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 S62Mastering the Art of the Request   Even the most effective leaders recognize how much is outside of their control, but one thing we all have agency over is how we communicate with others. Clearly articulated requests, the kinds that elicit real responses, don’t come naturally to most of us. As it turns out, there’s an art to the request — whether it’s directed at an employee who’s producing subpar deliverables or a colleague from a different department who hasn’t been pulling their weight on a collaborative project. Here’s why requests are so hard to make, what so many leaders are still getting wrong, and a handful of strategies for issuing requests that elicit concrete, actionable responses.If there was ever a time when leaders could simply issue commands and consider them done, now is most certainly not that time. We live in a world of flattened organizational structures, cross-functional teams, and workplace cultures that value collaboration, autonomy, and sensitivity. In my work coaching executives at companies and nonprofits over the past 20 years, I’ve observed that leaders increasingly find themselves having to make requests in order to get stuff done. And more often than not, they don’t know how to do it.
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S15 Ways Managers Can Support Neurosignature Diversity at Work  Neurosignatures are the unique properties that make up how our brains are wired. Each of us has four brain systems: the dopamine system, the serotonin system, the estrogen system, and the testosterone system. The amount of activity that takes place within each system varies from person-to-person.
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S2How to Work and Travel at the Same Time  If you’re finding it tough to work remotely while on the road, your best bet is to put some practices into place to keep yourself organized and your performance level on track. Define what you want to get out of your travels — and out of your job. What would be my ideal day-to-day work life? How does it feel, and what does it look like? The more well-thought-out your own goals are, the less friction you’re likely to encounter when structuring your days. Create a structure that supports the lifestyle you want. The simplest way to avoid burdening yourself or your colleagues is to construct a detailed plan. Know where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing the whole time you’re traveling. How much time do you need between transitioning workspaces? How far apart are these locations? Will there be a place to charge your laptop and headphones? Overcommunicate with your manager and colleagues. Be respectful and honest. Communicate your availability and average response times well in advance and in multiple media channels (via Slack, one-on-one texts, live meetings, etc.) Hold yourself accountable for meeting expectations. Keep yourself focused by traveling with all the accountability tools you need. These can include business operating system tools and project management solutions, as well as reliable devices. Make sure you’re able to update everything regularly and track your progress. Travel with people who understand remote working. Explain your commitments to your traveling pals. For instance, you may want to establish times of the day when you need to hop onto Zoom calls or be available for business.
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S3How Opinions About Hybrid Work Differ Around the Globe  Although remote and hybrid work have been widespread for several years now, debates about the benefits and perils of these more flexible ways of working continue. A key reason is differing perspectives on how to prioritize necessary trade-offs. While much has been much written about the different perspectives of leaders and employees, one dimension that has received relatively little attention is if and how perceptions of hybrid work differ across geographies. In new research, the authors found some important differences leaders of global organizations and teams need to be aware of and act on.
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S4Are Your Ads Funding Disinformation?  The global digital advertising industry is estimated to be $600 billion and growing. While Facebook and other social media sites are popular for advertising, much of the campaign spend dedicated to the internet is distributed across millions of websites and apps, and there’s little oversight and moderation from the adtech companies that monetize them. As advertisers handed off day-to-day operations to a bewilderingly complex digital advertising supply chain, companies often don’t know where their ads are ending up — including on sites that spew disinformation and hate-speech. This represents an acute reputational risk at a time when consumers are increasingly making buying decisions based on personal values and brand associations. Companies need to take three steps: check your ad campaigns, avoid brand safety technology, and demand cash refunds.
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S6What would net-zero shipping look like?  A large cargo ship fitted with huge rigid sails has set sail on its maiden voyage from China to Brazil in an attempt to prove the technology can help the shipping industry slash its carbon footprint. Wind propulsion is considered to be one of the most promising energy sources available for the rapid decarbonisation of shipping.Countries recently agreed to curb shipping emissions to net zero "by or around 2050" at a UN summit. At the annual meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), member countries pledged to cut 20% of their shipping emissions by 2030 and 70% by 2040, compared to 2008 levels. They agreed to cut 100% of emissions by or around 2050. While ambitious, it does go far enough for some – small island nations and richer countries had called for a 50% reduction by 2030 and 96% by 2040.
