Applying AI To Ancient Languages

Kevin Dickinson | Big Think | 4th July 2023

A good use for AI: Translating surviving fragments of esoteric ancient languages. Israeli linguists have been training an AI to read Akkadian, the 5,000-year-old cuneiform script of the Assyrians and Babylonians. The AI can now make instant raw translations which humans must polish, but it is getting better at the nuances all the time. Can a reading of the Voynich Manuscript be far behind? (1,400 words)

The Far Invisible

Alan Jacobs | Hedgehog Review | 10th July 2023

A unified theory of Thomas Pynchon, written with close reference to Pynchon's sprawling novels. Pynchon is "America's theologian", exploring the spiritual effects of society's surrender to technology. His novels sum to an "elaborate, raucous, anarchic, and terrifyingly accurate portrait of all the forces, prosaic and demonic, that militate against the restoration of our full humanity" (13,000 words)

The Raw, The Cooked And The Hydrolysed

Fred Warren | Dark Mountain Project | 12th July 2023

On the cultural impact of ultra-processed foods, foodstuffs formed in factories by "the fractioning of whole foods into substances". The spoil-defying properties of these foods speak to our obsession with evading death. "There is no sense of time in UPFs. They appear uncannily pre-formed, while their smooth, hyperpalatable textures melt away, leaving little trace of their existence" (1,948 words)

Mending At The Margins

Diamond Abdulrahim | Vestoj | 12th July 2023

Interviews with repairers. Dry cleaning, alteration and cobbling are dying arts. "'You’ve got to have a good eye and you’ve got to have a steady hand. Trimming rubbers and leathers. Don’t cut your fingers off or your chest you know, because you’re working like this towards your body,' he demonstrates by holding a shoe and a small cobbler’s knife horizontally towards his chest" (2,538 words)

To mend a shoe
Is nice to do
To help you feel
Your own sole heel
Just feast your eye-
let's really try -
On good reads. Mend
With what we send...

The Depths Of Rock-Paper-Scissors

Greg Costikyan | MIT Press Reader | 11th July 2023

The outcome in Rock Paper Scissors is neither random nor arbitrary. The savvy player knows that they are playing their opponent rather than the game and human psychology is not random. The different moves have known connotations — such as the Rock with strength and immovability — and to most people it "feels wrong" to choose the same symbol more than twice in a row (948 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.

Rethinking “Weekend Plans”

Haley Nahman | Maybe Baby | 2nd July 2023

On the decline of "doing errands". Tasks that used to take an entire afternoon like banking and shopping can now be done from the sofa. Has a mode of being been lost? "Today my to-do list is infinitely longer than it’s ever been, and yet real, out-of-the-house errands — afternoon cleared, sneakers and sunglasses on: the kind of errands my mom seemed to be running — are harder to come by" (1,747 words)

A Weekend Pretending To Be In Space

Sarah Scoles | Scientific American | 10th July 2023

Space exploration sceptic visits Biosphere 2, a 3.14-acre glass house in Arizona used for "analogue astronaut" experiments. "It looks like a large RV that belongs to a small cult. In the living quarters, mattresses lie head to toe on the floor against metal walls.  Farther back — after we crawl through a tunnel — is a room glowing purplish from grow lights that shine on a little stable of plants" (2,299 words)

Overload, Dizziness, Vertigo, Trance

Stephen Piccarella | n+1 | 10th July 2023

Account of what it is like to suffer from an obscure set of balance and visual processing disorders. Convalescing from such conditions requires a very conscious rejection of the world as it is today: "I have to resist the urge to scroll endlessly, to play music every time I take a walk or tackle a chore, to watch TV with every meal, end every workday with a drink, read every time I take the subway" (3,129 words)

Don't Make Me Think

Blas Moros | Rabbit Hole | 5th July 2023

Maxims for making websites more navigable, many of them excellent and most of them useful in other walks of life. "If you can’t make something self-evident, make it self-explanatory". "Six words is long enough to convey a full thought, and short enough to absorb easily". "Clarity trumps consistency". "The main thing you need to know about instructions is that no one is going to read them" (3,030 words)

Video: Umberto Eco's Library | Davide Ferrario | YouTube | 2m 10s

"Eco’s family members are our tour guides. They read the section titles, shelf by shelf: semiology, demonology, alchemy, Rosicrucians, universal languages, the soul of animals. Let us be honest: you have to be the kind of person who enjoys watching people open books, over and over, to appreciate this film. But if that describes you, it is a treat" — TLS

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Van Halen's Brown M&Ms

Doug Mack | Snack Stack | 3rd July 2023

A rider in Van Halen's touring contracts, demanding dishes of M&Ms with all brown M&Ms removed, was soon being studied at business schools: The rider was seen as a "canary" that signalled whether a venue had read and respected the 53-page contract. Smart, but not true. The rider was a display of power. It showed that Van Halen could demand anything, and that venues must acquiesce (2,700 words)

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Three Philosophies Of Carmaking

