Alaska Architecture: Waterfront Home Tour

Wall Street Journal (June 27, 2023) – This luxury oceanfront property in southeast Alaska, with concrete floors and a pink kitchen, cost $2.07 million to build and furnish.

Video timeline: 0:00 Living on the water 0:54 Living room 1:32 Kitchen 2:25 Deck and nook 3:54 Primary bedroom 4:49 Outside space

The home includes a strawberry wall, a floating chair that costs over $3,000 and ocean views from every room. Homeowner Kristi Linsenmayer describes the joys and challenges of custom-building a home over the water in rural Ketchikan.

Australia Design: Parkside Residence In Adelaide

The Local Project (June 27, 2023) – A house openly engaging with its surrounding context, Parkside Residence is both outwardly and inwardly focused to reference the existing formal language it is immersed within. Ashley Halliday Architects proposes a light-filled family home that combines heightened detailing with a sense of the familiar.

Video timeline: 00:00 – Intro to the Light Filled House 00:42 – The Project Brief 01:11 – A Walkthrough of the Home 02:17 – Creating A Cosy Home 02:50 – The Cathedral Glass Wall 03:20 – A Focus on the Landscaping 03:56 – The Colour and Material Palette 04:41 – Experiencing the Freshness of the Home

Set within a heritage-rich area of inner south-east Adelaide, Parkside Residence is imagined as a house of considered proportions. In acknowledging its adjacent neighbours and the traditional forms in place, the proposal aims to also celebrate the silhouettes of the existing streetscape through the formation of two main gabled pavilion arrangements. Aligned perpendicularly to one another, the pair sit separated with a connective corridor space to bind them.

Whilst the home is a modern insertion within its traditional setting, by respectfully honouring the formal language of the established rooflines, the structure adds to the rhythm of the streetscape. Ashley Halliday Architects focuses on balancing both the privacy and experience of the house from within with a series of spaces that nestle comfortably. Ikon Projects crafts Parkside Residence to transition from a privately veiled home at the front to a more open collective of spaces to the rear.

News: New Zealand & Saudi Arabia Leaders Visit China, Russia ‘Mutiny’ Fallout

The Globalist Podcast, Tuesday, June 27, 2023: New Zealand’s prime minister, Chris Hipkins, visits China for trade talks as Saudi Arabia sends a top delegation to an economic forum in Tianjin.

Kiwi journalist Lisette Reymer and China analyst Isabel Hilton discuss what’s on the agenda and why Beijing is turning its attentions to the Middle East. Plus: the latest claims from Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Progizhin and Guatemalans go to the polls in an election mired by democratic backsliding.

The New York Times – Tuesday, June 27, 2023

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Putin Says Russia Is United Behind Him, After Quelling Rebellion

Watching President Vladimir V. Putin’s address to the nation on television in Moscow on Monday.

President Vladimir V. Putin spoke angrily of those who want “Russians to fight each other,” but his former ally, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, said the mutiny he led was not a coup attempt.

Minefields and Menace: Why Ukraine’s Pushback Is Off to a Halting Start

The Ukrainian Army is encountering an array of challenges that has complicated the early stages of its counteroffensive, especially the large swaths of minefields. But its leaders are urging patience, insisting the main push is yet to come.

Intensifying Rains Pose Hidden Flood Risks Across the U.S.

A red truck is surrounded by water on a highway with cars behind it and buildings in the distance.

In some of the nation’s most populous areas, hazardous storms can dump significantly more water than previously believed, new calculations show.

A.I. May Someday Work Medical Miracles. For Now, It Helps Do Paperwork.

Dr. Matthew Hitchcock poses for a photo in a lab coat, blue shirt and colorful bow tie.

The best use for generative A.I. in health care, doctors say, is to ease the heavy burden of documentation that takes them hours a day and contributes to burnout.

Politics & Ideas: The Critic Magazine – July 2023 Issue

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The Critic Magazine (July 2023 Issue) – The new issue features The errors of escalation; The end of German stability?; Brahms: sublime genius on a major scale, and more…

The errors of escalation

The errors of escalation

What does it mean and why is it so dangerous?

Paul Winter

A fresh face for an old friend

The National Portrait Galley’s renovation doesn’t disappoint, bringing light and space to tell the story of the nation

Helen Barrett

Opinion: Sticky Inflation Issues, Building Ukraine 2.0, A New King Of Beers

‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (June 12, 2023) A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist including the trouble with sticky inflation, the challenge of building Ukraine 2.0 and why Modelo Especial is the new king of beers.

