Category Archives: Reviews
Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine — June 2023 Issue
Why Are We in Ukraine?
On the dangers of American hubris by Benjamin Schwarz, Christopher Layne
From Murmansk in the Arctic to Varna on the Black Sea, the armed camps of NATO and the Russian Federation menace each other across a new Iron Curtain. Unlike the long twilight struggle that characterized the Cold War, the current confrontation is running decidedly hot. As former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and former secretary of defense Robert Gates acknowledge approvingly, the United States is fighting a proxy war with Russia.
Seeing Through Maps
I was splitting wood at sunset when the cat jumped up on the chopping block in front of me, arched her back, and took a long piss. My axe hung in the sky. The cat stared at me, tail up. I put my axe down and squatted before her. I hitched my gown to my waist.
Special Report: ‘Digital Finance’ – The Economist
As payments systems go digital, they are changing global finance
The fight over payments systems is hotting up around the world. There may be surprising winners, says Arjun Ramani
Payment is one of the most fundamental economic activities. To buy anything, you need something the seller wants. One option is barter, but that is beset by friction (what are the chances of having something your counterparty wants at any exact moment?). Early forms of money, from cowrie shells to beads to metal coins, offered a solution: they were always in demand to settle transactions.
- Emerging markets: A digital payments revolution in India
- Techfin v fintech: The old bank/card model is still entrenched in the rich world
- Cryptocurrencies: The promise of crypto has not lived up to its initial excitement
- Digital money: Central-bank digital currencies are talked about more than coming to fruition
- International finance: Could digital-payments systems help unseat the dollar?
- The future: There are risks but also big potential benefits from digital payments
TV: Inside The Hollywood Film And TV Writer’s Strike
Video timeline: 0:00 Writers’ strike has brought productions to a halt 0:50 How streaming has transformed the industry 4:20 The 2007-2008 writers’ strike 4:59 The writers’ demands 7:13 The strike’s impact on the entertainment industry
WSJ sat down for exclusive interviews with the showrunners of “Abbott Elementary” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” to understand the key sticking points that led to the writers’ strike and what’s next for the entertainment industry.
Nature Reviews: Top New Science Books – May 2023
More Than a Glitch
Meredith Broussard – MIT Press (2023)
An artificial-intelligence (AI) ‘glitch’ is a problem neither expected nor consequential. Bias, by contrast, is baked in and disastrous, argues data scientist Meredith Broussard, one of very few Black women in this field, who focuses on AI and journalism. “Tech is racist and sexist and ableist because the world is so,” she says. Vivid examples in her disturbing book include that of a man arrested by US police using facial-recognition technology — purely because both he and the suspect in a blurry surveillance photo were Black.
Assyria
Eckart Frahm – Basic (2023)
The world’s first empire flourished in Assyria in the eighth and seventh centuries bc, and has long been seen as the epitome of barbarism. But, as Assyriologist Eckart Frahm reveals in his deeply informed, challenging history, Assyria produced many features of the modern world. Its innovations included long-distance trade, sophisticated communications networks, mass deportations and widespread political surveillance. Unlike most later empires, he writes, it was at least honest in its “open celebration of plunder, torture, and murder”.
Hands of Time
Rebecca Struthers – Hodder & Stoughton (2023)
‘Time’ is “the most commonly used noun” in English, according to Rebecca Struthers, the first professional watchmaker in the United Kingdom to earn a PhD in horology. Each chapter of her exquisitely crafted history explores a pivotal moment in watchmaking from the past 500 years. Mechanical timekeepers, she argues, have influenced human culture as much as the printing press. Imagine trying to catch a train by depending on the Sun’s position, or to perform an organ transplant without measuring the patient’s heart rate precisely.
The Deep Ocean
Michael Vecchione et al. Princeton Univ. Press (2023)
“For most people, the deep ocean is out of sight and out of mind,” write three zoologists and an oceanographer. The zone starts where penetration of sunlight can no longer support photosynthesis, about 200 metres down. This guidebook dissipates ignorance with superb colour photographs of astonishing organisms, accompanied by detailed captions and brief essays. For example, the vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) is neither vampire nor squid, but was so named because its black ‘cloak’ reminded scientists of Dracula.
