Nelson Mandela's legacy is taking a battering because of the dismal state of South Africa

S25

Nelson Mandela's legacy is taking a battering because of the dismal state of South Africa     University of the Witwatersrand provides support as a hosting partner of The Conversation AFRICA.The multiple concerns about the dismal state of South Africa – including a stagnant and failing economy, a seemingly incapable state, and massive corruption – have led to the questioning of the political and economic settlement made in 1994 to end apartheid. The settlement is strongly associated with Nelson Mandela, who oversaw its progress to a successful conclusion. He subsequently underpinned it by promoting reconciliation with white people, especially Afrikaners, the former rulers. Continued here

S1

Wonder-Sighting on Planet Earth: The Space Telescope Eye of the Scallop     Each month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.“The Eye altering alters all,” William Blake wrote not long before Darwin extolled the eye as the crown jewel of evolution — an organ of “such wonderful structure” and “inimitable perfection” that it magnetizes us to the mystery of life itself. In On the Origin of Species, he began a section titled “Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication” with a love letter to the eye:To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated. Continued here

S2

"Little Women" Author Louisa May Alcott on the Creative Rewards of Being Single     Each month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian going. For seventeen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.“Did she ever have a love affair? We never knew; yet how could a nature so imaginative, romantic and passionate escape it?” wondered Julian Hawthorne about his childhood friend Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832–March 6, 1888).When the first part of Little Women was published in 1868 to a wildly enthusiastic reception and the fate of her heroine became the subject of public opinion, Louisa railed against the pressure for conformity to convention: Continued here

S3

The Hard Side of Change Management     Everyone agrees that managing change is tough, but few can agree on how to do it. Most experts are obsessed with “soft” issues, such as culture and motivation, but, say the authors, focusing on these issues alone won’t bring about change. Companies also need to consider the hard factors—like the time it takes to complete a change initiative, the number of people required to execute it, and so forth. Continued here

S4

What Makes a Leader?     When asked to define the ideal leader, many would emphasize traits such as intelligence, toughness, determination, and vision—the qualities traditionally associated with leadership. Such skills and smarts are necessary but insufficient qualities for the leader. Often left off the list are softer, more personal qualities—but they are also essential. Although a certain degree of analytical and technical skill is a minimum requirement for success, studies indicate that emotional intelligence may be the key attribute that distinguishes outstanding performers from those who are merely adequate. Continued here

S5

Are You Failing to Prepare the Next Generation of C-Suite Leaders? - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM DAGGERWING     For many people leaders, that’s been the mantra for the past three years. “Let’s just get through this moment in time, focus on the short-term solutions for our immediate needs, and when things go back to normal, we’ll deal with all the issues we’ve been putting on the backburner.” Continued here

S6

What Leaders Really Do     Leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think. Leadership isn’t mystical and mysterious. It has nothing to do with having “charisma” or other exotic personality traits. It is not the province of a chosen few. Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it. Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Each has its own function and characteristic activities. Both are necessary for success in today’s business environment. Management is about coping with complexity. Its practices and procedures are largely a response to the emergence of large, complex organizations in the twentieth century. Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change. Part of the reason it has become so important in recent years is that the business world has become more competitive and more volatile. More change always demands more leadership. Most U.S. corporations today are over-managed and under-led. They need to develop their capacity to exercise leadership. Successful corporations don’t wait for leaders to come along. They actively seek out people with leadership potential and expose them to career experiences designed to develop that potential. Indeed, with careful selection, nurturing, and encouragement, dozens of people can play important leadership roles in a business organization. But while improving their ability to lead, companies should remember that strong leadership with weak management is no better, and is sometimes actually worse, than the reverse. The real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other. Continued here

S7

How Robots Can Enhance Performance Management for Humans     Our summer special report helps leaders gain a comprehensive view of risks, learn how to overcome market disrupters, and manage the analytical tools that provide predictive insight for decision-making.Our summer special report helps leaders gain a comprehensive view of risks, learn how to overcome market disrupters, and manage the analytical tools that provide predictive insight for decision-making.We are in the middle of a robot revolution. The past decade has seen dramatic growth in robot adoption across an increasing number of industries, and it shows no signs of slowing. In a recent McKinsey survey of companies worldwide, 88% of respondents said they plan to invest in robotics for their business. Our research has found an equally and perhaps more important transformation taking place: The adoption of robots is improving companies’ ability to recognize and reward good employee performance. Continued here

S8

Can AI help Gen Z workers make up lost ground?     Gen Z has had a hard landing into the workforce. Starting jobs amid the global pandemic, many of these new workers have missed out on gaining essential hard- and soft skills usually gleaned by working alongside older colleagues.However, as the first truly digital generation, their innate fluency with technology could help them make up some of that ground – especially as AI becomes a hugely important part of the modern workplace. Continued here

S9

Why KFC failed to master Karachi's famed paratha rolls     Paratha rolls – tender, juicy kebab or bite-sized chunks of grilled meat smothered with tangy chutney, garnished with onions and rolled in flaky, crispy fried flatbread (paratha) – are to Pakistanis what hot dogs are to Americans; they are at the culinary core of the frenetically paced city of Karachi. In this ethnically and linguistically diverse metropolis, paratha rolls are one of the few creations the city can proudly claim as its own. It's not so much a question of whether you've tried them, but which one is your favourite.The central premise is simple – just wrap a kebab in a paratha. But Masuma Yousufzai, a Karachi local who grew up eating paratha rolls, says it's the marriage of the two staples that stands out. Typically, kebab and paratha are eaten by tearing off pieces of the bread to scoop up the meat, but putting the bread and meat in one roll makes it greater than the sum of its parts. For Karachi residents, the food has always captured the zeitgeist of the times in one daring, delicious parcel. Continued here

