Category Archives: Culture

The New York Times Magazine-Dec. 1, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (November 30, 2024): The 12.1.24 Issue features Susan Dominus on an I.V.F. mix-up; Amir Ahmadi Arian on the director Mohammad Rasoulof; Francesca Mari on deadly superbugs bred by modern warfare; and more.

An I.V.F. Mix-Up, a Shocking Discovery and an Unbearable Choice

Two couples in California discovered they were raising each other’s genetic children. Should they switch their girls?

Modern Warfare Is Breeding Deadly Superbugs. Why?

Researchers are trying to understand why resistant pathogens are so prevalent in the war-torn nations of the Middle East.

Am I a Hypocrite for Calling Donald Trump a Liar?

The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on hypocrisy. By Kwame Anthony Appiah

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – Nov. 29, 2024

The Guardian Weekly (November 28, 2024): The new issue features last week’s escalation of Nato ballistic missile activity, in which UK and US-made missiles were launched into Russia for the first time, brought a predictably cold response from Vladimir Putin – who loosened Moscow’s nuclear doctrines and promised more attacks with a new, experimental ballistic missile.

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Spotlight | Does lame duck Biden have time to Trump-proof democracy?
The outgoing US president may only have weeks left in the White House, but activists say he can secure civil liberties, accelerate spending on climate and healthcare, and spare death row prisoners. David Smith reports

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Science | My weird, emotional week with an AI pet
Casio says Moflin can develop its own personality and build a rapport with its owner – and it doesn’t need food, exercise or a litter tray. But is it essentially comforting or alienating? Justin McCurry finds out

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Feature | Are we right to strive to save the world’s tiniest babies?
Doctors are pushing the limits of science and human biology to save more extremely premature babies than ever before. But when so few survive, are we putting them through needless suffering? By Sophie McBain

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Opinion | A social media ban is in everyone’s interests – not just kids under 16
Van Badham on why she resents being excluded from protection against monetised fear, anger and toxicity

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Culture | A road trip like no other: an epic drive on the Autobahn
Fifty years after electronic pioneers Kraftwerk released a 23-minute song about a road – and changed pop music for ever – Tim Jonze hits the highways of Düsseldorf and Hamburg in search of its futuristic brilliance

Cover: Claremont Review Of Books – Fall 2024

Claremont Review of Books (Fall 2024): The new issue features ‘Making America Great. Again.’…

America’s Red Shift

Now who’s on the wrong side of history? by Charles R. Kesler

Donald Trump and the Republican Party had a triumphant Election Day, gaining ground in all parts of the country and among almost all voting sectors. He won all seven of the ballyhooed swing states, by comfortable margins except in the blue-wall states of Wisconsin (where his margin of victory was 0.9%), Michigan (1.4%), and Pennsylvania (1.8%). Still, he won all three blue-wall states twice—in 2024 as in 2016—something no Republican had managed since Ronald Reagan. Trump regains office alongside a Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives, too, the trifecta of what political scientists call “undivided government,” not enjoyed by Republicans since the first two years of his own first term.

To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism

To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism

The Political and Strategic History of the World, Volume I: From Antiquity to the Caesars, 14 A.D.

The Political and Strategic History of the World, Volume I: From Antiquity to the Caesars, 14 A.D.

Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith

Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith

Farnsworth’s Classical English Argument

Farnsworth's Classical English Argument

Country Life Magazine – November 27, 2024 Preview

Country Life Magazine (November 26, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Advent Calendar Special’…

The master builder

Carla Passino is captivated by floral photographs that evoke 17th-century still-life paintings

A little mite with a mighty heart

She may be tiny, but Jenny wren certainly makes her presence felt, declares Mark Cocker

Worth its weight in gold

There’s more to myrrh than meets the eye, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee

Now that packs a punch

Lucien de Guise is bowled over by the intoxicating concoctions mixed by Dickens and George IV

Pie say!

Neil Buttery tucks into the tale of the Yorkshire Christmas Pye

Christmas gifts

Pick out those perfect presents with a helping hand from Hetty Lintell and Amie Elizabeth White

Mayara Magri’s favourite painting

The Royal Ballet dancer selects an inspiring, transformative work

Hardy and the country house

The author’s Wessex is brought to life in Jeremy Musson’s words and Matthew Rice’s drawings

Beauty by numbers

Deborah Nicholls-Lee is fascinated by fractals, the exquisite, ever-repeating patterns in Nature

The fall of Albion

John Lewis-Stempel urges us to rediscover our love of heathland, now a rarer habitat than rainforest

Get a Grip

Andrew Green rounds up the animals in Dickens’s life and work

First out of the lychgate

Jack Watkins explores the folklore and function of the lychgate

Little things that make a big difference

Our guide to entertaining in style

Thank you for the memories

From flying a Spitfire to sushi-making, the COUNTRY LIFE team puts gift experiences to the test

The legacy

Kate Green reveals how Sir David Willcocks changed the sound of Christmas with Carols for Choirs

Luxury

Hetty Lintell on saunas, socks, silk bows and precious stones

Now we’re just some gadgets that you used to know

Neil Buttery sorts the pudding prick from the tongue press

Lid pro quo

Rob Crossan talks Tupperware

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson on cabbage

It’s always darkest before the dawn

A black fox illuminates a dreary dawn for John Lewis-Stempel

Let’s go to the movies

Victoria Marston looks back at classic film posters

It takes the biscuit

Matthew Dennison explores the tin-novations that made Huntley & Palmers a household name

Forever a chorister

Sarah Sands shares how choral singing shaped the life of her late brother Kit Hesketh-Harvey

 ‘What a good boy am I’

Ian Morton investigates the real meanings of our nursery rhymes

The great astral sneeze

Harry Pearson finds out why this is the year of the Northern Lights

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – Dec. 2, 2024

A young person works on a farmhouse as turkeys wearing Groucho goggles look on.

