Video: Fran Lebowitz On Great Writing | YouTube | The Morgan Library | 5m 12s

Fran Lebowitz in her element here — “the closest thing to a human being is a book. I know people think it’s a dog, but they’re wrong”.

Podcast: How Grinders Work Deep Inside | The Science Of Coffee. Debunking myths about grinding coffee, via a detailed look at what happens to the beans inside the device. The conclusion is that after a certain point, spending more money on grinding won't produce a better-tasting cup of coffee (47m 24s)

Revolution In The Air

Mark Miodownik | Guardian | 4th July 2024

History of nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas. Interesting throughout. Samuel Colt funded the development of his revolver by travelling the US giving laughing gas demonstrations. Edgar Allen Poe's cousin George worked out a way to manufacture it as a liquid and distribute it to dentists in canisters. If you give birth in a hospital today, you will still be offered the gas for pain relief (3,700 words)

Moral Luck

Arianne Shahvisi | LRB Blog | 3rd July 2024

On the false comfort of counterfactuals. We tend to assume we would easily pass the moral tests of history — refusing the lure of dictators, declining to join the Nazi Party — but perhaps we are just lucky not to have to decide. "Recognising the role of moral luck encourages empathy and humility, but it also threatens the notions of culpability that help us to make sense of evil" (1,000 words)

The Bird Detectives

Andrew Zaleski | Washingtonian | 3rd July 2024

When a bird flies into a aeroplane's engine, whatever "gunk" is leftover is posted to a team of forensic ornithologists in Washington DC. These "bird detectives" inspect 11,000 dead birds a year. They identify bird corpses, sometimes just from a single feather. Their suggestions about pest control and habitat management aim to reduce the number of fatal bird strikes and improve air safety (2,500 words)

The Shareholder Supremacy

Edward Zitron | Where's Your Ed At? | 1st July 2024

It is not your imagination: today's companies don't care about customers. Instead, the shareholder reigns supreme. "Our economy is run by people that have never built anything, running companies that they contort to make a number go up for shareholders they rarely meet." This is all a short-termist shell game, in which the only winning moves are those that increase company value (11,000 words)

Like Shining From Shook Foil

Shore Leave | 30th June 2024

Make travel intrepid again. “Pursue your personal canon to its obscure points of origin. Assign yourself highly personalised and esoteric errands. There are more people crossing the seas on vessels of their own creation than in any previous age — improvised rail carts and mine shafts. Embed yourself in odd institutions, real or invented. Take jobs that let you into the back rooms of cities” (2,200 words)

American Dream Is Cursed

Meghan Boilard | Off-Topic | 1st July 2024

Visual history of American Dream, a New Jersey colossus that had once promised a staggering catalogue of amenities. The developers originally called it Xanadu, possibly dooming the project with the ill-fated name. Beset by difficulties, the space is now a maze of “deserted corridors, stairways abruptly interrupted by ceiling, unsettling murals, and an eerily quiet Nickelodeon Universe indoor theme park” (5,000 words)

The Augustinian Settlement

Nathan Goldwag | Goldwag’s Journal On Civilisation | 1st July 2024 | U

Historians mark 27 BCE as the year the Roman Republic transitioned into the Roman Empire, when Augustus became its first Emperor — without actually establishing an “Empire” or the office of “Emperor”. The Republican system was retained, while a dynasty that would last centuries was formed. How was this done? Extraordinarily detailed account of the forces that shaped Rome’s turning point (3,600 words)

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Elite Misinformation Is An Underrated Problem

Matthew Yglesias | Slow Boring | 26th June 2024 | U

Case in point: fossil fuel subsidies. For years, the mainstream press have reported on governments subsidising fossil fuel companies to the tune of trillions. These stories are based on an International Monetary Fund report, in which the majority of subsidies mentioned are “implicit subsidies” — in other words, governments’ failure to impose a carbon tax being characterised as a subsidy (1,900 words)

