Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Preview: The New Atlantis Magazine – Summer 2024

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The New Atlantis Magazine (July 10, 2024) : The latest issue features

Why We Need Amistics for AI

Tech ethics needs a breakthrough. The Amish have it.

Brian J. A. Boyd

The Refs Are Working Us

Fact-checking used to be how journalists policed themselves. Now it’s how they police everyone else.

M. Anthony Mills

Who Wants to Believe in UFOs?

Strange things in the skies of a clockwork universe

Clare Coffey

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – July 12, 2024

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Times Literary Supplement (July 10, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Ven ice Preserved – La Serenissima down the centuries; Why revolutions fail; Eating ourselves to death and Ozempic nation…

Previews: Country Life Magazine – July 10, 2024

Country Life Magazine (July 9, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Experts’ Experts – 185 heroes the top designers rely on; Top dogs – politics of the village show; Boar wars – what to do with wild pigs; Tea and cakes – the rise and rise of the sponge…

The experts’ experts

Giles Kime and Amelia Thorpe ask Britain’s leading lights in design to name the talented professionals who inspire and transform their own projects

The dog with the waggiest tail

Move over Crufts, the village pooch parade is the one they all want to win with local bragging rights hanging in the balance, as Madeleine Silver discovers

Rooting for the truth

Pilfering pest or beneficial ecosystem engineer? Vicky Liddell examines the often-controversial return of wild boar to Britain’s woodland

Oh, crumbs! Secrets of the sponge

How did the Victoria sponge rise to be fêted as the queen of all cakes? Flora Watkins indulges in the history of the nation’s favourite teatime treat

Philippa Thorp’s favourite painting

The interior designer chooses a powerful work that unlocks a whole range of emotions

The devil is in the detail

Minette Batters insists that the incoming Government must be held to account over the many lavish pre-election promises on food security and farming

Salvaging the vine

In the first of two articles, John Goodall charts the long, hard struggle to bring to fruition one Bishop of Lincoln’s dreams of establishing a college at Oxford

The legacy

Amie Elizabeth White brews up  a tale of 18th-century success as she celebrates Thomas Twining’s role as a tea pioneer

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell earns her summer stripes with elegant blue-and-white pieces for home and away   

Ancient and modern

George Plumptre is heartened to witness a clever modern renovation of Nash’s Picturesque vision at Sandridge Park, Devon

If you’re lookin’, you ain’t cookin’

Tom Parker Bowles harnesses the flame’s fickle power as he shares a chef’s secrets of the perfect barbecue technique

In the dock

John Wright grasps the nettle in a hands-on investigation into the powers of the dock leaf—and, he says, it is your turn next

Word on the street

Smart Duke Street in London’s St James’s is the epicentre of British art. Carla Passino meets the larger-than-life characters who put the area on the map

Go tell the congregation

Matthew Dennison can’t help but sing the praises of Isaac Watts, that most prolific of hymn writers born 350 years ago

Goodbye, James Anderson

James Fisher pays tribute to English cricket’s legendary fast bowler ahead of his farewell Test match against the West Indies

And much more

Education: “Schooling’s Stagnation” – July 13, 2024

Special reports: Must try harder

The Economist SPECIAL REPORTS (July 8, 2024): The latest special report features “Schooling’s Stagnation” – Must try harder…

Must try harder

Schools in rich countries are making poor progress. They need to get back to basics, argues Mark Johnson

Schools in rich countries are making poor progress

Hanging on to the best of them is getting harder

The rich world’s teachers are increasingly morose

Will artificial intelligence transform school?

Efforts to teach character bring promise and perils

England’s school reforms are earning fans abroad

The New Yorker Magazine ‘Interview Issue’ July 2024

gif cover of 2024 Interviews Issue

The New Yorker (July 8, 2024): The new digital issue features The Interviews Issue – A week of conversations with figures of note.

Nicolas Cage Is Still Evolving

The actor talks about the origins of “Adaptation,” his potential leap to television, and the art of “keeping it enigmatic.”

