The Faustian Bargain

Ed Simon | Next Big Idea | 8th August 2024

...And why it is compelling. The tale is an autobiography of every human. Mythical and transcendent it might be, but Faust’s story is also about paperwork — with a contract at its centre. Fascism is a Faustian bargain: the national soul exchanged for fantasies of making the nation great again. Faust holds up a mirror to modern society, with “the desire for power disguised as a thirst for knowledge” (2,000 words)

Creativity Is Not A Scarce Commodity

Howard S. Becker | 9th October 2017

On the contrary, it occurs everywhere, all the time. What’s scarce is the labelling of something as creative — “only the right kind of person, defined by the environing organisation as the kind of person who can be creative, can find creative solutions”. The informal codes around creativity demonstrate a parallel to sumptuary laws, which regulated what kinds of clothing different classes of people could wear (4,900 words)

The New Scramble For Africa

Adam Hanieh | Climate And Capitalism | 11th August 2024

Carbon offsetting commonly involves protecting land from deforestation, equating to a certain quantity of carbon “credits”. This is greenwashing. Buyers who purchase credits gain the right to pollute now; it takes hundreds of years for emissions to be reabsorbed. With a debt crisis, African countries are under pressure from international development organisations to commodify their land through offsets (2,900 words)

The Many Lives Of Null Island

Alan McConchie | Stamen | 23rd July 2024

Imaginary island at a real place: the coordinates of zero degree latitude and zero degree longitude, in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast. It is a nuisance for cartographic work: anything from errors to missing data can send the coordinates to Null Island. A long-running inside joke among cartographers, it has inspired many whimsical histories — “the island that doesn’t exist but lives on maps” (5,500 words)

The Strange Saga Of Kowloon Walled City

James Crawford | Atlas Obscura | 6th January 2020

Excerpt from Fallen Glory. “The city’s many tall, narrow tower blocks were packed tight against each other — so tight as to make the whole place seem like one massive structure: part architecture, part organism. Entering the city meant leaving daylight behind. Hundreds of factories produced everything from fish balls to golf balls. There was no law to speak of. This was an anarchist society” (4,100 words)

Angels And Demons

Mark Baker | Inside Story | 8th August 2024

The RAF’s Bomber Command had the highest attrition rates in WWII: 44% of the aircrew were killed, and another 28% were injured or became prisoners of war. There were other sorts of casualties: each year saw 3000 cases of nervous breakdown. Leadership stigmatised those who refused operations with the designation — “Lack of Moral Fibre”, stamping their records with a large red “W” for “Waverer” (2,300 words)

The Colony Makes The World

Claire Evans | Wild Information | 4th August 2024

“Ants are 140 million years old, older than dinosaurs. Some farm fungus; some enslave other ants; some build leaf castles mortared with aphid spit; some build bridges from their own bodies; some work security for trees in exchange for nectar. Everything ants do, they do without central control — even though individual ants are dumb, mostly blind, and can’t remember anything for more than ten seconds” (1,800 words)

The Left Abandoned Venezuela

Myrna-Paula Corvalan | Caracas Chronicles | 3rd August 2024

Scathing indictment of the Left’s failure to hold authoritarian regimes in Venezuela accountable. They are trapped in “US-centred tunnel vision”, believing that the White House alone is responsible for the Venezuelan situation — a notion both Chavez and Maduro have exploited in their rhetoric. “How can the international Left claim to be behind a regime that embraced military rule as default?” (1,500 words)

A Mind That Can’t “See” Mental Images

Yasemin Saplakoglu | Quanta | 1st August 2024

1% to 4% of the general population experience aphantasia — an inability to conjure mental images. Described over 140 years ago, the term was coined in 2015 as a play on “phantasia”, Aristotle’s word for “mind’s eye”. “You might think aphantasia makes for a very impoverished mental life. It’s possible that people with aphantasia are less likely to have mental health problems marked by vivid mental images” (2,800 words)

Why We Should Give Votes To Kids

Molly Kingsley | Critic | 2nd August 2024

Democracies are united in excluding “minors” from voting, on the logic that children are not competent to make good decisions. Yet, they are as much citizens as adults. Politicians are not incentivised enough to prioritise children’s interests in policy-making — as they are with the elderly. “It would be inconceivable to suggest that any other group be excluded from our most fundamental democratic processes” (1,600 words)

Podcast: Long Journey To Make Malaria Vaccines | Readout Loud. It has taken forty years for a malaria vaccine to become commercially available, given the complicated nature of the disease (34m 15s)

Video: Clever Way To Count Tanks | YouTube | Numberphile | 16m 45s

How many tanks was Nazi Germany producing during WWII? The Allies used mathematics and probability to find out, and were on the mark. 

Skill Issues

Lily Scherlis | The Drift | 18th July 2024

Behavioural therapies hold that a good life entails skilled emotional management. Before they became popular, “the idea of directly teaching emotional regulation was a novelty in therapy”. Its creator, Marsha Linehan, had been institutionalised for self-harm. Eventually cured, she drew a blueprint for a new therapeutic practice based on her experiences. “More than sessions with a psychiatrist, I needed skills” (4,600 words)

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The (Dis)Assembly Of Information

Miles Kellerman | False Positive | 29th July 2024

At its core, a financial transaction is an exchange of information. Underground banking systems work on this premise, and have existed for far longer than modern states. The Hawala system operated on the ancient Silk Road, obviating the need for traders to carry money on dangerous routes. To this day, it is used in cross-border payments. Hawala brokers use pre-agreed secret codes to maintain trust (3,900 words)

Early Bookcases, Cupboards & Carousels

Suzanne Ellison | Lost Art Press | 28th July 2024

How early scribes stored their weighty tomes. Interesting throughout, with beautiful illustrations. The 8C Codex Amiatinus shows Prophet Ezra in front of a shrine-like cupboard — one of the “oldest images in the Western world to show a bookcase”. Cupboards with bi-fold or tri-fold doors stored the more valuable books. A 16C bookwheel has rotating gears to hold books at a 45 degree angle (2,400 words)

from The Browser twelve years ago:

The Brain Set Free

Laura Sanders | ScienceNews | 27 July 2012

“A baby’s brain is a thirsty sponge, slurping up words. In a fully set brain, signals fly around effortlessly, making commonplace tasks short work. A master of efficiency, the adult brain loses the exuberance of childhood. But it need not remain in this petrified state. In a feat of neural alchemy, the brain can morph from marble back to limestone.” Could there be a way to recapture its youthful flexibility? (3,300 words)