Most Popular Editorials: 'A wonderful escape': the rise of gaming parents -- and grandparents

S5

'A wonderful escape': the rise of gaming parents -- and grandparents Video game popularity soared during the pandemic, as people sought distraction and ways to connect with loved onesHelping his seven-year-old daughter Romy set up the Nintendo Switch she got for Christmas, Paul Cliff managed to get himself hooked on Animal Crossing. "I've somehow played over 600 hours on it since January," says Paul, 56, of the life simulation game where villagers carry out daily activities such as gardening, furniture arrangement and gathering fruits. "I love the collecting in it, it's so gentle and oddly rewarding," he says, recalling an afternoon spent fishing together when Romy finally caught the Stringfish she'd been trying to catch for ages. "She couldn't wait to show me. We've been amazed at each other's achievements and creativity," Paul says. "I've found it an immersive and relaxing experience. I love my wee island, it's a wonderful escape from what's going on outside our four walls." Continued here

�

�

S1

Identify -- and Hire -- Lifelong Learners The most pertinent question one can ask of a current or future employee may just be: How do you learn? Lifelong learning is now roundly considered to be an economic imperative, and job candidates or employees who consider, update, and improve their skills will be the high performers, especially over the longer term. Pressing ourselves on the question of how we learn brings a hard, pragmatic edge to the important but nebulous notion of growth mindset. The world and the workplace have changed considerably in the past year. The skills we need to function and flourish have correspondingly changed, and so we need to bring them into a smarter, sharper focus to know what they are and to seek them out proactively, persistently, and methodically. Continued here

You Might Like

�

�

�

S2

How Einstein Learned Physics Einstein was a student long before he became a celebrity. There is a lot to glean from his education and unique approach to learning. While the story about Einstein being an early dullard is certainly false, it's not the case that he was universally regarded as a genius, either. In college, Einstein often struggled in math, getting 5s and 6s (out of a possible 6) in physics, but getting only 4s in most of his math courses (barely a passing grade). His mathematics professor, and future collaborator, Hermann Minkowski called him a "lazy dog" and physics professor, Jean Pernet, even flunked Einstein with a score of 1 in an experimental physics course. At the end of college, Einstein had the dubious distinction of graduating as the second-to-worst student in the class. Continued here

�

S3

How to work with someone who isn't emotionally intelligent If you ever worked with someone who is volatile, temperamental, moody, or simply grumpy, you will understand the difficulties. Here are ways to cope.Few psychological traits have been celebrated more during the past 20 years than emotional intelligence (EQ). Loosely defined, it's the ability to keep your own emotions under control, as well as read and influence other people's emotions. Ever since Daniel Goleman wrote a best-selling book on the topic (popularizing earlier research by two Yale psychologists), organizations are placing increasing importance on EQ when hiring and developing employees and managers. Sadly, many managers have low EQ, which is a common cause of anxiety and stress for their employees. If you ever worked for someone who is volatile, temperamental, moody, or simply grumpy, you will understand the difficulties of putting up with a low EQ boss. Even if organizations make progress in developing EQ in their managers, you are always going to have to learn how to deal with low EQ individuals, including, at times, a boss. No amount of coaching can turn someone with chronic anger management problems, severe empathy deficits, and lack of social skills, into Oprah Winfrey or the Dalai Lama. Continued here

You Might Like

�

�

�

S4

Hustle culture is burning us out. Here are 3 more productive ways to achieve success Burnout can stop ambition dead in its tracks, and a year of stay-at-home directives probably hasn't helped. Here is a simple tool kit to help build resilience and meet goals. Few career perspectives have permeated mainstream culture in the last 20 years more than hustle. The idea that it's both fashionable and lucrative to pursue multiple income streams, rake in that coin, and project the image that you're a go-getter. Once a derogatory business term, hustle is now an aspiration, a means to have what you want in life, and a way to reclaim control over your destiny. In recent years, however, hustle is now being seen as the villain, the toxic origin point of rising levels of burnout. Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian has bemoaned the rise of "hustle porn," and an essay from Anne Helen Petersen in BuzzFeed News reported how burnout became ubiquitous seemingly overnight. Burnout can stop ambition dead in its tracks, and a year of stay-at-home directives probably hasn't helped. Continued here

