A City With No Government

Jacob Kushner | Noema | 31st August 2023

Canaan was a town in Haiti flattened by the 2018 earthquake. Croix-des-Bouquets was a town next door with a can-do mayor called Rony Colin. Colin decided to take charge of Canaan, which had no government. He arrived with guns and money. How did it go? Not so well. Canaan had its own strongman. A small war ensued. Colin fled to Florida. Canaan relapsed into crime-ridden anarchy (3,000 words)

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The Doctor Dolittle Challenge

Yossi Yovel & Oded Rechavi | Current Biology | 7th August 2023

Will AI enable us to talk with animals? The potential is there, subject to three main constraints. We can collect animal utterances to train our AIs, but we won't know much about the context of the utterances, which is a big part of the training. We will have to figure out how to get animals to validate our models. And it may be that animals don't talk about the things we want to talk about (4,600 words)

History Is Having A Replication Crisis

Anton Howes | Age Of Invention | 29th August 2023

The framing here is not quite right; history does not consist of experiments; but this theory of historical errors is a welcome improvisation. "Just as in science, there is simply no time to check absolutely every detail in the things you cite. And even if you do, you may have to follow a citation chain that is dozens or hundreds of links long. History, like any other field, very often relies on trust" (2,200 words)

The 2,000-Year-Old Curry

Noel Hidalgo Tan | South East Asian Archaeology | 6th August 2023

Bronze Age grinding tools found recently in the Mekong Delta carry residues of turmeric, ginger and other spices typically used in making curries. Reverse-engineering a likely recipe from the 2,000-year-old residues yields a curry that is recognisably South-East Asian: "The flavours are earthy and complex, but not burn-your-tongue spicy, due to the lack of chilli and peppers" (1,200 words)

Philosophy And Fake Hair

Richard Halpern | CUP Blog | 30th August 2023

Leibniz wore a wig so extravagant that it resembled a poodle asleep on his head. He moved in high society and followed fashion. But posterity prefers plainness in philosophers. "If we no longer demand that our philosophers be poor, we expect at least a certain slovenliness — a sign that their attention is directed elsewhere, upon more fundamental matters, and not on their appearance"  (1,280 words)

Holes In Buildings

Graham McKay | Misfit Architecture | 27th August 2023

On the economics of what architects call "sky courtyards" — big holes punched through buildings to make facades more fun. After Miami Vice showcased Arquitectonica's Atlantis condo in 1982, everybody wanted a hole. "The downside of these holes is that they can’t be sold full-price. The upside is that being seen to not monetise every possible cubic metre is an indicator of prestige" (1,900 words)

When Havel Met Biden

Oscar Clarke | Quillette | 29th August 2023

Interesting tidbit from diplomatic history. In 1997, Václav Havel met Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to discuss the possibility of the Czech Republic joining Nato. Biden was less than enthusiastic. "Mexico is fifty times as important to us as you are!" he said, before concluding that "no one is asking you to join" and "democracy is a bitch" (1,680 words)

Last Summer Pearls

Michael Malay | Dark Mountain Project | 30th August 2023

The decline of Scottish freshwater mussels means losing more than molluscs. "The disappearance of a species is always a plural event, because it involves the unravelling of an interconnected world." In this case, that loss includes "the summer walkers": the semi-nomadic Gaelic-speaking mussel-fishers who roved the lochs, living off the proceeds of the pearls they found (1,835 words)

Boom And Bust, All At Once

Ashley Braun | Hakai | 16th August 2023

In the mid 20C, fish meal — the leftovers from processing fish like herring and sardine — performed what felt like miracles. It fattened livestock and fertilised crops at a time when many in Europe and North America were hungry. Demand is rising again now as food prices soar, and whole fish are now being used to make it — fish that would have fed people in South America or West Africa (1,230 words)

The Man Who Won The Lottery 14 Times

Zachary Crockett | The Hustle | 21st July 2023

Rogue economist, or "self-described philosopher-mathematician", used a talent for numbers to turn lottery-winning into a profession. His first jackpot enabled him to flee communist Romania, and he then went into business in the US and Australia. His theory was simple, if logistically challenging: just buy all the combinations, a cost then defrayed by the winnings. It was, then, perfectly legal (2,870 words)

How They Tried to Kill Me

Elena Kostyuchenko | n+1 | 15th August 2023

Russian journalist, who reports regularly from Ukraine, describes what she thinks is a poisoning attack by Russian special services. It took her a long time to accept assassination as a possibility. "I did not want to believe that they could kill me. I was protected from this thought by revulsion, shame, and exhaustion. It disgusted me to think that there were people who wanted me dead" (4,150 words)

Hands And Tongues

R. Douglas Fields | Quanta | 28th August 2023

Neurological background to a peculiar behaviour: why humans stick our tongues out in moments of manual concentration, such as when playing an instrument or threading a needle. Research suggests a connection with the early development of language, when hand signals were first coupled with syllabic utterances. There is also evidence that the tongue movement improves manual precision (1,590 words)

Audio: Ronan Farrow On Elon Musk | New Yorker. Ronan Farrow enlarges on his story in this week's New Yorker about Elon Musk's emergence as an essential yet unaccountable part of American governance. Musk stands athwart the green transition, the space race, the war in Ukraine. Yes, he is some sort of wayward genius. But should any private person possess such power? (32m 43s)

