Tag Archives: Culture

The Spectator World Magazine – April 13, 2026

Arming the dragon | The Spectator

THE SPECTATOR WORLD: The latest issue features Arming the dragon‘ – How the West is empowering China’s war machine…

Operation Epic Fury is costing Trump his coalition

As US troops flock to danger, Donald Trump seeks ways to disentangle himself from the war on Iran. “We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” he said in a 19-minute address at the start of the month. “It’s very important that we keep this conflict in perspective.”

How the West is empowering China’s war machine

The West’s technology brains and universities are arming China. A few of them are potentially breaking the law to do it, but most of them don’t need to. The front door has been open for years, and nobody in London or Washington has thought to close it.

The US currency is under attack like never before

It was, on the surface, a fairly routine proposal. Officials from the BRICS nations, made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, have decided to discuss, at a summit in New Delhi later this year, how to deepen trade and collaboration. No one was paying very much attention when the decision was made. And yet, according to a report in the well-informed newspaper Berliner Zeitung, a resolution was quietly suggested that might turn the global monetary system upside down. It was the start of what might be termed the “plot against the dollar.” America’s currency is likely to face its most serious challenge of the post-World War Two era.

ORION MAGAZINE – WINTER 2026 – Nature & Culture

ORION MAGAZINE: The Spring 2026 issue, Working the Land: Lessons in Labor and Collective Action, explores the relationship between labor and the environment and calls for solidarity at a time when that value is under attack. Contributors address various ways that humanity has put the planet to work—by extracting resources, expanding the reaches of capitalism, or using other creatures as helpmeets. But they also venture to imagine what an alternative version of this relationship might look like; one where the channel between labor and the land is driven not by division or profit but by coalition and repair. Inside:

  • Labor journalist Kim Kelly explores what climate activism can learn from union organizing
  • Camrin Dengel photographs the practice of regenerative farming as it pushes back against big agriculture
  • Emma Pattee interviews legendary activist Sarah Schulman and labor scholar Naomi R. Williams about what true solidarity looks like
  • Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri investigates the epidemic of stolen donkeys—an essential human workmate—in Ghana

Chloé Cooper Jones debuts as Orion’s new travel columnist.

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – APRIL 13, 2026 PREVIEW

The cover of the April 13 2026 Future Issue of The New Yorker in which a man smiles as he types on a screen attached to...

THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest issue cover features ‘Christoph Niemann’s “New Horizons” – Technology and the future.

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth’s Warped Vision of the Iran War

The two men might wish that they lived in a world where whoever dropped the most bombs got whatever he wanted. But the war has shown that this isn’t true. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Why Are People Injecting Themselves with Peptides?

Health and wellness influencers are hawking unapproved treatments on the gray market. The future of the F.D.A.—and the health of consumers—is at stake. By Dhruv Khullar

Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?

New interviews and closely guarded documents shed light on the persistent doubts about the head of OpenAI.

By Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE- APRIL 5, 2026

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘How the generation raised on smartphones is imagining life without them” by Matthew Shaer

The Novel Will Never Die. Ben Lerner’s Latest Book Shows Us Why.

With “Transcription,” the writer makes a case for the vitality of the form.

The Unlikely TV Show Restoring Everyone’s Faith in Dating

Without exploitation, “Love on the Spectrum” captures the triumphs and travails of dating. It has become one of Netflix’s most popular shows. By Anna Peele

Worried About A.I. Taking Your Job? That’s Not Very ‘Agentic’ of You.

Today’s spin on the idea of personal agency is convenient for tech C.E.O.s, who boast that their models work just fine without us. By Nitsuh Abebe

What Is YouTube’s Dominance Doing to Us? We Asked Its C.E.O.

    THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – APRIL 3, 2026 PREVIEW

    THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘The Tipping Point’ – A watershed moment for big tech’…

    In a landmark case, a California jury last week found social media companies Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products. The ruling came the day after Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was ordered to pay $375m after a jury in a separate trial in New Mexico found it misled consumers about the safety of its platforms.

    Meta, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok are facing thousands of similar lawsuits in US courts, while governments around the world are starting to introduce measures to curb social media’s grip on children’s attention.

    Guardian technology editors Dan Milmo and Robert Booth assess whether what has been called a “big tobacco” moment for the industry will lead to significant change. And in our opinion section, Jonathan Freedland argues that the court verdicts must be just the start of a global fightback.

    The big story | A war of regression
    Weeks into a war that was going to take days and has cost billions, Donald Trump has bombed the US into a worse position with Iran, writes Patrick Wintour

    Science | ‘On the shoulders of giants’
    Plant specimens and teaching materials that inspired Charles Darwin have been unearthed and will be used for the first time to teach contemporary students about botany, Donna Ferguson reports

    Feature | Circuit training
    After touring 11 Chinese companies making humanoid robots, Chang Che asks: just how close are we to a robotic future?

    Opinion | Labour needs a thinker
    Ed Miliband’s stock is rising in a party in need of an old-style intellectual heavyweight, argues Gaby Hinsliff

    Culture | Gimme shelter
    Catherine Slessor visits Henry Moore’s former countryside home Hoglands, now home to studios and a vast sculpture garden, to learn about a new exhibition of the drawings he made as a war artist, capturing people as they took sanctuary from the blitz

    THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – APRIL 6, 2026 PREVIEW

    The cover of the April 6 2026 issue of The New Yorker in which construction workers toil under a city street as people...

    THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest issue cover features Victoria Tentler-Krylov’s “Parallel Lives” – Around and under construction.

    What Was Behind the T.S.A. Meltdown?

