iNsAnItY iNtEnSiFiEd: A Psychologist Offers 5 Healthy Habits To Improve Your Self-Esteem

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A Psychologist Offers 5 Healthy Habits To Improve Your Self-Esteem

Many people come to therapy when they feel that their personal worth is jeopardized. They say things like:

Low self-esteem can lead to a number of mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. It can make it difficult for us to pursue our goals and it can negatively affect our relationships.

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The Unphotographabe: Walt Whitman on Birds Migrating at Midnight

There is singular magic to seeing a mass of creatures move in unison along the vector of a common purpose, as if commanded by a single mind. In those ultimate instances of unselfing, we are reminded that all of nature is one grand synchrony, in which we are mere particles existing in conviviality and consanguinity with every other particle.

A century and a half before Richard Powers painted in words the majestic migration of sandhill cranes, Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819–March 26, 1892) channels one such spectacle of humbling grandeur in Specimen Days (public library) — the exquisite collection of prose fragments that also gave us his reflections on democracy, music, and the wisdom of trees.

Did you ever chance to hear the midnight flight of birds passing through the air and darkness overhead, in countless armies, changing their early or late summer habitat? It is something not to be forgotten. A friend called me up just after 12 last night to mark the peculiar noise of unusually immense flocks migrating north (rather late this year.) In the silence, shadow and delicious odor of the hour, (the natural perfume belonging to the night alone,) I thought it rare music. You could hear the characteristic motion — once or twice “the rush of mighty wings,” but oftener a velvety rustle, long drawn out — sometimes quite near — with continual calls and chirps, and some song-notes. It all lasted from 12 till after 3. Once in a while the species was plainly distinguishable; I could make out the bobolink, tanager, Wilson’s thrush, white-crown’d sparrow, and occasionally from high in the air came the notes of the plover.

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In Search of the Sacred: Pico Iyer on Our Models of Paradise

“The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n,” Milton wrote in his immortal Paradise Lost. With these human minds, arising from these material bodies, we keep trying to find heaven — to make heaven — in our myths and our mundanities, right here in the place where we are: in this beautiful and troubled world. We give it different names — eden, paradise, nirvana, poetry — but it springs from the selfsame longing: to dwell in beauty and freedom from suffering.

With soulful curiosity channeled in his ever-lyrical prose, Pico Iyer chronicles a lifetime of pilgrimages to some of Earth’s greatest shrines to that longing in The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise (public library).

He begins in Iran, replete with monuments to Omar Khayyām, who built “a paradise of words” with his poems while revolutionizing astronomy — a place of uncommon beauty and uncommon terror, with roots as deep as the history of the written word, and living branches as tangled as the most contradictory impulses of human nature:

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The New Netflix Password Sharing Rules Are a Masterclass in Delivering Bad News

No one quite knows how the changes will affect them, or when. It's very, very clever.

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Enshrining the Voice gives best chance for Closing the Gap, Albanese says

Enshrining a constitutional Voice to parliament will bring better practical outcomes and give the best chance for Closing the Gap, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will say in a major address on the referendum on Sunday.

Albanese will also flatly reject opposition calls for the government to legislate the Voice at once, pointing out that the call from Indigenous people is for it to be in the Constitution.

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Robberies surge as criminals take advantage of South Africa's power outages

The acute energy crisis in South Africa has adversely affected all aspects of the society. Regular and lengthy power outages – which started in 2007 are also contributing to an escalation in the levels of criminal activity, especially street crime. The most recent quarterly crime statistics – have undermined an ailing economy and food security, as well as health and educational outcomes.

It has become evident that power cuts added to a significant increase in all robbery categories – for July to September 2022 – compared to the same period in 2021. This corresponded with the most severe power cuts the country had ever experienced.

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Chinese spy balloon over the US: An aerospace expert explains how the balloons work and what they can see

The U.S. military shot down what U.S. officials called a Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, 2023. Officials said that the U.S. Navy planned to recover the debris, which is in shallow water.

The U.S. and Canada tracked the balloon as it crossed the Aleutian Islands, passed over Western Canada and entered U.S. airspace over Idaho. Officials of the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed on Feb. 2, 2023, that the military was tracking the balloon as it flew over the continental U.S. at an altitude of about 60,000 feet, including over Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. The base houses the 341st Missile Wing, which operates nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.

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Higher interest rates, falling home prices and real wages, but no recession: top economists' forecasts for 2023

Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Australia’s Reserve Bank is set to push up rates once again at its first meeting for the year on Tuesday, according to all but two of the 29 leading economists surveyed by The Conversation at the start of 2023.

