Category Archives: Magazines

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Dec 4, 2023

Dancers and musicians can be seen practicing in the Juilliard School at night.

The New Yorker – December 4, 2023 issue: The new issue‘s cover features Sergio García Sánchez’s “Ready to Soar” – The artist discusses rhythm, rigor, and the linguistic capabilities of art.

How Jensen Huang’s Nvidia Is Powering the A.I. Revolution

A portrait of Jensen Huang made of computer chips.

The company’s C.E.O. bet it all on a new kind of chip. Now that Nvidia is one of the biggest companies in the world, what will he do next?

By Stephen Witt

The revelation that ChatGPT, the astonishing artificial-intelligence chatbot, had been trained on an Nvidia supercomputer spurred one of the largest single-day gains in stock-market history. When the Nasdaq opened on May 25, 2023, Nvidia’s value increased by about two hundred billion dollars. A few months earlier, Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s C.E.O., had informed investors that Nvidia had sold similar supercomputers to fifty of America’s hundred largest companies. By the close of trading, Nvidia was the sixth most valuable corporation on earth, worth more than Walmart and ExxonMobil combined. Huang’s business position can be compared to that of Samuel Brannan, the celebrated vender of prospecting supplies in San Francisco in the late eighteen-forties. “There’s a war going on out there in A.I., and Nvidia is the only arms dealer,” one Wall Street analyst said.

Why Trump’s Trials Should Be on TV

Why Trumps Trials Should Be on TV

The conduct of the trials, their fairness, and their possibly damning verdicts will be at the center of the 2024 election. Transparency is crucial.

By Amy Davidson Sorkin

On November 6th, Donald Trump emerged from a New York City courtroom, where he had testified in a civil trial alleging that he and others in the Trump Organization had committed fraud, and gave himself a great review. “I think it went very well,” he told reporters. “If you were there, and you listened, you’d see what a scam this is.” He meant that the case was a scam and not that his company was. “Everybody saw what happened today,” he went on. “And it was very conclusive.”

How to Play a Nazi

Sandra Hüller photographed sitting in a chair by Mark Peckmezian.

The German actress Sandra Hüller probes characters with unusual depth. But to portray a Fascist wife, in “The Zone of Interest,” she reversed her usual approach—and withheld her empathy.

By Rebecca Mead

In “Anatomy of a Fall,” Hüller stars as a successful novelist accused of murdering her husband. The camera often lingers on her face as it shifts like quicksilver between playfulness, defiance, and evasion.Photograph by Mark Peckmezian for The New Yorker

The New York Times Magazine – Nov 26, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (November 17, 2023): The latest issue features Was Peace Ever Possible in the Israel-Palestine Conflict?; Finding a Moral Center in This Era of War; The Beatles Are Still Charting the Future of Pop. It Looks Bleak – Their latest song points toward a future where no golden goose need ever stop laying, and more…

Was Peace Ever Possible?

Thirty years ago, a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed achievable. The story of how it fell apart reveals why the fight remains so intractable today.

MODERATED BY EMILY BAZELON

Finding a Moral Center in This Era of War

By David Marchese Photograph by Mamadi Doumbouya

Phil Klay, as both a participant and a writer, has been thinking deeply about war for a long time. In his two acclaimed works of fiction, the book of short stories “Redeployment,” which won a 2014 National Book Award, and the novel “Missionaries” (2020), and in the nonfiction collection “Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War” (2022), Klay has interrogated, to profound effect and with a deeply humane and moral sensibility, what war does to our hearts and minds, individually and collectively, here and abroad. “I’m interested in the kinds of stories that we tell ourselves about war,” says Klay, who is a 40-year-old veteran of the Iraq war. 

Everybody Knows Flo From Progressive. Who Is Stephanie Courtney?

Stephanie Courtney gets makeup for her character Flo.

A polo shirt, a white apron and a retro hairdo changed an actor’s life forever.

Arts/History: Smithsonian Magazine – December 2023

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Smithsonian Magazine (December 2023) – The latest issue features ‘Can A Robot Replace the World’s Greatest Artists?; A tiny reindeer enjoys its day in the sun; In Ukraine, war reshapes a Holocaust Memorial; the Rebirth of a Lost American Wine Region, and more…

Why Collectors Fall Head Over Heels for the ‘Inverted Jenny’ Stamp

Inverted Jenny

One of the rare 24-cent misprints sold at auction this week for a record-breaking $2 million

The Real History Behind Empress Joséphine in Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon’

Vanessa Kirby as Joséphine and Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon in Ridley Scott's Napoleon​​​​​​​

A new Hollywood epic traces Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise and fall through his checkered relationship with his first wife

Retirement: Barron’s Magazine – Nov 27, 2023

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BARRON’S MAGAZINE – November 27, 2023 ISSUE:

15 Stocks to Buy Around the World, From Our Roundtable Experts

15 Stocks to Buy Around the World, From Our Roundtable Experts

Global turmoil has created opportunities, especially in emerging markets and commodities.

A Golden Age of Vaccines Is Here. What It Means for You.

A Golden Age of Vaccines Is Here. What It Means for You.

