The Ultimate Horse

Sophie Fessl | Works In Progress | 5th August 2026

The ‘thoroughbred’, a type of horse designed for speed, was created in the 1700s from just three exceptional horses imported to England from Arabia. But modern breeders appear to have hit the ceiling on how fast an exceptional horse can run. Why? Horses have had great genetic diversity for thousands of years. Breeders may have bred away the very thing that would allow the horse to keep improving (4,100 words)

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Speaking For The Dead

Sam Roberts | Longreads | 11th August 2026

The NYT’s obituaries reporter looks back. The best obits are in the local dailies: in 2019, the family of Joe Heller placed one in the Hartford Courant, describing him as “a frequent shopper at the Essex Dump” who “left his family with a house full of crap, 300 pounds of birdseed and dead houseplants”. “There wasn’t an occasion too formal or an event too dour that Joe didn’t interrupt with his voluminous snoring” (4,800 words)

The Emperor’s New Letters

Danny Bate | 6th August 2026

The Latin alphabet, 2000 years old in Emperor Claudius’s time, had 21 letters. A man of books, Claudius added three more letters, but scholars cannot know what they were with any degree of certainty because they did not survive his demise. Contrast this with Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the former slave credited with inventing the successful letter G centuries prior. “Perhaps they just weren’t good letters?” (3,100 words)

The Bench As A Made Object

Leo Umilio | Idle Gazette | 8th August 2026

Short, almost dreamy piece on making benches. Though the simplest of seats, every proportion is a decision. Vindication comes from the neighbour, who takes a liking to one of these made benches. “Last Thursday I came up the road at dusk and he was already there, legs out, hat back, and he moved over exactly one plank’s width without looking, which is both a greeting and a verdict on the joinery” (900 words)

Podcast: The Chart Side of the Moon Edition | Hit Parade. Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon has spent over a thousand weeks on the Billboard album chart since 1973. Why does it have such extraordinary longevity? (57m 00s)

Video: Coastal Confluence | YouTube | Jan Erik Waider | 2m 38s

Aerial footage of a place on the Icelandic coast where a glacial river meets the sea, and the two colours of water combine.

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Career Suicide, Whatever It Takes

Danny Crichton | Securities | 27th June 2026

Review of four books about the Chinese economy, which can be read together. "It’s just work, debilitatingly hard work. The kind of hard work that leads to missing limbs, shattered lives, suicides and excruciating pain as one gropes inexorably forward to end the suffering... The story of hundreds of millions of people exiting poverty and entering the global middle class deserves many more retellings" (4,800 words)

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Plato’s Warning Has Been Vindicated

Michael Marinaccio | Hedgehog Review | 5th August 2026

In the Phaedrus, Plato posited that literacy would erode human memory, because readers would "rely on books instead of their brains". What if the prediction was just premature? The embrace of AI is doing this. "Chatbots perform a metaphysical sleight of hand: they convince us that we do not need to acquire and incorporate knowledge in our minds when data is out there for the taking" (1,900 words)

Life Inside Icelandic Turf Houses

Amelia Soth | JStor Daily | 15th July 2026

Iceland's turf houses, which the majority of the population lived in before 1910, "were an ingenious response to scarcity". Wood was rare and precious, used only for essential supporting beams. The rest of the structure was built from stone and covered with a living layer of insulating turf. It looked cosy, but according to contemporary visitors, inside it was unventilated, cramped and filthy (1,000 words)

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On The Ownership Of Assets

Chris Dillow | 3rd August 2026

Gianni Infantino’s failed attempt to sell off stakes in the World Cup was a demonstration of a classic economics phenomenon: the hold-up problem. European nations "held up" corporate production by threatening to withdraw participation in the tournament. Contracts are one way to solve this problem, but ownership is often a better one. It's why Ikea owns vast swathes of forested land (2,800 words)

The End Of The Age Of Heroes

Noah Smith | Noahpinion | 4th August 2026

A new AI model has solved major problems in mathematics, breakthroughs that have stunned the scientific community. Is this the dawn of a golden age or the end of human mathematics? The scientific enterprise was always collective. “AI is really a new world-mind — a technology that takes the accumulated findings of individual humans and integrates them into a general picture of the world” (3,600 words)