�

S6

Why Short-Term Solitude Makes You a Better Thinker Making good decisions requires having time and space to think Jesse Livermore is considered the best stock trader in history. He was the inspiration for one of the most famous books on trading, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, published in 1923. He was a true pioneer of stock trading and brought his profession to a new level in the early 21st century by dedicating his whole life to trading. His habits were unique for his time. He had laser focus from 9:30 a.m., when the market opened, until 4 p.m., when the final bell rang. In an interview found in the latest edition of his book, How to Trade in Stocks, he gave the following advice to traders: Continued here

�

S7

The Japanese art principle that teaches how to work with failure Your cracks and flaws make you more amazing - if handled artfully.Like a favorite cup or plate, people sometimes crack. We may even break. Obviously, we cannot and ought not throw ourselves away when this happens. Instead, we can relish the blemishes and learn to turn these scars into art - like kintsugi (金継ぎ), an ancient Japanese practice that beautifies broken pottery. Kintsugi, or gold splicing, is a physical manifestation of resilience. Instead of discarding marred vessels, practitioners of the art repair broken items with a golden adhesive that enhances the break lines, making the piece unique. They call attention to the lines made by time and rough use; these aren't a source of shame. This practice—also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い ), which literally means gold mending—emphasizes the beauty and utility of breaks and imperfections. It turns a problem into a plus. Continued here

�

S8

US-China tech war: Beijing's secret chipmaking champions How Washington's sanctions boosted China's semiconductor sector Once a month, senior executives of Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. fly to Beijing for a flurry of meetings with China's top economic management bodies. They focus on the company's efforts to build some of the world's most advanced computer memory chips -- and its progress on weaning itself off American technology. Based in the central riverside city of Wuhan, Yangtze Memory is considered at the vanguard of the country's efforts to create a domestic semiconductor industry, already mass-producing state-of-the-art 64-layer and 128-layer NAND flash memory chips, used in most electronics from smartphones to servers to connected cars. These marvels of nanoengineering stack tiny memory cells in ever-greater densities, rivaling industry leaders such as U.S.-based Micron Technology and South Korea's Samsung Electronics. Continued here

�

S9

Debranding Is the New Branding From Burger King and Toyota to Intel and Warner Brothers, major brands are discarding detail and depth. Why now, and what's the rush?Advertising's oldest cliche has the client asking: "Can you make the logo bigger?" But the internet has forever constrained the dimensions of design. In a pre-Web world - when the smallest canvas for many brands was the business card - intricacy could be embraced. Nowadays, corporate identities must "click" inside an ever-expanding warren of tiny boxes, from 120-pixel iPhone buttons to 16-pixel browser "favicons." The difficulty of ensuring that any logo (let alone an intricate, dimensional logo) stands out from the kaleidoscopic eye-candy of ads, apps and open tabs is one driver behind "mobile first" design. Here identity and functionality are conceived from the outset inside the tightest constraints - for what works on a cellphone will surely work on a water-tower. Continued here

S10

The secret ingredient of comfort food? Struggle. With pho, Spam, and Hoppin' John, pandemic baking joins a tradition.These days, pho is everywhere. The steaming bowl of rice noodles in broth is a mainstay on Vietnamese restaurant menus worldwide - comfort food served at corner shops, food trucks, and fancy fusion restaurants. It's a dramatic evolution for a dish that originated out of hunger and struggle. Pho was created in Hanoi in the early 20th century, when French colonialists craved steak, and the poor masses had to make do with the scraps, says Andrea Nguyen, a prolific Vietnamese cookbook author. Vietnamese butchers had to preserve every speck of meat, so they got creative and served it in noodle soup. "Pho was born out of resourceful cooking, necessity, and scrappy people trying to make a living," Nguyen says. Pho is just one example of a dish that evolved from harsh necessity to cultural mainstay. Continued here

