Essay
In Praise of Maintenance
We celebrate whoever builds a thing and forget whoever keeps it standing. That hierarchy is costing us more than we think.
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Ideas
Essays and arguments about how we live, and how we might.
Latest in Ideas
Essay
A Brief History of Complaining About Noise
Carts, church bells, barking dogs and leaf blowers. Every generation believes it is the first to be denied its quiet.
Memory
Should a City Be Allowed to Forget?
Archives cost money, and every one of them is a decision about what mattered. A plea for a more honest kind of forgetting.
Essay
Leisure Is Not a Reward
We talk about time off as something earned. The older idea was that it is what work is for.
Language
Against the ‘Untranslatable Word’
The listicles promise a single foreign word for a feeling you can’t name. The truth about translation is more interesting.
Reading
The Case for Footnotes
Notes are where a writer shows their working, argues with themselves and admits doubt. We should stop hiding them at the bottom of the page.
Work
What We Owe the Night Shift
A sixth of workers are awake while the rest of us sleep. Our cities, laws and manners still assume they don’t exist.