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☆ A Millennial Weaver Carries a Centuries-Old Craft Forward
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( Patricia Leigh Brown | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Spiders are weavers. The Navajo artist and weaver Melissa Cody knows this palpably. It also infuses “Melissa Cody: Webbed Skies,” the first major solo exhibition of the artist’s work, which is on view at MoMA PS1 through Sept. 9. in a co-production with the São Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil (known as MASP). The exhibition is part of the overdue recognition of Indigenous artists by museums and other institutions, from the recent retrospective of Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art to the expanding roster of artists at the Venice Biennale. Cody, 41, is a millennial at the forefront of an art form harking back millenniums — at once building on tradition and joyously venturing beyond it.

Persons: Melissa Cody, Man, Jaune Organizations: MoMA, São Paulo Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American, Venice Biennale Locations: Brazil, Venice, Cody

☆ Opinion | Seeking Answers on Israel and Palestine
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-08 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Zionist leaders of 1947 accepted this partition. The war that Hamas began on Oct. 7 was not in pursuit of a future state in which Jews and Arabs would coexist. It was a violent expression of the idea that Mr. Baconi expresses in more polite but nonetheless clear terms, that the presence of Jews in their ancestral and historical homeland is fundamentally illegitimate. Neil SchlugerBronxTo the Editor:Tareq Baconi argues against a two-state solution, considering it a ploy for continued Israeli domination. Yet he fails to articulate an alternative amenable to both Israelis and Palestinians.

Persons: Tareq Baconi, “, Baconi, Neil Schluger Organizations: Hamas Locations: Jerusalem

☆ No One Has Ever Read Genesis Like This
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-06 | by ( Francis Spufford | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

READING GENESIS, by Marilynne RobinsonMarilynne Robinson’s “Reading Genesis” is a writer’s book, not a scholar’s; it has no footnotes. Its power lies in the particular reading it gives us of one of the world’s foundational texts, which is also one of the foundations of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s mind and faith. We want to know what Robinson thinks of Genesis for the same reason we’d want to know what Tolstoy thought of it. The spirit of God moves on the face of the waters, and eventually, far off in Idaho, the novelist’s bedsheets stir. But the surprising thing about “Reading Genesis,” given that it’s by a writer who can make even nonbelievers feel the presence of the thing they disbelieve, is that it is hardly interested in the numinous.

Persons: Marilynne Robinson, Robinson, Genesis, Tolstoy, Gilead, Jacob, sideshows, herdsmen, ” Locations: Idaho

☆ ‘Dune: Part Two’: Here’s Everything You Need to Know
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-29 | by ( Danielle Dowling | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Dune” is set about 20,000 years in the future, and much of the series takes place on the desert planet of Arrakis. Part of the galactic empire of the Imperium, which is ruled by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam, Arrakis is vital because it offers a necessary resource — spice — that exists nowhere else. In “Part One,” the emperor transferred control of Arrakis from the brutes of House Harkonnen to their longtime foes, House Atreides. “Part Two” opens with the words “Power over spice is power over all.” After a religious revolt against robots millenniums before the start of the series, the use of intelligent machines was banned. The resource is particularly crucial to the navigators, who enable interstellar travel.

Persons: Shaddam, Harkonnen, Atreides, Duke Leto Atreides, Arrakis, Leto’s, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, Stellan, Leto, millenniums

☆ Locust Swarms Could Expand Their Range in a Hotter, Stormier World
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-14 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Rising temperatures could expand the area of the globe under threat from crop-devouring locusts by up to 25 percent in the coming decades, a new study found, as more places experience the cycles of drought and torrential rain that give rise to biblical swarms of the insects. Desert locusts for millenniums have been the scourge of farmers across northern Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. They love hot, dry conditions, but they need the occasional downpour to moisten the soil in which they incubate their eggs. Human-caused warming is heating up the locusts’ home turf and intensifying sporadic rains there. That is exposing new parts of the region to potential infestations, according to the study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

Persons: ” Organizations: National University of Singapore Locations: Africa, East, South Asia

