November 25, 2022 - Why This Universe? New Calculation Suggests Our Cosmos Is Typical. | Quanta Magazine

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Why This Universe? New Calculation Suggests Our Cosmos Is Typical. | Quanta Magazine The properties of our universe — smooth, flat, just a pinch of dark energy — are what we should expect to see, according to a new calculation. Cosmologists have spent decades striving to understand why our universe is so stunningly vanilla. Not only is it smooth and flat as far as we can see, but it's also expanding at an ever-so-slowly increasing pace, when naïve calculations suggest that — coming out of the Big Bang — space should have become crumpled up by gravity and blasted apart by repulsive dark energy. Continued here

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Parasite gives wolves what it takes to be pack leaders Some wolves in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, share territory with cougars — and can become infected with their parasites.Credit: mtnmichelle/Getty Wolves infected with a common parasite are more likely than uninfected animals to lead a pack, according to an analysis of more than 200 North American wolves1. Infected animals are also more likely to leave their home packs and strike out on their own. Continued here

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Oxford scientists crack case of why ketchup splatters from near-empty bottle Ketchup is one of the most popular condiments in the US, along with mayonnaise, but getting those few last dollops out of the bottle often results in a sudden splattering. "It's annoying, potentially embarrassing, and can ruin clothes, but can we do anything about it?" Callum Cuttle of the University of Oxford said during a press conference earlier this week at an American Physical Society meeting on fluid dynamics in Indianapolis, Indiana. "And more importantly, can understanding this phenomenon help us with any other problems in life?" Continued here

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I made professor before Ritalin. Now I can’t work without it | Psyche Ideas is emeritus professor of philosophy and director of the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. His most recent book is The Existentialist’s Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age (2018). He lives in Northfield, Minnesota. In his song Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues (1965), Bob Dylan whines: ‘I started out on Burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff. Everybody said they’d stand behind me when the game got rough. But the joke was on me, there was nobody even there to call my bluff…’ Substitute ‘Burgundy’ with ‘Ritalin’ and ‘everybody’ with ‘the mental health community’, and you have my predicament with my iatrogenic, or medically induced, dependency on stimulants. Continued here

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Bob’s back. Can he bring the magic? - The Hustle Despite having Bob Iger’s return on our 2022 bingo card, the move came as a surprise Sunday night when it was announced by Disney’s board. Iger held the top role at Disney from 2005 to 2020, and led the acquisitions of Pixar ($7.4B), Marvel ($4B), Lucasfilm ($4B), and 21st Century Fox ($71.3B). Continued here

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Off the hook: electrical device keeps sharks away from fishing lines The number of blue sharks (Prionace glauca) in fishery by-catches was cut by 91% thanks to a device that uses electrical signals to deter the creatures. Credit: Nick Hawkins/Nature Picture Library More than 30% of shark and ray species are edging towards extinction, mainly because they are unintentionally caught by fishers targeting tuna and other commercially valuable species. A new device might help to keep some of these threatened species away from fishing hooks. Continued here

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The dance of the macaws | Psyche Films A vast majority of Guatemalans are Christian, with Catholicism in the region rooted in 16th-century Spanish conquest. However, echoes of the Mayan culture that thrived in pre-Hispanic times still resonate in the country’s largely Indigenous highlands, where ancient rituals are incorporated into Christian ceremonies. The Dance of the Macaws captures one such highlands town, Santa Cruz Verapaz, where Mayan priests, elders and practitioners keep the flame of the region’s traditional religious beliefs burning. Directed by the Guatemalan photographer and filmmaker Ricky Lopez Bruni, the short documentary chronicles the interwoven rituals of dance, worship and celebration that take place in Santa Cruz Verapaz during Catholic Holy Week. In particular, the film focuses on a ceremony with deep Mayan roots known as the Dance of the Macaws. Spanning several days and venues, the ritual is centred on a dance in which locals re-enact an ancient myth once painted on ceramic vessels. Continued here

