Writing a Rejection Letter (with Samples)

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Writing a Rejection Letter (with Samples) I have a friend who appraises antiques — assigning a dollar value to the old Chinese vase your grandmother used for storing pencils, telling you how much those silver knickknacks from Aunt Fern are worth. He says the hardest part of his job, the part he dreads the most, is telling people that their treasure is worthless. Continued here

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How to Stop Saying "Um," "Ah," and "You Know" When you get rattled while speaking — whether you’re nervous, distracted, or at a loss for what comes next — it’s easy to lean on filler words, such as “um,” “ah,” or “you know.” These words can become crutches that diminish our credibility and distract from our message. To eliminate such words from your speech, replace them with pauses. To train yourself to do this, take these three steps. First, identify your crutch words and pair them with an action. Every time you catch yourself saying “like,” for example, tap your leg. Once you’ve become aware of your filler words as they try to escape your lips, begin forcing yourself to be silent. Finally, practice more than you think you should. The optimal ratio of preparation to performance is one hour of practice for every minute of presentation. Continued here

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7 Gaming Laptops That Pwned the Competition Choosing a gaming laptop is a lot like putting together a well-balanced adventuring party. You need to look at what you plan to use it for, what kinds of quests you'll tackle, and try to match its capabilities to your needs—without emptying your coin purse. To that end, weary traveler, we took it upon ourselves to source the latest and greatest gaming laptops from forges large and small. We gathered them in our keep and ran them through a variety of tests to sort the god-rolls from the vendor trash. Here they are, the best gaming laptops for every kind of player.Be sure to check out our picks for the Best Laptops, Gaming Mice, Keyboards, Headsets, Wireless Headsets, and our favorite PC Games (as well as how to build a game library for free.) Continued here

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To Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking, Stop Thinking About Yourself Even the most confident speakers find ways to distance themselves from their audience. It’s how our brains are programmed, so how can we overcome it? Human generosity. The key to calming the amygdala and disarming our panic button is to turn the focus away from ourselves — away from whether we will mess up or whether the audience will like us — and toward helping the audience. Showing kindness and generosity to others has been shown to activate the vagus nerve, which has the power to calm the fight-or-flight response. When we are kind to others, we tend to feel calmer and less stressed. The same principle applies in speaking. When we approach speaking with a spirit of generosity, we counteract the sensation of being under attack and we feel less nervous. Continued here

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You Need to Play the Most Controversial Lord of the Rings Game ASAP Sandbagged by an unfortunate lootbox system at launch, Middle-earth: Shadow of War is worth a revisit.You can’t manufacture a rivalry. Some of the biggest rivalries, be it video game companies or supervillains, seem to have always existed. There’s an organic nature to rivalries even in our own lives. We don’t pick our rivals. We find them. They happen to us. An obnoxious coworker, a nasty cashier, a printer that hates you. The paradox of rivalry is that even though they represent a conflict, we love them. A good rivalry is thrilling. And one video game understands that better than anything else. Continued here

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Apple's VR Headset Is Likely Delayed It's April 1, which means there's no shortage of nearly unbelievable news out there. Here are some recent developments that actually happened. I swear, no foolin'.First, Apple has announced that its next WWDC event is set for June 5. The annual developer conference is a place for nerdy tech types to mingle, but also the setting for some of Apple's biggest announcements of the year. While it's never a guarantee exactly what Apple will announce, there's a healthy rumor mill that gives a pretty good idea of what's to come. If this WWDC is anything like the last dozen or so, expect to hear primarily about new software updates to Apple's mobile and desktop devices. Continued here

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How to Run a Meeting Why is it that any single meeting may be a waste of time, an irritant, or a barrier to the achievement of an organization’s objectives? The answer lies in the fact, as the author says, that “all sorts of human crosscurrents can sweep the discussion off course, and errors of psychology and technique on the chairman’s part can defeat its purposes.” This article offers guidelines on how to right things that go wrong in meetings. The discussion covers the functions of a meeting, the distinctions in size and type of meetings, ways to define the objectives, the preparations, the chairman’s role, and ways to conduct a meeting that will achieve its objectives. Continued here

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Road Rage Is Relevant Again. 'SNL' Just Proved It. A seemingly throwaway sketch set a scene that captured the age of social media: people, stuck in their cars, gesturing furiously at one another.Here’s one more piece of evidence that the ’90s have returned: Road rage is back in style. Stories of people who turned traffic frustrations into acts of violence were mainstays of that decade, rendered in news and in pop culture. A little bit true crime, a little bit morality tale, they captured the moment’s creeping suspicion that life was much less stable than it might have seemed. Continued here

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The 13 Best D&D Episodes of TV, From 'Gravity Falls' to 'Stranger Things' Since its release in 1974, Dungeons & Dragons has fostered generations of writers to hone their craft one D20 roll at a time. Many Hollywood screenwriters claim to owe a debt to D&D, but sometimes they pay their love back through unforgettable TV moments that truly celebrate the game. With Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves now in theaters, you and your fellow party members may be itching to binge some classic D&D-themed episodes from shows like The IT Crowd and Community. Don’t worry: We’ve got you covered like a gelatinous cube. Continued here

