Wyze Makes Wi-Fi Slightly More Affordable With Mesh Routers

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Wyze Makes Wi-Fi Slightly More Affordable With Mesh Routers If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED Wyze’s mission to democratize the smart home started with a string of jaw-droppingly cheap devices that matched more expensive rivals on features. Its indoor and outdoor security cameras and video doorbell have all won our recommendations, but this is the first time Wyze has released a Wi-Fi mesh router.  Continued here

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As Kenya's crops fail, a fight over GMOs rages the middle of its worst drought in 40 years. In the parched north of the country, rivers are running dry and millions of livestock have perished due to lack of food. Around 4.4 million Kenyans don’t have enough to eat, and the situation will worsen if the coming rainy season fails like the previous five. “I’ve never seen it so bad. There’s nothing in the farms, the drought is too harsh,” says Daniel Magondo, a cotton and maize farmer in central Kenya. Continued here

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The Best Vinyl Accessories to Jazz Up Your Analog Audio 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 Whether you've just started spinning analog audio or you’ve been building a collection for years, good vinyl accessories can take your enjoyment—and your records’ longevity—to the next level. I’ve spent the better part of the past decade messing with some of the most lauded tools for cleaning, setting up, and maintaining record players, and these are my favorites. Plenty of these accessories are affordable, and they make great gifts too. Continued here

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HBO's The Last of Us episode 8 ruins one of the game's best villains New episodes of The Last of Us are premiering on HBO every Sunday night, and Ars' Kyle Orland (who's played the games) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn't) will be talking about them here every Monday morning. While these recaps don't delve into every single plot point of the episode, there are obviously heavy spoilers contained within, so go watch the episode first if you want to go in fresh. Continued here

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Mathematicians Roll the Dice and Get Rock-Paper-Scissors As Bill Gates tells the story, Warren Buffett once challenged him to a game of dice. Each would select one of four dice belonging to Buffett, and then they’d roll, with the higher number winning. These weren’t standard dice—they had a different assortment of numbers than the usual 1 through 6. Buffett offered to let Gates choose first, so he could pick the strongest die. But after Gates examined the dice, he returned a counterproposal: Buffett should pick first. Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research develop­ments and trends in mathe­matics and the physical and life sciences. Continued here

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Fast and Pluribus: Impacts of a Globalizing McDonald's - JSTOR Daily The expansion of McDonald’s in the twentieth century brought the fast food chain to more than 100 countries. But how well did it integrate into its new home(s)? The connection between globalization and McDonald’s is a tale of scholarly metonymy. There’s no textual shortage of evidence that references the now-global fast food chain’s success in other countries, often linking it to themes of self-sufficiency, post-industrial stability, and democracy-formed capitalism. Continued here

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These Are Our Favorite Cordless Vacuums 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 A cordless vacuum might not change your life, but it can make the housework easier. Not being tethered to the wall is freedom you didn't know you needed, letting you move from room to room without having to unplug and find a closer outlet. They're also generally lighter and take up less space than upright vacs, and they're great for getting under couches or coffee tables. Continued here

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Iran Needs to Believe America’s Threat If the U.S. does not take forceful action to check Tehran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb, Israel will. That’s a much more dangerous scenario. While the international community was focused on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inspectors from the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), discovered uranium residue enriched to 84 percent in Iranian centrifuge cascades. Weapons-grade fissile material is typically characterized as uranium enriched to 90 percent, but it is worth recalling that the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945 was a fission weapon enriched to an average of 80 percent. The Iranians may claim that they are not enriching beyond 60 percent, and that these are mere particles, but the discovery should set off alarm bells. Continued here

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The Only Good Portrayal of a Marvel Villain Bhumi Tharoor’s culture and entertainment picks include bachata music, the Marvel series Daredevil, and Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry. 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. Continued here

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When It Comes to OnlyFans, Humans Can Outcompete AI In the spring of 2001, when I was just 18 years old, I launched a multiyear career as an online porn model and cam girl, giving paying customers access to my naked body in the form of photo sets and weekly cam shows broadcast in the members’ sections of my paysites. By today’s standards, the work I did was laughably low-fi. The bulk of what I put out into the world was just softcore stills. Even my cam shows only offered viewers the chance to watch an image refresh every 15 seconds or so, basically providing access to a slow-moving digital flipbook. Over the course of three and a half years, I only shot two videos—and one of them was completely silent, thanks to a malfunctioning microphone. And yet people still paid to see me naked. They joined the websites that I modeled for. They paid me directly for private shows that would play out on a custom link available to them, and them alone. It seemed that nudity was enough to overcome any shortcomings in production value: The images could be bad or blurry or low res, but as long as there were tits available to view, I had a marketable product. Continued here

