In The Shadow Of The State
Lorenzo Warby | Lorenzo From Oz | 16th November 2024
Marx propagated the view that gunpowder, the printing press, and the compass ushered in bourgeois society. Yet, these were all originally invented in China, where a bourgeoisie did not develop. Why? The social dynamics in China and medieval Europe were driven not by technological developments, but by differences in state structures. “The state structures society, it is not a reflection or product of society” (1,700 words)
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The Big Guide To Fusion
Ben James | 8th November 2023
Engaging primer on what is needed to make fusion power happen. Tritium is hard to source and radioactive. All reactor work must hence be done by robots. Fusion reactors are inordinately expensive, requiring big turbines, vacuum pumps, and thick concrete shielding. This writer’s prognosis: we should be able to build fusion power plants before 2050; that doesn’t mean they will be commercially viable (4,400 words)
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Against The Dark Forest
Erin Kissane | Wreckage/Salvage | 29th November 2024 | U
The internet today comprises a “perilous aboveground” — the dark forest of predatory advertisers, tracking bots, clickbait creators, and a “cozyweb refuge underground” — private spaces of retreat. But what about people without those forms of access and capital? Should they “just hack their way through that forest — which is so much gnarlier now than it was when we built it?” (4,700 words)
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Black Hole Puzzle
John Carlos Baez | Azimuth | 30th November 2024 | U
“101 starship captains, bored with life in the Federation, arrange their starships in a line, equally spaced, and let them fall straight into an enormous spherically symmetrical black hole — one after the other. What does the 51st captain see?” At all times, he sees 50 starships in front of and behind him. He never sees any starship hit the singularity, because the singularity is always in his future (1,200 words)
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Five Books features in-depth author interviews recommending five books on a theme. You can read more interviews on the site, or sign up for the newsletter.
Baillie Gifford Prize-Winning Nonfiction Books
It's a prize that has been awarded annually since 1999 to a book that speaks to an important issue but is also highly readable. Below you'll find all the winners of the Baillie Gifford Prize, the UK's most prestigious non-fiction book award—from a gripping account of a turning point in World War II to a terrifying forest fire in an oil town in Canada. Read more
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Award-winning Fantasy Novels of 2024
This year’s award-winning fantasy books offer something for every taste, from melancholic fairy tales to gripping horror. Our fantasy and sci fi editor Sylvia Bishop introduces the winning titles. Read more
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The Great Abandonment
Tess McClure | Guardian | 28th November 2024
Hundreds of villages have been deserted across Bulgaria, offering a glimpse of the natural world unimpeded by humans. After communism, people moved to cities for work. The country's population has declined by almost a third since 1989. Bramble vines are swallowing buildings whole. Invasive species create temporary monocultures, until tree canopies expand and wildflowers appear (4,100 words)
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The Art And Mathematics Of Genji-Kō
Oran Looney | 26th November 2024
Genji-kō is a parlour game played with incense, invented by Japanese nobles of the Muromachi period (14C-16C) and named for a literary classic that describes an incense appreciation party. Guests smell five samples and then guess which are the same scent, using a notation formed from vertical lines — Genji-mon — to express their answers. These symbols shed light on art, but also equations (4,300 words)
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Who Can Claim Aristotle?
Edith Hall | Aeon | 25th November 2024
Enthusiast for the work of "the most brilliant philosopher ever to have lived" considers whether Aristotle truly belongs to the left or right-wing political traditions. His words have been borrowed by everyone from Charles II to early 20C suffragettes. The "complexity of his thought" has been vital in the formation of new ideas and, ultimately, contributed to greater equality in society (2,900 words)
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Private Chefs For Silicon Valley’s Elite
Priya Anand | San Francisco Standard | 15th November 2024
Seven chefs who have served "tech industry royalty" share their experiences. One client liked only the first sip of a can of Coca-Cola, leaving the rest to go to waste. In another house, binders were kept on every single guest's preferences. A chef might be accused of secretly sneaking sugar into dishes, or asked to scrap a menu with 30 minutes' notice. Interacting with such people is "an art" (1,400 words)
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The Myth Of The Loneliness Epidemic
Claude S. Fischer | Asterisk | 25th November 2024
Alarms about the decline of friendship are not new. They have been sounded often over decades, even as the claims have been challenged. Friendship rates are harder to track than marriage and divorce rates, not least because people have varying notions of “friend”. Social media magnifies the “Friendship Paradox”: “most of us have friends with more friends than we do”, as the most popular recur on many lists (4,100 words)
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Imperfect Parfit
Daniel Kodsi & John Maier | Philosophers’ Magazine | 22nd November 2024 | U
Critique of David Edmonds’ biography of Derek Parfit. “Philosophers tolerate a high degree of strangeness in one another. Individual eccentricity sometimes becomes too overwhelming to escape remark. In the case of Parfit, one of the first things either a critic or admirer will acknowledge is just how odd a man he was. The book is an entertaining exercise in psychological portraiture by means of anecdote” (4,900 words)
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The AI Turing Test
Scott Alexander | Astral Codex Ten | 20th November 2024 | U
Fifty pictures of various styles — are they human art or AI-generated images? See the test here. Results: most people struggled to tell the two apart. Genre biases persisted; many associated impressionist painting with human art and digital images with AI art. “Humans keep insisting that AI art is hideous slop. But when you peel off the labels, many of them can’t tell AI art from the greatest artists in history” (3,300 words)
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Were All Slave Societies Brutal?
