The Beauty Of Everyday Things

Graham McKay | Misfits' Architecture | 4th February 2024

Thoughts on the aesthetics of handmade objects in the age of total mass production. The Japanese philosopher Soetsu Yanagi was bemoaning this in 1933, and the effects have only become more pronounced — what we’re left with is “poorly designed and overpriced goods”. The writer’s own shelves, though, contain mass produced ceramics that have been designed to look handmade (2,200 words)

The Price Is Wrong

Sharon Su | Van | 15th February 2024

Bad editing is making it difficult to perform works by a wider range of classical composers. The Black American composer Florence Price is one such — the sheet music available today is so badly put together that it is barely usable. “It’s like being told to memorise a Shakespeare monologue and discovering that the only available copy of Hamlet’s speech begins ‘To beef or not to beef’” (3,400 words)

The Loss Of Things I Took For Granted

Adam Kotsko | Slate | 11th February 2024

Today’s college students struggle with basic literacy, this professor reports. Their “reading resilience” is low and comprehension basic. In part, this is because they have grown up with smartphones. But it is also because the way reading is taught is insufficient, and this is deeply troubling. They are not simply “choosing TikTok over Jane Austen”. “They are being deprived of the ability to choose” (1,600 words)

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Translating Philosophy

Damion Searls | Words Without Borders | 14th February 2024

Translator’s notes on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. A challenging task, given that this is a deeply thoughtful work of philosophy about the relationship between language and thought. The case is made for a looser, less consciously “highbrow” approach. Previous versions have been “too firmly in the grip of how the German language operates” to convey the work’s literary beauty as well as its ideas (5,000 words)

An Exploration Of Being Human

Lakshmi Thiagarajan | Pysche | 12th February 2024

“Did you lose your way under the bright moonlight, or did that fish-eyed woman seduce you?” Without relying on sets, props or character-specific costumes, Bharathanatyam dance uses lyric, movement, and facial expression to recreate scenes out of life. The verse is iteratively sung, and with each repetition, the dancer explores a different emotional layer — sarcasm, curiosity, mock surprise, and anger (2,300 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.

Nozick’s Experience Machine

Jack Maden | Philosophy Break | 6th February 2024

Thought experiment: suppose an experience machine could give you any experience you desired — writing a great novel or making a friend. Should you plug into it? A majority of people think not. The reason could be that we prefer to pursue pleasure indirectly — through the act of doing things, the “paradox of hedonism”. Nozick’s experience machine reveals our suspicion towards instant gratifications (2,800 words)

The Surreal Life Of A Professional Bridesmaid

Katherine Laidlaw | Hustle | 9th February 2024

Story of a bridesmaid-for-hire — “let me be there for you, this time, if: you don’t have any other girlfriends except your third cousin, twice removed, who is often found sticking her tongue down an empty bottle of red wine”. Skills include: doing the electric and the cha cha slide; holding up the bride's dress; catching the bouquet dramatically; and responding promptly to pre-wedding email chains (2,000 words)

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Bad Omens

Michelle Pfeffer | History Today | 2nd February 2024

February, 1524 was a dreaded time across Europe — astrologers were predicting a huge flood. Londoners gathered anxiously by the Thames, Rome stockpiled grains, German burghers arranged for barges outside their homes. Over 150 pamphlets circulated about these forecasts — “an early modern mass media event”. The flood never happened, leading to widespread derision about astrology (1,200 words)

Somewhere There’s Cheese

Zoe Kurland | Bright Wall/Dark Room | 8th February 2024

Love letter to A Grand Day Out, the first stop-motion claymation film to star Wallace and Gromit. It embodies the best kind of adventurous imagination. “What if the moon is made of cheese? What if we could wear our favourite sweater on its surface, and bring all our friends along for the journey? What a dream it is to look up at the sky and imagine a man and a dog picnicking on the moon” (2,300 words)

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Forgotten History Of The Chapter

Nicholas Dames | Millions | 27th November 2023

The way our reading material is split into chapters attracts very little attention from the average reader. “The chapter possesses the trick of vanishing while in the act of serving its various purposes.” Yet the concept rewards greater scrutiny. As Proust identified, capturing the perfect moment of transition, of hiatus, is both beautiful and near-impossible. We know when it is done well (2,200 words)