By Susan Orlean

Square black and white portrait of Nicolas Cage. Cage is wearing a suit and is photographed from the side looking at the camera.
Triptych of three blackandwhite portraits of Nicolas Cage in a black suit and white collared shirt. In the middle image...

The wobbly distinction between reality and artifice fascinates Nicolas Cage. The first time we encountered each other was in 2001, during the making of “Adaptation”—a film based on Charlie Kaufman’s struggle to adapt my book “The Orchid Thief” for the screen—in which Cage played Kaufman and his twin, Donald. He was in the middle of a scene, and I tiptoed onto the set as quietly as possible, convinced that any distraction would trigger one of the eruptions for which Cage had become famous. Between takes, he glanced at the handful of people watching, and exclaimed cheerily, “Oh, guys, look!” He pointed at me and a small, fuzzy-haired man I hadn’t noticed beside me. “It’s the real Charlie and the real Susan!” He seemed tickled by this collision between the characters in the movie and their real-life counterparts, and insisted that the crew take note. (Kaufman and I, who had never met before that moment, slunk away sheepishly.)

Ira Glass Hears It All

Ira Glass cycling on the street in New York.

Three decades into “This American Life,” the host thinks the show is doing some of its best work yet—even if he’s still jealous of “The Daily.”

By Sarah Larson

It can be easy to take the greatness of “This American Life,” the weekly public-radio show and podcast hosted by Ira Glass, for granted. The show, which Glass co-founded in 1995 at WBEZ, in Chicago, has had the same essential format for twenty-eight years and more than eight hundred episodes. It was instrumental in creating a genre of audio journalism that has flourished in recent decades, especially since the podcast boom—which was initiated by the show’s first spinoff, “Serial,” in 2014. Like “The Daily Show” or Second City, “This American Life” has trained a generation of talented people, and Glass’s three-act structures, chatty cadences, and mixture of analysis and whimsy are now so familiar as to seem unremarkable.

Previews: Country Life Magazine – July 3, 2024

Country Life Magazine (July 2, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Call of the Coast’; Seaside treasure – the museum on the cliff; What a scoop – secrets of the ice-cream makers; A boatbuilder’s life, Barbie’s lore and best beach clubs…

Water, water, everywhere

Ben Lerwill drops anchor in the Thames to meet master boat-builder Mark Edwards, whose eclectic roll call of clients includes Elizabeth II and George Clooney

What’s your flavour?

Artisan ice cream makers have got it licked, says Madeleine Silver, as she checks out cones lovingly created using local milk and natural flavourings

You can be anything

Barbie is still in the pink at the age of 65. Susan Jenkins charts the ups and downs of Mattel’s often-controversial, yet still much-loved figurehead

Travel

Rosie Paterson reveals that Italy is still the place to go for unbeatable beach clubs, Richard MacKichan discovers the untouched isle of Formentera and Pamela Goodman carves out her own niche on a transatlantic cruise

Greg Mosse’s favourite painting

The writer chooses a ‘gorgeous panorama’ bursting with fellowship and rustic merry-making

Wrestling alligators in a mud hole

The country is all of a flutter in the build up to the General Election, but all bets are off for an exasperated Carla Carlisle

The legacy

Kate Green marvels at the Minack, Rowena Cade’s breathtaking cliffside amphitheatre

If I only had a brain

Increasing numbers of jellyfish are wobbling their way into British waters, but there’s no need to be alarmed, says Helen Scales

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell’s bold sunglasses leave everyone else in the shade   

Interiors

Well-thought-out garden buildings are an ideal way to get closer to Nature, suggests Amelia Thorpe

London Life

Rosie Paterson goes up, up and away for the capital’s Balloon Regatta, Levison Wood is in the hotseat, Holly Black takes the wraps off the new-look Royal Academy Schools and Jemima Sissons is on the comeback trail

Coasting ahead

The D-Day landings were planned from its shores, but today George Plumptre finds a haven of peace at Lepe House in Hampshire

