Executive Presence

Stay Saasy | 30th May 2023

How to project a general air of authority. Dress the part, whatever the part may be; don't ever be the youngest and the shabbiest person in the room. Stay terse; don't talk for more than 30 seconds at a time. Admit ignorance once in a while; this makes your claims to knowledge more credible. And never freak out: "Losing self-control is one of the most damaging ways that leaders self-sabotage" (1,550 words)

From The Browser Eight Years Ago

Everything Is Yours, Everything Is Not Yours

Clemantine Wamariya & Elizabeth Weil | Matter | 29th June 2015

Beautifully understated memoir, voted best piece of the year by Browser readers in 2015. If the writing is measured, the story is shattering. Clemantine Wamariya escaped the Rwandan genocide at the age of six, criss-crossed Africa for seven years as a refugee, found asylum in America, won a scholarship to Yale, and was reunited with her parents, live on television, by Oprah Winfrey (8,200 words)

Last Of The Flying Wallendas

Marcus Webb | Delayed Gratification | 6th June 2021

Karl Wallenda, founder of the tightrope-walking Flying Wallendas, fell to his death at the age of 73. His son-in-law, his nephew and his sister-in-law all died similarly. The family walks without nets. Great-granddaughter Lijana broke every bone in her face when she fell in 2017. But the show goes on. Lijana is working again, and her son may follow in her precarious footsteps. "It’s just in us” (1,700 words)

An Emotional Guide To Fractional Reserve Banking

Brett Scott | Altered States | 14th March 2023

How fractional-reserve and full-reserve models work, and sometimes don't work, in banks, casinos, theatres, fitness clubs, personal relations, and other walks of life. The essence of the fractional-reserve model is that, at any given moment, you have reserves on hand to cover only a fraction of your commitments. Which is highly efficient in normal times, and catastrophic in abnormal times (4,600 words)

Europe’s Secret Wildlife Movement

Isobel Cockerell | Coda Story | 27th June 2023

Secretive networks of enthusiasts are conducting maverick rewilding projects by stealth. "Beaver bombers" have been releasing the animals into the wild since the 1990s, and there are similar efforts around butterflies, pine martens and boars. More "official" rewilding projects may get bogged down by regulation or end up as the playthings of "rich hobbyists", but these activists ignore it all (3,550 words)

What Did The Press Learn?

Tom Scocca & Maria Bustillos | Indignity | 27th June 2023

Conversation about the breaking news coverage of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny. The decline of Twitter made it difficult to get verifiable updates in real time and many pundits were publishing speculation without knowledge but with plenty of fear. "The difficulty of having experts weigh in on the news, especially on instant deadline, is that news is fundamentally inimical to expertise" (2,767 words)

The Most Irrational Number

Jordan Ellenberg | Slate | 8th June 2021

The number π, defined as the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle, approximates to 3.142, but defies exact expression; it is an "irrational" number. The golden ratio is like π, but more elusive still. It approximates to 1.618, and gives intuitive pleasure to the human eye when encountered as a proportion in nature and in art. It seems to be the key to something. But what? (2,100 words)

Could You Survive The Black Death?

Cody Cassidy | Smithsonian | 13th June 2023

How to deal with the worst that History can throw at you. If you are in London during the Black Death of 1348-50, stay home and wash often. If you are in Rome in 410 AD, escape to the West when the Visigoths arrive from the North. But should you be in Constantinople in 1453, your goose is cooked. Even with the wisdom of hindsight, there is no dodging the Ottoman onslaught (2,070 words)

Should You Read the Same Book Twice?

Erich J. Prince | Merion West | 16th June 2023

Which is more conducive to an enriching reading life: rereading classics, or sampling new texts? Although purely indulging personal preference is undoubtedly one way of navigating this dilemma, the author does propose a rule to try: "When reading for style or because one just loves a book, read it twice (or perhaps even a third time). For content, in most cases, read once" (2,555 words)

The Hunt For The Missing Orient Express

Jennifer Walker | Messy Nessy Chic | 16th June 2023

The rise, fall and rise again of long distance train travel resulted in some interesting salvage projects. Orient Express sleeping carriages were sold off in the 1970s and then had to be tracked down for restoration in the 2010s when luxury rail travel became a viable business again. Detective work eventually located derelict but rescuable carriages in Poland, Germany and Switzerland (1,603 words)

How To Raise A Roman Army

Bret Devereaux | A Collection Of Unmitigated Pedantry | 16th June 2023

Everything you might want to know about military administration in Republican Rome. The system was simple but effective: between 218 and 214BCE, the army called up over 250,000 soldiers, half of all men liable for service in Italy. This method of mass conscription worked primarily because armies were cheap to run. Unlike in the Hellenistic East, Romans served for glory, not for cash (7,532 words)

Have You Been To The Library Lately?

