iNsAnItY iNtEnSiFiEd: It Took Richard Branson a Few Words to Teach the Best Leadership Lesson You Will Hear Today

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It Took Richard Branson a Few Words to Teach the Best Leadership Lesson You Will Hear Today

What should be a company's top priority to grow a business? Billionaire Richard Branson has a simple answer.

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Can spicy foods cure colds? A neuroscientist reveals the encouraging truth

For centuries, capsaicin — the natural compound responsible for the kick in spicy food — has been used as a health remedy. It’s been applied to wounds and used as anesthesia.

It’s appealing to think that a few glugs of hot sauce are all it takes to cure a cold — at least to those who enjoy chugging hot sauce — but in reality, it’s more of a band-aid than a cure.

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28 Essential Tools You Should Have at Home

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Few people enjoy waiting around for the repairperson and shelling out more money in labor cost than the price of the parts themselves. Yet so many people do, because the idea of home repair seems murky and intimidating. Here's a trade secret: If you're reading this, it's entirely within your abilities to handle many small tasks yourself, even if you've never turned a wrench before in your life. All it takes is a can-do attitude, a bit of patience, the humility to know when you consult YouTube and the instructions, and the right tools.

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With 'Mandalorian' Season 3, Star Wars is repeating Marvelâ€™s worst sin

There’s a sensation that’s totally unique to the 21st century. That feeling of confusion after watching a new Marvel movie because you missed the previous, interconnected movie or show that explains a pivotal plot point. If the Germans had a word for it, it might be: whoiskangsyndrome.

But as Marvel’s influence continues to bleed into the rest of pop culture, we need to come up with an actual term for the confusion some people felt after watching the new trailer for The Mandalorian Season 3.

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Plague study complicates a commonly held belief about the Black Death

The Black Death ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1353, killing millions. Plague outbreaks in Europe then continued until the 19th century.

One of the most commonly recited facts about the plague in Europe was that it was spread by rats. In some parts of the world, the bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, maintains a long-term presence in wild rodents and their fleas. This is called an animal “reservoir.”

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Keep Forgetting Things? Neuroscience Says This Simple Phone Habit Actually Improves Memory

"Aapproaching events in our lives with more attention is going to be good for memory."

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Why This Universe? Maybe It's Not Specialâ€”Just Probable

Cosmologists have spent decades striving to understand why our universe is so stunningly vanilla. Not only is it smooth and flat as far as we can see, but it's also expanding at an ever-so-slowly increasing pace, when naive calculations suggest thatâ€”coming out of the Big Bangâ€”space should have become crumpled up by gravity and blasted apart by repulsive dark energy.

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 developÂments and trends in matheÂmatics and the physical and lifeÂ sciences.

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HBO's 'Last of Us' gets one thing wrong about its zombie apocalypse

Can the cordyceps fungus really infect humans and cause a global pandemic? Experts weigh in on The Last of Us.

A global disease outbreak is on everyone’s minds right now— and not just because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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How Did Tech Become Americaâ€™s Most Troubled Industry?

Twelve thousand layoffs at Google. Eleven thousand at Facebook; 10,000 at Microsoft; 18,000 at Amazon; 8,000 at Salesforce; 4,000 at Cisco; 3,000-plus at Twitter.

The American economy has recovered from the sharp downturn caused by the arrival of the coronavirus and is chugging along just fine, at least for the moment. Yet the tech sector—the country’s most dynamic industry—has fallen into a kind of recession characterized by mass layoffs, pervasive hiring freezes, a bear market for tech stocks (their recent rebound notwithstanding), a collapse in initial public offerings, and a sharp drop in venture-capital funding.

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This Simple Change to How You Speak Makes What You Say 20 Percent More Memorable, Research Shows

Experiments prove that we "listen" with our eyes as well as our ears.

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House Speaker McCarthy's powers are still strong - but he'll be fighting against new rules that could prevent anything from getting done

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is already facing the limits of his power. A single member of the House – from the far-right Freedom Caucus to a progressive on the far left, or any member in between – can threaten his speakership. And at least one Democrat already is promising to do just that.