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Apple has a secret project to help people with diabetes Apple is developing technology to build noninvasive blood glucose monitoring right into its smartwatches, according to a report from Bloomberg — freeing people with diabetes (PWD) from painful needle pricks to test their blood sugar levels and potentially helping people with pre-diabetes avoid developing the disease. The challenge: An estimated one in 10 Americans has diabetes. This means their bodies either don’t make insulin or can’t use it effectively to control the amount of glucose (a simple sugar) in their blood. Over time, chronically high blood sugar will damage the kidneys, heart, nerves, and eyes, leading to kidney and heart disease, as well as vision loss and even limb amputation. Continued here

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The LastPass Hack Somehow Gets Worse Chinese hackers proved themselves to be as prolific and invasive as ever this week with new findings revealing that in February 2022, Beijing-backed hackers compromised the email server of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, an intergovernmental body of 10 Southeast Asian countries. The security alert, first reported by WIRED, comes as China has escalated its hacking in the region amidst rising tensions. Meanwhile, with Russia facing economic sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has been trying to address gaps in its tech sector. Now, we've learned, it's scrambling to get a home-brewed Android phone off the ground this year. The National Computer Corporation company, a Russian IT giant, says it will somehow produce and sell 100,000 smartphones and tablets by the end of 2023. Though Android is an open-source platform, there are steps Google could take to restrict the license for the new Russian phone that could ultimately force the project to seek a different mobile operating system. Continued here � S7 A Privacy Hero's Final Wish: An Institute to Redirect AI's Future About a week before the privacy and technology luminary Peter Eckersley unexpectedly died last September, he reached out to artificial intelligence entrepreneur Deger Turan. Eckersley wanted to persuade Turan to be the president of Eckersley's brainchild, a new institute that aimed to do nothing less ambitious than course-correct AI's evolution to safeguard the future of humanity. Eckersley explained he couldn't run this project himself: He was having serious health issues due to colon cancer, and the organization's co-founder, Brittney Gallagher, was very pregnant and about to go on maternity leave. But Turan wouldn't be alone, Eckersley assured him—as soon as his illness was resolved, he'd be back to serve as the group's chief scientist. They agreed to meet in San Francisco a few days later to hash out a plan. Continued here S60 Lung Cancer Rates Are Soaring Among Unlikely Groups — an Oncologist Explains Why When many people think of an average lung cancer patient, they often imagine an older man smoking. But the face of lung cancer has changed. Over the past 15 years, more women, never smokers, and younger people have been diagnosed with lung cancer. In fact, lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women, and more women die from lung cancer than breast, ovarian, and colorectal cancer each year. The American Lung Association reports that while lung cancer rates have risen by 79 percent for women over the last 44 years, they decreased by 43 percent for men. And for the first time in history, more young women than men are diagnosed with lung cancer. Continued here � S18 What Does ‘SNL’ Think of Straight Adult Men? The sketch show’s latest parody of emotionally distant men had a surprising amount of heart. Super Bowl winners once went to Disney World to celebrate their victories, but Saturday Night Live has occasionally offered another option. Last night, Travis Kelce—the Kansas City Chiefs tight end and two-time Super Bowl champion—joined the likes of the quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, each of whom hosted the sketch show shortly after winning the big game. Kelce’s towering athletic presence, a rarity on the SNL stage, gave the show an opportunity to examine masculinity from various angles, including with a surprisingly emotional tenor. Continued here S40 A Better Way to Map Brand Strategy Companies have long used perceptual mapping to understand how consumers feel about their brands relative to competitors’, to find gaps in the marketplace, and to develop brand positions. But the business value of these maps is limited because they fail to link a brand’s market position to business performance metrics such as pricing and sales. Other marketing tools measure brands on yardsticks such as market share, growth rate, and profitability but fail to take consumer perceptions into consideration. Continued here � S10 Unearthing secrets of human sacrifice In the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, the demigod and his comrade Enkidu rip out the heart of the  Bull of Heaven as a gift to the sun god Shamash. This bloody act is far from the only time sacrifice makes an appearance in the world’s most ancient stories, and in some tales such rituals claim human lives, or almost. In Greek myth, King Agamemnon decides to sacrifice his daughter  Iphigenia to Artemis as payment for letting the Greek fleet sail to Troy. In the book of Genesis,  Abraham nearly sacrifices his son Isaac to God, with an angel staying Abraham’s hand only at the last minute. But human sacrifice is not merely the stuff of legends: Archaeologists have found evidence of it at sites across the globe. Sacrificial pits that dot the site of Yinxu, the last capital of China’s Shang dynasty, offer one notable example. The earliest Chinese dynasty to leave an archaeological record, the Shang era spanned from about 1600 BC to 1000 BC. More than 13,000 people were sacrificed at Yinxu over a roughly 200-year period, scientists estimate, with each sacrificial ritual claiming 50 human victims on average. Continued here S8 Play this card game to solve your team’s biggest problem Successful communication is at the heart of great teamwork, but words can mean different things to different people. We all tend to project our own biases onto commonly used words. Mary and David Sherwin — experts in team dynamics — have devised Teamwords, a collaborative card-based team-building system that cuts through differences to create consensus. Continued here S68 David Bowie: five must-have items for the V&A's new centre The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has announced the opening of a new David Bowie Centre for the Performing Arts in 2025 at V&A East Storehouse in east London. This follows the news that the museum has acquired – through donation – the artist’s fabled archive. This collection of over 80,000 objects formed the basis of the museum’s 2013 exhibition David Bowie Is. It includes personal correspondence, lyric sheets, photographs, costumes, set designs, music awards, films, album artwork, instruments and plans for unrealised projects. Continued here S21 Rocky Has Always Been Anime. 