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 S69This Giant Star Creates Plasma Waves 3 Times Larger Than the Sun   Astronomers recently used computer simulations to study the rise and fall of gargantuan tides on a distant massive star.The highest tides on Earth happen in the Bay of Fundy on the southeastern coast of Canada, where high tides raise the water level by more than 38 feet. But on the massive star MACHO 80.7443.1718, high tides raise waves of plasma 2 million miles high. Harvard University astrophysicists Morgan MacLeod and Avi Loeb (yes, that Avi Loeb) recently used computer simulations to explore how plasma tidal waves behave when the star passes close to its smaller (but still ten times more massive than our Sun) companion.
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S1Albert Camus on Writing and the Importance of Stubbornness in Creative Work  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.Three years after he became the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, awarded him for literature that “with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience,” Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) died in a car crash with an unused train ticket to the same destination in his pocket. The writings he left behind — about the key to strength of character, about creativity as resistance, about the antidotes to the absurdity of life, about happiness as our moral obligation — endure as a living testament to Mary Shelley’s conviction that “it is by words that the world’s great fight, now in these civilized times, is carried on.”Camus addressed his views on writing most directly in a 1943 essay about the novel, included in his altogether indispensable Lyrical and Critical Essays (public library).
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S2 Ask Sanyin: Why Can't We Get Meetings Right?  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.As a senior leader in my company, I find meetings are crucial for keeping tabs on what's going on and making decisions. But we seem to accomplish little, people are frequently unprepared, and they gripe about the time cost. How can I shift people's attitudes and run more effective meetings?
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S3Work 'love bombing': When companies come on too strong  They check in several times a day: texts, emails, phone calls. They lavish flattery and compliments, make it clear you're the one. You only met each other a few days ago, but the hours since have been a whirlwind of attention and promises.There's a term for this kind of behaviour: 'love bombing'. Generally, it's associated with dating, when a person heaps on praise and extends grand gestures, often to manipulate a potential partner to feel quickly indebted to them.
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S4'It brings out the worst in everyone': Why some workers are competing for their jobs  In May 2020, Frances got a call from her boss informing her she would need to re-apply for the job she currently held. The US-based publication she worked for had lost much of its advertising revenue due to Covid-19, and now restructuring was underway. Redundancies loomed.“I was a team of one, so my role would either survive, or get cut,” says Frances, now 28. “I had to make a case for my position in a presentation to the publishers, showing how much revenue it could generate and why they should keep it.”
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S5Can AI help Gen Z workers make up lost ground?  Gen Z has had a hard landing into the workforce. Starting jobs amid the global pandemic, many of these new workers have missed out on gaining essential hard- and soft skills usually gleaned by working alongside older colleagues.However, as the first truly digital generation, their innate fluency with technology could help them make up some of that ground – especially as AI becomes a hugely important part of the modern workplace.
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S6When so much at work has changed, why can't we shake presenteeism?  For many workers, Covid-19 altered our attitudes towards our jobs and how we do them. The conditions of the past three years catalysed a full re-evaluation of careers and values, and subsequently dislodged some staid traditions that have bogged down workplace progress.In the new world of work, many employees have received what they’ve wanted from their employers – new ways of getting things done including flexible hours, remote working and even shortened workweeks.
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S7Why you rarely believe celebrity apologies on social media  At a recent concert in the European country of Georgia, rock band The Killers found themselves in the middle of a decades-long political conflict. On 16 Aug, lead singer Brandon Flowers invited a Russian audience member on stage and asked the crowd to treat the fan as a "brother". The request was met with immediate boos and even walkouts; the backlash continued after the show.The next day, the musicians issued a swift social media apology via X, formerly known as Twitter. They wrote, in part: "We recognise that a comment, meant to suggest that all of The Killers' audience and fans are 'brothers and sisters', could be misconstrued. We did not mean to upset anyone and apologise."
