The Missing Lynx

Phoebe Weston | Guardian | 28th April 2025

Hostility to human migrants impacts animals too. Border barriers split migratory populations, causing "genetic bottlenecks", inbreeding and habitat deterioration. The wall on the Poland-Belarus border separated the lynx population that lives in that ancient forest. Pygmy owls can't fly high enough to get over the US-Mexico border wall. Red deer still don't cross the former iron curtain line in Germany (1,400 words)

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Against Reporting

Sam Kahn | Castalia | 15th May 2025

Intriguingly optimistic "state of journalism" survey. Yes, the old model of reporting is almost gone. But that doesn't have to be the end of the story. "'Journalism' doesn’t have to mean a boring, detached, clinical, telegraphic, faux-lab-coat-wearing style. Journalism can just be a curiosity about the world — an interest in talking to different kinds of people, in finding creativity within the non-fictional" (3,400 words)

Mushroom Cloud Over Manhattan

Mark Lynas | Literary Hub | 12th May 2025

Sobering explanation of how the first few hours of a nuclear war might go. Everyone who sees the light of the initial explosion will be blinded. A fireball "roughly the width of Manhattan" will then spread 1.5km off the ground. Everything within ten square kilometres, except steel and concrete, will be vaporised. Then, retaliation. "Once the detonations begin, the logic of escalation is inexorable" (3,800 words)

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The World's 'Poorest President'

Gerardo Lissardy | BBC News | 14th May 2025

Obituary for José Mujica, president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. He was known for his modest lifestyle: refusing to move into the presidential palace, driving himself in a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle and giving away a large portion of his annual salary. As a leftist guerilla in the 1970s he survived being shot six times and escaped twice from prison, once through a tunnel with 105 fellow inmates (1,200 words)

21 Observations From People Watching

Shani Zhang | Skin Contact | 2nd April 2025

Wedding artist makes notes on how strangers move through a room. “Some people are more like closed fists, others are more like open palms. Many of the driven people I have met are closed fists: warm, charming and ready to punch through a wall at any point in time. My favourite kind of person has an elasticity in their movements. There is an openness that does not need to be announced” (1,900 words)

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Anonymous Interview: The Indie Producer

The Vane | 13th May 2025

State of filmmaking today. Small movies are getting smaller, made with micro-donations from GoFundMe campaigns. Movies look worse today than they did fifteen years ago for many reasons: digital video is lit differently from celluloid with many “plasticky” elements; scenes are relocated after being shot due to script rewrites; the “production pipeline is ultimately adverse to specificity” (6,000 words)

The Forgotten Post-War Decree

Jon Neale | Birmingham Dispatch | 10th May 2025

Birmingham was booming in the 1900s until post-war policy tried to force industry into more deprived parts of the UK. New factories now required an “Industrial Development Certificate”, which the government routinely refused to grant. Existing companies fragmented, and new ones could find no foothold. By the 1990s, Birmingham went from being the UK’s second richest city to being infamous for decline (2,500 words)

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The Airplane ‘Barf Bag’

Mercedes Streeter | Autopian | 8th May 2025

Tribute to an “unsung hero of aviation”. In 1949, plastics pioneer Schjeldahl designed a polyethylene bag with ridges that folded and sealed with a hot iron. Originally meant for food storage, Northwest Orient Airlines repurposed the bag for motion sickness. Barf bags are collectibles today, perhaps for their jokes: German airline Hapag-Lloyd once had bags saying “thank you for your feedback” (2,900 words)

11 Things I Hate About AI

Marie Le Conte | Young Vulgarian | 9th May 2025

Well-expressed scepticism. Perhaps the daily friction of life that AI tools promise to eliminate is a crucial part of the human experience. We learn skills by trying to acquire them, and from starting with a blank canvas that gradually gets filled via our effort. Painting an original work is not the same as completing a paint-by-numbers exercise. We need "tough love", too, which a "digital courtier" will not provide (4,400 words)

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'Tone Deaf, Self-Important, Incredibly Bad Art'

Eddy Frankel | Guardian | 6th May 2025

A really furious one-star review can be a thing of beauty. By the end of this one about an art show by former Take That member Robbie Williams, the critic is questioning whether today's art landscape has degraded beyond saving. "On a basic, artistic level, the work looks bad and expresses incredibly superficial ideas very poorly. It’s a 'live, laugh, love' sign slowly strangling you with its self-importance" (900 words)

Is Everyone Getting Their Tattoos Removed?