Pharmaceutical companies are currently developing vaccines for a range of purposes, from preventing disease to treating cancers.Long read

One Auto Stock to Buy Now to Split the EV Difference

One Auto Stock to Buy Now to Split the EV Difference

The transition to electric vehicles has hit a speed bump, but Vontier shares should benefit no matter what kind of car you drive.4 min read

5 Pros Offer Their Top Year-End Financial Tips

5 Pros Offer Their Top Year-End Financial Tips

We asked financial advisors to share their most surprising year-end financial-planning or investing moves.Long read

Previews: The Economist Magazine – Nov 25, 2023

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The Economist Magazine (November 25, 2023): The latest issue features The Climate report – Some progress, must try harder….

Progress on climate change has not been fast enough, but it has been real

And the world needs to learn from it

The agreement at the conference of the parties (cop) to the un Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place in Paris in 2015, was somewhat impotent. As many pointed out at the time, it could not tell countries what to do; it could not end the fossil-fuel age by fiat; it could not draw back the seas, placate the winds or dim the noonday sun. But it could at least lay down the law for subsequent cops, decreeing that this year’s should see the first “global stocktake” of what had and had not been done to bring the agreement’s overarching goals closer.

Lessons from the ascent of the United Arab Emirates

How to thrive in a fractured world

In Argentina Javier Milei faces an economic crisis

The radical libertarian is taking over a country on the brink

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Nov 24, 2023

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Science Magazine – November 17, 2023: The new issue features Dolomite, a key mineral in stunning geological formations, such as Drei Zinnen (shown here), Niagara Falls, and Hoodoos. Despite its natural abundance, laboratory growth of dolomite has proven impossible—a contradiction known as the “dolomite problem.”

Rude awakening

The appearance of a “tropical” mosquito-borne illness in southeastern Australia has unsettled researchers

Giving birth gives birth to neurons

In mice, pregnancy results in new neurons that support recognition of pups

Previews: History Today Magazine – December 2023

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HISTORY TODAY MAGAZINE (DECEMBER 2023) This issue features The 50 years that made America from Revolution to the Monroe Doctrine, the forgotten role of Archbishop Wulfstan, the home front of the First World War, the role of sokol in Czech nationalism, Volcanos on tour, and the best history books of 2023.

The 50 Years that Made America

The ‘Boston Tea Party’, 16 December 1773, 18th-century woodcut. incamerastock/Alamy Stock Photo.

Fifty years separate the Boston Tea Party and the Monroe Doctrine. How did a group of British colonies become a self-proclaimed protector of continents within half a century?

It was the evening of 16 December 1773. At Boston’s Old South Meeting House, more than 5,000 people awaited word from the governor of Massachusetts Bay, Thomas Hutchinson. Had the governor finally given in to their demand to send back to England the three ships laden with East India Company tea that were moored in Boston harbour? When learning of the governor’s refusal, tradition holds that the firebrand orator Samuel Adams loudly declared that ‘this meeting’ could do no more to defend the rights of the people. The words were a pre-arranged signal.

Books of the Year 2023

Best History Books of 2023

Revolutions and rubles, godlings and fascist symbols, Shakespeare and silk: ten historians choose their favourite new history books of 2023.

Book Of The Year: “James Gillray – A Revolution in Satire” By Tim Clayton

Apollo Magazine (November 23, 2023) Political satire is by its nature ephemeral: it reacts to events and personalities and moves quickly on. Yet James Gillray’s (1756–1815) excoriating attacks on William Pitt, Charles James Fox, George III, the Prince Regent and a whole cavalcade of Georgian public figures retain their sting more than two centuries after he dreamed them up. In his sumptuously illustrated study of Gillray, Tim Clayton explains why.

Gillray was, shows Clayton, as much an artist as a caricaturist – his fertile wit and invention were equalled by his facility with an etching needle. His images reveal a man of learning, liberal with allusions in his prints to Shakespeare, Milton and the classics, who developed a style that combined the literary and the visual. His seven years at the Royal Academy, meanwhile, helped shape him into one of the most accomplished draughtsmen of the early 19th century.

Although Clayton takes Gillray from his early training as a letter engraver through his time as a travelling player and into his pomp and then the madness that blighted his later years, this is not a biography in the traditional sense. There are few documentary sources relating directly to Gillray, so Clayton skilfully reveals his man through examining the ‘business of satire’. He looks at Gillray’s often overlapping professional and personal relationships, at the intricacies of Georgian print culture, and the ebbs and flows of politics.

Special Report: ‘Carbon Dioxide Removal’ (NOV ’23)

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The Economist SPECIAL REPORTS – CARBON DIOXIDE REMOVAL (NOVEMBER 25, 2023): The new economy net zero needs – It is vital to climate stabilization, remarkably challenging and systematically ignored.

Carbon-dioxide removal needs more attention

It is vital to climate stabilisation, remarkably challenging and systematically ignored

St Augustine’s climate policy

The temptations of deferred removals

Carbon dioxide removals must start at scale sooner than people think

On the other hand…

The many prices of carbon dioxide

Not all tonnes are created equal

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Nov 23, 2023

B 8G4L/ChimeraX

Volume 623 Issue 7988

Nature Magazine – November 23, 2023: The latest issue cover features how cryo-electron microscopy can reveal the structure of motor protein myosin filaments, which power the heart via muscle contraction.

Earth just had its hottest year on record — climate change is to blame

Around 7.3 billion people faced temperatures strongly influenced by global warming over the past year.

UK first to approve CRISPR treatment for diseases: what you need to know

The landmark decision could transform the treatment of sickle-cell disease and β-thalassaemia — but the technology is expensive.

How AI is expanding art history

From identifying disputed artworks to reconstructing lost masterpieces, artificial intelligence is enriching how we interpret our cultural heritage.