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People Are Sharing The Most Impactful Lesson They've Ever Learned In Therapy "My therapist told me this 10 years ago, and I still think about it all the time." Continued here

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Institutions must acknowledge the racist roots in science As a PhD student at University of Sussex, Daniel Akinbosede pushed administrators to address racism in science.Credit: Daniel Akinbosede Science is steeped in injustice and exploitation. Scientific insights from marginalized people have been erased, natural history specimens have been taken without consent and genetics data have been manipulated to back eugenics movements. Without acknowledgement and redress of this legacy, many people from minority ethnic groups have little trust in science and certainly don’t feel welcome in academia — an ongoing barrier to the levels of diversity that many universities claim to pursue. Continued here

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How To Regain Muscle Mass: 6 Everyday Habits To Do After 60 We've consulted with our team of licensed nutritionists and dietitians to bring you informed recommendations for food products, health aids and nutritional goods to safely and successfully guide you toward making better diet and nutrition choices. We strive to only recommend products that adhere to our philosophy of eating better while still enjoying what you eat. Growing older doesn't only mean pesky gray hairs and sneaky wrinkles shocking the heck out of you when you look in the mirror. There are a lot of changes your body endures underneath the surface—one of them being the loss of lean muscle mass, also known as sarcopenia. Staying on top of your muscle mass is the name of the game as you age. In fact, your independence and overall well-being depend on it!  That's why we're here to share exactly how to regain muscle mass after 60 with expert-backed tips. Continued here

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How to go vegetarian or vegan | Psyche Guides Quitting animal foods needn’t be a hardship. Relish your new diet and make it stick with this nutritionist’s approach is a nutrition advisor for the Vegetarian Resource Group and a regular columnist and nutrition editor for Vegan Journal. Her books include The Dietitian’s Guide to Vegetarian Diets (4th edition, 2022), co-authored with Virginia Messina and Mark Messina, Simply Vegan (5th edition, 2013), co-authored with Debra Wasserman, and Your Complete Vegan Pregnancy (2019). Continued here

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The 50 most banned books in America During the 2021-2022 school year, more than 1,600 books were banned from school libraries. The bans affected 138 school districts in 32 states, according to a report from PEN America, an organization dedicated to protecting free expression in literature.  Texas and Florida lead the nation in book bans — a revelation that recently spurred Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot to call her city a "book sanctuary."  Continued here

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Can Zmail become the new Gmail? - The Hustle At least that seems to be the hypothesis behind Zoom One, the videoconferencing giant’s all-in-one suite that recently added in-app email and calendar functionality. Right. Zoom says it wants to solve the “toggle tax” — the time it takes workers to regain focus after switching between apps — which can add up to four hours per week, per Harvard Business Review. Continued here

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Is generative AI really a threat to creative professionals? Image-generators such as Dall-E 2 can produce pictures on any theme you wish for in seconds. Some creatives are alarmed but others are sceptical of the hype When the concept artist and illustrator RJ Palmer first witnessed the fine-tuned photorealism of compositions produced by the AI image generator Dall-E 2, his feeling was one of unease. The tool, released by the AI research company OpenAI, showed a marked improvement on 2021's Dall-E, and was quickly followed by rivals such as Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. Type in any surreal prompt, from Kermit the frog in the style of Edvard Munch, to Gollum from The Lord of the Rings feasting on a slice of watermelon, and these tools will return a startlingly accurate depiction moments later. Continued here

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The long poem is just right for our confounding, fractured age | Psyche Ideas is lecturer in English at Worcester College, University of Oxford. She is the author of Reading Time in the Long Poem: Milton, Thomson, and Wordsworth (2022). In 1848, Edgar Allan Poe proclaimed that readers would no longer waste their time on long poems: ‘the day of these artistic anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem were popular in reality, which I doubt, it is at least clear that no very long poem will ever be popular again.’ It’s not hard to see why long poems aren’t the most fashionable form of literature today. Poetry demands a sustained close attentiveness that is already difficult to achieve; long poems, which take up whole books with hundreds or even thousands of lines, combine this intense concentration with arduous duration. If reading a sonnet is hard work, why put yourself to the trouble of reading an epic? Continued here

