Words like payload worry me. Deploy and warhead. Bunker-busting munitions. Diagrams to illustrate how the Shahed-136 drone works, from target-lock to firestorm. Images of bodies like so many parallel ghosts. A wide-eyed child amid the ruins, her bakelite doll.

You get the picture. This mess we’re in. The need to know the names, the nuclear strike zones of Natanz and Fordow. Our urgent geography lessons, the squeeze point of Hormuz. Welcome to our new vocabulary. And also the reason unthink – the modern verb – has gained traction across databases, as futile as “un-thought” can be.

Sleep study Insomnia gifCredit: iStock

Perhaps this madness is why I found a book last week, or it found me. The tiger on the cover caught my eye, as did the title: The Shapeless Unease (Vintage, 2021). Sound familiar? The freefall anxiety we struggle to manage. The doomscroll morsels we never seem to ration. This invasive language........

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