Tag Archives: Previews

Culture, Magazines, Politics, Previews, Reviews, Society

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – April 5, 2024

April 3, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The Guardian Weekly (April 5, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Lone Star’ – Have the UN vote and questions about its conduct in Gaza left Israel isolated?; Liz Truss bids for political resurrection; Will IS strike again?; Nick Cave’s devilish change of direction…

Spotlight | IS affiliates could launch new wave of terror on the west

Islamic State has stalled in Iraq and Syria but officials believe it has been planning new attacks on the west for years, reports Jason Burke; while Angelique Chrisafis writes that France’s interior minister has met intelligence services to assess the terrorist threat to the country ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games

Environment | True cost of a city built from scratch

Nusantara is billed as a state-of-the-art capital city that will coexist with nature – but not all residents of Borneo’s Balikpapan Bay are happy, find. By Rebecca Ratcliffe and Richaldo Hariandja

Feature | 49 days later

Liz Truss trashed the economy as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister. But she is back, launching a new conservative movement and spreading her ideology across the world. You just can’t keep a bad politician down, argues David Runciman

Culture | The devil in the details

In the past nine years, Nick Cave has lost two sons – an experience he explores in a deeply personal new ceramics project. He discusses mercy, forgiveness, making and meaning with Simon Hattenstone

Architecture | A Māori-built environment

A new wave of Indigenous architects are behind a series of stunning buildings embracing tribal identity in Aotearoa New Zealand, Oliver Wainwright discovers

Arts & Literature, Culture, Homes, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Previews: Country Life Magazine – April 3, 2024

April 3, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Country Life Magazine – April 3, 2024: The latest issue features:

Spring fever

The reawakening of Nature has inspired artists from Botticelli to David Hockney and beyond. Michael Prodger revels in the artistic beauty of the season

Prepare to be a-maze-d

Few can match the twists and turns of Adrian Fisher’s stellar career. Deborah Nicholls-Lee meets the maze designer behind the chilling climax of Saltburn

London Life

Tianna Williams visits a Scottish corner of the capital
Need to Know has all the latest happenings
William Sitwell welcomes back the big business lunch
Richard MacKichan joins the Noisenights crowd

The icing on Nature’s cake

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage celebrates an annual explosion of pink and white blossom with excerpts from his new book

The legacy

Kate Green on how Sir Joseph Banks sowed the seeds of Kew

Leading by example

In the second of two articles, John Goodall puts the spotlight on the superb school buildings of Lancing College, West Sussex

Little April showers

Discover why a thunderous start to the month suggests a good harvest as Lia Leendertz delves into the weather lore of spring

Interiors

Green is the natural choice for a kitchen, as Amelia Thorpe and Arabella Youens discover

A garden from scratch

Caroline Donald marvels at the rapid transformation of the charming seven-acre garden at Charlton Farm in Wiltshire

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson puts British asparagus — a verdant harbinger of spring — back on the menu

Travel

Camilla Hewitt raises a glass to Cognac
Richard MacKichan explores the Alps in summer
Hetty Lintell falls in love with Mallorca
Pamela Goodman is in awe of the Alhambra

Gen Sir James Everard’s favourite painting

The president of the Army Bene-volent Fund chooses a wonderful depiction of the Battle of Waterloo

Déjà vu all over again

Carla Carlisle attempts to sort the tragedy from the farce in the baffling world of modern politics

Get the London look

Matthew Dennison charts the rise and fall of fashion label Biba

The good stuff

Mesmerising opals are having a moment — Hetty Lintell dives in

The Arts

150 years of the Impressionists

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Books: Literary Review Magazine – April 2024

April 3, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Literary Review – April 2, 2024: The latest issue features ‘From Bebop to Britpop’; Legends of Orkney; A Garden of One’s Own and Writing Doomsday…

Storm’s Edge: Life, Death and Magic in the Islands of Orkney By Peter Marshall

By JOHN KEAY

England: Seven Myths That Changed a Country and How to Set Them Straight By Tom Baldwin & Marc Stears

By RICHARD VINEN

Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Espionage, Murder and Justice in Northern Ireland By Henry Hemming

By MALACHI O’DOHERTY

Stakeknife’s Dirty War: The Inside Story of Scappaticci, the IRA’s Nutting Squad and the British Spooks Who Ran the War By Richard O’Rawe

Arts & Literature, Ethics, Magazines, Philosophy, Previews, Reviews

Preview: Philosophy Now Magazine April/May 2024

April 1, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Philosophy Now Magazine (April/May 2024) – The new issue features ‘Philosophy & Literature’ – Celebrate Immanuel Kant’s 300th Birthday….

How to Have a Good Life

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.

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

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – April 8, 2024

April 1, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

A person's silhouette walks up stairs toward a busy city street.

The New Yorker (April 1, 2024): The new issue‘s cover features Pascal Campion’s “Into the Light” – The artist depicts stepping out of the subway into the overwhelming glow of the city.

