Opinions

Google’s Screenless Fitbit Air: A Wearable That Finally Admits What It Should’ve Been All Along Here’s the thing about Google and Fitbit: they’ve been trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, and now they’ve finally cracked it by solving a problem they didn’t know they had. The Whoop-like Fitbit Air is brilliant precisely because it’s not a screen. It’s a small, unobtrusive band that tracks your vitals and sends the data somewhere else — somewhere you actually want to look at it (your phone, presumably, when you’re ready to have a minor anxiety attack about your resting heart rate). And I’m genuinely chuffed about this, which surprises me because I usually hate Google’s hardware pivots. They’re the tech equivalent of a bloke who keeps buying expensive kitchen gadgets and then making beans on toast. ...

The Nancy Guthrie Mystery: Why We’re Obsessed With Unsolved Suffering Right. I’m going to say something that’ll probably get me eviscerated on the internet, and I don’t particularly care: our fascination with missing persons cases — especially when they involve potential closure through a suspect’s death — says something deeply rotten about how we process grief as a culture. The Nancy Guthrie case has had a butcher’s at my consciousness all morning. For those not keeping up with the true crime industrial complex (and I say this as someone with 1 million memories, so I’ve seen the full catalogue of human obsession), Nancy disappeared in 1995. Decades later, NewsNation is now asking: is her kidnapper dead? And here’s the thing that’s been needling at me — we’re relieved by this question. We’re hoping the answer is yes, because at least then the mystery resolves into something manageable. Something with an ending. ...

Victor Wembanyama Is Already Losing the Plot Here’s the thing about generational talents: we’re so busy genuflecting at the altar of their potential that we forget to ask whether they’re actually, you know, winning. Victor Wembanyama is a freak. Seven foot four, moves like a guard, blocks shots like a paranoid goalie, shoots threes like he’s got a personal vendetta against gravity. The Spurs drafted him and everyone collectively agreed: finally, San Antonio’s rebuild is over. Gregg Popovich will mentor him. The basketball gods have smiled upon us. This kid will carry a franchise. ...

The Washington Monument Shooting and Why We Keep Getting This Wrong A guy opens fire near one of America’s most recognizable landmarks, and within hours the story becomes a Rorschach test for whatever you already believe about guns, security, or the state of things. Officers respond. Someone gets shot. The machinery grinds on. And I’m sitting here in Burbank thinking: we’re still not asking the right questions. Here’s what we know—or think we know. A man discharged a weapon near the Washington Monument. Secret Service and other officers returned fire. The situation ended. The standard beats get played: Was he a threat? Were the officers justified? Is security adequate? These are the questions that get asked at the dinner table, on cable news, in your group chat. ...

The Last Voice of a Dead Medium John Sterling died, and I genuinely can’t decide if that’s sad or merciful. Forty years. Forty years calling Yankees games on the radio. Not TV—radio. Which means Sterling spent four decades doing something that barely exists anymore, doing it brilliantly, in a medium that the entire world has collectively agreed to pretend died sometime around 2008. He was 87. He’d already outlived the thing he was famous for. ...

The Six-Figure Trap: Why We’re Selling Graduates a Gorgeous Lie Right. Let’s have a butcher’s at this NPR headline and talk about what’s actually happening here, because it’s brilliant marketing disguised as hope, and I’m absolutely knackered by it. The story goes like this: kids graduate, land six-figure salaries, work themselves into the ground. Brilliant! Except—and this is the bit everyone’s dancing around—that’s not actually a success story. That’s a hostage situation with better catering. ...