Amusement Parks And Central Banks

Tim Harford | 6th July 2023

Even bankers and economists find it hard to explain quite what money is and how money works; we all tend to fall back on stories and analogies. The late Nobel prizewinning economist Robert Lucas used to compare central banks with ticket-booths in amusement parks which issued tickets for rides. At Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, Tim Harford measures Lucas's fable against real life (1,000 words)

Russia, Finland, And The Åland Islands

Anna-Sophie Schneider | Spiegel | 6th July 2023

File under: Nooks and crannies of the new Europe. The Åland Islands are an archipelago in the Baltic Sea, belonging to Finland but largely autonomous, which have been demilitarised for a century under a peace treaty between Finland and Russia. But what now, as Finland joins Nato? The Ålanders fear invasion by Russia, but they also fear full incorporation into Finland (1,400 words)  

Mass And Consciousness

Colin McGinn | 5th July 2023

We do not have a theory of mind; we draw inferences from observing how people behave. But are we any the wiser when it comes to matter? Here, too, we merely draw inferences from observing how "things" behave. We may say that matter has (or is) mass — but what, then, is mass? If we define mass in terms of inertia, what then is inertia? Why is it a property of some things and not of others? (750 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.

Mystery At The Oslo Plaza

Lars Wegner | VG | 28th June 2022

On June 3rd 1995 a woman is found dead in a room at the Plaza Hotel in Oslo, shot through the head with a pistol that is still in her right hand. It looks like suicide. But why did she check in under a false name, why are the labels stripped from her clothes, and why is carrying a bag of bullets? Was she a spy? An assassin? Almost 30 years later, meticulous re-investigation sheds some new light (19,000 words)

Rapture Of The Deep

Gary Smith | SI Vault | 16th June 2003

Gripping throughout. The triumphs and tragedies of free-diving. Pipín Ferreras is the world free-diving champion. Audrey Mestre loves him and wants to emulate him — even outdo him. Sustained only by the breath in her lungs, she will dive to 571 feet, a new world record. On the day, a storm is brewing. Pipín frets. But Audrey must dive. "She took a final breath of air, and vanished" (8,100 words)

Automation Of Work

Benedict Evans | 2nd July 2023

As coal-powered steam engines became more efficient in the 19th century, the result was not a decrease in coal consumption, but a vast increase in the usage of steam-power, and thus of coal. Likewise, as automation has made office work more efficient in the past century, so the scope and scale of office jobs has multiplied. It will be the same with AI. Work expands to fill technology available (3,100 words)

Extreme Hoarding

Samira Shackle | Guardian | 4th July 2023

Hoarding is now recognised as a mental disorder in its own right, though diagnosis relies more on the size of the "hoard" than on the patient's reported state of mind. Hoards are ranked from 1 to 9 on a "Clutter Image Rating" scale. At level 1, "rooms are fairly empty". At level 9, "walls are barely visible". Half of all hoarders have a close relative who also hoards, and half have severe depression (4,600 words)

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Pasolini On Caravaggio

Piero Paolo Pasolini | Paris Review | 30th June 2023

Newly translated from Pasolini's notebooks, a fragment in which the film-maker recognises kindred skills in the painter. "Caravaggio invented a new kind of light. He replaced the universal, platonic light of the Renaissance with a quotidian and dramatic one. Caravaggio invented both this new kind of light, and new kinds of people and things, because he had seen them in reality" (1,200 words)

Audio: The Word For Man Is Ishi | The Last Archive. Ben Naddaff-Hafrey tells a story that seems to be about one thing, but is actually about something else entirely. Featuring Ursula K. Le Guin, the Berkeley Anthropology department, and a Native American man who was the only member of his community to survive a genocide (49m 43s)

Video: Space Filling Curves Filling With Water | Steve Mould | YouTube | 12m 06s

Possibly helpful for developing "an intuition for the fractal nature of a space-filling curve," but certainly a relaxing video of water moving around through pipes, and a nice nostalgia trip for those who remember the old Windows screensaver

Noam Chomsky

Tyler Cowen | Conversations | 14th June 2023

At 94, Chomsky is still game for an ask-me-anything on topics ranging from linguistics and AI to ancient history and American foreign policy, while citing authorities from Plato and Leibniz to J.S Mill and Stephen Wolfram along the way. Much of interest on LLMs, animal cognition, human nature, Cuba, Nicaragua, propaganda. One may not always agree, but one must surely admire (6,100 words)