S11

High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here's How to Create It "There's no team without trust," says Paul Santagata, Head of Industry at Google. He knows the results of the tech giant's massive two-year study on team performance, which revealed that the highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety, the belief that you won't be punished when you make a mistake. Studies show that psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off - just the types of behavior that lead to market breakthroughs. Continued here

S12

Persuading the Body to Regenerate Its Limbs Deer can regrow their antlers, and humans can replace their liver. What else might be possible?Each year, researchers from around the world gather at Neural Information Processing Systems, an artificial-intelligence conference, to discuss automated translation software, self-driving cars, and abstract mathematical questions. It was odd, therefore, when Michael Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University, gave a presentation at the 2018 conference, which was held in Montreal. Fifty-one, with light-green eyes and a dark beard that lend him a mischievous air, Levin studies how bodies grow, heal, and, in some cases, regenerate. He waited onstage while one of Facebook's A.I. researchers introduced him, to a packed exhibition hall, as a specialist in "computation in the medium of living systems." Continued here

S13

3 Signs You Possess a Skill Most Don't Have (and How to Capitalize On It) When you recognize where your gifts are, you're one step closer to finding ways to leverage them in business. There are many things that can give entrepreneurs an advantage over their competition. Unique life experiences. Strong leadership capabilities. Or even being able to assemble a high-performing, driven team. But like so many other aspects of life, you are your most valuable asset. This is especially true when you bring unique skills to the table--abilities most people don't have. The challenge, of course, is recognizing where your gifts lie and then finding ways to capitalize on them. Though this certainly isn't easy, here are three signs to look for to start the process. Continued here

S14

3 Billionaires' Best Advice for Getting Over Your Fear of Failure Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Sara Blakely on how you can dare to chase your wildest dreams.Perhaps one of the oldest and most oft repeated chestnuts in the startup world is that you shouldn't fear failure. "Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough," Elon Musk told SpaceX employees in the company's early days, for instance. Or how about this classic from Thomas Edison: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Entrepreneurs are bombarded with the message that getting over your fear of failure is essential for success, probably because it's true. But that doesn't make it easy. Failure feels terrible for most normal humans, and it's natural to worry about the social, economic, and business costs of falling on your face. Continued here

S15

An Oxford researcher says there are seven moral rules that unite humanity In 2012, Oliver Scott Curry was an anthropology lecturer at the University of Oxford. One day, he organized a debate among his students about whether morality was innate or acquired. One side argued passionately that morality was the same everywhere; the other, that morals were different everywhere. "I realized that, obviously, no one really knew, and so decided to find out for myself," Curry says. Seven years later, Curry, now a senior researcher at Oxford's Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, can offer up an answer to the seemingly ginormous question of what morality is and how it does - or doesn't - vary around the world. Continued here

S16

Your Emails Are 36 Percent More Likely to Get a Reply If You End Them This Way How you sign off on business emails seems like a small thing, but it has a big impact on their effect. As any salesperson, PR rep, or entrepreneur can tell you, the rate at which people open and respond to your emails can be the difference between accelerating your career and the pit of despair. No wonder we all spend so much time obsessing about subject lines, exact phrasings, and crafting the perfect ask. But according to research from email software company Boomerang, there's one part of your messages you're probably not putting enough thought into -- your closing. Most of us slap a pleasant-sounding "Best" or "Regards" on the end of our emails and call it a day. But when Boomerang trawled through 350,000 emails to see how particular closings impact whether a message gets a reply, they discovered how you sign off matters a surprising amount. Continued here

S17

Sputnik V: How Russia's Covid vaccine is dividing Europe It's no coincidence that Russia has christened its Covid vaccine Sputnik V. The first time the world learned the meaning of the Russian word Sputnik was in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite into orbit. At the height of the Cold War this startling evidence of Moscow's scientific and technical capabilities came as a huge shock to Western powers, which had assumed they enjoyed a comfortable technological lead over the Soviets. Critics of the Putin administration were sceptical when the vaccine was given regulatory approval in Moscow as early as last August. That scepticism, though, has faded. Because once again Russian scientists have surprised the West. An Eastern European diplomat, from a country that regards Russia as a clear and present threat, put it to me like this: "The search for vaccines in 2020 was rather similar to the race for space flight in the 1950s. Once again many outsiders have underestimated Russia. This is potentially the most powerful tool of soft power that Moscow has had in its hands for generations." Continued here

S18

Why the "velvet hammer" is a better way to give constructive criticism Have something difficult to say? These are the exact words you should use.It's time to bag the sandwich method of delivering bad news. You know, the technique where you say something nice, then drop in the criticism, and the end with something nice. It's not like the person won't notice that the center of the sandwich is terrible; the method is really designed to make it easier on the giver. "When you communicate something to somebody, it's irreversible and irretrievable," says Joy Baldridge, author of The Joy in Business: Innovative Ideas to Find Positivity (and Profit) In Your Daily Work Life. "You can't take it back, and it can be difficult to know what words to say in order to approach somebody and give them feedback. Whether you need to say they did or didn't do or something, it feels uncomfortable." The old methods of feedback can have a ripple effect with your team, resulting in people calling in sick, getting upset, or even quitting. But conflict avoidance isn't the answer. Instead, Baldridge suggests using her "velvet hammer" method, which is soft like velvet but packs a punch. Continued here

S19

Eliminate Strategic Overload How to select fewer initiatives with greater impactAs companies respond to intensifying competitive pressures and challenges, they ask more and more of their employees. But organizations often have very little to show for the efforts of their talented and engaged workers. By selecting fewer initiatives with greater impact, companies can make their strategies more powerful. A strategic initiative is worthwhile only if it does one or more of the following: - It creates value for customers by raising their willingness to pay. As your company finds ways to innovate or to improve existing products, the maximum price people will be willing to pay for the offering rises. - It creates value for employees by making work more attractive. Offering better jobs lowers the minimum compensation that you have to offer to attract talent to your business. - It creates value for suppliers by reducing their operating cost. As suppliers' costs go down, the lowest price they would be willing to accept for their goods falls. As companies expand the total amount of value created for their customers, employees, and suppliers, they position themselves for enduring financial success. Continued here

S20

Lost touch: how a year without hugs affects our mental health Humans are designed to touch and be touched - which is why so many who live on their own have suffered during the pandemic. Will we ever fully recover?There's only so much a dog can do, even if that is a lot. I live alone with my staffy, and by week eight of the first lockdown she was rolling her eyes at my ever-tightening clutch. I had been sofa-bound with Covid and its after-effects before lockdown was announced, then spring and summer passed without any meaningful touch from another person. I missed the smell of my friends' clothes and my nephew's hair, but, more than anything, I missed the groundedness only another human body can bring. The ache in my solar plexus that married these thoughts often caught me off guard. The need for touch exists below the horizon of consciousness. Before birth, when the amniotic fluid in the womb swirls around us and the foetal nervous system can distinguish our own body from our mother's, our entire concept of self is rooted in touch. Continued here

S21

How Long Can We Live? New research is intensifying the debate - with profound implications for the future of the planet.In 1990, not long after Jean-Marie Robine and Michel Allard began conducting a nationwide study of French centenarians, one of their software programs spat out an error message. An individual in the study was marked as 115 years old, a number outside the program's range of acceptable age values. They called their collaborators in Arles, where the subject lived, and asked them to double-check the information they had provided, recalls Allard, who was then the director of the IPSEN Foundation, a nonprofit research organization. Perhaps they made a mistake when transcribing her birth date? Maybe this Jeanne Calment was actually born in 1885, not 1875? No, the collaborators said. We've seen her birth certificate. The data is correct. Calment was already well known in her hometown. Over the next few years, as rumors of her longevity spread, she became a celebrity. Continued here

S22

The secretary who turned Liquid Paper into a multimillion-dollar business Bette Nesmith Graham invented one of the most popular office supplies of the 20th century. Today, she's largely been forgotten.On a warm Texas night in 1956, Bette Nesmith - later known as Bette Nesmith Graham - sat in a garage surrounded by buckets of white tempera paint, empty nail polish bottles, and handmade labels. She didn't know it then, but she was on the brink of something magical. The product she would eventually create - Liquid Paper, a white correction fluid used to conceal handwritten or printed typos - would become one of the world's most popular and enduring office supplies. Graham wasn't a chemist or an engineer. She was a single mom from Texas who had a brilliant idea while working a 9-to-5 job as a secretary. But she was also a budding product marketing genius: Over several decades, she identified a need in the market, organically grew her business, staved off competition, and bootstrapped her way to a $47.5m exit - $173m in today's money. And she did it all during a time when women were discouraged from pursuing business ventures. Continued here

S23

Is Your C-Suite Equipped to Lead a Digital Transformation? The Covid-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated technology adoption across all industries. According to one survey, 77% of CEOs reported that the pandemic sped up their companies' digital transformation plans, and as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella noted in the early days of the crisis, "We've seen two years' worth of digital transformation in two months." A study conducted by Twilio found that Covid-19 accelerated companies' digital communications strategies by an average of six years. Historically, success rates for digital transformation efforts are dismally low. Many organizations rush to boost headcount and budget, hiring teams of talented engineers, data scientists, and cybersecurity experts. Continued here

S24

Control the Negotiation Before It Begins Focus on four preliminary factors that can shape the outcome.Countless books and articles offer advice on avoiding missteps at the bargaining table. But some of the costliest mistakes take place before negotiators sit down to discuss the substance of the deal. That's because they often take for granted that if they bring a lot of value to the table and have sufficient leverage, they'll be able to strike a great deal. While negotiating from a position of strength is certainly important, many other factors influence where each party ends up. This article presents four factors that can have a tremendous impact on negotiation outcomes and provides guidance on what negotiators should be doing before either side starts worrying about offers, counteroffers, and bargaining tactics. Harvard Business School professor Deepak Malhotra advises negotiators to resolve process before substance, set expectations, map out the negotiation space, and control the frame. By following those steps, managers position themselves for success at the bargaining table. Continued here

S25

The future of social media is sharing less, not more We may never leave social media completely. But we will control which aspects of our identities we share, and with whomThe emergence of Facebook has been significant in how we conceive of social media. Almost every platform we use encourages us to share as much of our personal lives as possible, incentivising us with more features, filters and monetisation tools. Instead of the conscious curation that characterised social networks of the past, these platforms continue promising users that if they simply post more about themselves and their friends, they can have more fulfilling social experiences. In recent years, however, public conversations around the darker elements of social media platforms - from data collection and privacy issues to fake news and propaganda - have led to more thinking on how we should use them (or if they should even be used at all). In the next decade, as we reassess our relationship with social media - and by extension, the Big Tech companies that run them - we will see more people leave public platforms entirely, sticking instead to small communities and friendship groups on more private platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal. But this will be a luxury only few will be able to choose. Continued here

S26

What Makes a Happy Country? When governments around the world introduced coronavirus restrictions requiring people to stand two meters apart, jokes in Finland started circulating: "Why can't we stick to the usual four meters?" Finns embrace depictions of themselves as melancholic and reserved - a people who mastered social distancing long before the pandemic. A popular local saying goes, "Happiness will always end in tears." But for four consecutive years, Finland has been named the happiest country in the world by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which publishes an annual report evaluating the happiness of people around the world. The latest report, published last month, has led some Finns to ask: Really? Continued here

