The Browser - Soup, Selection, Xi, Planes, Pork

New on our letters page today, a correspondence with Mary Ann Sieghart, this year's Chair of Judges for the Women’s Prize For Fiction, about female novelists.

SoupGate

James Ozden | Understanding Social Change | 22nd October 2022 | U

If one sees climate change as a clear and present danger to human flourishing, should one support climate activists who throw soup at (glass-protected) Van Gogh paintings? Probably yes. Average sympathy for a radical protest will be much lower than average sympathy for a moderate protest; but a radical protest will attract many times more eyeballs, and thus a greater aggregate of sympathy (1,400 words)

Dandelions And Elephants

Flux Collective | Lens Of The Week | 6th October 2022 | U

Short and suggestive note on r/K selection theory, which locates all evolutionary strategy on a continuum between two poles: r-selection and K-selection. An r-selection strategy focuses on rapid replication: make copies of yourself as quickly as possible and have them mutate freely across generations. K-selection focuses on quality over quantity, fitting a population already at carrying capacity (375 words)

Back To Authoritarianism

Ian Johnson | NYRB/ChinaFile | 20th September 2022 | U

America's pre-eminent Chinawatcher on the rise of Xi Jinping: "To understand Xi’s career, it’s worth remembering how deceptive China’s apparent calm a decade ago was. At the time, a series of scandals seemed little more than salacious gossip. But in hindsight, it’s clear that they were the death throes of a system meant to keep China from descending once again into authoritarian rule" (3,600 words)

The Taliban Air Force, One Year On

Lukas Müller et al | Oryx | 4th November 2022 | U

Just before America pulled out of Afghanistan, most Afghan Air Force pilots took off with their planes and mechanics to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. A hundred American soldiers were deputed, as their final act, to wreck every military plane left on the ground in Afghanistan. Even so, the Taliban inherited 40 airworthy planes and 40 clunkers. How have they been doing? Pretty well (3,500 words)

from The Browser 11 years ago

A Conspiracy Of Hogs

Willy Staley | The Awl | 8th November 2011 | U

Is the McRib a "loss-leader", offered by McDonald's for seemingly arbitrary limited periods solely to bring in curious new customers who will then buy high-margin drinks and fries like anybody else? Or does McDonald's put McRibs on the menu when pork prices are low enough to make McRibs profitable in their own right? And is the McRib, all sauce and slurry, actually any good? (3,040 words)

Audio:  Wronging The Wrights | Smithsonian Sidedoor. It took pride, deceit and a giant catapult to set off a feud between the Wright brothers and the Smithsonian —a feud which almost cost the Smithsonian custody of the history-making airplane that was flown by Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk in 1903 and is now a centerpiece of the National Air And Space Museum collection in Washington, DC (35m 49s)

Video: Meet German Music | DW | YouTube | 7m 20s

From Schlager to the Scorpions, from Männer to Deutschrap. A guide to German popular music of the past 50 years compiled by Rachel Stewart for Deutsche Welle.

Afterthought:
"One must be poor to know the luxury of giving"
— George Eliot

Shortcode Glossary:
U = Ungated, free. M = Metered paywall. B = Metered paywall can be bypassed using private/incognito browsing. Full details of our shortcodes here.

This post is only for paying subscribers of The Browser, but please do forward it to any friends who deserve a treat today, especially if you think they might be interested in becoming Browser subscribers in the future.

Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Editor-At-Large; Dan Feyer, Crossword Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Sylvia Bishop, Assistant Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director

Editorial comments and letters to the editor: editor@thebrowser.com‌‌Technical issues and support requests: support@thebrowser.com‌‌Or write at any time to the publisher: uri@thebrowser.com

Elsewhere on The Browser, and of possible interest to Browser subscribers: Letters To The Editor, where you will find constructive comment from fellow-subscribers; The Reader, our daily commonplace book of clippings and quotations; Notes, our occasional blog. You can always Give The Browser, surely the finest possible gift for discerning friends and family.