Where Do Fonts Come From?

Sara Friedman | Hustle | 25th August 2023

Mostly from one corporation, the aptly named Monotype. Founded in the 19C, the company was first built around the monotype machine that manufactured type more quickly. After a century of acquiring rivals, it is now "a kraken eating up the industry". It owns all the major fonts — Arial, Helvetica, Gotham, Times New Roman — as well as the primary digital marketplace for typefaces (2,030 words)

Browser classified

Want to advertise here? Reach 75k+ smart subscribers with a Browser classified ad. Book your spot!

What Should Men Do With Their Hands?

Hannah Carlson | Guernica | 5th September 2023

Extract from a history of pockets, dealing with the vexed question of what 19C men — who lack accessories like "the needle, the shuttle, or the fan" — should do with their hands. Even Darwin addressed the problem, theorising that restless hands were an evolutionary throwback. Putting hands in pockets was felt to be disrespectful and unhygienic, until it became cool in the 20C (970 words)

The Habitation Economy

Fred Block | Dissent | 5th September 2023

Economic analysis from the left is based on an outdated paradigm. Most of what we consume now is not standardised goods, which shifts power towards producers. "We have been relying on markets to equilibrate the supply and demand for things that do not resemble classical commodities. It is therefore hardly surprising that these markets do not work as economic theory claims" (4,470 words)

Browser classified

Want to advertise here? Reach 75k+ smart subscribers with a Browser classified ad. Book your spot!

Did You Even Know This Movie Exists?

Adam Nayman | The Ringer | 16th August 2023

Cinematically, we are in an "era of strays". Other than the pop cultural juggernauts of Barbie and Oppenheimer, lots of films are now being released without us even realising. In part this is due to the ongoing Hollywood strikes that keep union members from their promotional duties, but this phenomenon also speaks to "the fate of film as a popular art form in an algorithmic age" (1,750 words)

Star Trek And Socialism

Adam Kotsko | An Und Für Sich | 4th September 2023

Star Trek is held up as the archetype of progressive science fiction and interpreted as a reaction to late 20C "capitalist triumphalism". It provides a vision of "a post-scarcity world where a combination of automation and instant replication of consumer goods have eliminated need and toil". Yet it is "surprisingly incurious about the actual economic underpinnings of its utopian abundance" (1,480 words)

Browser classified:

Free Workshop - Write Your Pitch in 30 Minutes. Want to see your name in a cool publication? You're one pitch away. Find out what editors want & start your next story. Sign up now!

When Wizards And Orcs Came To Death Row

Keri Blakinger | Marshall Project | 31st August 2023

Dungeons & Dragons is surprisingly popular among long-term prisoners in the US, including those sentenced to death. Playing can be difficult: with no internet, rules must be looked up in physical manuals that are banned in some states, as are the dice that are essential for play. But the productive escapism of inventing and then vanishing into a different world is worth the hassle (4,640 words)

A City With No Government

Jacob Kushner | Noema | 31st August 2023

Canaan was a town in Haiti flattened by the 2018 earthquake. Croix-des-Bouquets was a town next door with a can-do mayor called Rony Colin. Colin decided to take charge of Canaan, which had no government. He arrived with guns and money. How did it go? Not so well. Canaan had its own strongman. A small war ensued. Colin fled to Florida. Canaan relapsed into crime-ridden anarchy (3,000 words)

Browser classified:

Survey research used to be slow, expensive and gated by big firms. But no more! With Positly you can reach niche audiences, generate responses for as low as 25 cents and get 50+ responses in less than an hour. Make informed decisions fast - create your free Positly account today.

The Doctor Dolittle Challenge

Yossi Yovel & Oded Rechavi | Current Biology | 7th August 2023

Will AI enable us to talk with animals? The potential is there, subject to three main constraints. We can collect animal utterances to train our AIs, but we won't know much about the context of the utterances, which is a big part of the training. We will have to figure out how to get animals to validate our models. And it may be that animals don't talk about the things we want to talk about (4,600 words)

History Is Having A Replication Crisis

Anton Howes | Age Of Invention | 29th August 2023

The framing here is not quite right; history does not consist of experiments; but this theory of historical errors is a welcome improvisation. "Just as in science, there is simply no time to check absolutely every detail in the things you cite. And even if you do, you may have to follow a citation chain that is dozens or hundreds of links long. History, like any other field, very often relies on trust" (2,200 words)

The 2,000-Year-Old Curry

Noel Hidalgo Tan | South East Asian Archaeology | 6th August 2023

Bronze Age grinding tools found recently in the Mekong Delta carry residues of turmeric, ginger and other spices typically used in making curries. Reverse-engineering a likely recipe from the 2,000-year-old residues yields a curry that is recognisably South-East Asian: "The flavours are earthy and complex, but not burn-your-tongue spicy, due to the lack of chilli and peppers" (1,200 words)

Philosophy And Fake Hair

Richard Halpern | CUP Blog | 30th August 2023

Leibniz wore a wig so extravagant that it resembled a poodle asleep on his head. He moved in high society and followed fashion. But posterity prefers plainness in philosophers. "If we no longer demand that our philosophers be poor, we expect at least a certain slovenliness — a sign that their attention is directed elsewhere, upon more fundamental matters, and not on their appearance"  (1,280 words)

