The massive machines removing carbon from Earth's atmosphere

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The massive machines removing carbon from Earth's atmosphere To restrain global warming, we know we need to drastically reduce pollution. The very next step after that: using both natural and technological solutions to trap as much excess carbon dioxide from the air as possible. Enter Orca, the world's first large-scale direct air capture and storage plant, built in Iceland by the team at Climeworks, led by climate entrepreneur Jan Wurzbacher. This plant is capable of removing 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year. With affordability and scalability in mind, Wurzbacher shares his vision for what comes after Orca, the future of carbon removal tech -- and why these innovations are crucial to stop climate change. Continued here

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Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45 It’s widely believed that the most successful entrepreneurs are young. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg were in their early twenties when they launched what would become world-changing companies. Do these famous cases reflect a generalizable pattern? In fact, the average age of entrepreneurs at the time they founded their companies is 42. But what about the most successful startups? Is it possible that companies started by younger entrepreneurs are particularly successful? Research shows that among the top 0.1% of startups based on growth in their first five years, the founders started their companies, on average, when they were 45 years old. Continued here

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How to Support Your Iranian Colleagues For the past six months, Iran has been gripped by protests following the custodial death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini  by the country’s “morality police.” It is a particularly difficult time for Iranians, including those who may be far away from home. How can we support our Iranian colleagues as they navigate this moment? The author shares a few strategies for non-Iranian colleagues to be better allies.  Continued here

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Can Friends Be Successful Co-Founders? Founding a startup with your friend is not uncommon. Successful power teams — like Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal and Pankaj Chaddah, and theSkimm’s Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin — can really get that “smart and broke friends setting out to change the world” fantasy going. Continued here

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How to Be the Best Version of Yourself at Work Do you sit back and wait for an annual performance review to think about your work performance? It does feel easier to wait for another person to tell you about how you can improve yourself. But how can you do a better job every day without waiting for an annual feedback? The trick here is to work on yourself, not the job. Your work reflects you, so begin by making yourself better, and success will follow.  Here are nine ways to help you get better at what you do and become the best version of yourself. Continued here

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Dear Manager, You're Holding Too Many Meetings New research shows that 70% of meetings keep employees from doing productive work. While there was a 20% decrease in the average length of meetings during the pandemic, the number of meetings attended by a worker on average rose by 13.5%.  In addition, newly promoted managers are holding almost a third more meetings than their seasoned counterparts. To reduce the number of meetings for your team: Continued here

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Research: The Transformative Power of Sabbaticals In recent years, the number of employers offering sabbaticals has grown exponentially. In addition, many more workers, especially employees in managerial and professional roles, are taking their own unpaid sabbaticals when their organizations fail to offer them. Both groups need to know: What are the major benefits of a sabbatical? And how can a sabbatical be structured to maximize its benefits? Research shows that there are three types of sabbaticals people take, for different reasons and with different outcomes. Further, organizations looking to motivate and retain employees can smartly incorporate sabbaticals into their offerings. Continued here

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How to Seed Organic Marketing in a Video-First World Early direct-to-consumer companies relied on plentiful capital and low-cost digital marketing to power growth. But as this sector has matured, capital is more constrained, social media is more cluttered, and customer acquisition costs are rising. DTC companies need new marketing techniques to find customers today, and the 4Cs — content, consumers, creators, and celebrities — can help. Continued here

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A Digital Talent Hub Can Make Your Sales Team More Agile Companies typically rely on a series of unconnected databases to manage activities such as tracking applicants, onboarding new employees, and monitoring performance. For sales teams, which typically experience high turnover, there can be advantages to connecting these systems into a single digital talent hub. Doing so can speed the hiring and onboarding cycles, recognize patterns in how hires with certain backgrounds benefit from certain types of training, and better utilize artificial intelligence to nudge salespeople toward specific actions. All of these things can increase salespeople’s productivity and performance. Continued here

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How Businesses Can Make Plastic Sustainability Core to Growth - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM SAP This dire warning from the United Nations is, unfortunately, no exaggeration. Consumers worldwide buy a million plastic bottles every day, amounting to 400 million metric tons of plastic waste a year. Half of all plastic is used once and thrown away. Today, less than one- seventh (14%) of global plastic packaging is collected for recycling. Continued here

