The Guardian Weekly (June 9, 2023)– A year ago, the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and Guardian contributor Dom Phillips were murdered in a remote area of the Brazilian Amazon. They had travelled there to meet with Indigenous activists who patrol the Javari valley to protect it from illegal fishing and mining gangs.
Their deaths laid bare the environmental devastation inflicted under Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, as well as the extreme threat to those who dare to disrupt the activities of exploitative industries in the region. That’s why, in collaboration with an international journalists’ consortium, the Guardian has published the Bruno and Dom project: a series that seeks to honour their work and continue it. You’ll find a selection of pieces in this week’s Guardian Weekly and the rest are available online.
THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR – SUMMER 2023 issue: What does Antoni van Leeuwenhoek have to do with Covid? Can a digital restoration of a supposed da Vinci be just as good as the real thing? What was it like to be a young journalist on one of François Truffaut’s sets?
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, in a circa 1680 painting by the Dutch artist Jan Verkolje, famous for his portraits of prominent members of Delft society
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s discovery of microorganisms made possible the revolutionary advances in biology and medicine that continue to inform our Covid age
One night in 1677, a grizzled man in a wrinkled linen nightshirt rushed from his bemused wife’s bed with a candle in hand to examine the “remains of conjugal coitus, immediately after ejaculation before six beats of the pulse.” Using the candle to cast a pool of light in his dark study, he put a drop of the liquid into a tiny glass vial he had blown himself, attaching it to the back of a strange-looking device he had also constructed.
What a digital restoration of the most expensive painting ever sold tells us about beauty, authenticity, and the fragility of existence
I got the call late on a summer afternoon. Yanai Segal, an artist I’ve known for years, asked me whether I’d heard of the Salvator Mundi—the painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci that was lost for more than two centuries before resurfacing in New Orleans in 2005. I told him that I’d heard something of the story but that I didn’t remember the details. He had recently undertaken a project related to the painting, he said, and wanted to tell me about it. I was eager to hear more, but first I needed to remind myself of the basic facts. We agreed to speak again soon.
Can hard-core gamers learn to play well with others? By Spencer Kornhaber
Playing a prerelease version of Diablo IV, the latest installment in a 26-year-old adventure series about battling the forces of hell, I faced swarms of demons that yowled and belched. My character, a sorcerer, shot them with lightning bolts, producing a jet-engine roar.
Inside the desperate effort to rescue America’s pastime from irrelevance By Mark Leibovich
Where in the name of human rain delays is Juan Soto?
The stud outfielder is late. Everyone keeps checking their phones—the antsy Major League Baseball officials, the San Diego Padres PR guy, the handful of reporters, and the assorted hangers-on you encounter around baseball clubhouses. Everyone is wondering when the Padres superstar will show up. He was supposed to be here half an hour ago, just after this baseball players’ sanctum opened and we were allowed to join them in their most elemental of baseball activities: waiting around.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (June 4, 2023) – California is the place where the future happens, for good and ill. That’s part of its magic. Read our first-ever California Issue to find out what roads the state will take us down next.
Inside: A fight over a parking lot that explains the housing crisis; the future of California’s power to shape national policy; how the state is adapting to a warming world — and more.
From reparations to tax revolts, the Golden State tries out new ideas all the time. What roads will its latest experiments send us down?
By Laila Lalami
I remember my first glimpse into the future. In August 1992, when I arrived in California as a student, I discovered during orientation that the university required all incoming students to have something called an email account. To access it, I had to call up a text-based mail client on Unix, using a series of line commands. If I needed a file that sat on a university computer in New York, I could use file transfer protocol to download it in Los Angeles, the whole process taking no more than a few minutes. That’s brilliant, I remember thinking.
For a while this winter, seemingly every text message that Buffy Wicks received asked if she was running for Congress. Representative Barbara Lee, of California’s 12th District, which includes Oakland, had announced that she would enter the race for Dianne Feinstein’s soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat. This decision by Lee, who is 76, created a rare opportunity for the next generation of California Democrats to vie for federal office. And Wicks — a 45-year-old State Assembly member who lives in Lee’s district and was last re-elected with 85 percent of the vote — seemed like a natural candidate.