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Space archaeologists are charting humanity's furthest frontier Archaeologists have probed the cultures of people all over the Earth—so why not study a unique community that’s out of this world? One team is creating a first-of-its-kind archaeological record of life aboard the International Space Station. Continued here

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As glaciers retreat, new streams for salmon Pushing off from the dock on a boat called the Capelin, Sandy Milner’s small team of scientists heads north, navigating through patchy fog past a behemoth cruise ship. As the Capelin slows to motor through humpback whale feeding grounds, distant plumes of their exhalations rise from the surface on this calm July morning. Dozens of sea otters dot the water. Lolling on backs, some with babes in arms, they turn their heads curiously as the boat speeds by. Seabirds and seals speckle floating icebergs in this calm stretch of Alaska’s Glacier Bay. Continued here

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‘Well, Is There Blood on the Street?’ For decades, a myth about civil-rights lawyers has been spread by court decisions, legislative testimony, and popular culture. Courthouses, the story goes, are filled to the brim with plaintiffs’ attorneys desperate to make a dollar off someone else’s misery; ambulance chasers all too happy to file frivolous civil-rights cases and squeeze a few bucks out of a cash-strapped city that would otherwise spend the money on its community center or library.In fact, the opposite is true. The cities of the Great Migration—New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia—are home to small, tight-knit communities of experienced civil-rights lawyers. Yet few practice outside those urban areas, and they are in particularly short supply in the South. As a result, many people who have suffered clear constitutional violations can’t find a lawyer to take their case. And they are unlikely to want to go it alone. Winning is hard even when you have a lawyer; you’re almost certain to lose if you don’t. Continued here

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Where are Americans born in each U.S. state? This viral map shows you at a glance “Rather pleased with this map,” said Erin when she tweeted it on February 2, 2022. This is quite the understatement: Her map went viral almost immediately. Why?Because the map is an infographic that does a stellar job of answering its own question: Where are Americans born? The graph packs a lot of info, yet it is easy to decipher and can be read in a variety of ways. Its colorful combination of structure and variation is also pleasing to the eye. Continued here

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The friendship recession Richard Reeves, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, discusses the importance of friendships and the potential “friendship recession.” He notes that loneliness can be as harmful as smoking 15 cigarettes per day, but measuring and quantifying friendships is difficult. According to Reeves, an ideal number of close friends is around three or four.But alarmingly, 15% of young men today report having no close friends, compared to 3% in the 1990s. The COVID pandemic has further tested friendship networks, with women being the most affected due to their friendships’ reliance on physical contact. Other factors likely have contributed to the decline in friendships in the 21st-century U.S., including geographical mobility, parenting demands, workism, and relationship breakdowns. Continued here

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Stop Complaining About Your Colleagues Behind Their Backs Many of us believe that we’re above workplace gossip, and that we never engage in it.  But, if you’ve ever participated in a “confirmation expedition” — whereby you 1) ask a colleague to confirm their own negative or challenging experience with a third colleague who is not present, or 2) welcome a similar line of confirmation inquiry from another colleague about a third colleague who is not present, you are in fact engaging in gossip. By talking to anyone, everyone, or even one person about another colleague who isn’t there to hear the feedback, provide his or her perspective, and engage in joint problem solving, you are undermining the benefits of an open, honest relationship and a feedback-rich culture. To stop this kind of behavior, we have to first call gossip “gossip” to stop it in its tracks. Most people will step back at hearing a colleague say, “This sounds like gossip. Is that what you intended?” Then, pivot the conversation by asking, “How can I help you get a better outcome?” Only engage in coaching, brainstorming, and problem-solving conversations — not in problem-confirming expeditions. Continued here

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Science Debunks a Decades-Old Myth About Drinking Milk Americans born in the nineties likely remember the got milk? campaign. The rhetorical question came in slim, white sans serif text, all lower case, on a black background. Sometimes it completed a portrait of a smiling child or adult with a white mustache coating their upper lip like an Einstein-Groucho Marx hybrid.Since then, milk has proliferated. At first there was just whole and skim milk, but now there are whole spectra of milk containing various amounts of fat, as well as plant- and nut-based milk in varying flavors. Continued here

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'Succession' Season 4 Episode 2 Trailer Teases a Surprising Alliance It’s the most wonderful time of the year: Succession time! The new and final season of HBO’s dark anti-elite comedy premiered last week, and now, it’s almost time for Succession Season 4 Episode 2. But what can we expect from the next episode? And, more importantly, what time will it be released on HBO and HBO Max? Here’s everything you need to know about Succession Season 4 Episode 2.Yes, sort of. After the premiere, HBO released a promotional video for the rest of Succession Season 4, teasing the battle to come between Logan Roy and his children: Kendall, Shiv, and Roman. (There’s also Connor, but he’s got his own issues to deal with.) Notably, the trailer reveals that Logan and Roman have been texting ever since Logan’s birthday in Season 4 Episode 1. Are father and son hatching a plan of their own? Continued here

