Video timeline: 0:00 Ukraine’s counteroffensive 0:50 Ukraine’s long-term security and Western allies 2:23 U.S. election’s effect on Ukraine 4:03 Ukrainian weapons 5:44 NATO and Ukraine 7:05 Zelensky’s thoughts on China 7:38 How Zelensky is personally dealing with the war
0:15 Spain just powered itself entirely from renewables – Mainland Spain’s electricity needs were met solely by wind, solar and hydropower between 10am and 7pm on Tuesday, 16 May. Impressively, this happened on a weekday when demand is highest. Last year, 42% of Spain’s electricity was generated renewably. This could rise above 50% this year, experts say
1:31 This school teaches students in the Metaverse – Donning VR headsets, pupils can visit the planets in our solar system, get up close and personal with a woolly mammoth or walk through the chambers of a human heart. They can practice their pronunciation in a simulated French restaurant or travel back in time to World War II. The cutting-edge lessons are on offer at Reddam House School in the UK.
3:06 New York City is sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers – Scientists calculated the mass of all the buildings in New York City. Including the Central Park Tower and the Empire State. In total, there are 1.1 million buildings, weighing a total of 762 million tonnes. The same as 64 million city buses. While most of the city is built on solid bedrock, softer parts of the earth are compressing under the enormous weight. Sending the Big Apple downwards at 1-2mm a year on average and up to 4mm a year in some areas.
4:28 Scientists have developed Eco-Friendly Ammonia – Used in many cleaning products and agricultural fertilizer. Their method uses water, nitrogen, a catalyst and a sprayer. If successfully scaled up, researchers say it could make a big dent in CO2 emissions, while helping to feed the world’s growing population sustainably.
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The World Economic Forum is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. We believe that progress happens by bringing together people from all walks of life who have the drive and the influence to make positive change.
With a price tag of approximately $3,000, the ‘Reality’ headset has been seven years in the making, and has been apparently filled with controversy too, with a large chunk of Apple’s own employees expressing doubt and disdain. However, here’s everything we know about the Reality headset (or could it be a pair of glasses?) that’s set to launch this Monday.
The headset’s design journey has oscillated between being thick and obtrusive, like your average VR headset, to being as slim as a pair of spectacles, or realistically, a pair of chunky ski goggles. At its heart, however, lies the innovative xrOS, designed to provide an interface that echoes the familiar iOS experience. The new operating system (which is pretty much confirmed thanks to a trademark filed by Apple in New Zealand) is set to revolutionize how users interact with their devices, presenting a traditional Home Screen in an entirely new dimension filled with apps and customizable widgets.
One of the most exciting features of ‘Reality’ is its ability to merge digital elements with the real world. The xrOS software could potentially project AR app interface elements onto actual objects, creating a seamless mixed-reality overlay effect. This represents a significant leap forward in AR technology, blurring the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds. According to MacRumors, the ‘Reality’ device will achieve this using “dual high-resolution 4K micro OLED displays with up to 3,000 pixels per inch for a rich, realistic, and immersive viewing experience.” To operate the device, the user’s hands and eyes will be monitored by over a dozen optical cameras. The user can select an on-screen item by simply looking at it and activate it by making a hand gesture, such as a pinch.
BARRON’S MAGAZINE – JUNE 5, 2023 ISSUE
Regulators don’t have a clear view into the huge world of nonbank finance, or ‘shadow banking.’ Barron’s peers into this opaque world.
Real estate investment trusts have been clobbered over the past year. We survey the landscape, from REITs that specialize in cell towers, data centers, and warehouses to ones holding troubled office buildings. Where to find value and where to dodge traps.
Water shortages and a fast-growing India are among the developments that will change economies and markets.
Carleton English
Randall W. Forsyth
Eric J. Savitz
Andy Serwer
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JUNE 4, 2023: The summer reading issue lands this weekend, 56 pages filled with suggestions of books to keep you company at the beach or in that shady mothballed nook you discovered in your rental share. The issue closes with a beautiful photo essay of swimmers pictured underwater, from an art book that evokes summer as vividly as fried clam strips and soft-serve ice cream: “Swimmers,” by Larry Sultan.