The threat is to use a procedure – the motion to vacate the chair – which is a way of firing the speaker. Its power, though, is not necessarily that a member can successfully use it to oust McCarthy, but that it can be repeatedly used to stall his agenda.

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This Mythbustin' Nashville YouTuber Is on a Guitar Gear Mission

Get two professional guitar players in a room and ask them, "What's your most important piece of gear?" You'll almost certainly get two different answers.

Is it the pickup configuration? The specific tube type in their amplifiers? We don't know, and they don't always know, either. The world of guitar tone is almost as driven by myths and snake oil as ancient Greece itself. Every guitarist prays to different gear gods, and every city-state of nerddom is convinced it is right.Â

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Warren Buffett Says the Ultimate Test of a Life Well Lived Boils Down to 1 Simple Principle

How big is your bank account? In the end, it really doesn't matter.

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The great European house cat migration

Domestic cat bones around 8,000 years old have recently been found in both Serbia and Poland. This pushes back the arrival in Europe of one of humanity’s earliest companion animals by several thousands of years.

Until recently, the thinking was that cats arrived in Europe only in Late Antiquity (roughly the 3rd to 7th century AD). As the above map shows, that still holds true for many parts of the continent, but an earlier influx via Asia Minor into the Balkans, and further north, seems to have preceded it.

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The trouble with medicating mental illness

The standard of care for the severely mentally ill in the United States has drastically changed since the 1950s, when more than half a million patients resided in enormous state hospitals. As pharmaceutical firms developed new antipsychotic medications, national policy shifted such that most of the old hospitals have now closed. Today, the majority of US patients, even those with serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar syndrome and major depression, receive only short-term, in-patient medical treatment to quell symptoms before being sent home.

The old asylums were the scenes of some well-publicized abuses and poor conditions. Yet their closures and the parallel embrace of medications did not solve the issue of how to best care for people. The current mental-health system leaves many mentally ill patients no better off, says Joel Braslow, a historian and psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles. In some cases, the situation has grown worse.

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Treat your next career change like a verb

When I called career strategist Jenny Blake to talk about job shifts, my motivations were admittedly selfish. I had just made a career switch myself: After working in a business role at Quartz, I’d pitched myself for a new one in its newsroom (and landed the gig). I wanted to know how Quartz readers could approach career changes—or, in other words, pull off the proverbial pivot. But I also wanted to hear how I could make the most of my own.

Blake has spent years thinking about shifts, switches, and restarts at work. She’s the author of Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One, the host of a podcast about career shifting, and someone who’s made plenty of turns in her own career. And when I asked Blake about making a pivot, she was attentive to how I phrased the question.

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It Took Just 2 Words for Jane Fonda to Give the Best Advice About Making Friends You'll Hear This Year

Use it to improve both your business and your personal life.

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You need to watch the most underappreciated sci-fi remake on HBO Max ASAP

Thoughtful, moody, and almost impossible to advertise, this overlooked remake deserves reappraisal.

It’s easier than ever to watch foreign films — which has made it easier than ever to raise the question of why these films are being remade for a supposed subset of the North American market that loves critically acclaimed fare but refuses to strain their precious eyes on subtitles. The 2020 announcement of a Parasite remake prompted a wave of haranguing opinion pieces, like Esquire’s argument that the proposal “panders to audiences that are too lazy to do a bit of reading.” (The project has since been reframed as an original series set in, apparently, the Parasite Cinematic Universe.)

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7 Easy Tricks Emotionally Intelligent People Use to Stop Being Awkward and Get What They Want

Believe me, some of us need all the help we can get.

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The Culture Wars Look Different on Wikipedia

The site is tackling more controversial edits, the results of which can reverberate across the internet.

For more than 15 years, Wikipedia discussed what to call the third child of Ernest Hemingway, a doctor who was born and wrote books as Gregory, later lived as Gloria after undergoing gender-affirming surgery, and, when arrested for public disorderliness late in life, used a third name, Vanessa. Last year, editors on the site finally settled the question: The Gregory Hemingway article was deleted, and its contents were moved to a new one for Gloria Hemingway. This would be her name going forward, and she/her would be her pronouns.

