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Taking a walk on the weird side is officially the new normal. What am I talking about? The phrase ‘new normal’ no longer exists. We are now left to lurch into the slipstream of a new culture without the world-weary ‘COVID-19 sigh’ of yore.
Seismic events now unfold in real time and at sensationally regular intervals. Madness is now the hum-drum of life. What was life like before?
It seems impossible to believe that there was a time when fully grown adults didn’t make a heart shape with their hands at every opportunity. Do fully grown adults in an empty room without omnipresent smartphone cameras make a heart shape? Yes, dear reader, I fear they do. Is this what opposable thumbs are reduced to?
It makes ‘6-7’ make sense. Come to think of it, 6-7, just as it fades from view, seems like a sharply-shaped prophecy of our times.
There are, however, other slightly less irritating examples of relentless and incomprehensible activities unfolding (and they are generally not hand gesture-related). Pharma, life sciences and laboratory-based shin-digs happen, it seems, in spite of war and politics and greedy muppets, not because of them.
This gives us, by which I mean humankind, much to celebrate. These are the green shoots of recovery that give us the will to climb out of the crises of our own creating. After all, that’s what we do.
Enjoy the mag,
John Pinching
editor
April 2026 - magazine highlights
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