Free • 1 min read
🦒
This week, The Browser looks back at some of our favourite selections from the year gone by.

Research As Leisure Activity

Celine Nguyen | Personal Canon | 27th May 2024

“It's fundamentally personal, a style of research well-suited for people okay with being dilettantes, who are comfortable with an idiosyncratic, non-comprehensive education in a particular domain. It’s fine, better even, if the topic isn’t explicitly intellectual or academic. Research as leisure activity is exuberantly undisciplined, and isn’t constrained by disciplinary fiefdoms and schisms” (4,000 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's word game. Play the latest edition this weekend before it's gone!

I Will Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again

Nikhil Suresh | Ludic | 19th June 2024

Data scientist's rage-filled refutation of AI boosters (contains strong language). "This entire class of person is, to put it simply, abhorrent to right-thinking people. They're an embarrassment to people that are actually making advances in the field, a disgrace to people that know how to sensibly use technology to improve the world, and should be thrown into Thought Leader Jail" (4,700 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Time for leisure again? Use it well with the full Browser. We recommend five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read
🦒
This week, The Browser looks back at some of our favourite selections from the year gone by.

Big Gods

Brian Klaas | The Garden Of Forking Paths | 21st March 2024

Humans lived in small bands of fewer than a hundred people until 12,000 years ago, when large, complex civilisations emerged. What changed? The “Big Gods” theory holds that it is the belief in omniscient beings who watched and punished moral transgressions — “supernatural monitoring” which acted as social glue, preventing individuals from acting against the group’s interests (3,700 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Secrets Of Japanese Urbanism

Noah Smith | Noahpinion | 26th March 2024

There are many: “Zakkyo” buildings — neon high-rises stacked with miscellaneous retailers; “pocket” neighbourhoods — mazes of streets and low-rise buildings shielded by large walls; mixed-use zoning aiding self-regulated residential areas. All of this is ideal for small businesses and makes for a varied urban life. Tokyo has 160,000 restaurants versus New York’s 25,000 or Paris’s 13,000 (3,200 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Haven't got time to try 160,000 restaurants? Why not explore the full Browser instead: we recommend five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, so you can make new discoveries wherever you are.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read
🦒
This week, The Browser looks back at some of our favourite selections from the year gone by.

Tools For Thinking About Censorship

Ada Palmer | Reactor | 21st February 2024

“The majority of censorship is self-censorship, but is intentionally cultivated by an outside power. Real censorship regimes see themselves as constantly underfunded and understaffed while attempting to seem all-reaching and all-knowing. Censorship aims to be visible, talked about, feared. This increases its power. We must cut through the Orwellian illusion and remember the realities” (4,400 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Casting Light On Relief Map Shading

Felix Frey | Swiss National Museum | 9th January 2024

In 1927, Albert Heim denounced Switzerland’s official maps for a “lie that flew in the face of nature”: mountains were shaded as if lit from the northwest, where factually in Switzerland the sun shines from the south. The convention arose from the convenience of right-handed illustrators, as revealed by older maps where east is on the left and south is at the top but the shading stays the same (1,100 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Shed a little more light with the full Browser: we recommend five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read

Hashtags And Hit Lists

Colin Wright | Reality’s Last Stand | 23rd December 2024

Public opinion has shifted towards accepting violence as a “legitimate response to perceived systemic injustices”, hitherto found in small extremist communities. A study shows that heavy social media use correlates with high justification rates for violence, mainly on platforms like Bluesky. A generational divide exists as well: people aged 18–27 largely endorsed the United Healthcare CEO’s murder (2,100 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Let The Games Begin

Tolga Ä°ldun | Archaeology | 2nd November 2024

Gladiators in ancient Anatolia, unpacked. The games weren’t about killing; both participants mostly left the arena on their feet. There was a detailed set of rules, overseen by arbiters. They were often held in theatres, where they coexisted with other cultural activities. Wealthy aristocrats and religious officials sponsored games to curry public favour — easier than opening aqueducts (3,700 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Need some entertainment? You could organise a gladiatorial showdown. Or you could subscribe to the full Browser: we recommend five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read

The Colour Of Memory

Grace Linden | Public Domain Review | 11th December 2024

The autochrome, invented by the Lumière brothers in 1903, transformed early colour photography. The camera had a glass negative covered in dyed grains, through which light would pass, creating a fully coloured image. “Autochromes always feel more real than reality. The blues are bluer, the reds brighter, what is faded is even more subdued. Everything appears to have been summoned from a dream” (4,000 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Jim Mamer | Scheerpost | 15th September 2024

“High school American history textbooks contain virtually no dialogue between the present and the past.” Out of a desire to avoid controversy, they misrepresent the colonists’ encounters with Native Americans, and reasons for the Cold War. Often, they omit information altogether, like Chelsea Manning’s leak about human rights abuses in Iraq. “The result is highly diminished textbooks and students bored silly” (5,400 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

This Browser edition is also highly diminished. Want to fill in the gaps? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read

Who Will Own My Digital Twin?

Todd A. Carpenter | Scholarly Kitchen | 19th December 2024

If a company trains an AI model on an employee's output, can it continue to be used long after that person has resigned or died? "Companies are well positioned to continue to profit from the employee’s experience and intellectual contributions... The economic model in which the profits of intellectual labour are time-bound or even constrained is rapidly being transformed" (1,800 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

At Lady Violet’s

Hilary Spurling | Hudson Review | 8th November 2024

Zesty biographical essay about Violet Pakenham: writer, aristocrat and wife of Anthony Powell. She was a connoisseur of parties and the possessor of a profound talent for friendship. Closer examination proves her to have been no mere "social secretary and telephone receptionist", though. She acted as a "human index" to her husband's great work, the 12-volume A Dance to the Music of Time (4,300 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read
The full Browser recommends five articles, a video and a podcast. Today, enjoy our audio and video picks.