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The toxic legacy of the Ukraine war On 6 June, satellite images captured hundreds of craters made by artillery shells and a 40m-wide (131 ft) hole left by a bomb in fields around the village of Dovhenke, in eastern Ukraine. It is just one site left scarred by Russia's invasion of its neighbour. And as the war continues to wreak a devastating humanitarian toll on the people caught up in the fighting, the conflict is leaving a far less obvious, toxic legacy on the land itself. Amongst the pockmarked landscape and burned-out buildings of Dovhenke, heavy metals, fuel and chemical residues from ammunition and missiles have seeped into the soil. Continued here

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The strange items washing up on beaches It's around 1.5m (5ft) wide, almost perfectly spherical – and people in Japan aren't quite sure what it is. This week, a mysterious round ball washed up on the coast off the city of Hamamatsu, prompting widespread speculation about what it might be. Despite its metallic exterior, it's probably not an explosive mine – though bomb experts did check. Nor is it thought to be a surveillance device, fears of which have been fuelled by the recent reports of Chinese spy balloons drifting over the continental US. Continued here

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This Japanese manga artist-turned-politician is taking on AI art Japanese politicians are starting to take generative AI seriously. In January, Ken Akamatsu, a member of the Japanese legislature, uploaded a nearly 40-minute video to his official YouTube channel, calling for new national guidelines on the use of generative AI. Since becoming the first professional manga artist elected to Japan’s national legislature in 2022, Akamatsu has built a political career defending the interests of the country’s manga and anime artists. Months after a series of AI art controversies rocked those industries, he has turned his sights on text-to-image generators, like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. Continued here

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Amazon's plan to lure shoppers with free streaming is working in India Amazon chairman Jeff Bezos famously said that every time an Amazon Studios production wins a Golden Globe, it helps the company’s e-commerce arm sell more shoes. He was describing Amazon’s “flywheel” strategy, where users who are Prime subscribers shop more, browse more, and watch more of the platform’s award-winning content in order to make the most of their membership.  In India, Amazon is experimenting with a new but similar content-to-commerce strategy through miniTV, an ad-supported streaming service inside its shopping app. The hope is that it will lure young audiences with free content, eventually turning them into online shoppers, former and current company executives told Rest of World. They requested anonymity as they were either not authorized to speak to the media or had signed non-disclosure agreements. Continued here

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Battery-swapping EVs are all the rage in Taiwan. Will it work abroad? When entrepreneur Horace Luke first landed in Taipei two decades ago, the first thing he noticed were the motorcycles. Then, like today, the streets were clogged with millions of two-wheeled vehicles, their ambient roar background noise anywhere in the city, even indoors. During his time working for companies like Microsoft and HTC on projects like the Xbox gaming system and Android phones, Luke mulled over the idea of mobility. In 2011, he pitched the idea that would form the core of his company Gogoro: an electric vehicle that didn’t have to take up space and time charging its batteries, but instead relied on a network of batteries that could be swapped at roadside stations, like filling up a gas tank. Multiple investors and vehicle makers told him the idea was impossible. Continued here

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How Do We Find Aliens? Maybe Unlearn What We Know About 'Life' First Clara Moskowitz: This is Clara Moskowitz and you're listening to the Science Quickly podcast from Scientific American. Today, we're talking about life as we don't know it. Sarah Scoles just wrote a piece for us in our February magazine on that very subject. Sarah, hi. Continued here

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COVID Poses Severe Risks during Pregnancy, Especially in Unvaccinated People Pregnant people infected with SARS-CoV-2 are more likely to be admitted to an intensive care unit or die than those who are uninfected, but vaccination significantly reduces the risk Millions of people have been pregnant and given birth during the pandemic. When the COVID-causing virus SARS-CoV-2 first emerged, it wasn’t clear what additional risks—if any—it posed to pregnant people and their babies. Continued here

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Earth's Inner Core May Have an Inner Core Earth’s core consists of a solid iron-nickel ball rotating within a layer of liquid metal. But that ball may not be as simple as it seems: new research suggests the inner core contains its own inner core. If so, this so-called innermost inner core may record an early phase in Earth’s evolution. Continued here

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Tiny Bubbles of Primordial Soup Re-create Early Universe New experiments can re-create the young cosmos, when it was a mash of fundamental particles, more precisely than ever before Imagine you have a microscope that would let you see a single atom up close. Let's say it's a hydrogen atom, the smallest kind. Zoom in past the single electron orbiting at the outskirts, and you'll find the nucleus—in this case a lone proton. High school physics would have you believe that inside this proton you'll find a simple triad of three fundamental particles called quarks—two up quarks and one down quark. But the reality inside a proton is so much more complex that physicists are still trying to figure out its inner structure and how its constituents combine to produce its mass, spin and other properties. Continued here

