Research Says Your Happiness at Work May Come Down to 2 Simple Choices

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Research Says Your Happiness at Work May Come Down to 2 Simple Choices     I have been following research on positive psychology for years and find this field of study fascinating. The fundamental idea of positive psychology is that people aspire to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, which makes them sustainably happy.Positive psychology is the pathway to achieve that objective. However, experiencing happiness does not happen overnight. Training your brain to adopt virtuous behaviors takes time and effort until they become ingrained as lifestyle habits. This leads to more happiness, optimism, and resilience. Continued here

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How did a small developer of graphics cards for gamers suddenly become the third most valuable firm on the planet? | John Naughton     A funny thing happened on our way to the future. It took place recently in a huge sports arena in San Jose, California, and was described by some wag as “AI Woodstock”. But whereas that original music festival had attendees who were mainly stoned on conventional narcotics, the 11,000 or so in San Jose were high on the Kool-Aid so lavishly provided by the tech industry.They were gathered to hear a keynote address at a technology conference given by Jensen Huang, the founder of computer chip-maker Nvidia, who is now the Taylor Swift of Silicon Valley. Dressed in his customary leather jacket and white-soled trainers, he delivered a bravura 50-minute performance that recalled Steve Jobs in his heyday, though with slightly less slick delivery. The audience, likewise, recalled the fanboys who used to queue for hours to be allowed into Jobs’s reality distortion field, except that the Huang fans were not as attentive to the cues he gave them to applaud. Continued here

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'I had abs. I was in the best shape. But I was miserable': the fitness fanatic who quit the gym     When you're making any kind of change, it's messy and uncertain; making mistakes with a large audience is trickier," says Sophie Aris of her switch away from online bodybuilding and fitness. When the now 36-year-old joined the early cohort of fitness influencers posting about weightlifting and nutrition in 2015, she was working as a secondary school art teacher and had got into gym culture through an ex-boyfriend.She posted morning and night. "I used to pull up at the school car park, in Oldham, at 7.30am with my gym selfie or picture of my Tupperware meals ready to post," she says. Within a year, she had more than 100,000 followers on Instagram, weighed seven stone (44kg) and was a competitor in the bikini category of British and European bodybuilding competitions, winning gold. Continued here

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Antarctica, Earth's largest refrigerator, is defrosting - The Economist (No paywall)     The world must pay more attention to its southern pole Continued here

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Pill to prevent Lyme disease kills ticks before they can infect you     A pill to prevent Lyme disease is showing promise in clinical trials, suggesting there may soon be a new way to avoid contracting it and other nasty tick-borne diseases.The challenge: If you enjoy hiking, camping, or any other sorts of woodsy activities, you’ve probably been warned to watch out for ticks — tiny bloodsucking parasites that can transmit Lyme disease and other infections to people and animals through typically painless bites.  Continued here

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ADHD: The history of a diagnosis     Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has gone by a slew of different names over the years: organic drivenness, minimal brain dysfunction, hyperkinesis, hyperactive syndrome, attention deficit disorder, and ADHD.ADHD was originally thought of as “minimal brain dysfunction,” according to scholar Robert Erk. In the 1940s, “practitioners came to the conclusion that because many children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder…manifested some of the same symptoms as children with encephalitis (e.g., hyperactivity, inattention, disorganization), these children probably had some degree of minimal brain damage.” For the next two decades, scientists would link behavioral disorders with injury to the brain. Continued here

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The Fed's Favorite Inflation Measure Cooled in February--But There's a Catch.     What the latest economic data means for entrepreneurs sick of high prices and high interest rates. Continued here

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Canadian School Boards Sue Snapchat, TikTok and Meta for Disrupting Students' Education     Four Ontario districts file suit against social media giants alleging a link to increased social withdrawal, anxiety, attention problems, cyber bullying and mental health issues. Continued here

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Baltimore Bridge Collapse Highlights Latino Immigrants' Crucial, Yet Risky Role in the Job Force     Experts say the tragedy is a reminder that greater protections and safety measures for immigrant workers are needed. Continued here

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With 19 Words, Louis Gossett Jr.'s Oscar Acceptance Speech Taught a Bittersweet Lesson     It's very short, but there's a line in it that caught my attention--and then had me looking up the story. Continued here

