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)

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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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What Were We Thinking?

George Scialabba | Commonweal | 11th January 2023

How will today's political morality look to our descendants in the 23C? Here it is theorised that not only will they deplore the inequality in apparently free and fair democracies like the US, but they will also question whether our ideals of fairness and freedom are sufficient. They may well ask "why did you assume that contracts between parties with radically unequal resources could be free?" (4,024 words)

What Happens When A Huge Ship Sinks?

Emma Bryce & Harvey Symons | Guardian | 11th January 2023

Shipwrecks are rarely abandoned to the waves these days. The first step is to contain the cargo and off load it before it can cause pollution or fire. Any fuel and oil on board must be drained. If below the surface, the ship is raised. Then the hull is either sliced into sections with diamond-encrusted wire or blown into fragments by explosives. Each portion is lifted onto a barge and carried away (1,732 words)

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The Most Powerful Uber Driver In India

Varsha Bansal | Rest Of World | 4th January 2023

Profile of Shaik Salauddin, a former taxi driver who has emerged as a new kind of labour organiser in India. He still drives occasionally for Uber, but now lends out his car to others while he campaigns for better employment rights. He has founded a new gig economy union and seems to understand how to bend the internet news cycle to his purpose far better than traditional labour organisers (1,572 words)

Enduring The Winters Of A Life Sentence

Jeffrey Shockley | Atmos | 9th January 2023

Incarcerated writer reflects on winters in prison. On the positive side: tap water in the cells is properly cold, inmates get to work outside clearing paths, and the snow makes the grounds look better. The negatives include: more lockdowns as staff struggle to get to work, moods plummeting from all the time cooped up, and violence rising as people face the holiday season without loved ones (854 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.

An Ocean Of Earth

Justin E.H. Smith | Hinternet | 13th November 2022

Lyrical, surprising and "mostly true" history of the Russian Empire. "Turkey, Russia, and for a while Germany too, had no ocean to cross in their own territorial expansions, and curiously this circumstance has made it easy for at least one of these latter empires to 'hide' itself with surprising success. The reason Russia is so big is because most of it is not Russia" (7,514 words)

Strangely Beautiful Google Reviews

Will McCarthy | Longreads | 3rd January 2023

An old-fashioned internet article, which invites the reader to marvel at the infinite variety of humanity. Several of those highlighted here contain entire novels: “She butchered my Pomeranian I would not recommend” (Laurie’s Gentle Pet Grooming); “Unknowingly purchased sick Nigerian dwarf goats” (Hilltop Goat & Sheep Auction); and “Didn’t enjoy, too much water” (the Bering Sea) (3,313 words)

The Decline Of Disruption

Michael Park et al | Nature | 4th January 2023

Scientific paper, so no prizes for prose style, but an important-if-true main point and some interesting methodology. Key argument: "If a paper or patent is disruptive, subsequent work that cites it is less likely to also cite its predecessors". Key finding: Measured by citations culled from millions of papers and patents, disruptive discoveries have been in relative decline since 1945 (12,800 words)

In The Stacks

Robin Sloan | Brand New Box | 6th January 2023

A new short story by Robin Sloan! The year is indeed shaping up well. All the classic ingredients are here: An improbable hero or two, a library (of course), old technology, new technology, sadness, joy, youth, age, grace, nostalgia, incongruity, music — and a generous sprinkling of that same happy-magic dust which made Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough such charmers (3,500 words)

The Third Magic

Noah Smith | Noahpinion | 1st January 2023

Brad DeLong calls this piece "better than anything I read in all 2022". The three "magics" discussed here are (i) writing, broadly defined to mean all ways to record information; (ii) science, broadly defined to include the scientific method, mathematics, logic and reason; (iii) the capacity to control and predict events, now emerging from the confluence of computation, big data and AI (3,580 words)

