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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What Will Self-Reliance Mean For China?

Andrew Batson | 9th September 2022

Xi Jinping is talking up a new economic model of "self-reliance" for China, using slogans from the Maoist era. What sense do such signals make, when China has been one of the principal engines and principal beneficiaries of globalisation? What Xi probably has in mind is not to choke off China's foreign trade, but to direct trade more forcefully in the service of China's foreign policy (998 words)

What You Need To Build A Greek Temple

Edmund Stewart | Antigone | 9th September 2022

In brief: Quite a lot. An architect, obviously, though architects were relatively cheap in ancient Greece; ships to bring in the marble; a hundred slaves for heavy lifting; a dozen carpenters; six craftsmen per column to dress the facade; sculptors and painters for the ornamentation; a door-maker; and do be sure to order your floor-tiles well ahead of time, they may take two years to arrive (1,800 words)

When Sweden Switched To Driving On The Right

Adam Raphael | Guardian | 7th September 2022

At 5am on 4th September 1967, after "four years of preparations and 40 years of argument", Swedes ceased to drive on the left side of the road and started driving on the right side like the rest of continental Europe. "Typical of the meticulous attention to detail was that even the elk-hunting season had been brought forward by a week, so that hunters would not add to the traffic problem" (875 words)

The Case Of The Legless Duchess

Michael Prodger | The Critic | 1st September 2022

This story has it all: The world's most expensive painting; the model for Holmes's Professor Moriarty; J.P. Morgan (twice); a ransomed prisoner; a "gambler and sometime art dealer named Patrick Francis Sheedy"; a casino in Constantinople; a Murillo stolen from a monastery in Mexico; a chief of police who kept his composure while a tiger ate his arm; and the 11th Duke of Devonshire (980 words)

I Went to Trash School

Clio Chang | Curbed | 29th August 2022

Account of two days spent training with sanitation workers in New York. Interesting throughout. Nobody ever finishes a cup of coffee — those who collect the garbage always know what the "flavour of the month" is. Compacted rubbish spews out "juice". As a union job, this work is "a clear path to a middle-class life" but it is also one of the most dangerous occupations in the US (2,103 words)

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)

The Long Shadow Of Smart Streetlights

Zhile Xie | Failed Architecture | 6th September 2022

Street lighting has been associated with surveillance and control for millennia. Now, the advent of "smart" lighting turns a mere illumination device into a signal hub that monitors and records vast quantities of video and audio in real time without the need for human input. The data can then be sold for profit through partnerships between local government and tech companies (2,438 words)

Time Is On My Side

Eric Kohn | IndieWire | 2nd September 2022

Interview with Werner Herzog as he turns 80. He is phlegmatic about ageing: "It sounds like statistics. I do not really relate it... I’ll do what I do until they carry me out feet first." He doesn't fear death. "We shouldn’t make a big fuss about it. I think that fear basically has to do with our relationship to our own demise. If you have settled that, most fear will probably disappear" (2,727 words)

Identity, Alphabetically

Alfian Sa'at | Sydney Review Of Books | 5th September 2022

Alphabetised autobiography, told from "Adrian" to "Zat", by a writer who grew up as part of the Malay minority in Singapore. His family history is sprinkled with what he calls "Black Magic™" — a weaving together of folklore and anecdote that feels both part of a private, personal lore and an act of "self-orientalism", as if he is "turning totems and talismans into cheap tourist trinkets" (5,418 words)

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Better Than Ayn Rand

Michael Kinsley | Vanity Fair | 3rd September 2017

On Henry George, an economist who was lionised in the late 19C — "the Thomas Piketty or John Kenneth Galbraith of his time" — but has been forgotten, and deserves better. He made the best short defence of free trade: "You wouldn’t fill your harbour with rocks to keep out goods your citizens want to buy, would you? Well, that’s what you’re doing when you slap tariffs on imports" (1,300 words)

The Despotism of Isaias Afewerki

Alex de Waal | Baffler | 2nd September 2022

If you find yourself wondering why there has been war and famine in the general vicinity of Ethiopia for as long as you can remember, a large part of the answer is the man in the headline, Isaias Afewerki, who led Eritrea to a righteous victory in its war of independence from Ethiopia, but has since turned Eritrea into a military dictatorship fixated on the destruction of Ethiopia and Tigray (4,090 words)

Interview: Vitalik Buterin

Noah Smith | Noahpinion | 2nd September 2022

I haven't generally wanted to read or hear about cryptocurrencies for the past decade or so, but I make an exception for Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, who talks sense at a high intellectual level, and who understands the psychology and politics of finance as well as he does the tech. Here is that rare thing, a piece on crypto worth the time of the disinterested general reader (4,900 words)