A Maryland Bill Could Test Out the Four-Day Workweek. But CEOs Have Some Mixed Feelings

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A Maryland Bill Could Test Out the Four-Day Workweek. But CEOs Have Some Mixed Feelings A bill introduced in Maryland would create a pilot program to test the four-day workweek. But some Maryland-based CEOs are skeptical. Continued here

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Archaeologists Find 2,000-Year-Old Gemstones in Drain Beneath a Roman Bathhouse Down a drain beneath the murky waters of an ancient Roman bathhouse in Carlisle, England, near Hadrian’s Wall, archaeologists have discovered a trove of gemstones lost by bathers 2,000 years ago. More than 30 gems—including amethyst, jasper and carnelian—have been found so far during excavations at the site. Wealthy bathers likely dropped them back in the opulent bathhouse’s heyday in the second or third century C.E. Continued here

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How Anthony Casalena Took Squarespace From a Dorm Room to the Stock Exchange Twenty years ago, Anthony Casalena just wanted to build a website. Now he's helping over 4.2 million users do the same with his website-building and hosting platform, Squarespace. Continued here

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Too Much Sex and Too Little Sleep Can Kill These Endangered Marsupials A study finds male northern quolls forgo rest to travel up to 6.5 miles in one night in search of a mate—the equivalent of a human walking 25 miles Male northern quolls in Australia are so focused on sex that they're dropping dead from exhaustion, new research suggests.  Continued here

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The Band That Best Captures the Sound of the ’70s No decade is dominated by a single genre of popular music, but the 1970s was arguably more motley than most. What is the sound of the ’70s? Is it … folk rock? (Neil Young’s Harvest turned 50 last year.) Progressive rock? (Prog’s nadir, Yes’s Tales From Topographic Oceans, was released in 1973 and promptly crashed under its own weight.) How about disco? Punk? Post-punk? New wave? Reggae? Rap? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. And what do we do with Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell, one of the 10 best-selling albums of the decade? Is bombast a genre? But if you were to drill down through the decade and pull up a core sample of ’70s pop, it would come up Blondie—and would look, in fact, very much like the band’s eight-disc box set, Against the Odds: 1974–1982, which is nominated for the Best Historical Album Award at this weekend’s Grammys. As the academic and artist Kembrew McLeod has written, Blondie was a mediator between the experimental music and art scene of downtown New York City and the larger pop audience. But more fundamentally, I’d argue, the group was also a conduit and popularizer of a wide variety of new rock and pop sounds. Continued here

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6 Ways to Keep Your Environment From Stealing the Show in a Virtual Meeting Presentation Make sure your colleagues are dazzled by your message, not distracted by your background. Continued here

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Biden’s Document Issue Is Nothing Like Trump’s No equivalence exists in the ways that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have respectively handled the classified documents found in their possession. Yet panicky Democrats—ruled either by a thirst for TV airtime or by a knee-jerk defensive reflex—are suggesting that one does. Biden’s enemies might be expected to use an argument of false equivalence to attack him, but surely not people who are supposed to be his allies. I’m talking to you, Senator Dick Durbin and Representative Jim Himes. Continued here

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Czech Voters Deal a Blow to Populism This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Only a few years ago, democracies around the world seemed to be turning toward the pluto-populists, the wealthy men and women who convinced millions of ordinary voters that liberal democracy had run its course. They’re still out there—but their star may be dimming. Continued here

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Don't Let the Foxes in the Hen House Why the proposal to allow fintech participation in SBA lending is unwise. Continued here

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War, Politics, Business Make Meeting 1.5 Degrees C Target Unlikely The transformative social change needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius isn’t happening fast enough, experts say in a new report Keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius is “currently not plausible,” warns a new report from the University of Hamburg. The types of swift, transformative social change needed to reach that target just aren’t happening fast enough. Continued here

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Get Used to Face Recognition in Stadiums Last week, the New York Attorney General’s office sent Madison Square Garden Entertainment a letter demanding answers. The state’s top law enforcement agency wants to know more about how the company operating Radio City Music Hall and the storied arena where the NBA’s Knicks play uses a face recognition system to deny entry to certain people, and in particular lawyers representing clients in dispute with Madison Square Garden. The letter says that because the ban is thought to cover staff at 90 law firms, it may exclude thousands of people and deter them from taking on cases "including sexual harassment or employment discrimination claims.” Since the face recognition system became widely known in recent weeks, MSG’s management has stood squarely behind the idea of checking faces at the door with algorithms. In an unsigned statement, the company says its system is not an attack on lawyers, though some are “ambulance chasers and money grabbers.” Continued here

