Sotheby’s (November 17, 2024):In late September of 1925, Pablo Picasso, his wife Olga and their young son Paolo returned to Paris from their annual summer holiday in the South of France.
The summers were beginning to blend together for Picasso, who was tiring of the swell set he and Olga socialized with. The home they returned to at 23 rue la Boetie was a changed one. After lengthy negotiations, Picasso had acquired an additional floor of the building to be used as his studio.
He set about immediately modifying the space: removing doors from their hinges, bringing in his copious art supplies (and a limited amount of furniture) and stripping back most of the existing wallpaper. After years of jostling with his elegant and socially aspirational wife for space in their apartment on the floor below he relished a place to colonize as his own.
DW Travel (November 17, 2024): Even the artists of Romanticism loved the city of Heidelberg on the Neckar and painted the ruins of Heidelberg Castle.
Video timeline: 00:00 Intro 00:24 Heidelberg Castle 02:32 Philosopher’s Way 03:26 The Old Bridge
Today, it is tourists who post stunning photos of Heidelberg on social media. But are the castle and the city really as romantic as they appear? We conduct a reality check.
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.
Monocle on Saturday (November 16, 2024): Georgina Godwin looks back at the week’s news including president-elect Donald Trump’s picks for his future cabinet, X (formerly Twitter) users decamping to Bluesky and the purchase of Alex Jones’s ‘InfoWars’ by satirical publication ‘The Onion’.
Joining Georgina is Isabel Hilton, founder of China Dialogue and current chair of the judges of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non Fiction. Plus: we hear from one of the judges of the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards, Vivian Godfrey, about British readers’ continued love affair with Japan. Finally, Monocle’s Michael Booth speaks to the Copenhagen-based publisher behind the Gold Medal winning “Most Beautiful Book in the World”.
DW Documentary (November 15, 2024): The 17th century was the zenith of painting, in the Netherlands. In no other era were artists so productive. Never before had so many painters tried to make a living from their art. Demand was huge.
People from all walks of life began to enthusiastically collect paintings. New genres were born. And both the art market and the profession of art dealer emerged. Exceptional artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Vermeer and Frans Hals created masterpieces that still inspire us today.
One reason for the cultural heyday and its glut of paintings was an enormous surplus of capital, generated by speculative money transactions and trade, which was also based on the exploitation of the colonies and the ideal conditions that shipping found in the Netherlands. The film traces a period in which art, too, became an economic factor. In a way, the 17th century can be seen as the origin of our current art system.
After all, this was when auction houses were first established, leading to emergence of professional art dealers and wealthy collectors. Art was democratized. This documentary film explores an era when business and art entered into a marriage for the first time. How did such an artistic flourishing come about? What art-historical innovations do we owe to this period? And what significance does it have for our view of art and our approach to art today?
Business Insider (November 15, 2024): The United States has had 60 presidential elections starting in 1789. New parties have come and gone, while new states expanded the electoral map.
Video timeline: 0:00 – Intro 0:28 – First Party System (1792-1824) 1:30 – Second Party System (1828-1854) 2:40 – Third Party System (1854-1895) 5:46 – The Early 1900s (Progressive Era) 7:14 – Fifth Party System – FDR/New Deal Coalition 9:48 – Sixth Party System (1964-present) 16:42 – Credits
Maps show us how each state has voted over time — and who have been the winners and losers along the way.
Boomers Daily 