☆ The A.I. Economy Will Make Jobs More Human - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-14 | by ( Aneesh Raman | Maria Flynn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

There have been just a handful of moments over the centuries when we have experienced a huge shift in the skills our economy values most. Technical and data skills that have been highly sought after for decades appear to be among the most exposed to advances in artificial intelligence. But other skills, particularly the people skills that we have long undervalued as “soft,” will very likely remain the most durable. In today’s knowledge economy, many students are focused on gaining technical skills because those skills are seen as the most competitive when it comes to getting a good job. For decades, we have viewed those jobs as “future-proof” given the growth of technology companies and the fact that engineering majors land the highest-paying jobs.

Organizations: Workers

☆ A New Creature Emerges From a Forest Drowned by the Gulf of Mexico
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-06 | by ( Veronique Greenwood | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

But this mussel was tiny and pale and, strangest of all, lived a mere 60 feet or so down. Dr. Distel and his colleagues discovered the mussel while they were investigating an ancient underwater forest off the coast of Alabama. During the last ice age, bald cypresses grew in what was then a swamp a hundred miles from the ocean. Then, sometime between 45,000 and 70,000 years ago, as sea levels rose, the trees were swallowed by the advancing sea. For millenniums, all was still in the forest, until heavy waves stirred up by one of the hurricanes of 2004 scooped away the sand.

Persons: Dan Distel, wasn’t, Distel, Vadumodiolus, cypresses, Ben Raines Organizations: Genome, Northeastern University Locations: Boston, Alabama, Gulf of Mexico

☆ The Wild Beauty of Moss
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-21 | by ( Jenny Comita | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

And yet moss — unassuming and literally underfoot — has long been overlooked by Western naturalists. In fact, some of the most popular plants known as moss are not actually mosses (Irish moss belongs to the carnation family; Spanish moss is a bromeliad). SOPHIA MORENO-BUNGE, the founder of the Los Angeles floral design studio Isa Isa, especially enjoys working with Spanish moss around the holidays. In Los Angeles, moss can be hard to come by, but farther north, it’s a defining element of the landscape. The Portland, Ore.-based floral designer Françoise Weeks uses several types to create her abstract woodland wall sculptures, which also feature curling bark, dried seed pods and wildflowers.

Persons: Emily Thompson, “ Moss, ”, “, they’ve, Wall Kimmerer, Moss, Kimmerer, SOPHIA MORENO, BUNGE, Isa Isa, Maurice Sendak, Kelly Wearstler, Françoise Weeks, Weeks Organizations: New York Locations: Kingdom, New York, Angeles, Los Angeles, Portland, Pacific

☆ How to Apply Lipstick the Right Way
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-20 | by ( Caitie Kelly | More About Caitie Kelly | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

Lipstick has been used, in various forms, for millenniums, but the struggle to make its color last has, seemingly, existed for just as long. “I have clients run a really hot washcloth over their lips,” explains Daniel Martin, a makeup artist and the global director of artistry and education at the beauty brand Tatcha. Begin by tracing the very edge of your lips with the pencil then color in the outline you’ve created. Martin, on the other hand, prefers to apply liner after lipstick, to touch up the edges. Apply Lipstick — Then Apply Again“You want a color that will stain,” explains the makeup artist Gucci Westman, who is partial to the tomato and fuchsia hues in her namesake brand’s Lip Suede: Les Rouges palette ($85).

Persons: ”, Jenn Streicher, Duchess, sloughing, Daniel Martin, Martin, butters, Chanel, Tasha Reiko Brown, pesky, Le, Gucci Westman, Matte, Madame Locations: Egypt, New York

☆ Opinion | Why Jews Cannot Stop Shaking Right Now
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-22 | by ( Dara Horn | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +6 min

There is a reason so many Jews cannot stop shaking right now. The concept of intergenerational trauma doesn’t begin to describe the dark place into which this month’s attack plunged Jewish communities around the world. Many American Jews, like Jews around the world, are descendants of those who survived. As was true in ancient times, the ties between global Jewish communities and Israel are concrete, specific, intimate and personal. Millions of American Jews, not to mention Jews in Britain, France, Australia and elsewhere, have friends and relatives in Israel.