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This Particle Accelerator Makes a Substance That Has Not Existed in 13 Billion Years By using one of the most complicated and powerful machines on the planet, scientists have found a way to glimpse back to the very beginning of time itself. By using one of the most complicated and powerful machines on the planet, scientists have found a way to glimpse back to the very beginning of time itself. This time machine is a particle accelerator, and it gives us a peek at the soup of our newborn universe. Just moments after the Big Bang, our universe was a very different place. Continued here

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Why Google's Supreme Court Case Could Rattle the Internet Gonzalez v. Google seeks to hold tech giants accountable for recommendation algorithms in a complicated case that could see the Supreme Court meddle in more than 25 years of Internet policy We’ve all lost countless hours to online recommendation algorithms that suggest we might enjoy watching yet another cat video or following just one more influencer. But in mere months, social media platforms may need to find new ways to keep users engaged—and the Internet might be in for a major overhaul. Continued here

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U.S. Battery Installations Soared in 2022, Reshaping Power Grids The U.S. installed more battery storage last year than ever before, with California and Texas leading the way The United States is in a battery boom, adding nearly as much capacity on the power grid in 2022 as it did in all previous years combined. Continued here

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How to Engineer Buildings That Withstand Earthquakes Though deadly quakes can’t be prevented, science does have some ways to protect buildings—and the people inside them Our planet is covered by tectonic plates that are slowly moving around, pushing into or sliding past one another along boundaries called faults. Friction sometimes causes two of these plates to get stuck to each other spots along a fault. Tension builds up over years, decades or even centuries until suddenly the fault snaps. The two sides lurch past each other, unleashing an earthquake. Continued here

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How Analytics Can Boost Competitiveness in Sports Wharton’s Eric Bradlow and FanDuel CEO Amy Howe discuss how analytics can benefit teams, players, and customers while ensuring the necessary data protections. Data and analytics are increasingly being used to help maximize fan experiences and for team owners to determine the value of players, but also to enhance player safety. The recent episode of Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin going into cardiac arrest brought into focus the role analytics could play in spotting player injuries in real time to take remedial action. At the same time, the sports industry must ensure the security and privacy of player and customer data, according to participants in a Wharton panel discussion on January 19. Continued here

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Ayelet Fishbach: 4 proven ways to kick your procrastination habit You've got a long list of things you want to do, but there's just one problem: you can't seem to get -- or stay -- motivated. Social psychologist Ayelet Fishbach is here to help. She offers insights on the science of motivation along with tips and cognitive tricks to help you reach your goals while staying happy, healthy and engaged. (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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Ukraine Suffered More Data-Wiping Malware in 2022 Than Anywhere, Ever Amidst the tragic toll of Russia's brutal and catastrophic invasion of Ukraine, the effects of the Kremlin's long-running campaign of destructive cyberattacks against its neighbor have often—rightfully—been treated as an afterthought. But after a year of war, it's becoming clear that the cyberwar Ukraine has endured for the past year represents, by some measures, the most active digital conflict in history. Nowhere on the planet has ever been targeted with more specimens of data-destroying code in a single year. Ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion, cybersecurity researchers at Slovakian cybersecurity firm ESET, network security firm Fortinet, and Google-owned incident-response firm Mandiant have all independently found that in 2022, Ukraine saw far more specimens of “wiper” malware than in any previous year of Russia's long-running cyberwar targeting Ukraine—or, for that matter, any other year, anywhere. That doesn't necessarily mean Ukraine has been harder hit by Russian cyberattacks than in past years; in 2017 Russia's military intelligence hackers known as Sandworm released the massively destructive NotPetya worm. But the growing volume of destructive code hints at a new kind of cyberwar that has accompanied Russia's physical invasion of Ukraine, with a pace and diversity of cyberattacks that's unprecedented. Continued here

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Replace the Leather in Your Wallet With Seafood Waste The moment my feelings about the material startup TômTex went from curiosity to genuine excitement was when cofounder Uyen Tran—with no theatrics or flair—pulled a slim wallet out of her pocket and handed it to me.  For two years since the founding of TômTex, Tran says, she has carried this wallet—an early prototype crafted from her company's bio-based synthetic leather—with her everywhere. The black, subtly shimmering snakeskin material had gently conformed to the shape of her credit cards, just like a well-loved, real leather wallet. More importantly, unlike most leather alternatives, which are made of petroleum-derived materials like polyurethane and PVC, it showed no signs of peeling or cracking.  Continued here

