Process Knowledge Is Crucial To Development

Henry Farrell | Programmable Mutter | 2nd September 2025

When many small firms in a localised region are engaged in a sector of work, they produce process knowledge — “tacit” information about how to do things which in turn fosters vibrant local economies. Stapling a teabag in a way that allows one to pull it out easily is a surprisingly complex engineering problem. “You need deep connections into the physical economy to make proper use of the virtual economy” (2,300 words)

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Trading Places

Dennis Drabelle | American Scholar | 2nd September 2025

Though very different artistically, Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks had much in common. Both achieved a “quasi-independence” from the studios, rare in Hollywood of the time. They got to pick their stories and approve or veto the final cut. Both cast Cary Grant as their leading man many times. They were both admired by French New Wave directors and snubbed by the Academy Awards (1,100 words)

Museum Of Colour

Stephanie Krzywonos | Emergence | 28th August 2025

Vivid history of pigments — ochre, bone black, lapis lazuli and more. Tyrian purple, the rarest, most expensive pigment in human history, was harvested from a mollusk off the coast of Tyre in Lebanon. One ounce required the mucus of 250,000 murex sea snails. Its expense made purple the colour of royalty, until a young British chemist accidentally created mauve in 1856, democratising purple for the masses (6,100 words)

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A Brief History Of Intelligence

Sarabet Chang Yuye | 31st August 2025

Book review synthesising breakthroughs in neuroscience and AI research, by an author whose reading pleasure is augmented by her five-month-old baby “coming along as a mind”. Questions explored include: why does a nematode need a brain, but not a coral? What rules do nematodes and roombas follow while steering? What do fish brains and the first good backgammon-playing AI have in common? (7,000 words)

Podcast: The Bus Ride | Criminal. Retelling of how, during Hurricane Katrina, a small-time drug dealer stole a school bus and rescued dozens of people who were still awaiting help (32m 01s)

Video: What I See | YouTube | Sarah Lim Xi-Yin | 5m 58s

Warm, humorous short about art critics who scorn photorealism.

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Why Romania Excels In Olympiads

Jordan Lasker | Palladium | 29th August 2025

Romanian students perform very well in international intellectual competitions. These are usually dominated by China, the US, India and Japan, but of late Romania — a country with a small population and "unimpressive educational performance" — has top five finishes in many subjects. Why? Because post-WW2 Soviet reforms created "perhaps the most stratified educational system in the world" (2,200 words)

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Growing Up On Alcatraz

Richard Faulk | Gazetteer SF | 22nd August 2025

It wasn't just prisoners who spent years on Alcatraz Island. The writer's grandfather worked there as a prison guard and his family lived there for 20 years, moving over in 1934 when the federal penitentiary opened. His wife cried the first time she saw their new home, but the island soon revealed itself to be an "idyllic small town, floating in the heart of San Francisco Bay" (1,900 words)

Making My Kids’ Lives A Little Harder

Michelle Cyca | Walrus | 28th August 2025

In praise of "obstacle parenting", a philosophy of child-rearing that is positioned as the antithesis of the "helicopter" or "bulldozer" parenting style. The latter lifts the kid out of every frustrating situation or removes the stumbling block for them. Obstacle parents allow their charges — within safe parameters — to get bored or be frustrated so that they can develop their own skills to overcome these feelings (2,300 words)

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What We Find in the Sewers

Calum Drysdale | Asimov Press | 25th August 2025

On humanity's cyclical history with sewage. "What we flush is not just filth, but information, energy, and opportunity. Bazalgette’s achievements were wonders for his time, but now, sewage is too valuable to waste. The next great civil engineer will be the one able, paradoxically, to bring sewage back into human life, enabling it to be assayed and mined, restoring its value to those who made it" (6,600 words)

A Summer Of British Chaos

Clive Martin | Vice | 27th August 2025

British content creators have ruled the algorithms of late. Why? Desperation: "When you add up all the pieces — the tribalism, the humour, the hedonism, the rancour, and the jeopardy — it makes sense that the Britain of 2025 has become so disturbingly proficient at gaming the online system. In an attention economy, what more compelling draw could there be than people with nothing to lose?" (3,200 words)