Ancient Egyptian Scribes' Skeletal Risk

Petra Brukner Havelková et al | Scientific Reports | 27th June 2024

Sitting still for long periods has always been very bad for us. This study explores the injuries visible in the remains found in 200 tombs at the pyramid complex of Abusir, dating from 2,700BCE. At least 69 of these individuals are thought to have been scribes, who wrote for hours a day in a cross-legged or kneeling position. Their jaws, necks and shoulders show substantial damage (12,000 words)

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Every Pill I Took

Peder Clark | Polyphony | 10th June 2024

Most scholarship about drug use focuses on the bodily and social effects of intoxication. Less attention is paid to the aesthetics. "Nobody has written a social history of the bong, for example." But there is a book documenting the imagery of early 2000s ecstasy pills. Many came with a picture pressed into their surface — everything from Pokemon characters to the Rolls Royce logo (1,400 words)

Podcast: The Lost Subways Of North America | 99% Invisible. Lots of American cities either used to have, or almost had, functional electric railway systems. For a variety of reasons, including racism and bad politics, they fell out of use or were never built at all (26m 26s)

Video: Sun Chasing | YouTube | Posy | 6m 7s

More accurately, sunset chasing — Posy documents his various attempts to film the sun setting over the ocean. Best watched with headphones, so as not to miss the sublime sound design and music.

‘I’m Good, I Promise’

Conor Niland | Guardian | 27th June 2024

On the loneliness of the low-ranking tennis player. This former Irish number one spent his professional career in the lower divisions — the Challenger and Futures tours — that everyone is desperately trying to leave behind. Nobody wants to make friends. The social hierarchy, based on world ranking, is brutal. "Did they know I had nearly beaten a guy who had once beaten Pete Sampras?" (3,800 words)

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A Life-Time Cycle

Stephan Petermann | Archis | 26th June 2024

Interview with a cyclist on a 10,000km ride from Amsterdam to Shanghai. He crossed Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran, Uzbekistan and more to reach the Chinese border. He has found that perseverance is really made up of many mental tricks. The desire to save face, to keep commitments, and to focus just on the next 100 metres combine to keep you going (3,900 words)

Will We Ever Get Fusion Power?

Brian Potter | Construction Physics | 26th June 2024

Probably not, and even if we do it will inevitably be much more expensive than the alternatives. "By the time a reactor is ready, if it ever is, no one will even want it." But that's not a good reason to stop trying. None of the low-carbon technology we will use to generate energy in the future exists yet. All the options are speculative to some degree. Placing lots of bets is the best way to ensure success (8,200 words

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What Happened To People Magazine?

Anne Helen Petersen | Culture Study | 19th June 2024

The decline of People is a case study for the ruination of the media industry. Founded in 1974, it began with the promise to combine the "established journalistic rigour of Time" with "extraordinary stories about ordinary people" who could be the president or your neighbour. Then a series of acquisitions in the 21C turned it into something resembling "a weird SEO farm" (3,000 words)

Thoughts On Ideology

Dan Williams | Conspicuous Cognition | 24th June 2024

“Ideologies do not aim exclusively or even primarily at truth. They must provide simple, shared narratives that lend clarity and coherence to a complex political world. The average citizen does not consistently apply ideological principles in everyday political judgements or behaviour, and in many cases, citizens do not hold the kind of stable political preferences that ideology would imply” (3,000 words)

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Randomised Controlled Trials In Economics

Maia Mindel | Some Unpleasant Arithmetic | 4th June 2024

Proponents of RCTs — aka randomistas — claim they are the gold standard for economics research, allowing for smaller, more tractable questions instead of over-ambitious ones. Critics note that RCTs are expensive and don’t provide generalisable evidence. And then there is the thorny ethical question — a majority of people consider RCTs immoral, “thinking it inappropriate to play dice with outcomes” (3,800 words)