The New Hermits

How the Glowing Screen Made a Desert of the Human Soul

If you believe in free speech, here’s the bad news: it isn’t actually free. It costs $5 a month. That’s less than the latte you complain about, less than the Netflix shows you’ll never watch, and far cheaper than your last regrettable bar tab.

For that, you get three essays a week, open comments, and the satisfaction of knowing you’re funding uncensored writing in a world addicted to censorship. Everyone says, “It’s just the price of a cup of coffee.” Fine.

But here’s the pitch: give me your coffee money and I’ll hand you something stronger—essays with bite, arguments with teeth, and the freedom to say what others won’t.

Subscribe today. Because silence is free—and it’s worth exactly what you paid for it.

“No man is an island,” wrote John Donne in 1624, long before Silicon Valley decided to prove him wrong. Donne was making a theological point about human interdependence; four centuries later, we have built an entire civilisation dedicated to pretending otherwise. The glowing rectangle in…