Tenacious Beasts
Christopher J. Preston – MIT Press (2023)
Humans and domestic animals make up 96% of the mass of the world’s mammals. The outlook for wildlife “remains dire”, writes philosopher Christopher Preston. But he describes signs of hope in his well-travelled, thoughtful study of recoveries. Populations of humpback whales in the western Indian Ocean have surged since the mid-twentieth century; those of Californian black bears have quadrupled in a few decades. He visits farmland, prairie, river, forest and ocean, exploring why only certain species are recovering.
Business: Inside LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton
Chapters: 0:00 – Introduction 2:20 The Rise Of Louis Vuitton 8:45 A Culture Company, Not Just Luxury 16:46 The Future Of Luxury
Bernard Arnault, whose five children all hold senior executive roles within the company. With a keen eye for luxury, ruthless negotiation skills and an effective business acumen, Arnault has acquired some of the biggest names in the world. Most recently, in 2021, the company bought Tiffany & Co. for $15.8 billion after a bitter dispute about price due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and to salvage the luxury sector’s biggest-ever deal.
Though most companies struggled during the pandemic, LVMH’s stock steadily rose while it continued to report record revenue year after year as wealthy consumers participated in what McKinsey & Co. called “revenge spending.” For the first quarter of 2023, LVMH reported a 17% increase in revenue from the same period a year earlier. The Asia market, which had seen the most significant drop due to Covid-19 closures, had a 14% rise in revenue after an 8% decrease in the fourth quarter of 2022. In April 2023, LVMH became the first European company to surpass $500 billion in market value.
Opinion: China’s Power Is Peaking, Jobs Safe From A.I., Mexico Criminal Gangs
The Economist ‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (May 15 , 2023) – Is Chinese power about to peak? Why your job is (probably) safe from artificial intelligence (11:00) and how Mexico’s gangs are becoming criminal conglomerates (35:00).
Arts/History: Smithsonian Magazine – June 2023
Smithsonian Magazine – June Issue
Artist Joseph Stella Painted Nature in Vibrant Color
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Cities weren’t the only subject that fascinated this acclaimed Futurist
By Amy Crawford
He famously captured industrial America—the Brooklyn Bridge, Pittsburgh’s steel mills—with his monumental canvases. But the painter Joseph Stella (1877-1946) looked to nature for respite, escaping his Manhattan studio to visit the New York Botanical Garden and to paint in southern Italy, where he grew up. “My devout wish,” the artist wrote, “[is] that my every working day might begin and end—as a good omen—with the light, gay painting of a flower.”
Anne Frank’s Childhood Friend Recalls Their Years Before the Holocaust
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After fleeing her native Germany, a young Jew found companionship and community as the Nazis approached
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – May 22, 2023
How Philipp Plein Became the King of Low-Brow High Fashion
The maximalist designer has positioned himself as an underdog hero of the common man, who is successful despite the falsity and the snobbery of the élites.
By Naomi Fry
Earth League International Hunts the Hunters
A conservation N.G.O. infiltrates wildlife-trafficking rings to bring them down.
By Tad Friend
How a Disaster Expert Prepares for the Worst
Lucy Easthope, who has worked on major emergencies since 9/11, says that small interventions can make a significant difference.
By Sam Knight
Public Transit: NYC’s $16 Billion Subway Line Costs
Chapters: 00:00 — Introduction 01:39 — Second Avenue Subway 06:45 — A national problem 08:37 — Subway costs 15:31 — Solutions
In several major cities – New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco – the subway and other rapid rail systems are key contributors to the prosperity of the city. In NYC for example, more than $37 billion of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $54 billion budget goes to subways. But building subways in the U.S. is very expensive.
In fact, it’s the sixth most expensive country to build rail transit in the world. And even that is likely an understatement. High labor costs, overbuilt tracks and stations, and onerous regulations all jack up costs. NYC’s sheer population density makes it rather worth it – so many people ride the subway that the cost per rider is comparable to many European cities where total expenditures are substantially lower.
However, the high costs hurt the case for public transit in less dense areas of the country. Lowering those costs could go a long way toward building affordable and accessible public transit for smaller cities around the country and reducing traffic congestion, pollution and traffic accidents.
Boomers Daily 