'Creed III' Proves It. Michael B. Jordan brings his love of anime to the Rocky films, but the story of Rocky Balboa has always been anime at heart. The Rocky franchise, which began with the Oscar-winning Rocky in 1976, is now a nine-film saga with the release of Creed III from Michael B. Jordan (who stars in and directs the latest picture). A millennial who came of age in the time of Toonami, MBJ has made it clear to anyone who will listen that he loves anime. It isn’t just a branding thing, it’s legitimately his lifestyle. Continued here S63 Tabloid newspapers are seen as sensationalist - but South Africa's Daily Sun flipped that script during COVID-19 Tabloid journalism usually refers to short, easily readable and mostly human-interest news, presented in a highly visual and sensationalist style. “Tabloidisation” has become shorthand for the deterioration of journalistic standards. Newspapers like this are often criticised for diverting readers from serious news and analysis towards entertainment. They are viewed as low-quality because of their focus on sports, scandal and entertainment over politics or other serious social issues. Continued here S37 Research: Why Leaders Should Be Open About Their Flaws Leaders often struggle to come across as authentic. New research finds that one reason is they frequently choose to present their strengths and intentionally avoid disclosing their weaknesses. A team of researchers asked leaders in various organizations to write how they would introduce themselves to prospective workers. Most leaders only revealed their strengths. This is a mistake. Revealing personal foibles — as long as they are not serious personal shortcomings — makes leaders come across as authentic and generates good will and trust. Continued here S14 We’re All Invited to the Lighthouse To the Lighthouse, from the first word of its title, is a novel that moves. Here it comes striding across the lawn, with its hair in long, curving crimps and a deerstalker hat on its head, with a bag in one hand and a child trailing from the other. It is coming to find you, its face lights up, there is something in this world for you to do. I had met Virginia Woolf before I ever opened her books. I knew what she looked like and what had happened to her; I knew that her books took place inside the human mind and that I had my whole life to enter them. My premonitory sense of what her novels were about—Mrs. Dalloway is about some lady, The Waves is about … waves, To the Lighthouse is about going to a lighthouse—turned out to be basically accurate. Yet I put off To the Lighthouse for a long time, in order to live in delicious anticipation of it. There is a pleasure to be had in putting off the classics; as soon as you open Bleak House, you foreclose all other possibilities of what it could be, and there sits Mr. Krook in his unchanging grease spot, always to look the same, never to raise a hand differently. As long as it remains unread, the story can be anything—free, immortal, drowsing between white sheets. Yet if you are a reader, this pleasure can be drawn out for only so long. Continued here S65 The northern lights appeared in southern England twice in one week - here's why this could happen again soon People across the UK, from the Shetland Islands to Somerset and from Norfolk to Northern Ireland, have been treated to a stunning display of the aurora borealis or northern lights recently. But what causes this beautiful phenomena and why has it appeared so far south? For thousands of years, people associated the ghostly northern lights with the world of restless spirits. But over the last century, science has revealed that aurorae originate in the area surrounding our planet. The near-Earth region of space is known as the magnetosphere. It is a cocktail of atoms and molecules from the Earth’s upper atmosphere, shattered and heated by solar radiation (electromagnetic radiation emitted by the Sun). Continued here S41 How the Moon is making days longer on Earth Throughout human history the Moon has been an inextricable, ghostly presence above the Earth. Its gentle gravitational tug sets the rhythm of the tides, while its pale light illuminates the nocturnal nuptials of many species. Entire civilisations have set their calendars by it as it has waxed and waned, and some animals – such as dung beetles – use sunlight reflecting off the Moon's surface to help them navigate. More crucially, the Moon may have helped to create the conditions that make life on our planet possible, according to some theories, and may even have helped to kickstart life on Earth in the first place. Its eccentric orbit around our planet is thought to also play a role in some of the important weather systems that dominate our lives today. Continued here S39 Everything You (Don't) Want to Know About Raising Capital Most entrepreneurs understand that if the fundamentals of a business idea—the management team, the market opportunities, the operating systems and controls—are sound, chances are there’s money out there. The challenge of landing that capital to grow a company can be exhilarating. But as exciting as the money search may be, it is equally threatening. Built into the process are certain harsh realities that can seriously damage a business. Entrepreneurs cannot escape them but, by knowing what they are, can at least prepare for them. Continued here S9 5 questions to help you assess the ethics of future innovations It seems like every day we’re bombarded with new inventions and innovations poised to transform the world. Quantum computers promise to exploit multidimensional spaces to solve previously impossible problems. 