Holes In Buildings

Graham McKay | Misfit Architecture | 27th August 2023

On the economics of what architects call "sky courtyards" — big holes punched through buildings to make facades more fun. After Miami Vice showcased Arquitectonica's Atlantis condo in 1982, everybody wanted a hole. "The downside of these holes is that they can’t be sold full-price. The upside is that being seen to not monetise every possible cubic metre is an indicator of prestige" (1,900 words)

When Havel Met Biden

Oscar Clarke | Quillette | 29th August 2023

Interesting tidbit from diplomatic history. In 1997, Václav Havel met Joe Biden, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to discuss the possibility of the Czech Republic joining Nato. Biden was less than enthusiastic. "Mexico is fifty times as important to us as you are!" he said, before concluding that "no one is asking you to join" and "democracy is a bitch" (1,680 words)

Last Summer Pearls

Michael Malay | Dark Mountain Project | 30th August 2023

The decline of Scottish freshwater mussels means losing more than molluscs. "The disappearance of a species is always a plural event, because it involves the unravelling of an interconnected world." In this case, that loss includes "the summer walkers": the semi-nomadic Gaelic-speaking mussel-fishers who roved the lochs, living off the proceeds of the pearls they found (1,835 words)

Boom And Bust, All At Once

Ashley Braun | Hakai | 16th August 2023

In the mid 20C, fish meal — the leftovers from processing fish like herring and sardine — performed what felt like miracles. It fattened livestock and fertilised crops at a time when many in Europe and North America were hungry. Demand is rising again now as food prices soar, and whole fish are now being used to make it — fish that would have fed people in South America or West Africa (1,230 words)

The Man Who Won The Lottery 14 Times

Zachary Crockett | The Hustle | 21st July 2023

Rogue economist, or "self-described philosopher-mathematician", used a talent for numbers to turn lottery-winning into a profession. His first jackpot enabled him to flee communist Romania, and he then went into business in the US and Australia. His theory was simple, if logistically challenging: just buy all the combinations, a cost then defrayed by the winnings. It was, then, perfectly legal (2,870 words)

How They Tried to Kill Me

Elena Kostyuchenko | n+1 | 15th August 2023

Russian journalist, who reports regularly from Ukraine, describes what she thinks is a poisoning attack by Russian special services. It took her a long time to accept assassination as a possibility. "I did not want to believe that they could kill me. I was protected from this thought by revulsion, shame, and exhaustion. It disgusted me to think that there were people who wanted me dead" (4,150 words)

Hands And Tongues

R. Douglas Fields | Quanta | 28th August 2023

Neurological background to a peculiar behaviour: why humans stick our tongues out in moments of manual concentration, such as when playing an instrument or threading a needle. Research suggests a connection with the early development of language, when hand signals were first coupled with syllabic utterances. There is also evidence that the tongue movement improves manual precision (1,590 words)

Audio: Ronan Farrow On Elon Musk | New Yorker. Ronan Farrow enlarges on his story in this week's New Yorker about Elon Musk's emergence as an essential yet unaccountable part of American governance. Musk stands athwart the green transition, the space race, the war in Ukraine. Yes, he is some sort of wayward genius. But should any private person possess such power? (32m 43s)

Video: Happiness | Steve Cutts | Vimeo | 4m 15s

Funny, touching, sad animation about the rat race as lived by rats. Previously recommended on The Browser in 2017, but such a classic that I will risk recommending it again. The soundtrack is L’Amour Est Un Oiseau Rebelle from Bizet's Carmen. Cutts on Cutts: “I grew up looking at artists like Robert Crumb and Gary Larson, so I’m sure there’s some of their influence in there somewhere. I tend to view the world in a kind in slightly abstract terms and often see humor in dark situations"

Eugene Debs Really Loved Bicycles

Eugene Debs | Jacobin | 17th August 2023

In 1895, the US trade unionist had high hopes for the socialist potential of cycling. "The bicycle, not the medical profession, will triumph over disease. The wheel is on the trail of Consumption and will overtake and vanquish the remorseless destroyer. Men and women and children will all ride the bicycle and the enrapturing panorama of nature will no longer be forbidden glories" (335 words)

Next Slide, Please

Claire L. Evans | MIT Technology Review | 11th August 2023

History of the corporate presentation. The first audio-visual slideshow at a sales meeting occurred in 1948. It created an entire industry of slide projector specialists. Then came the 1984 revolution: Microsoft Powerpoint. Its instigator didn't stick around to see it become the "shorthand for the stupefying indignities of office life". He retired and became expert in antique concertinas (2,800 words)

My Kendom For A Horse

Lawrence Freedman | Comment Is Freed | 6th August 2023

Barbie, a strategic analysis. Why does the revolution of the Kens collapse, allowing the Barbies to restore their matriarchy so easily? Not because of hard power. Neither coup is violent. Ideology is the decisive factor. "Ken does not understand the patriarchy. He believes it has something to do with horses. The Barbies understand the matriarchy because they have lived it before" (1,500 words)

That 1980s Bowling Alley Smell

Jason Diamond | The Melt | 25th August 2023

Why don't ice rinks, and bowling alleys, and everything else, smell the way they used to when "we" (read "people turning 50") were kids? Is it just the lack of struck matches and cigarette smoke? Are different chemicals used for cleaning the ice and waxing the lanes? Or do our memories mislead us, insisting that the world of youth smelt (and felt) richer and stranger than the world of middle age? (1,580 words)