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S7The weird wind that can supercharge heatwaves and wildfire  It's a word that, in German, also means "hairdryer". And that's just what it's like. A hot, dry wind that sweeps down a mountainside, baking everything in its path. It is powerful enough to raise air temperatures by many degrees. This is the strange, and sometimes dangerous, weather event known as Föhn.This year, it has cropped up many times, including during heatwaves where it has pushed temperatures up to unbearable levels in local, literal, hotspots.
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S8Ideas | A horrific video sparks a national reckoning in India  Barkha Dutt, an Emmy-nominated journalist from India, is the founding editor of the multimedia platform Mojo Story. She is the author of two books: “This Unquiet Land: Stories from India’s Fault Lines” and “Humans of Covid: To Hell and Back.”A video clip, no longer than 30 seconds, has altered the national conversation in India — and has done what hundreds of news channels, with thousands of employees and budgets worth millions, could not or would not do.
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S9Using Human-Sized Microphones and Hay Bales, They Unlocked the Mysteries of Bird Migration  For thousands of years, no one truly knew how birds migrated—that is until a few unlikely pioneers sat, with hundreds of pounds of kludged together recording gear, in an empty field waiting to hear sounds that no one had ever capturedJacob Job: This recording that you are listening to is 66 years old. And it was the first of its kind—ever. After that initial bit of introduction, you are now listening to the sound of birds migrating through the inky darkness of night.
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S10Getting Closer to Eliminating the Wild Poliovirus  Global efforts to eradicate the poliovirus were recently described as unsuccessful—yet Afghanistan and Pakistan are now on the verge of eliminating itAfghanistan and Pakistan — the two countries in which polio is still endemic — are closer than they have ever been to eradicating wild poliovirus, the World Health Organization (WHO) said last month. It’s a surprising turn given that the eradication effort had been criticized as floundering as recently as last year. With a small number of cases and limited geographical spread of the virus, scientists agree that the two nations stand a real chance of stopping transmission of wild poliovirus this year, but only if the eradication programmes in these countries can overcome persistent social and political challenges.
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S11S12The Dangers of Wildfire Smoke  Climate change is making wildfires more likely and more intense, exposing more people to dangerous wildfire smoke. Scientists are continuing to learn how much damage that smoke can do to the environment and human healthThe deadly wildfire in Lahaina, Hawaii, has killed dozens of people so far. Here’s how fires threaten human health
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S13Worm Brains, Decoded like Never Before, Could Shed Light on Our Own Mind  One of the most in-depth catalogs of an animal’s brain-body connections ever compiled ties neural activity to roundworm behaviorWhen a nematode wriggles around a petri dish, what’s going on inside a tiny roundworm’s even tinier brain? Neuroscientists now have a more detailed answer to that question than ever before. As with any experimental animal, from a mouse to a monkey, the answers may hold clues about the contents of more complex creatures’ noggin, including what resides in the neural circuitry of our own head.
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S14Americans Have Breathed More Wildfire Smoke in Eight Months Than in Entire Years  Smoke from wildfires that have been exacerbated by climate change is complicating the picture of air pollution in the U.S.Editor’s Note (8/21/23): This story is being republished because smoke from wildfires in western Canada is affecting air quality across the Pacific Northwest.The average American may have already inhaled more wildfire smoke in the first eight months of this year than during any recent full year.
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S15Disappearing Glaciers Expose Vast New Ecosystems That Need Protection  New habitats that are emerging as mountain glaciers melt away represent huge ecological shifts and present new challenges for conservationRising temperatures could reduce the area covered by alpine glaciers around the world by more than one-fifth this century, exposing vast areas of land to the atmosphere for the first time in thousands of years. The emerging habitats that will form as the ice retreats present challenges — as well as opportunities — for conservation efforts, new research shows.
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S16How to Protect Yourself from Smoky Wildfire Air  As giant plumes from fires in Canada billow over the U.S., experts explain what smoke does to your health—and how to protect yourselfEditor’s Note (7/17/23): This story is being republished because smoke from wildfires in Canada is again affecting air quality across a large section of the U.S.
