Yellowknife 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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Into the Blue Beyond: William Beebe's Dazzling Account of Becoming the First Human Being to See the Deep Ocean

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.“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses,” Rachel Carson wrote in her pioneering essay Undersea in an era when the deep ocean was more mysterious than the Moon. The essay became the basis of her lyrical 1951 book The Sea Around Us, which won her the National Book Award and which she dedicated to William Beebe (July 29, 1877–June 4, 1962) — the visionary naturalist, ornithologist, marine biologist, and explorer who in the 1930s became the Poseidon of deep sea exploration.Diving off the coast of Bermuda in the Bathysphere — a pioneering spherical deep-sea submersible that looks like something out of a Jules Verne novel, named after the Greek word for “deep”: bathús — Beebe became the first scientist to observe the creatures of the deep in their native environment.

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3 Strategies for Making Better, More Informed Decisions

As humans, we tend to interpret information in a way that confirms our existing beliefs and serves our own self-interest. In situations that lack clarity, we often make assumptions that serve to bolster our egos and self-esteem. We selectively interpret information to support our own position, and overlook or dismiss information that contradicts our views. This is known as the self-serving bias, and it can lead to suboptimal decision-making or even contribute to conflict, as we become more entrenched in our own positions and less willing to consider alternative perspectives. The author offers three strategies to help you combat this bias: 1) Consider the source of the information you’re relying on; 2) Think counterfactually about previous decisions you’ve made; and 3) Seek out information that challenges your assumptions.

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Good Leadership Is About Asking Good Questions

Especially when they find themselves in the midst of crisis and uncertainty, leaders should ask powerful and inspiring questions. Asking questions well can put you on the path to solving intractable problems and will also help you connect with others and, counterintuitively, to earn their trust. Those questions should be big in scope: What new opportunities have emerged that we don’t want to miss? How might we use new technologies to change our business model? And you should involve others in answering those questions —employees, stakeholders, and even customers. Doing so can not only help you generate better answers, it can also help you to change your organization’s culture.

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Yellowknife and Kelowna wildfires burn in what is already Canada's worst season on record

The devastating wildfire that destroyed the historic Maui town of Lahaina in Hawaii was still making headlines when the Northwest Territories issued an evacuation order for Yellowknife and British Columbia declared a provincewide state of emergency.All 22,000 residents of Yellowknife are being evacuated in advance of a wall of flame from out-of-control wildfires converging on the capital city. Yet this isn’t the first time an entire Canadian town has been cleared.

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Civilian support for military coups is rising in parts of Africa: why the reasons matter

On the night of 13 January 1963, Togo’s President Sylvanus Olympio was shot dead by rebels in the first military coup staged in Africa. A long list, as shown below, was to come. From the 1960s to the end of the millennium, there were an average of four military coups a year on the continent. By the end of the 1990s this phenomenon seemed to have faded away. First came Mali, in August 2020. The military took advantage of social unrest and insecurity caused by the activities of violent extremists. Mali had two coups or attempts in a nine-month span.

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Bringing Up Lady Bird

I have fallen in love with a chicken. She is a Columbian Wyandotte, with that breed’s distinctive hackles of white feathers streaked with black, draping her bodice like a jagged jet necklace. She has a scissor beak—a crossed beak—and has had it from birth. I remember noticing the beak when she was a baby, hoping that she’d outgrow it, thinking she was such a beautiful bird except for that unfortunate beak. I never bothered to look up the condition.Like so many other people around the country, my family and I bought chicks at the start of the pandemic. It was one of the first things we did as the world shut down and we moved from New York City to my mother’s farm in rural New Jersey. We bought fifteen chicks to start, a variety of breeds chosen for the colorful eggs they would lay. We raised them in the kitchen, first in big plastic tubs with heating lamps, then in a large dog crate that we padded with straw. Across the crate, we rested a bamboo pole so they could roost.

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Is Guatemala About to See an Upset Win for Democracy?

