Tag Archives: Reviews

Financial, Investing, Magazines, Previews, Retirement, Reviews

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – June 5, 2023

June 3, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

BARRON’S MAGAZINE – JUNE 5, 2023 ISSUE

‘Shadow Banks’ Hold Half of the World’s Assets. Why Concerns Are Growing.

Regulators don’t have a clear view into the huge world of nonbank finance, or ‘shadow banking.’ Barron’s peers into this opaque world.

REIT Resurgence: 4 to Consider, 2 to Avoid

Real estate investment trusts have been clobbered over the past year. We survey the landscape, from REITs that specialize in cell towers, data centers, and warehouses to ones holding troubled office buildings. Where to find value and where to dodge traps.

It’s Not Just AI. 5 Trends That Will Change How You Invest.

Water shortages and a fast-growing India are among the developments that will change economies and markets.

The Stock Market Throws a Party—and Everyone’s Invited

Carleton English

The Debt-Ceiling Deal Could End Up Biting Stock Investors

Randall W. Forsyth

A Hidden AI Stock That Pays a Big Dividend

Eric J. Savitz

AI Will Change Investing. How It Could Play Out.

Andy Serwer

Arts & Literature, Books, Newspapers, Previews, Reviews

The New York Times Book Review-Sunday June 4, 2023

June 2, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW – JUNE 4, 2023: The summer reading issue lands this weekend, 56 pages filled with suggestions of books to keep you company at the beach or in that shady mothballed nook you discovered in your rental share. The issue closes with a beautiful photo essay of swimmers pictured underwater, from an art book that evokes summer as vividly as fried clam strips and soft-serve ice cream: “Swimmers,” by Larry Sultan.

Deep-Sea Creatures of Bittersweet Orange and Metallic Opaline Green

This illustration depicts two enormous fish with red eyes and lots of teeth swimming around the bathysphere, an underwater exploration machine from the 1930s.

In “The Bathysphere Book,” Brad Fox chronicles the fascinating Depression-era ocean explorations of William Beebe.

Consider the siphonophore. An inhabitant of the lightless ocean, it looks like a single organism, but is actually a collection of minute creatures, each with its own purpose, working in harmony to move, to eat, to stay alive. They seem impossible but they are real. In 1930 William Beebe was 3,000 feet underwater in a bathysphere, an early deep-sea submersible, when he spotted a huge one: a writhing 20-yard mass whose pale magenta shone impossibly against the absolute blackness of the water. As you can imagine, it made an impression.

An Indictment of Human Culture, Narrated by a Mountain Lion

This is a close-up illustration of a lion’s eye, reflecting the silhouette of a man against a blue sky and greenery.

Henry Hoke’s latest novel, “Open Throat,” follows an observant — and starving — cougar living in the Los Angeles hills surrounding the Hollywood sign.

There is a moment toward the end of “Open Throat,” Henry Hoke’s slim jewel of a novel, where the narrator, a mountain lion living in the desert hills surrounding Los Angeles’s Hollywood sign, falls asleep and dreams of Disneyland. It will be hard for those who haven’t yet read this propulsive novel to understand, but the lion’s waking life at this moment is so precarious that this slippage into pleasant dream left me scared to turn the page.

Summertime in America, Beneath the Surface

A new book of photographs by Larry Sultan captures recreational swimmers at public pools in 1970s and ‘80s California.

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

Preview: New York Times Magazine – June 4, 2023

June 2, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (June 4, 2023) – California is the place where the future happens, for good and ill. That’s part of its magic. Read our first-ever California Issue to find out what roads the state will take us down next.

Inside: A fight over a parking lot that explains the housing crisis; the future of California’s power to shape national policy; how the state is adapting to a warming world — and more.

California Builds the Future, for Good and Bad. What’s Next?

An illustration of a California-inspired scene: wildfires, cars on a highway, the writer’s strike in Hollywood, a tent city, drones in the sky, flooding and a marijuana dispensary.

From reparations to tax revolts, the Golden State tries out new ideas all the time. What roads will its latest experiments send us down?

By Laila Lalami

I remember my first glimpse into the future. In August 1992, when I arrived in California as a student, I discovered during orientation that the university required all incoming students to have something called an email account. To access it, I had to call up a text-based mail client on Unix, using a series of line commands. If I needed a file that sat on a university computer in New York, I could use file transfer protocol to download it in Los Angeles, the whole process taking no more than a few minutes. That’s brilliant, I remember thinking.