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S17Why a Highly Mutated Coronavirus Variant Has Scientists on Alert  Research is under way to determine whether the mutation-laden lineage BA.2.86 is nothing to worry about — or has the potential to spread globallyResearchers are racing to determine whether a highly mutated coronavirus variant that has popped up in three continents will be a global concern — or much ado about nothing.
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S18S19Strengthen Your Leadership with the Science of Awe  This Nano Tool for Leaders from Wharton Executive Education offers techniques for developing an "awe mindset" for greater creativity, improved collaboration, and better decision-making.Nano Tools for Leaders® — a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management — are fast, effective tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes, with the potential to significantly impact your success.
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S20What the COVID Experience Teaches About Designing a New Stimulus Package  Fiscal and monetary policy moves need to be coordinated for maximum impact, a new paper finds.The COVID pandemic caused sharp and deep setbacks to the U.S. economy, but it bounced back dramatically with the fiscal and monetary stimulus that followed. A new paper by experts at Wharton and elsewhere has analyzed the stimulus programs to understand why “the U.S. economy behaved unusually during and after the 2020 COVID recession” in four areas: economic output, inflation, house prices, and unemployment.
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S21How to meet your child's difficult behavior with compassion  Yvonne Newbold's son, Toby, is one of the millions of young people living with a disability. Parenting Toby has offered her some lessons on how to help children move from anxiety-led behavior towards happier times. Drawing on her personal experience, she outlines some of the most effective and actionable of these strategies -- starting with a dash of curiosity, kindness and creative thinking.
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S22Adderall Shortages Are Dragging On--Can Video Games Help?  Earlier this month, facing an increasingly precarious situation, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) joined forces to address the ongoing Adderall shortage. Technically, neither organization has the power to compel pharmaceutical companies to produce mixed amphetamine salts, but in the face of skyrocketing diagnoses for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the pandemic era of telemedicine, they wanted to reassure the public that they were looking into potential alternatives to stimulant medications. One suggestion: video games.In a joint statement, the agencies acknowledged that while they were actively working with the pharmaceutical industry to address the shortages, the FDA did approve a "game based digital therapeutic" to address ADHD symptoms in children back in 2020. While it's unclear whether digital therapeutics can replace stimulants entirely (they probably can't), it is clear that people want options beyond amphetamines. And this summer, digital medicine company Akili Interactive dropped the first "over-the-counter" digital therapeutic for managing ADHD symptoms in adults, using the same technology underlying their previously FDA-approved prescription video game for kids.
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S23The World's Workers Are Donning Cooling Vests to Battle Record Heat Waves  It's not the disease-carrying mosquitoes, the scorpions, or the 22-kilogram tanks full of pesticide strapped to his back that Wendell Van Pelt fears. It's the heat. This summer, while spraying insect-killing chemicals in the gardens of the rich in Greater Scottsdale, Arizona, Van Pelt has endured temperatures well in excess of 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Stepping past velvety green lawns and lagoon-like pools on his rounds, the field training manager at Mosquito Squad, a pest control service, has at times felt like he's "living in an oven."But Van Pelt has had respite from the scorching conditions: a cloak of cooling power wrapped around his torsoâa vest filled with ice. "I love it," he says, describing how his backpack filled with pesticide or natural repellent seems to amplify the effect: "That backpack is almost pressing the cold into your back. It just feels fantastic."
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S24The Best Webcams for Looking Brighter and Better  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 WIREDZoom is an inevitable fixture of post-pandemic life. For all I know, you're Zooming right now as you read this. It's an unverifiable fact that any time not spent on Zoom these days is time spent on Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, WebX, or Skype (don't quote me on that). The Jetsons predicted it, but it doesn't make it any easier to start a panel of disembodied heads several times a week.