The Doll Mommies Are Fighting

Jessica Lucas | Cosmopolitan | 27th June 2023

Report from the world of “reborn dolls", which are "hyperrealistic faux babies" that cost up to $5,000 and inspire "fanatical devotion" among "reborn moms". Some owners "jump into the scene just for fun"; others have "deeper therapeutic aims such as coping with pregnancy loss". An "entire role-play subgenre" is devoted to reborn dolls with "serious injuries and life-threatening illnesses" (2,500 words)

Podcast: Antibiotics | Without. Omar El Akkad hosts this climate change series, looking at a different thing in turn that the world may have to learn to live without. This one explores the rise of fatal antibiotic resistance and what we might do about it (44m 32s)

Video: A World From A Sheet Of Paper | YouTube | Tadashi Tokieda | 61m 12s

Public lecture from Stanford mathematics professor Tadashi Tokieda, using magic tricks and origami, to explain shapes and numbers. Very approachable and entertaining, even for those like me with little grasp of the theory involved.

Executive Presence

Stay Saasy | 30th May 2023

How to project a general air of authority. Dress the part, whatever the part may be; don't ever be the youngest and the shabbiest person in the room. Stay terse; don't talk for more than 30 seconds at a time. Admit ignorance once in a while; this makes your claims to knowledge more credible. And never freak out: "Losing self-control is one of the most damaging ways that leaders self-sabotage" (1,550 words)

From The Browser Eight Years Ago

Everything Is Yours, Everything Is Not Yours

Clemantine Wamariya & Elizabeth Weil | Matter | 29th June 2015

Beautifully understated memoir, voted best piece of the year by Browser readers in 2015. If the writing is measured, the story is shattering. Clemantine Wamariya escaped the Rwandan genocide at the age of six, criss-crossed Africa for seven years as a refugee, found asylum in America, won a scholarship to Yale, and was reunited with her parents, live on television, by Oprah Winfrey (8,200 words)

Last Of The Flying Wallendas

Marcus Webb | Delayed Gratification | 6th June 2021

Karl Wallenda, founder of the tightrope-walking Flying Wallendas, fell to his death at the age of 73. His son-in-law, his nephew and his sister-in-law all died similarly. The family walks without nets. Great-granddaughter Lijana broke every bone in her face when she fell in 2017. But the show goes on. Lijana is working again, and her son may follow in her precarious footsteps. "It’s just in us” (1,700 words)

An Emotional Guide To Fractional Reserve Banking

Brett Scott | Altered States | 14th March 2023

How fractional-reserve and full-reserve models work, and sometimes don't work, in banks, casinos, theatres, fitness clubs, personal relations, and other walks of life. The essence of the fractional-reserve model is that, at any given moment, you have reserves on hand to cover only a fraction of your commitments. Which is highly efficient in normal times, and catastrophic in abnormal times (4,600 words)

Europe’s Secret Wildlife Movement

Isobel Cockerell | Coda Story | 27th June 2023

Secretive networks of enthusiasts are conducting maverick rewilding projects by stealth. "Beaver bombers" have been releasing the animals into the wild since the 1990s, and there are similar efforts around butterflies, pine martens and boars. More "official" rewilding projects may get bogged down by regulation or end up as the playthings of "rich hobbyists", but these activists ignore it all (3,550 words)

What Did The Press Learn?

Tom Scocca & Maria Bustillos | Indignity | 27th June 2023

Conversation about the breaking news coverage of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny. The decline of Twitter made it difficult to get verifiable updates in real time and many pundits were publishing speculation without knowledge but with plenty of fear. "The difficulty of having experts weigh in on the news, especially on instant deadline, is that news is fundamentally inimical to expertise" (2,767 words)

The Most Irrational Number

Jordan Ellenberg | Slate | 8th June 2021

The number π, defined as the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle, approximates to 3.142, but defies exact expression; it is an "irrational" number. The golden ratio is like π, but more elusive still. It approximates to 1.618, and gives intuitive pleasure to the human eye when encountered as a proportion in nature and in art. It seems to be the key to something. But what? (2,100 words)

Could You Survive The Black Death?

Cody Cassidy | Smithsonian | 13th June 2023

How to deal with the worst that History can throw at you. If you are in London during the Black Death of 1348-50, stay home and wash often. If you are in Rome in 410 AD, escape to the West when the Visigoths arrive from the North. But should you be in Constantinople in 1453, your goose is cooked. Even with the wisdom of hindsight, there is no dodging the Ottoman onslaught (2,070 words)