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The Best Security Cameras for Inside Your Home 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 Not quite ready to deck out your house with window, door, and motion sensors and hire an on-call monitoring service? Don’t fret! You can still keep your home secure without messing with your wiring by going with an indoor security camera or two. Knowing you can check in when you are away from home offers peace of mind, but these cameras aren't perfect. There’s an obvious security benefit, but you expose yourself to privacy risks. These are our favorite security cameras after rigorous testing, and we've also got details on what to look for when shopping for one. Continued here

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Our Favorite Outdoor Security Cams for Your Home or Business 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 Complete security systems are expensive, but it’s become affordable and easy to install a couple of security cameras outside your home. Cover the exterior and you’ll know whenever there’s an intruder. Outdoor security cameras can deter burglaries, home invasions, and porch pirates; they’re also great for keeping an eye on the comings and goings of your family and pets. Continued here

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In Ukraine, Identifying the Dead Comes at a Human Rights Cost Five days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a year ago this week, US-based facial recognition company Clearview AI offered the Ukrainian government free access to its technology, suggesting that it could be used to reunite families, identify Russian operatives, and fight misinformation. Soon afterward, the Ukraine government revealed it was using the technology to scan the faces of dead Russian soldiers to identify their bodies and notify their families. By December 2022, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, was tweeting a picture of himself with Clearview AI’s CEO Hoan Ton-That, thanking the company for its support. Accounting for the dead and letting families know the fate of their relatives is a human rights imperative written into international treaties, protocols, and laws like the Geneva Conventions and the International Committee of the Red Cross’ (ICRC) Guiding Principles for Dignified Management of the Dead. It is also tied to much deeper obligations. Caring for the dead is among the most ancient human practices, one that makes us human, as much as language and the capacity for self-reflection. Historian Thomas Laqueur, in his epic meditation, The Work of the Dead, writes that “as far back as people have discussed the subject, care of the dead has been regarded as foundational—of religion, of the polity, of the clan, of the tribe, of the capacity to mourn, of an understanding of the finitude of life, of civilization itself.” But identifying the dead using facial recognition technology uses the moral weight of this type of care to authorize a technology that raises grave human rights concerns. Continued here

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The US Supreme Court Doesn't Understand the Internet There was a ripple of laughter in the US Supreme Court on February 21 when Justice Elena Kagan said: "We are a court—we really don't know about these things. We are not, like, the nine greatest experts on the internet." On February 21, the nine justices heard oral arguments in the case of Gonzalez v. Google, a case brought by Reynaldo Gonzalez, whose daughter was killed in a 2015 ISIS terror attack in Paris and who alleges that YouTube's algorithm aided in the attack by recommending the group's recruitment videos to people who would be most susceptible to their message. The outcome of the case could decide the future of social media platforms worldwide.  Continued here

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Alphabet Layoffs Hit Trash-Sorting Robots Teach a robot to open a door, and it ought to unlock a lifetime of opportunities. Not so for one of Alphabet’s youngest subsidiaries, Everyday Robots. Just over a year after graduating from Alphabet’s X moonshot lab, the team that trained over a hundred wheeled, one-armed robots to squeegee cafeteria tables, separate trash and recycling, and yes, open doors, is shutting down as part of budget cuts spreading across the Google parent, a spokeswoman confirmed. “Everyday Robots will no longer be a separate project within Alphabet,” says Denise Gamboa, director of marketing and communications for Everyday Robots. “Some of the technology and part of the team will be consolidated into existing robotics efforts within Google Research.”  Continued here

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There is no evidence for a Universe before the Big Bang One of the greatest scientific successes of the past century was the theory of the hot Big Bang: the idea that the Universe, as we observe it and exist within it today, emerged from a hotter, denser, more uniform past. Originally proposed as a serious alternative to some of the more mainstream explanations for the expanding Universe, it was shockingly confirmed in the mid-1960s with the discovery of the “primeval fireball” that remained from that early, hot-and-dense state: today known as the Cosmic Microwave Background. For more than 50 years, the Big Bang has reigned supreme as the theory describing our cosmic origins, with an early, inflationary period preceding it and setting it up. Both cosmic inflation and the Big Bang have been continually challenged by astronomers and astrophysicists, but the alternatives have fallen away each time that new, critical observations have come in. Even 2020 Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose’s attempted alternative, Conformal Cyclic Cosmology, cannot match the inflationary Big Bang’s successes. Contrary to many years of headlines and Penrose’s continued assertions, we see no evidence of “a Universe before the Big Bang.” Continued here

