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 S65Successfully managing forests must include stewarding the hidden life belowground   Half of the biodiversity in forests is unseen because it lives belowground. These organisms are miniscule in size, but their importance to the ecosystem is enormous. In a single teaspoon of forest soil there are thousands of species and billions of individual organisms. These include microorganisms such as bacteria and archaea, soil animals like the microscopic protozoa, nematodes, tardigrades, collembolan and mites, and larger fauna such as millipedes, centipedes and worms.
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S1How Midsize Companies Can Make the Most of Disruption  Midsize companies face the same level of disruption as their larger rivals, but they are more likely to see themselves as disruption’s victim, rather than its driver. Yet they are holding back from the big changes that might put them in the driver’s seat and make change an ally, not a foe. That doesn’t need to be the case. The middle market has a secret weapon in its openness to change among leaders and employees. Today, that weapon is used mostly as a defense — to react to change. But with the right planning — and the will to act — midsize companies can turn disruption to their advantage.
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S2How to Practice Reflective Thinking  Sitting in silence and self-reflecting activates multiple parts of our brain and helps us increase awareness of what matters most to us. However, in the busyness of our everyday lives, it can be hard to find the time to stop and reflect. All self-reflection takes is a little bit of MAGIC: mirror, aspirations, goals, ideas, and commitments. The author created this method, based on their experience and coaching practice, to help people unlock the power of silence and reflective thought.
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S3It's Time to Break the Cycle of Female Rivalry  Female rivalry happens when a woman uses her power to keep another woman down, whether it’s by mistreating her or unfairly competing with her. But women are not at fault. Sexism has been long normalized in many spaces, and many women have been taught to internalize these beliefs. Sexism in the workplace, for example, may heighten competition among women to fight for positions or opportunities that are more readily available to men. Here are a few actions you can take to break the cycle of female rivalry.
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S5How to Attract the Right Shareholders  Many companies go about investor relations all wrong, pitching their companies and plans to whatever audience they can and hoping some shareholders will buy in. This approach wastes time and valuable resources building relationships with the wrong shareholders who do not bring the right competencies, connections, and commitment to a business. Managers tasked with investor relations often believe their role is to “sell” the business — or the strategy the company pursues — with the sole goal of retaining and attracting as many shareholders as possible. Rather than selling a strategy in investor relations, managers need to think strategically about investor relations and the right shareholders they need for their business. By co-analyzing a company’s strategy with the shareholder landscape, managers can identify and attract strategic shareholders, who can help their business thrive. We have found this is best done with a five-step approach to strategic shareholder management.
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S6The VC Fund Closing Equity Gaps -- and Making Money  Much of the business world has bought into the idea of stakeholder capitalism. But Freada Kapor Klein and Mitch Kapor say that doing some good by doing well isn’t enough when the business impact still creates negative effects and broader disparities overall. Freada, with a background in social justice and empirical research, and Mitch, an entrepreneur and investor who got his start making early spreadsheet software, strive to invest in ventures that close the distance between those with wealth and privilege and those without. The founders explain their metrics and decision-making process at Kapor Capital. The profitable firm explicitly invests in tech startups serving low-income and underrepresented communities. Freada and Mitch wrote the book Closing the Equity Gap: Creating Wealth and Fostering Justice in Startup Investing.
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S74 Strategies to Prepare for a Late-Career Shift  If you’re a senior professional who has decided to change careers, how will you compete in a new field with younger competition? Will prospective employers immediately dismiss you as a candidate because you’re overqualified? The author presents four strategies to use if you’re preparing to switch gears later in your career: 1) Own your age enthusiastically; 2) Identify multigenerational connections within your network; 3) Be prepared to 10X your job search; and 4) Practice your answers to tough questions.