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Google's Undercover Hiring Strategy Is Working to Create a More Positive -- and Productive -- Workplace     I'm old enough to remember a time when Google once ranked among the nation's happiest workplaces. It's easy to remember, since it was during my time at Google Campus (now Google for Startups). It was a place that buzzed with energy on the inside while wannabe employees relentlessly tried to claw their way in on from the outside. It offered innovative positions in a fun and fast-paced environment, high pay, and an impressively pioneering list of benefits and employee perks. And though none of that has changed, its rank among the nation's happiest workplaces has. Because no matter how shiny the office complex, how large the benefits package, or how cool the perks are, there's one little-known and widely overlooked ingredient to making-and keeping-staff happy: fellow staff.  Continued here

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These 7 Simple Things Make Every Meeting Better Starting Right Now     If anything generates a lot of complaints in organizations today, it's meetings. The thing is, I've heard these complaints for years, and for some reason, meetings stay on everyone's short list of company dysfunctions. Sadly, a survey of senior managers found that 71 percent said that meetings are unproductive and inefficient.The good news is that your meetings are not fated to being unproductive and inefficient. There are some powerful things you can do to make every meeting better, and here are seven for you to try right now. Continued here

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Stop Freaking Out About the New Disney Plus Logo. It's a Lesson in     A few days ago, Disney Plus rolled out a new logo that appears when you first open the app. Technically, the logo design is mostly the same; it's the color that has changed. Instead of the dark blue background, you'll now find a more teal-colored logo. As happens, a lot of people freaked out about the change, and--since the internet is a thing--many of them shared their opinions. It seems that people don't like it when their favorite streaming service messes with, well, anything.  Continued here

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5 Pro Ways to Attract Investors     The investment landscape has cooled somewhat since the heat of 2021. Yet, within adversity lies opportunity. Success requires leaning into specific differentiators--crafting compelling value propositions, leveraging customer validation, building relationships, demonstrating financial aptitude, and highlighting teams with specialized expertise.Consultants Bain & Company report global venture capital has declined 15 percent quarter-over-quarter by the end of 2023. It marks the lowest investment level since early 2020, when the pandemic first hit. Continued here

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5 Tips for Creating a Safer Workplace:     Boeing's legacy in aerospace is remarkable, yet recent years have shown that even giants can falter. The 737 Max incidents, which led to the tragic loss of lives because of product quality and safety oversights, signify a crucial moment for reflection across all industries. The saga of Boeing's 737 Max provides a universal blueprint for all sectors. The tragic incident, resulting in the loss of 346 lives and a $2.5 billion settlement, highlights the repercussions of neglecting safety measures. Neglect of advancements in safety protocols, inspections, and technology to ensure your company doesn't lag in safety innovation can lead to severe consequences, not only in lost lives but also in financial losses and damaged trust. Continued here

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26 Best Travel Accessories (2024): Neck Pillows, Plug Adapters, and Headphones     Pack smarter with gear that makes any airplane seat or hotel room feel a little more like home. Continued here

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The 16 Best Movies on Amazon Prime Right Now     From Everybody's Talking About Jamie to Bottoms, these are the must-watch films on Amazon Prime Video. Continued here

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The 32 Best Shows on Amazon Prime Right Now     From Mr. and Mrs. Smith to Three-Body, these are our picks for what you should be watching on the streamer. Continued here

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One Couple's Quest to Ditch Natural Gas     This story originally appeared on Grist. It was produced by Grist and originally copublished with the Guardian. It's republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.My wife and I live in a green, two-story colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac in Burlington, Vermont. Each spring, the front of our home is lined with lilacs, crocuses, and peonies. The backyard is thick with towering black locust trees. We occasionally spot a fox from our office windows, or toddlers from the neighborhood day care trundling through the woods. It's an alarmingly idyllic home, with one exception: It runs on natural gas. Continued here

