Machon: The French breakfast you don't know

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Machon: The French breakfast you don't know Among the high-rise apartment blocks of Vaise, one of Lyon's newer quartiers (districts), I stepped into a little restaurant where time seemed to have stood still for 100 years. From the outside, Les 4G, a Lyonnais bouchon (traditional restaurant), looked much like the nondescript cafe-cum-tobacco shops that can be found in most small French towns, but inside the decor was as warm and inviting as a country pub. The red gingham tablecloths matched the chequered napkins, which were neatly stored in shelving units along the wall with brass plaques indicating each owner's name – regular clientele who had their own napkin stored for them. As I sat down, sandwiched between jolly retirees Pierre-Loïc Delfante and Jean Paul Pillon, I realised that I was the youngest in the group by more than 30 years. The cheese delivery had just arrived, and the chef was unpacking brown paper bags containing soft balls of cervelle de canut, an unappetising name that translates as "silk workers' brain" but looks like cottage cheese. Delfante filled my glass with a crisp white wine from Beaujolais. It was 9:00 in the morning. Continued here

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Why Family and Domestic Violence Is a Workplace Issue While there isn’t a single internationally agreed-upon definition of FDV, the term refers to a range of violent and non-violent abusive behaviors or threats committed in the context of intimate relationships. It’s not just about physical and sexual violence or abuse, it can also include emotional and psychological abuse, verbal abuse and intimidation, economic abuse, controlling behaviors that restrict one’s social movement and isolate them, damage to personal property, and the abuse of power. Continued here

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The Best Travel Bags for Wherever You're Headed 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 These days, traveling is a bonkers circus of marathon flight delays, rental-car price gouging, and wildly shifting weather patterns that make the stock market look like a model of stability. Make one thing easy on yourself and bring good luggage that's lightweight, rolls easily or fits comfortably on your back, and won't split open en route to your destination. Continued here

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Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development Not only is the majority of training in today’s companies ineffective, but the purpose, timing, and content of training is flawed. Want to see eyes glaze over quicker than you can finish this sentence? Mandate that busy employees attend a training session on “business writing skills”, or “conflict resolution”, or some other such course with little alignment to their needs. Like lean manufacturing and the lean startup before it, lean learning supports the adaptability that gives organizations a competitive advantage in today’s market. It’s about learning the core of what you need to learn, applying it to real-world situations immediately, receiving immediate feedback and refining your understanding, and then repeating the cycle. In order to begin practicing lean learning, organizations need to move from measuring credits earned to measuring business outcomes created. Lean learning ensures that employees not only learn the right thing, at the right time, and for the right reasons, but also that they retain what they learn. Continued here

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How Einstein challenged quantum mechanics and lost Quantum mechanics is notoriously weird. Even though it ranks as the most accurate and powerful scientific theory ever developed, it is a platform that has launched a thousand puzzles, paradoxes, and conundrums.  Quantum physics seems to tell us that events can occur without a cause, that objects can be in two places at the same time, that observing the Universe may irrevocably disturb it, and that systems with elements located across the galaxy can act as an instantaneous whole. Given all these affronts to both common sense and classical physics, you would be forgiven if you figured there must be something wrong with quantum physics. Albert Einstein certainly did. The story of his intuition about the deficits of quantum theory is worth recounting if we want to understand where that theory stands now. Continued here

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How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure People are quick to blame themselves for failure. But not doing something because you’re afraid to get started isn’t going to help you grow. Here are four strategies to help you get over the hump. Start by redefining what failure means to you. If you define failure as the discrepancy between what you hope to achieve (such as getting a job offer) and what you might achieve (learning from the experience), you can focus on what you learned, which helps you recalibrate for future challenges. It’s also important to set approach goals instead of avoidance goals: focus on what you want to achieve rather than what you want to avoid. Creating a “fear list” can also help. This is a list of what may not happen as a result of your fear — the cost of inaction. And finally, focus on learning. The chips aren’t always going to fall where you want them to — but if you expect that reality going into an event, you can be prepared to wring the most value out of whatever outcome. Continued here

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What Great Sponsors Do Differently Sponsorship initiatives are increasingly popular today, but few sponsors are given any guidance about how best to work with the people they’ve been asked to work with, and as a result the relationships often don’t develop as productively as they should. Aspiring sponsors need more practical guidance. In this article, drawing on their long experience with sponsorship, the authors describe six important steps all sponsors should take. Continued here