Investors must prepare for sustained higher inflation

A melting ice cream imprinted with a dollar bill

The costs of taming price rises could prove too unpalatable for central banks

The trouble is that the inflation monster has not truly been tamed. Britain’s problem is the most acute. There, wages and “core” prices, which exclude energy and food, are rising by around 7%, year on year. 

Building Ukraine 2.0

For Russia’s war to fail, Ukraine must emerge prosperous, democratic and secure

Ukraine’s nation-builders face formidable obstacles. The greatest is that, while Mr Putin is in power, this war is unlikely to end with a solid peace treaty. The two sides may talk—if only to avoid being seen as war-crazy. 

The new king of beers is a Mexican-American success story

Move over, Bud Light. Heed the power of the Hispanic market

The king is dead. ¡Viva el rey! That is the cheer ringing through drinking dens this summer as Bud Light, America’s self-styled “king of beers” for 22 years, is dethroned by Modelo Especial, a Mexican brew.

Ashmolean Museum Views: The ‘Tang Dynasty Camel’

Ashmolean Museum (June 26, 2023): This short film by Carina Hanslik shares an insight into the incredible story behind an ancient ceramic camel.

The object that inspired this animation, a ceramic camel dating back to the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907), helps us to tell the story of Paul Jacobsthal, a Jewish professor of Archaeology at the University of Marburg in the 1930s, who was forced to leave Germany.

CAMEL TOMB FIGURE

A spiritual object intended to protect the dead from evil 

Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford | EA2012.189

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Listen to the story of Jewish professor Paul Jacobsthal, and how he escaped the Nazis with his Tang Dynasty camel.

Cinematic Travel: ‘Five Elements Of Mauritania’ In Northwestern Africa

Timelab Pro Films (June 26, 2023) – Mauritania revealed itself to us like a symphony of nature’s elements. When we experienced the raw power of the earth, the gentle touch of the wind, the captivating dance of fire, and soothing embrace of water, it felt like there was an invisible force, a fifth element, giving meaning to everything that surrounded us.

Among the calm sand dunes, we met people who found their peace amidst the shifting sands, while others, along the shore, were braving the ocean. And in between, the wondrous Eye of the Sahara stood as a silent witness.

Like a celestial watching over the ever-changing life amid the timeless dunes, quietly keeping the secrets of the past. Immersed in the nature of Mauritania, we felt wonder and connection to the timeless history.

Author of the project: Andrew Efimov

Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a sovereign country in Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to the north and northwest, Algeria to the northeast, Mali to the east and southeast, and Senegal to the southwest.

Reviews: ‘Green Cuisine’ At Knystaforsen In Sweden

MICHELIN Guide Films (June 26, 2023) – The MICHELIN Guide’s video series Green Star in Action is dedicated to the Green MICHELIN Star restaurants run by chefs who are committed to sustainable gastronomy.

In this episode, we meet Nicolai Tram and Eva H. Tram who take us to their restaurant, which is actually their home. Here the restaurant Knystaforsen, awarded a MICHELIN Green Star and 1 Star in the Guide of Nordic countries 2023, is a sawmill located near the river and woodland, offering something quite unique.

Chef Tram cooks over an open fire using ingredients he can get our hands on from the wild nature around him: rivers, lakes, woods, and local producers. At Knystaforsen, nature is at every turn.

Learn more about 1 Star and Green Star Restaurant Knystaforsen:

#MICHELINGreenStar #MICHELINGuideNORDIC #MICHELINStar23

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – July 3, 2023

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The New Yorker – July 3, 2023 issue: For Independence Day, the artist Kadir Nelson chose to portray a young woman who, though she may be standing in the midst of the festivities, is anchored in her own private world.

The Divine Comedy of Roman Emperors’ Last Words

A statue of a man atop a walking eagle.

In the end, godlike aspirations often met with all too human final moments.

By Mary Beard

One of the funniest works of Roman literature to survive—and the only one that has ever made me laugh out loud—is a skit, written by the philosopher Seneca, about the Emperor Claudius’ adventures on his way to Mt. Olympus after his death. Titled “Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii” (“The ‘Pumpkinification’ of the Deified Claudius”), it recounts how the Roman Senate declared that the dead Emperor was now a god, complete with his own temple, priests, and official rites of worship. The deification of emperors was fairly standard practice at the time, and the spoof claimed to lift the lid on what really happened during the process.

How Plastics Are Poisoning Us

An outline of a woman made out of plastic beads and trash

They both release and attract toxic chemicals, and appear everywhere from human placentas to chasms thirty-six thousand feet beneath the sea. Will we ever be rid of them?

By Elizabeth Kolbert

News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious