A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist. This week, how to win the long war in Ukraine, why the Supreme Court’s judicial activism will deepen cracks in America (10:20), and beach reads for business people (17:55).
Tag Archives: Politics
Cover Preview: Harper’s Magazine – July 2022
Empire Burlesque by Daniel Bessner
What comes after the American Century?
In February 1941, as Adolf Hitler’s armies prepared to invade the Soviet Union, the Republican oligarch and publisher Henry Luce laid out a vision for global domination in an article titled the american century. World War II, he argued, was the result of the United States’ immature refusal to accept the mantle of world leadership after the British Empire had begun to deteriorate in the wake of World War I. American foolishness, the millionaire claimed, had provided space for Nazi Germany’s rise. The only way to rectify this mistake and prevent future conflict was for the United…
Preview: Foreign Affairs Magazine – July/Aug 2022
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 20, 2022
Preview: The Economist Magazine – June 11, 2022
Artificial intelligence’s new frontier
The promise and perils of a breakthrough in machine intelligence
Jun 9th 2022ShareGive
Picture a computer that could finish your sentences, using a better turn of phrase; or use a snatch of melody to compose music that sounds as if you wrote it (though you never would have); or solve a problem by creating hundreds of lines of computer code—leaving you to focus on something even harder. In a sense, that computer is merely the descendant of the power looms and steam engines that hastened the Industrial Revolution. But it also belongs to a new class of machine, because it grasps the symbols in language, music and programming and uses them in ways that seem creative. A bit like a human.
The “foundation models” that can do these things represent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, or ai. They, too, promise a revolution, but this one will affect the high-status brainwork that the Industrial Revolution never touched. There are no guarantees about what lies ahead—after all, ai has stumbled in the past. But it is time to look at the promise and perils of the next big thing in machine intelligence.
Morning News: Turmoil In Pakistan, Ukraine Seed Bank, Words For Family
Pakistan’s government faces an unpleasant choice between doing what’s popular and what is economically necessary, as Imran Khan, the former prime minister, exploits widespread discontent for his own ends.
Russia’s invasion is threatening Ukraine’s unique seed bank. And why so many languages have such a rich variety of words to describe family members and relationships.
Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – June 13, 2022
- Annals of NatureThe Strange and Secret Ways That Animals Perceive the WorldNonhuman creatures have senses that we’re just beginning to fathom. What would they tell us if we could only understand them?By Elizabeth Kolbert
- Onward and Upward with the ArtsA Hamlet for Our TimeIn a bold new production, the director Robert Icke finds resonances in Shakespeare’s canonical play which make it feel made for this moment.By Rebecca Mead
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 6, 2022
The Magazine – June 6, 2022
Eric Drooker’s “Uvalde, May 24, 2022” – Gun violence and the American way of life.
By Françoise Mouly, Art by Eric Drooker
- On May 24th, an eighteen-year-old gunman shot and killed nineteen children and two adults at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas. The horrific spree came just ten days after thirteen people were shot—ten of them killed—at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, by a self-professed white supremacist. In the past two months, Americans have also been confronted with mass shootings at a church, a flea market, and inside a subway car during the morning rush-hour. The magazine’s cover for the June 6, 2022, issue, is by the artist Eric Drooker, who echoes the weary rage of many when he says, “I hastily scrawled this image, wondering, Why are Americans so infatuated with guns in the first place? What are they so afraid of?”
Wednesday News: Turkey’s Foreign Policy, Russia In Donbas, World Economies
What are Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s foreign-policy aims? Plus: Russian troops try to encircle Ukrainian special forces in the Donbas region, a dispatch from our team at the World Economic Forum, and the latest business news.
Boomers Daily 