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Jeremy Strong and Hollywood's most extreme actors No acting technique raises more eyebrows than method acting – commonly misunderstood these days to mean the style of performance where people go to extreme lengths to identify with their characters, or "get in their head".More like this:It's been in the headlines once again ahead of next week's premiere of the fourth and final season of Jesse Armstrong's eviscerating dramedy, Succession, thanks to renewed discussion around the divisive acting of one of its stars, Jeremy Strong. Ever since Strong discussed his tortured process for playing would-be media mogul Kendall Roy in an infamous 2021 New Yorker profile, he has been saddled with the "method actor" label. "I think you have to go through whatever the ordeal is that the character has to go through," he told the magazine. He also admitted to isolating himself from his castmates, and sometimes refusing to rehearse because he wanted "every scene to feel like I'm encountering a bear in the woods". Continued here

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A Biden Ally on the Post-Indictment Stakes of Another Trump Presidency When Jon Meacham appears on “Morning Joe” from his elegant, bookish basement, in Nashville, he knows that he will be asked to link the latest outrage of the news cycle to a historical event of consequence. This is his role, and he never fails to deliver. Meacham invariably comes through with a choice quotation from Lincoln or Jesus of Nazareth, with an apt reference to, say, Yalta or the Long Telegram, and he always does it with a wry, slightly weary “It’s too damn early in the A.M., isn’t it?” smile.When he was young, Meacham seemed older; now that he is in his fifties, he seems like a young man playing an older one, as if the hair were powdered, the half-glasses non-prescription. After stints at the Chattanooga Times and Washington Monthly, Meacham went up the ladder at Newsweek, when newsweeklies were still very much a thing. But, at a certain point, he ditched journalism to become a full-time historian. The lack of a doctoral degree has not hindered him. His books are deeply researched and eloquent; they include “Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship,” “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power,” and “American Lion,” a biography of Andrew Jackson, which won a Pulitzer Prize, in 2009. His most recent book is “And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle.” He has also written about Christianity, patriotism, country music, and impeachment. Continued here

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55 Years Ago, Stanley Kubrick Made the Most Influential Sci-Fi Movie Ever -- Despite What Some Critics Think In the short-lived animated comedy Mission Hill, teenage sci-fi dork Kevin shows his two sci-fi dork friends what his cinephile neighbor calls “the greatest science fiction movie ever made.” Kevin is enraptured, but his Armageddon-addled pals are bored and full of angry questions like “What is that stupid black thing?” and “When are we going to fight some aliens?”Their struggle to wrap their heads around 2001: A Space Odyssey is understandable because the so-called greatest sci-fi ever has long been rendered a punchline by an interminable parade of parodies. Spaceballs, Zoolander, and Everything Everywhere All at Once reference famous scenes, the trailers for The Barbie Movie and The Peanuts Movie satirize its impact, and you could assemble a short recreation from all the times Futurama and The Simpsons mocked it, to name just a few examples. It’s so common to poke fun at its famous soundtrack selection, the opening of Richard Strauss’ “Also sprach Zarathustra,” that when the actual movie plays those booming notes it’s hard to take it seriously. Continued here

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The Best Earplugs for Concerts, Bedtime, and Anytime 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 WIREDYou only get one pair of ears, so it’s a good idea to look after them—and a good set of earplugs can come in handy in all kinds of situations. A proper set is a much better solution for blocking out noise during the night than a pillow over the head and is more comfortable than headphones. What you’re looking for in earplugs really depends on what you want them to do. When you’re sleeping, for example, comfort is paramount. Plus, you need an indiscriminate approach to blocking out snores, traffic noise, or a car alarm down the street. Continued here

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The Decade-Long Perfect Storm Behind Florida's Viral "Seaweed Blob" It was all anyone could talk about for a week straight: the smelly seaweed blob straight out of a bad ‘80s sci-fi horror movie.Earlier this month, headlines from outlets ranging from CNN to The New York Times to The Guardian bemoaned an encroaching “5000-mile” seaweed blob hitting Florida coastlines and ruining your beach vacation with its profound stench of rotting eggs. Continued here

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Nikolai Vavilov and the Living Library of Resilience: The Story of the World's First Seed Bank and the Tragic Hero of Science Who Set Out to End Humanity's Suffering I spent large swaths of my childhood by my grandmother’s side in rural Bulgaria as she tended to her subsistence garden, tilling and planting, watering and weeding. Each August, we did something that felt to me like partaking of magic — we would choose the sweetest, most succulent tomatoes from the vine, cut them open, carefully extract the seeds, and lay them out on newspaper to dry, knowing that they would become next spring’s seedlings and, with nothing more than sunlight and water, next summer’s bright red orbs of delight. So it is that, year after year, my grandmother refined her tomatoes into a cornucopia of unparalleled sweetness and perfection. Last summer’s seeds are already growing as I write. This magic was made possible by a visionary of science who set out to save humanity and died for his values the year my grandmother turned nine.While the physicist Sergei Vavilov was presiding over Stalin’s Academy of Sciences and spearheading the Soviet atomic bomb project, his idealistic older brother was laboring at something of orthogonal impact on humanity — a way to end an elemental form of suffering that has haunted our species since its dawn. Continued here

