December 24, 2022 - How to help the people of Ukraine right now

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How to help the people of Ukraine right now In reaction to the invasion of Ukraine, the British Red Cross, together with the Ukrainian Red Cross Society (URCS) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), has launched a Ukraine Emergency Fund that you can donate any amount to now. Donations could go towards water, first aid, medicines, warm clothes and shelter for people affected by the invasion. Continued here

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A Common Parasite Can Make People More Entrepreneurial When Daniel Lerner, a professor of entrepreneurship at Madrid’s IE Business School, and colleagues examined the medical and professional histories of 74,291 Danish women, they discovered that those infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii were, on average, 29% more likely than others to have founded a start-up, 27% more likely to have founded multiple ventures, and more than twice as likely to have founded their businesses alone. In addition, their ventures were more successful, on average, than those launched by their uninfected counterparts. The conclusion: A common parasite can make people more entrepreneurial. Continued here

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The 10 best things to see and do in Canggu, Bali Surfing is Canggu's raison d'être. From the mid-2010s, when intrepid surfers moved away from the crowded waves of Kuta and Seminyak, this then still-quiet spot began developing as one of Bali's most popular surf hubs. And while the pros have since moved even farther east to look for a new spot to surf undisturbed, Canggu remains a top choice for surfers of all levels. A handful of waves break on Canggu's shore, including the beginner-friendly Batu Bolong and Berawa, or the pro-grade rips and curls on Echo Beach. You'll find surfboards for rent all along the coast, and surf camps with one-on-one training sessions range from boutique retreats to luxurious lodgings such as COMO Uma Canggu. Continued here

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How to Design an AI Marketing Strategy In order to realize AI’s giant potential, CMOs need to have a good grasp of the various kinds of applications available and how they may evolve. This article guides marketing executives through the current state of AI and presents a framework that will help them classify their existing projects and plan the effective rollout of future ones. It categorizes AI along two dimensions: intelligence level and whether it stands alone or is part of a broader platform. Simple stand-alone task-automation apps are a good place to start. But advanced, integrated apps that incorporate machine learning have the greatest potential to create value, so as firms build their capabilities, they should move toward those technologies. Continued here

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Saving Coral Reefs with Dental Tech A routine dentist’s tool may soon help with more than just oral health. A new study has found that dental imaging scanners can double as portable devices to track the growth of baby corals—a crucial predictor of how reefs will fare amid climate change. Heat stress can kill mature coral reefs and curtail their regrowth. “Growth, reproduction and survival are the main things that we’re always looking at in terms of how healthy reefs are,” says marine biologist Kate Quigley of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. By modeling baby corals in 3-D, researchers can track how well they branch, develop complex shapes and reach reproducing size. If harsh water conditions make corals grow too slowly, a reef won’t recover. Continued here

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Mistletoe's Ridiculously Clingy Seeds Could Make a Biological Glue Many people today associate mistletoe with holiday kisses. But for centuries the plant was known more for its remarkable stickiness; ancient Greeks and Romans used gooey mistletoe berries for applications ranging from bird traps to skin ulcer ointment. Now biochemists are investigating whether mistletoe's clinginess can provide a natural alternative to synthetic glues. For the parasitic mistletoe plant, stickiness is essential. Inside each berry are seeds coated in a mucuslike substance called viscin. After a bird gobbles up and digests a berry, it expels globs of seeds in strands of this substance, which drape over tree branches and glue the seeds in place. The mistletoe then embeds itself into the tree, siphoning water and nutrients from its host. Continued here

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Editors' Picks: Our Favorite Opinions of 2022 Our opinion section took us to the front lines of COVID, revealed how racists misuse evolutionary biology, illuminated a mental health epidemic in kids, and more A year of incredible science news was complemented with wide-ranging commentary at Scientific American. Our opinion section featured some of the best and brightest minds, taking us to the front lines of COVID, teaching us about the many fraught Supreme Court decisions involving science and evidence, and more. We learned, for example, about the pitfalls of artificial intelligence, how racists misuse evolutionary biology, and how our children’s troubled mental health is another ongoing epidemic. Whether they were thought-provoking, deeply moving or challenged long-held beliefs, here are some of our editors’ favorite opinion articles of 2022. Continued here

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London restaurants, bars and foodie events to go to and help support Ukraine Ukrainian-born Olia Hercules, Russian Alissa Timoshkina and Polish chef Zuza Zak are at the helm of the efforts, along with London-based Instagrammer Clerkenwell Boy. The group were inspired by 2016’s £1 million raising Cook for Syria initiative and cooked up the plans after news of the war in Ukraine broke. Continued here