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Election violence in Nigeria's south east is threatening to derail voting in the region

Oluwole Ojewale managed the nationwide election security threat assessment programme during the 2019 general election in Nigeria.

Freedom C. Onuoha is a security sector consultant and recently co-facilitated the training of divisional police officers in the south-east zone on election security management for the 2023 general elections.

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Weed in South Africa: apartheid waged a war on drugs that still has unequal effects today

University of Johannesburg provides support as an endorsing partner of The Conversation AFRICA.

Cannabis is being commercialised into a multibillion-dollar global industry and South Africa wants a piece of the pie. In his 2022 state of the nation address, President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke of developing a hemp and cannabis sector to boost the post-COVID economy.

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Sending Help Instead of the Police in Albuquerque

In the southeastern corner of Albuquerque, near a wide mountain pass that opens onto an expanse of arid high plains, Sean Martin and Isaiah Curtis drove toward a Blake’s Lotaburger, a regional fast-food chain. Behavioral-health workers with Albuquerque Community Safety, a new city department, they respond to calls, mostly from 911, about nonviolent crises involving mental health, homelessness, or substance use. A.C.S. responders are trained to connect people from some of the city’s most vulnerable populations with professional help. In doing so, they also reduce those residents’ interactions with local law-enforcement agencies, which in recent years have had the second-highest fatal-shooting rate among major American cities.

Martin and Curtis were following a tip from a local nonprofit about a man who’d expressed an interest in housing vouchers. Behind the restaurant, they drove past dirt lots strewn with bottles and clothing. Near a short concrete wall, there were two charred tree stumps. It seemed that someone had set them on fire to stay warm, but the area was deserted. It was late morning at the end of November, and the air temperature hovered around forty degrees. Overnight, it had dropped well below freezing.

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You Need to Watch the Most Influential James Bond Movie on HBO Max ASAP

The Cold War didn’t invent espionage stories. But by the time the conflict ended in 1991, the genre had been completely redefined. The back-and-forth affair encompassed secrets, betrayals, violence, and ideology, a combination that made for box office gold. Throw in some babes, and the iconic figure of the era’s fiction, James Bond, was born.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the narrative was broken. Cold War spies, fictional characters so omnipresent that they became an oft-parodied cliche, were now officially relics of the past. While James Bond had fought a wide array of villains, and at times had even partnered with surprisingly alluring Soviet officials, in the public’s mind the British spy was firmly on one side of the Cold War. Even Russian audiences knew where he stood — in 1962, a Soviet newspaper attacked the first Bond movie, Dr. No, before it even came out, much to the delight of his creator, Ian Fleming.

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'Superman: Legacy' Will Reinvent the Man of Steel -- Everything to Know

Look, up in the sky! It’s a new Superman movie coming sooner than you think. On January 31, DC Studios co-chair James Gunn finally pulled back the curtain on the new era of the DC universe. In a slate titled “Chapter One: Gods and Monsters,” the DCU will be more tightly-connected from here on. While two different television shows will serve as an overture to the universe — Creature Commandos and Waller for HBO Max — Gunn says that the true beginning lies in a reboot film, Superman: Legacy, coming in 2025.

Here’s everything we know so far about Superman: Legacy. We’ll update this page with more information as we learn it.

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The Weirdest Sci-Fi Apocalypse on Netflix Reveals a Controversial Field of Medicine

The fear of death depicted in White Noise is real — and some studies say magic mushrooms could help treat it.

There’s something weird afoot in Netflix’s White Noise — and it’s not what you might think.

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'Hogwarts Legacy' Release Dates, Early Access, and Preorder Bonuses, Explained

Back-to-school season starts early this year. The second week of February marks the launch of the much-discussed role-playing game set in the Harry Potter universe, Hogwarts Legacy. 2023’s already off to a roaring start, with the return of two big franchises in Dead Space and Fire Emblem Engage, and a surprise banger in Hi-Fi Rush. That makes Hogwarts Legacy the next big event on the gaming calendar, but the logistics of when you can actually play are a smidge more complicated than usual. Essentially, your ability to access the game will depend on your platform, version, and whether or not you decided to preorder a copy. Let’s break it down.