    The present mess has roots in two entangled, defining White House projects: DOGE and the mind-bending expansion of ICE. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

    Trump’s War Hits the Chaiwalas

    Restrictions and attacks in the Strait of Hormuz have made fuel prices rocket. Just ask the roadside tea venders in New Delhi. By Nathan Heller

    He Helped Stop Iran from Getting the Bomb

    A former C.I.A. officer says that he recruited scientists as part of the United States’ effort to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program. By David D. Kirkpatrick

    THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE- MARCH 29, 2026

    Current cover

    THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE: The 3.29.26 Issue features Blair Braverman on leaving her life of dog sled racing; Maggie Shipstead on bringing her mother’s ashes to Antarctica; Kevin Fedarko on the Grand Canyon’s North Rim; Taffy Brodesser-Akner on teaching her son to take a vacation; and more.

    The Iran War is Revealing the Messy Middle of Our Renewable Energy Transition

    When the world map of literal power changes, the political hierarchy shifts, too.

    Every Pentagon Has Its Buzzword. For Hegseth’s, It’s ‘Lethality.’

    It’s blunt instead of vague, brash instead of evasive, bold instead of cautious. And yet the word obfuscates as much as old defense jargon. By Nitsuh Abebe

    ‘A Mass Disaster Nonstop’: Inside the Turmoil at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s C.D.C.

    Forty-three current and former C.D.C. employees on the changes they say are replacing science with ideology — and making Americans more vulnerable. By Jeneen Interlandi

    The Epstein Scandal Has Reached the Far-Right Meme Stage

    Once the Epstein files transitioned from an abstract concept to a real-world event, it became more difficult for fringe conspiracy theorists to control the story.

    THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – MARCH 27, 2026 PREVIEW

    THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘Strategy Backfires’ – Can Trump undo the mess he’s made in the Gulf?

    Brinkmanship, the ability to take countries to the edge of conflict, was a staple of cold war diplomacy. The remnants of that finely balanced standoff, bound by a rules-based order and spheres of influence, has given way to a world in freefall; to an ever-widening war in the Gulf where the aims are as unclear as the endpoint.

    It is approaching a month since the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran, arguing they were acting to remove the country’s nuclear threat, destroy its ballistic missile capability and free the populace of a tyrannical theocratic regime. Yet it seems it is these civilians and neighbouring Gulf countries who are bearing the brunt of the campaign while the Iranian regime’s willingness to escalate the war seems undimmed.

    Spotlight | The ‘anyone but’ election
    Pippa Crerar looks ahead to local elections in the UK, where voters seem more concerned with who they want to keep out of political office than who they vote in

    Science | Not-so silent nights
    Can a “vacuum cleaner turned the other way” become a popular solution to snoring disorders? Natasha May explores the rise of Cpap machines

    Feature | Gamifying government
    Steeped in gaming and rightwing culture, Elon Musk’s Doge team set out to defeat the enemy of the United States: its people, write Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian

    Opinion | Collateral damage
    Attacks on synagogues and Jewish shops in the UK, Europe and the US don’t hurt Benjamin Netanyahu, says Jonathan Freedland, they just hurt ordinary Jews

    Culture | Rock return
    “Validation was an insatiable monster”: Dave Grohl talks to Ben Beaumont-Thomas about Foo Fighters, life after his infidelity and grief for bandmate Taylor Hawkins

    The Spectator World Magazine – March 30, 2026

    THE SPECTATOR WORLD: The latest issue features ‘The End Of Trumpism’….

    The end of Trumpism

    Having Donald Trump as President probably resembles being a heroin addict: you undergo regular episodes of sweating terror and mortal danger, the end result of which is to get you – at best – back to normal. A year ago, the Liberation Day tariffs nearly caused the American economy to seize up, before China mercifully let the matter drop. Then came the even more reckless decision to join Israel in bombing Iran’s Fordow nuclear installation; Iran agreed to halt hostilities just as it was figuring out how to penetrate Israeli airspace with its missiles. By Christopher Caldwell

    Why Iran will hasten MAGA’s demise

    Readers may disagree with the cover line of this issue. Pronouncing “the end of Trumpism” feels somewhat similar to declaring “the end of history” – a provocative, albeit less grandiose, statement that risks being mocked in the near future. We should start by saying we hope that we are wrong. Trumpism, as this magazine understands….

    How Trump and FIFA’s Gianni Infantino teamed up to rebrand peace

    When you attend the court of King Donald, it’s important to genuflect. Unfamiliar foreigners in need of pointers can look to the man who is currently the most assiduous non-American flatterer: FIFA president Gianni Infantino. By Matt McDonald

    El Mencho’s last stand

    Jalisco, Mexico No one seems to know exactly how El Mencho was killed. We are told the feared leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel was captured by the Mexican army during a firefight in late February, and subsequently died of his wounds. Beyond that, there is very little information. Why are the Mexican and

    THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE – MARCH 30, 2026 PREVIEW

    A portrait of New York City as a pattern of subway cars firehydrants water towers rats alligators a few people and one...

    THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest issue cover features ‘Roz Chast’s “City Beasts” – Where the wild things are. Also, Jon Lee Anderson on Cuba’s crumbling regime, Jia Tolentino on Robyn, Jill Lepore on entrusting A.I. with moral judgment, and more.

    The First Casualty of Trump’s War in Iran Was the Truth

    The cruellest irony is that of a President who addresses the Iranian people in the language of liberation and then threatens freedom of the press back home. By David Remnick

    Does A.I. Need a Constitution?

    A new set of precepts is meant to make the chatbot Claude wise, decent, and safe. It also marks a striking transfer of public responsibility from constitutional government to private tech firms. By Jill Lepore

    Is Cuba Next?

    Trump’s campaign to topple foreign adversaries encounters a battered but defiant regime. By Jon Lee Anderson