Issue
Issue of September 12, 2026
Issue of September 12, 2026
Headlines
Indians say cheese
Asia · India at last acquires a taste for cheese
The photographer’s command, deployed with a straight face for an article about India’s booming $1.5bn dairy market.
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DEI by any other name
United States · How American universities get around the DEI backlash
Shakespeare’s rose gets a bureaucratic transplant — universities are rebranding diversity programmes as “belonging” or “community,” anything but the three letters that get funding pulled.
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A reservoir of last resort
United States · A reservoir of last resort is running dry in Wyoming
Central banking’s “lender of last resort” made literal for Wyoming’s last reliable water supply — which is now running dry.
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Europe rearranges the diplomatic deckchairs
Europe · Facing global crises, Europe rearranges the diplomatic deckchairs
The Titanic idiom gets a Brussels posting. The implicit iceberg is European foreign policy coherence.
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“Black gold” is pouring out of Myanmar
Asia · “Black gold” is pouring out of Myanmar
The oil-industry honorific, redirected to Myanmar’s booming opium trade — less Texas, more Golden Triangle.
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Buried in the text
Yet change is under whey
Asia · India at last acquires a taste for cheese
“Under way” curdled into “under whey” in the opening paragraph of India’s cheese revolution. Peak Economist.
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The evidence justifying such bias against blue hardly passes with flying colours
Science & Technology · Should you avoid blue light before bed?
An article debunking blue-light sleep myths deploys “flying colours” — where “colours” is doing exactly the spectral work the piece says blue light doesn’t.
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Mathematicians have been trying to bottle this one up for at least a century
Science & Technology · OpenAI’s apparent maths breakthrough raises profound questions
The Navier-Stokes equations describe fluid flow. “Bottle up” a fluid-dynamics problem — the kind of pun only a science writer could slip past an editor.
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That will make girding for orbit a bit less of a shot in the dark
Science & Technology · Satellites get a new type of armour
Space debris is literally a shot, and orbit is literally dark. The satellite-shielding article’s closing line does both jobs at once.
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Oh, brother
China · Only children in China prefer to marry other only children
An article about only children refusing to marry anyone with siblings ends with the exasperated “Oh, brother” — the one relative none of them have.
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We, well, look right through it
Culture · Urban life rests on invisible, extraordinary technology
From a review of a book about urban inventions — on the miracle of windows, which we now literally see through and figuratively overlook. The self-conscious pause makes the pun land.
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American consumers hoping for some relief may be waiting until the cows come home
Business · Beef has never been pricier—and meatpackers are suffering
The idiom about interminable waiting, deployed in the one context where cows actually need to come home — ranchers must rebuild herds before beef prices drop.
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