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Why you shouldn’t hire the smartest job candidate What do Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Stevie Ray Vaughan have in common? In addition to being phenomenal 20th-century musicians, all were scouted or had their careers furthered by the American record producer John Hammond. Finding talent is a talent in itself. And to the author and economics professor Tyler Cowen, it is a talent that gets neglected in many companies, whether due to biases, boring hiring practices, or a failure to think outside the box. Continued here

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Human sleep patterns appear to change with the seasons Changes in the seasons affect myriad forms of life on Earth. Deciduous trees shed their leaves in fall before regrowing them in spring. Bears, squirrels, turtles, and various other animals hibernate, their metabolisms falling to a near standstill. The snow hare and ermine don brown fur in summer and white fur in winter. And as a new study finds, humans seem to be seasonal as well, experiencing marked changes in the duration and structure of our sleep throughout the year. Scientists primarily based out of the Clinic for Sleep & Chronomedicine at St. Hedwig Hospital in Berlin conducted the research. It was published recently in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience. Continued here

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15-minute cities: The hot new conspiracy theory of 2023 Conspiracy theories aren’t a new thing, and for as long as they’ve been around they’ve ranged from the benign to the absurd. From the six moon landings being faked to the Earth being flat, or our ruling class being lizards, we’ve all probably come across them in one form or another.  Yet, in a surprise twist, the hottest conspiracy theory of 2023 comes from an unlikely corner: town planning. This relates to the idea of “the 15-minute city” and has even gone so far as to be mentioned in UK parliament by an MP who called the idea “an international socialist concept” that will “cost us our personal freedom”. Continued here

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Crisis management training: How to prepare and empower employees Crises are an ever-present threat that can tarnish an organization’s reputation and have dire financial consequences. With a plan in place for crisis management training, however, organizations can develop the agility and resilience to recover from a crisis with as little disruption or downtime as possible.  When asked to identify the types of crises their companies faced in the past three years, C-suite executives have cited online and social media attacks, supply chain issues or disruption, talent shortage, issues related to diversity and inclusion, and activism by shareholders, customers, or other organizations. As for the impact these crises could have on their organizations, their top concerns included leadership changes, strikes, and cybersecurity. Continued here

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How octopus DNA suggests that Antarctica will melt again Did the West Antarctic ice sheet completely collapse during the latest interglacial period, about 125,000 years ago? It’s an important question for climate scientists, but geology was giving them no answers. So they turned to genetics instead. Enter Turquet’s octopus, a cephalopod with a four-million-year pedigree that makes its home in the icy waters around Antarctica. New DNA analysis shows that two distinct populations of this species, one in the Weddell Sea and the other in the Ross Sea, mated about 125,000 years ago. Continued here

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Biden won't save the Apple Watch from potential ban Apple will continue fighting California-based AliveCor over the startup's electrocardiogram (ECG) technology. On Tuesday, AliveCor announced that US President Joe Biden had decided not to veto the US International Trade Commission's (ITC) December ruling that could lead to an import ban on the Apple Watch Series 4 and later. Continued here

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NSA's "state secrets" defense kills lawsuit challenging Internet surveillance The US Supreme Court yesterday denied a petition to review a case involving the National Security Agency's surveillance of Internet traffic, leaving in place a lower-court ruling that invoked "state secrets privilege" to dismiss the lawsuit. Continued here

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Dealmaster: Best deals on smart home tech Whether you're just starting to smarten up your home or looking to add new Internet of Things (IoT) pieces to your existing smart home, Dealmaster is here with some terrific deals on everything from routers and doorbells to door locks and everything in between. If you're new to the smart home game, adding a video doorbell or smart lock, like Eufy's 2K Dual Camera doorbell or the August 4th Gen Smart Lock, will help you keep tabs on what's happening at your front door and give your family some extra security without requiring you to subscribe to a monitoring or alarm service. These are two of the best smart home investments I've made. Continued here

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Starlink to charge users in "limited-capacity" areas $30 more than others Starlink notified users of new monthly prices in which people who live in "limited-capacity" areas will pay $30 more per month than users in "excess-capacity" areas. The changes consist of a price hike for many users and a decrease for others. Continued here

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ChatGPT-style search represents a 10x cost increase for Google, Microsoft Is a ChatGPT-style search engine a good idea? The stock market certainly seems to think so, with it erasing $100 billion from Google's market value after the company's poor showing at its recent AI search event. Actually turning a chatbot into a viable business is going to be a challenge, though. Besides that fact, Google has had a chat search interface for seven years now—the Google Assistant—and the world's biggest advertising company has been unable to monetize it. And a new report from Reuters points out another monetary problem with generating a chat session for every search: That's going to cost a lot more to run compared to a traditional search engine. Continued here

