Sy Montgomery in Orion Magazine:

ON AN UNSEASONABLY WARM day in the middle of March, I traveled from New Hampshire to the moist, dim sanctuary of the New England Aquarium, hoping to touch an alternate reality. I came to meet Athena, the aquarium’s forty-pound, five-foot-long, two-and-a-half-year-old giant Pacific octopus.

For me, it was a momentous occasion. I have always loved octopuses. No sci-fi alien is so startlingly strange. Here is someone who, even if she grows to one hundred pounds and stretches more than eight feet long, could still squeeze her boneless body through an opening the size of an orange; an animal whose eight arms are covered with thousands of suckers that taste as well as feel; a mollusk with a beak like a parrot and venom like a snake and a tongue covered with teeth; a creature who can shape-shift, change color, and squirt ink. But most intriguing of all, recent research indicates that octopuses are remarkably intelligent.

Many times I have stood mesmerized by an aquarium tank, wondering, as I stared into the horizontal pupils of an octopus’s large, prominent eyes, if she was staring back at me — and if so, what was she thinking?

More here.

Susan Stamberg on NPR:

Two beloved paintings have swapped locations for a while. One went from California to London; the other, from London to California. No passports were involved. But the two museums where the paintings are housed — the Huntington Art Museum near Los Angeles, and London’s National Gallery — are welcoming visitors to see these masterpieces. The best known is a portrait of a rosy-cheeked fellow, maybe 15 years old, in a blue satiny suit with matching blue bows on his shoes.

A British fellow, he’d spent a century in the Huntington, near Pasadena, Calif. When he first left London back in 1921, 90,000 people came to say goodbye. Some wept. Still, he’s had a good run at the Huntington, the star of the museum. “It’s the one thing everybody wants to see,” says the Huntington’s director, Christina Nielsen. And maybe take home images of him, for souvenirs. “There are lamps, pepper grinders, ashtrays,” she says. Thomas Gainsborough’s 1770 painting has been reproduced on all kinds of tchotchkes. And why not? The kid’s adorable, and getting a nice welcome back in England. “Blue Boy, right now, is wowing London audiences,” according to Nielsen.

Meanwhile the National Gallery in London loaned the Huntington one of their most popular 18th century paintings: Joseph Wright of Derby’s massive 1768 work, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. A mad “scientist” — probably a traveling lecturer — with a flowing red robe and glowing long, white hair holds up a big glass bubble. There’s a beautiful white bird inside the bubble. A lid makes the bubble airtight. The experimenter turns the crank on a vacuum pump that’s attached to the jar — stay with me. He pumps out the air. The bird looks distressed.

More here.

Justin E. H. Smith in his Substack newsletter, The Hinternet:

Today’s ‘stack will principally involve “housekeeping”. I said explicitly a week ago that the war in Ukraine has left me literally speechless, and I meant it. I was able to squeeze out some speech a week ago nonetheless, mostly by soldering together various fragments already written, by descending into mean-spiritedness in a vain effort to be funny, by “just saying whatever”. I can’t rely on the strategy of gonzo bricolage week to week, and so today I can only confess the stubborn silence of my “inner voice”, the homunculus who lives inside me and, when things are going right, dictates what I have to say.

This silence may come as a surprise, as I generally both teach and practice insouciance in the face of global crisis — I believe there is a moral imperative to do so: maintaining good spirits both for the sake of one’s own survival and the survival of good spirits themselves, so that the world, when any given crisis has passed, should still know what good spirits are. Although maintained with a solemn air of duty, this insouciance is sometimes received by others as a sign of my simply not caring, and if you receive it in that way you will likely wish to criticize me, now, for finally caring when it comes to the citizens of Kyiv or Mariupol, but not of, say, Syria, Iraq, or Yemen.

More here.

Darwin A Guevarra and Kari A Leibowitz in Psyche:

In a foundational study in 2010, researchers at Harvard Medical School randomised patients experiencing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) symptoms into either an open-label placebo group or a no-treatment control group – and crucially, all the patients knew which group they were in. The researchers told patients in the open-label placebo group that the placebo effect is powerful, that the body can respond automatically to taking placebo pills (similar to the classic conditioning example of Pavlov’s dogs, who salivated at the sound of the dinner bell), that a positive attitude helps but is not required, and that it is vital to take the pills faithfully for the entire 21-day study period, regardless of their belief in the pills. By the end of the study, even though the placebo pills contained no active ingredients, and despite the patients knowing they’d been taking placebos, they reported fewer IBS symptoms and more improvement in overall quality of life than patients in the no-treatment control group.

