Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence

The Economist Magazine – February 17, 2024 Preview

The right goes gaga: Meet the Global Anti-Globalist Alliance

The Economist Magazine (February 10, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Right Goes GAGA’ – Meet the Global Anti-Globalist Alliance’; Goodbye to the racial jobs gap; San Francisco’s comeback; China’s chipmaking plan; The looming hell in Rafah….

The growing peril of national conservatism

It’s dangerous and it’s spreading. Liberals need to find a way to stop it

Europe must hurry to defend itself against Russia—and Donald Trump

The ex-president’s invitation to Vladimir Putin to attack American allies is an assault on NATO. Ultimately, that is bad for America

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Feb 15, 2024

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Nature Magazine – February 14, 2024: The latest issue cover climate and land-use stresses could push the rainforest past a tipping point as early as 2050. The researchers probed five causes of water stress — global warming, annual rainfall, seasonal intensity of rainfall, length of the dry season and deforestation — using palaeorecords,  climate models and observational data.

First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed

Researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher the text of 2,000-year-old charred papyrus scripts, unveiling musings on music and capers.

Deepfakes, trolls and cybertroopers: how social media could sway elections in 2024

Faced with data restrictions and harassment, researchers are mapping out fresh approaches to studying social media’s political reach.

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Feb 16, 2024

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Times Literary Supplement (February 14, 2024): The latest issue features Thinking AI; London literary consequences, A new play in the great tradition, and Household terrors…

The New York Times Book Review – February 11, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (February 9, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Armed And Dangerous’ – Two new books – “One Nation Under Guns”, by Dominic Erdozain, and “What We’ve Become”, by Jonathan M. Metzl – examine America’s gun culture and its costs…

An America Where Guns Do the Talking

This illustration depicts a handgun in medium blue, drawn so that its middle section forms the outlines of the United States, beneath a jagged diagonal swath of red against a pale blue background.

Two new books consider how the country’s obsession with firearms has become an existential threat.

By Rachel Louise Snyder

ONE NATION UNDER GUNS: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy, by Dominic Erdozain

WHAT WE’VE BECOME: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms, by Jonathan M. Metzl


Last year, a friend from Brunei visited me in the United States. She is American but was raised in Sudan and has lived in Cambodia and Scotland, among other places. We were talking about the rise in anxiety among teenagers in America when another friend texted me; her daughter had just arrived home from school, where she’d spent the afternoon in lockdown. “Of course your kids have anxiety,” my Brunei friend said. “They’re being raised in a war zone.”

A Scottish Coming-of-Age Story, With a Supernatural Twist

In this illustration, a young woman stands in the middle of vast farmland filled with rolling hills, cows and a little farmhouse. In the distance, a black train billowing smoke rolls by.

In Margot Livesey’s new novel, “The Road From Belhaven,” a 19th-century farm girl’s life and maturity are complicated by her uncontrollable visions of accident and disaster.

By Daisy Lafarge

Lizzie Craig has a gift: She sees “pictures” of events before they take place. It happens first when she’s 10, with a vision in which her grandfather’s scythe slips from a whetstone and injures his leg. It’s the tail end of the 19th century in Fife, rural Scotland, where Lizzie is brought up by her grandparents on Belhaven Farm. Her pictures, more often than not, are premonitions of accidents and disasters: a hurt leg, a wheel coming off a cart, a tree hit by lightning. They tend to arrive “a few weeks before the accident,” giving Lizzie time to prepare, and sometimes, intervene accordingly.

Research Preview: Science Magazine-February 9, 2024

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Science Magazine – February 8, 2024: The new issue features ‘Citrus Oils’ – How the fruits regulate oil gland development…

Researchers discover new kind of magnetism

More than 200 materials could be “altermagnets,” predicted just a few years ago

A thousand years of solitude

How did the first human settlers of the Canary Islands survive a millennium of isolation?

The Economist Magazine – February 10, 2024 Preview

Who is in control? Xi v the markets

The Economist Magazine (February 10, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Who Is In Control?’ – Xi v the markets…

Killer drones pioneered in Ukraine are the weapons of the future

They are reshaping the balance between humans and technology in war

Can Xi Jinping win back the markets?

Investors at home and abroad no longer trust China’s policymakers

The arsenal of hypocrisy

House Republicans are helping Vladimir Putin

Their cynicism over Ukraine weakens America and makes the world less safe

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – February 9, 2024

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The Guardian Weekly (February 8, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Final Straw’ – What’s eating Europe’s Farmers?; Joe Biden’s Middle East masterplan; Can anything stop the AI deepfakes? and The Pet Shop Boys are back in town…

If you live in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland or Greece, you may well have already run into one of the numerous roadblocks or protests formed in recent weeks by furious farmers. If you’re in Spain and Italy, take cover – because they are coming to you soon, if not already.

In this week’s cover story, we explore what has proved to be the final straw for Europe’s farmers. A combination of rising costs, environmental rules and grievances over EU policies, coupled with more localised complaints, seem to be the factors driving the convoys of tractors. But far-right and anti-establishment parties, who could make major gains in forthcoming European parliament elections, have also picked up on the protests as part of their agenda against EU influence.

Paris correspondent Angelique Chrisafis and Europe correspondent Jon Henley delve into the protests (if not the piles of steaming dung being dumped on the continent’s roads, as illustrated wonderfully by Neil Jamieson on this week’s cover), and ask what can be done to placate them.

Research Preview: Nature Magazine- February 8, 2024

Volume 626 Issue 7998

Nature Magazine – February 7, 2024: The latest issue cover features ‘Dead Reckoning’ – Mass predator die-offs exert a hidden effect on lake ecosystems…

Surprise find: a blood-based immune system is discovered in the gut

Immune guardians called complement proteins are manufactured by gut cells and help to protect against pathogens.

Black-hole observations solve cosmic-ray mystery

Data from an African observatory show that jets from a collapsed star are capable of producing some of the Galaxy’s fastest particles.

Obesity drugs have another superpower: taming inflammation

The blockbuster medications that reduce body weight also reduce inflammation in organs such as the brain, raising hopes that they can treat Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases.

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Feb 9, 2024

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Times Literary Supplement (February 7, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Cancel Culture’ – The limits of academic free speech; An Auschwitz memoir; Wittgenstein’s bombshell; Horrible legions and Dutch artobiography…

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Feb 12 & 19, 2024

Pixelated Eustace Tilley magazine cover that appears and disappears.

The New Yorker (February 5, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Nicholas Konrad’s “Online Profile” – The magazine celebrates its ninety-ninth anniversary..

How Nikola Jokić Became the World’s Best Basketball Player

Nikola Jokić holding a basketball during a game.

He doesn’t run very fast or jump very high, and seems to prefer the company of horses. But he has mastered the game’s new geometry like nobody else.

By Louisa Thomas

The Art World Before and After Thelma Golden

Thelma Golden photographed by Lyle Ashton Harris.

When Golden was a young curator in the nineties, her shows, centering Black artists, were unprecedented. Today, those artists are the stars of the art market.

By Calvin Tomkins

Baruch Spinoza and the Art of Thinking in Dangerous Times

A portrait of Baruch Spinoza by Franz Wulfhagen, 1664.

The philosopher was a champion of political and intellectual freedom, but he had no interest in being a martyr. Instead, he shows us how prudence and boldness can go hand in hand.

By Adam Kirsch