25 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Explained: This Is the 'Most Important' Statistic to Identify Truly Great Leaders

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25 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Explained: This Is the 'Most Important' Statistic to Identify Truly Great Leaders "And when you have great people, the most important thing to do is to not lose them." Continued here

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The Police Folklore That Helped Kill Tyre Nichols Thirty-four years ago, near the crest of the crack-cocaine-fuelled crime surge of the early nineteen-nineties, two F.B.I agents began a novel investigation of threats to police. One agent was a former police lieutenant in Washington, D.C. The other was also a Catholic priest with a doctorate in psychology. Together, they plunged into the prison system, interviewing fifty convicted cop killers. Most criminologists today call such research pseudoscience. A sample size of fifty was almost anecdotal, and why should anyone trust a cop killer, anyway? The agents also had no benchmark—no comparable interviews with criminals who had complied. Yet the sweeping conclusions of their study, “Killed in the Line of Duty,” made the front page of the Times, and, through decades of promotion by the Department of Justice, became ingrained in the culture of American law enforcement. At the top of an inventory of “behavioral descriptors” linked to officers who ended up dead, the study listed traits that some citizens might prize: “friendly,” “well-liked by community and department,” “tends to use less force than other officers felt they would use in similar circumstances,” and “used force only as last resort.” The cop killers, the agents concluded from their prison conversations, had attacked officers with a “good-natured demeanor.” An officer’s failure to dominate—to immediately enforce full control over the suspect—proved fatal. “A miscue in assessing the need for control in particular situations can have grave consequences,” the authors warned. Continued here

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Scientists use CRISPR to insert an alligator gene into a catfish By inserting an alligator gene into catfish, Alabama scientists radically increased their disease resistance — but more work is needed before the genetically modified fish could find their way into farms or onto your plate. The challenge: Catfish are the most popular species raised by farmers in the U.S., but growing them isn’t easy — globally, 40% of the catfish hatched in farms die from disease before they can be harvested. Continued here

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Emotionally Intelligent People Use 2 Simple Words to Build Confidence and Work Better (and Get Others to Work Better, Too) These two words will not only change the way you see yourself and others, they'll turn you into 'self-fulfilling prophecies'--and inspire you to do great work. Continued here

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Our Favorite Products Made of Upcycled and Recycled Materials 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 Humans haven't been kind to the planet. Climate change is out of control, and microplastics are poisoning our oceans. But even when we try to reduce our footprint, we still need to wear shoes and clothes and occasionally drive vehicles. So it's important that we all make eco-friendly choices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow the spread of plastic waste. Luckily, some companies have figured out how to use that waste to make new products. Continued here

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The American West's Salt Lakes Are Turning to Dust This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Last summer, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed dust blowing 85 miles from its source, Lake Abert and Summer Lake, two dried-up saline lakes in southern Oregon. This has happened before: Saline lakebeds are some of the West's most significant sources of dust. California's Owens Lake is the nation's largest source of PM10, the tiny pollutants found in dust and smoke, while plumes blowing off the 800 square miles of the Great Salt Lake's exposed bed have caused toxin-filled dust storms in Salt Lake City. Continued here

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The Cryptic Crossword: Sunday, January 29, 2023 © 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices Continued here

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What happens when regular porn watchers abstain for a week? A team of psychologists based out of Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom and HELP University in Malaysia explored whether regular pornography users experience withdrawal symptoms when asked to abstain for one week. Their paper detailing this effort was recently published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. The researchers recruited 176 psychology undergraduates in Malaysia, about two-thirds female, to take part in the research. They received class credit and $7.00 for fully participating. All were regular porn consumers, viewing sexual content at least three times per week. One-half of subjects were randomized to an abstinence group — that is, they were asked to refrain from viewing pornography for seven days. The other half was assigned to a control group and told to continue their habits as usual. Continued here

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Three years ago, a fake April Fool’s Day joke transformed Sega's best series The Yakuza series has a reputation for being full of hijinks in addition to its melodramatic story of gangsters. This image reached its height in what was originally thought to be an April Fool's joke announcing a turn-based RPG entry in the series. But instead of a joke, Yakuza: Lika a Dragon was a groundbreaking soft reboot for the franchise that leans hard into the humor of the series, earning it newfound appreciation in the west. Setting up the joke — In 2016, developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio seemingly ended the story of longtime series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu with Yakuza 6: The Song of Life (although Kiryu will be coming out of retirement soon). When it came time to work on the next entry in the franchise, the studio wanted to branch off in a new direction that changed the protagonist and mechanics of the franchise. This game would become Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Continued here

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Startup's bladeless flying car is designed to reach Mach 0.8 Seattle-based startup Jetoptera is designing vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicles with bladeless propulsion systems — potentially making the future of urban flight quiet, safer, and faster. The challenge: The proportion of the global population living in cities is expected to increase from 50% today to nearly 70% by 2050, meaning our already crowded urban streets are likely to become even more congested. Continued here

