Down the rabbit hole of science humour magazines. In 1960, MIT’s Voo Doo magazine featured a semi-serious “stress analysis” of a strapless dress, likely an “attempt to ogle women under the guise of engineering analysis”. Years later, Deborah Henson-Conant, a harpist-turned-humorist set the article to orchestral music and performed it with the Springfield Symphony, for which she wore a strapless gown (2,000 words)
Since its inception in 1829, Scotland Yard pioneered many modern methods of crime patrolling and detection. They used bloodhounds to track evidence. They introduced plainclothes detectives, causing public outcry about spies in their midst. They made advances in forensics and toxicology, learning to distinguish the toxins usually found in Victorian homes — like arsenic and lead — from intentional poisoning (1,800 words)
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An echo of a Marcel Breuer Bauhaus design, it took three names and 40 years for this industrial steel-framed bookcase to hit the zeitgeist. In 1985 it was the "Guide", then in 2002 the "Enetri", and has been rebirth in 2025 as the "Byakorre". The eventual triumph of a democratic design? Or a cynical attempt to take business from "vintage" IKEA resellers? "People are willing to pay $1000 for IKEA now" (1,000 words)
Revealing correspondence from 2013 when Facebook tried to buy Snapchat, filed as part of Meta's anti-trust trial. CEOs should not write emails. A desperate-sounding Zuckerberg offered $6bn. Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel turned it down. Zuckerberg was "disappointed and frustrated". Sheryl Sandberg then suggested telling Spiegel that "leaking this won't help his relationship with you" (2,500 words)
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Oren Cass | Understanding America | 7th April 2025 | U
“Populism is an attack on elite institutions when they fail to fulfill their obligations in a society.” Leaders must maintain public trust by balancing advocacy and acquiescence. A leader will have his own values and make their case. He must also recognise when his case has not yet won the day and look beyond personal preference, rather than impose it — “the essence of noblesse oblige in a liberal society” (2,300 words)
Brian Potter | Construction Physics | 17th April 2025 | U
Reflections drawn from writing 600,000 words about construction and technological progress. Interesting throughout. Bricks haven't become cheaper since the 19C. The roads in Los Angeles and San Francisco are the worst of any US metro area. Tenants of skyscraper apartments tend not to care what the building's exterior looks like. Construction has become safer at a faster rate than other industries (1,900 words)
Kaushik Patowary | Amusing Planet | 1st April 2025 | U
In his dying days, Mozart was convinced he had been poisoned by Aqua Tofana, a colourless, tasteless, odourless liquid that could be mixed into food undetected. In gradual doses, it mimicked flu-like symptoms, eventually causing death. The poison was believed to have been invented by an Italian woman, quickly gaining notoriety in southern Italy amongst women seeking to be rid of their husbands (1,500 words)
Profile of "Vegas Matt", a professional gambler who has created a way to win by losing: he posts videos of his disastrous hours in the casino for his millions of fans. The advertising revenue alone makes him an "enviable living". He once lost $147,000 on a slot machine in three hours. People love to watch him lose. Casinos and sponsors just love him. And he laughs all the way to the bank (5,400 words)
Jack Maden | Philosophy Break | 14th April 2025 | U
Erich Fromm on love. “One of our most insidious misconceptions is that success or failure in love hinges entirely on the qualities of a prospective partner. We think that love is the problem of an object, not of a faculty. We browse people like products on a personality market. We’d do better if we approached love not like a once-in-a-lifetime transaction, but like an art, the mastery of which takes work” (1,900 words)
Podcast: Seven Crashes | Library Of Mistakes. Chronicle of the economic crises that shaped globalisation, from a podcast that documents history’s costliest financial mistakes (41m 22s)
Mesmerising footage of a juvenile specimen of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, the colossal squid. Although first identified a century ago, this is the first confirmed live observation.
