Category Archives: Magazines

Economics, Financial, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews

Previews: The Economist Magazine – May 27, 2023

May 25, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The Economist Magazine– May 27, 2023 issue: The race to become the Republican nominee for the presidential election in America next year is properly under way. And Donald Trump has a huge, perhaps insurmountable, lead.

Ron DeSantis has little chance of beating Donald Trump

Hopes of depriving the former president of the Republican nomination are fading

Belatedly and nervously, the would-be assassins have been lining up. On May 22nd Tim Scott, a senator from South Carolina, became the latest Republican to announce a run for president. Greater fanfare accompanied the official declaration (on Twitter) on May 24th that Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is joining the race for the Republican nomination. He has been widely heralded as the candidate with the best chance of defeating the favourite, Donald Trump. But even as more plotters step forward, the chances of a successful coup to overthrow Mr Trump are growing slimmer by the day.

What would humans do in a world of super-AI?

A thought experiment based on economic principles

In “wall-e”, a film released in 2008, humans live in what could be described as a world of fully automated luxury communism. Artificially intelligent robots, which take wonderfully diverse forms, are responsible for all productive labour. People get fat, hover in armchairs and watch television.

Hungary is becoming more important to China

Viktor Orban and Xi Jinping bond over their anti-Americanism

To ears accustomed to a swelling chorus of China-scepticism in the European Union, the language of Hungarian diplomats is striking. Not for them the common talk of European officials about the need to “de-risk” relations with China and to treat it as a “systemic rival”. Co-operation between Hungary and China presents “opportunities rather than risks”, said Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, in Beijing on May 15th. Wang Yi, China’s foreign-affairs overlord, told him that relations between the countries had entered their “best period in history”.

Magazines, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – May 25, 2023

May 24, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

nature Magazine – May 25, 2023 issue: In this week’s issue, Wenzhu Liu and colleagues present a way to make foldable silicon wafers that can be used in flexible solar cells. The secret to success was to blunt the edges of the silicon wafers, thereby stopping them from undergoing brittle fracturing. As a result, the researchers were able to make 15-centimetre solar cells with a bending angle of more than 360°.

Oldest known ‘blueprints’ aided human hunters 9,000 years ago

Prehistoric engravings depict vast hunting traps with extraordinary precision.

Photograph of a stone engraved with zig-zag lines.

The oldest blueprints ever found might have been used to prepare for large-scale hunts¹.

Engraved lines on a stone in Jordan might depict landscape features near a large-scale hunting structure.

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – May 26, 2023

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Times Literary Supplement (May 26, 2023) – Alan Jenkins on Martin Amis, Young Russian fascists, The Rossettis at Tate Britain, Writers at the Hay Festival, Seamus Perry on ‘Byron’s Voice’.

Taking life sentence by sentence

Martin Amis, a talent for our time By Alan Jenkins

In the Foreword to The War Against Cliché: Essays and reviews 1971-2000, a career-spanning collection of his journalism (literary and other), Martin Amis recalled how, when they started out in the early 1970s, he and his friends and colleagues touchingly assumed that literary criticism was as essential to civilization as literature itself was. Furthermore, “the most fantastic thing about this cultural moment” was that, in the debate between the Two Cultures, Art vs Science, “Art seemed to be winning”.

Culture, Magazines, Politics, Previews, Reviews, Society

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.

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Preview: London Review Of Books — June 1, 2023

May 22, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

London Review of Books (LRB) – June 1, 2023 issue: Rethinking 1848; Parfit’s Trolley Problem; Epictetus say ‘relax’ and reports from Istanbul.

At NatCon London

Peter Geoghegan

The British and American right differ in the weight they place on ideological purity. With a limited cast of characters – and an even smaller pool of funders – British conservatives can ill afford to divide their world into neoliberals and traditionalists. At NatCon London, the tirades about woke universities and pronouns often obscured political differences, but they can’t conceal them completely.

Arts & Literature, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – May 29, 2023

May 22, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Marcellus Hall's “Open House” | The New Yorker

The New Yorker – May 29, 2023 issue:

Stephen Satterfield Puts Black Cuisine at the Center of U.S. History

The host of Netflix’s “High on the Hog” draws seductive stories from a bittersweet legacy.

By Dorothy Wickenden

Stephen Satterfield, the host of the Netflix food-history series “High on the Hog,” was bent over the stove in his parents’ kitchen, near Atlanta. It was one o’clock on a February afternoon, and he was preparing Sunday dinner for the family. Most of the meal was canonical Black Southern food: turnip greens simmered for hours, cheese grits, biscuits baked in a cast-iron skillet.

What We Owe Our Trees

A black and white photograph of a dense forest.

Forests fed us, housed us, and made our way of life possible. But they can’t save us if we can’t save them.

By Jill Lepore

The woods I know best, love best, are made of Northern hardwoods, sugar maple and white ash, timber-tall; black and yellow birch, tiger-skinned; seedlings and saplings of blighted beech and striped maple creeping up, knock-kneed, from a forest floor of princess pine and Christmas fern, shag-rugged. White-tailed deer dart through softwood stands of pine and hemlock, bucks and does, the last leaping fawn, leaving tracks that look like tiny human lungs, trails that people can only ever see in the snow, even though, long after snowmelt, dogs can smell them, tracking, snuffling, shuddering with the thrill of the hunt and noshing on deer scat for dog treats.

Two Weeks at the Front in Ukraine

A Ukrainian sniper positioned in a trench aims a rifle.

In the trenches in the Donbas, infantrymen face unrelenting horrors, from missiles to grenades to helicopter fire.

By Luke Mogelson

A twenty-two-year-old Ukrainian sniper, code-named Student, stuffed candy wrappers into his ears before firing a rifle at the Russians’ tree line. He’d been discharged from the hospital two weeks earlier, after being shot in the thigh.Photographs by Maxim Dondyuk for The New Yorker

Arts & Literature, Books, Culture, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Arts & Culture: The New Criterion — June 2023

May 20, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

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

Financial, Investing, Magazines, Previews, Retirement, Reviews

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – May 22, 2023

May 20, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

BARRON’S MAGAZINE – MAY 22, 2023 ISSUE

10 Stocks to Play a Resurgent Energy Sector, From Our Roundtable Experts

Our energy roundtable predicts higher crude prices as global demand grows faster than supply. What’s ahead for U.S. shale, the majors, and the energy transition.

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL HOUTZ

Goldman Sachs Is Evolving. David Solomon on the Next Chapter.

The CEO sat down with Barron’s to discuss his critics’ complaints, the challenging climate for banking, his growth ambitions, and DJing side gig.Long read

Forget the Bud Light Mess. BUD Stock Is a Buy.

The controversy over Bud Light’s transgender promotion obscures Anheuser-Busch InBev’s push to boost global sales and revenue growth

The 5 Stocks That Rule This Market—and Make Investors Nervous

Al Root

UP AND DOWN WALL STREET

The Market Shrugs off Doomsday Scenarios. It Just Might Be Right.

Ben Levisohn

THE ECONOMY

Why a Fed Hike Is Still on the Table for June

Megan Cassella

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

Preview: New York Times Magazine – May 21, 2023

May 19, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

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.

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.

Magazines, Podcasts, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research Preview: Science Magazine – May 19, 2023

May 18, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Science Magazine – May 19, 2023 issue: More than half of the world’s largest lakes have declined over the past three decades. Human water consumption, warming climate, and sedimentation are largely responsible. Lake Powell, shown here, with its once-submerged walls that now appear as whitened surfaces, exemplifies this drying trend.

Cloning vigorous crops, and finding the first romantic kiss
First up this week, building resilience into crops. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss all the tricks farmers use now to make resilient hybrid crops of rice or wheat and how genetically engineering hybrid crop plants to clone themselves may be the next step.
After that we ask: When did we start kissing? Troels Pank Arbøll is an assistant professor of Assyriology in the department of cross-cultural and regional studies at the University of Copenhagen. He and Sarah chat about the earliest evidence for kissing—romantic style—and why it is unlikely that such kisses had a single place or time of origin.