A Love Letter To Public Libraries

Julia Fischer | 34th Street | 16th February 2024 | U

Mourning the loss of public libraries to budget cuts. Libraries are more than a place to get books; they are an example of the “ever-rarer third place” — spaces other than the home and workplace vital to community and human flourishing. Their disappearance exacerbates the epidemic of loneliness. “Even if I knew no one’s name, being in a room full of people affected how tied I felt to the community around me” (2,500 words)

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Time Drunkenness And Work Martyrdom

Peter Limberg | Less Foolish | 17th February 2024

Time drunks and work martyrs, on either extreme, are the “two fools of modern work” who offer life lessons — as fools often do. To be time drunk is to forget that time exists — “a contemplative disposition that puts work in its proper place”. Whereas a work martyr selflessly sacrifices for something other than themselves. There is a virtuous mean between the two, where work is neither demonised nor glorified (1,300 words)

Westarctica

Frank Jacobs | Big Think | 16th February 2024

The world’s largest unclaimed territory is a segment of Antarctica twice the size of Texas. Or it was until 2001, when a man named Travis says he found a loophole in the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. Nations cannot stake claims here, but there is no such prohibition on individuals. Which is how the biggest-ever “micronation”, Westartica, came into being, ruled by “Grand Duke Travis I” (1,300 words)

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Necessity Or Compulsion?

Eliane Glaser | LRB Blog | 15th February 2024

Confessions of a technology refusenik, who declines to own a smartphone because of her own “susceptibility to addiction”. “I use a watch, an alarm clock, a camera and a CD player. I listen to a portable analogue radio with headphones. I have a paper appointments diary and a pocket notebook with a pen. My daily newspaper lands on the mat. On holiday, I rely on guidebooks” (900 words)

Dark Side Of The Screen

Andrey Mir | Discourse | 14th February 2024

Early computers had dark screens. Then we moved into an era of bright interfaces. Now, we are returning to dark mode. Why? “Humankind is approaching the final stage of resettling onto the digital. Perceiving information that itself glows is becoming more common than perceiving information that is lit up. Digital media no longer need to simulate physical lighting conditions” (2,100 words)

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Jars With Well-Fitting Lids

Catherine Lacey | Yale Review | 14th February 2024

On having a “jar habit”. This involves being unable to throw away any glass containers, because you are still grieving a lost loved one. It means storing everything in jars that were made for another purpose. And it means always labelling the jars, even if it is possible to see what is inside. “The label is there so that when the jar falls empty, you know exactly what’s missing” (1,200 words)

The Beauty Of Everyday Things

Graham McKay | Misfits' Architecture | 4th February 2024

Thoughts on the aesthetics of handmade objects in the age of total mass production. The Japanese philosopher Soetsu Yanagi was bemoaning this in 1933, and the effects have only become more pronounced — what we’re left with is “poorly designed and overpriced goods”. The writer’s own shelves, though, contain mass produced ceramics that have been designed to look handmade (2,200 words)

The Price Is Wrong

Sharon Su | Van | 15th February 2024

Bad editing is making it difficult to perform works by a wider range of classical composers. The Black American composer Florence Price is one such — the sheet music available today is so badly put together that it is barely usable. “It’s like being told to memorise a Shakespeare monologue and discovering that the only available copy of Hamlet’s speech begins ‘To beef or not to beef’” (3,400 words)

The Loss Of Things I Took For Granted

Adam Kotsko | Slate | 11th February 2024

Today’s college students struggle with basic literacy, this professor reports. Their “reading resilience” is low and comprehension basic. In part, this is because they have grown up with smartphones. But it is also because the way reading is taught is insufficient, and this is deeply troubling. They are not simply “choosing TikTok over Jane Austen”. “They are being deprived of the ability to choose” (1,600 words)

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Translating Philosophy

Damion Searls | Words Without Borders | 14th February 2024

Translator’s notes on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. A challenging task, given that this is a deeply thoughtful work of philosophy about the relationship between language and thought. The case is made for a looser, less consciously “highbrow” approach. Previous versions have been “too firmly in the grip of how the German language operates” to convey the work’s literary beauty as well as its ideas (5,000 words)

