Tag Archives: May 2023

The New York Times Book Review-Sunday May 21, 2023

Illustration by Dakarai Akil

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – MAY 21, 2023

In This Satire, Televised Blood Baths Offer Prisoners a Path to Freedom

You can’t applaud Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s thrilling debut novel, “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” without getting blood on your hands.

The Martian Chronicles

Astronauts simulating a Mars spacewalk. As Matthew Shindell points out, our obsession with the planet is a relatively recent phenomenon.

In Matthew Shindell’s “For the Love of Mars,” perceptions of the planet reflect the changing culture of Earth.

Essential Neil Gaiman and A.I. Book Freakout

From the cult comic book series “The Sandman” to the giddy novel “Good Omens” (co-written with his friend Terry Pratchett) to the horror-tinged children’s story “Coraline” and beyond, the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman is so inventive and so prolific that you’ve probably stumbled across his influential work without even realizing it.

Saturday Morning: News And Stories From London

Monocle on Saturday, May 20, 2023: The weekend’s biggest discussion topics, with Georgina Godwin. Siân Pattenden reviews the papers,

Andrew Mueller recaps the week and Monocle’s Helsinki correspondent, Petri Burtsoff, brings us a taste of Finnish Eurovision mania. Plus: Taipei Dangdai art fair. Plus: Taipei Dangdai art fair.

Front Page: The New York Times —- May 20, 2023

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In a Sharp Reversal, Biden Opens a Path for Ukraine to Get Fighter Jets

President Biden and other leaders at the Peace Memorial Park during a visit as part of the G7 Summit in Hiroshima, Japan, on Friday. He surprised his counterparts by telling them he was prepared to allow some European countries to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16 jets.

The president told allied leaders that he would allow Ukrainian pilots to be trained on American-made F-16s, and is prepared to approve other countries’ transferring the jets to Ukraine.

Air DeSantis: The Private Jets and Secret Donors Flying Him Around

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, an all-but-declared presidential candidate, has relied on a Michigan nonprofit to help foot the bill for his campaign warm-up tour.

As the Florida governor hopscotched the country preparing to run for president, a Michigan nonprofit paid the bills. It won’t say where it got the money.

Fleeing Sudan, U.S. Diplomats Shredded Passports and Stranded Locals

Officials destroyed Sudanese passports on security grounds as they evacuated the Khartoum embassy. Now the passport owners are trapped in a war zone.

Jim Brown, Football Great and Civil Rights Champion, Dies at 87

After a Hall of Fame career in the N.F.L., he pursued social activism and Hollywood stardom, but his image was stained by accusations of abuse toward women.

Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’

The Art Newspaper May 18, 2023: This week: the Frieze art fair and spring auctions in New York. As the Frieze Art Fair returns to The Shed in Manhattan, coinciding with the season’s big auctions.

The Art Newspaper’s live editor, Aimee Dawson, and our contributing editor Anny Shaw take the temperature of the market in New York. 

Just as we completed the episode, the US Supreme Court ruled that Andy Warhol infringed on the photographer Lynn Goldstein’s copyright when he created a series of silkscreens based on her photograph of the late rock singer Prince. Coincidentally, we had already recorded an interview with our New York correspondent Laura Gilbert about the fact that a Manhattan judge last week refused to throw out two photographers’ long-running copyright lawsuits against the artist Richard Prince, for his New Portraits series, which appropriated their original images. 2021.

Preview: New York Times Magazine – May 21, 2023

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (May 21, 2023) – Sometimes it seems as if everyone is in therapy. And the language of therapy is certainly everywhere these days. So we dedicated this year’s Health Issue to a topic on all our minds.

THE THERAPY ISSUE

Does Therapy Really Work? Let’s Unpack That.

An illustration of a person’s profile that has large holes through their head. The missing parts of the head are floating above the person and a therapist staring out at them from a chair.

By Susan Dominus

Research shows that counseling delivers great benefits to many people. But it’s hard to say exactly what that means for you.

In my late 20s, living alone in New York, I found myself in the grip of a dark confusion, unclear of how to proceed — and so I started seeing a therapist. During most visits, I sat in a chair with a box of tissues on the small table beside it, but the office also held a couch, on which I occasionally reclined, staring at the ceiling as I wrestled with what I was doing with my life, and even what I was doing in that office.

Want to Fix Your Mind? Let Your Body Talk.

An illustration showing two bare legs standing on a green background with some daisies growing up around the toes. A small blue person with an orange head is touching one of the legs, and yellow circles are radiating out from the blue person’s hands.