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New killer CRISPR system is unlike any scientists have seen

A unique CRISPR system that destroys infected cells is unlike anything scientists have ever seen before — and it could revolutionize how we use the powerful gene editing technology in the future.

CRISPR 101: While bacteria can infect humans, they can also be infected — a virus can inject its DNA in a bacterial cell and then use the cell like a virus factory, creating more and more copies of itself inside the cell until it bursts.

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All politicians must lie from time to time, so why is there so much outrage about George Santos? A political philosopher explains

The idea that politicians are dishonest is, at this point, something of a cliché – although few have taken their dishonesty as far as George Santos, U.S. representative for New York’s 3rd Congressional District, who seems to have lied about his education, work history, charitable activity, athletic prowess and even his place of residence.

Santos may be exceptional in how many lies he has told, but politicians seeking election have incentives to tell voters what they want to hear – and there is some empirical evidence that a willingness to lie may be helpful in the process of getting elected.

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A Grim New Low for Internet Sleuthing

In the Idaho murders, the real crime has become a “true crime”—an ominous form of interactive entertainment.

On November 13, 2022, four students from the University of Idaho—Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Madison Mogen—were found dead in the house that the latter three rented near campus. Each had been stabbed, seemingly in bed. Two other students lived in the house, and were apparently in their rooms that night; they were unharmed.

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South Carolina's execution by firing squad: The last reenactment of the Civil War?

Mark M. Smith is affiliated with Justice 360. I served as an expert witness for the organization and submitted an affidavit in a case heard by the SC Supreme Court.

Americans have an appetite for reenacting the past, especially the battles of the U.S. Civil War, which took place from 1861 to 1865. Every year, in an effort to relive something of the nation’s bloodiest war, thousands don blue and gray uniforms and gather on fields where the distant echoes of war have since faded.

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If you have small ears, these headphones will stay put while you run

When you’re running, you’re constantly in motion — and you need your headphones to stay in place while you move. The best running headphones for small ears have a secure fit and come in wireless and wired styles, so you can pick the design that works best for you. Importantly, they’re also sweatproof or water-resistant for durability.

Getting headphones with the right fit for your ear depends on your personal preference, and you have a few options to choose from. Wireless earbuds are placed directly into your ears, and all of the ones on this list feature a variety of ear tip sizes for snug positioning while you run. However, they may get dislodged or slip out of your ear due to sweat, so earbuds with an over-the-ear hook or neckband can help them stay in place. And if you don’t want to place headphones in your ears, you can go with a pair of bone conduction headphones that have an open ear design and send sound waves through your cheekbones. These leave your ears open to ambient sound, which can be good if you’re running outdoors and want to hear your surroundings, but not if you want to focus on your music or podcast. Or you could try a pair of cushioned over-ear headphones. These can be noise-canceling and comfortable, just make sure they have a snug fit and don’t slip or fall as you run. All of these options connect to a device via Bluetooth and need to be charged to work, but another choice can be a pair of in-ear wired headphones. This means dealing with wires that can get in your way while you run, but also means you don’t have to charge or pair them before you go out.

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The Art of Asking Great Questions

While listening is an important skill, the art of asking questions is equally, if not more, important when it comes to learning more about your work tasks, unlocking hidden opportunities, delivering better results, and mitigating unforeseen risks. Great questions have three main characteristics:

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Democracies don't just bounce back after dictatorships - Argentina's Oscar contender shows what justice afterward looks like

When the director and the star of “Argentina, 1985” stepped on stage to accept a 2023 Golden Globe Award, the title of the film may not have meant much to many Americans in the audience. But for Argentines, 1985 is pivotal: the year leaders of its most recent dictatorship went on trial.

Santiago Mitre’s film details the complex judicial process against members of the military junta, which helped secure Argentina’s democratic future after years of repression that killed tens of thousands of people. The story illustrates how justice is built by both top-down and bottom-up forces, as ordinary people’s work for human rights turns them into heroes.

