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3 weeks ago | 
uscatholic.org | Nathaniel Hunter |Joseph Sorrentino
In 1531, the Virgin Mary appeared to Juan Diego on a hill known as Tepeyac (now part of Mexico City), leaving her image on his cloak. At first, a bishop stored the cloak four miles away in Tlateloco, but in November 1538, pilgrims brought it back to Tepayac. “After the first chapel was built in Tepeyac, there was a pilgrimage to bring [the cloak] there,” says Mauricio Reyes, the leader of the conchero group Palabra General de Santiago Tlatelolco.
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Sep 9, 2024 | 
qualitymag.com | Joseph Sorrentino
In one corner, we have quality assurance (QA), the bedrock of safety and precision in industries ranging from aerospace to healthcare. In the other corner, artificial intelligence (AI), a powerful yet unproven contender in the realm of QA. The question isn’t just who will win, but how can they coexist? The integration of AI into QA processes brings both significant opportunities and serious risks, particularly in safety-critical environments where lives and reputations are on the line.
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Sep 2, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Joseph Sorrentino |Dominic Preziosi |Philip Graubart |Kathleen Hill
It’s weird to feel like you miss someone you’re not even sure you know. —David Foster Wallace, Infinite JestNot long ago, I stopped at our neighborhood bookstore and there on a back table among scattered secondhand paperbacks I saw one I’d read many years before and since forgotten. It was called Catholics and was written by Brian Moore. Bree-an Moore, I said to myself, then wondered where I’d learned to pronounce the name that way.
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Aug 26, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | George Scialabba |Griffin Oleynick |Joseph Sorrentino |Kathleen Hill
It’s weird to feel like you miss someone you’re not even sure you know. —David Foster Wallace, Infinite JestNot long ago, I stopped at our neighborhood bookstore and there on a back table among scattered secondhand paperbacks I saw one I’d read many years before and since forgotten. It was called Catholics and was written by Brian Moore. Bree-an Moore, I said to myself, then wondered where I’d learned to pronounce the name that way.
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Aug 26, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Dominic Preziosi |Zach Czaia |Joseph Sorrentino |John Fea
Emmanuel gets up most mornings at four o’clock to make the two-hour trip by bus and subway to the Central de Abastos, Mexico City’s huge produce market. “When I arrive at the central, I ask at different places if there is work,” he told me. “I look and I look.” If he’s hired, he’ll spend the day unloading trucks or preparing produce. If he isn’t hired, then he heads home. I asked if it was possible for someone just to tell him on the phone if there was work. “No,” he said.
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Aug 21, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Griffin Oleynick |Regina Munch |George Scialabba |Joseph Sorrentino
Article The Venezuelan Elections Things have gone from bad to worse in Venezuela after the recent presidential election. Article Cracking Down on Tech Monopolies This month, a federal judge determined that Google is a monopolist. It’s the biggest antitrust ruling in over two decades. Article The Despotism of Money Two excellent new books defend the liberal project with wisdom and clarity. So why do they yield such little hope?
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May 9, 2024 | 
qualitymag.com | Joseph Sorrentino
My career in quality assurance and configuration management started in 1963. On April 10, 1963, the USS Thresher SSN 593 (after completing shipyard work), submerged for its sea trials. Tragically, 112 Naval Personnel and 17 Civilians plunged to their death. The USS Thresher was known as the Thresher-Class, a deep diving fast attack nuclear submarine that was a significant improvement over the Skipjack-Class Navy nuclear submarines.
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Mar 15, 2024 | 
plough.com | Joseph Sorrentino
Signs on Casa Tochan’s front door announce that the shelter is not letting in any more men. Leonila Romero Gonzalez, who helps place people in shelters in the city, says that when Tochan and other shelters are full, “people sleep on the streets or in parks.”Tochan (Nahuatl for “Our House”) houses migrants and refugees in Mexico City. “We opened in 2011,” Gabriela Hernández, the shelter’s director, tells me. “When we started, we had more people from Central America.
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Feb 28, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Joseph Sorrentino |Elena Curti |David Mills |Megan Buskey
The magpie is dressed to impress—and knows it. She wears a multi-strand red necklace, a floral crown, and a traditional blouse with embroidered patterns that extend to the tips of her wings. A dazzling set of peacock feathers is arrayed around her. On the left of the frame, a bird, bear, rabbit, and frog look on, musical instruments at the ready. They are rendered simply but expertly, their folksy horns and cymbals evoking the joy of an impending celebration.
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Feb 28, 2024 | 
commonwealmagazine.org | Joseph Sorrentino |Santiago Ramos |Evan Bednarz |Nuria López Torres |Núria Torres
With its economy collapsing, Cuba is in the middle of its largest exodus in sixty-five years. In 2022, U.S. border authorities intercepted 313,499 Cubans by land and sea. That’s more than the combined number of Cubans who emigrated during the revolution in the 1950s, the Mariel exodus in the 1980s, and the rafter crisis in the 1990s.
