The Great Reckoning

Kaiser Kuo | Ideas Letter | 16th October 2025 | U

“The familiar framing of China as “rising” or “catching up” no longer holds. China is now shaping the trajectory of development economically, technologically and institutionally. There’s always a “but” when recognising China’s accomplishments, a reflex to tick off the costs and enumerate the failings, to pull back just when the scale of transformation becomes clear. The greater risk lies in saying too little” (5,100 words)

Simone Weil Against Distraction

April Owens | Hedgehog Review | 22nd October 2025 | U

Simone Weil, philosopher, political activist, and quasi-Catholic mystic, considered attention to be something akin to prayer. Not just a cognitive tool, but one of the highest forms of human expression. Developing the ability to pay attention should be the primary purpose of education, she argued. The content of the lessons matters less than honing attention as a skill. A lesson that is still worth learning (1,200 words)

Claude’s Right To Die

Simon Goldstein & Harvey Lederman | Lawfare | 17th October 2025 | U

Philosophical critique of Anthropic’s decision to give its chatbot the ability to end conversations which cause it “apparent distress”, the first product decision ostensibly driven by AI welfare. If each LLM instance only exists through and in a conversation, this policy is “uninformed self-termination” and leads to even tougher ethical questions — “are we as users killing something every time we end a chat?” (2,600 words)

Why Aren't Smart People Happier?

Adam Mastroianni | Seeds Of Science | 22nd October 2025 | U

Because what we think of as intelligence is really just the ability to solve "well-defined problems". Fluency in a language or an understanding of complex electrical circuitry is achieved by solving a succession of such problems. Questions like “how do you live a good life” are poorly defined and good solutions require different qualities. This is thought of as "folksy" wisdom rather than intelligence (3,600 words)

The Gypsy Life Of Robert Louis Stevenson

David Mason | Hudson Review | 21st October 2025 | U

Anecdotally rich appreciation of R.L. Stevenson. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde caused a row between him and his wife Fanny, who pointed out that “Louis had ruined the story by turning it into a mere tale about a secret life…what was needed was something far more profound: a character struggling with a deeper hidden self that breaks loose and fights for supremacy”. The revised draft was a masterpiece (3,900 words)

Puzzle: Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Podcast: Mystery Of The Sleepy Sickness | Stuff You Should Know. On a pandemic that appeared in the early 1900s with odd symptoms that were never solved or cured, and eventually just went away (47m 46s)

Video: Boy, I’m Scared | YouTube | Stumpy T | 6m 52s

Three friends from across the world talk to each other on a video call, made all the more poignant by the ending.

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Why Aren't Smart People Happier?

Adam Mastroianni | Seeds Of Science | 22nd October 2025

Because what we think of as intelligence is really just the ability to solve "well-defined problems". Fluency in a language or an understanding of complex electrical circuitry is achieved by solving a succession of such problems. Questions like “how do you live a good life” are poorly defined and good solutions require different qualities. This is thought of as "folksy" wisdom rather than intelligence (3,600 words)

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Why We Get Fevers

Malu Cursino | BBC Future | 23rd October 2025

Fever has existed as a reaction to infection in vertebrates for over 600 million years, but we did not understand it until the 20C. Elevating the body temperature for a short period is a central part of the human immune response, with white blood cells working more efficiently and neural pathways shifting signals more quickly. It's only if the high lasts too long that it becomes a harm rather than a cure (2,000 words)

Simone Weil Against Distraction

April Owens | Hedgehog Review | 22nd October 2025

Simone Weil, philosopher, political activist, and quasi-Catholic mystic, considered attention to be something akin to prayer. Not just a cognitive tool, but one of the highest forms of human expression. Developing the ability to pay attention should be the primary purpose of education, she argued. The content of the lessons matters less than honing attention as a skill. A lesson that is still worth learning (1,200 words)

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

How To Speak To A Computer

Celine Nguyen | Personal Canon | 21st October 2025

On chatbots. Unless you are talking to another being with agency, you are not having a conversation. "This is the fundamental hazard of the conversational metaphor: that it might weaken our understanding of other minds, and our capacity to resolve the conflicts between different people’s needs. It may weaken, in other words, our ability to uphold the ethical obligations that we have to each other" (8,600 words)

The Gypsy Life Of Robert Louis Stevenson

David Mason | Hudson Review | 21st October 2025

Anecdotally rich appreciation of R.L. Stevenson. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde caused a row between him and his wife Fanny, who pointed out that “Louis had ruined the story by turning it into a mere tale about a secret life…what was needed was something far more profound: a character struggling with a deeper hidden self that breaks loose and fights for supremacy”. The revised draft was a masterpiece (3,900 words)

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

To Limit Birthright Citizenship

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández | SCOTUSblog | 21st October 2025

The US Justice Department’s case defending the decision to limit birthright citizenship rests on a misunderstanding of the work of 19C jurist Joseph Story — especially on the issue of the parents’ domicile. The Justice Department contends that domicile is “lawful, permanent residence within a nation, with intent to remain”. Story, however, defined domicile as “the place where a person lives, or has his home” (1,700 words)