Persons: Leo Frank, hadn’t, Israel, We’ve Organizations: Spanish, New Jersey Jewish, State Department Locations: Israel, Yom Kippur, Baghdad, Ukraine, Georgia, Spanish, Lodz, Kyiv, Aleppo, Tehran, New Jersey, Ofakim, Britain, France, Australia

☆ Until 3183 A.D., This Public Sculpture Is a Work in Progress
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-14 | by ( Richard Fisher | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

One of the biggest sticking points was the use of concrete, which some residents found ugly and drab, Barbara Laber said. He may have been seeking to make time itself more concrete, more tangible, Schlecht said. In the late 20th century, Laber was not the only German artist exploring time’s reach across generations. Since then, several other long-term art projects have begun across Europe and beyond. But Michael Münker, whose day job is running a medical device firm in the Netherlands, recently established a network called L.T.A.P.

Persons: Barbara Laber, “, Klaus Schlecht, Laber, Schlecht, Joseph Beuys, Bogomir Ecker, Michael Münker Organizations: Pyramid Foundation, Hamburger Kunsthalle Locations: Kassel, Germany, Hamburger, Hamburg, Europe, Halberstadt, Dutch, Oxfordshire, England, Texas, Netherlands

☆ Land Art Today, Beyond Cowboys With Bulldozers
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-04 | by ( Travis Diehl | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I’m standing in a fallow field on the edge of the San Luis Valley, in south-central Colorado. To the east, beyond a windbreak of tough old trees, the Great Sand Dunes rise against the mountains, where for millenniums this same wind has piled up this same sandy soil. Its creator, the French artist Marguerite Humeau, 36, thinks a lot about extinction. They clack and whistle in the stronger gusts. But the land itself is the work.

Persons: Marguerite Humeau, “, ” Locations: San Luis Valley, Colorado, Denver, French

☆ Searching for the ‘People’s Spelling Alphabet’
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-28 | by ( Sam Corbin | More About Sam Corbin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Phonetic alphabets, also known as spelling alphabets, came to prominence on the global stage in the mid-20th century, as world wars made urgent the need for clear, quick and secretive communication among Allied forces. The NATO Alphabet we know today (which begins with Alfa, Bravo, Charlie) was adopted officially in 1956 by the International Civil Aviation Organization, after earlier iterations such as the Able Baker alphabet proved inadequate. In a version used briefly by the British Royal Army, the spelling alphabet begins with Ack, Beer, which is what I say when I realize I’ve shown up empty-handed to a party. The NATO alphabet remains ubiquitous in ceremony — it comes up often in The New York Times’s crossword entries — but in practice, it’s somewhat niche. When was the last time you clarified the letter “Y” by saying “Yankee” instead of something like “yellow” or “yes”?

Persons: “, Charlie, Able Baker Organizations: Allied, NATO, Alfa, Bravo, International Civil Aviation Organization, British Royal Army Locations: Babel, Beer, New

AQUIFERS AQUIFERS AQUIFERS WASH. MAINE MONT. MONITORING WELLS MONITORING WELLS MONITORING WELLS WASH. MAINE MONT. FLA. DECLINING WELLS DECLINING WELLS DECLINING WELLS WASH. MAINE MONT. FLA. UNCHARTED WATERS America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow Overuse is draining and damaging aquifers nationwide, a New York Times data investigation revealed. Groundwater level trends Rising Declining Groundwater level trends Rising Declining Groundwater level trends Rising Declining Groundwater level trends Rising Declining Note: Colors depict the median trend for each site over the previous 20 years.

☆ A Fight to Save Soldiers, From the Lab to the Battlefield
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-26 | by ( Tom Mueller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Charles Barber’s “In the Blood” treats a consequential topic, and contains moments of real insight, drama and humor. Trouble is, Barber opens with several omissions and slights that left me on edge for the balance of the book. Barber begins his story about catastrophic bleeding and the urgent search for a cure, appropriately enough, in the savage battle for Mogadishu in 1993. More glaringly, the Army Rangers described on the raid actually played a supporting role to commandos from Delta Force, which Barber never mentions. Yet I wanted to trust this book, because it tells an important story in vivid, engrossing terms.