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NASA Successfully Crashed a Spacecraft Into Its Asteroid Target The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a first step toward defending Earth from threatening space rocks Traveling at 14,000 miles per hour, a NASA spacecraft slammed into an asteroid on Monday evening. But the crash was intentional: NASA meant to alter the flying rock’s trajectory in space. The asteroid poses no danger to Earth, but researchers wanted to test whether this approach is feasible in case of a future threat of impact. Continued here

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Prehistoric rubbish hints that early cooks cared about flavour Ancient fragments found in Franchti Cave, in Greece, proved to be a bread-like food (left), whereas those in Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan contained peas and related plants. Credit: Ceren Kabukcu In the popular imagination, a Palaeolithic lunch is a giant hunk of meat, roasted over an open fire. Science, too, has focused more on the Stone Age hunter than the ancient gatherer. But that is changing, according to Ceren Kabukcu at the University of Liverpool, UK, and her team, who analysed the charred remains of prehistoric food to expand our understanding of Palaeolithic menus1. Continued here S5 Have I dodged Covid and what does it mean? I hope this vial of blood contains answers because I have a nagging question - have I managed to dodge Covid? It seems remarkable that anyone could. The virus has swept the world since it emerged in China nearly three years ago. Fresh variants have become better and better at infecting us. Even vaccines make Covid milder rather than being an impenetrable shield. Continued here S13 Does Influencer Marketing Really Pay Off? Influencer marketing is a huge industry, with companies around the world spending billions of dollars on these partnerships. But do these investments actually pay off? To quantify the ROI of influencer marketing, the authors analyzed engagement for more than 5,800 influencer posts and identified seven key variables that drive a campaign’s effectiveness, including characteristics of both the influencer and of their individual posts. They further found that by optimizing these variables, the average brand could boost ROI by 16.6%, suggesting that many companies are designing campaigns that leave substantial value on the table. By adopting these research-backed guidelines, brands can move past anecdotal evidence to ensure that their marketing dollars go toward the partnerships and content that are most likely to offer returns. Continued here S20 Fehinti Balogun: How to find your voice for climate action Actor and activist Fehinti Balogun pieces together multiple complex issues -- climate change, colonialism, systemic racism -- in a talk that's part spoken-word poem, part diagnosis of entrenched global problems. Seeing the connections is a way to unlock collective solutions, he says -- and you have the power to reimagine what you think is possible. Continued here S15 Why parents are baffled by eco choices I am preparing to embark on a challenge to parent more sustainably, and, as I stand in my kitchen to get a feel for where I might be able to make some changes, I can't help but feel I've bitten off more than I can chew. Plastic baby bottles are lined up like skittles in my cupboards; drawers are a technicolour spectacle of lurid plastic baby food pouches and individually wrapped biscuits. Tupperware and zip-lock plastic bags threaten to consume me, and there are plastic bowls, weaning pots, and baby spoons everywhere. "Is having a baby in 2021 pure environmental vandalism?" reads one headline I come across in my research. Looking at my kitchen, I can see why. Continued here S14 Embrace Ambivalence When Making Big Career Decisions Career inflection points are moments of potential change and transition that often evoke feelings of ambivalence: the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions about something. Whether prompted by sudden, external triggers (e.g., promotion opportunity or job loss) or creeping stressors that reach a tipping point, career inflection points are opportunities to reevaluate not only career decisions, but also ourselves. The studies the authors have conducted on careers, identity, and ambivalence, along with the work of other scholars, have led them to conclude that you can harness ambivalence at career inflection points to craft a more authentic and fulfilling career. Here, they discuss the effects of ambivalence — and how to use yours to your advantage. Continued here S19 Why Employee-owned Companies Are Better at Building Worker Wealth Wharton’s Katherine