As countries in the global South refuse to take a side in the war in Ukraine, many in the West are struggling to understand why. Some speculate that these countries have opted for neutrality out of economic interest. Others see ideological alignments with Moscow and Beijing behind their unwillingness to take a stand—or even a lack of morals. But the behavior of large developing countries can be explained by something much simpler: the desire to avoid being trampled in a brawl among China, Russia, and the United States.
For China, Russia, and the West, the last year has been one of fear and conflict. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has killed tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, of people. It has prompted the United States and Europe to rearm and has pushed Moscow and Washington back into Cold War–style competition.
Something has gone wrong with work. On this, everyone seems to agree. Less clear is the precise nature of the problem, let alone who or what is to blame. For some time we’ve been told that we’re in the midst of a Great Resignation. Workers are quitting their jobs en masse, repudiating not just their bosses but ambition itself—even the very idea of work.
I had my first panic attack when I was fifteen, in the middle of January, while I was sitting in geometry class. Winter in Illinois, flesh comes off the bones—what did we need geometry for? We could look at the naked angles of the trees, the circles in the sky at night.
Grace Wright’s atmospheric paintings are all-consuming, inviting the viewer into a baroque world of tangled gestures. Markings on the canvas twist and convulse about themselves to build an anarchic structure before unravelling to moments of repose. While Wright’s gestures may be abstract, she views her paintings as representational narratives, evoking the tempestuous rhythm of the natural world, while alluding to 17th-century religious paintings.
Grace Wright, World Receivers, 2023
Deep Symmetry explores a recent evolution of Wright’s practice as a result of her time in Europe in the latter half of 2022. Its title was inspired by the architectural geometries of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, France, and a quote by writer Karl Ove Knausgaard: “Life is irregularity, death is geometry”.
Wright has been long fascinated with the deeper, universal connections that exist beyond our normal comprehension. Marrying alluring, harmonious colour with visceral imagery to monumental standing, Wright’s paintings are a reflection of this deep connectedness; her coiling energetic brush marks echoing the universal ‘rhythmic, cyclical nature’ forms in our world, to emotion and the force of life itself.
The artist discusses artistry, artificial intelligence, and the human experience.
Chatbots and image generators, newly on the rise, have sparked our imaginations—and our fears. As artificial-intelligence machines sharpen their ability to translate written prompts into images that accurately capture both style and substance, some visual artists worry that their specialized skills might be rendered irrelevant.
A new crop of biotech startups want to revolutionize human reproduction.
In 2016, two Japanese reproductive biologists, Katsuhiko Hayashi and Mitinori Saitou, made an announcement in the journal Nature that read like a science-fiction novel. The researchers had taken skin cells from the tip of a mouse’s tail, reprogrammed them into stem cells, and then turned those stem cells into egg cells.
Drug syndicates and other criminal groups bought into the idea that a new kind of phone network couldn’t be infiltrated by cops. They were wrong—big time.
Many criminals have been convicted as a result of encrypted-phone stings—more than four hundred in the U.K. alone.Illustration by Max Löffler
I recently returned to the Metropolitan Opera to see The Hours, based on Michael Cunningham’s novel. It was wonderful to be back in the glittering hall, after three long pandemic years, listening to Renee Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, and Kelli O’Hara bring Virginia Woolf and Cunningham’s other characters to life. That experience sent me looking for novels about music, and I was thrilled to see that Brendan Slocumb has a new one coming out only a year after his bestselling debut,
In the fourth annual Indie Issue, we let the books speak for themselves in these excerpts from a trio of starred Indieland picks: a memoir by two sisters who survived the Holocaust; another memoir about a teen’s coming-of-age on a sailing-school ship; and a collection of short stories from a renowned Bengali author.
In Daniel Seymour’s From Auschwitz With Love, sisters Manci Grunberger Beran and Ruth Grunberger Mermelstein describe their arrival at the concentration camp:
Father realized that we didn’t have much time together. So, he said to us, “No matter what happens, I want you to remember three things.”
World Economic Forum (April 15, 2023) – This week’s top stories of the week include:
0:15 China build’s the world’s largest container ship – Mediterranean Tessa is nearly 400 metres long. Her deck area is the size of 4 football pitches. She can carry up to 240,000 tonnes of cargo or more than 24,000 standard containers. The ship is fitted with an air lubrication system. It blows tiny bubbles along the hull to reduce its resistance in the water.This reduces the ship’s CO2 emissions by up to 4% saving around 6,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.
1:36 The first cellphone call was made 50 years ago – On 3 April 1973, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper stood on a Manhattan street and called the landline of a rival who was racing to develop the cellphone, too. This was the world’s first mobile phone call. “I’m calling you on a cellphone,” Cooper said. ‘‘A personal, handheld, portable cellphone” the race was over. Cooper’s prototype became the first commercially available mobile phone. Motorola released the DynaTAC 8000x a decade later, in 1984. It was about the size of a shoebox and cost $11,500 in today’s money. Since then, mobile technology has transformed our lives. Watch to learn more about the first mobile phone call in the world.
3:40 South Korea to pay its citizens to have children – South Korea has the world’s lowest fertility rate. The average South Korean woman will have 0.78 babies in her lifetime. While the average fertility rate in OECD countries is 1.59. South Korea’s population is shrinking as a result. More people die each year than are born. Left unchecked, the country’s working-age population will almost halve by 2070. Globally, the fertility rate is declining it stands at 2.3 today. In 2000 it was 2.7. The UN predicts the global population will peak at 10.4 billion by 2080, but a recent study suggests the peak could be much lower and could arrive much sooner.
5:01 Why sleeper trains are being revived across Europe – The EU has provisionally agreed to call 2021 the European Year of Rail. It says boosting rail travel could help the bloc reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
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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.
The author’s new book, “Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock,” urges readers to revise their conceptions of time and the world to nurture hope and action for a better future.
Silicon Valley’s moral bankruptcy by Victor Davis Hanson The Russian way of literature by Daniel J. Mahoney China apologetics by Gordon G. Chang Gillray: national lampooner by Myron Magnet
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