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The Best Cookware and Tools for Small Kitchens (2024): Storage, Cookware, and Other Tips     You've got a dilemma. You love to cook, and you love to eat, but your kitchen has no room to prepare meals. Seriously, it's like gerbil furniture. You could just declare all hope lost and rationalize eating out night and day. But you and I both know it's a lot healthier and cheaper to cook for yourself.As someone who lives in New York City, I know a thing or two about small kitchens. Over the years, my colleagues and I have tested various pieces of furniture and other kitchen gear to help make cooking in a small space easier (and saner). Don't forget to check out our other buying guides, including the Best Cookbooks, Best Chef Knives, and Best Pots and Pans. Continued here

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How to Resist the Temptation of AI When Writing     Whether you're a student, a journalist, or a business professional, knowing how to do high-quality research and writing using trustworthy data and sources, without giving in to the temptation of AI or ChatGPT, is a skill worth developing.As I detail in my book Writing That Gets Noticed, locating credible databases and sources and accurately vetting information can be the difference between turning a story around quickly or getting stuck with outdated information. Continued here

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Yogurt Heist Reveals a Rampant Form of Online Fraud     The saga of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange continued this week after the UK's high court ordered a delay in his extradition to the United States. Assange faces 18 charges in the US, including 17 alleged violations of the Espionage Act—charges that have alarmed journalism watchdogs. The two judges who issued the ruling said in a summary of their decision that the US must offer further assurances that Assange's First Amendment rights will be respected and that he will not face the death penalty if convicted.The University of Cambridge's medical school is still recovering from "malicious activity" which the school first detected last month. The incident impacted IT services provided by Cambridge's Clinical School Computing Service, and several websites were knocked offline. While the university also recently suffered a distributed denial-of-service attack, allegedly carried out by the hacker group Anonymous Sudan, it's unclear if the two incidents are related, and the university has not yet clarified the nature of the "malicious activity." Continued here

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What Is Apple One? A Breakdown of Plans, Pricing, and Included Services     big tech companies are always looking for new ways to tie us into their ecosystems, but there is something to be said for the simplicity of a single monthly subscription. Apple One bundles several Apple services into one payment that is cheaper than subscribing to the same services individually. If you already subscribe to the likes of Apple Fitness+ and News+, it's a great deal for you. The question is whether it can entice anyone currently using a mix of first- and third-party services to switch completely to Apple and lock that walled garden gate.Here we break down what Apple One includes, how much it costs, how to subscribe, and other details about the service in case you're thinking of signing up. Continued here

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How to Pick the Best Roku Device (2024): A Guide to Each Model     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 WIREDRokus continue to remain our favorite TV streaming devices. They're super easy to use and offer a wide array of streaming channels. Their displays aren't fancy, but they offer just what someone needs: quick, direct access to their favorite streaming services. However, figuring out which one to buy is not so easy. Continued here

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OpenAI Can Re-Create Human Voices--but Won't Release the Tech Yet     Voice synthesis has come a long way since 1978’s Speak & Spell toy, which once wowed people with its state-of-the-art ability to read words aloud using an electronic voice. Now, using deep-learning AI models, software can create not only realistic-sounding voices but can also convincingly imitate existing voices using small samples of audio.Along those lines, OpenAI this week announced Voice Engine, a text-to-speech AI model for creating synthetic voices based on a 15-second segment of recorded audio. It has provided audio samples of the Voice Engine in action on its website. Continued here

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Memories Are Made by Breaking DNA -- and Fixing It, Study in Mice Finds     When a long-term memory forms, some brain cells experience a rush of electrical activity so strong that it snaps their DNA. Then, an inflammatory response kicks in, repairing this damage and helping to cement the memory, a study in mice shows.The findings, published on 27 March in Nature, are “extremely exciting,” says Li-Huei Tsai, a neurobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge who was not involved in the work. They contribute to the picture that forming memories is a “risky business,” she says. Normally, breaks in both strands of the double helix DNA molecule are associated with diseases including cancer. But in this case, the DNA damage-and-repair cycle offers one explanation for how memories might form and last. Continued here

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America's Most Visited National Park Is Threatened by Climate Change     Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s spruce and fir forests are rebounding from overlogging and acid rain but may be no match for higher temperaturesNewfound Gap in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Spruce and Fraser fir forests are at risk from rising temperatures. Continued here

