Seeing Like A Spreadsheet

David Oks | 25th March 2026

There is no tool as "ubiquitous and yet so unloved" as the electronic spreadsheet. A sixth of the world's population use Microsoft Excel. Historians will one day write great works about how spreadsheets transformed economies. But nobody today can wax lyrical about them. Being able to see calculations laid out and work on them iteratively transformed the way businesses were run forever (4,500 words)

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William Blake, Remote by the Sea

Philip Hoare | Lapham's Quarterly | 30th March 2026

Before moving out of London to the coast in 1800, William Blake had never seen the sea. It changed him. "He’d imagined it endlessly in his art, in his head; now it was at the end of his lane. He could walk down there in his dressing gown and slippers, if he so desired. The sea hung there like a perpetually unfolding panorama, an unignorable flicker in the corner of his eye. Always different, always the same" (3,800 words)

Podcast: The Fake Admiral | Strangely. A pair of British investigative journalists explore two intriguing stories: the case of a man who impersonated a Naval veteran, and someone who turned amateur sleuth to find his own stolen car (32m 19s)

Video: Laufey — Both Sides Now | YouTube | BBC Music | 5m 36s

The Icelandic pop star shows off her classical training with this emotional cover of the Joni Mitchell classic, backed by a full orchestra.

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The Epstein Class

Lindsay Beyerstein | Dissent | 26th March 2026

Jeffrey Epstein was incredibly proficient at manipulating wealth and wealthy people to commit horrifying crimes. And the wealthy have just become wealthier, and more vulnerable to such a predator, since his death. "The real scandal of the Epstein saga is not that a billionaire cabal runs the world. It’s that there is a billionaire class. The moral of the Epstein files is that nobody should be that rich" (2,800 words)

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

My Prodigal Brainchild

Neal Stephenson | Graphomane | 23rd March 2026

Stephenson coined the term "Metaverse" in a 1992 novel. Here, he reflects on the demise of Facebook's virtual reality project of the same name. Its fatal flaw was the lack of plot. Successful virtual spaces — like Fortnite and Roblox — put users within the story-based framework of a game. There is no attraction to a place filled with "randos milling around waiting for something to happen" (2,000 words)

'Having' And 'Being' Modes Of Depression

Joshua Clark | The Polyphony | 25th March 2026 | U

In English, a person "has" depression. It is "understood as something one possesses, just as one receives and possesses a clinical diagnosis". In French, the construction is not possessive. One is dépressif or makes une dépression. It is a state of being, part of the self, rather than something added to it. The linguistic difference indicates a larger disparity in how the same condition is understood (2,000 words)

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Paradise: Expect Delays

Meaghan Garvey | Scary Cool Sad Goodbye | 23rd March 2026 | U

Eavesdropping expedition to the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas. "The Double Down was open 24 hours a day, with a happy hour that ran from 5am to 5pm. A canopy of dollar bills hung from the ceiling and covered the walls, framing the many exhortations to 'SHUT UP AND DRINK'... It was the kind of dump I liked, where time evaporated and you couldn’t say for certain whether it was day or night" (3,000 words)

China And The Future Of Science

Tanner Greer | The Scholar’s Stage | 21st March 2026

In the early days of the communist regime, its overarching aim was to seize state power. From the 1980s through the 2010s, the Chinese system doubled down on a different goal: making China rich. Now there is a new goal, explicitly stated by Xi and the Chinese central committee: they believe that humanity stands on the cusp of the next industrial revolution, and China must lead it (2,600 words)

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America And Public Disorder

Chris Arnade | Chris Arnade Walks The World | 9th March 2026

From a writer who chronicles his walks around the world: America is far too accepting of public disorder, which is why it tends towards suburban sprawl and away from walkable spaces. “Japanese/European style urbanism — density, fantastic public transport, mixed-use zoning — can’t happen here because there is a fine line between vibrant streets and squalid ones, and that line is public trust” (2,700 words)

A Cocaine Kingpin

Joseph Cox | 404 Media | 23rd March 2026

Marty Tibbits made millions running call centres for small businesses. He also loved to buy and fly historical aircraft, like the DH-112 Venom, an iconic combat jet of the Cold War. One day in 2018, he crashed the Venom into a barn in Wisconsin and died. Soon after, his wife received a phone call from a man in tears, a global cocaine trafficker. Tibbits had had a secret life as an aspiring international drug lord (3,400 words)

