Ever-Enduring Dürer

Warren Frye | New Criterion | 30th October 2023

Book review. There is a case to be made that Albrecht Dürer was the first modern artist, as well as the earliest example of the "notable narcissism" we now take for granted in highly successful creatives. "He may have been melancholic and vain, but his enduring fame is not the product of distinctive personality, but rather the quality of the art that character created" (1,000 words)

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The Silent Treatment

Jane Brox | Public Domain Review | 25th October 2023

The origins of solitary confinement were not punitive but therapeutic. It evolved in opposition to the corporal punishments common in the late 18C. Quakerism informed the idea of time alone in "active, searching silence" as a more effective means of reformation than inflicting bodily suffering. Solitude became a punishment once cramped conditions forced cell-sharing in prisons (3,900 words)

Lessons From China's Conquest Of Taiwan

Scott Savitz | RAND Corporation | 26th October 2023

It may be worth remembering — and China certainly remembers — that China has conquered Taiwan once before, in familiar circumstances. When Qing-dynasty armies gained control of the mainland in 1644, Ming-dynasty loyalists regrouped on Taiwan, claimed sovereignty there, and continued fighting. They surrendered in 1683 after losing a decisive naval battle, ceding Taiwan to the Qing (700 words)

My Left Kidney

Scott Alexander | Astral Codex Ten | 27th October 2023

How to give a kidney and why you might want to do so. The surgery carries a 1 in 10,000 mortality risk; no real worries. But the pre-op CAT scan carries a 1 in 660 mortality risk, so ask for an MRI. No known risks to longevity. You sleep through the surgery. You wake up feeling fine (except for the catheter). You get a call to say that your kidney has saved a stranger's life. You feel wonderful (6,700 words)

Behind The Scenes

Kimberly Nelson | Chicago | 16th October 2023

What it is really like to be an extra in major motion pictures. It is a lot like jury duty, in the sense that it involves long hours of waiting around for minimum wage pay. Days can start at 3am and end after dark. Being selected to hold a prop or sit next to a principal actor is entirely a matter of chance. And in the end, the shots that feature you may well end up on the cutting room floor (1,640 words)

The Beauty Of Chalk

Roy Peachey | Plough | 24th October 2023

Review of a book about mathematicians and their chalkboards. The act of writing with chalk forces the mind to slow down and thus to encounter new concepts at a pace conducive to understanding. It makes collaboration easier than with a computer screen. There are no glitches or errors that can prevent the ideas flowing out. And it forces a cerebral discipline into the physical realm (1,110 words)

Crooked Timber

Noah Millman | Gideon's Substack | 23rd October 2023

On being called Noah. A dvar Torah. As a Noah you start life with thousands of years of Judaic and Biblical culture at your back. In your infancy everybody gives you toy animals and you "relate to them a bit differently". The older you get, the more enigmatic your forebear appears. After impressing God with his virtue, and saving the animal kingdom from destruction, he gets blind drunk (2,100 words)

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Invitation To A Colonoscopy

Dynomight | Asterisk Magazine | 26th October 2023

A masterclass in interpreting clinical data. American doctors perform some 15 million colonoscopies each year at an average cost of $3,000 apiece. In Europe, meanwhile, a huge clinical trial finds that colonoscopies have little or no effect on mortality rates. American doctors say the trial is wrong, the methodology is flawed, Europeans are different. Are they right, or self-interested, or both? (4,500 words)

Naked Beneath Our Clothes

Jeannette Cooperman | Common Reader | 20th October 2023

Account of a couple's visit to a nudist resort. Both are nervous. She is worried about the etiquette of touching someone during a conversation when nobody is dressed. He is concerned about accidentally ogling the other guests. He is relieved to put the "protection" of his clothes back on, while she finds "the softened gazes and absence of awkwardness" intellectually liberating (5,530 words)

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The Ends Of Knowledge

Rachael Scarborough King | Aeon | 29th September 2023

A valid question about the future of academia: what could learning look like "if it were reoriented around emergent ends rather than inherited structures"? The answer is elusive here, but it bears considering. We accept that needs evolve and new areas of study open up, but the other side of that is that the demand for other areas diminishes. At what point do we start closing departments? (3,200 words)

How To Make A Monster

Charity Urbanski | Medievalists | 23rd October 2023

For most of history, a "monster" was not necessarily an imaginary creature like a vampire or a werewolf. Any deviation in appearance or behaviour (via a birth defect or disability, say) was folded into the concept of monstrosity. By the 12C, a complex visual language had developed that conflated otherness with demons, and this was used to persecute those perceived to be outsiders (2,810 words)

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What Does A Happily Ever After Look Like?

