Times Literary Supplement (July 10, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Ven ice Preserved – La Serenissima down the centuries; Why revolutions fail; Eating ourselves to death and Ozempic nation…
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – July 12, 2024
Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence
Previews: Country Life Magazine – July 10, 2024
Country Life Magazine (July 9, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Experts’ Experts – 185 heroes the top designers rely on; Top dogs – politics of the village show; Boar wars – what to do with wild pigs; Tea and cakes – the rise and rise of the sponge…
The experts’ experts
Giles Kime and Amelia Thorpe ask Britain’s leading lights in design to name the talented professionals who inspire and transform their own projects
The dog with the waggiest tail
Move over Crufts, the village pooch parade is the one they all want to win with local bragging rights hanging in the balance, as Madeleine Silver discovers
Rooting for the truth
Pilfering pest or beneficial ecosystem engineer? Vicky Liddell examines the often-controversial return of wild boar to Britain’s woodland
Oh, crumbs! Secrets of the sponge
How did the Victoria sponge rise to be fêted as the queen of all cakes? Flora Watkins indulges in the history of the nation’s favourite teatime treat
Philippa Thorp’s favourite painting
The interior designer chooses a powerful work that unlocks a whole range of emotions
The devil is in the detail
Minette Batters insists that the incoming Government must be held to account over the many lavish pre-election promises on food security and farming
Salvaging the vine
In the first of two articles, John Goodall charts the long, hard struggle to bring to fruition one Bishop of Lincoln’s dreams of establishing a college at Oxford
The legacy
Amie Elizabeth White brews up a tale of 18th-century success as she celebrates Thomas Twining’s role as a tea pioneer
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell earns her summer stripes with elegant blue-and-white pieces for home and away
Ancient and modern
George Plumptre is heartened to witness a clever modern renovation of Nash’s Picturesque vision at Sandridge Park, Devon
If you’re lookin’, you ain’t cookin’
Tom Parker Bowles harnesses the flame’s fickle power as he shares a chef’s secrets of the perfect barbecue technique
In the dock
John Wright grasps the nettle in a hands-on investigation into the powers of the dock leaf—and, he says, it is your turn next
Word on the street
Smart Duke Street in London’s St James’s is the epicentre of British art. Carla Passino meets the larger-than-life characters who put the area on the map
Go tell the congregation
Matthew Dennison can’t help but sing the praises of Isaac Watts, that most prolific of hymn writers born 350 years ago
Goodbye, James Anderson
James Fisher pays tribute to English cricket’s legendary fast bowler ahead of his farewell Test match against the West Indies
And much more‘
Education: “Schooling’s Stagnation” – July 13, 2024
Must try harder
Schools in rich countries are making poor progress. They need to get back to basics, argues Mark Johnson
Schools in rich countries are making poor progress
Hanging on to the best of them is getting harder
The rich world’s teachers are increasingly morose
Will artificial intelligence transform school?
Efforts to teach character bring promise and perils
England’s school reforms are earning fans abroad
The New Yorker Magazine ‘Interview Issue’ July 2024
Nicolas Cage Is Still Evolving
The actor talks about the origins of “Adaptation,” his potential leap to television, and the art of “keeping it enigmatic.”
By Susan Orlean
The wobbly distinction between reality and artifice fascinates Nicolas Cage. The first time we encountered each other was in 2001, during the making of “Adaptation”—a film based on Charlie Kaufman’s struggle to adapt my book “The Orchid Thief” for the screen—in which Cage played Kaufman and his twin, Donald. He was in the middle of a scene, and I tiptoed onto the set as quietly as possible, convinced that any distraction would trigger one of the eruptions for which Cage had become famous. Between takes, he glanced at the handful of people watching, and exclaimed cheerily, “Oh, guys, look!” He pointed at me and a small, fuzzy-haired man I hadn’t noticed beside me. “It’s the real Charlie and the real Susan!” He seemed tickled by this collision between the characters in the movie and their real-life counterparts, and insisted that the crew take note. (Kaufman and I, who had never met before that moment, slunk away sheepishly.)
Ira Glass Hears It All
Three decades into “This American Life,” the host thinks the show is doing some of its best work yet—even if he’s still jealous of “The Daily.”
By Sarah Larson
It can be easy to take the greatness of “This American Life,” the weekly public-radio show and podcast hosted by Ira Glass, for granted. The show, which Glass co-founded in 1995 at WBEZ, in Chicago, has had the same essential format for twenty-eight years and more than eight hundred episodes. It was instrumental in creating a genre of audio journalism that has flourished in recent decades, especially since the podcast boom—which was initiated by the show’s first spinoff, “Serial,” in 2014. Like “The Daily Show” or Second City, “This American Life” has trained a generation of talented people, and Glass’s three-act structures, chatty cadences, and mixture of analysis and whimsy are now so familiar as to seem unremarkable.
Previews: Country Life Magazine – July 3, 2024
Country Life Magazine (July 2, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Call of the Coast’; Seaside treasure – the museum on the cliff; What a scoop – secrets of the ice-cream makers; A boatbuilder’s life, Barbie’s lore and best beach clubs…
Water, water, everywhere
Ben Lerwill drops anchor in the Thames to meet master boat-builder Mark Edwards, whose eclectic roll call of clients includes Elizabeth II and George Clooney
What’s your flavour?
