4 ways to identify high-conflict people before it's too late

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4 ways to identify high-conflict people before it's too late Some people seem predisposed to cause chaos and conflict in their lives. Their every discussion regresses into an argument. Everywhere they go, something goes wrong and someone else is to blame. And they can’t let anything go, seeing even the smallest mistake as an affront to their worthiness. These are some of the signs of what lawyer and therapist Bill Eddy calls “high-conflict people,” and chances are you’ve encountered one before. They could be that coworker whose ego you have to tiptoe around at the office, the family member who adds drama to every holiday visit, or the friend who reacts explosively to the mere suggestion that they’ve misremembered some trivial fact. Continued here

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Super Mario Bros: The ultimate video game icon Back in the mid-1980s, I was thrilled to unwrap a hi-tech gift for my ninth birthday: a handheld Game + Watch version of the arcade hit Donkey Kong. I played the game obsessively, captivated by its split screen liquid-crystal display, and the simple expressiveness of its hero character: a plucky monochrome figure called Mario, who would scale a construction site to rescue a captive princess. Mario had three lives in this platform game, but an apparently infinite appeal beyond it. - The 1991 video game that packs a punch - The music most embedded in our psyches? - How gaming became a form of meditation Continued here

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'Destiny 2: Lightfall' Is Destiny at Its Best—Most of the Time 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 From the very beginning, Destiny has been a puzzle box. You can't take it in all at once. There's always something obscured, something moving behind the scenes. You'll figure out one thing, and another piece of the box opens into new puzzles—new stories to experience, new powers to chase, new weapons to build. That's Destiny at its best, and that's what Lightfall and the Season of Defiance deliver from start to finish—for the most part. Continued here

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It's Never Been Easier to Make an Adventure Game Visit WIRED Photo for our unfiltered take on photography, photographers, and photographic journalism wrd.cm/1IEnjUH Slide: 1 / of 1.Caption: Caption: New tools like Adventure Game Studio are responsible for a thriving indie scene for the genre. Courtesy of Julia Minamata Continued here

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The Emotional Range of Tattoos This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. Tattoos were once a sign of outsider status. But that’s changed in the 21st century: “My doctor has both of his arms totally sleeved. I have a friend that’s a corporate lawyer, and she’s working on her body suit,” a tattoo artist told the editor Adrienne Green in 2016. Continued here

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In the Age of Ozempic, What’s the Point of Working Out? In the summer of 2015, one of my best friends died at work. Shannon was 38, childless, single and thriving, and working as an executive at a global public-relations firm, where she handled a major client. She was set to take a family vacation—treating her nephews to a Disney trip or some such—when her boss sent down an edict that no one on her account was allowed to take time off. Saying no to your boss is hard, but disappointing your nephews is even harder, so Shannon stood her ground and refused to cancel her trip. She then proceeded—in a conference room—to have a panic attack about how the decision might affect her career. The panic attack triggered a heart attack; the heart attack revealed a preexisting tear in a heart valve; the tear led to internal bleeding that, after a two-week-long coma, led to her death. You can see why, though it isn’t technically true, I say that Shannon “died at work.” You can also see how my 36-year-old self—also single, also childless, also stuck in a successful but frustrating career and in need of some time off—–was very messed up by this. Everyone who knew Shannon was. As the bench in Prospect Park we dedicated to our friend says: Shannon, she gave a lovely light. Continued here

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How to Survive Hopelessness Dougal Robertson (January 29, 1924–September 22, 1991) was still a teenager, the youngest of a Scottish music teacher’s eight children, when he joined the British Merchant Navy. After a Japanese attack on a steamship during WWII killed his wife and young son, he left the navy and moved to Hong Kong, where he eventually met and married a nurse. Together, they began a new life as dairy farmers in the English countryside, on a farm without electricity or running water. Eventually, they had a daughter, then a son, then a pair of twins. After nearly two decades on the farm, the family had an unorthodox idea for how to best educate their children, how to show them what a vast and wondrous place the world is, full of all kinds of different people and all kinds of different ways of living: They sold everything they had, bought a schooner, and set out to sail around the world, departing on January 27, 1971. Continued here

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How Emotionally Intelligent People Use the 5 Finger Rule to Become Exceptionally Persuasive I think it's worth the effort of a little bit of simple memorization. Continued here

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Soutzoukakia: The Greek meatballs packed with history Soutzoukakia are more than their literal translation: meatballs. They are undeniably rich and comforting, laced with hints of red wine, cumin and garlic and swathed in a hearty tomato sauce. It's a dish packed with flavour as well as history. The origins of soutzoukakia trace back to the Greek population of the early 20th Century Empire. This is a dish that was created by a minority population and survived atrocities, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of survivors who carried the recipe with them from Turkey to Greece. Carolina Doriti, brings its history and recipe together in her new cookbook, Salt of the Earth: Secrets and Stories from a Greek Kitchen (March 2023). Born-and-raised in Athens, Doriti has spent most of her life in the Greek capital. She started cooking at a young age, with food playing an integral part in her life. She began cooking professionally in 2005 and has since worked as a private chef, recipe developer, food journalist and restaurant consultant. She's also the culinary producer of the celebrated Greek American chef, Diane Kochilas' PBS program, My Greek Table. Continued here

