Should you let the trolley race ahead and kill five people? Or should you switch the points and have the trolley hit somebody else? The philosophers cannot agree, and the passengers on the trolley are getting perplexed. "It’s not just that we ran over the guy; but on the return trip, and every subsequent trip on that trolley, there is always a slightly different combination of people tied to the tracks" (680 words)
The diaries of Brigitte Reimann reveal the experience of working and loving in the GDR; they also document her gradual disillusionment with the cause of state socialism. Above all, they are worth exploring as a meditation on objectivity. Reimann fretted that her journals had no "documentary value" because fact co-existed with her "endless love stories". Her doubts kept her honest (3,161 words)
If half-truths are lies, we confess, That this small half-The-Browser (Nay! Less!) Must be suspect at best So sign up for the rest For the Truth - or at least, our best guess.
On Sundays, Browser readers receive a special edition with puzzles, poems, books, charts, music and more – here's a little taste of this week's edition.
The book of my enemy has been remaindered And I am pleased. In vast quantities it has been remaindered Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized And sits in piles in a police warehouse, My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs. Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles One passes down reflecting on life's vanities, Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book — For behold, here is that book Among these ranks and banks of duds, These ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns Of complete stiffs.
Recommended by Caroline Crampton In The Guardian "One of the most refreshing things about Denk’s memoir is his relaxed approach to the music itself. There is no unnecessary complexity or pretension. He doesn’t shy away from using musical terminology, but deploys little hand-drawn diagrams and extracts from scores to make it absolutely clear what he is describing. The result is a light, informative tone that will be readable for both diehard classical music fans and complete newcomers alike. It’s a rare feat"
The Browser Sunday edition is a smorgasbord of delights. If you enjoyed this taster, subscribe for puzzles, crosswords, art, charts, articles and more each Sunday - plus five articles daily, in your inbox:
Reading and evaluating academic journals demands a "fundamentally predictive" approach. You need enough prior understanding of the given field to be constantly asking yourself, “What do I predict I will read next?” The best parts of the paper will be the parts that you didn't predict, that take you by surprise. One way to develop such skills is by reading alongside others in a journal club (3,000 words)
When a crisis looms, first choose your group. The bigger the crisis, the less likely you are to survive it alone. Find people that you want to be with, then agree who does what. "I used to think I was not much good in a crisis, but over the years, I have realized there is no such thing as being individually good or bad in a crisis. Humans either deal with crises in effective groups, or not at all" (1,800 words)
The moral of both today's readings Is "Join in with groups". If you need things To read, join our club We'll cut out the hubbub With our picks of "delight-guaranteed" things.
Passengerhood provides a "privileged perspective" on the passage of time. On a journey, we experience the finitude of what otherwise can seem infinite: time's span. And "each of us confronts the flux of time in a unique, idiosyncratic way", with our perception of time passing varying with mood and situation. Something to think about the next time you stare out of a train window (1,724 words)
Essay about transplanting oneself, told via the habits of rainbow trout. These fish migrate from fresh water to the sea and back again to spawn, although confusingly for scientists only some trout choose to make this risky trip. Humans, too, shy away from such a dislocation: "You have to be quite brave or desperate (or both) to strip yourself bare and offer yourself to the whims of a distant land" (4,326 words)
From time (passage of) to trout (rainbow) There's so much to tickle the brain! So If you're tickled pink By this taster, just think Of the full Browser joy! Who could say no?
Einstein earns more dead than he ever did alive, making an average of $12.5m a year in image licensing fees. Although image conscious, during his lifetime the scientist himself resisted all attempts to "commercialise his identity". Even the law that allows this postmortem profiteering is contentious. Can an heir inherit rights that did not yet exist during the originator's lifetime? (6,012 words)
The history of Indian biscuits, and also India itself, told through five crunchy vignettes. Biscuits touch everything: industry, geopolitics, agriculture and taste. From Parle-G, which was made possible by the US's post independence wheat exports, to free market "premium biscuits" like Hide & Seek from the 2000s, this is an excellent way to comprehend India's evolution in the 20C (2,985 words)
If you liked these biscuits, then chums, Start picking up more than the crumbs! We know you're deserving The full Browser serving To fill all your curious tums...
