Imagine a stressed professional checking this month’s salary , rising worries about how bills are stacking up, but there’s nothing left to save or put to the side. Stressed by life, they turn to retail therapy for comfort. It never disappoints. Suddenly, the new matte absolute lipstick from a designer brand appears. For only €50! Against all rational odds, it will most likely be bought. Why do people spend on luxuries when logic says the opposite? © Pixabay What is the lipst

From Filipino citizens to a new UN body, the largest polluters are being challenged in ground-breaking ways. © Unsplash The shape of climate justice is changing across the globe. Citizens and national governments in countries faced by the damage of climate change are pushing back at corporations that contribute the most. These developments are becoming more common as it is now easier to measure how much man-made climate change has contributed to the likelihood of specific nat

How Bad Bunny's halftime show reframed debates on American identity and Puerto Rico’s place in the U.S. “¡Qué rico ser latino!” The opening words of the   2026 Super Bowl halftime show  set the tone for a memorable and impactful performance by Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, popularly known as Bad Bunny. The selected artist swiftly stole the show, overshadowing the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. Being the most-watched halftime show of all time –and being almost en

Even though centuries separate them, seventeenth-century France and twenty-first-century Europe are confronted with the same question: should society place its faith in laissez-faire policies, or should the state intervene when faced with a macroeconomic problem? Across time, it seems the economy repeatedly falls into the same dilemma. In detail, throughout the 17th century, France, under the reign of Louis XIV, was involved in decades of continuous warfare, including the Th

Joint article with Sofija Stanojevic Gabriel Zucman at Room for Discussion On Monday, the Room for Discussion stage hosted Gabriel Zucman, a well-renowned French economist, professor of economics at the Paris School of Economics, U.C Berkeley, and the director of the EU Tax Observatory. Dubbed as " the billionaires’ nightmare ” , he is the leading expert on tax injustices and the main proponent of proposing a 2% annual wealth tax on billionaires. Zucman argues that taxing w

©Pexels: UMA media If Elon Musk isn't the most controversial person of the decade, he's getting really close, especially after the scandal surrounding his AI chatbot Grok. On January 12th , Indonesia and Malaysia became the first countries to ban Grok after it was caught generating sexualized images of women and children. Users were asking it to digitally undress people, and Grok was complying without hesitation. Yet, that same week, the US Pentagon announced it would integr