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 S1The Ambidextrous Organization   This mental balancing act is one of the toughest of all managerial challenges—it requires executives to explore new opportunities even as they work diligently to exploit existing capabilities—and it’s no surprise that few companies do it well. But as every businessperson knows, there are companies that do. What’s their secret?
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S3Will Scientists Ever Find a Theory of Everything?  Physicists are on an ever urgent quest to find a fuller understanding of what makes the cosmos tick, which they call a theory of everythingAlbert Einstein is known for his haircut, theories of relativity and belief that “the fact that [the physical world] is comprehensible is a miracle.”
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S4Science News Briefs from around the World: September 2023  Ancient poop pathogens in Israel, Peru’s millennia-old El Niño preparations, a halt to Icelandic whale hunting, and much more in this month’s Quick HitsIceland's government temporarily halted fin whale hunting after the country's veterinary authority released a gruesome whale hunt video. Public opposition has increased in recent years, and experts say the ban could become permanent.
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S5The Best Travel Bags for Wherever You're Headed  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 WIREDWe've all been tempted to skimp on our luggage purchases. Especially if travel is an occasional event, it's hard to justify spending good money for something that'll sit in your closet for most of the year. Think of it this way: Buying a dependable bag is buying peace of mind. A few yards of zippers and either hard plastic or nylon are the only barriers between your bag and the belly of an airliner, the conveyor belt of a baggage claim, and the trunk of a car. Make one thing easy on yourself and bring good luggage that's lightweight, rolls easily or fits comfortably on your back, and won't split open on the way to your destination.
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S6The Race to Save Yellowknife From Raging Wildfires  When Jay Bulckaert answered his phone, he was standing in a fire break clearing brush in Kam Lake, just outside of Yellowknife, the capital city of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Just miles away, a massive wildfire is stalking the city and threatening to move closer as the winds shift. Thousands of people have left Yellowknife since an evacuation order was announced Wednesday evening. Not Bulckaert, though, nor the other volunteers who showed up Friday morning to do whatever they could to stop the fire from razing the city of 20,000. “It’s all hands on deck,” he says.They divvied up tasks as soon as they met up Friday. Doing admin work, driving buses and tractors, operating chain saws, feeding the crew—everyone brings something to the table. “Right now we’re clearing brush. Probably next we’ll be moving sprinklers. We’re just a rag-tag crew of locals that showed up here and volunteered to help the effort. We’re going to do whatever they ask us to do,” says Bulckaert, who normally works as a filmmaker.
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S7The Best Early Labor Day Deals on Luggage, Grills, and Outdoor Gear  Autumn is fast approaching, and with it comes Labor Day—a herald to the end of summer. We've rounded up several early Labor Day deals and end-of-summer sales on furniture and outdoor gear. Be sure to check out our Best Early Labor Day Mattress Sales roundup as well. We also have a big list of back-to-school deals with more discounts that are worth your while.Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.
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S8Montana Youth Win a Historic Climate Case  A state judge in Montana gave climate activists a decisive win on Monday when she ruled that the state’s support of fossil fuels violates their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.District Court judge Kathy Seeley struck down as unconstitutional a state policy barring consideration of the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions in fossil fuel permitting. Her ruling establishes legal protection against broad harms caused by climate change and enshrines a state right to a world free from those harms, creating a potential foundation for future lawsuits across the country.
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S9Security News This Week: US Energy Firm Targeted With Malicious QR Codes in Mass Phishing Attack  At the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas last weekend, thousands of hackers competed in a red-team challenge to find flaws in generative AI chat platforms and help better secure these emerging systems. Meanwhile, researchers presented findings across the conference, including new discoveries about strategies to bypass a recent addition to Apple’s macOS that is supposed to flag potentially malicious software on your computer. Kids are facing a massive online scam campaign that targets them with fake offers and promotions related to the popular video games Fortnite and Roblox. And the racket all traces back to one rogue digital marketing company. The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has been filing lawsuits and pursuing a strategic legal offensive to oppose researchers who study hate speech and online harassment using data from the social network.
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S103 methods make up almost all cases of suicide in the U.S.  Suicides in the U.S. hit an all-time high in 2022, according to data recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 49,449 Americans took their own lives last year.These numbers aren’t merely mirroring population growth either. Since the turn of the century, the suicide rate in the U.S. has risen roughly 30%. Among Americans aged 10 to 24, suicide is now the second-leading cause of premature death.