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We’re Bungling the COVID Wind-down Stephen B. Thomas, the director of the Center for Health Equity at the University of Maryland, considers himself an eternal optimist. When he reflects on the devastating pandemic that has been raging for the past three years, he chooses to focus less on what the world has lost and more on what it has gained: potent antiviral drugs, powerful vaccines, and, most important, unprecedented collaborations among clinicians, academics, and community leaders that helped get those lifesaving resources to many of the people who needed them most. But when Thomas, whose efforts during the pandemic helped transform more than 1,000 Black barbershops and salons into COVID-vaccine clinics, looks ahead to the next few months, he worries that momentum will start to fizzle out—or, even worse, that it will go into reverse. This week, the Biden administration announced that it would allow the public-health-emergency declaration over COVID-19 to expire in May—a transition that’s expected to put shots, treatments, tests, and other types of care more out of reach of millions of Americans, especially those who are uninsured. The move has been a long time coming, but for community leaders such as Thomas, whose vaccine-outreach project, Shots at the Shop, has depended on emergency funds and White House support, the transition could mean the imperilment of a local infrastructure that he and his colleagues have been building for years. It shouldn’t have been inevitable, he told me, that community vaccination efforts would end up on the chopping block. “A silver lining of the pandemic was the realization that hyperlocal strategies work,” he said. “Now we’re seeing the erosion of that.” Continued here

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Politicians Can’t Just Go Around Censoring Ideas That Anger Them In my senior Southern Literature class, I’m about to teach Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner’s great novel about how racism has warped America. I ask my students to think about the stories Faulkner tells: the dispossession of the Chickasaw people, the enslaved woman who drowns herself in despair, and the white family struggling to accept that the admired patriarch who built their Mississippi cotton kingdom also raped his own daughter. Here at Florida State University, in the capital city of the third state to join the Confederacy, I ask them to consider the ways our troubled past haunts our precarious present. I start writing dates on the board—1619, 1830, 1863—and I wonder if somebody will accuse me of breaking Florida law. Governor Ron DeSantis sees Florida’s colleges and universities as hotbeds of trendy theories, where professors delight in propagating Marxism, pushing anti-racism, and undermining traditional gender identity. He likes to say he puts on “the full armor of God” to fight “wokeism” and create a “patriotic” education system. To that end, Florida has banned the teaching of what DeSantis declares erroneous doctrine, especially critical race theory and “The 1619 Project.” Both challenge our happier myths: that the Founding Fathers hated slavery even though they owned slaves, or that rugged individualism enables anyone to succeed if they just work hard enough. DeSantis doesn’t want Florida schools to explore how the legacy of slavery still casts a structural shadow on our democracy; to examine white privilege; or, as the “Stop WOKE Act” he pushed through our supine legislature puts it, to instruct students in topics that might cause “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” on account of their race. A federal judge has temporarily halted the law’s implementation, but the state has a good chance of winning on appeal to the Eleventh Circuit, which is dominated by Donald Trump appointees. Continued here

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How Neuroscience Can Optimize Your Brain for Remote Work Working from home has its own productivity challenges, but you can train yourself to overcome them. Continued here

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Tyre Nichols Wanted to Capture the Sunset Vincent van Gogh’s painting Willows at Sunset is a dazzling kaleidoscope of twilight. The canvas is awash in orange and yellow brushstrokes, as if the painter meant to depict the world ablaze. An asymmetrical sun hovers in the background while beams of light shoot across the sky. Terra-cotta grass leans in the wind that I imagine van Gogh felt slide across his cheek. Three pollarded willows rise up from the earth and bend like bodies frozen mid-dance. Shades of black expand across their barren trunks, as if they are about to be swallowed by the oncoming night. The piece, painted in 1888, wasn’t originally meant to be shared with the world. The wide brushstrokes on the canvas have led art historians to believe that van Gogh painted the image quickly, perhaps as a sketch for another work—the artist’s attempt to capture the majesty of a sunset before it slipped beyond the horizon. Continued here

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Marisa G. Franco: The secret to making new friends as an adult Making friends as an adult can feel like a baffling obstacle course. Why was it so much easier to connect as kids? To help you find well-rounded and fulfilling friendships, psychologist Marisa Franco discusses science-backed tips on how to make (and keep) friends, like the optimism-inducing "acceptance prophecy" and the shame-reducing "theory of chums." Learn more about the power of platonic love and how it can help you experience the full richness and complexity of who you are. (This conversation, hosted by TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was part of an exclusive TED Membership event. Visit ted.com/membership to become a TED Member.) Continued here