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10 Years Ago, a Marvel Star Launched an Overlooked Sci-Fi Gamechanger In She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Tatiana Maslany plays two versions of the same character — the brilliant Jennifer Walters and the bodacious She-Hulk — as both get into brushes with Marvel D-listers. But portraying two characters on one show was probably a cakewalk for Maslany after her five-year stint on Orphan Black. Maslany was lauded for her work on the thrilling and creative Canadian biopunk drama, where she played 11 different clones of Sarah Manning across five seasons. Each had different wardrobes, mannerisms, accents, and personalities, and Maslany showed impressive range in making each of them feel distinct. There have been fake twins and triplets galore on TV, but no other show had taken on such an enormous endeavor upon its March 30, 2013 debut. Continued here

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A Question of Language in Ukraine © 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices Continued here

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9 Years Ago, Astronomers Found Two Rogue Planets -- But They Didn't Realize It Until Now Scientists have found what appear to be rogue planets hidden in old survey data. Their results are starting to define the poorly-understood rogue planet population. In the near future, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will conduct a search for more free-floating planets, and the team of researchers will develop some methods that will aid that search.Planets are typically part of a planetary system and are gravitationally bound to their star, or stars in the case of a binary star. Planets can migrate toward and away from their star when conditions are right, but they stay bound to the star, even if separated by a vast distance. But sometimes, a planet is kicked out of its system due to a supernova explosion, a stellar interloper, or some other event. And in some cases, a planet can form on its own outside of any solar system. These are rogue planets or free-floating planets (FFPs.) Continued here

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The 3 Most Toxic Co-Workers or Employees and How to Handle Them, According to a Shark Tank Alum Entrepreneur, author, and former guest Shark Matt Higgins has seen these behaviors "over and over again." Continued here

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Reviewers Are Obsessed With This Clever Stuff On Amazon That Seems Expensive But Is Cheap As Hell It’s normal to want the best for yourself and your home, but with so many products out there it can be hard to tell what’s actually worth your money. One surefire way to help you decide, however, is by going with highly rated items with tens of thousands of positive reviews. Thankfully, this list below is chock-full of exactly that.Scroll on for clever stuff you didn’t know you desperately need, from haircare to electronics and more. And better yet, even though these items may look expensive, they’re actually super affordable. Continued here

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Migrant deaths in Mexico put spotlight on US policy that shifted immigration enforcement south The fire-related deaths of at least 39 migrants in a detention facility in Ciudad Juarez, just across the U.S. border with Mexico, will likely be found to have had several contributing factors.There was the immediate cause of the blaze, the mattresses apparently set alight by desperate men in the center to protest their imminent deportation. And then there is the apparent role of guards, seen on video walking away from the blaze. Continued here

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The Unexpected Tenderness of 'Succession' The Roys of Succession tend to go out of their way to prove they’re not delicate people. They reject any opportunity to talk about their feelings. They’d rather drop f-bombs than share hugs and kisses. And they relish their daily boardroom showdowns: Reneging on deals, jousting in bidding wars, and tearing apart competitors is, for them, a way of life.So when the patriarch of the show’s central, fractured family stumbles over his words, something’s clearly gone wrong—or perhaps, finally, right. In the second episode of the HBO drama’s final season, Logan (played by Brian Cox) meets with Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin) for the first time since he stopped them from taking over his company. But although much of the anger emanating from the younger Roys feels familiar, the summit is bizarre. For one thing, it takes place in a garishly lit karaoke room rather than a glass-walled office. For another, Logan is unusually hesitant and deferential. When his children press him to apologize, he does. When they ask for clarity, he appears to grant it. When he admonishes them, he accompanies his criticism with an admission of love. “Look,” he eventually concedes, “I just want to get us all together.” Continued here

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Managing Human Resources In the Dallas airport the other day I saw many tall, well-dressed, and impressive-looking men wearing large, immaculate Stetson cowboy hats. As I walked by one such hat-wearer, I noticed two middle-aged, sunburned men in faded blue jeans standing nearby. They eyed the same fellow, looked him up and down, and then one said quietly to the other, “Big hat, no cattle.” Continued here

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The Weirdest Sci-Fi Movie on HBO Max Reveals an Even Stranger True Story The Men Who Stare at Goats fictionalizes real-life attempts by the Pentagon into psychic powers. Running through walls, becoming invisible, and viewing faraway places with the power of your mind might sound like purely fantastical — and fictional — abilities. But they’re completely real for many of the characters in The Men Who Stare at Goats. Continued here

