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)

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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.

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

Mariners At The Dawn of History

Tristan Søbye Rapp | Palladium | 10th October 2025

The question of prehistoric maritime navigation is perplexing. We know that our ancestor species made successful long journeys across the sea, because artefacts and the remains of settlements have been discovered on far flung islands all over the world, some over dating back over a million years. But we still have no idea how they did it. Were they navigating or simply drifting, hoping to strike land? (2,200 words)

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My Parents’ Marriage

Susan Cheever | Paris Review | 7th October 2025

The daughter of feted American short story writer John Cheever and his wife Mary Winternitz reflects on her parents' long marriage. Cheever drank and had affairs with both men and women. His true feelings showed in his fiction. "My parents’ marriage over forty years and three children turned sour, then bitter, with intermittent periods of peace and very occasional happy times. The stories follow suit" (7,500 words)

Podcast: Brains Of A Feather | Many Minds. Wide-ranging conversation about the neural and anatomical foundations of birds’ behaviours (1h 31m)

Video: John Berger On Tenderness | YouTube | Lannan Foundation | 13m 35s

Filmed at his home in 2002, critic John Berger talks about the nature of tenderness. "It has an enormous amount to do with liberty, because one chooses to be tender... It is an almost defiant act of freedom."

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Sidelined, Or No Pain, No Gain

Mac Crane | Offing | 9th October 2025

Former college athlete and self-described jock explains the confusing desire to keep training when badly injured. "Even now, I still lift every day, and I often lift to excess. I want big, strong muscles, but I also want that old sore feeling back, that pathological embodiment, that can-think-of-nothing-else-but-the-pain, it hurts so good. My pain and pleasure wires have not necessarily crossed, but maybe fused" (4,000 words)

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The Myth Of The Sommelier

Cremieux Recueil | 9th October 2025

Can oenophiles really claim to be better judges of wine than the average imbiber? Is there even such a thing as an objectively "good" wine, as opposed to one that you personally happen to like? This investigation would suggest not. For decades, so-called inferior wines have been winning expert blind tasting contests. In competitions with many entries, the judges almost never agree (4,600 words)

The Cult Of Can't

Aurelien | Trying To Understand The World | 8th October 2025

To change society for the better, people have to believe that said change is possible. This is no longer the case, it is argued here. Left-wingers and right-wingers alike have ceased to subscribe to the "myth of progress". The result is ever greater individualism and a version of life as a zero-sum game. "When everything is too difficult, let’s concentrate on dividing up the spoils: at least we know how to do that" (5,500 words)

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Just A Little Longer

Joshua Barnes | Sydney Review Of Books | 7th August 2025

Why are books divided into chapters? This history of "literary segmentation" runs from the New Testament to the 21C. The great characters in this story are Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy, James Joyce and B.S. Johnson, all of whom created works with intriguing taxonomies. The chapter is a unit of time and, with this tool, a writer can shape "the reader’s experience of temporality" (7,500 words)