Inside this issue:
International Art: Apollo Magazine – November 2023
Monthly Archives: October 2023
Wildlife & Travel: ‘Hold Your Breath’ Moments Of Sir David Attenborough
Wondering if the leopard could possibly survive falling from such a height, Attenborough says “suddenly you realise you haven’t written anything because, you know, you’re just completely held. And that may tell you that perhaps your words aren’t all that necessary”.
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Oct 30, 2023
China’s Age of Malaise
Party officials are vanishing, young workers are “lying flat,” and entrepreneurs are fleeing the country. What does China’s inner turmoil mean for the world?
By Evan Osnos
Twenty-five years ago, China’s writer of the moment was a man named Wang Xiaobo. Wang had endured the Cultural Revolution, but unlike most of his peers, who turned the experience into earnest tales of trauma, he was an ironist, in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut, with a piercing eye for the intrusion of politics into private life. In his novella “Golden Age,” two young lovers confess to the bourgeois crime of extramarital sex—“We committed epic friendship in the mountain, breathing wet steamy breath.” They are summoned to account for their failure of revolutionary propriety, but the local apparatchiks prove to be less interested in Marx than in the prurient details of their “epic friendship.”
Plundering the Planet’s Resources
Our accelerating rates of extraction come with immense ecological and social consequences.
The town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, doesn’t have a lot to say for itself. Its Web site, which features a photo of a flowering tree next to a rusty bridge, notes that the town is “conveniently located between Asheville and Boone.” According to the latest census data, it has 2,332 residents and a population density of 498.1 per square mile. A recent story in the local newspaper concerned the closing of the Hardee’s on Highway 19E; this followed an incident, back in May, when a fourteen-year-old boy who’d eaten a biscuit at the restaurant began to hallucinate and had to be taken to the hospital. Without Spruce Pine, though, the global economy might well unravel.
News: Israel Ramps Up Gaza Attacks, US – South Korea- Japan Joint Military Drills
The New York Times — Monday, October 23, 2023
Israelis and Gazans Flee Amid Clashes and Warnings of Wider Regional War
Violence on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, and strikes in Syria and the West Bank, sent shock waves through the Middle East.
Hamas Fails to Make Case That Israel Struck Hospital
A senior Hamas official says “nothing is left” of the munition that hit the Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City last week, killing hundreds. Israel says the explosion was caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket.
A President, a Billionaire and Questions About Access and National Security
Anthony Pratt, one of Australia’s wealthiest men, made his way into Donald Trump’s inner circle with money and flattery. What he heard there has become of interest to federal prosecutors.
The Race to Save Our Secrets From the Computers of the Future
Quantum technology could compromise our encryption systems. Can America replace them before it’s too late?
Travel Tour: Kutná Hora In The Czech Republic
Also notable is Sedlec Ossuary, a chapel adorned with human skeletons. On the site of a former Cistercian monastery is the Gothic and baroque Cathedral of the Assumption. The Czech Museum of Silver recalls the city’s silver-mining history with a replica medieval mine.
Recorded on: 21 September 2023
Sunday Morning: Stories And News From Zürich, Palma, Helsinki And Paris
October 22, 2023 – From Zürich, Monocle’s editorial director Tyler Brûlé, Fabienne Kinzelmann, Juliet Linley and Florian Egli discuss the weekend’s hottest topics. Plus: check-ins with our friends and correspondents in Palma, Helsinki and Paris.
The New York Times — Sunday, October 22, 2023
First Humanitarian Aid Reaches a Hard-Pressed Gaza
But the 20-truck shipment of food, water and medical supplies is only a fraction of what is needed to head off a catastrophe, officials say.
Biden and Aides Advise Israel to Avoid Widening War With Hezbollah Strike
U.S. officials learned that the Israeli defense minister and other military officials supported a pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been cautious.
For the Most Vulnerable Hostages, a Plea for Mercy
Hamas released two American hostages on Friday, but concern is rising about the hundreds still held in Gaza, especially the injured and ill.
How Rich Donors and Loose Rules Are Transforming College Sports
A shift that allows booster groups to employ student-athletes has upended the economics of college football and other sports while giving many donors a tax break.
