The Globalist (March 22, 2024): Bosnia and Herzegovina could be given the green light to begin EU accession talks. We discuss what this means with Monocle’s Balkans correspondent Guy de Launey.
Plus: Washington pushes for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a row about palace furniture ramps up between Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro, and we get the latest fashion news.
The lawsuit caps years of regulatory scrutiny of Apple’s wildly popular suite of devices and services, which have fueled its growth into a nearly $3 trillion public company.
Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey faces federal bribery charges. His trial is scheduled to begin in May.
The group, headed by the former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, has filed more than 100 legal actions against “woke” companies and others. But winning may be beside the point.
Plans for Perseverance to explore past crater rim may be in jeopardy
A false “equity versus excellence” debate over mathematics curricula has long disrupted education in the United States
A gene for mate preference has been shared between hybridizing butterfly species
Clustering organic cropland can reduce pesticide use on nearby conventional farms
America should help it find a better strategy
There is still a narrow path out of the hellscape of Gaza. A temporary ceasefire and hostage release could cause a change of Israel’s government; the rump of Hamas fighters in south Gaza could be contained or fade away; and from the rubble, talks on a two-state solution could begin, underwritten by America and its Gulf allies. It is just as likely, however, that ceasefire talks will fail. That could leave Israel locked in the bleakest trajectory of its 75-year existence, featuring endless occupation, hard-right politics and isolation. Today many Israelis are in denial about this, but a political reckoning will come eventually. It will determine not only the fate of Palestinians, but also whether Israel thrives in the next 75 years.
It is becoming harder for investors to ignore politics
Investors differ in their approach to elections. Some see politics as an edge to exploit; others as noise to block out. Even for those without a financial interest, markets offer a brutally frank perspective on the economic stakes. As elections approach in America and Britain, as well as plenty of other countries, that is especially valuable.
The Globalist (March 21, 2024): We discuss what will be on the agenda at the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels with associate editor at Politico, Suzanne Lynch.
Also in the programme: we get the latest on Vietnam president Vo Van Thuong’s resignation and find out why Canada is stopping future arms shipments to Israel. Plus: we flick through the April issue of Monocle as it hits newsstands.
As dizzying legal developments sowed confusion along the border, an appeals court panel appeared split over whether Texas’ migrant arrest law should remain on hold while the court fight continues.
The treacherous migrant crossing in Panama is drawing packs of American activists who are distorting how immigration is perceived, and debated, at home.
A beacon for “anti-woke” conservatives abroad, Prime Minister Viktor Orban keeps his grip at home by doling out cash, critics say. Behold the treeless “treetop canopy walkway.”
1d ago
Nature Magazine (March 15, 2024):Verbose robots, and why some people love Bach: Books in Brief
Vision Impairment
Michael Crossland UCL Press (2024)
On a typical day in his clinic, London-based optometrist Michael Crossland assesses both young children and centenarians with low vision. Severe vision impairment affects 350 million people around the world, many of whom in poorer countries lack access to any eye care. His fascinating, sometimes moving, account — mixing ophthalmology with the stories of his patients and many others — reveals that life with vision impairment can be “just as rich and rewarding as life with 20/20 vision”.
Literary Theory for Robots
Dennis Yi Tenen W. W. Norton (2024)
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rooted in the humanities, argues Dennis Yi Tenen, a comparative-literature professor and former Microsoft engineer. Chatbots are trained using electronic versions of tools such as “dictionaries, style guides, schemas, story plotters [and] thesauruses” that were historically part of the collective activity of writing. Indeed, a statistical model called the Markov chain, crucial to AI, arose from an analysis of vowel distribution in poems by Alexander Pushkin. Tenen’s cogitation is a witty, if challenging, read.
The Last of Its Kind
Gísli Pálsson Princeton Univ. Press (2024)
Living species could never become extinct, thought naturalist Carl Linnaeus. Charles Darwin disagreed, saying extinction was a natural process. Then ornithologists John Wolley and Alfred Newton began studying great auks, flightless birds living on remote islands in the North Atlantic Ocean. They visited Iceland in 1858 to see great auks, but instead met locals who described killing off the birds — revealing how humans could extinguish a species. Anthropologist Gísli Pálsson tells the engaging story of this “key intellectual leap”.
All Mapped Out
Mike Duggan Reaktion (2024)
Cultural geographer Mike Duggan works in partnership with the UK national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey, to study everyday digital-mapping practices. Important as it is, digital mapping is not superseding analogue maps, he observes in his global history of cartography, which begins with Palaeolithic carvings. Sales of Ordnance Survey paper maps are rising, perhaps because of their convenience. “Although digital maps are improving constantly in accuracy and design, they do not always live up to those promises.”
The Neuroscience of Bach’s Music
Eric Altschuler Academic (2024)
Physician and neuroscientist Eric Altschuler regards J. S. Bach as the greatest composer ever, as do many others. Altschuler’s pioneering study — illustrated with numerous musical examples — aims to show how Bach-centred neuroscience “can help us better appreciate perceptual and cognitive affects in Bach” and create better performances of the composer’s work. It also teaches us how music perception is not localized to one region of the brain but occurs throughout it, and varies from person to person.
OpenAI’s debut of its impressive Sora text-to-video tool has raised important questions.
Semaglutide reduces weight and fat accumulation associated with the antiretroviral regimen that keeps HIV at bay.
A burgeoning technique called time-resolved cryo-EM is granting insights into the tiny motors and devices that power life.
Times Literary Supplement (March 22, 2024): The latest issue features ‘All the Lonely People’ – Charles Foster on a modern-day epidemic; Shakespeare and Bloomsbury; D.H. Lawrence, cuckhold; Marilynne Robinson’s god; Paul Theroux’s Orwell…
The Globalist (March 20, 2024): As negotiations in Doha resume, we discuss the likelihood of a temporary truce in Gaza after months of devastating war.
Plus: protests in Argentina, US domestic politics and why Slovakia’s forthcoming presidential election is crucial for the EU.
Boomers Daily 