More here.

Julia Friedman and David Hawkes in Quillette:

We are approaching the first anniversary of a landmark event in the art world. Although it seemed shockingly new last year, it represents the culmination of a trajectory described by Wolfe half a century ago: the de-materialization of art. On March 11th, 2021, a momentous auction was held by Christie’s. It was a dramatic departure from precedent, partly because its realized price was a record-breaking $69,346,250, but mostly because the lot that commanded this fortune was not a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, or even a sculpture by Jeff Koons, but a purely digital artwork by an artist with no prior auction record. Everydays: The First 5000 Days exemplified a brand-new aesthetic genre: it was a Non-Fungible Token (NFT), created by Mike Winkelmann, who works under the pseudonym “Beeple.” Neither of these names meant a thing to the fine art world a year ago. They do now.

More here.

Stephen S. Roach in Project Syndicate:

China can take the initiative in three key areas. For starters, Chinese President Xi Jinping should call for an emergency summit of G20 leaders, focused on achieving an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in this conflict and developing an agenda for a negotiated peace. The G20 is now the recognized forum for global action in the midst of crisis, having galvanized support among the world’s leading economies in late 2008 for a coordinated response to the global financial crisis. Both China and Russia are members, so the G20 can play a similar role today. As a demonstration of his personal commitment to this effort, Xi should break his post-pandemic lockdown protocol (he has not left China in 24 months) and attend the meeting in person – as should Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Second, China can contribute substantially to humanitarian assistance.

More here.

From Phys.Org:

Physicists have discovered a new way to coat soft robots in materials that allow them to move and function in a more purposeful way. The research, led by the UK’s University of Bath, is described today in Science Advances. Authors of the study believe their breakthrough modeling on ‘active matter’ could mark a turning point in the design of robots. With further development of the concept, it may be possible to determine the shape, movement and behavior of a soft solid not by its natural elasticity but by human-controlled activity on its surface.

The surface of an ordinary soft material always shrinks into a sphere. Think of the way water beads into droplets: the beading occurs because the surface of liquids and other soft material naturally contracts into the smallest surface area possible—i.e. a sphere. But active matter can be designed to work against this tendency. An example of this in action would be a rubber ball that’s wrapped in a layer of nano-robots, where the robots are programmed to work in unison to distort the ball into a new, pre-determined shape (say, a star).

It is hoped that active matter will lead to a new generation of machines whose function will come from the bottom up.

More here.

Dave Lindorff in Counterpunch:

Nobody is talking about the blame that must be shouldered by the German government for the crisis and humanitarian disaster in Ukraine.

Sure Russia is guilty of a huge war crime in invading Ukraine. Surely too, the US must be blamed for creating the situation which led Russia and its autocratic leader Vladimir Putin to decide it had to invade to prevent Ukraine from being pulled into the US orbit with the goal that it would ultimately become a base for US offensive weapons — even nuclear weapons — on Russia’s border — something the US would never allow to happen anywhere in its self-proclaimed “backyard” of Latin America and the Caribbean.

But Germany, the largest country in NATO after the US, is almost as guilty for this current war in Europe as is the United States. Germany was only reunified without any difficulty after 45 years of being split in two following World War II, because of a deal struck by the US with Russia in 1990 at which US Secretary of State James Baker stated that NATO would not be expanded “one inch ” eastward past the reunified German border. Now it is widely known that despite having a powerful economy, Germany remains something of a lackey of the US in its foreign policy.

More here.

Customs

The second farthest place that I have been
from anything that you will ever know is
in love. Like this, I mean. Like how when
condors fledge, they leap from icy cliffs then
fly. They ask: Destination? Purpose? I say, Yes,
I wish to have one. Let’s say “South.” Ushuaia,
the land of lagooned mountains, turquoise in
the snow. Let’s say I have a backup answer, but
we will never hear it because I’ll go and I’ll be
gone, like how you went, too—became a time
lapse of the clouds over El Chaltén: just some slow
recording on my phone. That was supposed to be
the time of my life. That was supposed to be when
we got closer. What even is the word explore? Flamingoes
in their craning lines, pink perforations in the sky and salt. Ñandu.
Receding glaciers. Perhaps we should just accept climate change
as a liberation of the water. We’re its savior, returning it to
its rightful salten home. And who was Magellan,
anyway? There are penguins with his name, but
only in colonial tongues, and I call them that. And
you sent me here to learn what a disaster the world is—
has always been because of men like me. See it
all, you said; and I signed on without considering
the finest print: sure to witness disaster. We’ll be
fighting over love and water in our lifetimes.
We’ll squander them like years, but
faster. And even when we have
none left, we’ll still believe
we have the answers.