Jeff Nilsson | Saturday Evening Post | 10th May 2022
Tips from 1922 for starting a Prohibition era liquor distribution business. The risks were great but the potential profits were enormous, especially during the days of "the medicinal whiskey racket". Other options included driving or sailing the booze down from Canada, while dodging hijackers. Two years in, customers forgot what real whiskey tasted like so it could be freely watered down (1,239 words)
William Blake, for all his heretical beliefs and casual chats with angels, was good company, especially towards the end of his life. Here we see the artist in his late sixties through the eyes of a new acquaintance. "He was dressed in old-fashioned, threadbare clothes and his gray trousers were shiny at the front through wear. His large, strong eyes didn’t seem to fit with his soft, round face" (1,598 words)
From whiskey bootlegger to poet Each corner of life, let us know it! If you liked this seed Of the Browser, take heed! Click the button below now to grow it:
The Leaning Tower Of Pisa sank lopsidedly soon after construction began in the late 12th century. Despite its builders' best efforts it was still leaning when work ended 200 years later. On the verge of collapse, it was stabilised for the nth time 20 years ago. So why not just straighten it? Perhaps because it is "a kind of freak show" among buildings. Its deformity excites our baser instincts (2,200 words)
World's gloomiest philosopher explains how to pwn trolls and win Twitter. Prepare to feel a sense of horrified recognition that Schopenhauer could list all relevant tropes in his Art Of Controversy a century before social media was even imagined. "Ignore your opponent's proposition, which was intended to refer to a particular thing. Understand it in some quite different sense and then refute it" (1,695 words)
The internet's full of loud shouting With scant room for learning or doubting. We send, on this basis, A daily oasis: Five pieces for quiet-think-about-ing
On Sundays, Browser readers receive a special edition with puzzles, poems, books, charts, music and more – here's a little taste of this week's edition.
Puzzle Of The Week
The average of 16 different positive integers is 16. What is the greatest possible value that any of these integers could have?
LARPer and author A.J. Jacobs talks about his latest book, The Puzzler, to The Browser's Uri Bram; with digressions touching on Oedipus, dogs, mazes, noodles, W.B. Yeats, CBT, ketchup, determinism, and the meaning of life.
On the riddle of the Sphinx:
When Oedipus answered the riddle correctly, the Sphinx was so distraught that she threw herself over a cliff. Which seems like one of the great over-reactions in puzzle history; she needed some cognitive behavioural therapy.
On staying calm:
I’ll never feel comfortable with my impending demise, but I have to accept that feeling. I’m not happy with the way the laws of the universe were set up, but I can’t control them. One strategy I find helpful is to contemplate what the world looks like long after I’m gone. That takes the pressure off: it’s not all about me.
On why people love puzzles:
I don’t think you need a randomised control trial to show that curiosity is one of the great emotions: it’s how we got the wheel, fire, and the mRNA vaccine, etc. (You could argue that Gain of Function research is the bad side of curiosity). Puzzles encourage that, no matter how specific they are.
Puzzle: The average of 16 different positive integers is 16. What is the greatest possible value that any of these integers could have? Solution: 136. In order to make one number as large as possible, the other fifteen numbers should be as small as possible. Letting x be the largest number, we have: (1 + 2 + 3 + ··· + 15 + x) ÷ 16 = 16 so (120 + x) ÷ 16 = 16 so 120 + x = 256 and hence x = 136
The Browser Sunday edition is a smorgasbord of delights. If you enjoyed this taster, subscribe for puzzles, crosswords, art, charts, articles and more each Sunday - plus five articles daily, in your inbox:
Our friends at Recomendo send a weekly newsletter with 6 brief personal recommendations of all kinds of cool stuff – it's like the Browser but for everything. Here's a sample of last week's edition; if you like what you read, subscribe to Recomendo to get the goodness every week!
