On Fridays I suggest worthwhile weekend reading that’s guaranteed to improve your posture, your online dating prospects, and make you an all around better person. Read a dozen articles, lose five pounds.
First, our weekly photo quiz. Pinning down the region ought not be too hard. Can you determine the specific country? Here are four photos:
That last one’s a clue. Give it your best guess. The answer is at the end of this post.
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Now, a few suggestions for your weekend reading:
How Arabs, Malabarians and Portuguese shaped the world in search of the 'black gold' A Story of Pepper, the World’s Most Important and Underappreciated Spice
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A former president of the United States has been indicted for allegedly spiriting away, refusing to return, and showing to unauthorized individuals some of the country’s most closely guarded nuclear secrets. According to the post-indictment polling, this has made him more likely to be the Republican nominee for president. Plausible forecasts may help us avert the worst political calamities. The Art of Prediction and the Arc of the Moral Universe
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High in the Andes Mountains, the mighty Amazon River begins. It trickles from glaciers and oozes from mountain wetlands. It gains momentum and volume and feeds into clear streams and muddy rivers that pass through high cloud forests and lowland valleys. The torrents of the waters carry nutrients through the vast Amazon River basin, some 4,000 miles across the rest of the South American continent. This interconnected cycle has been a sustaining force for some 10 million years. But the system appears to be faltering. The Amazon River in the Sky
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The question of why some countries join the developed world while others remain in poverty has vexed economists for decades. What makes it so hard to answer? Why Isn’t the Whole World Rich?
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Killer Heat Waves Are Coming. But awareness alone won’t solve the problem. Here’s what we should do. A short history of heat waves in society and what we should do
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Pensions only became commonplace through their widespread introduction by the State in the early 1900s. Guinness pensions date back to the 1860s; the first US corporation to introduce a corporate pension was American Express in 1875. No Great Stagnation in Guinness
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Sociologist Georg Simmel diagnosed the character of modern city life - in 1903: finance, fashion and becoming strangers to one another. Money and modern life
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Hiding from his crimes, Malcolm MacArthur “went to see his friend Paddy Connolly, who lived in a seaside suburb. Connolly knew nothing of his friend’s crimes and offered him the spare room in his penthouse apartment. When Macarthur was arrested there, three weeks later, a convulsion of captivated outrage ensued, not only because the murderer had been caught, but because of where he’d been found. Connolly wasn’t just Macarthur’s friend. He was Ireland’s attorney general, the most senior legal official in the country and a significant figure in an already embattled government.”
Mayhem ensued.
‘Why I might have done what I did’: conversations with Ireland’s most notorious murderer
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Many brightly colored frogs and salamanders have enough toxins in their skin to kill multiple people. How do they survive their own noxious weapons? Mysteries of the poisonous amphibians
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Using the ‘find my’ app. Fun story.
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Elsewhere on Substack, Chris Arnade walks the world: Walking Dakar, part 2: dirt, dysfunction, and depression
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The answer to this week’s photo quiz? It’s Oman. The two architectural shots are one interior and one exterior of the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat, the skyline is Muscat, the capital, and the weaponry as shown in a shop in the Muttrah souk is the Khanjar, the traditional Omani dagger, similar to the Jambiya down the coast in Yemen.
There are a few more photos in the Oman Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
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THE FAROE ISLANDS: “Good luck” in Icelandic is hvelreki, with an idea something like “may a whole whale wash up on your beach.” The neighboring Faroese don’t wait for luck to produce whales. They spot them when they’re out sailing. The Grindadráp is on again in the Faroes. It is a spectacle in which, as The Guardian puts it,
“hunters surround pilot whales and dolphins with a wide semi-circle of fishing boats and drive them into a shallow bay where they are beached. Fishermen on the shore slaughter them with knives.”
In the past decade or so the annual event has become a spectacle in which international media gang up on the tiny archipelago. I’m not going to contend that the Grind, as it’s known, is anything but gross. But there are two sides.
For my book Out in the Cold I visited the Faroes and took what I think is a measured look at the question. For Tuesday’s travel column I’ll excerpt that section of the book.
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In tomorrow’s week in review we’ll talk, among other things, about PM Modi’s Washington visit, more about Russia’s war on Ukraine and the run-up to the NATO summit next month in Vilnius, we’ll take a quick look at politics up north, we’ll look at dire warnings about the Hindu Kush/Himalaya ecosystem, poverty in Africa, and why Amazon Prime – surprise – is mostly good for Amazon.
Happy reading. See you here, tomorrow.
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