In “The Bathysphere Book,” Brad Fox chronicles the fascinating Depression-era ocean explorations of William Beebe.
Consider the siphonophore. An inhabitant of the lightless ocean, it looks like a single organism, but is actually a collection of minute creatures, each with its own purpose, working in harmony to move, to eat, to stay alive. They seem impossible but they are real. In 1930 William Beebe was 3,000 feet underwater in a bathysphere, an early deep-sea submersible, when he spotted a huge one: a writhing 20-yard mass whose pale magenta shone impossibly against the absolute blackness of the water. As you can imagine, it made an impression.
Henry Hoke’s latest novel, “Open Throat,” follows an observant — and starving — cougar living in the Los Angeles hills surrounding the Hollywood sign.
There is a moment toward the end of “Open Throat,” Henry Hoke’s slim jewel of a novel, where the narrator, a mountain lion living in the desert hills surrounding Los Angeles’s Hollywood sign, falls asleep and dreams of Disneyland. It will be hard for those who haven’t yet read this propulsive novel to understand, but the lion’s waking life at this moment is so precarious that this slippage into pleasant dream left me scared to turn the page.
A new book of photographs by Larry Sultan captures recreational swimmers at public pools in 1970s and ‘80s California.
May 27 – Oct 08, 2023
The exhibition features works that span the artist’s career, tackling pertinent social issues of the time like anti-Apartheid movements and the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 80s as well as works that address relevant issues that persist today — from capitalism and environmentalism to race, sexuality and religion. “” at the Broad is on view from May 27 through October 8, 2023.
In his short but prolific career, Keith Haring was known for his fluid, uniform lines, intricate compositions, and repeating imagery such as the barking dog and radiant baby. Since the 1980s, Haring’s art has garnered worldwide recognition, breaking down barriers and spreading joy while shining a bright light on complex issues from capitalism and the proliferation of new technologies to sexuality and race.
Born in 1958, Keith Haring grew up in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, where his father, Allen, taught him to draw cartoons from Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss. He moved to New York City in 1978 to enroll in the School of Visual Arts (SVA). In New York, he embraced his homosexuality, which informed his worldview and art practice. The city was pulsing with energy with the emergence of hip-hop, graffiti art, and an active nightclub scene. In alternative spaces such as Club 57 and Paradise Garage, Haring developed his visual style alongside artists Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, performers Grace Jones and Madonna, and many others.
Video timeline: 0:00 Introduction 0:20 Hotel Eden 1:21 Faro 2:04 Studio Cassio 2:40 Casa Manco 3:25 Access Italy 4:28 Retro Bottega 5:16 Outro
Hotel Eden is the picturesque place to stay with its top notch service, beautiful views, and dining options for every meal. Have an insider’s experience with Acccess Italy as they show you behind the scenes of Rome’s most popular attractions, as well as their favorite quiet spots in the city.
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (June 4, 2023) – California is the place where the future happens, for good and ill. That’s part of its magic. Read our first-ever California Issue to find out what roads the state will take us down next.
Inside: A fight over a parking lot that explains the housing crisis; the future of California’s power to shape national policy; how the state is adapting to a warming world — and more.
From reparations to tax revolts, the Golden State tries out new ideas all the time. What roads will its latest experiments send us down?
By Laila Lalami
I remember my first glimpse into the future. In August 1992, when I arrived in California as a student, I discovered during orientation that the university required all incoming students to have something called an email account. To access it, I had to call up a text-based mail client on Unix, using a series of line commands. If I needed a file that sat on a university computer in New York, I could use file transfer protocol to download it in Los Angeles, the whole process taking no more than a few minutes. That’s brilliant, I remember thinking.
For decades the state has been setting policy for the whole nation. Now red states are pushing back.
For a while this winter, seemingly every text message that Buffy Wicks received asked if she was running for Congress. Representative Barbara Lee, of California’s 12th District, which includes Oakland, had announced that she would enter the race for Dianne Feinstein’s soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat. This decision by Lee, who is 76, created a rare opportunity for the next generation of California Democrats to vie for federal office. And Wicks — a 45-year-old State Assembly member who lives in Lee’s district and was last re-elected with 85 percent of the vote — seemed like a natural candidate.
