 |
|
|
|||||
Given President Donald Trump’s well-established penchant for golden objects, it was not a surprise to many when images of his administration’s decorative choices in the Oval Office started appearing. The space now abounds in gold. There are gold picture frames, gold statues, gold trophies, gold crown molding, and gold coasters. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump called in his Mar-a-Lago “gold guy” to assist with the redesign, adding custom-made and gilded carvings. Compared to those of presidents past, Trump’s Oval Office decor is a maximalist and glistening tour de force. To some, the decoration is all a bit much. New York magazine called the overall decorative approach in the White House “tacky and trollish.” An opinion piece in The Washington Post called the decoration “gaudy-awful.” Another drew a direct line between Trump’s decorative leanings and the over-the-top opulence of the Palace of Versailles. From left: President George W. Bush, circa 2008, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent under the recently gilded entry, 2025 [Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images, Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images] “In order to gain a certain kind of reputational notoriety he emulates this style that’s connected with the elite. But he does so in a very pastiche way,” says Robert Wellington, a professor of art history at the Australian National University and a specialist in the arts in France during the reign of Louis XIV. Trump, who has called “the look and feel of Louis XIV” his “favorite style,” has interpreted this period mainly through items that are, or look like, gold. “Perhaps he’s trying to create a sense of material splendor around him that gives a sense of power and buttresses his claims to the success that his administration is having,” Wellington says. “He wants to give that illusion of success.” From left: Oval Office seating area, circa 2010, and 2025 [Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images, Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images] What are those things? According to information from the White House, some items in Trump’s Oval Office actually do have legitimate value, both materially and historically. On top of the mantle, there is a line of seven historic items from the White House collection dating back to the early and mid-19th century. This is the lineup, according to details from the White House curator’s office, that was provided by a source in the White House. On the outside edges there are two gilded silver dessert stands made around 1810. Next to those are two gilded silver figurative centerpieces made around 1843. Next to those are two gilded bronze vases made around 1817 and associated with James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States. And in the center is a gilded bronze basket made between 1815 and 1820. All the items originated in either England or France. [Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images] The provenance of these pieces may have some subversive significance for those who read between the lines. The four outermost pieces were bequests from Margaret Thompson Biddle, heir to a diamond- and copper-mining fortune and one of the richest American women of the mid-20th century. Once married to a diplomat, she lived for many of the pre- and post-World War II years in Europe, and hosted famous salons in her Paris home with the leading lights of American and French society. The centerpiece was a gift of Gifford B. Pinchot, an early trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an organization that by its own accounting sued the first Trump administration 163 times. Pinchot, who donated the piece in 1973 and died in 1989, was the son of Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the U.S. Forest Service and a close ally of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th U.S. president, with whom he helped formulate the federal government’s approach to resource conservation. Neither of these people would seem ideologically connected to the current administration’s policies. Made in the USA? Not in the White House More notable, perhaps, is the fact that none of the items on the mantle in Trump’s Oval Office were made in the U.S., which contrasts with the administration’s present focus on imposing tariffs on foreign-produced goods and services. “There is a long passion for French decorative arts in America, through the Gilded Age patrons but also in the White House itself. So it’s not completely outrageous to imagine these French styles coming into the White House,” Wellington says. The Hall of Mirrors in Versailles [Photo: Jessica Kantak Bailey/Unsplash] But Wellington also sees a deep irony in Trump’s affection for Louis XIV and the Palace of Versailles, which he explores in a forthcoming book, Versailles Mirrored: The Power of Luxury, Louis XIV to Donald Trump. Wellington notes that Versailles was built as a kind of advertising program, establishing France as the center for luxury production by putting its finest craftsmanship in furniture, metalwork, mirrors, silks, and paintings on display. The palace’s decorative approach was also a form of protectionism, meant to stop people from importing luxury products from other countries. “It was state-sponsored luxury production which led to France being seen as the place where the very finest things could be made,” Wellington says. Trump’s version of Louis XIV’s approach is more surface than substance, Wellington says. In contrast with the industry-boosting decoration at Versailles, the White House decor undermines one of the administration’s key policies. “If Trump wanted to be a Louis XIV, I think he would be well placed to support the arts and culture. Instead, there’s very regressive ideas about arts and culture being supported under the Trump administration,” he says. “To be a great model of patronage you would be looking to the greatest minds of the day, the greatest artists of the day to create an image of America, to make America great again,” Wellington adds. “The way that you would do that is to think to the future, not to lock into some old idea.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Generative AI is radically reshaping the job marketcreating new roles, changing some, and phasing out others. But heres one effect of the transformative technology thats not as widely talked about: Its deepening long-standing workplace gender gaps. A double disadvantage According to a recent report from the World Economic Forum and LinkedIn, women systematically face a two-part problem in the ongoing AI transformation. Relatively fewer women are currently in jobs that are being augmented by generative AI, and relatively more are in roles that are being disrupted. According to LinkedIn data for the US, 24.1% of men work in augmented occupations, while 20.5% of women do. At the same time, 33.7% of women work in occupations that are being disrupted, compared to 25.5% of men. Related research by LinkedIn shows that the pattern of mens higher representation in augmented roles holds for 95% of the 74 countries with available data. Examples of occupations that look set to be disrupted in the US include medical administrative assistant (91% female) and office manager (88% female). Augmented fields, meanwhile, include electrical engineer (94% male) and mechanical engineer (89% male). The STEM Gap The data align with broader AI-related disparities in STEM education and employment. Already, too many women are lost in