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Easily Distracted? You Need to Think Like a Medieval Monk Medieval monks were, in many ways, the original LinkedIn power users. Earnest and with a knack for self-promotion, they loved to read and share inspiring stories of other early Christians who had shown remarkable commitment to their work. There was Sarah, who lived next to a river without ever once looking in its direction, such was her dedication to her faith. James prayed so intently during a snowstorm that he was buried in snow and had to be dug out by his neighbors. But none of these early devotees could ward off distraction like Pachomius. The 4th-century monk weathered a parade of demons that transformed into naked women, rumbled the walls of his dwelling, and tried to make him laugh with elaborate comedy routines. Pachomius didn’t even glance in their direction. For early Christian writers, Pachomius and his ilk set a high bar for concentration that other monks aspired to match. These super-concentrators were the first millennium embodiment of #workgoals, #hustle, and #selfimprovement. Continued here

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The mind-bending physics of time In this Big Think interview, theoretical physicist Sean Carroll discusses the concept of time and the mysteries surrounding its properties. He notes that while we use the word “time” frequently in everyday language, the real puzzles arise when we consider the properties of time, such as the past, present, and future, and the fact that we can affect the future but not the past.  Carroll also discusses the concept of entropy, which is a measure of how disorganized or random a system is, and the second law of thermodynamics, which states that there is a natural tendency for things in the Universe to go from a state of low entropy to high entropy — in other words, from less disorganized to more disorganized. He explains that the arrow of time, or the perceived difference between the past and the future, arises due to the influence of the Big Bang and the fact that the Universe began in a state of low entropy.  Continued here

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5 Sentences the Best Leaders Never Say, According to Career Experts Employees may think you're out of touch, lack empathy, are setting a bad example, or all three. Continued here

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The Auckland floods are a sign of things to come - the city needs stormwater systems fit for climate change The extraordinary flood event Auckland experienced on the night of January 27, the eve of the city’s anniversary weekend, was caused by rainfall that was literally off the chart. Over 24 hours, 249mm of rain fell – well above the previous record of 161.8mm. A state of emergency was declared late in the evening. Continued here

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Strategy for Start-ups In their haste to get to market first, write Joshua Gans, Erin L. Scott, and Scott Stern, entrepreneurs often run with the first plausible strategy they identify. They can improve their chances of picking the right path by investigating four generic go-to-market strategies and choosing a version that aligns most closely with their founding values and motivations. The authors provide a framework, which they call the entrepreneurial strategy compass, for doing so. Continued here

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The neuroscience of loving music The oldest record of notated music, the Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal, is more than 3,000 years old. But in a sense, our relationship with music is far more ancient than that. As Michael Spitzer, a professor of music at the University of Liverpool, told Big Think, humans have been making and learning to recognize music from the moment our species learned to walk on two legs, creating a predictable beat. Continued here

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How you breathe affects your brain If you’re lucky enough to live to 80, you’ll take up to a billion breaths in the course of your life, inhaling and exhaling enough air to fill about 50 Goodyear blimps or more. We take about 20,000 breaths a day, sucking in oxygen to fuel our cells and tissues, and ridding the body of carbon dioxide that builds up as a result of cellular metabolism. Breathing is so essential to life that people generally die within minutes if it stops. It’s a behavior so automatic that we tend to take it for granted. But breathing is a physiological marvel — both extremely reliable and incredibly flexible. Our breathing rate can change almost instantaneously in response to stress or arousal and even before an increase in physical activity. And breathing is so seamlessly coordinated with other behaviors like eating, talking, laughing and sighing that you may have never even noticed how your breathing changes to accommodate them. Breathing can also influence your state of mind, as evidenced by the controlled breathing practices of yoga and other ancient meditative traditions. Continued here

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Most criminal cryptocurrency is funneled through just 5 exchanges For years, the cryptocurrency economy has been rife with black market sales, theft, ransomware, and money laundering—despite the strange fact that in that economy, practically every transaction is written into a blockchain’s permanent, unchangeable ledger. But new evidence suggests that years of advancements in blockchain tracing and crackdowns on that illicit underworld may be having an effect—if not reducing the overall volume of crime, then at least cutting down on the number of laundering outlets, leaving the crypto black market with fewer options to cash out its proceeds than it’s had in a decade. Continued here

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New blood types are often discovered following medical disasters Over the last 120 years, scientists have discovered 44 blood typing systems. These discoveries, which have saved millions of lives, often follow tragic and disastrous medical events.  In the 17th century, scientists uncovered the inner workings of the circulatory system and, before long, began injecting animal blood into people for a variety of reasons. As you might suspect, a lot of people died. By the 19th century, an English physician named James Blundell suspected animal blood wasn’t the best option. He proposed that blood is not universally compatible. That is, dogs can only tolerate dog blood, humans can only tolerate human blood, and so on. Continued here