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S25Using Generative AI to Resurrect the Dead Will Create a Burden for the Living  Given enough data, one can feel like it’s possible to keep dead loved ones alive. With ChatGPT and other powerful large language models, it is feasible to create a more convincing chatbot of a dead person. But doing so, especially in the face of scarce resources and inevitable decay, ignores the massive amounts of labor that go into keeping the dead alive online.Someone always has to do the hard work of maintaining automated systems, as demonstrated by the overworked and underpaid annotators and content moderators behind generative AI, and this is also true where replicas of the dead are concerned. From managing a digital estate after gathering passwords and account information, to navigating a slowly-decaying inherited smart home, digital death care practices require significant upkeep. Content creators depend on the backend labor of caregivers and a network of human and nonhuman entities, from specific operating systems and devices to server farms, to keep digital heirlooms alive across generations. Updating formats and keeping those electronic records searchable, usable, and accessible requires labor, energy, and time. This is a problem for archivists and institutions, but also for individuals who might want to preserve the digital belongings of their dead kin.
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S26Which Amazon Fire Tablet Is Best for You?  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 WIREDAmazon's Fire tablets are some of the only high-profile, ultra-affordable tablets around. The prices seem too good to be true—and in some ways, they are—but Fire tablets are also completely functional, reasonably capable devices. We reviewed every model to help you decide if one of these slates is right for you. We list Amazon's base price, but we suggest you spend the extra $15 to get an ad-free model.
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S27The Best Coffee Subscriptions We've Savored  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 WIREDA cup of coffee in the morning is not just about the caffeine (though that's certainly important). It's the ritual that starts the day. There's the whir of beans grinding, the toasted smell as it brewsâeven waiting for your finished cup is a part of the fun. It's time to start creeping toward wakefulness like the sun peeking over the horizon in an old-timey Folgers commercialâall fuzzy and warm and full of promise. Unless that is, you're out of coffee. Then it's dull, gray, and cold. We've tested several coffee subscription services over the years to protect you from this desolationâthey're a great way to stay stocked up.
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S28How Hilary Turned Into a Monster Storm .jpg) Like wringing out a great big sponge in the sky, starting this weekend tropical storm Hilary dumped an incomprehensible amount of water on Mexico, Southern California, Arizona, and Nevada, breaking “virtually all rainfall daily records,” according to the National Weather Service. Mount San Jacinto, near Palm Springs, got nearly a foot of rainfall over two days, while Mount Wilson, in Los Angeles County, got 8.56 inches. Even at some lower elevations, the rain has been relentless: 4.8 inches in Beverly Hills and 4.7 in Van Nuys. Hilary’s deluge has caused widespread flooding and debris flows—roaring rivers of mud, boulders, and trees—destroying homes and businesses and overwhelming people in their cars. As of Monday morning, there was no way in or out of Palm Springs, a “very extreme situation at the moment,” said Mayor Grace Garner.
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S29S30A 9-minute journey inside a black hole  Black holes should be thought of as “empty places” rather than “dense objects.” While they are indeed formed from incredibly dense objects (collapsed stars), the black hole itself is nothing.Black holes could have played a crucial role in the emergence of life. Ironically, the Solar System is in orbit around a supermassive black hole located in the center of our Milky Way galaxy. And one day, we might fall into a black hole.
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S31How self-fulfilling prophecies have shaped world history  In Oedipus Rex, a tragedy written by the Greek playwright Sophocles, the Oracle of Delphi informs the titular hero he is destined to kill his father and sleep with his mother. Desperate to avoid this fate, Oedipus leaves his parents and heads for the city of Thebes. On the way, he encounters and kills a stranger. Later, in Thebes, he marries the stranger’s late wife and — after battling a sphinx — is crowned the city’s new king. But fate is unavoidable. Just when Oedipus starts to believe he’s in the clear, he learns that he was adopted, that the stranger he killed was his biological father, and that his newly wedded spouse…well, you know the rest.Oedipus Rex is one of the most famous examples of a self-fulfilling prophecy: a situation that unfolds despite, in Oedipus’ case, precisely because of one’s conscious efforts to prevent it. Self-fulfilling prophecies make for great literary devices due to their dramatic irony — think of Voldemort attacking the infant Harry Potter or Anakin Skywalker joining the Dark Side. That said, self-fulfilling prophecies are by no means restricted to the realms of fiction. Each time someone fails a test because they stayed up late to study or makes a bad impression on a date because they are so concerned with making a good impression, they are channeling the spirit of poor Oedipus.