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Sarajevo

Lisa Abend | Unplugged Traveller | 19th August 2025

Observations on tourism in Bosnia. There are two types of visitor to the historic city of Sarajevo: people who come from the Middle East for the Ottoman heritage, stunning mosques and refreshing summer temperatures, and those from Europe and the US who are "uniformly there for the war". The 1990s conflict is everywhere, from the still-bombed out buildings to the bullet-based souvenir trade (2,400 words)

Giving People Money

Kelsey Piper | The Argument | 19th August 2025

“Just give people money” is the “brute-force solution” provided for poverty in high-income countries. Yet multiple large, randomised studies on “whether sizeable monthly payments help people lead better lives” have shown that they do not seem to produce “sustained improvements in mental or physical health, stress, child development, or employment”. Read the rebuttal and counter-rebuttal here (3,000 words)

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The Left Gagged On Sex Work

Kateleen | The Ick | 13th August 2025

Sex worker’s exposé of sex work activism. There are three paths: the Nordic model, which “criminalises the pimps and johns, not the sex worker”; Decriminalisation, the most “harm reductive approach”; and Legalisation. Small victories aside, this writer is disillusioned. “Sex work is often unpleasant, dangerous and dirty. So is mining, drilling and farming — leftists are desperate to get those workers on their side” (3,600 words)

Everything Eats And Is Eaten

Drew M Dalton | Aeon | 22nd August 2025

An understanding of thermodynamics has had a profound impact on nearly every branch of the natural sciences. We have yet to fully grasp the philosophical implications of “entropic decay”. A good starting point, perhaps, is to admit that “the universe will end” and that its function “is to hasten this extinction”. “The flourishing of life is always contributing to the eventual collapse of the cosmos” (4,300 words)

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The Unlikely Revival Of Nuclear Batteries

James Blanchard | IEEE Spectrum | 25th August 2025

The first nuclear-powered pacemaker was implanted in 1970. Its batteries could run for decades without maintenance, a relief to those who had needed surgery every few years to change their pacemaker’s battery. But regulators soon banned them when the batteries proved hard to track. The last known nuclear pacemaker was implanted in 1988. Nuclear batteries seemed destined for obscurity, until the 2000s (4,300 words)

Russia Refracted

Solomon Petrov & Veronika Travina | Ideas Letter | 21st August 2025

Exploration of Russian social attitudes under Putin, beyond the simplistic Western idea of "a cowed population" under a dictator. Among those who have not emigrated, it is argued, the reality is more nuanced. While there are groups that do not support the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the "middle-class beneficiaries of war" are experiencing a "nationalist awakening" that is altering the culture (3,500 words

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I Texted The Number On The Sign

Kate Bingaman-Burt | KBBBlog | 20th July 2025

After being struck by the bright colours and beautiful design of hand-painted signs advertising roof cleaning services around her city, the writer contacted said roof cleaner to learn more. Turns out, he makes all of his own signs from scratch and takes his process very seriously. What follows is a delightful conversation about work and art — and when it's a good time to take a break to go for a swim (2,200 words)

Podcast: The Silent Type | Threshold. Environmental documentary series takes a closer look at turtles, aiming to discover whether they are really as silent as has always been assumed (46m 04s)

Video: How Smart Are Crows? | YouTube | TED-Ed | 4m 49s

Humorous enumeration of corvids’ superior cognitive abilities.

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Behind the Shoot

Dina Litovsky | In The Flash | 19th August 2025

Photographer explains how to take a good picture of a politician, in this case NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for the cover of Time magazine. "What surprised me most was how little polish Mamdani seemed to have, at least compared to other politicians I’ve photographed." Her secret weapon is a sleight of hand magician, who dazzles her subjects with card tricks while she snaps away (1,300 words)

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Tolkien Against The Grain

Gerry Canavan | Dissent | 14th January 2025

Tolkien is revered by figures on the right, such as J.D. Vance and Giorgia Meloni. The Lord of the Rings is "obsessed with ruins, bloodlines, the divine right of aristocrats, and a sense of history as a tragic, endless fall from grace". But left-wingers love Tolkien too, finding anti-fascist and ecological narratives to revere. The secret to this broad appeal? His books are really about a "struggle over historicisation" (2,000 words)