NHS crisis: underlying problems are starting to be addressed

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NHS crisis: underlying problems are starting to be addressed The NHS is having its worst winter in recent memory with strikes, record ambulance and A&E waiting times, and fears of excess deaths caused by delays in treatment. What hope is there for improvement in 2023? It’s hard to find any cause for optimism in the current crisis. However, the worst elements of the crisis may be ameliorated as we move further away from the acute phase of the pandemic. Some recent trends in the workforce might also improve the situation. Continued here

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Disastrous floods in WA - why were we not prepared? Toni Hay is Director for Indigenous Climate Change providing climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction services. Courtney-Jay Williams works for Indigenous Climate Change providing climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction services. Continued here

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How to treat scars at home - and hopefully make them disappear Maybe you’ve had a skin cancer removed from your face or body. Perhaps you had an injury or accident and needed stitches. However you came by a cut on your skin, you probably want to make it appear as small as possible as quickly as possible and avoid a longer-lasting scar. In order to minimise scar formation we need to address wound healing, which is a complex process. Continued here

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What's next for the anti-Nato left after Ukraine? When Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, much of the political left across the western world were faced with a dilemma. Unlike in 2003 – when US oil interests seemed to explain the invasion of Iraq all too neatly – this time it was much more difficult to put a Marxist spin on things. The left, sections of which have traditionally been critical of the US-led Nato alliance, was presented with an unpalatable choice: either to back a state propped up by Nato, the world’s most powerful military alliance, or to end up excusing a war of aggression. Continued here

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Why does Nepal's aviation industry have safety issues? An expert explains A Yeti Airlines ATR 72-500 aircraft crashed in Pokhara in central Nepal on January 15 2023, killing at least 68 passengers on board. The aircraft was en route from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu to Pokhara, the country’s second largest city, situated under the picturesque Annapurna mountain range. While the picturesque landscape of the country appeals to tourists, it poses significant challenges to aviation operators, who need to embrace and navigate the challenging environment. Continued here

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Lasers used to guide lightning strikes to a safe target Lightning rods protect buildings by providing a low-resistance path for charges to flow between the clouds and the ground. But they only work if lightning finds that path first. The actual strike is chaotic, and there's never a guarantee that the processes that initiate it will happen close enough to the lightning rod to ensure that things will work as intended. Continued here

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OAN loses key ruling in suit claiming DirecTV broke deal by dropping network One America News Network's owner lost a key ruling in a lawsuit against DirecTV over the TV provider's decision to drop OAN from its channel lineup. OAN-owner Herring Networks had sued DirecTV and its owner AT&T in March 2022, claiming breach of contract. Continued here

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On a tiny Australian island, snakes feasting on seabirds evolved huge jaws in a surprisingly short time When we think of evolution, we tend to picture slow changes occurring over very long periods of time, typically millions of years. However, evolution can actually happen much faster, over only a few generations: think COVID-19 strains, for example. And this fast evolution isn’t just restricted to viruses and microbes. Our study, recently published in Evolutionary Biology, documents rapid evolution in tiger snakes (Notechis scutatus). In less than a century, these snakes evolved the ability to swallow whole seagull chicks, allowing them to survive on a tiny island. Continued here

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What can the Bildungsroman tell us about the Israel and Palestine conflict? The reactions to Australia’s decision to reverse the Morrison government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital ranged from outrage to endorsement. They confirmed, once again, that the territories involved are intensely contested. They also showed that there is almost no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that can be understood as genuinely neutral or beneficial for both sides. In the wake of the Second Palestinian Intifada, the conflict seems to have arrived at an impasse. Bildungsroman is a German word that translates as “novel of education”. The genre emphasises development and progress. It is associated with the maturation of a young or naive protagonist. Such protagonists are formed more by circumstance than academic instruction. They are “schooled by life”. Continued here

