Donald Trump is severing ties, imposing tariffs left and right. The Chinese are not moving. So the decision is not ‘Beijing or Washington.’ It is building ties with Jakarta and Delhi, and with other countries.
~ Joerg Wuttke, former head of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China via The New Yorker
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In some parts of the Himalayas, parents marry off their oldest son; then, when his younger brothers come of age, they join the marriage and share the wife. No one knows which brother is the biological father of any child that results from these unions, and, it seems, no one particularly cares.
~ Elizabeth Kolbert via The New Yorker
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via The New York Times:
Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a ‘Generation-Long Decline’
by Claire Cain Miller, Francesca Paris and Sarah Mervosh
published on May 13, 2026
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It may seem self-serving for a writer at a 169-year-old magazine to carry a torch for reading. But the people who make a living from words are not the only ones who lose out in a postliterate age. Reading is more than a skill, or one mode of communication among many. The media we use to interact with one another shape the world we inhabit.
~ Rose Horowitch via The Atlantic
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The more democratic the world’s societies are, the more idiosyncratic they will be, and the more their economic rules will diverge. But that is exactly what businesses cannot tolerate — at least not under globalization. Money and goods must be able to move frictionlessly and efficiently across borders. This requires a uniform set of laws. Somehow, democracy is going to have to give way.
~ Christopher Caldwell
via This Maverick Thinker Is the Karl Marx of Our Time
published by The New York Times on November 28, 2024
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