On Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights

Heather Parry | General Observations On Eggs | 15th February 2026 | U

Furious analysis of the recent film adaptation of Emily Brontë's novel. "Why adapt one story to turn it into another completely different story, of which many (better) versions already exist? Why is the resounding question you're left with after seeing this movie. Why am I supposed to give a fuck what an agonisingly posh woman from London thought Wuthering Heights was about when she was a teenager?" (5,200 words)

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The Secret History Of Indian Science Fiction

Gautam Bhatia | Alter Mag | 22nd November 2025

Survey of Indian science fiction in the 20C. "Before Asimov, there was Rokeya," who in 1905 published the first major work of Indian science fiction in English. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's dream of a woman-dominated world set off a literary tradition that moved from feminist utopias to technological dystopias. More recently, the genre has shown an interest in visualising "anti-caste futures" (5,000 words)

The Dream Of A Universal Picture Language

Keith Lowe | Engelsberg Ideas | 9th February 2026

The earliest experiments in creating a universal picture language took place during the Alpine cycling craze of the 1890s. Clubs began to put up signs warning members of upcoming sharp bends or steep ascents. Pictures were preferred in part because one could not be sure what language a cyclist in the region might speak. Yet, to this day, “the dream of a single language of the road has never been realised” (2,100 words)

Why I Am Not A Humanist

Daniel Greco | Greco & Wansley | 8th January 2026

“The characteristic temptation of the humanist is bringing exclusively humanistic tools to bear on questions that demand empirical evidence. The humanistically inclined put too much weight on the authority of great books. I don’t want to identify as a humanist, because I don’t want to be the kind of person for whom it feels natural to let quotation substitute for evidence when empirical questions are at stake” (4,300 words)

Can Abundance Include Nature?

Shawn Regan | Ecomodernist | 13th February 2026

The Abundance movement is becoming a major political force, and yet the conservation community is noticeably absent from its coalition. Understandable, given that it has long been about limiting human impacts. But many species, forests and wetlands now require continued human intervention to survive. “Conservation today isn’t something that happens on its own. It must be supplied” (2,400 words)

The Cult Deprogrammer

Sanjiv Bhattacharya | Minority Report | 16th February 2026

Stories about cults with Rick Ross, America’s “foremost cult deprogrammer”. He has travelled the world working with cult victims and thinks that the “US is the best place for a cult to set up shop”, not least because of its legal framework, which offers immunities and protections not available in other countries. When asked what type of person would join a cult, he replies, “every kind” (2,400 words)

The Professor Of The Lower Senses

Ruby Tandoh | Vittels | 9th February 2026 | U

Profile of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who in 1825 published The Physiology of Taste, "the most influential non-recipe book ever written about food". Best known for its highly quotable aphorisms, it's well worth reading in all its peculiar, digressionary glory. "It is gut-wrenching to think just how much bad food writing could have been averted if people had only read beyond the first two pages of his book" (4,000 words)

In Search Of The Soul Of Seoul

S.Y. Lee | S(ubstack)-Bahn | 13th February 2026 | U

Writer visits two favourite buildings that stand across the street from each other in Seoul: the Jongmyo Shrine, a Confucian complex founded in 1396, and the Sewoon Sangga, a brutalist complex of shopping malls that stretches for four blocks. They are polar opposites, but also embody Seoul's many evolutions. The mall is now heading for demolition. If it goes, so does a fascinating piece of urban history (4,600 words)

Podcast: Garden Symphony | Get Birding. Actor Sean Bean hosts an engaging podcast featuring birdcalls and expert imitations, best heard with headphones (31m 28s)

Video: Junior Free Skate | YouTube | US Figure Skating | 8m 33s

Synchronised figure skating is something to behold — a combination of skating with cheerleading and dance. This gold medal team performance contains dozens of thrilling jumps, lifts and spins.

