More than 3 billion people worldwide log on to Meta’s apps every day, the sort of reach most aspiring global megalomaniacs can only dream of. It’s also one of the main reasons why the decision by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta – the company behind Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads – to scrap its third-party factcheckers in the US is so significant.
That Zuckerberg, who has been under huge pressure from US president-elect Donald Trump, made the decision is hardly surprising. But it should be another worrying moment for anyone who is concerned about the survival of objective truth.
Spotlight | The devastation of Los Angeles Gabrielle Canon reports from Pacific Palisades, where the traumatised and displaced have been picking over the wildfire-ruined remains of beloved homes and communities
Feature | Caroline Darian interview The daughter of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot is coming to terms with being the child of both victim and perpetrator in the biggest rape trial in French history. Angelique Chrisafis hears her story
Feature | The deadliest beings on the planet Microscopic bacteriophages are everywhere – it’s estimated that they can infect and destroy between 20% and 40% of all microbes every day. But some scientists believe phages can help in the f ight against superbugs. ByJackson Ryan
Opinion | We forget Sudan at our peril Almost two years into a civil war, Sudan is facing anarchy, famine, genocide – and ambivalence from the rest of the world, writes Nesrine Malik
Culture | By a thread – the art of Doris Salcedo The Colombian artist Doris Salcedo transforms collective grief into art, confronting the scars of conflict and displacement with delicate yet powerful creations. Tim Adams spoke to her
Democrats displayed more depression than anger in the weeks following Donald Trump’s 2024 victory. Alas, partisans on the progressive left and their camp followers among conventional liberals could avoid succumbing to nihilism for only so long. An occasion to indulge their negative passions came along soon after the election in an act of cold-blooded murder on a predawn December morning in midtown Manhattan.
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (January 15, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Bloomsbury treasures’ – Newly discovered poems and photographs…
This week’s @TheTLS featuring Jonathan Rée on a new translation of Kapital; @knott_sarah on motherhood; @sophieolive on two newly discovered Woolf poems; Estelle Shirbon on Baalu Girma; Emma Greensmith on hybrid creatures; @bjkingape on cats – and more pic.twitter.com/4EfVcWxJQR
THE NATION MAGAZINE (January 14, 2025): The latest issue features ‘Jazz Off The Record’ – In the late 1960s, the recording industry lost interest in America’s greatest art form. But in a small, dark club on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, jazz legends were playing the …
To understand the body, “we might picture the heart as a pump, the brain as a kind of computer, the lungs as bellows, the kidney as filters”. But what about the immune system — asks immunologist John Trowsdale in his engaging analysis. It has no straightforward analogy, operating simultaneously as an antiviral software, a surveillance camera, a weapons system and a way to share resources. The system is “unobtrusive yet extensive, nowhere and everywhere, redundant yet essential, powerful yet remote”.
Wild Chocolate
Rowan Jacobsen Bloomsbury (2024)
When residue inside decorative pots from ancient Mexico was analysed, it yielded traces of cacao — early evidence of cocoa consumption. The Spanish word chocolate might have been influenced by the Nahuatl (Aztec) cacahuatl, or cacao water. Journalist Rowan Jacobsen’s appealing book explores wild chocolate’s history as he travels through Central and South America, meeting chocolate makers, activists and Indigenous leaders who revive the bean’s variety in taste and prestige, lost during its modern industrial manufacture.
Talking Images
Eds Silvia Ferrara et al. Routledge (2024)
The logo of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games was a figure with a red dot ‘head’, blue ‘body’ and single, straight green ‘leg’ — adapted from the Chinese character zhi, meaning ‘birth, life’, ‘arrival’ and ‘achievement’. It is one of a huge variety of “talking images” in a collection edited by three scholars interested in writing. Images range from Palaeolithic symbols and ancient Mesopotamian pictograms to modern Chinese calligraphy and Indian comics. The book traces links between images, marks, language and writing.
Do Plants Know Math?
Stéphane Douady et al. Princeton Univ. Press (2024)
Foreign Affairs Magazine (January 12, 2025): How the Next Computing Revolution Will Transform the Global Economy and Upend National Security
Over the last several years, as rapid advances in artificial intelligence have gained enormous public attention and critical scrutiny, another crucial technology has been evolving largely out of public view. Once confined to the province of abstract theory, quantum computing seeks to use operations based on quantum mechanics to crack computational problems that were previously considered unsolvable. Although the technology is still in its infancy, it is already clear that quantum computing could have profound implications for national security and the global economy in the decades to come.
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