There's a specific realisation that's reshaping how affluent, culturally-curious UK travellers think about their Mediterranean holidays. The realisation is that many of the destinations that once offered genuine discovery — the Dalmatian coast before the cruise ships, the Greek islands before the Instagram crowds, the Amalfi Coast before it became impassable in summer, Tuscany before it filled with tour buses — have become victims of their own popularity. The very qualities that made these places special — authenticity, tranquillity, the sense of discovering somewhere genuine — have been substantially eroded by mass tourism. The discerning traveller arrives at a celebrated destination only to find crowds, inflated prices, restaurants serving tourist…

I was organizing my bookshelf over the weekend—a task I always start with great enthusiasm before getting entirely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of novels I’ve bought but haven’t actually read yet. While moving things around, I found an old, faded booklet from an artisan tea tasting event I attended in Victoria a few years back. It detailed the incredibly specific flavor profiles, regional terroirs, and subtle aromatic notes of different leaves. It made me reflect on how our collective relationship with plants has evolved. We used to view botanical selection as a fairly crude, uniform thing. You took whatever was available, and that was that. But today, the modern…

I was clearing out an old desk drawer over the weekend—mostly untangling a truly absurd number of ancient charging cables that I probably haven't used since 2018—and I stumbled across an old receipt from a physical cannabis storefront. It was from a trip I took a few years back, and it got me thinking about how drastically our shopping habits have evolved. We used to think that driving down to a brick-and-mortar storefront, standing in a sterile line, and chatting with a budtender was the absolute peak of the modern retail experience. But frankly? The novelty of the physical dispensary has largely worn off for a lot of regular users.…