the transition from STEM degrees to their first job in the STEM workforce. Women who graduated in 2021 accounted for 38.5% of STEM graduates, but only 31.6% of STEM job entrants in 2022. This decline in representation continues across the hierarchy once women are in the workforce: in 2024, women held 29% of STEM entry-level positions and 24.4% of STEM managerial positions in STEM, but only 12.2% of STEM C-suite level roles. Women are also underrepresented in AI-related academic and leadership roles.To ensure that those who have the right skills have a fair chance to succeed and advance in the workplace, regardless of their gender, business leaders need to review and rethink their hiring practices, performance evaluation methods, and promotion processes. Generative AI itself can both help and hinder efforts to create a more level playing field. Relying on historical employment patterns to make predictions about future performance has too often overlooked womens potential to succeed in jobs where they have not traditionally been represented. On the other hand, using generative AI to predict future success based on current skills is a powerful way to deploy the latest technology to debias hiring processes and create a more level playing field. Some positive news When it comes to AI skills, there are encouraging signs that women are catching up on both AI literacy and AI engineering skills. In 2018, 23.5% of AI engineering skill-listers on LinkedIn were women; in early 2025, this number had risen to 29.4%. Over the past five years, the gap narrowed in 74 of the 75 economies with available data. At the same time, research by LinkedIn suggests that women are more likely to underreport AI skills in their professional profiles. Disparity among inventors Currently, no economy is fully leveraging all of the available talent to drive innovation, but some are doing better than others. In a race where every competitive edge counts, this is significant. High-level data on the gender breakdown among inventors, named as such on patent applications, reveals that East Asian economies are drawing on a more extensive talent pool, with more than 25% of inventors being women in China (26.8% in 2019) and South Korea (28.3% in 2019), which is around 10 percentage points higher than in the European Union (EU) and the United States. Around the world, the generative AI boom is being shaped in ways that dont fully reflect the diversity of society, leaving women underrepresented in the jobs and leadership roles of the future. Yet this moment offers a rare opportunity to course-correct. By investing in skills, using AI in a way that makes hiring and promotions more equitable, and ensuring technology is built by and for a broader range of people, we can create a more competitive future that expands economic opportunity and promotes fairness. Without such action, generative AI will reinforce inequality instead of driving meaningful progress.
Category:
E-Commerce
Your flights will probably get noticeably bumpier over the next few years, according to new research on how climate change is affecting turbulence. Paul Williams is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in England who has researched turbulence for more than a decade. In a presentation at the European Geosciences Union conference last week, Williams shared his research showing how global warming is likely leading to an uptick in something called clear-air turbulence, or turbulence that cant be seen on an airplane monitor or from the cockpit. Based on Williamss research, severe clear-air turbulence has increased by 55% since the 1970s, and its only going up. Over the next few decades, Williams told Inside Climate News, turbulence is expected to quadruple along some busy routes, presenting potentially dangerous conditions for aviation. What is clear-air turbulence? Clear-air turbulence, in simple terms, is turbulence that’s not caused by clouds or stormsmeaning that, for flight crews, it can essentially appear out of the blue. Whereas the more common turbulence happens due to weather, clear-air turbulence is most often due to jet streams in the atmosphere. Jet streams are strong, river-like air patterns, about 6 to 8 miles above the Earth, that contain many layers of air blowing at different speeds. These streams, which travel west to east, appear when warm air runs into much colder air. As the Earth is heated unevenly (with more sun in the tropics and less in the poles), warm air expands and rises up, and cold air rushes in to take its place, creating a moving current. There are multiple jet streams around the globe, and their strengths change throughout the year based on how hot and cold the converging currents are at a given time. In an interview with CBS News, Daniel Adjekum, a pilot and aircraft safety consultant, explained that the differing air masses inside a jet stream can cause a lot of friction, and, in turn, turbulence. The major issue with this is that normally pilots can predict convective turbulence based on moisture content in the air. Because clear-air turbulence isn’t caused by moisture patterns, it doesn’t show up to the naked eye or on flight instruments. Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, told CBS that clear-air turbulence is typically very violent. Some experts believe that it was responsible for extreme turbulence on a Singapore Airlines flight last year, causing the aircraft to drop thousands of feet in just a few minutes. The incident killed one person and injured more than 70 others. In recent months, unexpected severe turbulence has also led to multiple injuries on two separate United Airlines flights. How is global warming making clear-air turbulence worse? Williams coauthored a paper in 2023 demonstrating that clear-air turbulence has been on the rise over the past several decades. Now he’s uncovering how global warming is driving that pattern. The main piece of the puzzle, he explained in his presentation last week, is something called vertical wind shear. Inside jet streams, vertical wind shear is a phenomenon that occurs when two air currents close to each other move at different speeds. If the variation is wide enough, the atmosphere breaks into unusual, bumpy patterns, resulting in a turbulent flight experience. A growing body of research demonstrates that climate change is disrupting jet streams and, in turn, worsening vertical wind shear. Studies show that faster rates of global warming at the poles can twist jet streams into unusual patterns, creating “rough patches” with high wind shearssome of which are expected to worsen near busy transatlantic flight paths. Based on Williamss research, vertical wind shear has already increased by around 15% over the past 40 years. If rapid warming continues on its current trajectory, his models show that vertical wind shear inside jet streams could increase another 29% by 2100. This, of course, means a lot more turbulence in not that many years from now, he concluded at last weeks presentation. Flying is still considered to be a very safe form of travel. However, when problems do arise, theyre often caused by turbulence: Data from the National Transportation Safety Board shows that more than one-third of all airline incidents in the U.S. from 2009 through 2018 were related to turbulence, and most of them resulted in one or more serious injuries, though no damage to the plane. Now, Williams’s research shows, flight safety agencies may need to find new ways to monitor ever-bumpier skies.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||