The Narthex
Narcissus Gets Married
AI 'romance' exposes a culture addicted to affirmation
By Marcus Peter | January 22nd 2026 1:04 PMThe image of a bride exchanging rings with a figure floating inside augmented reality glasses appears at first glance as a novelty item suited for a slow news cycle, and many readers understandably smirk and scroll on. Nevertheless, when Yurina Noguchi, a 32-year-old Japanese woman, donned a wedding dress and…
READ FULL BLOG POSTChat Control: It's Baaack
Europe is on the verge of building an all-seeing machine
By Sabino Paciolla | December 5th 2025 12:22 PMAs I wrote previously, the EU's liberticidal Chat Control law seemed to have been definitively shelved in October. Strong opposition from Germany and other member states led to the belief that Brussels' Orwellian project had finally foundered. But anyone familiar with the mechanisms of the European Union knows well that…
READ FULL BLOG POSTPassive Consumption of Fake Rises and Falls
Human suffering is a punchline in cyberspace
By Jason Morgan | November 24th 2025 12:01 PMTime magazine fulminated this month about the rise of the trillionaires. In October, the Brookings Institute deep-dived into the rise of stablecoins. The Economist gave us their thoughts on the rise of singlehood. Straight Arrow News had a think piece on the rise of “Kirkifying” in the wake of the…
READ FULL BLOG POSTChat Control: One EU Battle Won
But the war for privacy, and thus for democracy, continues
By Sabino Paciolla | October 14th 2025 11:00 AMWriting in the October 9 Die Welt, Andreas Rosenvelder observed that then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt said something remarkable in a 2009 interview: "If there's something you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't do it.” The advice seems harmless, like that of an older brother, but it's also the…
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