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The entire state of Illinois is going to be crawling with cicadas     Brace yourselves, Illinoisans: A truly shocking number of cicadas are about to live, make sweet love, and die in a tree near you. Two broods of periodical cicadas—Brood XIX on a 13-year cycle and Brood XIII on a 17-year cycle—are slated to emerge together in central Illinois this summer for the first time in over two centuries. To most humans, they’re an ephemeral spectacle and an ear-splitting nuisance, and then they’re gone. To many other Midwestern animals, plants, and microbes, they’re a rare feast, bringing new life to forests long past their death. Continued here

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Too Few Americans Are Eating a Remarkable Fruit     Someplace in the lush backroads of San Sebastián, in western Puerto Rico, my friend Carina pulled the car over. At a crest in the road stood a breadfruit tree, full of basketball-size, lime-green fruits, knobbled and prehistoric, like a dinosaur egg covered in ostrich leather. One had recently fallen. I jumped out to scoop it up, thinking about the breadfruit tostones we would make that afternoon. We'd fry chunks of the white, spongy flesh, then smash them with the back of a cast-iron pan, then fry them again. In a wooden pilón, Carina would pound garlic and oil with oregano brujo, a pungent weedy plant in the mint family, and spoon the sauce over the frittered discs. For me, little in this world is above a breadfruit tostón, crisp and flaky on the outside, creamy on the inside. My mouth is watering writing this paragraph.In Puerto Rico, the word for breadfruit is panapén, almost always shortened to pana, which is also the word for your close friend, your crew, your people. Breadfruit trees feel like kin there: They are everywhere, their huge lobed leaves splayed over roads and porches like the hands of a benevolent giant. Continued here

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The Atlantic Tops 1 Million Subscriptions and Reaches Profitability     The Atlantic now has more than 1 million subscriptions and is profitable, surpassing two goals that the company set several years ago. In an email to The Atlantic's staff, quoted in part below, Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg and CEO Nicholas Thompson announce this news. Overall revenue is up more than 10 percent year over year; advertising booked year-to-date is also up 33 percent year over year. Subscriptions to The Atlantic have increased by double-digit percentages in each of the past four years--and surged 14 percent in the past year. The Atlantic has more than doubled the total number of paid subscriptions since it launched digital and a digital + print bundle four years ago. The magazine has earned Pulitzer Prizes in each of the past three years for stories that exemplify depth and range--an exhaustive investigation into immigration and family separation; a moving portrait of one family's heartbreaking loss in the 9/11 attacks and their struggle to move on; and defining coverage of the pandemic and how America failed in its response to the virus. The Atlantic is currently nominated for the fourth consecutive year for the top honor of General Excellence in the National Magazine Awards, which it won in both 2022 and 2023. Five of the magazine's features and issues are also nominated for reporting awards. Below is Goldberg and Thompson's email to staff: Dear All, Thanks to the hard work, creativity, and relentless focus of you, our colleagues, The Atlantic has achieved both profitability and crossed the million-subscription mark. A few short years ago, when we first outlined these goals, we were nowhere near achieving them. So today is a noteworthy day in the history of our magazine. Of course, the key to continued success is to be constructively dissatisfied with the present, and so both of us believe very strongly that our 1 million subscriptions represent merely the foundation of future excellence and growth. Profitability is also perilous in the media industry, and we are going to continue to be highly disciplined in how we run our operations. 2024 will be one of the most consequential years in the history of our magazine. The journalistic excellence and urgency we bring to our coverage will set a standard for the industry and help guide our readers through dangerous times. All of us have the same goal: to support and advance our historic mission; to constantly innovate; and to reach new readers across the globe every day. Thank you all for your excellent work, and congratulations. With appreciation. Jeff and Nick Continued here

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I Just Want a Normal Drink     Recently, a balmy spring day left me feeling parched. I needed a beverage—stat!—and had forgotten my water bottle at home. I ducked into a nearby CVS to pick up a drink.The choices were so overwhelming, I nearly forgot my thirst. The drink aisle included a bevy of the usual thirst-quenching options—and some that looked like they belonged in an apothecary rather than next to the LaCroix. Row upon row of multicolored cans and bottles held drinks with purposes beyond mere hydration and flavor. Some promised to improve my energy, immunity, or gut health. Others claimed to stimulate mind states such as clarity, balance, or calm. Fizzy or flat, juice or tea, high in protein or in probiotics? Continued here