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Break Phone Addiction With a Smart White Box--or Cardboard 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 First off, I refuse to blame anyone’s phone addiction on a lack of self-control. I now find it almost impossible to accomplish even the most minor task without the help of my smartphone. Not only is my iPhone my alarm clock and my kitchen timer, it’s also my calendar and my grocery list. I text my husband and check my work Slack and look up recipes and play podcasts while cooking. Continued here

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Aaron Bastani: A socialist perspective on the pursuit of happiness Several crises are set to define the next century -- but journalist Aaron Bastani believes we have the technological ability to meet our biggest challenges and create unprecedented levels of prosperity for all. He shows how we could get there by ditching capitalism as the world's economic operating system and adopting "universal basic services," where governments would freely provide life essentials like housing, health care, education and transport. (Followed by Q&A with head of TED Chris Anderson and public finance expert Maja Bosnic) Continued here

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When You're Doubting Your Leadership -- and Others Are, Too When you believe you aren’t doing well as a leader and others are sharing feedback in line with this view, it can be overwhelming. In this piece, the author offers practical steps you can take if you’re in need of a comeback. By focusing on self-reflection, enlisting support, and thoughtfully examining your role within the company, you’ll be able to determine your next steps and how you need to grow as a leader. Continued here

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Does a Woman’s Biological Clock Have a Price? For every year a woman ages, she must earn $7,000 more annually to remain equally attractive to potential romantic partners, according to new research from Wharton professor Corinne Low that calculates the economic trade-off for women between career and family investments. In two forthcoming papers, Low, a professor of business economics and public policy, takes a revealing look at “reproductive capital,” a term she uses to describe the economic value of fertility, and thus the trade-offs that women make when they make time-consuming educational and career investments. Continued here

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Your Boss Made a Biased Remark. Should You Confront Them? When I ask my MBA students if they would respond to a biased remark at work, there’s a unanimous response: Everybody says yes, they would. But, when I ask them how they’d react to the same comment from their boss, I usually hear, “I would still want to speak up. But I wouldn’t know how to actually do it.” Continued here

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How Transparency at Banks Changes Deposit Flows Higher bank disclosures bring volatility to uninsured deposits, and also hurt bank funding costs and profitability, according to a paper co-authored by Wharton’s Itay Goldstein. Many bank depositors may not know if their bank is financially healthy or weak, or whether it has made too many risky loans that threaten its future. But contrary to popular perceptions, depositors do care about their bank’s financial health, and about whether federal deposit insurance will protect their savings. How transparent banks are about their finances will help depositors decide on where they want to park their savings, according to a recent paper by experts at Wharton and elsewhere. Continued here

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The Surprising Substances Ancient Egyptians Used to Mummify the Dead An analysis of 2,500-year-old embalming ingredients suggests some of them came from far-off places Archaeologists have long marveled at ancient Egyptians’ sophisticated mummification processes. Now, thanks to biochemical analyses of 2,500-year-old ingredients, they know more about the types of substances Egyptian embalmers used to preserve human bodies for the afterlife. Continued here

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In Defense of Opportunists How to outrun both the pessimists and the optimists--and thrive in an unstable world. Continued here

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The Hidden Link Between Workaholism and Mental Health Long hours on the job can temporarily ease the symptoms of depression and anxiety. But you’re better off leaving the office and facing your feelings head-on. “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

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Should COVID Vaccines Be Given Yearly? Some scientists say the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s suggestion of updating COVID vaccines each year, as happens with influenza vaccines, could boost uptake. But others are less convinced Scientists are split on a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposal to update COVID-19 vaccines once a year, similar to the agency’s approach to updating influenza vaccines. At a meeting of the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel on 26 January, some researchers argued that the plan would help to simplify the country’s complex COVID-19 immunization schedule and might boost uptake as a result. Continued here

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Someday, You Might Be Able to Eat Your Way Out of a Cold A nascent scientific field is working to untangle the complex relationship between metabolism and infection. When it comes to treating disease with food, the quackery stretches back far. Through the centuries, raw garlic has been touted as a home treatment for everything from chlamydia to the common cold; Renaissance remedies for the plague included figs soaked in hyssop oil. During the 1918 flu pandemic, Americans wolfed down onions or chugged “fluid beef” gravy to keep the deadly virus at bay. Continued here