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S8The battle for Ukraine's cultural gems  "Attacking a country's culture is to attack its humanity. Historic monuments, works of art and archaeological sites – known as cultural property – are protected by the rules of war," stated the International Committee of the Red Cross (which is guided by principles, including the Geneva Convention 1949) in 2017. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the war has had terrible consequences for the country and its people – including massive damage to the entire Ukrainian culture sector.One month after the invasion, the effects were being reported, as workers went on desperate rescue missions. In Lviv, at Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum, the country's largest art museum, staff were seen struggling to move heavy baroque pieces, and a giant piece of religious art, the 18th-Century Bohorodchany iconostasis, to safety. We saw empty display cabinets at the Museum of the History of Religion; and at the Latin Cathedral, sculptures were wrapped in foam and plastic to protect them from the threat of shrapnel.
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S9This university class uses color and emotion to explore the end of life  Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching. For many years, I’ve worked as a literary artist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. In both contexts, I work with advanced oncology patients and with people at the end of life.
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S10Cameras in the court: Why most Trump trials won't be televised  Director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida It is unlikely the four court proceedings facing the former president will be televised live, with the exception of the case in Georgia, which favors public transparency under a policy established for that state’s courts known as Rule 22.
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S11S12Online gaming communities could provide a lifeline for isolated young men - new research  My colleagues and I analyzed an all-male online football gaming community over the course of a year. We discovered that members who reported more depressive symptoms and less real-life support were roughly 40% more likely to form and maintain social ties with fellow gamers compared with those reporting more real-life support.This finding suggests the chat and community features of online games might provide isolated young men an anonymous “third place” – or space where people can congregate other than work or home – to open up, find empathy and build crucial social connections they may lack in real life.
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S13Most US nursing homes are understaffed, potentially compromising health care for more than a million elderly residents  More than 80% of U.S. nursing homes reported staffing shortages in early 2023. SciLine interviewed Dr. Jasmine Travers, a gerontological nurse practitioner and assistant professor of nursing at New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing, and asked her how the shortage affects health care for nursing home residents, if nursing homes in poorer neighborhoods have been hit harder by the shortages, and what can be done to fix the problem.Below are some highlights from the discussion. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
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S14Policy framework for coexisting with wolves, bears and mountain lions could benefit both people and the environment  A video showing a close encounter between a hiker in Utah and a mountain lion defending her cubs went viral in 2020. The video, during which the hiker remained calm as the mountain lion followed him for several minutes, served as a visceral reminder that sharing the land with carnivores can be a complicated affair. For conservation scientists like me, it also underscored that Americans have a fraught relationship with large carnivores like wolves, bears and mountain lions. My colleagues and I have proposed a federal policy that, when combined with other initiatives, could allow for sustainable coexistence between people and carnivores.
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S15S16First Republican debate set to kick off without Trump - but with the potential to direct the GOP's foreign policy stance  When Republican presidential hopefuls take the stage in Milwaukee on Aug. 23, 2023, for the first debate of the 2024 campaign season, attention will center on how the candidates position themselves vis-à-vis former President Donald Trump and his four criminal indictments. Republican leaders are sharply divided over how the United States should position itself in the world. While some Trump supporters are pressing for the U.S. to pull back from world affairs, more traditional Republicans are calling for robust international engagement.
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S17S18Young Zimbabweans are using YouTube to ridicule politicians and educate voters  As Zimbabwe holds its 2023 elections, young creatives are taking to social media like YouTube to discuss politics and to create comic spoofs and critiques that speak back to the country’s autocratic government. One notable social commentator is Taffy Theman (Tafadzwa Ngubozabo), who hosts a popular YouTube channel that uses comedy, music and a mock news studio to parody the powers that be. Another is youth media platform Bustop TV, which offers skits, animation and talk shows to express views on social issues in the country. Magamba TV, meanwhile, creates scathing political satires about politicians.