S27

The new fuel to come from Saudi Arabia Green hydrogen is taking off around the globe - its supporters say it could play an important role in decarbonisation, but sceptics question its safety and practicality.On the edge of the Saudi Arabian desert beside the Red Sea, a futuristic city called Neom is due to be built. The $500bn (£380bn) city - complete with flying taxis and robotic domestic help - is planned to become home to a million people. And what energy product will be used both to power this city and sell to the world? Not oil. Instead, Saudi Arabia is banking on a different fuel - green hydrogen. This carbon-free fuel made is from water by using renewably produced electricity to split hydrogen molecules from oxygen molecules. This summer, a large US gas company, Air Products & Chemicals, announced that as part of Neom it has been building a green hydrogen plant in Saudi Arabia for the past four years. The plant is powered by four gigawatts of electricity from wind and solar projects that sprawl across the desert. It claims to be the world's largest green hydrogen project - and more Saudi plants are on the drawing board. Continued here

S28

It’s time to start wasting solar energy Solar is so cheap, we need to build far, far more than we need. That was the surprising conclusion Marc Perez, a doctoral student in engineering at Columbia University, arrived at in 2014. Perez was trying to design the world's cheapest electricity grid. By using a decade of satellite data to calculate solar power potential across the globe, he designed the optimal grid for producing the most power at the lowest cost. Perez found overproduction was not a problem. Unlike a coal or natural gas plant, renewable fuel is free. And switching off a solar panel's output could be done electronically, compared to the expensive process of spinning down a turbine. "Wasting" the energy carried few costs. The solution, he argued in his doctoral thesis, was to overbuild and use surplus solar energy to top off the grid, rather than storing most of that extra energy or keeping solar farms small to avoid overproduction. The strategy could theoretically lower the cost of electricity by as much as 75%. Continued here

S29

All Companies Should Live by the Jeff Bezos 70 Percent Rule A guide to making business decisions--even without all the information--inspired by the Amazon founder.There are times when companies move too swiftly into a decision that hurts them. There are also occasions when they're too slow and they fail. Jeff Bezos lives by a rule that addresses that problem. In a 2016 annual shareholder letter, Bezos talked about his approach to decision making. He suggested that while it's always nice to have access to all of the information someone wants, in the vast majority of cases, waiting until you know everything you should know is a problem. "Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70 percent of the information you wish you had," Bezos wrote in the letter. "If you wait for 90 percent, in most cases, you're probably being slow." That's a framework that every business owner should adopt. Continued here

S30

Don't Wish for Happiness. Work for It. If you want to improve your well-being, you need to make a plan and act on it.In his 1851 work, American Notebooks, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, "Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained." This is basically a restatement of the Stoic philosophers' "paradox of happiness": To attain happiness, we must not try to attain it. A number of scholars have set out to test this claim. For example, researchers writing in the journal Emotion in 2011 found that valuing happiness was associated with lower moods, less well-being, and more depressive symptoms under conditions of low life stress. At first, this would seem to support the happiness paradox - that thinking about it makes it harder to get. But there are alternative explanations. For example, unhappy people might say they "value happiness" more than those who already possess it, just as hungry people value food more than those who are full. Continued here

S31

On the Link Between Great Thinking and Obsessive Walking From Charles Darwin to Toni Morrison, Jeremy DeSilva Looks at Our Need to MoveCharles Darwin was an introvert. Granted, he spent almost five years traveling the world on the Beagle recording observations that produced some of the most important scientific insights ever made. But he was in his twenties then, embarking on a privileged, 19th-century naturalist's version of backpacking around Europe during a gap year. After returning home in 1836, he never again stepped foot outside the British Isles. He avoided conferences, parties, and large gatherings. They made him anxious and exacerbated an illness that plagued much of his adult life. Instead, he passed his days at Down House, his quiet home almost twenty miles southeast of London, doing most of his writing in the study. He occasionally entertained a visitor or two but preferred to correspond with the world by letter. He installed a mirror in his study so he could glance up from his work to see the mailman coming up the road - the 19th-century version of hitting the refresh button on email. Darwin's best thinking, however, was not done in his study. It was done outside, on a lowercase d-shaped path on the edge of his property. Darwin called it the Sandwalk. Today, it is known as Darwin's thinking path. Continued here