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The Core Consumers Of Tomorrow: 3 Tips For Connecting With Gen Z Why you should be focused on Gen Z--even if they aren't your target market. Continued here

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China's Declining Population Can Still Prosper Earlier this week, the National Bureau of Statistics in China announced that the Chinese population has decreased for the first time in 60 years. The population decrease does not come as a complete surprise. Curbing population growth was the entire point of the one-child policy in effect between 1980 and 2015, and women in China have been having fewer babies than needed to sustain the population since the early 1990s. But even before the one-child policy, fertility in China had been on a downward trend. Fertility dropped from over six to just three children per woman in just the 11 years between 1967 and 1978. And aside from a slight uptick in the years immediately after the end of the one-child policy, fertility has continued to decrease since 2017. According to various estimates, the total fertility rate in China now stands at just over one child per woman. Many people see China's low fertility and declining population as a threat to its economic prosperity, assuming the labor force will shrink at the same time that social security costs and the number of older dependents will explode as the population gets older. Such alarmist reactions are typical in the discourse about low fertility and population aging. But while low fertility and population aging certainly pose a number of challenges, they need not spell demise. Continued here

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Research: The Unintended Consequences of Right-to-Repair Laws Right-to-repair legislation is designed to break manufacturers’ monopoly on the repair market, thereby allowing  consumers to hold on to their old products longer, so they do not throw away used products and buy new ones as quickly. This would reduce the environmental impact by reducing e-waste and new production. New research, forthcoming in the journal Management Science, challenges this conventional wisdom and finds that the right-to-repair legislation may in some instances lead manufacturers to flood the market with cheap goods, thereby damaging the environment, and in other instances lead manufacturers to dramatically raise the price of goods, thereby hurting consumers. Lawmakers should examine specific product categories, including their production cost and environmental impact, and guard against sweeping, one-size-fits-all legislation. Continued here

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Mathematicians Roll Dice and Get Rock-Paper-Scissors | Quanta Magazine As Bill Gates tells the story, Warren Buffett once challenged him to a game of dice. Each would select one of four dice belonging to Buffett, and then they'd roll, with the higher number winning. These weren't standard dice — they had a different assortment of numbers than the usual 1 through 6. Buffett offered to let Gates choose first, so he could pick the strongest die. But after Gates examined the dice, he returned a counterproposal: Buffett should pick first. Gates had recognized that Buffett's dice exhibited a curious property: No one of them was the strongest. If Gates had chosen first, then whichever die he chose, Buffett would have been able to find another die that could beat it (that is, one with more than a 50% chance of winning). Continued here

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Twitter's 'Vox Populi' Is a Lie In the year 798, the noted scholar Alcuin of York penned a letter to Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Lombards, to (as was his wont) advise the mighty king on affairs of state. Writing in Latin, he said to his king and patron: Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit—"And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness." I do wonder whether the old monk would be pleased at how many enthusiastic new admirers he's gained on Twitter. So many have cited these words as proof that Elon Musk's now infamous invocation of "vox populi, vox Dei" after his Twitter polls—which supposedly guide his policy implementation on the platform—is ignorant. "He foolishly fails to cite the whole phrase! It was a warning!" they cry.  Continued here

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We Need to Talk About Your Stove Gas stoves are so hot right now. A recent report found that emissions from gas cooktops are worsening both the environmental crisis and the health of the humans who use them. This knowledge has stoked a heated cultural debate in the US. Some people have piped up to advocate for phasing out gas stoves, while others have fired back that the government can pry gas stoves out of their cold (presumably because they stopped paying the gas bill) dead hands. While the controversy has blown up, the reality is that gas is a problematic energy source with many worrisome issues. Reducing our dependence on the appliances and the fossil-based fuels they consume will be no easy task. This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED staff writer Amanda Hoover joins us to re-spark the gas stove debate, and talk about what we can actually do to fix the problems these old-school appliances are causing. Continued here

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What Do Your Customers Want in 2023? The New Year is often a time of optimism, hope, and change. But how do consumers’ shifting priorities affect businesses? The authors share findings from a recent survey exploring how U.S. consumers are thinking about their New Year’s Resolutions this year and offer seven strategies to help businesses attract and retain customers in this critical time: Help your customers build healthy habits, reach out to new customers, introduce new products, foster consumer loyalty, help customers meet their financial goals, prioritize value, and help your customers do good. Ultimately, the authors argue that retailers must understand how the New Year’s mindset may impact their business — and make their own resolution to anticipate customers’ evolving needs and provide the value that today’s buyers are looking for. Continued here

