daily horoscopes

PARIS—Every dawn, roughly three billion smartphones cough up the same sugary sentence: “Today, Mercury pirouettes into retrograde, so avoid signing contracts.” From Lagos laundromats to Lapland saunas, humanity greets the morning by asking a glowing rectangle permission to exist. Astrology, once the pastime of bored Babylonian bureaucrats, has metastasized into a planetary ritual—equal parts coping mechanism, dopamine drip, and low-cost therapy for a species that can split atoms but still panics when Saturn looks at it funny.

The numbers are almost charmingly dystopian. In South Korea, Naver’s horoscope page draws 8 million clicks before the national anthem finishes playing. Brazil’s biggest newspaper, Folha de S.Paulo, recently replaced its business column with a “Financial Constellation Forecast,” because apparently the only charts Brazilians trust these days are star charts. Meanwhile, India’s astrology apps—bless their enterprising hearts—now offer “kundli-matched” dating, monetizing arranged marriages with the same algorithmic swagger Tinder uses to monetize heartbreak everywhere else.

Globalization, that old scapegoat, has given the zodiac the same bland ubiquity as Starbucks: a Scorpio in Seattle and a Scorpio in Shenzhen receive identical warnings about “emotional intensity,” presumably translated by the same intern who localizes burger menus. The result is a planetary monoculture where cosmic vagueness passes for wisdom and every human crisis—from inflation to infidelity—can be blamed on a planet 900 million miles away. Hard to fault the strategy; outsourcing blame to outer space is cheaper than therapy and less embarrassing than admitting you bought crypto at its peak.

The political implications are darker than a Capricorn’s sense of humor. In Turkey, President Erdoğan’s allies consult star charts before announcing policy, a practice that makes the lira’s freefall feel oddly predestined. Thailand’s generals once delayed a coup because Mercury was retrograde; apparently tanks also suffer communication breakdowns. And in the United States—land of the free, home of the natal chart—congressional staffers circulate “astrology briefings” alongside economic forecasts, presumably to decide whether the debt ceiling is a Capricorn or just another cosmic prank.

But let’s not pretend the West holds any moral high ground. Silicon Valley, that temple of rational disruption, has merely disrupted rationality: venture capital now funds AI astrologers that promise “hyper-personalized” fortunes for $19.99 a month. The irony is artisanal. The same coders who mock flat-Earthers happily debug horoscope generators that tell Aquariuses to “embrace fluidity,” a phrase that also doubles as HR’s feedback on their last performance review.

The developing world, meanwhile, treats horoscopes as both spiritual GPS and economic lifehack. In Nairobi traffic, boda-boda drivers consult WhatsApp astrologers before choosing routes, because if Mars is in gridlock, why tempt fate? Filipino nurses working double shifts in Dubai pay extra for “career forecasts,” seeking cosmic permission to feel exhausted. And across refugee camps from Lesbos to Cox’s Bazar, Syrian mothers trade solar charts like currency, hoping the stars might finally reveal a border that opens.

What does it mean when eight billion people simultaneously outsource their future to a sky they increasingly can’t see—smog, light pollution, and Elon’s satellite swarm having turned the night into a glitchy PowerPoint? Perhaps the horoscope’s greatest trick isn’t predicting tomorrow but erasing today: a daily reminder that your problems are cosmically ordained, not systemically engineered. It’s neoliberalism with better branding. The stars, after all, never unionize.

Still, one can’t help admiring the efficiency. Why fund mental-health infrastructure when Gemini can just be told to “breathe through the anxiety”? Why fix climate change when it’s clearly Neptune’s fault for flooding Pakistan? The zodiac has become the opium of the masses, only now it’s delivered via push notification and auto-renews at midnight.

So tomorrow, as the sun rises over whichever corner of this spinning rock you call home, remember: somewhere a Libra is being advised to “seek balance” between rent and groceries, while a Pisces is warned that “escapism could backfire.” The forecast is always partly cloudy with a 100-percent chance of existential dread. But hey—at least the apocalypse is scheduled conveniently between lunch and Mercury’s next retrograde.