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S8Want to cope with heatwaves? Look to Japan's creative cooling solutions  When our iPhones alerted us that the temperature had crept past 37C, we paused. Every sun-drenched step outside felt like we were wagyu steaks sizzling on the grill. Was honeymooning in Japan in July – one of its hottest, most humid months – really a good idea? From Osaka to Kobe to Kyoto, my wife Erin and I planned every day with one goal: avoid melting into puddles. Around us, hordes of tourists were in the same sweaty boat. But a few days in, I noticed something. The locals looked noticeably cooler, less crabby, more comfortable. Why? The answer should come as no surprise. Japan, a nation renowned for its design thinking and innovation, is armed with a fistful of ways to survive punishing heat. While they love air-con as much as the next heat-stricken country, they also find respite in creative remedies, from electrically ventilated clothes to water-based rituals. Solutions like these epitomise a nation where ancient traditions fuse with hyper-modern cities reaching endlessly towards the future. Here's six ways that locals cope with extreme heat.The Japanese concept mono no aware reminds us that all things are beautiful, fleeting and temporary – even sweltering heat (Credit: Andia/Alamy)
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S9The painful puzzle of diseases that have no name  Helene Cederroth has lost count of the number of times doctors have said this to her. Yet she knew, soon after her son Wilhelm was born in 1983, that something wasn't quite right with her second child."He looked like a perfect baby with red cheeks," says Helene. "Everyone at the hospital thought he was perfectly healthy."
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S10The exclusive network behind India's global tech success  Indian tech entrepreneur Kesavan Kandadai has many accomplishments under his belt: launching Amazon Prime Video in India and founding his own generative-AI startup, to name a couple. But at the age of 45, when people introduce him to a stranger, they always name-check his very earliest career achievement: graduating from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.“Even after 24 years,” Kandadai told Rest of World, “all the work I did, whether I had success or not, is secondary.”
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S11Tech Companies' New Favorite Solution for the AI Content Crisis Isn't Enough  From college plagiarism to cybercrime scams, generative AI is eroding trust in online content. Digital watermarking is no quick fix for the problemThanks to a bevy of easily accessible online tools, just about anyone with a computer can now pump out, with the click of a button, artificial-intelligence-generated images, text, audio and videos that convincingly resemble those created by humans. One big result is an online content crisis, an enormous and growing glut of unchecked, machine-made material riddled with potentially dangerous errors, misinformation and criminal scams. This situation leaves security specialists, regulators and everyday people scrambling for a way to tell AI-generated products apart from human work. Current AI-detection tools are deeply unreliable. Even OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, recently took its AI text identifier offline because the tool was so inaccurate.
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S12The 4 Stages of Conspiracy Theory Escalation on Social Media  Conspiracy theory beliefs and (more generally) misinformation may be groundless, but they can have a range of harmful real-world consequences, including spreading lies, undermining trust in media and government institutions and inciting violent or even extremist behaviors.For example, some conspiracy theories claim that the Covid-19 pandemic is a hoax or a plot by a secret cabal to control the world population. Such beliefs can lead to a rejection of vital health measures, such as wearing masks or getting vaccinated, and thereby endanger the public. They can also erode the credibility and authority of scientific and political institutions, such as the World Health Organization or the United Nations, and foster distrust and polarisation.
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S13Grand Canyon Gains New Million-Acre Monument  President Biden is declaring a national monument around the Grand Canyon, protecting lands important to a dozen Native American tribes and prohibiting new uranium mining claims in the regionCLIMATEWIRE | President Joe Biden will create a new national monument in Arizona on Tuesday covering close to a million acres of lands surrounding the Grand Canyon important to nearby Native American tribes.
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S14Eileen Isagon Skyers: In the age of AI art, what can originality look like?  What happens when human and machine creativity meet? From an AI model trained on classic works to generate a seemingly infinite stream of portraits to a neural network that envisions otherworldly life-forms in impossible detail, media art curator Eileen Isagon Skyers showcases mind-bending art that embraces our increasingly technological future, showing how AI can stretch the scope of human imagination and help create worlds we could never design alone.
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S15A New Blood Test May Predict Your Alzheimer's Risk. Should You Take It?  More than 6 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's disease, the most common type of dementia, and that number is expected to reach 14 million by the year 2060. Doctors and researchers have long sought a way to predict who will develop the devastating, memory-robbing illness. Now, consumers in the US can learn about their own risk from a new blood test.Made by New Jersey-based Quest Diagnostics, the $399 test can be purchased online by anyone age 18 and older in most US states, who then must go to a Quest clinic for a blood draw. The test measures blood levels of a protein called amyloid beta. As a person ages, amyloid beta tends to accumulate in the brain and can eventually form plaques, which are linked to Alzheimer's disease. It's thought that these clumps build up many years before memory loss and confusion appear.