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The 23 Best Places to Go in Spain and Portugal in 2023 At the same time, the editors of all of the Condé Nast Traveller editions around the world have been discussing, debating, and defending their choices in order to create a collective list of the top 23 places to visit around the world in 2023. We are happy that two of our picks – a Spanish province and a town in the Alentejo region of Portugal – made the global list. We also hope the double honour for these two destinations will serve as a recognition of their new cultural, gastronomic, and hospitality offerings as well as encourage readers to go visit and see them in person. Continued here

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Boost your connection by checking your Wi-Fi strength from any device From gaming and online shopping to movie streaming and social media. There are a lot of reasons why you need stable Wi-Fi around your home, and getting stuck with a sluggish or unreliable connection, can become a major problem. We’re sadly not equipped to see the radio waves floating around our homes carrying that precious wireless internet access, but you can easily check how strong the signal from your router is at various locations. This can be helpful when making sure you’re getting the wireless speeds you’re paying for, but also to set up your devices in optimum locations and identify problems, like a badly positioned fish tank. You can check your wireless strength from any device, and we’ve picked the simplest options in each case. Continued here

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Ask Ethan: Could SETI detect an Earth-like civilization? Someday, if nature is kind to us, we’ll make the grandest discovery of all: that we aren’t alone in the Universe. While various observatories and space missions might someday soon find life on other worlds, our ultimate ambition is even grander: to find another intelligent, technologically advanced civilization out there, to receive and listen to their signals, to send our own human-generated signals their way, and to establish two-way communication. If there’s anyone else out there within a reasonable distance to make contact with, it’s only a matter of time, technology, investment, and luck before our searches pay off. But how far along on the path toward finding extraterrestrial intelligence are we, really? Could we even detect another civilization that’s operating and broadcast at the level that humans are currently at here on Earth? That’s the question of David Dempster, who asks: Continued here

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3 Strategies to Bridge Generational Divides at Work Generational disconnect is an ages-old problem. But for the first time ever, we now have five generations in the workforce. And the consequences of this disconnect are more severe in this post-Covid era: Company leaders are balancing the call for more purposeful work from their employees with ever-increasing performance demands to succeed in their markets. Based on their combined decades of academic and applied research as well as their hands-on experience inside and advising some of the world’s most progressive companies, the authors present three approaches that help people not only see the value in age differences, but also use that diversity to boost employee retention and productivity, innovate more consistently, and deepen customer relationships. Continued here

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Why Leaders Should Focus on 'We,' Not 'I,' in Team Communications People managers who focus on me, myself, and I are missing the point. Continued here

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'Snowball Earth' was crushing and cold. What animals could survive it? Planet Earth used to be something like a cross between a deep freeze and a car crusher. During vast stretches of the planet’s history, everything from pole to pole was squashed beneath a blanket of ice a kilometer or more thick. Scientists call this snowball Earth. Some early animals managed to endure this frigid era from roughly 720 to 580 million years ago, but they had their work cut out for them. Despite their valiant successes, the repeated expansion and contraction of giant ice sheets pulverized the hardy extremophiles’ remains leaving almost no trace of them in the fossil record and scientists with little to no idea of how they managed to survive. Continued here

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Save 20% on $50 or more of office essentials at Amazon My office is an absolute catastrophe here at the end of 2022. The year-end crunch has the whole place scattered with coffee cups, orphaned pen caps, crumpled to-do lists, and a whole bunch of pistachio shells from an unfortunate incident that happened during a late-night editing session. I’m resolving to keep my office more livable in 2023, and I need some stuff to make that happen. Amazon’s Stock Up & Save program offers discounted versions of essential items in various categories. The deals are especially good when it comes to office essentials, though. Of course, that includes notepads, pens, and other common supplies. But it also extends to snacks, cleaning products, and even dog training pads if you’re the type to keep your pooch around while you work. And, making the deals even sweeter, which is something we all need after all that Christmas shopping, you’ll get 20% off your order if you order more than $50 worth of products from Amazon’s Stock Up & Save program. Play your cards right and that’s like getting free bags of pecans to snack on. They’re delicious, and they don’t leave shells to fall onto the floor and slowly annihilate your feet with their impossibly sharp shards. Continued here

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10 last-minute digital gifts people can enjoy during the holidays (and beyond) The beauty of the digital era is that if you’ve waited until the absolute last second to get someone a gift, you don’t have to worry about shipping logistics or stock issues. Instead, you can send someone something virtual, which will arrive in their inbox the day it’s purchased (or sometimes can be pre-scheduled). There’s no harm in giving someone a gift card, especially if you know where they often shop, but we have some alternative suggestions. We’re focusing on subscriptions to services your friends and family members may enjoy throughout the entire year, which may not be tangible but are very thoughtful digital gifts as they acknowledge and nurture that special someone’s interests. MasterClass subscribers get unlimited access to thorough video courses taught by masters in their chosen field(s). Courses are taught video prerecorded video instructions and include cooking taught by Gordon Ramsey, drumming taught by Ringo Starr, and writing taught by Roxane Gay. MasterClass offers new classes regularly, so this subscription will only get more valuable over time. Continued here

