Should The Supreme Court Be “Pro-Congress”?

Gabe Fleisher | Wake Up To Politics | 23rd February 2026

Analysis of the verdict striking down Trump’s tariffs, already being hailed as “the most important Supreme Court decision this century”. Gorsuch’s concurring opinion “takes just about everyone on the court to task” for partisan hypocrisy, concluding with a “paean to the legislative process”. He wants to (re)enshrine the primacy of legislative power but neither his conservative nor his liberal colleagues agree (3,900 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

Everyone Is Reading Fantasy

Francis Spufford | Guardian | 22nd February 2026

Fantasy is now the dominant literary genre in the book market. What draws people to it? “Fantasy is true to the experience of the human psyche. The strictly disenchanted world, where nothing exists but physical processes describable without metaphor, and even consciousness is just a material problem waiting to be solved, can be a desiccated place. It keeps heart and mind on inadequate rations” (2,100 words)

How Far Back In Time Can You Understand English?

Colin Gorrie | Dead Language Society | 18th February 2026

Linguist crafts a blog post where the language gets older every few paragraphs, going back a thousand years. His voice changes to mimic a Georgian diarist, an Elizabethan pamphleteer, a medieval chronicler. Due mainly to unstandardised spelling, English is virtually unrecognisable if one goes back far enough. Read it and notice when you start to struggle with comprehension. How far did you get? (4,600 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

Luxury’s Overexposure Is Biting

Matter | 23rd February 2026

Luxury is now ubiquitous on social platforms and popular media, and this has been bad for business. “Products are seen constantly; few care and even fewer buy. These displays of luxury are so excessive and so intense that, for the majority of aspirational consumers they have become nothing more than product porn. Excess and expense abound. But the products are interchangeable” (2,600 words)

Bad Lunch

Mishele Maron | Sun Magazine | 31st December 2026 | U

Cooking on a yacht for the rich is hard. Even the best clients love to point out that they paid a lot of money for the experience. The worst actively monitor the workers, leaving dots of lipstick on windows to check how often they were cleaned. One ordered two dozen different desserts for the same meal. No request was too unreasonable: every private chef knows they are "only as good as my last dish" (4,500 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

You’ve Done It Again, Michael

Jynne Dilling | n+1 | 20th February 2026 | U

Publisher's fond memories of the late Michael Silverblatt, beloved public radio broadcaster and host of Bookworm, a show that ran for 33 years and comprised "48,000+ minutes of conversations with every canonical English language writer imaginable". "The most well-read individual on the planet" was startlingly humble and now represents a bygone, and better, period of literary discourse (2,100 words)

Podcast: Richard The Lionheart | Memory Medieval Podcast. Despite the episode’s title, it is mainly about Richard’s rival Saladin and why he is regarded as such a great military commander (2h 20m)

Video: Gnome | YouTube | Ben Cresswell | 4m 50s

An adorably curious character explores the great outdoors. The stop-motion and sound design are outstanding.

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

On Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights

Heather Parry | General Observations On Eggs | 15th February 2026 | U

Furious analysis of the recent film adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel. "Why adapt one story to turn it into another completely different story, of which many (better) versions already exist? Why is the resounding question you're left with after seeing this movie. Why am I supposed to give a fuck what an agonisingly posh woman from London thought Wuthering Heights was about when she was a teenager?" (5,200 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The Secret History Of Indian Science Fiction

Gautam Bhatia | Alter Mag | 22nd November 2025

Survey of Indian science fiction in the 20C. "Before Asimov, there was Rokeya," who in 1905 published the first major work of Indian science fiction in English. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's dream of a woman-dominated world set off a literary tradition that moved from feminist utopias to technological dystopias. More recently, the genre has shown an interest in visualising "anti-caste futures" (5,000 words)

The Dream Of A Universal Picture Language

Keith Lowe | Engelsberg Ideas | 9th February 2026

The earliest experiments in creating a universal picture language took place during the Alpine cycling craze of the 1890s. Clubs began to put up signs warning members of upcoming sharp bends or steep ascents. Pictures were preferred in part because one could not be sure what language a cyclist in the region might speak. Yet, to this day, “the dream of a single language of the road has never been realised” (2,100 words)

Why I Am Not A Humanist

Daniel Greco | Greco & Wansley | 8th January 2026

“The characteristic temptation of the humanist is bringing exclusively humanistic tools to bear on questions that demand empirical evidence. The humanistically inclined put too much weight on the authority of great books. I don’t want to identify as a humanist, because I don’t want to be the kind of person for whom it feels natural to let quotation substitute for evidence when empirical questions are at stake” (4,300 words)

Can Abundance Include Nature?

Shawn Regan | Ecomodernist | 13th February 2026

The Abundance movement is becoming a major political force, and yet the conservation community is noticeably absent from its coalition. Understandable, given that it has long been about limiting human impacts. But many species, forests and wetlands now require continued human intervention to survive. “Conservation today isn’t something that happens on its own. It must be supplied” (2,400 words)

The Cult Deprogrammer

Sanjiv Bhattacharya | Minority Report | 16th February 2026

Stories about cults with Rick Ross, America’s “foremost cult deprogrammer”. He has travelled the world working with cult victims and thinks that the “US is the best place for a cult to set up shop”, not least because of its legal framework, which offers immunities and protections not available in other countries. When asked what type of person would join a cult, he replies, “every kind” (2,400 words)

The Professor Of The Lower Senses

Ruby Tandoh | Vittels | 9th February 2026 | U

Profile of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who in 1825 published The Physiology of Taste, "the most influential non-recipe book ever written about food". Best known for its highly quotable aphorisms, it's well worth reading in all its peculiar, digressionary glory. "It is gut-wrenching to think just how much bad food writing could have been averted if people had only read beyond the first two pages of his book" (4,000 words)

In Search Of The Soul Of Seoul

S.Y. Lee | S(ubstack)-Bahn | 13th February 2026 | U

Writer visits two favourite buildings that stand across the street from each other in Seoul: the Jongmyo Shrine, a Confucian complex founded in 1396, and the Sewoon Sangga, a brutalist complex of shopping malls that stretches for four blocks. They are polar opposites, but also embody Seoul's many evolutions. The mall is now heading for demolition. If it goes, so does a fascinating piece of urban history (4,600 words)

Podcast: Garden Symphony | Get Birding. Actor Sean Bean hosts an engaging podcast featuring birdcalls and expert imitations, best heard with headphones (31m 28s)

Video: Junior Free Skate | YouTube | US Figure Skating | 8m 33s

Synchronised figure skating is something to behold — a combination of skating with cheerleading and dance. This gold medal team performance contains dozens of thrilling jumps, lifts and spins.

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

Learning About Longevity

Aria Schrecker | Works In Progress | 10th February 2026

“There are several measures by which humans are strangely long-lived: size, heart rate, and reproductive window. In general, the more intelligent the species, the longer its lifespan. The average lifespan of a species, across all kingdoms of organisms, tends to increase as it gets bigger. But longevity has tradeoffs, and many of the super-long-lived creatures make big sacrifices to achieve their lifespans” (4,500 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The Mass-Synchronisation Of Framings

Marco Giancotti | Aether Mug | 12th February 2026

On how people living in a culture synchronise their behaviour in arbitrary and self-reinforcing ways — examples ranging from train-boarding in Japan and Italy to English sarcasm. “The basic force behind all culture formation is imitation. This ability is innate in all humans, regardless of culture: we are extraordinarily good imitators. Indeed, we are overimitators, sometimes with unfortunate consequences” (2,900 words)