How Polyester Bounced Back

Virginia Postrel | Works In Progress | 21st April 2022

On the rise, fall and rise again of polyester. In the 1960s, it was a wonder-fabric that "freed women from their ironing boards". Then it became synonymous with bad taste and the lower classes. Its fortunes were rescued by sportswear and fast fashion. The polymers are relatively recyclable — and it uses less land to produce than wool or cotton — but it is still far from being sustainable (3,425 words)

The Lost Jews Of Nigeria

Samanth Subramanian | Guardian | 26th April 2022

There is no historical tradition of Judaism in Nigeria, but in the last few decades people have started joining the faith. They come via sects adjacent to Christianity, like the White Garment Sabbath, and then convert. For some, it was a DIY process, listening to recordings of US Hebrew speakers and Jonathan Sacks lectures online. Others see the rejection of Christianity as a rejection of colonialism (6,843 words)

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When We Talk About Holes

Evelyn Lamb | Scientific American | 25th December 2014

Yes of course one knows what a hole is ... Or so you might think until you read this attempt to arrive at a satisfactory mathematical definition. Holes turn out to be things that only specialists in holes can fully understand. A simple definition goes as follows: “A hole in a mathematical object is a topological structure which prevents the object from being continuously shrunk to a point” (2,300 words)

Handy Mnemonics

Kensy Cooperrider | Public Domain Review | 21st April 2022

For at least a thousand years, from the 8th to the 18th centuries, hands and fingers served as memory-palaces in miniature, using up to 92 points on the front and back of each hand as placeholders for data. Such systems enabled scholars to keep the lunar calendar on the tips of their fingers in 8th century England, musical scales in 12th century Italy, syllabaries in 13th century China (2,730 words)

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The Unfathomable Heart

Stephanie Krzywonos | Dark Mountain | 19th April 2022

Notes on a short walk in Antarctica, visiting "Nukey Poo", a leaky nuclear reactor abandoned by the US Navy in 1972; Thwaites Glacier, whose imminent collapse may doom the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet; and the whaling port of McMurdo, now a scientific research station. The 1.6m whales killed in the Southern Ocean last century "had a biomass equal to the whole of humankind" (2,300 words)

That's It? It's Over?

Nick Duerden | Guardian | 16th April 2022

What happens to pop stars whose careers peak when they still have most of their lives ahead of them? Ex-legends interviewed here include Terence Trent D'Arby (now living in Milan as Sananda Maitreya); Róisín Murphy (retired to Ibiza); Bob Geldof (went on to an equally successful career in television); Billy Bragg (still picketing, and writing comment pieces for The Guardian) (3,700 words)

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Ship Them Into Exile

Joan DeJean | CrimeReads | 19th April 2022

Extract from a book about how early 18C "money madness" in France resulted in the first transports of enslaved African people to colonial Louisiana and the forced deportation of women prisoners from Paris to "populate" the region. This "stock market fever" didn't last long, though — wealthy investors were knifed to death for their cash and police were fishing body parts out of the Seine (2,772 words)

Notes From The Underground

Zack Graham | Astra | 6th April 2022

Ode to raving. The writer started off in the shallow end of the scene, but is quickly drawn into its more radical depths. In Europe's Freetekno scene, he finds people who are so committed to the escapism that they have dropped out of society all together. Post Covid, he joins a reunion party in a remote Austrian forest clearing. The blissed out dancers are guarded from police by dogs (2,740 words)

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The Secret Code Of Beauty Spots

Cecile Paul | Messy Nessy | 15th April 2022

Brief history of the artificial beauty spot or mouche, the tiny decorative fabric patches that were all the rage in 18C London. These black blotches were "solely applied for the purpose of inviting attention". A patch at the corner of the mouth conveyed "impishness", whereas putting one on the cheek indicated a desire for flirtation. Only the proud applied them to the forehead (1,512 words)

Play And Devotion

Lawrence Weschler | Orion | 29th March 2022

Account of a visit to London's Natural History Museum with an exuberant Oliver Sacks. He once considered becoming a "gentile zoologist in California", and still loves a display of invertebrates. Afterwards, having seen sea cucumber specimens, he moves the interview to a Chinese restaurant so he can eat some. "Very rarely does one get to eat something this primitive," he enthuses (2,181 words)

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Tragedy Has Never Left Us

Florent Guénard | Books & Ideas | 18th April 2022

Interview with historian Bruno Cabanes about what lies behind the way media outlets have portrayed the war in Ukraine as part of the narrative of Europe during WW2. This ignores the fact that the conflict is part of "a repertoire of violence" from the recent past, seen in places like Yugoslavia, Chechnya and Syria. Be wary of confusing history with strategy or geopolitical analysis, he warns (3,588 words)

My Scream Is Famous

Ashley Peldon | Guardian | 8th April 2022

First person piece from a professional scream artist. Her shrieks are used in film and TV when the onscreen actors can't, or won't, give a character's terror the vocal oomph that the director requires. It's a niche skill. "I probably scream more on average than the normal person would. There’s something really relaxing about it. After a big day of screaming I feel lighter and brighter" (810 words)

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Interview Of The Week: Adrienne Raphel On Crosswords

Uri Bram talks crosswords and poetry with Adrienne Raphel, author of Thinking Inside the Box, a cultural and personal history of crosswords.

