The November 25, 2022 @TheTLS , features Olivia Laing on Kathy Acker; @emilytwrites on self-help and philosophy; @MElizabethLowry on Henry James’s golden age stories; @TobyLichtig on The Doctor; @MirandaFrance1 on Mariana Enriquez; @henryhitchings on slow journalism – and more.
Cop27’s climate anticlimax: inside the 25 November Guardian Weekly | Cop27 | The Guardian
Cop27 ended in a now-traditional blur of last-minute horse-trading, resulting in the welcome agreement of a finance deal for developing countries affected by global heating. But progress on eliminating fossil fuel usage – the key to slowing climate change – again seemed beyond the international community.
As winter descends on Ukraine, we focus on some of the war’s ripples around Europe. Jennifer Rankin reports from Antwerp, where the continued trade in Russian diamonds shines a light on loopholes in EU sanctions on Moscow. And Emma Graham-Harrison is in eastern Poland, where people’s proximity to the war is helping people to put aside past differences.
Then, in features, Luke Harding speaks to the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island – who famously sent an expletive-laden rebuttal to a Russian warship at the start of the conflict – and finds out what happened next.
Isabel Allen’s Editorial for AT322 discusses how the Architecture Today Awards subverted the traditional role of the crit, transforming it into powerful tool for judging the merits and performance of buildings that already exist.
A sharp, trapezoidal marquee hoisted on spindly pilot is points the way towards the primary pedestrian entrance on the long eastern front.
Adam Shatz on the US Midterms
‘This is what Biden and his advisers are counting on: a grinding and volatile battle with a weakened Trump and his increasingly unhinged movement in 2024.’
There is no way to offset the fact that a gigantic dose of hydrocarbon wealth is being used to stage an immensely carbon-intensive spectacle, in a place that is already getting hotter faster than almost anywhere else on the planet. In the narrowing window of opportunity that remains, can we justify burning this much of our carbon budget on international football?
Act of Oblivion, the title of Robert Harris’s novel, refers to the Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion, introduced to the Convention Parliament in May 1660 and given royal assent on 29 August.
Literary Review of Canada – December 2022:
Thwaites could reshape the world’s coastlines. But how do you study one of the world’s most inaccessible places?
The stories we tell ourselves about the future.
For low-lying islands like Kivalina, climate change poses an existential threat.
In West Virginia, a crew of five watches over twenty-three giant turbines.
California Burning
Katherine Blunt Portfolio/Penguin (2022)
California is having more and more wildfires because of climate change, poor tree management creating fire hazards, and antiquated power lines. In 2018, the failure of a 100-year-old rusted electrical hook sparked the Camp Fire, the world’s most expensive natural disaster that year. The blaze forced Pacific Gas and Electric into temporary bankruptcy. Journalist Katherine Blunt’s disturbing history of California’s environmental calamity ends in 2021, with the company’s new chief executive announcing costly underground power lines.
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe
Sean Carroll Oneworld (2022)
Theoretical physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll specializes in quantum mechanics, gravity and cosmology. He aims to create a world in which “most people have informed views and passionate opinions” about modern physics. His skilful book, the first of a planned trilogy, covers space, time and motion. Unlike most introductory physics books for the interested amateur, it includes mathematical equations, cogently explained but not solved, as well as the expected metaphorical language.
Cancer Virus Hunters
Gregory J. Morgan Johns Hopkins Univ. Press (2022)
One-fifth of cancers in people worldwide are caused by tumour viruses such as hepatitis B. Work stemming from these pathogens won seven Nobel prizes between 1966 and 2020, notes historian Gregory Morgan in his authoritative but accessible chronicle. Yet tumour virology is rarely mentioned in discussions of how molecular biology opened our understanding of cancer. As Morgan observes in his path-breaking history, this inhibits a complete understanding of this field as a technoscientific force.
Planta Sapiens
Paco Calvo with Natalie Lawrence Bridge Street (2022)
Humans are so focused on “brain-centric consciousness”, says philosopher of science Paco Calvo, “that we find it difficult to imagine other kinds of internal experience”. Might plants be intelligent (‘sapiens’)? His challenging book is aimed at both believers in this possibility and non-believers. His experiments, such as putting the touch-sensitive plant Mimosa pudica to ‘sleep’ with anaesthetic, provoke thought, as does his note that Charles Darwin requested burial under an ancient village yew, rather than in Westminster Abbey.
Ritual
Dimitris Xygalatas Profile (2022)
Just before anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas’s university went into COVID-19 lockdown, his students had one main concern: would there be a graduation ceremony? We care deeply about rituals, he notes in his wide-ranging and well-written survey, because they help us to “cope with many of life’s challenges”, even if we do not understand how — the “ritual paradox”. Scientific investigation has been tricky, because rituals do not flourish in a laboratory, but wearable sensors and brain-imaging technology help.
Country Life Magazine – 2022 Landscape Photographer of the Year winners:
The overall winner, by William Davies: ‘Brecon in Winter’, Brecon Beacons National Park, Wales. Dawn sunlight warms up a winter’s morning in the Brecon Beacons.
‘Rough and Tumble’ Photo by Lloyd Lane Photography (www.lloydlane.uk), runner-up in the 2022 Landscape Photographer of the Year.
Tryfan by Aled Lewis. A photo of the iconic Tryfan in Snowdonia National Park.
‘Sycamore Gap Sun and Moon’, by Brian Eyler. Sycamore Gap Sun and Moon. Northumberland, England.
Barron’s Magazine – November 21, 2022 issue:
After last year’s blockbuster season, retailers are stuck with bloated inventories just as consumers are pulling back. Get ready for sales, competition, and a new set of winners and losers.
Boomers Daily 