Stewart Brand | Books In Progress | 30th June 2023

An American car-buyer in 1908 might have noticed three new models: The Detroit Electric, with an 80-mile range; the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, which cost a fortune but would last for ever; and the Ford Model T, which was cheap but would need occasional fixing. Millions chose the Ford, then found they enjoyed fixing it. "They discovered that the power to maintain is the power to improve" (2,700 words)

Amusement Parks And Central Banks

Tim Harford | 6th July 2023

Even bankers and economists find it hard to explain quite what money is and how money works; we all tend to fall back on stories and analogies. The late Nobel prizewinning economist Robert Lucas used to compare central banks with ticket-booths in amusement parks which issued tickets for rides. At Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Tim Harford measures Lucas's fable against real life (1,000 words)

Russia, Finland, And The Åland Islands

Anna-Sophie Schneider | Spiegel | 6th July 2023

File under: Nooks and crannies of the new Europe. The Åland Islands are an archipelago in the Baltic Sea, belonging to Finland but largely autonomous, which have been demilitarised for a century under a peace treaty between Finland and Russia. But what now, as Finland joins Nato? The Ålanders fear invasion by Russia, but they also fear full incorporation into Finland (1,400 words)  

Mass And Consciousness

Colin McGinn | 5th July 2023

We do not have a theory of mind; we draw inferences from observing how people behave. But are we any the wiser when it comes to matter? Here, too, we merely draw inferences from observing how "things" behave. We may say that matter has (or is) mass — but what, then, is mass? If we define mass in terms of inertia, what then is inertia? Why is it a property of some things and not of others? (750 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.

Mystery At The Oslo Plaza

Lars Wegner | VG | 28th June 2022

On June 3rd 1995 a woman is found dead in a room at the Plaza Hotel in Oslo, shot through the head with a pistol that is still in her right hand. It looks like suicide. But why did she check in under a false name, why are the labels stripped from her clothes, and why is carrying a bag of bullets? Was she a spy? An assassin? Almost 30 years later, meticulous re-investigation sheds some new light (19,000 words)

Rapture Of The Deep

Gary Smith | SI Vault | 16th June 2003

Gripping throughout. The triumphs and tragedies of free-diving. Pipín Ferreras is the world free-diving champion. Audrey Mestre loves him and wants to emulate him — even outdo him. Sustained only by the breath in her lungs, she will dive to 571 feet, a new world record. On the day, a storm is brewing. Pipín frets. But Audrey must dive. "She took a final breath of air, and vanished" (8,100 words)

Automation Of Work

Benedict Evans | 2nd July 2023

As coal-powered steam engines became more efficient in the 19th century, the result was not a decrease in coal consumption, but a vast increase in the usage of steam-power, and thus of coal. Likewise, as automation has made office work more efficient in the past century, so the scope and scale of office jobs has multiplied. It will be the same with AI. Work expands to fill technology available (3,100 words)

Extreme Hoarding

Samira Shackle | Guardian | 4th July 2023

Hoarding is now recognised as a mental disorder in its own right, though diagnosis relies more on the size of the "hoard" than on the patient's reported state of mind. Hoards are ranked from 1 to 9 on a "Clutter Image Rating" scale. At level 1, "rooms are fairly empty". At level 9, "walls are barely visible". Half of all hoarders have a close relative who also hoards, and half have severe depression (4,600 words)

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Pasolini On Caravaggio

Piero Paolo Pasolini | Paris Review | 30th June 2023

Newly translated from Pasolini's notebooks, a fragment in which the film-maker recognises kindred skills in the painter. "Caravaggio invented a new kind of light. He replaced the universal, platonic light of the Renaissance with a quotidian and dramatic one. Caravaggio invented both this new kind of light, and new kinds of people and things, because he had seen them in reality" (1,200 words)

Audio: The Word For Man Is Ishi | The Last Archive. Ben Naddaff-Hafrey tells a story that seems to be about one thing, but is actually about something else entirely. Featuring Ursula K. Le Guin, the Berkeley Anthropology department, and a Native American man who was the only member of his community to survive a genocide (49m 43s)

Video: Space Filling Curves Filling With Water | Steve Mould | YouTube | 12m 06s

Possibly helpful for developing "an intuition for the fractal nature of a space-filling curve," but certainly a relaxing video of water moving around through pipes, and a nice nostalgia trip for those who remember the old Windows screensaver

Noam Chomsky

Tyler Cowen | Conversations | 14th June 2023

At 94, Chomsky is still game for an ask-me-anything on topics ranging from linguistics and AI to ancient history and American foreign policy, while citing authorities from Plato and Leibniz to J.S Mill and Stephen Wolfram along the way. Much of interest on LLMs, animal cognition, human nature, Cuba, Nicaragua, propaganda. One may not always agree, but one must surely admire (6,100 words)

The Doll Mommies Are Fighting

Jessica Lucas | Cosmopolitan | 27th June 2023

Report from the world of “reborn dolls", which are "hyperrealistic faux babies" that cost up to $5,000 and inspire "fanatical devotion" among "reborn moms". Some owners "jump into the scene just for fun"; others have "deeper therapeutic aims such as coping with pregnancy loss". An "entire role-play subgenre" is devoted to reborn dolls with "serious injuries and life-threatening illnesses" (2,500 words)