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ChatGPT and How AI Disrupts Industries ChatGPT, from OpenAI, shows the power of AI to take on tasks traditionally associated with “knowledge work.” But the future won’t just involve tasks shifting from humans to machines. When technology enables more people to complete a task, with help from a machine, the result is typically entirely new systems with new business models and jobs and workflows. AI will be no different: To truly unlock the potential of ChatGPT, the world will need new and different kinds of organizations. Continued here

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The Truth About Blockchain Blockchain promises to solve this problem. The technology behind bitcoin, blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that records transactions safely, permanently, and very efficiently. For instance, while the transfer of a share of stock can now take up to a week, with blockchain it could happen in seconds. Blockchain could slash the cost of transactions and eliminate intermediaries like lawyers and bankers, and that could transform the economy. But, like the adoption of more internet technologies, blockchain’s adoption will require broad coordination and will take years. In this article the authors describe the path that blockchain is likely to follow and explain how firms should think about investments in it. Continued here

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Most day traders end up losing money over time. Here’s why. The goal of trading is deceptively simple: buy low and sell high. Traders that manage to do that by correctly timing the markets will net a profit, and all they had to do, really, was press a couple of buttons on one of the many digital exchanges where you can trade stocks, currencies, cryptocurrencies, and other assets nearly instantaneously. It sounds easy, but the data shows the opposite is true: The vast majority of traders end up losing money over time. A report from the investment platform eToro suggests that 80% of its users lost money over a 12-month period. Other reports offer slightly different numbers, but none come close to suggesting that a majority of traders net a profit over long periods of time.  Continued here

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How Chinese companies are challenging national security decisions that could delay 5G network rollout British prime minister Rishi Sunak recently declared that the “golden era” of UK-China relations is over. The next day, the government removed China General Nuclear Power Group, a Chinese state-owned company, from the construction of the UK’s Sizewell C nuclear power station. Other countries have made similar moves in recent years. In 2020, for example, then-US president Donald Trump attempted to ban social media platform TikTok in the US. The move was subsequently stopped by two US judges following a lawsuit by TikTok, and eventually dropped by current president, Joe Biden. Continued here

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Will the Metaverse Live Up to the Hype? Game Developers Aren't Impressed The perfect version of the metaverse, to hear tech heads like Mark Zuckerberg tell it, marries social media, entertainment, and—most exciting of all—meetings in one pristine virtual space. Long ago foretold in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, it is a place where the online world offers more experiences than the flesh-and-bone one. But whereas Stephenson's metaverse was part of an apocalyptic future, modern inventors have promised a digital utopia.   Unfortunately, the metaverse they've built has, so far, lived up to those expectations about as well as a Craigslist apartment rented based on photos alone. Zuckerberg's Horizon Worlds, clunky and strange, may have been at its most thrilling when Meta informed users that legs for their avatars were "coming soon." The hardware needed to visit such virtual worlds—often a headset like Meta's Quest Pro—can be pricey and cumbersome, and once you get there, it's no party.  Continued here

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The parents who sever ties with their children Helen hasn’t spoken with her son in more than a year. The last she heard, he was in prison. Now aged 31, he’s been addicted to opioids for more than a decade. “He’s tried to call me, probably to ask for money, and I have not been picking up,” explains Helen, who lives in England. “Right now, that’s the right decision for my safety and sanity.” As the primary caregiver for her son’s young daughter, Helen’s focus is providing a loving and secure environment for her to grow up in. Continued here

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Want to Change? 3 Surprisingly Simple Habit Hacks You Should Follow Today It doesn't matter if you've faltered in improving yourself. It's easy to get back on track. Continued here

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How to Manage Your Diabetes in the Office Diabetes can affect almost every aspect of life. A 2019 study revealed that one in eight new cases of Type 2 diabetes is occurring in 18- to 40-year-old adults. While it’s unusual for diabetes to restrict occupation or job choices, the major challenges experienced by people working a nine-to-five surround maintaining dietary and exercise plans that will keep their blood sugar at a healthy level. Here are some ways to reduce the overwhelm that comes with managing diabetes at work. Continued here

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David Byrne’s Disco Musical About Imelda Marcos Comes to Broadway ‘Here Lies Love’ is an immersive stage production about the Philippines' former first lady When the average person thinks of Imelda Marcos, who served as first lady of the Philippines for two decades during her husband's dictatorship, they probably don't think of a disco musical. Continued here