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The 'Hogwarts Legacy' Boycott That Wasn’t When Hogwarts Legacy was released in February, the verdict from video-game sites was close to unanimous: The latest spin-off from the Harry Potter series was a heartless mess, the product of a bigoted worldview, and playing it involved an uncomfortable act of moral compromise—or at least holding your nose and reassuring yourself that J. K. Rowling was not directly involved.The tech magazine Wired gave the game 1/10, and said its “real-world harms are impossible to ignore.” (These were left unspecified, but let’s presume the reviewer wasn’t talking about repetitive-strain injury from too many spell battles.) TheGamer declined to review the title at all, and suggested that readers should not play Hogwarts Legacy “if you care about your trans friends.” The British outlet Rock Paper Shotgun pointedly reviewed games by trans developers instead. The Mary Sue reported on an alleged fan boycott, in an article that began with the Potteresque incantation “Accio controversy!” Continued here

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Robots are performing Hindu rituals – will they replace worshippers? It isn’t just artists and teachers who are losing sleep over advances in automation and artificial intelligence. Robots are being brought into Hinduism’s holiest rituals – and not all worshippers are happy about it.In 2017, a technology firm in India introduced a robotic arm to perform “aarti,” a ritual in which a devotee offers an oil lamp to the deity to symbolize the removal of darkness. This particular robot was unveiled at the Ganpati festival, a yearly gathering of millions of people in which an icon of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, is taken out in a procession and immersed in the Mula-Mutha river in Pune in central India. Continued here

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How to forgive yourself | Psyche Guides Finding it hard to move past a hurtful mistake? With these steps toward repair and renewal, you can do and feel betterAfter several months of therapy, Joe shared that he carried a burden he was hesitant to talk about. With some encouragement, he admitted that he had been treating his four-year-old daughter terribly. He described how typical events such as trying to get his daughter ready for daycare had triggered his anger, leading him to handle her roughly – like grabbing her arm or yelling at her. Joe shared other behaviours that he was ashamed of, such as losing his cool and just walking away while she was crying in the bathtub. Although he was often a supportive and loving father, Joe (whose name, along with some other details, have been altered here for anonymity) knew that these actions had hurt his daughter and his family. He wasn’t sure if – or how – he could forgive himself. Continued here

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LEGO-Inspired Robots Could Solve the Biggest Hurdles in Moon Exploration A student-led team from MIT developed a Walking Oligometric Robotic Mobility Systems (WORMS) robot.Building with LEGOs is a favored pastime for many small children and adults. But, as The LEGO Movie points out, they constitute “a highly sophisticated interlocking brick system.” So why not take the idea underpinning LEGOs — that you can make anything you want out of a set of generic pieces and apply it to a much more serious scientific topic … like robots. Continued here

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How to See a Rare Hybrid Eclipse in the Night Sky This Month April’s night sky will be full of celestial wonders. A stunning Full Moon, a notable meteor shower, and a meetup of four bright targets are just the tip of the iceberg.The Full Moon won’t literally be pink this month, but it is sometimes called the Pink Moon after a plant native to eastern North America. Phlox subulata, also known as creeping phlox and moss phlox, starts to sprout its colorful flowers in April. Continued here

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A "Goldilocks" star reveals previously hidden step in how water gets to planets like Earth Without water, life on Earth could not exist as it does today. Understanding the history of water in the universe is critical to understanding how planets like Earth come to be.Astronomers typically refer to the journey water takes from its formation as individual molecules in space to its resting place on the surfaces of planets as “the water trail.” The trail starts in the interstellar medium with hydrogen and oxygen gas and ends with oceans and ice caps on planets, with icy moons orbiting gas giants and icy comets and asteroids that orbit stars. The beginnings and ends of this trail are easy to see, but the middle has remained a mystery. Continued here

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Your "Recycled" Grocery Bag May Hide a Dirty Secret To jumpstart a paltry market for recycled plastic, governments across the globe are pushing companies to include recycled materials in their products. Last year, the United Kingdom introduced a tax on manufacturers that produce or import plastic packaging containing less than 30 percent recycled plastic. In 2024, New Jersey will begin enforcing similar rules, albeit with lower targets. California now requires that beverage containers be made of 15 percent recycled materials, and Washington will enact a similar requirement later this year. The European Commission, Canada, and Mexico are all considering comparable moves.Currently, most plastic products are derived from freshly extracted fossil fuels, including crude oil and natural gas. Incorporating some recycled plastic could reduce emissions and shrink pollution in waterways and landfills, experts say. But collecting, sorting, pulverizing, and melting post-consumer plastics for reuse is expensive. The new laws will potentially help recyclers find buyers for what would otherwise become waste. Continued here

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ChatGPT Sucks at Playing Wordle -- Here's Why The AI chatbot known as ChatGPT, developed by the company OpenAI, has caught the public’s attention and imagination. Some applications of the technology are truly impressive, such as its ability to summarise complex topics or to engage in long conversations.It’s no surprise that other AI companies have been rushing to release their own large language models (LLMs) — the name for the technology underlying chatbots like ChatGPT. Some of these LLMs will be incorporated into other products, such as search engines. Continued here

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Labor wins Aston byelection; NSW election and Trump polling updates Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne With 44% of enrolled voters counted in today’s Aston federal byelection, the ABC has Labor expected to win by 53.4-46.6 over the Liberals, a 6.3% swing to Labor from the 2022 general election. This includes ordinary election day votes only, no pre-polls or postals. Continued here

