Category Archives: Culture

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – March 31, 2023

Image

The Guardian Weekly (March 31, 2023) – This week sees an important moment in the history of the Guardian with the launch of Cotton Capital, a series revealing the links between the 19th-century Manchester founders of the newspaper, the transatlantic cotton industry and the enslaved labour upon which the trade was built.

In France, national protests against the proposed increase to the pension age have become so inflamed that a state visit by Britain’s King Charles had to be postponed. Kim Willsher reports on a wave of anger and how women are at the forefront of the demonstrations.

As if life wasn’t pressurised enough already for top-level football referees, the advent of video assistant technology only seems to have made the job even harder than ever, leading to a slew of controversial decisions. From hotel breakfasts to being holed up in front of TV monitors, William Ralston goes behind the scenes with the men and women in black.

On the Culture pages, there’s also a great interview with the indie supergroup Boygenius, whose band members Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker talk to Laura Barton about songwriting, friendship and group therapy.

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – April 3, 2023

A woman drinks coffee and sits on an armchair that is stacked on another chair and a table in order to reach rays of...

The New Yorker – April 3, 2023 issue:

The Data Delusion

A threedimensional pattern of books turning into transistor boards.

We’ve uploaded everything anyone has ever known onto a worldwide network of machines. What if it doesn’t have all the answers?

How Christian Is Christian Nationalism?

An American flag concealing a cross underneath it.

Many Americans who advocate it have little interest in religion and an aversion to American culture as it currently exists. What really defines the movement?

The Wild World of Music

The illustrated head of musician and scientist David Sulzer sits at the center of a network of symbols for the brain...

What can elephants, birds, and flamenco players teach a neuroscientist-composer about music?

Travel & Culture: Journey Through Cities Of China

Stef Hoffer (March 24, 2023) – China is one of the world’s most fascinating and complicated countries, and its cities seem to get bigger every year. Considered a rural society just a few decades ago, China today is home to the world’s largest urban population.

In this travel documentary, I take you on a journey through some of the country’s most interesting cities. While many city centers are filled with modern skyscrapers, we also search for more traditional neighborhoods, historic sites, tranquil parks, special events, and cultural activities.

We look at the rapid changes China is undergoing in its urbanization process, and mention some of the challenges the country is facing. From the modern megacities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou we travel to the ancient centers of Beijing and Xian. We visit the popular Summer holiday beaches of coastal Qingdao, and the exciting Winter festivals of Harbin.

From the streets of fusion cities like Hong Kong and Macau we continue our journey to Tibetan Lhasa, located on the Rooftop of the World. We also take a look at the disappearing alleys of old Kashgar, in the controversial Xinjiang region, and the empty streets of Ordos, China’s best known ghost town. And we explore the expanding urban centers along the Yangtze river, including Wuhan and Chongqing, all the way to the fast paced metropolis of Shanghai.

I traveled through China independently for more than a decade, on several occasions. The footage in this video was shot between 2010 and 2019, and is accompanied by background information. For more in-depth information on each place, I recommend to read, watch, and listen to as many different sources as you can.

Culture: New York Times Magazine – March 26, 2023

Image

The New York Times Magazine – March 26, 2023:

The Age-Old Food Fight That Beats an Italian Town to a Pulp

A color photograph of screaming men dressed in chess-themed uniforms. Orange pulp and blood is scattered on their faces and shirts.
The orange throwers are organized into nine teams, each with a different flag, logo, captain and uniform.

Every winter, Ivrea erupts into a ferocious three-day festival where its citizens pelt one another with 900 tons of oranges. (Yes, oranges.)

The orange throwers are organized into nine teams, each with a different flag, logo, captain and uniform.

I Went on a Package Trip for Lonely Millennials. It Was Exhausting.

Rosie Marks for The New York Times

On traveling to Morocco with a group-travel company that promised to build “meaningful friendships” among its youngish clientele.

Sections

I’m Lost All the Time. So I Went on a Labyrinth Vacation.

A color photograph of a hedge maze arch.
The Parc del Laberint d’Horta, in Barcelona.Credit…Joakim Eskildsen for The New York Times

The dizzying joys of maze tourism, in Barcelona, Paris and Chenonceaux.

The Parc del Laberint d’Horta, in Barcelona.Credit…Joakim Eskildsen for The New York Times

Seeking the Spirited, Mystical Jamaica Tourists Don’t See

A photographer’s journey through her native spiritual landscape of Jamaica, where Christian and Afro-centric traditions blend.

Culture/Society: Monocle Magazine – April 2023

Monocle Magazine (April 2023 issue) – What’s in store for retail? Monocle’s Retail Survey checks out the global benchmarks in shopping, while our spring Style Directory rounds up the labels, designers and products on the radar of the sharpest dressers.