3-D printers promise to remodel the way we manufacture food, clothes, and spare parts. Synthetic biology promises to refashion entire organisms. And artificial intelligence promises to conquer jobs performed by humans for hundreds of years. What are we to make of these claims? That depends on whom you ask. Proponents believe these innovations will change the world for the better, citing their potential to make it cleaner, safer, or more productive for more people. Conversely, opponents spin stories of unintended consequences and doomsday scenarios — if they don’t outright question the technology’s feasibility. Continued here S67 Estonian elections: conquered by Russia for centuries, why this Baltic country is worried about the Ukraine war Russia’s war in Ukraine has quickly refocused the politics of its Baltic neighbours. Renewed threats to national security have swiftly risen to the top of each nation’s priorities. In autumn 2022, Estonia like other Baltic countries, restricted travel over its land borders from Russia. Flights were already banned from Russia as part of an EU-wide decision. St Petersburg is only 229 miles away from Estonia’s capital Tallinn, and Estonians are all too aware of their recent history with Russia including being conquered by the Russian empire from 1710 and forced to become part of the Soviet Union in the 20th century. It shares memories of Russification and suppression of its language with Ukraine. Continued here S16 The Secret to Loving Winter When I was getting ready to leave my hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, for college on the East Coast more than a decade ago, weather warnings came from everyone. “Get ready for that New England winter!” “I hope you have a big coat!” “Ooh, I hear it gets cold up there!” This cautioning from friends and neighbors confused me. In my 18 years in the Midwest, I’d experienced huge snowfalls, multiple stretches of subzero temperatures, and an ice storm that closed school for three blissful days. Winter to my midwestern self meant sledding on school-cafeteria trays and poking Duraflame logs while in my pajamas and sneaking an extra packet of Swiss Miss into my mug. The average winter temperature in Missouri is only 4 degrees warmer than that in Massachusetts; other midwestern states such as Minnesota and North Dakota reliably sink to 12 degrees Fahrenheit in the colder months. What changed in those thousand or so miles to make the season “brutal,” “punishing,” and worthy of such grave warnings? Continued here S20 The Worm Moon Is Coming This Week The bright glow of March’s full Moon heralds the end of winter and the beginning of spring for cultures throughout the Northern Hemisphere. From the night of Sunday, March 5 through the morning of Wednesday, March 8, the Moon will be full and glowing brightly in the night sky. Called the Worm Moon, it makes for excellent viewing of our nearest celestial neighbor just before seasons change Continued here S38 Finally, Evidence That Diversity Improves Financial Performance Researchers have struggled to establish a causal relationship between diversity and financial performance—especially at large companies, where decision rights and incentives can be murky, and the effects of any given choice can be tough to pin down. So the authors chose a “lab rat” with fewer barriers to understanding: the venture capital industry. Continued here S35 Global Business Speaks English Like it or not, English is the global language of business. Today 1.75 billion people speak English at a useful level—that’s one in four of us. Multinational companies such as Airbus, Daimler-Chrysler, SAP, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, and Microsoft in Beijing have mandated English as the corporate language. And any company with a global presence or global aspirations would be wise to do the same, says HBS professor Tsedal Neeley, to ensure good communication and collaboration with customers, suppliers, business partners, and other stakeholders. Continued here S34 80 Years Ago, A Highly Anticipated Monster Movie Invented an Unstoppable Trend The Marvel Cinematic Universe. The DC Extended Universe. The Immortal Universe. The MonsterVerse. The Miyagiverse. Seemingly every modern property is part of a shared universe combining characters and stories from different series. While Marvel’s massive success is clearly the impetus for the current gold rush, the origins of the cinematic universe can be traced back to one goofy Universal monster movie released 80 years ago. The first of the so-called “monster rallies,” Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man isn’t a top-tier movie from the golden age of Universal monsters, which includes classics like Tod Browning’s Dracula, James Whale’s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, and Karl Freund’s The Mummy. The screenplay, by The Wolf Man screenwriter Curt Siodmak, is ungainly and lopsided, heavily favoring one of the title characters. The direction by Roy William Neill lacks the sophistication of masters like Browning and Whale. The performances are stiff and awkward, and the promised battle between two iconic creatures doesn’t occur until a few minutes before the movie ends. Continued here S36 A Smarter Strategy for Using Robots This article introduces positive-­sum automation, which enables productivity and flexibility. To achieve it, companies must design technology that makes it easier for line employees to train and debug robots; use a bottom-up approach to identifying what tasks should be automated; and choose the right metrics for measuring success. Continued here S22 Trust, Betrayal, and the Nexus of Mathematics and Morality: The Prisoner's Dilemma Animated “Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present,” Albert Camus wrote as he considered what it really means to be in solidarity with justice — an elegantly phrased reminder that the decisions we make today are the only fulcrum by which we move the outcomes of tomorrow. And yet the greatest pitfall of human consciousness might be our habitual forgetting of this fundamental fact. In 1950, two mathematicians working on game theory devised a cruelly brilliant thought experiment demonstrating just how poorly we manage to calibrate future outcomes for our own best interests, exposing a secret underground of consciousness where mathematics and morality converge. Known as The Prisoner’s Dilemma, it illuminates the complex dynamics that govern loyalty, betrayal, collaboration, and trust — dynamics that play out in myriad subtle ways across our everyday lives. The classic thought experiment comes alive with unexpected delight in this animated short film from TED-Ed by economist Lucas Husted and animators Ivana Bošnjak and Thomas Johnson Volda: Continued here S24 The Republicans Begin to Eye 2024 On August 6, 2015, Donald Trump appeared at the first