Strap in, because this is about to get absurdly complicated real fast. If you’re looking to start your adventures at Hogwarts as soon as possible, there are four key dates you should be aware of:

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You Need to Get the Best Post-Apocalypse RPG on PlayStation Plus ASAP

We have a lot of stuff. From gadgets to chili dogs to keychains our world is cram-jam with objects. Everything has a purpose of some sort, no matter how short-lived. That's because we live in a world that is one big marketplace, organized and tidy. But what happens if the world falls apart? What do we do with all this stuff if the world ends?

Fallout 4 answers this question better than any other game. Sure, on the surface it's an epic post-apocalyptic adventure filled with murder and mayhem. But at its heart, it's a game that loves stuff. Scavenging and scrounging form the foundation of a nearly flawless experience. It’s also part of the PS Plus Collection, a collection of the biggest PS4 hits for PS5 owners, which is shuttering in May.

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An Upcoming Mission to the Dark Side of the Moon Could Radically Reshape Astronomy

Lunar Surface Electromagnetic Explorer is a small radio antenna and instrument package that is scheduled to be delivered to the far side of the Lunar surface as early as 2025.

Astronomers have not yet been able to map large portions of the radio emissions from our universe because of interference from the Earth itself. A team of astronomers hopes to change that, beginning with the LuSEE Night mission to the far side of the Moon. It will launch in 2025 and chart a new pathway to Lunar observatories.

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The Milky Way Galaxy May Be a Unique Heavyweight in One Weird Way

Humanity is in a back-and-forth relationship with nature. First, we thought we were at the center of everything, with the Sun and the entire cosmos rotating around our little planet. We eventually realized that wasn’t true. Over the centuries, we’ve found that though Earth and life might be rare, our Sun is pretty normal, our Solar System is relatively nondescript, and even our galaxy is one of the billions of spiral galaxies, a type that makes up 60 percent of the galaxies in the Universe.

Illustris TNG is an ongoing series of large-scale simulations. The goal is to understand the mechanisms behind galaxy formation and evolution. The effort is a “series of large, cosmological magnetohydrodynamical simulations,” according to the Illustris TNG website. So far, the project has produced three primary runs, each one larger and higher resolution than the previous one: TNG 50, TNG 100, and TNG 300. Each run also focuses on various aspects of galaxy formation. TNG 300 is the largest, simulating a region of almost 300 million megaparsecs, more than a billion light-years across, and containing millions of galaxies.

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How Scientists Decide If Everyday Products Could Cause Cancer

People are exposed to numerous chemicals throughout their lifetimes. These can be from the air, foods, personal care items, household products, and medications. Unfortunately, exposure to certain chemicals can cause harmful health effects, including cancer. Substances that cause cancer are called carcinogens. Familiar examples include tobacco smoke, radon, asbestos, and diesel engine exhaust.

To protect the health of the public, national and international health agencies evaluate many new and existing chemicals to determine if they are likely to be carcinogens in a process called cancer hazard identification. If agencies judge the chemicals to be carcinogenic, they conduct further assessments to determine the level of risk, and legislators may put regulations in place to limit, or completely halt, the production and use of these chemicals.

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'The Last of Us' Reveals a Deadly Truth About Fungal Infections

Millions have been tuning in every week to watch the highly anticipated TV adaptation of The Last of Us. The show depicts a post-apocalyptic world where society has collapsed due to the outbreak of a dangerous, brain-controlling fungal infection that turns humans into hostile, cannibalistic “zombies.”

The fungus that causes the pandemic is based on the real-life Cordyceps zombie fungus that infects insects. Insects infected with Cordyceps have little control of their actions as the fungus takes over their nervous system before eventually growing out of their bodies.

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Genius things you didn't know you were missing in your home -- & they're all super cheap

There are a ton of clever solutions and gadgets you can bring into your home to give it an upgrade — whether or not you know about them. Luckily, these genius gems are pretty easy to find on Amazon. With just a few clicks, you can be on your way to saving space, conserving energy, and entertaining with ease — without the need for expensive new furniture or remodeling with contractors.

If you're not sure where to start, scroll through this list to get an idea of what clever inventions at affordable prices your home has been missing out on most.

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35 Years Ago, Wes Craven Put his Unique Mark on the Zombie Genre

George Romero didn’t invent zombies. It may be hard to imagine the existence of zombie movies before his 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead, since Romero did invent most of the modern tropes. But the term existed long before Romero came along, and older representations of zombies can be seen in vintage horror movies like Victor Halperin’s 1932 White Zombie and Jacques Tourneur’s 1943 I Walked With a Zombie. That’s the tradition that another master of horror was working in when he made his own contribution to the genre.

