Silicon Valley’s moral bankruptcy by Victor Davis Hanson
The Russian way of literature by Daniel J. Mahoney
China apologetics by Gordon G. Chang
Gillray: national lampooner by Myron Magnet
Arts & Culture: The New Criterion — May 2023
Tag Archives: Reviews
Preview: New York Times Magazine – April 16, 2023
The New York Times Magazine – April 16, 2023:
The R.T.O. Whisperers Have a Plan
A niche group of consultants is trying to get you back to the office. It’s not going too well.
Being the boss doesn’t mean you get exactly what you wish for. That’s what Craig Knoblock discovered when he tried to get his employees to come back to the office in the fall of 2021.
You Call This ‘Flexible Work’?
Labor fought for a long time to draw a bright line between work and home. It took almost no time at all to erase it.
When Your Boss Is an App
Gig work has been silently taking over new industries, but not in the way many expected.
For most Americans, the concept of “gig work” has been synonymous with a handful of Silicon Valley giants — companies like Uber and DoorDash, Instacart and TaskRabbit. There was a moment in the 2010s when pundits told us to expect the “Uberization of everything”: a future in which the typical worker would move from job to job or task to task, finding either independence and flexibility in freelancing or, more realistically, the precarity of working for platforms that may be light on benefits and aggressively exploitative of labor.
Research Preview: Science Magazine – April 14, 2023
Reproductive medicine
Since ancient times, humans have been trying to exercise control over their reproductive decisions, whether to avoid undesired pregnancy or to improve their chances of conceiving. In addition, the risks of pregnancy and childbirth have always been a major challenge.
Droughts are coming on faster
Higher global temperatures are increasing the frequency of flash droughts
Previews: The Economist Magazine – April 15, 2023
The lessons from America’s astonishing economic record
The world’s biggest economy is leaving its peers ever further in the dust
Can the West win over the rest?
In a more transactional world the price of influence is going up
Emmanuel Macron’s blunder over Taiwan
The French leader has made a dangerous situation worse
Research Preview: Nature Magazine – April 13, 2023
World’s biggest butterfly is low on genetic diversity
An endangered butterfly, found only in Papua New Guinea, has had a small population for a million years.
Three ways to solve the plastics pollution crisis
Researchers are studying how more-sophisticated policies, smarter recycling and new materials could stem the tide of waste.
Research: New Scientist Magazine – April 15, 2023
How do we know that therapy works, and which kind is best for you?
Psychotherapy has never been more available and yet, with so many options, it can be hard to know where to start. Thankfully, researchers are getting to grips with what really works and why
The Power of Language review: What speaking many languages can do
Physicist David Wolpert on how to study concepts beyond imagination
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – April 14, 2023
Times Literary Supplement @TheTLS (April 14, 2023) – This week’s issue features @TristramHuntVA on monuments; @nclarke14 on English caricature; @HettieJudah on Action, Gesture, Paint @_TheWhitechapel; @jntod on J. H. Prynne; @rinireg on the Trump indictment – and more.
Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine – April 10, 2023
Barron’s Magazine – April 10, 2023:
Inside Morgan Stanley’s Success—and What’s Ahead
The firm plans to hit $10 trillion in client assets over the next decade. If James Gorman can get it there, the stock will keep winning.
Growth Funds Are Poised to Outshine Again. Here’s How to Pick the Right Ones.
Due to shifting market dynamics, some growth funds might no longer hold what have long been considered growth stocks. Three actively managed funds to consider.
This Fintech Is Safe From Banking Turmoil. Buy It While It’s Cheap.
Financial-software provider Jack Henry & Associates, at its cheapest valuation in years, can keep prospering even if banks continue to stumble.
Pinterest Is Staging a Turnaround. Why the Stock Is a Buy.
A new CEO—and an improvement in earnings—means that shares in the social-media site could rise by 20% from current levels.
The New York Times Book Review – April 9, 2023
The New York Times Book Review – April 9, 2023:
It’s Like ‘Little Women’ — but With Basketball
In “Hello Beautiful,” Ann Napolitano puts a fresh spin on the classic story of four sisters.
“It is your God-given right as an American fiction writer,” Ursula K. Le Guin once said, to change point of view. But “you need to know that you’re doing it,” she warned, and “some American fiction writers don’t.”
Osamu Dazai, With Help From TikTok, Keeps Finding New Fans
The enduring appeal of a midcentury Japanese novelist who wrote of alienation and suicide.
The first thing you hear is an eerie synth tone, followed by a portentous, insinuating voice. “Tell me, Dazai,” it says. “Why is it you wish to die?”
“Let’s turn that question around,” someone earnestly replies. “Is there really any value to this thing we call … living?” Then a beat drops, accompanied by distorted shouts.
Real People, Reincarnated in the Pages of New Novels
These hefty books explore the lives of a former poet, a polarizing artist and a Scottish rebel from unexpected angles.
One of the great attractions of historical fiction is its ability to approach the past from unexpected angles, allowing us to consider famous figures in surprising ways. It’s a tactic that pays off brilliantly in Stephen May’s elegantly acerbic SELL US THE ROPE (Bloomsbury, 240 pp., paperback, $18), which features a thuggish former poet who calls himself Koba. The world will later know him as Stalin.
Reviews: ‘The Week In Art’
April 6, 2023: This week: Ben Luke talks to Melanie Gerlis about the recent turbulence in the banking sector, as US banks go under, an ailing Credit Suisse is acquired by UBS and Deutsche Bank shares fall at one point by 14%.
What are the implications for the art world? Melanie also explains the figures in the latest Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report. The Baltimore Museum of Art in the US this week opens the exhibition The Culture: Hip Hop & Contemporary Art in the 21st Century.
We speak to Asma Naeem, the director of the BMA and co-curator of the show, about what she’s called “the second pop art movement”. And this episode’s Work of the Week is The Calling of Saint Matthew by the 17th-century Afro-Hispanic artist Juan de Pareja. He is best known as the subject of one of the greatest ever portraits, by Diego Velázquez, the artist who enslaved Pareja for two decades before his manumission in Rome in 1650.
David Pullins and Vanessa K. Valdés, the curators of a new exhibition about Juan de Pareja at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, tell us about the painting.The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, Baltimore Museum of Art, until 16 July; St Louis Art Museum, 26 August-1 January 2024.Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, until 16 July.
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