All posts by Intellicurious

News, Views and Reviews for the Intellectually Curious
News, Newspapers, Opinion, Politics

THE NEW YORK TIMES – THURSDAY, SEPT. 24, 2026

Leave a comment

Trump Hosts Xi for Summit, Where Pomp May Mask Tensions

President Xi Jinping is making his first visit to Washington in a decade as President Trump continues his sharp turn from a hard line on China. Little progress is expected on the many issues dividing the powers.

The ‘Monster’ Behind Russia’s Global Effort to Evade Western Sanctions

A Moscow firm uses shell companies and cryptocurrency to launder money, and a custom app to forge trade records, to help Russia bypass sweeping restrictions.

As Russia Steps Up Shadow War, Europeans Waver on How to Respond

If President Vladimir V. Putin was hoping to get Europeans’ attention, he’s succeeded with a series of close-call incursions. The question now is what they will do about it.

Netanyahu and Abbas to Give Dueling Speeches to U.N. General Assembly

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas are set to deliver addresses amid criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Judge Blocks Trump’s White House Ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order and told the White House to immediately restore press credentials for employees of the three news outlets.

Magazines, Research, Reviews, Science

NATURE MAGAZINE – SEPTEMBER 24, 2026

Leave a comment
Volume 657 Issue 8133

NATURE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘STATES OF MIND’ – Atlas of prefrontal cortex offers way to explore ageing and disease.

The worst El Niño in recorded history is brewing — here’s how governments must prepare

From southern Africa to the Amazon, the risks are mounting and the window for action is rapidly closing.

Mercury is shrinking with age — faster than thought

Impacts by space objects have obscured some of the evidence of the planet’s contraction over the past 4.5 billion years.

Why most stars don’t have outbursts like the Sun’s

A strong magnetic field can disrupt a star’s ability to produce the fountains of matter called coronal mass ejections.

Cognitive resilience helps to predict Alzheimer’s dementia

The trait could explain why symptoms vary in severity between people with similar brain pathology.

Culture, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY – SEPTEMBER 25, 2026

Leave a comment

THE GUARDIAN WEEKLY: The latest issue features ‘A NEW LEAF’ – What does the Canada-EU alliance mean?

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, last week extended an unprecedented offer to Canada, inviting it to become the EU’s first “associate member”.

For our big story this week, Brussels correspondent Jennifer Rankin explores what the proposed alliance might mean. While there is a lot of common ground for the two parties, she writes, their agreement raises many questions and is clouded in uncertainty.

Meanwhile, senior correspondent Lisa O’Carroll examines the possible implications for the UK – asking whether it offers a blueprint for Britain, or a reminder it is out in the cold.

Then, former White House speechwriter Ted Widmer says Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s remarks before the European parliament set out what a new west might look like, without its most powerful member – the US.

Spotlight | Yemeni families’ flight
Fierce fighting has forced people to abandon their homes, leaving everything behind to seek shelter in refugee camps. Nasser Al-Sakkaf reports from Taiz

Science | ‘A map is never neutral’
The cartographers who took on centuries of western bias with the new Equal Earth projection speak to Oliver Holmes, Ana Lucía González Paz and Pablo Gutiérrez about their alternative to the 16th-century Mercator display

Feature | How to fight end times fascism
An unholy alliance is working toward an apocalyptic future from which only a chosen few will emerge unscathed. It’s becoming clear how we stop them, say Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor

Opinion | This Israeli election could be the country’s last
Spend time on the ground and you see how high the stakes are for next month’s contest – for Israelis and Palestinians alike, writes Jonathan Freedland

Culture | Present and correct
Author Jonathan Franzen talks to Sophie McBain about a new TV adaptation of his bestseller The Corrections, the future of reading and why creating new work is “horrible”

Intellitakes, News, Opinion

CAN RIDICULE PERSUADE?

Leave a comment
The Intellitake
One argument · Two sides · One verdict · Daily
Tuesday, September 22, 2026 · The Persuasion Debate
“

I have unshakable faith in vaccines. I went to the anti-vaccine conference intending to mock it — and that was wrong. Ridicule helps no one.