So You Think You’ve Been Gaslit

An anthropomorphic lantern being lit by a man.

What happens when a niche clinical concept becomes a ubiquitous cultural diagnosis.

By Leslie Jamison

When Leah started dating her first serious boyfriend, as a nineteen-year-old sophomore at Ohio State, she had very little sense that sex was supposed to feel good. (Leah is not her real name.) In the small town in central Ohio where she grew up, sex ed was basically like the version she remembered from the movie “Mean Girls”: “Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant and die.”

Black Holes Are Even Weirder Than You Imagined

An artistic rendering of two supermassive black holes.

It’s now thought that they could illuminate fundamental questions in physics, settle questions about Einstein’s theories, and even help explain the universe.

By Rivka Galchen

Black holes are, of course, awesome. But, for scientists, they are more awesome. If a rainbow is marvellous, then understanding how all the colors of the rainbow are present, unified, in ordinary white light—that’s more marvellous. (Though, famously, in his poem “Lamia,” John Keats disagreed, blaming “cold philosophy” for unweaving the rainbow.) In recent years, the amount of data that scientists have discovered about black holes has grown exponentially. In January, astronomers announced that the James Webb Space Telescope had observed the oldest black hole yet—one present when the universe was a mere four hundred million years old. (It’s estimated that it’s now 13.8 billion years old.) Recently, two supermassive black holes, with a combined mass of twenty-eight billion suns, were measured and shown to have been rotating tightly around each other, but not colliding, for the past three billion years. And those are just the examples that are easiest for the public to make some sense of. To me, a supermassive black hole sounds sublime; to a scientist, it can also be a test of wild hypotheses. “Astrophysics is an exercise in incredible experiments not runnable on Earth,” Avery Broderick, a theoretical physicist at the University of Waterloo and at the Perimeter Institute, told me. “And black holes are an ideal laboratory.”

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews, Society

The New York Times Magazine – March 31, 2024

March 31, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (March 30, 2024):

The Race to Reinvent CPR

A new, high-tech approach called ECPR can restart more hearts and save more lives. Why aren’t more hospitals embracing it?

By Helen Ouyang

Greg Hayes, an emergency first responder in Chanhassen, Minn., was picking up takeout sushi when a 911 call came in: A 61-year-old had stopped breathing at home. Hayes and his team jumped in their ambulance and were soon pulling up in front of a suburban two-story house, where paramedics and other first responders were also arriving. All of them grabbed their equipment and raced through the open garage to find a man, gray and still, on the living-room floor with his wife and stepdaughter nearby.

How Has Retirement Changed Your Relationship?

Maybe something like: A couple, photographed from behind, hold hands as they look out at a body of water with some buildings and trees around it.

We want to hear from you for a New York Times Magazine feature about how this transition can affect marriages and long-term relationships.

By Susan Dominus

When people think about stages of life that can strain relationships, they often reflect on the first sleepless years of child rearing or the phase of parenting that involves rebellious teens. Retirement, typically anticipated as a time of relaxation, might not come to mind, but this transition away from work can also be stressful, coinciding with reinventions and re-evaluations that can cause couples to suddenly experience new tensions. It can also be a time of renewed connection and relationship growth. Often, it’s both at once.

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

London Review Of Books – April 4, 2024 Preview

March 28, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

London Review of Books (LRB) – March 27, 2024: The latest issue features Brandon Taylor – Two Years With Zola,,,

Mary Wellesley – Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women’s Words by Jenni Nuttall

Moshé Machover, James McAuley, Avital Balwit, Brian Vickers, Pat Butcher, Joe Oldaker, Arthur M. Shapiro, Penny Collier, John Potts

Mike Jay – Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep by Kenneth Miller

T.J. Clark – Poem: ‘Clapham in March’

Michael Ledger-Lomas: Andrew Lang: Writer, Folklorist, Democratic Intellect by John SloanTroubled by Faith: Insanity and the Supernatural in the Age of the Asylum by Owen Davies

Michael Hofmann – The Islander: A Biography of Halldór Laxness by Halldór Guðmundsson, translated by Philip Roughton

Brandon Taylor – Is it even good?

Economics, Financial, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Previews, Reviews

The Economist Magazine – March 30, 2024 Preview

March 27, 2024 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The Economist Magazine (March 21, 2024): The latest issue features

The AI doctor will see you…eventually

A doctor with a computer screen head displaying a loading icon

Artificial intelligence holds huge promise in health care. But it also faces massive barriers

Better diagnoses. Personalised support for patients. Faster drug discovery. Greater efficiency. Artificial intelligence (ai) is generating excitement and hyperbole everywhere, but in the field of health care it has the potential to be transformational. In Europe analysts predict that deploying ai could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year; in America, they say, it could also save money, shaving $200bn-360bn from overall annual medical spending, now $4.5trn a year (or 17% of gdp). From smart stethoscopes and robot surgeons to the analysis of large data sets or the ability to chat to a medical ai with a human face, opportunities abound.