Thinking Fast, Slow, And Super Slow

David Bessis | 18th December 2025

Appraisal and critique of Daniel Kahneman's theory of cognitive biases, which posits that we have two distinct cognitive systems — one for immediate, instinctive responses and the other for rigorous reasoning. Cognitive biases arise when the first system is “systematically wrong”. His theory overlooks a third system, the bridge between intuition and logic, which is “entirely ignored by our culture” (4,700 words)

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Making Forest Fires Worse

Alex Smith & Elizabeth McCarthy | Breakthrough Journal | 17th December 2025

In the last 14 years, California’s wildfires have raged unchecked, burning 16% of the state’s landmass. The US Forest Service, which contains wildfires by mechanical thinning and prescribed burns, has been hamstrung by a string of lawsuits from one environmentalist. “The problem lies in a system that allows a single person to make decisions that impact millions of people and acres of our ecosystems” (3,100 words)

How To Be Old

Catherine Hiller | Oldster | 22nd December 2025

Tongue-in-cheek guide from a 79 year old on how to "enjoy the entitlements" of age. Be sure to tell everyone about your precise state of health. Enjoy the little noises you now make when standing up or sitting down. When faced with new technology, "cultivate a state of learned helplessness" — if an 8-year-old can truly solve the problem, let them. Also: "Embrace your inner curmudgeon!" (1,300 words)

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Editing Is Only Good If the Editing Is Good

Freddie deBoer | 22nd December 2025

Responding to writing by saying that it "could use an editor" seems smart but is actually akin to repeating a sports cliché. It offers no specific critique and reveals ignorance of how editing works, especially today when so much of editorial work has been hollowed out. Some editing is good, some is bad. Overediting can be as bad as underediting. Concision isn't even necessarily an improvement (3,200 words)

Were Classical Statues Painted Horribly?

Ralph S Weir | Works In Progress | 16th December 2025

When we reconstruct the original colouring of Greek and Roman sculptures, they look grotesque — to our eyes, much worse than the plain stone or bronze. Has our aesthetic sense greatly evolved in 2,000 years, or is something else going on? Much older painted statuary from other cultures, such as Egypt, still looks marvellous. Perhaps the problem is just that the reconstructions are very badly done (2,700 words)

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Let A Thousand Societies Bloom

Vitalik Buterin | 17th December 2025

Assessment of the state of intentional community-building. This movement encompasses everything from libertarian micronations to socialist utopias. Some are actively experimenting with short-term "pop-up" cultures. The writer ran one called Zuzalu in Montenegro in 2023; 200 people co-existed for two months, shared ideas and formed subcultures. Living in tribes is the future, it is argued (8,700 words)

Podcast: The World’s Worst Philosopher | Panpsycast. An attempt to rank the worst philosopher in all of history, revisiting famous missteps by otherwise well-regarded thinkers (39m 52s)

Video: Fairytale Lullaby | YouTube | Jacob Collier | 3m 17s

Jacob Collier sings John Martyn’s Fairytale Lullaby late at night in the mostly deserted streets of Venice.

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‘It's Just A Bomb’

Ravi Somaiya | Bungalow | 16th December 2025

Astonishing reconstruction of a chance meeting outside a hospital in Leeds in 2023. Mohammed Farooq, a student nurse, walked towards the entrance with a homemade bomb in a bag, planning on detonating it inside. Nathan Newby, sitting on a bench nearby, was a patient with a lung infection. He struck up a conversation — "Alright mate, you alright?" — and convinced the bomber to turn himself in (5,800 words)

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Rumours Of Our Death

Ian Hislop et al | The Fence | 18th December 2025

Veteran editors weigh in on the future of print magazines. Here's Ian Hislop on his much-mocked decision to keep Private Eye as print only, which seems astute now: "My strategy has always been to resist all developments and technological ‘improvements’ and just carry on with print, because it’s a better vehicle for conveying ideas – and a really good platform for cartoons. They just don’t work as well online" (3,300 words)

