What Counts As A Bestseller?

Jordan Pruett | Public Books | 11th October 2022

The word "bestseller" is deceptive. We might assume that a list of bestselling books ranks those titles that have sold the most copies, but no. As this historical analysis shows, these rankings are actually carefully curated by editors. One author sued the NYT after his exclusion, only to lose the case because, since it was subjectively compiled, the list was protected by the right to free speech (2,577 words)

The Transformations Of Science

Geoff Anders | Palladium | 10th October 2022

What is science for, and who should control it? Excellent questions and many non-answers are to be found in this essay. Since the 17C, science has evolved: from private activity to public, from never-ending inquiry to settled authority, from individual endeavour to state-sponsored justification for policy. Can we ever trust the science? Sometimes, and with caveats aplenty, it seems (3,178 words)

Psychiatry Wars

Rachel Aviv | Guardian | 11th October 2022

Extract from a book about mental illness, concerning the story of Ray Osheroff whose struggles with depression put him at the centre of a battle for the future of psychiatry. After a stay at a psychiatric hospital that prioritised psychoanalysis, he sued the institution for failing to prescribe him antidepressants. In the case, "the 20C's two dominant explanations for mental distress collided" (5,221 words)

What Happened To Rod McKuen?

Dan Kois | Slate | 10th October 2022

Notes on collective cultural amnesia, prompted by the rediscovery of a man once mocked as "the most understood poet in America". Rod McKuen sold millions of books and records in the 1960s and 1970s, but was then almost entirely forgotten. He walked the line between "being beloved, productive and yet also totally disparaged". His most popular poem is titled "A Cat Named Sloopy" (6,570 words)

Diplomatic Dining

Bompas & Parr | WePresent | 22nd September 2022

Pivotal geopolitical moments have often occurred over dinner. From the boeuf à la mode that the Founding Fathers consumed as they wrangled over the new capital of the United States to the schweinwürst that Hitler fed to Kurt von Schuschnigg as he threatened to annexe Austria, food has long been a form of soft power. Menu design still ranks among an ambassador's most important jobs (4,242 words)

There Are Three Types Of Meetings

Cam Daigle | 4th October 2022

Guide to having better meetings. Perhaps the key point here is that meetings cannot be fixed by holding more of them, nor can their problems be solved by abolishing them altogether. Being thoughtful about who attends, what the purpose of the gathering is, and where the power imbalances are is the only way to ensure productive discussions that don't devolve into pointless rambles (2,854 words)

Svante Pääbo And The Human Story

Editorial Board | Quillette | 6th October 2022

Concise explainer of why Svante Pääbo's Nobel Prize is so well deserved. Pääbo has sequenced the Neanderthal genome, discovered a previously unknown hominin species, the Denisovans, and shown that all three lineages — Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo Sapiens — overlapped and interbred 50,000 years ago. "He hasn’t just benefited humankind. He has illuminated it" (800 words)

Collision Course

Lauren Smiley | Intelligencer | 3rd October 2022

True-crime yarn, gloriously told. Family nets $6 million by staging car-crashes: They inflict moderate injuries on one another before each crash, then claim big insurance payouts afterwards. "Mize hurt you one at a time, pulling tools from a briefcase, cold and businesslike. He’d gash your brow with a razor or box cutter, scuff the wound with sandpaper, gripe if you didn’t bleed enough" (8,700 words)

What We Get Wrong About Inflation

Tim Harford | 6th October 2022

In 1963 Milton Friedman defined inflation as “a steady and sustained rise in prices”, which was "always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon”. But Friedman's rule hardly describes current conditions: Prices are rising because Russia has cut off Europe's gas. Is this still "inflation"? Governments are confused. "The recently signed Inflation Reduction Act is no such thing" (865 words)

Diaries

Alan Rickman | Guardian | 25th September 2022

Extracts from the actor's diaries covering the filming of Sense And Sensibility, Michael Collins, and Dogma. (The Harry Potter films are elsewhere.) "The trouble with this job is that you can watch yourself & your friends growing older in full colour, close up". The entries are brief but the cumulative effect is pleasing. "To Searcy’s for Brian Cox’s birthday party. All human acting was there" (4,500 words)

BrowserBites explores a new idea each day, in under a minute. Join Uri Bram (Publisher of The Browser), Sebastian Park (@SebPark), and guests as they blitz through an idea in less time than it takes to brush your teeth.

Browser Bites

Browser Bites explores a new idea each day, in under a minute. Join Uri Bram (Publisher of The Browser), Sebastian Park (@SebPark), and guests as they blitz through an idea in less time than it takes to brush your teeth.

Party Like It’s 1789!

A.J. Jacobs | Guardian | 1st October 2022

Account of an attempt to live according to a literal interpretation of the US constitution, as a test of the doctrine of "originalism" now popular on the US Supreme Court. He carries a musket, declines to deal with his publisher's female lawyer — women being denied licences to practice law at the time of the 14th amendment — and distributes incendiary pamphlets  (4,005 words)

If You Wish To Make A Toaster

Hillary Predko | The Prepared | 29th September 2022

Interview with a designer who tried to make a toaster entirely from scratch, refining all of the materials himself to build each component. The process highlighted the complexity of the basic objects we use without thought — all his smelting produced only iron, not steel, and he struggled with the plastic casing. The final object "had the form of a toaster and it sort of worked" (2,077 words)

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Who Speaks English?

