Category Archives: Culture

Preview: New York Times Magazine – May 28, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (May 28, 2023) –

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?

Imagine a Renters’ Utopia. It Might Look Like Vienna.

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Soaring real estate markets have created a worldwide housing crisis. What can we learn from a city that has largely avoided it?

Seeing Beyond the Beauty of a Vermeer

A detail of “The Milkmaid.” A woman is pouring milk into a bowl.

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.

Sri Lanka Views: The Rise Of Women ‘Tuk-Tuk’ Drivers

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.

French Culture: A Family Run Restaurant’s ‘Bistro To Michelin Star’ Journey

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.

Travel & Culture: Secrets Of Mont-Saint-Michel

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.

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – May 26, 2023

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The Guardian Weekly (May 26, 2023) – Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s surprise turn at last weekend’s G7 meeting in Hiroshima was the climax of a round of shuttle diplomacy in which the Ukrainian president secured yet more funds and equipment from western nations. 

Patrick Wintour ponders the complex wider issues at stake for western leaders who realise that more constructive relations with the global south could also be the key to containing an increasingly belligerent China.

E-cigarettes have been seen as useful and less health-damaging devices for weaning smokers off tobacco. But there are growing international fears at the rise of disposable e-cigarettes, which are fuelling a boom in vaping among children. Michael Safi looks at how different countries are responding, from sales curbs to outright bans.

Travel: Inside A Datoga Tribe Village in Tanzania

Ella McKendrick Films (May 21, 2023) – A journey into a Datoga tribe village in the lake Eyasi region in northern Tanzania.

The Datoga tribe are pastoralists who originally journeyed to Tanzania from Sudan, chasing better grazing for their cattle. But finding their place in Tanzania was far from easy. They are also renowned for their blacksmith abilities, crafting jewelry, and arrowheads out of scrap metal.

Arts & Culture: The New Criterion — June 2023

The New Criterion – June 2023 issue:

The diversity myth  by Peter Thiel
Emperor of chaos  by Gary Saul Morson
Pfitzner & the conservative artist  by Adam Kirsch
Vermeer in Amsterdam  by Benjamin Riley


New poems  by Dylan Carpenter, Karl Kirchwey & John Barr

Japan Culture: How Five Ancient Crafts Survived

Insider Business (May 19, 2023) – These Japanese crafts are among the oldest in the world. But most of them are disappearing. In this video, we will tell you the stories of five artisans who are among the last to keep their ancient methods alive.

Video timeline: 00:36 Soy Sauce 08:16 Wagashi 19:27 Mochi 27:12 Bonsai Scissors 37:45 Black Vinegar

We saw how soy sauce is aged in century-old wooden barrels, how vinegar is fermented using an ancient method, and how sweets that only aristocrats and emperors could eat 400 years ago are prepared today.

Preview: New York Times Magazine – May 21, 2023

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (May 21, 2023) – Sometimes it seems as if everyone is in therapy. And the language of therapy is certainly everywhere these days. So we dedicated this year’s Health Issue to a topic on all our minds.

THE THERAPY ISSUE

Does Therapy Really Work? Let’s Unpack That.

An illustration of a person’s profile that has large holes through their head. The missing parts of the head are floating above the person and a therapist staring out at them from a chair.

By Susan Dominus

Research shows that counseling delivers great benefits to many people. But it’s hard to say exactly what that means for you.

In my late 20s, living alone in New York, I found myself in the grip of a dark confusion, unclear of how to proceed — and so I started seeing a therapist. During most visits, I sat in a chair with a box of tissues on the small table beside it, but the office also held a couch, on which I occasionally reclined, staring at the ceiling as I wrestled with what I was doing with my life, and even what I was doing in that office.

Want to Fix Your Mind? Let Your Body Talk.

An illustration showing two bare legs standing on a green background with some daisies growing up around the toes. A small blue person with an orange head is touching one of the legs, and yellow circles are radiating out from the blue person’s hands.

By Daniel Bergner

Somatic therapy is surging, with the promise that true healing may reside in focusing on the physical rather than the mental.

I had been describing a looming fear about my writing, about encroaching failure. Price sat in front of a dangling plant in her home office in Austin, Texas. With her red-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, her delicate features communicated a mix of candor and vulnerability that created a sense of shared space, of intimacy, even by Zoom. She listened, took notes and, with a gesture of her hand, suggested that we leave my account of the situation off to the side.

The New York Review Of Books — June 8, 2023

Home | The New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books (June 8, 2023) – Sacagawea after Lewis & Clark, Cryptocurrency reflects a radical marketization of politics, Nicole Flattery’s Factory Girls and more.

The Price of Crypto

A cryptocurrency mine, Gondo, Switzerland

By Trevor Jackson

Despite its boosters’ frequent references to democracy and freedom, cryptocurrency reflects a radical marketization of politics in which major players can rewrite the rules as needed.

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze by Laura Shin

Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains by Vitalik Buterin, edited by Nathan Schneider

None of this had to happen. In the fall of 2008, amid the great shipwreck of the international financial order, an anonymous person or group of persons writing under the name Satoshi Nakamoto proposed a new electronic cash system called Bitcoin. In the “white paper” proposing the system, initially circulated to a cryptography mailing list, Nakamoto claimed that it would “allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” 

Ideal Detachments

Kevin Power

Tracing the memories of an employee at Andy Warhol’s Factory, Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special dramatizes a young woman’s self-scrutiny in an era defined by male looking and listening.

Nothing Special by by Nicole Flattery