Last Love

Sophie Elmhirst | Guardian | 23rd November 2023

Love story from the end of life. "Mary had so many metaphors for it. Derek was a blinding meteorite across her sky; it was like someone switched on the sun. She was knocked off her feet, smashed over the head with love. Derek proposed. In her room one day, quietly. Did she want to get married? Yes please. He bought her an amethyst ring, because she had always wanted an amethyst" (4,000 words)

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Yaar Parivaar

Neerja Deodhar | Mid Day | 5th November 2023

Literal translation: "dude family". A growing number of urban professionals in India are choosing to remain single into middle age and beyond. They are setting up multi-person households, often with children and pets cared for communally. Informal economic instruments are emerging around these setups — as unrelated people can't open joint bank accounts, a barter system evolves (2,440 words)

The Frog That Couldn’t Jump

Kim Ju-Song | Dial | 14th November 2023

Memoir. A Japanese-born writer of Korean descent describes working as an office assistant at the Writers’ Union in North Korea, where his responsibilities included overseeing what was known as the "100-copy collection", a small library of foreign books locked in a safe and reserved for the use of Union members only. "Any mismanagement of the 100-copy collection would be prosecuted as a political crime, since it would in effect be distributing capitalist reactionary materials to the public" (4,030 words)

Hitler The Hotel Guest

Adam Bisno | 1584 | 17th November 2023

In February 1931, two years before he became chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler moved his Berlin headquarters to a suite in the Hotel Kaiserhof on Wilhelmplatz, overlooking the Reich Chancellery. The Kaiserhof started to swarm with Nazis. Jewish custom evaporated. The directors of the hotel, most of whom were Jewish, found themselves in an unenviable dilemma. Should they kick Hitler out and face the consequences? Or should they let him stay, and face the consequences? (750 words)

Death Of A Berlin Power Broker

Peter Richter | Granta | 23rd November 2023

A century ago Potsdamer Platz and Friedrichstraße were the busiest and most glamorous streets in Berlin. War and partition reduced them to wasteland. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 it seemed only a matter of time before they regained their historic position and prestige. A tidal wave of international capital financed a decade-long construction boom. The outcome has been a planning disaster. Potsdamer Platz and Friedrichstraße are now bleak, ugly, and lifeless. What went wrong? And why was the city's planning officer murdered? (6,200 words)

Twins And Individuality

Helena de Bres | Aeon | 21st November 2023

Natural human chimeras are formed when the zygotes of non-identical twins fuse or exchange cells during gestation; one person is born with two sets of genes. A chimeric mother may also be her own child's aunt. Only 100 cases of natural chimerism are documented, but some 36 per cent of twin pregnancies involve a "vanishing twin", so many more cases may exist. Physically, chimerism is an unremarkable condition, but metaphysically it is bewildering. If one body can contain two people, could one person range across two bodies? (2,600 words)

What It Is Like To Be A Bee

Lars Chittka | Princeton University Press | 21st November 2023 | U

A brave attempt to model the mentality of a bee by making inferences from the bee's environment and behaviour, in the tradition of Thomas Nagel (bats), Peter Godfrey-Smith (octopuses), and Kristin Andrews (crabs). Whatever the bee's actual worldview, it must be very different from our own. "Night or day, it is always dark in a typical honey-bee nest. Imagine a 100-story windowless skyscraper, as packed with people as a bus during rush hour. All main surfaces are vertical, and individuals are constantly scurrying up and down walls" (4,800 words)

Name Your Industry

Sarah Brownsberger | Hedgehog Review | 19th November 2023 | U

When a drop-down menu on a website asks what "industry" you work in, it is probably trying to slot you into a taxonomy approximating to what is now called the North American Industry Classification System, a box-ticking exercise which did a fairly decent job of listing every recognised line of paid work when it was was first compiled under the auspices of the United Nations in 1958, but which has been falling further and further behind the times ever since. "Poets, independent", are currently a line-item. Baristas, dog-walkers, videographers and Elvis-themed-wedding planners are not (3,020 words)

In Praise of “Ain’t”

Richard Goodman | Brevity's Nonfiction Blog | 22nd November 2023

Saying "ain't" is superior to using "isn't" for lots of reasons, it is argued here, despite objections that this word is ungrammatical. "It’s strong, it’s musical — when was a one-syllable word so close to two? — it looks as good as it sounds. It’s economical. It’s working class, it does its job. The reasons against it are, in fact, purely those of class. It’s a beautiful word, a noble word" (950 words)

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Everything In Barbra Streisand’s Memoir

