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Category Archives: Previews
The New York Review Of Books – January 18, 2024
The Fate of Free Will
By James Gleick
In Free Agents, Kevin Mitchell makes a scientific case for the existence of human agency.
Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will by Kevin J. Mitchell
Nobody was holding a gun to your head when you started reading this. You made a choice. Surely it felt that way, at least. A sense of agency—of control over our actions, of continual decision-making—is part of the experience of being human, moment by moment and day by day. True, we sometimes just drift, like robots or zombies, but at other times we gird our loins and exert our will. David Hume defined will nearly three centuries ago as “the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind.” The feeling was universal then and it’s universal now.
Tools to End the Poverty Pandemic
Why have Americans not fought to sustain the unprecedented Covid-era expansion of aid to children, renters, and gig workers?
The Pandemic Paradox: How the Covid Crisis Made Americans More Financially Secure by Scott Fulford
The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W. Thrasher
Poverty in the Pandemic: Policy Lessons from Covid-19 by Zachary Parolin
Previews: The Top Future Tech Trends Of 2024
Previews: Country Life Magazine – Dec 27, 2023
Country Life Magazine – December 27, 2023: The latest issue features ‘This Splendid Land’ – Landscapes, Landmarks, Houses and Gardens; The Art of Knot Tying; Winston Churchill’s interior-design tips; A unicorn in the garden – fantastic beasts tamed…
Figs, wisteria, and the roses that ‘are ridiculously easy to grow’
Country Life’s 10 best gardens stories of 2023
By Toby Keel
Long-standing Country Life contributor Charles Quest-Ritson is literally the man who wrote the book on roses — specifically The RHS encyclopedia of Roses — and back in June, he shared some tips on sharing and planting cuttings which proved enormously popular.
Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – Dec 25, 2023
BARRON’S MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 25, 2023 ISSUE:
Apple’s Search for Growth
Apple trades near record highs, with a market value no other company has ever attained. Now it has to justify the gains
Why Emerging Markets Could Have a Strong Run Next Year
Mexico and Brazil are heading into a favorable interest rate backdrop already in a strong position.Long read
This Stock Is a Better Electric-Vehicle Bet Than Tesla. Buy It Now.
Tesla and China-based BYD are financially similar. Both car makers generated almost identical operating profit in the third quarter. The one big difference: their valuations.Long read
5 Ways to Play the Rally in Small-Cap Stocks
Shares of smaller companies have taken off in the recent rally, but they are still a bargain compared with bigger companies.Long read
Star Stockpickers Are Coming to ETFs. Why They May Not Shine as Brightly.
Active ETFs are the industry’s hottest trend. Picking winners is as tricky as ever.Long read
The New York Times Book Review – December 24, 2023
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (December 22, 2023): The latest issue features MAGIC: The Life of Earvin “Magic” Johnson, by Roland Lazenby; My Jewish Charlie Brown Christmas – The Peanuts special is the most overtly Christian TV holiday classic. So why does it speak to me so deeply?; Seven Fishes (Not Seven Dishes) for Christmas Eve – A modern Italian American take on the Feast of the Seven Fishes offers a streamlined menu any family can pull off….
Magic Man: The Story of the Greatest Point Guard in N.B.A. History
Roland Lazenby’s big biography of Magic Johnson gives us a wealth of detail, a huge cast of characters and, in a way, the tapestry of our time.
By Thomas Beller
MAGIC: The Life of Earvin “Magic” Johnson, by Roland Lazenby
I once asked a portrait photographer why no one ever smiled in her pictures, and she replied, “A smile is a mask.”
I thought of this aphorism as I read Roland Lazenby’s 800-page biography of Magic Johnson. Sports Illustrated declared his smile to be one of the two greatest smiles of the 20th century. (The other was Louis Armstrong’s.) As Missy Fox, the daughter of his high school coach, says in the book, “That is the one thing he’s always had, that smile.”
My Jewish Charlie Brown Christmas
The Peanuts special is the most overtly Christian TV holiday classic. So why does it speak to me so deeply?