Vicious Spiral Of Inequality

Valentino Larcinese & Alberto Parmigiani | LPE Project | 7th February 2024

Is income inequality compatible with democracy? Old question, addressed anew by analysing the effects of Reagan’s 1986 tax reforms on political donations. This suggests that policies generate politics, not the other way around. Changes that make the rich richer allow them to spend more on contributions to politicians who then protect wealth. A summary of a longer paper, available in PDF (950 words)

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Nuclear Lab On A Serial-Killer Case

Sarah Scoles | Undark | 9th February 2024 | U

The Forensic Science Center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — “the lab of last resort” — investigates samples that are too difficult or dangerous to be studied elsewhere. The staff officially develop and maintain nuclear weapons, but in this case they invented a new process for detecting chemicals in the human body and thus helped to convict a respiratory therapist who was killing his patients (1,900 words)

My Favourite Books

J.G. Ballard | MIT Press Reader | 8th February 2024

Ballard looks back on a lifetime of reading. He regrets reading the classics in his teens, “before I had any adult experience of the world”, and thinks it may have made him a less mature, less open-minded adult. He loves “invisible literatures” (brochures, manuals, journals) and never reads his own fiction. His all-time top ten includes Hemingway, Burroughs, Coleridge and Lewis Carroll (2,100 words)

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Creeped Out

Sara Bernstein & Daniel Nolan | Oxford Studies In Philosophy Of Mind | 7th January 2024 | PDF

On the philosophy of creepiness and being “creeped out”. Creepiness lies within a specific range of emotional reaction. Seeing someone hacked to death will produce shudders of horror and repugnance, but it’s too powerful and direct an experience to be creepy. Having “the creeps” is a more low key, subtle occurrence — and one that can even have aesthetic or comic value (7,200 words)

Lessons From A Fountain Pen Addict

Anthony Newman | UK Fountain Pens | 24th March 2019

Wise words from a stationery aficionado, who has spent thousands on writing implements and inks. Pen brands have personalities too, and it will save you a lot of money if you work out early on which ones align with your own. Don’t be sucked in by the promise of limited editions. Remember that the ink and the nib impact the writing experience too; if a pen feels off, it might not be the pen (2,200 words)

Never-Again Land

Hunter Dukes | Public Domain Review | 6th February 2024

A decade before he created Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie was inventing reasons to give up smoking. In My Lady Nicotine from 1890, a protagonist who greatly resembles the author documents the harm that nicotine has done him. “He felt frequently like he was dying; realised several oriental rugs could be purchased with the money saved; and delayed his marriage when his fiancée demanded cessation” (820 words)

The Codpiece Flopped

Zaria Gorvett | BBC Future | 4th February 2024

Upper-class Renaissance men were briefly obsessed with codpieces — “pretty personal palaces for penises” — shaped like “spirals, orbs, upwards-curling sausages”. Henry VIII used them to bolster accounts of his fecundity — a 1536 portrait “abashed and annihilated” viewers. Surviving pieces are housed in the Museum of London, “initially classified as shoulder pads by a starchy Victorian curator” (3,500 words)

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Marxist Rebel

Samuel Rubinstein | UnHerd | 6th February 2024

“Little Englander” E.P. Thompson was a maverick Marxist — his writing united hard-nosed critiques of industrial capitalism with a belief in the power of the individual and faith in English common sense. His Marxism was not oppressive — people, in his view, “were not Pavlovian dogs; they did not salivate their creeds in response to economic stimuli; they loved and hated, argued, thought, and made moral choices” (2,900 words)

A Cycle Of Misery

Brian Potter | Construction Physics | 31st January 2024

“You can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t quit” — developing new aircraft models is one of the most difficult enterprises. It is cripplingly expensive — making a single model can cost more than the entire company’s worth. The demand is small, necessitating a steep learning curve to reduce inefficiencies. Too many orders can be as disastrous as too few, and the reward is a paltry profit (4,400 words)

Everybody Hates Cocomelon

Meghan Boilard | Off-Topic | 2nd February 2024

Popular children’s YouTube channels seem safe, if vapid and annoying to adults — but are they “cocaine for toddlers”? Entertainment companies research the minutest of details about their tiny viewers. Every time an eye strays away from the show, they take note and make tweaks — for “a bombardment of colour, sound and movement engineered for complete dominion over the toddler’s attention” (4,300 words)