Podcast: The Journey, Episode 1: Gifts | In The Dark. Beginning of a five-part investigative series that unravels a California surrogacy scandal (59m 19s)

Video: Weird Optics | YouTube | Grand Illusions | 4m 44s

Demonstration of an assortment of objects that create unusual optical effects: liquid paper, a small square frame with a background image of black and white lines, a flip book with holes punched in some pages, and a circular box with a lid that is a series of tiny lenses.

Equestrian Statues Ranked

Tony Bozanich | 8th January 2026

Equestrian statues, especially the less flashy ones, tend to merge into the urban landscape. Catching a historical man on a horse out of the corner of your eye as you navigate the city is an everyday experience. The invitation to pause and look closer is welcome. The Marcus Aurelius in Rome is the best one, but there are also superb examples to be found in New York, London, Bamberg, and elsewhere (1,900 words)

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

Is Removing Non-Native Plants The Answer?

Jim Sullivan | Revelator | 17th September 2026

A weed is just a plant growing where humans don't want it to, or so the saying goes. As efforts to nurture and promote native species become more sophisticated, though, we might be getting a little too good at eradicating non-native plants that actually play an important role in supporting desirable ecosystems. Removal can have a greater impact than letting things be imperfect as they are (1,700 words)

Man Of Macau

Tim Struby | Victory Journal | 16th September 2026

Remembering Teddy Yip: racing driver, legendary swordsman, polyglot, businessman and "the Grand Old Man of Macau". Born in Indonesia and partially educated in the Netherlands, he found his calling at the 1955 Macau Grand Prix. "It wasn’t much of a race and Yip wasn’t much of a driver", but it cemented his love of both the place and the sport. Ian Fleming should have based a Bond villain on him (1,200 words)

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

Eating Alone

Gabe Bullard | Longreads | 15th September 2026

Extract from a book about "embracing friction in an age of convenience". Food delivery apps have created a "second reality" that is falsely smooth: we choose groceries and meals on screens instead in the physical world. Restaurants that participate in the app ecosystem find that virtual customers will accept lower quality food than in-person diners. The price of the virtual world is worse food that costs more (3,400 words)

The Siberian Ice Maiden

Patrick Wyman | Perspectives | 15th September 2026

In 1993, Russian archaeologists discovered the 2000-year-old mummified remains of a young woman in the Ukok Plateau, 7,000 feet above sea level and one of the most remote parts of the planet. She had been interred grandly, dressed in colourful silk and fine wool with pieces of cannabis and coriander. She was dubbed the Siberian Ice Maiden, and was found to have had breast cancer during her brief life (4,700 words)

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

Mark

Jeremy Stern | Colossus | 14th September 2026

Long profile of Mark Zuckerberg. Interesting throughout, if a little too sympathetic to its subject. Topics covered include his childhood and adolescence, the Roman Empire, mixed martial arts, the dictator’s dilemma, the 2016 elections and other critical episodes in Facebook history. A through-line is the Emperor Augustus, with whom Zuckerberg seems to have harboured a lifelong obsession (15,000 words)

My Personal Zugzwang

Mardean Isaac | Republic Of Letters | 13th September 2026

Chess anchors people across cultures because it is a game of strategy. “That is the key to its longevity: where culture changes and evolves, strategy survives and persists — mere as itself.” Zugzwang, the “situation in which you have no choice but to make a move that will worsen your position”, may be a metaphor for life itself: “you are always responsible for advancing yourself — even, and especially, into oblivion” (3,100 words)

Asia’s Lonely Economy Of One

Y Tony Yang | Asia Times | 14th September 2026

Across China, Japan and South Korea, single-person households are on the rise. “Markets are good at unbundling meals, entertainment and paid company. They are bad at unbundling the two things families did best: insurance against catastrophe and the last mile of care. The check-in app bluntly named “Are You Dead?” is a paid substitute for a job that, until recently, needed no product” (1,800 words)

Your Perception Of Time Is, In Fact, Warped

Mike Mariani | Noema | 3rd September 2026

Our internal clocks are speeding up, in part thanks to experiences of the Covid pandemic. It's unclear if we can slow down again. "We used to tolerate those interminable minutes standing in a crowded grocery line, gazing out the convex glass window of an airplane, waiting for the dull red digits on an oven timer to run down to zero. These are now the endangered species of our day-to-day lives" (4,800 words)

