Country Life Magazine – February 27, 2024: The latest issue features ‘Britain’s Top Dogs’ – Our favorites, decade by decade…
Previews: Country Life Magazine – Feb 28, 2024
Category Archives: Culture
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – March 4, 2024
INSIDE NORTH KOREA’S FORCED-LABOR PROGRAM
Workers sent from the country to Chinese factories describe enduring beatings and sexual abuse, having their wages taken by the state, and being told that if they try to escape they will be “killed without a trace.”
What a Major Solar Storm Could Do to Our Planet
Disturbances on the sun may have the potential to devastate our power grid and communication systems. When the next big storm arrives, will we be prepared for it?
The New York Times Magazine – Feb 25, 2024
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (February 23, 2024): The new issue features ‘Enemy of the People’ – Tom Sandoval turned last year’s season of ‘Vanderpump Rules’ into the best in reality TV’s history – and ruined his life in the process..
How Tom Sandoval Became the Most Hated Man in America
He turned last year’s season of ‘Vanderpump Rules’ into the best in reality TV’s history — and ruined his life in the proces
Want a Better Society? Try Better Buildings.
An obsession with luxury is transforming cities into bland, isolating landscapes. Architecture should be for creating community.
Politics: The Guardian Weekly – February 23, 2024
The Guardian Weekly (February 22, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Ukraine’s Lonely Road’ – After two years, is there a way out of Putin’s war?…
Shaun Walker reports on this week’s big story, the fall of the strategic town of Avdiivka to Russian troops has come at a grim time for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. While the army is struggling to hold ground, war fatigue is setting in among parts of the population and disagreements among the leadership have been spilling into the open.
At the same time, the death of the jailed Russian critic Alexei Navalny last week – widely seen as another political assassination – appears to emphasise the strengthening hand of Vladimir Putin, who is expected to secure another six-year term as Russia’s president in tightly controlled elections next month. Amid a familiar wave of international outrage, our Russia affairs reporter Pjotr Sauer asks what Putin might do next.
Coupled with the possibility of a Donald Trump victory in the US elections later this year, it all makes for a deeply worrying outlook for Ukraine, reflected in the Kyiv-based illustrator Sergiy Maidukov’s haunting cover artwork for the magazine this week.
“This war is the hardest test of my life, similar to an endless ultramarathon,” writes Sergiy. “It is good to try to not think about the finish when running long distance. This is important knowledge to endure.”
Previews: Country Life Magazine – Feb 21, 2024
Country Life Magazine – February 21, 2024: The ‘The Fine Arts Issue’ – Artists who say it with flowers and the AI debate; Wig law, daffodils and how does your hedgerow grow?….
Artificial art
With the technology powering artificial intelligence advancing so rapidly, what can artists do to protect their original work?
Blooming marvellous
Michael Prodger examines how flowers have inspired artists for centuries, from the ancient Egyptians up to the present day
On a wig and a prayer
The periwigs that were a 17th-century status symbol are still a mainstay of our legal system, as Agnes Stamp discovers
Hedge of eternity
They have long been used to contain cattle or define boundaries, but hedges can be beautiful, too, argues Charles Quest-Ritson
Trumpet majors
Alan Titchmarsh takes a wander with Wordsworth as he dreams of spring daffodils ‘fluttering and dancing in the breeze’
Norman Foster’s favourite painting
The architect falls under the spell of a gritty, but humorous work
All in a day’s work
Jamie Blackett is ready to man the barricades to scupper plans for an unwanted national park
Brothers in art
John Goodall applauds the restoration of Leighton House in London, which formed the hub of a 19th-century celebrity circle
Man of the world
Mary Miers follows the globe-trotting Sir John Lavery from Ireland to Africa and beyond
Follow your art
An inspiring oil painting was at the centre of a heist with a happy ending, reveals Carla Passino
Where be dragons?
A protective force in China and Wales, but a symbol of greed and evil in England: Lucien de Guise delves into dragon lore
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell celebrates the best of the Art Deco era with earrings old and new, but always modern
Is this London’s most exquisite hotel room?
The astonishing King’s Lodge suite at The Connaught is fit for a monarch, finds Rosie Paterson
Interiors
Amelia Thorpe shares the very best of London Design Week
A seed of an idea
Tilly Ware meets the wild-seed pioneer ‘nurturing the future’
A tower of thorns
Ben Lerwill finds the salt of the earth on the coast of Scotland
Kitchen garden cook
Melanie Johnson on rhubarb
Love and marriage
A real-life couple are in harmony on stage, finds Michael Billington
Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – March 2024
The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem
How Big Tech is losing the wars of the future
“Artificial intelligence may indeed affect the way our military operates. But the notion that bright-eyed visionaries from the tech industry are revolutionizing our military machine promotes a myth that this relationship is not only new, but will fundamentally improve our defense system—one notorious for its insatiable appetite for money, poorly performing weapons, and lost wars. In reality, the change flows in the other direction, as new recruits enter the warm embrace of the imperishable military-industrial complex, eager to learn its ways.”
