Does Not Being Able to Picture Something in Your Mind Affect Your Creativity?

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Does Not Being Able to Picture Something in Your Mind Affect Your Creativity? Researchers who study aphantasia, or the inability to visualize something in your “mind’s eye,” are starting to get a sense of how to accurately measure the condition and what it may mean for those who have it. If I asked you to visualize, say, Harry Potter, you’d probably have no problem picturing him in your mind: a teenage wizard with black hair, glasses, a thunderbolt-shaped scar on his forehead and a wand in his hand. It would almost be as if you were pulling up a photograph in your head. Continued here

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The Dream of Mini Nuclear Plants Hangs in the Balance Jordan Garcia, a deputy utilities manager in Los Alamos, New Mexico, is facing an energy crunch that is typical in the American West. For decades, the county-run utility relied on a cheap and steady mix of coal and hydroelectric power. But the region’s dams are aging and drought-parched, and its coal plants are slated to retire. The county is aiming to fully decarbonize its grid by 2040, and the city has been tapping more solar lately, but batteries are arriving slowly, and Garcia worries about heat waves that strain the grid after the sun goes down. Wind power? He’d take more of it. But there aren’t enough wires stretching from the state’s windy eastern plains to the mesa-top community. “For us it’s pretty dire,” he says. Continued here

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How humans evolved to be intelligent “Only a handful of genes separate us from the chimps, and yet we live twice as long and we have thousands of words in our vocabulary.” Dr. Michio Kaku, the co-creator of string field theory, says that intelligence is not necessary for survival — after all, Earth did just fine during the first 4.5 billion years before humans existed. Why aren’t there more intelligent creatures on Earth? And what propelled humans, above all other primates, to become intelligent creatures? We can thank opposable thumbs, predator eyesight, and language.  Continued here

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Sci-Fi Publishers Are Bracing for an AI Battle It began with a tweet of a bar graph depicting a sharp rise in the month of February: Neil Clarke, the publisher and editor in chief of the science fiction and fantasy magazine Clarkesworld, had plotted out the publication’s past few years of plagiarized and spammy submissions. Until late 2022, the bars are barely visible, but in the past few months—and especially this month—the numbers climb dramatically, mostly due to AI-generated content. Clarke wrote a post laying out the situation entitled “A Concerning Trend.” Five days and a massive amount of online chatter later, Clarkesworld announced it’s closing submissions for now.   Clarke says they’ve seen this problem growing for a while, but they took the time to analyze the data before talking about it publicly. “The reason we’re getting these is a lot of the side-hustle community,” he says. “‘Make money using ChatGPT.’ They’re not science fiction writers—they’re not even writers, for the most part. They’re just people who are trying to make some money on some of these things, and they’re following people who make it sound like they know what they’re doing.” He adds that having seen some of the how-to videos in question, “There’s no way what they’re hawking is going to work.” Continued here

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Your Brain Could Be Controlling How Sick You Get - And How You Recover Scientists are deciphering how the brain choreographs immune responses, hoping to find treatments for a range of diseases Hundreds of scientists around the world are looking for ways to treat heart attacks. But few started where Hedva Haykin has: in the brain. Continued here

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A Chatbot Is Secretly Doing My Job I have a part-time job that is quite good, except for one task I must do—not even very often, just every other week—that I actively loathe. The task isn’t difficult, and it doesn’t take more than 30 minutes: I scan a long list of short paragraphs about different people and papers from my organization that have been quoted or cited in various publications and broadcasts, pick three or four of these items, and turn them into a new, stand-alone paragraph, which I am told is distributed to a small handful of people (mostly board members) to highlight the most “important” press coverage from that week. Four weeks ago, I began using AI to write this paragraph. The first week, it took about 40 minutes, but now I’ve got it down to about five. Only one colleague knows I’ve been doing this; we used to switch off writing this blurb, but since it’s become so quick and easy and, frankly, interesting, I’ve taken over doing it every week. Continued here

