Everything Eats And Is Eaten

Drew M Dalton | Aeon | 22nd August 2025

An understanding of thermodynamics has had a profound impact on nearly every branch of the natural sciences. We have yet to fully grasp the philosophical implications of “entropic decay”. A good starting point, perhaps, is to admit that “the universe will end” and that its function “is to hasten this extinction”. “The flourishing of life is always contributing to the eventual collapse of the cosmos” (4,300 words)

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The Unlikely Revival Of Nuclear Batteries

James Blanchard | IEEE Spectrum | 25th August 2025

The first nuclear-powered pacemaker was implanted in 1970. Its batteries could run for decades without maintenance, a relief to those who had needed surgery every few years to change their pacemaker’s battery. But regulators soon banned them when the batteries proved hard to track. The last known nuclear pacemaker was implanted in 1988. Nuclear batteries seemed destined for obscurity, until the 2000s (4,300 words)

Russia Refracted

Solomon Petrov & Veronika Travina | Ideas Letter | 21st August 2025

Exploration of Russian social attitudes under Putin, beyond the simplistic Western idea of "a cowed population" under a dictator. Among those who have not emigrated, it is argued, the reality is more nuanced. While there are groups that do not support the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the "middle-class beneficiaries of war" are experiencing a "nationalist awakening" that is altering the culture (3,500 words

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I Texted The Number On The Sign

Kate Bingaman-Burt | KBBBlog | 20th July 2025

After being struck by the bright colours and beautiful design of hand-painted signs advertising roof cleaning services around her city, the writer contacted said roof cleaner to learn more. Turns out, he makes all of his own signs from scratch and takes his process very seriously. What follows is a delightful conversation about work and art — and when it's a good time to take a break to go for a swim (2,200 words)

Podcast: The Silent Type | Threshold. Environmental documentary series takes a closer look at turtles, aiming to discover whether they are really as silent as has always been assumed (46m 04s)

Video: How Smart Are Crows? | YouTube | TED-Ed | 4m 49s

Humorous enumeration of corvids’ superior cognitive abilities.

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Behind the Shoot

Dina Litovsky | In The Flash | 19th August 2025

Photographer explains how to take a good picture of a politician, in this case NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for the cover of Time magazine. "What surprised me most was how little polish Mamdani seemed to have, at least compared to other politicians I’ve photographed." Her secret weapon is a sleight of hand magician, who dazzles her subjects with card tricks while she snaps away (1,300 words)

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Tolkien Against The Grain

Gerry Canavan | Dissent | 14th January 2025

Tolkien is revered by figures on the right, such as J.D. Vance and Giorgia Meloni. The Lord of the Rings is "obsessed with ruins, bloodlines, the divine right of aristocrats, and a sense of history as a tragic, endless fall from grace". But left-wingers love Tolkien too, finding anti-fascist and ecological narratives to revere. The secret to this broad appeal? His books are really about a "struggle over historicisation" (2,000 words)

The Pleasure Of Patterns In Art

Samuel Jay Keyser | MIT Press Reader | 19th August 2025

Analysis of why Caillebotte's Paris Street; Rainy Day is so pleasant to look at. This painting of a street scene is also an arrangement of geometric objects. Triangles dominate the canvas. There are five umbrellas: rounded triangles containing smaller triangles. The buildings too have triangle motifs. The work delights in “repetition of the same/except variety”, central to how we perceive structure and rhythm (4,800 words)

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Scrappy Theory

Nick Hilton | Future Proof | 18th August 2025

The inhibiting factor with consuming porn used to be embarrassment, which the internet has obviated. How to limit access without a total ban? The UK’s new Online Safety Act has launched age verification on porn, using facial analysis to confirm that a visitor is over 18. This seems to have caused a big drop in traffic to porn websites. Perhaps people have been “discouraged by a collateral requirement” (2,600 words)