Can the ‘California Effect’ Survive in a Hyperpartisan America?

A collage illustration showing the California capitol, the Golden Gate Bridge and a surfer hitting the waves, among other California motifs.

For decades the state has been setting policy for the whole nation. Now red states are pushing back.

By Conor Dougherty

For a while this winter, seemingly every text message that Buffy Wicks received asked if she was running for Congress. Representative Barbara Lee, of California’s 12th District, which includes Oakland, had announced that she would enter the race for Dianne Feinstein’s soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat. This decision by Lee, who is 76, created a rare opportunity for the next generation of California Democrats to vie for federal office. And Wicks — a 45-year-old State Assembly member who lives in Lee’s district and was last re-elected with 85 percent of the vote — seemed like a natural candidate.

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

Previews: The Economist Magazine – June 3, 2023

June 2, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The Economist Magazine– June 3, 2023 issue: The baby-bust economy: How declining birth rates will change the world.

Global fertility has collapsed, with profound economic consequences

What might change the world’s dire demographic trajectory?

In the roughly 250 years since the Industrial Revolution the world’s population, like its wealth, has exploded. Before the end of this century, however, the number of people on the planet could shrink for the first time since the Black Death. The root cause is not a surge in deaths, but a slump in births. Across much of the world the fertility rate, the average number of births per woman, is collapsing. Although the trend may be familiar, its extent and its consequences are not. Even as artificial intelligence (ai) leads to surging optimism in some quarters, the baby bust hangs over the future of the world economy.

How to make the re-election of Recep Tayyip Erdogan less bad news

Turkish President and People's Alliance's presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdogan gestures to supporters at the presidential palace, in Ankara, Turkey, Sunday, May 28, 2023. Turkey President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won reelection Sunday, extending his increasingly authoritarian rule into a third decade as the country reels from high inflation and the aftermath of an earthquake that leveled entire cities. (AP Photo/Ali Unal)

There is a chance for a partial reset

It certainly wasn’t fair. Nor was it entirely free. But, like it or not, the victory on May 28th of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey’s presidential election is a fact. For the next five years Turkey, Europe and the wider world will have to deal with a prickly and authoritarian populist. That is bad news on many fronts: economically, democratically and regionally. And yet pragmatists have a duty to search for chinks of light in the gloom.

It’s not just a fiscal fiasco: greying economies also innovate less

That compounds the problems of shrinking workforces and rising bills for health care and pensions

“Adam is a special child,” says the voice-over, as the camera pans across abandoned classrooms and deserted maternity wards. “He’s the last child born in Italy.” The short film made for Plasmon, an Italian brand of baby food owned by Kraft-Heinz, a giant American firm, is set in 2050. It imagines an Italy where babies are a thing of the past. It is exaggerating for effect, of course, but not by as much as you might imagine. The number of births in Italy peaked at 1m in 1964; by 2050, the un projects, it will have shrunk by almost two-thirds, to 346,000.

Magazines, Podcasts, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research Preview: Science Magazine – June 2, 2023

June 1, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Science Magazine – June 2, 2023 issue: The snub-nosed monkey genus Rhinopithecus comprises five allopatric and morphologically differentiated species, the black-white snub-nosed monkey, the black snub-nosed monkey , the golden snub-nosed monkey, the gray snub-nosed monkey, and the Tonkin snub-nosed monkey.

Understanding our own order

Humans are primates. If we weren’t able to do things like write poetry and drive cars, we would likely be classified as another species of great ape, along with our closest cousins—chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. Thus, understanding the genomes, evolutionary history, sociality, and, some might argue, even ecology of modern primates greatly informs our understanding of ourselves.

A cool path for making glass

Brent Grocholski

Printing glass with additive manufacturing techniques could provide access to new materials and structures for many applications. However, one key limitation to this is the high temperature usually required to cure glass. Bauer et al. used a hybrid organic-inorganic polymer resin as a feedstock material that requires a much lower temperature for curing (see the Perspective by Colombo and Franchin).

A super Sonic circadian synchronizer

Sonic Hedgehog signaling and primary cilia control the core mammalian circadian clock

Virtually all mammalian physiological functions fall under the control of an internal circadian rhythm, or body clock. This circadian rhythm is governed by master neural networks in the hypothalamus that synchronize the activity of peripheral clocks in cells throughout the body.

