All posts by She Seeks Serene

My Journey of Reimagining Life, Love and Education

Previews: Country Life Magazine – Oct 18, 2023

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Country Life Magazine – October18, 2023:  The latest issue features Norfolks – Little pockets of fun; The real Macnab – great adventures in the field; Britain’s loneliest trees; Beethoven’s Austria and Amsterdam’s canal life, and more…

I’m still standing

In memory of the Sycamore Gap tree, so callously cut down, we salute its fellow arboreal sentinels of Britain

Following in the footsteps of John Macnab

The Editor and The Judge set off across the Tulchan estate in pursuit of a stag, a brace of grouse and a salmon, in the spirit of John Buchan’s hero

Country Life International

  • Anna Tyzack uncovers Monaco’s unexpectedly magnificent restoration
  • Deborah Nicholls-Lee settles in to an Amsterdam canal house
  • Tom Parker Bowles gorges on Alpine cheese
  • Russell Higham explores the Austrian countryside that inspired Beethoven
  • Holly Kirkwood picks the best Caribbean properties
  • Mark Frary straps on his pads for a spot of cricket in the Windward Islands

Felix Francis’s favourite painting

The author picks a scene full of the thrill of the racecourse

Totally foxed

The rural people of Scotland are reeling under a prejudiced new law on hunting. Jamie Blackett despairs for the fox

The Englishness of English architecture

What makes a building English? Steven Brindle considers the answer, from soaring cathedral vaults to austere Palladian villas and rambling country piles

Native breeds

Kate Green luxuriates in the luscious locks of the Leicestershire Longwool

Come hell or high water

Few creatures face as difficult a journey as the salmon does to and from its spawning grounds. Simon Lester follows in its wake

Interiors

A dramatic kitchen and why it’s time to cuddle up in British wool

Plant theatre

Charles Quest-Ritson takes the well-worn path to the famed nursery of Larch Cottage in Cumbria

Having a field day

Behind hounds or on the marsh, casting for a salmon or stalking a stag, nothing stirs Adrian Dangar’s heart as fieldsports do

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson finds the perfect pairing for hazelnuts

Health: Harvard Magazine November/December 2023

November-December 2023 | Harvard Magazine

HARVARD MAGAZINE November-December 2023 :

You Are What (Your Microbes) Eat

Illustration of an apple being pushed from a platform into a sea of colorful microbes

Diet, cooking, and the human microbiome

IN THE LATE 2000s, Rachel Carmody was spending a lot of time counting calories. An anthropology graduate student at Harvard, she was studying whether cooking changed the number of calories the gut can extract from food. When humans invented cooking thousands of years ago, she and her advisor Richard Wrangham wondered, had they opened the door to a new source of energy?

The Brain-Cancer Link

Photograph of Humsa Venkatesh in her lab

DURING THE past two decades, the number of annual cancer deaths in the United States has fallen by 27 percent, a remarkable improvement driven by new precision diagnoses and treatments tailored to individual patients. Today, oncologists can detect cancer in its earliest stages and deliver drugs that enlist the patient’s own immune system to improve their odds of survival. Yet cancer remains the second deadliest disease in the United States, claiming more than 600,000 lives every year. Its persistence underscores the urgent need for a deeper understanding of how cancer interacts with the body. Assistant professor of neurology Humsa Venkatesh believes she may have found a promising new pathway for highly effective cancer treatments in the most unexpected of places: the human brain.

News: Biden To Visit Israel, Egypt-Gaza Border, Putin To Meet With Xi In Beijing

The Globalist Podcast (October 17, 2023) – The latest on the fighting between Israel and Hamas from ‘Haaretz’ journalist Allison Kaplan Sommer in Tel Aviv, as well as a look at the situation at the Egypt-Gaza border.

Also in the programme: Vladimir Putin prepares to make his first trip to a major global power since the International Criminal Court arrest warrant to meet Xi Jinping at the Belt and Road Summit. Plus: why Italy’s population is in crisis.

The New York Times — Tuesday, October 17, 2023

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Biden to Visit Israel as Gaza’s Crisis Worsens Under Siege

Palestinians and dual citizens at the Rafah border crossing in Gaza, hoping for the border to open to cross into Egypt, on Monday.

President Biden will make the extraordinary trip on Wednesday as Israel readies a possible invasion of Gaza in response to the worst terrorist attacks in its history.

For Hostages’ Families, an ‘Endless Loop of Hope and Despair’

Friends and relatives of Maya Regev, 21, and Itay Regev, 18, watching a news segment about the Israelis kidnapped by Hamas, at their parents’ apartment in Herzliya, Israel. The siblings attended the rave in southern Israel and are believed to have been kidnapped by Hamas militants.

Relatives of those captured or missing express despair at the lack of information, and they are terrified of what an expected Israeli invasion of Gaza may mean for their loved ones.

Confusion and Frustration Reign at Egypt-Gaza Border

Told they could escape Gaza, scores of people with foreign passports gathered at the only border crossing into Egypt, only to find it still closed, as diplomatic efforts floundered.

Scientists Offer a New Explanation for Long Covid

In some patients, remnants of the coronavirus in the gut may stifle production of serotonin, an important neurotransmitter, researchers suggest.