Republican Party primary debate of the 2016 Presidential cycle, hosted by Fox News. Bret Baier asked all the candidates onstage if they would endorse the eventual Republican nominee, whomever that might be, and rule out running as an Independent. Trump alone declined, stating, “I cannot say.” Come next August, another season of Republican Presidential-primary debates is set to begin, and candidate Trump is again a seismic force of instability in the G.O.P. Last week, the Republican National Committee chair said that, during the 2024 cycle, all participants in its televised primary debates should first sign a “loyalty pledge” promising to support whichever candidate is finally selected to take on the Democratic nominee—presumably Joe Biden. Trump has not indicated that he will sign such a pledge; last month, he told the radio host Hugh Hewitt that his support for the Republican standard-bearer in 2024 “would have to depend on who the nominee was.” Some of Trump’s most ardent Republican opponents feel similarly; Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas, who is considering joining the race, told the Washington Post that he has doubts about promising to back Trump if he becomes the nominee. Continued here S64 New Brexit deal will be better for Northern Ireland's economy than the protocol, research suggests UK prime minister Rishi Sunak has said Northern Ireland will be “the world’s most exciting economic zone” due to its access to the EU single market under the latest post-Brexit trading deal between the EU and UK. The details of the Windsor framework are still being pored over by politicians and business leaders across the UK, and particularly those in Northern Ireland. Continued here S25 You Need to Watch the Most Intriguing Sci-Fi Movie on HBO Max ASAP Brace yourself for a searing question that penetrates straight to the heart of modern culture: What if social media is sometimes bad for us? You may be somewhat familiar with this query if you’ve watched Black Mirror, or Mr. Robot, or Silicon Valley, or Ingrid Goes West, or Not Okay, or if you’ve read a single newspaper article this century, or if you’ve been exposed to Twitter radiation for more than 10 seconds, or if you’ve ever suffered the misfortune of meeting an Instagram influencer. We’re as obsessed with questioning the healthiness of social media as we are with continuing to use it anyway. Continued here S29 Play This Thought-Provoking Indie Epic Before It Leaves Game Pass America is a myth. Sure, the United States is real. A real country full of gadgets and fast food, but the concept of “America” is really about the nation’s soul. What exists at the heart of America? Who are we? Where are we going? It’s a poetic notion explored by countless novels, films, and songs. But there’s really only one video game that gets at the esoteric roots of our existential musings, and it’s only on Xbox Game Pass until March 15. Continued here S33 'Last of Us' Episode 8 Trailer Reveals an Iconic Actor's Surprise Role The countdown to the buzzy season finale is officially here. But first, Episode 8 of The Last of Us promises yet another test of survival for the series’ heroes — and this time Ellie is in charge. With Joel not doing so hot following a bad wound, Ellie has been forced into the role of provider and protector. In her struggles to take care of both Joel and herself, she encounters a religious community of survivors led by a man named David. Ellie must quickly decide who she can trust because if she has learned anything from her journey so far, it’s that people can be just as monstrous as the Infected. Continued here S27 11 Years Ago, the Yakuza Team Made a Wildly Underrated Sci-Fi Shooter Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio is utterly synonymous with the Yakuza series, especially seeing as the studio itself is named after the franchise. Despite that laser focus, however, the developer has a vibrant history of varied games, and ironically the first game released under the “RGG Studio” moniker in 2012 wasn’t even a Yakuza game. Instead, it was a wildly absurd sci-fi shooter called Binary Domain, which to this day remains the studio’s most criminally overlooked title. While Binary Domain’s box art and initial marketing might have painted it as a bog standard sci-fi shooter, that’s actually incredibly far from the truth. It has its own flaws, but the further you dig the more you find a shooter with some fascinatingly experimental mechanics and a story that really goes to some thematically interesting places. Continued here S69 The 'milf': a brief cultural history, from Mrs Robinson to Stifler's mom The release of reality television series Milf Manor in January 2023 has added to the pantheon of milfs (“Mothers I’d Like to Fuck”) on screen. But from Stacy’s mum to Stifler’s mum: why is our cultural fascination with and fetishisation of the milf so enduring? The milf is an older mother who is considered sexually attractive. Not to be confused with the “cougar”, a middle-aged woman who seeks relationships with significantly younger men. Continued here S42 11 Great Deals on Sex Toys, Indestructible Tights, and Apparel The shamrock shake isn't the only thing coming back this March—some of our favorite sex toys are on sale again. We've gone ahead and whisked off the cream of that particular crop and presented them below, along with a couple of non-sex-toy deals that came our way.  Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you'd like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day. Continued here S23 How to Grow Re-enchanted with the World: A Salve for the Sense of Existential Meaninglessness and Burnout There are seasons of being when a cloak of meaninglessness seems to slip over you, over everything, muffling the song of life. It is not depression exactly, though the two conditions make eager bedfellows. Rather, it is a great hollowing that empties you of that vital force necessary for moving through the world wonder-smitten by reality, that glint of gladness at the mundane miracle of existence. A disenchantment we may call by many names — burnout, apathy, alienation — but one that visits upon every life in one form or another, at one time or another, pulsating with the unmet longing for something elemental and ancient, with the yearning to see the world as beautiful again and feel its magic, to find sanctuary in it, to contact that “submerged sunrise of wonder.” Katherine May explores what it takes to shed the cloak of meaninglessness and recover the sparkle of vitality in Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age (public library) — a shimmering chronicle of her own quest for “a better way to walk through this life,” a way that grants us “the ability to sense magic in the everyday, to channel it through our minds and bodies, to be sustained by it.” May — who has written enchantingly about wintering, resilience, and the wisdom of sadness — reaches for the other side of that coma of the soul: Continued here S52 Low-Wage Jobs Are Becoming Middle-Class Jobs Millions of low-income families are experiencing less financial stress and even a modicum of comfort. Last month, Target announced that it would pay new employees as much as $24 an hour and extend health benefits to anyone working at least 25 hours a week. The company is hardly the only one coughing up cash to lure in new workers or retain those on staff. Starbucks recently set a national minimum wage of $15. McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, and Subway franchises have been offering signing incentives. Lowe’s is giving bonuses to hourly workers this month. Continued here S57 Trump Begins His ‘Final Battle’ Former President Donald Trump gripped the CPAC lectern as he workshopped a new sales pitch: “I stand here today, and I’m the only candidate who can make this promise: I will prevent—and very easily—World War III.” (Wild applause.) “And you’re gonna have World War III, by the way.” (Confused applause.) It was just one in a string of ominous sentences that the 45th president offered tonight during his nearly two-hour headlining speech at the annual conservative conference, which for years prided itself on its ties to Ronald Reagan, but is now wholly intertwined with Trumpism, if little else. Yet even amid cultish devotion, Trump seemed bored, listless, and unanimated as he spoke to a sprawling hotel ballroom that was only three-quarters full. Continued here S70 Inquiries differ on why the 2017 Manchester bombing wasn't prevented - here's why How can you hold the intelligence and security services accountable, when what they do is secret? The third and final report from the public inquiry into the 2017 Manchester arena bombing is a useful guide. Sir John Saunders, the retired judge in charge of the inquiry, has given a damning verdict on how government agencies handled the case of Salman Abedi, the man who set off a bomb at an Ariana Grande concert. His conclusions differed significantly from earlier reviews and the reasons why are important. Continued here S32 Venus May Have a Bizarro Version of a Vital Earth Phenomenon While Earth and Venus are approximately the same size, and both lose heat at about the same rate, the internal mechanisms that drive Earth’s geologic processes differ from its neighbor. It is these Venusian geologic processes that a team of researchers led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology hopes to learn more about as they discuss both the cooling mechanisms of Venus and the potential processes behind it. The geologic processes that occur on Earth are primarily due to our planet having tectonic plates that are in constant motion from the heat escaping the core of the planet, which then rises through the mantle to the lithosphere, or the rigid outer rocky layer, that surrounds it. Once this heat is lost to space, the uppermost region of the mantle cools, while the ongoing mantle convection moves and shifts the currently known 15 to 20 tectonic plates that make up the lithosphere. These tectonic processes are a big reason why the Earth’s surface is constantly being reshaped. Venus, on the other hand, does not possess tectonic plates, so scientists have been puzzled as to how the planet loses heat and reshapes its surface. Continued here S31 Clever Ways To Make Your Home Way Better for Under $35 Keeping up with home maintenance and improvement can feel like hard, costly work. After all, major overhauls like renovations and remodels can come with major price tags. Still, the desire to upgrade your space is only natural. Thankfully, there are ways to see big improvements by investing just a little cash. In fact, sometimes the best way to elevate the feel of your home is with practical solutions to everyday problems, like nabbing some furniture that doubles as storage or making your morning routine easier with a mirror that won’t fog up. Sometimes a bit of thoughtful decor can do the trick, like brightly patterned serving bowls or chic-looking appliances that make your kitchen pop. Whatever you’re searching for, this list offers up plenty of ways to make your home look better for $35 or less. Continued here S26 This Simple, Everyday Hack Can Help Fight Antibiotic Resistance Can washing your hands help stop the evolution of antibiotic resistance? Mathematically, it’s possible. Antibiotics save lives by killing bacteria that cause infections. But antibiotics don’t just kill infection-causing bacteria or stay in the area of the body where the infection is occurring. Instead, antibiotics spread across the body and inhibit or kill any sensitive bacteria they encounter. Continued here S28 Volkswagen’s Electric Minibus is Getting a Throwback Porsche Redesign As cool as they look, they’re unfortunately not going on sale and will only have eight models made. Porsche is taking us for a trip down memory lane by re-envisioning its livery vans that date back to the ‘50s and were used as support vehicles for its race cars. Continued here S59 The Best Marvel Movie of 2022 Reveals an Incredible Quirk of Human Evolution Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s plot raises deeper questions about humans’ evolutionary relationship to the sea. Some 365 million years ago, our fishy ancestors evolved limbs that enabled them to climb out of water and onto land — forming the evolutionary bridge to all terrestrial land mammals that would one day inhabit planet Earth, including humans. Continued here S30 Coral and Other Marine Animals Have a Surprising Tie to the Moon It’s an evening at the northern tip of the Red Sea, in the Gulf of Aqaba, and Tom Shlesinger readies to take a dive. During the day, the seafloor is full of life and color; at night, it looks much more alien. Shlesinger is waiting for a phenomenon that occurs once a year for a plethora of coral species, often several nights after the Full Moon. Guided by a flashlight, he spots it: coral releasing a colorful bundle of eggs and sperm tightly packed together. “You’re looking at it, and it starts to flow to the surface,” Shlesinger says. “Then you raise your head, and you turn around, and you realize: All the colonies from the same species are doing it just now.” Continued here S49 Cosmic rays passing through Great Pyramid help reveal hidden corridor Of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only one is left standing: the Great Pyramid, located on the Giza plateau in Egypt. Built by the pharaoh Khufu about 4,500 years ago, it was the tallest human-made building on the planet until it was eclipsed in 1889 by the Eiffel Tower. It remains an enduring testament to the ingenuity and determination of humanity. It’s also an edifice shrouded in mystery. Was it ever used as a burial chamber? Are there undiscovered cavities inside it? If a mummy is hidden somewhere inside, does the mummy also have a curse? Was it built using UFO technology? (Okay, some mysteries are more realistic than others, but many unanswered questions still remain.)  