The New Yorker (April 29, 2024): The new issue‘s cover featuresFaith Ringgold’s “Sonny’s Bridge, 1986” – The late artist’s work recalls her pioneering spirit through vivid, inventive designs.
Also: Kamasi Washington, “The Outsiders” reviewed, Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival, and more.
The Return, Again, of the Power Lunch
Four Twenty Five, a luxe new dining room from the mega-restaurateur Jean-Georges Vongerichten, takes square aim at the expense-account crowd.
Donald Trump’s Sleepy, Sleazy Criminal Trial
The most striking aspect of the former President’s hush-money trial so far has been that, for the first time in a decade, Trump is struggling to command attention.
By now, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambition to remake the world is undeniable. He wants to dissolve Washington’s network of alliances and purge what he dismisses as “Western” values from international bodies. He wants to knock the U.S. dollar off its pedestal and eliminate Washington’s chokehold over critical technology. In his new multipolar order, global institutions and norms will be underpinned by Chinese notions of common security and economic development, Chinese values of state-determined political rights, and Chinese technology. China will no longer have to fight for leadership. Its centrality will be guaranteed.
How long will the world’s forests impound carbon below ground?
by Jonathan Shaw
MARYVILLE, Tennessee, lies near the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, a range home to more tree species than exist in all of Europe. Benton Taylor grew up amidst this abundance, but as a boy, he barely noticed the plants. In the nearby national park, a family friend was raising—together with a menagerie of other mammals—a pair of bears orphaned as cubs. Taylor dreamed of studying these apex denizens of the forest, who forage at the top of the food chain. But as his education and understanding grew, his curiosity shifted to seed-dispersing animals, plants, and the soil and nutrients that sustain them: a trip down the trophic pyramid, driven by an appreciation of forests as ecological systems in which plants are primary producers. “Now I’ve half moved into the basement,” jokes the assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, whose research encompasses the strategies plants use to obtain essential nutrients such as nitrogen, and how that, in turn, affects their ability to store another vital element with a global climate impact: carbon.
DIVERSIFYING one’s assets is useful not only in finance but also in diet, according to an October study from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (HSPH). Though not many people have heard of the “portfolio diet”—consisting of plant-based foods proven to lower unhealthy cholesterol, such as nuts, oats, berries, and avocados—it is one of the easiest ways to improve long-term cardiovascular health. “The idea was that each of these foods lowers cholesterol quite minimally, but if you make a whole diet based on these different foods, you will see large reductions in [unhealthy] cholesterol,” said Andrea Glenn, an HSPH postdoctoral research fellow in nutrition and the lead author of the study. The more of these foods one eats, the higher the protection—but one need not include them all to reap the diet’s benefits, she said. “Like a business portfolio, you can choose the ones you want.”
In 2012, at the age of thirty-two, the writer Alena Smith went West to Hollywood, like many before her. She arrived to a small apartment in Silver Lake, one block from the Vista Theatre—a single-screen Spanish Colonial Revival building that had opened in 1923, four years before the advent of sound in film.
Smith was looking for a job in television. She had an MFA from the Yale School of Drama, and had lived and worked as a playwright in New York City for years—two of her productions garnered positive reviews in the Times. But playwriting had begun to feel like a vanity project: to pay rent, she’d worked as a nanny, a transcriptionist, an administrative assistant, and more. There seemed to be no viable financial future in theater, nor in academia, the other world where she supposed she could make inroads.
On the Saturday before the Iowa caucuses, the super PAC supporting Florida governor Ron DeSantis staged a “drop by” for the candidate at its headquarters in West Des Moines. Outside the modernist office park, much of the Upper Midwest was under a deep freeze brought on by a low-pressure system that had deposited more than a foot of snow in advance of a surge of arctic air that brought the wind chill into the negative thirties. Despite the atrocious road conditions, DeSantis was keeping his schedule as a “special guest” of the Never Back Down PAC, beginning the day at the far western end of Iowa, in Council Bluffs, and concluding it three hundred miles east, in Davenport.
National Geographic Traveller Magazine (April 5, 2024): The latest issue heads to Mexico where we discover this diverse and spirited nation through the communities and craftspeople keeping its culture alive. Plus, explore the remote reaches of Vietnam, dive into the folk traditions of Istria and taste the flavours of Philadelphia.
Also inside this issue:
Vietnam: Discover the country’s remote reaches along the Mekong River and Con Dao islands. Istria: Explore the festivals and folk traditions of Croatia’s unique Adriatic enclave. Antarctica: This barren land of rock, water and ice is home to a surprising amount of wildlife. Egypt: Itineraries to discover the country, from the Nile and the Red Sea to the Sinai Peninsula. Philadelphia: Food in Pennsylvania’s largest city is as much about coming together as it is about flavour. Birmingham: The UK’s historic industrial powerhouse is flaunting its heritage with style. Le Mans & around: Come for the eponymous car race, stay for canoe trips, wine-tasting and more. Fez: Food traditions and culinary innovation come together in the medina of this Moroccan city Tokyo: Accommodation in the Japanese capital is all about character, from traditional ryokan inns to a cosy literary hotel.
Smithsonian Magazine (April 4, 2024) –The latest issue features ‘Australia’s Underwater Wonderland’ – For divers off the Sunshine Coast, tiny creatures with big personalities put on a spectacular show…
Meena Danishmal asks if Seneca’s account of the good life is really practical.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the adjective ‘stoical’ means “resembling a Stoic in austerity, indifference, fortitude, repression of feeling and the like”. This gives us some idea of what it is like to be a Stoic. Indeed, the key teaching, arguably the fundamental point, of Stoicism, is that we should focus on controlling the things that are under our control, such as our thoughts, emotions, and actions, whilst accepting those things we cannot control, such as most things that are happening in the world. How did they get there?
To consider this question let’s look at the ideas of the Roman philosopher and statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (4 BCE-65 CE). As a top advisor to the paranoid and murderous Emperor Nero, he probably found Stoicism a particularly practical guide to life.
As a Stoic, Seneca believed the soul (Latin: anima or animus) to be a finer form of matter than the body; but matter it is. It was also described as a spark of the fire which had consumed the original matter. With such an understanding of the soul, where does the soul reside within the body? Stoics provided a rather simple answer: everywhere. The soul was considered to be a vital force that animates the whole body. The soul was also the source of reason, virtue, and moral character, which is what Stoic philosophy is built upon, as the rational soul guides individuals towards living in accordance with nature.
For us to understand this concept further, it’s vital to grasp the Stoic conception of reality. Stoics see the universe as interconnected and interwoven, and this unified cosmos as governed by rational principles. Within this holistic perspective, the soul is seen as part of the divine rational order of the universe. This understanding forms the basis of Stoic ethics, which emphasises the importance of cultivating reason and virtue in all aspects of life. This encouragement to align thoughts, actions, and desires with principles of reason, is a way for the soul to flourish.
REASON MAGAZINE (March 21, 2024) – The latest issue features ‘What If America Runs Out Of Bombs?’ – Due to overzealous interventionism, the U.S. is dispensing munitions faster than they can be replaced…
What if America Runs Out of Bombs?
The U.S. is dispensing munitions to Ukraine and Israel faster than they can be replaced.
National Geographic Traveller Magazine (April 5, 2024): The latest issue 
Boomers Daily 