Watch out for dangerous combinations of over-the-counter cold medicine and prescription drugs - two pharmacoepidemiology experts explain the risks

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Watch out for dangerous combinations of over-the-counter cold medicine and prescription drugs - two pharmacoepidemiology experts explain the risks   When colds, flus and allergies hit, many people automatically turn to over-the-counter medications to push through and treat their symptoms. These include decongestants, painkillers, cough or allergy medicines and combinations thereof. Nearly 70% of adults in the U.S. use over-the-counter medications as a first-line response for treating cold and flu symptoms. Although these medications are easily accessible and widely used, it might come as a surprise to many people to learn that they are not risk-free. Continued here

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Can the Climate Fight Be Won in Court?   Climate activists are increasingly using courts to effect change. In this segment from Getting Warmer With Kal Penn, climate storyteller Alice Aedy examines how the rise of climate litigation has created a shift in the balance of power, with small groups going head-to-head with huge corporations. But will long and expensive cases really create lasting change? Continued here

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Can Adani Redevelop India's Most Famous Slum?   India's slum Dharavi gained global attention from "Slumdog Millionaire." Billionaire Gautam Adani is now leading a $620-million urban renewal project there, but what happens to its residents? Bloomberg's P.R. Sanjai explains. Continued here

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The Satellite Hack Everyone Is Finally Talking About   When Viasat’s network was hacked at the start of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian government scrambled to connect troops— and the satellite internet industry got a wakeup call. Bloomberg's Katrina Manson tells us more. Continued here

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Hands On With a Smart Gun That Actually Works   It's taken more than a decade, but startup Biofire has created a Smart Gun that actually works. The gun uses fingerprints and facial recognition to register a primary user and hopefully prevent children and teens from picking up and accidentally discharging the weapon.Ashlee Vance visited Biofire's headquarters to test the Smart Gun out and talk with founder Kai Kloepfer about the complicated questions surrounding its creation – like, will anyone buy one? Continued here

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Henrik Lundqvist on Life Off the Ice   With his playing time behind him, New York Rangers legend Henrik Lundqvist is still adjusting to post-hockey life. He talked with Scarlet Fu about the challenges of his new role as a broadcaster, having new experiences, and how he's keeping an open mind to what comes next. Continued here

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What China's Falling Population Means for Its Future   In 2022, China announced its first population decline in 60 years, a historic turning point for the world's most populous nation.Here's a look at what China's population crisis means for its future and why reversing the decline may be tough. Continued here

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The Russian Hack Everyone Is Finally Talking About   At the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a satellite network was hacked and tens of thousands lost access to the internet. And industry got a serious wakeup call. Bloomberg's Katrina Manson tells us more. Continued here

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Why the World Should Care About Credit Suisse's Downfall   Switzerland’s secret bank accounts and political neutrality turned the small Alpine nation into a financial giant. Now the demise of Credit Suisse, one of its two big banks, has shaken global finance and created a megabank in UBS that comes with new and potentially bigger risks. Bloomberg journalists trace the history of Swiss banking and how the ramifications of the Credit Suisse crisis extend far beyond the country’s borders. Continued here

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How the $120 Billion Adani Scandal Shook India   When short seller Hindenburg Research took aim at Adani Group, it triggered a financial earthquake for tycoon Gautam Adani and his empire. What happens now could alter the future of India, and affect the prospects of Prime Minister Modi. Jeanette Rodrigues and P R Sanjai report. Continued here

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The Big Problem With Carbon Offsets   Imagine a financial tool that lowers greenhouse gasses, speeds the green transition and rejuvenates forests. That’s the promise of carbon offsets, but far from the reality. In this segment from Getting Warmer, Kal Penn explains how carbon offset markets work, or in most cases don’t. Continued here

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Bogus Carbon Offsets Drive 'Carbon Neutral' Claims   Big companies have purchased carbon offsets that promise to save forests under threat. But in many cases they’re not under threat, so nothing is being saved. In this segment from Getting Warmer, Kal Penn takes a skeptical look at the effectiveness of these programs in reducing emissions. Can the carbon credits market clean up its act? Continued here

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New Trees Won't Solve Global Warming   The idea of tree-planting to offset carbon emissions has boomed in recent years. It’s cheap, appealing to consumers and companies, and allows us to feel like we’re “taking action.” But many tree planting programs don’t actually increase forest cover, improve biodiversity or sequester carbon. In this segment from Getting Warmer, climate storyteller Jack Harries explores whether planting trees is actually the best solution to the climate crisis. Continued here

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When Will the Machines Come Alive? | AI IRL   The discussion around whether AI can ever become alive or sentient is divisive. Some experts consider it a distraction from important research, while others say it's essential to ask the question. Neuroscientist and Westworld adviser David Eagleman argues that the possibility of AI developing consciousness is an important conversation to have. Former Google software engineer Blake Lemoine says his decision to go public with concerns that an AI bot had become sentient has kick-started conversations around regulation and led to greater transparency.Then, child psychologist Alison Gopnik explains why babies and young children’s ability to interact with the world around them provides a blueprint for artificial intelligence systems.Hosted by Bloomberg journalists Jackie Davalos and Nate Lanxon, Bloomberg's 12-episode series premiers April 19 and will delve into the ways that AI is transforming fields like medicine, art, warfare and crime. Big picture and conversational, AI: IRL will bring viewers to the forefront of this technology and interrogate its most persuasive evangelists and critics.#AI #artificialintelligence #technology Continued here