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Pink Iguana hatchlings spotted for the first time on the Gal The Galápagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Ecuador are a playground for biodiversity. Particularly famous for their role in helping Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution in the 1830s and 1840s, it’s home to many species that aren’t found anywhere else on the planet. Giant tortoises, flightless cormorants, and three species of land iguanas are some of the many animals that only call these islands home. One land iguana species is the critically endangered Galápagos Pink Land Iguana (Conolophus marthae), which is only found on Isabela Island, one of the 13 major islands in the archipelago. First discovered in 1986 and identified as a new species in 2009, there are only about 200 to 300 of these photogenic reptiles on the Isabela Island. Continued here

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Tesla driver blames self-driving mode for eight-car pileup The driver of a 2021 Tesla Model S says a Full Self-Driving (FSD) Mode malfunction is behind a Thanksgiving Day eight-vehicle crash on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge. The accident  resulted in two children receiving minor injuries. The incident, made public on Wednesday via a local police report and subsequently reported on by Reuters, is only the latest in a string of wrecks, some fatal, to draw scrutiny from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). As The Guardian also notes, the multi-car wreck came just hours after Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced the $15,000 autopilot upgrade would become available to all eligible vehicle owners in North America. Prior to the expansion, FSD was only open to Tesla drivers with “high safety scores.” Continued here

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Meta will pay $725 million for a single Cambridge Analytica privacy settlement Facebook’s owner, Meta, agreed Friday to pay a $725 million class action lawsuit settlement over the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal—the largest data privacy sum in history, according to lawyers speaking with the BBC. In exchange, Facebook will not be required to admit any wrongdoing regarding its role in facilitating the mishandling of over 87 million users’ personal data via third-party companies. One of those businesses, the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica, became a focal point of the Big Tech controversy for its leverage of a relatively obscure app’s trove of personal user information. Despite only 300,000 people installing an app called This Is Your Digital Life, its access to users’ friend networks allowed it to build a vast set of voter “psychoanalytic profiles,” which it then sold to both Ted Cruz’s and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaigns. Continued here

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Warren Buffett Says This Is the Best Investment You'll Make for Beating Inflation Your best investment choice in times like these may not actually be about your finances. Continued here

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Best heated insoles of 2022 There’s nothing worse than heading home early from what should be a great ski day because all heat has left your toes, or having a tough time focusing at work because all you can think about is the cold creeping into your insoles. You might be dreaming of the space heater waiting for you at home, but you need a solution now. The best heated insoles can quickly and comfortably take out any unwelcome chills that come your way. These impressively compact creations can be found in a variety of sizes and suited to various activities. Some heated shoe insoles are disposable, some are powered by rechargeable batteries, and some are even water-resistant (we’re looking at you fellow, frequent foot-sweaters). Plus, most models are designed to minimize bulk or extra padding, so you won’t have to worry about your toes being squished. The best heated insoles are a great way to stay warm and stay active even when the temperature starts to drop. Continued here

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The 23 Best Places to Go in 2023 Our 23 best places to travel in 2023 is a mix of old favourites worth visiting anew, and lesser-trammelled, even once-forbidden, regions ready to welcome travellers - yet they are all unified by highly anticipated new offerings and evolutions. There's something here for every kind of traveller, whether you seek extraordinary excursions through ancient rainforests, a blossoming terroir-driven culinary scene, or dazzling cultural calendars packed with world-class music and rare art exhibits. We also believe that there's more that binds than separates these places: an opportunity for richer engagement with local communities, slower travel, and more meaningful - and joyful - human connection. What could better speak to what we hope for in the year ahead? Continued here

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No, Christmas is not a stolen pagan festival. There are 3 problems with that argument This Christmas, I can rely on three things. First, the turkey will be overcooked and dry. Second, my brother will utterly ignore my Christmas list and buy me some ridiculous miscellany of weirdness. And, third, my dad will go on a rant about how Christmas is “stolen.” He’ll tell me, with the confidence of an old man who’s read Dan Brown, that it’s all just paganism repackaged. It’s Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, or the Feast of Mithras superimposed with a clunky image of Jesus. Christmas isn’t Christian; it’s the manipulation of a devious, Machiavellian Church who just stole everything good. Every year, I roll my eyes and mumble something like, “I think it’s a bit more complicated, Dad,” in a placating olive branch of good spirit. This year, though, I’m going to try something different. I’m going to point him to this article. If you have anyone in your life who also, predictably and tediously, tells you, “Christmas is just a pagan festival,” feel free to do the same. Continued here

