Hello. Here is this week’s list. To follow immediately is #16, which is a science special. Enjoy!

They know more about their clients than the clients’ own wives. They are loyal in the face of appalling behaviour. They are the brains behind the most ingenious tax avoidance schemes. And there are more of them than ever

  • The Detectives Who Never Forget a Face- Computers might be good at spotting faces, but that’s only when the picture is taken in good lighting, and at the right angle. Humans do this far far better in the sketchy regimes of finding criminals. This team of London detectives, according to this article, might change modern policing forever. Very well written piece.

  • The Girl Who Would Live Forever - Cryogenics is something that’s going to be a major part of our life in the future. Read about a two year-old with a tumour in her head whose brain is now preserved for when we can actually fix these things about the human body.

  • Far Away From Here - Beautiful beautiful essay by novelist Teju Cole about his six months in Switzerland on a writing fellowship. He talks mostly about photography, entertains his whims about which camera to use, and talks about how the Alps and the rest of the Swiss landscape stands for so much. Also, he introduces a beautiful word fernweh, which is the opposite of nostalgia.

I became less interested in populating my images and more interested in traces of the human without human presence. I used deep shadows less frequently than I had in the past. I pretty much ceased nocturnal shooting. As the sequence began to take shape, I got a better sense of what belonged and what didn’t. I was studying photographs constantly, but I also immersed myself in the rhythms of certain painters and collagists: Chardin, Matisse, Rauschenberg, Mehretu, Mutu. I let go of some “good” photos, the way you strike out pretty sentences from a draft, and I learned how a number of tightly argued photos should be followed by one or two that are simpler and more ventilated. Authorship, after all, is not only what is created but also what is selected.

A substance that could “integrate shirkers, malingerers, defeatists and whiners” into the labour market might even be sanctioned.

Performing Hamilton through two hours and 45 minutes, when you’re in it, was the most relaxing part of the day. Because I didn’t have unanswered e-mails, or family stuff I wasn’t doing. I was just supposed to be Hamilton, and I know the script on that one. Playing Hamilton is like taking the nozzle off your id and letting it fly. It’s walking into the room and going, “I’m the smartest person in this room—and you need to listen to me!”