Worse Inside

It's Worse Than You Think

Oliver Burkeman | The Imperfectionist | 23rd June 2022

Bracing life advice. Accept that many of the standards to which we hold ourselves are completely impossible to reach, and you will be free to attempt hard things without impediment. "We can't ever get free from the limited and vulnerable and uncertain situation in which we find ourselves. But when you grasp that you'll never get free from it, that's when you're finally free in it" (965 words)

Inside The Oxford English Dictionary

Pippa Bailey | New Statesman | 22nd June 2022

Encounter with the lexicographers who have been compiling the third edition of the OED since 1993. It was meant to be finished by 2005. They are barely half way. They labour over entries for years, but the final version is unbylined, which most prefer. As early editor James Murray put it: "I am a nobody. Treat me as a solar myth, or an echo, or an irrational quantity, or ignore me altogether" (5,146 words)