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Universe's first galaxies unexpectedly large How soon after the Big Bang could stars and galaxies start to form? It has been a difficult question to answer, as much of the light from the first stars has been shifted deep into the infrared during the billions of years it has spent traveling to Earth. One of the design goals of the Webb Telescope was to create a telescope that could pick up this light and tell us something about the early history of the Universe. And initial data has been very promising, with astronomers seemingly racing each other to find the most distant galaxy yet observed. Continued here

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Kombucha electronics? Sure, why not? Cheap, light, flexible, yet robust circuit boards are critical for wearable electronics, among other applications. In the future, those electronics might be printed on flexible circuits made out of bacterial cultures used to make the popular fermented black tea drink called kombucha, according to a recent paper posted to the arXiv preprint server. Continued here

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Twitter struggles to convince SCOTUS it isn't bolstering terrorists Today it was Twitter’s turn to argue before the Supreme Court in another case this week that experts fear could end up weakening Section 230 protections for social networks hosting third-party content. In Twitter v. Taamneh, the Supreme Court must decide if under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorists Act (JASTA), online platforms should be held liable for aiding and abetting terrorist organizations that are known to be using their services to recruit fighters and plan attacks. Continued here

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Ukraine wants ban on game allegedly funded by Russians and set in glorified USSR Ukraine's Digital Ministry has said it will ask Steam, Microsoft, and Sony to remove Atomic Heart from their gaming platforms in Ukraine, and possibly elsewhere, pointing to its retro-Communist aesthetic and reported "Russian roots." Continued here

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Google's improved quantum processor good enough for error correction Today, Google announced a demonstration of quantum error correction on its next generation of quantum processors, Sycamore. The iteration on Sycamore isn't dramatic—it's the same number of qubits, just with better performance. And getting quantum error correction isn't really the news—they'd managed to get it to work a couple of years ago. Continued here

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The Children of the Nazis’ Genetic Project 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.       t the small elementary school in Jouy-sous-les-Côtes, in northeastern France, Gisèle Marc knew the rumor about her: that her parents were not her real parents, and her real mother must have been a whore. It was the late 1940s, just after the war, a time when whispered stories like this one passed from parents to children. Women who were said to have slept with occupying soldiers—“horizontal collaborators”—had their heads shaved and were publicly shamed by angry crowds. In the schoolyard, children jeered at those who were said to be born of “unknown fathers.” Continued here

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A Basic Premise of Animal Conservation Looks Shakier Than Ever Sign up for The Weekly Planet, The Atlantic’s newsletter about living through climate change, here. Sperm whales live in the remote open ocean. Or at least, that’s what scientists have long thought. The U.S. government’s 2010 recovery plan for sperm whales characterizes their range as “generally offshore.” A 2016 study of their Australian range describes the whales as foraging in “deep offshore areas of the world’s oceans.” This understanding goes way back. In Moby-Dick, published in 1851, the whaling ship Pequod chases sperm whales far from shore, days from port. Continued here

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The Forgotten Ron DeSantis Book The Florida governor’s long-ignored 2011 work, Dreams From Our Founding Fathers, reveals a distinct vision of American history and how it should influence the present. History works for Ron DeSantis as an argument. It would be a mistake, though, to think he doesn’t care about it deeply or hasn’t devoted serious deliberation to his own understanding of the American past. In fact, his biography indicates a great respect for the discipline. DeSantis reportedly received special praise for his performance in an Advanced Placement U.S. history course at Florida’s Dunedin High School before he graduated in 1997. He majored in history at Yale during some of the years I taught there. He instructed high-school students in history for a year at the Darlington School, in Georgia, before attending Harvard Law School and joining the U.S. Navy. And get this: Two of his children are named Madison and Mason presumably after James Madison and George Mason, the most intellectually interesting of the Virginians who helped fashion the Constitution. Continued here