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Europe's forgotten transalpine cuisine To make sügeli, a fresh shell-shaped pasta, chef Patrick Teisseire first takes a tiny round of dough, rolls it in flour, and with his thumb, presses it flat and slides it along a large circular wooden board. After pressing along the ridged board, a soft, contoured shell with seven fine pleats emerges. It's a finely-honed technique that Teisseire described as the "skill of sügeli". He repeats the process until his dough has disappeared, replaced by neat rows of pasta shells ready to be fed into a deep saucepan of boiling water.Composed of flour, water, salt and olive oil, sügeli is one of the main dishes of cucina bianca (white cuisine), the food of the pastoral transalpine communities in the high valleys of Piedmont, Liguria and the Alpes-Maritimes in what is today south-eastern France and north-western Italy. Named for the "colourless" nature of staple ingredients, such as flour, potatoes, leeks, turnips, dairy products and legumes, it's a cuisine that shares little resemblance to the bright reds, greens and yellows of the tomato, pepper and courgette-infused dishes of the coastal Mediterranean cuisine typically associated with the region. "An absence of colour doesn't mean an absence of taste, however," Teisseire was keen to emphasise as he expertly manipulated more sügeli shells from a new batch of dough in front of me. Continued here

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A new AI lie detector can reveal its "inner thoughts" When Plato imagined the ideal society, over two millennia ago, he banned poets. “All poetical imitations are ruinous,” he writes in The Republic.Plato had in mind “imitative” poetry, by which he largely meant storytelling — language that attempts to craft a compelling facsimile of the world around us. “All these poetical individuals,” Plato writes, “beginning with Homer, are only imitators; they copy images of virtue and the like, but the truth they never reach.”  Continued here

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How to Stop Programs From Loading When Windows Starts Up A lot of applications start up when you boot your Windows computer—probably more than you'd like. You can turn off some of these in Windows Settings under Apps > Startup, and others in the settings for that specific application. Not always, though: Some applications are stubborn.This is where Autoruns comes in. This free application is offered by Sysinternals, a subsidiary of Microsoft. It gives you a complete—and I do mean complete—list of everything that starts up when Windows boots. It also allows you to disable things from starting at boot. This is the tool you're looking for if there are a few stubborn programs you don't want to uninstall. Continued here

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Disney's Last-Minute Sometimes, strategy isn't just about playing harder or tougher or more aggressively. Continued here

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Cope or Quit? Facing a Mid-Career Crisis Research shows that many people—even those with seemingly enviable careers—grow dissatisfied in their jobs in their mid-40s. They may regret past choices or feel stuck in a rut. But Kieran Setiya thinks the tools of his trade—philosophy—can help. He says sadness about the road not taken can be mitigated by attending to the people and pursuits that we cherish and wouldn’t have without our careers. He notes that we spend much of our work time solving problems and meeting needs, so we should engage in some feel-good activities (inside or outside the office). And he suggests focusing less on projects and more on process, to replace a “What’s next?” mindset with an appreciation for the present. Continued here

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How to Build Wealth When You Don't Come from Money The first step to attaining wealth — at least for people who are not born into it — is much more personal than building millionaire habits or investing wisely. Such approaches often fail to address the systemic and mental barriers faced by many of the marginalized groups who grew up without access to wealth. The author argues that changing your mindset, or building a mindset conducive to wealth, is the real first step. Continued here

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The Best Barefoot Shoes for Walking or Running 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 WIREDYou were born barefoot, and a growing body of evidence suggests you should have stayed that way. The technology and padding of the modern shoe protect your feet, but protection isn't always what you want. Feet were made to stretch, flex, roll, and bend, and letting them do what they evolved to do can reduce impact injuries and provide a host of other benefits. Continued here