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Why food is such a powerful symbol in political protest Food is a hot issue in today’s activism. Last year, UK climate group Just Stop Oil hurled tomato soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London. Later they smeared cake on a Madame Tussauds waxwork of King Charles. Protesters affiliated with the German group Letzte Generation (Last Generation) threw mashed potatoes on Claude Monet’s Grainstacks at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, Germany. An activist targeted Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with cake at the Louvre Museum in Paris. All were intended as wake-up calls about the anthropogenic climate catastrophe. Food has a long history of being a weapon of protest. Historian E.P. Thompson proposed in 1971 that food was part of the “moral economy” of protest in pre-industrial England. Food riots in the 18th century (such as those that took place across England in 1766 over the rising price of wheat and other cereals) were partly a response to the breakdown of the old moral economy of provision, replaced by the new political economy of the free market. Continued here

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Are the Clintons actually writing their novels? An expert uses 'stylometry' to analyse Hillary and Bill's writing In 2018, former US president Bill Clinton coauthored a novel with James Patterson, the world’s bestselling author. The President is Missing is a typical “Patterson”: a page-turner of a thriller, easy to read, with short chapters and large font. Patterson is accustomed to collaborative writing – much of his success can be attributed to novels he has written with others. Considered the first “brand-managed author”, Patterson brought the Hollywood model of film production to books. Continued here

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These Are the Best Portable Storage Drives If you're running out of storage space on your laptop, or if you need to back up your data and store that backlog of videos you're going to edit one day (I am, I swear), an external hard drive can solve your problem. The trouble is, there are hundreds of drive options ranging from dirt cheap to crazy expensive—which one is right for your needs? I've tested dozens with different use cases in mind to find the best portable storage drives for your workflow.  Be sure to check out our other guides, including How to Back Up and Move Your Photos Between Services, How to Back Up Your Digital Life, and How to Back Up Your iPhone. Continued here

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The radical quest to discover how the first molecules of life arose Excerpted from WHAT’S GOTTEN INTO YOU by Dan Levitt. Copyright © 2023 by Dan Levitt. Excerpted by permission of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. In 1918, the citizens of Moscow, the new capital of Communist Russia, struggled to maintain a semblance of normal life. It wasn’t easy. A brutal civil war between the White and Red Russian armies was raging. The West had imposed a trade war. The capital was aswirl with revolutionary ideas, new ways of thinking about equality, justice, and history. Those of means who had not fled were demoted to ordinary citizens and forced to share their wealth and homes with the less privileged. Despite all the revolutionary fervor, Alexander Oparin, a young biochemist steeped in radical scientific ideas, received disappointing news. The censorship board would not permit him to publish a manuscript that speculated on how life arose from mere chemicals. Though the Bolsheviks had overthrown the tsar a year ago, their revolutionary ideology had not yet filtered down to the censors, perhaps because they were not yet ready to directly antagonize the Russian Orthodox Church. Continued here

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From start to finish, Sunday's Falcon Heavy launch delivered spectacular imagery The Falcon Heavy rocket made its fifth launch in five years on Sunday evening from Florida. However, this was the first launch of the triple-core booster in twilight, and this rare evening light provided some spectacular new insights into the liftoff and return of the rocket. Continued here

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Woman, modernist, West Indian: the haunted life of Jean Rhys The life of Dominican-born writer Jean Rhys is at once well-known and mysterious. Her career dipped and soared across both halves of the last century, across changes of name (Ella Gwendoline “Gwen” Rees Williams, Ella Lenglet, Jean Rhys) and changes of location (West Indies, England, Europe). Review: I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys – Miranda Seymour (Harper Collins). Continued here

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Musk wins legal battle to force laid-off Twitter employees into arbitration The weekend delivered some disappointing news for laid-off Twitter employees who launched a class-action lawsuit in November against the social media platform immediately after CEO Elon Musk kicked off the first round of layoffs at the company. On Friday, a US district judge ruled that five plaintiffs who proposed the class action would instead have to enter individual arbitration to pursue their claims that Twitter violated employment laws. Continued here

