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Art of Craft is a series about specialists whose work rises to the level of art. Are blacksmiths going extinct in America? Not according to Craig Kaviar, a prominent practitioner of the craft who is based in Louisville, Ky. If anything, he said, “there’s been a revival.”The industrial revolution rendered a lot of traditional blacksmith work — making hammers, nails, axes, shovels and more — obsolete. But blacksmiths like Mr. Kaviar, 69, have found success creating so-called “functional art.” Mr. Kaviar, for instance, is regionally known for making handrails forged with leaves and birds that have a rough-hewed, borderline macabre design evocative of the work of sculptors like Louise Bourgeois.

☆ Build in the Suburbs, Solve the Housing Crisis
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-12 | by ( Ginia Bellafante | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Unlike the Levittowns of 1957, these early suburbs were not as homogeneous, because the wealthy people who lived there were so reliant on domestic labor. The more vaporous claim that density threatens a certain “way of life” requires us to ask: What way? In 1960, during the high period of the ranch house, 44 percent of American households were made up of married couples with children. During the same period, the proportion of households containing only a single individual more than doubled, to 28 percent. In 2010, the population of Nassau County was 66 percent white; now it is 57 percent white.

☆ ‘Chile ’76’ Review: Resistance and Paranoia Under Pinochet
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Kyle Smith | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Aline Küppenheim Photo: Kino LorberA woman is choosing colors in a paint store when there’s a disturbance outside. After some sounds of struggle and another, unseen woman crying out, everything goes silent again. There is an awkward pause. Then customers and clerks carry on with their business. None of them discuss what they have just heard.

☆ ‘Chile ’76’ Review: Domestic Unease That Twists Into Intrigue
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Teo Bugbee | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 1973, the socialist government of Chile was overthrown by a military junta led by Gen‌‌. Thousands were killed, and hundreds of thousands fled the country under Pinochet’s dictatorship, which lasted for 17 years and was maintained through violence. The protagonist of “Chile ’76” is Carmen (Aline Küppenheim), a regal woman of middle age. She’s a grandmother and a career flight attendant who now lives a comfortably bourgeois lifestyle with her husband in Santiago. Carmen occupies her time alone with charitable work, guided by the sanguine priest of the town, Father Sánchez (Hugo Medina).

☆ Is Annie Ernaux the Most Brutally Honest Writer Alive?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Rachel Cusk | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

I listened on the radio to an astronaut reading passages aloud from Marguerite Duras from his space station to his earthbound audience below. Then, last October, the writer Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first Frenchwoman ever to do so. We had been in France for nearly two years, and amid the alternating sensations of regeneration and disarray that this upheaval had inevitably incurred, Annie Ernaux had come to represent for me a troubling point of constancy. Despite the differences — of nationality, generation, social class, familial situation — between my own life and that of Annie Ernaux, I found myself plunged as I read into a more and more profound state of recognition. She believed in writing as some people believe in religion, as a sphere where the self, the soul, is entitled to find refuge.

☆ Is Tom Ford Saying Farewell to Fashion With His Surprise ‘Final Collection’?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Vanessa Friedman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On Wednesday, he dropped a surprise “final collection” (according to a news release) in the form of three short videos by the photographer Steven Klein. The videos came unaccompanied by any statement, and Mr. Ford declined requests for comment. Neither Estée Lauder nor Zegna, which has the license for Tom Ford fashion, could be reached for comment. Still, the collection answered the question that had been hanging over the brand since its sale in November: Would Mr. Ford stay or go? Rumor has it that Peter Hawkings, Mr. Ford’s longtime men’s wear designer, is getting the job.

☆ EU takes on United States, Asia with chip subsidy plan
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Foo Yun Chee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BRUSSELS, April 18 (Reuters) - The European Union on Tuesday agreed a 43 billion euro ($47 billion) plan for its semiconductor industry in an attempt to catch up with the United States and Asia and start a green industrial revolution. The EU Chips Act, proposed by the European Commission last year and confirmed by Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, aims to double the bloc's share of global chip output to 20% by 2030 and follows the U.S. CHIPS for America Act. "We need chips to power digital and green transitions or healthcare systems," Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said in a tweet. Since the announcement of its chips subsidies plan last year, the EU has already attracted more than 100 billion euros in public and private investments, an EU official said. While the Commission had originally proposed funding only cutting-edge chip plants, EU governments and lawmakers have widened the scope to cover the whole value chain, including older chips and research and design facilities.

☆ This Isn't What Millennial Middle Age Was Supposed to Look Like - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Jessica Grose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +25 min

Things have been difficult for her family, she says, but one thing she isn’t worried about: a midlife crisis, looming just over the horizon. One of our questions was about whether they had experienced a midlife crisis and how they would define the term. Many people said they felt they couldn’t be having a midlife crisis, because there was no bourgeois numbness to rebel against. “Who has midlife crisis money?”The traditional midlife crisis, as presented in popular culture, at least, unfolds amid suburban ennui. We just increase our Lexapro.”Was the midlife crisis ever even real?

☆ The world's oldest person made it to 122—3 reasons she lived so long, from a longevity expert who knew her
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Renée Onque | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

However, there are some aspects of her life that likely contributed to her ability to live so long, he says. But before her passing, Calment met and discussed her life with Jean-Marie Robine, an expert demographer who studies the links between health and longevity. Jeanne Calment, a French woman, achieved an incredible feat of living to age 122, thus earning the honor of being the world's oldest person on record. She didn't smoke cigarettes until much later in lifeUntil marriage, Calment was not allowed to smoke, says Robine. Interestingly enough, Calment didn't smoke for most of her life, but picked up the habit at around age 112 while living in a nursing home.

☆ The Ayahuasca Diaries
▼ + stars: | 2022-06-26 | by ( Mattathias Schwartz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +37 min

But please understand: I didn't drink ayahuasca so I could write an article about it. I wrote an article about it so I could drink ayahuasca. I was desperate to drink ayahuasca — I had been for several months, in fact — and the formality of an assignment would help me out at home. Instead, a friend of a friend linked me up with an ayahuasca sangha, a Buddhist word for a spiritual community. I thought of my old friend, Scott, who, many years before, had declined an opportunity to drink ayahuasca.

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