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How Venture Capitalists Make Decisions For decades now, venture capitalists have played a crucial role in the economy by financing high-growth start-ups. While the companies they’ve backed—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and more—are constantly in the headlines, very little is known about what VCs actually do and how they create value. To pull the curtain back, Paul Gompers of Harvard Business School, Will Gornall of the Sauder School of Business, Steven N. Kaplan of the Chicago Booth School of Business, and Ilya A. Strebulaev of Stanford Business School conducted what is perhaps the most comprehensive survey of VC firms to date. In this article, they share their findings, offering details on how VCs hunt for deals, assess and winnow down opportunities, add value to portfolio companies, structure agreements with founders, and operate their own firms. These insights into VC practices can be helpful to entrepreneurs trying to raise capital, corporate investment arms that want to emulate VCs’ success, and policy makers who seek to build entrepreneurial ecosystems in their communities. Continued here

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Chairing ASEAN: what does it mean for Indonesia in 2023? Despite many obstacles and challenges, including the Russia-Ukraine war and global recession, host nation Indonesia managed to ensure that the high-level conference held in Bali on November 15-16 2022 produced a joint declaration, known as the G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration. It shows how Indonesia, under President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, has tried to be a unifying force in the midst of global uncertainty. Now Indonesia has shifted focus and attention to its next significant challenge: chairing ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) in 2023. Continued here

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The weekend's best deals: Apple computers, Kindles, 4K TVs, charging cables, and more. Another weekend, another Dealmaster. In this week's roundup of the best tech deals on the web, we have deals on a range of Apple computers―desktops and laptops alike. Co-headlining the Apple computer sale are the just-released 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros and the 2021 iMac. Continued here

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Nadhim Zahawi sacked: today's Tory scandals are similar to 1990s sleaze stories in more than one way The 1990s are everywhere right now. From the fashion trends making a comeback in 2023 (I’m told), to the hotly anticipated return of the flashback mystery-box thriller Yellowjackets, it’s starting to feel like the millennium never happened. And where pop culture leads, politics inevitably follows. Events swirling around prime minister Rishi Sunak are more than a little reminiscent of the sleaze that dogged John Major’s Conservative government for most of his tenure between 1992 and 1997. So much so that I was recently reminded of a passage written by political scientist Tim Bale: Continued here

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The best mystery thriller on Netflix ignores a basic fact about hydrogen energy Could a solid hydrogen crystal really power our homes today? Experts weigh in on Glass Onion. The most entertaining science fiction starts with a kernel of real science and grows it into something far beyond the boundaries of our current reality. Continued here

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Warren Buffett Says 3 Major Decisions in Life Will Be the Difference Between Success and Failure Avoiding failure requires making some new decisions. Continued here

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Finding your essential self: the ancient philosophy of Zhuangzi explained Zhuangzi – also known as Zhuang Zhou or Master Zhuang – was a Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE. He is traditionally credited as the author of the ancient Taoist masterpiece bearing his name, the Zhuangzi.  The work of Zhuangzi has been described as “humorous and deadly serious, lighthearted and morbid, precisely argued and intentionally confusing”. On the surface, his teachings can seem outright nonsensical. He maintains that “listening stops with the ear”, that we should “hide the world in the world”, and that a person on the right path is “walking two roads”. Continued here

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Your Overall Happiness in Life Really Comes Down to 5 Simple Words Money alone doesn't lead to sustainable happiness. So what does? Continued here

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Israel’s Anti-Democratic Practices Against Palestinians Are Infecting Its Political System Early Thursday morning, Israeli soldiers and police conducted a raid against what they said were Islamic Jihad militants that left nine Palestinians, including a sixty-year-old woman, dead. The operation, in the city of Jenin, also wounded dozens, according to Palestinian officials. The Israeli Army contended that most of the dead were militants who had shot at or hurled Molotov cocktails at security forces. The death toll was one of the highest single-day tallies in the West Bank in years. On Friday night, a Palestinian gunman killed seven Israelis and wounded three others in an attack near a synagogue in East Jerusalem. Among the dead were three elderly, two women and a man. Three others were injured. On Saturday, a thirteen-year-old Palestinian boy, police said, shot and wounded two people near Jerusalem's Old City. Continued here

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'Persona 3 Portable' requests guide: How to complete every Velvet Room errand One of the most time-consuming activities players can pursue in Persona 3 Portable are the requests given to the protagonist by the Velvet Room attendant, either Elizabeth or Theodore. While players will already spend plenty of time trying to romance side characters and get the highest grade in class, these requests are essential to maxing out your relationship with the Velvet Room attendant. Still, they aren’t always clear about how you can fulfill the myriad of requests. Here is a complete guide on all of the 80 requests from Elizabeth and Theodore in Persona 3 Portable. Defeat the Reaper enemy who appears by remaining on any one floor of Tartarus for too long. Continued here

