Most Popular Editorials: Can history teach us anything about the future of war and peace? | Society | The Guardian

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Can history teach us anything about the future of war – and peace? | Society | The Guardian Ten years ago, the psychologist Steven Pinker published The Better Angels of Our Nature, in which he argued that violence in almost all its forms - including war - was declining. The book was ecstatically received in many quarters, but then came the backlash, which shows no signs of abating. In September, 17 historians published a riposte to Pinker, suitably entitled The Darker Angels of Our Nature, in which they attacked his "fake history" to "debunk the myth of non-violent modernity". Some may see this as a storm in an intellectual teacup, but the central question - can we learn anything about the future of warfare from the ancient past? - remains an important one. Pinker thought we could and he supported his claim of a long decline with data stretching thousands of years back into prehistory. But among his critics are those who say that warfare between modern nation states, which are only a few hundred years old, has nothing in common with conflict before that time, and therefore it's too soon to say if the supposed "long peace" we've been enjoying since the end of the second world war is a blip or a sustained trend. In 2018, for example, computer scientist Aaron Clauset of the University of Colorado Boulder crunched data on wars fought between 1823 and 2003 and concluded that we'd have to wait at least another century to find out. Clauset doesn't think it would help to add older data into the mix; indeed, he thinks it would muddy the picture. Continued here

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Want to Hire People With High Emotional Intelligence? Look for These 5 Things | Inc.com That's because every company lives and dies by the success of their teams. A great team can accomplish much more than a single person, no matter how talented. And a single "brilliant jerk" can totally ruin a potentially high-performing team. Yes, look for a candidate who communicates what they do well. But also look for those who share what they've learned from mentors and colleagues, who give others credit for helping them to become the person they are today. Experienced interviewers know that only a precious few job seekers can identify a true weakness. And even fewer have developed plans to strengthen those weaknesses. To do so takes intense self-reflection, critical thinking, and the ability to accept negative feedback--qualities that take years to develop. Continued here

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Bridgewater Investments Founder Ray Dalio: Invest in Idea Meritocracy Continued here

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How to cope with an existential crisis | Psyche Guides Are you exhausted from rushing through life doing the same monotonous things over and over again? Perhaps those things that were once meaningful now seem vacuous, and the passion has burned out. Do you feel that pleasures are short-lived and ultimately disappointing, that your life is a series of fragments punctuated with occasional ecstasies that flare up and then, like a firework, fade into darkness and despair? Perhaps you are lonely or pine for past loves. Or you feel empty and lost in the world, or nauseous and sleep-deprived. Maybe you are still looking for a reason to live, or you have too many confused reasons, or you have forgotten what your reasons are. Congratulations – you’re having an existential crisis. Sometimes, the questions ‘Why am I here?’ and ‘What’s it all for?’ haunt you gently like a soft wingbeat with barely a whisper, but sometimes they can feel as if they are asphyxiating your entire being. Whatever form your existential crisis takes, the problem, as the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) saw it, was that living without passion amounts to not existing at all. And that’s bad for all of us because, without passion, rampant waves of negativity poison the world. Kierkegaard thought that one of the roots of this problem of a world without passion is that too many people – his contemporaries but, by extension, we too – are alienated from a society that overemphasises objectivity and ‘results’ (profits, productivity, outcomes, efficiency) at the expense of personal, passionate, subjective human experiences. Continued here

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America’s First Utopian City, Telosa, Could Welcome Its First “Settlers” By 2030 Former Walmart president, Marc Lore, is attempting to create the unthinkable – a Utopian city in the middle of the American desert. The Billionaire is currently spearheading the conceptual and fina… Continued here

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How to maintain a healthy brain | Psyche Guides People living in Western nations today can expect to live a considerably longer life, on average, than 100 years or so ago. The dramatically shorter average life expectancies of the past were skewed by tragically high rates of infant mortality. Nonetheless, compared with the mid-19th century, an average five-year-old today can expect to live to 82 rather than 55 – an extra 27 years (based on data from England and Wales). Although this is obviously a welcome development – largely brought about by improvements in healthcare and the defeat of infectious diseases – it is a double-edged sword. The body could well keep going throughout all these decades, but the brain might not; and, if you are left able-bodied but with a permanently compromised brain, then you will be in an unenviable position. Such is the concern that a recent survey by Alzheimer’s Research UK showed that, for almost half of the respondents, dementia is the condition they fear the most, rising to more than 60 per cent among those aged over 65. Continued here