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Blockchain: The Complete Guide At this stage, when you say “blockchain,” you get two reactions: eye-rolling and dismissal or excited fervor at the potential for quick money. But it doesn’t have to be either/or. The system that powers Bitcoin could yank power from central banks, build trust into supply chains, and manage ownership in the metaverse, but it could also shrivel into nothing amid chaos and hype, a technology looking for a use case.  The original blockchain is the decentralized ledger behind the digital currency bitcoin. The ledger consists of linked batches of transactions known as blocks, with an identical copy stored on each of the roughly 60,000 computers that make up the Bitcoin network. Each change to the ledger is cryptographically signed to prove that the person transferring bitcoins is the actual owner. No one can spend coins twice because once a transaction is recorded in the ledger, every node in the network will know about it. Continued here

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Why My Company Implemented a Paid Sabbatical Program for Employees Its impact is unmatched and it might be easier to implement than you think. Continued here

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How undersea cables may affect marine life Tens of thousands of miles of cables crisscross our deep seas, ferrying data between continents and carrying renewable power from offshore energy platforms to the land. These snaking, artificial structures can serve as shelter to a vast array of bottom-dwelling sea life: anemones, sponges, corals, sea stars, urchins, worms, bivalves, crabs and other invertebrates have been found to take up residence on or near undersea cables. But marine scientists believe we need a greater understanding of how electromagnetic fields (EMF) generated by submarine power cables might affect some of these delicate creatures, many of which rely on their own internal sense of magnetic north to navigate or use electric fields to help them hunt. Given that the number of submarine cables will only multiply as the marine renewable energy sector grows, what threats do they pose to life underwater, one of the last spots on Earth largely untouched by humans? Continued here

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How AI Will Transform Project Management Only 35% of projects today are completed successfully. One reason for this disappointing rate is the low level of maturity of technologies available for project management. This is about to change. Researchers, startups, and innovating organizations, are beginning to apply AI, machine learning, and other advanced technologies to project management, and by 2030 the field will undergo major shifts. Technology will soon improve project selection and prioritization, monitor progress, speed up reporting, and facilitate testing. Project managers, aided by virtual project assistants, will find their roles more focused on coaching and stakeholder management than on administration and manual tasks. The author show how organizations that want to reap the benefits of project management technologies should begin today by gathering and cleaning project data, preparing their people, and dedicating the resources necessary to drive this transformation. Continued here

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This social network paid users for posts. What could go wrong? In early 2021, in Manila, a social media app called Lyka seemed to appear out of nowhere. Lyka promised the impossible: earn money just for being online. On the app, there was a reward for every interaction. A basic task like uploading a photo earned users GEMs, the in-app currency. Liking a photo: yet more GEMs. Even more interestingly, the coins were redeemable in real life, for anything from a luxury spa treatment to paying a telecomm or water bill. In one viral video, a celebrated actress tearfully gifted her mother a nearly $70,000 Ford SUV  — all paid for upfront, she claimed, with the Lyka currency.  Continued here