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Chick-fil-A Customers Were Upset Their Favorite Menu Item Was Leaving. The Companys Response Is a Lesson for Every Brand It's always worth listening to your customers.Continued here S5 Zendure's Portable Power Station Is an Impressive Workhorse 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 WIREDIf you suffer from power outages, want to live off-grid, or need a way to store power from a solar panel array, a portable power station could be the answer. They can bring power anywhere you need in the home and out, from garages and backyards to building sites and camp sites. Since the grid is unprepared for the shift to renewable power, and our electricity demands and anxieties are soaring, high-capacity portable power stations are growing more popular. But Zendure's Superbase V6400 is the largest we have tested so far. Continued here S54 This Change to Your Day Can Make You Happy and More Productive, According to a Performance Psychologist Poor energy management is the real cause of burnout, says psychologist and coach Sarah Sarkis. Continued here S23 Labor's unexpected Aston win is body blow for Dutton The party has defied history - in the worst possible way. This is the first time in more than a century that a government has taken a seat off an opposition at a byelection. Both government and opposition expected a Liberal win, although they predicted a tight result. In the event Labor had a comfortable victory. Continued here S68 2 over-the-counter drugs may reduce "brain fog" in COVID long-haulers COVID long-haulers experience symptoms for weeks or even years after their infection. One of the common complaints among these patients is brain fog — a colloquial term for lack of mental clarity, poor focus and concentration, memory problems, and difficulty with multitasking. Unfortunately, no treatment options are currently approved for the condition. Luckily, Yale researchers have discovered a drug combination that can mitigate or even eliminate brain fog. The best part is these drugs are already available to patients.Executive functioning, working memory, and attention regulation are carried out by a recently evolved area in the brain called the prefrontal cortex. The neurons in this region form highly interconnected, circular neural circuits, which help keep information “in focus” without requiring external stimulation. Unfortunately, these circuits are also vulnerable to inflammation and stress. Continued here S61 50, 100 & 150: April 2023 “Among the most troublesome air pollutants produced by automobiles are the chemically active nitrogen oxides. Workers at Bell Laboratories have found catalysts that react nitrogen oxides with a reducing gas (hydrogen or carbon monoxide), converting them to nitrogen and such harmless by-products as water and carbon dioxide. They can be coated on a ceramic support to make a filter-like device that could be installed in an automobile. So far such devices have been tested only in the laboratory; further tests are necessary to see if they will stand up under the severe conditions in an exhaust system of an automobile running for extended periods. The automobile industry faces increasingly strict Federal standards for reducing carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen in exhaust emissions.”“At the recent meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn announced the discovery of a tooth giving evidence of a pre-historic and unknown species of anthropoid intermediate between the ape and the earliest man. This discovery was made by Harold J. Cook in the middle Pliocene formations of Nebraska. This tooth matches no known tooth of ape or man, modern or extinct. Dr. Osborn classifies it as a new species and genus and names it Hesperopithecus haroldcookii, which means ‘the anthropoid from the west discovered by Harold Cook.’ The fossil was found in the upper phase of the Snake River beds, associated with remains of the rhinoceros, camel, Asiatic antelope and an early form of the horse. Hitherto, no specimen of anthropoid primates had been discovered in America.” Continued here S64 This Story Has Been Removed Editor’s note 4/1/2023 6:30 pm ET: This article was taken down after WIRED learned that the company in the story paid the author for their travel, a violation of WIRED’s editorial policy.© 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. WIRED may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices Continued here S36 Amazon's selling a ton of these cheap things that make your home so much cooler Decorating your home can be tricky. On one hand, you want to make sure it looks nice — but you also want to make sure you don’t blow through too much money when sprucing it up. Luckily, there are tons of cheap things on Amazon that can make any home look so much cooler. From sleek wine decanters to silky pillowcases, I’ve made sure to include a variety of affordable items that’ll look good in your home regardless of how you like to decorate. But if you want to see more? You’ll just have to keep scrolling. Continued here S53 Acing Your Self-Appraisal (Even If It's Your First) Writing your first self appraisal (or the fifth!) can be daunting. If you’re overly positive, you might appear disconnected from reality. But if you point out your shortcomings, you risk sowing seeds of doubt in otherwise solid ground. It’s worth getting the self-appraisal right because, done well, it’s a chance to boost your credibility and increase your impact. Continued here S48 Creating a Trans-Inclusive Workplace Trans people often experience stigma and discrimination, hostility from others, and pressure to “manage” their identities in social settings, including the workplace. These experiences can set in motion a host of psychological responses that have devastating consequences for trans individuals’ job satisfaction, turnover intentions, and emotional well-being. Continued here S63 How a Victorian Prince's Lawsuit Shaped Today's TikTok Debate Before the House Energy and Commerce Committee had even concluded its hearing with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew last week, users took to the app to mock members of Congress for their questions. Lawmakers were lambasted for being out of touch with the realities of social media. One younger TikTokker called the hearings “the most boomer thing I have ever seen.”But the TikTok controversy can’t simply be chalked up to generational differences, as the very notion of data privacy doesn’t stem from the invention of social media, the internet, or even computers. Instead, it’s traceable to a watershed legal decision in 1849, when Prince Albert of England sued a printer for trying to publish a catalog about drawings he and Queen Victoria had made depicting their personal family life. All of the elements at play in data privacy debates today—personal information, technological innovation, and national security—were also integral to that case.  