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15 leadership training topics for forward-thinking organizations A list of today’s most important leadership training topics would’ve likely raised some eyebrows a few decades ago. But the world is now a very different place due to generational shifts, technological innovation, new business models, and not to mention, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we’ll share 15 leadership development topics designed to help businesses navigate the times and prepare for the future.  The world of work is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and employees now have very different expectations of their leaders. The business environment has also become hyper-competitive and difficult to predict, presenting new challenges that require big decisions to be made in short order. Leaders are going to need a new set of skills to thrive in these volatile conditions. Let’s dive in.    Continued here

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U.K.'s Oldest Toy Museum Shuts Its Doors Thousands of historic toys will sit in storage until Pollock's Toy Museum finds a new home For more than 50 years, Pollock's Toy Museum was a cheerful fixture of London's Fitzrovia district, its colorful exterior beckoning visitors to explore the vast collection of historic playthings within. Victorian toy theaters, antique wax dolls, wartime tin toys and an ancient Egyptian clay mouse were among the eclectic artifacts that lined the museum's rooms and winding staircases. Continued here

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5 Super Awkward WFH Moments You've Probably Experienced At my first job out of college, my coworker and I would often fight over the title of “most awkward person in the office.” I know it doesn’t seem like a title you would want, but it was our way of coping with the inevitable feelings of social awkwardness that we all experience at work sometimes — you know, waving to a colleague who is waving to the colleague behind you, or having to jog for the door because your boss waits, holding it, a whole 30 feet ahead. Continued here

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Study reveals why some people are more creative than others Creativity is often defined as the ability to come up with new and useful ideas. Like intelligence, it can be considered a trait that everyone – not just creative “geniuses” like Picasso and Steve Jobs – possesses in some capacity.  It’s not just your ability to draw a picture or design a product. We all need to think creatively in our daily lives, whether it’s figuring out how to make dinner using leftovers or fashioning a Halloween costume out of clothes in your closet. Creative tasks range from what researchers call “little-c” creativity – making a website, crafting a birthday present or coming up with a funny joke – to “Big-C” creativity: writing a speech, composing a poem or designing a scientific experiment. Continued here

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Physics is in crisis. Quantum cosmology can save it and point us toward the theory of everything Excerpted from The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics by Heinrich Päs. Reprinted with permission of Basic Books, Copyright © 2023. Ever since the discovery of the atom, physicists adhered to the philosophy of reductionism. According to this idea, nature could be grasped in a unified understanding by decomposing everything around us into pieces made up from the same tiny constituents. According to this common narrative, everyday objects such as chairs, tables, and books are made of atoms, atoms are composed of atomic nuclei and electrons, atomic nuclei contain protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons consist of quarks. Elementary particles such as quarks or electrons are understood as the fundamental building blocks of the universe.  Continued here

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This 'Jousting' Trilobite Might Be the First Known Creature to Fight for a Mate Using a "trident" attached to its head, the arthropod may have competed for sexual dominance 400 million years ago At the bottom of the ocean 400 million years ago, a knight in shining armor may have used a long trident to joust against the competition and win the hand of a fair lady. Continued here

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The Battery That Never Gets Flat Humans are complex machines, with moving parts that bend, squish, stretch, flow, quiver, and beat. Scientists are now plugging into these energy sources to solve a common problem afflicting sensors, wearables, and implanted medical devices—the dreaded flat battery. Devices that are self-powered by design could be the solution, and researchers have discovered that the human body itself can be a handy power source—just in time to power the exploding market in wearables. “Electroceuticals” are starting to challenge pharmaceuticals in medicine, so more people will depend on devices such as implanted electrostimulators and pacemakers in order to stay healthy. Continued here

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Anil Ananthaswamy: Where does your sense of self come from? A scientific look Our memories and bodies give us clues about who we are, but what happens when this guidance shifts? In this mind-bending talk, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy shares how the experiences of "altered selves" -- resulting from schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, foreign limb syndrome or other conditions -- shed light on the constructed nature of identity. He breaks down where our sense of self comes from and invites us to challenge our assumptions about who we are, with the aim of building a better you and a better world. Continued here

