Intellicurious

News, views & reviews for the intellectually curious. Daily previews of The Economist, TLS, NYRB, the NYT front page & more. Formerly Boomers Daily.

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

New at Intellicurean: "She Read Tacitus." Catherine, the coup of 1762, and a confession that got drunker with every printing. One guess, graded. The method cannot tell which.
https://t.co/fCaP3n00LM

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

Winter, 1754. A grand duchess of 25 has had her newborn son taken from her by the Empress. She has the winter and a room. She reads Baronius, then Montesquieu, then the Annals of Tacitus, which, she wrote later, "caused a singular revolution in my brain."

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

Then there's the letter she didn't write. A confession from Alexei Orlov at Ropsha, found in her cabinet after her death, that clears her of her husband's murder. It survives only in a copy made in a quarter of an hour. The archive's folder says: two letters. Not three.

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

AUDUBON MAGAZINE - FALL 2026
@audubonsociety The 2026 Audubon Photography Awards: The Top 100 - The photographers’ artistry and the beauty of birdlife from Canada to Chile; Smoke from Wildfires Is a Growing Health Threat to Both People and Birds
https://t.co/Te0hAvbT44

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

The verdict: both sides read the same grid. The fight is over which fact is the trend and which is the residue — is flat coal the plateau before the fall, or the floor the system still stands on?

The full debate: https://t.co/EXtIP93sHI

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

The argument: what the West calls China's "overcapacity" is the climate's solution — Beijing's scale is decarbonizing the world. (Azhar Azam, Eurasia Review)

The answer: the electrostate still runs on old technology — coal remains its foundation. (Bloomberg Opinion) 2/3

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

BARRON'S MAGAZINE - SEPTEMBER 28, 2026
@barronsonline Innovation Is Driving a New Bull Market in Biotech. 16 Picks From Our Roundtable Pros; Trump Calls Xi Meeting ‘Very Productive.’ What Investors Might Not Like; The AI ‘Jobpocalypse’ Isn’t Happening.
https://t.co/85I4oODFWK

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

THE NEW YORK TIMES - SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2026 - FRONT PAGE
@nytimes At Summit, Xi Sought to Tilt Trump’s Stance on America’s Place in Asia; Xi Jinping Snubs a Troubled U.N. for Trump; Heroine or Public Enemy? The Israeli Blocking Netanyahu’s Agenda
https://t.co/xCvC5Ksmbo

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

DOES A SHIELD MAKE PEACE?
The general who runs Golden Dome says missile defense is a commitment to peace through strength. The arms-control school says every shield breeds more spears — why the ABM Treaty existed.

One argument. Two sides. One verdict.
https://t.co/Lsi0vbPwCv

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

New at Intellicurean: "Another Man's Eloquence." Seneca, Nero, and the first ghostwriter the record caught. One guess about what the throne cost him, graded, with the hostile witnesses printed in full.
https://t.co/Zrnj1lu9Ck

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

ANOTHER MAN'S ELOQUENCE - AN INTELLICUREAN ESSAY
Rome, AD 54. A boy of sixteen praises the dead Claudius. When the speech reaches his wisdom, nobody in the Forum can keep a straight face. The old men's verdict, in Tacitus: Nero was the first ruler to need another man's eloquence.

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

Then, in the first year he owned his own mouth, he wrote the most famous opening in Roman philosophy: set yourself free for your own sake. And the word Tacitus used for Nero's borrowed voice turns up in the same letter: everything is another's; only time is ours.

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

WASHINGTON EXAMINER MAGAZINE - SEPTEMBER 30, 2026
@dcexaminer Midterm elections set Democrats up for 2028 success or failure; Failing public schools need higher standards, not more money; California voter ID ballot measure could be rare GOP statewide win
https://t.co/nJvF4jgBKT

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

THE NEW YORK TIMES - FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2026 - FRONT PAGE
@nytimes In Trump’s White House, China’s Strongman Is Welcome. U.S. Media Less So; Russia Intensifies Its Focus on Ukraine’s Economy; Leo XIV, Trying to Be Everyone’s Pope, Tours Secular France
https://t.co/Q60SdGJehF

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

Descartes had the frame in 1641: from a window we see hats and cloaks; the men, we judge. Kundera, Nietzsche's demon, a police file from 1950, and a sister with scissors. New at Intellicurean: "Hats and Cloaks."
https://t.co/DZOCddvS9O

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

HATS AND CLOAKS - AN INTELLICUREAN ESSAY
Prague, February 1948. A leader speaks from a balcony; a comrade in a fur hat stands beside him. Four years later the comrade is hanged and painted out of the photograph. The hat, Kundera wrote, stayed on the leader's head.

[Intellicurious @Intellicurious]

Except it didn't. Scholars who went back to the original print say both men wore hats all along. The most famous opening in postwar Czech literature is a novelist's addition to the record, and the essay takes that as its subject rather than its scandal.