Tag Archives: Magazines

The New York Times Magazine – Dec 24, 2023

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 22, 2023):

He Was My Role Model. My Mentor. My Supplier.

A portrait of Lonnie in a car looking into the camera.

Decades after I left hustling to become a writer, why did I seek out the man who drew me into that world?

By Mitchell S. Jackson

O.G. rings me in the a.m. to say he’s just touched down in Phoenix. It’s the day before he said he’d arrive, and while there was a time when I’d treat the seeming opacity of his plans as par, the call’s a minor surprise. He asks for my address and tells me he can drop by as soon as he grabs his rental car. “Cool,” I say, as if the call ain’t ramped my pulse, as if my crib is presentable for guests. It isn’t. So I shoot out of bed and get to cleaning and straightening the first floor, going so far as to light a candle. It’s been umpteen years since I’ve seen O.G. — Lonnie’s his name — and God forbid he judge me anything less than hella fastidious.

In Jordan, a Sprawling Palestinian Diaspora Looks Towards Gaza

The story of 2.3 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan has been shaped by generations of war and exile.Photographs

by MOISES SAMAN

How Do You Make a Movie About the Holocaust?

A photo illustration of various stills from movies about the holocaust collaged together.

With “The Zone of Interest,” Jonathan Glazer is just the latest director to confront the problem.

Poetry makes nothing happen, W.H. Auden said in 1939, when words must have seemed especially impotent; but cinema is another matter. For several decades after the end of the Second World War, what’s come to be seen as its central catastrophe — the near-total destruction of the European Jews — was consigned to the status of a footnote. The neglect was rooted in guilt: Many nations eagerly collaborated in the killing, while others did nothing to prevent it. Consumed by their own suffering, most people simply didn’t want to know, and a conspiracy of silence was established.

Arts/Culture: Humanities Magazine – Winter 2024

Gold_Articles_First_Kings

Humanities Magazine – Winter 2024 Issue:

Royalty Reconsidered: The King’s Beer and the Commoner’s Shirt

Silver helmet with gold detailing

A new exhibition looks at Europe’s earliest societies

Ada Palmer

As visitors exit “First Kings of Europe,” the gift shop offers a kind of test. Two craft beers were created for the exhibition, a collaboration between the museum and Off Color Brewing: Beer for Kings, made from top-quality rich and ancient grains, and Beer for Commoners, made from the more modest ingredients of the poor. Beneath the racks of beer hang T-shirts with the art for each. Which identity does the visitor want to take home: commoner or king? The answer for most exhibitions celebrating the awe-inspiring treasures of royalty would be easy, but “First Kings of Europe” is a different kind of show, with an ambitious new approach to how we display and envision power, kingship, and history.

Nazi Spies in America!

Illustration of police officer looking through handcuffs like binoculars

During World War II, Axis espionage inspired a media panic, but amateurish German agents turned out to be “underwhelming”

Sam Lebovic

Research Preview: Science Magazine – Dec 22, 2023

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Science Magazine – December 21, 2023: The new issue featuresAI-Powered Forecasting – Predicting worldwide weather and cyclone tracks with greater speed and accuracy; Fifty years after the Endangered Species Act, what’s next?; Long-sought quasiparticle could transform quantum computing and What Salvadorans feared about bitcoin…

The quantum phantom

A ghostly quasiparticle rooted in a century-old Italian mystery could unlock quantum computing’s potential—if only it could be pinned down

Are cryptocurrencies currencies? Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador

Preference for cash and privacy fears deterred bitcoin adoption in El Salvador.

Mimicking polar bear hairs in aerogel fibers

Encapsulated aerogel fibers offer thermal insulation, breathability, and strength

Opinion & Politics: Reason Magazine – February 2024

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REASON MAGAZINE (December 21, 2023)The latest issue features ‘The Conformity Gauntlet’ – How Universities use DEI Statements to Enforce Groupthink; The Post-Neoliberalism Moment; We Absolutely Do Not Need an FDA for AI, and more…

Universities Use DEI Statements To Enforce Groupthink

An illustration showing college graduates navigating a maze | Illustration: Joanna Andreasson

DEI statements are political litmus tests, write Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott.

The Post-Neoliberalism Moment

An illustration of Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek | Illustration: Friedrich Hayek, Margaret Thatcher, and Milton Friedman; Joanna Andreasson REASON 27 Source images: Graphic Goods/Creative Market, Mosi/Fiverr

Anyone advocating neoliberal policies is now persona non grata in Washington, D.C.

DANIEL W. DREZNER

We Absolutely Do Not Need an FDA for AI

topicsfuture | Photo: @eshear/X

If our best and brightest technologists and theorists are struggling to see the way forward for AI, what makes anyone think politicians are going to get there first?

KATHERINE MANGU-WARD

National Wildlife Magazine – Winter 2024

The front cover of National Wildlife's Winter issue containing text and an image of a submerged brown booby.

National Wildlife Magazine (December 21, 2023) – The 2023 National Wildlife Photo Contest Winners – Nearly 40,000 entries from more than 4,000 photographers.


An image of a running zebra herd.

GRAND PRIZE
Anup Shah

Chippenham, England

“It is powerful and decisive, the pace compact yet energetic,” says Anup Shah of this year’s spectacular top photo, catching zebras at the edge of a river crossing in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve. “I wanted the viewer to feel the energy in the path of a galloping herd.” We do, and it’s exhilarating.


An image of three coastal brown bear cubs following their mom.

BABY ANIMALS
FIRST PLACE
Torie Hilley

Ventura, California

Torie Hilley trudged through the mudflats of Alaska’s Lake Clark National Park and Preserve with a professional guide in July 2022, hoping to catch this coastal brown bear and her cubs in a line as they dug for clams. When Hilley spotted the family falling into formation on her last day, she dropped to one knee to preserve the moment. She later learned not all of the cubs survived the following weeks. “It reminded me to never take anything for granted,” she says.