The Case Against Children
Among the antinatalists
“People would rather be enthusiastic collaborators in a global project than be skeptics of its fundamental integrity. Antinatalism implies or counts on our eventual extinction, and thinking this way is painful.”
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Feb 26, 2024
Legal Weed in New York Was Going to Be a Revolution. What Happened?
Lawsuits. Unlicensed dispensaries. Corporations pushing to get in. The messy rollout of a law that has tried to deliver social justice with marijuana.
Matt Gaetz’s Chaos Agenda
The Florida Republican is among the most brazen and controversial figures in Donald Trump’s G.O.P. He’s also among the most influential.
Representative Matt Gaetz arrived at the White House in the last days of 2020, amid a gathering national crisis. President Donald Trump had lost his bid for reëlection the previous month, and his allies were exploring strategies to keep him in office. Though only thirty-eight years old, Gaetz, the scion of a political family in Florida’s Panhandle, had become one of the Republican Party’s most prominent and divisive figures. His dark hair styled in a kind of bouffant, his lips often curled in a wry smile, Gaetz bore a resemblance to Elvis Presley, or, in the description of a Florida friend, “either Beavis or Butt-head.” He was quick-witted and sometimes very funny, and he loved to taunt his enemies, who were numerous, especially in his own party. “He’s the most unpopular member of Congress, with the possible exception of Marjorie Taylor Greene, and he doesn’t care,” a fellow-congressman told me.
The New York Times Magazine – Feb 19, 2024
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (February 17, 2024): The new issue features ‘Actors in the Wild’ – The best performers of the year, when they’re not on film….
Actors in the Wild
The best performers of the year — when they’re not on film.
James Nachtwey, an eminent photojournalist known for his intimate depictions of the front lines in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine, had never photographed a movie star before. So for this year’s Great Performers issue, we asked him to capture a dozen of the world’s best actors away from the red carpets and awards ceremonies that often define how we see them. “My work has focused almost exclusively on conflicts and critical social issues, the polar opposite of what might be thought of as celebrity photography,” Nachtwey says. But he was intrigued by the challenge: “Art takes talent, but it’s also hard work, and exploring what actors practice in their daily lives to strengthen their art would be fascinating.”
Tubi Is Reviving a Lost Joy: Watching Really, Really Bad Movies
Their films have gone viral for their awful production values. But their success says fascinating things about what comes after prestige TV.
By Niela Orr
There’s a 2008 movie that offers an odd preview of today’s entertainment. In Michel Gondry’s “Be Kind Rewind,” a bizarre accident demagnetizes the entire inventory of a video rental store, so a clerk and his eccentric friend decide to remake all the films themselves, from “The Lion King” to “Driving Miss Daisy” to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Their versions are 20 minutes long (at most), shot on an old hand-held video camera and produced in a delightfully quirky, ad hoc way: handcrafted props and sets, buddies working as extras, costumes from the local dry cleaner.
The New Criterion – March 2024 Preview
The New Criterion – The March 2024 issue features:
Israel’s eternal dilemma by Victor Davis Hanson
Enrique Gómez Carrillo by Anthony Daniels
The singularity of speech by Wilfred M. McClay
A life in ballet by Peter Martins
New poems by Amit Majmudar, James Matthew Wilson & Michael Casper
Previews: New Humanist Magazine – Spring 2024
NEW HUMANIST MAGAZINE – SPRING 2024 ISSUE: The new issue features Emma Park on how the culture wars are damaging the sciences, theoretical physicist Tasneem Zehra Husain on why the imagination is key to decoding the universe, and Alom Shaha on what can be gained by thinking like a scientist…
Beyond the two cultures
Amid a polarised debate, science and art seem further apart than ever. Emma Park, editor of The Freethinker, explores what humanism has to teach us about the apparent conflict between these ways of thinking and how to bridge the divide.
“While humanities scholars are often (not without justification) accused of being Luddites, those on the science and technology side could also benefit from the knowledge that the humanities have accumulated over the centuries … [And] no intellectual activity worth the name can flourish in a politically repressive environment: freedom of expression and enquiry should be an issue to unite artists, scholars and scientists.”
The poetry of science
Metaphors are key to unlocking the secrets of the universe – scientists should do more to harness their power, writes acclaimed physicist Tasneem Zehra Husain.
“Metaphors aren’t only a means of description, they can also lead to revelations. Centuries ago, Newton was able to calculate the gravitational attraction between two objects … [but] would ‘feign no hypothesis’ as to why it was so. He had the equation, but he did not understand gravitation … With Einstein, we finally have a metaphor. When we picture space-time as a dynamic ‘fabric’ … we begin to understand what gravity means.”
Boomers Daily 