Modernity Has Made Us Allergic

Theresa MacPhail | Noema | 8th August 2023

You are not imagining it: allergies are much more common now. Our pets also get them, unlike animal species that do not live with us — a clue that "we are at least partially doing this to ourselves" with our hygiene and diet. Nobody is certain exactly what the problem is, though. Likely theories: our homes are too clean, our food production too industrialised and our lives too sedentary (7,410 words)

One Week In America

Monet P. Thomas | From Monet With Love | 7th August 2023

One of the best genres of personal newsletter to develop on the Tinyletter is the serialised travelogue, told through sporadic updates that feel like receiving postcards from a kindly stranger. This one is well worth your time. It reads best cumulatively, as intended, but this entry about a return to the US after three years living through Covid-19 in Beijing is a good starting point (700 words)

100 Things I Know

Mari Andrew | Out Of The Blue | 5th August 2023

Lengthy list of life-improving advice. Being good at cooking is mostly about adding lemon and salt. Always board the plane last. If you feel hot and sweaty, wash your hands and feet. Write to your old teachers and tell them what you still remember from their lessons. Use an endearment for yourself in your head. No therapist is better than a bad therapist. Many other gems contained therein (5,260 words)

Killer Heat Waves Are Coming

David S. Jones | Boston Review | 1st June 2023

We have known that heat can kill humans for millennia, yet we have done very little about it. Hoping that temperatures rise slowly enough for acclimatisation or trying to air condition every indoor space will not be sufficient. This is a public health matter: we need to invest in heat protection infrastructure in the way that 19C governments poured money into sewers and sanitation systems (4,310 words)

Why Kundera Never Went Home

Petr Drulak | Compact | 1st August 2023

He may have been the greatest Czech novelist since Kafka, but Milan Kundera was never much loved at home. Czechs saw him as the anti-Havel: When Havel was a persecuted dissident, Kundera was an establishment gadfly; while Havel stayed and suffered, Kundera emigrated and prospered. It only made things worse that Kundera, by far Havel's moral inferior, was by far the better writer (3,270 words)

From The Browser Eleven Years Ago

Snap Goes The Crocodile

Marina Akhmedova | OD Russia | 4th August 2012

Harrowing throughout. Notes on life among the drug addicts of Yekaterinburg. Much granular detail about preparing and injecting home-made narcotics. "It is dark and fetid in here, as if you are in the depths of a forest. Pale, dropsical men lie on a couch redolent of urine. They look like mushrooms which have sprouted in some poisonous grove. A swollen girl occupies the only chair" (9,070 words)

Home Is Where The Hatred Is

Damian Le Bas | Literary Review | 1st August 2023

Discussion of Roma history and culture, with reference to recent books by Klaus-Michel Bogdal and Jeremy Harte. "The key places in our history are the places where we congregate today: Horse fairs, races, christenings, weddings, funerals, camps, stopping places, pubs that are happy to serve us and – too often, alas – jail. A history of an outlawed culture is bound to be a history of outlaws" (1,600 words)

We Are All Animals At Night

Lana Hall | Hazlitt | 12th July 2023

Gripping account of life and work in a massage parlour, as told by a writer who made her living from sex work for five years: Three to six twelve-hour shifts a week, 2pm to 2am, mostly spent "waiting around, wondering how much money you will — or won’t — make". The job was "unbearably tangible at times", but the world felt quieter and simpler in the small hours of the night (3,240 words)

A Philosophy Of Holes

Roberto Casati & Achille Varzi | SEP | 14th June 2023

A hole is made of nothing and contains nothing. It is an absence, not a substance. Can a hole even be said to exist, save as a property of the substance in which it forms a hole? We might say that holes exist in their own right as pieces of space; but, if so, how is it that we can move holes around (move a donut and you move the hole) when we cannot move pieces of space around? (2,160 words)

Second Chance Suite

Sam Sweet | Baffler | 15th July 2023

Three true stories from Los Angeles about luck, magic and death. The first centres on “Crazy Mike” Caro, the poker player who wrote a standard work on tells; the second on Professor Dai Vernon, illusionist and co-founder of The Magic Castle; the third on Wardell Gray, a dazzling jazz saxophonist whose career echoed that of Charlie Parker right down to Gray's fatal heroin overdose at age 34 (3,500 words)

The Limits Of Personal Experience

Max Roser | Our World In Data | 27th July 2023

Many people believe that first-hand knowledge, "lived experience", trumps experts and text-books when understanding how the world works. This may be true in the context of one's own life, but it is not true of life in general. "The world is large, and we can experience very little of it personally. To see what the world is like, we need to rely on other means: carefully collected global statistics" (2,700 words)