The New Yorker (November24, 2024): The latest issue features Tom Toro’s “Incognito” – Putting on a friendly face.

The Fundamental Problem with R.F.K., Jr.,’s Nomination to H.H.S.

Kennedy has many bad ideas. Yet the irony of our political moment is that his more reasonable positions are the ones that could sink his candidacy. By Dhruv Khullar

How Old Age Was Reborn

“The Golden Girls” reframed senior life as being about socializing and sex. But did the cultural narrative of advanced age as continued youth twist the dial too far? By Daniel Immerwahr

How to Make Fuel (or Booze) from Thin Air

Air Company, a startup that has used water and carbon dioxide to make vodka and to power automobiles, taste-tests its product and discusses getting Elon Musk’s business. By Adam Iscoe

Travel Tours: What It’s Like To Grow Up In Prague (DW)

DW Euromaxx (November 23, 2024): Prague – a city straight out of a fairytale, with its cobblestone streets, iconic red rooftops, and famed Czech beer. But beyond the picture-perfect image, what is life really like in the capital of the Czech Republic?

CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:46 Living arrangements 02:36 Getting around 03:18 Roza’s work as a greenfluencer 04:56 Cost of living 05:37 Studying in Prague 06:24 Social life

Is it still as magical for locals as it is for tourists? We follow 21-year-old student Rozárie to find out.

#Prague #Czechia #dweuromaxx

The New York Times Magazine-Nov. 24, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (November 2, 2024): The 11.24.24 Issue features Philip Montgomery on two weeks in the life of Pennsylvania’s Luzerne County before, during and after the election; Emily Bazelon on how the abortion rights movement won in many states in the election; Tomas Weber on how Ozempic is turning people off from eating junk food; and more.

Becoming Trump Country

Luzerne County is one of many counties in Pennsylvania — and across the country — that shifted to the right this year.

Facing Eight Years in Prison, a Director Flees Iran

Facing an eight-year prison sentence, Mohammad Rasoulof had to make the most difficult decision of his life. We spent two weeks there before and after the election to understand what’s driving these changes.

Ozempic Could Crush the Junk Food Industry. But It Is Fighting Back.

Arts/History: Smithsonian Magazine – December 2024

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Smithsonian Magazine (November 21, 2024) – The latest issue features ‘The Hidden History of Bermuda’ – New archaeological finds are reshaping our views of early colonial life in the Americas…

The Forgotten Colony

What excavations in Bermuda are revealing about one of Britain’s first settlements in the Americas—and the surprising ways it shaped the New World. By Andrew Lawler. Photographs by Nicola Muirhead

The Feminist Behind the Man Behind the Curtain

The untold story of Matilda Gage, the freethinker who inspired her son-in-law L. Frank Baum’s classic novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. By Evan I. Schwartz

It’s Not Easy Being Seen

Glass frogs use translucence to evade predators. So why are researchers trying to find as many as they can? By Alex Fox

Culture: New Humanist Magazine – Winter 2024-25

New Humanist's winter 2024 cover shows a futuristic blue face with the words: 'Our cyborg future?'

NEW HUMANIST MAGAZINE – WINTER 2024/2025 ISSUE: The new issue features ‘Our Cyborg Future?’

The new age of the cyborg?

Neurobiologist and journalist Moheb Costandi explores the rapidly-developing world of brain-computer interfaces. For some people, these devices are already transforming lives – but the technology is quickly overtaking the ethics.

A dangerous calculation

Peter Ward unpicks the dark philosophy of the tech billionaires and how it is infiltrating some of our most powerful organisations.

There’s a product for that

A recent film, The Substance, explored the growing pressure on all of us – particularly women – to modify our bodies, not only through make-up and cosmetic procedures but also through digital filters. Clare Chambers, professor of political philosophy at the University of Cambridge, talks to us about the power of resistance and allowing our bodies to be “good enough”.

New life in the veins

Peter Salmon recounts the bizarre history of blood transfusion – and why the super-rich remain fascinated by its possibilities.

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – Nov. 22, 2024

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The Guardian Weekly (November 21, 2024): The new issue features ‘The crisis in the Church of England’…

Existentialist crises might more commonly be associated with some who seek out religion, rather than with those religions themselves, but that’s where the Church of England has found itself in recent days.

The resignation of Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, followed a damning report into the church’s shameful failures over the serial child abuser John Smyth, which detailed even more disturbing details of cover-ups by some senior clergy.

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Spotlight | Trump’s shock-and-awe team
A flurry of controversial and extremist picks for Trump’s administration has provoked criticism and made heads spin. David Smith reports from Washington

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Science | The inverse link between cancer and dementia
Scientists have long been aware of a curious connection between these common and feared diseases. At last, a clearer picture is emerging, writes Theres Lüthi

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Feature | Kernels of hope
During the siege of Leningrad, botanists in charge of an irreplaceable seed collection, the first of its kind, had to protect it from fire, rodents – and hunger. By Simon Parkin

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Opinion | Seven lessons from a long-serving economics editor
From Thatcher to Trump and Brexit, the Guardian’s outgoing economics editor, Larry Elliott, reflects on his 28 years in the role.

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Culture | Faking history
Film and TV have a slippery relationship with the truth when it comes to historical epics. Simon Usborne meets the experts whose advice goes unheeded