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Elie Dolgin in Nature: The blood cancer had returned, and Kevin Sander was running out of treatment options. A stem-cell transplant would offer the best chance for long-term survival, but to qualify for the procedure he would first need to reduce the extent of his tumour — a seem … | Continue reading
More here. (Note: In honor of Black History Month, at least one post will be devoted to its 2024 theme of “African Americans and the Arts” throughout the month of February) | Continue reading
The Leash After the birthing of bombs of forks and fear the frantic automatic weapons unleashed, the spray of bullets into a crowd holding hands, that brute sky opening in a slate metal maw that swallows only the unsayable in each of us, what’s left? Even the hidden nowhere river … | Continue reading
Charles Foster in Literary Review: If a cow said, ‘Don’t eat me’, we wouldn’t. We seem to regard the capacity for language (by which we mean our kind of language) as evidence of moral significance. But do animals talk? Many traditions assume they do, and understanding animal talk … | Continue reading
Scott Aaronson at Shtetl-Optimized: Now, as far as I can tell, the empirical questions of whether AI will achieve and surpass human performance at all tasks, take over civilization from us, threaten human existence, etc. are logically distinct from the philosophical question of w … | Continue reading
Alex Bronzini-Vender at Public Books: The epigraph of Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel The Camp of the Saints is a quote from the British expatriate novelist and travel writer Lawrence Durrell: “My spirit turns more and more toward the West, toward the old heritage. There are, perhaps, … | Continue reading
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Miryam Naddaf in Nature: An analysis of around 1,500 blood proteins has identified biomarkers that can be used to predict the risk of developing dementia up to 15 years before diagnosis. The findings, reported today in Nature Aging1, are a step towards a tool that scientists have … | Continue reading
Christina Turner in PBS News Hour: When Tina Turner, years before she became rock ‘n’ roll royalty, lent her iconic voice to Phil Spector’s “River Deep, Mountain High” in 1966, the single ranked at No. 3 on the UK charts. But, on U.S. Billboard charts that same year, it didn’t ge … | Continue reading
A New National Anthem The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets red glare” and then there are the bombs. (Always, always, there is war and bombs.) Once, I sang it at homecoming an … | Continue reading
Dan Piepenbring at n+1: SOMETIMES I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE I had the good fortune of being alive between 11:59:59 PM on December 31, 1999 and 12:00:00 AM on January 1, 2000. Of all the times to exist! It felt momentous then, when I was 13, and it still does: a state of perfect rollo … | Continue reading
Stuart Jeffries at Literary Review: When Hannah Arendt looked at the man wearing an ill-fitting suit in the bulletproof dock inside a Jerusalem courtroom in 1961, she saw something different from everybody else. The prosecution, writes Lyndsey Stonebridge, ‘saw an ancient crime i … | Continue reading
by Richard Farr At first, the countless violations of the law by our new rulers still caused a degree of disquiet. But among the incomprehensible features of those months, my father later recalled, was the fact that soon life went on as if such crimes were the most natural thing … | Continue reading
Making Way —Narragansett Bay —1960, first time out We part from pier slow as disengaging lovers one landlocked, the other a floater who won’t be kept at bay The diminishing dock slides back, its bollards and planks deploy to some other place not here —to a distancing otherworld T … | Continue reading
by Mike Bendzela Mother used to say to me when I was growing up, “Mikey, you’re going places! Thursday’s child has far to go!” She was referring to Thursday, February 18, 1960 and the traditional English nursery rhyme. She didn’t seem to realize that “has far to go” could mean “p … | Continue reading
Amy Sherald. They Call me Redbone but I’d Rather Be Strawberry Shortcake, 2009. Oil on canvas. More here, here, and here. | Continue reading
by Andrea Scrima In November 2023, in an essay for the German national newspaper die taz, I wrote that Germany’s Jews were once again afraid for their lives. It was—and is—a shameful state of affairs, considering that the country has invested heavily in coming to terms with its f … | Continue reading
by Mark Harvey In fiction, there is one story that never gets old: the good man or good woman who is imprisoned or abused, but through strength of character and the force of justice retakes their rightful place in the world. It can be the story of a woman violated by a man or deg … | Continue reading
To Javed My Son — on receiving his first hand-written letter in London by Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) Create your own place in the world of love New time new morning new evening Listen to the divine within you Like a hawk searching for live prey Learn the language of a rose — Ins … | Continue reading
by David J. Lobina Well, first post of the year, and a new-year-resolution unkept. Unsurprising, really. In my last entry of 2023, I drew attention to the various series of posts I have written at 3 Quarks Daily since 2021, many of which did not proceed in order, creating a bit o … | Continue reading
Walking above the village of Schalders in the South Tyrol on Saturday morning. | Continue reading