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Scientists use laser beam to divert lightning strikes Sometimes a scientific accomplishment needs no hype to sound cool. Laser-guided lightning is one of these cases. Since the time of Benjamin Franklin, we’ve looked for ways to control, or at least deflect, lightning strikes. The most common method for deflecting lightning is currently the lightning rod, but the technology suffers a major limitation: The zone of protection offered by the rod extends roughly only as far as the height of the rod. Using lasers to guide the path of lightning could create much larger zones of protection. Scientists first tried to control the path of a lightning bolt with a laser in 1999. Now, scientists are reporting the first successful demonstration of laser-guided lightning. Pictures of one of the experiments speak for themselves: Continued here

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The Essentials: Managing Projects We’re in a project economy, where so much of our work is developing something new — a product, a service, an event. That means that many of us manage projects, even if “project manager” isn’t in our official job title. And we’re typically doing this work alongside others, on a deadline, often with multiple stakeholders involved, while objectives and circumstances continuously change. It’s not easy, and it’s no wonder that people get certified in project management: it’s a discipline that’s surprisingly deep, from planning to close-out. Continued here

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Wyoming Republicans take a stand, want to ban electric cars Legislators of the nation's least-populous state are taking a brave stand against modernity and climate action. They're sponsoring SJ0004, "Phasing out new electric vehicle sales by 2035," an uncomplicated bill that expresses the state's goal to phase out sales of new EVs by 2035 and asks Wyoming's industries and citizens to do their civic duty in resisting the EV. Copies of the resolution would be sent to the White House, leaders in Congress, and the governor of California. Continued here

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The 2023 Australian Open pauses a year of profound political tensions in tennis Over the past 12 months, significant challenges by way of policy and politics have impacted professional tennis. Chief among them have been participation constraints around the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by considerations about the eligibility or otherwise of Russian and Belarussian competitors following the invasion of Ukraine. Continued here

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Sparkle-filled JWST galaxy solves a longstanding cosmic mystery Over half a year since its first science image was released, JWST’s data continues to educate us. Behind galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 lies a series of brightened, magnified, gravitationally lensed galaxies. Continued here

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Canada's new COVID test rules: Targeting travellers from China will not stop globally circulating Omicron subvariant In a throwback to January 2020, when the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 began to be detected outside of China, many countries have again adopted measures targeted at travellers from China. These measures include flight restrictions, pre-departure testing and blanket entry bans. As of Jan. 5, 2023, air travellers from China, Hong Kong and Macau over two years of age entering Canada must provide proof of a negative COVID test prior to departure. Continued here

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Where Matter support stands, and what devices are coming, in early 2023 First came the specification, then the release, and then CES 2023—it has been a busy few months for Matter, the smart home connectivity standard. You can't quite fill your home just yet with Matter-ready devices, but there are some intriguing options in development. Here's a look at some of the most practical, quirky, and viable gear coming soon (or soon-ish). Continued here

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Slack's Stewart Butterfield on Getting to $1 Million in 72 Hours The co-founder and CEO of Slack explains the unlikely creation and insanely rapid adoption of the fastest-growing enterprise software the world had ever seen. Continued here

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Reports: Twitter's sudden third-party client lockouts were intentional Twitter has not yet explained why third-party clients like Twitterific and Tweetbot stopped working late last week. But a new report and testing by one app developer suggest the outages and lack of communication are intentional. Continued here

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Google Stadia celebrates shutdown with controller update, new game Google Stadia is scheduled for execution this week. The service dies on January 18, and while there will be tons of spurned developers and hours of lost game progress in its wake, the shutdown of Stadia is going about as smoothly as it can go. After refunding every game purchase made on the service, Google is now responding to calls to open up the service's controller so that it can function as a generic Bluetooth device after Stadia dies. In a post on the Official Stadia forums, a community manager wrote on Friday: "Next week we'll be releasing a self-serve tool to enable Bluetooth connections on your Stadia Controller. We'll share details next week on how to enable this feature." Continued here

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WHO presses China for more data after COVID death tally leaps from 37 to 60K China is now reporting that nearly 60,000 people had died of COVID-19 since early December when the country abruptly abandoned its zero-COVID policy and omicron subvariants began ripping through its population. The new death toll is a stark revision from China's previously reported figure for that period, which was just 37. But experts remain skeptical that the new, much larger tally is a complete accounting, and the World Health Organization continues to press the country to release more data. Continued here

