The End Of Cinema

Jared Marcel Pollen | Verso | 20th September 2022

Engaging account of Jean-Luc Godard's early years, from 1959 to 1967, when he made "perhaps the greatest series of films made by a single filmmaker" — 15 feature films including the masterpieces À bout de souffle, Pierrot le Fou, and Week-end. "If we can compare Godard’s work during this period to anything, it would be the novels of Thomas Pynchon and James Joyce" (1,500 words)

Oligopoly And Social Norms

Mançur Olson | Yale University Press | 20th September 2022

Notes on the logic of cartels. Many points of interest, including a theory of why, in many countries, the medical profession strives to limit the number of new entrants more strictly than the legal profession does. "In legal systems without much limitation on the initiation of litigation, additional lawyers can raise the demand for their colleagues by increasing the likelihood of legal disputes" (1,100 words)

In Egypt, Foreigners Dominate Belly Dancing

Chahrazade Douah | New Lines | 21st September 2022

Egyptian belly dancing is full of contradictions. Purists consider it "one of the last authentic Egyptian art forms". It is also now mostly performed by non-Egyptians. Since the golden age of belly dancing ended in the 1960s, a rise in religious conservatism has made it an unattractive occupation. Dance moves and costumes are regulated and performers do prison time for violations (2,221 words)

Philosophy’s Lost Prodigy

Lincoln Allison | Engelsberg Ideas | 20th September 2022

Recollection of Gareth Evans, a philosopher who died forty years ago at the age of 34. It was obvious, this friend writes, from their first Oxford class that Evans was "at least the intellectual equal of the tutor". Even before he graduated the great minds of the field were lining up to meet him. But not everyone was happy "to be told at whatever level of frankness that they were stupid" (1,734 words)

Tiny Murder Scenes Of Frances Glessner Lee

Nicole Johnson | Al-Jazeera | 11th September 2022

While she was convalescing from an illness in 1929, a fellow patient — a medical examiner — awoke a passion for forensics in the heiress Frances Glessner Lee. She became a patron of the field and in her 50s found her calling as the creator of incredibly detailed dioramas, known as "The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death", which were used to train police on crime scene procedure (3,949 words)

Visibility And Power

Kirsten Voris | The Metropole | 20th September 2022

The Beyoğlu district of Istanbul, home to Gezi Park, has long had a reputation as "a secular playground". In 1155, Genovese merchants received permission to live here according to their own customs, a practice that stuck as ex-pats of all kinds moved in. The opening of the Taksim mosque in 2021 marked the end of an era in which the area had avoided Erdoğan's dramatic development projects (1,272 words)

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Did Neanderthals Make Art?

Bruce Hardy | Sapiens | 11th August 2022

The answer to this question is yes, but this is a recent shift in consensus, which says more about researchers' biases than Neanderthal creativity, it is argued. "The stereotype of the artless Neanderthal and the artful modern human was rooted in prejudices of the time... Even today, some art produced by non-Western peoples is described as 'folk art' or 'primitive art' rather than just art" (2,231 words)

from The Browser seven years ago:

Mrs. Bundy

Dana Middleton Silberstein | Morning News | 3rd September 2015

On the day of serial killer Ted Bundy's execution, a local TV host tracks down his mother at home and interviews her alongside the mother of one of his victims. An emotional profile of two women simultaneously close and distant. "It has to be terrible for her," says the victim's mother; "our suffering is over, our answers are all there — and I think hers are probably just beginning" (5,260 words)

Word Watch

Maria Heim | Princeton University Press | 12th September 2022

However fugitive the emotion, Sanskrit has a word for it — including a word for the feeling that there ought to be a word for a feeling that you cannot yet quite pin down. The word is anannatannassamitindriya, the “I-will-come-to-know-what-is-unknown faculty”. Surprised? Sanskrit has your back there too. Camatkara is the "smacking sound as the lips come together in surprise" (1,290 words)

Europe's Energy Catastrophe

Benjamin Hart | Intelligencer | 13th September 2022

Interview with energy analyst. Interesting throughout. "We believe that Putin would not have moved into Ukraine had natural gas not already been a crisis. The price of natural gas skyrocketed in December in Europe. He did the calculation and realised: They don’t have enough molecules. They’re surely going to come to the table and give me what I want in Ukraine. He was incorrect" (3,070 words)

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On Sundays, Browser readers receive a special edition with puzzles, poems, books, charts, music and more - plus selections from our decade-plus archive of the finest writing on the internet. Here's a taste of this week's edition - our archive picks.