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U.S. Lawsuit Threatens Access to Abortion Drug: The Science behind the Case A judge’s decision could ban mifepristone across the country and weaken the Food and Drug Administration’s authority A lawsuit in Texas not only has the potential to further restrict abortion access in the United States — but it could also set a dangerous precedent by overturning the approval of a medication by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Continued here

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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. Continued here

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A look back at JWST's predecessor: NASA's Spitzer Joining Hubble, Compton, and Chandra, Spitzer was the final of NASA’s original Great Observatories. Spitzer reigned as humanity’s greatest mid-infrared observatory until JWST’s operations began. Continued here

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4 Steps to Beating Burnout Three symptoms characterize burnout: exhaustion; cynicism, or distancing oneself from work; and inefficacy, or feelings of incompetence and lack of achievement. Research has linked burnout to many health problems, including hypertension, sleep disturbances, depression, and substance abuse. Moreover, it can ruin relationships and jeopardize career prospects. Continued here

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How we discovered a personality profile linked to war crimes Former US Private First Class Stephen Green was found guilty of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl and murdering her family in Mahmudiyah, Iraq in 2006. Four years later, US Corporal Jeremy Morlock was convicted of ambushing, murdering and maiming Afghan civilians in 2010. Investigations revealed that Green had a pre-existing antisocial personality disorder. This effectively made him indifferent to the suffering of others. Morlock, too, had a personal history of anti-social behaviour.  Continued here

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Keke Palmer Is OK With Being Left Out of the Group Chat Let’s clear this up once and for all. Keke Palmer is not the moment. After watching her on my screen for 20 years, here is what I can tell you with absolute certainty: She is, and continues to be, a ubiquitous talent—a daughter, sister, actress, singer, producer, podcaster, CEO, and millennial diva. So to say Palmer is one of these things more than the other would be incorrect. She’s a canny, once-in-a-generation artist who makes the kind of work that resists containment. So, no—she is not one moment, one performance, one anything.  Gaze into the window of any of her roles and notice the way she builds them line by line, making a home for us to find comfort in. Palmer’s investment becomes ours. A turbine of emotion and a natural scene stealer, she has pulled off an audacious high-wire act of feeling, from Akeelah and the Bee in 2006, her breakout role as a champion speller, to her turn in Nope as Emerald Haywood, the electric heart of Jordan Peele’s awe-stirring sci-fi Western. I have always considered Palmer my generation’s Angela Bassett. She is an actor who puts in the work—lots and lots of work—even when no one is looking. Through it all Palmer has remained unequivocally herself. Through it all she has never given in to the expectation of others. Continued here

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How to Pick the Right Backpack Size for You If you own as many backpacks as we do, you might have noticed that they're categorized by liters rather than their inch-by-inch dimensions. The volume, or bag capacity, is a critical factor to keep in mind when purchasing a backpack. For example, a 15-liter backpack is fine for day-to-day activities, but it's probably not going to be big enough for an overnight trip. It's surprisingly difficult to convey a bag's volume given its dimensions. Let's compare two of my favorite bags: The Rains Mini measures 15.7 inches by 11.4 by 3.9, and the Herschel Heritage measures 18 inches by 12.25 by 5.5. Given a side-by-side visual comparison, they look pretty comparable, but the Rains holds nine liters, while the Herschel holds 21.5. Continued here

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How eccentric religions were born in 19th-century America Excerpted from An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder, written by Susan Wels and published by Pegasus Books. Newspapers were a thriving business in the 1830s. There were twice as many of them in America as there had been in 1810. Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat who traveled the young country in 1831, was amazed at the number of periodicals. Every village, he reported, had a newspaper, and the power of the press was impressive. John Humphrey Noyes — God’s self-anointed messenger — planned to launch a religious newspaper that would serve as the pulpit of the world.  Continued here