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AI isn’t close to becoming sentient – the real danger lies in how easily we anthropomorphize it ChatGPT and similar large language models can produce compelling, humanlike answers to an endless array of questions – from queries about the best Italian restaurant in town to explaining competing theories about the nature of evil. The technology’s uncanny writing ability has surfaced some old questions – until recently relegated to the realm of science fiction – about the possibility of machines becoming conscious, self-aware or sentient.  Continued here

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India Shut Down Cell Service for 27 Million During a Manhunt A US House of Representatives hearing this week about the social media app TikTok did little to clarify lawmaker's specific concerns about the potential national security risks associated with the wildly popular app, but it did vividly underscore the country’s lack of federal data privacy legislation. WIRED also discovered that TikTok paid for influencers popular on its platform to attend a DC rally in support of the service ahead of the hearing.  Meanwhile, as a possible indictment of former US president Donald Trump looms in New York state, internet users began generating AI images of Trump being arrested, but there are ways to tell that they're fake. WIRED examined the increasingly aggressive and desperate tactics of Iran's government-backed hackers amid mass protest and unrest in the country. Citizen sleuths around the world are using open source intelligence to separate fact from fiction in the mystery of who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipeline. And vulnerabilities keep showing up in ultra-popular photo cropping tools, exposing a host of cropped images all over the world where some or all of the original image can be recovered. Continued here

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The Problem With How the West Is Supporting Ukraine Wars are won or lost well behind the front lines. Allies should arm Ukrainians accordingly. For the past four months, people around the world have witnessed the macabre process of Russian forces making repeated assaults near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut for only the tiniest of gains. By some counts, Russia has lost about five of its soldiers for every Ukrainian soldier lost—to say nothing of massive equipment losses. Although in theory a country can win a war by using its military forces to make forward assaults against an enemy’s forces, that’s just not a smart way to fight. Military technology long ago evolved to arm both sides in conflicts with extremely lethal weaponry, and any army that tries to approach this machinery head-on is likely to suffer major, and in some cases horrific, losses. Continued here

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4 Key Management Lessons You Can Learn From Family Businesses Forget Succession -- family-run companies offer valuable insights on issues from governance to workplace dynamics. Continued here

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The Best MacBook Accessories The MacBook is a powerful machine. Whether you're using a MacBook Air for web browsing and sending emails or a MacBook Pro for graphics-intensive projects like video editing and 3D design, Apple's laptops can handle a wide range of activities. But to enhance your experience, I suggest throwing some accessories into the mix. Regardless of your MacBook of choice or the work you're using it for, a slew of peripherals can pair with your computer, like laptop stands, keyboards, charging bricks, and external displays. We've tested dozens over the past year, and these are the best MacBook accessories to streamline your workflow and unlock your machine's full potential. This is by no means an exhaustive list, as there are an innumerable number of accessories, so we'll always be on the hunt for more to test. Check out our Best Work-From-Home Gear guide for other recommendations. Continued here

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Soaring interest rates contributed to recent bank failures - and there could be more to come US bank regulators closed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10 2023, after it suffered US$42 billion (£35 billion) of deposit withdrawals in a 24-hour period. This was the largest bank failure since the 2008 global financial crisis and was not supposed to happen again. Since the 2008 crisis, international bank regulations have been greatly tightened and, among other measures, banks now have more capital to absorb losses and protect themselves from insolvency. Yet, even though SVB’s capital was above the minimum level required by regulators, this was not enough to keep it alive. Continued here

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Why "Should" Is Not Good For You If your brain cascades into a series of “I shoulds,” leaving you too overwhelmed to initiate any items on your to-do list, know that you’re not alone. The word “should” implies that you have an obligation to complete an action and that there will be a consequence if you fail to do so. Sometimes this may be true, but it’s ultimately demotivating. Research shows that we’re more likely to be productive when we find work meaningful — not when we are driven by a fear of punishment. Continued here

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Why Getting Someone's Name Right Matters Names are our identities. Often, they are deeply rooted in our social and cultural beliefs. Yet, historically, many people have anglicized their names to “fit in,” appear more mainstream, or gain social and cultural advantages in countries with dominant Anglo cultures. But names are more than monikers. Casually anglicizing names is not only disrespectful of people’s cultural heritage and traditions — it is also disrespectful of them. Here’s how to get better at pronouncing names. Continued here

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Apple Has a Secret Recruiting Tool That Sets It Apart From All of Its Competition It isn't laying off any employees. Continued here