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5 ways pressuring young athletes to perform well does them harm

When Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapsed during a Jan. 3, 2022, NFL football game, much of the public attention was on the pressures athletes face to perform despite the perils they face on the field.

However, as a scholar who specializes in youth sports, I have found that this pressure often begins well before a player enters the pros – often very early in a young athlete’s life. And sometimes the biggest forces behind this pressure are coaches, peers and parents.

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Google's CEO Just Announced 12,000 Layoffs, and This 1 Little Word Mattered Most. (It's a Lesson Worth Learning)

"I have some difficult news to share."

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Pompeii's House of the Vettii reopens: a reminder that Roman sexuality was far more complex than simply gay or straight

As Pompeii’s House of the Vettii finally reopens after a long process of restoration, news outlets appear to be struggling with how to report on the Roman sex cultures so well recorded in the ruins of the city.

The Metro opened with the headline “Lavish Pompeii home that doubled as a brothel has some interesting wall art”, while the Guardian highlighted the fresco of Priapus, the god of fertility (depicted weighing his oversized penis on a scale with bags of coins) as well as the erotic frescoes found next to the kitchen.

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The Perfect Popcorn Movie

John Hendrickson’s culture picks include the unsung heroes of the turn-of-the-millennium New York rock renaissance and a 1993 blockbuster that was among the last of its kind.

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.

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Why People Aren't Motivated to Address Climate Change

Whether it’s an unfamiliar dog growling outside your front door or a bus bearing down the street toward you, we are often motivated to avoid threats. Why is climate change so different? The recent United Nations report detailed that we will face serious consequences in the next 25 years if the nations of the world do not drastically act to reduce climate change now. There are many reasons that it’s difficult to motivate people to address climate change. It represents a trade-off between short-term and long-term benefits; it’s a nonlinear problem; the effects of climate change are distant from most people; and the future is always more uncertain than the present. However, there are ways to motivate yourself about the dire consequences: Bring the future mentally closer to yourself, confront the uncertainty head-on, and initiate a serious discussion about values among your peers.

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Deep-sea mining could power a clean energy future â€” but thereâ€™s a cost

As companies race to expand renewable energy and the batteries to store it, finding sufficient amounts of rare earth metals to build the technology is no easy feat. That’s leading mining companies to take a closer look at a largely unexplored frontier — the deep ocean seabed.

A wealth of these metals can be found in manganese nodules that look like cobblestones scattered across wide areas of deep ocean seabed. But the fragile ecosystems deep in the oceans are little understood, and the mining codes to sustainably mine these areas are in their infancy.

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People With High Emotional Intelligence Ask Themselves These 6 Questions to Be Calm, Balanced, and Centered

It's all about what they think about emotions and how they handle them.

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You need to play the most chill fantasy sim on Xbox Game Pass ASAP

Fate is convenient. We use it to explain why we fall in love or talk about our future. The idea that things are “meant to be” is attractive in a world that is, in reality, ruled by chaos. We love it in our video games, too. How many titles have you played where you were THE CHOSEN ONE? It makes for easy exposition to say you’re the hero in a world full of NPCs. But NPCs have lives too. What’s their story like?

Medieval Dynasty from Toplitz Productions gives players a glimpse of what life is like for the poop-shovelers on the side of the road as the heroes race by. A clever and accessible survival sim, it puts you in the role of a very average man tasked with a very average mission: starting over.

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How do you vaccinate a honeybee? 6 questions answered about a new tool for protecting pollinators

Honeybees, which pollinate one-third of the crops Americans eat, face many threats, including infectious diseases. On Jan. 4, 2023, a Georgia biotechnology company called Dalan Animal Health announced that it had received a conditional license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a vaccine designed to protect honeybees against American foulbrood, a highly destructive infection.

The new bee vaccine, Paenibacillus Larvae Bacterin, aims to protect honeybees from American foulbrood. This highly destructive bacterial disease gets its name from the foul scent honeybee larvae exude when infected.

