Why Are We All Cowards?

Linch | 10th July 2025

Wide-ranging discussion of risk. Interesting throughout. There is little doubt that humans are becoming more risk averse. The US's value for a statistical life (now $11.4 million) has more than tripled since 1980, far outstripping life expectancy. Why do we prize safety more? Likely a combination of growing personal wealth, secularisation, smaller families, falling mortality rates, and psychological evolution (4,000 words)

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A Pro-Human Manifesto

Marie Le Conte | Young Vulgarian | 11th July 2025

Slice of memoir that doubles as an argument for resisting the slide into social isolation. The writer was identified as a gifted child young, bullied for it and then later opted to learn how to trust humans again even though "liking people" is not something that came naturally. Whether introverted or extroverted, it is a deliberate choice to move through the world and "feel the warmth of human interaction" (3,300 words)

Podcast: Guilty: The Jury Returns Its Verdict | Mushroom Case Daily. Courtroom explainer from the Australian poisoning case that has gripped the nation down under (24m 07s)

Video: Incredibly Beautiful Starling Murmurations | YouTube | DW Euromaxx | 4m 34s

A Danish photographer explains his process for photographing these incredible avian aerial displays. The most interesting shapes, he says, occur when the starlings are being attacked by birds of prey.

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Some Tastes Are Better Than Others

Jeremy Stangroom | Herstical | 21st January 2025

Unearthed interview from the early 2000s with Roger Scruton, about art, passion and elitism. "I think you can be an elitist without being a snob. You can think that some tastes are better than others, not just because they are more satisfying, but because they engage in a more creative and fulfilling way with the human soul, without condemning people who don't have those tastes" (2,600 words)

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Frame Of Preference

Marcin Wichary | Aresluna | 8th July 2025

Stylishly illustrated history of Mac's settings menu, known variously as "Control Panel" and "System Preferences". The entire history of Apple as a company is here in microcosm, from iconic design choices like rounded corners and window transparency to the years-long duel with Windows for domestic computing dominance. Devices became more complicated, but the fonts are much better now (10,000 words)

Good Translations? Bad Translations?

Olga Litvak | Hedgehog Review | 1st July 2025

Until the 16C, it was not widely acknowledged that the Bible began life as a translation by Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria from the 1st BC. Differences in translation have been consequential, to say the least. In Hebrew, the verse about the virgin birth refers simply to a “young woman with child”. “Young woman” was translated as “virgin” because in Greek, the two words are synonymous (5,200 words)

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The French Liar

Sandrine Parageau | Aeon | 8th July 2025

René Descartes, in his time, was repeatedly and publicly accused of being a fraud. The “radical or hyperbolical doubt” that Descartes advocated seemed, to his detractors, to be “implying a form of self-induced ignorance” which would result in “solitude and despair”, and leave his victims no choice but to “adhere to him tooth and nail”. This description is strikingly similar to what we now call “gaslighting” (2,400 words)

Monks In Jersey

Simon Wu | Paris Review | 3rd July 2025

Account of a long weekend spent as a temporary Buddhist monk in New Jersey. "There was more of it than I thought — my hair, that was. It fell in soft clumps to the shower curtain. As he shaved me, the monk explained to me that this arrangement was intentional and symbolic. It was supposed to represent losing vanity. But I could think of nothing but my vanity. I couldn’t stop thinking about being bald" (4,400 words)

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Getting Started With Old English Poetry

Colin Gorrie | Dead Language Society | 2nd July 2025

Most Old English poetry is easier to read than Beowulf, so work your way up to it. The Wanderer, a work from the subgenre of elegiac poetry, is worth exploring — it inspired some of Tolkien's verse for The Lord of the Rings. Deor, a wisdom poem, contains lines that are the "kind of thing people get tattooed on their arm". Or try The Dream of the Rood, which recasts the crucifixion as a Germanic epic (2,300 words)

Men In The Off Hours

Fernanda Eberstadt | European Review Of Books | 1st May 2025

Bearing the subtitle "on Impressionist butts", this review of a Gustave Caillebotte exhibition considers the development of the vulnerable male nude in art history. "It’s this stout indifference to male-female divisions that makes Caillebotte such a provocative artist — one who chooses to depict grumpy-looking young ladies reading the newspaper, and naked workmen toweling off after a bath" (2,600 words)

