Tag Archives: July 2024

News, Newspapers, Views

The New York Times — Tuesday, July 2, 2024

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Supreme Court Says Trump Has Some Immunity in Election Case

The ruling makes a distinction between official actions of a president, which have immunity, and those of a private citizen. In dissent, the court’s liberals lament a vast expansion of presidential power.

Ruling Further Slows Trump Election Case but Opens Door to Airing of Evidence

The Supreme Court’s immunity decision directed the trial court to hold hearings on what portions of the indictment can survive — a possible chance for prosecutors to set out their case in public before Election Day.

The Road to a Crisis: How Democrats Let Biden Glide to Renomination

An 81-year-old candidate and no Plan B. “How did we get here?” one leading Democrat asks. The answer is complicated.

The Center Collapses in France, Leaving Macron Marooned

Squeezed by the far-right National Rally party and the left, President Emmanuel Macron faces a country that may prove ungovernable.

Foreign Policy, Government, Magazines, Politics, Previews, Reviews

Preview: Foreign Policy Magazine – Summer 2024

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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 Leonard, Constanze Stelzenmüller, Nathalie Tocci, Carl Bildt, Robin Niblett, Radoslaw Sikorski, Guntram Wolff, Bilahari Kausikan, Ivan 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.

Arts & Literature, Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

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

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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?

News, Newspapers, Views

The New York Times — Monday, July 1, 2024

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48 Hours to Fix a 90-Minute Mess: Inside the Biden Camp’s Post-Debate Frenzy

With countless calls and a rush of campaign events, the president’s team began a damage-control effort to pressure and plead with anxious Democratic lawmakers, surrogates, activists and donors.

How the N.Y.P.D. Quietly Shuts Down Discipline Cases Against Officers

Police Commissioner Edward Caban has often relied on an obscure authority to intervene when officers are accused of serious wrongdoing, often handing out little to no punishment.

French Far Right Wins Big in First Round of Voting

A surprise decision by President Emmanuel Macron to hold a snap election appears to have backfired badly, giving the National Rally a decisive victory.

Magazines, Reviews, Science, Technology

SCIENCE & TECH: DISCOVER MAGAZINE – JULY/AUG 2024

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Discover Magazine Subscription [6 issues]

Discover Magazine (June 30, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Next-Gen Medicine’ – Recreating human organs on microchips; Inside the new Opioid Crisis; History’s strangest sleep study and Prehistoric Family Secrets…

The Future of Organ-Chip Technology Is Bright

From rendering animal testing obsolete to reducing HIV and preterm birth, Donald Ingber is making the future a reality.

The Opioid Crisis Is Not Over

Organizations Work to Reduce Animal Deaths With Relegated Passageways

Man Experiences His Own Spine-Tingling Tale

Mapping the Darkness Excerpt: Sleep Spelunking

Financial, Investing, Magazines, Previews, Retirement, Reviews

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – July 1, 2024

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Magazine - Latest Issue - Barron's

BARRON’S MAGAZINE – JULY 1, 2024 ISSUE:

Wall Street’s Hottest Lottery Ticket: Zero-Dated Options

Wall Street’s Hottest Lottery Ticket: Zero-Dated Options

Bets on market moves have taken off with these options. Stocks like Nvidia and Apple could be next.

Heart Just Skip a Beat? Your Watch Already Knows.

Heart Just Skip a Beat? Your Watch Already Knows.

Smart rings and smartwatches are providing consumers with reams of health information. Clinical device makers like DexCom needn’t worry.Long read

Things Are Looking Up for Income Investors. Here Are 11 Sectors to Consider.

Things Are Looking Up for Income Investors. Here Are 11 Sectors to Consider.

From Treasuries to REITs and MLPs, there are plenty of places to find generous dividends and yields.Long read

Books, Literature, Magazines, Previews, Reviews, Stories

The New York Review Of Books – July 18, 2024

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The New York Review of Books (June 27, 2024) – The latest issue features:

Reimagining the Ordinary

The French artist Jean Hélion approached painting with a philosophical precision, each style a hypothesis to be investigated and tested.