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'Sensational' Runestone Discovered in Norway May Be the World's Oldest The find promises to shed new light on lingering questions about runic writing’s early history During the fall of 2021, archaeologists excavating a grave in eastern Norway unearthed a block of red-tinged sandstone etched with spidery runes, an ancient system of writing used by Germanic peoples of northern Europe. This in itself was not unusual; thousands of stones with runic inscriptions, dating to the Viking period, have been found in Scandinavia alone. But the carvings on this particular stone were inscribed up to 2,000 years ago, making it “the oldest datable runestone in the world,” according to the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, which announced the find in a statement this week. Continued here

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Pioneering Apple Lisa goes "open source" thanks to Computer History Museum As part of the Apple Lisa's 40th birthday celebrations, the Computer History Museum has released the source code for Lisa OS version 3.1 under an Apple Academic License Agreement. With Apple's blessing, the Pascal source code is available for download from the CHM website after filling out a form. Continued here

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How Joe Biden Wins Again The year after a midterm election is presidential purgatory. Congressional investigators from the opposing party devote themselves to flaying the incumbent. Stripped of any possibility of grand legislative accomplishments, presidents busy themselves with foreign policy and patiently wait for their domestic foes to overplay their hand. For Joe Biden, this is all intimately familiar. He experienced this discomfort as Barack Obama’s vice president. And he walked away with a sense of how he might get through it differently himself, how he could profitably survive this awkward year—and leverage it as the basis for reelection. Continued here

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Indian teenagers from small towns are taking YouTube Shorts by storm In a remarkably short time, RG Factboy became one of the world’s most popular YouTube Shorts channels. The creator behind it is Rohit Gupta, a 17-year-old student based in the remote Indian town of Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh. Gupta’s Shorts had sensational Hindi voice-overs to viral videos of other creators, and ended on a plea for viewers to subscribe. The channel, created in April 2022, had 11 million subscribers before it was abruptly deleted on January 11 for violating YouTube’s rules. Unlike viral YouTubers who thrive on long-form videos, RG Factboy only posted YouTube Shorts: vertical-format videos with a maximum length of 60 seconds. “YouTube is working hard to promote Shorts,” Gupta told Rest of World. “They want audiences to move from Instagram to YouTube. Because of this, creators are active on Shorts day in and day out.” Between November 1 and January 11, RG Factboy had gained 4 million subscribers, according to social media analytics company SocialBlade. Continued here

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Freshwater Fish Contain Harmful 'Forever Chemicals' Eating one serving of locally caught fish could equate to drinking contaminated water for a month, a new study finds Freshwater fish locally caught in the United States contain high levels of dangerous “forever chemicals” that stick around in the environment and can cause health problems in humans, a new study finds. Continued here

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Can the SEC Cut Down on Insider Trading? The SEC is amending a specific rule in hopes to make insider trading more difficult for company executives. Wharton’s Dan Taylor explains how it works. Wharton’s Daniel Taylor speaks with Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM about the amendment of SEC Rule 10b5-1. Continued here