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The wild psychedelic origins of indigenous mystical rites — as revealed by archaeology We’ll never know when and where humans first discovered the mind-altering power of psychedelics. But it seems fair to state three things about our relationship with visionary drugs: it’s incalculably old, globally pervasive, and rich with meaning. Our ancestors likely began their long journey with naturally occurring psychotropic substances tens or even hundreds of thousands of years ago. The nascent field of archaeochemistry has convincingly demonstrated Neanderthal use of psychoactive plants like yarrow and chamomile going back 50,000 years. Anthropologist Scott M. Fitzpatrick envisions the early hunter-gatherers of our own species encountering, consuming and experimenting “with a wide array of plants” and fungi — just like their Neanderthal cousins. Continued here

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Delta Air Lines Just Announced a Smart Idea, and Yes, You Should Definitely Copy It I sense a trend. And a lesson. Continued here

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Why Capital Investment in Equipment Doesn’t Hurt Employment A new study co-authored by Wharton’s Daniel G. Garrett shows that giving businesses tax breaks for investment in new equipment doesn’t lead them to replace workers with machines. A new paper by experts at Wharton and elsewhere has set to rest “widespread concerns” that increased capital investment in equipment is at the cost of worker employment. In the study of tax incentives that boost capital investment in equipment at U.S. firms between 1997 and 2011, the experts found that such investment resulted in matching employment growth, although it did not stimulate wage or productivity growth. Continued here

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Rick Steves’s Advice for Vacationers in Europe This Summer The TV host and travel guide reflects on how travel has—and hasn’t—changed since COVID. When the Washington State–based travel guide and TV host Rick Steves decided to return to Europe in early 2022, he wasn’t sure how many of his favorite local spots had survived two years of pandemic life. Steves, who has hosted Rick Steves’ Europe for the past two decades and operates tours aimed at introducing American travelers to the continent, was pleasantly surprised by what he found: Many of his beloved places—the kind of mom-and-pop places that have been owned by the same families for generations—had made it through, and the streets were alive anew. “They’re kissing cheeks with a vengeance in Paris right now,” he told me. “And I’m really thankful for that.” Continued here

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Earthquake Debris Could Create an Environmental Catastrophe in Türkiye and Syria After recent earthquakes, Türkiye and Syria continue to grapple with a mass of rubble that could pollute, poison and alter the lives of everyone around it The earthquake that has destroyed parts of Türkiye and Syria is a tragedy for millions of families, including my own. One of the worst hit regions—around the ancient city of Antioch—is where my father’s family has lived for generations. This disaster has killed thousands of people and affected millions of others. Now that the last presumed survivors have been found, the region faces many other problems, including enormous amounts of debris from collapsed buildings, roads, and the like. This material is estimated to weigh up to 210 million tons—enough to cover Washington, D.C. four feet deep, or build a mound as tall as Mount Erciyes, a large volcano in Türkiye. Continued here

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Does Your Health Insurance Cover Mental Health? Mental health care that’s expensive to the point of being inaccessible has been an issue for a long time, but it has taken on new urgency during the Covid-19 pandemic. For many people, waiting for insurance companies to get it together is not an option right now. Luckily, you may not have to wait. There are steps you can take to better manage these costs. Continued here

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Here's an Almost Foolproof Way to Get People to Do What You Want, According to a Leadership Professor Want to influence people's behavior? Keep this hard-wired human trait in mind. Continued here

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Xbox's Plan to Buy Call of Duty Just Cleared a Massive Hurdle Looks like all those ten-year deals moved the needle. On March 24, UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) flipped its stance on a major element of Microsoft’s pending $69 billion acquisition of Activision. The regulatory agency says it no longer has concerns that Microsoft will remove the best-selling Call of Duty series from PlayStation platforms in the future. “Having considered the additional evidence provided, we have now provisionally concluded that the merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in console gaming services because the cost to Microsoft of withholding Call of Duty from PlayStation would outweigh any gains from taking such action,” said CMA spokesperson Martin Coleman in a press release. Continued here

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5 Ways to Prepare Your Business Team to Tackle Any Market Change To survive and thrive in business today, you need every team member engaged and working together. Continued here

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13 Great Deals on TVs, Headphones, and Office Gear I live in Portland, Oregon, where we've had one of the dreariest, wettest winters on record. This week saw our first warm temperatures in months, which means it's time for a good spring cleaning. If you, like me, found some holes in your technological arsenal (and a bag full of hand-me-downs to donate to charities like Free Geek), now is a good time to check out these deals. We found discounts on TVs, soundbars, and home office gear, not to mention a MacBook Air deal. There are several other spring sales happening now and we've rounded them up, from deals on camera backpacks and smartphones to sex toys and smart home gadgets. Continued here