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New battery is cheaper than lithium-ion with four times the capacity A new type of low-cost battery could help solve the renewable energy storage problem, giving us a better way to bank solar and wind energy for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. The challenge: A whopping 30% of global CO2 emissions are produced by coal-fired power plants, and decarbonizing the electric grid is a vital part of combating climate change. Continued here

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What Causes Inflation? What causes inflation? There is no one answer, but like so much of macroeconomics it comes down to a mix of output, money, and expectations. Supply shocks can lower an economy’s potential output, driving up prices. An increase in the money supply can stoke demand, driving up prices. And the expectation of inflation can become a self-fulfilling cycle as workers and companies demand higher wages and set higher prices. Continued here

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5 Ways to Talk About Salary During a Job Interview The most nerve-wracking question of all might just be: What are your salary expectations? To gain more insight into how to answer this question in a smart way, I reached out to a few of my colleagues — across job titles, departments, industries, and levels of experience — for advice. Here’s what they had to say: Continued here

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2022's most spectacular, cringeworthy, and sad NFT disasters After a year of seemingly endless launches of blockchain-based digital assets, 2022 was a year of reckoning for true crypto believers. Those who bet big on nonfungible tokens (NFTs) in order to own a small piece of the internet — be it for a profile picture, a metaverse avatar, or just for bragging rights — generally lost a lot of money. One report estimates the volume of NFTs across all marketplaces, including OpenSea, Rarible, and CryptoPunks, went down from almost $6 billion in January to less than $1 billion in October. But some NFT investors lost far more than others by rushing into the hype surrounding Web3 — the so-called third generation of the internet, in which users supposedly have more agency and ownership through decentralized mechanisms, like the blockchain.  Continued here

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How Many Republicans Died Because the GOP Turned Against Vaccines? Party leaders are unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of their own supporters. No country has a perfect COVID vaccination rate, even this far into the pandemic, but America’s record is particularly dismal. About a third of Americans—more than a hundred million people—have yet to get their initial shots. You can find anti-vaxxers in every corner of the country. But by far the single group of adults most likely to be unvaccinated is Republicans: 37 percent of Republicans are still unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, compared with 9 percent of Democrats. Fourteen of the 15 states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Donald Trump in 2020. (The other is Georgia.) Continued here

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Twitter Is No Longer a Creative Haven WIRED has written frequently of late about Elon Musk’s Twitter, so forgive me for coming back to it—but for those of us as terminally online as I am, let me just ask: What the hell happened last weekend? This is an edition of Steven Levy's Plaintext newsletter, exclusive to WIRED subscribers: sign up here. Continued here

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9 incredible castle hotels around the world A medieval fortress that fits the images of childhood storybook tales, the Kilkea Castle sits on a 186-acre estate only 45 minutes from Dublin. This luxury property features a world-class 18-hole golf course, a robust wellness centre, and a traditional Irish pub. Outdoor enthusiasts can also sign up for tennis, fishing, archery, falconry, and equestrian activities. Or get your blood pumping while seeing the best of Ireland's nature, with 4x4 off-roading through the nearby Wicklow mountains. Continued here

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Breathe Easy--We Found the Best Air Purifiers If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED Welcome to the future, where clean air is a luxury. From pandemics to wildfires, air purifiers have become the gotta-have-it home appliance. Buildings let in a lot of particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, and vaporous chemicals. Indoor plastics, furniture, paint, and flooring off-gas noxious fumes too. There’s also evidence that air filters can help clean Covid-causing virus particles from the air.  Continued here

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The 13 Best Places to Go in the UK in 2023 This list – curated by our expert contributors – is an edit of cities, regions and entire counties across the four devolved nations of the UK that should be on your radar right now. From Manchester's new museums to Glasgow's slew of slated hotel openings via conservation initiatives in Inverness and the sparkly arrival of Eurovision in Liverpool, these are the 13 best places to go in the UK in 2023, in no particular order. And don’t forget to visit our global list of international destinations to visit next year – the best places to travel in 2023, vetted by Condé Nast Traveller editors, plus ideas for places to go in the USA, top spots in Spain and destinations to book in India. Happy travels.  Continued here