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Six Myths of Product Development Many companies approach product development as if it were manufacturing, trying to control costs and improve quality by applying zero-defect, efficiency-focused techniques. While this tactic can boost the performance of factories, it generally backfires with product development. The process of designing products is profoundly different from the process of making them, and the failure of executives to appreciate the differences leads to several fallacies that actually hurt product-development efforts. Continued here S62 ChatGPT Is About to Dump More Work on Everyone Artificial intelligence could spare you some effort. Even if it does, it will create a lot more work in the process. Have you been worried that ChatGPT, the AI language generator, could be used maliciously—to cheat on schoolwork or broadcast disinformation? You’re in luck, sort of: OpenAI, the company that made ChatGPT, has introduced a new tool that tries to determine the likelihood that a chunk of text you provide was AI-generated. Continued here S38 5 Stoic quotes to help you through difficult times It can sometimes feel as though we are living through uniquely difficult times. Wars, disease, economic upheavals, and political strife dominate news headlines. Traditions, once the terra firma of our lives, have split along cultural fault lines and are shifting widely. And the lessons imparted to us by our parents seem completely out of touch with the challenges we face daily. In short, there seems to be much cause for sadness, despondence, and being overwhelmed by life. Continued here S40 Best practices for a needs analysis [Templates included] All too often, L&D teams are charged with providing training to address symptoms of a perceived problem, without a proper diagnosis of the problem or an investigation to determine its root cause.  If training fails to improve the situation, it’s the quality of the solution – not the lack of an accurate diagnosis – that’s typically called into question. And sometimes, training isn’t the best solution in the first place. This is why performing a thorough needs analysis is so vital.  Continued here S16 7 Small Ways to Be a More Inclusive Colleague Workplace inclusion is not a static, one-off act of service. It’s an ever-evolving experience that requires the contribution of every employee — regardless of their level of seniority in the organization — to make each other feel included. To foster inclusion around you, form and regularly practice these seven inclusive behaviors until they become habitual and automatic. Starting with these small actions can enable you to transform the level of inclusivity in your team. Continued here S54 The Man Who Moves Markets Carson Block uses covert techniques to uncover fraud for profit. Now he’s under investigation himself. Is he the hero of Wall Street, or the villain? 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 S32 The Best Wi-Fi Routers 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 The humble Wi-Fi router has become an essential fixture in every home, but the one your internet service provider sent is likely the reason your Wi-Fi sucks. There are various ways to improve your Wi-Fi, but few are as effective as upgrading your router. Benefits will extend to everything from streaming movies and online gaming to video calls. Most people can get by just fine with a single Wi-Fi router, and I’ve collected recommendations to suit different needs, spaces, and budgets. I tested all of these in a busy family home full of Netflix-addicted gamers. Continued here S27 How This Psychological Effect Skews Home Prices People list homes at a premium to avoid selling a house for less than they bought it, thereby reducing market liquidity, according to research co-authored by Wharton's Lu Liu. Everyone considers their home as an investment that gains value over time, and that explains why homeownership makes up most of household wealth both in the U.S. and globally. So it’s natural for homeowners who want to sell their house to expect more than what they paid for it — even if its current market value is lower. Continued here S24 Recognizing an Investing Signal That Defied Wisdom, and Endured This year’s Wharton-Jacobs Levy Prize for Quantitative Financial Innovation went to a seminal paper on stock price behavior that spawned numerous studies on the topic of momentum investing. Stock market investing gurus have dispensed maxims like “buy low, sell high“ and “what goes up must come down, and vice versa,” or Eugene Fama’s “efficient markets hypothesis,” which assumes that the price of a security reflects all relevant and known information about that asset. But those guideposts have never convincingly explained why some stocks seem to keep rising or falling on their own steam, or what is called “momentum investing.” Continued here S11 How to Regain Your Drive After Returning From Parental Leave Having a sense of autonomy and control is key to integrating family and career. Continued here S33 'Poker Face' Is the New 'Columbo'—and That's a Good Thing for Fans Poker Face, writer and director Rian Johnson's new murder mystery, premiered last week on Peacock to fawning reviews, with Natasha Lyonne's character Charlie Cale—a DIY crime solver on the run from casino baddies with a preternatural ability to spot a lie—quickly becoming a cult favorite. Who would have thought a remake of a dusty 1970s cop show would be such rich material? To be fair, Poker Face isn't literally a remake. But as no less a resource than the Columbophile Blog has pointed out, "Poker Face could be a Columbo reboot in all but name." Both Johnson and Lyonne are avowed Columbo-heads, with Lyonne once threatening to fight Mark Ruffalo over the right to play the titular lieutenant. In interviews, Johnson has tiptoed around the inspiration, saying, "It's kind of a throwback to Magnum P.I. or Rockford Files or Columbo." Or he'd explain that "like Columbo, we show you the murder in the first act. We show you who did it. And then it's [about] how Natasha Lyonne's character is going to end up catching them." And when Vulture asked The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle how he ended up being cast, he gave