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You Need to Play 2023's Cutest Game About Poisoning Your Spouse ASAP Like ‘em or lump ‘em, puzzle games often aren’t very engaging from a narrative perspective. Despite what the producers of the Apple TV Tetris movie would have you believe, few games manage to elegantly intermingle satisfying brain-teaser mechanics with an engaging story. But Storyteller, out March 23 on Nintendo Switch and Steam, is a rare exception to that rule. The award-winning indie from developer Daniel Benmergui and publisher Annapurna Interactive gives you a series of 51 folktale-inspired puzzles — think witches, royalty, dragons, vampires, and marriages aplenty. Each puzzle is laid out like a comic strip, with anywhere from three to six panels. You’ll be given a handful of scenarios to mix and match across the panels, and a variety of characters to populate them, in order to create a story that matches the prompt at the top of the screen. Continued here

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The 5 Must-Upgrade Weapons in 'Resident Evil 4' The Resident Evil 4 remake gives you plenty of weapons to combat the maddening horrors you’ll face, but some are certainly better than others. It’s a grueling game, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the series or survival-horror games in general, meaning it’s best to come prepared. At the start of the game, it’s tempting to pour all your currency into each firearm you find, but it’s actually better to prioritize a handful of weapons, instead, allowing you to maximize your arsenal effectively. But which weapons should you prioritize upgrading first, and which should you skip? While the Combat Knife isn’t the best weapon in the game or even the best melee option, we still recommend pouring your resources into it. This is because you’ll often find yourself with little to no ammo during certain segments, meaning you’ll have to rely on your Combat Knife to get by. Make sure you increase its durability and power as much as you can to get the most out of this weapon. We also recommend selling it for the Primal Knife eventually, but until then, stick with the Combat Knife. Continued here