The Presidential election in Guatemala, which will be decided on Sunday, in a second and final round of voting, initially appeared to be over before it began. Within two months of the start of the race, at least three prominent candidates had already been disqualified by the country’s electoral tribunal. Two were conservatives and the third, Thelma Cabrera, a leftist, was the only Indigenous candidate effectively in the running—in a country where more than forty per cent of the population is Maya. What each of the candidates had in common was that none sat well with the political establishment. The tribunal’s reasoning was technical and dubious—in short, it was typical of the government of Alejandro Giammattei, a conservative surgeon with a sagging approval rating, whose time in office has been marred by allegations of corruption and the entrenchment of special interests. (By law, he cannot run for a second term.)Among the remaining candidates, the establishment favorites going into the first round, in June, were Zury Ríos, the daughter of a former dictator, and Sandra Torres, an ideologically malleable figure who’s run for President twice before. Ríos previously faced a ban on running, because her father, General Efraín Ríos Montt, had taken the Presidency by force. (He came to power in a coup, in 1982; was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, in 2013, for his role in the massacre of Indigenous villagers during the early nineteen-eighties; and died, in 2018, at the age of ninety-one.) The constitution barred the immediate relatives of coup leaders from executive office, but Ríos secured an exception. Torres is the ex-wife of former President Álvaro Colom, who died earlier this year, while under house arrest facing corruption charges. He and Torres divorced in 2011, because of a legal prohibition on spouses following their partners into the Presidency. In 2019, she was arrested for violating campaign-finance laws, but the case was later dismissed. Guatemalans of diverse political persuasions use a single phrase to explain how such people become front-runners: el pacto de corruptos, the pact of the corrupt.

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Fani Willis's Indictment of Donald Trump and a Voting-System Breach

On Monday night, when Georgia's Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, released her forty-one-count, ninety-eight-page indictment of nineteen people who allegedly conspired to subvert the 2020 Presidential election in that state, the spotlight was on the most prominent suspects: former President Donald Trump, his chief of staff Mark Meadows, and his lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Sidney Powell. Here, according to the indictment, was the President of the United States conspiring to overturn the results of a legitimate election, abetted by officers of the court who themselves conspired to subvert the law of the land. Then there are the other defendants, whom those at the top allegedly relied on to help carry out various plots. Three of themâScott Hall, Misty Hampton, and Cathleen Lathamâare charged, along with Powell, in the indictment, which states that "several of the Defendants corruptly conspired" and "stole data, including ballot images, voting equipment software and personal voter information" in Coffee County, a rural outpost in the southeastern corner of the state, two hundred miles from Atlanta. Since all of Georgia uses the same Dominion voting machines and software, this theft provided access to the entire election system in the state. According to the indictment, the software was then shared with people around the country, some of whom are cited by Willis as unindicted co-conspirators. In March, according to the Los Angeles Times, during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, a small group of people, and many others online, watched a presentation using the stolen software, suggesting that it is still circulating among those who aim to assist Trump in his current benighted quest to recapture the Presidency.According to the indictment, the Coffee County breach occurred a day after the January 6, 2021, insurrection, when Latham, who was then the chair of the Coffee County G.O.P. and one of sixteen fake Georgia electors who tried to replace the certified electors on Trump's behalf, ushered into the elections office four computer-forensics experts from the Atlanta office of SullivanStrickler, which, according to an invoice, billed Powell for its services. (SullivanStrickler is not accused of any wrongdoing in the indictment, and the firm has stated that "it had no reason to believe" that it had done anything illegal. Latham could not be reached for comment.) This action was not covert. As a January 1st text from Katherine Friess, a lawyer on Trump's legal team, noted, "Huge things are starting to come together! Most immediately, we were granted access - by written invitation! - to the Coffee County systens [sic]. Yay!"Â Surveillance video from January 7th shows that the office was a hive of activity. In addition to Latham and the SullivanStrickler employees, Hampton, who was the elections supervisor, and Scott Hall, an Atlanta-area bail bondsman and pro-Trump poll watcher, were also present. Video from over the course of a few days shows Doug Logan, the C.E.O. of the now defunct company Cyber Ninjas, which conducted a widely derided review of ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona, and Jeffrey Lenberg, a computer analyst from New Mexico who had articulated a number of unfounded claims about Trump winning the election, making repeated visits to the Coffee County elections office. Once copies of the Dominion Voting Systems software were made, they were uploaded to a server at SullivanStrickler, and then downloaded by others.

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Supreme Court Bombshell: Anybody Can Rain on Fanny Brice's Parade

After sixty years of avowing that "nobody, no, nobody" is going to rain on her parade, Fanny Brice suffered a stinging defeat in a 6-3 Supreme Court decision affirming that state officials, Mother Nature, and generally anyone with a religious exemption have a First Amendment right to ruin her attempts to march down public streets belting torch songs.Providing a definitive answer to Ms. Brice's provocative question "Who told you you're allowed to rain on my parade?," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his majority opinion, "While the Court sympathizes with Fanny's First Amendment right to have a parade, her insistence that 'nobody, no, nobody' can rain on it is both melodramatic and not founded on substantive case law. As the Court has long held, the opportunity to think freely for ourselves and disrupt parades that involve belting, sequins, and chorus boys is among Americans' most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our republic strong."