S32

Alexei Navalny, the Russian dissident challenging Putin, explained Russian President Vladimir Putin imprisoned Navalny to silence him. He continues to trouble the dictator.The greatest challenger to Russian President Vladimir Putin's rule is a man whose name the dictator won't say and whom he has tried to kill: Alexei Navalny. Having defiantly returned to Russia after surviving a brazen assassination attempt only to be immediately detained and thrown in jail upon arrival, the opposition leader and anti-corruption crusader has rallied tens of thousands of supporters to his cause like never before - a real sign of trouble for Putin's hold on power. Alexei Navalny has spent over a decade trying to overthrow Putin. Through slick videos, public mobilization, and even an ill-fated presidential run against the autocrat, Navalny has aimed to expose Kremlin corruption and malfeasance. While Navalny's ultimate goal seems to be to take Putin's place, not just depose him, few believe he will actually succeed. Still, his campaign has inspired tens of thousands across the country to take to the streets to express their frustration with the regime - many for the first time - posing an existential threat to Putin. Continued here

S33

How This Chinese Vaping Billionaire Became One Of The World's Richest Women In Three Years Kate Wang, 39, jumped into the ranks of the world's richest when her vaping company RLX went public on the New York Stock Exchange in January. Now the Procter & Gamble and Uber veteran faces looming threats from Chinese regulators and skeptical investors.In a period of 55 hours starting on the morning of March 22, shares in Chinese vaping company RLX Technology collapsed 54%, slashing more than $16 billion from the startup's market cap. The slump continued through the week as investors sold on the news of a potential industry crackdown by China's tobacco regulator and the Securities and Exchange Commission's announcement that it would start enforcing a law to require Chinese listed companies to provide audits or risk being delisted. It was just another twist in the rollercoaster history of a company that rose from nothing to become the largest e-cigarette brand in China in three years. Just two months prior, it raised $1.4 billion in a blockbuster IPO on the New York Stock Exchange that catapulted four of its cofounders into the ranks of the world's wealthiest. Among them was CEO Kate Wang, 39. One of a record 57 self-made women billionaires from China, Wang was worth $9.1 billion on the day of the IPO, thanks to her 20% stake in RLX. Continued here

S34

How to end a conversation the right way Conversations, like hammocks, are much easier to get into than out of. We've established a lot of collective social norms for texting- "haha" is standard, "hehe" is weird - but we still haven't figured out how to exit conversations. When we're trying to get out of an in-person conversation, we can gather our things or say we're tired. We can physically exit the room. When we're texting, every message just prolongs the conversation, but silence is rude. Either it seems like you're cutting things off abruptly - hey sorry to hear about your parakeet i'm going to bed now - or you're stuck trying to keep your eyes open as you give shorter and shorter hahahahas until the person just stops texting you. I wish society would get together and agree on a kill-switch emoji for every hard conversation. The battered-shrimp emoji means "you don't need to respond anymore; the conversation is over." The closed mailbox with the flag down means "I think we should see other people." Continued here

S35

Spirituality is a brain state we can all reach, religious or not William James, the father of Western psychology, in 1902 defined spiritual experiences as states of higher consciousness, which are induced by efforts to understand the general principles or structure of the world through one's inner experience. At the core of his view of spirituality is what we might call 'connectedness', which refers to the fact that individual goals can be truly realised only in the context of the whole - one's relationship to the world and to others. Traditionally, this spiritual state has been described as divine, achievable through contemplative and embodied practices, such as prayer, meditation and rhythmic rituals. Indeed, this higher state of consciousness and connection has been reported in many spiritual traditions, ranging from Buddhism to Sufism and Judaism to Christianity. However, recent neuroscientific research shows that the same state can be achieved by secular practices too. Continued here