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Chris Hipkins becomes NZ's new prime minister - there are two ways it can go from here

Following the surprise resignation of Jacinda Ardern on January 19, the New Zealand Labour Party already has a new leader: Chris Hipkins. The handover from Ardern to Hipkins has been achieved with the same efficiency as the handover from Andrew Little to Ardern in 2017. But will it be as successful?

Hipkins entered parliament in 2008 – along with Ardern. Under Ardern’s leadership, he held ministerial portfolios in education, police and public services, and was Leader of the House.

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Archaeologists discovered a new papyrus of Egyptian Book of the Dead

Archaeologists have confirmed that a papyrus scroll discovered at the Saqquara necropolis site near Cairo last year does indeed contain texts from the Egyptian Book of the Dead—the first time a complete papyrus has been found in a century, according to Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt. The scroll has been dubbed the "Waziri papyrus." It is currently being translated into Arabic.

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Nuclear-powered robots could hunt for aliens on icy Solar System moons

In the coming years, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will send two robotic missions to explore Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. These are none other than NASA’s Europa Clipper and the ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE), which will launch in 2024, and 2023 (respectively). Once they arrive by the 2030s, they will study Europa’s surface with a series of flybys to determine if its interior ocean could support life. These will be the first astrobiology missions to an icy moon in the outer Solar System, collectively known as “Ocean Worlds.”

One of the many challenges for these missions is how to mine through the thick icy crusts and obtain samples from the interior ocean for analysis. According to a proposal by Dr. Theresa Benyo (a physicist and the principal investigator of the lattice confinement fusion project at NASA’s Glenn Research Center), a possible solution is to use a special reactor that relies on fission and fusion reactions. This proposal was selected for Phase I development by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which includes a $12,500 grant.

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Nigeria's 2023 presidential election: 10 factors that could affect the outcome

As Nigerians inch closer to the February 2023 presidential election, the seventh since the current wave of liberal democracy formally started in 1999, there are at least 10 key issues that are likely to drive and determine the outcome. Political scientist, Jideofor Adibe, explores them all.

Four of the 18 presidential candidates in the election, regarded as the front runners, come from the three dominant ethnic groups in the country: Hausa/Fulani, Yoruba and Igbo.

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Why Your Company Needs Data-Product Managers

As companies have struggled to make use of datasets and AI, many have started to create data products — reusable datasets that can be analyzed in different ways by different users over time to solve a particular business problem. Data products can be a powerful tool, especially for large, legacy companies, but often require companies to create a new role that’s distinct from chief digital officer and product manager: the data product manager. Data product managers, like product managers of other types, don’t have all the technical or analytical expertise to create the model or engineer the data for it. They are unlikely to be gifted at redesigning business processes or retraining workers either. What they do need to have is the ability to manage a cross-functional product development and deployment process, and a team of people with diverse skills to perform the needed tasks.

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The Artist Who Collaborates with Ants

On her first trek through the rain forest, in 2000, the artist Catherine Chalmers noticed movement on the ground near her feet. It was a parade of thousands of leaf-cutter ants. “There’s these perfectly cleaned pathways that the ants make and maintain, and they carry bright-green leaves,” Chalmers told me recently. “And so you saw this ribbon, almost like a drawing. Green, flickering, because light shimmers on them. I didn’t know they existed. And it was really, really beautiful.”

Chalmers wanted to work with the ants, but didn’t know how. “I’m interested in that place where nature meets culture,” she said. The more complicated the interface, the better: around this time, she was exploring humans’ relationship with cockroaches. But, by comparison, the ants seemed almost too natural to work with artistically. “They’re of the forest,” she said. “We think of them as the other.” What would it mean to make art about our relationship with such creatures?

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Why the News Is Not the Truth

The news media and the government are entwined in a vicious circle of mutual manipulation, mythmaking, and self-interest. Journalists need crises to dramatize news, and government officials need to appear to be responding to crises. Too often, the crises are not really crises but joint fabrications. The two institutions have become so ensnared in a symbiotic web of lies that the news media are unable to tell the public what is true and the government is unable to govern effectively. That is the thesis advanced by Paul H. Weaver, a former political scientist (at Harvard University), journalist (at Fortune magazine), and corporate communications executive (at Ford Motor Company), in his provocative analysis entitled News and the Culture of Lying: How Journalism Really Works.