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Garmin's Forerunner 255 Is Jam-Packed With Features 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 Garmin’s Forerunner line of GPS-enabled fitness trackers is bewilderingly complex. Also, the company updates Forerunner models so often even those of us who test them for a living sometimes have trouble keeping up. That’s a good thing—new features are almost always a plus—but it does make picking the right model a challenge. Continued here

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Death, Sex and Aliens: A Surprising History of Slime Sublime slime, sprawling light pollution, harnessing the bioelectricity in our body, and more books out this month Slime: A Natural Historyby Susanne WedlichTranslated by Ayça TürkoğluMelville House, 2023 ($27.99) Continued here

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Labs Are Scooping Up Animals Killed by Wind Turbines “This is one of the least smelly carcasses,” says Todd Katzner, peering over his lab manager’s shoulder as she slices a bit of flesh from a dead pigeon lying on a steel lab table. Many of the specimens that arrive at this facility in Boise, Idaho, are long dead, and the bodies smell, he says, like “nothing that you can easily describe, other than yuck.” A wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, a government agency dedicated to environmental science, Katzner watches as his lab manager roots around for the pigeon’s liver and then places a glossy maroon piece of it in a small plastic bag labeled with a biohazard symbol. The pigeon is a demonstration specimen, but samples, including flesh and liver, are ordinarily frozen, cataloged, and stored in freezers. The feathers get tucked in paper envelopes and organized in filing boxes; the rest of the carcass is discarded. When needed for research, the stored samples can be processed and sent to other labs that test for toxicants or conduct genetic analysis. Continued here

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'Nasty' Geometry Breaks a Decades-Old Tiling Conjecture One of the oldest and simplest problems in geometry has caught mathematicians off guard—and not for the first time. Since antiquity, artists and geometers have wondered how shapes can tile the entire plane without gaps or overlaps. And yet, "not a lot has been known until fairly recent times," said Alex Iosevich, a mathematician at the University of Rochester. Continued here

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65 dank things on Amazon that are so freaking cheap It’s always a little bit surprising when you find something that you actually love and it didn’t cost you a fortune. However, Amazon has made that a more frequent occurrence. It’s actually made it a little too easy to find cheap things that you want to keep forever and that’s why I’ve compiled these 65 ingenious products. There’s everything from skincare to tools to kitchen utensils. And instead of expecting your choice to break after a week of having it or another charge to pop up on your credit card, just add to your cart and enjoy them for all their affordable and high-quality glory. Continued here

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You need to watch the most experimental dinosaur movie on HBO Max ASAP With director Joe Johnston replacing Steven Spielberg, the beloved franchise upped the ante on monsters... and little else. Nothing can touch Jurassic Park. Even Steven Spielberg swung and missed with his 1997 sequel The Lost World, fumbling the rare blessing of Jeff Goldblum in the lead role. There was no way a third film, sans Spielberg, could dazzle audiences like the first time they saw a roaming brontosaurus. But an attempt was made, and the result is as fascinating as it is baffling. Continued here

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ChatGPT could help students cheat — but it could also revolutionize education ChatGPT is a powerful language model developed by OpenAI that has the ability to generate human-like text, making it capable of engaging in natural language conversations. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with computers, and it has already begun to be integrated into various industries. However, the implementation of ChatGPT in the field of higher education in the U.K. poses a number of challenges that must be carefully considered. If ChatGPT is used to grade assignments or exams, there is the possibility that it could be biased against certain groups of students. Continued here