Artisan ice cream makers have got it licked, says Madeleine Silver, as she checks out cones lovingly created using local milk and natural flavourings
You can be anything
Barbie is still in the pink at the age of 65. Susan Jenkins charts the ups and downs of Mattel’s often-controversial, yet still much-loved figurehead
Travel
Rosie Paterson reveals that Italy is still the place to go for unbeatable beach clubs, Richard MacKichan discovers the untouched isle of Formentera and Pamela Goodman carves out her own niche on a transatlantic cruise
Greg Mosse’s favourite painting
The writer chooses a ‘gorgeous panorama’ bursting with fellowship and rustic merry-making
Wrestling alligators in a mud hole
The country is all of a flutter in the build up to the General Election, but all bets are off for an exasperated Carla Carlisle
The legacy
Kate Green marvels at the Minack, Rowena Cade’s breathtaking cliffside amphitheatre
If I only had a brain
Increasing numbers of jellyfish are wobbling their way into British waters, but there’s no need to be alarmed, says Helen Scales
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell’s bold sunglasses leave everyone else in the shade
Interiors
Well-thought-out garden buildings are an ideal way to get closer to Nature, suggests Amelia Thorpe
London Life
Rosie Paterson goes up, up and away for the capital’s Balloon Regatta, Levison Wood is in the hotseat, Holly Black takes the wraps off the new-look Royal Academy Schools and Jemima Sissons is on the comeback trail
Coasting ahead
The D-Day landings were planned from its shores, but today George Plumptre finds a haven of peace at Lepe House in Hampshire
Strawberry dreams
Tom Parker Bowles is seduced by the charms of the strawberry, that most flirtatious of fruits
Kitchen garden cook
Melanie Johnson savours the joy of sweet and floral apricots
The dog days aren’t done
All eyes are on St Swithin’s Day as Lia Leendertz examines what weather lore has in store
Technology Report: “Spycraft” – July 6, 2024
The tools of global spycraft have changed
And so has the world in which they are used, says Shashank Joshi
Afew years ago intelligence analysts observed that internet-connected cctv cameras in Taiwan and South Korea were inexplicably talking to vital parts of the Indian power grid. The strange connection turned out to be a deliberately circuitous route by which Chinese spies were communicating with malware they had previously buried deep inside crucial parts of the Indian grid (presumably to enable future sabotage). The analysts spotted it because they were scanning the internet to look for “command and control” (c2) nodes—such as cameras—that hackers use as stepping stones to their victims.
Ubiquitous technical surveillance has made spying more difficult
Signals intelligence has become a cyber-activity
Sometimes the old ways of espionage are the best
Artificial intelligence can speed-sort satellite photos
Private firms and open sources are giving spies a run for their money
Preview: Foreign Policy Magazine – Summer 2024
Europe Alone
Nine thinkers on the continent’s future without America’s embrace.
By Mark Leonard, Constanze Stelzenmüller, Nathalie Tocci, Carl Bildt, Robin Niblett, Radoslaw Sikorski, Guntram Wolff, Bilahari Kausikan, Ivan Krastev, and Stefan Theil
No bloc of countries has, for the past 75 years, been as umbilically tied to the United States as Europe. First, its western half and, since the end of the Cold War, much of its eastern half have prospered under the world’s most extensive bonds in trade, finance, and investment. Europe could also depend on the U.S. military’s iron commitment—enshrined in the 75-year-old NATO alliance—to come to its defense. Together with a few other nations, the United States and Europe defined many of the institutions that comprise what we call the Western-led order. The U.S.-European alliance has arguably been the bedrock of the global system as we know it today.
Trump’s Return Would Transform Europe
Without Washington’s embrace, the continent could revert to an anarchic and illiberal past. By HAL BRANDS
Which is the real Europe? The mostly peaceful, democratic, and united continent of the past few decades? Or the fragmented, volatile, and conflict-ridden Europe that existed for centuries before that? If Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election in November, we may soon find out.
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – July 8 & 15, 2024
Finally, a Leap Forward on Immigration Policy
President Biden has offered help to undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, in the most consequential act of immigration relief in more than a decade. By Jonathan Blitzer
High-Roller Presidential Donor Perks
Give now to get your name on the wing of a fighter jet!
Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Scabrous Satire of the Super-Rich
In “Long Island Compromise,” wealth is a curse. Or is that just what we’d like to think?
The Economist Magazine – June 29, 2024 Preview
France’s centre cannot hold
After the election, populists of the right and left could hobble a centrist president
What to expect from a second Biden term
He has a domestic agenda, but no easy way to bring it about
Can countries get rich from services?
American fried chicken can now be served from the Philippines
Making heavy weather of hot weather
Deadly heat is increasingly the norm, not an exception to it
Research Preview: Science Magazine – June 28, 2024
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The perfect pesticide? RNA kills crop-destroying beetles with unprecedented accuracy
Could super-Earths or mini-Neptunes host life among the stars?
As the hunt for habitable Earth-like planets stalls, astronomers are turning to bigger worlds
This biologist aims to solve the cell’s biggest mystery. Could it help cancer patients, too?
Four decades after his lab found odd, massive particles inside cells, Leonard Rome is still determined to figure out what “vaults” do
Intellicurious 