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Second act sensations! Meet the people who reached peak fitness – after turning 50 | Fitness | The Guardian Rich started working out, Mags started running and Shashi started walking three times a day. It is possible to reach new goals as you get older and it is not only your physical health that benefits 'I do sometimes feel like a cliche," says Rich Jones. We're in the cafe at his gym and he is in workout gear. It's true, something about the language and the before and after pictures from his physical transformation - severely overweight to lean and chiselled - would appear familiar from thousands of adverts and magazine spreads, if it wasn't for one thing; Jones got into the best shape of his adult life after he passed 50. "On 9 August 2019, I walked in here. I was 54 and 127kg [20st]." He worked out at least six days a week, for 90 minutes or more at a time. "I immersed myself in everything, I did gym, I did classes, Pilates, I even did barre," he says. Within eight or 10 weeks, he was able to stop taking painkillers for a shoulder injury. He now cycles and runs on top of his gym sessions. "It's just a habit - I brush my teeth every day, I go for a run every day." Continued here

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Does Having Kids Make You Happy? - The Atlantic Few choices are more important than whether to have children, and psychologists and other social scientists have worked to figure out what having kids means for happiness. Some of the most prominent scholars in the field have argued that if you want to be happy, it’s best to be childless. Others have pushed back, pointing out that a lot depends on who you are and where you live. But a bigger question is also at play: What if the rewards of having children are different from, and deeper than, happiness? The early research is decisive: Having kids is bad for quality of life. In one study, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues asked about 900 employed women to report, at the end of each day, every one of their activities and how happy they were when they did them. They recalled being with their children as less enjoyable than many other activities, such as watching TV, shopping, or preparing food. Other studies find that when a child is born, parents experience a decrease in happiness that doesn’t go away for a long time, in addition to a drop in marital satisfaction that doesn’t usually recover until the children leave the house. As the Harvard professor Dan Gilbert puts it, “The only symptom of empty nest syndrome is nonstop smiling.” After all, having children, particularly when they are young, involves financial struggle, sleep deprivation, and stress. For mothers, there is also in many cases the physical strain of pregnancy and breastfeeding. And children can turn a cheerful and loving romantic partnership into a zero-sum battle over who gets to sleep and work and who doesn’t. As the Atlantic staff writer Jennifer Senior notes in her book, All Joy and No Fun, children provoke a couple’s most frequent arguments—“more than money, more than work, more than in-laws, more than annoying personal habits, communication styles, leisure activities, commitment issues, bothersome friends, sex.” Someone who doesn’t understand this is welcome to spend a full day with an angry 2-year-old (or a sullen 15-year-old); they’ll find out what she means soon enough. Continued here

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The Project Economy Has Arrived To take advantage of the new project economy, companies need a new approach to project management: They must adopt a project-driven organizational structure, ensure that executives have the capabilities to effectively sponsor projects, and train managers in modern project management. Continued here

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Why Your Group Chat Could Be Worth Millions If you turn it into a DAO, that is. But what’s a DAO? It’s a little bit cryptocurrency, a little bit gamer clan, a little bit pyramid scheme. Continued here

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‘Yeah, we’re spooked’: AI starting to have big real-world impact, says expert | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian Prof Stuart Russell, the founder of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at the University of California, Berkeley, said most experts believed that machines more intelligent than humans would be developed this century, and he called for international treaties to regulate the development of the technology. Continued here

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Mark Zuckerberg on why Facebook is rebranding to Meta - The Verge On Thursday, he officially became the CEO and chairman of Meta, the new parent company name for Facebook. The rebrand is about solidifying the social media giant as being about the metaverse, which Zuckerberg sees as the future of the internet. Zuckerberg is staying in control of everything. He told me in an interview that, unlike the founders of Google who stepped aside in 2015 when it became part of a holding company called Alphabet, he has no plans to give up the top job. Continued here

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Ideas | She drew millions of TikTok followers selling a fantasy of rural China. Politics intervened Li Ziqi’s fans span from the U.S. to Bangladesh. But behind the camera, she is just another player in China’s platform economy. Continued here