Howard W. French | Foreign Policy | 26th September 2022 | U

English is the official language of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, but students from these countries are often required to take costly language tests to prove fluency when applying to universities in Europe or the US. This measure is "of a piece with a much more systematic, albeit unacknowledged, economic quarantining of the African continent", it is argued here  (1,844 words)

Alone At The Edge Of The World

Cassidy Randall | Atavist | 30th September 2022 | U

Thrilling epic about the Golden Globe Race, in which entrants sail solo and nonstop around the world without modern technology." She felt the stern rise. Sound returned in a deafening roar. Clinging to the post by the radio, she was suddenly looking down at the rest of the cabin. She went airborne as a leviathan of water she couldn’t see but only feel somersaulted the boat" (15,773 words)

The Incredible Huxleys

Stuart Jeffries | Observer | 2nd October 2022

Review of a history of evolution, told via one family: the Huxleys. The two great figures to emerge are T.H. Huxley, Victorian biologist and Darwin's bulldog, and his grandson Julian, who was a fervent eugenicist in the 1920s and a prominent critic of Nazi eugenics in the 1930s. Their influence remains. "We live, depending on your politics, in the shadow or the light of the Huxleys" (1,317 words)

Into The Pre-Gap

Daryl Worthington | Quietus | 26th September 2022

Marking forty years since the first album was released on CD (Billy Joel’s 52nd Street, in Japan). There is little or no nostalgia for CDs, as there is for cassettes or vinyl. Yet the CD gave us two lasting musical quirks: the "pre-gap" or hidden track concealed from the sleevenotes "in the neverzone before the album proper" and the means to loosen the tracklisting by programming songs to skip (2,743 words)

Openings

Andrew Kahn | Oxford Academic | 30th September 2022

How to begin a short story — or, indeed, any more ambitious work. There are two basic approaches: Foreshadow the plot, and/or grab the attention. "If there were a contest for the best all-time opening lines of literature, either the Old Testament (‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’) or the Gospel according to John (‘In the beginning was the Word’) might well take the prize" (4,606 words)

Paul McCartney's Memory

Ian Leslie | Ruffian | 24th September 2022

Anecdotal evidence suggests that Paul McCartney possesses a prodigious memory for music, for people, and for the trivia of everyday life. Is his capacity to draw on such memories, consciously and unconsciously, one key to his genius? "The richer and more varied our store of unconscious memories, the more combinations are generated, the more creative and insightful we’re likely to be" (2,520 words)

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How To Turn A Door Knob

Hannah Devlin | Guardian | 15th September 2022

Not to be confused with next month's Nobel prizes, the Ig Nobel prizes are awarded by the Annals Of Improbable Research for outstanding achievement in less obvious corners of science. Among this year's winners: Japanese researchers who modelled the best way to turn a big doorknob; and Brazilian researchers who studied how constipation affects the mating prospects of scorpions (740 words)

Otters As Unsung Muses

Sarah Rose Sharp | Hyperallergic | 28th September 2022

Very possibly the most enthusiastic piece ever to have been written about the place of otters in art, ranging from ancient Egyptian statues of the first millennium BC when otters were worshipped as gods, to the "high otter drama" of Pieter Boel’s Otter Harassed by Dogs in the Prado, to Audubon's watercolours, and to Seki Shuko's Meiji-era paintings on silk. Beautiful illustrations, too (850 words)

Prometheus And The Fishpond

Sigrid Schmalzer | Made In China | 27th September 2022

The Chinese state's increasing interest in "ecological civilisation" — an idealised harmony between humans and nature created by historical agriculture practices — is a double-edged sword. It both helps to cement political control by "establishing a totalising vision for top-down state intervention not only in society but also in nature," and also expands the opportunity for environmentalism (3,056 words)

How Big Is Infinity?

Patrick Honner | Quanta | 27th September 2022

Explanation of the curious child's favourite question that is (mostly) accessible to the non-mathematician. Hold tight for the introduction to set theory and cardinality. "Saying 'My love for you is independent of the axioms' may not be as fun as saying 'I love you infinity plus 1,' but perhaps it will help the next generation of infinity-loving mathematicians get a good night’s sleep" (2,352 words)

BrowserBites explores a new idea each day, in under a minute. Join Uri Bram (Publisher of The Browser), Sebastian Park (@SebPark), and guests as they blitz through an idea in less time than it takes to brush your teeth.

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Browser Bites explores a new idea each day, in under a minute. Join Uri Bram (Publisher of The Browser), Sebastian Park (@SebPark), and guests as they blitz through an idea in less time than it takes to brush your teeth.

The Storykeeper

José Vergara | Los Angeles Review Of Books | 27th September 2022

Interview with Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature. For her "documentary novels", she gathers oral testimony and collates it like a composer with musical phrases. "It’s all intuition. It just feels how it has to be... It’s not that I’m coming up with my material — there were real people sitting there. I take a piece of life and take away all superfluous things." (4,479 words)

The Disappearing Art Of Maintenance

Alex Vuocolo | Noema | 22nd September 2022

A 21C inclination towards built-in obsolescence is creating a world that is hard to maintain. As a result, we are losing the art of good maintenance, which — although expensive — can head off the need for repairs later on. It's a philosophy that could serve us well as climate change accelerates. "Repair is when you fix something that’s already broken. Maintenance is about making something last" (4,328 words)

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