The Thesis — Leana Wen, The Washington Post

THE ARGUMENT

In today’s Washington Post, physician and former Baltimore health commissioner Leana Wen opens with a confession: she arrived at the Grand Hyatt to cover an anti-vaccine conference — keynoted by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — intending to make fun of it. Her verdict on her own intention: “That was wrong.” Wen’s faith in vaccines is unshakable, and the conference’s talking points struck her as the same deceptive claims she has rebutted for years. But the painful lesson of her title is aimed at her own side: ridiculing the people in those seats, she argues, helps no one — least of all the cause of vaccination itself.

vs

THE ANSWER

The maximal case for the opposite view was made by Pulitzer Prize–winning Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik in his notorious January 2022 column, “Mocking anti-vaxxers’ COVID deaths is ghoulish, yes — but may be necessary”. Written at Omicron’s peak, it argued that “pleas for ‘civility’ are a fraud” — typically the work of hypocrites seeking to blunt criticism — and that mockery is not necessarily the wrong response to public figures who belittled the disease that then killed them. Denying sympathy, he contended, might be the only way to make such teachable moments heard. Where Wen sees counterproductive contempt, Hiltzik saw a moral pedagogy: some lessons are taught only by consequence, named plainly.

iC

THE INTELLITAKE

Note what this collision is not: a debate about vaccines. Both writers are emphatically pro-vaccine; the dispute is over what contempt accomplishes. And unusually for an Intellitake, history has partly run the experiment. Hiltzik’s wager was made in 2022; Wen writes in 2026, from a conference where the movement his side mocked now keynotes as the sitting health secretary. Whatever four years of scorn were supposed to teach, the class did not convert — it took over the school. Yet honesty cuts both ways: civility’s record is unproven too, and Hiltzik would ask what respectful engagement has won lately. The real question beneath the manners: does persuasion begin with respect — or does normalization? Wen has staked her answer on the first. The last four years are the evidence both sides now have to explain.

TODAY’S PROVOCATION

Think of the last time someone mocked something you believe. Did it change your mind — or harden it?

— THE EDITORS, INTELLICURIOUS —

Essays, History, Lifestyle, Philosophy

I THINK, BUT AM NOT CERTAIN

Leave a comment

Intellicurean Essays on Intellicurious

In the spring of 45 BCE Cicero hid in a wood all day, wrote every night that nothing can be known for certain, and spent the same nights trying to buy land on which to make his dead daughter a god. What was in his mind? The essay guesses twice, and grades both guesses by his own rules.

A painting of Cicero writing by lamplight at Astura, with a translucent figure of Demosthenes, wreathed, standing unseen behind his shoulder
Cicero at Astura and the ghost of Demosthenes, painted for the essay. An invention, and captioned as one there.

Why we’re pointing you there

Most writing about Cicero’s grief for Tullia quotes the letters and moves on. Michael Cummins reads them as a working file: the philosopher checking the dates of other parents’ bereavements before he dares cite them, refusing a visit from his teenage wife, ordering columns from Chios for a shrine he never built. Then he notices who else is in the room. Demosthenes, the orator Cicero spent his life measuring himself against, had also lost an only daughter, and had been attacked in an Athenian court for grieving her too little. Cicero cited the attack, months after his own loss, in a book about grief.

What we liked most is how the two men are made to meet. Not in an invented dialogue, but in a cento: every sentence its speaker’s own, from public-domain translations named on the page, and only the arrangement the essay’s. Demosthenes never speaks of his daughter, because he never did. The essay ends fourteen centuries later in a library in Verona, with the first reader we know of who found these letters and wrote back. It is the second essay in a row with no machine in it, and the one we would hand to a sceptic.

Read the full essay at Intellicurean →

Essays & Reviews for the Intellectually Curious

Business, Finance, Financial, Magazines, Politics

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK MAGAZINE – OCTOBER 2026

Leave a comment

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK MAGAZINE: ‘The President’s Man’ – Donald Trump is blowing up the global order. Marco Rubio is here to help.

Marco Rubio Remakes Himself as Trump’s Unapologetic Global Envoy

The secretary of state is executing the president’s wishes around the world, even when they contradict his past beliefs. What’s his long game?

Why Politicians From the Working Class Are Rare Around the World

Less than 1% of major-party candidates competing for a seat in the US Congress have a background in manual trades or service industries.

The World’s Most Reliable AI Detector Has a Human Problem

Armed with a near-perfect detection tool, Pangram is fighting to convince the public AI cheating can be caught.

Government, Magazines, Opinion, Politics, Reviews

THE AMERICAN PROSPECT MAGAZINE – OCTOBER 2026

Leave a comment

The American Prospect: The latest issue features ‘ELECTION 2026′

Money Can’t Buy Me Votes

Republicans are going to try to solve their midterm problems with money. Good luck to them.

AI Safety Needs More Evidence and Less Fruitcake Speculation

Strange nerds distributing imaginary stories on the internet is no basis for a system of government.

Republicans Running Scared in the Rio Grande Valley

Trump’s economic and immigration policies have pushed South Texas voters away from the GOP, but that doesn’t mean they’ll vote blue no matter who.

Rideshare Drivers Want a Fair Hearing Before Losing Their Jobs

In Chicago, city data shows fewer than 4 percent of the more than 30,000 drivers removed from rideshare platforms were reinstated.