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S16The Glowforge Aura Laser Cutter Makes a Powerful Tool Easy  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’ve spent any time on Etsy, you’ve probably come across crafts made with a laser cutter. For sellers who have to cut wood, leather, or acrylic in bulk, Glowforge laser cutters are a mainstay, but previous models have been prohibitively expensive for hobbyists. The new Glowforge Aura has now delivered a perfect middle ground.
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S17The 17 Best (and Worst) Mattresses You Can Buy Online  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 WIREDHunting for the best mattress online is a waking nightmare, and picking the wrong one can literally cause bad dreams or kill your back. It doesn't help that the online market is flooded with options or that there are more dedicated mattress review sites than stars in the sky. It's a mess. A few years ago, we started this guide by filling a room with dozens of the top mattress-in-a-box models and spending several days examining, reclining, and even jumping on each of them.
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S18New 'Downfall' Flaw Exposes Valuable Data in Generations of Intel Chips  Intel is releasing fixes for a processor vulnerability that affects many models of its chips going back to 2015, including some that are currently sold, the company revealed today. The flaw does not impact Intel's latest processor generations. The vulnerability could be exploited to circumvent barriers meant to keep data isolated, and therefore private, on a system. This could allow attackers to grab valuable and sensitive data from victims, including financial details, emails, and messages, but also passwords and encryption keys.It's been more than five years since the Spectre and Meltdown processor vulnerabilities sparked a wave of revisions to computer chip designs across the industry. The flaws represented specific bugs but also conceptual data protection vulnerabilities in the schemes chips were using to make data available for processing more quickly and speed that processing. Intel has invested heavily in the years since these so-called speculative execution issues surfaced to identify similar types of design issues that could be leaking data. But the need for speed remains a business imperative, and both researchers and chip companies still find flaws in efficiency measures.This latest vulnerability, dubbed Downfall by Daniel Moghimi, the Google researcher who discovered it, occurs in chip code that can use an instruction known as Gather to access scattered data more quickly in memory. Intel refers to the flaw as Gather Data Sampling after one of the techniques Moghimi developed to exploit the vulnerability. Moghimi will present his findings at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday."Memory operations to access data that is scattered in memory are very useful and make things faster, but whenever things are faster there's some type of optimizationâsomething the designers do to make it faster," Moghimi says. "Based on my past experience working on these types of vulnerabilities, I had an intuition that there could be some kind of information leak with this instruction."The vulnerability affects the Skylake chip family, which Intel produced from 2015 to 2019; the Tiger Lake family, which debuted in 2020 and will discontinue early next year; and the Ice Lake family, which debuted in 2019 and was largely discontinued in 2021. Intel's current generation chipsâincluding those in the Alder Lake, Raptor Lake, and Sapphire Rapids familiesâare not affected, because attempts to exploit the vulnerability would be blocked by defenses Intel has added recently.The fixes are being released with an option to disable them because of the potential that they could have an intolerable impact on performance for certain enterprise users. "For most workloads, Intel has not observed reduced performance due to this mitigation. However, certain vectorization-heavy workloads may see some impact," Intel said in a statement.
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S19The Mystery Genes That Are Keeping You Alive  Launched in 1990, the Human Genome Project unveiled its first readout of the human DNA sequence with great fanfare in 2000. The human genome was declared essentially complete in 2003—but it took nearly 20 more years before the final, complete version was released.This did not mark the end of humankind’s genetic puzzle, however. A new study has mapped the yawning gap between reading our genes and understanding them. Vast parts of the genome—areas the study authors have nicknamed the “Unknome”—are made of genes whose function we still don’t know.
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S20The 17 Best Movies on Max (aka HBO Max) Right Now  As the birthplace of prestige TV shows like The Sopranos and The Wire, HBO—and, by extension, Max (aka the streamer formerly known as HBO Max)—is best known for its impressive lineup of original series. The network has also been upping the ante with feature-length content that is the stuff of Oscar dreams. However, because Max is not (yet) a production powerhouse like, say, Netflix, hundreds of great movies come and go each month. So if you see something you want to watch, don’t let it linger in your queue for too long. Below is a list of some of our favorite films streaming on Max—from international awards darlings to piercing documentaries you’ll see near the top of any “Best Movies of the Year” list. If you decide you’re in more of a TV mood, head over to our picks for the best shows on Max. If you’re looking for even more recommendations, check out our lists of the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Amazon Prime, and the best movies on Disney+.