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Bloomberg Investigates Trailer   Bloomberg Investigates takes viewers on an immersive journey to the heart of our most powerful reporting. Award-winning journalists and the individuals whose stories they tell shed light on the critical issues facing our world. Stream starting April 26. Continued here

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Research: When A/B Testing Doesn't Tell You the Whole Story   When it comes to churn prevention, marketers traditionally start by identifying which customers are most likely to churn, and then running A/B tests to determine whether a proposed retention intervention will be effective at retaining those high-risk customers. While this strategy can be effective, the author shares new research based on field experiments with over 14,000 customers that suggests it isn’t always the best way to maximize ROI on marketing spend. Instead, the author argues that firms should use A/B test data alongside customers’ behavioral and demographic data to determine which subgroup of customers will be most sensitive to the specific intervention that’s being considered. Importantly, the data suggests that this subgroup doesn’t necessarily correspond to the “high-risk” customer group — in other words, it’s very possible that the intervention won’t be as effective at retaining high-risk customers as it will be at retaining some other group of customers. By identifying the characteristics that actually correlate with high sensitivity to a given intervention, marketers can proactively target their campaigns at the customers who will be most receptive to them, ultimately reducing churn rates and increasing ROI. Continued here

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Traditional B2B Sales and Marketing Are Becoming Obsolete   Long the elusive objective of virtually every B2B commercial team, the time for sales and marketing “integration,” has passed. Instead, the most progressive B2B commercial organizations are completely reconfiguring commercial operations to better address today’s deep misalignment between how suppliers sell and how buyers buy. Continued here

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Research: When A/B Testing Doesn't Tell You the Whole Story   When it comes to churn prevention, marketers traditionally start by identifying which customers are most likely to churn, and then running A/B tests to determine whether a proposed retention intervention will be effective at retaining those high-risk customers. While this strategy can be effective, the author shares new research based on field experiments with over 14,000 customers that suggests it isn’t always the best way to maximize ROI on marketing spend. Instead, the author argues that firms should use A/B test data alongside customers’ behavioral and demographic data to determine which subgroup of customers will be most sensitive to the specific intervention that’s being considered. Importantly, the data suggests that this subgroup doesn’t necessarily correspond to the “high-risk” customer group — in other words, it’s very possible that the intervention won’t be as effective at retaining high-risk customers as it will be at retaining some other group of customers. By identifying the characteristics that actually correlate with high sensitivity to a given intervention, marketers can proactively target their campaigns at the customers who will be most receptive to them, ultimately reducing churn rates and increasing ROI. Continued here

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Traditional B2B Sales and Marketing Are Becoming Obsolete   Long the elusive objective of virtually every B2B commercial team, the time for sales and marketing “integration,” has passed. Instead, the most progressive B2B commercial organizations are completely reconfiguring commercial operations to better address today’s deep misalignment between how suppliers sell and how buyers buy. Continued here

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Today's Most Critical Workplace Challenges Are About Systems   Critical workplace issues — e.g., the problematic quality of leadership within organizations, the threats to employee mental health and well-being, and the lack of belonging and inclusion — are primarily attributable to systemic factors embedded in organizational cultures and processes. And yet, many of these and other issues are still mainly addressed on the individual level. Why do organizations keep investing in remedies that don’t work and have little chance of working? An automatic bias in how we perceive and explain the world is a likely culprit. The author explains how that “superbias” manifests — and what leaders can do to combat it in their organizations. Continued here

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Responsible AI at Risk: Understanding and Overcoming the Risks of Third-Party AI   For the second consecutive year, MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) have assembled an international panel of AI experts that includes academics and practitioners to help us gain insights into how responsible artificial intelligence (RAI) is being implemented in organizations worldwide. Last year, we published the report “To Be a Responsible AI Leader, Focus on Being Responsible.” This year, we’re examining the extent to which organizations are addressing risks stemming from the use of internally and externally developed AI tools. To kick things off, we asked our panelists to react to what we thought would be a straightforward provocation: RAI programs effectively address the risks of using or integrating third-party AI tools. Although half of our panelists agree or strongly agree with the statement, their interpretations of it varied widely. Some panelists focused on what organizations do in practice, while others described what they ought to do in principle. Overall, there is broad agreement that RAI programs should address the risks of such tools. However, the extent to which they actually do address them in practice is another matter — one that we will dive into more deeply with our research this year. Below, we share insights from our panelists and draw on our own observations and experience working on RAI initiatives to offer recommendations on how organizations might address the risks of third-party AI tools through their RAI programs. Continued here

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Webinar: A New Way to Manage Customer Portfolios for Maximum Value   Many leaders understand that it’s important to create closer, more valuable relationships with customers. But if they aren’t actively managing their portfolios of weaker and stronger relationships, they’re missing big opportunities, according to Fred Selnes and Michael D. Johnson.In their latest research, Selnes and Johnson demonstrate why heavy emphasis on customer lifetime value (CLV) needs to evolve into more balanced consideration of customer portfolio lifetime value (CPLV). They show how better-informed decisions about managing an entire portfolio of customer relationships can lead to lower costs and increased revenue.Fred Selnes is a professor of marketing at BI Norwegian Business School and an adjunct professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway. Michael D. Johnson is the marketing department chair at the Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and dean emeritus and E.M. Statler Professor Emeritus at Cornell University. Allison Ryder is program director for MIT Sloan Management Review’s Big Ideas Initiatives. She moderated the session. Continued here

