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)

Slow Down, Do Less

Akielly Hu | Grist | 1st February 2024

Conversation with philosophy professor and Marxist scholar Kohei Saito, whose book Capital in the Anthropocene became a bestseller during the Covid pandemic. He is interested in the redistributive potential of degrowth; a deliberate shrinking of the global economy. In his vision, it is accepted that economies do not grow forever. Sharing existing wealth, he argues, will enable a better life (2,000 words)

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The Cost Of Inflation In Prison

Phillip Vance Smith II | JStor Daily | 1st February 2024

The 13th amendment to the US constitution banned slavery and forced labour “except as punishment for a crime”. Thus, the incarcerated can be required to work and do not have to be paid a living wage, or any wage at all. This has been the case for nearly 150 years, but inflation hikes have made the problems it causes all the more acute. Costs go up, but the pay remains the same for decades (1,900 words)

Flipping Russian Spies

Szabolcs Panyi | VSquare | 1st February 2024

Former Hungarian intelligence officer explains the process when a Russian spy is found. Pre Ukraine invasion, he estimates that 34 per cent of Russian diplomats were confirmed spies. An attempt will likely be made to “flip” the spy. Cash and security guarantees will be required, as well as offers of medical treatment and education for family members. If they refuse, expulsion follows (2,500 words)

Declining Trust In Zeus

Adam Mastroianni | Experimental History | 31st January 2024

Some scientific progress is external and linked to physical improvements, but some comes purely from mental adjustments, like the use of randomised clinical trials. The decline in trust in institutions is just such an opportunity. “I’m so excited for people to become less impressed with our modern day Aristotles and Galens. Perhaps then people will be inspired to outdo them” (2,100 words)

Zoozve

Latif Nasser | 26th January 2024

Zoozve is not a moon of Venus. But it’s also not not a moon of Venus. Quasi-moons are the solar system’s weirdos: objects that orbit the sun while being gravitationally linked to a planet, they seem to be dancing to the beat of their own drum. They can also switch planets — Earth currently has at least seven quasi-moons dancing around it, and probably flung Zoozve over to Venus 7000 years ago (1,300 words)

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The Atom Bomb And The Two Cultures

Jeroen Bouterse | 3 Quarks Daily | 29th January 2024

Against the backdrop of nuclear war, American physicist I.I. Rabi opposed a model where science dealt purely in facts and outsourced questions of value to disciplines like the humanities. Scientists had been used to create the bomb, but had not been consulted about its use. “To the politician, the scientist is like a trained monkey who goes up to the coconut tree to bring down choice coconuts” (4,600 words)

The Man Who Collects Lost Pet Posters

Amelia Tait | The Waiting Room | 17th January 2024

Interview with a Los Angeles oddball with a collection of old “missing” posters for pets. He sees them as a kind of folk art — “the hand-drawn dogs and the poetic pleas meticulously crafted in a time before computers and printers were household goods”. They are touching. Many offer rewards. He has over a hundred. He does admit that taking the posters was “morally questionable” (2,100 words)

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Podcast: Stop Trying To Fall Asleep | Try This. Beginning of an audio “sleep course” offered by the Washington Post that attempts to train listeners to care less about the thing they want most: good rest (8m 44s)