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S11How Indian perfumers capture the smell of rain  The alluring, musky fragrance of marigolds floats from a Hindu shrine, as a group of men laugh over ginger-infused milk teas served in clay cups called kulhads. In a nearby perfume distillery, a man turns his head towards the laughter as he crushes a batch of discarded kulhads. Here in Kannauj, a town in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, generations of perfumers have used kulhads and other clay materials to capture an enticing scent known as mitti attar.“It’s the smell of the baked, parched earth when the first rains arrive after a long drought,” says Rajat Mehrotra, co-owner of the family-run Meena Perfumery. Perfumers like Mehrotra, who runs the company with his brother, have been bottling the enigmatic fragrance for centuries.
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S12S13I try synthetic salmon and enter the "uncanny valley" of taste  I could count on one thing as I sat down for a multiple-course meal based on something that looked very much like salmon: I would not have to worry about any bones. The plant-based theme ingredient came from a Toronto startup called New School Foods that has been developing a way to construct a salmon substitute with not just the taste but also the texture of the real thing.
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S14S15Maui's Fire Risk Was Glowing Red  When the wildfire came ripping down into the town of Lahaina, Maui’s state-of-the-art emergency sirens did not sound. That much is sure.In the immediate aftermath of the fire, officially the deadliest in modern U.S. history, the decision not to sound these alarms has been one of the more baffling ones. Sirens are supposed to warn people, and shouldn’t more people have been warned by any means necessary? The official in charge of making the call, Herman Andaya, resigned Thursday, citing health reasons. And yet, under pressure, officials have also defended their decision not to sound the island’s sirens.
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S16The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Ever Being President Again  As students of the United States Constitution for many decades—one of us as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, the other as a professor of constitutional law, and both as constitutional advocates, scholars, and practitioners—we long ago came to the conclusion that the Fourteenth Amendment, the amendment ratified in 1868 that represents our nation’s second founding and a new birth of freedom, contains within it a protection against the dissolution of the republic by a treasonous president.This protection, embodied in the amendment’s often-overlooked Section 3, automatically excludes from future office and position of power in the United States government—and also from any equivalent office and position of power in the sovereign states and their subdivisions—any person who has taken an oath to support and defend our Constitution and thereafter rebels against that sacred charter, either through overt insurrection or by giving aid or comfort to the Constitution’s enemies.
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S17A Very Silly Movie About Some Very Good Dogs  The raunchy talking-animals comedy Strays contains a warm core about the unconditional love of pets. Who can be mad about that?Early on in the raunchy talking-animals comedy Strays, a montage plays of four dogs humping inanimate lawn ornaments, guzzling beer leaking from trash bags, and bonding over a plan to bite off a man’s genitals. It’s an inartfully staged sequence, packed with sophomoric jokes and enough f-bombs to rival a Quentin Tarantino film. On the other hand: Will you look at those sweet, scruffy faces! Those little paws! Sure, their CGI-ed mouths appear a bit strange and the canines do not seem to be making direct eye contact with one another, but they each deserve belly rubs and every single treat ever. How can anyone dislike a scene in which the goodest dogs are having the best time? Indeed, halfway through my screening, I glanced at my notes and realized that I’d drawn a series of smiley faces.
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S18Why We Drink What We Drink  This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.I’ve always paid more attention to my beverage habits than is perhaps standard. I grew up in the early 2000s in a household that much preferred juice, soda, coffee, or really anything else to water. But this was also, as my colleague Amanda Mull noted in a recent article, an era in which beverage trends were slowly shifting away from sugary drinks. When I got to college, my friends immediately noticed my strange tendencies; I’d fill up a huge glass with apple juice from our cafeteria’s soda machine and cradle it the way they were holding their Nalgenes. Finally, sometime around sophomore year, I gave water a real chance. I wish I could say I made an active decision to be healthier, but I think I just got thirsty.
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S19A Simple Marketing Technique Could Make America Healthier  Doctors are experimenting with health-care reminders to promote vaccination, mammograms, and more.Death from colorectal cancer can be prevented by regular screenings. Controlling high blood pressure could prolong the lives of the nearly 500,000 Americans who die from this disease each year. Vaccinations help prevent tetanus, which could otherwise be lethal.
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S20Making Sense of Donald Trump's 91 Felony Charges  Former President Donald Trump is facing what could be his most consequential legal challenge yet, after having been indicted in Fulton County, Georgia this week for his alleged efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results. It’s Trump’s fourth indictment in as many months. As things stand now, reporters will spend much of 2024 running between campaign rallies and court appearances by the man who, as of today, is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Trump has until next Friday, two days after the first Republican presidential primary debate, to turn himself in.He is being charged along with 18 co-conspirators including his former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose indictment marks the latest development in the fall from grace of the man once referred to as “America’s Mayor.”