An Exploration Of Being Human

Lakshmi Thiagarajan | Pysche | 12th February 2024

“Did you lose your way under the bright moonlight, or did that fish-eyed woman seduce you?” Without relying on sets, props or character-specific costumes, Bharathanatyam dance uses lyric, movement, and facial expression to recreate scenes out of life. The verse is iteratively sung, and with each repetition, the dancer explores a different emotional layer — sarcasm, curiosity, mock surprise, and anger (2,300 words)

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Nozick’s Experience Machine

Jack Maden | Philosophy Break | 6th February 2024

Thought experiment: suppose an experience machine could give you any experience you desired — writing a great novel or making a friend. Should you plug into it? A majority of people think not. The reason could be that we prefer to pursue pleasure indirectly — through the act of doing things, the “paradox of hedonism”. Nozick’s experience machine reveals our suspicion towards instant gratifications (2,800 words)

The Surreal Life Of A Professional Bridesmaid

Katherine Laidlaw | Hustle | 9th February 2024

Story of a bridesmaid-for-hire — “let me be there for you, this time, if: you don’t have any other girlfriends except your third cousin, twice removed, who is often found sticking her tongue down an empty bottle of red wine”. Skills include: doing the electric and the cha cha slide; holding up the bride's dress; catching the bouquet dramatically; and responding promptly to pre-wedding email chains (2,000 words)

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Bad Omens

Michelle Pfeffer | History Today | 2nd February 2024

February, 1524 was a dreaded time across Europe — astrologers were predicting a huge flood. Londoners gathered anxiously by the Thames, Rome stockpiled grains, German burghers arranged for barges outside their homes. Over 150 pamphlets circulated about these forecasts — “an early modern mass media event”. The flood never happened, leading to widespread derision about astrology (1,200 words)

Somewhere There’s Cheese

Zoe Kurland | Bright Wall/Dark Room | 8th February 2024

Love letter to A Grand Day Out, the first stop-motion claymation film to star Wallace and Gromit. It embodies the best kind of adventurous imagination. “What if the moon is made of cheese? What if we could wear our favourite sweater on its surface, and bring all our friends along for the journey? What a dream it is to look up at the sky and imagine a man and a dog picnicking on the moon” (2,300 words)

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Forgotten History Of The Chapter

Nicholas Dames | Millions | 27th November 2023

The way our reading material is split into chapters attracts very little attention from the average reader. “The chapter possesses the trick of vanishing while in the act of serving its various purposes.” Yet the concept rewards greater scrutiny. As Proust identified, capturing the perfect moment of transition, of hiatus, is both beautiful and near-impossible. We know when it is done well (2,200 words)

Vicious Spiral Of Inequality

Valentino Larcinese & Alberto Parmigiani | LPE Project | 7th February 2024

Is income inequality compatible with democracy? Old question, addressed anew by analysing the effects of Reagan’s 1986 tax reforms on political donations. This suggests that policies generate politics, not the other way around. Changes that make the rich richer allow them to spend more on contributions to politicians who then protect wealth. A summary of a longer paper, available in PDF (950 words)

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Nuclear Lab On A Serial-Killer Case

Sarah Scoles | Undark | 9th February 2024 | U

The Forensic Science Center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — “the lab of last resort” — investigates samples that are too difficult or dangerous to be studied elsewhere. The staff officially develop and maintain nuclear weapons, but in this case they invented a new process for detecting chemicals in the human body and thus helped to convict a respiratory therapist who was killing his patients (1,900 words)

My Favourite Books

J.G. Ballard | MIT Press Reader | 8th February 2024

Ballard looks back on a lifetime of reading. He regrets reading the classics in his teens, “before I had any adult experience of the world”, and thinks it may have made him a less mature, less open-minded adult. He loves “invisible literatures” (brochures, manuals, journals) and never reads his own fiction. His all-time top ten includes Hemingway, Burroughs, Coleridge and Lewis Carroll (2,100 words)

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Creeped Out

Sara Bernstein & Daniel Nolan | Oxford Studies In Philosophy Of Mind | 7th January 2024 | PDF

On the philosophy of creepiness and being “creeped out”. Creepiness lies within a specific range of emotional reaction. Seeing someone hacked to death will produce shudders of horror and repugnance, but it’s too powerful and direct an experience to be creepy. Having “the creeps” is a more low key, subtle occurrence — and one that can even have aesthetic or comic value (7,200 words)