Internet and Bitterness

The People Holding Up The Internet

Sheet.Works | 8th October 2026

Timezones, JavaScript, compression, photos on Android phones, alphabet legibility in languages like Hindi, Arabic and Tamil — all of these work in the digital realm because of mostly uncompensated work done by a small handful of coders. Much of the world's online timezone infrastructure, for instance, functions because of a text file that a UCLA lecturer updates in his spare time (3,200 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

Heart Of Bitterness

Maria Pinto | Orion | 5th October 2026

Bitterness is one of the five basic taste sensations and has twenty-five taste receptor genes dedicated to it, compared to two for sweetness. Once, it was thought that this was an evolutionary mechanism to detect poison, but now we know better: the most toxic mushroom is said to taste delicious. Bitterness is not just a flavour, but a state. "The way we live incubates bitterness" (3,100 words)