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S19S20Why an EU document mentioning the 'Islas Malvinas/Falkland Islands' is a big deal  At a recent summit of European leaders and their counterparts from the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), the European Union published a declaration in which it referred to the “Islas Malvinas/Falkland Islands”.The summit was aimed at re-energising economic and diplomatic relations between Europe and Celac countries and the joint declaration issued at its conclusion was signed by the 27 EU member states and 32 Celac nations. It is not a binding document but the decision to refer to the islands by their Spanish as well as their British name is deeply significant. It happened despite reported efforts by UK foreign secretary James Cleverly to have the islands kept out of the summit declaration altogether and has left the UK angry.
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S21Remote Pacific coral reef shows at least some ability to cope with ocean warming - new study  Unprecedented ocean temperatures are triggering mass coral bleaching events across the world. This year, the world’s third largest barrier reef, in Florida, is already being hit hard.We know that corals will need to withstand rising ocean temperatures to survive under climate change. And we know reef-building corals are acutely sensitive to even small increases in temperature. What we don’t yet know is whether their “thermal tolerance” – essentially their ability to handle high temperatures – can keep pace with ocean warming.
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S22Disabled people are disproportionately affected by homelessness - and getting support feels 'nearly impossible'  Homelessness is reaching record highs in the UK. The latest statistics on statutory homelessness show that in March 2023, 104,510 households – including over 131,000 children – were living in hotels, hostels, B&Bs and the like. But disabled people are particularly affected by homelessness, as our new report, commissioned by the Centre for Homelessness Impact, explores.While disabled people represent 22% of the overall population, a recent survey suggests they may represent up to 39% of the homeless population.
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S23Six pregnancy terms you probably won't hear again, including 'high risk' and 'failed'  Medical terminology evolves alongside our understanding of medicine. As time goes by, new terms are adopted while others are abandoned. In midwifery, there should always be a strong emphasis on the language we use, particularly in pregnancy.In 2020, the Royal College of Midwives launched an initiative to discover the impact language has on women. The aim of the Re:Birth project was to find language around pregnancy that could be understood both by people delivering maternity care and those receiving it.
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S24US election 2024: beware polling predictions as they can be wrong - but here's an approach which has often been on the money  Despite the avalanche of legal indictments, Donald Trump remains favourite to win the Republican nomination for the 2024 US presidential election. According to a poll reported by the website Real Clear Politics on August 19, he has a 41% lead over his main rival Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, in the Republican nomination race. His lead over the other Republican hopefuls such as former vice president Mike Pence is even larger.If he does win the Republican nomination the question is: can he win the presidential election in November next year? Real Clear Politics also reported a poll showing that he is running neck-and-neck with Joe Biden, each having 44% in voting intentions. If the election took place tomorrow, he would have a real chance of regaining the presidency.
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S25Lucy Letby: it is not being 'beige', 'average' or 'normal' that makes her crimes so hard to understand  In seeking to understand the crimes of Lucy Letby, the neonatal nurse who murdered seven babies in her care, a fixation about how “ordinary” she appears to be has emerged. At times like this, we seek answers, which perhaps explains the vague sense that understanding this apparent inconsistency can teach us a lesson for the future. But that is a circle that cannot be squared.Letby was sentenced to whole life imprisonment for the murders of seven babies carried out while she worked at Countess of Chester Hospital, in north-west England. She was found guilty of the attempted murder of six other babies and is suspected of having harmed more. She is variously described as a “serial killer” and a “serial killer nurse”. Letby meets the generally accepted criminological definition of a serial killer – that is, someone who commits three or more murders on separate occasions which are not for revenge or material gain.
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S26Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech sounded more like a snake oil salesman than a statesman  Narendra Modi’s tenth consecutive Independence Day speech as Indian prime minister, delivered from the Red Fort in Delhi on August 15, was long (90 minutes) and characteristically loaded with bombast. It was not the inclusive message of a statesman seeking to address a nation’s challenges and opportunities, but more of a campaign pitch for next year’s general election. At times, he resembled the old snake oil salesman cliché: he proclaimed the success of his product and ignored its side effects. He was vague on detail and tried to distance himself from any problems his policies had caused. And, as you’d expect, he rubbished what his competitors have to offer.
