Maxime Marquette
MadMax is an independent bilingual news outlet based in Québec, publishing analysis on geopolitics, technology, democracy, and culture.
Our mission: rigorous, source-cited analysis carried out with full editorial independence — no sponsorship, no party line.
Our editorial standards: sources are cited inline, corrections are fixed and logged publicly, and any use of artificial intelligence is disclosed.
“Burn rather than rot. Write rather than stay silent.”
Fire first. Sentences after. No lukewarm takes.
Always answer the strongest version of the opposing point. No strawmen.
No commissioned pieces. No editorial masters. No compromise.
Columns by Maxime Marquette
4,540 columns published
The Great Wall of China is not visible from space?
How many times have you heard that the Great Wall of China is the only human-made structure visible to the naked eye
Napoleon wasn't short — debunking the Napoleon complex myth
Few historical figures have suffered from such a persistent physical caricature as Napoleon Bonaparte, universally pictured in the collective imagination as a
The stubborn myth of the Library of Alexandria burned in a single night
Few historical stories have marked the collective imagination as much as the tale of the great Library of Alexandria being reduced to
When urine served as toothpaste and soap in ancient Rome
It's hard today to imagine brushing your teeth with urine. And yet in ancient Rome, this practice was neither exceptional nor shameful.
Fungi existed millions of years before the first trees
When we picture the first land ecosystems, we tend to imagine primeval forests full of majestic trees, with fungi quietly growing at
More than 1,100 new marine species discovered in a single year
How many species still live in the oceans without ever having been observed by a human being? The answer remains uncertain, but
Octopus skin can detect light without using the eyes
Imagine an animal capable of sensing light not just with its eyes, but with its entire body. This isn't science fiction: it's
Lungs don't just help us breathe, they also make blood
For generations, physiology textbooks have taught a simple rule: blood is made in the bone marrow, full stop. That certainty has just
Harmless gut bacteria inject proteins straight into our cells
For decades, we pictured the gut microbiome as a peaceful mass of bacteria, confined to digestion and a few favors rendered in