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Poem Beginning With a Sentence From My Last Will & Testament                        Lucy, when I die, I want you to scatter one-third of my ashes among the sand dunes                        of Virginia Beach. Here I’ve come every summer for three and a half decades.                        Here you and Eleanor learned to swim in the ocean waves and bodysurf.                        Here your mother and I once walked hand in hand for miles and made love among                        warm sand dunes by starlight when we were young. We grew apart. Argued or kept silent.                        Your grandmother and grandfather died here. Until the end, they could hear the surf breathe and sigh                        as wind does through deciduous trees. Seagulls crying. I keep inhaling the healing                        salt air and tasting the salt of saltwater. After I leave this spindrift life,                        the Atlantic Ocean will continue. Children will keep chasing its waves                        as the surf withdraws. They will run from the waves as the surf comes thundering in. They play                        tag with infinity. Middle-aged couples will walk their black labs and golden retrievers on these                        sands that the surf pounds flat like a drunken fist pounding a smooth oak bar to underscore                        some obscure convoluted point that neither the fist nor the bartender                        can truly grasp. For the truth is far beyond our reach. The truth is that on the day I die                        a man will be flying a kite in the shape of a red Chinese dragon. It will fly so high                        he can barely see it. Baby spotted sharks with their leopard skin wash up                        dead on the shore, their gills clogged with sand after storms. Teenage boys                        keep hurling footballs back and forth as if their muscled bodies are metronomes                        for the music the ocean makes. Shy teenage girls will keep singing their pop songs,                        so full of unfulfilled desire, to the doo-wop, doo-wah of the surf. They will dye                        their hair pink or pale blue as cotton candy. All of it will continue as it always                        does, almost the same. When I die, families will still keep pitching their pastel-colored                        awnings, shade tents, and sun umbrellas like giant dahlias and make their nomad                        encampments on the sand. They will stay a week or two and then depart                        for more permanent shelters inland. Lucy, I like nothing better than walking with you                        for hours on the beach. First, north as far as Fort Story’s No Trespassing signs.                        Then south three miles from 81st Street toward the boardwalk and hotels.                          A boy holds a girl, whose long legs wrap around him. He carries her into                        the surf while she screams ecstatically as the cold waves buffet them. He staggers                        but does not fall. You are recovering from twenty-eight-hour shifts during surgical rotation                        at medical school. You tell me that your sole patient yesterday had cancer. It has metastasized                        to lungs, kidney, spleen, spine, brain. “It is inoperable,” you say. “There’s nothing                        I can do, except make her comfortable.” You mean more oxycontin,                        then morphine. Yard-high letters in the sand spell STEPH HEARTS                    DOLLY. All our thousands of naked footprints crisscross the sand.                        A sandcastle stands with terraces, towers, winding staircases, a moat,                        and the most delicate of arches over the moat. Nothing is all the more beautiful                        because it is fragile. The tide is either coming in or going out.                        I don’t know which. With its bent, outstretched wings, a lone brown pelican                        dive-bombs the ocean, skims low, only a few inches above the waves,                        looking for fish. Continued here

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A Debut Novel That’s Not to Be Missed Clint Smith’s culture picks include Fatimah Asghar’s first book of fiction and a sad song by Boyz II Men. 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

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'SNL' Is Excelling in One Particular Way The defining quality of Saturday Night Live throughout its staggering 48 years on the air has been its live factor. Where other sketch or variety shows have had the benefit of post-production—namely planning and polish—SNL’s spirit has most often emerged under the pressure of live television. You see it in the little things, like unexpected wardrobe gaffes and uncontrollable laughter; like when the actors in a Disney World–themed “Debbie Downer” sketch labored to deliver their lines in the face of her outrageous observations. Yet this season, the live sketches are where SNL has struggled most for a spate of reasons: underdeveloped premises, writing that misses the mark, a lack of recurring characters outside of the “Weekend Update” desk, and a relatively new cast still learning to work together. The show’s pretaped segments have shouldered a lot of the heavy lifting, delivering consistently notable comedy and commentary. Last night, SNL’s post-production team—which recently authorized a strike after contract negotiations with its newly formed union stalled—assembled two of the strongest sketches. An announcement from Southwest Airlines sarcastically apologized for canceling more than 16,000 flights during the busy holiday travel season, and a State Farm commercial pursued a delightful twist featuring the fictional company rep Jake from State Farm. These sketches were so fully developed that they highlighted the ways this season’s live sketches have steadily fallen short of that goal line. Continued here