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Unlocking the Potential of Justice-Impacted Talent   April has been designated Second Chance Month in the U.S. in recognition of the importance of supporting people’s successful reentry into society and the workforce after incarceration. Amid ongoing workforce shortages, the potential benefit of supporting these community members is more significant than ever. As the U.S. economy recovers following the pandemic-induced recession, employers are scrambling to fill almost 10 million vacant jobs. At the same time, more than 70 million (1 in 3) American adults have some form of criminal record, which creates substantial — and often completely unreasonable — barriers to employment. Businesses large and small are increasingly looking to tap into the justice-impacted workforce to meet demand while becoming more inclusive. Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, there has been an ongoing reckoning for the U.S. justice system, and there remains widespread opportunity to combat the vast inequity mass incarceration perpetuates. Helping people with records bridge successful pathways to meaningful work is a way to do both. Such efforts can do more than just offer employers access to a diverse and underutilized talent pool. In the United States, 1 out of 4 Black men can expect to spend time in prison — resulting in Black males having the lowest labor force participation among men. Helping people with records join the workforce can help combat racial inequity in the U.S., honor commitments and public pledges to inclusion and social justice, and create safer communities. Continued here

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Caponata alla giudia: Sicilian aubergine and vegetable stew   Sicily has long gripped the imagination of writers and travellers, setting the stage for epic moments in film and television. But many know Sicily best through its cuisine, shaped over more than 2,000 years of conquest by everyone from the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans, to the Normans, Arabs and Spaniards. Left behind is a legacy of a flavourful, regional cuisine based primarily on grains, vegetables, legumes and fish brought to the modern world by Sicilian immigrants.One of the more historically interesting dishes of Sicily is caponata, which is somewhere between a cooked aubergine salad and a stew that vaguely resembles ratatouille. As the aubergine simmers with tomatoes, celery, olives, capers, herbs and vinegar, it all turns into a savoury, briny mix – one that tastes even better the next day. Continued here

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Joaquin Phoenix in Ari Aster's Beau Is Afraid: 'The most bizarre film of the year'   At the premiere of Ari Aster's Beau Is Afraid, the writer-director thanked the studio, A24, for being "stupid enough" to fund it. You can see where he was coming from. That's not to say that the film is bad – in many respects, it's brilliant – but no one will watch it without asking how he got to make such a mind-blowing, genre-bending, bladder-testing three-hour sprawl of Oedipal angst, despair and absurdist black comedy, with no conventional plot or character development. His previous arthouse horror dramas, Hereditary and Midsommar, may have been strange, but Beau Is Afraid is certain to rank as one of the most bizarre films of the year.More like this:-        Renfield is 'a sloppy mess'-        Eight of the best films of 2023 so far-        The horror shocker that set off a culture war Continued here

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Shakespeare's environmentalism: how his plays explore the same ecological issues we face today   Climate change, urban sprawl, air pollution, deforestation, depleted fish stocks, biodiversity and species loss: these are not exclusively modern problems that only sprang up in the last few hundred years. In fact, the common but misleading phrase “industrial revolution” masks the long history of resource extraction and ecological degradation in the British Isles stretching back at least to the arrival of the tin-hungry Romans. Renaissance England was reeling from the effects of all these problems. Often hailed as the golden age of English literature, the Renaissance was also the apex of the “little ice age”, in which a cooler climate produced poorer harvests. Continued here

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How can a French protester be arrested under British terrorism laws in London? The alarming 'schedule 7' power explained   The arrest and charging of a French publisher as he arrived in London has raised serious questions about the use and abuse of power in the UK. Ernest Moret was detained and questioned by police at St Pancras station under counter-terrorist powers, allegedly because of his involvement in the anti-government protests that have swept France in recent weeks. Moret was stopped under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, one of the most controversial counter-terrorist powers in the UK. Continued here

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Twitter drops 'government-funded' label for media organisations - here's what it should use instead   After objections from a number of major media organisations, Twitter appears to have dropped its media account labels. The labels drove at least two media organisations from the platform, and enraged followers of many others. The BBC pushed back against its initial designation of “government-funded media”. This was highly misleading given that the BBC is funded primarily through licence fees paid directly by the public. Continued here

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Raw materials, or sacred beings? Lithium extraction puts two worldviews into tension   Located in the heart of South America, Bolivia contains the largest lithium deposits in the world – an enviable position, in many countries’ eyes, as the market for electric vehicles takes off. Though EVs emit fewer greenhouse gases than fuel-powered vehicles, their batteries require more minerals – especially lithium, which is also used to make batteries for smartphones and computers.Unlike its neighbors Chile and Argentina, Bolivia has yet to become a major player in the global lithium market. In part, this is because its high-altitude salt flats aren’t suited to the usual extraction method, solar evaporation. Continued here

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Keeping NBA players on the court is no small 'feet'   The NBA playoffs provide a stage for some of the biggest and tallest athletes in the world. With an average height of 6 feet, 7 inches and an average weight of 225 pounds, players have a lot of skin, bone and muscle to support. And so while fans eagerly anticipate eye-popping dunks and crafty assists, I’ll be keeping an eye on the footwork of players like Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid and Lebron James, each of whom has had challenges keeping their feet healthy. Continued here

