The Globalist Podcast, Friday, June 9, 2023: China enters Taiwanese airspace and Japanese waters. Is this business as usual or a serious escalation?
Plus: the EU’s “Hogwarts for ambassadors”, the latest fashion news and the White Cube gallery heads to Seoul.
The counter-offensive is getting under way. The next few weeks will be critical
Trailed ten days early with a blood-stirring video in which Ukrainian troops asked God to bless their “sacred revenge”, Ukraine’s counter-offensive is under way. For weeks its armed forces have conducted probing and shaping operations along the 1,000km front line, looking for weaknesses and confusing the Russians. Now Ukraine is testing enemy defences with an intensity not seen for months, with attacks against the occupiers in a series of positions in the east and south. The apparent demolition of the Kakhovka dam on June 6th, if it was indeed Russian sabotage as Western military sources believe, would be clear evidence that they are already feeling the pressure.
The meaning of “spatial computing”
No one shows off a new gadget quite like Apple. But the device that Tim Cook unveiled on June 5th was billed as something more significant. The Vision Pro, a pair of sleek glass goggles, represents “an entirely new spatial-computing platform”, said Apple’s boss, comparing its launch to that of the Macintosh and the iPhone. Apple’s message is clear: after desktop and mobile computing, the next big tech era will be spatial computing—also known as augmented reality—in which computer graphics are overlaid on the world around the user.
Democrats should ditch it in favour of ideas that Americans actually support
The Guardian Weekly (June 9, 2023) – A year ago, the Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira and Guardian contributor Dom Phillips were murdered in a remote area of the Brazilian Amazon. They had travelled there to meet with Indigenous activists who patrol the Javari valley to protect it from illegal fishing and mining gangs.
Their deaths laid bare the environmental devastation inflicted under Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, as well as the extreme threat to those who dare to disrupt the activities of exploitative industries in the region. That’s why, in collaboration with an international journalists’ consortium, the Guardian has published the Bruno and Dom project: a series that seeks to honour their work and continue it. You’ll find a selection of pieces in this week’s Guardian Weekly and the rest are available online.
The Globalist Podcast, Thursday, June 8, 2023: Former US vice president Mike Pence bids for the 2024 Republican nomination.
Plus: the fallout continues from the Kakhovka dam blast, the Japanese military reconsiders its tattoo ban and the toad species that is wreaking havoc in Australia.
The Globalist Podcast, Wednesday, June 7, 2023: Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka dam: what we know about the breach.
Plus: US secretary of state Antony Blinken visits Saudi Arabia, Brazil says goodbye to a bossa nova legend and why the French military working with science-fiction writers.
Can hard-core gamers learn to play well with others? By Spencer Kornhaber
Playing a prerelease version of Diablo IV, the latest installment in a 26-year-old adventure series about battling the forces of hell, I faced swarms of demons that yowled and belched. My character, a sorcerer, shot them with lightning bolts, producing a jet-engine roar.
Inside the desperate effort to rescue America’s pastime from irrelevance By Mark Leibovich
Where in the name of human rain delays is Juan Soto?
The stud outfielder is late. Everyone keeps checking their phones—the antsy Major League Baseball officials, the San Diego Padres PR guy, the handful of reporters, and the assorted hangers-on you encounter around baseball clubhouses. Everyone is wondering when the Padres superstar will show up. He was supposed to be here half an hour ago, just after this baseball players’ sanctum opened and we were allowed to join them in their most elemental of baseball activities: waiting around.
The Globalist Podcast, Tuesday, June 6, 2023: Ukraine‘s Kakhovska dam was completely destroyed; naval drills in Indonesia bring together Chinese, Russian and US forces, we get the latest from Jakarta.
Plus: reports of mass arrests in Kyrgyzstan, our technology correspondent is in California as Apple announces its newest releases and why Studio Ghibli’s forthcoming film will be unique.
‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (June 5, 2023) – A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, the economic consequences of the global collapse in fertility, Scotland’s holiday from reality (10:10) and the business of the rapper, Bad Bunny (18:10).
What might change the world’s dire demographic trajectory?
Even as artificial intelligence (ai) leads to surging optimism in some quarters, the baby bust hangs over the future of the world economy.
Populism can unravel quickly. But its effects are long-lasting
Scotland was the first part of Britain to get high on populist referendums. In 2014, two years before the Brexit vote, the Scottish independence campaign exhorted people to ignore the experts and revel in a glorious national renewal.
On Spotify and Netflix Spanish seems to be taking over the world
In November Spotify crowned Bad Bunny, a rapper from Puerto Rico, its most-streamed artist for the third year in a row.
Robert Redford, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Rudd, and Angela Bassett now disappear into movies whose plots can come down to “Keep glowy thing away from bad guy.”
James Grissom says that he met the playwright and his famous muses, and quoted them extensively in his work. Not everyone believes him.
By Helen Shaw
Lawyers tried to use the independent-state-legislature theory to sway the outcomes of the 2000 and 2020 elections. What if it were to become the law of the land?
An extreme version of the theory could give state legislatures the power to award Electoral College votes however they see fit. Illustrations by Golden Cosmos
The Globalist Podcast, Monday, June 5, 2023: Journalist Maria Romanenko gives us the latest from Ukraine and we discuss the shifting power dynamics in the UAE.
Plus: Do you need to speak English to become Spain’s next leader? We also look at the stories dominating the papers in Scandinavia with Monocle’s Oslo correspondent, Lars Bevanger.
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