Nothing Personal

Paul Nedelisky | Hedgehog Review | 23rd November 2023

Like a modern-day Diogenes, Derek Parfit tried to practise what he preached, and with similarly disconcerting results. He became a saint to some and a sociopath to others. "He spent decades arguing for the idea that we should behave more impersonally toward those close to us. His antisocial behavior reflected his philosophy. You might say he lived down to his principle" (2,160 words)

The Chimp-Pig Hypothesis

Uri Bram | Atoms vs Bits | 22nd November 2023

Place tongue firmly in cheek before accepting this invitation to reconsider Eugene McCarthy's theory that humanity's ancestor was a chimp-pig hybrid. "This is a rare theory that is internally consistent and coherent enough not to be ridiculous, overturns everything we think we know about a major area of knowledge, and doesn't have any meaningful implications for our current lives" (2,400 words)

Invisible Landscapes

Jennifer Brandel | Orion | 16th November 2023

On the discovery of a new human organ. The interstitium is a sponge-like layer that lies just beneath the skin, where fluid rushes through "a fractal, honeycombed network" that supports musculature and carries cells and information around the body. It can be seen with the naked eye during surgery, but was overlooked by a scientific approach that preferred isolated objects to systems (2,900 words)

Browser classified:

Attract more opportunities from LinkedIn with AI. Taplio helps over 6000+ users create better content, schedule it, engage with other accounts and monitor their results. Join them for free

The Great Poets’ Brawl Of ‘68

Nick Ripatrazone | LitHub | 29th November 2023

The 1968 World Poetry Conference was notable for how quickly it turned violent. "The poets battled on Long Island. Drinks spilled into the grass. Punches were flung; some landed. Chilean and French poets stood on a porch and laughed while the Americans brawled. A glass table shattered. Bloody-nosed poets staggered into the coming darkness. Allen Ginsberg fell to his knees and prayed" (1,500 words)

When Deepfakes Go Nuclear

Sarah Scoles | Coda | 28th November 2023

The proliferation of computer generated imagery that looks real has implications for nuclear warfare. The problem exists at both ends — fake satellite images could end up being analysed by a compromised AI system. But even if such a system does launch a missile by mistake, it is still our fault. "Humans created the AI systems and made choices about where to use them" (3,300 words)

Browser classified:

Without you knowing it, your food is already full of MSG (and that’s a good thing). If you like it you should put some MSG on it.

Last Week At Marienbad

Lauren Oyler | Granta | 23rd November 2023

Witty essay about a trip to Marienbad, a fading spa town in the Czech Republic famous as a place where Kafka fought with his fiancé, where Goethe fell in love, and as the setting for a 1961 French New Wave film written by Alain Robbe-Grillet. Here, the travellers' attempt to experience true convalescence is stymied by excessive sugar consumption and too many trips to the sauna (5,200 words)

Last Love

Sophie Elmhirst | Guardian | 23rd November 2023

Love story from the end of life. "Mary had so many metaphors for it. Derek was a blinding meteorite across her sky; it was like someone switched on the sun. She was knocked off her feet, smashed over the head with love. Derek proposed. In her room one day, quietly. Did she want to get married? Yes please. He bought her an amethyst ring, because she had always wanted an amethyst" (4,000 words)

Browser classified:

Everybody’s talking about the impact of AI on business – few people understand it. Be one of them with The Business Of Big Data

Yaar Parivaar

Neerja Deodhar | Mid Day | 5th November 2023

Literal translation: "dude family". A growing number of urban professionals in India are choosing to remain single into middle age and beyond. They are setting up multi-person households, often with children and pets cared for communally. Informal economic instruments are emerging around these setups — as unrelated people can't open joint bank accounts, a barter system evolves (2,440 words)

The Frog That Couldn’t Jump

Kim Ju-Song | Dial | 14th November 2023

Memoir. A Japanese-born writer of Korean descent describes working as an office assistant at the Writers’ Union in North Korea, where his responsibilities included overseeing what was known as the "100-copy collection", a small library of foreign books locked in a safe and reserved for the use of Union members only. "Any mismanagement of the 100-copy collection would be prosecuted as a political crime, since it would in effect be distributing capitalist reactionary materials to the public" (4,030 words)

Hitler The Hotel Guest

Adam Bisno | 1584 | 17th November 2023

In February 1931, two years before he became chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler moved his Berlin headquarters to a suite in the Hotel Kaiserhof on Wilhelmplatz, overlooking the Reich Chancellery. The Kaiserhof started to swarm with Nazis. Jewish custom evaporated. The directors of the hotel, most of whom were Jewish, found themselves in an unenviable dilemma. Should they kick Hitler out and face the consequences? Or should they let him stay, and face the consequences? (750 words)

