Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (April 28, 2023) – This week’s @TheTLS, featuring Abigail Green on 1848; @WeTheBrandon on the geopolitics of space; @woodsgregory on James Purdy; @JulianBaggini on food policy; @scheffer_pablo on the Passion in the Netherlands; @CamilleRalphs_ on poetry anthologies – and more
Pensions – and ‘the fiscal impact of ageing’ – have long troubled the EU. A European Commission paper published in 2016 noted with relief that ‘most EU member states’ were reforming their pension systems. France is one of them. During his first term in office Emmanuel Macron envisaged an ambitious reform plan, but Covid-19 put paid to it. Re-elected in 2022, he put a different plan on the table; at its core is an increase in the retirement age from 62 to 64. It has been predictably unpopular. Pensions rank high on the list of French state expenditures. They are one of the cornerstones in France’s edifice of public provision, which is why the sound of drilling and hammering sets most citizens’ teeth on edge.
COTSWOLD LIFE MAGAZINE – MAY 2023: The issue features the folklore, sayings and celebrations of Maytime; 24-hours in Burford; @Benfogle on health scares, hope & homesickness; from Elgar to Beatlemania at @AbbeyRoad; an illustrated guide to #Uley; a folkloric walk by the River Severn.
Barron’s Magazine – April 24, 2023:
Auto makers are pressing ahead with “software-defined vehicles.” Here are the suppliers helping to make it happen.
Professional investors favor bonds over stocks for the next 12 months, according to the Big Money Poll. The biggest risk to the market: recession.
Diller, chairman of IAC, says artificial intelligence could be an existential threat to publishers. He’s rallying the industry to fight back.
The New York Times Book Review – April 23, 2023:
The author’s latest book, “The Wager,” investigates the mysteries surrounding an 18th-century maritime disaster off Cape Horn.
There were multiple moments while reading David Grann’s new book, “The Wager,” about an 18th-century shipwreck, when it occurred to me that the kind of nonfiction narratives The New Yorker writer has become known for share something essential with a sturdy ship.
Catherine Lacey’s new novel follows a polarizing artist through a fractured country.
The narrator of “Biography of X,” the new Catherine Lacey novel, is a journalist named C.M. Lucca who worked for a Village Voice-like newspaper in New York City during the 1980s. C.M. has a cool tone and a lonely intelligence; she’s a solitary spirit.
In “Walk the Walk,” Neil Gross profiles three departments around the country experimenting with genuine reform.
WALK THE WALK: How Three Police Chiefs Defied the Odds and Changed Cop Culture, by Neil Gross
The New York Times Magazine – April 23, 2023:
The crime-scene investigators are the ones who document, and remember, the unimaginable. This is what they saw at Sandy Hook.
In Israel, the United States and other democracies, bitter battles are being waged over the same question.
Whether the platform is dying or not, it’s time to reckon with how exactly it broke our brains.
New seamount maps could aid in studies of ecology, plate tectonics, and ocean mixing
Sleep is essential, but not all mammals live in environments where long periods of time asleep are possible. Marine mammals encounter especially challenging conditions for sleep when they are at sea.
An exhibition of the Algerian painter’s work liberates it from the political symbolism of late colonialism.
In November 1947 a fifteen-year-old prodigy from colonial Algeria named Baya, described variously as Kabyle, Berber, Muslim, and Arab, exhibited her gouaches and clay sculptures at the Parisian gallery of the art dealer Aimé Maeght. Yves Chataigneau, the French governor of Algeria, and Si Kaddour Benghabrit, the rector of the Paris Mosque, were the sponsors of the exhibition, and the opening attracted some of the most influential cultural figures of postwar Paris: the writers Albert Camus, François Mauriac, and André Breton; the painters Henri Matisse and Georges Braque; the designer Christian “Bebè” Bérard.
For generations, Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s prints of Roman views defined the popular image of the Eternal City. A profusion of new exhibitions and publications shows why he still speaks to us.
Also in the issue: Jacqueline Rose on C. P. Taylor’s final play, Colin B. Bailey on the Impressionists’ decorations, Wendy Doniger on Bengali tales from the mangrove forests, Christopher Benfey on the Black American potters of the nineteenth century, Jed Perl on high-tech high art, poems by Sasha Debevec-McKenney, Mosab Abu Toha, and Cyrus Console, and much more.
They bring enormous promise and peril. But how do they work?
In order to assess the damage, we look at three financial institutions
Conflicts are growing longer. Blame complexity, criminality and climate change
The plan to re-green a 7,000-kilometre swathe south of the Sahara is at risk of losing its pan-African vision and ambition.
Eleven hikers died after weeks of unusually warm weather led to melting of the Marmolada Glacier in the Alps.
Prototype facility smashes record for converting solar power to hydrogen for its technology category.
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