Sublime Capability
Spencer Wright | Scope Of Work | 9th March 2026 | U
On unfinished projects. “Last weekend I picked up a beat-up spindle-back loveseat, which needs new seat webbing. I’ve got an old bike that needs to be either rebuilt or disassembled and hung on the wall, and Baltic Birch scraps that should be turned into shelves. Thought has been put into these projects; they occupy space in my life. They all ache a little bit, sitting there unfinished. Maybe the ache feels good” (1,600 words)
The First Airplane Fatality
Kaushik Patowary | Amusing Planet | 5th March 2026 | U
When Orville Wright tested the Wright Flyer in 1908, he had with him Thomas Selfridge, a young US military officer who had had his own successes with flying. On its fourth lap, one of the Flyer’s two wooden propellers broke and sent it into a nose dive. Orville Wright was badly injured but lived. The crash fractured Selfridge’s skull, making him the first fatality in the history of powered aviation (1,000 words)
No War Is Illegal
Lorenzo Warby | Lorenzo From Oz | 5th March 2026 | U
Is the attack on Iran, or any war, illegal? Laws come with remedies — consequences for breaking the law. (Public) international law only makes declarative statements, which are not enough to make it law. A war may be unconstitutional, immoral or a strategic failure, but it cannot be illegal. “A much more useful question is: does the war disrupt an existing order or does it seek to enforce it?” (2,100 words)
Bad Lunch
Mishele Maron | Sun Magazine | 31st December 2026 | U
Cooking on a yacht for the rich is hard. Even the best clients love to point out that they paid a lot of money for the experience. The worst actively monitor the workers, leaving dots of lipstick on windows to check how often they were cleaned. One ordered two dozen different desserts for the same meal. No request was too unreasonable: every private chef knows they are "only as good as my last dish" (4,500 words)
from The Browser nine years ago:
How The Soviet Union Disappeared
Branko Milanovic | Global Inequality | 19th February 2017 | U
Gorbachev belonged to the first generation brought up entirely on Marxist dogmas; he believed that socialism was the inevitable future of mankind; so he underestimated the consequences of introducing elements of democracy into the Soviet system. He had no understanding of democracy's disruptive power, nor of how weak and arbitrary the Soviet State would appear once it ceased to rely on terror (1,100 words)
Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.
Ten Thoughts On Government Data
Santi Ruiz | Statecraft | 5th March 2026 | U
…And its idiosyncrasies. Government data systems were built for administration, not analysis. Datasets often have a small number of civil servants using them; inaccuracies can go unnoticed for a long time. Lots of data are based on representative samples, which entails assumptions that can easily invalidate findings if one forgets to include them. “There’s rarely a single person who can explain the whole thing” (2,000 words)
from The Browser ten years ago:
The Entrepreneurial Kafka
Reiner Stach | Paris Review | 8th March 2016 | U
In 1911 Franz Kafka proposed a European travel guide series, “On The Cheap”, written for the new era of mass tourism. Its slogan would be: “The same pleasure for less money”. According to Max Brod, the project failed because “we didn’t want to disclose our precious secret [to publishers] without an enormous advance.” Kafka also invented an answering machine in 1913, but the idea had already been patented (1,400 words)
Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.
Podcast: A Scandal in Königsberg | Bookstack. About two 19C Prussian clerics and their alleged involvement in a sex cult (26m 42s)
Video: The Automata Maker | YouTube | We Are Makers | 5m 55s
Heartwarming profile of a Scotsman who makes automata.
Afterthought:
“I have wasted a lot of time living”
— Michael Oakeshott
