The International Monetary Fund is sitting on oodles of cash, but failing to disburse it. We examine why China’s lending practices are putting the IMF on a path to irrelevance. Climate change is already squeezing farmers in Latin America; some outright crazy agricultural policies are making matters worse. And reasons not to ban a well-known workplace species: the “talented jerk”.
For full access to print, digital and audio editions of The Economist, try a free 30-day digital subscription by going to www.economist.com/intelligenceoffer
In which underslept Wyoming railroad workers strike back against a tide of pushy brush and encyclopedia salesmen, and John appreciates the Jehovah's Witnesses. Certificate #12881.
Baby Shark is the most-watched YouTube video of all time, but now it’s charging money for podcasts — because there’s big $$$ in digital babysitting. Twitter (the company) is no more… It’s now owned by X Company. And the best inflation report in years just exposed a new thing: “Restaurant-flation” is the latest see-saw effect.
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Songkran is a traditional festival celebrated in Thailand that marks the start of the Thai New Year. It is also known as the Water Festival, as it involves splashing water on one another as a symbolic gesture of cleansing and washing away the sins and bad luck of the previous year.
However, it is since evolved into something much more than a religious observance. It has become the world’s biggest water fight.
Learn more about Songkran, the Thai New Year’s celebration, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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Christopher Celenza is one of the foremost contemporary scholars of the Renaissance. His ambitious new book The Italian Renaissance and the Origin of the Humanities: An Intellectual History, 1400-1800 (Cambridge UP, 2021) focuses on the body of knowledge which we now call the humanities, charting its roots in the Italian Renaissance and exploring its development up to the Enlightenment. Beginning in the fifteenth century, the author shows how thinkers like Lorenzo Valla and Angelo Poliziano developed innovative ways to read texts closely, paying attention to historical context, developing methods to determine a text's authenticity, and taking the humanities seriously as a means of bettering human life. Alongside such novel reading practices, technology – the invention of printing with moveable type – fundamentally changed perceptions of truth. Celenza also reveals how luminaries like Descartes, Diderot, and D'Alembert – as well as many lesser-known scholars – challenged traditional ways of thinking. Celenza's authoritative narrative demonstrates above all how the work of the early modern humanist philosophers had a profound impact on the general quest for human wisdom. His magisterial volume will be essential reading for all those who value the humanities and their fascinating history.
Professor Christopher S. Celenza is the James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. He is also a professor of history and classics.
Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel.
In a unanimous vote, county officials sent State Representative Justin Pearson back to his seat in Tennessee’s House of Representatives. His reinstatement comes less than a week after he and another Black Democratic colleague were expelled for leading a protest on gun reform.
And in headlines: California Senator Dianne Feinstein will temporarily give up her seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Donald Trump is suing his former lawyer Michael Cohen, and NPR has decided to ditch Twitter after the platform mislabeled the news organization.
Crooked Coffee is officially here. Our first blend, What A Morning, is available in medium and dark roasts. Wake up with your own bag at crooked.com/coffee
"The way that this strain of progressivism approaches journalism is completely divorced from what we traditionally understand as journalistic ethics and standards," said Athey, Washington editor for the Spectator.
"These individuals believe that the media is just another platform for which they can advance political activism, and they've rewritten the rules of journalism to reflect that," says Athey, who previously covered the White House for The Daily Caller and hosts a weekly radio show, "Unfit to Print," on WCBM-680 in Baltimore. "So, it's no longer about objectively trying to find the facts and get somewhere close to the truth and presenting facts to the reader so they can make their own decisions."
Athey adds:
It's now about fighting on behalf of the downtrodden, or "speaking truth to power," or making sure that you are not causing offense to marginalized groups.
Athey joins today's episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss some examples of this liberal woke takeover of the media that she’s referring to, whether she thinks this liberal takeover was inevitable or could have been prevented, and how conservatives can work to counter the influence of these corporate media outlets.