Strawberry dreams

Tom Parker Bowles is seduced by the charms of the strawberry, that most flirtatious of fruits

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson savours the joy of sweet and floral apricots

The dog days aren’t done

All eyes are on St Swithin’s Day as Lia Leendertz examines what weather lore has in store

Technology Report: “Spycraft” – July 6, 2024

Technology Quarterly: Watching the watchers

The Economist SPECIAL REPORTS (July 2, 2024): The ‘Watching The Watchers’ issue features Tools of the spy trade have changed and so has the world in which they are used, says Shashank Joshi

The tools of global spycraft have changed

Illustration of two magnifying glasses with eyes inside on a background of digital files and pointing cursors.
illustration: claire merchlinsky

And so has the world in which they are used, says Shashank Joshi

Afew years ago intelligence analysts observed that internet-connected cctv cameras in Taiwan and South Korea were inexplicably talking to vital parts of the Indian power grid. The strange connection turned out to be a deliberately circuitous route by which Chinese spies were communicating with malware they had previously buried deep inside crucial parts of the Indian grid (presumably to enable future sabotage). The analysts spotted it because they were scanning the internet to look for “command and control” (c2) nodes—such as cameras—that hackers use as stepping stones to their victims.

Ubiquitous technical surveillance has made spying more difficult

Signals intelligence has become a cyber-activity

Sometimes the old ways of espionage are the best

Artificial intelligence can speed-sort satellite photos

Private firms and open sources are giving spies a run for their money

Preview: Foreign Policy Magazine – Summer 2024

Europe-issue-FP-Summer-2024

Foreign Policy Magazine – July 1, 2024: The new issue features ‘Europe Alone’ – Ten thinkers on a future without America’s embrace….

Europe Alone

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Nine thinkers on the continent’s future without America’s embrace.

By Mark LeonardConstanze StelzenmüllerNathalie TocciCarl BildtRobin NiblettRadoslaw SikorskiGuntram WolffBilahari KausikanIvan Krastev, and Stefan Theil

No bloc of countries has, for the past 75 years, been as umbilically tied to the United States as Europe. First, its western half and, since the end of the Cold War, much of its eastern half have prospered under the world’s most extensive bonds in trade, finance, and investment. Europe could also depend on the U.S. military’s iron commitment—enshrined in the 75-year-old NATO alliance—to come to its defense. Together with a few other nations, the United States and Europe defined many of the institutions that comprise what we call the Western-led order. The U.S.-European alliance has arguably been the bedrock of the global system as we know it today.

Trump’s Return Would Transform Europe

Illustration of a torn map of Europe revealing Donald Trump

Without Washington’s embrace, the continent could revert to an anarchic and illiberal past. By HAL BRANDS

Which is the real Europe? The mostly peaceful, democratic, and united continent of the past few decades? Or the fragmented, volatile, and conflict-ridden Europe that existed for centuries before that? If Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November, we may soon find out.

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – July 8 & 15, 2024

A woman holds an ice cream cone at Coney Island.

The New Yorker (July 1, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Kadir Nelson’s “Soft-Serve” – Keeping it cool while keeping cool…

Finally, a Leap Forward on Immigration Policy

President Biden has offered help to undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, in the most consequential act of immigration relief in more than a decade. By Jonathan Blitzer

High-Roller Presidential Donor Perks

Give now to get your name on the wing of a fighter jet!

Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Scabrous Satire of the Super-Rich

In “Long Island Compromise,” wealth is a curse. Or is that just what we’d like to think?

The Economist Magazine – June 29, 2024 Preview

France’s centre cannot hold

The Economist Magazine (June 27, 2024): The latest issue features

France’s centre cannot hold

After the election, populists of the right and left could hobble a centrist president

What to expect from a second Biden term

He has a domestic agenda, but no easy way to bring it about

Can countries get rich from services?

American fried chicken can now be served from the Philippines

Making heavy weather of hot weather

Deadly heat is increasingly the norm, not an exception to it

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