The hyper-carnivory movement conjures a time when men hunted and lunch was literally on the hoof. What does the research say?
Daniel Lopatin talks with Amanda Petrusich about his collaborations with the Weeknd and the Safdie brothers.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (September 22, 2023): The 9.24.23 Issue features Hannah Dreier on migrant children working in dangerous conditions; McKenzie Funk on Hank Asher, a drug smuggler who became a pioneer in data mining; Sonia Shah on new research that suggests animals are saying more than we think; and more.
Language was long understood as a human-only affair. New research suggests that isn’t so.
Can a mouse learn a new song?
Such a question might seem whimsical. Though humans have lived alongside mice for at least 15,000 years, few of us have ever heard mice sing, because they do so in frequencies beyond the range detectable by human hearing. As pups, their high-pitched songs alert their mothers to their whereabouts; as adults, they sing in ultrasound to woo one another. For decades, researchers considered mouse songs instinctual, the fixed tunes of a windup music box, rather than the mutable expressions of individual minds.
Real-deal Tunisian harissa is an anchor to the motherland and a bright, specific accent to countless dishes.
By Eric Kim
Last year, UNESCO officially deemed harissa, the brick red, aromatic chile paste, “an integral part of domestic provisions and the daily culinary and food traditions of Tunisian society.” Keyword: Tunisian.
Its backers should pray for a speedy victory—but plan for a long struggle
The war in Ukraine has repeatedly confounded expectations. It is now doing so again. The counter-offensive that began in June was based on the hope that Ukrainian soldiers, equipped with modern Western weapons and after training in Germany, would recapture enough territory to put their leaders in a strong position at any subsequent negotiations.
Western countries have for too long acquiesced to the Indian government’s abuses
For years, India objected to Western strategists lumping it together with its violent and chaotic neighbour in the phrase “Indo-Pakistan”. Now recognised as a fast-growing giant and potential bulwark against China, India claims to have been “de-hyphenated”. Yet the explosive charge aired this week by Justin Trudeau suggests that diplomatic recalibration may have gone too far. Canada’s prime minister alleges that Indian agents were involved in the murder in Vancouver of a Canadian citizen sympathetic to India’s Sikh separatist movement.
‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (September 18, 2023) – Three essential articles read aloud from the The Economist. This week, an analysis of how AI can revolutionize science and how a fresh wave of hard-right populism is stalking Europe.
Where’s the support for Democratic insurgents?
For decades, New Hampshire has generated brisk and gratifying drama with its first-in-the-nation presidential primary. The Granite State momentously destroyed a presidency in 1968, when the Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy ran against President Lyndon Johnson on an antiwar platform.
On seeing without being seen
by Rachel Cusk
Not long ago our mother died, or at least her body did—the rest of her remained obstinately alive. She took a considerable time to die and outlasted the nurses’ predictions by many days, so that those of us who had been summoned to her bedside had to depart and return to our lives.
The bohemian English circle that included Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, and Vanessa Bell revolted against Victorian formality—and their casually ornamental style is inspiring designers today.
By Rebecca Mead
In July, 1918, Virginia Woolf spent a weekend at Garsington—a country home, outside Oxford, owned by Lady Ottoline Morrell, a celebrated hostess of the era, and her husband, Philip Morrell, a Member of Parliament. The house, a ramshackle Jacobean mansion that the Morrells had acquired five years earlier, had been vividly redecorated by Ottoline into what one guest called a “fluttering parrot-house of greens, reds and yellows.” One sitting room was painted with a translucent seafoam wash; another was covered in deep Venetian red, and early visitors were invited to apply thin lines of gold paint to the edges of wooden panels. The entrance hall was laid with Persian carpets and, as Morrell’s biographer Miranda Seymour has written, the pearly gray paint on the walls was streaked with pink, “to create the effect of a winter sunset.” Woolf, in her diary, noted that the Italianate garden fashioned by Morrell—with paved terraces, brilliantly colored flower beds, and a pond surrounded by yew-tree hedges clipped with niches for statuary—was “almost melodramatically perfect.”
Pavels Hedström believes that most architecture separates us from nature. He wants to make nonhuman life inescapable.
By Sam Knight
At the end of his first year at the architecture school of the Royal Danish Academy, Pavels Hedström went on a class trip to Japan. Hedström, a twenty-five-year-old undergraduate, revered Japanese culture and aesthetics, even though he had never visited the country. As a teen-ager growing up in rural Sweden, Hedström had been introduced to Zen meditation by his mother, Daina, and devoured manga and anime. In architecture school, Hedström was drawn to Japanese principles of design and how they applied to a world—and a profession—increasingly troubled by the climate crisis. Hedström was particularly influenced by Metabolism, a postwar Japanese architectural movement that imagined cities of the future as natural organisms: ephemeral, self-regulating, and subject to biological rhythms of growth, death, and decay. In 1977, Kisho Kurokawa, one of Metabolism’s founders, wrote, “Human society must be regarded as one part of a continuous natural entity that includes all animals and plants.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (September 17, 2023): The 9.17.23 Issue features Emily Bazelon on abortion rights being won through state ballots after the Dobbs decision; Audra D.S. Burch on the death of Elijah McClain in Aurora, Colorado and the city’s deep divide over policing; Teju Cole on Greek tragedies; Dan Brooks on the Italian rock band Måneskin; and more.
After Dobbs, the political ground seems to be shifting in some unpredictable ways.
By EMILY BAZELON
After Elijah McClain died in 2019, the case seemed to be closed. The George Floyd protests — and the backlash to them — would change everything.
One by one, the five men — three police officers and two paramedics — walked up before the judge one afternoon this January. Their lawyers stood beside them, and the wooden benches of the Colorado courtroom were filled with family, friends and fellow police officers and paramedics.
Consider the historical precedents
Debate about artificial intelligence (ai) tends to focus on its potential dangers: algorithmic bias and discrimination, the mass destruction of jobs and even, some say, the extinction of humanity. As some observers fret about these dystopian scenarios, however, others are focusing on the potential rewards. ai could, they claim, help humanity solve some of its biggest and thorniest problems. And, they say, ai will do this in a very specific way: by radically accelerating the pace of scientific discovery, especially in areas such as medicine, climate science and green technology.
In the next decade regional tensions will build in India
The world has been seeing the bright side of India. In August it landed a spacecraft on the Moon. In the latest quarter gdp grew at an annual rate of 7.8%, making it the world’s perkiest big economy. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, has just hosted a g20 summit where other leaders, including Joe Biden, courted Asia’s rising behemoth. Yet inside India the talk has turned to whether Mr Modi’s hunger for power and dreams of national renewal could lead him to bend the constitution.
(September 14, 2023) – The new issue features OpenAI’s now famous ChatGPT bot was used by the Humanist to generate this article as an experiment to discover what today’s AI knows and will tell about the dangers posed by AI technology.
From Misinformation to Autonomous Weapons
IN RECENT YEARS, the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence have brought forth a myriad of benefits and possibilities. Be it healthcare or transportation, AI has shown its potential to revolutionize industries and improve the quality of human life. However, this transformative power comes hand in hand with a range of dangers that must be understood and addressed. This article delves into both the narrower personal risks and the broader socio-political concerns associated with AI.
Imagine a world where your conversations with AI-powered machines could lead you astray, your job might vanish overnight, and your personal data might end up in the wrong hands. Welcome to the realm of artificial intelligence, a place where the marvels of technology coexist with a web of dangers that can reshape our lives in unexpected ways. There are personal concerns that ordinary people face as they navigate this AI-infused landscape.
‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (September 18, 2023) – Three essential articles read aloud from the The Economist. This week, the future of the Middle East, Wall Street’s race to wealth management (10:00), and how London’s bus drivers revolutionised health (17:40).
Boomers Daily 