World Economic Forum: Top Stories – Oct 21, 2023
0:15 AI can predict your risk of Parkinson’s – RETFound was trained using 1.6 million retinal images which gave it a picture of a healthy retina. Then its creators added images of eyes from people with certain conditions. Our eyes are a window to our health. They’re the only place where doctors can directly observe capillaries, our smallest blood vessels, enabling detection of cardiovascular illnesses such as hypertension. Eyes are also linked to the central nervous system, giving an insight into neural tissue, too. The RETFound tool was best at picking up eye diseases such as diabetic retinopathy. On Parkinson’s, stroke and heart disease, it performed not quite as well but still beat other AI models.
2:08 These are the most detailed heat maps of our planet – They use imagery from a satellite called HotSat-1 which can detect heat and cold at a resolution of 3.5 metres. The satellite can precisely map the fronts of forest fires, detect and monitor heat islands in cities and measure the thermal efficiency of buildings. This information can drive more effective decision-making.
3:51 AI designed this robot in 26 seconds – Researchers from Northwestern University gave an AI a simple prompt. ‘Design a robot that can walk across a flat surface’. By the 9th iteration, the AI had successfully met its brief. The robot could walk half its own body length per second. The entire iteration process took just 26 seconds and it ran on a laptop.
6:26 Norway completed it’s largest rewilding project – It’s centred around Sveagruva, a 100-year-old mining town on the Arctic island of Svalbard. Norway decided to close the town and its mining operations in 2017 and return the area to its natural state, restoring biodiversity and the local ecosystem.
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The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.
Travel Tour Of Scotland: “36 Hours In Glasgow”
Here is the itinerary:
Friday
Burrell Collection
3 p.m. Wander through woodlands to a world-class museum
Start your weekend at the Burrell Collection, a glass-roofed art museum that rises out of a meadow in the city’s southern Pollok Country Park like a vast, gleaming greenhouse. The 9,000-piece collection was donated to the city at the close of World War II by William Burrell, a Glasgow shipping merchant, and opened in this specially commissioned building in 1983. The free-entry museum reopened in 2022 after a six-year refurbishment of its red sandstone, glass and wood interiors. Though it is busy, the Burrell offers a peaceful immersion in an unmistakably personal collection, drifting from Degas and Rembrandt to tabernacles, tulip-motif textiles and ancient Chinese roof tiles. The tapestries are especially wonderful, including the palatially sized “Wagner Garden Carpet” made by master weavers in 17th-century Iran.
Saturday
Papercup
10 a.m. Grab a brekkie roll, then discover a Glaswegian jungle
If it’s not raining, take advantage of clear skies with a botanic stroll in Glasgow’s affluent West End. Grab breakfast at Papercup, a small and friendly cafe that has original period details, like egg-and-dart molding and an ornate ceiling rose. Try the brekkie roll with a sausage patty (£5), or eggs on toast with a side of vegan haggis (£8.50). From the cafe, wander to the Glasgow Botanic Gardens, either directly, along Great Western Road, or take the more meandering Kelvin Walkway down by the River Kelvin, crossing the blue, steel Botanic Gardens Footbridge to emerge into the scented gardens on the other bank. Enter the domed Kibble Palace, a spectacular glasshouse in which to explore a jungle of orchids, begonias and ferns, among other leafy treasures.
Hoos
12 p.m. Browse Scandi home goods and woolly Scottish knitwear
Glaswegians have an appetite for sustainable shopping and for secondhand goods of all stripes. Hoos, next to the Botanic Gardens, stocks chic Scandi home goods, while the Glasgow Vintage Co., farther along Great Western Road from Papercup, has a thoughtful selection of second-hand Scottish knitwear alongside show-stopping coats and dresses from the 1970s. Up the hill on Otago Street, above Perch & Rest Coffee, Kelvin Apothecary sells a nice range of gifts including handmade Scottish soaps and wooden laundry and cleaning tools. In the cobbled Otago Lane is the chaotic Voltaire and Rousseau secondhand bookshop, with teetering, vertical book piles. Unlike many Glasgow shops, this store isn’t the most dog-friendly, because of the resident cat, BB, who supervises from his perch at the till.
Boomers Daily 