metazine

by Benjamin Selwyn

More than fifty years since its thirty thousand inhabitants—most of them Greek-Cypriots—fled before the advancing Turkish army, the resort city of Varosha on Cyprus’s southeastern coast has been reborn. Now, from 8 AM to 6 PM every day, visitors are free to enter this modern wasteland through a casually guarded gate and wander a small portion of its once-thriving streets. From what I’ve seen, the tourism may be less dark than dumb, kitschifying the skeletal city into yet another selfie backdrop.

With hundreds of satellites launched each year and tens of thousands more planned, scientists are increasingly concerned about an emerging problem: emissions from the fuels burned in launches and from the pollutants released when satellites and rocket stages flame out on reentry.

If the enshrinement of a salary cap does not yet feel entirely inevitable, the prospect of a lockout does, at least amongst the baseball commentariat. The tenor is the same: the situation has gotten out of hand, and the mythical fan, an amalgamation of conventional wisdom and vibes transubstantiated into hypothetical flesh and blood, is now for the first time starting to side with management over labor.

The Dodgers’ model, like the city’s, depends on endless escalation, infinite growth; more spending, more spectacle, more winning. The Reds, meanwhile, live on prayer and parsimony. When you know the ending before the first pitch, fandom curdles into masochism.

Subscribers // by Serge Halimi

Subscribers // by Cécile Marin

Subscribers // by Michael Pauron

Subscribers // by Lise Triolet

Subscribers // by Nathan Sperber

If the Democratic discourse du jour pits populist socialism against technocratic “Abundance, ” nobody seems to have told New York City voters. One the same day that a majority chose Zohran Mamdani to be the second-ever democratic socialist occupant of Gracie Mansion (and a decidedly more fervent. ..

I find comfort in the thought that cinema is not just moving pictures; it sets hope in motion! . . . It is a sensory journey . . . in which . . . even pain can find new meaning.

Researchers are finding a disturbing uptick in the trade of African hornbills and their body parts in West African voodoo markets and globally on the internet. Conservationists want international protections for these birds, which play a key role in Africa’s forest ecosystems.

As China has cut back on domestic extraction of rare earth minerals, uncontrolled mining in Myanmar has boomed in areas ruled by powerful ethnic armies. New reporting reveals how this activity is damaging water supplies, forests, and the health of workers and communities.

Tech companies are turning to natural gas to help power the growing number of A. I. data centers in the U. S. Jigar Shah, a former Energy Department official, explains how installing batteries instead can help balance the grid, lower electricity bills, and support renewable energy.

Maybe you know the drill: metahistorical intrigue and antiauthoritarian politics; several deep benches’ worth of quirky characters toting loudly emblematic affectations and not-strictly-probable names; song-and-dance numbers with rhythmically typeset lyrics and toy instrument arrangements, plus screwball wordplay and cartoon pratfalls and gags, gags, gags.

As the Western media and politicians breathlessly celebrated the return of the final Israeli prisoners, a number of them soldiers captured in combat, Israel began returning hundreds of captives it had snatched from Gaza over the previous two years and held in abominable conditions ever since. Having released some 2,000 people, Israel still holds around 9,000 Palestinian men, women, and children in captivity, hostages for a future day.

Two recent books, Liz Pelly’s Mood Machine and Andrew deWaard’s Derivative Media, explore the consequences of these technological intermediaries for the music, film, and television industries. While Pelly’s account focuses on the power of Spotify’s ever-changing playlisting practices, deWaard turns to the rise of intellectual property, as remakes, reboots, and spin-offs have come to saturate mass media markets. Both center on the changing relationship between labor and capital in the platform era.

“I am a democratic socialist. ” These words were really spoken by an American politician on live TV, just hours after being elected to govern a city with a population greater than that of all but twelve US states, in the year 2025.

As U. N. talks get underway, China is emerging as a key leader in international climate efforts. It is empowering the global energy transition, and along with India and Brazil, is becoming the driving force in climate diplomacy and filling a vacuum left by the world’s rich nations.