What We Are Reading Today: The Seed Detective by Adam Alexander
Taking us on a journey that began when we left the life of the hunter-gatherer to become farmers, he tells tales of globalization, political intrigue, colonization and serendipity – describing how these vegetables and their travels have become embedded in our food cultures.
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Al Arabiya
13 hours ago
- Al Arabiya
Taylor Swift announces new album ‘The Life of a Showgirl'
Look what you made her do. Taylor Swift has announced her 12th studio album, 'The Life of a Showgirl.' Swift announced the album on her website shortly after a countdown timer expired at 12:12 a.m. Tuesday. No release date was announced, but her site said vinyl editions of the album would ship before Oct. 13. View this post on Instagram A post shared by New Heights (@newheightshow) Fans have long theorized that Swift's 12th album would soon arrive. On Monday, Taylor Nation — an official branch of the pop superstar's marketing team — posted a TikTok slide show of 12 images with the caption 'Thinking about when she said, 'See you next era…'' Swift is seen wearing orange in every image. A special limited vinyl edition of the album will be released in 'portofino orange glitter," according to a pre-order page on her site. Sensing a pattern, eagle-eyed fans noticed that 12 minutes earlier, the popular 'New Heights' podcast posted a tease for Wednesday. The show, hosted by Swift's boyfriend and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce alongside his brother, former Eagles center Jason Kelce, posted an orange image on social media with a mysterious silhouette, many believing to be Swift. Swift also announced early Tuesday that she would appear on the podcast. 'The Life of a Showgirl' follows last year's 'The Tortured Poets Department,' announced during the 2024 Grammys and released during her record-breaking tour, which raked in over $2.2 billion across two years and five continents, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time. The album is also her first release since Swift regained control over her entire body of work. In May, that pop star said she purchased her catalog of recordings — originally released through Big Machine Records — from their most recent owner, the private equity firm Shamrock Capital. She did not disclose the amount. In recent years, Swift has been rerecording and releasing her first six albums in an attempt to regain control of her music. The project was instigated by Hybe America CEO Scooter Braun's purchase and sale of her early catalog and represents Swift's effort to control her own songs and how they're used. Previous 'Taylor's Version' releases have been more than conventional re-recordings, arriving with new 'from the vault' music, Easter eggs and visuals that deepen understanding of her work. So far, there have been four rerecorded albums, beginning with 'Fearless (Taylor's Version)' and 'Red (Taylor's Version)' in 2021. All four have been massive commercial and cultural successes, each one debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Swift's last rerecording, '1989 (Taylor's Version),' arrived in October 2023, just four months after the release of 'Speak Now (Taylor's Version).' That was the same year Swift claimed the record for the woman with the most No. 1 albums in history.
Arab News
23-07-2025
- Arab News
What We Are Reading Today: ‘Plastics'
Edited by Caroline Fowler and Ittai Weinryb Modern and contemporary art wouldn't exist without the invention of plastics. From sculpture to paint, and photography to film, plastics have shaped every major medium of art. In turn, plastics have revolutionized art conservation, transforming the possibilities of preservation but also producing new challenges for conservators struggling to preserve toxic and degrading material. Hailed as utopian in the 20th century, plastics today are often understood as pollution and waste—a central cause of ecological crisis.