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China's New Quantum Computer Has 1 Million Times the Power of Google's Physicists in China claim they've constructed two quantum computers with performance speeds that outrival competitors in the U.S., debuting a superconducting machine, in addition to an even speedier one that uses light photons to obtain unprecedented results, according to a recent study published in the peer-reviewed journals Physical Review Letters and Science Bulletin. Continued here

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Review: ‘The Transcendentalists and Their World,’ by Robert Gross - The Atlantic In the lead-up to the bicentennial of American independence in 1976, a graduate student sent a proposal to an editor at a trade publisher in New York. Would he consider taking on a book about the Minutemen and their “shot heard round the world,” set painstakingly in a history of Concord, Massachusetts, the town where the North Bridge fight broke out? In 1977, that book—which was also the student’s dissertation—won a Bancroft Prize, the highest honor in the history profession. The Minutemen and Their World remains a classic, memorable within a wave of “community studies” that sought to explain big turning points—such as the outbreak of the Revolution and the Salem witch trials—at the level of local ties, focusing on loyalties and antipathies among neighbors, families, holders of property and office, laborers and servants. Continued here

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Why even fully vaccinated older people are at high risk for severe COVID-19 | National Geographic Mounting data suggests that older people are at higher risk of severe disease from a breakthrough infection of COVID-19—and scientists say that should come as no surprise. After all, older age brackets have been disproportionately at risk throughout the pandemic, and that continues to be true even once someone is fully vaccinated. Continued here

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If You Think Downsizing Might Save Your Company, Think Again Firms often downsize because it is seen as a way to reduce costs, adjust structures, and create leaner, more efficient workplaces. But new research indicates that downsizing may actually increase the likelihood of bankruptcy. The research team examined 2010 data from 4,710 publicly traded firms and determined whether they declared bankruptcy in the subsequent 5-year period. After controlling for known potential drivers of both downsizing and bankruptcy, as well as numerous other factors, they found that downsizing firms were twice as likely to declare bankruptcy as firms that did not downsize. Continued here

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The Principles of Persuasion Aren't Just for Business We typically think of business building relationships using the Principles of Persuasion. But anyone can use them when building better relationships. Continued here

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Albert Camus on the Three Antidotes to the Absurdity of Life – The Marginalian What an astrophysicist might have the perspective to eulogize as “the incredibly improbable trip that we’re on” the rest of us might, and often do, experience as simply and maddeningly absurd — so uncontrollable and incomprehensible as to barely make sense. What are we to make of, and do with, the absurdity of life that swarms us daily? Oliver Sacks believed that “the most we can do is to write — intelligently, creatively, evocatively — about what it is like living in the world at this time.” And yet parsing the what-it-is-like can itself drive us to despair. Still, parse we must. Continued here

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Improve Your Résumé by Turning Bullet Points into Stories There’s nothing wrong with listing your definitive actions and quantifiable results on your resume — this is standard advice. The problem is, however, that you may not be telling an employer what they really need to know. Details are important, but what’s your story? By telling a story in your resume, employers will be able to see what you can do for them based on what you’ve been able to do in the past. Continued here

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Ask an Expert: How Do I Become a CEO? I am a 25-year-old woman just starting out in veterinary marketing. During my first three years in the workforce, I worked as a certified technician in veterinary medicine, but recently, I decided I wanted more out of my career. While working, I went back to school to complete my bachelor’s degree in business. During this time, I also approached my boss and asked if she could help me gain more experience on the business side of the industry. Continued here

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Who Killed the Billionaire Founder of a Generic Drug Empire? The chairman of Apotex and his wife were brutally murdered last year in their Toronto home. Continued here

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Happiness doesn’t follow success: it’s the other way round | Aeon Ideas Work hard, become successful, then you’ll be happy. At least, that’s what many of us were taught by our parents, teachers and peers. The idea that we must pursue success in order to experience happiness is enshrined in the United States’ most treasured institutions (the Declaration of Independence), beliefs (the American dream), and stories (Rocky and Cinderella). Most people want to be happy, so we chase success like a proverbial carrot on a stick – thinking that contentment lurks just the other side of getting into college, landing a dream job, being promoted or making six figures. But for many chasers, both success and happiness remain perpetually out of reach. The problem is that the equation might be backwards. Continued here