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From Cooperation To Conflict

Lionel Page | Optimally Irrational | 19th March 2026

Tribute to Robert Trivers, “Einstein of evolutionary biology”, who proposed the idea of “reciprocal altruism” — animals thrive through cooperation of the form “I scratch your back if you scratch mine”. Hence humans feel anger towards cheaters, gratitude for altruistic acts and guilt for violating the “implicit rules of reciprocity”. By this token, the system also favours subtler forms of cheating or manipulation (3,600 words)

Culture Shift

Rachel Dutton | Asimov Press | 20th March 2026

It is generally accepted that humans cultivate their food, not the other way around. But with fermentation, we might have that backwards. Fermenting food has been going on for at least 7,000 years, long before we understood what "microbes" were. Fermented foods shaped human biology — and only now, in the last century, that we've been eating a lot less of it, are we feeling the consequences (3,000 words)

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Suicidal Bootlicking As Governance

Hamilton Nolan | How Things Work | 19th March 2026

Polemic against the economic policies of states in the American South. Since the end of the Civil War, it is argued here, the approach has been to attract "out-of-state capitalists" with promises of low taxes, minimal regulation and a population of workers kept poor enough to serve as non-union cheap labour. Institutions are remade for these rich incomers, who then send their kids north, to Harvard (1,700 words)

Podcast: How To Redraw A City | Works In Progress. Japan solved its urban challenges by letting homeowners plan their neighbourhoods privately by supermajority vote (35m 5s)

Video: Friedrich Gulda, Mozart Piano Sonata 13 | YouTube | Deutsche Grammophon | 6m 29s

A 1995 performance by a great interpreter of Mozart. The clarity of tone and expressive lines sound quite wonderful together.

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“This Is Not The Computer For You”

Sam Henri Gold | 12th March 2026 | U

Somewhat starry-eyed appreciation of lower-range Apple computers. By putting their full OS — "the complete behavioural contract of the Mac" — into all their machines no matter their hardware limitations, the potential for creative use remains alive. Thus, a low-spec model is not "a browser in a laptop costume", but something a canny beginner can use and abuse in order to enter a new world of possibility (1,100 words)

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Tinderbox City

Audrey Gillan | LRB Blog | 19th March 2026 | U

Something odd keeps happening to Glasgow's heritage buildings. They catch on fire, a lot. Local journalists estimate that 42 have gone up in flames since 2020. The famous Glasgow School of Art has had two major blazes. Does Scotland's "Tinderbox City" really have more conflagrations than other conurbations? Or are its beautiful, centuries-old buildings just more vulnerable and unprotected? (1,200 words)

The Greatest Role Of Philosophy

Thesmara | Philosophy Under Construction | 15th March 2026

…Is in detecting evil. Since it rarely appears as itself but rather “as necessity, as progress, or as any lie to get the foolish and emotional to open the door”, detecting evil requires critical skills. Without philosophy, we are susceptible to bad arguments, where evil can hide. Evil depends on stupidity and destroys freedom. Philosophy can “clear the fog of appearance and spot the parasite through analysis” (2,400 words)

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Meme Buildings

Graham McKay | Misfits’ Architecture | 15th March 2026

Motley reflections on buildings that have a degree of public recognition independent of expert opinion or sightseeing value. One example is Face House, a 50-year-old building in Kyoto which resembles a human face. The Big Duck in New York is another, as is Finnish architect Matti Suuronen’s spaceship-shaped Futuro House. What is a meme building’s defining quality? Endearment, perhaps (2,100 words)

The Population Doomster Has Died

Ronald Bailey | Reason | 16th March 2026

From mass famines to imminent economic collapse to human-caused mass extinction, “Ehrlich seemingly never encountered a prediction of doom that he failed to embrace. In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the Trojan priestess who was cursed to utter true prophecies that no one believed. Ehrlich was a reverse Cassandra: he made many false prophecies that were widely believed” (1,000 words)

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Bettors Using Death Threats

Emanuel Fabian | Times Of Israel | 16th March 2026

Alarming account of a military correspondent who received death threats from Polymarket bettors to try to get him to change his report on a missile impact in central Israel. The event that they had bet on was “Iran strikes Israel on…?” with over $14 million wagered on the question. Perhaps the most egregious known instance of prediction market gamblers manipulating journalistic reporting yet (2,800 words)