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Research: How Cultural Differences Can Impact Global Teams Diversity can be both a benefit and a challenge to virtual teams, especially those which are global. The authors unpack their recent research on how diversity works in remote teams, concluding that benefits and drawbacks can be explained by how teams manage the two facets of diversity: personal and contextual. They find that contextual diversity is key to aiding creativity, decision-making, and problem-solving, while personal diversity does not. In their study, teams with higher contextual diversity produced higher-quality consulting reports, and their solutions were more creative and innovative. When it comes to the quality of work, teams that were higher on contextual diversity performed better. Therefore, the potential challenges caused by personal diversity should be anticipated and managed, but the benefits of contextual diversity are likely to outweigh such challenges. Continued here S55 In its new season, _Don't Call Me Resilient_ brings you the news -- through an anti-racist lens ? S38 Naked women have long been seen as a threat - today's puritanism is just the latest cycle of western history In the middle of the fourth century BC, an ancient Greek woman named Phryne cast off her clothes and walked naked into the sea at the Festival of Poseidon. While it earned her a job as nude model for one of Greece’s top artists, it also landed her in court on the charge of impiety, for which the punishment was death. Today Greece plays host to many a scantily clad holidaymaker, and with the sexual revolution behind us, many would like to think that women are free to do whatever they like with their own bodies. Continued here S11 Esteemed Harvard Business Professor Explains the Happy Accident of How She Landed at Harvard. It's a Lesson for Every Leader You are your own worst enemy when it comes to being a better leader. Continued here S25 Garmin's Forerunner 955 review: Still king for runners and cyclists The Forerunner 955 continues that tradition. It sits atop the Forerunner series as the most feature-packed watch in the bunch, and this year it gains some modern touches like a touchscreen and daily exercise readiness assessments (à la Fitbit's Daily Readiness feature, but free to users), while introducing new features not present on any other Garmin watch. That includes the higher-end Fenix series of watches, from which the Forerunner 955 is also starting to steal some cues, like solar-charging options and multi-band GPS. Continued here S59 Putting Words in Their Mouths Follow @newyorkercartoons on Instagram and sign up for the Daily Humor newsletter for more funny stuff. © 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices Continued here S24 There is now a blood test for anxiety disorders Based on preliminary research, a new blood test for anxiety may be able to help doctors diagnose patients and find effective treatments for them. But some experts believe it needs to be independently confirmed by further research. Anxiety 101: While everyone occasionally experiences worry or dread due to an upcoming event, such as an important test, people with anxiety disorders experience those feelings persistently and often without any specific threat looming. Continued here S67 Succession Season 4 Savagely Kicks Off The Roy Family's Final Act There are a lot of ways that someone can describe HBO's corporate dramedy Succession: Shakespearean, intense, silly, overdramatic, and everything in between. None of these descriptors are wrong – in fact, they are exactly what the show, guided by master satirist Jesse Armstrong, wants to be described as. It's a messy show, and when viewers find the three main Roy siblings at the beginning of its fourth season, it's about to get even messier. If you may recall, the third season of Succession ended with media monarch Logan Roy all but cutting out three of his children from his dynasty: resident weirdo Roman, the underestimated and vicious Shiv, and Twitter's favorite sad boy Kendall. Set shortly after the events of that finale, Season 4's opener (this writer received only the first of Succession Season 4’s 10 episodes) is mostly business as usual, except for the unlikely unity Kendall, Shiv, and Roman have with each other. Seeing this trio finally come together with some shared goal and love is exciting to watch unfold, as most of the show up to this point had them butting heads and spitting venom. While things aren't sunshine and roses, it's great to see Jeremy Strong's Kendall and Kieran Culkin's Roman insulting each other in a more playful than outwardly mean way. Seeing Sarah Snook's Shiv dish it out so eloquently is also incredibly fun. Continued here S27 "Yellowjackets" Understands the Horror of Toxic Best Friends In the show’s second season, bonds formed in adolescence continue to bless and poison the present. This article contains spoilers for the entire first season as well as the second-season premiere of Yellowjackets. Continued here S56 Marsupials and other mammals separately evolved flight many times, and we are finally learning how Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land on the next tree. Many groups of mammals seem to have taken this evolutionary advice to heart. According to our newly published paper in Science Advances, unrelated animals may even have used the same blueprints for building their “wings”. While birds are the undisputed champions of the sky, having mastered flight during the Jurassic, mammals have actually evolved flight more often than birds. In fact, as many as seven different groups of mammals living today have taken to the air independently of each other. Continued here S29 Indicting a Former President Should Always Have Been Fair Game If a grand jury does indict Donald Trump, it will finally confirm, as the Founders expected, that ordinary citizens have the power to treat former commanders in chief like anyone else. No former president of the United States has ever been indicted at either the federal or state level. That more-than-two-centuries-old record, if you want to call it that, looks like it could soon be broken—something that should have happened a long time ago. Continued here S57 Final NSW Newspoll gives Labor a thumping lead; federal Labor's lead widens Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne The New South Wales state election is today. Polls close at 6pm AEDT. Votes cast on election day should be counted quickly, but large pre-poll booths are likely to take until late at night or next week. Continued here S15 The 38 Best Movies on Netflix This Week Netflix has plenty of movies to watch, but it's a real mixed bag. Sometimes finding the right film at the right time can seem like an impossible task. Fret not, we’re here to help. Below is a list of some of our favorite films currently on the streaming service—from dramas to comedies to thrillers. If you decide you're in more of a TV mood, head over to our collection of the best TV series on Netflix. Want more? Check out our lists of the best sci-fi movies, best movies on Amazon Prime, and the best flicks on Disney+. Continued here