Stanford University Press (April 5, 2024): Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman introduce their new book Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises.
A clear-eyed and urgent vision for a new system of political governance to manage planetary issues and their local consequences.
Deadly viruses, climate-changing carbon molecules, and harmful pollutants cross the globe unimpeded by national borders. While the consequences of these flows range across scales, from the planetary to the local, the authority and resources to manage them are concentrated mainly at one level: the nation-state. This profound mismatch between the scale of planetary challenges and the institutions tasked with governing them is leading to cascading systemic failures.
National Geographic Traveller Magazine (April 5, 2024): The latest issue heads to Mexico where we discover this diverse and spirited nation through the communities and craftspeople keeping its culture alive. Plus, explore the remote reaches of Vietnam, dive into the folk traditions of Istria and taste the flavours of Philadelphia.
Also inside this issue:
Vietnam: Discover the country’s remote reaches along the Mekong River and Con Dao islands. Istria: Explore the festivals and folk traditions of Croatia’s unique Adriatic enclave. Antarctica: This barren land of rock, water and ice is home to a surprising amount of wildlife. Egypt: Itineraries to discover the country, from the Nile and the Red Sea to the Sinai Peninsula. Philadelphia: Food in Pennsylvania’s largest city is as much about coming together as it is about flavour. Birmingham: The UK’s historic industrial powerhouse is flaunting its heritage with style. Le Mans & around: Come for the eponymous car race, stay for canoe trips, wine-tasting and more. Fez: Food traditions and culinary innovation come together in the medina of this Moroccan city Tokyo: Accommodation in the Japanese capital is all about character, from traditional ryokan inns to a cosy literary hotel.
Science Magazine – April 4, 2024: The new issue features ‘Lucy At 50’ – Fifty years ago in Ethiopia, paleoanthropologists unearthed the 3.2-million-year-old skeleton known as “Lucy” and transformed our views of humanity’s origins.
Smithsonian Magazine (April 4, 2024) –The latest issue features ‘Australia’s Underwater Wonderland’ – For divers off the Sunshine Coast, tiny creatures with big personalities put on a spectacular show…
Times Literary Supplement (April 3, 2024): The ‘The Art Issue’ features ‘Miss Lonelyhearts’ – Tom Seymour Evans: Carson McCullers’s unruly life; Violence and Climate Change; Posing for John Singer Sargent and Huckleberry Jim – Mark Twain’s escaped slave wrests control of his story…
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
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
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.
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.
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.”
It’s now thought that they could illuminate fundamental questions in physics, settle questions about Einstein’s theories, and even help explain the universe.
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.”
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
National Geographic Traveller Magazine (April 5, 2024): The latest issue 
Boomers Daily 