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S21Revealed: The Authors Whose Pirated Books Are Powering Generative AI  Stephen King, Zadie Smith, and Michael Pollan are among thousands of writers whose copyrighted works are being used to train large language models.One of the most troubling issues around generative AI is simple: It’s being made in secret. To produce humanlike answers to questions, systems such as ChatGPT process huge quantities of written material. But few people outside of companies such as Meta and OpenAI know the full extent of the texts these programs have been trained on.
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S22Pricing and the Psychology of Consumption Why should you care if your customers actually use your products? Isn’t it enough that they buy them? Not if you want repeat business. Consider this counterintuitive impact of price on customer loyalty: When your customers are aware of your product’s cost, they’ll likely use the product—to feel they’ve gotten their money’s worth. And the more they use it, the more likely they’ll buy it again.
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S23The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ram  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.Beneath our anxious quickenings, beneath our fanged fears, beneath the rusted armors of conviction, tenderness is what we long for — tenderness to salve our bruising contact with reality, to warm us awake from the frozen stupor of near-living. Tenderness is what permeates Platero and I (public library) by the Nobel-winning Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez (December 23, 1881–May 29, 1958) — part love letter to his beloved donkey, part journal of ecstatic delight in nature and humanity, part fairy tale for the lonely.
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S24Uses of the Erotic: Audre Lorde on the Relationship Between Eros, Creativity, and Power  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.To be a complete human being, to fully inhabit your own vitality, is to live undivided within your own nature. No part of us is more habitually exiled, caged, and crushed under the weight of millennia of cultural baggage than Eros — the part that includes sexuality but transcends it to also include our capacity for spontaneity and playfulness, our tolerance for uncertainty, our unselfconscious creative energy. W.H. Auden understood the centrality of Eros when he looked up at the stars that made us and realized how we too are “composed like them of Eros and of dust, beleaguered by the same negation and despair.” Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934–November 17, 1992) understood it with singular clarity of vision in a paper she delivered at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women at Mount Holyoke College on August 25, 1978, titled “Uses of the Erotic,” later adapted as an essay in the altogether indispensable Lorde collection Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (public library).
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S25Does Your Company Have a Culture of Quiet Retaliation?  Quiet forms of retaliation are incredibly common and can be contagious in the workplace. The organizations that accept this form of retaliation as a standard practice have difficulty hiring and retaining great people. Retaliation — in all its forms — not only harms current team members, but a culture that tolerates retaliation results in harm to the mission and the organization’s ability to deliver to its customers and stakeholders. To create cultures where psychological safety is the norm, innovation thrives, and team effectiveness is high, it’s critical to address the retaliation that happens in the shadows.
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S26Company loyalty is out - touting yourself is in  For years, a hallmark of neighbourhoods like London’s Canary Wharf or Manhattan’s Financial District was workers wearing fleece vests emblazoned with their company logos. It wasn’t just a sign of a less formal dress codes in the corporate world – it was a badge of pride in the company one worked for.Yet that kind of overt employee loyalty may be waning. In a changed work world, where technology is rapidly developing and workers’ priorities have shifted, experts say people are less likely to be company-first when thinking and talking about their careers.
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S27Cake Yazdi: Iranian yoghurt cake  In the Red Hook neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York, masterful yoghurt-makers balance sweet and tart in a creamily decadent fermented yoghurt, and preserve and its byproduct of whey. Iranian author, business owner and yoghurt expert, Homa Dashtaki, lies at the heart of the operation, sealing jars of this timeless kitchen staple with a label embellished with an illustration of a white moustache.In her recent cookbook, Yogurt and Whey: Recipes of an Iranian Immigrant Life, Dashtaki uses her lifelong relationship with yoghurt and whey to tell the story of her culture, faith and relationship with food through her recipes. She emphasises sustainable food production and a battle against wastefulness, instilling these ideals into her 12-year-old yoghurt and whey business, The White Mustache, named for the facial hair of Dashtaki's earliest kitchen companion: her father.
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S28Climate change is making debt more expensive - new study  Earth is overheating due to the greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. This is “the biggest market failure the world has seen” according to economist Nicholas Stern. The rational behaviour of companies that pollute by making profitable commodities, and consequences of most people’s desire to drive everywhere are creating irrational outcomes for everyone: an increase in the average global temperature which threatens to make the planet uninhabitable. We found that by 2030, 59 countries will see a deterioration in their ability to pay back their debts and an increased cost of borrowing as a result of climate change. Our predictions to 2100 entail the number of countries rising to 81.
