Times Literary Supplement (December 13, 2023): The latest issue features ‘Innocent bystanders? – Collaboration with the Third Reich; The contaminated blood scandal; Gertrude Stein and Picasso, Hamlet’s play; AI Journalism and Clarice Lispector calls…
The best ad campaigns make a memorable, valuable, and deliverable promise to customers.
More than a century ago the merchant John Wanamaker wryly complained, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Because the proponents of advertising have always struggled to prove that the money is well spent, that indictment has long helped financial executives justify cutting ad budgets. As no less an authority than Jim Stengel, a former chief marketing officer at Procter & Gamble, has noted, the struggle continues, although huge resources go toward testing advertising copy and measuring effectiveness.
New systems can learn autonomously and make complex judgments. Leaders need to understand these “autosapient” agents and how to work with them.
The wheel, the steam engine, the personal computer: Throughout history, technologies have been our tools. Whether used to create or destroy, they have always been under human control, behaving in predictable and rule-based ways. As we write, this assumption is unraveling. A new generation of AI systems are no longer merely our tools—they are becoming actors in and of themselves, participants in our lives, behaving autonomously, making consequential decisions, and shaping social and economic outcomes.
We routinely test for chemicals that cause mutations. What about the dark matter of carcinogens—substances that don’t create cancer cells but rouse them from their slumber?
In the nineteen-seventies, Bruce Ames, a biochemist at Berkeley, devised a way to test whether a chemical might cause cancer. Various tenets of cancer biology were already well established. Cancer resulted from genetic mutations—changes in a cell’s DNA sequence that typically cause the cell to divide uncontrollably. These mutations could be inherited, induced by viruses, or generated by random copying errors in dividing cells. They could also be produced by physical or chemical agents: radiation, ultraviolet light, benzene. One day, Ames had found himself reading the list of ingredients on a package of potato chips, and wondering how safe the chemicals used as preservatives really were.
The law, passed in a frenzy after the First World War, is a disaster. Why is it still on the books?
In March, 1940, Edmund Carl Heine, a forty-nine-year-old American automobile executive, reached an understanding with a company then known as Volkswagenwerk GmbH. Heine, who immigrated to the United States from Germany as a young man, had spent years at Ford, first in Michigan and then in its international operations in South America and Europe, landing finally in Germany. In 1935, two years after the Nazi regime came to power, Ford fired him, for reasons that are unclear. Heine next signed on with Chrysler, in Spain, but the Spanish Civil War was tough on the car business. And so he was out of a job again.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (December 10, 2023):
The Book Review’s daily critics — Dwight Garner, Alexandra Jacobs and Jennifer Szalai — reflect on the books that stuck with them in 2023.
By Jennifer Szalai, Alexandra Jacobs and Dwight Garner
Films, TV shows, albums, books, art and A.I.-generated SpongeBob performances that reporters, editors and visual journalists in Culture couldn’t stop thinking about this year.
BARRON’S MAGAZINE – DECEMBER 11, 2023 ISSUE:
Even as inflation eases, global changes including less trade and growing government deficits will keep rates higher than before.
Three moves to take advantage of higher rates.
Thanks to an inflation adjustment to the 2024 income-tax bracket thresholds, you may save money by deferring year-end income and bonuses to next year.
Emilia-Romagna: Cycle through Italy’s ‘food valley’ for a taste of the country’s iconic produce
Tahiti: The French Polynesian island’s southeast offers coastal hiking and surfing fit for champions
Hampi: Long in ruins, the capital of the ancient Hindu kingdom beckons pilgrims to this day
New Zealand: For outdoor lovers, completing one of the country’s Great Walks is the feat of a lifetime
Manchester: Creativity and craftsmanship infuse all areas of life in this northwestern hub
Montreal: Canada’s second city merges European flair with North American innovation
County Wicklow: Foraging, fine arts and forest paths in an outdoorsy getaway to the ‘Garden of Ireland’
Bali: Local recipes and passionate chefs are the backbone of Indonesia’s food-loving island
Boston: In Massachusetts’ capital city, the best hotels are within easy reach of the culinary and cultural action
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (December 8, 2023):
How do you reinvent yourself after being a global superstar? The former R.E.M. frontman is still figuring that out.
By Jon Mooallem
When Michael Stipe was little, his parents called him Mr. Mouse. He was a scurrier. As soon as he could stand, he ran, and when he ran, he ran until he face-planted. His mother would deposit him in a baby walker, but if Stipe scrambled as fast as he could and hit the threshold of a doorway with a running start, he could topple the walker and eject himself onto the floor. Then he’d spring to his feet and run away.
When detained by the U.S. Coast Guard at sea, even children fleeing violence have no right to asylum — and often face an uncertain fate.
By Seth Freed Wessler
Tcherry’s mother could see that her 10-year-old son was not being taken care of. When he appeared on their video calls, his clothes were dirty. She asked who in the house was washing his shirts, the white Nike T-shirt and the yellow one with a handprint that he wore in rotation. He said nobody was, but he had tried his best to wash them by hand in the tub. His hair, which was buzzed short when he lived with his grandmother in Haiti, had now grown long and matted. He had already been thin, but by January, after three months in the smuggler’s house, he was beginning to look gaunt. Tcherry told his mother that there was not enough food. He said he felt “empty inside.”
A peace process can go wrong in many ways, but a real possibility exists that it could go right
What the world could learn from Britain’s flawed approach
Our poll tracker sheds light on that competition. It may yet matter
We’ve become inured to his rhetoric, but his message has grown darker.
“We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Donald Trump said this past November, in a campaign speech that was ostensibly honoring Veterans Day. “The real threat is not from the radical right; the real threat is from the radical left … The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within.”
How Trump could unwind generations of progress
In late 2020, even as the instigators of insurrection were marshaling their followers to travel to Washington, D.C., another kind of coup—a quieter one—was in the works. On December 21, in one of his departing acts as attorney general, Bill Barr submitted a proposed rule change to the White House. The change would eliminate the venerable standard used by the Justice Department to handle discrimination cases, known as “disparate impact.” The memo was quickly overshadowed by the events of January 6, and, in the chaotic final days of Donald Trump’s presidency, it was never implemented. But Barr’s proposal represented perhaps the most aggressive step the administration took in its effort to dismantle existing civil-rights law. Should Trump return to power, he would surely attempt to see the effort through.
His campaign is promising a more repressive and dangerous America.
In a second term, Trump would punish the cities and states that don’t support him.
New research is revealing surprising complexity in the minds of goats, pigs, and other livestock
Biomedical microrobots could overcome current challenges in targeted therapies
Sustainable management approaches are needed to protect coastal environments
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