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Cats Use This Trick To Manipulate Their Humans --

The few evolutionary changes the domestic cat has made have been the right ones to wangle their way into people’s hearts and homes. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go on a safari in southern Africa. One of the greatest thrills was going out at night looking for predators on the prowl: lions, leopards, hyenas.

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You Need to Watch the Most Chilling War Thriller on Max ASAP

Two decades after the Iraq War began, America is still grappling with the extrajudicial violence it committed. The ghosts created in the deserts and dungeons still demand justice, and the guilt of our actions crept into American media from the 2000s onwards. There’s no one in Hollywood with a better grasp on guilt than Paul Schrader, whose filmography is dripping with blood and self-loathing. For the last 40 years, he’s been looking deep into the soul of American masculinity to examine the rot on the inside, and perhaps no film of his provides such a stark examination of how violence trickles down from institutions into individuals than his 2021 release, The Card Counter.

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The Most Unnecessary Action Sequel on Netflix Has a Sliver of Science Truth

In the Terminator franchise, a seemingly endless army of shape-shifting, time-traveling robots try to nix John Connor — a.k.a. humanity’s heroic savior — out of existence.Often, the plan is foiled by Connor himself sending reprogrammed Terminators or resistance soldiers back in time to protect younger versions of himself or his mother, Sarah. However, the 2015 Terminator Genisys switches up the character dynamics established since the 1984 film that started it all.

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15 Years Ago, George Lucas Redefined Star Wars Canon With His Final Jedi Creation

George Lucas wasn’t finished telling stories in the Star Wars universe after Revenge of the Sith. While mainstream moviegoers might see the decade between Sith in 2005 and The Force Awakens in 2015 as a dry spell for the Force, the truth is that many hours of canonical Star Wars were produced via The Clone Wars. And what made The Clone Wars so interesting, and initially controversial, is that George Lucas completely retconned not just the classic trilogy, but his just-completed prequel trilogy too. The last Jedi character co-created by George Lucas was Anakin Skywalker’s hitherto unseen Padawan, Ahsoka Tano. To this day, Ahsoka’s creation in 2008 remains the most enduring George Lucas retcon of them all. As the former Jedi makes her big splash in the Disney+ series that carries her name, it’s hard to remember that her existence was once a shock to both the Star Wars fandom and the timeline.

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'Starfield's Lack of a Pacifist Mode Could Be a Huge Problem for One Reason

Ahead of Starfield’s release next month, developer Bethesda Game Studios released a lengthy Q&A on its Discord server (which was transcribed and shared on Reddit). Lead Quest Designer Will Shen and Lead Designer Emil Pagliarulo offered in-depth answers to the community’s burning questions, covering topics such as the game’s companions, the jail system, and how buying property works. Unfortunately, the developers confirmed that Starfield will not include the option to allow players to get through the game non-lethally. When asked if a pacifist playthrough would be possible in Starfield, Shen said, “I can’t guarantee every mission can be completed in pacifist mode.” Pagliarulo further explained that developing a “non-lethal” playthrough “wasn’t totally feasible.”

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A Massage For Your Pet? Veterinarians Say They Have Surprising Health Benefits

Everyone knows the universal sign of feline contentment: Curled up on a couch with their humans petting them, cats will often let out the slow rumble of a purr.What you may not realize, though, is that the simple act of petting is actually a form of massage. Experts say it, and more specialized massage techniques and therapies like acupuncture can do wonders for your pet’s health — from easing stress and anxiety to preventing muscle injury and reducing arthritis pain.

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You Need to Play the Best Crime Thriller on PS Plus ASAP

The metaverse is a lot like America. People keep discovering it, even though plenty of other people have already been there. Zuckerberg’s utopia of meetings aside, the real action has been in gaming for a while. Roblox is the unquestioned frontrunner when it comes to scale, boasting millions of active users and a world of boundless possibility. Except for the look. Bootleg Lego vibes don’t scream immersion. When it comes to how we want a metaverse to feel, you need look no further than the streets of Kamurocho. Kamurocho, a facsimile of the real-world Kabukicho in Tokyo, is the frequent playground for Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios’ famed Yakuza franchise. In 2018 the studio used it as a setting for a new game, Judgment. Fans flocked to the title thanks to its beautiful brawling, outrageous side missions, and flawless setting. A sequel, 2021’s Lost Judgment, just hit PS Plus. It improves on its predecessor in every conceivable way, and adds another painstakingly detailed locale, Yokohama-inspired Ijincho, to serve up one of the grittiest crime dramas you’ll find in any verse.