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S32Does a "growth mindset" really help you succeed?  Google “growth mindset” and you’ll be barraged with a plethora of clickbait self-help headlines. “Developing a Growth Mindset Culture.” “Using a Growth Mindset to Build Resilience.” “Building a Winning Mindset to Unlock Your Public Speaking Potential.” These siren songs of self-improvement might cause you to wonder, what exactly is a growth mindset? Originally developed and championed by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, a growth mindset means viewing intelligence and abilities as changeable and learnable. It stands in contrast to a fixed mindset where you see those traits as immutable.
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S33S34Ford's recall of Mustang Mach-Es in 2022 is under investigation by feds  Last year, Ford issued a recall for almost 49,000 Mustang Mach-E crossovers due to a problem with the electric vehicles' high-voltage battery contactors. The automaker's fix was a software update to two control modules on the Mach-E, but on Monday, Reuters reported that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation has opened a recall query to see if Ford's software recall actually did the job.
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S35S36S37S38S39S40Scientists find evidence that Vlad the Impaler shed bloody tears  The eponymous villain of Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel Dracula was partly inspired by a real historical person: Vlad III, a 15th century prince of Wallachia (now southern Romania), known by the moniker Vlad the Impaler because of his preferred method of execution: impaling his victims on spikes. Much of what we know about Vlad III comes from historical documents, but scientists have now applied cutting-edge proteomic analysis to three of the prince's surviving letters, according to a recent paper published in the journal Analytical Chemistry. Among their findings: the Romanian prince was not a vampire, but he may have wept tears of blood, consistent with certain legends about Vlad III.
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S41Political polarization toned down through anonymous online chats  Political polarization in the US has become a major issue, as Republicans and Democrats increasingly inhabit separate realities on topics as diverse as election results and infectious diseases. An actual separation seems to underly some of these differences, as members of the two parties tend to live in relatively homogeneous communities, cluster together on social media, and rely on completely different news sources.
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S42S43Vivek Ramaswamy's Truth  The Millennial outsider Republican says he wants a revolution. To get there, he’d gut the federal government.This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.
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S44Americans Vote Too Much  It’s always election season in America. Dozens of local contests are taking place across the country this month, from Montgomery, Alabama to the Mariana Ranchos County Water District in California. On August 8 alone, Custer County, Colorado held a recall election for a county commissioner; Ohio asked residents to consider a major ballot measure; and voters in Oklahoma weighed in on several ballot measures.America has roughly 90,000 local governing bodies, and states do not—at least publicly—track all of the elections taking place on their watch, making an exhaustive accounting nearly impossible. In many cases, contests come and go without any local media coverage, either. I came across a notice for an August 29 election in Marin County, California. When I called the Registrar of Voters for more information, the county assistant had to search a few moments before he could tell me that the town of Tiburon (population 9,000) was selecting a short-term council member.
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S45Love Is Magic--And Also Hormones  Next year, NASA’s Europa Clipper will travel 1.8 billion miles to Jupiter’s icy Galilean moon. Engraved on the spacecraft will be a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón called “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa.” It may seem ironic, emblazoning a vessel on a fact-finding mission to outer space with an ode to mystery. Yet the vast puzzle of space remains exactly that. “I like a universe that includes much that is unknown,” the astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in a 1979 essay, “and, at the same time, much that is knowable.” This tension lies at the heart of all the sciences—perhaps, especially, the science of love.Since the 1980s, the study of romantic love and attraction has coalesced into a formal discipline. The interdisciplinary field of relationship science—which encompasses neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, and evolutionary biology—is currently experiencing a boom: A search of the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed database reveals that more than half of the papers written about romantic love since 1953 are from the past 10 years. Today, the findings of such studies are disseminated by popular and scientific media outlets; TED now has an entire playlist of recent talks on “the weird science of love.”