Wes Craven’s haunting, underrated 1988 film The Serpent and the Rainbow uses the term zombie early and often, but it’s not about an apocalypse of the undead in the vein of most modern zombie movies. Instead, it hearkens back to an earlier definition of zombie, as derived from Haitian folklore. These zombies don’t hunger for human flesh, they don’t decay, and they don’t need to be shot through the head to be killed. They’re living humans who are almost catatonic, placed in a deathlike state and then revived as obedient puppets for a voodoo master.

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AI Is Smarter Than Ever - But Some Problems Still Stump Today's Computers

Empowered by artificial intelligence technologies, computers today can engage in convincing conversations with people, compose songs, paint paintings, play chess and Go, and diagnose diseases, to name just a few examples of their technological prowess.

These successes could be taken to indicate that computation has no limits. To see if that’s the case, it’s important to understand what gives a computer power.

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How Your Diet Could Help (or Hurt) Your Aging Brain

Ultra-processed foods impact the mind differently than plant-based meals with low amounts of sugar.

Scientists have known for years that unhealthy diets — particularly those that are high in fat and sugar — may cause detrimental changes to the brain and lead to cognitive impairment.

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How to Ask Great Questions

Asking questions is a uniquely powerful tool for unlocking value in organizations: It spurs learning and the exchange of ideas, it fuels innovation and performance improvement, it builds rapport and trust among team members. And it can mitigate business risk by uncovering unforeseen pitfalls and hazards. But few executives think of questioning as a skill that can be honed—or consider how their own answers to questions could make conversations more productive.

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Estimate the Cost of a Meeting with This Calculator

Stuck in an unproductive meeting — again? Everyone agrees that meetings can be a waste of time, but they’re actually a waste of money, too. How much? In a study of time budgeting at large corporations, Bain & Company found that a single weekly meeting of midlevel managers was costing one organization $15M a year!

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How to Ask Great Questions

What the West Gets Wrong About China

Many people have wrongly assumed that political freedom would follow new economic freedoms in China and that its economic growth would have to be built on the same foundations as in the West. The authors suggest that those assumptions are rooted in three essentially false beliefs about modern China: (1) Economics and democracy are two sides of the same coin; (2) authoritarian political systems can’t be legitimate; and (3) the Chinese live, work, and invest like Westerners. But at every point since 1949 the Chinese Communist Party—central to the institutions, society, and daily experiences that shape all Chinese people—has stressed the importance of Chinese history and of Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Until Western companies and politicians understand this and revise their views, they will continue to get China wrong.

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The Very Real Dangers of Executive Coaching

Over the past 15 years, it has become more and more popular to hire coaches for promising executives. Although some of these coaches hail from the world of psychology, a greater share are former athletes, lawyers, business academics, and consultants. No doubt these people help executives improve their performance in many areas. But I want to tell a different story. I believe that in an alarming number of situations, executive coaches who lack rigorous psychological training do more harm than good. By dint of their backgrounds and biases, they downplay or simply ignore deep-seated psychological problems they don’t understand. Even more concerning, when an executive’s problems stem from undetected or ignored psychological difficulties, coaching can actually make a bad situation worse. In my view, the solution most often lies in addressing unconscious conflict when the symptoms plaguing an executive are stubborn or severe.

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HBR's Most-Read Research Articles of 2022

The new year is a great time to set ambitious goals. But alongside our plans for the future, it’s also helpful to acknowledge all the challenges we’ve faced — and the progress we’ve made — in the last 12 months. In this end-of-year roundup, we share key insights and trends from HBR’s most-read research articles of 2022, exploring topics from embracing a new identity to fostering equity in the workplace and beyond.

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3 Simple Habits to Improve Your Critical Thinking

Too many business leaders are simply not reasoning through pressing issues, and it’s hurting their organizations. The good news is that critical thinking is a learned behavior. There are three simple things you can do to train yourself to become a more effective critical thinker: question assumptions, reason through logic, and diversify your thought and perspectives. They may sound obvious, but deliberately cultivating these three key habits of mind go a long way in helping you become better at clear and robust reasoning.

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The More Senior Your Job Title, the More You Need to Keep a Journal

Being a CEO can be a lonely job–there is no obvious person in whom to confide. Keeping a journal can fill that void, by giving a new leader a chance for structured reflection of recent past events and decisions, and mental rehearsal for future ones. Despite the time and discipline it takes to keep a journal, it should be part of every new leader’s toolkit.

