Philippa Kaur

ON JUNE 14TH Constitution Avenue will turn into the Champs Elysées for a day. Some 150 military vehicles, 50 aircraft and 6,600 troops will roll, fly and march past the White House to celebrate the US Army’s 250th birthday (and, coincidentally, its current occupant’s 79th). The scene will be reminiscent of the annual Bastille Day parade in Paris, which so inspired Donald Trump when he attended one during his first presidential term that he has since insisted on emulating it at home. More

The ways in which humans can be triggered into making irrational decisions are many and varied. Investors make higher bids for stocks when the sun is shining. If you add paper packaging to a product wrapped in plastic, people will perceive it as being more environmentally friendly than the same product without paper. The act of sharing an article makes people feel more knowledgeable: people who read an article on investing and share it are likely to take more risk in investment decisions than those who read the same article but do not pass it on. It’s a wonder the species has done as well as it has. More

A YEAR AGO, when Apple used a jamboree at its home in Silicon Valley to unveil its artificial-intelligence (AI) strategy, grandly known as Apple Intelligence, it was a banner occasion. The following day the firm’s value soared by more than $200bn—one of the biggest single-day leaps of any company in American history. The excitement was fuelled by hopes that generative AI would enable Apple to transform the iPhone into a digital assistant—in effect, Siri with a brain—helping to resuscitate flagging phone sales. Twelve months later, that excitement has turned into almost existential dread. More

FROM MONDAY to Friday, Diana Kydysiuk’s life looks much like that of any other 11-year-old, with her time taken up by school, gymnastics and judo practice. But at weekends Diana becomes the star of home-made videos that are viewed billions of times by people around the world. “Yeah,” she says shyly, “it’s weird.” More

Eid al-Adha, which began this year on June 6th, is nicknamed the “Muslim Met Gala” for good reason. The three-day Islamic holiday is an opportunity not only for religious observance but for worship of the fashion gods, as revellers dress up to the nines. As Muslim spending on fashion grows, designers are bringing out collections aimed at the observant. What’s more, even non-Muslims are adopting the trend for “modest-wear”. More

At first glance Bicester Village looks like any other in the Cotswolds, the bucolic corner of England it is located near. It is filled with low-rise buildings with gabled roofs, cobbled streets, wooden benches and greenery. It is, in fact, a shopping centre where designer brands, from Armani to Zegna, sell their wares at discounts of 30% or more. Announcements on the train from London come in Mandarin, as well as English, testament to its status as one of Britain’s most popular tourist destinations. More

The shed, a glittering cultural centre in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards where Ralph Fiennes and Sir Kenneth Branagh have graced the stage, hosted an unlikely gathering of utility and technology bosses on May 29th. They were there not for Shakespeare, but for something as dramatic in its own way. The event celebrated Mercury, a new effort led by the Electric Power Research Institute (epri), an industry body, to create interoperability standards for “micropower” devices inspired by the Bluetooth technology that revolutionised consumer electronics. It will allow such things as electric-vehicle (ev) chargers, heat pumps, solar panels, smart thermostats and residential batteries to communicate seamlessly with electricity grids. More

“Ja, ja, ja, now we’re gonna spit on our hands, we will increase the gross national product!” is the refrain from Geier Sturzflug’s biggest hit. The band’s “Gross National Product” topped Germany’s pop charts in 1983, when the country’s work ethic was still ferocious: “when grandpa gets on his bike on Sunday/and sneaks into the factory/then grandma worries he’ll collapse/because grandpa is working an extra shift again today.” More