As the baby boomers age, it’s becoming more common for people to remain employed into their 70s and 80s. These octogenarians tell us why they still aren’t ready to retire.
Her new novel, “The Fraud,” is based on a celebrated 19th-century criminal trial, but it keeps one eye focused clearly on today’s political populism.
By Karan Mahajan
All over the dorm in California glinted pale-orange and tabasco-red and steel-blue copies of Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth,” with their hard white bright lettering. The year was 2001, and “White Teeth” had been assigned as incoming reading for my freshman dorm. I remember loving the sprawling, rude, funny, slapdash narration, the magical way in which Smith brought it all together in the figure of a genetically engineered mouse.
“The Vaster Wilds” follows a girl’s escape from a nameless colonial settlement into the unforgiving terrain of America.
By Fiona Mozley
Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, very nearly didn’t survive. A few years into its existence, in the early 1600s, the majority of the population had succumbed to famine and disease. The period known as the Starving Time has taken on allegorical status. Jamestown is the colony that tried too much too soon; that underestimated the harsh climate, the foreign land, its existing, Indigenous population. Pilgrims went in search of heaven and found hell.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (September 10, 2023): The Education Issue features Americans Are Losing Faith in the Value of College. Whose Fault Is That?; Affirmative Action Is Still in Effect. For Men, and more….
For most people, the new economics of higher ed make going to college a risky bet.
By Paul Tough
A decade or so ago, Americans were feeling pretty positive about higher education. Public-opinion polls in the early 2010s all told the same story. In one survey, 86 percent of college graduates said that college had been a good investment; in another, 74 percent of young adults said a college education was “very important”; in a third, 60 percent of Americans said that colleges and universities were having a positive impact on the country. Ninety-six percent of parents who identified as Democrats said they expected their kids to attend college — only to be outdone by Republican parents, 99 percent of whom said they expected their kids to go to college.
Declining male enrollment has led some colleges to adopt an unofficial policy that many find objectionable: “We need to admit men, and women are going to suffer.”
In the spring of 2021, about 2,000 students on the campus of Tulane University in New Orleans received an email they were expecting. They had filled out an elaborate survey provided by Marriage Pact, a matchmaking service popular on many campuses, and the day had come for each of them to be given the name of a fellow student who might be a long-term romantic partner. When the results came in, however, about 900 straight women who participated were surprised by what the email offered: a friend match instead of a love interest.
A male Anna’s hummingbird in Newport, Oregon. A 19th-century French naturalist named the species after the French courtier Anna Masséna, Duchess of Rivoli. Gretchen Kay Stuart
Anna’s Hummingbird, Calypte anna
U.S. range of the Anna’s hummingbird Guilbert Gates
Photograph by Gretchen Kay Stuart
“I’ve always been enchanted by hummingbirds,” Stuart says. “Their tiny size and iridescent plumage make them seem as though they are born out of fairy tales.”
A member of the finch family, this bird, photographed in Ithaca, New York, has a large beak useful for crushing seeds. Early English colonists mistakenly thought it came out only after sunset. Melissa Groo
Evening Grosbeak, Coccothraustes vespertinus
Photograph by Melissa Groo
U.S. range of the evening grosbeak Guilbert Gates
The evening Grosbeak tends to hover north of Groo’s home in Central New York State. So she was delighted when a flock of them recently appeared outside her house. “When they roam further south in winter in search of food, I’ve been blessed with their presence, sometimes over months,” she says. “This past winter and into very early spring, I had a flock of up to 15 visiting my platform bird feeder daily, hoovering up black oil sunflower seeds.”
Dinner is served in Portland, Oregon, as this adult northern pygmy-owl returns to the nest cavity clutching a vole. These owls often store food inside their trees or hang it on thorns for later. Gerrit Vyn
Northern Pygmy-Owl, Glaucidium gnoma
Photograph by Gerrit Vyn
U.S. range of the northern pygmy owl Guilbert Gates
In Western Oregon where Vyn lives, the tooting of the northern pygmy-owl is the sound of spring. “Even when you don’t see them, while hiking through the forest or sitting in a lush patch of sword ferns on the forest floor and looking up into the canopy, just knowing they are somewhere up there, watching, deepens the experience and magic of place,” he says.
The Week In Art Podcast (September 7, 2023): It’s our 250th podcast, and in this special episode we focus on the future. We ask leading figures across the art world to tell us about their hopes and concerns for the visual arts. Among them are Max Hollein, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,
Bénédicte Savoy, the co-author of the Saar-Savoy report into the restitution of cultural heritage, Shanay Jhaveri, the head of visual arts at the Barbican, the Berlin-based curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Kymberly Pinder, the dean of Yale School of Art, and the artist Tomás Saraceno. Host Ben Luke is then joined by three core members of The Art Newspaper’s team and regular guests in the first 249 episodes of this podcast: editors-at-large Cristina Ruiz and Georgina Adam and our contemporary art correspondent Louisa Buck discuss the present and future of museums and heritage, art and artists and the art market.