Klein talks to Corey Rosen, founder of the National Center for Employee Ownership, about how employee ownership plans are structured and why they yield great financial benefits for companies and workers alike. Wharton’s Katherine Klein speaks with Corey Rosen, founder of the National Center for Employee Ownership, about employee-owned companies. Continued here S16 As GoTo slashes 12% of workforce, massive tech layoffs hit Southeast Asia Citra had only joined GoTo Group, the massive Indonesian ride-hailing and e-commerce decacorn, in early October 2022. So it was a shock when, a month and a half later, she discovered she’d been fired as part of mass layoffs. On November 18, the Alibaba and SoftBank-backed company, valued at some $15 billion, announced it was laying off 12% of its roughly 10,500-person permanent workforce.  “I was on sick leave, so I found out about the news from Instagram,” recalled Citra, who requested a pseudonym to avoid potential friction with the company. “Very abrupt. I know someone who joined two weeks before the announcement and was also laid off.” Continued here S23 Time is money? No, time is far more valuable. Here's how to spend money to optimize your time Four thousand weeks is the average lifespan of a person living in the modern world. With exercise and healthy living, you may push that number out a couple of months. Then again a disease or accident may just as easily cut it short. Give or take, 4,000 weeks is all the time you have to build the life you want. Admittedly, such framing is stark, but it’s something we all understand on a gut level: Our time is limited, and that makes it the most precious resource we have. Yet when it comes to how we use our time, it’s often in service of money. Continued here S24 Be thankful for an out-of-equilibrium Universe You couldn’t make the Universe we have today if everything were always the same. Although many philosophically favored the idea that the Universe was static and unchanging — an idea popularized in the 20th century as the Steady-State Theory — such a Universe would look vastly different than our own. Without an early, hot, dense, and more uniform past, our Universe couldn’t have expanded, cooled, gravitated, and evolved to give us what we have today: a cosmos where galaxies, stars, planets, and even life not only all exist, but appear to be quite abundant. The reason is simple: the Universe isn’t in equilibrium. Equilibrium, which occurs when any physical system reaches its most stable state, is the enemy of change. Sure, in order to perform mechanical work, you need free energy, and that requires an energy-liberating transition of some sort. But there’s an even more fundamental problem than extracting energy: without beginning from a hot, dense state in the distant past, and then cooling and falling out-of-equilibrium, the Universe we see today wouldn’t even be possible. Continued here S25 How mind wandering helps prepare you for the future When psychologist Jonathan Smallwood set out to study mind-wandering about 25 years ago, few of his peers thought that was a very good idea. How could one hope to investigate these spontaneous and unpredictable thoughts that crop up when people stop paying attention to their surroundings and the task at hand? Thoughts that couldn’t be linked to any measurable outward behavior? But Smallwood, now at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, forged ahead. He used as his tool a downright tedious computer task that was intended to reproduce the kinds of lapses of attention that cause us to pour milk into someone’s cup when they asked for black coffee. And he started out by asking study participants a few basic questions to gain insight into when and why minds tend to wander, and what subjects they tend to wander toward. After a while, he began to scan participants’ brains as well, to catch a glimpse of what was going on in there during mind-wandering. Continued here S18 Satellite Constellations Could Harm the Environment, New Watchdog Report Says Elon Musk’s Starlink and other satellite sources of light pollution and orbital debris should face an environmental review, the U.S. Government Accountability Office finds Do people have a right to an unobstructed view of the heavens? For most of human history, such a question would have been considered nonsensical—but with the recent rise of satellite mega constellations, it’s now being asked again and again. Mega constellations are vast groups of spacecraft, numbering in the thousands, that could spark a multitrillion-dollar orbital industry and transform global connectivity and commerce. But the rise of mega constellations also threatens to clutter the night sky, cripple the