Find out if you’re close to burnout
IT Burnout Index
is a 10-question survey that will tell you how close you are to
burnout, and what your risk level is for Exhaustion, Self Inefficacy,
Cynicism and Depersonalization. It only takes 2 minutes to get the
results and you can then choose to check out Yerbo’s personalized
insights and exercises. It’s anonymous, and doesn’t require an email. —
CD
Cheap healthy recipes
Budge Bytes
is a recipe website of delicious meals that cost very little to make,
other than your time. The recipes use fresh ingredients and are
accompanied by tantalizing photos. Try the Comeback Sauce for roasted vegetables. — MF
Easy plant replication
Most
plants can be propagated by pinching off a bit and setting the piece in
soil to grow into a whole new plant. You can increase the likelihood of
success by dusting the pinched piece with plant hormone to speed root
growth, such as Bontone II Rooting Powder. We have generally propagated our entire garden by pinching. We can increase success even more using the Hormex set of 3 different strengths of the hormone based on how woody the plant is. — KK
Silicone earplugs
Mack’s moldable silicone earplugs
are superior to squishy foam earplugs because they completely seal the
opening to your ear. They do a fantastic job of blocking out sound.
These silly-putty-like plugs have saved my sleep many times when staying
in noisy hotels and Airbnbs. — MF
Get oldest Google search results first
Oldestsearch.com
reverse-orders all Google search results so that you see the oldest
webpages first. This is refreshing to use, because I so often feel like
all the top results are repetitive. — CD
Cool Tools Show and Tell
Every
week for 6 years we’ve recorded a podcast featuring the cool tools of a
remarkable person. Earlier this year we paused the podcast, but we have
now relaunched it as a video-cast in the same format. Every Friday I
interview a remarkable person and ask them on screen to show and tell 4
of their favorite tools. This program, called the Cool Tools Show and
Tell, streams on our YouTube channel. And the audio channel of each session will resume streaming on the old Cool Tools Podcast subscription
for those who only want to listen. I really look forward to each
session because I am always surprised by what interesting cool tools
people will recommend. — KK
Readers in London are warmly invited to join us on tomorrow's walking tour through Sir Christopher Wren's Churches in the footsteps of The Great Fire of London – 10.30am on Saturday, book here to join us.
Action-packed review of Straits, Felipe Fernández-Armesto's new biography of Ferdinand Magellan, the 16C Portuguese-born adventurer who sought a westward route to the Spice Islands, discovered the Straits of Magellan, lost 90% of his crew to mutiny and disease, gave the Pacific Ocean its name, came to believe that he had divine powers, and died in battle trying to conquer the Philippines (1,540 words)
When first recorded in 1837, The Story Of The Three Bears told how a "naughty old woman" broke into the house of some innocent bears, stole their food, and vandalised their goods. How did we get from there to our modern version in which the bears are the baddies and the trespasser is a nice girl called Goldilocks? What is the story's archetypal appeal? Why is there three of everything? (2,800 words)
In stories, things often come thrice But we think some extra is nice The Browser, each day, Sends five good things your way Plus a podcast and vid. Try a slice!
Inside a workshop where a company interested in both entertainment and engineering is building the most human-like androids ever seen. The results are eerie. "It scrunches its cheeks, raises its eyebrows, and then grimaces and blinks. It’s like watching a newborn baby cycle through facial expressions. There’s a sense that the hardware hasn’t yet been fully connected to the software" (3,138 words)
Come for the horrifying opener about what might be lurking in your cod fillet, stay for the argument that it is worth conserving parasite populations to keep vital ecosystems functioning. It is, understandably, a hard sell for funding bodies, since some of the parasites in need of conservation merit this kind of description: "The adult worms burst out of their hosts to partake in a parasitic orgy" (3,783 words)
A parasite's* living, but dull A human has more in its skull Keep yourskull upscale With the full Browser mail: Five picks over which you can mull
*The Browser will leave readers to decide for themselves about the livingness and/or dullness of android minds. It's a bit much to tackle in a limerick.
