Why Luxury Cheese Is Targeted By Criminals

Dan Saladino | BBC News | 10th November 2024 | U

In October 2024, 950 cheddas truckles worth £35,000 were stolen from an artisanal retailer in London, the latest in a string of such crimes. Lorries have been hijacked on the road and live lobsters abducted from a facility in Scotland. Prices for high-end foods are soaring and Russia retaliated to economic sanctions by banning fresh food imports, supercharging the black market (2,300 words) | Share this on X

The Problem Of Thinking Too Much

Persi Diaconis & Barry C. Mazur | Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences | 11th December 2002 | PDF

Decision theorist interrogates his concerns that earnest analysis leads to a total loss of contact with the original problem. Part of this paper is a case study, in which his idle curiosity about whether coin flips can be predicted spirals into hours of experimentation, all for no appreciable illumination. The conclusion? When in doubt, don't think too much and follow the rule of thumb (3,500 words) | Share this on X

The First Virtual Meeting Was In 1916

Allison Marsh | IEEE Spectrum | 13th November

Almost a century before there was Zoom, 5,000 electrical engineers in eight US cities across four time zones took part in a virtual meeting that was "a triumph of engineering". Each auditorium was linked by telephone, with handsets for listening at each seat. A telegram from Woodrow Wilson, a welcome by Alexander Graham Bell, and local musical interludes enlivened the proceedings (1,500 words) | Share this on X

Maximising Time For Reading

Blake Butler | Dividual | 11th November 2024

To cultivate a habit of regular reading, it is necessary to read more. A truism, perhaps, but not untrue. Reading a single page at a time counts. Keep a book of poetry in the car or beside the toilet. Read with the TV on mute during the adverts. Don't only read books by dead people, or people from your own country, but do be picky about what you read. In an age of output, input still matters (3,600 words) | Share this on X

Carl Jung’s Midlife-Crisis Notebooks

Jillian Hess | Noted | 11th November 2024 | U

At the peak of his life, Jung began to experience psychotic visions: “a monstrous yellow flood bearing garbage and corpses piling up against the Alps”. Despairing, he began to write them down in his famous Black Books, “trying to get at what exists when we turn off our consciousness”. In the process, he developed some of his most influential theories, of the archetypes and the collective unconscious (2,200 words) | Share this on X

Seeds Of Hope

Simon Parkin | Guardian | 12th November 2024 | U

How do you protect a precious food source in a famine? During the siege of Leningrad, the botanists managing the world’s first seed bank showed by heroic example, protecting a vast collection from fire, voracious rodents, and hunger. At least 19 staff members died. “It wasn’t difficult not to eat the collection. It was impossible to eat this, your life’s work, the work of the lives of your colleagues” (4,700 words) | Share this on X

Visualising The Past

Nathan Goldwag | Goldwag’s Journal On Civilisation | 26th October 2024

On the maps that newspapers featured to help their readers follow the course of WWII. In the wake of Blitzkrieg, the LA Times had a cut-and-preserve map of the theatre of war. Details included potential rail and sea corridors from the Allied powers to Poland, naval bases, fortifications, and the aerial distance between cities, “as the artist tried to grapple with the new kind of warfare still being born” (3,000 words) | Share this on X

Hemingway And The Good Samaritan

William E. Cain | Slant Books | 11th November 2024

Hemingway wrote on the “principle of the iceberg — 1/8th above the surface, 7/8th below”. He excelled at this demanding aesthetic, showing writers “how to use the silences between words”. An overlooked influence in Hemingway’s “art of omission” is the King James Bible. “A good writer knows what not to say, an insight he absorbed from years of experience reading and listening to the Bible” (1,400 words) | Share this on X

The Heroic Industry Of The Brothers Grimm

David Mason | Hudson Review | 8th November 2024

The lives of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm have become surrounded by legend to the point that they seem like "quaint Hobbit-like creatures trawling the peasantry for stories". The biography under review here rather casts them as "complicated heroes" in troubled times. Beset by aristocratic patrons in the dying years of the Holy Roman Empire, their labour produced results against the odds (3,700 words) | Share this on X