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S29How Ukraine's savvy official social media rallied the world and raised the bar for national propaganda  Just days after the Russian military launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, stories of Ukrainian resistance were already circulating with a ferocity all their own. On March 7, 2022, for example, the government posted a video on Twitter, the platform now known as X, showing clips of Ukrainian farmers using John Deere tractors to tow away disabled Russian tanks and equipment. The image came with a simple message, complemented by a tractor icon: “Don’t mess with Ukrainian farmers.”
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S30Nagorno-Karabakh blockade crisis: Choking of disputed region is a consequence of war and geopolitics  In the South Caucasus, a region far from most Americans’ attention, the democratic republic of Armenia lost a short but devastating war three years ago to Azerbaijan, its larger, richer neighbor.That defeat is being felt hardest today by the increasingly desperate people of Nagorno-Karabakh. Known by Armenians as Artsakh, or “Black Garden,” the enclave – Armenian in population but within Azerbaijan territory – has been subjected to a devastating monthslong blockade that has prevented food and medical supplies reaching its 120,000 residents.
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S31S32Risk of death related to pregnancy and childbirth more than doubled between 1999 and 2019 in the US, new study finds  Black women were more likely to die during pregnancy or soon after in every year from 1999 through 2019, compared with Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and white women. That is a key finding of our recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The risk of maternal death increased the most for American Indian and Alaska Native women during that time frame. Maternal deaths refers to death from any cause except for accidents, homicides and suicides, during or within one year after pregnancy.
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S33ChatGPT and other language AIs are nothing without humans - a sociologist explains how countless hidden people make the magic  The media frenzy surrounding ChatGPT and other large language model artificial intelligence systems spans a range of themes, from the prosaic – large language models could replace conventional web search – to the concerning – AI will eliminate many jobs – and the overwrought – AI poses an extinction-level threat to humanity. All of these themes have a common denominator: large language models herald artificial intelligence that will supersede humanity.But large language models, for all their complexity, are actually really dumb. And despite the name “artificial intelligence,” they’re completely dependent on human knowledge and labor. They can’t reliably generate new knowledge, of course, but there’s more to it than that.
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S34S35S36S37Five bizarre historic leisure activities to try with friends - from gurning to stereoscopy  Leisure activities flourished in 19th-century Britain, as legislation was passed limiting the length of the working day and working week, giving people more free time. If you’re struggling to know how to spend your own free time this summer, take a leaf out of the Victorians’ book with these strangely fun leisure pursuits. Put you hand above your right ear. Do you feel a bump? Then you are clearly selfish! Partly in response to the growth of new cities packed full of strangers, and partly out of a desire to better understand themselves, the Victorians embraced the idea that character could be read from one’s outward appearance, especially one’s skull shape.
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S38How genetically modifying mosquitoes could strengthen the world's war on malaria  It’s been 126 years since British medical doctor Sir Ronald Ross discovered that mosquitoes in the Anopheles family are primarily responsible for transmitting malaria parasites between vertebrate hosts. Since his discovery, mosquitoes have been found to carry and transmit many other diseases that pose a major threat to public health. Among them are yellow fever, dengue and Zika.
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S39Europe's wild bird species are on the brink - but there are ways to bring them back  Almost two out of every five species of wild bird are of conservation concern across Europe, according to an updated and comprehensive assessment of their population status. That means these species are declining and becoming more scarce across the continent. Among the birds of conservation concern are some familiar species, including dunnock, goldcrest and meadow pipit.Since the first assessment, which was carried out in 1994, the number of European bird species that are of global conservation concern has trebled. Snowy owl, northern lapwing, Eurasian curlew, steppe eagle and bearded vulture have all been unlucky enough to make this list.
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S40As BRICS cooperation accelerates, is it time for the US to develop a BRICS policy?  When leaders of the BRICS group of large emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – meet in Johannesburg for two days beginning on Aug. 22, 2023, foreign policymakers in Washington will no doubt be listening carefully.The BRICS group has been challenging some key tenets of U.S. global leadership in recent years. On the diplomatic front, it has undermined the White House’s strategy on Ukraine by countering the Western use of sanctions on Russia. Economically, it has sought to chip away at U.S. dominance by weakening the dollar’s role as the world’s default currency.
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S41S42Why we think that some extinct giant flying reptiles cared for their young  But how do we do this for extinct animals? In a recent scientific paper,palaeontologist Zixiao Yang and colleagues compared the growth of small and giant pterosaurs. These were flying reptiles that were alive between about 228 million years ago and 66 million years ago – sharing the Earth with dinosaurs. Yang and colleagues wanted to understand what, if anything, was different about how the giant animals got so big.
