2023 Letter

Dan Wang | 23rd January 2024

Dan Wang’s annual China letter. Time spent in Thailand allows him to consider who is emigrating from China and why — rùn is a new word usage expressing a desire to flee. Young Chinese people show up in Singapore, Thailand and Japan. Increasing numbers are being stopped on the US-Mexico border. They are leaving stressful jobs and “menial, political restrictions on free expression” (8,700 words)

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Video: Requiem For A Whale | Vimeo | New Yorker | 15m 09s

After a dead whale washes up on an Israeli beach, a filmmaker documents what happens next, from the curiosity of passersby to the autopsy performed by experts.

The Failed Saint

Jason Christian | LA Review Of Books | 21st January 2024

Orwell is sanitised in public memory, despite his flaws and contradictions. He wrote candidly of bullying subordinates and hitting coolies as an officer in Burma, but such details are often omitted in retellings. His radical honesty did not take the form of "weepy confessionals", and was instead informed by a deep pragmatism: if he had to sacrifice his reputation in service to an insight, he would (3,900 words)

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The Early History Of The Channel Tunnel

Peter Keeling | Public Domain Review | 10th January 2024

On the many unsuccessful 19th-century efforts to build a tunnel across the English Channel. In 1856, Thomé de Gamond proposed a double-track railway tunnel with ventilation shafts, steel shields and lighthouses lining the route. The challenges, ultimately, were not of engineering or geology but politics — the project failed due to fears that the tunnel would present a military weakness (5,900 words)

Why Are Some Rich Societies Conservative?

Alice Evans | The Great Gender Divergence | 21st January 2024

Modernisation theories predicted that cultural liberalism would follow economic growth. But wealthy societies like Malaysia and South Korea remain conservative. The answer lies elsewhere: societies with labour-intensive agriculture and strong kinship tend to be collectivist and conformist. Rice grown in Asia requires great coordination compared to wheat in Europe, which needs less labour (3,200 words)

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A Parliament Of Owls

Maria Popova | Marginalian | 4th January 2024

Collective nouns for birds are very charming — “a deceit of lapwings”, “an ostentation of peacocks”, “an unkindness of ravens”. Many of these terms originate from The Book of Saint Albans, one of the first English books printed after the advent of the Gutenberg Press. Anonymously published in 1486, it eventually became known that the author was Juliana Barnes, a reclusive nun (1,900 words)

Our Language, Our World

James McElvenny | Aeon | 15th January 2024

Recent research lends credence to the idea that language shapes worldview: some languages enable speakers to unlock senses that all humans possess but do not necessarily use. All humans are sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic field. But Australia’s Gurindji speakers, who would say “a fly is on the eastern part of my leg”, are reliably attuned to shifts in ambient magnetic fields (4,000 words)

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Sober Curious

Louise O’Neill | Savage Hunger | 7th January 2024

There is a cultural shift towards drinking less — #SoberCurious is one of the most searched-for hashtags on social media. The science for an alcohol-free lifestyle is compelling. But there are things to miss about drinking, like the ability it confers to withstand noise. Tips for a Dry January: embrace mocktails, get a friend on board, don’t make assumptions about who you’ll become in sobriety (2,100 words)

Casting Light On Relief Map Shading

Felix Frey | Swiss National Museum | 9th January 2024

In 1927, Albert Heim denounced Switzerland’s official maps for a “lie that flew in the face of nature”: mountains were shaded as if lit from the northwest, where factually in Switzerland the sun shines from the south. The convention arose from the convenience of right-handed illustrators, as revealed by older maps where east is on the left and south is at the top but the shading stays the same (1,100 words)

The Dress Form

Kathryn Hughes & Lauren Kane | New York Review | 13th January 2024

Clothes tell a life through “the wearer’s engagement with their own arrangement of sinew and muscle, and the accommodations they’re obliged to make with the wider world”. George Eliot claimed her right hand was larger due to “all the milking she had done on her father’s farm”. Jane Austen’s coat-dress shows she “wasn’t simply tall; she was gigantic”, which is why she would only wear flat shoes (2,500 words)

Step Inside The ‘Pain Cave’

Olivier Guiberteau | BBC Sport | 18th January 2024

Courtney Dauwalter is the only ultrarunner to win the sport’s “triple crown” of three 100-mile races in a season, setting a new record for each course. A teacher, she only began running full time in 2017. She regularly wins races ahead of male competitors — once beating the nearest man by ten hours. Scientists think 195 miles is “the magic number where women become faster than men” (2,800 words)