S10

How 2013 film The Congress predicted Hollywood's current AI crisis     With Hollywood all but shut down indefinitely due to strikes by the actors' union, SAG-AFTRA, and the Writers Guild of America, some powerful players have weighed in. George Clooney told CNN last week: "This is an inflection point in our industry". After the writers went on strike, Christopher Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter that "the business models don't work right now". And studio head Jeff Green said: "Things are changing quickly. Very soon this whole structure we all love so much will be gone". More like this: – How The Truman Show foretold the reality TV boom – How The Matrix predicted life in 2021 – The sci-fi offering radical hope for living better Continued here

S11

The colour pink and how the new Barbie film might subvert our expectations     Does it feel like you're looking at the world through rose-tinted spectacles right now? You're not alone. If summer 2023 has a colour, then it is undoubtedly pink, and it's all down (mostly) to one woman: Barbie.The new live-action film about the iconic doll, starring Margot Robbie and directed by Greta Gerwig, has leant right into Barbie's association with the colour, its set designers working with a palette of 100 different shades, and apparently contributing to a global shortage of pink paint. The movie's all-conquering marketing campaign has left a sea of pink wherever it goes, from billboards, buses and the cast's (pink) carpet outfits to a real-life Barbie Dreamhouse on Airbnb, more than 100 brand tie-ins and a Google takeover. Continued here

S12

How a surfing sea otter revealed the dark side of human nature     Surfers often talk about how the sport helps them reconnect with nature, but a recent episode involving an otter with a love for surfboards shows just how brittle our love for wildlife really is. The authorities are trying to capture and remove said otter from her native environment for climbing onto a man’s surfboard in Santa Cruz, California. In a video of the incident published on Twitter, the otter is seen clambering onto the surfer’s board where she appears to play with it. Wildlife officials described the otter’s behaviour as aggressive. Continued here

S13

Returning to the Moon can benefit commercial, military and political sectors - a space policy expert explains     NASA’s Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years, with the first human landing currently scheduled for 2025. This goal is not just technically ambitious, but it’s also politically challenging. The Artemis program marks the first time since the Apollo program that an effort to send humans to the Moon has been supported by two successive U.S. presidents. Several companies around the world, including both startups and established aerospace firms, have begun working on missions to the Moon. Some, like Japan-based iSpace and U.S.-based Astrobotic, are developing commercial lunar landers and have plans to eventually collect lunar resources, such as water or minerals. Continued here

S14

FTC probe of OpenAI: Consumer protection is the opening salvo of US AI regulation     The Federal Trade Commission has launched an investigation of ChatGPT maker OpenAI for potential violations of consumer protection laws. The FTC sent the company a 20-page demand for information in the week of July 10, 2023. The move comes as European regulators have begun to take action, and Congress is working on legislation to regulate the artificial intelligence industry.The FTC has asked OpenAI to provide details of all complaints the company has received from users regarding “false, misleading, disparaging, or harmful” statements put out by OpenAI, and whether OpenAI engaged in unfair or deceptive practices relating to risks of harm to consumers, including reputational harm. The agency has asked detailed questions about how OpenAI obtains its data, how it trains its models, the processes it uses for human feedback, risk assessment and mitigation, and its mechanisms for privacy protection. Continued here

S15

'Zombie fires' in the Arctic: Canada's extreme wildfire season offers a glimpse of new risks in a warmer, drier future     The blanket of wildfire smoke that spread across large parts of the U.S. and Canada in 2023 was a wake-up call, showing what climate change could feel like in the near future for millions of people.Apocalyptic orange skies and air pollution levels that force people indoors only tell part of the story, though. Continued here

S16

China needs immigrants     For several centuries, the Asian nation has been the most populous country in the world. But it is now shrinking. In 2022, the country registered more deaths than births, and it will soon be surpassed by India in total population size – indeed, many demographers believe this has already occurred.As a scholar who has studied China’s demography for almost 40 years, I know the likelihood is this falling population will lead to an economic slowdown, with a greater number of dependents and fewer workers to support them. Yet attempts to reverse the trend through policy that encourages couples to have more children have proved ineffective. China will need to turn to other measures to solve its population problem. In short, China needs immigrants. Continued here

S17

Registering refugees using personal information has become the norm - but cybersecurity breaches pose risks to people giving sensitive biometric data     The number of refugees worldwide reached record high levels in 2022. More than 108.4 million people have been forced to flee their homes because of violence or persecution. Meanwhile, governments and aid agencies are increasingly using a controversial method of effectively identifying and tracking many refugees. This method, known as biometrics, involves collecting someone’s physical or behavioral characteristics, ranging from fingerprints to voice. Organizations that collect the personal physical data can store it to instantly recognize someone after scanning their fingerprints or irises, for example. Continued here

S18

175 years ago, the Seneca Falls Convention kicked off the fight for women's suffrage - an iconic moment deeply shaped by Quaker beliefs on gender and equality     On July 19, 1848, nearly 300 men and women gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, to begin the United States’ first public political meeting regarding women’s rights. The Seneca Falls Convention resulted in the Declaration of Sentiments, a document modeled on the U.S. Declaration of Independence that asserted “all men and women are created equal.” The two-day conference marked the beginning of the movement for women’s suffrage, which would be granted 70 years later by the ratification of the 19th Amendment of the Constitution. And it likely wouldn’t have happened without Quakers. Continued here