Philosophy Of The Death Penalty

Peter Salmon | New Humanist | 25th April 2024

The death penalty is an issue of sovereignty, “not so much “does the state have the right to take a life?” as: “what does it mean if we grant the state that right?”. It is a fundamental change in the relationship between the state and each individual. This in turn changes all of our relationships to death. It is no surprise that US states with capital punishment have the highest rates of homicide” (2,500 words)

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Nature’s Oldest Mandolin

Maria Popova | Marginalian | 5th May 2024

Observations on cicadas, every line a joy. “Homer’s highest praise for orators was to compare them to cicadas. Lord Byron — otherwise blind to the grandeur of smallness — rhapsodised about these tiny “people of the pine” that “make their summer lives one ceaseless song”. Their kettledrums are perhaps the only musical instruments now in use that have remained unchanged through a thousand centuries” (1,200 words)

Leaf Venation Networks And Simulated Damage

Luke Mander & Hywel T. P. Williams | Royal Society Open Science | 1st May 2024

Trees began to grow branching veins in their leaves about 340 million years ago. Then, around 20 million years ago, a new "loopy" vein pattern evolved in some plants. Why? By inflicting hypothetical damage to fossilised leaves, the authors of this paper posit the plausible answer that, in between, insects evolved that eat these leaves, and so the trees developed veins that resist the damage (5,500 words)

Variations On The Theme Of Silence

Jeannette Cooperman | Common Reader | 26th March 2024

Stellar opening to a piece about kinds of silence: not all of them are soothing. "My boyfriend was a moody architect who wore black leather jackets and blared Nine Inch Nails. I worked for a broke little magazine so stressful the production manager threw her phone at the floor and screamed 'fuck' every afternoon at three, clockwork. About to turn thirty, I was beginning to hate my life" (4,600 words)

To Save It, Eat It

Taras Grescoe | Long Now | 24th January 2024

War in Ukraine and Syria could end up devastating humanity long after the last shot is fired. Both conflicts have damaged major seed banks — one in Kharkiv, the other in Aleppo — where the seeds of tens of thousands of plants were preserved as insurance against future famine and mutation. Even Hitler left the Ukrainian seeds alone. Some of the samples destroyed were centuries old (1,600 words)

Vico's Singularity

Henry Farrell | Programmable Mutter | 1st May 2024

"Vinge’s Fork", named for the late science fiction author Vernor Vinge, suggests two paths forward: either an AI-powered super-intelligence will destroy humanity, or with the help of such an AI, humanity will conquer the cosmos. Both metaphors are "wildly misleading', it is argued here, and merely continue a debate humans have been having at least since the Renaissance (2,300 words)

The Beautiful Dissociation Of The Japanese Language

Marco Giancotti | Aether Mug | 20th April 2024 | U

…Lies in the difference between the spoken and written forms. Japanese was purely oral until 5th-century scholars adopted Chinese characters, or “kanji”, sometimes only for their sound and not their meaning. A single Chinese character can represent several spoken Japanese words, so one kanji can have many different meanings and sounds. Example: there are over 15 ways to pronounce “life” in kanji (3,900 words)

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History Of Online Public Messaging

Jeremy Reimer | Ars Technica | 29th April 2024 | U

From Morse’s prophetic first message via telegraph — “what hath God wrought?” — all the way to social networks today. Full of amusing facts: Usenet veterans in the 1990s dreaded Septembers, when undergraduates would discover and pepper newsgroups with naive questions. “What started as a fun hobby for nerds has led to a world where everyone feels anxious and uncertain as they “doomscroll” infinite feeds” (4,400 words)

The Unstallable Plane That Stalled

Sylvia Wrigley | Fear Of Landing | 26th April 2024

The Cessna 185 Skywagon is a small aircraft popular in remote areas without proper airstrips. With modification, it can take off from and land on water. The pilot flying one in Finland on 30th April 2003 believed that it was incapable of stalling, which is the major reason that he crashed it into a lake seconds after take off. That, and he wasn't wearing the safety shoulder harness (4,000 words)

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How to discover and consume 6,500+ podcast episodes without subscribing to any podcasts? Wenbin Fang shares his episode-centric listening approach with Listen Notes.

