Three Government Programmes, Three Promises and a Bill Nobody Wants to Calculate
On 31 May, more than 41 million Colombians are called upon to choose between…
ESSAYS
ESSAYS — ACIDREPORT
Essays
In-depth texts: cultural analysis, political reading and history as a tool for understanding the present.
The essay as a pause
Daily news explains what happened. The essay explains why it matters. There is no informational urgency here, there is time to think a subject through to the end, without the pressure to publish before anyone else or to summarise in two paragraphs what demands a full development. A well written essay does not compete with current events, it deliberately ignores them for as long as careful thought requires.
The texts gathered in this section address culture, politics and history from a critical distance that current events rarely allow. They do not aim to inform about a specific event, they aim to place that event within a wider structure of meaning, the one that explains why it happened that way and not another, and why it will probably happen again.
Not everything deserves an essay. Only what survives a second reading, what still says something once the outcome of the event that inspired it is already known. A good essay ages better than the news that gave rise to it, because it does not depend on novelty but on the quality of the reasoning, and that is exactly the criterion by which every text in this section is chosen.
Giacometti and the factory of the armoured man: identity, fear and power in Latin America
In February 2010, L’Homme qui marche I by Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti sold at…
Ben Gvir Filmed the Humiliation, Netanyahu Signed the Silence That Made It Possible
On 20 May 2026, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir posted a video…
AcidReport runs on their servers. We chose Infomaniak before it was a political statement. Boris Siegenthaler just made it one
On May 13, 2026, Boris Siegenthaler signed a document. He did not give a…
Learning Every Day as an Act of Resistance in a System That Doesn’t Need You to Be Stupid, Just Distracted
There is a distinction the system would rather we not make. Between knowing and…
What ninety-three million documents revealed about who manufactures our ignorance
The mechanism is seventy years old and operates with the precision of a Swiss…
No conspiracy needed to destroy a democracy, boredom will do
Julien Gracq published The Opposing Shore in 1951, when the European ruins were still…
The Mammals That Stopped Reproducing So the App Could Keep Running
A thirty-year-old man, in a recent debate, said something his contemporaries rarely say out…
The Traqueto as True Mirror of Colombian Capitalism
Colombia has spent decades conducting a cultural operation without a name and almost without…
What Tanizaki Knew in 1933 and Five Billion Users Are Learning Too Late
In 1933, as imperial Japan electrified itself at a forced pace and Western architects…
Schopenhauer, or How Loving Is Obeying the Species and Calling It Freedom
Schopenhauer was not a man who chose his words to reassure. His thesis on…
The animal we never chose and never managed to do without
There is a scene that plays out millions of times a day on screens…