Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

It’s How Old?!?

Most notable event of my week: yesterday’s Phi Beta Kappa Greater Detroit Association “glacial geology of Ann Arbor” field trip, which introduced me to this glacial erratic boulder that’s 2.4 billion years old and just sitting along a trail at the Fox Science Preserve.

No big deal. Two point four billion years. 🤯

Thanks for joining me this week.

Recommendations

China Stories

Chang Che, “Inside the World-Conquering Rise of the Micro-Drama”

Tinhinan El Kadi, “Silicon Elsewhere: A Conversation with Andrea Pollio”

Yi Liu, “Xiang Biao on a Society at the Edge”

Timothy McLaughlin, “The Weird, Twisting Tale of How China Spied on Alysa Liu and Her Dad”

Alexandra Stevenson and Hasya Nindita, “As U.S. Brands Stumble, China Wins Over Young Indonesians”

Wanderings Around the World

In a country filled to the brim with medieval Islamic architecture, Carthaginian ruins, colonial facades and postindependence modernism, that heritage is facing new threats. Weak legal protections, fragmented governance and funding issues have long left these architectural triumphs vulnerable. Recently, however, a new obstacle has emerged: a political climate defined by suspicion toward elites and intellectuals. Now, architects must contend with being cast as actors working against the public interest while they fight to save the country’s prized buildings. — Amelia Dhuga, “Tunisia’s Landmarks Are Under Threat — and so Are the Architects Who Would Preserve Them”

Elizabeth Hightower Allen interviews David Feinman, “Bankrupting the BLM”

Lizzie Johnson, “A Chernobyl Widow’s Tragedy, Forty Years Later”

Ben Seal, “Maine’s Cambodian Community Aims to Keep Invasive Green Crabs at Bay”

Kamala Thiagarajan, “Why nearly every farmer who grows these chile peppers is a woman”

Featured photo: Members of the Phi Beta Kappa Greater Detroit Association walk in Fox Science Preserve, where the small grass hills are topped with glacial erratic boulders, April 25, 2026.