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The 3 Elements of Trust As a leader, you want the people in your organization to trust you. And with good reason. In our coaching with leaders, we often see that trust is a leading indicator of whether others evaluate them positively or negatively. But how to create that trust, or perhaps more importantly, how reestablish it when you’ve lost it isn’t always that straightforward. By analyzing over 80,000 360-degree reviews, the authors found that there are three elements that predict whether a leader will be trusted by his direct reports, peers, and other colleagues. These are positive relationships, consistency, and good judgment/expertise. When a leader was above average on each of these elements, they were more likely to be trusted, and positive relationships appeared to be the most important element in that, without it, a leader’s trust rating fell most significantly. Trust is an important currency in organizations and any leader would be wise to invest time in building it by focusing on these three elements. Continued here

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Can organs-on-a-chip replace animals in medical experiments? Bringing a new drug to market costs billions of dollars and can take over a decade. These high monetary and time investments are both strong contributors to today’s skyrocketing health care costs and significant obstacles to delivering new therapies to patients. One big reason behind these barriers is the lab models researchers use to develop drugs in the first place. Preclinical trials, or studies that test a drug’s efficacy and toxicity before it enters clinical trials in people, are mainly conducted on cell cultures and animals. Both are limited by their poor ability to mimic the conditions of the human body. Cell cultures in a petri dish are unable to replicate every aspect of tissue function, such as how cells interact in the body or the dynamics of living organs. And animals are not humans – even small genetic differences between species can be amplified to major physiological differences.  Continued here

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Thinking about cosmetic surgery? At last, some clarity on who can call themselves a surgeon When is a surgeon not a surgeon? It’s a riddle that’s long puzzled regulators and consumers. But it may soon be solved. State and territory health ministers have decided to restrict the title “surgeon” to specialist doctors. The move represents a significant change in Australian medical regulation. Continued here

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The Tonga Eruption Is Still Revealing New Volcanic Dangers Last year, Larry Paxton was looking at the edge of space when he saw something he shouldn’t. A physicist at Johns Hopkins University, Paxton uses satellite-based instruments that look down on the region of space just above the atmosphere. They see in spectrums of light that we can’t, like the far ultraviolet, monitoring for things like odd space weather. But in late January, his team observed something unusual on a scan: Part of the map had gone dark. The rays of far UV light were being absorbed by molecules of some sort, resulting in a dim splotch roughly the size of Montana.  The source soon became clear: the Hunga Tonga volcano, which had just erupted in the South Pacific. Those molecules—enough water, Paxton’s team later determined, to fill 100 Olympic swimming pools—had been jettisoned skyward faster than the speed of sound by an explosion unlike anything previously recorded on Earth. “This is an enormous amount of water to get injected that high,” says Paxton, who presented his research a few weeks ago at the American Geophysical Union. “It’s an extraordinary thing.”  Continued here

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Meet te mokomoko a Tohu: a new species of New Zealand gecko hidden in plain sight Aotearoa New Zealand is home to an incredible diversity of lizards (mokomoko) – more than 120 species are identified, and counting. Elusive species are being (re)discovered in cracks and crevices in remote areas, while geneticists are using DNA to untangle hidden diversity in widespread populations. Continued here

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40 Ideas to Shake Up Your Hiring Process Many companies today are struggling to hire and retain talent, but more often than not the problem is self-inflicted: They’re simply not using a broad enough array of tools, sometimes because they don’t even know the tools exist. In this article, the authors list 40 tools — some familiar but underutilized, others unfamiliar and innovative — that can help companies find and keep the people they need to succeed in both the short-term and the long-term. Continued here

