 | | | Hello discoverers!And welcome to the 400th issue of Dense Discovery, and the 579th weekly issue of this newsletter overall. Confused? Well, DD started life under a different name. On 29 January 2015 I sent out the first-ever issue of this publication, then called ‘The Modern Desk’. I managed to dig up the web version of that original issue. It went out to a grand total of 460 subscribers. Since then, I’ve sent an issue out every single week for 579 weeks, bar my usual two-week break over Christmas and New Year. Time for a quick inventory. Under the Dense Discovery banner alone, I’ve shared 1265 items in the Media section and 1595 in Tools, with many thousand more across the other categories. That’s a lot of tabs I’ve opened on your behalf. The audience has hovered around 37,000 readers for a couple of years now – mostly because I’m ruthless about deleting anyone who’s gone quiet. Two thirds of them open this newsletter every week. I sometimes like to picture this number as a crowd at a gig: tens of thousands of people showing up every week. Not bad for someone who mostly just shares his opinions on links. And I got to this subscriber number without any yucky growth-hackery. I’m not out here networking DD into every conversation, and I don’t cook the numbers to flatter people with dubious money. I believe the industry term for this is organic growth. DD is, if nothing else, proof that persistence can pass for a business model: showing up and doing the work without chasing whatever’s hyped that month, without fancy tech stacks, without aiming for a quick buck. That seems like an unfashionable way to make a living online these days, and I have to admit, I’m a little proud of it. Some weeks, sending an email into the void with barely a ripple back can feel a bit pointless. I often open my ‘confidence boost’ email folder, where I archive the most heartfelt, warm responses I received from readers over the years. There are (*checks folder*) 206 of them now. Put that on your KPI dashboard! One that recently stuck with me: a reader who said that she’d been forwarding DD issues and essays to her conservative parents for a couple of years – nothing preachy, just stories she thought they’d find interesting. She said they’ve since done “almost a 180 in the way they look at the world”, including how they relate to her and, eventually, how they’d vote. I’m not naïve enough to think a newsletter changes anyone’s politics. But the right story, landed at the right moment, from the right person, can still reach people in a way arguing never does. You’ll be relieved to hear there’s no roadmap to ‘10x’ this. For the foreseeable future DD will remain nothing more than a humble email, sent because I still enjoy sending it, to people who – somewhat improbably, 579 issues in – still want to read it. For now, that’s still the whole strategy: find good stuff, put it into an email, hit send, repeat. And now to this week’s discoveries. – Kai | | Hello there, and welcome to the Schist issue! This is Dense Discovery, your weekly dose of unreasonably selective links from an utterly discombobulated web. Writing to you and 36,258 others is Kai Brach based in Narrm. In the previous issue, this link got most of the clicks. Got thoughts on this issue? Simply hit reply – I read every email. Happy discovering! |
| | | Sponsor | A draw‑along workshop to map your organisation’s maturity in 9 key areas. When something feels ‘off’ in your growth – leads stalling, good people leaving, website underperforming – it’s tempting to grab the nearest painkiller: a new headline, a new campaign, a new employer brand. This workshop is not another painkiller. Credible by Design is a live, draw-along version of our Culture & Website Diagnostic for expert-led brands. In about 50 minutes, you’ll map your organisation’s maturity across nine key areas, and see exactly where your culture and website need treatment first. Built by two fellow DD readers with a big heart for intellectual nuance and technical detail. Secure your free spot. |
| | | Tools | A fascinating (cross-platform) design tool for creating intricate vector patterns, gradients and generative artwork without needing to write code. Its node-based, non-destructive workflow makes it surprisingly easy to experiment with repetitions, randomisation and data-driven graphics, then export everything as editable SVG. Friends of DD enjoy a 20% discount. Become a Friend to access specials like this. |
| Universal Mac music player |
Liqoria for macOS pulls Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube and whatever is playing in your web browser into a single native player. You can control music via various interfaces: a menu bar widget, dock player, a Dynamic Island-style floating window or a desktop widget. |
| Quarkdown starts as plain Markdown and lets you layer on fine typographic control: precise page layout, footnotes, cross-references, maths and consistent styling across a whole document, along with function-like scripting and reusable templates. It’s free, open source, and depending on one line of setup, the same lightweight syntax can turn into a paper, a slide deck or a company wiki. |
| Music-centric communities |
Genzi centres around what people are listening to rather than what they’re posting. You join genre or scene-based communities, share a track with a mood attached, and can even find gigs or meetups through it. It’s iOS-only for now, but there is an Android waitlist too. |
| Guest | A question worth askingWhen buying something online, could I get this from a local shop? Even if it costs a bit more and takes a bit longer? Supporting local businesses, whether that’s keeping high streets alive or contributing to your local economy online, is a small way to rebel against late capitalism. A book worth readingSilvio Lorusso’s What Design Can’t Do challenges the simplistic notion that ‘design can save the world’ and provokes designers to find meaning in their work beyond the obvious, whilst being upfront about the limits of their craft. Direct, a little dark and surprisingly fun to read. A word worth knowingGambiarra in Brazilian Portuguese describes an improvised solution, often pulling together random objects to create a hybrid workable solution. In essence it’s about ‘doing what you can with what you have’. It’s about facing what’s broken with resilience and creativity. An activity worth doingCasual birdwatching: noticing and admiring wildlife in everyday moments. Whether from a balcony or on walks, learning more about bird behaviours and taking note of their rhythms connects me to a sense of seasonality and place. A podcast worth listening toI’m not a big podcast person, but I’m a huge fan of radio. I listen to several shows religiously to discover music. I love the storytelling, and hearing from the artists as well as the DJ-led curation. My top two are Coco Maria and Coleen Cosmo Murphy. (Did you know? Friends of DD can respond to and engage with guest contributors like Olivia Dias Bagott in one click.) |