work of some astronomers and create space debris that harms people on Earth and in space alike. Continued here S22 The 73 Absolute Best Black Friday Deals Right Now The Salesmas season started a bit early this year, but that's only made things more confusing—what's really a deal? What's not? It's hard to know which deals to snag and which to walk away from. Luckily, we've done the hard work for you. WIRED reviewers try countless gadgets, tools, and digital delights of all kinds every week, and we have developed smart shopping tips and tricks to weed out fake discounts and bring you the real deals. We can say with confidence that these are the absolute best Black Friday deals you're going to find. Keep this page bookmarked. You will find regular updates as products go out of stock and prices change, and we'll keep scouring to find more deals worth grabbing.  Continued here S33 Human Sperm Counts Declining Worldwide, Study Finds In the last 50 years, average human sperm concentrations dropped by 51.6 percent, and total sperm counts dropped by 62.3 percent, according to a study published last week in the journal Human Reproduction Update. The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 223 papers published between 1973 and 2018. The studies analyzed sperm samples of a combined 57,000 men across 53 countries, writes Euronews Next’s Natalie Huet. Continued here S26 How to recession-proof your finances In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the stock market and economy seemed to continue stronger than ever for a while. Then, inflation started to soar. What goes up must come down, and now we’re being hit by a double-whammy of post-pandemic economic problems and new geopolitical issues, like the energy crisis. If you’re worried about a recession coming soon, you’re not alone. 74% of U.S. consumers are thinking the same thing, and experts echo their concerns. More than two-thirds of economists expect a recession to hit the country in 2023, with some believing it may come earlier.  Continued here S17 Scientists Ruin Delicious Seabass to Probe Why Some Organs Don’t Fossilize If every living thing died right now, by some estimates only around 1 percent would become fossils. Even fewer would have any soft tissues preserved. These rare tissue fossils offer crucial clues about biology and evolution, but their formation remains mysterious. Why do scientists find fossilized intestines, for example, but never a fossilized liver? Fossils develop when minerals replace the body parts of organisms that die and get buried in sediment, such as the mixture of mud and seawater on the ocean floor. Paleontologists are particularly fond of the fossil-building mineral calcium phosphate because it can preserve soft organs in exquisite detail—sometimes all the way down to cell nuclei. This mineral forms only under specific acidity conditions, so scientists have hypothesized for decades that differences between decaying organs’ pH levels determine which ones get preserved. Continued here S21 Apollo’s Escooter Isn’t the Breath of Fresh Air I Was Hoping For 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 WIRED There’s nothing terribly wrong with the Apollo Air 2022. This electric kick scooter can get you from point A to point B at a decent speed, with a reliable enough range that you won't have to pack the charger everywhere you go. Continued here S27 Porsche 911 Carrera T first drive: Simplify, then add the right options Getting bigger and heavier as you age is something that many of us can relate to. Even the sportiest of cars is not immune to this unfortunate expansion. The Porsche 911 weighed just 2,400 lbs (1,089 kg) when new in the early 1960s and was only 165 inches (4,191 mm) long. Since then, it has grown by over a foot (300 mm) and has packed on over 800 pounds (363 kg). Continued here S8 Want to Age Well? Bulletproof Your Back With These 6 Lower Back Stretches For someone who’s never experienced low back pain, it’s difficult to fully convey just how devastating this condition can be. Literally, any movement can cause unbearable, shooting pain in the back and legs. In some cases, it can even be impossible to find a comfortable position. This makes sleeping and recovering a monumental task. Continued here S22 The 73 Absolute Best Black Friday Deals Right Now The Salesmas season started a bit early this year, but that's only made things more confusing—what's really a deal? What's not? It's hard to know which deals to snag and which to walk away from. Luckily, we've done the hard work for you. WIRED reviewers try countless gadgets, tools, and digital delights of all kinds every week, and we have developed smart shopping tips and tricks to weed out fake discounts and bring you the real deals. We can say with confidence that these are the absolute best Black Friday deals you're going to find. Keep this page bookmarked. You will find regular updates as products go out of stock and prices change, and we'll keep scouring to find more deals worth grabbing.  