Monocle Magazine (May 2023 issue) – Ever dreamed of ditching the rat race for a life on the land? We meet the new Mediterranean farmers doing just that in the latest edition of Monocle.
Issue 164 also includes an Art Special that puts collectors, galleries and this year’s Art Basel in the frame.
Plus: a guide to the Venice Architecture Biennale and a rare venture into Syria.
Ever dreamed of ditching the rat race for a life on the land?
France-Amérique Magazine – June 2023– The issue explores the art world on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean! First, read how American sculptor Alexander Calder produced a mobile to support Free France during World War II – this is our cover story.
LYNN GUMPERT – “Paris Has Always Attracted American Artists”
By Guy Sorman
A book co-edited by Lynn Gumpert, director of the Grey Art Gallery at NYU, is shaking up preconceptions about the contribution of American artists in France following World War II. We asked her about this little-known period, when Paris was still as much a hub of artistic creativity as New York City.
Also in this issue, discover the little-known contribution of American artists in 1950s France; read our interview with Delphine de Canecaude of Chargeurs Museum Studio, the French company that has outfitted many of America’s largest museums; and enjoy our profiles of Clark Art Institute director Olivier Meslay and French-American graffiti legend John “JonOne” Perello.
DELPHINE DE CANECAUDE
By Guénola Pellen
“Every Museum Is an Incredible Adventure”
The dynamic fortysomething was hired to run Chargeurs Museum Studio in February. As the world leader in cultural engineering and production, the French company has designed the National Museum of the U.S. Army, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the new wing of the American Museum of Natural History, which recently opened in New York City.
Welcome to Vienna, where a whopping 80 percent of residents qualify for public housing, and once you have a contract, it never expires, even if you get richer. What can America learn from a city that has largely avoided the housing crisis?
The violence of his era can be found in his serene masterpieces — if you know where to look.
The afternoon I discovered Vermeer, I was passing time by browsing the books and publications piled up on the shelves at home in Lagos. I was 14 or 15. Amid the relics of my parents’ college studies (Nigerian plays, French histories, business-management textbooks), I found something unfamiliar: the annual report for a multinational company. I don’t remember which company it was, but it must have had something to do with food or drink, because on the front cover was a painting of peasants in a rolling field and on the back was a painting of a woman pouring milk.
DW Documentary (May 25, 2023) – Amidst the traffic chaos of Sri Lanka: the popular auto-rickshaws, or tuk-tuks. They’re traditionally driven by men. But increasingly, you’ll see a woman at the wheel – and this film is about three of them: Anulawathi, Thushari and Jega. Anulawathi, Thushari and Jega all do the same job: they’re auto rickshaw drivers in Sri Lanka, three women in a sector traditionally dominated by men.
Besides being a popular mode of transport, the three-wheeled tuk-tuk also provides these three women with a reliable source of income. All three were left by their husbands and had to find a way to feed themselves and their children. They were forced to challenge societal norms. After all, in Sri Lanka, men are traditioanally seen as the providers. Male tuk-tuk drivers view their female colleagues as rivals. But unsurprisingly, female customers love them. Thushari lives in the capital Colombo. She is a longtime parent and works to support herself and her two daughters.
Anuwalathi works in Kandy. She lived abroad for a few years and saved up enough money to buy her own tuk-tuk. Jega is also a single parent. She lives with her son and niece in the tourist resort of Hikkaduwa. All three women earn a steady income from the tuk-tuk business, which brings them closer to their eventual goal – independence and freedom.
FRANCE 24 (May 25, 2023) – In a small village deep in central France, the same family has run the “La Promenade” restaurant for four generations. The story began in 1960, when Lucienne created a small bistro. Then Jacky, the son, took over and won the first Michelin star in 1989.
Today, the grandson Fabrice watches over this mecca of French gastronomy, and now his son Clément is studying for his chef’s diploma. “La Promenade” is a moving family story, whose finest pages are perhaps yet to be written.
FRANCE 24 (May 24, 2023) – Located in France’s Normandy region, the Mont-Saint-Michel is one of the most iconic and photographed places in the country. Every year, the site attracts some 2.5 million visitors.
Built 1,000 years ago, the tidal island and its abbey, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, have stood the test of time and survived through the centuries. Our France 2 colleagues report on some of its secrets, with FRANCE 24’s Guillaume Gougeon.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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