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Improve Your Résumé by Turning Bullet Points into Stories There’s nothing wrong with listing your definitive actions and quantifiable results on your resume — this is standard advice. The problem is, however, that you may not be telling an employer what they really need to know. Details are important, but what’s your story? By telling a story in your resume, employers will be able to see what you can do for them based on what you’ve been able to do in the past. Continued here

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I Left My Corporate Job -- and These 8 Things Became Clear | Inc.com After more than two great decades at Procter & Gamble, I made the leap--a planned exit from corporate life to go all-in on my former side hustle of writing, speaking, and teaching. Now this is my full hustle and believe me, I'm hustlin' (and loving every minute of it). Continued here

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How to Get Your To-Do List Done When You’re Always in Meetings You keep waiting for the “perfect time” to sit down and knock out your work presentation in one go, but at the end of the day you realize you spent your time in meetings. You may never get your perfect time or ideal day, so start working within the reality that meetings happen — and that you can get important stuff done in between them. Try to break down the big task into bite-sized ones you can fit in between your meetings. You can also try scheduling in your project work time by blocking off a couple hours at a time and trying to stick to that schedule. Once you have that time, you can prioritize which projects you want to work on and in what order. Don’t let meetings keep you from getting those projects done. There’s plenty of time, if you can strategize and prepare for it. Continued here

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Brené Brown’s Empire of Emotion | The New Yorker In August, Brené Brown, the Houston-based writer, researcher, professor, social worker, podcast host, C.E.O., and consultant-guru to organizations including Pixar, Google, and the U.S. Special Forces, met with a group of graduate students at the McCombs School of Business, at the University of Texas at Austin, to talk about emotions. Brown, fifty-five, was wearing a shiny maize blouse, jeans, and a black face mask. It was the first day of her new class, Dare to Lead, and she stood onstage in a small auditorium. There were about a hundred people in the room; Brown had them stand up and introduce themselves. “Howdy!” a Black student in a fleece jacket said, giving a Longhorns salute. “Who else is from Washington, D.C.?” Other students were from Texas, Nigeria, Ohio, Hong Kong. They were concentrating in fields like accounting and management, and they were going to confront one another’s humanity. Continued here

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How to Talk to an Employee Who Isn’t Meeting Their Goals Having to tell someone that they’re not meeting their work standards can get awkward fast. Luckily, simply asking them to evaluate themselves can do a lot of the work for you. If they can spot the problems on their own, it saves you a lot of trouble. If not, make sure that your goals and visions are aligned. State the non-negotiables and how it can help them further their career. Be clear about your employee’s failings by describing specific examples and behaviors you observed, giving them guidelines about how they can get back on track. Ask them to create an improvement plan and then review together, filling any gaps they might have missed, setting deadlines, and explaining repercussions if the goals are not met. Confrontation about shortcomings is much easier when it’s done with a shared vision, clear expectations, and a plan to move forward. Continued here

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How to Live to 100: A Definitive Guide to Longevity Fitness - InsideHook At this point, we’re all familiar with the trope. A local news station visits a retirement home to celebrate Muriel’s 106th birthday. She’s deaf or blind or both or neither, sitting in a wheelchair in the “good spot” next to the TV set, and a reporter asks her her secret. You’ve lived through both World Wars?! How’d you do it? Then Muriel gets to flash a mischievous grin and tells us she smoked a pack a day for 50 years. Continued here

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How to Identify Your Shadow Emotions (and Why You Should) At some point in our childhood, we learn that living in a society means controlling certain emotions. We suppress, in particular, emotions we consider to be “negative”—fear, anger, jealousy, selfishness—for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we consider them shameful. However suppressed these negative emotions are, they are still there, creating what the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called a “shadow self,” complete with “shadow emotions.” Continued here

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How to raise a boy: my mission to bring up a son fit for the 21st century | Parents and parenting | The Guardian My little son has a gang he roots for. All boys, dudes everywhere – they’re his gang. I figured this out, recently, when we sat down to watch the Grand National. He’d picked a horse in the family sweepstake and his choice was out in front for most of the race. When it fell back, out of contention, my son paled a bit. Possibly he’d already spent the sweepstake winnings in his head (on stickers, sweets, toy balls) but he took the disappointment quite well, I thought, for a four-year-old. The race was won in the end by a female jockey. It was the only time a woman had ever finished first in a Grand National, the commentators shouted. And all at once my son did cry, real fat gushers, instant snot moustache, the works. Now this was too much, if a girl had gone and beaten all the boys. Continued here