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New Color-Changing Coating Could Both Heat and Cool Buildings A thin film can switch from releasing heat to trapping it, and wrapping the coating around buildings could make them more energy-efficient Keeping indoor spaces comfortable takes a lot of power. About half the energy Americans use in their homes goes toward heating and cooling, accounting for a sizable chunk of both utility bills and greenhouse gas emissions. Although many buildings have walls packed with insulation to maintain an ideal temperature, others—especially old buildings—are shockingly energy inefficient. Continued here

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No One Knows If Decades-Old Nukes Would Actually Work Flattened cities, millions of people burnt to death, and yet more tortured by radioactive fallout. That harrowing future may seem outlandish to some, but only because no nation has detonated a nuclear weapon in conflict since 1945. Countries including the US, Russia, and China wield hefty nuclear arsenals and regularly squabble over how to manage them—only last week, Russia suspended participation in its nuclear arms reduction treaty with the US. Thankfully, nuclear warheads mostly just sit there, motionless and silent, cozy in their silos and underground storage caverns. If someone actually tried to use one, though, would it definitely go off as intended? “Nobody really knows,” says Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear weapons historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology. The 20th century witnessed more than 2,000 nuclear tests—the vast majority carried out by the US and the Soviet Union. And while these did prove the countries’ nuclear capabilities, they don’t guarantee that a warhead strapped to a missile or some other delivery system would work today. Continued here

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People on TikTok are paying elderly women to sit in stagnant mud for hours and cry In a series of recently viral livestreams on Indonesian TikTok, the premise is always the same: Women in their 50s and 60s sit in a stagnant pool of water and mud, often shivering. The women’s clothes are soaked to the skin, and they periodically throw a pail of water over themselves, looking directly at the camera. At times, they wipe away tears, appearing distressed. In doing so, the women — or the TikTok creators directing them, at least — can earn money. Over hours, sympathetic viewers send “coins” and gifts that can be exchanged for cash, amounting to several hundred dollars per stream, says Sultan Akhyar, the man credited with inventing the trend. Emojis of gifts, roses, and well-wishes float up gently from the bottom of the live feed. Continued here

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Stop Demonizing Stock Buybacks If progressives think they’ve found a good stick to beat corporate America with, they’re wrong. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this month featured a hefty dose of good old-fashioned economic populism. Biden called out the rich for cheating on taxes, and big companies for not paying any taxes at all. He attacked Big Pharma for jacking up drug prices. And he took aim at one of progressives’ bêtes noires: stock buybacks. Continued here

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4 Simple Ways to Show Employee Appreciation Year Round Employee Appreciation Day is a good opportunity for leaders to reflect on improving their employee retention. Continued here

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Cat Owners Are More Cautious Consumers Than Dog Owners Xiaojing Yang of the University of South Carolina and two coresearchers gave pet owners basic definitions of stocks and mutual funds, highlighting the increased risk associated with the former, and asked them which type of financial instrument they’d rather buy and how much they’d invest. Dog owners were more likely than cat owners to opt for stocks, and they allocated more money to them than the relatively few cat owners who made that choice did. Additional experiments revealed that cat owners also preferred products that prevented problems, while dog owners were drawn to products that promised gains. The conclusion: Cat owners are more cautious consumers than dog owners. Continued here

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Jacqueline DiBiasie-Sammons: Ancient Pompeii's hidden messages, preserved in graffiti Take a graffiti tour through ancient Pompeii with Roman archaeologist Jacqueline DiBiasie-Sammons and discover what 2,000-year-old scribblings from antiquity can teach us about life in modern times. A fascinating reminder of what we leave behind for future generations. Continued here

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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. Continued here

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The Case for a Primary Challenge to Joe Biden He will most likely make this official in the next couple of months, and with the support of nearly every elected Democrat in range of a microphone. That is how things are typically done in Washington: The White House shall make you primary-proof. The gods of groupthink have decreed as much. In private, of course, many elected Democrats say Biden is too old to run again and that they wish he’d step away—which aligns with what large majorities of Democrats and independents have been telling pollsters for months. The public silence around the president’s predicament has become tiresome and potentially catastrophic for the Democratic Party. Somebody should make a refreshing nuisance of themselves and involve the voters in this decision. Continued here