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How to Blow a Presentation to the C-Suite

You’re asked to speak to the C-suite, to offer your ideas for tackling company-wide strategic challenges. This was a rare opportunity to present directly in front of the CEO, so you do your research, frame the specific challenge, debate different ideas and solutions, and prepare your presentation. But despite all your hard work, your idea is met with a lukewarm reaction and what, at best, could be called a polite round of applause. What went wrong? When presenting ideas to the CEO, even seasoned leaders who don’t regularly interact with the C-suite fall into a few common traps that can be easily avoided. These traps include presenting an idea without its problem or a clear indication of its ROI; offering your presentation with little time to interact with your audience; and providing data without attention to detail.

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I'm a CEO who tried 'monk mode' after seeing it on TikTok. My productivity shot up, and so did the quality of my work.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Josh Wood, the 32-year-old CEO and founder of the tech hospitality company Bloc, who's based in London, about his experience trying the productivity hack known as "monk mode." The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I recently had a big deadline coming up for a new feature within my company, Bloc, and I felt like I was behind and constantly distracted. As the CEO of a startup, you play many different roles, so focus and productivity is incredibly important.

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You're Not an Imposter. You're Actually Pretty Amazing.

Do you feel like a fraud? Many of us do. Perhaps you started a new job and believe you have less experience than you need, despite being the perfect candidate on paper. Or maybe your boss trusted you with an assignment that you feel totally unprepared to lead, regardless of your flawless track record.

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10 Common Job Interview Questions and How to Answer Them

Interviews can be high stress, anxiety-driving situations, especially if it’s your first interview. A little practice and preparation always pays off. While we can’t know exactly what an employer will ask, here are 10 common interview questions along with advice on how to answer them. The questions include:

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Let's Talk About Layoffs: Our Favorite Reads

In my mid-20s, I was laid off from a job in the tech industry. We were called into work for a 9 am meeting, and as soon as I saw the room, I knew. My peers, my boss, and I sat across from the senior managers of our department. Years later, my memory of the conversation is murky, but there was something about cutting back on resources, leaving everything at our desks, and being escorted out of the building by security.

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How Important is a College Degree Compared to Experience?

The converging trends of a competitive labor market, ballooning university tuitions, new online learning alternatives, and fast-changing job roles has created a tipping point in the perceived value of college degrees. The percentage of jobs requiring a college degree fell from 51% in 2017 to 44% percent in 2021. And according to Gallup, the percentage of U.S. adults ages 18 to 29 who view college education as “very important” dropped from 74% to 41% in just six years. What does this mean for you?

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12 Simple habits Tom Brady Lived By, Quickly Explained So You Can basically Copy Them

Tom Brady has retired. Here's what we can learn.

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Feeling Like an Imposter? The 'Character Alarm Method' Has Got You Covered in 3 Easy Steps

Become your own Sasha Fierce with your alarm.

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6 Marketing Conferences You Should Attend in 2023

From social media summits to SEO immersions, these are the top digital marketing conferences you'll want to check out this year.

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The ancient remains of Great Zimbabwe

Walking up to the towering walls of Great Zimbabwe was a humbling experience. The closer I got, the more they dwarfed me – and yet, there was something inviting about the archaeological site. It didn't feel like an abandoned fortress or castle that one might see in Europe: Great Zimbabwe was a place where people lived and worked, a place where they came to worship – and still do. It felt alive.

Great Zimbabwe is the name of the extensive stone remains of an ancient city built between 1100 and 1450 CE near modern-day Masvingo, Zimbabwe. Believed to be the work of the Shona (who today make up the majority of Zimbabwe's population) and possibly other societies that were migrating back and forth across the area, the city was large and powerful, housing a population comparable to London at that time – somewhere around 20,000 people during its peak. Great Zimbabwe was part of a sophisticated trade network (Arab, Indian and Chinese trade goods were all found at the site), and its architectural design was astounding: made of enormous, mortarless stone walls and towers, most of which are still standing.

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Mexico's 1,500-year-old unknown pyramids

From a distance, the grey volcanic rock pyramids and their encircling stonewalls looked like something that Mother Nature had wrought herself. Located in Cañada de La Virgen (The Valley of the Virgin), an area about 30 miles outside the city of San Miguel de Allende in Mexico's central highlands, the stone formations blended into the arid, desiccated landscape like a diminutive mountain range.

But as I got closer to the largest of the three structures, there was no doubt it was man-made. A staircase of identical steps, etched into the hard, dark rock, had clearly required a skilled mason's hand. The other two pyramids, smaller and less well-preserved, bore a similarly unmistakable human touch. The timeworn edifices were erected by a civilisation long gone.

