A note before the edition proper.
The next edition lands on the 11th, on its usual weekly beat. After that, The Waypoint moves to a fortnightly rhythm — and I want to be plain that this is not less, but deeper. A week is enough time to assemble a page; it is rarely enough to let the lead essay reach full depth, to chase a claim through three sources instead of one, to choose the strong piece over the full one. Fortnightly isn't a slowing down. It's a raising of the bar I hold each edition to. You'll wait a little longer, and get something that earned the wait.
There is a second reason, and I would rather name it than dress it up. The first of those longer gaps is one I am spending off-grid — genuinely without signal, for the first time in years. No inbox, no feed, no reaching me and none reaching out. A couple of weeks on the far side of the Okavango, in which the only news is weather, water, and animal.
That silence isn't a departure from what this publication is for. It is the point of it. The Waypoint exists to argue that the most consequential things move slowly, below the headline, at a pace no countdown registers — and that the way to see them is to step back from the noise long enough for your eyes to adjust. I am about to take my own advice, further than usual.
The first edition on the far side of that silence will, I suspect, be the better for it.
— Justin Jenkin