An image of a piping plover chick on a beach.

BABY ANIMALS
SECOND PLACE
Carl D. Walsh

Dayton, Maine

Listed as endangered by Maine, the state’s piping plover population has seen some improvement in recent decades—a hopeful note suggested by the glow surrounding this days-old fledgling. To get this July 2022 photo, Carl D. Walsh “spent a lot of time lying in the sand, trying to capture the right vantage point and backlight” on a Cumberland County beach. “Many thousands of frames were shot,” he says.


An image of a submerged brown booby.

BIRDS
FIRST PLACE
Suliman Alatiqi

Kuwait City, Kuwait

History Today Magazine – January 2024 Preview

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History Today (December 21, 2023) – The latest issue features ‘The KGB – Russia After Stalin’; An Uyghur Chieftain in China’s Civil War; Preston’s Banana Boat Stowaways; ‘The End of Enlightenment’ by Richard Whatmore review, and more…

The KGB After Stalin

The arrest of Aleksandr Podrebinek by plainclothes KGB men during a Baptist prayer meeting in April 1977. Smith Archive/Alamy Stock Photo.

In 1954 a new agency was founded: the KGB. While less violent and arbitrary than what it replaced, its insidious reach soon permeated Soviet society.

‘The End of Enlightenment’ by Richard Whatmore review

’A Contest between Oppression and Reason, On the Best Way of Settleing Debates‘ by William O'Keefe, c. 1795. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection. Public Domain.

Richard Whatmore’s The End of Enlightenment: Empire, Commerce, Crisis takes the ideals of the 18th century on their terms.

The Economist Magazine – December 23, 2023 Preview

Holiday double issue

The Economist Magazine (December 20, 2023): The latest issue features the ‘Holiday double issue’; On safari in south Sudan – The planet’s biggest conservation project is in its least developed nation; Global warming and wine – New vineyards are popping up in surprising places; old ones are enduring; Penguins and prejudice in America – When two male penguins hatched an egg in Central Park, they set off an enduring controversy; China’s new love of the beach – China’s beach culture is a microcosm of society…

The US Navy confronts a new Suez crisis

Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping threaten global trade

For the world to prosper, ships must reach their ports. They are most vulnerable when passing through narrow passages, such as the Strait of Malacca or the Panama Canal. So a recent surge of attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, the only southern conduit into the Suez Canal, poses a grave threat to global trade. The Houthis, militants in Yemen backed by Iran, have fired over 100 drones and missiles at ships linked to more than 35 countries, ostensibly in support of the Palestinians. Their campaign is an affront to the principle of freedom of navigation, which is already at risk from the Black Sea to the South China Sea. America and its allies must deal firmly with it—without escalating the conflict in the Middle East.

Economists had a dreadful 2023

Mistaken recession calls were just part of it

Spare a thought for economists. Last Christmas they were an unusually pessimistic lot: the growth they expected in America over the next calendar year was the fourth-lowest in 55 years of fourth-quarter surveys. Many expected recession; The Economist added to the prognostications of doom and gloom. This year economists must swap figgy pudding for humble pie, because America has probably grown by an above-trend 3%—about the same as in boomy 2005. Adding to the impression of befuddlement, most analysts were caught out on December 13th by a doveish turn by the Federal Reserve, which sent them scrambling to rewrite their outlooks for the new year.

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – December 22, 2023

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The Guardian Weekly (December 20, 2023) – The new issue features Two wars and a growing divide between the global west and south. Plus: Best culture of 2023.

World risks new age of empires where might makes right, warns Estonian foreign minister

Margus Tsahkna

International institutions seem powerless in face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, writes Margus Tsahkna, arguing they ‘cannot survive unchanged’

The international rules-based system needs urgent and fundamental change if it is not to collapse, the Estonian foreign minister has said, calling for “a new global conversation” to begin on how to reform the UN and the international criminal court.

Writing in the Guardian on Wednesday, Margus Tsahkna says Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted flaws in the system that risk fatally undermining people’s faith in it.

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Elsewhere, we shouldn’t forget there are plenty of reasons for hope. Having been expected to deliver little, the Cop28 climate summit turned out to be full of surprises – but was the final deal on fossil fuels just a ruse, asks environment editor Fiona Harvey.

Writers from the Guardian’s global development team reflect on the inspirational figures they met in 2023, from leaders to dancers to dads, who proved that humanity still has much to give. And leading conservationists and scientists tell us about the mysteries of the planet they wish they better understood.

The review of 2023 continues with the Observer’s selection of those we lost, recalled with affection by their friends. There’s also a dazzling range of images courtesy of the Guardian agency photographers of the year.

Last but not least, the Guardian critics’ top 10 rundowns of the best film and music of 2023, topped off with the Guardian Weekly team’s now-legendary television selections of the year.

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Dec 22, 2023

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Times Literary Supplement (December 20, 2023): The latest issue features ‘A nice little earner’ – On Dicken’s Christmas Carol; Jane Austen’s Truth Universally Acknowledged; Between God and Jingle Bells; and ‘Revoltingly Cute’…

Scientific American – January 2024 Preview

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Scientific American (December 19, 2023): The January 2024 issue features How Much Vitamin D Do You Need to Stay Healthy?; Inside Mathematicians’ Search for the Mysterious ‘Einstein Tile’; How Analyzing Cosmic Nothing Might Explain Everything; Why Are Alaska’s Rivers Turning Orange?; and Intervention at an Early Age May Hold Off the Onset of Depression…