The Enlightenment As Reading Project

David Wootton | The Critic | 15th February 2023

What we can learn about the 18C Enlightenment by studying not only the content of books by Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire et al, but also how these books were received by readers of the day. "I hope no future historian of ideas will write about a book printed before the Industrial Revolution without asking how many copies were printed, how much they cost, and who actually owned them" (1,500 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.

What Happened At The Crossroads?

Ted Gioia | Honest Broker | 15th February 2023

Investigation into the legendary meeting between Robert Johnson and the Devil at a crossroads in Mississipi, treating the tale neither as fact nor as fiction but as myth — a myth with many ancient variants in Western and African-American folklore. “The most common reason people made a deal with the Devil, according to these accounts, was the desire to play a musical instrument.” (5,200 words)

Inside Flipkart

Mihir Dalal | Rest Of World | 14th February 2023

Profile of a homegrown e-commerce startup, since acquired by Walmart, that beats Amazon in terms of market share in India. But despite having the edge, Flipkart is still inextricably connected to its rival: the founders met working at Amazon’s India office, their company was modelled upon their former employer, and remaining ahead is vital to maintaining investor confidence (4,809 words)

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Creatures That Don’t Conform

Lucy Jones | Emergence | 2nd February 2023

Praise hymn to slime mould, with poetic interpolations. "I can’t stop staring at its fractal shape. The way its yellow branches so directly and intentionally. Neural rivers of xanthic goo. Just like the veins of our bodies, and the vessels of our eyes, and the branches of the trees, and the clouds above, and the dendrites of galaxies. Blebs pack together, river networks of slime fan and spread" (5,312 words)

China's Policy Reversals

Andrew Batson | Tangled Woof | 8th February 2023

China is executing a series of major policy reversals — on Covid, on real estate, and on tech. These were some of Xi Jinping's flagship policies. So either Xi is proving more pragmatic than anybody had thought possible; or there has been a "quiet revolt" against him in the party leadership. Absent any hard evidence for either reading, it may be best to presume that the truth is a bit of both (1,200 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.

Also Italian

Dylan Byron | Lapham's Quarterly | 6th February 2023

In the city people spoke a Venetian dialect of Italian. In the countryside they spoke Slovene. In the government they spoke German. Such was Trieste in 1913, capital of the Adriatic, still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, if only just, and one of the most cultured cities in Europe, beloved of Joyce, and Svevo, and Musil. Its magic survived World War 1, but did not survive Mussolini (2,250 words)

Watching Paint Dry

Ed Conway | Material World | 3rd February 2023

History of car paint in the 20C. Interesting throughout. When production began on the Model T, it took much longer to paint a car than to make one. Better paint was critical to a faster assembly line. Now robots do the painting and custom "printed" designs are not far off. Getting better at making more hard-wearing yet ever faster drying paint is "a microcosm of human achievement" (2,943 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.

How Do I Make Up For My Lost Years?

Ayesha A. Siddiqi | 28th September 2021

Sensitive and thought-provoking response to a question from a 30 year old who fears that, thanks to years of severe depression that is only now being treated, they have wasted their life thus far. "I recommend against speaking about time as if it’s something that can be budgeted, that would imply we know how much we have. If there are ways to waste it, surely regret is one of them" (1,588 words)

Subterranean Paris

Félix Nadar | MIT Press Reader | 6th February 2023

Extract from the memoir of a 19C photographer. He describes a trip down into the sewers and catacombs of Paris and the experiments he conducted with different kinds of portable artificial light so that he could capture what he saw in these subterranean ossuaries. "In the egalitarian confusion of death, a Merovingian king remains in eternal silence next to those massacred in September 92" (4,368 words)

The Radical Idea That People Aren't Stupid

Adam Mastroianni | Experimental History | 24th January 2023

Psychology is good at identifying cognitive biases and we are very good at turning them into a general presumption that most other people are stupid. This is both not the case, it is argued, and would not be a useful way to approach the world even if it were. It can also be dangerous: "The idea that people are stupid and that only an elite few can handle the truth has led to some nasty places" (2,900 words)

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Yamagami Tetsuya’s Revenge

Dylan Levi King | Palladium | 2nd February 2023

A journey into the dark hinterland of post-war Japanese politics, when three generations of the Kishi/Abe family led the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and the LDP entwined itself with criminal gangs, intelligence agencies, and religious cults. This history was an open secret, but a secret of sorts, until prime minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead and explanations became unavoidable (3,500 words)

The Violin Doctor

Elly Fishman | Chicago | 17th January 2023

Profile of John Becker, considered to be the best violin restorer in the world. He has worked on more Stradivarius violins than any other living person, making repairs for the likes of Nigel Kennedy and Joshua Bell. He uses a mixture of antique 19C tools and modern surgical implements. Despite an impeccable ear and a sixth sense for quality instruments, Becker cannot play the violin (4,287 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.

