Why Britain stopped building homes
For twenty years after the war Britain built houses at a rate it has never come close to since. The reasons it stopped are specific, and mostly deliberate.
Deep dives into ideas, systems and subjects worth understanding.
An independent project explaining subjects properly — in articles, films, conversations and series that connect to one another.
Featured
How jungle assembled itself
A genre built in a few years out of a borrowed drum break, cheap samplers, sound system culture and a licensing crackdown. None of it was planned.
Electronic Music · Part 1
The land question
A conversation about the oldest argument in British politics: what happens to the value of a field when someone is allowed to build on it.
Housing Britain · Part 2
How a message crosses the internet
There is no route planned in advance and no single machine in charge. A packet is passed from stranger to stranger until it arrives, or does not.
How Computers Work · Part 6
What a logic gate actually is
Every explanation of computing hurries past the gate. It is worth stopping, because almost everything above it is the same trick repeated.
How Computers Work · Part 2
Breakbeat hardcore and the ardkore years
For about three years British dance music was faster, sillier and more inventive than anyone involved could sustain. Almost everything that followed came out of it.
Electronic Music · Part 2
What utilitarianism asks of you
A theory usually summarised in six words, which turns out to be far stranger and more demanding than the summary suggests.
Series
Curated collections. Each one is worked through in an order, but no piece depends on having read the last.
How Computers Work
Building up from electricity to the internet, one layer at a time, without hand-waving.
2 published · 4 planned
Housing Britain
Why building a home in Britain is slow, expensive and contested — and what the system is actually made of.
2 published · 3 planned
Electronic Music
British dance music as a technical and social history: the machines, the records and the rooms.
2 published · 3 planned
Subjects connect
Follow a subject sideways rather than down. Each step below is a tag page holding everything Reference has on it.
Why a house costs what it costs
Start with the shortage and you end up at land value and council finance.
How jungle got its rhythm
A genre assembled from a borrowed drum break, a licensing crackdown and cheap hardware.