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S43Teamwork is not always the best way of working - new study  Throughout the 21st century, teamwork has come to define the modern work environment. Driven by advances in communication technology, working collaboratively is, as management experts will tell you, how you harness the “collective intelligence”.Collective intelligence is often seen as greater than the sum of its parts: superior to the cumulative individual intelligence of the group’s members. Capitalising on it is said to improve task accuracy (finding better and more correct answers), and enhance task efficiency (finding good answers faster). This in turn leads to quicker and higher quality completion. In other words, when we work together, our performance improves. This has been one of the major factors shaping our modern societies.
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S4470 years ago, an Anglo-US coup condemned Iran to decades of oppression - but now the people are fighting back  The 1953 coup d'etat in Iran ushered in a period of exploitation and oppression that has continued – despite a subsequent revolution that led to huge changes – for 70 years. Each year on August 19, the anniversary of the coup, millions of Iranians ask themselves what would have happened if the US and UK had not conspired all those years ago to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected leader. Iran, the Middle East and, arguably, the whole world may well have been profoundly different. Apart from rewriting the destiny of Iran and its neighbours, the coup paved the way for a series of imperialist interventions and the toppling of democratically elected governments across the global south. Perhaps Washington might have thought twice before plotting coups in Guatemala in 1954, Congo in 1961 or Chile in 1973, if they’d been unable to overthrow Iran’s prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, so easily and profitably.
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S45Yellowknife fires: Evacuees will need culturally specific support services  On the evening of Aug. 16, due to rapidly moving wildfires, an evacuation order was issued for the entire city of Yellowknife. Thousands of residents faced a long, stressful drive on the only road out of the city. The goal was for as many people as possible to flee one of the largest cities in Canada’s North before the deadline for safe exit of Aug. 18 at noon Mountain Daylight Time.In May 2016, a large fast-moving wildfire jumped from the surrounding rural areas and into the city of Fort McMurray, Alta., causing approximately 88,000 people to flee. Canadians were shocked and saddened by the televised images of slow-moving lines of cars passing in close proximity to massive walls of flames.
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S46S47S48An Emotional Timeline of Going on Vacation  Daydream about a trip. You’re currently sitting in an office chair that has permanently memorized the shape of your butt. But imagine if you were sitting on a beach, sun-baked sand between your toes. Or on the steps of an ancient ruin. Or at a rustic wooden table, drinking great wine with beautiful locals with whom your only shared language is laughter. This is possible, you know. The world is your oyster, and it’s filled with amazing, faraway places that are begging you to visit them!Book it. That’s right—you’re doing it. You’re really doing it. In a few clicks and a few short months, you will be somewhere else, becoming a happier, more interesting person who will return home with a happier, more interesting life. You deserve it. Ride this high all the way to the airport.
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S49Talking to Conservatives About Climate Change  Even in a summer of record-breaking heat and disasters, Republican Presidential candidates have ignored or mocked climate change. But some conservative legislators in Congress recognize that action is necessary. David Remnick talks with a leader of the Conservative Climate Caucus about her party’s stance on climate change, her belief that fossil fuels cannot be rapidly phased out, and the problems she sees with the Inflation Reduction Act. Then the authoritative climate reporter Elizabeth Kolbert talks with Ben Jealous, who was recently named the executive director of the Sierra Club, about his strategy for building support in Republican-led states. Plus, the writer Tessa Hadley talks to the New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman about the long process of settling into her true voice.Mariannette Miller-Meeks, an Iowa Republican, feels that the G.O.P. hasn’t engaged enough with this critical issue. But she won’t vote for Democratic bills that “take away choice.”
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S50The Spectre of Andrew Cuomo Continues to Haunt New York  Two years ago, when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned in disgrace after an investigation found that he had sexually harassed almost a dozen women, he had eighteen million dollars in his reëlection-campaign coffers. Some reports suggested that Cuomo might use the money to run for office again, once the controversy died down. Instead, as campaign-finance disclosures recently revealed, the ex-governor has, over the past two years, spent more than half of the funds, much of it on lawyers and storage lockers. (When he moved out of the Executive Mansion, Cuomo was technically homeless.)Sexual harassment was really just one factor in Cuomo’s downfall. The governor spent a decade ruthlessly dominating New York politics. Even as his daily televised pandemic press briefings briefly made him a national Democratic Party star in early 2020, he was covering up the state’s true number of COVID-19 nursing-home deaths, ordering state employees to help him produce a triumphant pandemic-response memoir that netted him a multimillion-dollar book contract, and threatening his critics with public humiliation and personal ruin. (“I will destroy you!” Cuomo screamed over the phone at one state lawmaker.) When legislative leaders in Albany turned against him, and started counting votes for a possible impeachment, it was recognition not just that Cuomo was personally a bad actor but that he was, politically, out of control.