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This Upcoming Telescope Could Be Our Most Powerful Tool for Finding Interstellar Objects

The next ‘Oumuamua could elude us, but the Vera Rubin Observatory will take care of that.Most of the comets we see in the sky were born in our Solar System. They may have formed deep within the Oort cloud, and for some, it is their first visit to the inner Solar System, but they are distinctly children of the Sun. We know of only two objects that came from beyond our Solar System, ‘Oumuamua and Borisov. There are likely other interstellar objects visiting our Solar System — we just haven’t found them. But that’s likely to change when the Vera Rubin Observatory comes online.

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50 cheap ways to upgrade your home you'll wish you knew about sooner

I’ve been doing small weekend projects on my house lately, and they have transformed the place. I haven’t spent much time or money, but it’s easier to cook in my kitchen, my stairs are no longer dangerous, there is less clutter, and my once-crappy shower is suddenly amazing. I don’t have the money or patience at the moment for tearing out walls or upgrading appliances, but these little improvements have had a huge impact. And along the way, I discovered 50 cheap ways to upgrade your home you'll wish you knew about sooner.There are dozens of these tips, and none of them cost much money or take much time. Check them out.

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Geologists May Have Discovered a Huge, Ancient Asteroid Site That Triggered Mass Extinctions

Eighty-five percent of species died in an ancient mass extinction. Did this asteroid cause it?Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank my colleague Tony Yeates, who originated the view of the Deniliquin multi-ring structure as an impact structure — and who was instrumental to this work.

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50 Clever Things Under $25 on Amazon That Are Insanely Popular for Good Reason

Sometimes you just need a super clever Amazon find in your life — like when you have a ton of time-consuming chores you’ve been putting off. Whether your space feels a little cluttered or you simply need a luxurious product to relax after work, these 50 clever things under $25 are here to help out. Everything on this list is also insanely popular (for good reason). Grabbing these budget-friendly products will instantly make everything feel more manageable (and make your space look super chic), so it’s easy to see why people love these clever little finds.

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37 Years Ago, a Rising Director Made a Hugely Influential Sci-Fi Movie -- He Never Got His Due

“He’s a very good man, and he’s come from far,” a bedridden elderly patient at a psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires declares about an enigmatic new visitor who’s admitted himself.A lanky figure who radiates an unnerving calm, Rantés (Hugo Soto) claims to have arrived from another planet on a spaceship. He cannot feel human emotions the way we do (or so he explains) and finds himself mystified by the indifference we exhibit toward each other.

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Does Eating Apples Really Promote Health? A Nutritionist Reveals What the Data Actually Shows

Apples are not high in vitamin A, nor are they beneficial for vision like carrots. They are not a great source of vitamin C and therefore don’t fight off colds as oranges do.However, apples contain various bioactive substances — natural chemicals that occur in small amounts in foods and that have biological effects on the body. These chemicals are not classified as nutrients like vitamins. Because apples contain many health-promoting bioactive substances, the fruit is considered a “functional” food.

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You Need to Watch The Most Surprisingly Violent Thriller of the Year on Amazon Prime ASAP

2023 is shaping up to be one of the best years for big-screen comedies in, well, a while. For several years there, it looked like the standard American studio comedy had been totally erased from the Hollywood marketplace. While some of them haven’t been box office hits, either, films like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, No Hard Feelings, Joy Ride, Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre, and Theater Camp have, thankfully, proven that’s not necessarily the case.The year’s comedy lineup got off to a pretty good, surprisingly gnarly start in February with Cocaine Bear. The film, which is loosely inspired by a true story from the 1980s, centers around the carnage that ensues after a wild black bear ingests several kilos’ worth of cocaine. Directed by Elizabeth Banks and featuring a star-studded ensemble, it’s a horror comedy with a refreshing mean streak and a bloodlust that is, at times, genuinely shocking.

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Innovation in Data-Driven Health Care - SPONSORED CONTENT FROM ROCHE

Innovative uses of data in health care are helping solve the most challenging problems in patient health and operational efficiency. Today, many health care organizations understand that a data-driven approach can improve patient health outcomes, enable faster clinical decisions, and improve treatment and hospital workflows.