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Boy Scouts of America can now create $2.4 billion fund to pay claims for Scouts who survived abuse - a bankruptcy expert explains what's next   On April 19, 2023, the Boy Scouts of America declared that it has exited its bankruptcy case after clearing one of the last legal hurdles in its way. Some insurance companies and sex abuse claimants objected to the Boy Scouts’ plan to pay claimants, but the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the plan can go ahead anyway while the insurers’ appeal is pending. It’s now possible to begin the process of paying at least US$2.45 billion to resolve about 82,000 claims against the Boy Scouts and affiliated entities asserted by people who allege that they were sexually abused as children over the past 80 years. The Boy Scouts operate through the national organization known as the BSA, which includes hundreds of separate but affiliated organizations known as local councils, and faith-based or civic groups called chartered organizations. Because these troop-sponsoring nonprofit organizations across the country are responsible for ensuring the safety of children in scouting, all of them faced child sexual abuse claims. Continued here

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What's going on when the Virgin Mary appears and statues weep? The answers aren't just about science or the supernatural   Claims of appearances of the Virgin Mary and weeping statues have been common in Catholicism. And now they’re going to get a closer look – but on a worldwide scale.The Pontificia Academia Mariana Internationalis, or PAMI, recently announced an “observatory” to investigate claims of appearances of the Virgin Mary and reports of statues of her weeping oil and blood. Continued here

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Black students in Washington state played key role in the Civil Rights Movement, new book states   Marc Arsell Robinson received the 2022 Mellon Emerging Faculty Award. He was also previously a student and employee of the University of Washington and Washington State University.When it comes to civil rights history, the focus is often on the marches, boycotts, sit-ins and other protests that took place in the South. In “Washington State Rising,” Marc Arsell Robinson, assistant professor of African American history at California State University, San Bernardino, takes a look at the civil rights protests that occurred in a lesser-examined region of the United States: the Pacific Northwest. The following Q&A is about what Robinson found for his forthcoming book, which is set to be published in August 2023. Continued here

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Dominic Raab is right that the government has set a 'dangerous precedent' - but not for the reasons he thinks   Dominic Raab has resigned as deputy prime minister and secretary of state for justice following an investigation of accusations that he bullied civil servants. However, his resignation letter contained no apology and barely any admission of guilt. He instead said that he felt “duty bound” to accept the findings of the investigation against him but that he believes they were “flawed and set a dangerous precedent for the conduct of good government”. Continued here

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Joe Biden: slips of the tongue can project our own hidden thoughts, fears and anxieties   Joe Biden is proud of his Irish heritage and they say that he has “the gift of the gaffe”, given how many slips of the tongue he makes (and has been making long before he became president). In various speeches, he has confused presidents Trump and Obama. He also referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “the first lady”. Continued here

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Snailfish: the 'impossible' fish that broke two deep sea records shows the importance of ocean exploration   When thinking of animals that live in the most extreme environments on Earth most of us probably don’t think of the snailfish. Its name may not hint at extraordinary physical capabilities but the snailfish has broken the record for living at the deepest ocean depths known to humanity. The deep ocean has yet again shown us there is still much to be discovered if we only have the willingness to look. Continued here

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How extreme weather threatens to bring down UK's power lines and halt supply to homes   Storm Arwen, described by the UK’s Met Office as “one of the most powerful and damaging winter storms of the last decade”, hit the east coast of Scotland and northern England in late November 2021. Wind gusts of over 90 mph and fallen trees caused widespread damage to energy infrastructure. More than one million homes lost power and some were still disconnected over a week later.Arwen was followed by storms Dudley, Eunice and Franklin in February 2022. These storms had similarly devastating impacts on the UK’s power supply. During Storm Eunice, areas of southeastern England were left without water for five days as water treatment facilities had no power. Continued here

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How the Troubles affected healthcare in Northern Ireland   Celebrating a quarter century of “peace” since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement will undoubtedly lead many to question how much things have really changed for the better in Northern Ireland. Especially since segregation remains the norm in many areas of life, including housing and education. Attention will once again turn to the Troubles and its legacy.Between 1968 and 1998 more than 3,700 people were killed and up to 100,000 injured. It was the job of the Northern Ireland health service to treat the wounded while continuing to provide healthcare for all the other medical needs of the population. Continued here

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Hay fever could be linked to our gut and nose bacteria - and probiotics may help symptoms   For many people, spring has brought with it the dreaded symptoms of hay fever, such as itchy eyes, sneezing and a stuffy nose. Hay fever is common, affecting up to 42% of people. It occurs when the immune system overreacts to allergens including pollen.Research suggests there could be a link between hay fever and the microbiome, the collection of microorganisms that live in and on our bodies. Specifically, the composition of a person’s gut and nasal microbiomes may play a role in the development of hay fever symptoms. Continued here

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Cooking pollutes your home and increases your health risks - but better ventilation will help   Asit Kumar Mishra is funded by Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland. He is a member of International Society of Indoor Air Quality and Climate and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. Most of us will spend more than two-thirds of our lives at home. But even indoors, many people will still be exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution – much of it resulting from cooking. Continued here

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Better quality jobs are what the UK economy needs to end strikes, staff shortages and low productivity   Productivity in the UK over the last 15 years has been described as growing at a “snail’s pace”. Meanwhile, wages lag way behind inflation, and numerous sectors are suffering from staff shortages. Job quality is not just about pay. It also about elements that can be difficult to measure, such as security, autonomy, work-life balance and opportunities for progression. Continued here