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The Ambidextrous Organization This mental balancing act is one of the toughest of all managerial challenges—it requires executives to explore new opportunities even as they work diligently to exploit existing capabilities—and it’s no surprise that few companies do it well. But as every businessperson knows, there are companies that do. What’s their secret? Continued here S45 Sarcasm, Self-Deprecation, and Inside Jokes: A User's Guide to Humor at Work A few years ago, we conducted a research study in which we asked people to help us create an ad campaign for a travel service called VisitSwitzerland.ch (which we’d made up). We put the participants into small groups and showed them a photo—a Swiss landscape of a lake, a mountain, and the country’s distinctive flag with its white plus sign against a red background—accompanied by the question: “What made you fall in love with Switzerland?” We gave participants three minutes to come up with a memorable answer and then had them share their ideas with their groups. Continued here S20 Television Is Better Without Video Games HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us offers a definitive case for games’ narrative impoverishment. “Fudge,” I remember saying, only I didn’t say fudge, I said fuck, a word for adults. I was playing The Last of Us, a narrative video game for adults about a zombie apocalypse, and I had just died for what seemed like the thousandth time in the first room with a “clicker,” the game lore’s name for a medium-difficulty enemy. These “infected”—it’s classier not to call them zombies, and this is a classy zombie-combat game, one with a story—had become misshapen thanks to a cordyceps brain infection, which devoured mankind almost overnight. The clicker was ghastlier than others, because it had lived long enough for the infection to fully engulf its formerly human face, fungal fibers enrobing it, teeth jutting out like barbs. An older infected is a more resilient one. In a video game, that translates to a more difficult baddie to beat. It would be too boring to tell you all the things I had tried, but none of them had yet worked. Fuck this fucking game. Continued here S61 14 Great Deals on TVs, Wireless Earbuds, and Soundbars If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, it's a pretty dark and cool time of year, which makes it a good time to consider your indoor tech essentials. From TVs to wireless earbuds, this weekend's list of deals is sure to keep you occupied inside. Be sure to check out our deals roundup from earlier in the week, where you’ll still find discounts on work-from-home gear and more headphones.  Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you'd like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day. Continued here S39 Viruses can speed up unhealthy brain aging — vaccines may offer peace of mind There is currently no cure for dementia, but getting vaccinated for common viral illnesses may reduce your risk. One in 9 Americans ages 65 and older had Alzheimer’s disease in 2022, and countless others were indirectly affected as caregivers, health care providers, and taxpayers. There is currently no cure — available treatments primarily focus on prevention by encouraging protective factors, such as exercise and a healthy diet, and reducing aggravating factors, such as diabetes and high blood pressure. Continued here S63 A Link to This Site Can (Technically) Land You in Russian Prison When you run a major app, all it takes is one mistake to put countless people at risk. Such is the case with Diksha, a public education app run by India’s Ministry of Education that exposed the personal information of around 1 million teachers and millions of students across the country. The data, which included things like full names, email addresses, and phone numbers, was publicly accessible for at least a year and likely longer, potentially exposing those impacted to phishing attacks and other scams.  Speaking of cybercrime, the LockBit ransomware gang has long operated under the radar, thanks to its professional operation and choice of targets. But over the past year, a series of missteps and drama have thrust it into the spotlight, potentially threatening its ability to continue operating with impunity.   Continued here S18 The Narcissism of the Angry Young Men Some years ago, I got a call from an analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center. After yet another gruesome mass shooting (this time, it was Dylann Roof’s attack on a Bible-study group at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine and wounded one), I had written an article about the young men who perpetrate such crimes. I suggested that an overview of these killers showed them, in general, to be young losers who failed to mature, and whose lives revolved around various grievances, insecurities, and heroic fantasies. I called them “Lost Boys” as a nod to their arrested adolescence. The NCTC called me because they had a working group on “countering violent extremism.” They had read my article and they, too, were interested in the problem of these otherwise-unremarkable boys and young men who, seemingly out of nowhere, lash out at society in various ways. We think you’re on to something, the analyst told me. He invited me to come down to Washington and discuss it with him and his colleagues. Continued here S38 With these mini projectors, you can stream shows & so much more — all from your iPhone Whether you want to dive into your favorite series from a random location or host an impromptu movie night with friends, a phone projector makes quick work of sharing content on a big screen. Weighing as little as 1 pound, the best mini projectors for iPhones are easy to travel with and offer excellent image quality relative to their price tags. The best iPhone projectors effortlessly display content from your device using the screen mirroring function, but some require a Lightning-to-HDMI connector, which you’ll have to supply yourself. If you’re planning to project a work presentation or your own photo or video collection, display setup is quick and easy. However, if you want to project copyrighted material from streaming services like Netflix or Hulu, a separate media device (such as an Amazon Fire TV Stick or Roku) will be required for viewing. Continued here S6 Science News Briefs from around the World: February 2023 Sharks wielding research cameras in the Bahamas, Mexico’s spider monkey diplomacy, a carbon “time bomb” in the Republic of Congo, and much more in this month’s Quick Hits Biologists strapped small cameras onto tiger sharks to study seagrass in the Caribbean. The footage helped expand estimates of the global area of seagrass coverage by 41 percent—a good sign for the