In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems by Giorgio Parisi
From the 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, an enlightening and personal journey into the practice of groundbreaking science
With In a Flight of Starlings, celebrated physicist Giorgio Parisi guides us through his unorthodox yet exhilarating work, starting with investigating the principles of physics by observing the flight of flocks of birds. Studying the movements of these communities, he has realized, proves an illuminating way into understanding complex systems of all kinds—collections of everything from atoms and planets to other animals, such as ourselves.
I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World by Rachel Nuwer
In I Feel Love, science journalist Rachel Nuwer separates fact from fantasy, hope from hype, in the drug’s contested history and still-evolving future. Evidence from scientific trials suggests MDMA, properly administered, can be startlingly effective at relieving the effects of trauma. Results from other studies point to its usefulness for individual and couples therapy, for treating depression, alcohol addiction, and eating disorders, and for cultivating personal growth. Yet scientists are still racing to discover how MDMA achieves these outcomes, a mystery that is taking them into the inner recesses of the brain and the deep history of evolution.
Many Things Under a Rock: The Mysteries of Octopuses by David Scheel
A behavioral ecologist’s riveting account of his decades-long obsession with octopuses: his discoveries, adventures, and new scientific understanding of their behaviors.
Of all the creatures of the deep blue, none is as captivating as the octopus. In Many Things Under a Rock, marine biologist David Scheel investigates four major mysteries about these elusive beings. How can we study an animal with perfect camouflage and secretive habitats? How does a soft and boneless creature defeat sharks and eels, while thriving as a predator of the most heavily armored animals in the sea? How do octopus bodies work? And how does a solitary animal form friendships, entice mates, and outwit rivals?
A fascinating exploration of the uncrackable codes and secret cyphers that helped win wars, spark revolutions and change the faces of nations.
There have been secret codes since before the Old Testament, and there were secret codes in the Old Testament, too. Almost as soon as writing was invented, so too were the devious means to hide messages and keep them under the wraps of secrecy
An astounding account of how gesture, long overlooked, is essential to how we learn and interact, which “changes the way you think about yourself and the people around you.” (Ethan Kross, bestselling author of Chatter)
In Thinking with Your Hands, esteemed cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow argues that gesture is vital to how we think, learn, and communicate. She shows us, for instance, how the height of our gestures can reveal unconscious bias, or how the shape of a student’s gestures can track their mastery of a new concept—even when they’re still giving wrong answers. She compels us to rethink everything from how we set child development milestones, to what’s admissible in a court of law, to whether Zoom is an adequate substitute for in-person conversation.
What might change the world’s dire demographic trajectory?
In the roughly 250 years since the Industrial Revolution the world’s population, like its wealth, has exploded. Before the end of this century, however, the number of people on the planet could shrink for the first time since the Black Death. The root cause is not a surge in deaths, but a slump in births. Across much of the world the fertility rate, the average number of births per woman, is collapsing. Although the trend may be familiar, its extent and its consequences are not. Even as artificial intelligence (ai) leads to surging optimism in some quarters, the baby bust hangs over the future of the world economy.
There is a chance for a partial reset
It certainly wasn’t fair. Nor was it entirely free. But, like it or not, the victory on May 28th of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey’s presidential election is a fact. For the next five years Turkey, Europe and the wider world will have to deal with a prickly and authoritarian populist. That is bad news on many fronts: economically, democratically and regionally. And yet pragmatists have a duty to search for chinks of light in the gloom.
That compounds the problems of shrinking workforces and rising bills for health care and pensions
“Adam is a special child,” says the voice-over, as the camera pans across abandoned classrooms and deserted maternity wards. “He’s the last child born in Italy.” The short film made for Plasmon, an Italian brand of baby food owned by Kraft-Heinz, a giant American firm, is set in 2050. It imagines an Italy where babies are a thing of the past. It is exaggerating for effect, of course, but not by as much as you might imagine. The number of births in Italy peaked at 1m in 1964; by 2050, the un projects, it will have shrunk by almost two-thirds, to 346,000.
Boomers Daily 