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Best battery backups of 2022 Losing power is never fun, but it can also seriously mess with your electronics, especially if you don’t have a battery backup on-hand. Computers, external hard drives, home Wi-Fi networks, and more all feel the negative effects of an outage. So, it’s important to create a plan of action to keep your home or your business, or both, running during these possible future blackouts. One important part of your plan should be to consider the best battery backups (uninterruptible power supply, or UPS), which will automatically take over when the power drops or goes out entirely. But there’s no one solution that’s perfect for everyone. Some might need a more powerful and versatile solution—particularly if you’re looking to back up the equipment in your business. Or maybe you have computers and laptops that are particularly sensitive. And you’ll find that UPS models have a broad price range—you can buy one for under $100 or spend thousands of dollars.  Continued here

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Meta and Alphabet lose dominance over US digital ads market Meta and Alphabet have lost their dominance over the digital advertising market they have ruled for years, as the duopoly is hit by fast-growing competition from rivals Amazon, TikTok, Microsoft and Apple. Continued here

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Should you bring a kid into this world? If you pay too much attention to negative stories in the media, you might get the impression that the world is all doom and gloom — that humanity is headed for catastrophe. After all, things like climate change, wealth inequality, and political polarization are real problems that demand big solutions. To some people, the state of our world is so bleak that they wonder whether it’s ethical to have children. But that’s a short-sighted worldview, according to Ari Wallach, author of Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs. Continued here

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Best nose hair trimmers in 2022 If you just spotted a nose hair peeking from your nostril after a Zoom then you probably need a nose hair trimmer. Plucking hairs is painful and can cause infections and one slip with a tiny pair of scissors could lead to a cut or worse. Nose trimmers are designed to do the job without pain or injury.  It may seem like nose hair sprouts more prolifically as we age, but in reality, they’re the same hairs just growing longer and coarser. Surprisingly, your nose has the same amount of follicles as your head. The reason? To protect you from breathing in dust and particles. When they get too long though, the best nose hair trimmers will take care of them in a hurry. Continued here

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Increase Your Emotional Intelligence With These 10 Simple Rules Ready to take your emotional intelligence to the next level? These 10 simple rules will help you get started. Continued here

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Do You Really Understand Your Best (and Worst) Customers? Most companies analyze financial performance by looking at geographic segments, product lines, or channels. These perspectives overlook the fact that aggregate revenues are dependent on individual customers, and that’s why analyzing the business by looking at its customers can provide managers with useful insights. This process, called a customer-base audit, can be a tool for businesses as they seek to answer five questions: Who are our best and worst customers? How is customer behavior changing? How does a cohort of customers change over time? How do different cohorts behave differently? And when you put the answers to these questions together, what do they suggest about the health of the business? Continued here

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A very special Dealmaster: Last-minute deals you can still grab We're entering the last week of the year and, as you might've guessed, there's still a fair amount of last-minute gifts to grab at some of the best prices you'll find all year. In this week's Dealmaster we have some of our favorite big-ticket items matching their all-time low prices, including the latest iPad, Google Pixel's (6, 6a, and 7), Sony headphones and earphones, and the latest Apple AirPods Pro, to name a few. Continued here

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Mosquitoes Can Survive Insecticides in Southeast Asia Researchers found high numbers of a genetic mutation linked to this resilience in Cambodia and Vietnam Aedes aegypti, a mosquito that carries yellow fever, dengue and the Zika virus, is considered one of the world's deadliest creatures. Now, it may be becoming a bit more dangerous.  Continued here

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A More Elegant Form of Gene Editing Progresses to Human Testing In April 2016, Waseem Qasim, a professor of cell and gene therapy, was captivated by a new scientific paper that described a revolutionary way to manipulate DNA: base editing. The paper, published by David Liu’s lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, described a version of Crispr gene editing that allowed for more precise changes than ever before. “It seemed like science fiction had arrived,” says Qasim, who teaches at University College London. The genetic code of every living thing is made up of a string composed of four chemical bases: A, C, G, and T. These pair up to form the double helix structure of DNA. Traditional Crispr and previous gene editing methods work by cutting DNA’s double-stranded helix in order to knock out a disease-causing gene, for instance. Base editing, on the other hand, simply swaps one chemical base for another in order to correct a mutation or disable a gene. The first base editor that Liu’s lab described could convert a C to a T. Others have been invented since.  Continued here

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The most beautiful small towns in Europe Whether it's a lakeside hamlet in Austria or a hauntingly beautiful village in Romania, these 26 storybook towns are the stuff European dreams are made of. Fair warning: There are many charming bell towers and cobblestoned streets ahead. Continued here

