it seems the founder of the Department for Government Efficiency (DoGE) has been holding back a rather explosive opinion – one he could never share while he was popping in and out of the Oval Office, working for President Donald Trump. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote this afternoon on his platform X. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.

I first met sex guru Nicole Daedone three years ago when she was performing orgasmic meditation on a colleague from her sexual wellness start-up, OneTaste. Daedone, was delicately touching Rachel Cherwitz, her head of sales, giving her multiple, and very vocal, sexual highs – for 15 straight minutes – in front of more than 100 riveted people in a studio in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district at 7pm on a weeknight. Naked from the waist down, Cherwitz was lying on a raised table with her legs open towards the audience. Cameras and microphones catching her every reaction. The crowd was that archetypal New York mix of wealthy investors, impeccably dressed-for-business single women, and the orgasm-curious of all ages.

Is life worse today than it was 50 years ago? According to a Pew Research survey, 58 percent of respondents believe it is. Perhaps watching the doom and gloom of the nightly news gives the impression that times have never been worse. But the facts show otherwise.The world has never been richer, food has never been more abundant, and extreme poverty is at historic lows. We are fortunate to live in a country where the people have a strong work ethic and control a vast, resource-rich territory. Yet, even with those advantages, we rely on trade to access goods that America simply does not produce in abundance, like coffee and bananas. Perhaps we should ask a more nuanced question: is international trade good or bad?

When politicians run out of solutions, they start offering symbolism – and this year, that symbolism comes in the form of a check. Representative Summer Lee’s “Reparations Now” resolution calls for trillions of dollars in payments to black Americans as compensation for slavery and its aftershocks. As a black man in America, this issue cuts close to home. My grandparents came from South Georgia, and their grandparents were born into slavery. That blood runs through me. The pain, the endurance, the quiet strength – it’s part of my inheritance. If reparations were handed out, I’d be one of the people eligible to receive them. But I couldn’t take the check in good conscience.

By one recent estimate, Trump’s foray into crypto has made his family almost $3 billion in six months and now accounts for up to 40 percent of his wealth.At the same time, his administration has been quietly dismantling guardrails around the crypto industry. Trump has slashed funding for key Treasury initiatives, scrapped proposed anti-fraud rules, and even pardoned crypto felons. Much of the hype – and money – comes from $TRUMP and $MELANIA, two so-called meme coins: cryptocurrencies driven by branding, jokes, or online fandom rather than real-world use. Yet despite having little practical function, the pair has already generated over $140 million in trading volume in just four months.

The White House press conference between President Trump and newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney shows that every generation gets the summit it deserves. World War Two had Yalta, the 1970s the Camp David Accords. Barack Obama had a beer with the cop who arrested Henry Louis Gates, Jr. And Trump bragged about the new 24-karat White House gold décor and said, about Canada, “I think we have a lot of things in common.” The half-hour press scrum veered between mutual respect and Trumpian disdain, while Carney struggled to get a word in, flopping his hands in his lap like fish on a deck. He called Trump a “transformational President” and said, “We’re stronger when we’re together.” Trump said, “I have a lot of respect for this man.