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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.  Continued here

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Always Feeling Exhausted? Embrace the Military's Sleep Discipline Rule to Get the Perfect Night's Sleep A lot of science, and a time-tested method for being more productive, focused, engaged, and energized. Continued here

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Six Memoirs That Go Beyond Memories Sometimes you hear that taunt in your head late at night as you try and fail to sleep. Maybe it’s the voice of an old acquaintance whose respect you once craved. Or worse, perhaps this voice sounds like your own, the most insecure and anxious version of you. The truth is, it’s never not a little embarrassing when someone hears that you’re writing a book and asks you what it’s about. If and when you venture down this particular writing path, you’ll quickly discover that memoirs are not diaries. The best don’t work solely from the author’s biased, Hollywood-style recollections, where every character is either “good” or “bad.” Lives, and memories, are more complicated than that. Continued here

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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. Continued here

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Judy Blume Goes All the Way This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       Like tens of thousands of young women before me, I wrote to Judy Blume because something strange was happening to my body. Continued here

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Scientists Are Trying to Pull Carbon Out of the Ocean to Combat Climate Change Instead of sucking planet-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, some scientists are looking to capture it from the oceans CLIMATEWIRE | There's a growing consensus among climate scientists that in order to avoid the worst effects of global warming, humanity has to find a way to sequester carbon dioxide — and most efforts to date have focused on removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Continued here

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How to Manage Interruptions in Meetings Imagine you’re in your first job, sharing a brilliant idea in a meeting. Then, out of nowhere, one of your peers, who is also new, interrupts you. Before you know it, you’re competing with the interrupter to speak – but it’s too late. Your colleague has sidetracked the entire conversation. The meeting ends. Continued here

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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.  Continued here

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The AI Disaster Scenario Is it right to freak out? Is it wrong? Will AI end the human race? But also: Aren’t these tools awe-inspiring? This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Continued here