The Oil Thieves Of Nigeria

James Barnett | New Lines | 26th January 2023

Steady oil production is vital to Nigeria's economic stability, but a decades-long conflict over who owns the oil in the Niger Delta has created a thriving black market. Between 200,000 and 700,000 barrels a day are lost to "oil bunkering", the practice of siphoning crude oil straight from the pipeline and processing it in unofficial but increasingly sophisticated refineries (10,231 words)

Battle Of The Botanic Garden

Mark O’Connell | Guardian | 26th January 2023

Seemingly simple story of a hyperlocal dispute (American buys English botanic garden; locals object) with hidden depths. The new owner initiates a kind of "rewilding" that his critics claim is just a failure to do any gardening. Then culture war battle lines are drawn as the newcomers reject the classic style of botanic garden horticulture as an "inheritance of colonialism" (6,207 words)

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Pulse

Nell Stevens | London Magazine | 18th January 2023

Short story about learning the piano, starting a family, and travelling across Europe to see Chopin's heart. "To ensure he wouldn’t wake up underground, Chopin requested his heart be taken from his body before he was buried. And so when he died, his sister, Ludwika Jędrzejewicz, removed the heart and placed it in a jar of cognac. She smuggled it, under her cloak, back to Warsaw" (4,982 words)

Is There Hope For Marriage?

Mary Harrington | Hedgehog Review | 9th December 2022

Only if we let go of "Big Romance", which does not mean entering into passionless commitments, but rather "accepting that romance and affection are great but not the chief objective of a thriving marriage". Partnerships where couples consider that their purpose is to work together on the "common business of living" offer a more flexible and in many cases equitable vision of married life (2,102 words)

The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok

Cory Doctorow | Wired | 23rd January 2023

Don't be put off by the strange headline; this is an astute analysis of the life cycle of internet platforms. At first, the aim is to provide value to users, probably while operating at a loss. Then the priority is business users, in the hope of breaking even. Finally, all users are betrayed by the platform as it attempts to make a profit. Nobody is served, the experience is ruined, and the platform dies (4,710 words)

Notes On Craft

Lee Lai | Granta | 5th January 2023

Cartoonist reflects on the geography of the page in a comic book. "A single frame could be a whole busy vignette, a single intake of breath, or more of a fluid roll into the following panel. This awareness of the rhythm between the panel gutters and the page-turning has built up over time. I have sometimes found myself writing my dialogue deliberately to fit into left pages or right pages" (680 words)

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English In The Real World

Dan Stahl | Millions | 3rd January 2023

Review of the new edition of Garner's Modern English Usage, which is less of a grammar reference work and more a way of keeping up to date with the way that language is being used in everyday life. "They" as a singular gender neutral pronoun is now commonly accepted, as is the deployment of a terminal preposition. "Like" now has five valid uses, including as a filler word (1,554 words)

Secretary Jobs In The Age Of AI

Hollis Robbins | Noahpinion | 17th January 2023

On the revival of the secretary. "I predict that ChatGPT is going to drive a comeback of the 'keeper of secrets' role, paid well to screens calls and emails... If you’re in a role of any importance, you’re going to be flooded with AI-written text, much of which will be incorrect. You’re going to need to hire someone with a head on their shoulders to sort through it. Why not a secretary?" (1,915 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.

Ending World History In... 1763?

Rob Taber | Age Of Revolutions | 12th December 2022

History professor makes the case for splitting the classic undergraduate "World History" course at the year 1763, rather than 1500 or 1600 as is more common. The signature of the Treaty of Paris in 1763 was an early clue to the future expansion of the British Empire, and this focus allows budding young historians to break away from "Eurocentric notions of the Renaissance" (1,686 words)

The Sound Of The Dialup

Oona Räisänen | Absorptions | 17th November 2012

Explanation of what each phase of the classic internet dial-up tone signified. It was almost entirely the product of two different modems performing a "handshake" and making sure they were using compatible modes, before sending pulses of test data. A new fact to me in all of this: it was easy to silence this tone, if you wished, by sending a single command down the line before initiating the dial (636 words)

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