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Most people already think climate change is 'here and now', despite what we've been told   A quick search on the internet for “climate change images” readily yields the familiar photograph of a lone polar bear on a shrinking block of ice. Despite signifying an impending crisis, such images make climate change seem abstract – happening a long way off (for most of us), to animals we’ve probably never encountered.The idea that climate change is perceived as “psychologically distant” – happening in the future, in distant places, to other people or animals – has long been presented as a major barrier to action on climate change. Continued here

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Beef: what your nemesis reveals about you   The Netflix series Beef is about a battle between two strangers that escalates to dramatic heights over ten episodes. What might first appear as a petty feud unravels over the series as the show deftly touches on themes of anger, frustration, abandonment and intergenerational trauma.The characters, who are strangers to each other, seem completely different. Amy Lau is a highly successful business owner on the cusp of landing a lucrative deal to sell her business. Daniel Cho is a struggling handyman who keeps getting knocked back by customers and life in general. By the end, however, we see they have much more in common than appears – both are carrying intense pain that they feel unable to share with anyone. Continued here

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'Stand your ground' laws empower armed citizens to defend property with violence - a simple mistake can get you shot, or killed   In one key respect, Ralph Yarl was fortunate. The wounds the 16-year-old suffered after being shot twice on April 13, 2023, by the owner of the house whose doorbell he rang, thinking it was where he was due to pick up his two younger brothers, did not prove fatal.Others who have made similar mistakes have died. Take Renisha McBride, who sought help after wrecking her car in a Detroit suburb in 2013, or Carson Senfield, who entered the wrong car in Tampa – thinking it was his Uber – on his 19th birthday. And then there is the case of 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis, a passenger in a car that turned around in a driveway in upstate New York on April 15, 2023. What these young people have in common is that they were killed in accidental encounters with armed property owners. Continued here

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Sudan: violence between army and militia is a symptom of an old disease that is destroying Africa   A three-day ceasefire to mark the Islamic festival of Eid-al-Fitr in Khartoum appears to be dead in the water as fighting continues in the Sudanese capital. According to the World Health Organization, more than 330 people have been killed over the past week. Now, with reports emerging that arms are being sent from Egypt and Libya, there are growing fears the situation could develop into a civil war that could draw in regional powers.The violence represents a power struggle between the country’s military, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, often referred to as Hemedti. The pair were respectively leader and deputy leader of a transitional government which was supposed to hand over to a civilian administration after the 2019 ousting of the former president, Omar al-Bashir. Instead the pair launched a military takeover in October 2021. Continued here

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Networks of silver nanowires seem to learn and remember, much like our brains   Over the past year or so, generative AI models such as ChatGPT and DALL-E have made it possible to produce vast quantities of apparently human-like, high-quality creative content from a simple series of prompts.Though highly capable – far outperforming humans in big-data pattern recognition tasks in particular – current AI systems are not intelligent in the same way we are. AI systems aren’t structured like our brains and don’t learn the same way. Continued here

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A Coming of Age in New York City's Underground   Two varieties of nostalgia merge in Adam Zhu's photo book "Nice Daze." The imagery, shot between 2013 and 2020, beginning when the artist was just sixteen, forms something like a yearbook, though not one associated with any institution. An impressionistic chronicle of the recent past, it follows Zhu's friends and his friends' friends—a multigenerational group of skateboarders, graffiti writers, artists, musicians, and attendees of crowded parties—around New York's East Village, Lower East Side, and Chinatown.Mostly, it tells a happy story, of people glad to see the kid behind the point-and-shoot. Zhu shows us, in the book's comment-less, uncaptioned procession of photos, such scenes as five bathers in an inflated kiddie pool on a rooftop, looking up at him, wherever he's perched; girls striking poses on a crowded D train; an early-career Princess Nokia, with a toothy smile, standing in the aisle of a bodega with a friend while holding crumpled bills in front of vacuum-packed bricks of Cuban-style coffee; and, in a twelve-image grid, a sunlit view of a young man assiduously rolling a blunt, step by step. But, as with anything, really, where youth is so foregrounded, there's an ever-present note of bittersweetness. As you look at Zhu's depictions of amorphous and pack-like social configurations, fleeting experiments in style and thrill-seeking, and elevated forms of doing nothing, you feel the clock quietly ticking down to adulthood. Continued here

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Elon Musk Says Rocket Exploded Because It Insisted on Working Remotely   HAWTHORNE, CA (The Borowitz Report)—One day after SpaceX’s first test flight of its Starship craft, Elon Musk claimed that the rocket exploded in midair because it insisted on working remotely.“Starship was performing perfectly well when it was on the launchpad,” Musk said. “The trouble began when it left.” Continued here

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Dogs Who Will Never Be the Same After a DNA Test Shatters Their Identity   Mitzi tested positive for the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap, which explains her predilection for used makeup-remover wipes, Monopoly pieces, and kitty litter.Rocky discovered that he is a Pembroke Welsh corgi of the royal bloodline, closely related to the illustrious Dookie. He now goes by Sir Robert, adds tea bags to his water bowl, and insists on foie gras for dinner. Continued here