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S21The nuclear fusion era has arrived, if we choose it  Last year, on December 5, 2022, an incredible milestone was achieved: for the first time, a nuclear fusion reaction experienced what’s known as a net energy gain. This means, remarkably, that the energy liberated from a nuclear fusion reaction exceeded the (useful) energy that was inputted into the reaction. This wasn’t achieved by a magnetic confinement fusion reactor, which is where most of the worldwide fusion funding is centered, nor by any among the hundreds of private laboratories dedicated to bringing commercial fusion to the public, but rather by a largely forgotten source: the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.This year, on July 30, 2023, the National Ignition Facility did it again, and in an even superior fashion: repeating their results and achieving an even higher energy yield than in the December prior. All of this was achieved despite a paltry amount of funding being directed toward nuclear fusion research by the U.S. government: an average of just half-a-billion dollars per year across all endeavors, combined. With this recent confirmation, the path toward developing widespread nuclear fusion as the anchor to a clean, carbon-neutral energy economy is now clearer than ever. But in order to truly achieve it, we not only need to be brave and bold, but also focused, as the distractions and pitfalls could truly divert us from the ultimate goal.
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S22How a single human cell connects us to the spiritual essence of Carl Sagan's cosmos  Bob Vonderheide, a friend and colleague who studies cancer and immunology, teases me for having once remarked, “You are a developmental biologist, Bob, you just don’t know it.”My lighthearted statement was a throwback to the notion that almost all fields of biomedical research — cell biology, genetics, physiology, immunology, cancer biology, neuroscience — have their roots in the study of embryonic development. Theodosius Dobzhansky, the Ukrainian-born biologist who helped unify evolutionary biology and genetics, is most famous for stating, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” But he could just as easily have asserted that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of development. Embryogenesis is as central to the body’s operations as a building’s architectural designs and assembly are to its flow and structural integrity.
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S23Researchers use AI to predict hit songs from listeners' heart rates  Every week, nearly 170,000 new songs are released worldwide, but as anyone in the music industry will tell you, predicting which of those will be successful is practically impossible. The answer to this so-called “Hit Song Science” problem may lie in the brain. According to new research published in the journal Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, machine learning algorithms can analyze neural responses to songs to predict accurately which ones will be hits.Sean Merritt of Claremont Graduate University and his colleagues recruited 33 volunteers and recorded their heart rate while they listened to 24 songs chosen independently by the staff at a streaming service. The data was then fed into a model that can predict brain activity from changes in heart rate.
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S24Scientists make pain relievers like Tylenol from pine trees rather than fossil fuels  Common pain relievers like acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (Advil) have a dirty little secret: Producing them involves chemicals derived from crude oil. Now, a team of chemists from the University of Bath in the UK has shown how to manufacture these medicine cabinet staples using a waste product from the forestry and paper industries. The researchers detailed the process in a freely available paper published in June to the journal ChemSusChem.The remarkably versatile petrochemicals (compounds derived from oil and natural gas) currently utilized to make essential pain relievers are called benzenoids, organic hydrocarbon compounds that contain a benzene ring (which is composed of six carbon atoms in the shape of a ring with alternating single and double bonds). Benzenoids are incredibly useful, as they can be broken down to manufacture polymers, drugs, pesticides, flavors, stabilizers, and lubricants.
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S25Yes, there is a cure for bullshit  Bullshit’s no laughing matter. Climate denialism bullshit, for example, is harmful. Misinformation about SARS-CoV-2 clearly cost lives. In fact, the biologist Carl Bergstrom, while watching the pandemic unfold, argued that “detecting bullshit” should be a top scientific priority. In 2020, Bergstrom coauthored a book called Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World. In their preface, he and his coauthor paid respect to the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, who died on Sunday at the age of 94. Frankfurt, they noted, “recognized that the ubiquity of bullshit is a defining characteristic of our time.”Frankfurt, the author of the surprise 2005 bestseller On Bullshit, maintained that bullshit isn’t the same thing as a lie. The bullshitter is unaware of the facts. They’re just “bullshitting,” as we say, often in order to persuade others to go along with something, like a plan. But the liar deceives knowing what’s true and obscures it, with language or charts and figures. The good news is that we don’t have to resign ourselves to observing the spread of bullshit—or lies.