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NZ aid worker remains missing in Ukraine: the tragedy of people motivated to help in war zones becoming victims themselves The humanitarian aid worker Andrew Bagshaw, who has dual New Zealand and British citizenship, has been missing in Ukraine for more than ten days. Bagshaw and his British colleague Christopher Parry worked as part of a team of Ukrainian and international volunteers delivering aid and carrying out evacuations of civilians, often under fire from Russian forces. They have not been seen since January 6, when they left the city of Kramatorsk for Soledar, in eastern Ukraine, which has since been claimed by the Russian mercenary company Wagner. Continued here

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Basquiat: A multidisciplinary artist who denounced violence against African Americans Doctorant en littérature et arts de la scène et de l'écran (concentration cinéma), Université Laval The exhibition Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music, currently running at the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, demonstrates that the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, which is usually associated with painting, also calls upon other media, including music — the main theme of this exhibition — literature, comic strips, cinema and animation, a much lesser-known aspect of his work. Continued here

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Here is the most terrifying pterosaur ever discovered This article was first published on Big Think in August 2021. It was updated in January 2023. Who hasn’t wondered what it would be like to live in the era of the dinosaurs? It certainly would be an amazing sight — but also utterly terrifying, once the reality set in that you were rather close to the bottom of the food chain, a tasty morsel for tyrannosaurs and pterosaurs alike. Continued here

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Algorithms Allegedly Penalized Black Renters. The US Government Is Watching Two years ago, Mary Louis submitted an application to rent an apartment at Granada Highlands in Malden, Massachusetts. She liked that the unit had two full bathrooms and that there was a pool on the premises. But the landlord denied her the apartment, allegedly due to a score assigned to her by a tenant-screening algorithm made by SafeRent. Louis responded with references to prove 16 years of punctual rent payments, to no avail. Instead she took a different apartment that cost $200 more a month in an area with a higher crime rate. But a class-action filed by Louis and others last May argues that SafeRent scores based in part on information in a credit report amounted to discrimination against Black and Hispanic renters in violation of the Fair Housing Act. The groundbreaking legislation prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, disability, religion, or national origin and was passed in 1968 by Congress a week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Continued here

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They say we know more about the Moon than about the deep sea. They're wrong This idea has been repeated for decades by scientists and science communicators, including Sir David Attenborough in the 2001 documentary series The Blue Planet. More recently, in Blue Planet II (2017) and other sources, the Moon is replaced with Mars. As deep-sea scientists, we investigated this supposed “fact” and found it has no scientific basis. It is not true in any quantifiable way. Continued here

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Free Will Is Only an Illusion if You Are, Too New research findings, combined with philosophy, suggest free will is real but may not operate in the ways people expect Imagine you are shopping online for a new pair of headphones. There is an array of colors, brands and features to look at. You feel that you can pick any model that you like and are in complete control of your decision. When you finally click the “add to shopping cart” button, you believe that you are doing so out of your own free will. Continued here

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Don't Underestimate the Power of Your Voice Our voices matter as much as our words matter. They have the power to awaken the senses and lead others to act, close deals, or land us successful job interviews. Through our voices, we create nuances of meaning, convey our emotions, and find the secret to communicating our executive presence. So, how do we train our voices to be more visceral, effective, and command attention? Continued here

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Information literacy courses can help students tackle confirmation bias and misinformation When it comes to the news these days, what we choose to regard as trustworthy has more to do with our own world view than what kinds of news practices are worthy of trust. Many people are seeking out news that aligns with their politics. But there’s just one problem with this: we are not always good judges of what constitutes trustworthy information and news. Continued here

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American Religion Is Not Dead Yet Participation in traditional houses of worship is in decline, but innovation and growth are happening elsewhere. Take a drive down Main Street of just about any major city in the country, and—with the housing market ground to a halt—you might pass more churches for sale than homes. This phenomenon isn’t likely to change anytime soon; according to the author of a 2021 report on the future of religion in America, 30 percent of congregations are not likely to survive the next 20 years. Add in declining attendance and dwindling affiliation rates, and you’d be forgiven for concluding that American religion is heading toward extinction. Continued here