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BuzzFeed, Blue Check Marks, and the End of an Internet Era   Three distinct crises unfolded online on Thursday, but in a sense all were part of the same story. One was the shutdown of BuzzFeed News, the journalism operation of the digital-content company, putting an end to a newsroom that launched in 2012, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021, and at its peak employed around a hundred journalists. Another was the vanishing from Twitter of the majority of blue check marks, the tiny icons that verified the identities of celebrities and other public figures, including journalists. Elon Musk, who has gradually dismantled Twitter since taking the company over last October, had long promised that anyone who didn’t pay for a Twitter subscription would lose their check mark, which had come to represent a certain kind of insider Internet prestige. (Even Pope Francis’s Twitter account lost its blue sigil.) Lastly, an online audience of spectators looked on, in real time, as Musk’s SpaceX Starship, the most powerful rocket on Earth, exploded several minutes into its planned flight. The conflagration served as an apt symbol: everything was blowing up, and everyone could watch.Just a decade ago, Twitter and BuzzFeed were the popular poles of a nascent social Internet. Twitter, where the hive mind of social media congregated, was faster and more fun than Facebook, more news-obsessed than the niche cultural fandoms of Tumblr. BuzzFeed was one of the first media companies to wholly embrace social media. Founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti, who also co-founded the Huffington Post, it both observed online trends and memes and created them. The site constructed entire articles out of aggregating amusing tweets, and it pioneered digital personality quizzes in the vein of “Which Harry Potter Character Are You?” In 2011, Peretti brought on the journalist Ben Smith as its editor-in-chief. Though the site carried out investigative reporting on American election campaigns and international affairs, its most famous accomplishment might be a post about a photograph of a dress that looked either blue and black or white and gold depending on the viewer’s perception. It got more than twenty-eight million views in a day. Watching both Web sites crumble at once adds to an already burgeoning sense that a certain era of the Internet has ended, and that the rules under which they once thrived have fundamentally changed. Continued here

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Jane Mayer on Justice Clarence Thomas   The cascade of revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas—the island-hopping yachting adventures underwritten by a right-wing billionaire patron, the undisclosed real-estate transactions—is raising questions about lax ethics on the Supreme Court. Judges are “supposed to be independent,” the staff writer Jane Mayer tells David Remnick, “and I think it stretches common sense to think that a judge could be independent when he takes that much money from one person.” Then David Remnick talks with Representative Barbara Lee, and with the senators Tim Kaine and Todd Young, about a bipartisan effort to scale back the President’s authority to use military force, granted during the war on terror. The music critic Hanif Abdurraqib talks about his love of concert tees; and Remnick remembers one of The New Yorker’s beloved cartoonists, Edward Koren.The staff writer discusses the latest financial disclosure scandal involving the judge, and how lax ethical standards on the Supreme Court contribute to a decline in public trust. Continued here

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Has Black Lives Matter Changed the World?   How should we think about the Black Lives Matter movement, now that three years have passed since the worldwide George Floyd protests? In sympathetic circles, the question does not usually inspire a direct answer, but, rather, a seemingly endless set of caveats and follow-up questions. What constitutes success? What changes could possibly be expected in such a short period of time? Are we talking about actual policies or are we talking about changed minds? I’ve engaged in this type of back-and-forth on several occasions during the past few years, and, though I believe the protests were, on balance, a force for good in this country, I wonder whether all this chin-scratching suggests a lack of conviction. Why don’t we have a clearer answer?In his new book, “After Black Lives Matter,” the political scientist Cedric Johnson blows right past the sort of hemming and hawing that has become de rigueur in today’s conversations about the George Floyd protests. Johnson chooses, instead, to level a provocative and expansive critique from the left of the loose collection of protest actions, organizations, and ideological movements—whether prison abolition or calls to defund the police—that make up what we now call Black Lives Matter. He agrees that unchecked police power is a societal ill that should inspire vigorous dissent. His problem is more with the “Black Lives Matter” part—not the assertion, itself, which should be self-evident, but, rather, how the shaping of the slogan and its main beneficiaries (Johnson believes these are mostly corporate entities) promoted a totalizing and obscurantist vision of race and power. Continued here

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How Lucinda Williams Found Her Muse   In my teen years, in the late nineteen-sixties, my father was adamant about cigarettes and sex. “I know a lot of teen-agers are having sex already, but if you hold off on having sex until you are eighteen, then we’ll get you the pill,” he said. “And don’t smoke cigarettes. They are bad for you.” We had a little deal, and I stuck to it. I didn’t have sex until I was eighteen. After I started the pill, though, I didn’t waste much time. Those were the days of free love. You’d just go and go and go until the bed broke or something. (The beds were cheap back then, at least the ones we were using.) I never did take to cigarettes, which I’m glad about, because not smoking has helped my singing voice mature. I don’t sound like I did when I was younger; it’s different, but just as good.I’ve been called an “erotic” songwriter. I don’t disagree, but even though I had plenty of sex when I was younger, I was never promiscuous. The brain is the real erogenous zone, at least for me, so I have to connect with somebody intellectually and almost spiritually in order to be attracted to them physically, and that rarely happens immediately. I realized early in my adult life that talking—real, honest, substantive conversation—could be superhot, and it didn’t have to result in anybody taking their clothes off for it to be erotic in a lasting way. Very often a good conversation is more memorable than fucking. Continued here

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The Future of Earth: Editor's Letter   It is a simple question that barely anyone asks themselves. Is it home? A resource? Is it merely a blue marble in a vast universe where a few sentient beings got lucky (or unlucky) enough to realize they existed?For most of the last decade, Inverse has taken a scientific approach to explaining culture and entertainment and a cultural and entertaining approach to science and technology. We like to think of ourselves as the stewards of our readers’ curiosity about their worlds — fictional and real. So in honor of Earth Day, we would like to propose the question slightly differently: What will Earth mean to you? Continued here