Video: Curiosa | Vimeo | Tessa Moult-Milewska | 9m 31s

Stop motion puppet animation about a woman's search for her disappearing boyfriend.

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Podcast: The Adventure of the Speckled Band: Part One | Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Excellent new readings of the classic Arthur Conan Doyle tales by Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville (30m 08s)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's word game. Play the latest edition this weekend before it's gone!

Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read
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.

Best Philosophy Books of 2024

We ask our philosophy editor Nigel Warburton to recommend five of the most notable new books in his specialist area at the end of every year. In 2024, his nominations for the best philosophy books of 2024 include an introduction to the work of Karl Marx, a study of sentience in animals, and an examination of suicide through the work of the Greek tragedians. Read more

Award-Winning Novels of 2024

If you struggle to keep abreast of notable new novels, it can be helpful to check the consult a list of winners of recent literary awards. The juries of major prizes often wade through dozens or even hundreds of submissions when they put together their shortlists, and are therefore well placed to offer informed recommendations. Here, we've put together an easy to consult round-up of novels that won big literary awards in 2024. Read more

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's word game. Play the latest edition this weekend before it's gone!

Want more to read? The full Browser sends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, to keep you fascinated for longer.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read

The Diagnostician Of Despair

Robert Zaretsky | American Scholar | 19th December 2024

Rousseau was many contradictory things — among them a playwright who hated the theatre and a writer who regretted writing — but he should be valued above all else for his understanding that civilisation is both the best and worst creation of humankind. The structures that we erect to better society and ourselves also contribute to the "ontological drift" that causes alienation (1,200 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

A Garden In Winter

Deborah Vass | Still Sketching | 5th December 2024

Essay about a painting, “Winter Garden” by Evelyn Dunbar. It is a rare example of a painter capturing a garden out of season, "at rest in the fading light of a December afternoon". There, too, is the "quality of light that only exists in the days leading to the Winter Solstice... before dusk slips into dark, when the gardener retreats inside after a hard day’s digging, to warm against the chill" (1,500 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Retreating inside to warm against the chill? Take some great reading with you. The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read

How My Thinking Has Changed

J.P. Koning | Moneyness | 17th December 2024

Reflections on twelve years of covering Bitcoin. An"early optimist", the writer gradually realised that the coin is not "a monetary thingamajig... akin to gold, cash, or bank deposits" as widely assumed. It is rather an example of an "early-bird game", like a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. Although it is generally innocuous, he wonders whether it would have been better to ban it back in 2014 (3,300 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Moon

Bartosz Ciechanowski | 17th December 2024

Everything you could want to know about the Earth's closest celestial neighbour, with attractive visual aids. The Moon affects our tides, our light, and even the planet's rotation. No wonder it has dominated human culture for millennia in one form or another; it is simply always there. It is "a fellow companion that gently affects our own existence" and "never leaves us completely alone" (16,000 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Want a fellow companion that gently affects your own existence? Allow us to apply for the post... The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read

Innovation Bends Towards Decadence

Nicholas Carr | New Cartographies | 15th December 2024

Why is innovation less impressive now than in the first half of the 20C? Perhaps due to a shift in focus, to “smaller-scale, less visible breakthroughs”. As life gets more comfortable, our priorities and reward structures shift from “tools of survival to tools of the self”. An entrepreneur today has a greater prospect of fame and riches for creating a social-networking app rather than a faster system of mass transit (1,500 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

Beatrix Potter’s Quiet Rebellion

Hannah Stamler | Humanities | 9th December 2024

The children’s author had a less well-known second act as a farmer and conservationist. She painted fungi and bred prize-winning sheep. She used her wealth and influence to acquire as many buildings and lands as she could in England’s Lake District. At the end of her life, she bequeathed 4,000 acres of land to the National Trust, including “important examples of Lakeland architecture” (2,800 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Want more? The full Browser recommends five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily, for less than $1 a week.
Get The Full Browser Experience
Free • 1 min read

Shifting Heavenly Models

James Vincent | Port | 16th December 2024

What is the shape of the universe? The early Christians thought it was like a big tent. Today, science tells us that we can never know its actual dimensions — or if finite bounds exist at all — since our observations are limited by the speed of light. “There is something ineffable about the cosmos”, and it “now absorbs some of the awe and mystery that in previous centuries was directed towards the divine” (2,600 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Nomido

Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!

The German Model Is Failing

Yascha Mounk | 16th December 2024

Sobering look at Angela Merkel’s legacy. “Although she always strived to do the right thing, she ultimately got nearly everything wrong. Her refugee policy has been neither sensible nor humane. Germany has long outsourced its security to the United States, its energy needs to Russia and its export-led growth to China. Merkel doubled down on all three bets. Since she left office, all three have gone belly up” (3,100 words)

Share this on X , Facebook , Linkedin or Bluesky

Here's a bet you should double down on: bet on the Browser and get the full edition, with five outstanding articles, a video and a podcast daily.
Get The Full Browser Experience

Join 150,000+ curious readers who grow with us every day

No spam. No nonsense. Unsubscribe anytime.

Great! Check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription
Please enter a valid email address!
You've successfully subscribed to The Browser
Welcome back! You've successfully signed in
Could not sign in! Login link expired. Click here to retry
Cookies must be enabled in your browser to sign in
search