'I Am Not Who You Think I Am'
Shaun Walker | Guardian | 10th April 2025 | U
Strange-but-true Cold War thriller. At the age of 16, Peter Herrmann's father Rudi told him that his entire life was a lie. Both his parents were a type of covert KGB agent known as an "illegal". Their life as a "model Canadian family" had been painstakingly constructed so that they could eventually penetrate US government circles. When that didn't work, Rudi recruited his teenage son to take up the mission (6,200 words)
The Ghost Bird’s Last Song
Joeri Bruyninckx | MIT Press Reader | 10th April 2025 | U
In 1935, seventy years after the ivory-billed woodpecker was presumed extinct, ornithologists managed to record one in the swamps of Louisiana. Experts have been fighting about it ever since. At the time, the rediscovery was hailed as offering a "second chance" for American conservation. But since then the recordings have been disputed as too faint to be definitive. Is this bird dead or alive? (2,200 words)
Another Country
Aurelien | Trying To Understand The World | 9th April 2025 | U
On the problem of feelings vs facts in political discussion, especially when it comes to matters of national loyalty and patriotism. "I probably wasted years of my life under the delusion that people could be convinced by rational argument. Having changed my opinions a number of times in my life on the basis of new information or better arguments, I naively supposed that everybody did the same" (5,500 words)
Slime Or Be Slimed!
Elena Saavedra Buckley | i-D | 4th April 2025 | U
In 2017, a great way to make your fortune on the internet was to film yourself making "slime", a non-Newtonian fluid popular as a toy that can be created and customised at home. A whole class of influencer arose to do this, many of them children. Then the bubble burst. Where did the slime go? At least some of it went to the "Sloomoo Institute", a chain of pseudo-museums dedicated to this phenomenon (2,100 words)
from The Browser ten years ago:
When An Astronaut Dies In Space
Daniel Oberhaus | Slate | 9th April 2015 | U
Ethics in space. If an astronaut suffers a life-threatening injury on a mission to Mars, does the spacecraft turn around, ending a mission that cost billions of dollars? Worse, how do you deal with a corpse, given that international law forbids dumping stuff in space? Do you "strap the body to the craft and call it a day"? Or do you bury the body on Mars and contaminate the biology of the planet forever? (1,900 words)
Puzzle: Nomido is the Browser's daily word game. Play today's before it's gone!
Podcast: The Lost Food of Soho | Vittles. A touching memorial for the early 2000s Soho restaurants, large and small, fancy and simple, that did not survive gentrification and redevelopment (55m 27s)
Video: A "Tree Bark" Flavored Bowl Of Ice Cream | YouTube | JustinInTheTrees | 14m 04s
A woodworker asks a question: "Have you ever looked at some tree bark and wondered 'I wonder what this would taste like as ice cream?'" In answer, he steeps hickory bark and declares the resulting dessert delicious, with a flavour akin to smoky maple syrup.
Afterthought:
"The wise man thinks once before he speaks twice"
―Robert Benchley