Ornamental Hermits

Shoshi Parks | Smithsonian | 7th July 2023

Notes on the fashion among 18th century English aristocrats for keeping hermits on their country estates. Terms for a hermit might include a cave or hut, food and water, and a lump sum at the end of a seven-year term. The hermit's main job was to be silently picturesque, and thus to delight visitors. “By 1750, if you only put in one structure in your garden, it would have been a hermitage” (1,900 words)

Birth Of The Laffer Curve

Grace-Marie Turner | Bastiat's Window | 27th July 2023

Eyewitness account of the moment in 1974 when Arthur Laffer drew a curve on a Washington hotel napkin and gave it to another lunch guest, Dick Cheney. The curve purported to show that lower tax rates would produce higher tax revenues by encouraging taxpayers to work harder. Laffer's claim was speculative at best, but his doodle was politically irresistible. Voodoo economics was born (2,300 words)

The Greatest Scam Ever Written

Rachel Browne | Walrus | 26th July 2023

Profile of probably the most successful living copywriter — a convicted fraudster. In two decades, Patrice Runner made $175 million through a mass-mailing venture that was supposedly selling psychic services. During that time, nearly 1.5 million people across Canada and the US responded to his letters and sent money, hooked by the promise of greater knowledge about their future (5,260 words)

Reading Well

Simon Sarris | The Map Is Mostly Water | 17th July 2023

Sage advice on how to become "well read". Read slowly. Aim to be influenced by what you read. Start lots of books and only finish a few. Buy books on a whim. Re-read the ones you adore. Prioritise fiction over non-fiction. "Reading fiction helps you become an unsystematic thinker. It is easy to maintain an intellectual rigidity. It takes more care to maintain a loose poeticism of thought" (1,300 words)

The Persuaders

Dave Jamieson | Huffington Post | 24th July 2023

On the work of "persuaders", consultants hired by companies to dissuade employees from unionising. These "mysterious men" infiltrate the workforce, sowing doubt about what a union can achieve. It's big business: "Employers are now paying upwards of $3,000 a day, plus expenses, for each persuader. Amazon alone dished out more than $14 million to consultants last year" (4,200 words)

How To Sharpen A Scythe

Daegan Miller | Yale Review | 23rd May 2023

It is not easy. To "peen" the blade of a scythe — that is, hit its edge with enough force to thin the metal yet not so much that it tears — requires discipline and attention. "One hundred and fifty overlapping blows should complete one pass of the blade’s length. If you can avoid distraction and do the job well, the blade will be so thin that it will ripple when you run your nail beneath it" (1,800 words)

Braille Is Alive, Well, And Ever-Evolving

Sophia Stewart | Millions | 21st July 2023

Far from being superseded by new technology, the Braille system of tactile reading and writing is in more demand than ever. The publisher profiled here does brisk business producing manuals and menus for companies like Starbucks, as well as publishing more literary material. Reading with Braille, according to many blind people, allows for a more immersive experience than alternatives (1,500 words)

Browser classified:

Yakread merges all your content—newsletters, bookmarks, tweets, and more—into a single intelligently curated feed. It's great for keeping up with all your subscriptions without feeling overwhelmed. Give it a try.

The Power Of Smaller Countries

Veronica Anghel | Eurozine | 24th July 2023

The Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion has finally discredited the idea that the interests of "great powers" supersede those of small states. By fighting to win the war and insisting on support from the US and the EU to do so, Zelensky has changed the geopolitical game. To capitalise on this, wealthy nations will need to invest not only in the war but in Ukraine's reconstruction (1,960 words)

Sinister Strike

Lior Lefineder | 18th June 2023

Why are 8-12% of humans left-handed, given that left-handedness is in many superficial ways a disadvantage? Perhaps because left-handers can make good fighters and sports players; they can take right-handers by surprise. "The common custom of a handshake, likely invented to present peaceful intentions by showing the dominant hand is not carrying a weapon, fails with lefties" (1,090 words)

Chasing The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

Lindsey Liles | Garden & Gun | 1st June 2023

The ivory-bill was last sighted in the United States in 1944, and is now on the point of being declared extinct, though devotees believe that a few survive in Arkansas. "Perhaps the ivory-bill was just too beautiful. With a sweeping suit of black and white feathers, dramatic crests in electric red on males and ebony on females, and a long pearly bill, its aspect inspired awe in all who encountered it" (4,400 words)

The Case Of Like

Anatoly Liberman | OUP Blog | 19th July 2023

"In grammar, popular usage almost always wins," but do we have to rejoice in its triumph? A curmudgeonly take on the modern usage of "like", which has overtaken "you know" as a default filler word. Why is this change, like, so irritating to this author, and many others? Its ubiquity: "There is a difference between a solitary pimple (which may even be 'cute') and a skin rash" (1,310 words)

Delts Don’t Lie

Ellie Rose Mattoon | JSTOR Daily | 19th July 2023

Many Renaissance artists used male models for their female figures, but only Michelangelo's look like "men with breasts". The musculature always gives him away. "In his Doni Tondo, the Virgin Mary’s biceps bulge as she lifts baby Jesus into the air, and the breasts on the sculpture Night look like a misshapen afterthought." Why? It seems deliberate; his work is too precise (1,417 words)