Persons: Charles Barber Reading, Charles Barber’s “, Barber, Mohamed Aidid’s, Aidid Organizations: U.S . Army, Army Rangers, Delta Force, millenniums, Navy Locations: Mogadishu, Somali, Bethesda

☆ Starving Orcas and the Fate of Alaska’s Disappearing King Salmon
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Julia O Malley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Some scientists say that even if the ocean were full of king salmon, the Southern Residents would still be in trouble. But the ocean won’t be full of king salmon. In the Pacific Northwest and California, wild salmon runs have been decimated by dams, agricultural pollution and hatchery programs that harmed stocks of wild fish. While the troller lawsuit makes its way through the appeals process, the Wild Fish Conservancy said it will encourage consumers to stop eating wild king salmon from Alaska’s troll fishery and petition to have many of that state’s king runs listed as endangered. Wild salmon survived for millenniums in rivers across the globe, through the earth’s warming and cooling cycles, but over the last few hundred years, they’ve disappeared from all but a few places on earth.

Persons: ”, Emma Helverson, they’ve Organizations: Southern Residents, Fish Conservancy, Alaska Department of Fish Locations: Pacific Northwest, California, Alaska

☆ Big Histories for the Big Future
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( Francis Fukuyama | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Worse, the path to safety is not clear; simply getting past the next election without the democratic system grinding to a halt seems like a big achievement. Both authors had predicted, by a decade or more, that a period of great crisis would arrive around 2020, though neither foresaw a pandemic. He proposes a cyclical scheme of societal rise and subsequent disintegration based on a “wealth pump,” whereby elites get richer and ever more entrenched. Inequality, if left unchecked, grows to the point that the system fragments and has to be rebuilt from the ground up. Such is the situation today in America, where oligarchy has become so extreme that a huge redistribution of power needs to take place.

Persons: Neil Howe, Peter Turchin, Neil Howe’s “, Peter Turchin’s Organizations: Elites Locations: Ukraine, America

☆ The Grand Canyon, a Cathedral to Time, Is Losing Its River
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Raymond Zhong | Elena Shao | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +19 min

And yet, the Grand Canyon remains yoked to the present in one key respect. The Colorado River, whose wild energy incised the canyon over millions of years, is in crisis. Down beneath the tourist lodges and shops selling keychains and incense, past windswept arroyos and brown valleys speckled with agave, juniper and sagebrush, the rocks of the Grand Canyon seem untethered from time. The Grand Canyon is a planetary spectacle like none other — one that also happens to host a river that 40 million people rely on for water and power. At Mile 0 of the Grand Canyon, the river is running at around 7,000 cubic feet per second, rising toward 9,000 — not the lowest flows on record, but far from the highest.

Persons: windswept, Davis, John Weisheit, ”, “, Mead Hoover, Powell, Daniel Ostrowski, Victor R, Baker, . Baker, Lake Powell, Dr, Ed Keable, wouldn’t, Jack Schmidt, Schmidt, ’, Alma Wilcox, “ There’s, we’ve, Nicholas Pinter Organizations: Rockies, York Times, University of California, Utah Glen, Lake, Mead, Recreation, Hualapai, CALIF, ARIZ . Utah Glen, Lake Mead, Area, Forest Utah, Engineers, University of Arizona, of Reclamation, National Park Service, Center, Colorado River Studies, Utah State University Locations: Colorado, The Colorado, North America, Utah, Powell, Lake Mead, Arizona, . UTAH COLO, N.M, ARIZ . Utah, Mead, NEV . UTAH COLO, Glen, ARIZ, Hopi, Nevada, Lake Powell, Arizona , California , Nevada, Mexico, Davis, Little Colorado, tamarisk, gesturing

☆ Opinion: Happiness is a trap. Here’s what to pursue instead
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Opinion Monica C. Parker | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +10 min

Monica C. Parker Elena RossiniBetween chief happiness officers, the Happy Planet Index, Gross National Happiness, and the World Happiness Report (Finland scored the highest again this year), it seems as though happiness has some good PR. This one is: What if we’re so fixated on happiness that we’ve failed to question whether happiness is what we should be pursuing? We resist negative emotions such as sadness or fear at our peril. Even better than embracing your negative emotions is embracing both positive and negative emotions at the same time. Wonder makes us less stressed and feel like we have more time.