By Michael Gorra

Jean Hélion: La Prose du monde – an exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, March 22–August 18, 2024

A Story of His Own

In James, Percival Everett’s smart, funny, brutal retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Everett takes readers deeper into the capricious yet certain violence of American slavery, giving the characters a life that seems to lift off the page.

James by Percival Everett

The Watercolorist

The short fiction of Ángel Bonomini possesses a lightness that sets him apart from contemporaries like Borges and Cortázar.

The Novices of Lerna by Ángel Bonomini, translated from the Spanish by Jordan Landsman

Innovations, Magazines, Previews, Research, Reviews, Technology

Preview: MIT Technology Review – July/August 2024

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MIT Technology Review (June 26, 2024): The new issue features The Play issue – Did you know you could surf in the desert? New pools make it possible–but at what cost? Learn how AI is bringing an unprecedented expansiveness to computer and video games and how high-tech supershoes are helping athletes run faster and more safely. Plus: Gamification was always a dubious concept–so how did it take over the world?

How gamification took over the world

Gamification was always just behaviorism dressed up in pixels and point systems. Why did we fall for it?

Supershoes are reshaping distance running

Kenyan runners, like many others, are grappling with the impact of expensive, high-performance shoes.

How generative AI could reinvent what it means to play

AI-powered NPCs that don’t need a script could make games—and other worlds—deeply immersive.

Analysis, Foreign Affairs, Government, Magazines, Politics, Reviews

Politics: Foreign Affairs Magazine – July/Aug 2024

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July/August 2024

Foreign Affairs (June 25, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Does America Need a New Foreign Policy?…

A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is

Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy

“America is back.” In the early days of his presidency, Joe Biden repeated those words as a starting point for his foreign policy. The phrase offered a bumper-sticker slogan to pivot away from Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership. It also suggested that the United States could reclaim its self-conception as a virtuous hegemon, that it could make the rules-based international order great again. Yet even though a return to competent normalcy was in order, the Biden administration’s mindset of restoration has occasionally struggled against the currents of our disordered times. An updated conception of U.S. leadership—one tailored

The Return of Peace Through Strength

Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy

Si vis pacem, para bellum is a Latin phrase that emerged in the fourth century that means “If you want peace, prepare for war.” The concept’s origin dates back even further, to the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian, to whom is attributed the axiom, “Peace through strength—or, failing that, peace through threat.”

America Is Losing the Arab World

And China Is Reaping the Benefits

Culture, Essays, Magazines, Media, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – July 2024

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HARPER’S MAGAZINE – June 17, 2024: The latest issue features Resisting Artificial Intelligence; A visual history of the Olympics and What remains of Syria…

The Gods of Logic

AI images generated by Phillip Toledano for Harper’s Magazine © The artist/Institute. Toledano’s book Another America was published in May by L’Artiere Edizioni.

Before and after artificial intelligence

We will never know how many died during the Butlerian Jihad. Was it millions? Billions? Trillions, perhaps? It was a fantastic rage, a great revolt that spread like wildfire, consuming everything in its path, a chaos that engulfed generations in an orgy of destruction lasting almost a hundred years. A war with a death toll so high that it left a permanent scar on humanity’s soul. But we will never know the names of those who fought and died in it, or the immense suffering and destruction it caused, because the Butlerian Jihad, abominable and devastating as it was,…

Metal Machine Music

Can AI think creatively? Can we?

“Far as the east from even, / Dim as the border star, / Life is the little creature / That carries the great cigar.” So wrote Emily Dickinson, with some unfortunate help from a computer. As I read that stanza in February 2022, I was more than six months into a scientific experiment I was conducting with my friend and colleague Morten Christiansen, a cognitive psychologist at Cornell, where he and I are professors. In 2021, two years before ChatGPT would become a household name, Christiansen had been impressed by the initial technical descriptions of GPT-3, the recently released version of the generative large language…