Continued here S23 Time is money? No, time is far more valuable. Here's how to spend money to optimize your time Four thousand weeks is the average lifespan of a person living in the modern world. With exercise and healthy living, you may push that number out a couple of months. Then again a disease or accident may just as easily cut it short. Give or take, 4,000 weeks is all the time you have to build the life you want. Admittedly, such framing is stark, but it’s something we all understand on a gut level: Our time is limited, and that makes it the most precious resource we have. Yet when it comes to how we use our time, it’s often in service of money. Continued here S24 Be thankful for an out-of-equilibrium Universe You couldn’t make the Universe we have today if everything were always the same. Although many philosophically favored the idea that the Universe was static and unchanging — an idea popularized in the 20th century as the Steady-State Theory — such a Universe would look vastly different than our own. Without an early, hot, dense, and more uniform past, our Universe couldn’t have expanded, cooled, gravitated, and evolved to give us what we have today: a cosmos where galaxies, stars, planets, and even life not only all exist, but appear to be quite abundant. The reason is simple: the Universe isn’t in equilibrium. Equilibrium, which occurs when any physical system reaches its most stable state, is the enemy of change. Sure, in order to perform mechanical work, you need free energy, and that requires an energy-liberating transition of some sort. But there’s an even more fundamental problem than extracting energy: without beginning from a hot, dense state in the distant past, and then cooling and falling out-of-equilibrium, the Universe we see today wouldn’t even be possible. Continued here S25 How mind wandering helps prepare you for the future When psychologist Jonathan Smallwood set out to study mind-wandering about 25 years ago, few of his peers thought that was a very good idea. How could one hope to investigate these spontaneous and unpredictable thoughts that crop up when people stop paying attention to their surroundings and the task at hand? Thoughts that couldn’t be linked to any measurable outward behavior? But Smallwood, now at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, forged ahead. He used as his tool a downright tedious computer task that was intended to reproduce the kinds of lapses of attention that cause us to pour milk into someone’s cup when they asked for black coffee. And he started out by asking study participants a few basic questions to gain insight into when and why minds tend to wander, and what subjects they tend to wander toward. After a while, he began to scan participants’ brains as well, to catch a glimpse of what was going on in there during mind-wandering. Continued here S26 How to recession-proof your finances In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the stock market and economy seemed to continue stronger than ever for a while. Then, inflation started to soar. What goes up must come down, and now we’re being hit by a double-whammy of post-pandemic economic problems and new geopolitical issues, like the energy crisis. If you’re worried about a recession coming soon, you’re not alone. 74% of U.S. consumers are thinking the same thing, and experts echo their concerns. More than two-thirds of economists expect a recession to hit the country in 2023, with some believing it may come earlier.  Continued here S27 Porsche 911 Carrera T first drive: Simplify, then add the right options Getting bigger and heavier as you age is something that many of us can relate to. Even the sportiest of cars is not immune to this unfortunate expansion. The Porsche 911 weighed just 2,400 lbs (1,089 kg) when new in the early 1960s and was only 165 inches (4,191 mm) long. Since then, it has grown by over a foot (300 mm) and has packed on over 800 pounds (363 kg). Continued here S28 Oxford scientists crack case of why ketchup splatters from near-empty bottle Ketchup is one of the most popular condiments in the US, along with mayonnaise, but getting those few last dollops out of the bottle often results in a sudden splattering. "It's annoying, potentially embarrassing, and can ruin clothes, but can we do anything about it?" Callum Cuttle of the University of Oxford said during a press conference earlier