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Know What Your Customers Want Before They Do Shoppers once relied on familiar salespeople to help them find exactly what they wanted—and sometimes to suggest additional items they hadn’t even thought of. But today’s distracted consumers, bombarded with information and options, often struggle to find products or services that meet their needs. Continued here S17 How to make fruit and vegetables last longer It's a problem humans have been reckoning with since the first moment we had more food than we could eat in one go. When food is abundant, how do you store it to make it last? About 17% of the produce available to consumers is thrown away, though that includes food supermarkets dispose of from their shelves and food which goes into restaurant bins, as well as household waste. Continued here S22 The Best Electric Cargo Bikes for Families 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 There are a number of physical, philosophical, environmental, and logistical reasons why it’s better to hop on a bike than it is to drive a car. Gas prices are rising. The Earth is on fire. And yet, somehow, it's easy to ignore all this when you're late to work and have yet to wrestle pants onto your screaming toddler. Continued here S69 Free movement of people across Africa: regions are showing how it can work One of the key ones is the fear among member states that the Free Movement of Persons Protocol would suddenly come into force as soon as the parliaments of 15 out of 55 member states had ratified it. But, in fact, only the first of the protocol’s three phases will come into force and only for the countries that had ratified it. In addition, the protocol’s safeguards allow countries to suspend it if their concerns cannot be dealt with through normal immigration procedures. Continued here S64 Who is Messina Denaro, Italy’s Mafia boss caught after 30 years? Italian police on Monday arrested Matteo Messina Denaro, the country’s most wanted Mafia boss, who had spent 30 years on the run. Messina Denaro is accused of being a ruthless assassin whose violence fuelled the bloody reputation of the Cosa Nostra Mafia. Continued here S37 Amazon is discontinuing its AmazonSmile charity program next month Amazon's business practices and footprint have received plenty of criticism over the years. From its misleading products and reviews and its environmental impact to its effect on small businesses and its own employees, its shoppers are left with a fair amount of guilt every time they use its convenient platform. AmazonSmile, which donates 0.5 percent of the price of eligible purchased items to a shopper-selected charity, has been one way for shoppers to ease that sense of guilt. Come February 20, those shoppers will have to find a new path to absolution when AmazonSmile is shuttered. Continued here S56 Is Political Violence on the Rise in America? In a worrying sign, an election denier allegedly masterminded a series of shootings in New Mexico. A defeated New Mexico GOP candidate allegedly hired others to shoot at the homes of Democratic officials, in a case that is intensifying concerns about political violence in America. Continued here S26 Cartier Beams That Diamond Ring Right to Your Finger Cartier has carved out quite a niche in its 170-odd years in the luxury retail business. It makes jewelry—often very expensive jewelry—and has a long history of sales to royalty. King Edward VII referred to Cartier as “the jeweler of kings and the king of jewelers,” and for his coronation in 1902, he ordered no fewer than 27 tiaras from the company. It’s good, after all, as Prince Harry will tell you, to have spares. Of course, Cartier’s product line is not one that requires yearly hardware or software updates. Still, tech is in everything these days, and even non-techy fashion brands are eager to keep up with the times. For years now, brands like Gucci and Burberry have been at the vanguard of the luxury sector’s serious flirtation with ecommerce, investing in gaming among other things. Now, Cartier is looking to reinvent augmented reality retail. Not with your usual run-of-the-mill AR, mind. That didn’t come up to scratch for the company. No, Cartier has decided to try and create its own pimped virtual shopping experience. Continued here S10 Do You Ever Second Guess Yourself? A certain level of self-doubt is good. It can push us to work harder. But when it manifests as imposter syndrome — that nagging voice in the back of your head, clouding your mind with doubt and insecurity — it can backfire. If you’ve recently been promoted or found the job of your dreams but find yourself overtaken by imposter syndrome, there are a few ways to dial down the self-criticism and grow in your career. Continued here S51 Trying to Stop Long COVID Before It Even Starts New data offer hope that chronic illness can be headed off with the right combination of drugs. Three years into the global fight against SARS-CoV-2, the arsenal to combat long COVID remains depressingly bare. Being vaccinated seems to reduce people’s chances of developing the condition, but the only surefire option for avoiding long COVID is to avoid catching the coronavirus at all—a proposition that feels ever more improbable. For anyone who is newly infected, “we don’t have any interventions that are known to work,” says Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist and long-COVID researcher at Yale. Continued here S24 A Sneaky Ad Scam Tore Through 11 Million Phones Every time you open an app or website, a flurry of invisible processes takes place without you knowing. Behind the scenes, dozens of advertising companies are jostling for your attention: They want their ads in front of your eyeballs. For each ad, a series of instant auctions often determines which ads you see. This automated advertising, often known as programmatic advertising, is big business, with $418 billion spent on it last year. But it’s also ripe for abuse. Security researchers today revealed a new widespread attack on the online advertising ecosystem that has impacted millions of people, defrauded hundreds of companies, and potentially netted its