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Solving a Century-Old Byline Mystery     This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic's archives to contextualize the present and surface delightful treasures. Sign up here."Do you like to know whom a book's by?" E. M. Forster asks in a 1925 essay on the question of anonymity in literature and journalism. The practice is fine in fiction, he argues, but not in news writing. Forster, however, wasn't in charge: His essay, which appeared in the November 1925 issue of The Atlantic, was followed by an article bylined "Anonymous." Continued here

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You Can't Even Rescue a Dog Without Being Bullied Online     Lucchese is not the world's cutest dog. Picked up as a stray somewhere in Texas, he is scruffy and, as one person aptly observed online, looks a little like Steve Buscemi. (It's the eyes.)Isabel Klee, a professional influencer in New York City, had agreed to keep Lucchese, or Luc, until he found a forever home. Fosters such as Klee help move dogs out of loud and stressful shelters so they can relax and socialize before moving into a forever home. (The foster can then take on a new dog, and the process restarts.) Klee began posting about Luc on TikTok, as many dog fosters do. "I fell in love with him, and the internet fell in love with him," she told me over the phone earlier this month. "Every single video I posted of him went viral." In one such video, which has attained nearly 4 million views since it was published in October, Klee's boyfriend strokes Luc, who is curled up into his chest like a human infant. The caption reads, "When your foster dog feels safe with you 🥲🫶." Continued here

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Sam Bankman-Fried's Dream Came True     The crypto mogul, now sentenced to 25 years behind bars, is leaving behind an industry that has started to grow up.If there's a single image that defines the crypto frenzy of 2021 and 2022, it's that of the actor Matt Damon, calm and muscled, delivering the immortal proverb "Fortune favors the brave." It was part of an ad for Crypto.com, yet it somehow captured the absurdity of what the crypto industry promised at the time: not just a digital asset, but a ludicrously magnified vision of the future. Continued here

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Joe Lieberman's Parting Gift     A serious policy debate with the late senator could veer sharply into a one-man Borscht Belt on the Potomac.Say what you will about Joe Lieberman, the self-described "Independent Democrat" senator from Connecticut and onetime Democratic vice-presidential candidate. He was many things—honorable, devout, sanctimonious, maddening, and unfailingly warm and decent—all of which have been unpacked since his death yesterday, at 82. He elicited strong reactions, often from Democrats, over his various apostasies to liberal orthodoxy. Continued here

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Sam Bankman-Fried's Losing Game     He made wild bets during his time at the top of the crypto industry. Now he's facing consequences for treating it all like a game.This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Continued here

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Why Did The U.S. Navy Kill Arizona's Housing Bill?     When a controversial housing bill dies in a state legislature, you don't expect to find the U.S. military holding the gun. But earlier this month, when Katie Hobbs became the first governor in recent memory to veto a major bipartisan bill to address the housing shortage, the Arizona Democrat pointed to the military's opposition. The Arizona Starter Homes Act would have prevented cities with more than 70,000 residents from using home- and lot-size minimums to prohibit the construction of houses for first-time homebuyers. A few days before she announced her veto, Rear Admiral Brad Rosen, the commander of Navy Region Southwest, sent her a letter expressing vague concerns that the bill might fail to "protect areas in vicinity of military installations" and would instead promote "incompatible development."Rosen was speaking for all branches of the military; part of his job is to act as a regional environmental coordinator for the Defense Department, which involves working with state lawmakers and federal regulators to protect military interests. His worries about the starter-home bill, despite their lack of specificity, were apparently enough for Hobbs, who cited the Pentagon's concerns at the top of her veto letter. Continued here

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Evan Gershkovich's Year in Captivity     The U.S. journalist is in prison because Vladimir Putin has made no pretense about using Americans as human bargaining chips.This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Continued here

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Photos of the Week:     A wildfire in Venezuela, cherry blossoms in eastern China, a deadly terrorist attack in Russia, a surf competition in Australia, Holy Week processions in Spain, a full moon above Istanbul, a vast solar-power farm in Texas, and much more An aerial view of the cargo vessel Dali, seen after it had crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, causing it to collapse, in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 26, 2024 # Continued here