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The Death of the Sex Scene Here’s a theory: Forget sex, forget nudity, forget the soft-focus jazzy humping of Red Shoe Diaries and the silhouetted saliva strings from Top Gun. The history of film and television suggests that, sometimes, the sexiest thing two people can do on-screen is simply look at each other—look, for a prolonged period of time, until the air around them seems to spark; desire and be desired, in the same breath. Never mind the fact that we are watching too, projecting all of our own intentions and experiences into the charged negative space between the characters. When we talk about the “chemistry” shared by two actors on-screen, we usually mean their ability to look at each other and make us believe in what they’re seeing. But in the recent Netflix movie You People, what’s striking is how little the two stars seem to see each other at all. Early in the film, Ezra (played by Jonah Hill) and Amira (Lauren London) have a microaggression-tinged meet-cute when he jumps into the back of her Mini under the assumption that she’s his Uber driver. He charms her, for no discernible reason other than that it’s in the script—it’s not quite right to say that, throughout, Hill gives off the vibe of a man with a gun to his head, but it’s also not right to say that he doesn’t. Ezra and Amira go on a lunch date and a series of outings where they look at anything except each other—sneakers, an art exhibition, something funny on someone’s phone. Viewers infer that the two are going to have sex via a shot of his besocked feet touching hers; the next morning, Amira tells Ezra that they’re exclusively dating while flossing her teeth, potentially the single least sexy thing one person can do in the presence of another. Continued here

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The Cure for Hiccups Exists Hiccups are a weirdly distressing physical experience. In their normal version, they are benign and, given enough time and patience on the part of the sufferer, end by themselves. Yet there is something oddly unbearable about that brief eternity when you’ve just hiccuped and are waiting, powerlessly, for the next one to strike. The search for a cure has, naturally enough in the age of the internet, resulted in a multitude of Reddit threads. Many claim a 100 percent, never-fails guarantee: putting a cold knife on the back of your tongue, saying pineapple, closing your eyes and gently pressing on your eyeballs, drinking water while holding down an ear. Specifically, your left ear. Continued here

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'The Parent Test' Stokes American Parenting's Worst Impulses The reality competition show reinforces an isolationist vision of family life that is fueled by fear. If you are an American parent, you are mired in contradiction wherever you look: Children are too coddled, a strident Facebook post might shout at you, right before you read an article about the dangers of letting kids go outside alone. It takes a village, you are told, but also, everyone hates it when you bring your toddler on a plane or into a restaurant. You read that modern American parenting is uniquely isolating and expensive, then watch in befuddlement while Congress lets the expanded child tax credit expire. Continued here

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America Built an Actually Good Airport In 2004, Steven Spielberg made an entire movie about the terror of getting stuck for months in an airport, but I might be happy never to leave the new LaGuardia Air travel itself, the part where you are crammed like a rodent into a metal tube, is clearly miserable. So is everything in its orbit: the barfsome cab from the city, the shameful indignity of security, the sullen panic of being away from home, and—most of all—the ghastly purgatory of the airport that detains you. Continued here

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Modern Spirituality Is a Consumer’s Choice Now This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here. What is your relationship with organized religion? How has it affected your life, and has its impact changed over time? I’m eager to hear anything about the varieties of your religious experiences. Continued here

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How the Housing Shortage Warps American Life 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. Housing shortages color all aspects of American life, my colleague Annie Lowrey wrote over the weekend, including bagels, music, and education. The solution seems simple: Build more homes. But that’s much easier said than done, especially when Americans disagree about the basic facts of the crisis. Continued here

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How to nap | Psyche Guides Whether it’s to recover after a late night or to boost your learning abilities, there’s a science to napping effectively is a post-doctoral fellow in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. Her work focuses on how napping can be tailored to benefit cognition and wellbeing for different age groups. Continued here

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A Greenlander | Psyche Films Greenland is a massive island country that very few people can call home. While not entirely immune to the tides of globalisation, it remains, in many ways, a land apart from the rest of the world. Its economy is still centred on fishing and hunting, and very few foreigners seek to settle there or make it their tourist escape. This is especially true in the small town of Uummannaq, on an island off the central-western coast of Greenland, some 600 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. It’s these facts that make the unlikely life of Pierre Auzias so fascinating. Although French by birth, he’s lived in Uummannaq for 14 years – first with his partner Annie, and then alone, after her recent retirement as the town doctor and return to France. An artist by trade, Auzias served as the official maritime painter of the Royal Danish Navy during 1994-2016, and has established himself as a vital part of the community by creating a local art school. He also speaks Kalaallisut, has learned to fish and hunt, travels by dogsled, and has even developed a taste for whale and seal. However, his life in Uummannaq is now very much in flux as he waits to hear if the authorities will allow him to remain. With his residency status in doubt, he worries about losing the routines, friends and way of life he’s come to cherish, and is especially troubled by the uncertain fate of his beloved sled dogs. Continued here