creators some serious profits. The attack, dubbed Vastflux, was discovered by researchers at Human Security, a firm focusing on fraud and bot activity. The attack impacted 11 million phones, with the attackers spoofing 1,700 app and targeting 120 publishers. At its peak, the attackers were making 12 billion requests for ads per day. Continued here S30 Science won't ever make philosophy or religion obsolete For hundreds of thousands of years — nearly all of human history — we had no definitive answers to some of the biggest existential questions we could formulate. How did humans come into existence on planet Earth? What are we made of, at a fundamental level? How big is the Universe, and what is its origin? For countless generations, these were questions for theologians, philosophers, and poets. But over the past few hundred years, humanity has discovered the most compelling and convincing answers we’ve ever had to those questions and many others. Through the process of performing experiments and making observations, we have increased our definitive, scientific knowledge tremendously, enabling us to draw conclusions rather than merely to engage in unprovable speculations. Yet even with as far as we’ve come from a scientific perspective, philosophy and religion will never become obsolete. Here’s why. Continued here S54 Hollywood Cannot Survive Without Movie Theaters Every Thanksgiving weekend, once the holiday itself has passed and people are looking for things to do for the rest of the break, I get texts from friends seeking movie recommendations: What’s worth seeing in theaters right now? In 2022, that query became more of a plea. Was there anything to see? Something the whole family, not just rowdy teenagers, might enjoy? Anything geared toward grown-up viewers? And then, with an air of horror, they would realize that only two movies along those lines were out—Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans and Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion—but that, on one of the year’s busiest weeks for multiplexes, neither was in wide release. Last year was, on the whole, a positive one for the movie-theater industry, a period of further improvement as the world continued to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects. In 2020, movie theaters sold roughly 216 million tickets; in 2021, that number rose to 492 million, and last year, it shot up to 813 million. Although that’s still below the 2019 number of 1.2 billion tickets, we’re seeing an unmistakably positive trend line. The success of releases such as Top Gun: Maverick, superhero blockbusters, non-sequels, and original films was galvanizing, calming fears that theaters would never rebound amid a rise in streaming options. Continued here S36 The first "Bored Ape" NFT game costs $2,300+ for three weeks of play Listings on the OpenSea exchange show a current floor price of 1.49 ETH (about $2,293) for a "Sewer Pass" NFT that grants access to Dookey Dash until February 8. In less than 24 hours, the exchange has seen 8,394 ETH (about $12.8 million) in Sewer Pass transactions, with some passes selling for as much as 5.75 ETH (about $8,770). Continued here S38 PSVR 2 launch includes only a handful of exclusive titles The initial PSVR 2 lineup is overwhelmingly a sort of "greatest hits" collection of titles available on existing VR platforms. Almost all of the headset's launch window titles are also available on SteamVR, the Oculus Quest platform, or the original PSVR. Continued here S53 What Winning Did to the Anti-abortion Movement As anti-abortion protesters prepare for this year’s March for Life, a current of uncertainty ripples beneath the surface of the movement. In a normal year, the March for Life would begin somewhere along the National Mall. The cavalcade of anti-abortion activists in Washington, D.C., would wind around museums and past monuments, concluding at the foot of the Supreme Court, a physical representation of the movement’s objective: to overturn Roe v. Wade. The march happens in January of each year to coincide with the anniversary of the Roe decision. Continued here S55 He’s Tweeting for His Life Hanif Kureishi’s tweets from his sickbed are a bravura performance that is no performance at all. On the day after Christmas, the British novelist and playwright Hanif Kureishi was visiting Rome when he suddenly blacked out in his apartment and woke up immobilized. “I then experienced what can only be described [as] a scooped, semi-circular object with talons attached scuttling towards me,” he tweeted 11 days later from his hospital bed. “Using what was left of my reason, I saw this was my hand, an uncanny object over which I had no agency.” He had suffered a grievous spinal injury that paralyzed his arms and legs. His wife began transcribing his words. Later, his son took over. These dispatches, anywhere from five to 20 tweets a day, given a title and later compiled as a Substack entry, have become an international phenomenon, written up in newspapers around the globe. Well-wishers—mostly strangers—reply, thanking him, encouraging him, commiserating, offering advice. Continued here S48 What the Longest Study on Human Happiness Found Is the Key to a Good Life The Harvard Study of Adult Development has established a strong correlation between deep relationships and well-being. The question is, how does a person nurture those deep relationships? This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       Continued here S41 Twitter auction's highest bid was $100K; it could owe $300M next week Twitter owes $13 billion, and it’s expected to make its first payment against that debt next week, Bloomberg reports. Due to this looming financial burden, CEO Elon Musk has been doing everything he can to cut costs—including directing mass layoffs, skipping rent payments, and slashing employee benefits. But even those major cost-cutting moves weren’t enough to keep Musk from turning to penny-pinching. Twitter held an auction this week that was essentially a garage sale, selling off equipment no longer needed by Twitter’s drastically reduced staff. Continued here S40 Plastic surgeon injected kids with saline instead of