Steven Poole

Europe

Author and Cultural Critic at The Guardian

composer: https://t.co/f3BCC3fbpN | author: RETHINK, UNSPEAK, &c | writer: @Telegraph @WSJ @Guardian &c

Articles

The dark truth behind that delicious bottle of Coca-Cola you’re craving

1 month ago | independent.ie | Steven Poole

Some scientists would tell you there’s no difference, because “a calorie is a calorie”, and you will get fatter if you consume too many calories from any type of food. What won’t necessarily be made clear is that some of those scientists were given money by the very same Coca-Cola Company.
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams review - Zuckerberg and me

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Steven Poole

If Douglas Coupland’s 1995 novel about young tech workers, Microserfs, were a dystopian tragedy, it might read something like Careless People. The author narrates, in a fizzy historic present, her youthful idealism when she arrives at Facebook (now Meta) to work on global affairs in 2011, after a stint as an ambassador for New Zealand. Some years later she finds a female agency worker having a seizure on the office floor, surrounded by bosses who are ignoring her.
That delicious can of Coke? It may be helping to kill you

1 month ago | yahoo.com | Steven Poole

Which is more likely to contribute to obesity: a can of Coca-Cola, or the calorie-equivalent amount of broccoli? Some scientists would tell you there’s no difference, because “a calorie is a calorie”, and you’ll get fatter if you consume too many calories from any type of food. What won’t necessarily be made clear is that some of those scientists were given money by the very same Coca Cola Company.
Perspectives by Laurent Binet review – a dazzling Renaissance romp

2 months ago | msn.com | Steven Poole

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Perspectives by Laurent Binet review - a dazzling Renaissance romp

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Steven Poole

Florence, 1557. A painter is murdered with a hammer blow to the head and a chisel to the heart. It looks as though someone has painted over a section of the frescoes he has been labouring on for years at the church of San Lorenzo. But who could have killed old Jacopo da Pontormo, and why? So begins this historical epistolary detective novel, stuffed with real-life Renaissance artists behaving badly.
Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates review – refreshingly frank

2 months ago | msn.com | Steven Poole

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates review - refreshingly frank

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Steven Poole

Bill Gates is the John McEnroe of the tech world: once a snotty brat whom everyone loved to hate, now grown up into a beloved elder statesman. Former rivals, most notably Apple’s Steve Jobs, have since departed this dimension, while the Gates Foundation, focusing on unsexy but important technologies such as malaria nets, was doing “effective altruism” long before that became a fashionable term among philosophically minded tech bros. Time, then, to look back.
The Extinction of Experience by Christine Rosen review - smartphone nation

Jan 8, 2025 | theguardian.com | Steven Poole

People who walk along the street with their heads down, staring at their phones, are enemies of society. They are narcissistic babies who have unilaterally derogated from the social contract that says you should look where you’re going to make sure you don’t bump into people. They implicitly believe that others should do that cognitive work for them while they shuffle along scrolling for porn or doom.
The best ideas books of 2024

Dec 3, 2024 | theguardian.com | Steven Poole

Richard Dawkins’s The Genetic Book of the Dead: A Darwinian Reverie (Bloomsbury) relates a delightful gallimaufry of stories about the evolution of everything from camouflaged frogs to “weakly electric fish” as though the emeritus zoologist were holding forth from a lightly distressed leather armchair.
Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway review – this continuation of le Carré is a treat

Oct 24, 2024 | msn.com | Steven Poole

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.