The September 28 edition of The Spectator has gone to press, featuring: 🏺 @geoffrey_cain 🏺 @ConradMBlack 🏺 @ToryAnarchist 🏺 @d_whitehouse 🏺 @default_friend 🏺 @rogerkimball 🏺 @IuliiaMendel

In the late 18th century, scurvy was killing around 50 percent of British mariners on long-haul journeys – more than shipwrecks, battles and all other diseases combined. ✍️ Hannah Moore Article | trib.al/hPSgHJh

One prominent Estonian investment banker I spoke to admitted to me that ultra-high-net-worth individuals have indeed taken part of their assets outside the country. ✍️ Scott Diel trib.al/kh1U2yM

They must be doing something right, because I sat through three episodes without switching over to Reacher ✍️ James Delingpole Article | trib.al/WZETGHu

They must be doing something right, because I sat through three episodes without switching over to Reacher ✍️ James Delingpole Article | trib.al/hXX5Oo3

“Prepare for war,” was the message from Estonian EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to the European Defence Agency last year. And Estonia has: its 2026 defense expenditure is 5.4 percent of GDP, the second highest in Europe. Citizens are advised by the government to keep an emergency supply of 21 liters of drinking water per person permanently on hand. A survival checklist has also been published, including ready-to-eat, high-energy foods, prescription medications, a bank card, cell phone with charger and a stock of ready cash. The country’s authorities don’t mince their words. ✍️ Scott Diel Article | spectator.com/article/is-est…

Delighted to feature on this week’s @TheSpectator @spectator Americano podcast with @Freddygray31 discussing all things China, US, and China’s relations with North Korea. Watch here: piped.video/watch?v=dD8fd8… Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcas…

He’s automating the very thing I always hated most and, I have to say, I respect it ✍️ Katherine Dee Article | trib.al/jQYbq5J

Nancy Mace appeared on her new video podcast Get Maced Thursday wearing a garment X posters called a “cat suit.” Technically speaking, it was a skin-tight black leather top with a zipper down the front. ✍️ Cockburn trib.al/2wUZAXV

Does Macklemore really want to “Save Gaza” or save his own lame career from the dungheap of history? Yesterday, the self-styled canceled rapper – he’s bloody noisy for someone who’s been silenced – announced that he’s going on tour. It’s called the “Free Palestine” tour. Of course it is. There’s no speedier shortcut to the moral high ground for a has-been half-celeb than on the Gaza bandwagon. ✍️ Brendan O’Neill Article | spectator.com/article/spare-…

I’m looking for an editorial intern to join The Spectator in New York 🇺🇸 Full-time, Mon–Fri in our NYC office for an initial three months, with possibility to extend into 2027. You’d be helping across social, events, production and the general day-to-day of a beautiful new office. Background and experience matter much less than enthusiasm, initiative and being someone who’s genuinely keen to get stuck in - though an eye for design, social media nous and any experience clipping/editing video are bonuses. If interested, DM me a few lines about yourself and why you’d like to join the team. Please do share with anyone who might be a good fit. Paid at NYC minimum wage.

At a lavish White House dinner last night, Trump said that the US and China had “never gotten along better,” while Xi said he and the US president had “sincere, in-depth” exchanges and came to an understanding on many issues, though he did not elaborate. ✍️ Ian Williams Article | spectator.com/article/whats-…

Few people had heard of Jacob Coxon, the 28-year-old British AI researcher, on the morning of September 8, 2026. His X account had fewer than 100 followers. By September 10, he was world famous, after he published a social-media thread on X about resigning from Anthropic because the company is not “acting responsibly.” The post has now been viewed 174 million times. It triggered a tsunami of news panic about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Suddenly, Jacob was everywhere: doing prime-time interviews; a celebrity whistleblower, the casus tumultus of a global conversation about the dangers of AI, which in turn led to a public fight among various tech overlords urging for more government regulation, and angry pushback from the Trump administration. It all felt like a highly-orchestrated PR stunt. Because it was. The apparently new intelligence about artificial intelligence turns out to be artificial. ✍️ @Freddygray31 Article | spectator.com/article/when-t…

My wife is the human shield, wrangling the toddlers, two of them. They’re at a “fun age,” which is what people say when they’re able to visit then leave. ✍️ Fin Taylor trib.al/VTrrf0x

Throughout the video, @NancyMace unpacked opinions on Yemen and Qatar as they relate to the war. Unlike many politicians and political influencers of the moment, she did not seem to be yelling at the viewer. “Ladies be louder,” she said, referring to “common-sense” responses to gender. “You can’t protect women if you can’t define them.” Cockburn can define them alright. A woman is a person who can wear purple eye-shadow and an outfit that would gain her admittance to Berghain – and get elected to Congress in South Carolina. spectator.com/article/nancy-…

Marketing stunts come in different shapes and sizes, and sometimes the people in the middle of them don’t quite understand what’s really driving the agenda. Just because Coxon truly believes in what he’s saying doesn’t mean his story is not part of some bigger propaganda effort to spread fear and awe about AI – a drive that often comes from the very people who are busy trying to create the monster they are warning us about. ✍️ @Freddygray31 Article | spectator.com/article/when-t…

Trump met Xi in person at the foot of that smoothed-out red carpet – the first time that a sitting American president has greeted a foreign leader in Washington in person for 64 years. ✍️ Ian Williams trib.al/vsZx8Hc

“Journaling” is now a good thing, which we know because it’s part of Bryan Johnson’s morning routine, sandwiched between eating algae and sauna-ing with a Bryan Johnson-trademarked ice pack on his crotch. It’s nice to check in with Johnson – the tech millionaire who wants to “defeat death” – every few hours. This week I embarked on my biggest ever stand-up tour, a tour whose scale makes it seem like a culmination of everything to this point. Venues you dream of playing, ones which seem so distant in the mud and piss of the UK’s comedy circuit. Twelve hundred people tonight, 1,500 the night before. “Only 680 tonight is it?” I shrug from the back seat of my tour manager’s Skoda, like a man used to four-figure wine rolling his eyes at a mere Château Lafite. ✍️ @FinTaylorcomedy Article | spectator.com/article/should…

The grim reality is that the world’s pro-Kyiv coalition has shrunk to the EU and UK, Moldova, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a scattering of Pacific and Latin American states. ✍️ Owen Matthews trib.al/8M3BQPn

Should Russia’s aggressive war on Ukraine, with its accompanying litany of horrific human rights abuses, disqualify it from a seat on the United Nations’ Security Council (UNSC)? That’s what Poland’s feisty foreign minister Radek Sikorsky called for yesterday in New York. The UNSC was meant to be a “guardian of peace, not to give immunity to aggressors” like Russia, Sikorski told Polish television. More, he called the legal basis for Russia’s permanent seat at the Security Council table – with its accompanying veto over all resolutions – “questionable” because Moscow took over the USSR’s old seat without a vote. ✍️ @owenmatth Article | spectator.com/article/the-un…

Stand-up tours are the opposite of Bryan’s day-to-day, but I’m trying. Reading rather than scrolling (this month’s been tough because of all the 9/11 reels; that’s a very short off-ramp for me, I can be gone for hours rubbernecking my own loss of innocence). Herbal teas rather than beers. Limiting the amount of processed pork, for some reason still inextricably tied to the hotel experience. I like feeling good on stage, I like feeling fully conscious up there. This may be the best it gets. But it’s a means to an end. Johnson’s sober so he can get up and be sober all day. Isn’t the point of feeling rested that you’re able to enjoy things? ✍️ @FinTaylorcomedy Article | spectator.com/article/should…