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S26What does it take to get AI to work like a scientist?  As machine-learning algorithms grow more sophisticated, artificial intelligence seems poised to revolutionize the practice of science itself. In part, this will come from the software enabling scientists to work more effectively. But some advocates are hoping for a fundamental transformation in the process of science. The Nobel Turing Challenge, issued in 2021 by noted computer scientist Hiroaki Kitano, tasked the scientific community with producing a computer program capable of making a discovery worthy of a Nobel Prize by 2050.
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S27Disney explores cutting costs through AI use  The Walt Disney Company has formed a task force to investigate the potential applications of AI throughout its various business units, reports Reuters, including cutting costs and enhancing customer experiences. This comes despite ongoing Hollywood writers' and actors' strikes that have put some AI technologies in the crosshairs.
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S28S29S30S31S32S33S34S35NASA's Artemis II crew meets their Moonship  The three Americans and one Canadian slated to fly on NASA's Artemis II circumlunar mission had a "pinch me" moment Monday when they got their first chance visit the Orion spacecraft that will carry them around the Moon and back to Earth.
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S36'Working Class'  In her new book, Blair LM Kelley explores an overlooked history: what it means to be a Black worker in the time since slavery.That the words working class are synonymous in the minds of many Americans with white working class is the result of a political myth. As the award-winning historian Blair LM Kelley explains in her new book, Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class, Black people are more likely to be working-class than white people are.
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S37Lost Histories of Coexistence  James McBride’s new novel tells a story of solidarity between Black and Jewish communities.Near the end of James McBride’s new novel, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, a character named Miggy makes a proclamation about what truly ails the folks living in the asylum where she works:
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S38Trees? Not in My Backyard.  “It’s almost like the government’s imposing its will on its residents,” Trayon White, the D.C. council member for Ward 8, said at the council’s June 6 legislative meeting. He wasn’t talking about a proposed highway, a subway station, a power plant, or—perish the thought—an apartment building. He was talking about trees: specifically, three linden trees on Xenia Street planted a few years ago by D.C.’s Urban Forestry Division. To my surprise, the legislative body of a major American city experiencing escalating homelessness and a serious spike in violent crime dedicated a quarter of its time that day to discussing three trees.White said he was concerned about the potential risk to property values and what he sees as a “reasonable fear” that once mature, the trees would “be large enough to make it difficult to see through and around the walkway, which is a public-safety concern.” He asked his colleagues to support an emergency resolution to remove them before this happened.
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S39The Local-News Crisis Is Weirdly Easy to Solve  Restoring the journalism jobs lost over the past 20 years wouldn’t just be cheap—it would pay for itself.Zak Podmore did not bring down a corrupt mayor. He did not discover secret torture sites or expose abuses by a powerful religious institution. But there was something about this one article he wrote as a reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune in 2019 that changed my conception of the value of local news.
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S40The Gender War Is Over in Britain  While upholding trans rights, the Labour Party disassociates itself from radical postmodern theories.When Keir Starmer wanted to change the Labour Party’s stance on sex and gender, he didn’t give a set-piece speech or hold a press conference. Instead, the leader of Britain’s main opposition party stayed in the background, leaving Anneliese Dodds, a shadow minister with a low public profile, to announce the shift in a short opinion column in The Guardian. In just over 800 words, she made three big declarations. One was that “sex and gender are different.” Another was that, although Labour continues to believe in the right to change one’s legal gender, safeguards are needed to “protect women and girls from predators who might abuse the system.” Finally, Labour was therefore dropping its commitment to self-ID—the idea that a simple online declaration is enough to change someone’s legal gender for all purposes—and would retain the current requirement of a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
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S41We Must Learn to Love Our Sweat  This summer, I, like so many other Americans, have forgotten what it means to be dry. The heat has grown so punishing, and the humidity so intense, that every movement sends my body into revolt. When I stand, I sweat. When I sit, I sweat. When I slice into a particularly dense head of cabbage, I sweat.The way things are going, infinite moistness may be something many of us will have to get used to. This past July was the world’s hottest month in recorded history; off the coast of Florida, ocean temperatures hit triple digits, while in Arizona, the asphalt caused third-degree burns. As human-driven climate change continues to remodel the globe, heat waves are hitting harder, longer, and more frequently. The consequences of this crisis will, on a macroscopic scale, upend where and how humans can survive. It will also, in an everyday sense, make our lives very, very sweaty.