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How to Make Peace with Feeling Less Ambitious

You’re used to thinking of yourself as a high-achieving professional, and it may feel discomfiting to have that identity brought into question through your own desires and actions. But downshifting your ambitions doesn’t necessarily mean you’re throwing away your past or becoming a slacker. It may actually mean that you’ve finally recognized what it takes for achievement and ambition to be sustainable. In this article, the author outlines three strategies you can use to make peace with your desire to scale back your ambitions, even if it conflicts with your previous vision of yourself as a driven professional.

At the start of every new year, we’re inundated with advice about how to plan your professional development for the next 12 months or tackle major goals you’ve been putting off. But what if that’s really not where you are this year?

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Diversity and Inclusion Efforts That Really Work

A Stanford and Harvard professor convened a symposium on what’s actually working to improve diversity and inclusion in organizational life. In this article, David Pedulla summarizes the main findings. First, organizations should set goals, collect data, and hold people accountable for improving diversity within the organization. Second, organizations should abandon traditional discrimination and harassment reporting systems—these often lead to retaliation. Employee Assistance Plans (EAPs), ombuds offices, and transformative dispute resolution systems can not only play a critical role in reducing retaliation but also provide fuel for organizational change. Third, organizations should check to ensure that technologies used to assist in hiring and promotion aren’t inherently biased. Fourth, companies must avoid tokenism. Finally, organizations should get managers and other leaders involved in diversity programs from the start. This will increase buy-in and lead to smooth implementation.

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The weekend's best deals: The newest MacBook Pros, Kindle Kids, iPad Air, and more.

It's the weekend, and that means another Dealmaster. In this week's roundup of the best tech deals on the web, we have Fire HD and Kindle tablets from Amazon, some solidly-discounted computer peripherals, and even Apple's just-announced MacBook Pros have a price cut.

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Shopping editors are calling these hidden gems on Amazon their most amazing finds of the year

When you want to find out what kind of peonies to put in your garden, you consult a landscaper. If you fancy putting a new sink in the bathroom, you’d reach out to a plumber. And if you want to know what the most useful, tried-and-true hidden gems on Amazon are, you call in the shopping editors who’ve spent countless hours combing the depths of the mega-marketplace (and trying their fair share of goods along the way).

Get that clicking finger stretched and ready because each one of the picks on this list is a bonafide winner.

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7 Reasons Salespeople Don't Close the Deal

When you ask B2B buyers about the skills of the salespeople who call on them, they rate two-thirds of reps as either average or poor performers. New research highlights seven reasons these salespeople garner low ratings, including inability to communicate with top management, appearing self-centered, inability to explain how the client benefits from the sale, and trouble building personal rapport with the buyer. Understanding these weaknesses can help sales reps improve.

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45 genius solutions to your stupid problems around the house

I'm a science fiction fan, and we’re living in the 21st century. I was always led to expect that by now there would be robots or androids available to handle all the stupid problems around the house, so we humans could focus on picking out space suits, mastering techno-babble, and learning to pilot our flying cars.

But here we are, still struggling with issues like mosquitoes in the bedroom, drafts underneath the door, rotting produce, and sock drawers in chaos. It's all good, though. I don't think I want to live in a universe where there is no shopping — and shopping is what makes it possible to solve all of those conflicts. So, after boldly going where no AI can, I found 45 solutions to different household issues — and they're all on Amazon.

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The Immortal David Crosby

“We’re going to do kind of a science-fiction story, if you’ll bear with us,” David Crosby said on August 18, 1969, as his band Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young began playing their song “Wooden Ships” at Woodstock. Crosby, the singer, songwriter, and guitarist who died on Wednesday at the age of 81, was never a typical hippie, despite being one of the movement’s founders and figureheads. Yet the band’s Woodstock performance of “Wooden Ships” is a perfect example of his sweeping, singular, sci-fi-driven vision.