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Learning About Longevity

Aria Schrecker | Works In Progress | 10th February 2026

“There are several measures by which humans are strangely long-lived: size, heart rate, and reproductive window. In general, the more intelligent the species, the longer its lifespan. The average lifespan of a species, across all kingdoms of organisms, tends to increase as it gets bigger. But longevity has tradeoffs, and many of the super-long-lived creatures make big sacrifices to achieve their lifespans” (4,500 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

The Mass-Synchronisation Of Framings

Marco Giancotti | Aether Mug | 12th February 2026

On how people living in a culture synchronise their behaviour in arbitrary and self-reinforcing ways — examples ranging from train-boarding in Japan and Italy to English sarcasm. “The basic force behind all culture formation is imitation. This ability is innate in all humans, regardless of culture: we are extraordinarily good imitators. Indeed, we are overimitators, sometimes with unfortunate consequences” (2,900 words)

Dan McQuade

Sebastian Stockman | Saturday Letter | 8th February 2026

Memories of a friend who died at the age of only 43. Dan McQuade was a sportswriter in Pennsylvania and a connoisseur of "life’s inconveniences and absurd juxtapositions". This writer met him in college and ever since they had shared a deep love of the "bad lede", the opening paragraph of an article that deploys layers of inappropriately tortured metaphor. Several excellent examples are given (1,100 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

Editor's note: we apologise for the recent bug in the system! Nomido is back, and with a new meta-challenge: instead of finding a phrase of the day, find four words that share a theme.

Twenty-One Reactions To Wuthering Heights

Rossetti, Woolf et al | Common Reader | 9th February 2026

As the curator here rightly says, "there is no indifference to Wuthering Heights". Critics have been delighting in or deploring Emily Brontë's only novel since it was first published in 1847. One anonymous reviewer from 1848 considered it to be the author's devilish cheese dream. Dante Gabriel Rossetti thought it a "fiend of a book". Swinburne called it a poem. F.R. Leavis declared Emily Brontë a genius (4,000 words)

Assistant To The Regional Manager

Paul Bloom | Small Potatoes | 9th February 2026 | U

Notes on a post-scarcity utopia. It is oft-said that if all our material needs were satisfied, humans would suffer from ennui and loss of purpose. Struggle gives life meaning — or does it? In a world without want, positional goods, which mark one’s status relative to others, would still matter. The desire to matter in some way and to someone would still remain. Attention itself is a positional good (3,100 words)

The Bias Against Left-Handedness

Meagan Bojarski | Mental Floss | 10th February 2026 | U

Many languages bias people against left-handedness. In Latin, right is “dexter” and left is “sinister”, which acquired its association with evil in later usage. In Arabic and Hindi, the word for left also denotes “easy”, implying that a task must be easy to be done by the left hand. A clumsy person has “two left feet” in English. “Left luck” denotes bad luck; “getting up with the left foot” is connected to a bad day (1,600 words)

Alien Assumptions

George McGowan | Mindless Algorithm | 8th February 2026 | U

Science fiction has warped our ideas of how a visit to Earth from aliens might go. Just to get here from the nearest star, let alone further afield, said aliens would have to be far more technologically advanced than us. Unless they wanted us to know, we might not even be aware of their presence. "There is no 'war' and we don't even necessarily realise what is happening. They don't land infantry with laser guns" (1,200 words)

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London’s Most Controversial Cyclist

Peter Carlyon | Londoner | 7th February 2026 | U

Profile of one Michael van Erp, better known as "Cycling Mikey". When he was 19, his father was killed by a drunk driver. Ever since, he's been trying to catch road offenders in the act. As a "cycling vigilante" who shares his footage with both the Met and his thousands of followers, he is proud to say that he has pulled in £168,568 in fines. His nemesis is a lawyer known as "Mr Loophole" (2,700 words)

Believing Your Lying Eyes

Patrick McKenzie | Bits About Money | 6th February 2026 | U

Thoughts on fraud. Fraudsters tend to repeat themselves: "The dominant next adventure for a former fraudster is… opening up a new fraud." They share the same supply chain and professional services firms. They employ family and close friends, because they need loyalty in the face of threatened prison time. Properly investigating fraud is a vital but underrated function of a healthy democracy (6,700 words)

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To Remember In America

Yiyun Li | LRB Blog | 6th February 2026 | U

Writer recalls her bad memories of a traumatic time in nursery school in 1970s Beijing — four-year-olds were threatened with hammers — and finds parallels to 21C politics. "A friend in London talks about the mystifying phrase she keeps hearing these days: ‘This is not America, this is not who we are.’ But this is America, this is life, and this is how human beings behave. American exceptionalism will not save us" (600 words)