Continued here S50 How One Fast-Food Chain Keeps Its Turnover Rates Absurdly Low Many of us who are hungry for the latest dispatches from the war for talent look to to Silicon Valley. We want to know Google’s secret to hiring the best people or Mark Zuckerberg’s one tip for hiring employees. But in a world where most companies don’t operate on the frontiers of digital transformation, and most employees aren’t tech geeks or app developers, our appetite for unconventional talent strategies should probably extend to more conventional parts of the economy. Like, say, an amazing fast-food chain called Pal’s Sudden Service. Continued here S62 18 Great Deals on Electric Bikes, Outdoor Gear, and Camera Bags Winter is finally behind us here in the US, so you might be itching to spend more time outdoors—whether it's going for a run or a bike ride, spending time in the backyard, or planning a trip. Regardless of how you plan to shake off cabin fever, we've found a variety of gear on sale to make it even more enjoyable. Below, you'll find great deals on electric bikes, smartwatches, luggage, portable chargers, and more. Looking for more deals? Earlier this week we rounded up some nice discounts on phones, headphones, and video games.Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you'd like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day. Continued here S47 Your "Autism Awareness Day" Might Be Excluding Autistic People Forward-looking organizations can do much better than having an outdated, performative Autism Awareness Day. People outside of the autism community often receive contradictory information about which “awareness” efforts are welcomed, with the mainstream media, parents of autistic children, and adult autistic self-advocates presenting very different perspectives. The confusion over the language and symbolism reflects the philosophical divide between the medical perspective on autism that has primarily dominated the awareness conversation in the mainstream and the neurodiversity perspective. Leaders need to understand the origins of these mixed and changing messages, then take steps to celebrate and include the autistic community meaningfully. Continued here S60 The mystery origins of Candida auris On a vast palm-fringed beach, bordered by a sapphire-blue sea, a search team was looking for a killer. It was 2021 and the operation was taking place at Corbyn Cove – an impressive swathe of pale golden sand and terracotta beach huts in the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago in the north-eastern Indian Ocean.So far, the suspect had appeared in at least 33 countries on three continents, leading to hundreds of  deaths. But this was no ordinary manhunt. Firstly, there were no search warrants – only swabs. And secondly, the assailant was a fungus. Continued here S59 The German clinics for burnt-out parents Sebastian Schwerk lay awake at night, his mind racing. His father had recently died of leukaemia. Schwerk had been caring for him for months, together with his siblings, as well as looking after his own family. Now his mother needed care, too. His two older children were going through puberty. And he worried that with so much going on, his youngest son wasn't getting enough attention."All of those issues were causing me huge stress," recalls Schwerk, who is the creative director of a communications agency in Dresden, Germany. "And then my partner said to me: 'You do realise you have a right to a health retreat, don't you?'" Continued here S56 People With High Emotional Intelligence Never Use These 9 Phrases. Here's What They Say Instead "Sorry, I wasn't listening." Continued here S57 What Is the Optimal Pattern of a Customer Journey? Even though customer experience (CX) leaders are becoming increasingly focused on optimizing their firms’ customer journeys, they face a clear challenge: Which touchpoints along the journey should they invest in? That is, which moments when the customer interacts with their brand are most impactful to the customer’s overall experience? One way to think of customer journeys is as continuous patterns of mental experiences traced over time. Thinking of customer journeys as patterns raises a new set of productive questions, such as: Which patterns are most successful? And what features of those patterns lead to success? Some have argued that the best patterns are smooth and frictionless, while others have made the case for patterns that fluctuate, given that they are likely to be more eventful and stimulating. This article covers research and data on which patterns are most effective, and where CX managers should be investing their limited resources for the best possible customer experience outcomes. Continued here S46 When (and How) to Speak Up as an Ally Our friend Naomi is a white ally who works for a charitable organization. Her white male boss recently decided to establish a committee to address issues of diversity, inclusion, and racial equity. Naomi feared that if the mostly white leaders didn’t structure committee meetings carefully, they would exclude the voices of people of color. She read some antiracism resources on how to elicit diverse perspectives and shared some recommendations with her boss. He agreed with her suggestions and urged her to announce her ideas at the next all-company meeting. Continued here S67 Brain scans can reveal what song you're listening to Neural decoding is a subfield of neuroscience that uses machine learning algorithms to infer or reconstruct mental states or sensory information from brain activity recorded by various neuroimaging methods. Most decoding studies employ functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which records changes in cerebral blood flow as a proxy for brain activity. In the past decade, researchers have decoded fMRI data to detect individual memories and to reconstruct what a person is hearing from the brain’s responses to speech or what they are seeing while watching movies. Perhaps the most spectacular example is found in a 2013 study which used fMRI to decode the visual imagery that occurs in dreams. Continued here S58 Video Quick Take: Prudential's Lee Boon Huat on Fostering Financial Inclusion Using Data and Analytics - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM GOOGLE CLOUD Todd Pruzan, Senior Editor for Research and Special Projects at Harvard Business Review, recently sat down with Lee Boon Huat, Group Chief Digital Officer at Prudential plc, to talk about how Prudential uses artificial intelligence and data analytics to enhance the levels of insurance coverage as well as financial inclusion for communities in Asia and Africa. What follows is a transcription of the highlights of their conversation. Continued here S41 To Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking, Stop Thinking About Yourself Even the most confident speakers find ways to distance themselves from their audience. It’s how our brains are programmed, so how can we overcome it? Human generosity. The key to calming the amygdala and disarming our panic button is to turn the focus away from ourselves — away from whether we will mess up or whether the audience will like us — and toward helping the audience. Showing kindness and generosity to others has been shown to activate the vagus nerve, which has the power to calm the fight-or-flight response. When we are kind to others, we tend to feel calmer and less stressed. The same principle applies in speaking. When we approach speaking with a spirit of generosity, we counteract the sensation of being under attack and we feel less nervous. 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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