The Epstein Class
Lindsay Beyerstein | Dissent | 26th March 2026 | U
Jeffrey Epstein was incredibly proficient at manipulating wealth and wealthy people to commit horrifying crimes. And the wealthy have just become wealthier, and more vulnerable to such a predator, since his death. "The real scandal of the Epstein saga is not that a billionaire cabal runs the world. It’s that there is a billionaire class. The moral of the Epstein files is that nobody should be that rich" (2,800 words)
My Prodigal Brainchild
Neal Stephenson | Graphomane | 23rd March 2026 | U
Stephenson coined the term "Metaverse" in a 1992 novel. Here, he reflects on the demise of Facebook's virtual reality project of the same name. Its fatal flaw was the lack of plot. Successful virtual spaces — like Fortnite and Roblox — put users within the story-based framework of a game. There is no attraction to a place filled with "randos milling around waiting for something to happen" (2,000 words)
A Gathering of Lights
Charles P. Pierce | Stacks Reader | 25th March 2026 | U
First published in The National Sports Daily in 1991, this is a wonderfully lyrical piece of writing about the American marathon runner Dick Beardsley, who at the age of 33 had a terrible accident on his farm in Minnesota. A loose bootlace snagged and dragged his leg into a tractor's mechanism. His athletic career over, he had no savings or insurance. The farming and running communities saved him (3,600 words)
London's Divide Was Called Character
Lauren Leek | 16th March 2026 | U
Visible inequality in London is described euphemistically. A neighbourhood has "character", it is "up and coming", or about to be regenerated. This data scientist built a model to make explicit this vague sense of a line between the city's have and have-not areas. She found that the geographical split went all the way back to the 1600s, when rich people wanted to live west of the City's smoke (2,000 words)
from The Browser eleven years ago:
India’s Great Wall
Kai Friese | n+1 | 24th March 2015 | U
India fortifies its border with Bangladesh to keep out Muslim migrants, in a crude show of nationalism with cartographic complications. There are 106 pockets of Indian territory inside Bangladesh and 92 the other way around. Some are counter enclaves: an island of Bangladesh surrounded by India surrounded by Bangladesh, or vice versa, a consequence of local princes settling their gambling debts with land (5,500 words)
Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.
Podcast: Did Status Signalling Ruin Architecture? | Works In Progress Podcast. Why aren't there any surviving ugly buildings from before 1930? This wide-ranging discussion digs into the "survivorship bias" problem in the built environment (87m 47s)
Video: Laufey — Both Sides Now | YouTube | BBC Music | 5m 36s
The Icelandic pop star shows off her classical training with this emotional cover of the Joni Mitchell classic, backed by a full orchestra.
Afterthought:
"Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine"
―Alan Turing