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How Henry Winkler Learned to Embrace His Inner Jerk on 'Barry'   The deadly skills of Barry Berkman (Bill Hader) may be a match for the physical threats of Barry’s criminal underworld, but there’s one menace he’s never been able to overcome: the need for his acting instructor’s approval. Going into the series’ fourth and final season, Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) has been at times Barry’s mentor, father figure, hostage, and now betrayer, but the hold he has over the series’ central anti-hero is a bug Barry just can’t shake.“Do you know what is interesting?” Winker asks rhetorically in a Zoom chat with Inverse. “There was a teacher here in L.A. years ago, and [Barry co-creator] Alec Berg’s wife went as a student, and took notes… those notes were the basis underlying Gene Cousineau.” Continued here

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"Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly": Image Shows the Moment SpaceX's Starship Rocket Exploded   Despite the explosion, the company is counting its first Starship flight test as a success.“Rapid unscheduled disassembly” is the internet’s new favorite way to say “the big rocket blew up.” Continued here

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Who Were the Spies? 'Mandalorian' Finale Quietly Solves Season 3's Biggest Mystery   The Mandalorian Season 3 is over, and in hindsight, it was a strange one. There were hour-long episodes, half-hour episodes, flashbacks and spinoff teases, and episodes that rarely featured Din at all. And then there was Episode 7, “The Spies.” While the actual events of the episode were straightforward enough, there was nary a spy in sight. This led fans to wonder if the season finale would include the revelation that one of our heroes had secretly been spying for the bad guys this whole time, but Episode 8 came and went without any such twists. So just who were the Spies? Was the episode title a vestige of an abandoned storyline, or was it all just a big misdirect? Continued here

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Worms Get the Munchies Just Like People -- Study   It’s one of the most well-known side effects of cannabis: the munchies. That insatiable hunger for fatty, sugary, calorically dense foods sneaks up on many people when they’re high.But it turns out we’re not the only living things who get an urge to snack on something tasty when our bodies are flooded with cannabis compounds. The tiny worm Caenorhabditis elegans gets the munchies too, according to a new study. Continued here

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'Agatha: Coven of Chaos' Star Accidentally Reveals a Huge Doctor Strange Connection   Agatha: Coven of Chaos represents a new frontier for Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. The supernatural corner of the MCU is still finding its legs, so Coven of Chaos can expand on the rules first established in Doctor Strange and WandaVision. We still know very little about the upcoming series, although Kathryn Hahn will reprise her role as Agatha Harkness, and the witch will be joined by Patti LuPone, Aubrey Plaza, and Heartstopper’s Joe Locke. Marvel Studios cast their usual protection spell over the in-depth details, but some secrets are apparently too powerful to keep under wraps.LuPone recently appeared on The View, where she chatted about her upcoming role. According to EW, LuPone will play Lilia Calderu, “a 450-year-old Sicilian witch whose power is divination.” Continued here

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'Godzilla x Kong' Teases the Resurrection of a Wild, Forgotten Monster   The sequel to 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong has a title: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. And with that title reveal, comes a tantalizing teaser that tells us nothing, but may actually reveal more about the plot of the monster movie than it intends.In the title reveal teaser for Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, a shadowy ape-like figure sits on a stone throne surrounded by bones. As the camera pans out, the graveyard of bones reveals two very familiar skulls — that of Godzilla and Kong. It’s clear that Godzilla and Kong, after duking it out and coming to a wary truce in the 2021 film, have a frightening new enemy to contend with. Continued here

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You Need to Play the Best Star Wars Shooter for Free on Switch ASAP   The beauty of Star Wars is that the series is so pliable and easily adapted to a wealth of different genres and experiences. While there have been plenty of great Star Wars games over the years, the series brought a novel approach to shooters in 2005 with an intense squad-based game called Republic Commando. From 4/20 to 4/26, Republic Commando is a free game trial to anyone with an active Nintendo Switch Online account, and if you decide to buy the game you can even get 50 percent off and save your data, meaning you have no excuse to miss out on one of the finest Star Wars games ever created. Republic Commando takes place in the heat of the Clone Wars, casting you as a group of elite commandos known as Delta Squad. These commandos aren’t your typical Clone Troopers; they have significantly better training, weapons, and more freedom to do whatever is needed to properly execute the spec ops missions they’re sent on. Continued here

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'Starfield' Could Steal the Most Controversial Mass Effect Mechanic   Bethesda’s next big-budget RPG Starfield is less than six months away from being released, but we still know relatively about what to expect. While several trailers and gameplay segments have been shown off for Starfield, the sci-fi adventure is still the subject of many fan theories seeking to explain the game's mechanics. The latest suggests Starfield could adopt one of the most derided mechanics from Mass Effect — a land vehicle.Users on Reddit have focused on the presence of a land rover in several shots of the many Starfield trailers. With the knowledge that the game will involve plenty of traversal in space, it will also involve plenty of exploring terrestrial bodies. (There will be more than 1,000 planets to discover after all.) Presumably, Bethesda doesn’t want to make you walk around all these planets Déath Stranding style, so vehicles would be provided in some form. Continued here

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How to Get Prismarine and Gold in 'Minecraft Legends'   Minecraft Legends incorporates many materials into its building system, including Gold and Prismarine. Mojang Studios’ latest spinoff may lack the hook that it needs for newcomers, but it still has plenty going for it as an approachable RTS — like its straightforward farming. Prismarine is the main resource you need to build Improvements to your home base, the Well of Fate. It’s one of the first things you should invest in when you start your adventure. Gold is an equally valuable resource from the same source: your enemies, the Piglins. Continued here