Andrew Hopf | Interview | 20th November 2023

Streisand's 966-page memoir, My Name is Barbra, took her twenty years to write, but has no index. This writer has now supplied one, and it makes for an interesting way to experience the book. "Another unsupportive male" receives just one entry; Goethe and "giving birth" get two; "see-through pantsuit" and Fiddler on the Roof have three; Stephen Sondheim, meanwhile, has over a dozen (21,000 words)

The Asbestos Times

Mano Majumdar | Works In Progress | 15th November 2023

Yes, asbestos is a powerful carcinogen and we spend billions removing it from buildings. But during the century in which it was hailed as a miracle material, it did have its benefits (although they did not outweigh the then-unknown risks). As cities became more crowded and flammable, this fireproof substance prevented what could have been many 19C-style "Great Fires" from spreading (3,140 words)

All Classics Are Funny

Joel Cuthbertson | The Bulwark | 10th November 2023

Classic books are classics for a reason, and part of that reason is that they are funny. Or so runs the theory put forward here — that a lot of what we think of as the "timeless quality" of a text is actually humour that can still be appreciated centuries later. "A joke is language unmasked. A joke grounds and justifies itself. A joke bears all things, believes all things" (2,920 words)

Greatest Dictionary Collection In The World

April White | Atlas Obscura | 14th November 2023

When Madeline Kripke died in 2020, the dictionary collection she had amassed in her two-bedroom Manhattan apartment and several storage units comprised an estimated 20,000 volumes. It will take years to catalogue, so for now experts are pulling out volumes at random at which to marvel, from a 17C guide to the "cant" of London's criminals or a 1950s dictionary of slang (1,300 words)

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The Long Goodbye

Andrew Trees | The Smart Set | 20th November 2023

A fan of Netflix's DVD service, now shuttered, revisits his queue of 485 unwatched films. "I bid you a fond farewell and hope that if meaning comes not from the destination but the journey itself, my queue has suggested an admirable desire to be the kind of person who could speak knowledgeably about the French New Wave. Isn’t my aspiration worthy of at least a single rotten tomato?" (1,370 words)

The Past And Future Of Genomics

Razib Khan | Palladium | 17th November 2023

Genetic science has transformed our knowledge of human history in ways that we have yet to digest fully. Parts of the newly-revealed historical record are inspiring: We can claim Neanderthals and Denisovans as ancestors. Other parts confirm our worst fears: "Human nature was bloody, brutal, and typified by genocide. This is the legacy we inherit, but it is not the legacy we need to replicate" (4,300 words)

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How Starbucks Perfected Autumn

Ian Bogost | 15th October 2023

Starbucks pioneered seasonal drinks with Eggnog Latte in 1986 and Peppermint Mocha in 2002. But Pumpkin Spice Latte, launched in 2003, was in a league of its own. People loved fall, they associated fall with pumpkins – and who wanted to eat actual pumpkins? The attribution alone was enough. "The drink was not flavoured with the mere taste of a dessert, but with the fundaments of fall itself" (720 words)

Magic Carpet Ride

Emma Aars | Vestoj | 15th November 2023

A Norwegian living in Scotland is politely baffled by the UK's fondness for carpet. "How they clean these floors is still a mystery to me." More used to "insulated houses and woollen socks", a floor that cannot be wiped clean seems bizarre. The carpets of Glasgow's Mitchell Library fascinate her, though, their exuberant designs a mournful tribute to the city's defunct carpet industry (2,120 words)

Stealing Shakespeare's First Folio

Alicia Andrzejewski & Carole Levin | CrimeReads | 13th November 2023

We don't know where all the extant copies of the First Folio are. The missing ones have likely been stolen, such is its value to elite buyers. Thefts of the original 400-year-old printing are relatively common — there were three dramatic heists in the 20C alone. One thief arrived for his trial in a silver stretch limo and insisted on using Shakespearean English throughout the court proceedings (2,950 words)

The Future Of Intelligence

Steve Hsu | Latecomer | 24th October 2023

We overestimate the technical risks of genetic engineering in humans. Editing a specific gene may cause side-effects in other genes, but these are foreseeable. On the other hand, we underestimate the social consequences of genetic engineering, if its benefits are captured by an existing elite. It may create a self-replicating class of rulers who are tall, beautiful, super-clever, and live for 200 years (4,100 words)

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Daoist History

Dingxin Zhao | Noema | 1st November 2023

A modest attempt to explain how Daoist philosophical precepts shape the teaching of history in China. Westerners tend to view history as a linear movement in the general direction of progress. The Daoist model is more dialectical. History is a constant rebalancing of forces. What is stronger now will be weaker later, and vice versa. This does not sum to "progress". It is merely change (2,550 words)