☆ The Dnipro River, Axis of Life and Death in Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Nicole Tung | Marc Santora | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The thunder of artillery echoes night and day over the mighty Dnipro River as it winds its way through southern Ukraine. With Russian and Ukrainian forces squared off on opposite banks, fighters have replaced fishermen, surveillance drones circle overhead and mines line the marshy embankments. Carving an arc through Ukraine from its northern border to the Black Sea, through Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, the Dnipro shapes the country’s geography and economy, its culture and its very identity. And now it helps define the contours of battle — as it has for millenniums, a barrier and a conduit to warring Scythians, Greeks, Vikings, Huns, Cossacks, Russians, Germans and many more. Visiting towns and villages along the Dnipro a year after Russia’s full-scale invasion and ahead of a much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive, Nicole Tung, a photographer for The New York Times, traveled a path marked by hope and horror, joy and sorrow.

☆ Rome, Sacred Ground for Nearly 3,000 Years, and Counting
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( David Laskin | Martin Pauer | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“There is not a corner of it that is not full of our cults and our gods.”Rome, in a sense, has been sacred ground right from the start. To many, Rome is the epicenter of Catholicism, the seat of the Vatican and home to a seemingly infinite number of churches. Rome has sheltered polytheistic pagans and monotheistic Jews, adherents of Middle Eastern cults, and, in more recent times, a sizable multinational Muslim community. All have left traces — altars, temples, shrines, mosques, inscriptions — some hauntingly beautiful, others erased to stubs. But Rome and its environs conceal many holy places beyond the ken of the Bible.

☆ Legendary Female Artists on the Younger Women Who Inspire Them
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +20 min

The Artist’s Mind What it feels like for female artists to wrestle with ambition, ego, ambivalence and inheritance. That isolation has, historically, been especially true for women artists, some of the most celebrated of whom have seen “writer” or “painter” or “filmmaker” treated as a secondary part of their identity. For this issue, we asked legendary female artists to tell us about a younger woman whose work excites them and gives them hope. But for the current generation of women artists, who have come of age with models who more closely resemble them, identity seems more like a source of community than a trap. Women artists, born into a Babylon of exclusion and possibility, reveal that creative inheritance is as promiscuous as legal inheritance is strict.

☆ The Threads That Bind Us
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Peggy Orenstein | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I wondered if the commentator knew its origin: coloring sheep fleece rather than spun thread to reduce fading. The princess in “Sleeping Beauty” pricks her finger (on a spindle, on flax, on a wool comb) in the Middle East, South America and across Europe. Perhaps inspired by the molasses months of lockdown when so many found comfort in needlework, a trendlet of books has emerged celebrating the fiber arts. She drags him to an embroidery class at the local library that seems, at first, beyond his abilities. The needle that looks like a “tiger’s tooth” bites his finger, then bites it again.

☆ $14 billion Schonfeld is launching a new credit unit as the hedge fund continues its growth tear
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-28 | by ( Alyson Velati | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

$14 billion Schonfeld Strategic Advisors has rolled out a credit unit within its new macro trading business that launched earlier this year. Silverman and Aubrey joined in July and August, respectively, following Anchorage shutting its $7.4 billion hedge fund last December. The expanding credit business is part of Schonfeld's recent growth tear. In January, the firm is rolling out long/short credit strategies across the credit quality spectrum in the US and plans to add APAC and EMEA strategies over time. The HFRI Asset Weighted Index gained 1.1% for September, increasing the year-to-date return to 3.8%, according to Hedge Fund Research data.

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