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S27As Canadian wildfires rage, Facebook's news ban reveals the importance of radio  Amid the wildfire crisis in the Northwest Territories and the Aug. 16 order to evacuate its capital city, Yellowknife, the outcry over Meta’s Canadian news block has reached new heights. The issue has become even more pressing as evacuees face challenges getting essential updates. I was visiting Paulatuk, a remote part of N.W.T, almost 900 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife when the evacuation order was issued.
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S28S29Slow train coming: only a genuine shift to rail will put NZ on track to reduce emissions  Philip Laird owns shares in some transport companies. He is affiliated with the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, the Railway Technical Society of Australasia, and the Rail Futures Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author.Both the Labour government and the opposition National Party have now released major transport polices that put the emphasis on maintaining and expanding roads.
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S30S31S32Champagne is deeply French - but the English invented the bubbles  In 1889, the Syndicat du Commerce des Vins de Champagne produced a pamphlet promoting champagne at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, claiming that Dom Pérignon, procurator of the Benedictine Abbey of Hautvillers from 1668, was the “inventor”, “creator” or discoverer" of sparkling champagne.The story of a blind monk having an epiphany, accidentally happening upon the secret to effervescence, was seductive. It combined divine revelation and French winemaking expertise to produce a national symbol deeply rooted in the French landscape.
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S33Can I take my child out of school to go on a holiday?  As the school term stretches on, many parents might be tempted to take their children out of school. Perhaps they want to beat the crowds at the snow or enjoy off-season prices at the coast. Maybe they just need a break. But what are the rules around taking your child out of school in term time? And is it a good idea?
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S34A male character on Heartstopper has an eating disorder. That's more common than you might think  Vivienne Lewis is a Clinical Psychologist working with people of both genders with eating disorders. She has recently written a book to assist health professionals and trainees working in this field called Eating Disorders – A practitioner’s guide to psychological care. Season two of the series Heartstopper on Netflix brings out an issue that is often hidden – male eating disorders. Centred on two teenage boys in love, the show helps bust the common perception that eating disorders are only seen in girls and women.
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S35S36S37Unpacking the invisible, gendered labour of women coaches  Despite a positive shift in sport culture towards prioritizing athletes’ mental health and well-being, the crucial work of coaches in supporting athletes — and the resulting emotional toll — remains taken for granted.Referred to as emotional labour, this often-overlooked part of coaching requires coaches to manage their emotions in order to influence or mediate the emotions of their athletes.
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S38New research into genetic mutations may pave the way for more effective gene therapies  Consider a living cell, which can have thousands of genes. Now think of these genes as dials that can be tweaked to change how the cell grows in a given environment. Tweaking a gene can either increase or decrease growth, and this is made more complex considering these dials are interconnected with each other, like cogs in a machine. While scientists are now able to edit genes in laboratory conditions and attempt to produce findings that may lead to cures, evolution has been doing this for billions of years. Evolution is the natural process that turns these dials, allowing populations to adapt. However, unlike scientists, evolution turns these dials randomly as mutations affect the function of genes.
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S39S40S41S42S43S44S45Russia has declared a new space race, hoping to join forces with China. Here's why that's unlikely  Richard de Grijs is the Executive Director of the International Space Science Institute–Beijing (ISSI-BJ). ISSI-BJ is an international, politically neutral platform for the exploitation of space science data and the preparation for future space-borne scientific missions.This week, the Russian space agency Roscosmos had hoped to return to the Moon after an absence of nearly 50 years. Instead, on Saturday it lost control of its Luna-25 lander. The agency explained the spacecraft “switched to an off-design orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the lunar surface”.