This Life Gives You Nothing

Jonah Weiner | Blackbird Spyplane | 16th December 2025

Elegantly-written realisation that outsourcing thought to one's phone is not a good idea. "I enjoyed two unexpected, interconnected revelations. The first was that the opening pages of Swann’s Way are beautiful and captivatingly trippy. The second was that I did not want to die having made an Instagram reel with a throwaway punchline about Proust, but not having actually read any Proust" (3,200 words)

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Anti-Sports Personality Of The Year 2025

Simon Burnton | Guardian | 17th December 2025

There were two stone-based cheating scandals in sport this year. Some competitors at the world stone skimming championship were accused of throwing "suspiciously circular" stones. Also, a Chinese curling player allegedly "burned a stone", that is, illegally touched it with a broom to change its path. Sportspeople also bit each other, waxed pool balls, and tampered with ski suits. Delightfully ignominious (1,900 words)

Great Scientists Follow Intuition And Beauty

Erik Hoel | Seeds Of Science | 3rd December 2025

“The abstract machine of science is an open system. We can be rational about choosing between different hypotheses, different ideas, or different experiments. But rationality does not actually tell you, by itself, what makes for a good hypothesis, a good idea, or an elegant experiment. Those choices include some strange blend of aesthetics, intuition, passion and other irreducible qualities” (1,400 words)

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Debt Shaped The Way We Speak

Colin Gorrie | Dead Language Society | 10th December 2025

The words “owe”, “should” and “debt” reveal how “English built its way of expressing duty, necessity and obligation — not to mention guilt and sin — out of the raw materials of accounting”. Old and Middle English words that denoted some form of actual debt have become modal verbs of obligation, instances of concrete words being worn down into abstract bits of grammar through use (3,600 words)

Purpose From First Principles

Marco Giancotti | Plankton Valhalla | 4th December 2025

“Humans seem to really, really want to find the purpose of things. This has the nice effect of making us “storytelling animals”, because every story is the chronicle of intents fulfilled or thwarted. The same tendency is the cause of many of our self-inflicted torments. Seeing goals everywhere is the natural way of being human, and it takes years of practice to keep this propensity temporarily at bay” (10,800 words)

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Venetian Report On The Ottomans

Roman Helmet Guy | 11th December 2025

Venetian intelligence on the Ottomans in 1534. A good four paragraphs are dedicated to naming all lands under Ottoman rule, followed by assessments of the two empires’ respective military prowess as well as allegiances and enmities, near and far. “The Sultan makes no important decision without Ibrahim (Pasha), and Ibrahim alone does everything.” An intriguing snapshot of geopolitics from the time (9,400 words)

Podcast: To Hell And Back | Fear No Man. First episode in a new series about the life of Afrobeat pioneer and social revolutionary Fela Kuti (38m 5s)

Video: Frank | Vimeo | New Yorker | 15m 06s

Film following 99-year-old New Jersey lawyer Frank Lucianna through his final criminal case. When he died not long after this was filmed, there was a two-hour line to get into his wake, such was the crowd of people who wanted to pay their respects.

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The Legacy Of Nicaea

Ed Simon | Hedgehog Review | 10th December 2025

2025 was the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, "a milestone observed by churches, seminaries, and religious institutions but largely ignored by the secular press". It is worth knowing about, since this gathering in "an Anatolian backwater" resulted in the core doctrine of orthodox Christianity. "Not consistency but paradox, not reason but mystery, not an answer, but a question" (2,100 words)

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In Memoriam: Justice David H. Souter

Chief Justice Roberts et al | Harvard Law Review | 11th December 2025

Legal luminaries pay tribute to Supreme Court Justice David Souter, who died earlier this year at the age of 85. He was brilliant: "Not just in a yeah-yeah-of-course-he-was-smart kind of way. He possessed a sixth intellectual gear that very few do... I’m talking about raw intellectual firepower. His mind just worked at a speed, and with a capacity, that I hadn’t seen before — and, frankly, haven’t seen since" (6,600 words)