It is probably this year’s most important election—and for the first time in a long time, the country’s strongman leader has a plausible adversary. Our correspondent heads along to the Hollywood writers’ strike, finding an age-old conflict centred on the technologies that shape the film-and-television industry. And the books to read to become a better home bartender.
And 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
George Novik's life is his work, so it's strange for him to think of life outside of his startup. But outside of tech, his hobbies include swimming, surfing, and computer games. He loves to surf at the United Emirate States. He is uncertain of the wave sizes there, as the variance is high.
A few years ago, George was hired to build a marketplace for his friends company. Fast forward, he and his team are on a mission to simplify software production, and provide access to vetted, no code developers.
You may have noticed that your local chain big box or drugstore has locked certain items behind plexiglass, requiring you to hail an employee to grab things like deodorant or laundry detergent. Companies say know this is annoying, but that it's necessary to prevent theft. So does it actually work? How big of a problem is retail theft anyway? Reporter Katherine Monahan went shopping for the answer.
This story was reported by Katherine Monahan. Bay Curious is made by Olivia Allen-Price, Amanda Font, and Christopher Beale. Additional support from Cesar Saldana, Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Jasmine Garnett, Carly Severn, Jenny Pritchett and Holly Kernan.
In which German university students create a new status symbol when they add swordplay to their drinking society meetings, and John's closet skeletons are all bar fights. Certificate #36857.
Since 1 out of 3 couples registered for wedding gifts on Bed Bath & Beyond, Etsy is jumping into BB&B’s bankruptcy void. We crunched the numbers on the electric truck company Rivian: It’s only got 2 years of cash left in the tank. And Google just unveiled its first ever foldable phone… but it costs more than a computer… and they won’t call it a phone.
$ETSY $RIVN $GOOG
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On July 16, 1945, at 5:29 am, 35 miles southwest of Socorro, New Mexico, the world’s first nuclear bomb was detonated.
This was the culmination of the Manhattan Project, one of the largest and most expensive programs in world history.
Yet, just before the event, the scientists and engineers who worked on the project weren’t entirely sure it would work and, if it did, just what the results would be.
Learn more about the Trinity Test, the world’s first atomic bomb detonation, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
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In 1578, a fourteen-foot linen sheet bearing the faint bloodstained imprint of a human corpse was presented to tens of thousands of worshippers in Turin, Italy, as one of the original shrouds used to prepare Jesus Christ’s body for entombment. From that year into the next century, the Shroud of Turin emerged as Christianity’s preeminent religious artifact. In an unprecedented new look, Andrew R. Casper sheds new light on one of the world’s most famous and controversial religious objects.
Since the early twentieth century, scores of scientists and forensic investigators have attributed the Shroud’s mysterious images to painterly, natural, or even supernatural forces. Casper, however, shows that this modern opposition of artifice and authenticity does not align with the cloth’s historical conception as an object of religious devotion. Examining the period of the Shroud’s most enthusiastic following, from the late 1500s through the 1600s, he reveals how it came to be considered an artful relic―a divine painting attributed to God’s artistry that contains traces of Christ’s body. Through probing analyses of materials created to perpetuate the Shroud’s cult following―including devotional, historical, and theological treatises as well as printed and painted reproductions―Casper uncovers historicized connections to late Renaissance and Baroque artistic cultures that frame an understanding of the Shroud’s bloodied corporeal impressions as an alloy of material authenticity and divine artifice.
Andrew R. Casper's book An Artful Relic: The Shroud of Turin in Baroque Italy (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021) introduces rich, new material about the Shroud’s emergence as a sacred artifact. It will appeal to art historians specializing in religious and material studies, historians of religion, and to general readers interested in the Shroud of Turin.
Andrew Casper is a professor of art history in the Department of Arts at Miami University
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.
