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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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 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 Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ram

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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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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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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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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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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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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