From The Browser Six Years Ago

Cow Dung Capitalism
Lhendup Bhutia | Open | 16th September 2016 | U
The market for cow products is booming in India; not meat and milk, but dung and urine. A litre of cow urine can fetch three times the price of a litre of milk. Cow dung goes into face packs, shampoos, soap, incense; urine into cough syrups, body oils, energy drinks, floor disinfectants. “A unique marriage is unfolding here, between ancient belief systems and the market forces of capitalism” (3,100 words)

From The Browser Ten Years Ago

A New Text About Jesus — And His Wife
Ariel Sabar | Smithsonian | 18 September 2012 | U
At the time, this was bruited as the biggest event in biblical studies since the Dead Sea Scrolls: A Harvard professor announced the discovery of a scrap of papyrus, apparently from the third century AD, which referred to Jesus and to his "wife", perhaps Mary Magdalene. Four years later, the story was retracted, the papyrus was declared a forgery, and the presumed forger was uncontactable (6,300 words)

Browsings — What We Are Up To:

Uri has published an essay about Misquoting Winnie The Pooh on Dirt
Caroline talks to Lucy Worsley about Agatha Christie on Shedunnit
Robert is speaking this weekend at the Summit Of Minds in Chamonix

Build A Home That Lasts A Thousand Years

Wrath Of Gnon | 12th September 2022

After a brief salute to Roger Scruton and his ideas of beauty, this is a thoroughly practical reflection on building for the long-term. Use straw, adobe, bricks, clay, wood, stone — and try to find stuff nearby, as your descendants will need more to repair and rebuild. Use building techniques that are simple and obvious. Sloping roofs beats flat roofs. Build on high ground. Build something useful (1,160 words)

What Happened To Our Economic Paradise?

Brad DeLong | Time | 8th September 2022

The wealth created by the industrial revolution, railroads, and steampower, started rippling outwards to the general public in Europe and America around 1870, sparking hopes that a utopian age was approaching. New technologies would increase pleasure and leisure. Rising living standards would float everyone's boat. What went wrong? Neoliberalism got in the way, says DeLong (3,200 words)

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In The Floppy Disk Business

Niek Hilkmann & Thomas Walskaar | Eye On Design | 12th September 2022

Interview with one of the last people dealing in floppy disks. His wife persuaded him to buy "floppydisks۔com" in 1990 and he has never looked back. His business used to be mostly duplicating CDs and DVDs, but is now "90% selling blank floppy disks". He carries "all the flavours" of floppy disk and his recycling service is now so popular that he sometime receives 1,000 disks a day in the post (3,443 words)

Coming Into Focus

Carla Ciccone | Harper's Bazaar | 5th September 2022

The rate of ADHD diagnosis among adult women is rising sharply. There is little research yet into why, but it seems likely that indicators have historically been explained as mere feminine character traits. "It’s likely been there all along, masquerading as low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, 'she’s difficult', 'she’s an airhead', 'she’s unlucky', 'she’s lazy', and other labels" (3,343 words)

The Twisted Life Of Clippy

Benjamin Cassidy | Seattle Met | 23rd August 2022

Clippy, the cartoon paperclip Microsoft used as an early user help interface, was branded by Time as "one of the 50 worst inventions ever". But critics forget that in the 1990s, reassurance was welcome to the majority who had never used a computer before. Clippy returned to Microsoft 365 last year thanks to a social media campaign, a throwback to "a more benign digital age" (3,054 words)

The Lost Library Of John Milton

Hannah Yip | Centre For Material Texts | 13th September 2022

Report from a scholar who spent eight weeks tracking down John Milton's surviving books. His commonplace book provided an invaluable list of suspects to cross-examine. His distinctive style of writing in books — with ink not pencil, rarely underlining, and using asterisks to mark key passages — makes his notes relatively easy to identify. Still: "In the end, I found very little" (3,481 words)

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On Barbara Ehrenreich

Gabriel Winant | n+1 | 9th September 2022

Barbara Ehrenreich, who died on 1st September, was an expert at showing how power operates on an intimate level. Her readers were never spared her sharp pen. "Ehrenreich’s specialty was to reveal her readers to themselves by showing them the other... She invites this, beckoning you to follow her into her subject, and then suddenly wheels around on you — and you are caught out" (5,351 words)

Punishment, Puppies, And Science

Ula Chrobak | Undark | 12th September 2022

The dog training industry is like "the wild, wild West". There is very little oversight or regulation. Attempts to fix this have exposed a schism between those who believe punishment is the most effective training tool and those who prefer rewards. Designing a study to test this in a controlled and balanced way is very difficult, so ideology still reigns in canine education (2,290 words)

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The Discovery Of The X-Ray

Ira Rutkow | Delancey Place | 7th September 2022

Extract from a history of surgery. The discovery of the X-Ray in 1895 utterly transformed what so-called "scalpel wielders" could achieve. "Not only did the accessibility of X-rays change the definition of what consti­tuted a successful surgical intervention, but also the physical presence of an X-ray apparatus lent an air of modernity and scientific progress that impressed patients" (690 words)

King Charles III

Robert Booth | Guardian | 19th November 2014

Prince Charles is eccentric, impassioned, impatient, indiscreet — which, while manageable faults in a prince, are difficult ones in a king. "Preparations are being made for a very different monarchy to that of Queen Elizabeth, who has secured acceptance of the constitutional monarchy in part through her strict silence on political affairs. The death of the Queen is a day many dread" (5,200 words)

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