S36

This 5-Move, No-Gym Workout Got Matt Damon Fighting Fit in His Forties Hollywood PT Jason Walsh reveals the back-to-basics workout that healed Jason Bourne's battered bodyRather than letting loose with barbells flying everywhere, Jason Walsh favours a back-to-fundamentals approach to fitness. Put the emphasis on very basic movement patterns, he argues, and you'll not only build muscle, but open up the joints to prevent injury while promoting mobility - something which is vital for all stages of life. "It's about understanding the basics," Walsh says. "People always want to add more weight. We don't even touch a weight, it's all calisthenics work. It's about connecting to the body again and then maybe putting weight on, or starting to hold moves for longer periods of time." With that in mind, it's time to take your workouts back to basics. While Walsh is keen to point out the difficulties of prescribing a workout that will benefit every body, the below is inspired by Walsh's work with Damon. Continued here

S37

What the West Gets Wrong About China Many people have wrongly assumed that political freedom would follow new economic freedoms in China and that its economic growth would have to be built on the same foundations as in the West. The authors suggest that those assumptions are rooted in three essentially false beliefs about modern China: (1) Economics and democracy are two sides of the same coin; (2) authoritarian political systems can't be legitimate; and (3) the Chinese live, work, and invest like Westerners. But at every point since 1949 the Chinese Communist Party - central to the institutions, society, and daily experiences that shape all Chinese people - has stressed the importance of Chinese history and of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Until Western companies and politicians understand this and revise their views, they will continue to get China wrong. Continued here

S38

The Surprising Benefits of Unconditional Positive Regard In 1967, a catchy tune by The Beatles, "All You Need is Love," became the anthem for the Summer of Love. The Flower Power culture embraced the song and its message, "love is all you need." If someone had asked humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers what the song meant, he might have said, "Unconditional Positive Regard!" Although it didn't quite roll off the tongue the same way, Rogers introduced the concept nearly a decade before the Beatles song, it has the same basic message: empathy invokes change. Rogers emphasized the importance of unconditional positive regard in healthy personality development, and his work has implications beyond the lab or therapist's office. Treating ourselves and others with unconditional positive regard can improve our lives in many ways. Continued here

S39

The real reason humans are the dominant species Energy is the key to humanity's world domination. Not just the jet fuel that allows us to traverse entire continents in a few hours, or the bombs we build that can blow up entire cities, but the vast amounts of energy we all use every day. Consider this: a resting human being requires about the same amount of energy as an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb to sustain their metabolism - about 90 watts (joules per second). But the average human being in a developed country uses more like 100 times that amount, if you add in the energy needed to get around, build and heat our homes, grow our food and all the other things our species gets up to. The average American, for example, consumes about 10,000 watts. Continued here

S40

Is Nuclear Energy Good or Bad? Listen to The Atlantic's Robinsen Meyer explain the arguments and decide for yourself SEAN: We spoke to David Wallace-Wells earlier in the week about clean energy a whole lot. We didn't dig into the question of whether nuclear counts as clean. ROBINSON: {Laughs} SEAN: It sounds like probably not. ROBINSON: I mean it really, really depends on how you define clean. And I'd say if you hear a politician talking about clean energy, they are probably including nuclear in that because they mean zero carbon energy. SEAN: Mmm. ROBINSON: I think critics of nuclear would tell you that because nuclear generates this waste material, it is not clean. Because you have nuclear waste at the end of the process, it is not clean in the same way that, say, solar or wind are clean. SEAN: Well, let's talk about the waste. Listen to the podcast here    Read the transcript here