Video: Happiness | Steve Cutts | Vimeo | 4m 15s

Funny, touching, sad animation about the rat race as lived by rats. Previously recommended on The Browser in 2017, but such a classic that I will risk recommending it again. The soundtrack is L’Amour Est Un Oiseau Rebelle from Bizet's Carmen. Cutts on Cutts: “I grew up looking at artists like Robert Crumb and Gary Larson, so I’m sure there’s some of their influence in there somewhere. I tend to view the world in a kind in slightly abstract terms and often see humor in dark situations"

Eugene Debs Really Loved Bicycles

Eugene Debs | Jacobin | 17th August 2023

In 1895, the US trade unionist had high hopes for the socialist potential of cycling. "The bicycle, not the medical profession, will triumph over disease. The wheel is on the trail of Consumption and will overtake and vanquish the remorseless destroyer. Men and women and children will all ride the bicycle and the enrapturing panorama of nature will no longer be forbidden glories" (335 words)

Next Slide, Please

Claire L. Evans | MIT Technology Review | 11th August 2023

History of the corporate presentation. The first audio-visual slideshow at a sales meeting occurred in 1948. It created an entire industry of slide projector specialists. Then came the 1984 revolution: Microsoft Powerpoint. Its instigator didn't stick around to see it become the "shorthand for the stupefying indignities of office life". He retired and became expert in antique concertinas (2,800 words)

My Kendom For A Horse

Lawrence Freedman | Comment Is Freed | 6th August 2023

Barbie, a strategic analysis. Why does the revolution of the Kens collapse, allowing the Barbies to restore their matriarchy so easily? Not because of hard power. Neither coup is violent. Ideology is the decisive factor. "Ken does not understand the patriarchy. He believes it has something to do with horses. The Barbies understand the matriarchy because they have lived it before" (1,500 words)

That 1980s Bowling Alley Smell

Jason Diamond | The Melt | 25th August 2023

Why don't ice rinks, and bowling alleys, and everything else, smell the way they used to when "we" (read "people turning 50") were kids? Is it just the lack of struck matches and cigarette smoke? Are different chemicals used for cleaning the ice and waxing the lanes? Or do our memories mislead us, insisting that the world of youth smelt (and felt) richer and stranger than the world of middle age? (1,580 words)

Every Strand Of Thread

Ben Harper | Boring Like A Drill | 4th August 2023

Recommended for beauty of language. Music for detuned violin is not my bag, but the descriptions here are pure poetry. Lisa Streich’s Falter is "made out of feathery arpeggios occasionally anchored by a barking low note"; Soosan Lolavar’s Every Strand Of Thread is "a rough and hairy piece even in its most delicate sections, modulated by guttural buzzing, thickened timbre and faint rattles" (630 words)

From The Browser Eleven Years Ago

Chicks Dig The Uniform

Maria Farrell | Crooked Timber | 26 August 2012

What it's like being married to a soldier when the soldier goes off to war and when the soldier comes home again. Both are stressful in their different ways. "The army has actually created a Powerpoint slide to illustrate the highs and lows of the soldier’s return, from, ahem, the first moments of joyful reunion to the inevitable and explosive fight that comes between 36 and 48 hours later" (1,800 words)

Readers in New York are invited to join The Browser for a free Parakeet Safari on Saturday, September 16th. RSVP here. To learn more about Brooklyn's wild parakeets, listen to the episode on The Last Archive here.

Always Lie To Election Pollsters

Igor Tulchinsky & Christopher E. Mason | Big Think | 23rd August 2023

The headline is an exaggeration, but the thesis is interesting. Political polling can create a sense of momentum and narrative that makes an election seem decided long before citizens actually vote. We don't govern nations via opinion poll, but we do let them influence our elections. Refusing to take part in a poll, it is argued here, destabilises its prediction and thus strengthens democracy (1,400 words)

The Early History Of Counting

Keith Houston | Lapham's Quarterly | 23rd August 2023

Humans started counting at least 40,000 years ago, around 35,000 years before we started writing. This is shown by a baboon fibula found in South Africa that bears 29 notches made by different tools over time. We may never know what its maker was counting, but this tally stick shows maths moving from fingers to tools. "No invention is simpler and yet more significant than this" (2,160 words)

The Experimental Light Station

Horatio Morpurgo | London Magazine | 22nd August 2023

On the career of Arthur Moss, brilliant lepidopterist and somewhat less brilliant vicar of the largest Anglican parish in the world — the Amazon basin. "He saw silk-moths with astonishing clarity and painted them superbly. This was a fine achievement. Was it perhaps their beauty that blinded him? He chose not to see anything which might threaten his agreeable way of life" (2,660 words)

Artists Have Forgotten How To Draw

Alexander Poots | UnHerd | 18th August 2023

Art schools have moved away from the kind of education that Michelangelo's students would have recognised: copying others' work until you "charm the cheating eye into submission and learn to really see". Access to human life models must be earned. Van Gogh compared it to giving birth: "First pain, then joy afterwards". It is still worth doing. Drawing like this is compulsive (1,760 words)