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Sardinia's mysterious beehive towers

Expecting not to find much more than a pile of big stones, I followed the sign off the motorway into a little car park and there it was, rising from a flat, green landscape covered in little white flowers, with a few donkeys dotted around: Nuraghe Losa. From a distance, it looked like a big sandcastle with its top crumbling away, but as I walked towards it, I began to realise the colossal size of the monument in front of me.

Nuraghi (the plural of nuraghe) are massive conical stone towers that pepper the landscape of the Italian island of Sardinia. Built between 1600 and 1200BCE, these mysterious Bronze Age bastions were constructed by carefully placing huge, roughly worked stones, weighing several tons each, on top of each other in a truncated formation.

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The city with gold in its sewage lines

"He burned the sari and from it, handed us a thin slice of pure silver," said my mother, describing a moment that had taken place 30 years ago at her home in the city of Firozabad. The man in her story was no magician, but an extractor. Like many similar artisans in my mother's hometown, he'd go door to door collecting old saris to mine them for their precious metals.

Until the 1990s, saris were often threaded with pure silver and gold, and I remember digging into my mother's wardrobe, searching for her glittery outfits like treasure. But as she told me, the extractors were looking for something even more valuable than clothing – they were looking for trash, and a kind of trash specific to this city.

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The mysterious Viking runes found in a landlocked US state

"[Farley] spent the majority of her adult life researching the stone," said Amanda Garcia, Heavener Runestone Park manager. "She travelled all around the US, went to Egypt and went to different places looking at different markings."

Faith Rogers, an environmental-science intern and volunteer at the Heavener Runestone Park, led me down a cobblestone path toward one of the 55-acre woodland's biggest attractions – which is also one of the US' biggest historical mysteries. We were deep in the rolling, scrub-forest foothills of the Ouachita Mountains in far eastern Oklahoma, and we were on our way to view a slab of ancient sandstone that still has experts scratching their heads and debating about the eight symbols engraved on its face.

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The true story behind the US' first federal monuments

"Are you sitting down? I have news for you." Gwen Marable's cousin from the US state of Ohio called her at home in Maryland about 27 years ago. "We are descended from the sister of Benjamin Banneker, Jemima."

The Banneker family, which numbers over 5,000 known descendants today, only learned about this astonishing connection to their ground-breaking but little-known ancestor through the wonders of DNA testing. As such, no personal stories about him, no artifacts, were handed down through the generations.

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Duna de Bolonia: The Spanish sand dune hiding Roman ruins

Near the southern tip of Spain's Cádiz province, where Europe lunges into the Strait of Gibraltar as if reaching out for the North African coast, the Duna de Bolonia is one of the continent's largest sand dunes. Rising more than 30m high and sprawling 200m wide, the white mound spills into the azure sea and appears as if someone has dumped a massive pile of sugar atop the surrounding Estrecho Nature Park's protected green forest.

Like all sand dunes, Bolonia is a constantly moving ecosystem that shifts with the winds. But as climate change has intensified the hurricane-force gusts coming from the east, the dune has increasingly migrated inland towards the ecologically important cork and pine forests and scrubland – revealing remnants of the many past cilivilisations who have passed through here in the process.

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Is Santa Claus buried in Ireland?

Amid green hilly pastures dotted with grazing sheep and a cemetery with graves dating back to the 13th Century, the ruins of St Nicholas Church tower over the family home of Maeve and Joe O'Connell. Among those resting eternally here are early inhabitants of the estate, parishioners of the church and – according to local legend – St Nicholas of Myra. Yes, the St Nick who inspired Santa Claus.

Today, the O'Connells are the owners and sole (living) human inhabitants of Jerpoint Park, a 120-acre deserted 12th-Century medieval town located 20km south of the town of Kilkenny, Ireland. Located along the crossing point of the River Nore and Little Arrigle River, the settlement (formerly called Newtown Jerpoint) is thought to have been founded by the Normans, who arrived in Ireland around 1160 CE. According to a conservation plan compiled by Ireland's Heritage Council, the town flourished into the 15th Century, with archaeological evidence revealing homes, a marketplace, a tower, a bridge, streets, a mill, a water management system and nearby Jerpoint Abbey, which still stands today. But by the 17th Century, the town's occupants were gone, likely from a combination of violent attacks and a plague.

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A secret site for the Knights Templar?