Alice Lang & Jan Diehm | Pudding | 16th October 2023

Analysis of how romance novel covers have changed over time. Comprising almost a quarter of the US adult fiction market, the way these books are marketed reflects the changing status and perceived desires of their women readers. In the 1950s, as more women entered the workforce, "corporate romances" were popular. Later, the classic 1980s Fabio "clinch" reflected "more feminist openness" (2,800 words)

The Future Of Ghosts

Jeanette Winterson | Paris Review | 23rd October 2023

Ghost stories may well have proliferated in the 19C because of the excess carbon monoxide from gas lamps — low level poisoning can cause hallucinations and dread. In the 21C, our hauntings will be predicated on the intangible reality we already inhabit. "A ghost is the spirit of a dead person. An avatar is a digital twin of a living person. Neither is 'real'. A haunted metaverse. Why not?" (910 words)

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Everyone Needs The Odd Free Lunch

James Harris | Stiff Upper Quip | 19th October 2023

On the "spiritual ungenerosity" of the UK. Unlike elsewhere, tap water is not always free and a hot drink rarely comes with an unsolicited biscuit. This writer finds that his homeland has become "a place of martialling scarcity". The little things that make life nicer are in short supply. "This is what happens to people when they live pinched, cramped lives, worrying about every penny" (1,460 words)

A Spark Extinguished

Ian Johnson | China Books Review | 19th October 2023

Extract from Ian Johnson's much-admired new book, Sparks, about China's "underground historians", an informal movement of disparate individuals working at great personal risk to provide a factual account of China's modern history, often contradicting the "official" history written and rewritten by the Communist Party to erase the Party's monstrosities and bolster the Party's legitimacy (4,800 words)

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The Lure Of Madness

Lorna Collins | The Polyphony | 20th September 2023

A reviewer "who has experienced madness" reviews Lure Of Madness, Alastair Morgan's study of Adorno, Foucault, and anti-psychiatry. "As I am reading, I find myself (my hallucinations) reacting violently. I do not usually include my visionary perspectives in an academic review. but these experiences seem to show something valid about the field defined in this book, if not the book itself" (2,080 words)

Collection Cost

Kathleen S. Murphy | Lapham's Quarterly | 18th October 2023

Ripple effects of the slave trade are still being uncovered. Natural history in the 17C and 18C relied on slave traders as collectors. "A specimen gathered by a Fante person in the Gold Coast, then acquired by a British slaving mariner, transported on a slaving vessel to an American port of disembarkation and then to London, might find its way to the Royal Society's meeting rooms" (1,740 words)

Fake It ’Til You Fake It

Nick Heer | Pixel Envy | 8th October 2023

Image manipulation is older than we think. Stalin had officials who displeased him cut out of group photographs. In 1851 Edouard Baldus layered multiple exposures to create a single photograph. While there is legitimate cause for concern about what the latest AI-assisted computational photography tools might produce, it has always been a good idea to be sceptical about the images we see (2,390 words)

Murder, Muggers, And Rottweilers

Thurston Moore | Esquire | 10th October 2023

Sonic Youth's co-founder remembers life on the Lower East Side circa 1978, a peak year for no-wavers and punk rockers but also for muggers, murderers, rottweilers, junkies, drug-dealers, rent-boys and drunks. "The crime and violence were real, but they were more or less arbitrary. Also, I probably shouldn’t have been walking alone around Alphabet City at three in the morning" (4,500 words)

The Exam That Broke Society

Yasheng Huang | Aeon | 19th October 2023

The Imperial Civil Service Examination was the sole avenue of social mobility in China from the seventh to the twentieth centuries. It was a catastrophic success. The most brilliant minds in China wanted only to pass the examination, win high office, and entrench their emperor's monopoly on power. So far from fostering private enterprise and civil society, their job was to suppress it (4,000 words)

Hollywood Horror

Daniel Parris | Stat Significant | 18th October 2023

Until the break-out success of The Exorcist (1974), which earned $441 million on a budget of $12 million, horror was strictly a B-movie genre. It has since become Hollywood's most reliable money-maker. Horror films are rarely blockbusters, but they are cheap to make, and their average return on investment is twice that of an action movie. Blair Witch was the most profitable film of all time (2,000 words)

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The Happy Dysfunction Of Dover

Chris Arnade | Unherd | 16th October 2023

Chris Arnade wanders through Dover, walks on to Portsmouth, and decides that the vibe in broken-down parts of England is gentler than the vibe in broken-down parts of America. "England still has a real community built around a shared history and culture. Even if it sometimes gets turned into tourism-board silliness, it very much matters. The English know who they are, and are OK with it" (1,700 words)

Skinny House

Kim Samek | Electric Lit | 18th October 2023

Satirical fiction about a housing shortage. In a busy city, demand exceeds supply so landlords start putting up partitions everywhere, until the average square footage of an apartment has shrunk to almost nothing. "Most of his neighbours have bigger houses. They moved in decades ago, before the subdivisions. He is stuck in an upright coffin, but he is proud of his home" (1,580 words)

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On The Tyranny Of Slush Piles

Samsun Knight | Millions | 18th October 2023

Nepotism has historically played an important part in the publishing of literary fiction — both Proust and Joyce were widely rejected before being rescued by friends. This isn't a good system, but is it any worse than what we have now? Digital "slush piles" proliferate everywhere and the same tropes keep rising to the top. This privileges the "simple at the expense of the complex" (1,400 words)