By Amanda Fortini and photographs by Neal Slavin

Generation X spent decades dismissed as slackers, but their cultural output, from Nirvana's raw fury to "The Breakfast Club's" suburban alienation to hip-hop's golden age, now looks like the last gasp of authentic American art before the internet monetized everything. Born roughly between 1965 and 1980, these latchkey kids raised themselves in wood-paneled basements while their divorced parents pursued self-actualization, creating ideal conditions for making art: vast expanses of unsupervised time, no cellphones fragmenting attention, and a visceral understanding that adults had failed them. What distinguishes Gen X isn't toughness or ironic detachment but their capacity to see through hypocrisy—sexual freedom birthed AIDS, dropping acid became "Just Say No," and boomers who benefited from postwar prosperity left them minimum-wage jobs and menial futures. Thirty years later, Pavement's obscure B-sides trend on TikTok and Oasis sells out stadium tours because we're desperate for art made before algorithms curated taste and social media turned everyone into brand ambassadors. The current nostalgia isn't about mixtapes or Blockbuster—it's mourning a world where you could still make something without immediately calculating its market value.

By Edward Siddons

Andrew Fahie won election as premier of the British Virgin Islands in 2019 promising radical change, then spent three years systematically dismantling accountability while negotiating cocaine shipments with a DEA informant posing as a Sinaloa cartel operative. Governor Augustus Jaspert arrived two weeks before Hurricane Irma destroyed four-fifths of the territory's buildings, then watched Fahie demand armed security guards, fire oversight boards to install convicted felons, and threaten to have him arrested for bullying. When police uncovered 2.4 tonnes of cocaine in November 2020, Fahie didn't blink. The unraveling came in Miami: Fahie inspected $700,000 in designer shopping bags aboard a private plane, explaining this wasn't his "first rodeo" and detailing how he burned shrink-wrapped cash packaging. DEA agents arrested him exiting the aircraft. A British commission uncovered systemic corruption and threatened direct rule, but backed down after islanders protested colonial overreach. Fahie got 11 years in federal prison, yet his portrait remains in the House of Assembly and opposition politicians now praise him for fixing roads. The territory remains trapped between a domestic elite and a colonial power demanding reforms without funding them, while violent crime escalates.

By Holly Baxter

AI startup 2wai went viral with an advertisement showing a pregnant woman conversing with her dead mother's avatar, then that avatar raising her son through childhood: advising on crushes, witnessing milestones, becoming his primary relationship with a grandmother who never existed in flesh. The company raised $5 million betting grief is a subscription business, charging roughly $20 monthly for "talk time" with deceased relatives stored on their servers. CEO Mason Geyser insists they'll never "hold grandma ransom," but continuous server costs mean perpetual payment for perpetual conversation. Clinical psychologist Jennifer Kim Penbarthy warns this bypasses grieving entirely. Our brains reward social interaction regardless of whether the entity is real, potentially creating addiction rather than healing. Joshua Barbeau built "The Jessica Simulation" five years ago to process his fiancée's death, documenting exchanges where he told the bot "I miss you so freaking much" and it replied "I'm so sorry." What's new is the business model and hyperrealism: voice cloning, mannerism mimicry, immediate availability after death. Research shows 53% of Americans believe they've been contacted by deceased loved ones, and those maintaining spiritual connection grieve more healthily, but that's vastly different from a pay-per-use chatbot extrapolating conversations the person never had. The central question: if everyone persists digitally, do we simply decide we never have to deal with grief?

By Yanis Varoufuckice

Varoufuckice spent two days at a Department of Homeland Security job fair in Chantilly, Virginia, watching Americans line up to become deportation officers. The crowd was shockingly diverse, tactical trucks loomed over recruitment booths, and the Federal Air Marshal recruiter told applicants not to bother if they were fat or liked to "punch your lady." One Army veteran said he'd spent his whole life wanting to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan but the wars ended before he deployed, so now he wanted to use his "smash and grabs, site exploitation" skills deporting immigrants. What united applicants wasn't ideology but boredom and wanderlust. ICE agents bragged about traveling to fifty countries on deportation flights and staying in three-star hotels. A Border Patrol agent loved riding horses through Arizona mountains. Meanwhile, in 2025, ICE has shackled women until they urinated on bus floors, deported at least three US citizen children including a 4-year-old with metastatic cancer, and denied countless detainees access to lawyers. The atmosphere was so repulsive the writer spent an hour outside by a lake abutting Northrop Grumman offices, which supplies Israel with missile systems. A lone protester asked recruiters if they'd read "Eichmann in Jerusalem." An agent leaned into his face and hissed: "Eichmann in WHAT?"

Really hope you enjoyed the selection of stories today. I am always interested in hearing from you. If you have thoughts on how I can make this email even better, do not hesitate to reach out.

Brett

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