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S46S47S48Junk fees and drip pricing: the underhanded tactics we hate yet still fall for  You see a fantastic offer, like a hotel room. You decide to book. Then it turns out there is a service fee. Then a cleaning fee. Then a few other extra costs. By the time you pay the final price, it is no longer the fantastic offer you thought. Welcome to the world of drip pricing – the practice of advertising something at an attractive headline price and then, once you’ve committed to the purchase process, hitting you with unavoidable extra fees that are incrementally disclosed, or “dripped”.
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S49S50S51S52In one chaotic day, Thailand sees one PM elected, one ex-PM sent to jail. Where does the country go from here?  More than three months after Thailand’s national elections – and many anti-democratic manoeuvres in parliament – the country finally has a new prime minister, Srettha Thavisin. But, given the chaotic nature of Thai politics, this was perhaps not even the biggest news of the week. Hours before the partially military-appointed Thai parliament elected Srettha to the post, one of the country’s most prominent political figures, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, returned from his self-imposed exile of more than 15 years and surrendered to authorities over longstanding corruption charges.
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S53Word from The Hill: Date for Voice referendum to be announced on Wednesday  As well as her interviews with politicians and experts, Politics with Michelle Grattan includes “Word from The Hill”, where she discusses the news with members of The Conversation’s politics team.In this podcast Michelle and politics + society editor Amanda Dunn discuss the news that the Prime Minister next Wednesday will reveal the date for the Voice referendum. They also canvass the Intergenerational Report, which gazes into the 2060s, as well as Labor’s national conference, that endorsed AUKUS. During the conference Anthony Albanese emphasised the importance of the party staying in office to bed down a long term agenda, with the message to the rank and file not to rock the boat.
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S54S55Fertility is becoming a workplace issue but employer support can create winners and losers  Since the world’s first human baby was born by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in the UK in 1978, over 10 million IVF babies have been born globally. Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have also become even more sophisticated, now including egg-freezing and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).But alongside these new fertility possibilities, the technology has also brought challenges. Access to publicly funded fertility treatment is not universal, and success rates are limited. This means many people globally are forced to pay privately – if they can afford it – often for multiple cycles of treatment. This can equate to tens of thousands of pounds.
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S56A brief history of pregnancy tests - from toads and rabbits to rosewater  Today, knowing if you are pregnant is usually straightforward – you pee on a stick and then wait for the lines to appear. Tests for women to use themselves at home were first marketed in the 1960s. They work by detecting the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in urine – which is produced primarily by cells in the placenta during pregnancy. Blood tests can tell you the answer a mere 11 days after conception and urine tests a few days later. Of course, a positive pregnancy test doesn’t necessarily lead to a baby – one in five will end in miscarriage. Yet that positive test is often seen as the start of a journey into parenthood.
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S57Is Hercule Poirot autistic? Here are seven clues that he might be  Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective with the flamboyant moustache and keen eye for detail, is one of the most beloved characters in crime fiction. He was created by British writer Agatha Christie and first arrived on our bookshelves in 1920. He has since appeared in 33 novels, 51 short stories and two plays.He has also been depicted in film and television by an array of actors, with Kenneth Branagh’s latest iteration, A Haunting in Venice, opening on the big screen in September 2023.
