Category Archives: Culture

Culture, Documentaries, History, Reviews, Society, Travel, Videos

Travel & History: The Sindh Region Of Pakistan (DW)

Leave a comment

DW Documentary (April 28, 2023) – Pakistan’s Sindh region is one of the cradles of human civilization. It’s seen as the homeland of the Indus Valley Civilization, an advanced Bronze Age civilization. But the events of 1947 brought drastic change to the cultural landscape of the Sindh.

The 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan was devastating for those living in the Sindh region. Most were Hindus and fled to India, as the area was completely assigned to Pakistan. Many Muslims from India then resettled in Sindh and changed the face of this region, whose cultural heritage had been formed over centuries.

Suddenly, the Hindus who remained found themselves in the minority. Many members of the Sindhi community are now scattered across the globe. They’re making every effort to preserve the old stories and traditions and are proud of their legacy as descendants of one of the oldest human civilizations.

Culture, Design, Lifestyle, Magazines, Reviews, Society

Design/Culture: Monocle Magazine —May 2023

Leave a comment

Monocle Magazine (May 2023 issue) – As the canny, optimistic winners of this year’s Monocle Design Awards all demonstrate, staying on top of your game in any field requires the instincts of a true detective – and a curiosity to find out what makes the world tick, writes our editor in chief, Andrew Tuck.

Dutch master

fp009446.jpg
When the sun’s over the yardarm…

A former waterside inn in a quiet fishing village north of Amsterdam is now a cosy hotel and restaurant where good food, nice design and big views all entice you to linger. Monocle takes a first look.ByJosh FehnertPhotographyJulie Mayfeng

Design Awards: Part 1

s1.jpg

For the third annual Monocle Design Awards, we’ve scoured the globe for the best in architecture, furniture, graphic design and more, to celebrate projects improving our lives – while looking good.Edited byNic MonissePhotographyBenjamin Swanson

“I was a motorcycle hater,” says Stefan Ytterborn. That is, before the Swedish entrepreneur tried a few electric ones and got so hooked that he decided to design his own. Cake’s first model, Kalk, put competitors to shame with a design weighing 40 per cent less than the average motorbike. In 2021 Cake started shipping out Kalk &, an upgrade engineered for both commutes and off-road escapades. “During the week you ride the bike from home to work, and during the weekend you bring it out to the countryside,”…

Analysis, Climate Change, Culture, Food, Living, Retail, Reviews, Videos

Culture: Dal Lake Floating Market, Srinagar, Kashmir

Video Leave a comment

Insider Business (April 21, 2023) – For generations, farmers in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir have been selling their crops on the Dal Lake in a floating market. The lake is an economic hub for people living there – with many working in agriculture, fishing, and tourism. But decades of pollution have threatened their livelihoods.

The floating vegetable market on Dal Lake is in Srinagar, Kashmir, where locals trade out of their canoes. The produce sold here is grown in floating gardens.. The rich ecosystem of this wetland produces plenty of tomatoes, cucumbers, water chestnuts and the famous nadru (lotus roots, a delicacy in the Kashmir Valley).

They gather in the centre of the lake at dawn, and disappear just as sunlight hits the waters.

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews, Society

Preview: New York Times Magazine – April 23, 2023

Leave a comment

Image

The New York Times Magazine – April 23, 2023:

They Saw the Horrific Aftermath of a Mass Shooting. Should We?

A photograph of Detectives Art Walkley and Karoline Keith and Sgt. Jeff Covello, all staring directly into the camera.
Detectives Art Walkley, left, and Karoline Keith and Sgt. Jeff Covello, crime-scene investigators for the Connecticut State Police.Credit…Elinor Carucci for The New York Times

The crime-scene investigators are the ones who document, and remember, the unimaginable. This is what they saw at Sandy Hook.

How Much Power Should the Courts Have?

A color illustration of a courthouse in the clouds.
Credit…Illustration by Anson Chan

In Israel, the United States and other democracies, bitter battles are being waged over the same question.

What Was Twitter, Anyway?

A color photograph of a nest filled with trash, including cigarette butts, a soda tab, wire, chewed-up bubble gum and a blue feather in the middle.
Credit…Photograph by Jamie Chung. Concept by Pablo Delcan.