In a hole in the ground beneath the Hertfordshire market town of Royston, dimly illuminated by flickering light, I was looking at a gallery of crudely carved figures, blank-faced and bearing instruments of torture. Cave manager Nicky Paton pointed them out to me one by one. "There's Saint Catherine, with her breaking wheel. She was only 18 when she was martyred," Paton said, cheerfully. "And there's Saint Lawrence. He was burnt to death on a griddle."

Amid the grisly Christian scenes were Pagan images: a large carving of a horse, and a fertility symbol known as a sheela na gig, depicting a woman with exaggerated sexual organs. Another portrayed a person holding a skull in their right hand and a candle in their left, theorised to represent an initiation ceremony – a tantalising clue as to the cave's possible purpose. Adding to the carvings' creepiness was their rudimentary, almost childlike, execution.

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The enormous heat pumps warming cities

It's another cold snap and the fields of Cornwall, in south-west England, are blanketed in snow. But down a windy lane, Ceri Simmons' home is toasty warm. Her living room is a jungle of hanging plants and, through the kitchen, glimpses of a wood-lined studio reveal Simmons' job as an aerial-yoga teacher. "It's not just lovely for me to have a warm house, it's also important for my clients," she says.

The remote village of Stithians, close to the most south-westerly tip of the UK mainland, where the Simmons family live has become an unlikely frontier in the race to decarbonise heating. It is piloting a new approach to low-carbon heating which could be key to the rapid scale-up needed worldwide.

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Poem: 'A Quantum Cento'

Time crystals could soon escape the laboratory.These quantum systems made of time and lightare potential fugitives into our reality.

By shining twin laser beams pipedinto a tiny disk-shaped crystal cavitythis new class of matter was created unexpectedly.

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37 Great Deals on Sleep Tech and Smart Frames for Valentine's Day

if your valentine isn't a fan of flowers and chocolate, there are plenty of other options to surprise them with—whether it's a partner, friend, or family member. But for those struggling to find the perfect alternative, we've got you covered. Below, you'll find a number of discounts on gift ideas that cover a wide range of interests, including photography, books, self-care, fitness, and more. And, while you're at it, don't forget to treat yourself.

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The Climate Crisis Is Threatening Spain's Saffron Crop

This story originally appeared on The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A sharp wind shunts clouds across the low and endless skies of La Mancha as Carlos FernÃ¡ndez stoops to pluck the last mauve flowers of the season from the cold earth. Their petals, which stain his index finger and thumb blue, enclose an almost weightless prize whose crimson threads are treasured in Spain and across the world.

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Razer's Cage-Like Mouse Is a $280 Goth-Metal Jewel

Razer could never be accused of subtle branding. From pulsating, RGB-backlit keyboards, laptops, and mice to flashing, light-festoonedÂ face masks, the gaming hardware company has crafted its whole vibe around a sense of ostentatious opulence.

Enter the Razer's new mouse, theÂ Viper Mini Signature Edition. By Razer standards, it is actually somewhat subdued, with the kind of tasteful aesthetic you might see on the cover of an industrial-metal album. The back of the cursor conveyor is an open web of triangular and trapezoidal shapes made of a lightweight magnesium alloy. It currently comes in one color option, which is solid black.Â

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Space travel will radically change human psychology and spirituality

Humans have lived on Earth for millennia, but one day that will change. The stars are calling us, and their pull is far too strong for us to ignore. We have already put our feet on the Moon; one day we will be back. Then perhaps we will head to Mars and beyond. When we do, it will change us. Leaving the pull of Earth will alter how we think and feel. It will affect our spirituality and our psyche — and perhaps even redefine humankind.

Throughout human history, we have associated our spirituality, myths, and religions with the sky. Constellations are peppered with sky stories, from Orion to Warepil (the eagle constellation of aboriginal Australians). The Lakota Native Americans associated the Milky Way as a path for departed souls. Jesus ascended to the heavens. The primary god of ancient Egyptians was Ra, the god of the Sun. And the entire Universe was seen inside Krishna’s mouth.

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How the metaverse will revolutionize K-12 and higher education

There are many things we can teach through books and lectures but giving students highly realistic, “hands-on” experience through a virtual world isn’t one of them. But that future is coming very soon, and it will revolutionize K-12 and higher education.

To give but one example, we can teach kids to multiply numbers and generate a result in the billions, but it’s very difficult — if not impossible — to teach the vastness of a billion stars, the profound smallness of a billion atoms, or the relevance of pumping 37 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But immersive technology will allow us to foster a sense of intuition in students, and thereby engendering a much deeper understanding of the world.