by Carol A Westbrook The Supreme Court is poised to make another landmark decision this year, when it determines if it will uphold a Texas Federal court’s ruling that invalidates the FDA’s (U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s) updated labeling of the abortion pill mifepristone (p … | Continue reading
Leon Vlieger at The Inquisitive Biologist: In this second foray into the biology of death, I will examine programmed cell death or PCD. You might have heard of the process of apoptosis, but, as the previously reviewed The Biology of Death mentioned, this is just one of many ways … | Continue reading
Gísli Pálsson at Literary Hub: In 1858, the great auk (Pinguinus impennis) was reported to be in serious decline. William Proctor, keeper of the bird collection at Durham University, had traveled to Iceland in 1833 and 1837, partly in order to seek out great auks, but reported th … | Continue reading
Anthony Alessandrini in the Los Angeles Review of Books: The Rebel’s Clinic thus enters an already crowded field. But given Fanon’s continuing influence, from the seminar room to social media to the streets, few would object to another effort to tell the story of his extraordinar … | Continue reading
Samuel Moyn in Granta: Gerontocracy is as old as the world. For millennia, to greater or lesser degrees, it has been the default principle of governance, from ancient Greek city-states to the Soviet republics. Though there have been exceptions, when you look for gerontocracy toda … | Continue reading
Adam Kotsko in Slate: Recent years have seen successive waves of book bans in Republican-controlled states, aimed at pulling any text with “woke” themes from classrooms and library shelves. Though the results sometimes seem farcical, as with the banning of Art Spiegelman’s Maus d … | Continue reading
From Zarastro Art: Black women artists have encountered several challenges throughout history due to their color and gender. They have demonstrated incredible tenacity and determination in the face of obstacles given by the predominance of white male artists, making vital contrib … | Continue reading
Coffee Shop in the late Afternoon The beautiful woman gone leaving the shop to young men making their way in the January world with cell phones and computers – and me. Outside, a sunny day. too warm for the season. A phone rings – a barista calls out “Tall vanilla soy latte.” Str … | Continue reading
Rithika Ramamurthy and Ajay Singh Chaudhary in Non-Profit Quarterly: Rithika Ramamurthy: I want to talk about the central concept of your book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World. That is: exhaustion. Can you tell us how the term works across the material, ps … | Continue reading
Over at the podcast LARB Radio Hour: Adam Shatz speaks with Kate Wolf and Eric Newman about his latest book, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon. The book is both a biography of Fanon—one of the most important thinkers on race and colonialism of the last c … | Continue reading
Anna Kornbluh in e-Flux: On January 1, 2024, the best-selling author and motivational lifestyler Gabby Bernstein launched a New Year’s “Manifesting Challenge”: “If you think it, it will come.” To “manifest” is to make evident, obvious, plain. For the self-help thought leaders and … | Continue reading
Laura Raicovich and Laura Hanna in The New York Times: Ask any workers in the nonprofit arts sector — maybe after they have had a few drinks — and they will tell you that arts funding in this country is a mess. Here’s an example: At a typical midsize arts institution — a place li … | Continue reading
James Stafford in Dissent: In the next British general election, due to happen within the year, the Labour Party is set to sweep into power after fourteen years in opposition. Its two major rivals, the Conservative Party and the Scottish National Party (SNP), have imploded in sca … | Continue reading
Tom Crewe in The Guardian: Oscar Wilde always imposed. Meeting him in 1892, the French writer Jules Renard reported: “He offers you a cigarette, but selects it himself. He does not walk around a table: he moves the table out of the way … He is enormous, and carries an enormous ca … | Continue reading
More here. (Note: In honor of Black History Month, at least one post will be devoted to its 2024 theme of “African Americans and the Arts” throughout the month of February) | Continue reading
Stephanie Merritt at The Guardian: In 1519, the German scholar Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa intervened to secure the release of a poor woman accused of witchcraft by a zealous inquisitor, who claimed that such women conceive children by demons. “Is this how theology is done nowaday … | Continue reading
Stephen Buoro at the NYT: Lagos is an experience of a lifetime. The city will enchant and wreck you. The bedlam. The 15-minute journeys that stretch to five hours because of traffic jams. The multitudes everywhere you turn, each individual fizzing with hope and energy and stories … | Continue reading
—two small poems: Lady The Universe is a lady Holding within her the unborn light— Our Lady, Nostre Dame. It is fitting that Nostradamus could predict the future. That is a function of our lady, We the tealeaves. —by Jack Kerouac A Man Said to the Universe A man said to the unive … | Continue reading
Sarah Scoles at Undark: Nuclear weapons laboratories don’t often help solve serial-killer cases. But in the investigation of Efren Saldivar, data from such a lab provided the clinching evidence that led to his conviction on six counts of murder. As a respiratory therapist at Glen … | Continue reading
Nora Bradford in Quanta: But is your brain active even when you’re zoning out on the couch? The answer, researchers have found, is yes. Over the past two decades they’ve defined what’s known as the default mode network, a collection of seemingly unrelated areas of the brain that … | Continue reading