One of the strangest changes I’ve witnessed over the past twenty years has almost gone unnoticed.
There was a time when public embarrassment carried real weight. If a politician lied, a CEO abused his office, a pastor betrayed his congregation, or a public figure disgraced himself, shame served a social purpose. It wasn’t always pleasant, but it reminded us that character mattered.
There is no specific date on which to pin the advent of the postmodern age. The term was coined in reference to painting in 1870, and first cited as a descriptor for contemporary social and cultural thought in 1939. In 1960, the sociologist Daniel Bell published “The End of Ideology,” heralding a “post-industrial society” and laying the groundwork for postmodern thought as a guiding light in academia. Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault followed from the mid-’60s, cementing the philosophical base for postmodernism and popular derivatives like Edward Said’s postcolonial theory.
Gen Z isn’t the teetotalling generation after all, according to new data. They just took some time to catch up to the rest of the drinking population, and their influence is reshaping the alcohol industry.
As a larger proportion of gen Zers reaches legal drinking age, the gap between them and drinkers at large “appears to have almost completely disappeared.” The report from IWSR, a leading alcohol data provider, dispels the myth that younger people imbibe less.
Pouring cats and dogs today. Great for the Garden! @fancypants_s https://t.co/XgxIOgUSQW
— Occam's Razor (@Occams_Razor_CA) July 21, 2026
Drownings are in the news in B.C. this year because they’ve increased almost 50 per cent from the same point last year, according to the Lifesaving Society of B.C. So far 32 people have drowned.
The upsetting trend makes it a hard time to extol the virtues of the outdoors, especially when it comes to young people.
Beware when the world’s most powerful leaders talk of “civilization.” Their abuse of the term could spawn a new international order.
Russia is “an original civilization-state,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a prominent annual forum in Sochi in 2023, adding that “the world is on its way to a synergy of civilization-states.” The same year, Xi Jinping called China “the only great, uninterrupted civilization that continues to this day in a state form.” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi describes his own state as “the most refined idea of human civilization.”
Overwhelmingly, women are increasingly dissatisfied with our modern conditions, to the extent that no Hugo Spritz or pair of Jimmy Choos can cure. A 2023 Cardus study found that over half of Canadian women are having fewer children than they would like. Contrary to what you might assume based on Canadian conservative messaging, the predominant factor here is not affordability or housing costs. This study found that the most influential factors affecting fertility rates relate to the idea that children are burdensome, parenting is time-consuming, and that women want to finish self-development and exploration before starting families. Somewhere between avoiding pregnancy from ages 15-29 and self-actualizing ourselves into six-figure, corner office jobs, it appears we have lost our way. Raised on a heady cocktail of Sex and the City, Girls, Lean In, and She-EOs, it’s no wonder we find ourselves here, in a society that prioritizes material success over family formation. Women who have been incentivized to put off having children to build a career are becoming increasingly aware that their lives are missing something.
Nobody is less motivated to watch a WNBA game than I am.
In fact, the only WNBA action that I have ever seen is clips on X that I scroll by, mostly without watching.
But even I know who Caitlin Clark is and why she is so popular among basketball fans. She is the person who put the WNBA on the map, whose jersey sales, along with her now-famous teammate Sophie Cunningham, outsell those of every other WNBA player combined by a whopping 2-1 margin.
The fact that Sophie triggered almost an entire league with just a simple point of a finger is just crazy motion 😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/7paK3NxFLC
— Ashwin (@Sudharsan_ak) June 27, 2026