this week at an American Physical Society meeting on fluid dynamics in Indianapolis, Indiana. "And more importantly, can understanding this phenomenon help us with any other problems in life?" Continued here S29 How to go vegetarian or vegan | Psyche Guides Quitting animal foods needn’t be a hardship. Relish your new diet and make it stick with this nutritionist’s approach is a nutrition advisor for the Vegetarian Resource Group and a regular columnist and nutrition editor for Vegan Journal. Her books include The Dietitian’s Guide to Vegetarian Diets (4th edition, 2022), co-authored with Virginia Messina and Mark Messina, Simply Vegan (5th edition, 2013), co-authored with Debra Wasserman, and Your Complete Vegan Pregnancy (2019). Continued here S30 I made professor before Ritalin. Now I can’t work without it | Psyche Ideas is emeritus professor of philosophy and director of the Hong Kierkegaard Library at St Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. His most recent book is The Existentialist’s Survival Guide: How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age (2018). He lives in Northfield, Minnesota. In his song Just like Tom Thumb’s Blues (1965), Bob Dylan whines: ‘I started out on Burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff. Everybody said they’d stand behind me when the game got rough. But the joke was on me, there was nobody even there to call my bluff…’ Substitute ‘Burgundy’ with ‘Ritalin’ and ‘everybody’ with ‘the mental health community’, and you have my predicament with my iatrogenic, or medically induced, dependency on stimulants. Continued here S31 The long poem is just right for our confounding, fractured age | Psyche Ideas is lecturer in English at Worcester College, University of Oxford. She is the author of Reading Time in the Long Poem: Milton, Thomson, and Wordsworth (2022). In 1848, Edgar Allan Poe proclaimed that readers would no longer waste their time on long poems: ‘the day of these artistic anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem were popular in reality, which I doubt, it is at least clear that no very long poem will ever be popular again.’ It’s not hard to see why long poems aren’t the most fashionable form of literature today. Poetry demands a sustained close attentiveness that is already difficult to achieve; long poems, which take up whole books with hundreds or even thousands of lines, combine this intense concentration with arduous duration. If reading a sonnet is hard work, why put yourself to the trouble of reading an epic? Continued here S32 The dance of the macaws | Psyche Films A vast majority of Guatemalans are Christian, with Catholicism in the region rooted in 16th-century Spanish conquest. However, echoes of the Mayan culture that thrived in pre-Hispanic times still resonate in the country’s largely Indigenous highlands, where ancient rituals are incorporated into Christian ceremonies. The Dance of the Macaws captures one such highlands town, Santa Cruz Verapaz, where Mayan priests, elders and practitioners keep the flame of the region’s traditional religious beliefs burning. Directed by the Guatemalan photographer and filmmaker Ricky Lopez Bruni, the short documentary chronicles the interwoven rituals of dance, worship and celebration that take place in Santa Cruz Verapaz during Catholic Holy Week. In particular, the film focuses on a ceremony with deep Mayan roots known as the Dance of the Macaws. Spanning several days and venues, the ritual is centred on a dance in which locals re-enact an ancient myth once painted on ceramic vessels. Continued here S33 Human Sperm Counts Declining Worldwide, Study Finds In the last 50 years, average human sperm concentrations dropped by 51.6 percent, and total sperm counts dropped by 62.3 percent, according to a study published last week in the journal Human Reproduction Update. The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 223 papers published between 1973 and 2018. The studies analyzed sperm samples of a combined 57,000 men across 53 countries, writes Euronews Next’s Natalie Huet. Continued here S34 NASA Successfully Crashed a Spacecraft Into Its Asteroid Target The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a first step toward defending Earth from threatening space rocks Traveling at 14,000 miles per hour, a NASA spacecraft slammed into an asteroid on Monday evening. But the crash was intentional: NASA meant to alter the flying rock’s trajectory in space. The asteroid poses no danger to Earth, but researchers wanted to test whether this approach is feasible in case of a future threat of impact. 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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