away the game: "I was probably bugging [Johnson] about something and he texted, 'Want to talk to you about this TV show I'm doing with Natasha Lyonne. It's basically Columbo with her as the detective.'" Continued here S8 Why You Should Be Hiring When the Tech Giants Are Sleeping Take advantage of available talent by growing your ranks when others are not. Continued here S36 Netflix's US Password-Sharing Crackdown Isn't Happening—Yet After Netflix Spent years piloting different ways to crack down on password sharing, changes to its United States Help Center page this week seemed to indicate that the streaming giant had finally settled on a plan. But those tweaks quickly disappeared, leaving confusion and concern about potential changes to Netflix's account-sharing policies. Now the company is clarifying that nothing has changed this week, and no new restrictions are rolling out right now. "For a brief time Tuesday, a Help Center article containing information that is only applicable to Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru went live in other countries. We have since updated it," a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement. Continued here S66 What can Kant tell us about the perils and promise of booze? | Psyche Ideas does research in history of philosophy, history of science and philosophy of science at University of King’s College/Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada. Intoxication is a central component of the human experience. Drugs like opium, psilocybin mushrooms and peyote have served a wide array of social, cultural and religious functions throughout history. Meanwhile, brewing alcohol is seen by some historians as the source of civilisation itself. With such a colourful history, it is baffling that the dialogue surrounding intoxication and intoxicants is not more prominent in the fields of art, philosophy and literature. This is because the place of intoxication in the grand human story is not so much marginal as marginalised. The best example of this is a figure often caricatured as the antithesis of sensuous abandon: Immanuel Kant. Continued here S18 What parents get wrong about childhood 'milestones' Scroll through parenting feeds on social media, and you'll soon come across so-called milestone cards: pastel-coloured cards marking a baby's first attempt at crawling, sitting up, or walking, along with their age. It's not just on social media that developmental milestones have become something to celebrate – or stress over. One recent poll, for example, found that around six in 10 US parents worried about their babies meeting their developmental milestones. But few knew what should happen, when. Other parents may take the opposite approach and pay little attention to the timing of new skills, trusting that a child will develop at their own pace. Continued here S2 Is Your Job Stress Perceived or Circumstantial? We all complain about job stress. But have you ever wondered how our own perceptions play a role in our stress levels at work? Clinical psychologist Richard Lazarus asserts that work stress isn’t solely about the situation or the person. Rather, it’s about how the situation and person interact. While you can’t always change the situation that’s causing you stress, the good news is that you can manage your perception of it by examining and intentionally challenging how you see your job. There are things that we can do to reframe our outlook. Continued here S17 ActOne Group Founder Janice Bryant Howroyd: Never Compromise Your Values in a Quest to Succeed Janice Bryant Howroyd is founder and CEO of The ActOne Group, a large and innovative global employment and management company. Howroyd, who founded the organization 45 years ago, has made the top 40 in Forbes most recent list of the wealthiest self-made women in the US. She’s the author of a couple of books, including most recently Acting Up: Winning in Business and Life Using Down-Home Wisdom. Continued here S67 Archaeologists Unearth Oldest Known Gold-Covered Mummy in Egypt The year-long excavation has also revealed statues, tools, pottery and dozens of other artifacts Archaeologists have announced a host of new discoveries at the Tombs of Saqqara in the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis, including a 4,300-year-old mummy covered in gold leaf. Continued here S63 The FDA’s New ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Policy for Blood Donation For decades now, gay men have been barred from giving blood. In 2015, what had been a lifetime ban was loosened, such that gay men could be donors if they’d abstained from sex for at least a year. This was later shortened to three months. Last week, the FDA put out a new and more inclusive plan: Sexually active gay and bisexual people would be permitted to donate so long as they have not recently engaged in anal sex with new or multiple partners. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, the first Senate-confirmed transgender official in the U.S., issued a statement commending the proposal for “advancing equity.” It “treats everyone the same,” she said, “regardless of gender and sexual orientation.” As a member of the small but honorable league of gay pathologists, I’m affected by these proposed policy changes more than most Americans. I’m subject to restrictions on giving blood, and I’ve also been responsible for monitoring the complications that can arise from transfusions of infected blood. I am quite concerned about HIV, given that men who have sex with men are at much greater risk of contracting the virus than members of other groups. But it’s not the blood-borne illness that I, as a doctor, fear most. Common bacteria lead to far more transfusion-transmitted infections in the U.S. than any virus does, and most of those produce severe or fatal illness. The risk from viruses is extraordinarily low—there hasn’t been a single reported case of transfusion-associated HIV in the U.S. since 2008—because laboratories now use highly accurate tests to screen all donors and ensure the safety of our blood supply. This testing is so accurate that preventing anyone from donating based on their sexual behavior is no longer logical. Meanwhile, new dictates about anal sex, like older ones explicitly targeting men who