S58 “Petite Solange,” Reviewed: A Modernist Melodrama Mines the Power of the Female Gaze Cinematic realism is at its best when it's dialectical—when seemingly transparent representations of dramatic action are heightened, tweaked, transformed to call attention to their styles, their methods, and their artifices. Far from submerging emotions in gamesmanship, such transformations can distill them to a concentrated intensity. That's what the French director Axelle Ropert does in her latest feature, "Petite Solange" (opening Friday), a familiar story that she endows with overwhelming power by paradoxical means. Its eponymous protagonist, Solange Maserati (played by Jade Springer, in her first feature), is a thirteen-year-old middle-school student in the western French port city of Nantes. She's a bright, earnest, and outgoing child—her attentiveness and alertness show in her expressions. But something has happened to distract and perturb her, and much of the action takes place as a flashback, showing what brought her to such a state of quiet crisis. Solange is a child of the French middle-class art-ocracy: her mother, Aurélia (Léa Drucker), is a leading actress with a local theatre company who specializes in literary repertory (such as Brecht and Marivaux); her father, Antoine (played by Philippe Katerine, who's also a well-known singer-songwriter), owns a musical-instrument shop; and her older brother, Romain (Grégoire Montana-Haroche), a twenty-one-year-old math student, is Solange's doting confidant. The Maserati family (Antoine is of Italian descent) lives in a small, neat house on a tranquil alley, and Solange attends a calm and orderly school, where she has an unexceptional social life: a best friend named Lili (Marthe Léon), a budding crush on a long-haired boy who plays the piano (Léo Ferreira). Continued here S26 The fight to expose corporations' real impact on the climate Say you are a maker of computer graphics cards, under pressure from investors questioning your green credentials. You know what to do. You email your various departments, asking them to tally up their carbon emissions and the energy they consume. Simple enough. You write a report pledging a more sustainable future, in which your trucks are electrified and solar panels adorn your offices. Continued here S54 Four ways the UK economy is being hampered by the private sector The UK government has decided to go ahead with a rise in corporation tax in April 2023. The move is a clear reversal of the tax reduction which previous chancellors hoped would encourage output and innovation. The idea of lowering corporation tax to boost growth (and ultimately tax revenue) failed spectacularly under Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership. And as the current chancellor Jeremy Hunt explained in his recent budget: “Even at 19%, our corporation tax regime did not incentivise investment as effectively as countries with higher headline rates.” Continued here S37 Misophonia: nearly one in five UK adults have the condition causing extreme reactions to certain sounds Many of us have sounds that we find to be annoying. But for some people, certain sounds actually trigger extreme reactions. It’s a disorder known as misophonia, where sounds like chewing, sniffing and pen clicking can cause intense emotional reactions – and sometimes even physical reactions, such as an elevated heart rate and spike in blood pressure. As it turns out, this condition is more common than many realise, as our recent study showed. We estimate that nearly one in five adults in the UK may have misophonia. Continued here S50 Could the common cold give children immunity against COVID? Our research offers clues Why children are less likely to become severely ill with COVID compared with adults is not clear. Some have suggested that it might be because children are less likely to have diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, that are known to be linked to more severe COVID. Others have suggested that it could be because of a difference in ACE2 receptors in children – ACE2 receptors being the route through which the virus enters our cells. Some scientists have also suggested that children may have a higher level of existing immunity to COVID compared with adults. In particular, this immunity is thought to come from memory T cells (immune cells that help your body remember invading germs and destroy them) generated by common colds – some of which are caused by coronaviruses. Continued here S7 Warren Buffett Says He Hires People With High IQ and Motivation. But Without This Third Trait, The First Two Will Kill You Warren Buffett warns leaders to not neglect this very important business virtue. Continued here S65 How to Kill Regenerators in the 'Resident Evil 4' Remake Nearly everything is deadly in the Resident Evil 4 remake. You’ll take on horrifying villagers and enormous monsters while scrounging for precious resources. But few of the baddies you’ll encounter are as formidable as the Regenerators, which are found in the medical facility portion of the game. Seemingly, unloading on these creatures doesn’t do much, as they simply reanimate after being de-limbed. Here’s how to defeat Regenerators in the Resident Evil 4 remake. Regenerators appear in the medical facility toward the end of Resident Evil 4. As their name suggests, they will simply regrow their limbs if you shoot them off. You can take them out with bullets if you shoot them in the right spots on their body, but it takes a lot of ammo. So, we recommend running away — at first. Continued here S66 Will There Be a 'Scream 7'? Everything We Know So Far About the Slasher Sequel For almost 30 years now, Ghostface has been carving through the box office and bumbling into our hearts. And if there was any question whether the “meta-whodunit-slasher” franchise had lost its sting, Scream 6 has put a knife in it. This new era of the series, spearheaded by directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet (better known as the dynamic duo Radio Silence), launched with a “requel” installment that felt almost too beholden to the tried-and-true formula established by franchise creator and legend Wes Craven. Scream 6, while still honoring that enormous legacy, finds some fresh ideas and a unique voice in the Big Apple, along with all the brutal kills and shocking betrayals a sadistic fan could ask for. Continued here S42 How 'misogyny influencers' cater to young men's anxieties Parents, teachers and politicians are worried about the appeal of so-called “online misogyny influencers” to boys and young men. These influencers post content to thousands of followers in videos and podcasts, offering advice about relationships, mental health and wellbeing, and achieving material success and status. They are believed to be having a negative effect on young men’s attitudes, beliefs and expectations, including about gender roles and relationships between men and women. Continued here S61 Trump's Potential Trials Are a One-Man “Stress Test of the Legal System” It's the end of a week in which former President Donald Trump said that he would be indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, for a hundred-and-thirty-thousand-dollar hush-money payment to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels—and still no charge. But just the prospect of an indictment has created a furor among Trump's Republican allies in the House, who called Bragg's investigation a "sham" and the District Attorney "radical." Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, led an inquiry into the Manhattan D.A.'s office—a move that the D.A.'s general counsel called an "unlawful incursion into New York's sovereignty." In this week's political roundtable, the New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos look at the political ramifications of the still-looming indictment, the terrifying threat of political violence, and what a Trump "perp walk" could mean. After high-school football stars were accused of rape, online vigilantes demanded that justice be served. Continued here S64 "There's No Book Club?!" 'Yellowjackets' Star Warren Kole is Happy to Be a Meme The Yellowjackets star reveals what it's like being a meme, how his character's changed, and his forgotten Marvel role. There’s no greater encapsulation of Warren Kole’s Yellowjackets character Jeff Sadecki than his most famous scene: a faithful husband, baffled not by the fact that his wife (Melanie Lynskey) cheated on him, but by the fact she lied and said she was at book club. Continued here S60 Jia Tolentino on the Ozempic Weight-Loss Craze The prescription drug Ozempic (semaglutide) was designed to manage diabetes and obesity. But it has been embraced recently as a tool for weight loss, and many celebrities are rumored to use it to shed pounds. The staff writer Jia Tolentino wonders if the drug will wind the clock back to the brutal insistence on thinness of decades past. Plus, the staff writer D. T. Max explores the hidden life of H. G. Carrillo, a celebrated author of Latino fiction. After Carrillo’s death, from COVID-19, an obituary revealed secrets he had worked for decades to conceal. The staff writer examines the celebrity obsession with the diabetes drug (generically known as semaglutide), and the unsettling undercurrent sweeping thinness back into vogue. Continued here S52 China's latest diplomatic move will extend its trade, energy, financial and maritime power Senior Economist, IMD World Competitiveness Center, International Institute for Management Development (IMD) China’s billions of dollars in global investments and infrastructure projects seem to be paying off politically and economically. Continued here S48 Gloria Bosman: a personal reflection on the loss of a South African jazz great We have no idea what we have just lost. None. Prolific singer, composer and educator Gloria Bosman, who passed away on 14 March 2023, was someone I could only describe as South Africa’s most interactive artistic archive. Interactive not because she housed so much knowledge about the unique relationship between music and South Africans as a people, but also because she transmitted this knowledge to others at every opportunity. If you ever found yourself in the same room with Gloria, you were in for a lesson of a lifetime. Read more: Gloria Bosman was more than a South African jazz vocalist, she was a guiding light Continued here S53 How to rewire your brain to feel good on Mondays If you hate Mondays, you’re most certainly in good company. After a couple of days off, many of us have difficulty settling back into our routines and work duties. You may even have dread and anxiety that seeps into the weekend in the form of “Sunday scaries”. You can’t always change your schedule or obligations to make Mondays more appealing, but you may be able to “reprogram” your brain to think about the week differently. Continued here S63 You Need to Watch the Smartest Tom Cruise Sequel on Amazon Prime By almost any metric, Top Gun: Maverick was a smash success. It was one of the highest-grossing movies of 2022, a Best Picture nominee, and it received widespread critical acclaim. Anytime a movie earns praise from that many sources, it’s natural for detractors to come out of the woodwork and try to knock it down a peg. Fair enough. Every movie has flaws, and the movies worth thinking about are ones that can handle a little criticism. There’s one line of attack, though, that doesn’t pass the smell test. Top Gun: Maverick was one of the five movies nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars this year, an unlikely nod given how many more obviously great scripts could have filled its slot. After that nomination, critics were inclined to make fun of the movie’s script, pointing out, for example, that Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell literally throws the rulebook out on his first day of teaching. And yet the script for Maverick was always the secret to the movie’s success. Continued here S44 3D-printing the brain's blood vessels with silicone could improve and personalize neurosurgery - Many neurosurgeons practice each surgery before they get into the operating room based on models of what they know about the patient’s brain. But the current models neurosurgeons use for training don’t mimic real blood vessels well. They provide unrealistic tactile feedback, lack small but important structural details and often exclude entire anatomical components that determine how each procedure will be performed. Realistic and personalized replicas of patient brains during pre-surgery simulations could reduce error in real surgical procedures. 3D printing, however, could make replicas with the soft feel and the structural accuracy surgeons need. Continued here S51 How Black children in England's schools are made to feel like the way they speak is wrong Whiteness is an invention of the modern, colonial age. It refers to the racialisation of white people and the disproportionate privilege – social, linguistic, economic, political – that comes with this. Crucially, as an invention, whiteness is not innate – it is taught. As an educational project, whiteness is designed to maintain racial hierarchies. Whether or not that intention remains or is recognised in modern schools, the racism underpinning that educational project continues to shape education in England. Continued here S43 How do superconductors work? A physicist explains what it means to have resistance-free electricity The modern world runs on electricity, and wires are what carry that electricity to every light, television, heating system, cellphone and computer on the planet. Unfortunately, on average, about 5% of the power generated at a coal or solar power plant is lost as the electricity is transmitted from the plant to its final destination. This amounts to a US$6 billion loss annually in the U.S. alone. To see why these recent advances are so exciting and what impact they may have on the world, it’s important to understand how superconducting materials work. Continued here S40 Plastic fibres stunt growth in mussels by more than a third - here's why this is a concern Plastic pollution poses a threat to marine wildlife. The plastic bags, bottles and straws that we see strewn across beaches have long been identified as a danger. But tiny fragments of plastic – called microplastics – that are less than 5mm in size are also a major source. Microfibres are the most common type of microplastic and account for up to 91% of the microplastics that float around our seas. These minuscule fibres are shed from textiles as a result of the wearing and washing of clothes, and from the weathering and abrasion of marine equipment. Continued here S47 'A toxic policy with little returns' - lessons for the UK-Rwanda deal from Australia and the US One afternoon in mid-June, I sat with Ethan*, a local islander, at Nauru’s boat harbour. He was speaking about how life had changed in the country since the asylum deal with Australia was agreed. Just a few years before my arrival in 2016, the small Pacific island had once again been financed to process the asylum claims of migrants attempting to reach Australia. If successful, refugees would be resettled locally around the island. Successive Australian governments had taken a tough zero-tolerance approach, making sure that anyone making their way by boat without documentation would “never settle in Australia”. Not far from where we sat, placards covered the fence of a refugee resettlement compound, reading: “We’re refugees not criminals,” and “Freedom is a Right Not a Crime, We Want Justice.” Continued here S49 IPCC's conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) synthesis report recently landed with an authoritative thump, giving voice to hundreds of scientists endeavouring to understand the unfolding calamity of global heating. What’s changed since the last one in 2014? Well, we’ve dumped an additional third of a trillion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere, primarily from burning fossil fuels. While world leaders promised to cut global emissions, they have presided over a 5% rise. The new report evokes a mild sense of urgency, calling on governments to mobilise finance to accelerate the uptake of green technology. But its conclusions are far removed from a direct interpretation of the IPCC’s own carbon budgets (the total amount of CO₂ scientists estimate can be put into the atmosphere for a given temperature rise). Continued here S45 Reaction to bronze sculpture of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr. in Boston hasn't been good - and that's not bad for art that shatters conventions As an acclaimed photographer and conceptual artist, Hank Willis Thomas has grown accustomed to criticisms of his unconventional art and concepts of identity. But even Thomas had never experienced anything like the reaction to his latest sculpture, designed to commemorate the lives of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr., two of the most revered civil rights leaders in modern American history. Continued here S39 Succession planning: not all family businesses feud - here's how they help younger generations take over Director, Centre for Family Business, Department of Entrepreneurship and Strategy, Lancaster University When the world’s richest and most powerful families deal with the tricky task of succession planning, it can attract a lot of interest. Think of news reports from the Murdoch’s media empire or, more recently, luxury goods company LVMH. Even fictional clans such as the Roys of TV show Succession attract massive global audiences with tales of dysfunction as members battle for control of the family firm. Continued here S41 Why elite athletes should develop mindfulness to up their game Athletes at the very highest level of their sport face the challenge of performing consistently under pressure amid many potential distractions, including performance anxiety, crowd behaviour, their own and others’ expectations, and the responses of their opponents. The performance of players in the 2023 Australian Open, for example, demonstrated the psychological factors needed to succeed at elite-level tennis. Continued here S62 The Myth of the Alpha Wolf In 1958, as part of a research project on wolves, David Mech, a graduate student in wildlife ecology at Purdue, was flying over Isle Royale National Park, on Lake Superior. From above, he saw a wolf pack capture and kill a moose. This was rare. More than nine times out of ten, he had witnessed the wolves’ prey escape. “I wanted to see how old this moose was, and to see if it was ill,” Mech told me recently. He had the pilot drop him off some distance away, and snowshoed in. “I remember arriving to the edge of this clearing, and there were these fifteen wolves feeding on this moose,” he said. He didn’t know how the wolves would react when they saw him. “Long ago, when I started, we knew very little about wolves in the wild. We knew that they lived in packs, that they preyed on large animals, and that they howled. And the standard things from storybooks.” Upon spotting him, the wolves ran off, leaving behind the moose carcass. “They could have attacked me,” he said. “They could have had something more to eat!” The wolf, as he later described it in print, is “one of the wildest and shyest of all the animals in the northern wilderness.” The Isle Royale study, which was started by Durward Allen, a celebrated biologist, was one of the earliest major studies of wolves in their natural setting. (It was inspired in part by “The Wolves of Mt. McKinley,” a monograph published by Adolph Murie, in 1944. Murie had been asked by the National Park Service to look at the relationship between timber wolves and Dall sheep in the area; Murie, after walking thousands of miles over three summers, concluded that the various fauna populations—including caribou and grizzly bears—were keeping one another in balance. A decade later, the Park Service instituted protections against wolf-eradication efforts there.) Moose had been known to have come to Isle Royale in the early twentieth century; the wolves had first arrived in the late nineteen-forties, having crossed an ice bridge from Canada. The island was only two hundred and ten square miles, and the wolves tended to follow waterways and shorelines, which made it easier to keep track of them. Scientists flying overhead in winter could see their footprints in the snow. Continued here S46 40 years ago 'A Nation at Risk' warned of a 'rising tide of mediocrity' in US schools - has anything changed? The National Commission on Excellence in Education’s release of a report titled “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 was a pivotal point in the history of American education. The report used dire language, lamenting that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” Using Cold War language, the report also famously stated: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” Continued here Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Followers Blog Archive ►  2024 (50) ►  October (2) ►  August (2) ►  July (4) ►  June (3) ►  May (5) ►  April (4) ►  March (2) ►  February (10) ►  January (18) ▼  2023 (834) ►  December (20) ►  November (54) ►  October (44) ►  September (108) ►  August (91) ►  July (29) ►  June (68) ►  May (104) ►  April (33) ▼  March (30) Mar 28, 2023 - 6 Questions to Ask Yourself When Yo... March 27, 2023 - A Ukrainian ballerina displaced b... 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