Nicholas Hune-Brown | Walrus | 12th June 2023

A public library is no longer mainly about books. It is a welfare state in microcosm, a place where people go to fill in online applications for government assistance, a shared space for work and study, a place to warm up and use a washroom without being required to buy anything. To be a librarian is a bit like being a bartender: “Some bars have a quiet clientele. And some are nasty and violent.”(5,500 words)

Nothing, Forever

Aharon Schrieber | Seinfeld Law | 13th June 2023

Quite apart from there being something intrinsically wonderful about the very existence of an expert blog dedicated solely to legal issues posed on and by Seinfeld, the question explored here is a big one both for AI and for intellectual property. If an AI generates a TV show apparently in the style of Seinfeld, but without using content from Seinfeld, is that a copyright violation? (960 words)

Three Days With A Giant

Carey Baraka | Guardian | 13th June 2023

Wonderfully intimate profile of Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, a giant of late- and post-colonial African literature. "If Chinua Achebe captured the deep feeling of displacement that colonisation had wreaked, and Wole Soyinka tried to make sense of the collision between African tradition and western ideas of freedom, then Ngũgĩ was the unabashed militant. His books were a weapon" (8,600 words)

You're only getting two of our article recommendations each day. We'd love to send you five article recommendations, a podcast and a video tonight:

Podcast: 'If It Makes You Happy' — Sheryl Crow | 60 Songs That Explain The 90s. Meandering and eccentric look at the nineties, song by song. The interview (from 53m) about Sheryl Crow's treatment in the media is a particular highlight of this episode (87m 02s)

Video: Why Do Movies Feel So Different Now? | YouTube | Thomas Flight | 37m 34s

The films of the 2020s feel different to those of previous eras and this video essay seeks to explain why. There is less "straightforward storytelling" and more introspection on the art of cinema itself.

Three Kings

Jonathan Bousfield | Deep Baltic | 14th June 2023

The story of the Vilnius Jazz Trio and jazz in the Soviet Union. Unlike the more archetypal "rebellious" rock music, jazz was a permitted, even respectable, art form — as long as musicians stayed away from more modern or free jazz styles. The Trio evaded the KGB by pushing the boundaries of what was possible: "Their music was so abstract that few officials really knew how to respond to it" (2,283 words)

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The World’s Most Polarising Watch Brand

Sarah Miller | Hodinkee | 13th June 2023

Tour of the premises of Swiss watchmaker Hublot, which prides itself on making timepieces that a lot of people don't like. Their entire design philosophy seems to be making fun of their wealthy customers. "Every time I turn around, I am looking at a watch that really should not exist, that is way too much. Does this watch need nine colours? Does this watch need to look like a very angry alien?" (5,211 words)

Olfactory Overload

Kim Crowder | Polyphony | 13th June 2023

How it feels to have hyperosmia, a heightened sensitivity to smells, which can accompany autism. "Where the neurotypical nose and brain sniffs, moves on, and forgets, the neurodivergent nose can’t let go. An unpleasant smell intensifies, invading nasal cavities, permeating the mind, the brain, triggering an olfactory echo-chamber effect lasting long after the smell’s disappearance" (1,500 words)

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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.

Snowden Ten Years Later

Bruce Schneier | On Security | 6th June 2023

In this essay written ten years ago for the New Yorker, but withheld until now for legal reasons, cyber-security expert Bruce Schneier tells how he helped Glenn Greenwald evaluate Edward Snowden's NSA documents for publication, and why he agreed to do so: "The odds are close to zero that Snowden is the first person to do this; he’s just the first person to make public that he did" (3,020 words)