Tag Archives: July 2023

Preview: New York Times Magazine – July 2, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (July 2, 2023) –

In this week’s cover story, Lynsey Addario takes us to a Ukrainian town where an 11-year-old is navigating a childhood transformed by war. Plus, a profile of the Christian pop star Marcos Witt and an investigation into how federal law targets thousands of women on anti-addiction medications.

A Boy’s Life on the Front Lines

In a Ukrainian town, an 11-year-old navigates a childhood transformed by war.

In a town near the Eastern front lines of the Donbas region of Ukraine, an 11-year-old boy named Yegor’s days were as predictable as they could be, given the unpredictability of war.

A.I. and TV Ads Were Made for Each Other

A photo collage of frames from AI-generated spoof advertisements, showing people drinking orange juice and beer and eating pizza. Close examination of the images reveal some strange visual distortions.

A string of uncanny videos show what generative A.I. and advertising have in common: They chew up the cultural subconscious and spit it back at us.

By Mac Schwerin

Even if I didn’t work in advertising, I would be a connoisseur of commercials. You’re probably one, too. Think of all the tropes you’ve ingested over the years — the forest-green hatchbacks conquering rugged Western landscapes, the miles of mozzarella stretched by major pizza chains. These are the images that let you know what kind of pitch you’re watching, so you won’t be confused when the brand shows up.

The New York Review Of Books – July 20, 2023

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The New York Review of Books – July 20, 2023 issue: The Fiction Issue features Adam Thirlwell on Emmanuel Carrère, Carolina Miranda on contemporary Caribbean art, Darryl Pinckney on a new reissue of a classic of American vernacular literature, Fintan O’Toole on Mike Pence’s pallid pomp, Daniel Mendelsohn on Bob Gottlieb, and more.

The Trouble with Truth

Emmanuel Carrère

Adam Thirlwell

Emmanuel Carrère’s new book, Yoga, has been the subject of gossipy debate about its veracity, but it is seductively open about its own anxiety as a work of fiction.

Life Made Light

Ruth Bernard Yeazell

Johannes Vermeer, one of the most intimate and quiet of artists, who is celebrated for the silence and light of his paintings, has become, paradoxically, a crowd-pleaser.

Johannes Vermeer: Faith, Light and Reflection by Gregor J.M. Weber

Vermeer and the Art of Love by Aneta Georgievska-Shine

Preview: MIT Technology Review – July/August 2023

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MIT Technology Review – July/August 2023: ‘The Accessibility issue’ features Connecting climate change and the digital divide. A blind educator working to make images accessible to everyone. How the app meant to streamline immigration at the border may be making things worse. Plus regulating robotaxis, Metaverse attorneys, and the forgotten history of highway photologs.

The future is disabled

Looking down a neighborhood street where a man in wheelchair has crossed with wife and daughter.

We need to take steps toward a more inclusive future—one that we all can inhabit.

“Technology,” wrote the late historian of technology Melvin Kranzberg Jr., “is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral.” It’s an observation that often doesn’t stick with people as they think about technologies related to accessibility.

The iPad was meant to revolutionize accessibility. What happened?

a tiny person in the center of a maze protruding from the screen of an iPad

For people who can’t speak, there has been depressingly little innovation in technology that helps them communicate.

A piece of hardware, however impressively designed and engineered, is only as valuable as what a person can do with it. After the iPad’s release, the flood of new, easy-to-use AAC apps that LoStracco, Shevchenko, and their clients wanted never came. 

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

Reports: Tufts Health & Nutrition – July 2023 Issue

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Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter (July 2023): Food Allergy, or Intolerance?; Sugar substitute Erythritol associated with higher heart attack and stroke risks; Plant-based Cookouts; Create a Powerful Pantry, and more…

Food Allergy, or Intolerance?

These terms are often used interchangeably, but there are important differences.

Are You Losing Muscle?

We asked a leading expert what you can do to stay strong and active at any age.

Previews: History Today Magazine – July 2023

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HISTORY TODAY MAGAZINE (JULY 2023) – Civil war in Ancient Rome, England’s most useless charities, agents of anarchy in the fin de siècle, the battle for the Korean peninsula, a Catholic sympathiser at Elizabeth I’s court, Bardolatry, Hong Kong’s floating population.

