Issue
Advantage Iran
Issue of March 28, 2026
Headlines
With “SNL UK”, Britain’s laughing stock appreciates
Culture · With “SNL UK”, Britain’s laughing stock appreciates
“Laughing stock” as comedy inventory, “appreciates” as both financial gain and cultural enjoyment. Triple duty from six words.
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Advantage Iran
Leaders · Advantage Iran
Tennis scoring applied to geopolitics. Iran holds serve despite a month of bombing.
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Vets vetted
Britain · A golden decade for British vets is coming to an end
Veterinarians subjected to veterinary-style examination by the competition watchdog. The profession gets a taste of its own medicine.
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The decline and fall of the Roman currency empire
Finance & Economics · The decline and fall of the Roman currency empire
Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” retooled for a piece on debased Roman coins and modern dollar dominance.
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If 19th-century plutocrats are dinosaurs, we’re now in Jurassic Park
Essay · If 19th-century plutocrats are dinosaurs, we’re now in Jurassic Park
The Gilded Age tycoons are back — and this time the theme park has no fences.
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Chuck Norris made onions cry
Obituary · Chuck Norris made onions cry
The internet’s favourite joke format repurposed as a send-off. The obituarist clearly had fun.
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Chevroletstan
Asia · China is breaking into one of the world’s weirdest car markets
Uzbekistan + Chevrolet = a country defined by its car monoculture. Portmanteau does the heavy lifting.
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Buried in the text
”Show them who’s Bosporus”
Briefing · Hormuz is not the only weak spot for global trade
A subheading on maritime chokepoints. “Who’s boss” becomes “who’s Bosporus.” Magnificent.
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“one steppe at a time”
Asia · China is breaking into one of the world’s weirdest car markets
BYD making inroads in Chevroletstan — “one step at a time” meets the Central Asian grasslands. Geography and idiom in perfect harmony.
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“saved their bacon”
China · China’s huge pork industry is a victim of its own success
Big pig companies literally saving their bacon during the swine-fever downturn by moving to mechanised farms. The idiom earns its keep.
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“The verdict in California may soon go viral”
Business · Meta and Google face a reckoning over social-media addiction
A court ruling against social-media companies spreading via the very mechanism it condemns. The medium is the punchline.
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“Victorians managed to make adultery sound like a noise complaint”
Culture · Everyone knows divorce is costly. But children pay most dearly
On the Victorian legal term “criminal conversation” for adultery. The parenthetical observation is doing more work than the footnote it pretends to be.
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“Pig farms are going vertical as profits flatline”
China · China’s huge pork industry is a victim of its own success
Multi-storey pig farms going literally vertical while the bottom line goes horizontal. Architecture mirrors accounting.
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