Mussolini In Public And Private Life

Andrea Bajani | Literary Hub | 5th January 2023

Let's say you were a young girl in Italy in the 1920s when Mussolini seemed strong, exciting, full of possibilities. You went to his rallies. You cheered his speeches. You made him Mussolini. But you never hurt a fly. Time passes. Now you are older, much older, in the Italy of the 1990s. Any regrets? Any feelings of guilt? What were you hoping for all those years ago? What is your share of fascism? (2,900 words)

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Living With Wolves

Nikki Kolb | Catapult | 3rd January 2023

Account of months spent at a remote wolf sanctuary. "On only my second day caring for him alone, he nipped me in the stomach, breaking skin. The mark was miniscule. I was nonetheless mortified. What business did I have here, a city girl who was scared of the dark, worn out by the basic terrain, unable to build a fire, and not even savvy enough to avoid the bite of an ancient wolf dog?" (3,410 words)

Strontian To Laga Bay

Jon Combe | Round The Island | 3rd January 2023

Notes from a walk along a Scottish sea loch, part of an attempt to walk the entire coast of mainland Britain. This section is on the Ardnamurchan peninsula in the western Highlands. The walker visits the village where the chemical element strontium was discovered in 1790, navigates the boundaries between public and private property, and shows great care for some uncaring ducks (2,921 words)

James Patterson's Daily Routine

Clay Skipper | GQ | 3rd January 2023

Interview with the prolific author, who claims to have 31 book projects active at one time. He works with a "stable of co-writers", does about 11 hours of reading and writing a day, and works seven days a week, with interludes for golf. He writes longhand and then an assistant types his manuscripts. His explanation for why he exists like this, at the age of 75? "I've always been a hungry dog" (2,075 words)

The Truffle Industry Is A Scam

Matt Babich | Taste Atlas | 24th December 2022

Few foods that taste of truffle contain the gourmet fungi itself. The organsulfur compound 2,4-dithiapentane naturally occurs in truffles but is almost impossible to extract, although it can be cheaply derived from petroleum. You may not know what truffle tastes like; the familiar flavour is probably the synthetic version. Some restaurants even grate tasteless tubers over dishes to aid the illusion (2,049 words)

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What It's Like To Dissect A Cadaver

Alok Singh | Every Man A Debtor | 9th November 2022

Observations recorded after taking an open access dissection class. Exposing veins, arteries and nerves takes a surprising amount of physical effort and is best done with the hands. Cancer can turn guts a bright mouldy green. Human fat is extremely greasy. The intestines look like damp cardboard but are dry to the touch. Lifting a face off a skull is, as one might assume, "extra uncanny" (1,447 words)

How To Speak Honeybee

Karen Bakker | Noema | 2nd November 2022

Bees communicate mainly by dance, but they also have a vocabulary of sounds and vibrations. They have excellent eyesight and can recognise faces. They can rob and cheat. They get happy and sad. When a swarm needs to split or move on, the bees will argue and vote about where to go next. To better observe them, humans are now building a bee-sized robot which will pass as a bee among bees (4,700 words)

How To Be Influenced

Ian Leslie | The Ruffian | 23rd July 2022

In a world of online influencers we are all going to be influenced. "For almost every decision we have to take, bidders line up to take the contract". The trick lies in turning this to your advantage. "Be impervious to social influence and you get closed off from the best that your fellow humans have to offer. Be defenceless against it and you become manipulable, boring, and unhappy" (2,800 words)

Art, Mourning, Remembrance

Hayley Campbell | Literary Hub | 24th August 2022

Conversation with Nick Reynolds, Britain's only sculptor of death masks, whose subjects have included Peter O'Toole, Malcolm McLaren, Ronnie Biggs, William Rees-Mogg — and his own father, Bruce Reynolds, who masterminded the Great Train Robbery. "When you die, you look amazing. All tension is released from your face. Ideally, I would get to them while they were still warm” (3,500 words)

Cryptic crosswords getting you DOWN? No need to get a-CROSS.
We at The Browser are here to help. Pick up the ultimate beginners' guide, by Dan Feyer and Uri Bram, and let us explain what those mysterious clues are all about.