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S51Will the Summer of Trump Indictments Shake Up the Election?  It has been a summer of history-making indictments against Donald Trump. This week, he received his fourth—this one from Georgia, where the former President and eighteen co-defendants are accused of conducting a “criminal enterprise” to reverse his 2020 defeat in the battleground state. Despite all of Trump’s legal troubles, he remains the overwhelming front-runner for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2024, and a rematch with Joseph Biden appears imminent. Yet history cautions that, with fifteen months to go before Election Day, all kinds of factors could derail his campaign. How damaging are these criminal charges in Georgia? Can anything actually shake up the race? The New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos weigh in.By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
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S52Robo-Taxis Are Legal Now  The California Public Utilities Commission—a state agency that regulates power, water, and telecommunications companies, as well as movers, taxicabs, rideshare services, and self-driving cars—is headquartered in a large, curved building on Van Ness Avenue, in San Francisco, that looks a bit like a sun visor. Last Thursday morning, a small group of protesters gathered on the steps in advance of the commission’s vote on whether to allow the autonomous-vehicle companies Cruise and Waymo to expand their fleets, and charge for rides, like a taxi service, in the city. A man holding a megaphone denounced corporate greed, while other people unfurled hand-painted banners. One depicted a dead dog lying in the street—possibly a reference to the small dog killed earlier this summer by a Waymo car. Another showed an autonomous vehicle in flames bearing down on a crowd of firemen, police officers, and taxi-drivers. “Shut the robos down,” the protesters cried.Members of Cruise’s public-affairs team held a press conference off to the side. Nearby, another demonstration, organized by Waymo, was forming. People wearing yellow shirts that read “SAFER ROADS FOR ALL” were congregating behind Tim Elder, the president of the California chapter of the National Federation of the Blind, as he addressed a row of cameras, touting the benefits of autonomous vehicles, or A.V.s, for blind passengers.
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S53'Warrior' Season 4? Star Andrew Koji Thinks There's a "Very Good Chance"  For three seasons on the acclaimed martial-arts crime drama Warrior, the 35-year-old actor has been getting pummeled, punched, and pulverized every which way. All the while, his character Ah Sahm — a martial artist who travels to San Francisco in search of his sister and gets caught up in the Tong Wars of the late 1870s — has become a local folk hero. The newfound fame earns Ah Sahm a glowing reputation in the frequently-ravaged Chinatown, but it also earns him a target on his back that forces him to fight all manner of axe-wielding gangsters and bigoted cops. Which, in turn, forced Koji to level up his fighting skills.“The training’s always tough,” Koji tells Inverse in an interview conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strikes. “And getting older is always tough because I’m 35 now, and I know it's not old, old, but for that kind of level of action, it's a lot on the body.”
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S5455 Years Ago, the Most Fascinating Piece of Sci-Fi Trash Kickstarted an Unstoppable Trope  If you’re sick of seeing nothing but superhero films hit theaters, imagine going to the multiplex in the ’40s and thinking, “Great, not another damn war movie.” War dramas were pumped out by the dozens, with the occasional comedy or musical thrown in to lighten the mood. When World War II ended, new angles emerged. Servicemen readjusted to life at home, war criminals were hunted down… every conceivable story was told. The deluge continued into the ’60s, but as the war started fading into history, a new subgenre became popular: mad Nazi schemes.Nazis and mad science go together like Mecha-Hitler and the chaingun bullets used to blow up Mecha-Hitler. Inspired by horrific real-life experiments and tales of mythical wunderwaffe superweapons that supposedly could have turned the tide, movies like The Yesterday Machine and The Frozen Dead imagined outlandish plots to revive the Third Reich with time travel and zombies. They Saved Hitler’s Brain was one of the first films to give Nazis a sci-fi twist… and it’s inarguably the worst.
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S55Marvel Book Finally Answers an Overlooked Question About 'Avengers: Endgame'  Ant-Man tells all! Just a few short months after debuting in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Scott Lang’s international best-seller Look Out for the Little Guy! will soon be available to own — not just in Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, but in our own. Yes, really. Disney and Hyperion have teamed up to bring us the very first memoir from a real-life Avenger. Look Out for the Little Guy! will reacquaint us with the hero we all know as Ant-Man, charting his rise as a scientist-turned-corporate-whistleblower, his checkered past as a convict, and of course, his tenure as one of Earth’s mightiest heroes.