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The Israeli Government Goes Extreme Right The country’s longest-serving prime minister is returning to power—and bringing radicalism with him. In 2015, an Israeli police investigation into Jewish extremism uncovered a wedding video that shocked the public. In the clip, a group of far-right revelers were captured celebrating by stabbing a picture of a Palestinian baby who had been murdered in a recent firebombing in the West Bank village of Duma, perpetrated by a settler extremist. The guests at this affair drew from the furthest reaches of the Israeli right, and included a lawyer named Itamar Ben-Gvir. Several of the participants—including the groom—would later be convicted for incitement to violence and terror. Continued here

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Can I travel to Bhutan? Entry requirements explained As of Friday 23 September 2022, you no longer have to provide a negative PCR test or undergo quarantine to visit Bhutan, regardless of vaccination status. However, these entry requirements can change at a moment's notice so it is important to check with your tour provider or sponsoring organisation before travelling. Continued here S57 What’s Wrong With Following a Recipe? Editor’s note: This week’s newsletter is a rerun. We’ll be back with a fresh newsletter soon. Naz Deravian, the author of the cookbook Bottom of the Pot, grew up in a family that shunned recipes in favor of spontaneous cooking—an attitude that initially impeded her effort to write a cookbook. However, as she wrote in an article for The Atlantic, the specificity and certainty of following a recipe eventually became a source of comfort for her, especially as she grappled with national and personal stressors. Continued here S51 Photos of the Week: Frosty Countryside, Christmas Train, Santa Visit Ice-skating in England, a bearskin parade in Romania, whirling dervishes in Turkey, sheep mustering in New Zealand, welcoming the winter solstice in Ireland, a live nativity performance in Slovenia, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and much more An elephant seal is surrounded by penguins on Possession Island, part of the Crozet Islands, an archipelago in the southern Indian Ocean, on December 20, 2022. # Continued here S55 Why Is Elon Musk Lighting Billions of Dollars on Fire? Maybe you have not had the best year. But take some consolation from the fact that you did not YOLO yourself into overpaying for an unprofitable social-media platform, publicly try to wriggle out of the deal, get lawyered into ponying up, liquidate billions of dollars of stock in a down market to do so, take over a company you did not really want, shitpost your way into a revenue crisis, quit paying your bills, antagonize your super-users, wink-wink at Nazis, and decimate your staff, all the while damaging your other, more lucrative businesses. Or at least probably not, unless you are Elon Musk. Twitter’s new owner might have fared better than Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cryptocurrency magnate who improbably saved Musk from winning the title of Tech Fortune–Craterer of the Year. But Musk nevertheless spent 2022 lighting billions of dollars and his reputation on fire. Musk’s behavior raises many questions, such as Why?, Why?, and Why?! And Is he going to bankrupt this thing? He looks like he is trying to: On Tuesday evening, Musk vowed to resign as CEO of Twitter “as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job!” He and whoever is foolish enough to succeed him certainly face a challenging year ahead. The once–richest man on Earth took over a company losing $220 million a year and multiplied its losses by 10, if not more, according to one analyst’s estimate. Twitter looks likely to bleed users, advertisers, and money for the foreseeable future. But the social network is Musk’s to fund, not just run. And he’s one of the few people on the planet with essentially limitless amounts of money to lose. Continued here S64 Unearthed Near Stonehenge, This Toolkit Was Used for Goldwork 4,000 Years Ago The toolkit was discovered in 1801—but until recently, researchers didn’t understand its purpose In 1801, archaeologists discovered an earthen mound near Stonehenge that contained the remains of two individuals, as well as myriad objects buried alongside them.  Continued here S69 These Frogs Turn Nearly Invisible While Sleeping The transparent glass frog can hide 89 percent of its blood in its liver, new research shows When a tiny glass frog dozes off to sleep, its body becomes so transparent it’s almost invisible. The amphibian’s glass-clear skin casts no shadows. Even the red blood disappears from its veins. It’s an unusual trick—most see-through animals are aquatic, such as icefish or jellyfish, which don’t produce hemoglobin or red blood cells.  