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S42When Small-Town Pride Sounds Like Anger  Jason Aldean says “Try That in a Small Town” celebrates community—but its words and sound tell a different story.Country music, the century-old genre of nostalgia, tradition, and twang, has never been more in style. Last week, for the first time in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, the three most popular songs in America were country songs. One explanation for the milestone is that the genre’s artists and audiences are finally leaning into streaming: This year, country has experienced a 20 percent rise in listenership, a surge outpaced only by those of Latin music and K-pop.
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S43The Coup in Niger Is About Power. Russia Will Exploit It.  The most exciting explanations for Niger’s upheaval are globe-sweeping and probably wrong.Late last month, armed troops in Niger overthrew the government, arrested the elected president, and seized power for themselves. Soon after, a small group of Nigeriens who supported the coup in the capital city, Niamey, gathered to show their support for the military government, some waving the Russian flag. They denounced the West in general, and France, the former colonial power, in particular. “Long live Putin!” they chanted. “Down with France!”
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S4418 Months of War in Ukraine  Ukraine will soon mark the passing of 18 months since Russian forces launched their invasion in February of 2022. In recent weeks, the frontline battlefields in eastern and southern Ukraine remain punishing arenas of trench warfare, drone attacks, and artillery battles. Heavily mined and fortified Russian positions are slowing Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive. Russia’s military continues to launch missiles into all parts of Ukraine, attacking infrastructure and other targets, while Western countries continue to supply Ukraine with ammunition, equipment, and training. Gathered below are images from recent weeks, showing a region reshaped by a year and a half of war. Ukrainian soldiers fire toward Russian positions from a trench on the front line in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region on June 23, 2023. #
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S45Welcome to the Age of 'Foomscrolling'  The online frenzies that followed LK-99 and ChatGPT reveal a resurgent techno-optimism—and a shared longing for a new technology that will free us from human limits.I remember the first time I saw the floaty rock. It was the middle of night, and I was facing the insomniac’s dilemma: to reach for the phone or not. I reached and opened Twitter—this was two weeks ago; the new name hadn’t yet sunk in—on the theory that a scroll through my feed might achieve some hypnotic effect, creating an opening for sleep to take hold. That’s when I saw the blurry video. In it, a scrap of material, small and misshapen like a pencil’s broken lead tip, hovers mystically above a thick wafer of polished metal.
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S46I'm Supporting Colombia Now  For its electric style and all that its players have overcome to reach the Women’s World Cup, it’s a no-brainer.Fatalism can be a fan’s best friend. When the United States’ women’s team began this World Cup, I wanted the best to transpire, but my mind kept warning me that the team was destined for the worst. It was painfully evident that the squad wasn’t well-coached and that injuries to crucial players left it unable to surmount bad tactics. From the opening game, I watched the rest of the tournament in search of another nation that I could adopt as my own if the U.S. flamed out.
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S47How to Make a Four-Day Workweek Sustainable  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.A four-day workweek sounds great in theory. But what would it take to actually make the practice sustainable?
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S48The Abortion Backlash Reaches Ohio  A rare Democratic victory in the state shows the limits of Republican power since Roe fell.Officially, abortion had nothing to do with the constitutional amendment that Ohio voters rejected today. The word appeared nowhere on the ballot, and no abortion laws will change as a result of the outcome.
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S49Cultural differences are far more nuanced than East vs West | Psyche Ideas  is a commissioning editor at Psyche. He was previously a senior editor at Psychology Today.The idea that people in the ‘East’ and in the ‘West’ differ psychologically in important ways has been studied for decades and popularised in countless articles and books. You might have read that, compared with East Asians, people in North America tend to place more value on being unique, for example, or that they are more inclined to focus on their own positive qualities. Indeed, various aspects of ‘self-construal’ – that is, how people see themselves in relation to others – have been reported to vary in this way, with some cultures, notably in East Asia, showing a more interdependent emphasis (on how people are related), and others, such as those in the US and Canada, having a more independent emphasis (focused on being distinct and independent).