The Year of the Four, Five, Six Emperors

Vitellius led through the streets of Rome by the people, by Georges Rochegrosse, 1883
Vitellius led through the streets of Rome by the people, by Georges Rochegrosse, 1883.

For citizens of Ancient Rome, the recurrence of brutal civil war was par for the course. For writers, it was an opportunity. 

During the Roman Empire, outbreaks of civil war (and the assassinations which often preceded them) were generally intended to change the emperor, not the imperial system. Even though there was a brief moment after the emperor Caligula’s assassination in AD 41 when a change in the political system might have been triggered, the rudderless and leaderless soldiers quickly reverted to the reassuring default mode of imperial rule after conveniently finding Claudius hiding behind a curtain and making him emperor. 

How to Make a Devil

Image from Ravachol’s anthropometric file, 1892

The legend of Ravachol, the terrorist ‘mastermind’ of the fin de siècle. 

Design/Culture: Monocle Magazine – July/Aug 2023

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Monocle Magazine (July/August 2023 issue) – Monocle’s annual Quality of Life Survey puts the world’s best cities through their paces and profiles the urban centres on the up.

We also get set for summer by gardening in Hiroshima, dining in Marseille and dancing in Mexico City. Plus: how Bratislava’s bass-playing, architect mayor is helping the city to find its groove.

Arts/History: Smithsonian Magazine – July/Aug 2023

Smithsonian Magazine - July/August 2023 - SoftArchive

Smithsonian Magazine – July/August Issue: American Tapestries- Three artists creating bold new versions of a cherished art form; In search of Willa Cather; Archaeology of the world’s oldest village, and more…

A Massive Archive Tells the Story of Early African American Photographers

Arresting portraits, now a part of the Smithsonian collections, illuminate the little-known role these artists played in chronicling 19th-century life

“Before daguerreotypes, if you wanted a portrait made, you commissioned a painter,” says John Jacob, SAAM’s director of photography, as we study Rhoda’s portrait. “Photography democratized portraiture because it was significantly cheaper. But until we acquired these images, we weren’t able to show in our collection that African Americans were part of this process, as photographers and subjects, and also as entrepreneurs and innovators, experimenting with the latest technology and investing in it.”

Preview: Foreign Affairs Magazine- July/Aug 2023

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Foreign Affairs – July/August 2023 issue:

The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia

Ukraine’s Future and Putin’s Fate

There is good reason to be pessimistic about the prospects of Russia’s changing course under Putin. He has taken his country in a darker, more authoritarian direction, a turn intensified by the invasion of Ukraine.

China Is Ready for a World of Disorder

America Is Not

In March, at the end of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin stood at the door of the Kremlin to bid his friend farewell. Xi told his Russian counterpart, “Right now, there are changes—the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years—and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Putin, smiling, responded, “I agree.”

An Unwinnable War

Diego Mallo

Washington Needs an Endgame in Ukraine

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a moment of clarity for the United States and its allies. An urgent mission was before them: to assist Ukraine as it countered Russian aggression and to punish Moscow for its transgressions. While the Western response was clear from the start, the objective—the endgame of this war—has been nebulous.

The Korea Model

Why an Armistice Offers the Best Hope for Peace in Ukraine

In the middle of August 1952, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai traveled nearly 4,000 miles to Moscow to meet with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin… The two Communist powers were allies at the time, but it was not a partnership of equals: the Soviet Union was a superpower, and China depended on it for economic assistance and military equipment.

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine — July 2023 Issue

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Harper’s Magazine – July 2023 issue: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Wokeness by Ian Buruma; Jackson Lears on Nuclear Insouciance and The World of Homemade Submarines…

Doing the Work

The Protestant ethic and the spirit of wokeness

By Ian Buruma

Writing about “Woke” has at least two pitfalls. One is that any criticism of its excesses provokes accusations of racism, xenophobia, transphobia, misogyny, or white supremacy. The other problem is the word itself, which has been a term of abuse employed by the far right, a battle cry for the progressive left, and an embarrassment to many liberals.