Author: Sam Allcock

Churchill, Manitoba is known in one way by most people. Every fall, polar bears walk along frozen streets, and every summer, beluga whales come to the surface of the Churchill River. In the summer, tourists arrive by charter flight to see the northern lights dance across an unusually clear sky. Most people agree that it is one of the more interesting places in Canada to just be. Fewer people know that Churchill has one of the stranger internet histories on the continent. It involves volunteer engineers, satellite dishes pointed at the sky over Hudson Bay, years of dial-up connections held…

Bruno Cerella played basketball in Italy for almost twenty years and became known as a reliable and good defensive wing player who never quite made the news like his flashier teammates did. His personal life off the court, on the other hand, has gotten more attention than most people would expect from a player who mostly came off the bench. Émilie Nef Naf is the name that comes up most often when people talk about Bruno Cerella’s past relationships. She is a French TV personality who is well-known in France for her roles on reality shows like Secret Story and…

She has built her career on order, procedure, and the machinery of justice. Yet, the picture shows a woman who is sitting with grief that none of those systems could fix. Carin Götblad is one of Sweden’s most well-known police chiefs. She has spent decades dealing with violent crime, gangs, and changing the way institutions work. The loss that seems to have hurt her the most, though, had nothing to do with any of that. It was about them. It was her son. He passed away when he was 21 years old. Before he was pronounced dead, he had been…

When you walk through the Loop on a Tuesday afternoon, something doesn’t seem quite right. People walk on the sidewalks. There are plenty of people in the coffee shops. However, if you look up at some of those office towers—mostly the older, more basic ones—the empty floors tell a different story. For years, Chicago’s commercial real estate market has been having a hard time. Lenders’ reluctance, remote work, and rising interest rates have all made things worse. There are, however, more and more investors who aren’t running away… They’re walking slowly, quietly, and on purpose toward it. That is not…

A certain type of movie used to be shown in theaters on Friday nights without any problems. There is no extended universe attached. There is no connection to action figures. There is only a tight plot, a few familiar faces, real tension, and the quiet pleasure of watching adults deal with real-life consequences on screen. The adult thriller with a moderate budget was never very exciting. It just worked well. Slowly but surely, it was no longer there. It wasn’t taken out of Hollywood out of spite. The economics made the choice slowly at first, and then all at once.…

Something strange is going on in Silicon Valley right now. Everyone has an opinion on whether AI is a bubble—whether OpenAI is worth more than Toyota and Coca-Cola put together, whether Jensen Huang’s cocky attitude hides a slow deflation, and whether Sam Altman’s careful admission that some parts of AI are “bubbly” is a warning or an improvement. That’s a good question. But under all of that debate is something that has been growing slowly for longer and with less attention: the race to make money off of people’s attention. Take a moment to think about that phrase. Making money…

For the cameras, there is a Cannes that includes the red carpet arrivals, the standing ovations, and the jury deliberations that carry a heavy artistic weight. There is also the version that runs everything. It happens in private lounges, on yacht decks, and at dinners where people are only invited and the guest list is passed around by word of mouth. The picture is taken of the first version. What gets things done is the second one. This is how things have been for decades, even though no one in charge of the festival likes to say it. Steven Spielberg,…

Something about Jang Wonyoung’s height makes people want to argue about it all the time. Not the interested kind that is polite and goes away. The kind that comes back every couple of months with a new picture, a new comparison, and a comment section with over a hundred responses. As an idol who is officially listed at 173 cm tall, she takes up a lot of room when people talk about how tall people are. More than 100,000 people saw a picture of Wonyoung standing next to Choo Sung Hoon on Pann in just a few hours in September…

It was supposed to be a pure moment when Stephen Eustáquio scored that low volley against South Africa on June 28. It sent Canada to the Round of 16 of the World Cup for the first time in the country’s history. And it was for a short time. Then there was the talk. A reporter asked a question that was so badly worded that people all over North America thought Eustáquio had really lost his young daughter. They were probably trying to show that the goal was heavy with personal tragedy. He didn’t. The girl he had in April 2024…

Gary Neville was one of the most famous people in English football for more than twenty years, first as a fierce right back for Manchester United and then as a TV commentator who always had something to say. It really came as a surprise when, in late 2023, he said on a podcast that there was something he had never been able to talk about in public. One with someone. A broken promise. He kept this part of his life secret for more than twenty years. Hannah Thornley was at the center of that story. She was the sister of…