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How "Perspective Swaps" Can Unlock Organizational Change

Leaders often suffer from “power poisoning” and fixate on their own needs and ambitions. A perspective swap — where, for example, a CEO works as a customer service representative for a day, or an HR representative works in sales for a week — can help detox leaders from blind spots and distorted views of what’s actually happening on their teams. Perspective swaps can also be effective when applied laterally across different teams, such as sales, and marketing, helping cross-functional teams gain a deeper understanding of the challenges that other departments face. At the heart of perspective swaps is the idea that there is always more than one way to view a situation. They help build “cognitive flexibility” — the ability to think creatively and adaptively in response to new situations and change efforts. Ultimately, perspective swaps can foster a culture of innovation and empowerment that leads to better outcomes for everyone involved.To remain competitive, businesses must continually challenge the status quo and find ways to reinvent themselves. In a world where complacency can be comfortable, one unconventional approach can jolt organizations out of their traditional ways: It’s called the perspective swap. For example, a CEO might spend a day working as a customer service representative. Or, an HR representative might spend a week working in sales.

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The 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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Will 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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Science 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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The 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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The 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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The 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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Montana 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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Security 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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3 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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How 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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NASA's mission to a $10-quintillion asteroid is two months from launch

This article is an installment of Future Explored, a weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Thursday morning by subscribing here.NASA hopes to get a glimpse at the metal core hidden deep within Earth — by sending a spacecraft to an asteroid 280 million miles away.

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I 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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Is Luna 25 alive? Russia says an "emergency situation" has occurred

In a terse update posted on the social media network Telegram Saturday, the Russian space corporation Roscosmos said that an "emergency situation" had occurred on board its Luna 25 spacecraft.

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Maui'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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The 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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A 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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Why 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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A 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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Making 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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Revealed: 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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Pricing 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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The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ram

Uses 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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Does 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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Company 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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Cake 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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Climate 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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How 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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Nagorno-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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Georgia indictment and post-Civil War history make it clear: Trump's actions have already disqualified him from the presidency

Co-Director, National Security and Civil Rights Program, Loyola University Chicago After three indictments of former President Donald Trump, the fourth one in Georgia came not as a surprise but as a powerful exposition of the scope of Trump’s efforts to remain in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election.

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Risk 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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ChatGPT 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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Memes about animal resistance are everywhere -- here's why you shouldn't laugh off rebellious orcas and sea otters too quickly

Memes galore centered on the “orca revolution” have inundated the online realm. They gleefully depict orcas launching attacks on boats in the Strait of Gibraltar and off the Shetland coast.One particularly ingenious image showcases an orca posed as a sickle crossed with a hammer. The cheeky caption reads, “Eat the rich,” a nod to the orcas’ penchant for sinking lavish yachts.

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Identifying fire victims through DNA analysis can be challenging - a geneticist explains what forensics is learning from archaeology

Fire devastates communities and families, and it makes identification of victims challenging. In the aftermath of the wildfire that swept through Lahaina, Hawaii, officials are collecting DNA samples from relatives of missing persons in the hope that this can aid in identifying those who died in the fire. But how well does DNA hold up under such extreme conditions, and what is the best way to recover DNA from fire victims?

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Tipping etiquette and norms are in flux - here's how you can avoid feeling flustered or ripped off

The ever-growing list of situations in which you might be invited to tip includes buying a smoothie, paying an electrician, getting a beer from a flight attendant and making a political donation. Should you always tip when someone suggests it? If yes, how do you calculate the right amount? And if you don’t, are you being stingy?

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Five 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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How 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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Europe'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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As 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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How the tourism industry - and other travellers - can help families of autistic children get the break they deserve

The Family Fund - gave advice with respect to accessing participants and shared our questionnaire with their networksGoing on a family holiday is not always a relaxing experience. It can involve traffic jams, airport queues and stress. Even so, most of us look forward to going away for the change of scenery and break from our everyday routines.

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Why 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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Teamwork 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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70 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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Montana youth win unprecedented climate case: What does this ruling mean for Canada?

Jason MacLean is a member of the board of directors of the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation (CELL), and East Coast Environmental Law (ECELAW). On Aug. 14, a Montana court delivered what is being hailed as a game-changing ruling in a much anticipated youth-led climate change case, Held v. State of Montana.

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