by Benjamin Faro
from the Ecotheo Review

Marc Lange in Aeon:

In the original Star Trek, with the Starship Enterprise hurtling rapidly downward into the outer atmosphere of a star, Captain James T Kirk orders Lt Commander Montgomery Scott to restart the engines immediately and get the ship to safety. Scotty replies that he can’t do it. It’s not that he refuses to obey the Captain’s order or that he doesn’t happen to know how to restart the engines so quickly. It’s that he knows that doing so is impossible. ‘I can’t change the laws of physics,’ he explains.

We all understand Scotty’s point (although the Enterprise does somehow manage to escape). He cannot break the laws of nature. Nothing can. The natural laws limit what can happen. They are stronger than the laws of any country because it is impossible to violate them. If it is a law of nature that, for example, no object can be accelerated from rest to beyond the speed of light, then it is not merely that such accelerations never occur. They cannot occur.

There are many things that never actually happen but could have happened in that their occurrence would violate no law of nature. For instance, to borrow an example from the philosopher Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953), perhaps in the entire history of the Universe there never was nor ever will be a gold cube larger than one mile on each side. Such a large gold cube is not impossible. It just turns out never to exist.

More here.

Esfandyar Batmanghelidj in War on the Rocks:

In his 1919 work Economic Consequences of the Peace, John Maynard Keynes warns that “the menace of inflationism … is not merely a product of war, of which peace begins the cure. It is a continuing phenomenon of which the end is not yet in sight.” Keynes was commenting on the negotiations that would lead to the Versailles Treaty. Against a backdrop of hunger and despair, the victors of World War I condemned Germany to further sanctions. The treaty’s proponents believed that to prevent a future war, the German economy, a “vast fabric built upon iron, coal, and transport,” needed to be “destroyed.” But Keynes understood that with Germany in a state of perpetual crisis, the European economy would never recover. Tearing up Germany’s fabric would keep Europe on the path to another great war.

Western governments have responded to President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine with an unprecedented sanctions program. President Joe Biden has vowed to sap Russia’s “economic strength and weaken its military for years to come.” Erik Sand and Suzanne Freeman echo Keynes’ warning in this publication, arguing that “there is likely no way to effectively pressure Russia without some increase in the risk of escalation.” Putin may respond to increased economic pressure militarily, but so far he is weighing economic countermeasures. Reports that Russia will ban the export of key commodities for the remainder of the year have rocked global markets given the likely inflationary shock.

More here.

Ron Ivey in American Affairs Journal:

SG—environmental, social, and governance—investing has become one of the fastest growing areas of finance in recent years and increasingly influences capital allocation decisions for investors and firms. But what exactly is ESG, and does its actual impact on a broad group of economic “stakeholders” match its advertising? As ESG funds have grown their assets under management in recent years, ESG invest­ment criteria have, if anything, only become more contested.

Indeed, Bloomberg Businessweek recently revealed that the largest for‑profit accreditation company of corporate environmental and social responsibility, MSCI, does not actually measure a corporation’s impact on society or the environment, but rather assesses how companies are reducing regulatory and brand risks for their shareholders.¹ New York University finance professor Aswath Damodaran recently lamented that the ESG ecosystem is merely a “gravy train” for consultants, ESG fund managers, and investment marketers, leading to little social benefit for stakeholders outside of the self-serving circle of the ESG industry.² Former Facebook executive, SPAC promoter, and Social Capital found­er Chamath Palihapitiya has made an even bolder statement that ESG funds and evaluation agencies like MSCI are fraudulent products.³ He argues that these groups use the veneer of social and environmental responsibility to reduce regulatory oversight for multinational behemoths while allowing them to apply for negative interest rate loans from central banks. From Palihapitiya’s perspective as a venture investor, these “green washed” and “social washed” funds attract investment away from actual businesses that are addressing social and ecological challenges more fundamentally in their business models.

More here.