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A Slick Mystery That Takes Place Entirely on Screens Early in Missing, a teenager named June (played by Storm Reid) gets a FaceTime call from her mother, Grace (Nia Long). Grace is about to leave June home alone for several days and wants her daughter to jot down some reminders. Instead of transcribing her mother’s advice, however, June key-smashes to give the impression that she’s diligently taking notes, eventually spelling out her annoyance: “omg omg stfuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.” All of this plays out on June’s monitor, the camera flitting around her cluttered desktop and following her cursor’s every move. Missing, which hits theaters this week, is set entirely on screens—computers, cellphones, smartwatches, security cameras, and so on. As a filmmaking tool, the gimmick works best when the story involves a ton of online action, such as characters Googling queries, sending messages, and watching videos. As a result, most films in this vein tend to be mysteries that unfold via digital clues. The best of these, 2018’s Searching, follows a father digging into his daughter’s social-media archives to track her down after she disappears. Continued here

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Birdsong isn't just competition for mates or territory. Zebra finches sing to bond When you hear beautiful birdsong, such as the warbling of the Australasian magpie, you might believe it’s a sign of intense competition for territory or showing off to attract a mate. After all, that’s the way birdsong is often thought of – a way for male birds to compete with each other. A prettier version of nature red in tooth and claw, as Tennyson put it. There’s some truth to it – in many species, even the most beautiful song by a male in another’s territory will invite attack. Continued here

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How extinct animals could be brought back from the dead Millions of years ago thylacines, also known as Tasmanian tigers, were widespread across Australia. About the size of an American coyote, these dog-like creatures with stripes disappeared from the mainland around 2,000 years ago. They remained in Tasmania until the 1920s, when they were slaughtered by European colonisers who saw them as a threat to livestock. "It was a human-driven extinction – European settlers came to Australia and brutally obliterated this animal," says Andrew Pask, a geneticist at the University of Melbourne. Continued here

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How Successful Women Sustain Career Momentum The authors, executive coaches for women leaders, wanted to understand why some women are able to sustain and maintain career momentum, despite the systemic, structural problems women — and especially women of color — face in the workplace. They interviewed 37 women in senior leadership roles, identifying three behaviors that helped these women sustain momentum: a focused drive, an incessant desire to learn, and an agile mindset. Continued here

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Better Brainstorming Great innovators have long known that the secret to unlocking a better answer is to ask a better question. Applying that insight to brainstorming exercises can vastly improve the search for new ideas—especially when a team is feeling stuck. Brainstorming for questions, rather than answers, helps you avoid group dynamics that often stifle voices, and it lets you reframe problems in ways that spur breakthrough thinking. Continued here

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How to unlock your “peak mind” Attention is a crucial aspect of the human experience, as it allows us to think, feel, and connect with others. However, attention can be fragile and vulnerable, and it can be disrupted by stress, threat, negative mood, and other factors.  The world today often feels like a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, and attention is also constantly being hijacked by the “attention economy,” as well as the tendency to mentally time travel to the past or future.  Continued here

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The ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Bubble Is About to Burst Many Gen Zers have rejected traditional credit in favor of new-age layaway programs, which are riskier than they may seem. As familiar as Americans are with the concept of credit, many of us, upon encountering a sandwich that can be financed in four easy payments of $3.49, might think: Yikes, we’re in trouble. Continued here

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4 Keys to a Digital Banking Startup Success How purpose helped the founder of NuBank win a David vs. Goliath battle. Continued here

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What First-Time Managers Can Do to Address Burnout Becoming “the boss” is a significant career transition, and is often accompanied by shifting relationship dynamics at work, including leading direct reports. If managers don’t put their mental health first, burnout could easily rub off onto their teams. Here are some ways to take care of yourself as you start to lead. Continued here