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A Refresher on Price Elasticity Setting the right price for your product or service is hard. In fact, determining price is one of the toughest things a marketer has to do, in large part because it has such a big impact on the company’s bottom line. One of the critical elements of pricing is understanding what economists call price elasticity. Continued here S4 Why Are We So Emotional about Money? Money, I imagine, is something that belongs in my future. I feel greedy every time I spend it on myself and often fall into the trap of comparing my financial situation to that of my friends. I spiral into a dark hole of negative self-talk — the expensive events I can’t afford playing on a loop in my head — because I know I will spend my entire 20s chipping away at my massive student loan debt. Continued here S54 "Sorry in advance!" Snapchat warns of hallucinations with new AI conversation bot On Monday, Snapchat announced an experimental AI-powered conversational chatbot called "My AI," powered by ChatGPT-style technology from OpenAI. My AI will be available for $3.99 a month for Snapchat+ subscribers and is rolling out "this week," according to a news post from Snap, Inc. Continued here S7 3 Simple Questions to Assess Whether Your Job Candidates Have Emotional Intelligence Emotional intelligence is just as important as IQ, if not more. Continued here S51 The Paratethys Sea was the largest lake in Earth's history Maps of Earth’s distant past have the strange ability to shock by their sheer alienness. Consider this one showing the Paratethys Sea. It’s the largest lake the world has ever seen. You could have sailed from what is now Austria to what is now Turkmenistan — if there had been boats back then, or people. The idea of a body of water this vast yet now completely vanished brings home an uncomfortable truth: the physical parameters or our world — continents and oceans, mountains and lakes — appear fixed only because our own lives are so infinitesimally short, measured against geological eras. Continued here S8 Feeling Overworked? Here are 3 Work Boundaries You Didn't Know You Needed to Reset Set healthy and productive boundaries for yourself in your business with these helpful tips. Continued here S67 Dear Therapist: My Daughter’s ‘Brother’ Is Actually Her Father When I married my husband, he had two adult children, and I had none. We both wanted to have a child together, but my husband had a vasectomy after his second child was born—too long ago to get the procedure reversed. We didn’t want to use a sperm bank, so we asked my husband’s son to be the donor. We felt that was the best decision: Our child would have my husband’s genes, and we knew my stepson’s health, personality, and intelligence. He agreed to help. Continued here S59 Lenovo demos laptop that rolls from 13 to 15 inches with the flip of a switch Lenovo's laptop with a screen that can roll from 12.7 inches to 15.3 inches is just a proof of concept, but it looks like a pretty serious one. The company first teased the versatile OLED laptop online in October but showed it off in person before the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona this week. Marked by an OLED screen usable in two different sizes and resolutions, it's described as subtle looking and decently polished. Continued here S63 LastPass says employee's home computer was hacked and corporate vault taken Already smarting from a breach that put partially encrypted login data into a threat actor’s hands, LastPass on Monday said that the same attacker hacked an employee’s home computer and obtained a decrypted vault available to only a handful of company developers. Continued here S55 West Virginia, Florida make moves to undermine science education Two recent bills introduced at the state level could spell trouble for science education. One of them is in West Virginia, where the state Senate has approved a bill that would allow teachers to tell students that the Universe is the result of intelligent design, an idea that was developed to avoid prohibitions on teaching creationism. While a court held that teaching intelligent design was an unconstitutional imposition of religion, a recent Supreme Court decision weakened the legal foundations of that ruling. Continued here S11 8 Ways to Enhance Your Trust Quotient as a Business Professional Team trust in you as a leader won't happen by default, and can make or break your long-term success. Continued here S23 Tuscany's mysterious 'cave roads' Wildflowers grazed my legs as I hiked down from the volcanic-rock hilltop fortress of Pitigliano into the Tuscan valley below. At the base of the hill, I crossed a burbling stream and followed a winding trail as it inclined. All of a sudden, I was walled in. Huge blocks of tuff, a porous rock made from volcanic ash, rose as high as 25m on either side of the trench I found myself in. I felt spooked – and I'm not the only one who's felt that way in vie cave like this. These subterranean trails have been linked with lore of devils and deities for centuries.  