Continued here S43 Climate Change Is Making Alaska's Legendary Iditarod Harder to Run This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Mike Williams Jr. doesn't remember when he started mushing, but once he was strong enough to handle the sled dogs, it became his passion. At first, he mushed after school, taking his father's dogs on 3- and 4-mile trails near his home in Akiak, Alaska. He ran the Iditarod for the first time in 2010 and has competed seven times since. Continued here S44 Apple Reins in ChatGPT-Powered Apps The artificial intelligence incursion has made its way to the App Store. BlueMail, an app that uses AI to write emails and manage people’s calendars, was set to release an update to its service that would utilize OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT engine. Apple, citing ChatGPT’s ability to spew out nearly any kind of text imaginable, blocked BlueMail’s updates out of concern that it could generate text that would be offensive or unfit for minors. Apple didn’t ban BlueMail from the App Store entirely. It just stopped the app maker from publishing the update without content restriction filters. Still, BlueMail’s developer has protested the move, saying Apple was stifling its innovation efforts.  Continued here S46 Is science about to end? In his 1996 book The End of Science, John Horgan argued that scientists were close to answering nearly all the big questions about our Universe. Was he right? The theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder doesn’t think so. As she points out, the Standard Model of physics, which describes the behavior of particles and their interactions, is still incomplete as it does not include gravity. What’s more, the measurement problem in quantum mechanics remains unsolved, and understanding this could lead to significant breakthroughs. Continued here S55 A Do-Nothing Day Makes Life Better 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. “A few years ago, my wife, Angie, and I made a pact,” Jason Heller writes in The Atlantic. “Every Sunday, we swore to each other, we will abstain from work. And we kept our promise: On the second day of each weekend, we start our morning and end our night by bingeing TV in bed. In the middle of the day, we binge TV on the couch, taking breaks exclusively to nap or read.” The anxiety of looming to-do lists sometimes creeps in, but “we fight to stay still,” he writes. Continued here S51 The sketchy plan to build a Russian Android phone Since the invasion of Ukraine one year ago, Russia has faced an exodus of tech companies and services. This includes the exit of Samsung and Apple, two of the world’s most popular smartphone brands. In response, the country has doubled down on its efforts to attain technological self-sufficiency, including creating a new Android smartphone. Continued here S48 Breakthrough study discovers that psychedelics breach our neurons The clinical evidence for using psychedelics to treat major depressive disorder, PTSD, addiction, and other mental health conditions is building. But despite the growing pile of data, we do not know just how psychedelics might be helping. (This isn’t unusual, by the way — we still don’t really know why most antidepressants work, just that they do.) Continued here S62 Beware the Pitfalls of Agility Given the panoply of recent disruptions — including COVID-19, inflation, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — it’s no surprise that many leaders are striving to quickly dial up the agility level of their companies. Indeed, the ability to rapidly adapt to changing conditions can be a shield against disruption and a healing prescription for crisis. But organizational agility is not a panacea. There are pitfalls in the pursuit of agility that can and do produce unintended consequences. Agility is a multidimensional concept that comprises three sequential and interrelated processes: alertness to the need for change, the decision to make the change, and the mobilization of the organizational resources required to execute the change. Our agility research and observations regarding the behavior of companies, especially during the pandemic, revealed that each process contains a pitfall that can subvert its outcomes: Alertness harbors the pitfall of hubris, decision-making harbors the pitfall of impulsiveness, and mobilization harbors the pitfall of resource fatigue. Agility depends on the ability of an organization to sense and interpret signals — some obvious and unambiguous, others subtle and opaque — that emanate from and reverberate within the business environment. This alertness enables companies to respond to disruptions, challenges, and opportunities in a timely manner. The mindset of leaders is the pitfall in this process, especially when it is subject to the kinds of cognitive biases that lead to hubris. Continued here S66 South Africa is exporting more food. But it needs to find new growth frontiers Wandile Sihlobo is the Chief Economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa (Agbiz) and a member of the Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC). South African agricultural exports were up for the third consecutive year in 2022, reflecting favourable production conditions and higher commodity prices. The export numbers for the full year have not yet been published. I have calculated the annual data for 2022 using quarterly trade export statistics published by Trade Map, a trade statistics portal developed by the International Trade Centre, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the World Trade Organisation. Continued here S50 Do masks work? It's a question of physics, biology, and behavior On March 28, 2020, as COVID-19 cases began to shut down public life in much of the United