Whether the platform is dying or not, it’s time to reckon with how exactly it broke our brains.

Buildings, Culture, History, Reviews, Travel, Videos

Travel: France’s Most Beautiful Hiking Paths

Video Leave a comment

FRANCE 24 (April 20, 2023) – Of the 370 long-distance hiking paths that criss-cross the French countryside, some in particular stand out. In Finistère, on the Atlantic, the Chemin du Pouldu merges with the Brittany coast. Its contrasts of green and blue have inspired many artists, such as French painter Paul Gauguin.

Down in the Cévennes, Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson gave his name to the Chemin Stevenson, where you can still come across donkeys. As for the route to Santiago de Compostela, one of the oldest long-distance hiking paths in France, it contains delights for the eyes and the soul.

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews, Society

Previews: The Atlantic Magazine — May 2023

Leave a comment

Image

The Atlantic Magazine – May 2023 issue – In “American Madness,” appearing as the cover story of the May issue of The Atlantic, Jonathan Rosen writes about the extraordinary turned tragic trajectory of Michael’s life and illness, and makes a broader argument that how we treat people with severe mental illness in this country must change.

Why Chatbot AI Is a Problem for China

An illustration featuring digits in the shape of a yellow star on red background

If the technology is only as good as the information it learns from, then state censorship is not a recipe for success.

What Your Favorite Personality Test Says About You

Colorful blobs behind an illustration of a person reading a paper and another person looking through a telescope

Are you a Myers-Briggs person, an Enneagram person, or something else? The Atlantic made a quiz to help you find out.

Culture, Magazines, Media, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine — May 2023 Issue

Leave a comment
Image

Harper’s Magazine – May 2023 issue: @laurenoyler goes on the @goop cruise; @harikunzru and @erikmbaker on the real “crisis of work; A person history of panic; Losing a father and finding Stoicism; New fiction by Cynthia Ozick and more..

The Age of the Crisis of Work

The Age of the Crisis of Work thumbnail

What is the sound of quiet quitting?

Something has gone wrong with work. On this, everyone seems to agree. Less clear is the precise nature of the problem, let alone who or what is to blame. For some time we’ve been told that we’re in the midst of a Great Resignation. Workers are quitting their jobs en masse, repudiating not just their bosses but ambition itself—even the very idea of work.

The Anatomy of Panic

The Anatomy of Panic thumbnail

A personal history of anxiety

I had my first panic attack when I was fifteen, in the middle of January, while I was sitting in geometry class. Winter in Illinois, flesh comes off the bones—what did we need geometry for? We could look at the naked angles of the trees, the circles in the sky at night. 

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – April 24, 2023

Leave a comment

Image

The New Yorker – April 24 & May 1, 2023 issue:

JooHee Yoon’s “Drawing Hands with A.I. (After M. C. Escher)”

A hand drawn on a piece of paper rises off the page and draws another hand on the piece of paper which in turn draws the...

The artist discusses artistry, artificial intelligence, and the human experience.

Chatbots and image generators, newly on the rise, have sparked our imaginations—and our fears. As artificial-intelligence machines sharpen their ability to translate written prompts into images that accurately capture both style and substance, some visual artists worry that their specialized skills might be rendered irrelevant.

“Drawing Hands,” M. C. Escher, 1948.

The Future of Fertility

A futuristic scene of metallic DNA strands which wrap around a central petri dish containing a human ovum.

A new crop of biotech startups want to revolutionize human reproduction.

In 2016, two Japanese reproductive biologists, Katsuhiko Hayashi and Mitinori Saitou, made an announcement in the journal Nature that read like a science-fiction novel. The researchers had taken skin cells from the tip of a mouse’s tail, reprogrammed them into stem cells, and then turned those stem cells into egg cells. 

Crooks’ Mistaken Bet on Encrypted Phones

A group of four men sit around a table piled with cocaine. They are illuminated by the light of a cell phone hovering...

Drug syndicates and other criminal groups bought into the idea that a new kind of phone network couldn’t be infiltrated by cops. They were wrong—big time.

Many criminals have been convicted as a result of encrypted-phone stings—more than four hundred in the U.K. alone.Illustration by Max Löffler