Lipton Matthews | Aporia | 23rd November 2024 | U
It depended on “production systems and crop requirements, rather than individual malice”. In Ancient Greece, skilled slaves were allowed to earn wages and buy their freedom. Sparta, fearing rebellion from their huge agrarian slave population, had periodic state-sponsored purges. Specific crops fuelled brutality: those growing labour-intensive cash crops like sugar subjected slaves to gruelling conditions (1,500 words)
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How To Give A Good Speech
Tim Harford | 21st November 2024 | U
There is no one right way. It is best, though, to have a point and connect every other element, including jokes, to it. Trying to say something will always go down better than saying nothing. "People who talk when they’ve nothing to say are an annoyance, but those who do have something important to say, yet duck their opportunity to say it are less of an annoyance and more a tragedy" (1,000 words)
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The ‘Mad Egghead’ Who Built A Mouse Utopia
Lee Alan Dugatkin | Guardian | 21st November 2024 | U
John Bumpass Calhoun, ecologist turned psychologist, created Universe 25, which he described as "a utopian environment constructed for mice". In an attempt to study human overpopulation, Calhoun became a rodent city planner. There were 16 apartment buildings for the mice, plus all their food and water. For three years, he watched over his mouseopolis as it became "a mouse hell" (2,900 words)
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I Hate That I Love You
Chiara Bressan | Mapping Ignorance | 20th November 2024
On the neuroscience of heartbreak. Dopamine and norepinephrine levels rise as attraction is frustrated. The stress of separation suppresses serotonin, which adds to the feeling of being "high on love" as it is taken away. Aggression and rage set in as the brain processes the abandonment, followed by despair. The brain pathways are similar to those when recovering from substance addiction (1,100 words)
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On Bonfire Night
Sam Jennings | Hinternet | 21st November 2024
Argument for great literature as a social good, woven into a fictional speech delivered at 5th November festivities. Oddly charming. "Why would I give up this belief so easily? Why wouldn’t I be like some early Christian, looking around at my culture and beginning to conceive of ways to show people what I’ve experienced— what I believe to be the deep, spiritual truth of my transformation?" (3,500 words)
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The Super-Rich And Their Secret Worlds
Isobel Cockerell | Coda | 19th November 2024
Interview about the hidden spaces and loopholes used by the ultra-wealthy to skirt laws and norms. Digital courtrooms, ships with creative flags of convenience, freeports, diplomatic compounds, tax havens, charter cities — these are all considered. "If you look at the map of the world, you’ll see 192 countries. But what isn’t shown is all the stuff in between and above and beneath" (2,000 words) | Share this on X
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November 17, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson | Letters From An American | 18th November 2024
At noon on Sunday 18th November 1883, the railroads of the United States changed time. Having previously operated in a confusing muddle of 53 different time schedules, on this day they all moved to a standardised set of five time zones. Clocks moved everywhere: forward 16 minutes in Boston, back four in New York, and forward six minutes and twenty-eight seconds in Baltimore (850 words) | Share this on X
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The full Browser recommends five articles, a video and a podcast. Today, enjoy our audio and video picks.
Podcast: Risky Science And Public Consent | Entanglements. Determining the role that democratic processes should play in high-risk science, like gain-of-function research. One proposal is something akin to jury duty for citizen deliberations on thorny issues (28m 23s) | Share this on X
Video: Australia’s Cassowaries | YouTube | ABC Science | 6m 29s
How deadly can they be? Quite, as entertainingly explained here. | Share this on X
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