Continued here S14 Laid Off From Tech and Considering Starting a Business as a Foreign Worker? Here's How to Navigate the Visa Process Most foreign tech workers are in the U.S. on H-1B visas, which can make it tricky to launch a business. But immigrant founders have found ways around that. Continued here S56 First Kindle Scribe software update begins closing the feature gap Update, 5:28pm: The story has been updated to reflect that the new brush types support pressure sensitivity. Continued here S29 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. Continued here S57 Twitter Payments chief is out as layoffs cut 10% of Twitter staff, report says More engineers, product managers, and data scientists are out at Twitter, as another round of layoffs has slashed 10 percent of the remaining staff, The New York Times reported. Multiple sources familiar with the matter told the Times that 200 employees were affected. Continued here S53 4 psychological techniques cults use to recruit members This article was first published on Big Think in October 2018. It was updated in February 2023. Scientologists believe that human beings are vessels for the ghosts of brainwashed aliens. Heaven’s Gate believed that committing mass suicide would enable them to enter a spaceship flying in the wake of the Hale-Bopp comet. The leader of the Branch Davidians said he was the messiah and all women were his “spiritual wives.” With views this crazy, the only thing crazier is that people seem to buy into cults at all. Continued here S61 Study: Bronze Age remains in Israel show signs of trepanation Just a couple of weeks ago, we reported that scientists had analyzed the skull of a medieval woman who once lived in central Italy and found evidence that she experienced at least two brain surgeries consistent with the practice of trepanation. Now a recent paper published last week in the journal PLoS ONE has reported evidence of trepanation in the remains of a man buried between 1550 and 1450 BCE at the Tel Megiddo archaeological site in Israel. Continued here S13 Considering the Four-Day Workweek? Here Are 3 Tips to Make the Transition Easier Last year Kristi Piehl, founder and CEO of PR firm Media Minefield, told employees they no longer needed to work on Fridays. Now, six months later, her only regret is not doing it sooner. Continued here S33 Should you avoid eating burnt food? It's more than likely you still have some of the habits around eating and cooking that you learned from adults when you were young, maybe without even realising. Perhaps you never lick food off your knife, or you always throw salt over your shoulder to ward off evil spirits. Many of these quirks are probably nothing more than superstition, but one in particular may have been unknowingly prescient a few decades ago, and grounded in a scientific discovery that was yet to happen. Continued here S22 The Maine lake full of sunken steamboats "A hundred years ago there were dozens of these things cruising around here," said a man who'd suddenly appeared next to me at the dock as I watched the approaching steamboat. He'd startled me out of my reverie, my gaze caught somewhere between the shimmer that dances across Moosehead Lake and the seaplanes taking off toward Mount Katahdin. I grew up in the US state of Maine at a smaller lake not far from here, and I spent many summers taking day trips to Moosehead Lake with my family. But this was the first time I boarded the historical Steamboat Katahdin, the last of a once-numerous fleet that used to ferry hordes of well-dressed elites from nearby train depots to the area's luxury resorts for their summer holidays.  Continued here S30 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. Continued here S6 After a New Ruling from the NLRB, Most of Your Severance Agreements Will Be Illegal Unless You Make Big Changes Out: Non-disparagement clauses. In: Fewer reasons for companies to grant severance. Continued here S62 OnePlus 11 Concept brings water cooling to a phone with questionable results It's Mobile World Congress this week, which means entering the wild world of concept phones. Usually, these are flexible display devices that will never see the light of day, but this year OnePlus has the "OnePlus 11 Concept" phone. This has a liquid cooling system called "Active CryoFlux." We will try to decipher this thing, but our first blazing red flag is that OnePlus does not go into much detail. Continued here S35 More CCTV, more crime: India's most-surveilled cities are the least safe Mohammed Khadeer, a 35-year-old daily wage laborer, died in a hospital in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad on February 16, days after being arrested. During his hospital stay, he recorded a video in which he accused the police of extreme brutality. Khadeer had been arrested over an alleged chain-snatching case caught on a CCTV camera, and was released five days later. According to business portal Moneycontrol, the police admitted that unclear CCTV footage may have led to Khadeer being misidentified as a suspect. Facial recognition using CCTV footage is often touted as a solution to counter crime. According to a 2022 data report by U.K.-based technology research firm Comparitech, a handful of Indian cities are among some of the most surveilled cities globally. But these cities also have some of the highest crime rates. Hyderabad, for instance, is the third most-surveilled city in the world, according to Comparitech, with 41.8 cameras per 1,000 people. But its crime index — an estimation of the overall level of crime in a given city or country — stands at 42.9, according to Numbeo, an online database that specializes in cost of living. Internationally, cities like Zurich and Munich fare well on the scale, with their crime indices as low as 19.1 and 18.8, respectively. Continued here S34 The search for the world's 'missing' genomes In the summer of 2020, a 63-year-old African American woman with colon cancer was treated with a common chemotherapy known as fluoropyrimidines at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland. But over the coming weeks, she began to develop a severe side-effect known as pancytopenia – a rapid and sudden decrease of red and white blood cells and platelets – causing her to be rushed into intensive care. This kind of reaction is surprisingly common. Around 38,000 cancer patients in England and approximately 154,000 patients in the US are initiated on fluoropyrimidine-based