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Brian Potter | Construction Physics | 17th April 2025
Reflections drawn from writing 600,000 words about construction and technological progress. Interesting throughout. Bricks haven't become cheaper since the 19C. The roads in Los Angeles and San Francisco are the worst of any US metro area. Tenants of skyscraper apartments tend not to care what the building's exterior looks like. Construction has become safer at a faster rate than other industries (1,900 words)
This 1966 song rewards a closer look for what it reveals about the Lennon-McCartney partnership. "Nobody had created a pop song like this before. Its cultural ubiquity has stopped us from noticing how strange it is... Both John and Paul were living up to Arthur Schopenhauer's definition of genius: unlike talent, which hits a target nobody else can reach, genius hits a target nobody else can see" (2,600 words)
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For centuries, East Asian cuisines used sugar like any other spice — an ingredient to combine with others to enhance the final flavour of a dish. A touch of sweetness is traditional across the region as a way to deepen savouriness or tamp down spice. Globalisation has ushered in a "great sweetification", as Western culinary tastes spread. This is most noticeable in restaurants and in processed foods (2,000 words)
Profile of "Vegas Matt", a professional gambler who has created a way to win by losing: he posts videos of his disastrous hours in the casino for his millions of fans. The advertising revenue alone makes him an "enviable living". He once lost $147,000 on a slot machine in three hours. People love to watch him lose. Casinos and sponsors just love him. And he laughs all the way to the bank (5,400 words)
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Erich Fromm on love. “One of our most insidious misconceptions is that success or failure in love hinges entirely on the qualities of a prospective partner. We think that love is the problem of an object, not of a faculty. We browse people like products on a personality market. We’d do better if we approached love not like a once-in-a-lifetime transaction, but like an art, the mastery of which takes work” (1,900 words)
Reflections on life, technology and the soul in the present. Acedia is the malaise of our times, often translated as “sloth”, though the experience of it feels like the opposite. We are all struggling with speed because we live in a global village. In this unhealthy restlessness, even escapes are “high pressure affairs with a ticking clock”. “Everything is fast, so we feel we must be moving fast too — at all times” (2,200 words)
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The full Browser recommends five articles, a video and a podcast. Today, enjoy our audio and video picks.
Podcast: April | As The Season Turns. A compilation of seasonal nature observations, including time spent with oak trees, bats and a blossoming orchard (33m 54s)
Short film about the celebrated photographer's artistic practice, including perspectives from her children, who discuss the impact her focus on her work had on family life: "I think we lost to some extent a mother, but we gained a friend and an artistic accomplice."
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There are two essential features of a vampire, says award-winning author Grady Hendrix: they look just like us, and they need us. Beyond this, they are highly adaptable, and have stood in for pandemics, economic exploitation, addiction, abuse, true crime and lust. Here, Hendrix introduces five novels that have shaped this complicated monster. Read more
Public domain books are books on which the copyright has expired, which means they are often available for free on the internet. Copyright rules vary by country, but some of the classics of literature were written more than a century ago and are now in the public domain. Read more
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Driving across America in the 1970s, one could see a marvellous array of eccentric attractions. Not the corporate kind — these were all "a brainchild of an individual with a vision". Their presence was announced by billboard miles away, building the anticipation for eventual arrival at a dinosaur park, the world’s largest ball of twine, the rare fur-bearing trout, the coon dog cemetery and many more (1,700 words)
Thought experiment. It feels like "asking to outlaw gravity", but it could improve the world. Removing paid advertising would, overnight, get rid of addictive digital content and "personalised, reality-distorting bubbles". Our lives would no longer be minutely and stealthily tracked. Perhaps one day we will look back on advertising saturation as we do "cigarette smoke, child labour, or public executions" (600 words)
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Strange-but-true Cold War thriller. At the age of 16, Peter Herrmann's father Rudi told him that his entire life was a lie. Both his parents were a type of covert KGB agent known as an "illegal". Their life as a "model Canadian family" had been painstakingly constructed so that they could eventually penetrate US government circles. When that didn't work, Rudi recruited his teenage son to take up the mission (6,200 words)
Aurelien | Trying To Understand The World | 9th April 2025
On the problem of feelings vs facts in political discussion, especially when it comes to matters of national loyalty and patriotism. "I probably wasted years of my life under the delusion that people could be convinced by rational argument. Having changed my opinions a number of times in my life on the basis of new information or better arguments, I naively supposed that everybody did the same" (5,500 words)
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The full Browser recommends five articles, a video and a podcast. Today, enjoy our audio and video picks.
Podcast: The Heist | Crime Next Door. Beginning of a rare light-hearted true crime series, about the theft of a solid gold toilet worth £5 million (19m 59s)