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Hydronuclear Testing

J. B. Crawford | Computers Are Bad | 19th June 2025

Between 1959 and 1961, hydronuclear testing took place in "Technical Area 49" of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. This technique involved drilling deep wells, installing the test device (which had most of the nuclear material removed; just the explosive mechanism was under scrutiny), backfilling the hole and then detonating. "The plutonium and uranium is just down there, and it'll have to stay" (3,100 words)

Endometriosis Is Incredibly Interesting

Abhishaike Mahajan | Owl Posting | 13th June 2025

From a purely scientific perspective, endometriosis is one of the most intriguing human maladies. It is widespread but research is underfunded. Diagnosis takes on average between seven and ten years. Its progressive lesions and inflammation are functionally very similar to cancer, yet the treatment options are much worse. For the right researcher, this is an opportunity to make medical history (4,900 words)

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You Can't Buy An Original Bob Ross

Zachary Crockett | Hustle | 2nd May 2021

The smooth-voiced instructional painter may well have been one of the most prolific artists in history, producing around 30,000 works. He did three for each of the 381 episodes of The Joy of Painting alone. But his work almost never comes to market. Hundreds of canvases are still in boxes at his company's headquarters, no doubt to help drive up the prices. When they do sell, it's for five or six figures (1,900 words)

Highways And Horizons

Reinhold Martin | Places Journal | 17th June 2025

The US Interstate Highway System dates back to the early 20C, "the crest of the liberal era". Rethinking it could provide a way both of restoring what Alexis de Tocqueville called "democracy in America", and divesting from fossil fuels. Why not nationalise Tesla and fold it into the network? This would signal that "profit, including the vast inequalities it requires, is not necessary. It is a political choice" (7,300 words)

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The Wet History Of Media In The Bathroom

Rachel Plotnick | MIT Press Reader | 12th June 2025

On the rise of "bathroom culture" beyond hygiene. This came into being in the 1980s as several factors collided: the growth in size of the average American bathroom, the craze for personal fitness, and the vogue for gadgets. The "good" body was a clean one. Water resistant entertainment devices, like shower stereos and "executive" radios that fitted around the toilet paper holder, soon followed (2,100 words)

Notes On Managing ADHD

Fernando Borretti | 12th June 2025

A software engineer offers sage advice on managing ADHD. “The difficulty class of the tasks you can perform declines throughout the day. Keep in regular contact with long-running projects. Journalling is good for detecting maladaptive patterns and tracking your progress. If you’re a software engineer I strongly advise against building your own tools, which is a terrible form of procrastination for creative types” (7,700 words)

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Facts About Indigo

Thing Magazine | 16th June 2025

Ancient Japanese had three distinct words for red, black and white; all other colours were grouped under the word for “blue”. Traditional indigo dyeing involves fermentation similar to using a sourdough starter — the colour changes slightly from day to day. Synthetic indigo was first made in 1878. Scientists are now working on “bio-indigo”, a method which uses bacteria to produce the colour (1,200 words)

I Was A Juror On A Murder Trial

Ozy Brennan | Thing Of Things | 13th June 2025

Observations from jury duty. Most of the evidence in the case would not have existed twenty years ago: Instagram posts, ShotSpotter. The jury instructions present a dilemma: “how could I be sure that I wasn’t changing my opinion based on struck testimony?”. Mainly, these rules are meant to constrain which arguments are allowed in jury deliberations. Ultimately, the jury is hung due to a Kantian (7,600 words)

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The Jumping Frenchmen Of Maine

Kaushik Patowary | Amusing Planet | 16th June 2025

In the late 19C, French-Canadian lumberjacks in Maine exhibited dramatic involuntary reactions to sudden movement or loud noise: leaping into the air, repeating words, screaming, instantly obeying shouted commands — traits later observed in other lumbering communities. Neurologist George Beard noted that these “jumpers” were “as powerless as apoplectics or hysterics” (2,000 words)