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The Everyday Indignity of Dining Out     Like anyone who has ever navigated a high-school cafeteria, I can instantly clock the merits and demerits of a given restaurant table. Is it tucked into a sad corner for the socially dispossessed? Should I be proud of where I've been seated, accept it grudgingly, or make a play for something better? I perform this silent psychodrama in the desperate moments as the host walks me over, while there's still time to object—the kind of neurotic calculus that Larry David understands deeply and pays tribute to in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm titled "The Ugly Section."As its title implies, the possible existence of a "hot or not" policy for the sorting of restaurant patrons is the central plot of "The Ugly Section." Larry—who created Curb and stars as its lightly fictionalized antihero—visits a voguish "kitchen • bar • market" called Tiato in various social combinations, attempting to get a seat among the attractive people near the windows. Even a good-looking date doesn't sway the smug maître d', played by an extra-punchable Nick Kroll, who consigns both her and Larry to the ugly section when he realizes they're together. At one point, Larry yells, echoing the anguish of many a diner, "How did I wind up here?" Meanwhile, the episode's other storylines include a death by suicide and a robbery at gunpoint—dramatic developments that in any other show would be the main event. Continued here

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The CDC Is Squandering the Breakthrough RSV Vaccine     New RSV shots could make winter much safer for infants, but experts think current guidelines may be too strict.When a new RSV vaccine for pregnant people arrived last fall, Sarah Turner, a family-medicine physician at Lutheran Hospital, in Indiana, couldn't help but expect some pushback. At most, about half of her eligible pregnant patients opt to get a flu vaccine, she told me, and "very few" agree to the COVID shot. Continued here

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Americans Really Don't Like Trump's Health-Care Plans     Expanding access to health care has been a shared policy priority for Joe Biden and the former Democratic presidents who joined him onstage at a lucrative New York City fundraiser last night, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. But the politics of health care look very different for Biden than they did for his two predecessors.Clinton and Obama faced widespread public resistance to their health-care plans that forced them to play defense on the issue. Biden and his campaign team, by contrast, see health care as one of his best opportunities to take the offensive against Donald Trump and the GOP. Continued here

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The Real Adeel Mangi Is Nothing Like the Caricature GOP Senators Have Invented     Just more than half a century ago, Thurgood Marshall, whom I later had the privilege of serving as a law clerk, was nominated by President Lyndon B. Johnson to be the first Black American to sit on the Supreme Court. The nomination triggered an outpouring of racist opposition from the southern members of the United States Senate. Yet the nomination survived the hatred, and Marshall was confirmed.Last fall, President Joe Biden nominated Adeel Mangi, my friend and longtime partner, to be the first Muslim American to sit on a federal appeals court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Just as with Marshall, Mangi's nomination has triggered an outpouring of opposition grounded in hate, this time on the basis of religion, not race. Continued here

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The Greatest Contribution of Christianity     Nearly 15 years ago, I had the chance to ask Christopher Hitchens, one of the world's most prominent critics of religion, a simple question: "What do you think is the greatest contribution of Christianity, either writ large in terms of society or writ small in terms of individual lives?"To which Hitchens, an atheist who grew up as a nominal Christian, replied, "The greatest contribution of Christianity in my life is the reminder of the complete ephemerality of human power, and indeed of human existence—the transience of all states, empires, heroes, grandiose claims, and so forth. That's always with me. And I daresay I could have got that from Einstein—I would have—and from Darwin, too. But the way I got it and the way it's implanted in me is certainly by Christianity." Continued here

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Zyn Was 100 Years in the Making     For something that isn't candy, Zyn nicotine pouches sure look a lot like it. The packaging, a small metal can, looks more than a little like a tin of mints. The pouches come in a wide variety of flavors: citrus, cinnamon, "chill," "smooth." And they're consumed orally, more like jawbreakers or Warheads than cigarettes.America has found itself in the beginnings of a Zyn panic. As cigarette and vape use have trailed off in recent years, Zyn and other nicotine pouches are gaining traction. The absolute pouch-usage numbers are still not that high, but sales have more than quadrupled from late 2019 to early 2022. Although only adults 21 and older can legally purchase them—a fact that the product's website directly points out—they are reportedly catching on with teens. "I'm delivering a warning to parents," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in January, calling for a crackdown, "because these nicotine pouches seem to lock their sights on young kids." Earlier this month, a group of plaintiffs filed a class-action lawsuit accusing the tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI), which also makes Zyn, of purposefully targeting kids. ("We believe the complaints are without merit and will be vigorously defended," a PMI spokesperson told me over email, adding that Zyn offers "adult-orientated flavors.") Continued here

