How British and American secret services have collaborated
Contemporary philosophy|Book Review
Do different perspectives lead to scientific progress?
Natural history|Book Review
The extraordinary variety of animals’ sensory worlds
Diaries|Book Review
Dora Wordsworth’s journal of her father’s German tour
Our new issue is now online, featuring @_jamesmeek in southern Ukraine, @GeoffPMann on economic degrowth, @jonathancoe on esoteric 70s TV, @KasiaBoddy on Donald Barthelme, @KathleenJamie on bird flu and a cover by Helen Napper.
Read more: http://lrb.co.uk
There’s something about the Lake District – something that sparks the imagination and soothes the soul. A picture-perfect expanse of rugged peaks, placid waters and rolling farmland, neatly divided by dry-stone walls and dotted with stone-built villages, northwest England’s Lake District has the double accolade of being both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Park.
The artist on loosening up and the rewards of keeping a sketchbook.
By Françoise Mouly, Art by Gayle Kabaker (August 8, 2022)
THE TRADER
Ben Levisohn
UP AND DOWN WALL STREET
Randall W. Forsyth
STREETWISE
Jack Hough
TECHNOLOGY TRADER
Eric J. Savitz
Marram grass, or beachgrass, grows on and stabilizes coastal sand dunes on Ireland’s Dingle Peninsula. Grasses, whether terrestrial or submarine, tend to be undervalued but have influenced the trajectory of human history through their domestication as food staples, as well as natural ecosystems worldwide. If restored and conserved appropriately, grasslands can benefit climate change mitigation efforts. See the special section beginning on page 590.
A new special issue of Science explores the unrecognized value of grass: https://fcld.ly/bo80dpr
An individual’s social network and community — their ‘social capital’ — has been thought to influence outcomes ranging from earnings to health. But measuring social capital is challenging. In two papers in this week’s issue, Raj Chetty and his colleagues use data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook to construct a Social Capital Atlas containing measures of social capital for each ZIP code, high school and college in the United States. The researchers measure three types of social capital: connectedness between different types of people, social cohesion and civic engagement. They find that children who grow up in communities where people of low and high socio-economic status interact more have substantially greater chances of rising out of poverty. The team then examines what might limit social interactions across class lines, finding a roughly equal contribution from lack of exposure — because children in different socio-economic groups go to different schools, for example — and friending bias, the tendency for people to befriend people similar to them.
This week’s @TheTLS , featuring Marjorie Perloff on Robert Lowell’s Memoirs; A. N. Wilson on Lord Northcliffe; @funesdamemorius on Aleister Crowley; @MarenMeinhardt on Manon Gropius; @JuliaBell on Lillian Fishman; @chrismullinexmp on political lives – and more.
Boomers Daily 