Science Magazine – September 8, 2023: Reducing single-use cutlery with green nudges: Evidence from China’s food-delivery industry; Anatomy of a volcanic eruption undersea, and more…
Submarine flows from the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai eruption decimated seafloor cables
In December 2021, an undersea volcano in the southern Pacific Ocean, the Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha‘apai (hereafter called the Hunga volcano) began erupting. In January 2022 the eruption reached a powerful climax, triggering atmospheric waves that traveled around the globe and a tsunami that swept across the Pacific Ocean. An estimated 75% of Earth’s volcanoes are underwater, and 20% of all fatalities caused by volcanic eruptions since 1600 CE have been associated with underwater volcanism (3).
China’s high demand for online food delivery resulted in an increase in the use of disposable, single-use cutlery. Disposable cutlery increases plastic pollution, and paper napkins and wooden chopsticks contribute to environmental degradation that endangers wildlife and marine species and compromises human health. Informed by the literature on “green nudges, ” which are prompts to promote environmentally friendly behaviors, He et al. collaborated with Alibaba to use its mobile food delivery platform, Eleme, in a longitudinal field study across China.
The Economist (September 7, 2023) – Rampant inflation, a booming black market for US dollars and crippling debt – welcome to Argentina, one of the world’s most dysfunctional economies. How did it end up like this?
Video timeline:00:00 – Argentina’s economy is in crisis 01:21 – What is happening now? 04:16 – Why is this happening? 05:52 – Overspending 07:00 – Printing money 08:03 – Borrowing money 08:51 – Trade controls 11:06 – What are the solutions?
Architectural Digest (September 7, 2023) – Today AD joins architect Nick Potts in New York City for a walking tour of the Upper West Side. At the turn of the century, apartment hotels such as The Dakota and The San Remo started populating the Upper West Side.
Servants’ quarters, elevators, and the realization of views were making apartment living more appealing to the upper middle classes and increasing the value of the top floors. Join Nick for an in-depth look at how the Upper West Side revolutionized apartment living and became the birthplace of the penthouse in Manhattan.
The Economist Magazine (September 9, 2023): The new Middle East has more money and less mayhem. For now…; America’s Supreme Court should adopt new ethics standards How artificial intelligence will affect the elections; Javier Milei would be a danger for democracy in Argentina….
Economies are booming and wars are fading. But climate change is looming
If you thought the Middle East was stagnant, think again. The Gulf economies are among the richest and most vibrant on the planet, helped by a Brent crude oil price that rose back to over $90 per barrel this week. A $3.5trn fossil-fuel bonanza is being spent on everything from home-grown artificial intelligence models and shiny new cities in the desert, to filling the coffers of giant sovereign-wealth funds that roam the world’s capital markets looking for deals.
Next term will be agonising for the Supreme Court. Some combination of voters and courts will determine whether Donald Trump becomes president again and whether he goes to prison. President Joe Biden’s son has a case before the courts. Dozens of states have changed their voting laws since 2020 and the nine justices on the Supreme Court may be asked to look at them. If the presidential election in 2024 is close, the court may have to step in and adjudicate. With so much at stake, America needs a Supreme Court that is broadly seen as legitimate and, ideally, impartial. Regrettably, trust in the court is at its lowest point since pollsters began asking about it.
Wall Street Journal (September 7, 2023) – Meta. PayPal. X. All of these tech companies have made attempts at a “super app” in the U.S., following the success of WeChat in China, but have yet to get one off the ground. Tech leaders have struggled to combine elements like social media, messaging, payment and more into one place.
Video timeline: 0:00 App efficiency 0:37 The appeal 2:18 U.S. issues 4:03 Regulation 4:48 What’s next?
So what’s holding the U.S. back from having a super app available? WSJ explains why, despite challenges, companies still see it as their holy grail product.
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/5e/b1/5eb1bc29-12a1-41ac-9517-fad96960a3f9/sepoct2023_g07_favoritebirds.jpg)
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/5d/be/5dbe47f1-53bf-4865-8542-913914c11756/sepoct2023_g20_favoritebirds.jpg)
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/71/3c/713c262a-4344-4288-b28a-843c692ced1f/sepoct2023_g06_favoritebirds.jpg)
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/50/ff/50ff24ff-081e-4b6e-925e-4ee5662cd38c/sepoct2023_g18_favoritebirds.jpg)
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/eb/ee/ebeead28-455b-4fff-9d2b-2a2943cecbb4/sepoct2023_g01_favoritebirds.jpg)
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/41/ff/41ff8cad-cd8b-4f18-b833-84cb884a4da2/sepoct2023_g15_favoritebirds.jpg)
Boomers Daily 