treatments every year. While fluoropyrimidines help save lives, between 20% and 30% of the people who receive these drugs require lower doses, because their bodies struggle to process them. If given the standard dose, they experience reactions which can vary from severe to fatal. Continued here S32 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. Continued here S21 Spain's ingenious fairy-tale houses Deep in Spain's north-western corner, the windswept Ancares mountains are dotted with centuries-old houses that look straight out of a fairy tale – or the Asterix and Obelix comic-book series – but that are cleverly suited to the harsh realities of this remote region. Known as pallozas, the round huts are made of stone and topped with a teardrop-shaped roof of rye straw. There are more than 200 scattered among Galicia's and Castile-León's rural villages, including Piornedo, Balouta, O Cebreiro and Balboa. Many of these homes were built 250 years ago, though their architectural roots stretch back millennia – some historians contend that pallozas are pre-Roman, an evolution of Celtic and Iron Age constructions. Continued here S12 Why Recess Is Just as Important for Your Employees as It Is for Children Build time to recharge into the work day. Continued here S31 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. Continued here S58 You can now search comments within a Reddit post--even on desktop Today, Reddit announced a new feature that addresses one of the more frustrating limitations of the platform over the years: You can now type in a query to search all the comments within a single Reddit post. Continued here S17 How to Onboard Your New Boss Many companies still give too little time and focus to helping new leaders succeed. If you have a new manager coming soon, the best way to offer your support is to guide them up the learning curve. In this piece, the authors offer practical recommendations for how to help your new manager learn about the organization, the team, and the culture. Continued here S16 Leading with Compassion Has Research-Backed Benefits How do organizations earn employee loyalty? Lasting relationships aren’t merely achieved through compensation and material perks; they’re nurtured by human connection and compassion. Research has shown the benefits of being compassionate on health and personal relationships, but it’s also incredibly beneficial to professional success — but it has to be authentically altruistic. The good news is that becoming more compassionate is not only possible; it’s actionable. The authors recommend managers take the following actions to grow in their own compassion: Start small, be thankful, be purposeful, find common ground, see it, elevate, and know your power. Continued here S15  How Kiki Freedman of Hey Jane Navigates Her Online Abortion Clinic In a Sea of Regulatory Changes First came skepticism around online medicine. Then came the overturning Roe v. Wade. Continued here S60 SpaceX unveils "V2 Mini" Starlink satellites with quadruple the capacity With Starlink speeds slowing due to a growing capacity crunch, SpaceX said a launch happening as soon as today will deploy the first "V2 Mini" satellites that provide four times more per-satellite capacity than earlier versions. Continued here S18 Why Retailers Fail to Adopt Advanced Data Analytics Advanced analytics have been available to businesses for years and are getting better all the time, but with a few big exceptions most retailers still use very basic tools. They do this even though they understand the advantages that analytics have given their competitors. What is holding them back from more fully embracing analytics? To find out, the authors interviewed 24 global retail executives in the Americas, Europe, and Asia and found that six factors are the primary sticking points. In this article they discuss those six factors and offer retailers some suggestions for how to move forward and profit from what advanced analytics have to offer. Continued here S20 Schmilka: The progressive German town stuck in the past The half-timbered houses, the isolated location deep in eastern Germany's forested hinterlands, the eerie rock pinnacles bounding the town on one side and the tempestuous Elbe River on the other – throw in an evil witch and Schmilka would be straight out of a 19th-Century Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Or, at least, of that age: the buildings go back around two centuries, the food and beer are prepared using techniques just as old, and I had to run up and down the town's one street (cobblestoned, of course) to find a wi-fi signal. Talk about a time warp. "Schmilka used to be a holiday village 200 years ago," said Andrea Bigge, a local art historian. It is again, she added, but it still feels like it exists in that era.  Continued here S19 The Himalayas' ancient earthquake-defying design In 1905, a deadly earthquake rocked the landscape of Himachal Pradesh, an Indian state in the western Himalayas. Sturdy-looking concrete constructions toppled like houses of cards. The only surviving structures were in towns where the residents had used an ancient, traditional Himalayan building technique known as kath kuni. On a warm Tuesday afternoon, I was headed towards one of them: Naggar Castle, which was built more than 500 years ago as the seat of the region's powerful Kullu kings, and which remained standing, unscathed, after that calamity.  Continued here Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Tweets Tweets follow me on Twitter Microsoft Silverlight - Change the World Connect with Me Random Hacks! - My Blog @ MSDN Loading... Where Dreamers Dare! Loading... About Me Sayan Will copy and paste later from my official biography! 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