Carrie Battan | GQ | 24th April 2025

The vivid opening of this piece speaks for itself: "The worst part of getting a tattoo removed, apart from the searing pain and the two-year commitment, is the sound the laser makes as it hits your skin: a violent, unnatural popping and crackling that could soundtrack an animated video of someone being electrocuted... It feels as if your body is a stretch of New York City sidewalk being torn into by a torch" (4,600 words)

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The Trouble With Dangling Modifiers

Stan Carey | Sentence First | 6th May 2025

Grammar experts deplore them, but must we always avoid dangling modifiers? Sentences like "While replying to your email, the doorbell rang" are technically incorrect but surely harmless. Most examples seem "ambiguous only with a feat of imagination", or to those looking for misreadings. A common remedy is to use the passive voice instead — which many grammarians also hate (1,500 words)

28 Slightly Rude Notes On Writing

Adam Mastroianni | Experimental History | 29th April 2025

Less a list than a begrudging appreciation of the never-ending grind that is trying to produce good creative work. "Some people think that writing is merely the process of picking the right words and putting them in the right order, like stringing beads onto a necklace. But the power of those words, if there is any, doesn’t live inside the words themselves...The beauty ain’t in the necklace. It’s in the neck" (3,300 words)

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An 80,000-Year History Of The Tomato

Evan DeTurk | Works In Progress | 7th May 2025

80,000 years ago, a tomato was a blueberry-sized fruit that grew only in Central and South America. Being small they were time-consuming to pick and some variants were toxic to humans, so Native Americans began breeding for a better plant. The cherry tomato was an intermediate product of this process. The first tomato suitable for commercial growing appeared only in 1870 (1,500 words)

The Benevolent Bureaucracy

Ben | Flyover Takes | 5th May 2025

Philanthropy shifted from personal aid to professionalised intervention during the American Gilded Age. Carnegie argued that the rich should act as “trustees for the poor” by funding libraries, universities, hospitals — a form of aristocratic stewardship. Foundations today echo his vision: interventions at scale rather than direct handouts. Is this generosity, or is it the rich usurping the role of government? (2,200 words)

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Plucked To Perfection

Nicole Garrison | Serenade | 6th May 2025

Potted history of the harpsichord. Unlike the piano, which strikes strings with hammers, the harpsichord plucks its strings with quills or plectra. Its main role in early music was as a continuo instrument — “far from simply filling in chords”, harpsichordists would “shape the harmonic texture” of the piece. It was eventually eclipsed by the piano, until a historically informed revival in the 20C (1,400 words)

The Anglo-Nazi Empire That Almost Was

Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | 4th May 2025

The prevailing narrative in the West today is that appeasement was a well-intentioned but catastrophic attempt to avoid WWII. In reality, Britain was pursuing a “world political partnership” with Nazi Germany. An industry summit took place in London on the same day as Kristallnacht, which proved to be no deterrent for continued discussions. A month later, an Anglo-Nazi coal cartel was created (2,500 words)

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Possibly A Serious Possibility

Adam Kucharski | Understanding The Unseen | 3rd May 2025

Intelligence communication offers lessons on dealing with the language of uncertainty. In 1951, a CIA report noted that Soviet aggression against Yugoslavia “should be considered a serious possibility”, a phrase whose probability was interpreted by some to be as high as 80%, others as low as 20%. A NATO study showed officers had a dozen different understandings of the word “likely” (1,000 words)

Import, Immature

Spencer Wright | Scope Of Work | 28th April 2025

Surely one of the most beguiling essays ever to be written about globalisation and reciprocal tariffs, by someone who thinks professionally about manufacturing. "I turn a can of tuna over in my hand, and my entire understanding of it changes. I buy a pair of shoes, make myself a drink, take a sip of water — it all has so much meaning. But every time I think I know what the meaning is, it seems to change" (3,600 words)

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Does A Magician Reveal Their Tricks?

Andrew Coletti | Atlas Obscura | 1st May 2025

Frank interview with a magician. Interesting throughout. The best way to learn to do magic is still by reading books and then practising in front of a mirror. With a mastery of the fundamentals, you can create your own novel tricks. Magicians keep their methods secret "for the audience’s benefit, not for our own". Most of the time, the explanation is "confoundingly simple" and kills the fun (2,000 words)