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How to make a 5-hour workday the most productive Scandinavian countries dominate the World Happiness Report—Norway being the third most productive country in the world and Helsinki winning the title of the best city for work-life balance. And their standard working week is less than 40 hours long. They work a whopping 359 hours less than Americans every year. Continued here

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Climate change: Five dealmakers who will influence the outcome at COP26 - BBC News Not only do countries have differing national priorities, but to make things even more confusing, nations forge alliances with each other and form negotiating blocs within the talks. Countries can be members of several different groups at the same time. Continued here

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The Brutal Truth You Need to Accept If You Want to Stop Feeling Constantly Overwhelmed | Inc.com If you feel there aren't enough hours in the day, there are a million and one gurus and companies out there willing to sell you a solution. They've got scheduling hacks, project management tools, and relevant research to offer. Some of this stuff is even useful. But even if you implement every good idea in the bunch, I've got bad news for you: You're still going to feel endlessly overwhelmed.  Continued here

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The Long History of Japan’s Tidying Up | The New Yorker “You must take everything out of your room and clean it thoroughly,” a guru writes. “If it is necessary, you may bring everything back in again . . . but if they are not necessary, there is no need to keep them.” You would be forgiven for mistaking this advice as a passage from one of Marie Kondo’s best-selling books. But they are the words of Shunryu Suzuki, the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and a nourisher of the American counterculture. He wrote them in 1970, more than a decade before Kondo was born. Continued here

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Three Simple Ways to Find the Meaning of Life - The Atlantic People who believe that they know their life’s meaning enjoy greater well-being than those who don’t. One 2019 study found that agreeing with the statement “I have a philosophy of life that helps me understand who I am” was associated with fewer symptoms of depression and higher positive affect. Continued here

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How Leaders Can Get Honest, Productive Feedback Great leaders are great learners. Their never-ending pursuit of information pushes them to constantly improve and sets them apart from the rest. Feedback serves a crucial role in this process, but getting and learning from it isn’t always easy. If you want to get the feedback that is necessary to improve your leadership, there are a few steps you can take. First, build and maintain a psychologically safe environment. Sharing feedback is often interpersonally risky. To increase the likelihood of your colleagues taking that risk with you, show them that their honesty is valued. You can do this by asking open-ended questions like, “What did you hear when I shared my strategy?” or “How did it feel to you when I sent that email?” Next, be sure to ask for both positive and negative feedback. Listen carefully when receiving it — even if you disagree. You may feel happy, angry, confused, or frustrated by what you hear. Recognize that your reactions are about you, and not the other person. Lastly, express gratitude. Now that you have some new data, you can reflect on the meaning and implication of what you heard, consider what you need to work on, and make a plan of action. Continued here

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How Russia Is Cashing In on Climate Change - The New York Times Nowhere do the prospects seem brighter than in Russia’s Far North, where rapidly rising temperatures have opened up a panoply of new possibilities, like mining and energy projects. Perhaps the most profound of these is the prospect, as early as next year, of year-round Arctic shipping with specially designed “ice class” container vessels, offering an alternative to the Suez Canal. Continued here

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Highly Intelligent People Are Less Satisfied By Friendships In a paper published in the British Journal of Psychology, researchers Norman Li and Satoshi Kanazawa report that highly intelligent people experience lower life satisfaction when they socialize with friends more frequently. These are the Sherlocks and the Newt Scamanders of the world — the very intelligent few who would be happier if they were left alone. Continued here

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The On/Off Trick and Other Best Hacks for Handling Stress - Nir and Far Unlike other animals, which (as far as we know) react solely to what’s going on in their environment, humans can imagine entire realities in our heads. These alternate realities make us act in all sorts of strange ways. For instance, while zebras will run from the sound of a lion in the brush, humans will stampede at the start of a Black Friday sale, imagining the deals we’ll miss if we don’t elbow our way through. Continued here