Sins Of The Salmon Kings

Simen Sætre (tr. Siân Mackie) | Dial | 18th July 2023

"Salmon barons" are controversial figures in Norway: lauded for their economic success but despised by those who cite the environmental harms of intensive aquaculture. The fish farmers have even penetrated contemporary fiction, as this investigation of recent literary publications reveals. Salmon farming characters are heartless capitalists, child abusers and nihilistic loners (2,168 words)

Machine Voice

Andrew Dean | Los Angeles Review Of Books | 19th July 2023

On J.M. Coetzee's time as a "miserable programmer" before he became a novelist. When he wasn't writing code for machines, he spent a decade using them to write poetry, a foreshadowing of what large language models can now do. The result was interesting, if not good. A sample: "the bedroom drowses / the casino is swathed in tidal melancholia / the nude awaits the hero" (3,062 words)

The Romance Scammer On My Sofa

Carlos Barragán | Atavist | 24th June 2023

Writer travels to Nigeria find the person who almost scammed his lonely mother. This particular con artist remains elusive, but the hunt introduces him to the fascinating world of the "yahoo boys". Cruel fraudsters, or young men with few other options hustling to survive? One of his interviewees, Biggy, claims to have earned $30,000 in his decade of peddling fake love online (8,920 words)

Browser classified:

Yakread merges all your content—newsletters, bookmarks, tweets, and more—into a single intelligently curated feed. It's great for keeping up with all your subscriptions without feeling overwhelmed. Give it a try.

Borges' Anxiety About Going Blind

Andrew Leland | LitHub | 18th July 2023

How to lose your vision without losing literature, according to Jorge Luis Borges. Borges went blind at the age of 55 and never learned Braille, instead relying on companions (mostly his mother) to read aloud or take dictation. He used the change as the motivation to learn a new language, too, mastering Old English by ear. He found "an almost tactile relief in the unfamiliar words" (1,529 words)

Inside Liberland

Matt Broomfield | UnHerd | 17th July 2023

Account of a visit to a boggy patch of land on the banks of the Danube, claimed by "a coterie of libertarian crypto enthusiasts" as a utopian micronation. About the size of Gibraltar, it is uninhabited because of a post-Soviet border dispute between Croatia and Serbia. The "population" — a handful of activists — currently lives on a houseboat downstream, closely supervised by the Croatian police (1,724 words)

Synth Wars

Daniel Griffiths | MusicRadar | 21st June 2023

How MIDI came to be the universal interface for synthesisers. In the 1980s, manufacturers were racing to be the first to produce an easily programmable system. The temptation was to lock musicians into one maker — so they had to stick with Korg, or Moog, or Yamaha. But thanks to a "minor miracle", an agreement was reached: a decision that changed the sound of music (2,508 words)

New York Browser readers are invited to join publisher Uri Bram for a party on Thursday evening in honour of his new book, Book. RSVP here.

My Lumbago Isn’t Acting Up

Molly Young | Paris Review | 12th July 2023

DisneyWorld first timer reviews her experience, having read a lot of academic papers before arrival. She has four observations. There are no mirrors over sinks to discourage vain lingering. The park is "utterly sexless", despite the large number of drunk adults in costumes. Everyone is nice to each other. And the attractions are impossibly, brilliantly engineered to be as hokey and silly as they are (1,874 words)

From The Browser Six Years Ago

Growing Up As An Untouchable

Sujatha Gidla | Literary Hub | 18th July 2017

Memoir. Interesting throughout. "In your own town or village, everyone already knows your caste; there is no escaping it. But how do people know your caste when you go elsewhere, to a place where no one knows you? There they will ask you, “What caste are you?” You cannot avoid this question. And you cannot refuse to answer. By tradition, everyone has the right to know" (4,040 words)

Editor's note: Browser readers in and around New York are invited to join publisher Uri Bram for a party next Thursday evening, 20th July, to mark the launch of his new book, Book. If you would like to attend, please RSVP here. (The link will take you to a Partiful page.)

The Drug Dealers' Hometown

Megan Cassidy & Gabrielle Lurie | SF Chronicle | 10th July 2023

A visit to the Siria Valley in Honduras, home to families who control much of drug trade in far-away San Francisco, and who seem only too happy to explain their business. "Leydis Cruz, convicted of helping lead a family-run fentanyl operation in the Bay Area, said the people from her village love San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge, she noted, has emerged as a popular neck tattoo" (6,800 words)

China And The Global South

Jacob Dreyer | Noema | 13th July 2023

How China is replacing America as the role-model of the developing world. "For better or worse, it’s San Francisco or Shenzhen. For many countries in the Global South, the model exemplified by Shenzhen seems more plausible and attainable. Nobody thinks they can replicate Silicon Valley, but many seem to think they can replicate Chinese infrastructure-driven middle-class consumerism" (2,900 words)

Second Thoughts On Germ Theory

Jean-Laurent Casanova | PNAS | 12th June 2023

The germ theory of disease has dominated medicine since the mid-19th century. But to see germs as the cause of disease, while true, misses the point. There are germs everywhere, all of the time. Disease happens, not so much because there are germs around, but because the body's defences fail against a particular germ. What medicine needs is not a "germ theory" of disease, but a "host theory" (8,100 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.

Gadgets And Gizmos In Adam Smith

Virginia Postrel | Reason | 10th July 2023

Pocket-sized gadgets were as popular in the 18th century as they are now. People loved showing off their watches and nutmeg graters, snuff boxes and flea-glasses. Adam Smith discerned in these "trinkets" the beginnings of a distinctly modern, even modernist, aesthetic: "What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it" (1,600 words)