Magazine | Monocle

EDITOR’S LETTER – Bricks-and-mortar retail, from tiny independent shops to giant malls, can shape and inspire the community around it. Andrew Tuck finds Monocle’s Retail Survey reflecting what we’ve always believed: that in-person experiences are the most valuable. There’s plenty more too.

Lifestyle: Country Life Magazine – March 22, 2023

Country Life Magazine (March 22, 2023) – Verdi’s land of opera and glory, Picasso in Spain’s cradle of the Arts, where leading writers find their inspiration, French breeds to provoke English envy and the best in luxury overseas property

A spectacularly converted 15th century watermill with original beams, glorious surroundings and a minstrels’ gallery

Once derelict, Gurney Manor Mill was rescued in the early 1990s and transformed into a lovely family home.

Any property that is surrounded by water is guaranteed to be impressive. It’s sort of an unwritten rule. Naturally, as a former watermill, Gurney Manor  Mill falls into this category:  the mill and its 1.2 acres of gardens are surrounded by the historicwater system, creating a bucolic setting.

Thirsty work

Amelia Thorpe selects watering cans for the home and garden

Food stuff: a simple guide to nutrients and fertilisers

Don’t know your potassium from your phosphorus? Fear not, as Steven Desmond explains what to feed your plants and when

Blossoming ideas

There’s more to ornamental apple trees than merely fruit, reveals Charles Quest-Ritson

Holey moley!

Meet the ‘gentleman in velvet’—Harry Pearson unearths the underground world of the mole

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – March 24, 2023

Image

The Guardian Weekly (March 24, 2023) – You’d be forgiven for having allowed the collapse of the tech industry lender Silicon Valley Bank, earlier this month, to pass you by. Even the news that SVB’s UK operation had been salvaged in a deal brokered by the British government might not have registered too much. But the rescue this week of Switzerland’s second-largest lender Credit Suisse had a more ominous feel to it, a sense of fiscal dominoes cascading slowly into one another.

For our big story this week, Anna Isaac and Kalyeena Makortoff report on a week that brought back anxious memories of the 2008 financial crash, while economics editor Larry Elliott argues that only the era of ultra-low interest rates that followed the previous crash has prevented a further correction happening sooner.

Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia this week had the feel of a pivotal moment for global diplomacy. Russian affairs reporter Pjotr Sauer and senior China correspondent Amy Hawkins look at what the strengthening of the Sino-Russian alliance signifies for Moscow, Beijing and the rest of the world.

This week also saw the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour reflects on a botched intervention that still haunts global politics to this day, while on the Opinion pages Randeep Ramesh argues that the US foreign policy debacle still serves to underline what he describes as “the capricious and self-centred nature of American global power”.

Culture/History: The Many Lives Of Abbeys In France

FRANCE 24 (March 21, 2023) – Once important seats of Christian worship, and now treasures of the country’s heritage, French abbeys often have surprising histories. That’s the case of Fontevraud abbey, in the former duchy of Anjou. Run by a woman during its heyday, the abbey was turned into a prison after the French Revolution.

In Alsace, the abbey of Mont Sainte-Odile is famous for its supposedly miraculous spring water. Finally, on the outskirts of Montpellier, Valmagne abbey used to be a wine cellar. Visitors can still observe the gigantic barrels that were once used to store thousands of litres of wine.

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – April 2023 Issue

Harper’s Magazine – April 2023 issue:

The Incredible Disappearing Doomsday

How the climate catastrophists learned to stop worrying and love the calm

The first signs that the mood was brightening among the corps of reporters called to cover one of the gravest threats humanity has ever faced appeared in the summer of 2021. “Climate change is not a pass/fail course,” Sarah Kaplan wrote in the Washington Post on August 9. 

In Search of Lost Time

The science of the perfect second

When I was a kid, in the touch-tone era in the Midwest, I often dialed, for no real reason, the “time lady”—an actress named Jane Barbe, it turns out—who would announce, with prim authority “at the tone,” the correct time to the second. I was, in those days, a bit obsessed with time. 

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – March 27, 2023

A figure wearing  very large colorful sneakers poses against a green background.
Art by Sarula Bao

The New Yorker – March 27, 2023 issue:

Will the Ozempic Era Change How We Think About Being Fat and Being Thin?

Two abstract bodies one big and one skinny gravitate towards the top and bottom of the image. The top is yellow while...

A popular, growing class of drugs for obesity and diabetes could, in an ideal world, help us see that metabolism and appetite are biological facts, not moral choices.

How the Graphic Designer Milton Glaser Made America Cool Again

Colors radiating from the tip of a pen.

From the poster that turned Bob Dylan into an icon to the logo that helped revive a flagging city, he gave sharp outlines to the spirit of an age.