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S50These Climbers Just Set a New Record for Ascending the World's 14 Highest Peaks /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/4e/bd/4ebd42b8-9cf5-4589-a1fb-1f0b2e4d744f/kanchenjunga_kristinharila_tenjenlama_2manishmaharjan_fieldproductions.jpg) On July 27, at the peak of K2 in Pakistan, Norwegian mountaineer Kristin Harila and her Sherpa guide Tenjin became the fastest climbers to ascend all 14 of the world’s peaks that stand above 8,000 meters (26,000 feet). They completed the ascents in three months and one day—smashing a record held since 2019 by Nirmal Purja, who took six months and six days.“I don’t think those of us outside of the climbing community fully understand the breadth of what she has accomplished,” says Harila’s father in a statement. “And I couldn’t be more proud of her.”
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S51S52S53S54Swiss Seniors Are Suing Over Climate Change's Threat to Their Health /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/ca/6c/ca6cb13f-cbf4-4400-9830-ee57859dd1de/82f4c31a-gp0stvtrs.jpg) Amid record-setting heat, the group of women argue that their government’s failure to cut fossil fuel emissions has violated their human rightsA group of senior women from Switzerland are suing their government over its climate change inaction, alleging the country’s climate policies violate their human rights and health. KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz, a Greenpeace-backed group of 2,400 women ages 64 and older, filed a lawsuit that was heard in Europe’s top human rights court in March.
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S55You Can Now Buy a Lighthouse of Your Very Own in Michigan /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/5f/0d/5f0d2b81-9ae4-4581-aade-f0e09f708fa6/chica123003001.jpeg) So far, bidding is only up to $16,000 for the historic 68-foot-tall structure in Lake SuperiorIf you’ve always dreamed of cozying up inside your own beautiful lighthouse on the water, far from the hustle and bustle of daily life, now’s your chance: A 68-foot-tall structure in Lake Superior is for sale, with a starting bid of just $10,000.
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S56A Better, Fairer Approach to Layoffs  Today layoffs have become companies’ default response to the challenges created by advances in technology and global competition. Yet research shows that job cuts rarely help senior leaders achieve their goals. Too often, they’re done for short-term gain, but the cost savings are overshadowed by bad publicity, loss of knowledge, weakened engagement, higher voluntary turnover, and lower innovation, which hurt profits in the long run.This article looks at better ways to handle changing workforce needs that make sparing use of staff reductions and ensure that if they do happen, the process feels fair and the affected parties have a soft landing. Most successful approaches begin with a philosophy that spells out a firm’s commitments and priorities, establish methods for exploring layoff alternatives (such as furloughs, retraining, and reassignments), and determine options for three scenarios: a healthy present, short-term volatility, and an uncertain future.
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S57Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life Livable  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.We spend our lives yearning to be saved — from harm and heartache, from ourselves, from the inevitability of our oblivion. Religions have taught that a god saves us. Kierkegaard thought that we save ourselves. Baldwin believed that we save each other, if we are lucky. Ultimately, we don’t know, or only think we know, what saves us. But when it happens, we hold on to our saviors with the full force of gratitude and grace. In every true friendship, each is the other’s savior, over and over.That is what Hungarian artist Balint Zsako explores with great subtlety and sweetness in Bunny & Tree — a strange and wondrous wordless picture-book about a bunny saved from the archetypal hungry wolf by an unlikely savior — a sentient tree — and the unlikely friendship that blooms between them.
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S58'I'm next, I need to save myself': Why layoffs cause other workers to quit  In an economic environment of widespread layoffs and company downsizing, many employees are holding tight to their positions. Yet, according to some experts, these cuts may create a surprising domino effect – driving some remaining workers to voluntarily quit their jobs.A study published in the Academy of Management Journal in January 2023, in which researchers applied a proprietary framework to study 1,620 retail stores during the course of 22 months, in order to predict human capital outflow showed that company-wide layoffs were 10 times more likely than quits following voluntary quits. And while post-layoff resignations spiked among all employees, the trend was more pronounced among high-performing workers, rising from around 1.5% to 2% in the six months after job cuts were announced – a 75% spike.
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S59Feast your way around Batumi with tour curator Koba Jincharadze  With its sunny Black Sea climate, wide pebble beaches and boulevards fringed by palms, magnolias and banana trees, Batumi is everything that media darling Tbilisi isn't. While the Georgian capital hits headlines for its frenzied parties and politically charged atmosphere, Batumi is all about relaxation and indolence – as a local proverb goes, "We were born tired and live only to rest."The capital of Georgia's humid, south-western Adjaria region, Batumi is a subtropical city of lush greenery and eclectic architecture. The exuberant fin-de-siecle confections of Europe Square sit cheek by jowl with the Turkish-style openwork balconies, Art Nouveau masterpieces and cobbled streets of Batumi's historic heart, while the green space of the 7km seaside promenade is overshadowed by futuristic skyscrapers along Rustaveli Avenue.