Ian Black at The Guardian:

In modern times – at least since the mid-19th century – the Old City of Jerusalem has been conventionally described by foreigners as consisting of four distinct quarters: Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Armenian. Matthew Teller, in his highly perceptive and readable book, tells a very different story.

Teller, a freelance journalist and documentary-maker, combines millennia of Jerusalem’s history with insightful interviews with its residents, weaponising that unusual approach to present a subtle portrait of the current reality at the heart of the world’s most intractable and divisive conflict. The Old City is still enclosed by 16th-century walls built by the Ottomans and only started to expand beyond them in the 1860s when Britain, then the rising global superpower, began to take an interest, reinforced by its Protestant Christian identity.

more here.

Peter Richardson at the LARB:

HALF A CENTURY AFTER the publication of Post Office (1971), how should we understand Charles Bukowski’s literary achievement? His publisher predicted that Bukowski would never reach a mainstream audience. And yet his books, including his poetry, have sold millions of copies in more than a dozen languages. Writing for The New Yorker in 2005, Adam Kirsch claims that Bukowski’s liminal status and seedy persona were part of his appeal: “He is one of those writers whom each new reader discovers with a transgressive thrill.” Describing his verse as “pulp poetry,” Kirsch also notes the author’s penchant for autobiography. “Bukowski’s poems are best appreciated not as individual verbal artifacts but as ongoing installments in the tale of his true adventures, like a comic book or a movie serial,” he observes. “They are strongly narrative, drawing from an endless supply of anecdotes that typically involve a bar, a skid-row hotel, a horse race, a girlfriend, or any permutation thereof.” That combination made a strong impression on readers. “The effect is as though some legendary tough guy, a cross between Philip Marlowe and Paul Bunyan, were to take the barstool next to you, buy a round, and start telling his life story.”

more here.

The Review’s Review from The Paris Review:

“Living in America during the Reagan years had the same disorientation as a texture dream,” writes David Wojnarowicz in Close to the Knives, “that sense you get at times lying with your face against the sheets with your eye open, millimeters away from the microscopic weave of the linen, and suddenly your body freezes up and your eye is locked into the universe of textures and threads and weaves, and for an extended moment you can’t shake yourself from the hallucination.” The political subterfuge of the Reagan years is the subject, too, of Maxe Crandall’s recent poem-novel, The Nancy Reagan Collection. Published by Futurepoem in 2020, it’s a mercurial archive of the Reagans’ silence on AIDS and the era’s innumerable other devastating failures, among them Iran-Contra and the expansion of the war on drugs. In high-camp imagined encounters with Nancy Reagan, Crandall deftly traces the era’s iconography of concealment—Nancy in her immutable trademark red, her high-necked collar, her tartan blazer, her little nautical blouse, her gloves—as he lists the names of friends and public figures dead from AIDS and its complications. Grief and rage churn at the center of these encounters, each of them shaped by speculative archival work and a biting queer sensibility. It’s a beautifully inventive experiment in historiography and a reminder of the enduring political aesthetics of obfuscation and silence: the particular politeness that meets with mass death. And like everything Futurepoem puts out, as an object it’s gorgeous—bright red, impossible to miss. —Oriana Ullman 

More here.

William Deresiewicz in UnHerd:

One summer afternoon when I was 23 — this was in 1987 — I was twiddling the dial on the radio in the apartment I was subletting on 114th St. when I stumbled on a station that was unlike anything that I had ever heard before. They were in the middle of a story about the Appalachian Trail, profiling some of the people who were hiking its two thousand miles that year. The reporting was calm, patient, intelligent, allowing the subject to find its own shape, unfolding slowly, minute after minute, like the trail itself.

What is this, I thought? What portal had I fallen through? I’d been raised on 1010 WINS, “all news all the time,” blaring the same rotation of headlines, weather, traffic, and trivia, in 40-second increments, for hours at a stretch. The piece that I had happened on that day went on, improbably, for over 20 minutes.

The program I was listening to was called All Things Considered, on a network with the unfamiliar name of NPR, short for National Public Radio. I was immediately hooked. In no time flat, I’d put it on whenever I was home. Morning Edition as soon as I opened my eyes, All Things Considered when I got back in the afternoon, Fresh Air during dinner. I fell in love with Robert Siegel’s wit, Renée Montagne’s voice, Scott Simon’s charm. These people got me. They shared my interests, my outlook, my sensibilities. For the first time, I felt myself reflected in the public sphere. “NPR,” I put it to a friend a few years later, “is my home in America.”

More here.