| | | Books |  | Rediscovering nature’s clockArtist and educator Cathy Haynes wants us to devote more attention to the living rhythms of plants, animals and light. In her newest book, she digs into the half-forgotten ways people once tracked the day and seasons: shadows shrinking at noon, flowers that open and close on their own schedule, a phase of darkness once called ‘cockcrow’. A heartfelt invitation to notice the same rhythms still ticking away around us. |
 | The Arctic’s new cold warRiding along with Navy SEALs training for Arctic combat and Coast Guard crews tracking Russian movements, Kenneth Rosen spent three years reporting from the region’s edges to show how melting ice is opening it up to both resource grabs and old-fashioned spycraft. A mix of travelogue and reportage, it describes a disappearing landscape while nations circle it. |
| Socials | I love the cartoons by Stephen Collins. His latest one for Prospect Magazine is about how algorithms serve us more of the same to keep us hooked. A new favourite! There is more/older work on his website. on Instagram |
| | | Media | Read | Algorithmic feeds, social media and generative AI are eroding authentic personal taste, replacing individual preferences with commercialised uniformity and microtrends, according to Rachel Aroesti. Her essay offers a good overview of how hyper-personalisation has created homogenised consumption. Reclaiming ‘true taste’ requires stepping away from screens and cultivating a new kind of contemplation that makes real self-expression possible. |
“In her chapter, the novelist Nicola Dinan writes about feeling like ‘a driverless car’ when it comes to her cultural consumption in today’s landscape. I can’t think of a better analogy. ... By making taste – at least the most passive yet performative version of it – our defining quality, streaming and social media platforms boiled humanity down to data-producing nodes of consumption.” |
| Read | A reminder for all the control freaks and perfectionists: chronic maximising – the endless search for the absolute best choice – leaves us less happy and more prone to regret. Instead of optimising every decision, David Epstein says we should embrace ‘satisficing’, choosing an option that is simply good enough so we can free up our attention for what truly matters. |
“Social media has intensified the problem by functioning as an infinite comparison engine. When you can see a curated highlight reel of everyone else’s career, relationship, home and vacation, the very concept of ‘good enough’ begins to feel like settling.” |
| Read | Dutch cycling advocate Mark Wagenbuur looks back at Utrecht’s seventeen-year transformation. Beautiful proof of how cities change when we move away from car-centric design. By turning streets into spaces where cars are merely guests, the city created room for walking, cafés and trees that actively cool the air and manage heavy rainwater. It’s such a positive example of how streets can become places to linger rather than just pass through. |
“Looking back at footage filmed over seventeen years, another pattern becomes visible. As traffic volumes fell, many intersections no longer required traffic lights. In quieter streets, separate cycle tracks sometimes became unnecessary because the entire street now functions as a cycling street, with the few remaining cars as guests.” |
| Read | This is for the dog owners who’ve felt the exhaustion of trying to fit a smart, high-energy dog into a human-shaped world. Sociologist William Davies’ chaotic boxer, Dusty, sends him down a rabbit hole of behaviourism in pursuit of an answer to a deceptively simple question: how do you make something ‘good’ when it has no concept of morality? So much of dog training is about training ourselves to let go of control and guilt. |
“As any parent of a toddler knows, being morally liable for something that is incapable of moral liability is a fraught and stressful business. It forces one to develop a range of imperfect techniques that are all fundamentally about one thing: control.” |
| Inspiration | The European Central Bank has narrowed its new banknote redesign down to ten proposals. So many wonderful design concepts! (Public voting runs until mid-September, after which jurors pick a final design for further vetting.) |
| In his Vertical Churches series, Richard Silver stitches together 180-degree vertical panoramas of the world’s grandest cathedrals into a single symmetrical frame. Hypnotic! |
| Font of the week: MD Lórien draws on a careful selection of late-17th to mid-18th-century Dutch and Flemish typefaces, softening their ornate, decorative Baroque flourishes into a usable contemporary family. |
| | | Classifieds | Goodreads, but no ads. Letterboxd, but no friends. Add Music too. Podcasts, of course. Articles to boot. No Feeds. No Algorithms. Don’t let others hijack your tastes in life. Curate your own here. Beautiful typefaces that care where they end up. Weekend Type offer discounted licences for projects that are fighting for social justice or striving to build a better future for all, not just a few. Real data, as easy as lorem ipsum. Map any REST API to your layers and save it as a reusable Palette. Paint-by-numbers makes everything look the same – Paint By JSON makes it look real. Revue Collé is a weekly exploration into the world of contemporary collage – the most forward-thinking artists, delivered every Wednesday. Sign up for Collé’s weekly newsletter. |
Classifieds are paid ads that support DD and are seen by 38,000 subscribers each week. Book yours here. |
| Numbers | 1.2 SpaceX has shed $1.2 trillion in market cap since its June high, roughly Tesla’s entire value. The stock has nearly halved since then, down about 50% and falling for 13 of the last 16 sessions. |
10 1 in 10 US Americans now name politics as their top personal safety risk, ten times the 1% global average across 140 countries surveyed, and higher than anywhere else bar Hungary. |
| | | Poll | | | | Mood | Internal conflict escalates. |
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