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Obama, the Protagonist     Join Atlantic editors Jane Yong Kim, Gal Beckerman, and Ellen Cushing in conversation with executive editor Adrienne LaFrance for a discussion of "The Great American Novels," an ambitious new editorial project from The Atlantic. The conversation will take place at The Strand in New York (828 Broadway) on Wednesday, April 3, at 7 p.m. Tickets are available for purchase here.Vinson Cunningham's new novel, Great Expectations, is a thinly veiled fictional account of his own experience as a young man working on Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Obama isn't mentioned once in the book, but in every way, the fount of charisma described as "the senator" or "the candidate" is him. And through the character of David Hammond, a college dropout who almost by accident finds himself in a fundraising job for the nascent campaign, Cunningham is able to give readers a close-up look at Obama's stratospheric rise. Mostly, as Danielle Amir Jackson writes in an essay this week, that is the story of how one man was imbued by his supporters with messiah-like qualities, creating an unsustainable cult of personality around him. Continued here

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The Violence of 'Cowboy Carter'     Beyoncé's confrontational spin on Dolly Parton's "Jolene" comes as a warning to outside forces.The power of Dolly Parton's "Jolene" is that Dolly Parton sounds powerless. The guitar riff prickles nervously; the melody pleads in the manner of a hungry pet; Parton sings, in a trembling tone, about the woman who could and very well might take her man. It's a love song to Jolene herself, expressing the sort of love a supplicant shows their god—desperate, fearful, needy for mercy. Continued here

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That's Enough of the MonsterVerse     There is rarely a good time for Godzilla to show up, but the MonsterVerse version of him could not have picked a worse moment to rampage again. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, the fifth entry in Legendary Pictures's slate of movies featuring lumbering kaiju and dubious continuity, arrives just weeks after Japan's Godzilla Minus One concluded its impressive box-office run in the States. That film, made using a paltry-for-a-blockbuster budget of $15 million, took home an Oscar for Best Visual Effects and proved that audiences had a taste for a fresh spin on the Godzilla story. Maybe creatures like him could do more than merely stomp around and roar a bunch.Too bad the MonsterVerse movies prefer the stomping and roaring to actual storytelling. The films, after 2014's Godzilla and 2017's Kong: Skull Island established the franchise's stars, have morphed into exercises in CGI monster-mashing. The truth is that pure spectacle has kept me on board, even as the sequels have become awfully hard to defend as actual movies. I've been genuinely impressed by the expressive creature design and layered sound work; the monsters' screams often make me feel like my bones are rattling. These films may be empty—there's no message or meaning to think about—but they can be strangely stimulating. Continued here

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How AI Is Reshaping Foreign-Language Education     A new generation of translation tools threatens to upend how people understand different cultures.This is Atlantic Intelligence, a limited-run series in which our writers help you wrap your mind around artificial intelligence and a new machine age. Sign up here. Continued here

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Everything You Know About Killer Whales Is Wrong     John Ford still recalls the first time he heard them. He'd been puttering around the Deserters Group archipelago, a smattering of spruce- and cedar-choked islands in Queen Charlotte Strait, between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. He was piloting a small skiff and trailing a squad of six killer whales. Ford, then a graduate student, had been enamored of cetacean sounds since listening to belugas chirp while he worked part-time at the Vancouver Aquarium as a teenager. Now here he was, on August 12, 1980, tracking the underwater conversations of wild killer whales through a borrowed hydrophone.Ford had spent the previous two summers painstakingly recording the sounds made by other groups of these black-and-white marine mammals, known as resident killer whales. In summer and fall, the residents traveled in noisy, tight-knit pods that often hugged the shorelines of British Columbia and Washington State, breaching in spectacular aerial displays that delighted tourists, scientists, and other bystanders. They emitted rapid overlapping clicks and thumps, along with squeals, honks, and bleats that could resemble seal barks or, occasionally, human flatulence. Continued here