Tag Archives: Culture

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – July 19, 2024

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The Guardian Weekly (July 17, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Reset?’ – America reckons with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump…

The image of Donald Trump, his face smeared with blood after a bullet grazed his ear, marked a watershed moment in the already high-stakes 2024 US presidential election campaign. Opening our special report on the Pennsylvania rally shooting, Washington bureau chief David Smith examines how it could fuel Trump’s base and stoke further division in American politics.

Five essential reads in this week’s edition

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Spotlight | On paw patrol in Sumatra
National Geographic explorer and photographer Danielle Khan Da Silva joins an all-female group of Indigenous rangers who protect a rare Indonesian rainforest ecosystem.

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Spotlight | Evasive action
The doctors who treat cancer share their expert advice on what simple things we can all do to lessen the risk of getting the disease with Sarah Phillips.

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Feature | Too hot to handle
As heatwaves become a common occurrence, outdoor workers are particularly vulnerable, explains Samira Shackle, as she documents the death from heat of one French labourer.

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Opinion Simon Tisdall on the Nato summit
The 75-year-old alliance was created to counteract Moscow’s power and needs to keep its focus on containing Russian ambition.

Untitled #96, 1981.
Untitled #96, 1981. Photograph: Cindy Sherman/Hauser & Wirth

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Culture | Selfies with Cindy Sherman
The US artist whose work changed the way we see women talks image, AI and Instagram to Nadia Khomami.

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – July 22, 2024

In a Supreme Court portrait Trumps head replaces the heads of the Conservative Justices.

The New Yorker (July 15, 2024): The latest issue features Anita Kunz’s “The Face of Justice” – The remaking of the Supreme Court in Donald Trump’s image.

F.D.R.’s Election Lessons for Joe Biden and the Democrats

Less than six weeks before Democrats formally choose their nominee, the President is marching down a path of constant peril.

Inside the Trump Plan for 2025

A network of well-funded far-right activists is preparing for the former President’s return to the White House. By Jonathan Blitzer

Paradise Bronx

Paradise Bronx

From the time of the Revolutionary War to the fires of the nineteen-seventies, the history of the borough has always been shaped by its in-between-ness.

By Ian Frazier

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: 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?

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – July 1, 2024

Image may contain Book Publication Furniture Person Chair Accessories Glasses Sink and Indoors

The New Yorker (June 24, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Klaas Verplancke’s “Chilling” – Coming up with creative ways to stay coo;…

What Can We Expect from the Biden-Trump Debate?

Until recently, it wasn’t clear that the two men would ever share a stage again. Now there’s a potential for even greater stakes and strangeness than four years ago. By Evan Osnos

The Doctor Tom Brady and Leonardo DiCaprio Call When They Get Hurt

Neal ElAttrache, the surgeon to the stars of sport and screen, can fix anything. By Zach Helfand

John Fetterman’s War

Is the Pennsylvania senator trolling the left or offering a way forward for Democrats? By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – June 21, 2024

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The Guardian Weekly (June 19, 2024) – The new issue features Emmanuel Macron’s ballot box gamble – Could the far right gain political power in France? Plus: the record detectives fighting back against bootleggers

Spotlight | Kharkiv under siege
Luke Harding and Artem Mazhulin report from Ukraine’s second city where living conditions are increasingly precarious

Environment | The fight to save Norway’s arctic foxes
Captive breeding has helped reduce threats from predators and the climate crisis – but can the species survive long-term?

Feature | The vinyl frontier
John Harris meets the record detectives going after music’s retro bootleggers

Opinion | Starmer’s quiet man appeal
The UK Labour leader has been accused of being a “political robot”. But, argues Jonathan Freedland, that’s exactly why he’s so far ahead in the opinion polls

Culture | Alive and Kicken
On its 50th anniversary, culture writer Eliza Apperly pays tribute to the Berlin gallery that helped pioneer photography as an art discipline

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 24, 2024

Eager parents dressed in clothing with contemporary popculture references walk behind their embarrassed daughter.

The New Yorker (June 17, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Adrian Tomine’s “Eternal Youth” – For parents trying to look hip, no effort goes unpunished.

Rise of the Nanomachines

Nanotechnology can already puncture cancer cells and drug-resistant bacteria. What will it do next?

By Dhruv Khullar

After the European Elections, President Macron Makes a Gamble

The rise of the far right in Europe might help Americans deprovincialize their own crisis. The single wave has struck many coastlines.

By Adam Gopnik

Deaccessioning the Delights of Robert Gottlieb

The eminent editor’s wife and daughter sift through a lifetime’s worth of collectibles: quirky plastic purses, a porcelain Miss Piggy, and many, many books.

By Zach Helfand

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – June 14, 2024

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The Guardian Weekly (June 13, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Blood Lines’ – The human cost of Europe’s cocaine habit’; The Far Rights surges across EU; A doughnut theory of the universe; The muscular rise of steroids…

In a week when much of the attention in Europe was on far-right political gains in the parliamentary elections, the Guardian Weekly’s cover shines a light on another of the continent’s disturbing undercurrents.

A Guardian investigation has found that hundreds of unaccompanied child migrants across Europe are being forced to work for increasingly powerful drug cartels to meet the continent’s soaring appetite for cocaine.

In cities including Paris and Brussels, gangs are exploiting the “unlimited” supply of vulnerable African children at their disposal, using brutal means to control their victims, including torture and rape if they fail to sell enough drugs, as they seek to expand Europe’s $13bn cocaine market.

Mark Townsend reveals the plight of the illegal trade’s child foot soldiers, while Annie Kelly explains the growing problem of cocaine use in Europe. And from Ecuador, Tom Phillips reports on how death and destruction follow the drug on its complex journey across the Atlantic.

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 17, 2024

People play chess in Washington Square Park.

The New Yorker (June 10, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Victoria Tentler-Krylov’s “Pawns in the Park” – The artist captures a corner of calm contemplation in the midst of New York’s hustle and bustle.

A Striking Setback for India’s Narendra Modi

The truly disquieting thought was that the cult of personality around the Prime Minister had become suffocating and seemingly impossible to pierce—until now. By Isaac Chotiner

A Journey to the Center of New York City’s Congestion Zone

A Journey to the Center of New York City’s Congestion Zone

After Governor Kathy Hochul’s flip-flop on congestion pricing, a cop reconsiders his retirement while inching his Lexus through snarled-up traffic on the F.D.R.

By Ben McGrath

How Liberals Talk About Children

Many left-leaning, middle-class Americans speak of kids as though they are impositions, or means to an end.

By Jay Caspian Kang

Culture: The American Scholar – Summer 2024

THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR (June 4, 2024): The latest issue features ‘An Olympian for the Ages’ – Why George Eyser’s feats at the 1904 Games deserve to be celebrated today; Joshua Prager on a forgotten Olympian, Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing, new poetry from Ange Mlinko, and more…

A Forgotten Turner Classic

Who was George Eyser, the one-legged German-American gymnast who astounded at the Olympic Games?

Femmes Fantastiques

Mickalene Thomas and the art of remixing

We Are the Borg

Is the convergence of human and machine really upon us?

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI by Ray Kurzweil

In the fall of 2014, an MIT cognitive scientist named Tomaso Poggio predicted that humankind was at least 20 years away from building computers that could interpret images on their own. Doing so, declared Poggio, “would be one of the most intellectually challenging things … for a machine to do.” One month later, Google released an AI program that did exactly what he’d deemed impossible.