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The Story Of A Mosque

Ruslan Yusupov | Made In China | 18th January 2024

Architectural changes to Laohuasi Mosque in Gansu Province show how serious the Chinese government is about its campaign to “Sinicise Islam”. Domes have been removed and minarets shortened, and a hip-and-gable roof, typical of Chinese design, added. This mosque holds over 6,000 people and altering it so publicly is a rejection of “so-called Arabisation and Saudi-isation” (1,600 words)

What The Germans Left Behind

Anna Parker | Granta | 17th January 2024

On the afterlife of the Sudetenland. Now in the Czech Republic, this area began to be settled by Germans in the 16C and was annexed by Hitler in 1938. Germans were expelled in 1945, and the photographs and memorabilia of their tenure is now valued as kitsch decoration. “The men balance cigars between their index and middle fingers. I wonder which of them were Nazi collaborators” (4,700 words)

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How to discover and consume 6,500+ podcast episodes without subscribing to any podcasts? Wenbin Fang shares his episode-centric listening approach with Listen Notes.

Accents And Dialects In The United States

Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton | Smithsonian | 17th January 2024

Every twist and turn of American history is audible in the vast array of accents and dialects spoken across the country. Colonists and immigrants brought their speech with them, and then spread them as they migrated across the continent. Travel was historically easier in the west than in the east, which is why the vocal differences there are “slightly more homogenised” and “subtle” (2,000 words)

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Indelible Ink

Sunil Iyengar | Arts Journal | 16th January 2024

The number of books in a child’s home is positively correlated with reading test scores. Would the same hold for digital reading? Recent research claims that the “short length, fast-paced stimuli, and lower linguistic quality” of digital texts may invoke more shallow cognitive processes. For younger students, reading digitally for leisure was associated with lower reading comprehension (1,100 words)

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Compliance, Violence And Overachievement

Conrad Bastable | Radical Contributions | 7th January 2024

Every place is defined by the process used to select its elites, who eventually acquire the monopoly on state violence. Modern American elites are selected for the desire to pass tests and please authority figures, so when in power they prioritise polite compliance. “To engage in violence,” even as an unwilling recipient, “is perceived as failing a societal-level marshmallow test” (10,500 words)

So You Wanna De-Bog Yourself

Adam Mastroianni | Experimental History | 2nd January 2024

Being intellectually stuck is “the psychological equivalent of standing knee-deep in a fetid bog”. When this happens, it may feel like “a bespoke bog”, but in fact there are recurring patterns. This writer has names for them all. Perhaps you are “gutterballing”, or “hedgehogging”, “puppeteering” or “declining the dragon”. The silly names help with pulling yourself out, apparently (3,800 words)

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Podcast: How Panel Shows Really Work | The Rest Is Entertainment. A long-time TV insider (Richard Osman) and a TV critic (Marina Hyde) answer common questions about how the entertainment we consume is made and how much of apparently “unscripted” content is really scripted in advance (35m 29s)

Paying People To Have Children

Kevin Kelly | Technium | 11th January 2024

Proposal to arrest the global decline in fertility rates: pay people a lot of money to have children. A government would calculate a citizen’s “Total Lifetime Economic Value” and pay people slightly less to have a child. Previous incentives, like free childcare or housing, have not worked. Perhaps the cash payment needs to be huge. “Would you be willing to have a(nother) child for $8 million?” (1,100 words)

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Between The Algorithm And A Hard Place

Diana Enríquez | Tech Policy Press | 11th December 2023

In a job that is largely managed by an automated system, software glitches will periodically create a lose-lose situation. The route the app presents to an Uber driver or an Amazon worker makes no sense in the real world, but they face harsh automatic penalties for deviating from it. What to do? A system that is supposed remove worker autonomy forces more individual decision making (1,500 words)

Getting Under The Skin

McKenzie Prillaman | Grow By Ginkgo | 10th January 2024 | U

On the past and future of insulin. Just over a hundred years ago, it was extracted for the first time from cattle to be sold as a diabetes treatment. In the 1970s, it became possible to manufacture it synthetically by injecting bacteria with DNA. Today, the price can fluctuate wildly. But one day soon, we will likely be able to modify our skin cells to be “own miniature insulin factories” (2,300 words)

The Un-Brie-Lievable History Of Tyromancy

Jennifer Billock | Saveur | 16th November 2023 | U

Tyromancy is the art of telling fortunes with cheese. It dates back to the 2C, via the writings of a diviner named Artemidorus of Daldis. It was popular in the Middle Ages for finding love: suitors’ names were carved into cheese, and whichever one grew mould first should meet you at the altar. This tyromancer can read any kind of cheese, including vegan, but a Kraft single must be torn up first (800 words)