The artist discusses the enduring allure of the “Mona Lisa,” the puzzle of celebrity, and which famous people she would invite to dinner.
By Françoise Mouly, Art by Anita Kunz
How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look.
By Nat Hentoff
As he approaches 90, even brushes with death can’t keep him off the road — or dim a late-life creative burst.
Welcome to the era of the audio meme, a time when replicable units of sound are a cultural currency as strong as — if not stronger than — images and text.
Read more: https://nyti.ms/3A6vPOT
Every visitor to Barcelona will sometime take a stroll along La Rambla. The Catalan capital’s leafy boulevard is simply the place to be – but what makes this street world-famous, and what secrets does it hold? Fermin Villar, president of the Friends of La Rambla, clues us in.
La Rambla is a street in central Barcelona. A tree-lined pedestrian street, it stretches for 1.2 km connecting the Plaça de Catalunya in its center with the Christopher Columbus Monument at Port Vell. La Rambla forms the boundary between the neighbourhoods of the Barri Gòtic to the east and the El Raval to the west.
Donja Lokosnica is an unassuming agricultural village in Serbia. That is until it’s time for the annual pepper harvest, where around 250 out of 280 households in the village engage in growing the crimson crop. The sweet peppers are the lifeblood of the small village that produces 60,000 tons of peppers a year.
To learn more about how the Serbian farmers turn the quaint village a rich red, tune in brand new episodes of Europe From Above. Thursdays at 8pm, on National Geographic UK
September-October 2022, Issue 539
Railways can be a world unto themselves. When properly managed, this can mean it’s easier to get things done on the railways than in other parts of an economy. That should be a huge opportunity for reducing climate emissions by getting passengers off the roads and out of the skies. But unless we re-purpose rail networks to serve the interests of people – and not those of the empires and corporations which built them and run them to this day – we can’t succeed. This edition explores how we can make a start on this task.
With an election looming, Jair Bolsonaro has set an economic timebomb for Brazil, writes Leonardo Sakamoto.
Polishing the crystal ball
The intelligence community often fails to make accurate predictions. Amy Zegart, an expert brought in to improve analysis in the United States, sets out what can be done to overcome our cognitive biases.
Improving analysis to prevent nuclear catastrophe isn’t just a matter of history. Great power competition is back. Russia and China are trying to rewrite the international order along authoritarian lines.
Can a brain implant treat drug addiction?
On a bright summer day in July 2021, James Fisher rested nervously, with a newly shaved head, in a hospital bed surrounded by blinding white lights and surgeons shuffling about in blue scrubs. He was being prepped for an experimental brain surgery at West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, a hulking research facility that overlooks the rolling peaks and cliffs of coal country around Morgantown. The hours-long procedure required impeccable precision, “down to the millimeter,” Fisher’s neurosurgeon, Ali Rezai, told me.
A small island off the coast of Newfoundland is redefining itself with the help of a local businesswoman who combined deep pockets with a deep appreciation for the island’s past.
Fogo Island is the largest of the offshore islands of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The Town of Fogo Island encompasses Fogo, Joe Batt’s Arm-Barr’d Islands-Shoal Bay, Seldom-Little Seldom and Tilting, with the unincorporated areas of Fogo Island.
Viewers can explore the interiors of the newly-opened Taipei Performing Arts Center by Dutch studio OMA in this drone video, produced by Shephotoerd Co. Photography.
Opened to the public on 7 August, the Taipei Performing Arts Center is a 59,000-square-metre cultural venue in Taiwan that incorporates three unique theatres.
Read more on Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/?p=1829625
Each year in the wide open spaces of Mongolia, the Mongol Derby takes place, extending over 650 miles, is known to be the world’s longest and most difficult horse race, lasting two weeks. The course shifts slightly each year but is a recreation of the horse messenger system created hundreds of years ago by Genghis Khan.
Boomers Daily 