Times Literary Supplement (December 11, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The tragic Queen of France’ – The legend of Marie Antoinette; William Dalrymple’s Indian empire; Mary Beard – A night at the museum; The coffee house scientist; What Kindle readers want…
Times Literary Supplement (December 4, 2024): The latest issue features ‘HIs Other Country’ – The James Baldwin revival continues in the 100th anniversary year of his birth. A trickle of biographies has become a flood, and the causes for which he stood, racial equality and gay rights, speak to the times.
Record-label scouts chase ‘strange compositions’
A video game challenges the history of Argentina
By Mia Levitin
Study participants rated fictional scientists who admitted their own knowledge gaps as more credible.
Neighbouring cells bolster the immune cells’ tumour-fighting abilities.
The only continent where amber had not been found no longer has that distinction, thanks to a sediment core drilled just offshore.
Relatively warm regions of the object called Makemake could also be explained by a dusty planetary ring.
The Guardian Weekly (November 28, 2024): The new issue features last week’s escalation of Nato ballistic missile activity, in which UK and US-made missiles were launched into Russia for the first time, brought a predictably cold response from Vladimir Putin – who loosened Moscow’s nuclear doctrines and promised more attacks with a new, experimental ballistic missile.
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Spotlight | Does lame duck Biden have time to Trump-proof democracy?
The outgoing US president may only have weeks left in the White House, but activists say he can secure civil liberties, accelerate spending on climate and healthcare, and spare death row prisoners. David Smith reports
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Science | My weird, emotional week with an AI pet
Casio says Moflin can develop its own personality and build a rapport with its owner – and it doesn’t need food, exercise or a litter tray. But is it essentially comforting or alienating? Justin McCurry finds out
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Feature | Are we right to strive to save the world’s tiniest babies?
Doctors are pushing the limits of science and human biology to save more extremely premature babies than ever before. But when so few survive, are we putting them through needless suffering? By Sophie McBain
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Opinion | A social media ban is in everyone’s interests – not just kids under 16
Van Badham on why she resents being excluded from protection against monetised fear, anger and toxicity
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Culture | A road trip like no other: an epic drive on the Autobahn
Fifty years after electronic pioneers Kraftwerk released a 23-minute song about a road – and changed pop music for ever – Tim Jonze hits the highways of Düsseldorf and Hamburg in search of its futuristic brilliance
Stimulating certain brain cells in mice seems to ease anxiety without causing hallucination-like effects.
A pall of smoke from burning cropland each year decreases rainfall in the annual monsoon.
Understanding how human neurons cope with the energy demands of a large, active brain could open up new avenues for treating neurological disorders.
Times Literary Supplement (November 27, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Mutti Knows Best?’ – Angela Merkel’s triumph and tragedy; Gaughin’s uncensored thoughts; Gladiator II; C.S. Lewis’s Oxford and “The Magic Mountain” at 100…
 Inside Clear’s ambitions to manage your identity beyond the airportThe company that has helped millions of people cut security lines wants to give you a frictionless future—in exchange for your face. Read more →  Google DeepMind has a new way to look inside an AI’s “mind”Autoencoders are letting us peer into the black box of artificial intelligence. They could help us create AI that is better understood, and more easily controlled. Read more →  How this grassroots effort could make AI voices more diverseA massive volunteer-led effort to collect training data in more languages, from people of more ages and genders, could help make the next generation of voice AI more inclusive and less exploitative. Read more →  Who’s to blame for climate change? It’s surprisingly complicated.The world’s biggest polluters, by the numbers.Read more →  The rise of Bluesky, and the splintering of socialYou may have read that it was a big week for Bluesky. If you’re not familiar, Bluesky is, essentially, a Twitter clone that publishes short-form status updates. Read more → |
The Guardian Weekly (November 21, 2024): The new issue features ‘The crisis in the Church of England’…
Existentialist crises might more commonly be associated with some who seek out religion, rather than with those religions themselves, but that’s where the Church of England has found itself in recent days.
The resignation of Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, followed a damning report into the church’s shameful failures over the serial child abuser John Smyth, which detailed even more disturbing details of cover-ups by some senior clergy.
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Spotlight | Trump’s shock-and-awe team
A flurry of controversial and extremist picks for Trump’s administration has provoked criticism and made heads spin. David Smith reports from Washington
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Science | The inverse link between cancer and dementia
Scientists have long been aware of a curious connection between these common and feared diseases. At last, a clearer picture is emerging, writes Theres Lüthi
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Feature | Kernels of hope
During the siege of Leningrad, botanists in charge of an irreplaceable seed collection, the first of its kind, had to protect it from fire, rodents – and hunger. By Simon Parkin
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Opinion | Seven lessons from a long-serving economics editor
From Thatcher to Trump and Brexit, the Guardian’s outgoing economics editor, Larry Elliott, reflects on his 28 years in the role.
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Culture | Faking history
Film and TV have a slippery relationship with the truth when it comes to historical epics. Simon Usborne meets the experts whose advice goes unheeded
Times Literary Supplement (November 20, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Uncommon Reader’ – Virginia Woolf in literary tradition..
Virginia Woolf as reader, writer and literary inspiration By Sophie Oliver
The unravelling of Vivien Leigh’s marriage amid her mental health breakdown By Vanessa Curtis
History as an ideological battleground By Niall Ferguson
How the world’s most famous thinker fell out of fashion By Mark Sinclair
0:15 AI robot zaps weeds while saving crops – It’s called Concentrated Light Autonomous Weeding and Scouting or CLAWS for short. CLAWS uses AI-powered image processing to identify the crops, then targets weeds around the crop with blasts of concentrated light. This gets rid of unwanted intruders without damaging either crops or soil.
1:52 5 ways bioeconomy affects daily living – The bioeconomy uses renewable resources from land or sea to produce food, energy, and other resources. It focuses on leveraging nature’s processes and products to create sustainable economic outputs. The bioeconomy is already a part of our daily lives, influencing various sectors and industries.
6:08 Iceland sees benefit of a 4-day work week – The Nordic nation of 380,000 is rolling out a new way of working. Between 2020 and 2022, 51% of Iceland’s workers accepted an offer of shorter hours, such as a 4-day week for no loss of pay. The shift has had a positive impact on work-life balance and personal stress, new research shows.
8:17 Restored Amazon ecosystems beat logging – Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance is fighting to safeguard 35 million hectares of rainforest through a collaboration between 30 Indigenous nations of the Amazon basin. There’s an economic case for protecting the Amazon, says Atossa Soltani, Director of Global Strategy, Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance.
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