To him, the counterculture of the ’60s was more than a protest movement or a bohemian aesthetic; it was a vehicle for probing the reaches of being human. While many anthems of the hippie era painted pictures of folksy peace—including CSNY’s own “Teach Your Children” and “Our House,” both written by Graham Nash—“Wooden Ships” is an outright downer, a dark account of the apocalypse. Still, it soars with cautious hope, its titular ship sailing either the sea or outer space.

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The Mesopotamian Marshes Are Disappearing, Again

This story originally appeared on Yale Environment 360 and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Three years ago, the vast marshlands of southern Iraq’s Dhi Qar province were flourishing. Fishermen glided in punts across swathes of still water between vast reed beds, while buffalo bathed amid green vegetation. But today those wetlands, part of the vast Mesopotamian Marshes, have shriveled to narrow channels of polluted water bordered by cracked and salty earth. Hundreds of desiccated fish dot stream banks, along with the carcasses of water buffalo poisoned by saline water. Drought has parched tens of thousands of hectares of fields and orchards, and villages are emptying as farmers abandon their land.

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Do detox diets work? A dietician breaks down the murky science

Detox diets are often touted as a way to cleanse the body after the excess food and drinks that come with the holidays. These diets promise quick results and can particularly entice people around the new year when there tends to be a renewed focus on health and lifestyle habits.

There are a few different types of detox diets: fasting, juice cleanses, eating only certain foods, using dietary commercial detox supplements, or “cleansing” the colon with enemas or laxatives.

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How artificial intelligence is helping us decode animal languages

For years, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning has been used to analyze and translate human languages. This field of research has helped expand human communication channels as well as led to new language-based technologies like advanced chatbots and voice command smart devices.

Today, AI is being used to study animal communication, with researchers aiming to decipher animal languages in support of conservation and sustainability efforts.

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The Bitter Truth Behind Russiaâ€™s Looting of Ukrainian Art

Kherson’s museums became a microcosm of the grim drama of collaboration and resistance that takes place under occupation.

After occupying Kherson for eight months and pledging to keep it forever, Russia’s army abandoned the city in southern Ukraine in November and retreated south and east across the Dnipro River. With them, Russian soldiers took truckloads of cultural treasures looted from the region’s museums.

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Roe Was Never Roe After All

Tomorrow will mark 50 years since Roe v. Wade was decided, but the landmark ruling did not make it to its semicentennial, having been overturned by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization last summer. Many people viewed this as the end of abortion rights in America. But that’s not what it was. Both practically and theoretically, Roe was never the guarantor of those rights that people believed it to be.

The “Roe” that has occupied the center of the abortion debate for decades bears only a passing resemblance to anything the Supreme Court said in 1973. Roe has become much more than a legal text; it’s a cultural symbol created not only by judges but by voters, politicians, and grassroots movements. And the history of America’s fixation on Roe is a story not just about the power of the Supreme Court, but about how the Court alone does not—and should not—dictate what the Constitution says.

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New mRNA cancer vaccine has a key difference from most jabs

Media outlets have reported the encouraging findings of clinical trials for a new experimental vaccine developed by the biotech company Moderna to treat an aggressive type of skin cancer called melanoma.

Although this is potentially very good news, it occurred to me that the headlines may be unintentionally misleading. The vaccines most people are familiar with prevent disease, whereas this experimental new skin cancer vaccine treats only patients who are already sick. Why is it called a vaccine if it does not prevent cancer?

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Tripledemic: How viruses may outcompete each other

Three years into the pandemic, Covid-19 is still going strong, causing wave after wave as case numbers soar, subside, then ascend again. But this past autumn saw something new — or rather, something old: the return of the flu. Plus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) — a virus that makes few headlines in normal years — ignited in its own surge, creating a “tripledemic.”

The surges in these old foes were particularly striking because flu and RSV all but disappeared during the first two winters of the pandemic. Even more surprising, one particular version of the flu may have gone extinct during the early Covid pandemic. The World Health Organization’s surveillance program has not definitively detected the B/Yamagata flu strain since March 2020. “I don’t think anyone is going to stick their neck out and say it’s gone just yet,” says Richard Webby, Ph.D., a virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. But, he adds, “we hope it got squeezed out.” Such an extinction would be a super rare event, Webby says.