The Dutiful Wife

Rafia Zakaria | Baffler | 14th July 2023

Before we got hooked on the turbulent private lives of footballers and musicians, we looked mainly to writers and artists to shock and delight us with glimpses of their bohemian marriages and sordid divorces. Nor did they let us down. Kingsley Amis, Alberto Moravia and Roald Dahl were among these "cheaters of old", who believed that their genius entitled them to behave as they liked (1,200 words)

Obituary For A Quiet Life

Jeremy B. Jones | Bitter Southerner | 6th June 2023

The conventions of the obituary form rarely capture "the sheer audacity of a quiet life". We expect lists of achievements and tales of adventure. Here, a quiet, private grandfather is remembered — who, it turns out, did military service overseas, remained married for 70 years, and was fired over and over again for leading a union at a textile mill. The lesson? "A quiet life isn’t a passive life" (1,610 words)

Mystified by cryptic crosswords? We at The Browser are here to help. Pick up the ultimate guide, by Dan Feyer and Uri Bram, and let us guide you through the meaning of those clues - so you can get on with puzzling.

Facts Don’t Change Minds

Anna Hennessey | Psyche | 23rd May 2023

The Latin root of "propaganda" — propagare — simply means "to spread" or "propagate". Stripped of its negative connotations, can the "intelligent use of words and images" to change a mindset be deployed for good purposes? Martin Luther King Jr thought so, as did W.E.B. Du Bois. Emotive techniques are much better at altering opinons. Time for some "positive propaganda"? (1,615 words)

Is Nature A Gigantic Cat?

Nikola Tesla | Letters Of Note | 21st July 2023

Tesla owed his fascination with electricity, according to this 1939 letter, to a youthful encounter with a cat. "As I stroked Macak’s back, I saw a miracle that made me speechless with amazement. Macak’s back was a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be heard all over the house." At the age of 83, he still has no answer to question "what is electricity?" (1,180 words)

Death: A Literary Guide

Ted Gioia | Honest Broker | 6th June 2023

Literary recommendations for those who would like to make a more enlightened and contented acquaintance with their mortality and inevitable death (a psychically beneficial exercise, we are told). Start with Plato, then proceed via Julian of Norwich, Herman Hesse, Joan Didion, Willa Cather and Leo Tolstoy. If you read well, you will no longer waste energy battling ageing (1,950 words)

Kafka Agonistes

David Mason | Hudson Review | 31st July 2023

The world is indebted to Max Brod, best friend of Franz Kafka, who did not burn his dying friend's work as instructed. Brod saved the manuscripts again when he fled the Nazis to Tel Aviv in 1939. Thanks to him, we have three extra novels and twelve diaries, which reveal an uncanny, surrealist mind always in motion as Kafka tried to depict the truth of his "dreamlike inner life" (3,600 words)

The Happiest Place Makes The Darkest Music

Tim Brinkhof | Big Think | 31st July 2023

Why do Scandinavian countries, which top global rankings for life expectancy and happiness, also produce so much more heavy metal music? Perhaps Nordic cultures use the genre to process emotions that are not welcome in everyday life. Or maybe it is a purely economic matter: starting a heavy metal band requires equipment, space and time that is inaccessible to the less well-off (1,090 words)

Internet Search Tips

Gwern | 22nd July 2023

Don't be fooled by the bland title. Everyone can learn from this magnum opus. Beginning with simple advice, such as on how to master Boolean operators and search hotkeys, Gwern takes the reader through increasingly advanced strategies for finding research papers, books, theses and other references online. Some of these tips may be known to you, others definitely will not (19,140 words)

From The Browser Eight Years Ago

Rule Of The Jogi

Amara Guriro | Dawn | 26th July 2015

A visit with the Jogis, a community of snake charmers in Pakistan. Each family keeps a stock of venomous snakes around the house, including cobras and vipers, which the children treat as playthings. "A snake cannot bite a jogi child, and even if it does, it will not harm our child since we administer a drop of snake venom as first food to our newborns. This establishes immunity for life" (1,450 words)

God Died in 1975

Charles Price | Conversation | 19th July 2023

The death of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1975 provoked an "existential crisis" for Rastafarian sects which believed him to be the Messiah. Some refused to accept his passing; others waited for God to issue further guidance. Half a century later, while no new doctrine has been proclaimed, Rastafarians seem to be more accepting of the view that Selassie was a king and a prophet but not a Messiah (1,000 words)

Walmarts And Small Towns

Addison Del Mastro | Discourse | 24th July 2023

A Walmart is the size of a small town — and perhaps that is the right way to think about a Walmart. It doesn't compete with individual shops, it competes with entire town centres, and it has the advantage of being pedestrianised. "If we could transpose the commercially vibrant walkability of a modern Walmart back to the downtowns it killed, those towns would be their old selves" (1,100 words)