climate because seagrass stores carbon. Continued here S37 You need to play the best Bond game ever made on Switch and Game Pass ASAP Sean Bean dies a lot — not in real life, obviously, but on screen. From Game of Thrones to The Lord of the Rings and Equilibrium, the man rarely makes it. The most spectacular Beanslaughter of them all is his fatal freefall off the Arecibo Observatory in 1995’s GoldenEye. But sometimes quantity tops quality, and if you want to kill Sean Bean more than once, now’s your chance. Because that James Bond film’s iconic video game adaptation is now playable on Xbox Game Pass and Nintendo Switch Online. GoldenEye 007 was an FPS sensation for the Nintendo 64, allowing players to kill Bean’s 006 alongside the rest of the cast in its legendary multiplayer mode. There’s a true-to-movie campaign too, and both have been revamped for re-release on Nintendo Switch and Xbox. Naturally, the nostalgia will hit harder for some than others. Continued here S14 The flight tracker that powered @ElonJet has taken a left turn A major independent flight tracking platform, which has made enemies of the Saudi royal family and Elon Musk, has been sold to a subsidiary of a private equity firm. And its users are furious. Continued here S40 Physicists demo a sci-fi-inspired laser that mimics a classic UFO trick Tractor beams make intuitive sense. Matter and energy interact with each other in countless ways throughout the Universe. Magnetism and gravity are both natural forces that can draw objects together, so there’s sort of a precedent. A tractor beam is a device that can move an object from a distance. The idea comes from a 1931 sci-fi story called Spacehounds of IPC: Continued here S48 The Good-Better-Best Approach to Pricing Companies often crimp profits by using discounts to attract price-sensitive customers and by failing to give high-end customers reasons to spend more. A multitiered offering can use a stripped-down product (the “Good” option) to attract new customers, the existing product (“Better”) to keep current customers happy, and a feature-laden premium version (“Best”) to increase spending by customers who want more. Continued here S43 A nuclear-powered X-ray “flashlight” could probe the Moon for water Not all flashlights are created equal. Some are stronger, consume more power, or have features such as blinking or strobes. Some aren’t even meant for humans, such as a new project that recently received funding from a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I award. Designed by the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC), this flashlight doesn’t emit visible light, but it does emit X-rays and gamma rays, and the researchers on the project think it could be useful for finding resources on the Moon. Continued here S64 The 9 Best TVs We've Tested (and Helpful Buying Tips) 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 Saving up for a new screen? To help you navigate the dozens of seemingly identical TV models from Samsung, LG, Vizio, TCL, Sony, and other manufacturers, we've watched hundreds of hours of content on them and picked a few of our favorites. We've listed everything from the very best TV to the best budget set you can buy—and a few excellent choices in between. Continued here S56 A Neurologist Answers Questions Patients Might Have about the New Alzheimer's Drug Lecanemab What a patient and family members can expect from the recently approved drug lecanemab—and what more is needed to help stop Alzheimer’s dementia No drug with consistent statistical evidence from clinical trials had ever been found to slow the course of Alzheimer’s disease before the Food and Drug Administration gave its nod this month to lecanemab, which clears the brain of the toxic amyloid protein that has been a primary target for drug developers. Continued here S44 Innovating in Uncertain Times: Lessons from 2022 Too many leaders succumb to fear of missing out (FOMO) when new tech trends emerge and demand that something — anything — using the new tech be implemented immediately. This leads to wasted investment, missed opportunity and disillusionment about the new landscape. Emerging technologies are critical and demand attention and investment, but managers must exercise patience and avoid falling victim to the hype. Responsible exploration is key. Continued here S41 How does the placebo effect take hold? A doctor explains 2 influential factors In this book excerpt, Kathryn Hall, an expert on placebos, considers the ways that expectations and learning affect our response to them. It was time for Dr. Musavi to convey the sad news. With her health rapidly declining, his patient, Mrs. Ozra, had less than two weeks to live. Summoning the family together, he encouraged them to make arrangements. Continued here S57 How Plants' Plumbing Let Them Conquer the World To protect from deadly drought and make it on land, plants developed complicated inner plumbing Towering redwoods and lanky jungle vines hoist water from the soil to their lofty leaves through a tubelike tissue called the xylem. In early plants, which reached just a few centimeters and lived only in wet environments, the xylem worked like a simple cylindrical bundle of drinking straws running up the stem; our modern biosphere exists because that infrastructure somehow got much more sophisticated. Continued here S49 What Makes a Great Resume? Begin by writing an unedited list detailing your complete work history. And we mean, everything. Include your job waiting tables or walking your neighbor’s dog to get some extra pocket money in college, and even the summer you spent delivering newspapers or mowing lawns as a teenager. Include the job you quit after six months and the job where you got fired. Continued here S50 The childhood diseases making a post-lockdown comeback As child after child gasping for air was admitted to the hospital, Rabia Agha gritted her teeth. In her role as director of the paediatric infectious diseases division at Maimonides Children's Hospital in New York, she had seen this before. An outbreak of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – a winter virus that can feel like a common cold in adults, but which can be dangerous for some young children. There was a wave last autumn – and an unexpected one in spring this year. Now, in the early autumn months of 2022, it was back again. Continued here S54 Did Plants Domesticate Humans? Watch The First Entanglement Archaeologists studying one of the birthplaces of agriculture find a complex interplay between human actions and the workings of nature and genetics. While this provocative question might not be the way we learned about the history of agriculture in high school, it animates the current study of archaeology. What’s at stake is a matter of perspective—how