Where An Amplifier Gives Itself Away

Alexandra Plesa | Headphonesty | 24th July 2026

A good amplifier should do more than amplify sound; it should “keep bass controlled, preserve detail during busy passages, and handle sudden peaks without sounding strained”. Test tones do not always catch these flaws. Use the 50 songs in this list instead, featuring a wide range of music from Prokofiev to AC/DC to Norah Jones to Hans Zimmer — with detailed, timestamped notes on what to listen for (5,700 words)

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

Why Does Everything Feel So Joyless?

Michèle Mendelssohn & Charlie Tyson | Guardian | 26th July 2026

“Welcome to the era of decadence without pleasure.” Historically, decadence has been a symptom of cultural decline. Yet, some cultures produced extraordinary art in their decadent stages, “like the flare of a dying star”. “Think of the undulating arabesques of Rococo painting before the French Revolution, or the lush shimmering silks of the late Ottomans, or the experimental cinema and nightlife of Weimar Berlin” (4,000 words)

How French Theory Lost Its Cool

Geoff Shullenberger | Compact | 21st July 2026

Review of a semi-autobiographical book which argues that reports of the demise of French theory — as embodied by Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, et al — has been greatly exaggerated. Theory is no longer oppositional or countercultural but part of the status quo, the mainstream. Barthes posited the creation of texts without authors, and now huge corporations sell AI models on the basis that they can do just that (2,100 words)

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

Tuna Melt

Talia Lavin | The Sword And The Sandwich | 24th July 2026

Why the humble tuna melt is the sandwich most suited to this moment in time. "A bad time is here; a melting world. Now is the time to melt a little. Retrench. And harden for the long struggle, because a better world, despite all indicia to the contrary, still is possible. And when it comes, because we make it... it will be filling, and bedecked with cheese, and needs must feed us all" (2,100 words)

Podcast: Ogham | Irish History. About Ogham, Ireland’s oldest known writing system dating back over 1500 years (36m 31s)

Video: O Viridissima Virga | YouTube | The Marian Consort | 4m 47s

Haunting performance of a song by Hildegard of Bingen, 12C abbess and polymath.

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

How To Write By Hand

Neal Stephenson | Graphomane | 21st July 2026

For 25 years, Stephenson has written his novels on paper with a fountain pen. The stacked manuscript of his 1,000-page Baroque Cycle trilogy stood 42 inches high. The benefits are huge, he argues, as the brain navigates the physical act of writing alongside the more intangible work of creation. A good fountain pen will outlive you. Your hands will get inky. Don't be prissy about it; it washes off (2,500 words)

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

The Greatness Of David Lean

Alexander Larman | Contra Mundum | 23rd July 2026

Despite his gift for epic filmmaking, David Lean never had the cult-like reputation of Hitchcock or Kubrick. Why not? "His films are relatively straightforward narratively and cinematically... In this they reflected their director’s personality, of a hard-working professional who was often exasperated by the apparent inability of actors or crew to do their job as well and conscientiously as he was doing his" (2,100 words)

How To Survive Boiling Water

Jane A. Cook | Taxa | 19th July 2026

Scientist and self-described procrastinating PhD student goes on a journey of discovery to investigate whether the claims of a "probiotic" tea bag can possibly be true. Surely any "good bacteria" will have been destroyed by steeping it in boiling water before drinking? "Learning how bacteria grow and adapt does not diminish the sense of wonder I feel when I observe them – it only enhances it" (4,200 words)

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

A History Of The Internet’s Favorite Scam

Finn Brunton | MIT Press Reader | 20th July 2026

The advance-fee fraud, also known as the 419 scam, is familiar to the point of cliché: "It always starts with the same canonical line, trotted out in conversation over the phone, or perhaps over email: 'Hello! I am a Nigerian prince.'." It has a richer history than we might assume, dating back to at least the 19C. Then, as Nigeria's oil bubble collapsed in the 1980s, it took off on paper, and then via the web (2,500 words)

What Nobody Teaches You About The Holocaust

Barry Weiss | Mama Magazine | 21st July 2026

A difficult read. “The story we tell ourselves about the Holocaust is the story of the survivors, which means it is the story of the camps. But it is not how most Jews died.” The camps were undoubtedly horrific, but the majority of European Jewry were killed on WWII’s Eastern front, in “a continent-wide eruption of murderous violence carried out primarily by local populations against their own neighbours” (3,800 words)

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

Rain Robbers

Chris Bennett | AgWeb | 9th June 2026

True crime story of four Colorado cowboys who faked a drought to receive millions of dollars in drought insurance. How? The insurance program was based on rain amounts and not crop performance. They devised an elaborate scheme to manipulate the rainfall gauges in their area to show lower measurements. “They permanently changed the country’s quality-controlled data and climatological record” (4,200 words)

Who’s Afraid Of Chinese Models?