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S46The Right to Not Have Your Mind Read  Jared Genser in many ways fits a certain Washington, D.C., type. He wears navy suits and keeps his hair cut short. He graduated from a top law school, joined a large firm, and made partner at 40. Eventually, he became disenchanted with big law and started his own boutique practice with offices off—where else—Dupont Circle. What distinguishes Genser from the city’s other 50-something lawyers is his unusual clientele: He represents high-value political prisoners. If you’re married to a troublesome opposition leader in a place where the rule of law is thin on the ground, one night the secret police might kick in your door, slip a hood over your spouse, and vanish into the dark. That’s when you call Genser.Earlier this year, Genser helped obtain the release of two men who had run for president against Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s on-again, off-again strongman, and found themselves imprisoned for their trouble. He still remembers the early-morning call letting him know that his clients were airborne and headed for Dulles International Airport. But not every case ends in a euphoric release. Genser has represented the three most recent imprisoned winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, including the Chinese prodemocracy activist Liu Xiaobo, who died in custody at the age of 61, and Ales Bialiatski, who was just sentenced to 10 years in a grim penal colony in Belarus, where inmates receive beatings between long shifts of hard labor.
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S47Islands Have a Disaster-Response Problem  The death toll of the Maui fires, the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century, now stands at 114 people. Another 1,000 people are still missing. About 1,800 in people are in temporary housing. Displaced or not, people in Maui need food, water, toiletries, and medications. And in the coming days, weeks, and months, all that and more—everything needed for a long, difficult recovery—will have to come from somewhere.“Imagine building the entire town of Lahaina from scratch, and how many hundreds of millions—or billions—of dollars are needed to recover and rebuild,” Joe Kent, the executive vice president of Hawaii’s Grassroot Institute, a nonprofit public-policy think tank, told me.
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S48Talking to Strangers About the Book of the Summer  Lizzie: One night several years ago, Kaitlyn and I and a group of other friends ended up at a party in the South Street Seaport. It was at the apartment of someone none of us knew, and I can’t say for sure how we got there. We were excited to see what kinds of people lived in this gift-shop neighborhood, and what their apartment would look like. Would every room feature its own ship in a bottle? Would there be portholes instead of windows?Of course, the reality couldn’t compare to our fantasy, as is standard for reality. It was a regular old apartment, with regular old IKEA furniture. There was a nice rooftop and cheap beer in the fridge. Eventually, the host requested that our group please leave the premises, probably because they’d realized that no one knew who we were, and also perhaps because Kaitlyn may have mildly insulted their taste in literature.
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S49The Most Disrespected Document in Higher Education  You may remember the syllabus. Handed out on the first day of class, it was a revered and simple artifact that would outline the plan of a college course. It was a pragmatic document, covering contact information, required books, meeting times, and a schedule. But it was also a symbolic one, representing the educational part of the college experience in a few dense and hopeful pages.That version of the syllabus is gone. It has been replaced by courseware, an online tool for administering a class and processing its assignments. A document called “syllabus” persists, and is still distributed to prospective students at the start of each semester—but its function as a course plan has been minimized, if not entirely erased. First and foremost, it must satisfy a drove of bureaucratic needs, describing school policies, accreditation demands, regulatory matters, access to campus resources, health and safety guidelines, and more.
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S50Scenes From the 2023 World Athletics Championships  More than 2,000 athletes from about 200 countries have gathered in Budapest, Hungary, for the 2023 World Athletics Championships, competing in 49 track-and-field events. The competition began on August 19 and continues through August 27. Gathered below are images from some of the events over this weekend. Second-placed Tara Davis-Woodhall of Team USA celebrates after competing in the women's long-jump final during the World Athletics Championships at the National Athletics Center in Budapest, Hungary, on August 20, 2023. #
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S51A Still-Shocking Masterpiece Worth Catching in Theaters  Many movies with notorious twist endings—such as The Sixth Sense or The Usual Suspects—face a steep challenge on rewatch. The impact of the finale evaporates, or is at least blunted, by the viewer’s knowledge of what’s coming. A second viewing is largely an exercise in detecting the breadcrumbs leading to the big surprise. When a rerelease of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy was announced for this summer, I wondered if it would suffer from the same limitations. Oldboy has one of the nastiest gut-punch cinematic conclusions I’ve ever seen. Twenty years on, would that be sustainable?Back in the early aughts, when word of Oldboy first started to spread among American cineastes, Korean cinema was a few years into a flourishing renaissance led partly by Park, Bong Joon-ho, and Kim Ki-duk. Still, few projects had genuinely crossed over to the United States—Park’s prior film Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance played on a grand total of six screens in North America. Oldboy gained a little more steam, partly because of its success at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where a jury headed by Quentin Tarantino gave it the Grand Prix (the runner-up prize) and critics breathlessly noted its unusual intensity.