we, as a species, see our place in nature and nature’s place in our own evolution. Continued here S53 How the U.S. Lost Years of Life Many countries saw drops in life expectancy during the pandemic, but some populations have suffered more than others Over the past century people have been living longer lives around the globe. Then COVID hit. Now, nearly three years into the pandemic, with highly effective vaccines widely available, life expectancy in many middle- and high-income countries has started to bounce back. But in the U.S., it is still dropping. A study last year found that life expectancy in most Western European countries recovered in 2021—most likely the result of high vaccination rates that reduced mortality, particularly among the elderly. But the U.S. has continued to see declines, in part because of lower vaccination rates as well as a devastating opioid epidemic. Continued here S46 Competing on Analytics Companies questing for killer apps generally focus all their firepower on the one area that promises to create the greatest competitive advantage. But a new breed of organization has upped the stakes: Amazon, Harrah’s, Capital One, and the Boston Red Sox have all dominated their fields by deploying industrial-strength analytics across a wide variety of activities. Continued here S55 How Antidepressants Help Bacteria Resist Antibiotics A laboratory study unravels ways antidepressants and other nonantibiotic drugs can contribute to drug resistance The emergence of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics is often attributed to the overuse of antibiotics in people and livestock. But researchers have homed in on another potential driver of resistance: antidepressants. By studying bacteria grown in the laboratory, a team has now tracked how antidepressants can trigger drug resistance. Continued here S47 Why some people can't tell left from right Preventable medical mistakes frequently involve wrong-sided surgery: an injection to the wrong eye, for example, or a biopsy from the wrong breast. These "never events" – serious and largely preventable patient safety accidents – highlight that, while most of us learn as children how to tell left from right, not everyone gets it right. While for some people, telling left from right is as easy as telling up from down, a significant minority – around one in six people, according to a recent study – struggle with the distinction. Even for those who believe they have no issues, distractions such as ambient noise, or having to answer unrelated questions, can get in the way of making the right choice. Continued here S58 The Right Words Are Crucial to Solving Climate Change Climate change is already disrupting the lives of billions of people. What was once considered a problem for the future is raging all around us right now. This reality has helped convince a majority of the public that we must act to limit the suffering. In an August 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center, 71 percent of Americans said they had experienced at least one heat wave, flood, drought or wildfire in the past year. Among those people, more than 80 percent said climate change had contributed. In another 2022 poll, 77 percent of Americans who said they had been affected by extreme weather in the past five years saw climate change as a crisis or major problem. Yet the response is not meeting the urgency of the crisis. A transition to clean energy is underway, but it is happening too slowly to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The U.S. government finally took long-delayed action by passing the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, but much more progress is needed, and it is hampered by entrenched politics. The partisan divide largely stems from conservatives’ perception that climate change solutions will involve big government controlling people’s choices and imposing sacrifices. Research shows that Republicans’ skepticism about climate change is largely attributable to a conflict between ideological values and often discussed solutions, particularly government regulations. A 2019 study in Climatic Change found that political and ideological polarization on climate change is particularly acute in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries. Continued here S51 The secrets inside your saliva At first glance, saliva seems like pretty boring stuff, merely a convenient way to moisten our food. But the reality is quite different, as scientists are beginning to understand. The fluid interacts with everything that enters the mouth, and even though it is 99% water, it has a profound influence on the flavours – and our enjoyment – of what we eat and drink. "It is a liquid, but it's not just a liquid," says oral biologist Guy Carpenter of King's College London. Continued here S52 This Overlooked Scientist Helped Save Washington, D.C.'s Cherry Trees Mycologist Flora Patterson helped make the USDA fungus collection into the world’s largest. She also made a mean mushroom “catsup” In 1909 the mayor of Tokyo sent a gift of 2,000 prized cherry trees to Washington, D.C. But the iconic blossoms that are now enjoyed each spring along the city’s Tidal Basin are not from those trees. That’s because Flora Patterson, who was the mycologist in charge of mycological and pathological collections at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, recognized the original saplings were infected, and the shipment was burned on the National Mall. Continued here S59 One Third of the Amazon Has Been Degraded by Human Activities A pair of studies raise concerns that the Amazon rainforest may be approaching a point of no return Study after study has sounded the alarm on the deteriorating Amazon rainforest. Plagued by deforestation, drought, fires and other human disturbances, the iconic ecosystem is teetering on a dangerous precipice, scientists warn. Continued here Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Followers Blog Archive ►  2024 (50) ►  October (2) ►  August (2) ►  July (4) ►  June (3) ►  May (5) ►  April (4) ►  March (2) ►  February (10) ►  January (18) ▼  2023 (834) ►  December (20) ►  November (54) ►  October (44) ►  September (108) ►  August (91) ►  July (29) ►  June (68) ►  May (104) ►  April (33) ►  March (30) ►  February (99) ▼  January (154) A Physical Theory For When the Brain Performs Best... Feb 1, 2023 - 4 Startup Terms Explained With Analo... January 31, 2023 - Russian offensive "imminent" as... 'Tomb Raider' is Becoming a TV Series -- 'The Last... 9 Strategies to Improve Business Team Collaboratio... Jan 31, 2023 - The Jack Ma test for China"s promis... January 30, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelens... Does the Best Workout Exist? 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