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S56Tiffany Haddish Thinks Her Bees Are From Outer Space  The Landscape With Invisible Hand star reveals her passion for her bees — and the mysterious plant they feed on. The actor just appeared in Disney’s new Haunted Mansion movie and had her own spotlight episode on The Afterparty Season 2 on Apple TV+, but her newest role is something completely different: hardworking mom Beth Campbell in Cory Finley’s touching sci-fi drama Landscape With Invisible Hand.
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S57'War of Being': How One Band Is Using Gaming To Redefine How We Experience Music  To promote its upcoming record, War of Being, a small development team — which includes TesseracT’s singer, Dan Tompkins — designed a first-person sci-fi VR exploration game that ties to the album’s themes, immersing you in the music. The game, also titled War of Being, is available in early access on Steam and is playable both in VR and non-VR formats.To entice people to play, TesseracT released its single “The Grey” within the game. Until now, this kind of immersive game/music tie-in hasn’t really been done before.
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S58'Persona 4 Golden' True Ending Guide: All Requirements and Choices to Unlock  For a long time, Persona 4 Golden was trapped on PlayStation Vita prison. Mercifully, that is no longer the case, and with ports now available on PC and modern game consoles, everyone can enjoy this classic adventure and start making choices.Persona 4 already had a “True” ending, but Persona 4 Golden added a fair bit of additional content and context in the appropriately-titled “Golden” ending. Almost any possible lingering questions are resolved, as this ending reveals everything about the events in Inaba, and has plenty of new moments and content for the Investigation Team. With that in mind, we’ll walk you through each step necessary to get the True and Golden endings.
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S59Your Ultimate 'Persona 5 Royal' School Quiz Cheat Sheet  Thanks to multiple re-releases on new platforms, Persona 5 Royal is more popular than ever. While this super-stylish turn-based RPG has plenty of action, a huge chunk of the game comes from improving yourself via tests. That’s sometimes quite literal, as you can boost your knowledge by answering questions correctly in classroom tests. For every question you get right, your knowledge stat will grow by a point. Additionally, if you perform admirably on exams, it will greatly increase your charm stat and propel you further up the social ladder. Here’s what you need to know in order to graduate from class clown to know-it-all.
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S60How to Get All 18 Legendary Weapons in 'Horizon Forbidden West' and 'Burning Shores'  The image of PlayStation heroine Aloy drawing a boy is now iconic, but that’s not the only tool she’s got for taking on danger in Horizon Forbidden West. With numerous special weapons that can be used with different ammo types, perks, coils, and more, you’ve got plenty of ways to dish out heavy damage to raiders and machines alike. Across this lengthy adventure, you’ll eventually come across a handful of particularly special Legendary weapons, easily denoted by the orange label on them. There are nine Legendary weapons to acquire in Horizon Forbidden West, and while some of them may be a pain to unlock, we’re here to help with this guide. After you’re finished with the main game, there’s an additional nine Legendary Weapons to find in the PS5-exclusive DLC, Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores. We’ve got everything you need for those too.
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S61How Long Is 'Horizon Forbidden West'? Game Length, Mission List, and Levels  Horizon Forbidden West has been another big win for PlayStation studio Guerrilla Games, with reviews of the game bringing it to an 88 on Metacritic, citing the increase in machines, higher-quality side activities, and how the gorgeous world looks compared to the already-impressive predecessor, Horizon Zero Dawn.With players jumping into this experience and seeing another massive open-world adventure, it’s fair to wonder how long it’ll take to complete. We’ve got all the details on the missions and the time you can be expected to put into them on round two of Aloy’s adventures. With Horizon Forbidden West being an even bigger game than Horizon Zero Dawn, you’ve got a vast world to explore and a long journey ahead. Here’s everything you need to know.
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S62How To Pick the Best Starter in 'Pok  Some gaming traditions don’t go away, such as picking a unique Pokémon to start your adventure. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet keeps that tradition going, asking if you if you’d prefer a critter with fire, water, or grass-type affinity. The Generation IX starters include the “attention-seeking” Grass-type Sprigatito, the “laid-back” Fire-type Fuecoco, and the “earnest and tidy” Water-type Quaxly. But which one is truly you?The wider gaming community affectionately dubbed Sprigatito “wéed cat” because of the cannabis-looking leaf on its face. Meanwhile, Fuecoco looks like a goofy crocodile with a huge, beaming smile on its face. And Quaxly? He’s just a dapper little duck. But for all those would-be Pokémon Champions out there, what’s the best starter?