News, Newspapers, Opinion, Politics

THE NEW YORK TIMES – WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 23, 2026

Leave a comment

At the U.N., Trump Lays Out a Winner-Takes-All Vision of U.S. Power

President Trump’s speech at the U.N. General Assembly amounted to a rejection of the founding concept of the United Nations.

How China’s Leader Plans to Win the Future With A.I.

A decade ago, Xi Jinping asked if China could master A.I. His push is remaking the economy, challenging the United States and keeping society under control.

Iran’s President to Address World Leaders After Trump Threat

Masoud Pezeshkian is the first leader whose country is at war with the United States to travel to New York to address the General Assembly. President Trump said he faced a choice over whether to “annihilate” the Islamic republic.1h ago

Trump’s New Favorite Neighbor: Mexico

President Trump built his political brand in part on bashing Mexico. Now his second presidency depends on deepening partnerships with the country.

Why Germany’s Leader Is Struggling: Painful Cuts and a Wooden Style

As the far right surges, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s unpopular economic policies and gruff manner have failed to sway voters turned by rivals’ promises of easy fixes.

Art, Essays, Intellicurean.com, Museums, Opinion

WHO PAID FOR VENUS?

Leave a comment

Intellicurean Essays on Intellicurious

Two rooms, one painter, two very different buyers. In 1549 a queen hung Titian’s tormented giants to greet the future king of Spain. A few years later that king hung Titian’s nudes for himself. The essay asks who was doing the looking, and finds it was never simply the men.

Why we’re pointing you there

Everyone who took an art-history survey met John Berger’s line about men looking and women being looked at. Michael Cummins takes that line to the Prado, where the museum’s new volumes on women and the Spanish collections show something the slogan can’t hold: Mary of Hungary commissioning, Christina of Sweden collecting, Isabella Farnese marking her paintings with a lily like a brand on cattle. Power looked, and power was often a woman. The essay does not overturn Berger. It finds the room he left out.

What we liked most is the discipline. Every claim about who owned what rests on an inventory, and where the record gives only a later opinion rather than a fact, the essay says so and moves on. It is also the first piece in the series with no artificial intelligence in it at all, which is the point: Intellicurean was always a project about judgment, and here the judgment is a queen’s. Read it for Binche in 1549, and for a Sisyphus who turns out to have been a political statement.

Read the full essay at Intellicurean →

Essays & Reviews for the Intellectually Curious

Culture, History, Homes, Magazines, Reviews, Travel

COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE – SEPTEMBER 23, 2026 PREVIEW

Leave a comment

COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE: The latest issue features ‘Where To Live In The West Country’….

Hide and squeak

Miniature Mouse Town has been captivating audiences for half a century, but the rodent realm has reached the end of the road, as Harry Pearson reports

Flour power

Ancient and heritage grains are enjoying a revival. Makers and growers tell Tom Howells why they are going back to the future

Property market

Penny Churchill surveys a West Country scene sparking into life with the launch onto the market of a spectacular coastal estate

Spreads from Country Life September 23, 2026

Properties of the week

West is best, says Julie Harding, as she showcases characterful and comfortable cottages for sale

To boldly go on

James Alexander-Sinclair finds out what the future holds for the innovative Eden Project as the Cornwall garden turns 25

Spreads from Country Life September 23, 2026

Chorus of approval

Henrietta Bredin hails opera’s unsung chorus lines in a look at life beyond the solo spotlight

Iain MacGregor’s favourite painting

The historian picks a work that reveals beauty in ordinary things

Country-house treasure

A tribute to ‘justice, honour and humanity’ catches John Goodall’s eye at Grey Abbey in Co Down

Spreads from Country Life September 23, 2026

Ruling the waves

Admiralty House and the Ripley Building in London represent 400 years of our naval history, as Billy Hurley Reading discovers

The legacy

Kate Green celebrates the ever-popular 19th-century Savoy operas of that peerless creative double act Gilbert & Sullivan

Get ready for rush hour

Rush is not only a haven for all manner of wildlife, but also a precious resource for artisan makers, declares Laura Parker

Deep thinking

Next stop, Aldwych… Emma Hughes goes underground to tour the forgotten platforms of London’s lost Tube stations

Spreads from Country Life September 23, 2026

Luxury

Amie Elizabeth White chooses classic check prints making an impression this autumn

Interiors

Arabella Youens warms to a fossil-stone fireplace in an Exmoor retreat and Amelia Thorpe shares some bright ideas on wall lights

Countryside mystery

The wonder of choke fungus takes John Wright’s breath away

Travel

Sophia Money-Coutts stays on the secluded Flete Estate, a favourite south Devon destination

Arts & antiques

Carla Passino visits a new British Museum exhibition exploring how Korea mastered foreign art forms and made them its own

On the hoof

Satyrs, centaurs and fauns have been strident symbols in art from Ancient Greece to the present day. Charles Harris investigates