Magazines, Previews, Research, Reviews, Science

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – June 1, 2023

May 31, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

nature Magazine – June 1, 2023 issue: X-rays are widely used to characterize materials, but samples still require a reasonably high number of atoms for success. In this week’s issue, Saw-Wai Hla and his colleagues report that they have used synchrotron X-rays to characterize the elemental and chemical state of an individual atom. The team was able to detect X-ray-excited currents generated from an iron and a terbium atom in molecular hosts.

How can mosquitoes find you? All you have to do is exhale

A person sits on a bed behind a mosquito net.

Free-flying mosquitoes gravitate toward pads that emit carbon dioxide, which is found in human breath.

Jupiter’s lightning has rhythm — just like Earth’s

Bolts begin as a series of short pulses both on Earth and on its much bigger, gassier neighbour in the Solar System.

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

Philosophy Now Magazine June / July 2023 Preview

May 31, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Philosophy Now Magazine (June/July 2023) – The ‘Meta Ethics Issue’ featuring Back to the Sophists: Nana Ariel corrects the record and the modern application of Sophistry and Will the Real John Locke Please Step Forward? Hilarius Bogbinder shows how Locke’s intellectual identity changed over time.

The Cognitive Gap

Justin Bartlett explores a basic distinction between understandings of ethics.

Who’s To Say?

Michael-John Turp asks if anyone has the authority to establish moral truth.

Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.

Ethical Truth in Light of Quantum Mechanics

Myles King contends that physics helps us understand ethics.

Can You Be Both A Moral Rationalist & A Moral Sentimentalist?

Andrew Kemle says that evolutionary forces give us the answer.

Arts & Literature, Books, Magazines, Previews, Reviews

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – June 2, 2023

May 31, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Times Literary Supplement (June 2, 2023): The Last Days of Weimar – Lesley Chamberlain on German culture before the catastrophe; Michel Houellebecq in the buff; Death by Dementia; The Art of Sex and Champagne socialist guilt.

Sophisticated Primitive

The "Monforte" altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes, c.1470-75

An early Flemish painter’s claim to greatness

By Mark Glanville

Not a team player

"The Ten Largest, Group IV, No. 3, Youth" by Hilma af Klint, 1907

An abstractionist artist who was guided by the spirit world

By Charles Darwent

Analysis, Government, Reviews, Videos, Water Resources

Analysis: The Best Ways To Fix America’s Water Crisis

Video May 30, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

CNBC (May 30, 2023) – From floods to droughts, CNBC Marathon explores the water crisis in the U.S. Today, one out of three people don’t have access to safe drinking water. And that’s the result of many things, but one of them is that 96.5% of that water is found in our oceans. It’s saturated with salt, and undrinkable.

Chapters: 00:00 — Introduction 00:30 — Can Sea Water Desalination Save The World? (Published October 2019) 14:00 — U.S. Farms Waste A Lot Of Water — But This Tech Could Help (Published September 2022) 29:56 — How The West Coast Drought Could Cause More ‘Water Wars’ (Published July 2021) 40:07 — Why Flood Insurance Is Failing The U.S. (Published November 2020)

Most of the freshwater is locked away in glaciers or deep underground. Less than one percent of it is available to us. So why can’t we just take all that seawater, filter out the salt, and have a nearly unlimited supply of clean, drinkable water? The western U.S. is experience a megadrought so severe, it is the driest two decades in at least 1,200 years. And no sector has felt the impact more than agriculture, which takes up about 70% of the world’s freshwater.

With water resources becoming more scarce, several companies are working to improve irrigation efficiency and help sustain food production in a future where extreme climate may be more common. Water is a cornerstone of economic activity, and when it runs low, communities face tough choices. The extreme drought conditions in the U.S. West are straining water resources and providing a fertile ground for wildfires. How will the West Coast face this climate challenge? And 2020 was the busiest hurricane season on record. Flooding is one of a storm’s most devastating consequences.

FEMA estimates one inch of flood water can cause up to $25,000 in damage. The U.S. began offering national flood insurance in 1968 but the program, called the NFIP, is now over $20 billion in debt. Private companies are starting to offer flood insurance as well. However, flood insurance is more complicated than it may appear. Watch the video to better understand how flood insurance works, and doesn’t work, in the U.S.

Culture, Design, Lifestyle, Magazines, Reviews, Society

Design/Culture: Monocle Magazine — June 2023 Issue

May 30, 2023 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Monocle Magazine (May 2023 issue) – Ever dreamed of ditching the rat race for a life on the land? We meet the new Mediterranean farmers doing just that in the latest edition of Monocle.