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S58"The Bee Sting," a Family Saga of Desperation and Denial  In "The Bee Sting," the fourth novel by the Irish author Paul Murray, twelve-year-old PJ Barnes ponders the downsides of resurrection. He recently saw "Pet Sematary," Stephen King's horror film about a graveyard that disgorges its occupants and sends them back into the world. "When things come back," PJ observes, "very often they come back different." The rule applies to his own father, Dickie Barnes, who has been working long hours on a building project in the woods; business at his auto dealership hasn't been the same since the 2008 market crash. Dickie returns to the house periodically, but he's almost unrecognizable, snappish one moment and catatonic the next. A friendly conversation with a local garda leaves him "death-white," his eyes "wide as plates," and emitting a noise like "a horrible croaking, or a reverse-croaking," as if "he's trying to suck in breath but he can't."The novel is about things coming back different, coming back weird. Its more than six hundred pages explore the eeriness of transformative change, and they are packed with literal and symbolic deaths. The first lines dispatch a handful of incidental characters: "In the next town over, a man had killed his family . . . When he had finished he turned the gun on himself." Murray handles his protagonists with comparable ruthlessness, introducing them only to rip their identities and projected futures out from under them. The book employs a rotating structure: the four members of the Barnes familyâPJ and his dad are joined by PJ's mother, Imelda, and his sister Cassâtake turns as narrator. Some of their metamorphoses are comic (the "clammy illicit flowerings" of puberty) and some are tragic (the downward slope of adult life) but what binds them together is a neck-prickling sense of defamiliarization. As with his celebrated second novel, "Skippy Dies," Murray intertwines registers from the lyre-strumming to the fart-ripping. ("Skippy Dies" was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2010. "The Bee Sting" is long-listed for this year's Booker.) In "Skippy," Murray recounts a semester at a boy's boarding school in Dublin from a round of perspectives. At one point, a group of fourteen-year-olds try to communicate with their departed friend. "And even though it didn't work," one of them reflects, "it did sort of work . . . because each of us has his own little jigsaw piece of him he remembers, and when you fit them all together, and you make the whole picture, then it's like he comes to life."
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S59Robbie Robertson and the Greatest Songs Never Finished  The wounded sense of what might have been that’s hovered over the story of the Band since Robbie Robertson walked away from the group in 1976 swelled miserably this month with the surprising news that Robertson had died, at age eighty. It was a sombre moment even for those who had long since come to resent the guitarist-songwriter for his role in dissolving what some believe was one of the greatest ensembles of the rock era, a kind of North American Beatles. (Although the Band has been credited with helping forge the sound now known as Americana, four of its five members were from Canada.)That original group was never going to get back together. The pianist Richard Manuel hanged himself in a Quality Inn bathroom after the Robertson-less Band played the Cheek to Cheek Lounge, outside of Orlando, in 1986. Thirteen years later, the bassist Rick Danko’s heart gave out at age fifty-five, and, in 2012, the drummer Levon Helm succumbed to throat cancer. The multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson, eighty-six, is the lone surviving member. But, in our minds and in our dreams, the Band played on. They’ve always been right there, immortalized on celluloid as they bid farewell in Martin Scorsese’s elegiac concert film, “The Last Waltz.” They’ve been there, too, whenever Bob Dylan’s thunderous 1966 and 1974 tours have been evoked, or when we watched “Easy Rider” or when the needle dropped on a record like their self-titled second album, a near-perfect collection of songs that—though it was released in 1969—sounds as though it might have been written while accompanying Matthew Brady as he made Civil War daguerreotypes.
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S60David Zaslav, Hollywood Antihero  In 1941, a couple from New York bought an undeveloped parcel of land in Beverly Hills for fourteen thousand dollars from the writer Dorothy Parker, the most fearsome wit at the Algonquin Round Table. James Pendleton, an interior designer and art dealer of Regency and Baroque pieces, and his wife, Mary Frances, who went by Dodo, craved a particular vision of California living. They imagined a landscape of eucalyptus trees and rose gardens, with a pool house suitable for high-life entertaining—a Xanadu escape from their place in Manhattan. The Pendletons enlisted the architect John Elgin Woolf, who designed homes for Cary Grant, Lillian Gish, Barbara Stanwyck, and Errol Flynn, to create a one-level house—Dodo had a bad hip—in a coolly sumptuous style that would come to be known as Hollywood Regency.In 1967, Pendleton sold the house to Robert Evans, who, as the head of Paramount Pictures, went on to oversee a string of era-defining films: “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Love Story,” “The Godfather,” “Serpico,” “Chinatown.” Evans led a life worthy of a film auteur’s attention—glamorous, accomplished, and more than a little sleazy. When he bought the house, which he called Woodland, he had been married twice; he would marry five more times. He became almost as well known as a host as he had been as a producer, throwing bacchanalian parties and entertaining such stars as Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson, and Roman Polanski. In the nineteen-eighties, an addiction to cocaine and an association with a tawdry murder case helped bring his career, and the parties, to an end.