Ben Thompson | Stratechery | 20th July 2026 | U

The economics of software has always been different from other industries because of zero marginal costs. This equation is changing with AI models. As intelligence increasingly becomes a commodity — in that it is fungible — the tech industry will have to deal with the dynamics of a commodity market, where all suppliers charge the same price, so the supplier with a superior cost structure will win out (3,700 words)

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

A Theory Of Invention

Daniel Frank | Not Not Talmud | 12th July 2026 | U

The time difference between New Zealand and San Francisco is 21 hours, but seeing it as just 3 hours plus a one-day change is useful for people co-working from these places. Anyone can do this: take a thing that already exists and present it in a new light, in a way that makes it more useful to others. We should all think of ourselves as inventors — of new framings, connections and curations that add value (1,800 words)

Podcast: Aftermath | Speaking In Tongues. The Rolling Stones’ first official podcast, narrated by Norah Jones and featuring interviews with the band members (20m 51s)

Video: What's The Story In The Bayeux Tapestry? | YouTube | British Museum | 2m 08s

Animated explainer of the 70-metre long visual chronicle of 11C Norman history.

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

Disaster Rehearsal

Morley Musick | n+1 | 16th July 2026

What it's like to be a volunteer for a mass-casualty simulation drill at an airport. First, you are daubed with fake blood and burns. Then, a replica plane on a disused runway is set on fire. Everyone lies on the floor and pretends to be injured. Trainee firefighters effect a rescue, which is "a very pleasurable, quasi-erotic experience, giving a taste of what it might be like to be able to float" (1,800 words)

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

As Odd As A Clockwork Orange

The Memory Hole | 28th June 2026

The oft-repeated origin story of A Clockwork Orange — that Anthony Burgess completed the novel after receiving a terminal brain tumour diagnosis, drawing inspiration from a horrific attack on his wife — is not true. The brain tumour never existed and it's highly likely the attack never happened either. When asked once on what occasions he lied, Burgess replied: "When I write, when I speak, when I sleep" (3,500 words)

'See The Whole World In Lichen'

Lynda Mapes | Seattle Times | 27th June 2026

Lichens are extraordinary. They have no roots, do not need pollination, and make their own food. They bind soil, produce nitrogen, feed animals, and serve as key indicators for environmental changes. "They are green, black, orange, yellow, chartreuse, gray, white and even blue — and every shade in between. Shaped like leaves, like blowing beards, like pixie cups, like newly brushed paint" (3,700 words)

Browser classified:

Person Do Thing is a fast, friendly party game for two or more players (designed by Browser Publisher Uri Bram).

Vinyl In The Veins

Kyle Devine | Longreads | 14th July 2026 | U

Vinyl records have enjoyed an extraordinary resurgence in popularity in the last decade. Once considered to have been superseded by CDs and mp3s, the format generated $1bn in revenue in the US in 2025. Every new record is made from polyvinyl chloride and nobody in the music industry wants to talk about what happens when the oil runs out. How punk is it to harm the planet? Not very (2,500 words)

The Most Modern Thing You Own

Michael Diaz-Griffith | World Of Interiors | 14th July 2026

The Art Deco relics of the 1920s are not “antique in the way we used to mean”. “In 1925, it was possible to conjure a material world that sublimated the conflict between the machine and the hand, ancient craft and modern industry pressed alike into service of how we might live. We’ve given up on that fantasy. Our rooms are from the archival past or resigned present, but they fail to imagine new futures” (1,400 words)

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

The Moral Logic Of Equality

Michael Burlingame | American Mind | 10th July 2026

How Lincoln understood the phrase ‘all men are created equal’. Social and economic mobility was, to him, a distinctive feature of American democracy and he frequently cited his own life as an example of it. “When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labour, for his whole life” (2,600 words)