The Browser Newsletter

Kaamya Sharma & Caroline Crampton | The Browser | Since 2011

Interesting throughout. Two thoughtful readers attempt to consume the entire output of quality internet writing each day, and select only the finest pieces that are truly worth reading. Topics include octopuses, maps, music, orchids, Romans, and almost anything else you can imagine. “An island of wonders, filled with treasure and surprise” (Millions of words)

Entrance Island’s ‘Haunted’ Lighthouse

Olamide Olaniyan | Tyee | 11th September 2026

In the winter of 1900, a young Japanese man at a remote lighthouse in British Columbia, was "beset by dark and mysterious forces that seemed determined to do him ill". Two workers had died during the construction of the lighthouse and now spectral figures armed with weapons pursued Tsunekichi Katsuyama through his every waking hour. A ghost story, or something rather more cruel? (3,500 words)

Podcast: ‘I’m Done With That Life’ | The Divide. Opening instalment of a twelve-part spy drama set in the UK of 1964 (17m 43s)

Video: Modern Day Typographer | YouTube | Elle Cordova | 3m 3s

A litany of fonts set to the tune of “Modern Major General” by Gilbert & Sullivan. Delightfully silly.

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

From Fake Coffee To Coffee Empire

Katja Hoyer | Zeitgeist | 10th September 2026 | U

Vietnam is the world’s second-largest coffee producer today, thanks to a deal struck with East Germany in 1980. 10,000 hectares of land were cleared for coffee. The GDR provided $20 million to cover the costs of machinery, irrigation and a hydropower plant in exchange for half of Vietnam’s coffee for 20 years. However, by the time the first proper harvest came in 1990, the GDR had ceased to exist (2,000 words)

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

Napoleon And His Memorable Alpine Crossing

Barbara Basting | Swiss National Museum | 7th September 2026 | U

A painting of Napoleon crossing the 2500-metre high Great St. Bernard Pass in the Alps shows the man rearing up in triumph on his favourite horse, Marengo. This was pure visual propaganda. In 1832, Alexandre Dumas crossed the pass and wrote in his diaries about how the farmers en route had mocked the Emperor. Napoleon reportedly did the journey on “unglamorous mules” and almost fell into an abyss (1,800 words)

Every Map Starts With A Lie

Betsy Mason | Last Word On Nothing | 9th September 2026

All maps have to distort geography in order to render the three-dimensional planet in two-dimensional form. There are five qualities that can be tweaked — area, shape, distance, direction, and angle — and each projection balances them differently, with different results. None of them are perfect. The maps we carry in our heads do not accurately represent the world as it really is (1,900 words)

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

The Couple’s Therapist

Ellika Lagerlöf & Saskia Vogel | Granta | 8th September 2026

Short fiction with a tinge of body horror to it. A wife fears that her husband is pulling away from her; he spends a lot of time at the gym and is rapidly gaining muscle mass. They even eat their meals separately now. They go to couple's therapy and take the recommendation to spend more time together, cooking and eating. The husband takes it a little too far, perhaps. There's a dark twist to the tale (3,100 words)

What Are We Teaching Music For?

Peter Wei | Ecumene | 7th September 2026 | U

Most parents who put children in music lessons are not seeking for them to become virtuoso performers. And yet that is how music education is structured today. What if it had a different ideal: that of the talented amateur? Before recorded music, homes that wanted music had to make it themselves. The 18C sophisticate was expected to play with friends, not perform a difficult piece flawlessly before an audience (1,600 words)

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

The End Of Romanitas

Mathew Lyons | Engelsberg Ideas | 7th September 2026 | U

The centuries after Roman power fell in Britain tell a story that echoes throughout British history: “the insular against the incomer”. Britishness and Englishness were sometimes competing, sometimes porous identities. Surveys today report ethnic minorities are more comfortable identifying as British. “Might Britishness become a subaltern identity again, cleaving away from English hegemony?” (3,100 words)

After Work, We’ll Have Each Other

Clara Collier | Asterisk | 2nd September 2026

In a society where people no longer need to work, they will — once again — be defined by their participation in the social world. This may not be desirable. “The modern labour market has dissolved the bonds of tradition, family and clan. In the modern world, relationships matter less. And because they matter less, we can do much more inside them. They are freer. They have room to breathe” (5,500 words)

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14 Reasons Robotics Is Hard

Steve Newman | Second Thoughts | 2nd September 2026

At present, robots are nowhere near replacing humans. They cannot replicate the dexterity and coordination of the human hand. They are not yet able to break down a task, say engine repair, to individual, related steps. Computer vision has made great strides but the ability to pick out an object from a crowded space remains distant. Robots do poorly on weight, mobility, safety, speed and endurance (3,200 words)