Adrienne on cryptic clues:

The cryptic answer has everything you need inside it, but there is this learning curve too. I pulled this cryptic clue from my book, and it’s one that I think about a lot: The clue is "pretty girl in crimson rose". "Pretty girl" is a "belle", and then "in crimson" — the "in" means it’s going to be encasing on either side, and crimson is "red" — it’s "r-e" on one side, "d" on the other side. So it’s re-belle-d. Then "rose" means an uprising: "rebelled".

read the whole interview

Should We Get Rid Of The Scientific Paper?

Stuart Ritchie | Guardian | 11th April 2022

The answer in this case is Yes. (Betteridge's Law may need amending for op-ed pieces.) Publishing a scientific paper is a slow process, especially with peer-review. Journals prefer positive findings, and the more positive the better, encouraging sensationalism and exaggeration among researchers. Editors resist corrections when their reputation is at stake. Better to publish directly online (1,200 words)

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Ancient Gears

Scott Locklin | Locklin On Science | 10th April 2022

Who invented gears? The ancient Greeks had the technology, and used it in intricate ways, as we know from Antikythera Mechanism. Aristotle and others wrote about gears. But surviving Greek sources make no reference to the novelty or invention of gears, suggesting that their origins may lie much further in the past — perhaps in the Bronze Age, with the Sumerians or the Egyptians (1,530 words)

Dunbar’s Number And Picking Fleas

Matt Webb | Interconnected | 5th April 2022

The evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar conjectured in 1993 that the average person could maintain meaningful relationships with a maximum of 150 people, and that conversation was difficult in groups of more than four. Big data has been busy proving him right ever since. Most restaurant reservations are for groups of four. The average mobile phone user has 130 recurrent contacts (1,600 words)

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What Lies Beneath

Laura Maw | Real Life | 7th March 2022

The contents of the internet is largely dead; most sites are not updated. A dead link is "a sign of ruin in an otherwise living space". This has caused "a crisis of concealment", in which designers work to hide what is aesthetically displeasing. "Navigating a landscape of dead sites changes the way we look at living ones; clean, minimalist design only cloaks the evidence of inevitable decay"(2,602 words)

The Beauty Of The Magnolia

Ben Dark | House & Garden | 13th April 2022

The magnolia tree owes its "robust and architectural" flowers to the fact that it evolved to attract beetles as pollinators rather than bees. The latter are so efficient that plants can have much smaller, frailer flowers, whereas beetles must be lured in with huge petals and buds that emit heat. The magnolia's glory develops slowly, over decades. The trees are "wedded to the place they have grown" (1,931 words)

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Inside The Tow Truck Mafia

Rob Stumpf | The Drive | 23rd March 2022

In Ontario, Canada, organised crime is focused on the towing industry. A lack of regulation and a highway authority keen to see obstructions cleared quickly has created an ecosystem of "chasers", in which the first recovery vehicle to reach an accident gets the job. Rival companies battle for territory, resulting in firebombs, shootings and extortion rackets. Try not to break down in Toronto (2,539 words)

Creating A Literary Life In Prison

Deirdre Sugiuchi | Electric Lit | 24th February 2022

Those at risk of incarceration have been known to joke that time inside will give them the leisure to write a bestselling novel. The reality, as this editor of a writing handbook for prisoners reveals, is very different. "Alone time and quiet is non-existent in prison — imagine writing on a tiny bunk with the toilet next to you and potentially your roommate going to the bathroom as you try to type" (2,179 words)

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Circus And Philosophy

Meg Wallace | Aesthetics For Birds | 2nd December 2021

Account of an unusual university course, in which the professor uses circus skills like juggling to illuminate the study of philosophy. The purpose of this is to make the learning process "tactile" and to demonstrate the benefits of narrowing the "participation/theorising gap" that is common in disciplines like philosophy of art or of science. Those who think are not usually those who do (2,596 words)

How Dictionaries Define Us

Ilan Stavans & Margaret Boyle | LARB | 30th March 2022

Conversation about the different dictionary traditions in the English and Spanish speaking worlds. It's customary to think of dictionaries as both immutable and objective, but they are neither. Each definition and edition bears the imprint of the people and the time that created it. A shadow "double" dictionary exists comprising all the words that were excluded from the tangible tome (4,085 words)

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The Last Great War

Richard Overy | Literary Hub | 8th April 2022

Historian argues for a more expansive view of the causes and effects of the Second World War, giving more weight to events in Asia. "The warfare between 1939 and 1945 may provide the heart of the narrative, but the history goes back at least to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931, and forward to the insurgencies and civil wars prompted by the war, but unresolved in 1945" (1,100 words)

Unfollow

Tom Stafford | Reasonable People | 4th April 2022

Thought-provoking account of Unfollow, Megan Phelps-Roper's memoir of growing up in her family's fanatically conservative Westboro Baptist Church. "They were so confident in their rightness that they didn’t see any need to ban Hollywood movies or pop music. Elton John’s Candle In The Wind was rewritten as Harlot Full Of Sin so they could celebrate the death of Princess Diana" (2,500 words)

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