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S63Best Order and Strategies for the 'Pok  Like most other Pokémon titles, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet have eight gym leaders that players need to take down in order to prove themselves through the games’ story. Due to the open world structure of Scarlet and Violet, you can technically fight the gym leaders in absolutely any order you want, a first for the series. “Can” and “should” are very different things though, because the gym leaders aren’t going to scale or change their Pokémon based on the order in which you play. That means that unless you’ve got a really good reason, you should try and fight each gym leader in increasing order of difficulty based on your level.
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S64Everything We Know About 'Pok  Between the launch of Pokémon Legends: Arceus as well as Scarlet and Violet, 2022 was a massive year for Pokémon fans, and there’s even more content on the way. After a few months of silence and spinning rumor mills, Nintendo confirmed that Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will be getting two big DLC packs with a major expansion. Similar to post-launch support for Pokémon Sword and Shield, That means more Pokemon to catch, more areas to explore, and more ways to prove that you’re the very best! Here is everything you need to know.
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S65'Ahsoka' Just Broke a Huge Streaming Rule -- And Made a Change for the Better  Ever since the first days of Netflix originals, there have been unspoken rules about streaming releases. New movies and TV episodes were almost always made available at midnight PST, meaning any east coast fans would have to wait until 3:00 am (or, more realistically, the following day) to watch something new. There were exceptions, like HBO’s releases in parallel with its cable channel broadcasts, but the standard was set at midnight PST. The timing makes sense from a marketing standpoint, as it ensures releases come out on the same day worldwide, with no confusion caused by the International Date Line. But for hardcore fans who wanted to watch right away, it meant late nights or early mornings on weekdays.
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S66The Best Armor for Kratos for Every Stage of 'God of War Ragnarok'  Ragnarok is here, and with it, we’ve got an action-packed, contemplative final act to the Norse arc of Kratos’ story, though there are dark hints as to where we’ll go next. The gods of Asgard are vindictive and the Nine Realms are packed to the brim with danger. There are enemies ready to destroy Kratos and Atreus around every corner, which means you’ll need some good armor. Fortunately, going off the beaten path and taking time to explore the Realms means finding useful equipment and resources, which can be used to improve your survivability against the game’s greatest foes. Here are the best armor sets for every stage of God of War Ragnarok.
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S67Here's Every Voice Actor in the 'God of War Ragnarok' Cast  God of War Ragnarok feels like almost two games in one, bringing Act 2 and Act 3 to conclude the story of Norse mythology set up in the 2018 God of War, or Act 1. With so much story to tell, it’s natural that this game will have a sprawling cast of performance actors, with some pretty big names from across the gaming industry. In addition to returning favorites like Kratos, Atreus, and Mimir, you’ve got some pretty major new characters like Thor and the dreaded Odin. If at any point you find yourself thinking “I’ve heard that voice before...” you probably have! With that in mind, we’ll dive into the talented actors behind the main cast of Ragnarok.
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S68Here's Exactly How Long It Takes to Beat 'God of War Ragnarok'  Over four years after God of War’s Norse mythology,arc kicked off, Sony Santa Monica and its numerous support teams delivered God of War Ragnarok, concluding the story with an epic clash that sees Kratos and Atreus pushed to their absolute limits. With a 94 on Metacritic, the game has seen near-universal acclaim, with praise for the story and scope, while also focusing on how the quality of the side quests has improved, with some reviews even comparing them to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Being a bigger game means players have a lot to explore, especially if they want to do everything, finding all the collectibles like Odin’s Ravens and uncovering secrets that can’t be found until after the main story is done. We’ll go into detail on exactly how long God of War Ragnarok takes to complete, all chapters in the game, and what to expect from the post-game.
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S69Moment's New Phone Lenses Will Kill Your Digital Camera Once and for All  With most phones now having an ultra-wide and/or telephoto lens, I thought Moment had given up on making its excellent mobile lenses for iPhone and Android, but I was wrong. The creator-focused brand has announced a new “T-Series” collection of lenses to take your smartphone photography and videography to the next level.Like the old V2 M-series lenses for smartphones, the T-Series comes in different focal lengths. There’s the classic 18mm “wide” lens that fits more in a frame, a 14mm for a fisheye-like POV, a 58mm telephoto, a 10x macro, and two tyles of anamorphic lenses (1.55x and 1.33x). You can even attach a filter to the telphoto’s threaded mounting ring.
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S70DC's Best Superhero Movie Owes a Debt to Its Visionary, Rising Director  Blue Beetle director Ángel Manuel Soto made a breakout superhero movie by breaking all the rules.There’s a fierce sociopolitical consciousness coursing through Blue Beetle, something most wouldn’t expect from the new superhero romp by DC Studios. Those revolutionary undertones come directly from the mind of its Puerto Rican director Ángel Manuel Soto.
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