Draw Me Like One Of Your French Girls

Alysia Abbott | Oldster | 3rd August 2026

54-year-old joins life drawing sessions and eventually emboldens herself to pose as a model. “During my time on stage I was reduced to my bare naked figure, but that body, while mine, also felt not mine as I posed and turned in service to the needs of the room. After two and a half hours of quick poses and then long poses, my back and limbs ached. I was thirsty and hungry. But I did it” (NSFW — nude art) (3,000 words)

No, You Don’t Want To Time Travel

Douglas Giles | Insert Philosophy Here | 3rd August 2026

Physicists and enthusiasts grappling with time travel have extensively pondered and debated complex questions of relativity, spacetime, energy and even whether time is real outside human perception. Time may be the fourth dimension, but what about the first three dimensions? Moving through time also means moving through space, which presents many insurmountable challenges — explained here (1,300 words)

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The Golden Age Of British Ice Cream

Ruby Tandoh | Vittles | 3rd August 2026

…began with a question: how to package the ice cream cone in a way that it could withstand getting knocked around in a freezer but also melt in one’s mouth? After years of experimentation, the Cornetto made its debut in the British corner shop in the summer of 1976, one of the hottest summers on record. That was the beginning of a fifteen-year run that launched Mini Milks, Twister and Magnum (4,500 words)

Bordeaux is Burning — Why?

Medieval Histories | 31st July 2026

A devastating Castilian wildfire in the 10C suggests that long-term agricultural shifts are to blame. Then, landowners had begun intensive viticulture and monasteries were clearing forest for farmland. Less livestock and more wooden debris spread the flames. Now, the lack of free-ranging animals keeping the undergrowth down and the disappearance of vineyards has again created fuel for fires (2,900 words)

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Contrarian's Month Without Social Media

Kate Wagner | Late Review | 27th July 2026

Refreshing take on the phone detox trend: it does not fix you. "Getting off my phone and limiting my screen time has not radically reoriented my existence. It has not made me suddenly erudite, though it has welcomed considerable peace into my life. It is actually very relieving to not have four hundred commentators yelling in your ear about how we are all going to die... even though this is, in fact, true" (2,600 words)

Podcast: Fabricated Memories And Stories | A View From A Bridge. From a bridge in Central Park, David Byrne muses on the self as an unreliable narrator of cherished memories (12m 58s)

Video: Pride & Prejudice (2005) | YouTube | CinemaStix | 11m 45s

Analysis of director Joe Wright’s approach, which veers away from the picturesque method conventionally followed in British period cinema towards more realism. In practice, this means that the camera does not stay unobtrusive and still, but moves around for extended tracking shots and long takes following characters around. This creates for the viewer a feeling that the camera and crew have been transported to another time.

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On Plagiarism

Terry Eagleton | UnHerd | 30th July 2026

All language is second-hand; that's why we know what it means. Today, we set great store on utter originality, but it was not always so. In neo-classical times, "an imitation of Homer or Horace might be deemed far more precious than an artistic creation of one’s own. Originality was the preserve of the Almighty, who could conjure his handiwork out of nothing as no mere mortal could" (1,800 words)

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Reaping The Whirlwind

Admiral Cloudberg | Medium | 30th July 2026

Book-length analysis of the January 2025 collision above the Potomac River between an airliner and a helicopter. The level of detail is astonishing, as is the emerging argument that the disaster was entirely foreseeable. "The dangers created by the interlocking web of commercial, military, and political interests surrounding National Airport were evident to those who had to work there every day" (51,000 words)

When Literary Passion Leads To Illness

Max Lawton | LitHub | 28th July 2026

"After about a hundred pages, when the pain and stabbing sensations grew more intense, I was forced to go to the nearest emergency room. At the end of the examination, the doctor told me: ‘I don’t know you, and I don’t know what you do for a living, but whatever it is — stop it immediately, for a month!’ Antonio’s blood pressure was simply too high and he had to take a break from his masterpiece" (1,200 words)

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On Weird Fiction

Robert Baskin | Cleveland Review Of Books | 28th July 2026

Weird fiction is not horror and not Gothic, although it shares qualities with both. It was "forged from Gothic materials in the smithies of the American magazine". "The primary affects are fear, disgust, and wonder. Standard Weird motifs include tentacles, eldritch horrors beyond the capacity of language, scientists discovering that which should not be discovered, and strange artefacts with world-altering auras" (3,500 words)