COVID vaccine, feds allege A Utah plastic surgeon and three of his associates are facing federal charges for a year-long scheme in which they allegedly squirted around 2,000 vaccine doses down the drain, sold falsified vaccination cards for $50 each, and tricked kids into thinking they were vaccinated against COVID-19 by injecting them with saline, collectively, 391 times. Continued here S47 Nothing Drains You Like Mixed Emotions Feeling conflicted can be even more distressing than feeling bad. Here’s how to manage it. “How to Build a Life” is a column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness. Click here to listen to his podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life. Continued here S67 The silent struggles of workers with ADHD When Christian got laid off in late 2022, he wasn’t surprised. The 31-year-old, based in New York City, knew he’d fallen behind on his projects as a management consultant, and underperformed with essential job duties. “I had a tough time grappling with the sorts of executive functioning that our world operates by, like being able to set up meetings, follow through with things, focus and be detail oriented,” he says. His manager had pointed out these failings for months, which is why his termination was hardly shocking. Continued here S49 Others Take Mandela’s Name in Vain, Not Harry and Meghan I applaud the work the royal couple does inspired by my grandfather. I abhor those who exploit his legacy for personal gain. Live to Lead, a Netflix documentary series that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle produced, cites the legacy of Nelson Mandela as its inspiration. Because he was my grandfather, I was contacted recently by an Australian newspaper to comment on this. Call me naive, but I did not suspect that I was being recruited to a press vendetta against the royal couple; I was shocked when my remarks were misused. Continued here S46 Stop Trying to Ask ‘Smart Questions’ This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here to get it every week. For most of my life, I thought I was pretty good at asking questions. After all, that is sort of my job as a journalist. Explaining complex ideas in simple terms requires pulling myself out of a pit of ignorance using the rope of other people’s expertise. I can’t do it without begging for a lot of help. Continued here S50 The Energizer Bunny of Nobel Laureates Maria Ressa is focused on three things: avoiding prison, fixing the entire internet, and saving democracy. Last May, when it became clear that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. would ascend to the presidency of the Philippines, Maria Ressa, the Nobel laureate (and Atlantic contributing writer) who has become legendary in her fight for freedom of the press and democracy, was despondent. “This is how it ends, I said to myself that evening,” Ressa wrote in her book How to Stand Up to a Dictator. “You can’t have integrity of elections if you don’t have integrity of facts. Facts lost. History lost. Marcos won.” Continued here S42 Winnebago's first electric motorhome prototype breaks cover People are clamoring for an electric RV, at least if our reader feedback is anything indicator. Every time we've covered an electric van like the Ford E-Transit or BrightDrop Zero 600, you can guarantee people will want to know if there's a camper version available. I don't know if the people at Winnebago read Ars Technica comment threads, but they've obviously had the same thoughts. Continued here S44 Hacker group incorporates DNS hijacking into its malicious website campaign Researchers have uncovered a malicious Android app that can tamper with the wireless router the infected phone is connected to and force the router to send all network devices to malicious sites. Continued here S39 Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot grows a set of hands, attempts construction work Boston Dynamics' Atlas—the world's most advanced humanoid robot—is learning some new tricks. The company has finally given Atlas some proper hands, and in Boston Dynamics' latest YouTube video, Atlas is attempting to do some actual work. It also released another behind-the-scenes video showing some of the work that goes into Atlas. And when things don't go right, we see some spectacular slams the robot takes in its efforts to advance humanoid robotics. Continued here S43 Meet the real zombifying fungus behind the fictional Last of Us outbreak HBO's new sci-fi series The Last of Us debuted earlier this week and is already a massive hit. Based on the critically acclaimed video game of the same name, the series takes place in the 20-year aftermath of a deadly outbreak of mutant fungus that turns humans into monstrous zombie-like creatures (the Infected, or Clickers). While the premise is entirely fictional, it's based on some very real, and fascinating, science. Continued here S57 Forget ‘Little Women’. How did girls learn to be grown women? | Psyche Ideas is professor of English at Hollins University in Virginia. She is the author of Transforming Girls: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Adolescence (2021). Teenage girls are charming, capable and inspirational – at least they are in popular media, where a recent flurry of movies set in the 19th century, from Greta Gerwig’s movie version of Little Women to Netflix’s Enola Holmes, feature feminist-crusader heroines battling social restrictions, while somehow looking lovely. These films provide a break from the reality of troubled contemporary girlhood with its rash of anxiety and self-harm. The Victorian era becomes the space of fantasy, where teenage girls face relentless restriction and nevertheless change their world (and themselves) for the better. The real difficulties of adolescence – changing responsibilities and power, the desire for self-expression and the weight of self-doubt – are resolved in 120 minutes. 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? Exercise Scientists A... 25 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Explained: This Is the 'M... This Overlooked Scientist Helped Save Washington, ... 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