Continued here S70 'Wizard of Oz' Hourglass Fetches $495,000 at Auction Midway through The Wizard of Oz (1939), flying monkeys capture Dorothy (Judy Garland) and take her back to the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West (Magaret Hamilton). The green-skinned antagonist holds up a gargoyle-adorned hourglass and screeches: ”You see that? That’s how much longer you’ve got to be alive! And it isn’t long, my pretty! it isn’t long! I can’t wait forever to get those shoes!" Earlier this month, that hourglass sold at auction for $495,000, reports Artnet’s Sarah Cascone. Continued here S35 Masks Are a Proven Way to Defend Yourself from Respiratory Infections Respiratory viruses have rebounded hard after COVID seclusion, and masks are one of the best ways to avoid getting them The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. Continued here S63 If animals are persons, should they bear criminal responsibility? | Psyche Ideas From The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities (1869) edited by Robert Chambers. Courtesy Internet Archive From The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities (1869) edited by Robert Chambers. Courtesy Internet Archive Continued here S56 The Biggest Takeaway from the January 6 Report Rather than conducting a large-scale dragnet, the committee zeroed in on the former president. The congressional committee investigating the January 6 insurrection delivered a comprehensive and compelling case for the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump and his closest allies for their attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Continued here S25 4 Fatal Mistakes of Walt Disney’s Deposed CEO Get and keep the support of your board, employees, customers, and investors. Continued here S62 A Year of Botched Executions Elizabeth Bruenig reflects on writing about—and witnessing—capital punishment in America. This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Continued here S59 Remembering the Strange Dream of Lockdown New York New York City in the early days of pandemic shutdowns was a horrible place to be. As fatal chaos unfolded in the hospitals, a gloriously noisy soundscape was replaced by terrifyingly constant sirens and the thrum of refrigerated morgue trucks. Anyone on the sidewalk, many of them essential workers who had no choice but to be there, moved away from other passersby in a fearful overshoot of the recommended six-foot separation. A famously packed city became a fraught place where it felt like getting too close to anyone might send both of you to a mass grave. Despite being painful, these things are simple to talk about. They are morally clear: Death is awful; fear is awful. What many New Yorkers admit more gingerly is that when the pure terror began to subside in late April 2020, we ventured out and discovered that some things about the city were better. No tourists, no crowds, wealthy New Yorkers–by-convenience gone to the Hamptons or upstate. Left behind was everyone who couldn’t afford to leave or didn’t want to. New York felt more neighborly, like a city half its size. Continued here S38 11 Ways to Upgrade Your Wi-Fi and Make Your Internet Faster Whether you're working from home, binge-watching Netflix, or streaming your gameplay on Twitch, there's no such thing as too much bandwidth. Even if you have gigabyte fiber mainlined into your router, everyone could use help getting faster internet around the house. It doesn't matter if you have the best possible wires outside your house—eliminating subpar speeds and Wi-Fi dead zones is largely up to you. To help, here are some ways to troubleshoot and, hopefully, improve the quality of the Wi-Fi inside and outside your place. Be sure to check our guides for more, including our how-to on securing your home Wi-Fi network, our router buying guide, an explainer on Wi-Fi 6, and our gear guide for working at home. Continued here S50 Meta to pay $725 million to settle Cambridge Analytica lawsuit Meta, the parent company of Facebook, will pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in 2018. The lawsuit came in the wake of Facebook's revelation that it had improperly shared data on 87 million users with Cambridge Analytica, a British political consultancy tied to former President Donald Trump's election campaign. Continued here S68 What's Within the Burial Cave Dedicated to Jesus' Midwife? Archaeologists in Israel are excavating the site that was popular among pilgrims more than a millennia ago Archaeologists in Israel are unraveling more of the mysteries, and finding new ones, surrounding a cave that for centuries was considered to be the burial site of Salome, the midwife of Jesus, while they prepare to open it to the public. Continued here S44 Honeybees join humans as the only known animals that can tell the difference between odd and even numbers As children, we learn numbers can either be even or odd. And there are many ways to categorise numbers as even or odd. We may memorise the rule that numbers ending in 1, 3, 5, 7, or 9 are odd while numbers ending in 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8 are even. Or we may divide a number by 2 – where any whole number outcome means the number is even, otherwise it must be odd.  Continued here S66 Pope Francis Will Return Parthenon Sculptures to Greece Pope Francis has decided to return three 2,500-year-old pieces of the Parthenon to Greece.  Dating to the fifth century B.C.E., the sculpture fragments depict the head of a boy, a horse head and the head of a bearded man. They were likely once part of a 520-foot frieze that adorned the Acropolis in Athens, showing a procession in honor of the goddess Athena.  