ReadGlobe · morning brief · archive
Monday 28 September
1 · The text
How do I love thee
The last three sonnets, ending on the one everybody half-remembers and nobody reads whole.
2 min · Elizabeth Barrett Browning · Sonnets from the Portuguese · 1850 · public domain
I thank all who have loved me in their hearts, With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all Who paused a little near the prison-wall To hear my music in its louder parts Ere they went onward, each one to the mart’s Or temple’s occupation, beyond call. But thou, who, in my voice’s sink and fall When the sob took it, thy divinest Art’s Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot To harken what I said between my tears, . . . Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot My soul’s full meaning into future years, That they should lend it utterance, and salute Love that endures, from life that disappears!
XLII
My future will not copy fair my past— I wrote that once; and thinking at my side My ministering life-angel justified The word by his appealing look upcast To the white throne of God, I turned at last, And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied To angels in thy soul! Then I, long tried By natural ills, received the comfort fast, While budding, at thy sight, my pilgrim’s staff Gave out green leaves with morning dews impearled. I seek no copy now of life’s first half: Leave here the pages with long musing curled, And write me new my future’s epigraph, New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!
XLIII
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday’s Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
2 · One idea · Optimization & strategy
Local vs global optimum
You are climbing in thick fog, and you have one rule: always step uphill.
It works beautifully. Every step is higher than the last. Then every direction is down, and you stop, proud, on top of a small hill. The mountain is two valleys away and you never saw it.
Evolution climbs the same way. Your own eye is wired back to front: the nerves run across the front of the light-sensing cells and leave a blind spot where they exit. An octopus eye is built the right way round. Evolution cannot walk back down the hill to fix a design that already works.
In one line. A local optimum is the best option within your immediate vicinity; a global optimum is the best option overall. The trap is that improving step by step can strand you on a local peak — better than everything nearby, yet far below the highest summit elsewhere.
Worked example
A company perfects its product through endless small tweaks until it’s the best of its kind — a local optimum. A rival reinvents the category entirely (a higher, global peak) and wins. The incumbent climbed its hill flawlessly; it was just the wrong hill.
How to use it, and where it fails3 · One number
CO₂ emitted per person per year, world
19502.4 tonnes
20244.7 tonnes
2.0 times the 1950 level.
An average that hides a very wide spread between the richest and poorest countries.
Source: Our World in Data, world estimates, read 2026-09-24.