A weekly collection of links to interesting things curated by Colin Wright.
Beatrix Potter’s Quiet Rebellion
In a 1918 storybook, Beatrix Potter describes an encounter between a humble country mouse named Timmy Willie and his urbane counterpart, Johnny Town-Mouse.
The two meet when Timmy Willie falls asleep in a hamper and is transported to town, the unwitting passenger of a weekly produce delivery. After escaping from an angry cook, displeased to find vermin in her vegetables, he is housed and fed by Johnny Town-Mouse. The pair grow friendly, but as Potter recounts, their tastes prove to be hopelessly incompatible. Disturbed by the commotion of town, Timmy Willie hitches a ride back to the country as soon as he is able. On a later visit to see Timmy Willie, Johnny Town-Mouse declares that the country is “too quiet” and ends his trip early.
Moon
In the vastness of empty space surrounding Earth, the Moon is our closest celestial neighbor. Its face, periodically filled with light and devoured by darkness, has an ever-changing, but dependable presence in our skies.
In this article, we’ll learn about the Moon and its path around our planet, but to experience that journey first-hand, we have to enter the cosmos itself.
How the English State Gave Up on Insisting the New Year Started on 25 March
By the mid 1700s in England there was a curious juxtaposition between the lore of New Year’s Day and the law of New Year’s Day.
The legal system, the government, the established church, and business: all insisted that the year began on 25 March – Lady Day.
That would be the date on which, say, 1748 would become 1749.
This sort-of-made-sense for many reasons.
It would make the month beginning with ‘Sept’ the seventh month, and the month beginning with ‘Oct’ the eighth month, and so on.
It also meant that years began in spring, rather than in midwinter (bleak or otherwise).
India Takes Out Giant Nationwide Subscription to 13,000 Journals
India was the third largest producer of research papers globally last year—yet thousands of Indian students and researchers cannot read many of them because their institutions can’t afford subscriptions to the journals in which many appear. But that is about to change: Last week, the Indian government announced a giant deal with multiple publishers that will allow an estimated 18 million students, faculty, and researchers free access to nearly 13,000 journals, including some top-tier ones, through a single portal.
My Quest to Make Shopping Fun Again
Disenchanted by the distancing effect of online shopping, Voto—a veteran of Altuzarra, Brock Collection, and Gabriela Hearst—launched her atelier concept, One/Of, in 2020. Voto and her team release two capsule collections a year, but she views them more as suggestions than dictates: Clients can purchase pieces made to measure, “demi-bespoke” (with changes to an existing design), or fully bespoke, all created with deadstock fabrics produced by mills for other brands that would otherwise languish in a storeroom.
How Surveillance Became a Love Language
Nine months after the product was announced, Lotus’s president publicly acknowledged the “volume and tenor of the concerns raised” as well as the insurmountable expense of removing the over thirty thousand people who demanded to be taken out of the database. Lotus MarketPlace was canceled before it even launched. Today, this triumph of privacy advocates reads like a false dawn. In the decades since, we have indeed, as the Georgetown professor warned, completely lost “control of how, and by whom, personal information is used.”
The ‘Perfect’ Predator
Geneva wanted Coffey to be fired and arrested. But who, she wondered, would she report him to? He had the top job at the police department. He was cozy with the city’s mayor. So Geneva called and texted the sheriff of Ellis County, where Maypearl is located.
Surely, Geneva thought, the sheriff would take action against a police chief sending sexual messages to a child.
But Sheriff Johnny Brown told her that he couldn’t help.