Continued here S46 Google vs. Amazon: The smart display showdown Google and Amazon are basically the only game in town if you're looking for a plug-and-play smart display, but the companies arrived at similar products from very different directions. A smart display's usefulness mostly has to do with which ecosystem you've committed to, making recommendations no simple affair. If you're on Team Apple, you'll have to keep hoping that Tim Cook announces a Siri smart display someday. Continued here S58 Should Everyone Be Masking Again? Winter is here, and so, once more, are mask mandates. After last winter’s crushing Omicron spike, much of America did away with masking requirements. But with cases once again on the rise and other respiratory illnesses such as RSV and influenza wreaking havoc, some scattered institutions have begun reinstating them. On Monday, one of Iowa’s largest health systems reissued its mandate for staff. That same day, the Oakland, California, city council voted unanimously to again require people to mask up in government buildings. A New Jersey school district revived its own mandate, and the Philadelphia school district announced that it would temporarily do the same after winter break. The reinstated mandates are by no means widespread, and that seems unlikely to change any time soon. But as we trudge into yet another pandemic winter, they do raise some questions. What role should masking play in winters to come? Is every winter going to be like this? Should we now consider the holiday season … masking season? Continued here S54 The Dizzying Debauchery of ‘Babylon’ Damien Chazelle’s new film is an extravaganza of caustic misery and overflowing movie magic. For a lavish and expensive epic about 1920s Hollywood, Damien Chazelle’s new film, Babylon, introduces itself about as scatologically as possible. In its first sequence, a harried gofer named Manny Torres (played by Diego Calva) tries to transport an elephant into the Hollywood Hills for a big-shot producer’s party, a farcical task that ends with the elephant pooping on the camera lens—in a way, on the viewers themselves. We then cut to a giggling movie star getting urinated on as part of some private sexcapade while the party ensues on the floors below—a sweaty, drug-fueled orgy that Chazelle presents in a bravura unbroken take. Continued here S37 The Metaverse Doesn't Have a Leg to Stand On It only takes four words to sum up the absurd trajectory of the tech world in 2022: “Legs are coming soon!”  This October, Meta announced an improvement to its metaverse, Horizon Worlds. To show off the new feature, the company released a clip of Mark Zuckerberg’s Horizon Worlds avatar happily lifting each leg, then jumping. Previously, people who strapped on a $400 headset to explore Meta’s virtual space saw avatars with floating cartoon torsos. Now they would have lower bodies, too. Even feet. Continued here S67 First Recorded Pink Iguana Hatchlings Found on Galápagos Island After a ten-month effort, researchers discovered the young endangered reptiles on a remote volcano With seven expeditions over the past ten months, scientists in the Galápagos Islands have been studying the last surviving population of critically endangered pink iguanas. Made up of an estimated 200 to 300 adults, the population has been declining and aging over the last decade, leading to concern about the species going extinct. Continued here S52 Breaking China’s Hold As Beijing’s ambition of overtaking the American economy stalls, its strategy is shifting to economic coercion. The U.S. must be prepared. The United States is in danger of missing a profound change in the economic component of China’s geopolitical strategy. Chinese President Xi Jinping has downgraded the Communist Party’s ambition to overtake the U.S. in economic size (though that is still officially a goal). Instead, his priority is to minimize China’s dependence on other countries and maximize its ability to coerce them economically. This is an implicit acknowledgment that China can’t achieve the aim of being a truly rich nation anytime soon. But the U.S. cannot afford to be complacent: China can wield its very large economy as a strategic weapon. Continued here S48 Exxon's bad reputation got in the way of its industry-wide carbon capture proposal ExxonMobil has been the prime target of activists and politicians angered by the oil industry’s efforts to block action on climate change. Now, newly disclosed documents confirm that the oil company’s reputational woes have extended into the industry itself and threatened to derail Exxon’s biggest climate proposal to date. Continued here S53 The War on Christmas Is Winning “Do they know it’s Christmas?” the musician Bob Geldof once asked. Nearly three decades on, the answer in the United States is that they know perfectly well, but what that means, and how they express it, is in flux. For years, conservatives have warned of a “war on Christmas.” Former President Donald Trump adopted it as a major cause, and nearly four in 10 Americans said in a poll last December that politicians are waging a campaign to take religion out of the holiday. Liberals have scoffed at the idea that anyone is trying to downplay Christmas, dismissing the whole thing as either earnest paranoia or cynical politics. They are right that there’s no coordinated push to downplay the holiday or its religious roots, but conservatives aren’t reacting to nothing: Christmas is becoming less of a religious holiday for millions of people. If a war on Christmas exists, it’s gaining ground in a long battle of attrition. 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December 13, 2022 - Russia’s McDonald’s succes... ►  November (6) ►  October (23) ►  September (5) ►  August (8) ►  June (12) ►  May (3) ►  April (9) ►  March (14) ►  February (5) ►  January (6) ►  2021 (107) ►  December (9) ►  November (6) ►  October (3) ►  September (6) ►  August (45) ►  July (4) ►  June (23) ►  May (10) ►  February (1) ►  2020 (59) ►  July (4) ►  June (16) ►  May (39) ►  2010 (19) ►  September (11) ►  August (1) ►  February (1) ►  January (6) ►  2009 (44) ►  December (2) ►  October (21) ►  September (6) ►  August (15) About Me Prem Kumar View my complete profile