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Public Programs Are Only as Good as Their Data

Data scientists will have a bumper year in 2023 as governments invest heavily in applying AI and algorithms to public policy. The European Commission has committed €1.3 billion ($1.38 billion) to research and innovation under the Digital Europe Programme. The UK government is funding £117 million ($143.6 million) for PhDs in AI, and it’s already on the second year of its 10-year plan to “make Britain a global AI superpower.” Examples of ongoing initiatives include the National Health Service’s use of AI to identify abnormalities in CT scans and the Department for Work and Pensions’ efforts to detect fraud in universal credit applications.

This story is from the WIRED World in 2023, our annual trends briefing. Read more stories from the series here—or download or order a copy of the magazine.

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How to Promote Yourself Without Looking Like a Jerk

Self-promotion can be uncomfortable for many people. That’s certainly true for foreign professionals in America, who have to navigate different cultural mores in the most bullish nation on earth when it comes to personal branding. But even for many Americans, it’s a tricky prospect: how can you ensure that your talent is recognized without alienating your colleagues and looking like a jerk?

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Everything You Need to Know Before You Buy a Laptop

Buying a laptop is an exercise in confusion. Even if you know what everything means and know exactly what you want, finding it can be difficult. Heck, just navigating the manufacturers' websites to locate the model you want is frustrating.

We hope this guide will help you navigate the morass of modern laptops. Below is a section on every major component you'll want to know about when you browse for your next PC. We break down the jargon and try to explain things on a practical level.

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The Biggest US Surveillance Program You Didn't Know About

Do you know where tonight's pork chop dinner came from? You might not like the answer.Â

This week, weÂ 22revealed the first-ever footage recorded in a US meatpacking plant of a CO2 "stunning chamber" used in the butchering of pigs. The footage was captured at a facility in California by an activist with the group Direct Action Everywhere using infrared pinhole spy cameras that are smaller than a coin. The goal of the covert surveillance mission was to prove that this supposedly "painless" form of killing is illegal and inhumane.Â

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Where is everybody? A new hope for solving the Fermi Paradox

After decades of planning, construction has finally begun on the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which will be the world’s largest radio astronomy observatory when it is completed in 2028. The final version of the SKA will use thousands of dishes and up to one million low-frequency antennas located in South Africa and Australia to study the sky at radio wavelengths. It also will be a valuable new tool for SETI, because it will have enough sensitivity to intercept potential alien transmissions at large distances. Its search space will include many exoplanetary systems, some of which will be habitable. A subset of those may contain life, possibly even intelligent life.

For that reason, the SKA raises our hopes of finding an explanation for what’s often called the Great Silence. Also known as the Fermi Paradox, this refers to the puzzling observation that we have as yet seen no clear evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life, despite the vast number of stars out there and the expectation that most of them have planets and moons. (And no, even though the number of UAP sightings has increased, the U.S. government still hasn’t found proof for alien spacecraft on Earth.)

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7 great economists and how their ideas still affect us today

Economics has a reputation as “the dismal science” — but at its most elegant and foundational, the discipline can be invaluable, revelatory even. Here, we look at some of the all-time great economists and how their genius uncovered the societal mechanisms that connect all of us.

Adam Smith was an 18th century Scottish economist and philosopher. Widely considered “The Father of Economics,” his book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is arguably the most influential book in the field’s history. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was rumored to have kept a copy in her handbag.

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The 15 Best Portable Chargers for All of Your Devices

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

Portable devices have a Murphy’s law–like ability to run out of power at the least convenient moment: as you step on the bus, right in the middle of an important meeting, or just as you get comfortable on the couch and press Play. If you keep a battery-powered portable charger handy, all those situations are a thing of the past.

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7 Reasons Salespeople Don't Close the Deal

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It Took Richard Branson a Few Words to Teach the Best Leadership Lesson You Will Hear Today

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