📰 Noteworthy stories for today #29
Indiana Jones & the lost Art, Australian mice plagues & Predicting war with Literature
Indiana Jones and the Lost Art
They say you can’t choose your own nickname but shit, if you could you’d want this one. The ‘Indiana Jones of Lost Art’ is Arthur Brand a world renown private detective tracking down lost or stolen art, through a network of informants, forgers, galleries, fences and criminals he has successfully found long lost works by Picasso, Oscar Wilde and even the Gospel of Judas. Read more on The Economist (might need an account for this one)
The Australian Plague of Mice
This year following off the back of wildfires, drought and finally rain, Australian farmers are now faced with an enormous plague of mice feasting on the abundant harvest. Something I never knew was that Australian faces mice plagues like this roughly once a decade but this year’s seems to be worse and many farms and families are struggling to hold out. Read the full beautiful interactive data piece on The Washington Post here.
Can You Predict War Through Literature?
Good writing has always been able to sense things about the world that are difficult or intangible to judge and in Germany, in a historically left, liberal and anti-war town, that’s exactly what the military hoped to achieve with Project Cassandra. A project aimed at researching and predicting military tensions through the popularity and context of literature being consumed. It’s a fascinating story, no really it is, about to power of books to create ‘emotional heat-maps’ based on the area’s literature and potentially predict wars before they even start. Read on The Guardian here.
See ya soon
M