Unreliable Parts Make A Reliable Whole

Kasra | Bits Of Wonder | 17th August 2025

“In living things, unlike in machines, unreliable parts make a reliable whole.” A “mechanical mindset emphasises reduction into simple parts and total control over every aspect of the system” whereas the “organismal mindset emphasises creative autonomy over predictability”. In a society overrun by machines, we should be careful not to let the mechanical mindset take over (1,300 words)

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The Pistachio Croissant And Meaning Of Life

Michael Shindler | Et In Arcadia We Go | 17th August 2025

Why do French patisseries recoil from pistachio croissants, when they are perfectly at ease with pistachios in their macarons, eclairs, and financiers? A delightfully absurd exploration, featuring a potted history of the croissant, an encounter with a man whose face could be a “caricature of a gloomy Teutonic philosopher of the 19C”, plus wild excursions into Kierkegaard, Jung and other worthies (7,300 words)

Podcast: Cyan | Your Greek Word On A Sunday. Bitesize Hellenic etymology series. Did the Ancient Greeks have a word for "blue" and why did Homer describe the sea as "wine-dark? (1m 58s)

Video: Laura Steenberge: Four Studies | YouTube | Marco Fusi | 11m 16s

Haunting contemporary classical music that makes full use of a Baroque stringed instrument: the viola d'amore.

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The Woman Who Perfected Flower Painting

Zachary Fine | Atlantic | 9th August 2025

Rachel Ruysch, "one of the greatest still-life painters in the history of art", was more famous during her lifetime than Rembrandt or Vermeer. Born in 1664, she lived to 86. Her father was a renowned embalmer and she too had the knack of turning "a perishable commodity into a stable one" — in her case, flowers and fruit, immortalised at the zenith of their beauty in her abundant compositions in oils (2,500 words)

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I Used To Know How To Write In Japanese

Marco Giancotti | Aether Mug | 15th August 2025

When learning Japanese, divide and conquer. Either learn to write the kanji first, or learn how to speak, but don't do both at the same time. This separation can later result in "character amnesia", though. "There is even a term for it, wahpro baka (ワープロ馬鹿), meaning 'word-processor idiot,' from the idea that spending too much time typing into Microsoft Word atrophies handwriting skills" (1,900 words)

Sex Sells

Robert Foyle Hunwick | China Books Review | 7th August 2025

Review of a book about sex work in China. The author provides an introduction to "the Chinese underworld of surly madams, hard-bitten hookers, predatory policemen and truculent johns" who orbit this illicit trade. Socialism is "not compatible with commodification of the body" and sex work has always been banned in the People's Republic. Other than to serve high-ranking party officials, of course (2,000 words)

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How To Leave A Sinking Nation

Atul Dev | Guardian | 14th August 2025

The highest point in the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu stands at 4.5 metres. By the year 2100, predictions show that 90 per cent of it will be underwater. The heat might make it uninhabitable before then. Although it is one of the least-visited countries in the world, tourists are already arriving to see the place before it disappears. The 11,000 residents of Tuvalu have to decide if, and when, to leave (5,900 words)

Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?

Ozy Brennan | Asterisk | 11th August 2025

The rationalist community was drawn together by Eliezer Yudkowsky’s The Sequences, a set of essays about thinking more rationally. Ironically, the same community has played host to groups with very strange beliefs, including claims of interacting with demons. The Zizians, a loose group of vegan anarchist transhumanists, have been linked to six violent deaths. Why? Analysed here by an insider (5,400 words)

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ChatGPT And The Meaning Of Life

Harvey Lederman | Shtetl-Optimised | 4th August 2025

On the dread of a life without work, as more of it is automated. “If mechanised minds consume all the empty space on the intellectual map, lives dedicated to discovery won’t be lives that humans can lead. The post-instrumental world could be a much better place. But its coming means the death of my culture. We may be the last to enjoy this spell, before all exploration is done by fully automated sleds” (5,100 words)