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The Supreme Court Justices Do Not Seem to Be Getting Along Supreme Court justices often get cross with lawyers arguing cases before them. But six months after the Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the justices are betraying signs of impatience and frustration with one another—sometimes bordering on disrespect. The Court has seen acrimony in its history, such as the mutual hostility among four of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s appointees. More recently, there have been reports of justices’ annoyance with Neil Gorsuch, and Sonia Sotomayor took the unusual step of publicly tamping down speculation of a dustup over his decision not to wear a mask during the Omicron wave a year ago. For decades, though, peace has mostly prevailed. Justices of sharply different legal views have been dinner-party friends, skeet-shooting pals, and opera companions. Ketanji Brown Jackson’s predecessor, Stephen Breyer, and Clarence Thomas—ideological opposites but quite friendly—would whisper and tell jokes during oral arguments. The one-liners and jibes of Antonin Scalia, the ornery conservative, drew laughs from his conservative and liberal colleagues alike. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg grew frail in her final year, Thomas would offer his arm to ease her descent from the bench. Rancor has always animated the justices’ opinions, but it was limited to pen and paper. On the bench, civility reigned. Continued here

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Artists file class-action lawsuit against AI image generator companies Some artists have begun waging a legal fight against the alleged theft of billions of copyrighted images used to train AI art generators and reproduce unique styles without compensating artists or asking for consent. Continued here

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Dust Lakes Keep Popping Up Across the West 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 had happened before: Saline lake beds are some of the West’s most significant sources of dust. California’s Owens Lake was once the nation’s largest source of PM10, the tiny pollutants found in dust and smoke, and 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. Saline lakes are rapidly losing water to climate change and agricultural and urban uses, becoming some of the West’s most threatened ecosystems. Now new legislation is offering some support. On December 27, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Saline Lake Ecosystems in the Great Basin States Program Act, which allocates $25 million in funding for research and monitoring of saline lakes across the Great Basin. Although this funding is an important step, it cannot give the lakes what they really need: more water. Continued here

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Adetayo Bamiduro: Africa's path to clean mobility -- driven by motorcycles A lack of infrastructure in parts of Africa has made unregulated, gas-powered motorcycle taxis widespread -- a system that gets people where they need to be, but heavily pollutes the air and excludes drivers from the formal economy. TED Fellow and entrepreneur Adetayo Bamiduro offers his vision for a cleaner, more equitable future, where an electric motorcycle service helps green Africa's transportation and transform the lives and livelihoods of drivers. Continued here

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Alberta's new policy on psychedelic drug treatment for mental illness: Will Canada lead the psychedelic renaissance? Patients in Alberta will now be able to legally consider adding psychedelic-assisted therapy to the list of treatment options available for mental illnesses. Alberta psychiatrists and policymakers suggest that they are getting ahead of the curve by creating regulations to ensure the safe use of these hallucinogenic substances in a therapeutically supported environment. As of Jan. 16, the option is available only through registered and licensed psychiatrists in the province. Continued here

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6 Realities to Consider Before Starting Your Own Business Starting and running your own business requires considerations that you probably did not anticipate. Continued here

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What to Say When You're Reaching Out to Someone on LinkedIn But what previously took place face-to-face in local meetups, alumni gatherings, industry conferences, and happy hours is now largely confined to video due to the global pandemic. Still, effective networking online is key for young people seeking their next role — possibly a remote job, given broader industry trends and permanent WFH announcements from major companies like Facebook and Twitter. Continued here

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Here’s the truth about how to spot when someone is lying | Psyche Ideas is professor of psychology at the University of Oslo in Norway, where his research is in the field of legal psychology. He has acted as expert witness in many court cases, and has served in the Norwegian Criminal Cases Review Commission. is professor emeritus at the University of Oslo in Norway, where his research is in the field of legal psychology. He has acted as expert witness in many court cases, and has served in the Norwegian Criminal Cases Review Commission. Continued here

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Gen Z and young millennials' surprising obsession If asked to guess what under 25-year-olds are listening to, it's unlikely that many of us would land upon orchestral music. And yet a survey published in December 2022 by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) found that 74% of UK residents aged under 25 were likely to be tuning into just that at Christmas-time, compared with a mere 46% of people aged 55 or more. These figures reflect not only the RPO's broader finding that under 35-year-olds are more likely to listen to orchestral music than their parents, but also the widespread surge in popularity of classical music in general, particularly among younger generations. There are plenty of reasons for this, from the playlist culture spawned by streaming platforms that make it easy for listeners to discover new artists and types of music to fit their mood, to the solace it provided during the pandemic, not to mention the profusion of classical music in pop culture hits like Squid Game. But perhaps highest on the list is the global wave of Gen Z and young millennial classical artists who are finding new ways to be seen and heard, and – just as vitally – new means of modernising what has long been branded music's most elite and stuffy genre. Continued here