States, then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams issued an advisory on Twitter: The general public should not wear masks. “There is scant or conflicting evidence they benefit individual wearers in a meaningful way,” he wrote. Continued here S58 A flight attendant's secrets to surviving long-haul flights | CNN Any air travel can be stressful, but facing down a long-haul flight can be especially intimidating. Should you prioritize sleeping or eating, or both? Should you attempt to exercise in the aisle? Is it ever acceptable to take off your shoes? Continued here S53 ‘We Belong Here’ Wesaam Al-Badry was born in Iraq, where he and his family might have stayed if not for the Gulf War, which began when he was 7. In 1991, the family landed at a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia. There, Al-Badry got his first camera, a Pentax K1000. “I didn’t understand the numbers on top, shutter speed, and aperture, but I understood, over time, composition,” Al-Badry told me. Even without regular access to film or any reliable way to develop what he shot, he saw in his hands a tool for telling his story as it unfolded. Eventually, Al-Badry’s family was relocated to Lincoln, Nebraska. “When you come in as a refugee, you think everything is beautiful. You think you made it to the promised land; everybody’s equal,” he said. “But then you realize there’s little hints.” As he grew up, Al-Badry became more aware of racism. Teenagers mocked his mother’s hijab; many Americans, he realized, had been conditioned to see Arabs and Muslims as intrinsically strange, angry, or violent. Continued here S61 Dinosaurs of the Sky: Consummate 19th-Century Scottish Natural History Illustrations of Birds Birds populate our metaphors, our poems, and our children’s books, entrance our imagination with their song and their chromatically ecstatic plumage, transport us on their tender wings back to the time of the dinosaurs they evolved from. But birds are a time machine in another way, too — not only evolutionarily but culturally: While the birth of photography revolutionized many sciences, birds remained as elusive as ever, difficult to capture with lens and shutter, so that natural history illustration has remained the most expressive medium for their study and celebration. To my eye, the most consummate drawings of birds in the history of natural history date back to the 1830s, but they are not Audubon’s Birds of America — rather, they appeared on the other side of the Atlantic, in the first volume of The Edinburgh Journal of Natural History and of the Physical Sciences, with the Animal Kingdom of the Baron Cuvier, published in the wake of the pioneering paleontologist Georges Cuvier’s death. Hundreds of different species of birds — some of them now endangered, some on the brink of extinction — populate the lavishly illustrated pages, clustered in kinship groups as living visual lists of dazzling biodiversity. Continued here S45 How to Get Your Unruly Toddler to Sleep Getting to watch two kids morph from larval infants into walking, talking people has been one of the great gifts of my life. I love their wobbling steps and their hilariously expressed opinions—except when it comes to bedtime. Their brains are dribbling out their ears, I’m exhausted, and the sink is still full of dirty dishes. These kids need to go to sleep. Every parent has experienced this particular flavor of desperation, whether they’re trapped in a bed in the dark with a 3-year-old with separation anxiety, or when a toddler pops up at a particularly gory moment in The Last of Us asking for just one more drink of water. I talked to certified sleep consultants for some advice on how to get your kids snoozing. Continued here S47 Custom, 3D-printed heart replicas look and pump just like the real thing No two hearts beat alike. The size and shape of the the heart can vary from one person to the next. These differences can be particularly pronounced for people living with heart disease, as their hearts and major vessels work harder to overcome any compromised function. MIT engineers are hoping to help doctors tailor treatments to patients’ specific heart form and function, with a custom robotic heart. The team has developed a procedure to 3D print a soft and flexible replica of a patient’s heart. They can then control the replica’s action to mimic that patient’s blood-pumping ability. Continued here S54 The Pulse of Pop Music Is Changing One of the most popular songs in the world right now presents a musical riddle: Are you supposed to dance or nap? PinkPantheress’s “Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2,” featuring the rapper Ice Spice, sounds both fast and sluggish, new and old. It’s undeniably catchy and yet feels as fleeting as a mild dream. Another vexing fact: Liar is pronounced, in the chorus, “lee-yah.” Really, the No. 3 song on the Billboard Hot 100 is the culmination of a few trends, technologically driven and taste-bound. In many enclaves, music is getting faster and more fidgety. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s getting more energetic or extroverted. Welcome to the age of lo-fi beats to take stimulants to. Continued here S56 Astronomers Were Not Expecting This Humans have long found meaning in the stars, but only recently have we begun to understand whole clusters of them—galaxies, way out in the depths of space. A few nearby galaxies, such as Andromeda, have always been visible to the naked eye as a dusky smear in the night sky. Other shimmery structures became known to us after the invention of the telescope in the 17th century, along with a debate about their nature: Were they clouds of cosmic dust within our Milky Way, or “island universes” of their own? Not until the 1920s did humanity identify these glowing clouds as galaxies, when the astronomer Edwin Hubble (relying on the work of a lesser known astronomer, Henrietta Leavitt) found that some stars were too far away to belong to the Milky Way. And only in the mid-1990s, when a space telescope named for Hubble peeked farther into the universe than ever before, did we find the thousands of galaxies shimmering across the universe—island after island in a vast cosmic sea. 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... March 27, 2023 - NATO, world leaders condemn Russi... 4 ways to identify high-conflict people before it'... 3 Simple Habits to Improve Your Critical Thinking The Last of Us - a show that surprised and challen... How Business Owners Scrambled to Pull Their Funds ... 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