“A Charlie Brown Christmas” was a one-of-a-kind wonder when it premiered in 1965 and remains so almost 60 years later. Unlike the other jingle-belled baubles that TV throws down the chimney each year, it is melancholy and meditative. The animation is minimalist and subdued, full of grays and wafting snowflakes. I could wrap myself in the Vince Guaraldi jazz score like a quilt.
And then there’s the speech.
The New York Times Magazine – Dec 24, 2023
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 22, 2023):
He Was My Role Model. My Mentor. My Supplier.
Decades after I left hustling to become a writer, why did I seek out the man who drew me into that world?
By Mitchell S. Jackson
O.G. rings me in the a.m. to say he’s just touched down in Phoenix. It’s the day before he said he’d arrive, and while there was a time when I’d treat the seeming opacity of his plans as par, the call’s a minor surprise. He asks for my address and tells me he can drop by as soon as he grabs his rental car. “Cool,” I say, as if the call ain’t ramped my pulse, as if my crib is presentable for guests. It isn’t. So I shoot out of bed and get to cleaning and straightening the first floor, going so far as to light a candle. It’s been umpteen years since I’ve seen O.G. — Lonnie’s his name — and God forbid he judge me anything less than hella fastidious.
In Jordan, a Sprawling Palestinian Diaspora Looks Towards Gaza
The story of 2.3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan has been shaped by generations of war and exile.Photographs
by MOISES SAMAN
How Do You Make a Movie About the Holocaust?
With “The Zone of Interest,” Jonathan Glazer is just the latest director to confront the problem.
Poetry makes nothing happen, W.H. Auden said in 1939, when words must have seemed especially impotent; but cinema is another matter. For several decades after the end of the Second World War, what’s come to be seen as its central catastrophe — the near-total destruction of the European Jews — was consigned to the status of a footnote. The neglect was rooted in guilt: Many nations eagerly collaborated in the killing, while others did nothing to prevent it. Consumed by their own suffering, most people simply didn’t want to know, and a conspiracy of silence was established.
Arts/Culture: Humanities Magazine – Winter 2024
Humanities Magazine – Winter 2024 Issue:
Royalty Reconsidered: The King’s Beer and the Commoner’s Shirt
A new exhibition looks at Europe’s earliest societies
As visitors exit “First Kings of Europe,” the gift shop offers a kind of test. Two craft beers were created for the exhibition, a collaboration between the museum and Off Color Brewing: Beer for Kings, made from top-quality rich and ancient grains, and Beer for Commoners, made from the more modest ingredients of the poor. Beneath the racks of beer hang T-shirts with the art for each. Which identity does the visitor want to take home: commoner or king? The answer for most exhibitions celebrating the awe-inspiring treasures of royalty would be easy, but “First Kings of Europe” is a different kind of show, with an ambitious new approach to how we display and envision power, kingship, and history.
Nazi Spies in America!
During World War II, Axis espionage inspired a media panic, but amateurish German agents turned out to be “underwhelming”
Research Preview: Science Magazine – Dec 22, 2023
The quantum phantom
A ghostly quasiparticle rooted in a century-old Italian mystery could unlock quantum computing’s potential—if only it could be pinned down
Are cryptocurrencies currencies? Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador
Preference for cash and privacy fears deterred bitcoin adoption in El Salvador.
Mimicking polar bear hairs in aerogel fibers
Encapsulated aerogel fibers offer thermal insulation, breathability, and strength
Opinion & Politics: Reason Magazine – February 2024
REASON MAGAZINE (December 21, 2023) – The latest issue features ‘The Conformity Gauntlet’ – How Universities use DEI Statements to Enforce Groupthink; The Post-Neoliberalism Moment; We Absolutely Do Not Need an FDA for AI, and more…
Universities Use DEI Statements To Enforce Groupthink
DEI statements are political litmus tests, write Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott.
The Post-Neoliberalism Moment
Anyone advocating neoliberal policies is now persona non grata in Washington, D.C.
We Absolutely Do Not Need an FDA for AI
If our best and brightest technologists and theorists are struggling to see the way forward for AI, what makes anyone think politicians are going to get there first?
Boomers Daily 