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Are the Cameras in iPhones and Samsung Galaxy Phones Falling Behind?   Smartphones used to be phones with a camera thrown in. These days, smartphones are more like cameras with a side of phone.Don’t believe me? Go back and watch any iPhone or Galaxy phone launch from the past several years and you will find that Apple and Samsung devote a majority of their keynotes to talking about improvements made to the cameras. Continued here

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Look! Hubble Image Celebrates the Telescope's 33rd Anniversary with a Cosmic "Laser Lightshow"   Behold a stellar nursery, where starlight scatters through interstellar dust — and sometimes can’t pierce the space soot.Beginnings are always an exciting time to remember. To celebrate the first day that the Hubble Space Telescope reached space, its mission team shared an image of chaotic stellar birth. Continued here

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Chatbots Are Making the Black Box of Internet Search Even Darker   We don’t know what Microsoft’s Bing or OpenAI’s ChatGPT are trained on. But if we did know, we could very well be put off from using the chatbots at all. A new report from The Washington Post examining the training data powering competing large language models (LLMs) from Google and Facebook reveals chatbots could very easily pull from copyrighted material and discredited news sources to create their responses. And that’s before you consider their tendency to “hallucinate” wrong answers without you even knowing.The report is a glimpse into what’s been the secretive side of the current AI boom. More and more companies are making it easy to interact with natural text and image generators, but few share what sources those generators are based on. It adds uncertainty to every response in terms of safety and validity. Continued here

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'The Mandalorian' Season 4 Still Needs to Solve the Show's Original Mystery   The Mandalorian still doesn’t seem to know what to do with IG-11, the bounty-hunting assassin droid voiced by Taika Waititi. Despite a brief role in the series’ first season, IG made an irrevocable impact on Mandalorian fans. IG was first introduced as a ruthless killer, assigned to terminate the same asset that Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) has been sent to collect. Later, we learn that said asset is, in fact, Grogu — and though Djarin ends up destroying IG in order to protect the little guy, the droid does return in the Season 1 finale. The next time we see IG-11, he’s been reprogrammed by Kuiil (Nick Nolte) and tasked with protecting Grogu no matter what. His new directive eventually leads to an impressive sacrifice, and one of the strongest arcs in the series to date.Two seasons later though, The Mandalorian has undercut his sacrifice at nearly every turn. From the very beginning, Djarin is adamant about resurrecting IG — even if it means tearing down the statue that the citizens of Nevarro erected to honor him. Said memorial was built from IG’s remaining scrap parts, so it was essentially his grave. After a series of complications involving IG’s fried memory circuit, his body becomes a vehicle for young Grogu — again, not exactly a respectful stance on Droid autonomy. Eventually, Djarin finally gets his hands on the tech needed to bring IG back from the dead. It’s meant to be a heartwarming moment, but it still cheapens the emotional weight of IG’s death in Season 1. More than that, it’s inadvertently brought up an IG-related mystery that The Mandalorian, to this day, hasn’t bothered to answer. Continued here

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You Need to Watch the Most Ridiculous Time-Travel Movie on HBO Max ASAP   You star Penn Badgley recently restarted one of our most tedious cultural discourses. He demanded that his wholesome show about a man who stalks and murders women be stripped of its sex scenes for the sake of his surely stable marriage. Badgley has every right to comment on his craft — and in isolation, his thoughts would be barely worthy of, ahem, gossip. But social media has developed a bit of a Puritan streak, as its dorkier users suggest that sex on film has no storytelling purpose and serves only as actor-exploiting gratuitousness.If we wrote an article every time someone on Twitter said something inane, we’d have to chain ourselves to our desks and nourish ourselves with hamster bottles. But it’s not a new observation to note that, even as dweebs retire to their fainting couches at the sight of a rogue wiener, pop culture is demanding ever-increasing physical perfection from actors despite fewer characters being allowed to actually enjoy their Olympian bodies. Sex on screen can shock and confuse the Helen Lovejoys among us because it is getting rarer. Continued here

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'Mandalorian' Season 3 Finale Fixes the Biggest Disappointment of Season 2   The Mandalorian has completed three seasons, which means it’s saddled with the responsibility to not only help other Star Wars media get off the ground, but to also innovate and keep itself fresh. That’s especially true of the series’ combat scenes, which can be difficult to continually reinvent given that most of our heroes wear borderline invincible magic space armor. But in the Season 3 finale, one of the most popular fighting tropes in recent memory was reworked in a fun and logical way.One of the most famous fight scenes in movie history is the hallway fight in Park Chan-Wook’s action film Oldboy. Using precise choreography and a single long shot, our hero faces off against a whole crowd of enemies in a brutal, exhausting battle. Continued here

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Inside the Controversial Strategy To Make the World More Wild   The wolves of Yellowstone National Park are perhaps the most recognizable conservation success story in America. Native wolves were exterminated in the park by the 1920s — shot and poisoned as part of official park policy. After decades of conservation campaigns, they were reintroduced in 1995. Since then, they have become a poster child for a sometimes controversial brand of nature conservation called “rewilding” that puts the emphasis on handing the reins over to nature.“The term ‘natural’ — it’s just really hard to get any agreement on what it means,” says Rolf Peterson, an ecologist at Michigan Technological University. Peterson studies wolf populations in Yellowstone and elsewhere in the United States. Continued here