Tales From An Attic

Sierra Bellows | American Scholar | 4th March 2024

In 1995, the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane in New York closed. Over 400 suitcases belonging to patients were found in an attic. The contents are revealing not of high psychological drama, but the mundanities of life. One held a military uniform and WW2 ration books, another a library slip from borrowing a Freud volume in 1929. Patient Benjamin M's luggage held only a toothpick (7,700 words)

Where The Language Changes

Bathsheba Demuth | Granta | 25th April 2024

For a thousand miles of the Yukon river's course, no settlement along it can be reached by road. Rapid travel is only possible by air or by boat. It makes this part of Alaska a liminal space, close to history, because distances cannot be covered with modern rapidity. In the 19C, Russian and American traders carried out a slow imperial struggle here, to the great detriment of indigenous peoples (5,000 words)

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The Rise Of The Bee Bandits

Oliver Milman | Noema | 2nd April 2024

Once the American west was rife with cattle rustlers. Now thieves pilfer bee hives. Over 2,000 have already been stolen this year. Hives are trucked into California from all over the country to pollinate almond trees. Haphazard unloading and logistical confusion allow heists to go unnoticed. Even the sheriff described here as a "steely sort of bee detective" is struggling to regain control (2,800 words)

California Unlocks Shakespeare’s Gibberish

Frank Bergon | Los Angeles Review Of Books | 23rd April 2024

Solution to a longstanding mystery about a passage of "gibberish" in All's Well That Ends Well. Act four includes lines like "boskos thromuldo boskos" that had been assumed to be nonsense words invented by Shakespeare. It is, in fact, based on Euskara, the Basque language, which can be heard spoken with sounds like this in parts of rural California where emigrés still live (1,900 words)

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How to discover and consume 6,500+ podcast episodes without subscribing to any podcasts? Wenbin Fang shares his episode-centric listening approach with Listen Notes.

The Rise And Fall Of The LAN Party

Merritt K | Aftermath | 11th April 2024

The early 2000s were a singular moment for players of videogames, when the "isolated gamer" stereotype began to fade. Gameplay was becoming more complex and cinematic, but low internet speeds made it difficult to play together online. The LAN party — "local area network" — was the solution. Players brought their computers to communal spaces and plugged in together (2,900 words)

The Trouble With Passion

Tyler Burgese & Erin Cech | Culture Study | 21st April 2024

Why “follow your passion” is flawed advice: it prioritises self-expression at the cost of job security or salary in career decisions. Without safety nets or social capital, “working-class and first-generation college graduates are more likely to end up in low-paying jobs when they pursue their passion”. Employers too prefer “passionate applicants”, as they seem more willing to do uncompensated work (3,300 words)

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When Do We Stop Finding New Music?

Daniel Parris | Stat Significant | 10th April 2024

When do our musical tastes stagnate? The bad news: we are more “open-eared” as adolescents; the songs we hear from ages 13 to 16, no matter how trite, leave a lasting impact. Sonic stagnation happens by 33 — every generation believes “music was better back in my day”. The potential good news: a “waning commitment to exploration” might be the cause, which suggests that it can be rekindled (1,900 words)

Feathers Are Evolution’s Cleverest Invention

Michael B. Habib | Scientific American | 16th April 2024 | U

Marvel at feathers. They are "skin appendages", modified by genes and molecules to take the specialised form that each part of a bird requires: narrow and asymmetrical for flight, dazzlingly coloured for display, bristled for protection. Owls have silent hunting feathers. Hummingbirds have extra stiff feathers because they flap so much. Penguins use tiny dense feathers for buoyancy (3,300 words)

The Woman Behind The Windows

Aliide Naylor | Meduza | 19th April 2024 | U

The career of Estonian stained glass artist Dolores Hoffmann tracks the evolving reputation of her medium. Self-taught via smuggled books — religious art not being popular under Soviet rule — she created robust secular works that even Soviet troops couldn't smash. Then stained glass was rehabilitated as an art form; now she receives commissions from Russian oil giants (2,600 words)