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S60Mie Bakso: Rice noodle soup with meatballs  On a 2010 state visit to Indonesia, former US president Barack Obama delivered an unforgettable comment during his dinner speech: "Bakso, nasi goreng... semuanya enak!", or "Meatball soup, fried rice... it's all delicious!"A staple in the country where Obama spent four years of his childhood, Indonesia's mie bakso is a warm, hearty bowl of meatball noodle soup. Between his several testaments to the dish's exceptional flavour and candid shots of the politician enjoying the dish at restaurants like the Grand Garden Café in Bogor, Indonesia, mie bakso has become known as one of Obama's favourite soups.
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S61Women's World Cup 2023: How female players have finally got the football kit they deserve  The 2023 Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand is well under way, and has millions around the world glued to their televisions. It's been a thrilling tournament so far, and making the coverage extra vibrant this time round are the super-stylish kits the various teams are sporting.There are nature-inspired ensembles by Adidas – such as Japan's away shirt paying tribute to Mount Fuji sunsets – and a range of stylishly-patterned Nike kits – such as the Nigeria strip, which takes inspiration from traditional prints.
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S62Linking police and healthcare data could help better identify domestic abuse - new research  Our study showed that many victims of domestic abuse often visit accident and emergency departments before the police get involved. This means that healthcare professionals can play a crucial role in identifying and helping people who are experiencing abuse.We combined data from the police with data from GPs and accident and emergency hospital admissions. We focused on residents in the South Wales Police catchment area who had experienced domestic abuse between August 2015 and March 2020, and who were given a public protection notification (PPN). This is a document that records safeguarding concerns about adults or children.
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S63The strange history of ice cream flavours - from brown bread to Parmesan and pat  English Heritage is now selling what it calls “the best thing since sliced bread” at 13 of its sites – brown bread ice cream, inspired by a Georgian recipe. The announcement of the flavour mentions several more outlandish Georgian flavours trialled by English Heritage before it landed on brown bread, such as Parmesan and cucumber.English Heritage is not alone in its efforts to beguile visitors with historical treats. In Edinburgh, the National Trust for Scotland’s Gladstone’s Land features an ice cream parlour linked to the dairy which stood there in 1904. The property sells elderflower and lemon curd ice cream based on a recipe from 1770, and visitors can go on several food-themed tours.
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S64Housing is a direct federal responsibility, contrary to what Trudeau said. Here's how his government can do better.  This statement is neither accurate nor politically smart, with recent polls suggesting that 70 per cent of Canadians think the Liberal government isn’t adequately addressing the high and growing cost of housing.While the word “housing” isn’t mentioned in the 1867 Constitution Act or 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a federal, provincial or municipal responsibility, the rights to “life, liberty and security of the person” as well as “equal protection” in the Charter can’t be achieved without adequate housing.
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S66Young people need more support coping with online sexual harms  Digital technologies and the internet have become a part of daily life for many young people in Canada and worldwide. While that increased connectivity brings many benefits, it can also open youth up to online harm and abuse. It is important that meaningful supports are in place to protect young people from sexual harm. In 2020, humanitarian organization Plan International surveyed just over 14,000 young girls and women aged 15-25 in 22 countries, including Canada. Fifty-eight per cent of participants reported having personally experienced some form of online harassment, including sexual harassment.
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S67S68How canny marketing and strong supply links gave the world a taste for Scotch whisky  Scotch whisky exports grew from £4.51 billion in 2021 to more than £6 billion in 2022, while separate government figures showed a 25% sales increase last year – the biggest for any UK manufactured product except aircraft parts. Such impressive growth shows how the industry has cultivated its image, appeal and supply networks over 200 years, withstanding pandemics, trade wars and even world wars in the process. Scotch whisky producers have long looked overseas to sell their product. The UK domestic market is not and never has been big enough to meet their aspirations for growth. Some of the earliest records of Scotch being exported date to 1839 with adverts for Ardbeg Scotch from Islay and others appearing in New York publications around this time.
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