What It’s Like To Experience Polar Night

Cecilia Blomdahl | Smithsonian | 17th October 2024

In Longyearbyen, the world's northernmost settlement, the Earth's tilted axis means that the sun stays hidden for almost three months of the year. The inhabitants of the polar island of Svalbard largely enjoy this seasonal plunge into darkness, strapping on their headlamps and enjoying the crisp scent of snow. "Life in the darkness seems to follow a slower, more relaxed rhythm" (1,500 words) | Share this on X

Podcast: The Common Kingfisher | The Science of Birds. Well-written and produced introduction to the "Prince of Piscivory", a bird best known for its striking blue and orange plumage and remarkable fish-hunting skills (50m 09s)

Video: Bach, Fugue In E-Flat Major & Cantata "Widerstehe Doch Der Sünde" | YouTube | Glenn Gould | 23m 24s

Extract from a programme made by the storied pianist Glenn Gould for Canadian television in 1962. He discusses Bach's artistry and how it has influenced his own musicianship and then performs a cantata with the countertenor Russell Oberlin.

The Ultimate Electric Experience

Tim Stevens | Verge | 3rd November 2024

Review of the first fully electric Rolls Royce car. Far out of the budget of any "mere mortal", the best thing about it is the noise. "This car makes the kind of sound that you would expect to hear when an omniscient, all-powerful alien force swoops through the clouds in a sci-fi movie, the gut-shaking tone backing the moment when everyone realises that humanity is about to get served" (850 words)

I Told You So

Sam Kriss | Numb At The Lodge | 6th November 2024

The time for considered analysis of the 2024 US election will come. Until then, extravagantly expressed fury at the failure to change after 2016 will do. "You have sinned, and Trump is your punishment: whatever happens next, you will deserve it. You did not learn! The last eight years have taught you absolutely nothing: we’ve gone nowhere, we’re trapped in the same stupid loop" (2,400 words)

An Uncivil Civil War

Anders L. | Wood From Eden | 4th November 2024 | U

Reflections on the Finnish Civil War of 1918, fought between the working classes, the “reds”, and the upper classes, the “whites”, causing 40,000 casualties — over 1% of the population. “The vast majority of all civil wars are not civil wars as much as regular wars that just happen to be fought within the borders of a state. Political conviction is usually not strong enough to make people risk fighting and dying” (5,900 words)

The Lost Art Of Memory

Adam Robbert | The Base Camp | 31st October 2024 | U

The medieval and antique mind valued memory or recollection; the modern one emphasises imagination and creativity. Compare St. Thomas Aquinas with Einstein, both seen as geniuses by their contemporaries. Einstein was hailed for an imagination “unfettered by definite tracks”. Thomas was the man of memory, whose “knowledge increased as page is added to page in the writing of a book” (1,800 words)

Recursion, Tidy Stars, And Water Lilies

Marco Giancotti | Plankton Valhalla | 30th October 2024

Wonderful essay on randomness and design. “Atoms, genes, people, companies interact, build on each other, and lead to new things without end. If all there was to physics was a series of isolated events, destructive chance would reign supreme. The key must be to look at chains of interactions, instead of single ones. Feedback makes recursion possible, and recursion is what makes the unlikely likely” (6,800 words)

The Coffin In The Roof

Kaushik Patowary | Amusing Planet | 1st November 2024

Due to reduced executions, unmet demand for cadavers at anatomy schools caused a rise in grave robberies. Henry Trigg, an 18C Hertfordshire grocer, devised a way to prevent this desecration. In his will, he stipulated that his body be placed in a coffin and mounted beneath the rafters of his barn. The unusual “burial” became popular, drawing visitors after the barn was converted into the Old Castle Inn (1,100 words)

The Private Train Car Edition

Matt Locke | Why Is This Interesting? | 29th October 2024 | U

Super-wealthy people in the US who prefer to travel by train rather than plane can still move about the country in privacy and surrounded by luxury. Their opulent private rail cars can be hitched to ordinary Amtrak services. At their 1929 zenith, there were over 2,000 of them in use. There is something heart-warming about "the mutual co-existence of extreme private luxury and public goods" (800 words)

How To Build A Wonder Of The World

Kevin Duong | Public Books | 29th October 2024 | U

Review of a book about communes. From the Paris Commune of 1871 to the 21C "embourgeoisement" of the Hudson Valley, what defines a commune is its members' acts of protection. "Defending a piece of land, a neighbourhood, or a town is what sustains the autonomous self-management of everyday life, the very quality that makes the commune such a distinctive political form" (X words)