Death Of A Berlin Power Broker

Peter Richter | Granta | 23rd November 2023

A century ago Potsdamer Platz and Friedrichstraße were the busiest and most glamorous streets in Berlin. War and partition reduced them to wasteland. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 it seemed only a matter of time before they regained their historic position and prestige. A tidal wave of international capital financed a decade-long construction boom. The outcome has been a planning disaster. Potsdamer Platz and Friedrichstraße are now bleak, ugly, and lifeless. What went wrong? And why was the city's planning officer murdered? (6,200 words)

Twins And Individuality

Helena de Bres | Aeon | 21st November 2023

Natural human chimeras are formed when the zygotes of non-identical twins fuse or exchange cells during gestation; one person is born with two sets of genes. A chimeric mother may also be her own child's aunt. Only 100 cases of natural chimerism are documented, but some 36 per cent of twin pregnancies involve a "vanishing twin", so many more cases may exist. Physically, chimerism is an unremarkable condition, but metaphysically it is bewildering. If one body can contain two people, could one person range across two bodies? (2,600 words)

What It Is Like To Be A Bee

Lars Chittka | Princeton University Press | 21st November 2023 | U

A brave attempt to model the mentality of a bee by making inferences from the bee's environment and behaviour, in the tradition of Thomas Nagel (bats), Peter Godfrey-Smith (octopuses), and Kristin Andrews (crabs). Whatever the bee's actual worldview, it must be very different from our own. "Night or day, it is always dark in a typical honey-bee nest. Imagine a 100-story windowless skyscraper, as packed with people as a bus during rush hour. All main surfaces are vertical, and individuals are constantly scurrying up and down walls" (4,800 words)

Name Your Industry

Sarah Brownsberger | Hedgehog Review | 19th November 2023 | U

When a drop-down menu on a website asks what "industry" you work in, it is probably trying to slot you into a taxonomy approximating to what is now called the North American Industry Classification System, a box-ticking exercise which did a fairly decent job of listing every recognised line of paid work when it was was first compiled under the auspices of the United Nations in 1958, but which has been falling further and further behind the times ever since. "Poets, independent", are currently a line-item. Baristas, dog-walkers, videographers and Elvis-themed-wedding planners are not (3,020 words)

In Praise of “Ain’t”

Richard Goodman | Brevity's Nonfiction Blog | 22nd November 2023

Saying "ain't" is superior to using "isn't" for lots of reasons, it is argued here, despite objections that this word is ungrammatical. "It’s strong, it’s musical — when was a one-syllable word so close to two? — it looks as good as it sounds. It’s economical. It’s working class, it does its job. The reasons against it are, in fact, purely those of class. It’s a beautiful word, a noble word" (950 words)

Browser classified:

Everybody’s talking about the impact of AI on business – few people understand it. Be one of them with The Business Of Big Data

Everything In Barbra Streisand’s Memoir

Andrew Hopf | Interview | 20th November 2023

Streisand's 966-page memoir, My Name is Barbra, took her twenty years to write, but has no index. This writer has now supplied one, and it makes for an interesting way to experience the book. "Another unsupportive male" receives just one entry; Goethe and "giving birth" get two; "see-through pantsuit" and Fiddler on the Roof have three; Stephen Sondheim, meanwhile, has over a dozen (21,000 words)

The Asbestos Times

Mano Majumdar | Works In Progress | 15th November 2023

Yes, asbestos is a powerful carcinogen and we spend billions removing it from buildings. But during the century in which it was hailed as a miracle material, it did have its benefits (although they did not outweigh the then-unknown risks). As cities became more crowded and flammable, this fireproof substance prevented what could have been many 19C-style "Great Fires" from spreading (3,140 words)

All Classics Are Funny

Joel Cuthbertson | The Bulwark | 10th November 2023

Classic books are classics for a reason, and part of that reason is that they are funny. Or so runs the theory put forward here — that a lot of what we think of as the "timeless quality" of a text is actually humour that can still be appreciated centuries later. "A joke is language unmasked. A joke grounds and justifies itself. A joke bears all things, believes all things" (2,920 words)

Greatest Dictionary Collection In The World

April White | Atlas Obscura | 14th November 2023

When Madeline Kripke died in 2020, the dictionary collection she had amassed in her two-bedroom Manhattan apartment and several storage units comprised an estimated 20,000 volumes. It will take years to catalogue, so for now experts are pulling out volumes at random at which to marvel, from a 17C guide to the "cant" of London's criminals or a 1950s dictionary of slang (1,300 words)

Browser classified:

Look, it's a book. It's not like other books. There's no real way to describe it without ruining the surprise, you might have to take a chance.

The Long Goodbye

Andrew Trees | The Smart Set | 20th November 2023

A fan of Netflix's DVD service, now shuttered, revisits his queue of 485 unwatched films. "I bid you a fond farewell and hope that if meaning comes not from the destination but the journey itself, my queue has suggested an admirable desire to be the kind of person who could speak knowledgeably about the French New Wave. Isn’t my aspiration worthy of at least a single rotten tomato?" (1,370 words)