By Daniel Bergner

Somatic therapy is surging, with the promise that true healing may reside in focusing on the physical rather than the mental.

I had been describing a looming fear about my writing, about encroaching failure. Price sat in front of a dangling plant in her home office in Austin, Texas. With her red-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, her delicate features communicated a mix of candor and vulnerability that created a sense of shared space, of intimacy, even by Zoom. She listened, took notes and, with a gesture of her hand, suggested that we leave my account of the situation off to the side.

Travel: A Guided Tour Of Castle Howard, England

House & Garden Films (May 19, 2023) – House & Garden presents Houses with History from Castle Howard, home to Netflix’s hit series ‘Bridgerton’.

Join interior designer Remy Renzullo as we tour Castle Howard, designed by Sir John Vanbrugh and home to the Carlisle branch of the Howard family for over 300 years. Remy takes us on a tour of the castle that is featured in popular TV shows — most notably as Clyvedon castle in Bridgerton — showing us private spaces usually unseen by the public, including the beautiful Temple of the Four Winds, as well as giving us his take on the spectacular 18th-century state rooms.

Travel: An Aerial Tour Of Algeria In North Africa

Clairmont Films (May 19, 2023) – Algeria is a North African country with a Mediterranean coastline and a Saharan desert interior. Many empires have left legacies here, such as the ancient Roman ruins in seaside Tipaza.

In the capital, Algiers, Ottoman landmarks like circa-1612 Ketchaoua Mosque line the hillside Casbah quarter, with its narrow alleys and stairways. The city’s Neo-Byzantine basilica Notre Dame d’Afrique dates to French colonial rule. 

News: G7 Leaders Meet In Hiroshima, Candidacy Of Ron DeSantis, Cambodia

The Globalist, May 19, 2023: Fiona Wilson, Monocle’s Asia editor and Tokyo bureau chief, tells us about Japan’s aims ahead of the G7 meeting in Hiroshima; then Florida governor Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the 2024 presidential race, and we examine the state of Cambodian democracy ahead of the July elections.

Plus: the latest from the Venice Biennale with Monocle’s Nic Monisse, and Andrew Mueller’s analysis of the week.

Front Page: The New York Times —- May 19, 2023

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As Biden Weighs Paring Public Assistance in Debt Limit Talks, Liberals Balk

“We cannot be blackmailed into balancing the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable and leaving the most affluent alone,” said Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont.

A G.O.P. demand to impose stricter work requirements on recipients of food stamps and other public benefits has drawn a Democratic backlash, underscoring the tricky politics at play in the negotiations.

Feinstein Suffered More Complications From Illness Than Were Publicly Disclosed

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, suffered a decline in health after being hospitalized for shingles in February.
CREDITKENNY HOLSTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Senator Dianne Feinstein, 89, whose recent bout with shingles included contracting encephalitis, is frailer than ever. But she remains unwilling to entertain discussions about leaving the Senate.

Supreme Court Won’t Hold Tech Companies Liable for User Posts

The justices ruled in one case that a law allowing suits for aiding terrorism did not apply to the ordinary activities of social media companies.

Another Casualty in Ukraine: Teenage Years

In a battered Ukrainian city, the war has stolen the normal experiences of teenage life. The youths mostly use humor to deal with the ferocity of the fighting around them.

Research Preview: Science Magazine – May 19, 2023

Contents | Science 380, 6646

Science Magazine – May 19, 2023 issue: More than half of the world’s largest lakes have declined over the past three decades. Human water consumption, warming climate, and sedimentation are largely responsible. Lake Powell, shown here, with its once-submerged walls that now appear as whitened surfaces, exemplifies this drying trend. 

Cloning vigorous crops, and finding the first romantic kiss
First up this week, building resilience into crops. Staff Writer Erik Stokstad joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss all the tricks farmers use now to make resilient hybrid crops of rice or wheat and how genetically engineering hybrid crop plants to clone themselves may be the next step.
After that we ask: When did we start kissing? Troels Pank Arbøll is an assistant professor of Assyriology in the department of cross-cultural and regional studies at the University of Copenhagen. He and Sarah chat about the earliest evidence for kissing—romantic style—and why it is unlikely that such kisses had a single place or time of origin.

Global loss of lake water storage

Drying trends are prevalent worldwide

The ancient history of kissing

Sources from Mesopotamia contextualize the emergence of kissing and its role in disease transmission

The disappearing boundary between organism and machine

Artificial skin mimics the sensory feedback of biological skin