Al Arabiya
22-07-2025
- Al Arabiya
Can you ever expect privacy in public? Coldplay kiss camera saga tells us a lot about the answer
When the KissCam at a Coldplay concert landed on a couple who tried (but failed) to duck out of the spotlight, the internet immediately got to work. In hours, the clip was just about everywhere. Endless memes, parody videos, and photos of the pair's shocked faces filled social media feeds. Online sleuths rushed to identify who was on camera. Artificial intelligence and software company Astronomer eventually confirmed that its CEO and chief people officer were in fact the couple in the video – and announced the CEO's resignation over the weekend. The incident's fallout has of course generated conversations about business ethics, corporate accountability, and the repercussions that conflicts of interest among leadership can cause. But there are also broader implications at play in our increasingly online world – about the state of potentially being visible everywhere you go or tracked through social media surveillance. Experts say it's more and more common for moments that may have been intended to be private, or at least reserved to a single physical venue, to make their way online and even go global today. So, in the era of lightning-fast social sharing, and when cameras are practically inescapable, does being in public hold any expectation of privacy anymore? Is every experience simply fodder for the world to see? Cameras are everywhere. It's no secret that cameras are filming much of our lives these days. From CCTV security systems to Ring doorbells, businesses, schools, and neighborhoods use ample video surveillance around the clock. Sporting and concert venues have also filmed fans for years, often projecting playful bits of audience participation to the rest of the crowd. In short, the on-scene viewer becomes part of the product – and the center of attention. And of course, consumers can record just about anything if they have a smartphone in their pocket – and if it's enticing to other social media users, that footage can quickly spread through cyberspace. Ellis Cashmore, author of the book Celebrity Culture, proposes that the rapid fame of last week's KissCam moment probably answers a question many have been asking for years: 'Is the private life still what it was?' And the answer is, 'of course there's no such thing as the private life anymore,' he notes. 'Certainly not in the traditional sense of the term. I'm not sure that we can assume privacy at a concert with hundreds of other people,' adds Mary Angela Bock, an associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism and Media. 'We can't assume privacy on the street anymore.' Some version of the KissCam has long been a staple at big events – from timeouts during sports games to romantic songs played by artists at their concerts. It's easy to miss, but most venues have signs to inform the audience that they could be filmed during the event. What's been different in more recent years, experts note, is how quickly those moments can travel beyond the physical space where they actually unfold. That isn't only limited to what shows up on a jumbotron. Sometimes it only takes one person in the crowd to capture any interaction on their phone and post the video online – where it can zip around the world. 'It's not just the camera,' Bock says. 'It's the distribution system that is wild and new.' Once something's viral, doxing often follows. Then there's the second ring of exposure – what happens after the video or photos spread. Experts point to growing instances of social media users rushing to publicly identify or dox the people captured on camera – much like how quickly the internet committed to finding those involved in the Coldplay moment, for example. The LinkedIn pages belonging both to Astronomer's now-former CEO and chief people officer remained disabled on Monday, and The Associated Press could not reach either for comment. But it isn't limited to company executives. Beyond someone simply spotting a familiar face and spreading the word, technological advances – including AI – have made it easier and faster overall to find just about anyone in an online post. This can happen with videos and photos shared on social media each day, even if it doesn't go viral, experts warn. 'It's a little bit unsettling how easily we can be identified with biometrics, how our faces are online, how social media can track us – and how the internet has gone from being a place of interaction to a gigantic surveillance system,' Bock says. 'When you think about it, we are being surveilled by our social media. They're tracking us in exchange for entertaining us.' And of course, such moments can also impact people who were not actually on camera. As easy as it can be to be identified online today, the internet is notorious for cutting a broad swath or not always getting it right. That sometimes produces harassment of individuals not actually involved. At last week's Coldplay concert, for example, many social media users speculated that a third person seen near the two caught on camera was another Astronomer employee – leading to swarms of posts targeting her. But the company later confirmed that she was not at the event and said no other employees were in the video circulating online. 'For the now-viral moment, we can talk about what's right and wrong and whether they deserved it,' says Alison Taylor, a clinical associate professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. 'Still, it's a very frightening thing to get a lot of abuse and harassment online,' Taylor notes. 'There are real human beings behind this.' It's hard to think that that these kind of viral moments will ever go away – and there are few legal restrictions to stop users from sharing clips of interactions recorded from anything from a concert to the street widely online. But on an individual level, Bock says it can be helpful to think before you share and question whether something's really accurate. 'Social media has changed so much,' Bock says. 'But we really have not as a society caught up with the technology in terms of our ethics and our etiquette.'