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S52The Price of Sauce  Campbell Soup Company’s acquisition of Rao’s Specialty Foods is a reminder of the power of high costs.This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
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S53S54These Ancient Japanese Islanders Created a Signature Skull Shape by Molding Babies' Heads /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/05/ee/05eeab3c-44cb-44de-a1e6-6efcf9c17502/hirota_remains_2.jpeg) Humans have been modifying their bodies for millennia. In some cultures, alterations like foot binding, neck lengthening and tattoos are related to class, beauty ideals or spirituality. But new research suggests the Hirota people of ancient Japan had a more practical reason for modifying their infants’ skulls: to facilitate trade.The study, published in the journal PLOS One, argues that the Hirota people purposefully distorted their children’s skulls. Previously, researchers were unsure whether the deformations were the result of “an unknown natural process,” writes Live Science’s Harry Baker.
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S55S56What Is This 'Cosmic Question Mark' Captured by the James Webb Space Telescope? /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/36/17/3617dd90-0aa8-47cd-b259-25be06500388/f3ktyf5xeaat_5.jpeg) The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a spectacular new image of a pair of actively forming stars about 1,470 light-years away. But beneath the breathtaking phenomenon, some viewers noticed a peculiar shape among the backdrop of celestial objects: a glowing question mark. The image quickly went viral on social media, with jokes about its origin ranging from aliens to a glitch in the Matrix.“The very first thing you can rule out is that it’s a star in the Milky Way,” Matt Caplan, a physicist at Illinois State University, tells CNN’s Kristen Rogers and Ashley Strickland. “Stars always have these really big spikes, and that’s because stars are point-like. It’s called diffraction, from basically the edges of the mirrors and the struts that support the sort of camera in the middle.”
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S57S58Tropical Storm Hilary Makes Landfall /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/07/3a/073a6f67-676f-4f21-8d96-b4eb73701095/gettyimages-1610411966.jpg) The National Hurricane Center downgraded Hilary to a post-tropical storm, though it warned of continued life-threatening and locally catastrophic floodingPacific storm Hilary made landfall in Mexico’s Baja California coast yesterday morning, battering the region with rain, flooding roads and causing “very severe” damage to the town of Santa Rosalía, its mayor said Sunday, per the New York Times’ Thomas Fuller. In Baja California Sur, a man was killed when his car was swept away in the coursing water.
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S59Two Tourists Fell Asleep in the Eiffel Tower and Woke Up to Police /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/b4/be/b4be21fd-6866-4e9e-ad7e-1c0c54632474/gettyimages-1571001732.jpg) After jumping a security barrier, the visitors were found between the landmark’s second and third floorsIn the early hours of August 14, two American tourists were found asleep in an area—normally closed to the public—between the Eiffel Tower’s second and third floors. Security guards discovered the pair as they prepared to open the landmark up to the morning crowds.
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S60S61S63Spell Against Indifference  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.I was a latecomer to poetry — an art form I did not understand and, as we tend to do with what we do not understand, discounted. But under its slow seduction, I came to see how it shines a sidewise gleam on the invisible and unnameable regions of being where the truest truths dwell, the most difficult and the most beautiful; how it sneaks in through the backdoor of consciousness to reveal us more fully to ourselves; how it gives us an instrument for paying attention, which is how we learn to love the world more.When I first began writing poetry, it was privately, almost secretly, certainly shyly. But I have come to see that while poetry may be a language for the silent places in us, it is also a language of connection — a way of finding the intimate in the universal and the universal in the intimate — and so it is meant to be shared.