have sex with men, still discriminate against the queer community—the FDA is simply struggling to find the most socially acceptable way to pursue a policy that it should have abandoned long ago. Continued here S37 The good reasons scientists are so hostile to new ideas Every few months, a novel headline will fly across the world, claiming to revolutionize one or more of our most deeply held scientific ideas. The declarations are always sweeping and revolutionary, ranging from “The Big Bang never happened” to “This idea does away with dark matter and dark energy” to “Black holes aren’t real” to “Maybe this unexpected astronomical phenomenon is due to aliens.” And yet, despite the glowing coverage of the novel proposal, it most frequently languishes in obscurity, attracting little mainstream attention other than a myriad of dismissals. Commonly, it’s portrayed that scientists in this particular field are dogmatic, wedded to old ideas, and close-minded. This narrative might be popular among contrarian scientists or those who themselves hold fringe beliefs, but it paints a disingenuous picture of the scientific truth. In reality, the evidence supporting the prevailing theories are overwhelming, and the new headline-grabbing proposals are no more compelling than the scientist’s equivalent of playing in the sandbox. Here are the four big flaws that commonly occur with new ideas, and why you’ll never hear about most of them again after they’re first put forth. Continued here S56 Do They Not Know He’ll Betray Them? Expect Donald Trump to blame his own party if the Republicans’ debt-ceiling gambit goes wrong. House Republicans are preparing for a big confrontation with the Biden White House over the debt ceiling—a confrontation that could, if played wrong, collapse the U.S. financial system and drag down the world economy. President Joe Biden has been preparing for this fight since 2011, the last time Republicans tried a similar trick. That year, the doomsday device was switched off seconds before it detonated by an agreement on a sequester that automatically cut spending on defense and domestic programs with little regard to merits. Even so, the S&P rating agency downgraded U.S. debt below triple A for the first time, and the stock markets spasmed. The sequester was ultimately jettisoned by Republicans during the Trump years. Continued here S21 'Unbelievable' Spinning Particles Probe Nature's Most Mysterious Force The strong force holds our atoms together. Scientists may have observed its small-scale fluctuations for the first time The strong force is an enigma. Through gluons, it binds together quarks, one of the two basic building blocks of matter, into the protons and neutrons at the center of every atom. True to its name, it is the strongest of the four known fundamental forces, but it only exerts its might across subatomic distances. Despite its power and importance, the strong force is the hardest force to observe in action, and its behavior is nearly impossible to mathematically predict. Continued here S46 Anker's Eufy admits unencrypted videos could be accessed, plans overhaul After two months of arguing back and forth with critics about how so many aspects of its "No clouds" security cameras could be accessed online by security researchers, Anker smart home division Eufy has provided a lengthy explanation and promises to do better. Continued here S9 Want to Build a Wellness App That Sticks? These 6 Companies Got it Right Focus on these three things when developing a wellness app you want users to actually use Continued here S34 Six-Word Sci-Fi: Stories Written by You Disclaimer: All #WiredSixWord submissions become the property of WIRED. Submissions will not be acknowledged or returned. Submissions and any other materials, including your name or social media handle, may be published, illustrated, edited, or otherwise used in any medium. Submissions must be original and not violate the rights of any other person or entity. 🏔🏃‍♀️🏃🏻‍♂️🏃🏽‍♀️🦑🛸 —@jessbeckah42, via Instagram Continued here S48 Razer's $280 mouse is covered in gaping holes There are a lot of cookie-cutter mice that, though made by different manufacturers, have the same shapes and features but rely on mild changes in color or sensor specs to differentiate themselves. So when Razer announced the Viper Mini Signature Edition (SE) today, a wireless mouse that looks like it forgot to get dressed, we took notice. Continued here S47 ISP admits lying to FCC about size of network to block funding to rivals Ryan Grewell, who runs a small wireless Internet service provider in Ohio, last month received an email that confirmed some of his worst suspicions about cable companies. Continued here S41 How to avoid family fights about money If you don’t want money issues to come between you and your family, it’s important to prepare yourself for them ahead of time. We’ll run through the primary ways money causes problems in families, along with strategies to ensure it never becomes an issue in your family. You might think that something as seemingly shallow as money wouldn’t affect you and your family. But you’d be surprised. Money can spark strong emotional reactions, especially when families are dealing with an abundance or shortage of money. And when you factor in the number of people in the family and consider potential conflicts of interest, it’s no wonder it often causes division. Continued here S45 Carbon capture is here--it just isn't evenly distributed Global emissions have continued to burn through the carbon budget, meaning each year brings us closer to having put enough CO2 in the atmosphere that we'll be committed to over 2°C of warming. That makes developing carbon-capture technology essential, both to bring atmospheric levels down after we overshoot and to offset emissions from any industries we struggle to decarbonize. Continued here S49 Squid skin inspires novel "liquid windows" for greater energy savings Squid and several other cephalopods can rapidly shift the colors in their skin, thanks to that skin's unique structure. Engineers at the University of Toronto have drawn inspiration from the squid to create a prototype for "liquid windows" that can shift the wavelength, intensity, and distribution of light transmitted through those