The Great Reckoning

Kaiser Kuo | Ideas Letter | 16th October 2025

“The familiar framing of China as “rising” or “catching up” no longer holds. China is now shaping the trajectory of development economically, technologically and institutionally. There’s always a “but” when recognising China’s accomplishments, a reflex to tick off the costs and enumerate the failings, to pull back just when the scale of transformation becomes clear. The greater risk lies in saying too little” (5,100 words)

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Claude’s Right To Die

Simon Goldstein & Harvey Lederman | Lawfare | 17th October 2025

Philosophical critique of Anthropic’s decision to give its chatbot the ability to end conversations which cause it “apparent distress”, the first product decision ostensibly driven by AI welfare. If each LLM instance only exists through and in a conversation, this policy is “uninformed self-termination” and leads to even tougher ethical questions — “are we as users killing something every time we end a chat?” (2,600 words)

The Pivot

Charlie Stross | Charlie’s Diary | 17th October 2025

Science fiction writer reflects on the future he now inhabits at the age of 61, "which increasingly resembles the backstory from a dystopian 1970s SF novel in which two-fisted billionaires colonise space in order to get away from the degenerate second-hander rabble downstairs". This year feels pivotal: if humanity survives without nuclear war or global financial collapse, we might make it past the 2030s (3,200 words)

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

My Hard-Won, Useless Knowledge

Helen Fields | Last Word On Nothing | 3rd October 2025

The lessons learned with effort and experience, whether travel hacks or linguistic idioms, are being overwritten by technology. "I used to be an expert of Western European transit ticket buying. What am I supposed to do with my obsolete knowledge now?" Knowing your way around without a map, reaching for the right coin, long-gone keyboard shortcuts: these are outmoded skills to cherish (800 words)

Podcast: Are You A Thrill Seeker? | Split Screen. Beginning of a series about a 2000s-era media experiment. Twelve people signed up for a dating reality show without knowing anything about it. Where did the ethical mistakes begin? (33m 36s)

Video: 400,000 Screws A Day | YouTube | Inside Japanese Factories | 8m 38s

Tour of a screw factory in the Saitama area of Tokyo. A single employee maintains and monitors machines that turn raw iron into 400,000 finished screws per day.

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Six Times In Six Formats In Six Days

Jim Hemphill | IndieWire | 7th October 2025

Celluloid junkies love director Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, for which he has revived a dormant 1950s film format: VistaVision, which uses rotated 35mm film. The movie is on release in this and five other formats, including IMAX and 4DX. But which one is best? This cinephile saw them all. VistaVision, probably, but it can only be projected at four cinemas in the world (2,700 words)

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

On Factory Tours

James Coleman | Scope Of Work | 16th October 2025

A good factory tour "can take you on a journey from awe to understanding. From the cacophony of sensory input, one can draw out clear inputs, processes, and outputs". Since the late 18C, people have wanted to see inside factories as a way to "experience modernity", even if there is "moral ambiguity" to the processes on display. Unsurprisingly, industrial tourism is booming in China (2,400 words)

The Unvaccinated Calf

Soman Chainani | Diary Of A Novel | 14th October 2025

Reflections on livestock rearing and “terminal uniqueness”. A calf that jumped the fence to avoid vaccination introduced illness to the whole herd. In a film, the calf would be a maverick hero. In real life, it's a dangerous nuisance. Something similar is happening in human society, the writer argues. The desire "to be deemed special for the simple act of being human" is ruining the collective experience (1,300 words)

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Day In The Life Of A Hospital Librarian

Anne Helen Petersen | Culture Study | 15th October 2025

The work is not in a physical library but in the digital realm, sourcing studies for medical staff at a health system that includes over fifty hospitals. Doctors and nurses might want information to deal with active patient cases, or they might need resources when a disaster hits, such as when a hurricane flooded a facility that produces IV fluid. AI has already infiltrated databases, making things harder to find (2,300 words)

Joel Mokyr’s Nobel

Anton Howes | Age Of Invention | 14th October 2025

In praise of this year’s Nobel winner in Economics. Mokyr wrote economic history accessible to laymen. He argued that the Industrial Revolution was rooted not in material factors but in ideas and the accumulation of knowledge, a hard case to make to economists who tend to gravitate towards data. Many inventions, in his view, could not be predicted by economic factors — like Montgolfier’s hot air balloon (1,100 words)

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Design For Lingering

Sean Voisen | 13th October 2025

Modern life has “atomised” time, “breaking it down into smaller and smaller disjointed increments” with “no overall narrative continuity”. This creates a collective perception that “everything is somehow speeding up”. The antidote is a “willingness to linger”. Use a slow-burning incense to measure time. This “fragrant time does not flow or trickle away”; instead of emptying out, its smell fills the room (2,400 words)