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Patient Cured of HIV After Stem Cell Transplant, Researchers Say He is at least the third person cured in this way, which would likely be too risky for patients who don't also have cancer A 53-year-old man diagnosed with HIV in 2008 is now free of the virus after receiving a stem cell transplant, researchers reported Monday in the journal Nature Medicine. Continued here

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A Long Low Tide Dries Up Venice's Smaller Canals A high-pressure anticyclone is driving the situation, making it difficult to get around the carless city Historic low tides have dried up some of Venice’s smaller canals, leaving many of the Italian city’s famous gondolas stuck in the mud. Continued here

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Archaeologists Find Elite Residences at Mexico's Chichén Itzá Researchers in Mexico have uncovered a new group of structures at Chichén Itzá, the famed Maya archaeological site, that may have once belonged to the city's elite. The new find comes from the work of Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), a government bureau dedicated to historical preservation. Prior to this discovery, experts didn't know of any residential structures at Chichén Itzá.  Continued here

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Shoes Carry Poop Bacteria Into NYC Buildings, Study Finds With “absolutely astonishing” amounts of fecal bacteria on city sidewalks, an expert recommends removing shoes before entering homes People walking down New York City’s streets might unknowingly be bringing home unwelcome visitors: microscopic fecal bacteria. A study conducted on Manhattan’s Upper East Side found high concentrations of the bacteria not only on outdoor sidewalks, but also on people’s shoes, indoor floors and carpets. Continued here

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Looted Gold Jewelry Returns to Cambodia A stunning trove of never-before-seen gold jewelry has been returned to Cambodia, the country’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts announced in a statement this week.   Experts think the items were worn by Angkorian royals. The collection includes more than 70 artifacts—crowns, necklaces, woven gold belts and intricate body ornaments—from the Khmer Empire, a far-reaching state in Southeast Asia from the 9th to the 15th century.  Continued here

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Radioactive Capsule Safely Recovered in Western Australia After getting lost in transit, the capsule sat for days on the side of a road in the desert Editor’s Note, February 6, 2023: The capsule was found and safely recovered on February 1. Search crews driving some 125 miles from the mine site detected gamma radiation, which led them to the capsule about 6.5 feet from the side of the road. Officials said it is unlikely anyone was exposed and that the capsule would be transported to a health facility in Perth. Continued here

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How Will the Universe End? | Quanta Magazine Our universe has a beginning. And someday, it will have an end too — but which one? As the cosmos expands and the stars and galaxies grow dim, will everything slowly become colder and more isolated? Could the dark energy that's accelerating the expansion of the universe eventually rend apart spacetime? Would it be possible for our world and the rest of the universe to one day just cease to exist without warning? In this episode, Steven Strogatz discusses the ultimate grand finale with Katie Mack, a theoretical cosmologist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada. Mack is also the author of The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking), published in August 2020, in which she described the five scenarios that scientists have identified for how the universe might end. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn or your favorite podcasting app, or you can stream it from Quanta. Continued here

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Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing | Quanta Magazine The new quantum protocol effectively borrows energy from a distant location and thus violates no sacred physical principles. For their latest magic trick, physicists have done the quantum equivalent of conjuring energy out of thin air. It's a feat that seems to fly in the face of physical law and common sense. Continued here

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Bertrand Russell on the Secret of Happiness In my darkest hours, what has saved me again and again is some action of unselfing — some instinctive wakefulness to an aspect of the world other than myself: a helping hand extended to someone else’s struggle, the dazzling galaxy just discovered millions of lightyears away, the cardinal trembling in the tree outside my window. We know this by its mirror-image — to contact happiness of any kind is “to be dissolved into something complete and great,” something beyond the bruising boundaries of the ego. The attainment of happiness is then less a matter of pursuit than of surrender — to the world’s wonder, ready as it comes. That is what the Nobel-winning philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) explores in The Conquest of Happiness (public library) — the 1930 classic that gave us his increasingly urgent wisdom on the vital role of boredom in flourishing. The world is vast and our own powers are limited. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give. And to demand too much is the surest way of getting even less than is possible. The man* who can forget his worries by means of a genuine interest in, say, the Council of Trent, or the life history of stars, will find that, when he returns from his excursion into the impersonal world, he has acquired a poise and calm which enable him to deal with his worries in the best way, and he will in the meantime have experienced a genuine even if temporary happiness. Continued here

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Lose Your Inner Critic to Become a Stronger Leader Improve your leadership by getting rid of your meanest friend. Continued here

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How AI and Chatbots Can Benefit Your Small Businesses A guide to streamlining operations, enhancing customer service, and driving growth. Continued here