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S64 Who Should Price a Gig?  Our summer special report helps leaders gain a comprehensive view of risks, learn how to overcome market disrupters, and manage the analytical tools that provide predictive insight for decision-making.Our summer special report helps leaders gain a comprehensive view of risks, learn how to overcome market disrupters, and manage the analytical tools that provide predictive insight for decision-making.Arriving at Boston’s Logan International Airport after a tiring journey, Mia opened the Uber app to find a ride home. Her relief at seeing the message “Your Uber driver is arriving in 3 minutes” was short-lived because the driver canceled. In the next 30 minutes, half a dozen Uber drivers accepted her ride request, then canceled, before one eventually arrived. What was happening?
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S65Fifa 2023 Women's World Cup: 'Good, queer joy' on and off the pitch  Immediately after winning the 2019 Fifa Women’s World Cup game against the Netherlands, now-retired champion Megan Rapinoe ran towards the sidelines and kissed her long-time girlfriend, WNBA star Sue Bird. The moment was seen around the world – and it took the visibility of the LGBTQ+ community to a new level.Rapinoe is not the first openly gay football player – that was Lily Parr in the 1920s – and more than 96 athletes in the 2023 Fifa Women’s World Cup are out today. Experts and viewers alike say the door has increasingly swung open for LGBTQ+ athletes to express their true selves.
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S66The untold story of London's original fast food  In the 1740s, pleasure boaters would jauntily sail from central London down the River Thames to an islet once known as Twickenham Ait in Richmond, mooring at an inn that had built a reputation across the city for selling just one thing: eel pies.Eel Pie House was the grand tavern's name, and punting parties would drift along the shore and then congregate for merry picnics on the riverside. Inside, the inn's chefs would skin, debone and trim batches of Thames eels into three-inch chunks, before stewing them ready for pastry and the pie oven.
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S67Rich Men North of Richmond: The hit song that has divided the US  In the culture wars that continue to divide US politics, the right wing may have found its latest hero in Oliver Anthony, whether he likes it or not. Last week, Anthony's song Rich Men North of Richmond, which criticises Washington and big government, dropped on a West Virginia radio station's YouTube channel and the unknown singer-songwriter became a viral sensation with more than two million views over two days and more than 20 million so far. In the roughly produced video, Anthony, a burly guy with a big red beard and a guitar, stands in a wooded area, looking and sounding like an everyday blue-collar worker. "I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day/ Overtime hours for bullshit pay," he sings. "It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to/ For people like me and people like you." More like this:- Can a parody song top the charts?- The film that has divided the US- The erotic drama too hot for the US censors
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S68Tropical Storm Hilary pounds Southern California with heavy rain, flash flooding  Tropical Storm Hilary made landfall on Mexico’s Baja peninsula and moved into Southern California with damaging wind and heavy rainfall on Sunday, Aug. 20, 2023. Forecasters warned of a “potentially historic amount of rainfall” and dangerous flooding. California’s governor declared a state of emergency on Saturday, and officials had urged people on Catalina Island and in other high-risk areas to evacuate. Nevada’s governor declared a state of emergency on Sunday.Hurricane scientist Nick Grondin explained ahead of landfall how the storm, with help from El Niño and a heat dome over much of the country, could bring flash flooding, wind damage and mudslides to the U.S. Southwest.
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S69Zimbabwe's president was security minister when genocidal rape was state policy in 1983-4. Now he seeks another term  Zimbabwe will hold its elections on 23 August. The current president of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is running for re-election. This is despite his having oversight in the execution of the genocide of a minority group of Zimbabweans in the south-west region, as evidenced in my newly published study. My latest study explores a military operation, known as Gukurahundi, between 1983 and 1984 in Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands in Zimbabwe. Drawing on 36 in-depth interviews with survivors, my study provides new insights into Operation Gukurahundi. It identifies systematic patterns of rape and other forms of sexual violence in the operation.
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S70Ozempic, the 'miracle drug,' and the harmful ideaof a future without fat  We’ve encountered these headlines before. Time and again, dubious and ineffective solutions for obesity gain prominence. Pills, tonics, elixirs, Zumba, Noom and now Ozempic. The latest wonder drug is a semaglutide drug invented to help diabetics regulate blood glucose levels, but has the notable side-effect of severe weight loss. It has been heralded by many to culminate in the elimination of fat bodies.
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