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Martin Luther King Jr. Was a Truly Great Leader. This 15-Minute Speech Proved It (Long Before 'I Have a Dream') It started on December 5, 1955. Continued here

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How Noma Made Fine Dining Far Worse Even if you haven’t eaten at Noma, you’ve eaten at Noma. Or at least at someplace trying to be a mini-version of the influential Copenhagen restaurant, where tweezer-wielding worker bees obsess over each microgreen so that every morsel of food looks and tastes transcendent. When the chef, René Redzepi, announced last week that, at the end of next year, Noma will close its doors to guests and transform into “Noma 3.0”—something of a Willy Wonka–style food lab and pop-up-restaurant incubator—The New York Times predicted that the news would “send shock waves through the culinary world.” But for those of us in the restaurant industry, Noma’s announcement felt less like a seismic event and more like the dampened thud of a silver spoon falling on a plush dining-room carpet. As a burned-out chef slogging through the challenges of running a restaurant myself, I’m shocked only that Noma—along with many other ultra-high-end restaurants built on the same foundation—has been running for so long. Despite Noma’s global reputation and eye-popping prices, the restaurant has depended heavily on uncompensated labor. The Financial Times has reported that, in its last year of operations before the pandemic, the restaurant typically had 34 paid cooks—and about 30 unpaid interns. Only in October, after nearly two decades in business, did Noma start paying the people who painstakingly prep and stage its food for presentation to customers. Continued here

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5 Wintery Books to Fill Up Cold January Nights The days are short and the weather is miserable, but at least that gives you lots of time to curl up with a good book. Continued here

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How to Build a Product That Builds Avid Fans Hint: It starts by having a mission behind your product Continued here

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An Impactful Way Every Leader and Brand Can Honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's Legacy, Today and Everyday Both your team and the customers you serve want you to demonstrate your admiration and commitment to Dr. King's legacy beyond just saying you do. Continued here

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Spotted hyenas all sound different when they call - they can tell friend from foe On quiet nights across large swaths of the African bush, you may hear a series of whooping calls in the distance. This unique sound is the long-distance vocalisation used by spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) to communicate with each other. For hyenas, it’s advantageous to know who is calling before deciding to respond. They don’t treat every member of their group the same – and the caller could even be an intruder in their territory. Continued here

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The Literary Legacy of C. Michael Curtis Across six decades as an Atlantic editor and a teacher, C. Michael Curtis discovered and nurtured multiple generations of American writers A few years ago, the novelist and short-story writer Lauren Groff reflected on what had launched one of the more sparkling literary careers of recent years: Continued here

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The companies that churn through young workers Sarah had always dreamed of working in the fashion industry. Aged 21, she decided to follow her dream, move to London and find a career she loved. “Like many young people, my passion was fashion,” she says. “But the reality wasn’t quite so glamorous.” After working for less than a year in fashion retail, Sarah secured an e-commerce assistant role in the head office of a global luxury brand. In both jobs, she was surrounded by like-minded twenty-somethings, all of whom wanted to succeed in the fashion world. “It’s like any creative industry: young people always see it as cool to work in,” she says. “And the perks are great, even in sales: we’d get heavily discounted items all the time.” Continued here

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Canada, a superpower? Here's how the country might one day fit the bill For the foreseeable future, the United States will probably remain the world’s most powerful nation. Yet, like any champion, it must watch for challengers and head them off. At present, China’s rise on the global stage troubles Washington. A few decades ago, it was the Soviet Union. But will future contenders for superpower status be much closer — specifically, north of the U.S. border? The British Empire ended in the mid-20th century when it was outmanoeuvred not by one of its longtime rivals, France or Germany, but rather by its ally, the U.S. Could Canada do the same? Continued here