windows, thereby saving substantially on energy costs. They described their work in a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Continued here S50 After 16 years of freeware, Dwarf Fortress creators get their $7M payday The month before Dwarf Fortress was released on Steam (and Itch.io), the brothers Zach and Tarn Adams made $15,635 in revenue, mostly from donations for their 16-year freeware project. The month after the game's commercial debut, they made $7,230,123, or 462 times that amount. Continued here S51 Extremely drug-resistant germ found in eye drops infects 55 in 12 states; 1 dead An extensively drug-resistant bacterial strain is spreading in the US for the first time and causing an alarming outbreak linked to artificial tears eye drops, according to an alert released Wednesday evening from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So far, the germ has caused various infections in 55 people in 12 states, killing one and leaving others hospitalized and with permanent vision loss. Continued here S53 Google isn't moving Legacy G Suite users again, despite admin console warnings Grandfathered-in "Legacy G Suite" users got a scare recently when another new "transition" message started popping up in the Google Admin console. "The transition to Google Workspace has started," said the new message that suddenly appeared in people's accounts. This was after Legacy G Suite users went through a contentious transition last year, where Google's opening position involved shutting down their accounts if people didn't start paying, but eventually, it was talked into not doing that. A Google spokesperson tells us the Workspace transition message was "a bug that surfaced an old banner from earlier in the process last year, and our team is working on removing it. More changes are not happening at this time, and those who previously opted-in for personal use are not expected to take any further action." Continued here S39 Memory and the benefits of forgetting Excerpted from Why We Forget and How to Remember Better: The Science Behind Memory by Andrew E. Budson and Elizabeth A. Kensinger. Copyright © Oxford University Press 2023. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Do you wish you could simply take a pill and have the superpower to remember everything? Given the extensive marketing of so-called memory-enhancing vitamins, herbs, supplements, and nutritional drinks, you might think that if such a pill really existed, you should jump at the chance to take it. But while it is easy to think of forgetting as a “glitch,” and to imagine the ideal memory system as one that would retain all details, there turn out to be important benefits to forgetting. In fact, just like storage, forgetting is both an active process some of the time and also one that is essential for memory to serve its purpose. Continued here S42 What’s effective altruism? A philosopher explains Effective altruism is an intellectual and charitable movement that aspires to find the best ways to help others. People dedicated to it rely on evidence and rational arguments to identify what they can do to make the most progress toward solving the world’s most pressing problems, such as reducing malnutrition and malaria while increasing access to health care.  A group of intellectuals, including the Oxford University philosophers William MacAskill and Toby Ord, coined the term in 2011. The movement was inspired in part by the philosopher Peter Singer, who has argued for an obligation to help those in extreme poverty since the 1970s. Continued here S52 Apple Q1 earnings miss the mark almost across the board Apple reported its earnings for Q1 2023 today, and it was one of the company's poorest-performing quarters in recent years. It was the company's biggest decline since 2016 and the first since 2019. Overall revenue was down more than 5 percent year-over-year as the company failed to match sales from the same quarter last year across most of its hardware categories. Continued here S44 Cash-strapped Twitter to start charging developers for API access next week In the middle of the night, Twitter made an announcement that disappointed a wide range of developers whose research, bots, and apps depend on free access to the platform’s API to function. Twitter announced in a tweet that starting on February 9, Twitter “will no longer support free access to the Twitter API.” Instead, many developers will have to either pay to access public data or abruptly shut down their projects. Continued here S43 What kind of intelligence is artificial intelligence? I heard that quip from a computer scientist at the University of Rochester as my fellow professors and I attended a workshop on the new reality of artificial intelligence in the classroom. Like everyone else, we were trying to grapple with the astonishing capacities of ChatGPT and its AI-driven ability to write student research papers, complete computer code, and even compose that bane of every professor’s existence, the university strategic planning document.  That computer scientist’s remark drove home a critical point. If we really want to understand artificial intelligence’s power, promise, and peril, we first need to understand the difference between intelligence as it is generally understood and the kind of intelligence we are building now with AI. That is important, because the kind we are building now is really the only kind we know how to build at all — and it is nothing like our own intelligence. Continued here Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Followers Blog Archive ►  2024 (51) ►  December (1) ►  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) Can't Find An Email? Use This Hack. Mar 1, 2023 - VCs and founders are finding life ea... Wegovy: what you need to know about this weight lo... Does Not Being Able to Picture Something in Your M... Do You Cause Your Own Stress? How To Stop a "Toxic... Is Natural Wine Better For You? February 26, 2023 - Russian Information Warfare Us... The Great Resignation Didn't Start with the Pandemic Ukraine: Beijing's peace initiative offers glimpse... How to Ask for a Promotion People Forgot How War Actually Works Mac McClung may have 'saved' the slam dunk contest... 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