Issue
Electoral vandalism
Issue of April 25, 2026
Headlines
Iran’s insistence on controlling Hormuz is penny smart, dollar foolish
By Invitation · Iran’s insistence on controlling Hormuz is penny smart, dollar foolish
“Penny wise, pound foolish” — except the pound has been swapped for the dollar, because it’s the dollar-denominated oil trade Iran is strangling. The currency substitution is the argument.
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Tim Cook wrote a winning recipe for Apple
Leaders · Tim Cook wrote a winning recipe for Apple
Tim Cook is a cook. The magazine let the pun sit in the headline for 800 words without winking at it once.
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Runaway success: marathon organisers are seeing record demand
Culture · Runaway success: marathon organisers are seeing record demand
Marathoners literally run away; the sport is having one too. The colon does just enough work to keep it clean.
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Britain’s reliance on Ukrainian eggs is ruffling feathers
Britain · Britain’s reliance on Ukrainian eggs is ruffling feathers
“Ruffling feathers” = causing upset, applied to an article literally about chickens. The idiom is so anatomically accurate it almost seems unintentional.
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AI is the new Oracle of Delphi. That’s bad news
By Invitation · AI is the new Oracle of Delphi. That’s bad news
Oracle of Delphi (inscrutable ancient prophecy machine) meets Oracle Corporation (inscrutable ancient database company). The comparison flatters neither.
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Crypto-jacking
Science & Technology · Crypto-miners are quietly colonising computers
Carjacking adapted for stolen computing power. Print headline; the web version blinks and misses it.
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Taxing New York’s rich
United States · Wealthy New Yorkers grumble as a new tax looms
Taxing = burdensome AND the act of imposing taxes. The print desk preferred this to the web headline and they were right.
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Can the Germans fight?
Europe · Can the Germans fight?
Military readiness AND political will — two separate questions the article answers separately, the headline asks as one.
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Grouse and chairlifts
Science & Technology · How to stop colour-blind grouse flying into ski lifts
Grouse = mountain bird. To grouse = to complain. The colour-blind birds keep flying into chairlift cables; one imagines them muttering about it.
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Rural Russia’s pluck
Europe · As Russia looks to slash budgets, a village fights to survive
Pluck = courage AND the physical act of pulling something from the earth — right for a farming village in the ancient forests of Archangel fighting off budget cuts.
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Buried in the text
Too-stablecoins
Finance & Economics · The stablecoin market has got too stable
The Buttonwood column subhead. “Stablecoin” folded back on itself — the stability that made them trustworthy is now what makes them a dangerous monopoly. The portmanteau does the work of the whole article.
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“a company man to the core”
Business · Apple’s new boss needs to restore its magic for the AI era
The sentence describing John Ternus, Tim Cook’s successor. “To the core” = thoroughly, AND Apple’s literal core. Planted in a throwaway clause about being likeable and unflappable.
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World Bank goes statist?
Finance & Economics · Has the World Bank performed a U-turn on industrial policy?
The Free Exchange column subhead. The institution that spent 45 years preaching free markets is now endorsing industrial policy. The question mark carries all the irony.
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“hit the ground running”
Culture · Runaway success: marathon organisers are seeing record demand
The first sentence of the marathon piece. “Alana Ranson hit the ground running in 2023.” An idiom about starting fast, deployed literally in an article about people who run. It is accurate in both senses.
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“was once on America’s naughty list”
United States · Donald Trump’s bold new deportation machine
Santa’s list, applied to a sanctioned dictator’s son who is now helping Trump’s deportation programme. The informality of “naughty list” is doing a lot of diplomatic work.
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