Travel: A Walking Tour Of Schönbrunn Park, Austria

anbax Films (October 16, 2023) – The park at Schönbrunn Palace was opened to the public around 1779 and since then has provided a popular recreational amenity for the Viennese population as well as being a focus of great cultural and historical interest for international visitors.

Extending for 1.2 km from east to west and approximately one kilometre from north to south, it was placed together with the palace on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1996.

Opinion: Israel’s Agony & Retribution, Green Policy Recoil, 2-Day Workweeks

‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (October 16, 2023) A selection of three articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, will Israel’s agony and retribution end in chaos or stability? Also, the backlash against green policies (09:58) and a disastrous workplace experiment (16:15).

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – November 2023

Harper’s Magazine – NOVEMBER 2023: This issue features The Machine Breaker – Inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist”; Forbidden Fruit – The anti-avocado militias of Michoacán; Principia Mathemagica; From Magus – The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa, and more…

The Machine Breaker – Inside the mind of an “ecoterrorist” 

by Christopher Ketcham

In the summer of 2016, a fifty-seven-year-old Texan named Stephen McRae drove east out of the rainforests of Oregon and into the vast expanse of the Great Basin. His plan was to commit sabotage. First up was a coal-burning power plant near Carlin, Nevada, a 242-megawatt facility owned by the Newmont Corporation that existed to service two nearby gold mines, also owned by Newmont.

Forbidden Fruit

by Alexander Sammon

The anti-avocado militias of Michoacán

Phone service was down—a fuse had blown in the cell tower during a recent storm—and even though my arrival had been cleared with the government of Cherán in advance, the armed guard manning the highway checkpoint, decked out in full fatigues, the wrong shade to pass for Mexican military, refused to wave me through. My guide, Uli Escamilla, assured him that we had an appointment, and that we could prove it if only we could call or text our envoy. The officer gripped his rifle with both hands and peered into the windows of our rental car.

Travel: Village Of Baveno On Lake Maggiore, Italy

Italy Together (October 16, 2023) – A picturesque town on the shore of Lake Maggiore north of Stresa, Baveno faces the romantic  Borromean Islands and backs to the green hills surrounding the lake. The town of about 5,000 residents has seen a very long history, starting with prehistoric human existence. The many archeological finds testify to the many millennia that have touched this area.

The Romans left evidence in the way of necropoli, domestic wares, funerary items and coins. The town was along a crossroads between Ossola and the Alps, and later between Genova and Venzia, making it stragetically important with a once-flourishing commercial port.

Ecosystems: The ‘Sea Of Hope’ In Chilean Patagonia

SeaLegacy Films (October 16, 2023) – At the foot of the iconic mountain peaks of Chilean Patagonia, just below the blue surface of the sea, lies a biodiverse and pristine kelp forest. In this episode of “Sea of ​​Hope,” Mission Blue ocean policy expert Max Bello and Chilean Environment Minister Maisa Rojas join the SeaLegacy team to explore how wonderful and spectacular this unique ecosystem is. in the world.

Abundant and diverse life forms find their home in the world’s longest continuous kelp forest, just off the coast, in a region home to hundreds of fjords and more than 40,000 islands and islets. Join our co-founder Andy Mann as he embarks with the exploration team on an adventure to discover the treasures of Chilean Patagonia and evaluate the health of this productive and wild ecosystem. Discover the natural neon colors, the huge stems of kelp, some of the marine characters that inhabit the area, and the impressive carbon capture abilities of the underwater forests!

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Oct 23, 2023

Daniel Clowess “Quiet Luxury”

The New Yorker – October 23, 2023 issue: The new issues cover features Daniel Clowes’s “Quiet Luxury” – The artist discusses patronage, in-home pillars, and what he’d do with a billion dollars.

Beyond the Myth of Rural America

Grant Woods sister Nan Wood Graham and his dentist Byron McKeeby stand by the painting for which they had posed...

Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts.

By Daniel Immerwahr

Demanding that your friend pull the car over so you can examine an unusual architectural detail is not, I’m told, endearing. But some of us can’t help ourselves. For the painter Grant Wood, it was an incongruous Gothic window on an otherwise modest frame house in Eldon, Iowa, that required stopping. It looked as if a cottage were impersonating a cathedral. Wood tried to imagine who “would fit into such a home.” He recruited his sister and his dentist as models and costumed them in old-fashioned attire. The result, “American Gothic,” as he titled the painting from 1930, is probably the most famous art work ever produced in the United States.

When Foster Parents Don’t Want to Give Back the Baby

In many states, lawyers are pushing a new legal strategy that forces biological parents to compete for custody of their children.

American ChroniclesBeyond the Myth of Rural America

Its inhabitants are as much creatures of state power and industrial capitalism as their city-dwelling counterparts.

What Happened to San Francisco, Really?

It depends on which tech bro, city official, billionaire investor, grassroots activist, or Michelin-starred restaurateur you ask.By Nathan Heller

The Great Cash-for-Carbon Hustle

Offsetting has been hailed as a fix for runaway emissions and climate change—but the market’s largest firm sold millions of credits for carbon reductions that weren’t real.