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Even in the age of AI, some problems are just too difficult for computers

Empowered by artificial intelligence technologies, computers today can engage in convincing conversations with people, compose songs, paint paintings, play chess and go, and diagnose diseases, to name just a few examples of their technological prowess.

These successes could be taken to indicate that computation has no limits. To see if that’s the case, it’s important to understand what makes a computer powerful.

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Why do high IQ people stagnate in their careers? Emotional intelligence

Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Ludwig van Beethoven, John Rockefeller, Ada Lovelace, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. What do these people have in common? They were all incredibly successful in their respective fields, and they are all personalities who have had the label “genius” attached to them. The lesson learned from their examples is evident: Success and intelligence go hand-in-hand.

And there is some truth to that. Intelligence as measured by an IQ test — that is, general intelligence — does correlate with beneficial life outcomes, such as educational attainment and life expectancy.

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My latest co-op multiplayer obsession is Raft, the game where you build a raft

My co-op gaming group has logged a few hundred extra hours in Deep Rock Galactic since I wrote about it a year and a half ago, but we're always looking for another game to fall in love with.

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Scientists grew mini human guts inside mice

Your gut has an obvious job: It processes the food you eat. But it has another important function: It protects you from the bacteria, viruses, or allergens you ingest along with that food. “The largest part of the immune system in humans is the GI tract, and our biggest exposure to the world is what we put in our mouth,” says Michael Helmrath, a pediatric surgeon at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center who treats patients with intestinal diseases.

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Scientific highs and lows of cannabinoids

The 1960s was a big decade for cannabis: Images of flower power, the summer of love and Woodstock wouldn’t be complete without a joint hanging from someone’s mouth. Yet in the early ’60s, scientists knew surprisingly little about the plant. When Raphael Mechoulam, then a young chemist in his 30s at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, went looking for interesting natural products to investigate, he saw an enticing gap in knowledge about the hippie weed: The chemical structure of its active ingredients hadn’t been worked out.

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The physics of James Joyce's Ulysses

Ulysses, the groundbreaking modernist novel by James Joyce, marked its 100-year anniversary last year; it was first published on February 2, 1922. The poet T.S Eliot declared the novel to be "the most important expression which the present age has found," and Ulysses has accumulated many other fans in the ages since. Count Harry Manos, an English professor at Los Angeles City College, among those fans. Manos is also a fan of physics—so much so, that he penned a December 2021 paper published in The Physics Teacher, detailing how Joyce had sprinkled multiple examples of classical physics throughout the novel.

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US military shoots down Chinese balloon over coastal waters

On Saturday afternoon, US jets intercepted the Chinese surveillance balloon as it was leaving the continental US. Live footage of the event shows contrails of aircraft approaching the balloon, followed by a puff of smoke that may indicate the explosion of some ordnance near the balloon's envelope—a reporter is heard saying "they just shot it" in the video embedded below. The envelope clearly loses structural integrity shortly afterwards as it plunges towards the ocean. Reportedly, the events took place near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

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The French Are in a Panic Over 'le Wokisme'

The nation’s vehement rejection of identity politics made me recalibrate my own views about woke ideology.

It took me a moment to register the sound of scattered hissing at the Tocqueville Conversations—a two-day “taboo-free discussion” among public intellectuals about the crisis of Western democracies. More than 100 of us had gathered in a large tent set up beneath the window of Alexis de Tocqueville’s study, on the grounds of the 16th-century Château de Tocqueville, in coastal Normandy. I couldn’t remember hearing an audience react like this in such a forum.

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Why Aren't More People Running for President?

The 2024 field has been frozen by an unusual pairing—a former president who still inspires fear and a sitting president still biding his time.

Typically, by the time a president delivers the State of the Union address at the start of his third year in office, as Joe Biden will on Tuesday, at least half a dozen rivals are already gunning for his job. When Donald Trump began his annual speech to Congress in 2019, four of the Democrats staring back at him inside the House chamber had already declared their presidential candidacies.

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Six Books That Will Change How You Look at Art

These titles expand our understanding of creative work—and affirm that it is fundamental to how we process the world.

In 1923, Pablo Picasso told his peer, the Mexican gallery owner Marius de Zayas, that “art is a lie”—but one that “makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.” Artists intuitively engage—in paint, clay, prints, film—with the strangeness of life. Their creations can differ wildly from our expectations and outlook; they frequently inspire emotion by surprising us or, as Picasso believed, by manipulating our perception.

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Emotionally Intelligent Leaders Regularly Use These 5 Words