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S61You Only Need to Watch One Star Wars Episode Before 'Ahsoka'  Whether you’re intimately familiar with Ahsoka Tano or going into her new series blind, there’s a chance you know all about her falling out with the Jedi. As a padawan, Ahsoka was framed for terrorism and expelled from the Jedi Order, only to be reinstated when her master, Anakin Skywalker, cleared her name.The ordeal was covered in “The Wrong Jedi,” an episode of The Clone Wars that cleverly dealt with the series’ continuity issue and set Ahsoka on a brand-new path. It’s one of two Star Wars stories — along with the Rebels episode “A World Between Worlds” — that’s routinely cited as one casual audiences should watch to understand and appreciate Ahsoka.
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S62This USB-C Dock Fixes Your MacBook's Biggest Flaw  Satechi’s Dual Dock Stand has all the ports you need, along with passthrough charging and extra storage room.There’s no such thing as too many ports and Satechi knows it. The brand’s newest accessory is a Dual Dock Stand that expands your laptop’s capabilities with nine ports external monitor capabilities, and even passthrough charging.
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S63'Ahsoka' Review: A Thrilling Return to the Most Underrated Era of Star Wars Storytelling  The newest Star Wars series finally finds a balance between the franchise’s recent varying tones.Deftly inserted into Star Wars canon 15 years ago as Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan, Ahsoka became an easy scapegoat for fans unimpressed by the animated storytelling of The Clone Wars. “All this new Ahsoka character brings to the table, other than a lightsaber-sized gash through the heart of continuity, are giggling one-liners,” one review said. “I just want to go up to that Padawan and slap her,” another said.
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S64These Are the Exciting Colors the iPhone 15 Might Come In  Yesterday, word got out that the iPhone 15 will likely ship with a high-quality braided USB-C cable in the box and today we’ve have news about the colors they’re supposedly going to match.Leaker “Unknownz21” (has anyone but me noticed leakers on Twitter/X love to use cat images as their avatars?) via MacRumors says Apple has been testing various colors for the iPhone 15, including pink/rose gold/blush gold, green, blue, yellow, orange, and a black/midnight/dark/basalt. The orange could be a new coral shade.
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S65Why You Don't Need to Be a Mega Star Wars Fan to Watch 'Ahsoka'  Ahsoka Tano has a long and varied history in the Star Wars saga. She’s been around for almost a decade, having been introduced in the animated Clone Wars movie. She grew up before our eyes in the seven-season Clone Wars series that followed, and in Rebels, she really came into her own. The same could be said for all the characters she encountered along the way.As Ahsoka continues her journey in live-action, she’s brought the cast of Rebels with her. Ahsoka will follow the title ex-Jedi, as well as Sabine Wren, Hera Syndulla, and Ezra Bridger, on a mission to defeat the fallen Empire’s last Grand Admiral. Much of this is carrying over from Rebels, which leaves fans with a question leading up to Ahsoka’s two-episode premiere. How much of Rebels should casual fans watch to get up to speed?
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S66Microsoft May Have Just Saved Ubisoft's Game Pass Competitor  Microsoft recently made huge progress in its efforts to acquire Activision Blizzard by winning its case against the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, but there are still holdouts on the deal. One of the biggest is the U.K.’s Competition and Market Authority which took steps to block the acquisition earlier this year over concerns the deal would hinder innovation in the industry and the future of cloud gaming.But in a surprising turn of events, Microsoft has announced a new deal with Ubisoft that aims to address the CMA’s biggest worries surrounding the Activision Blizzard acquisition. While it could lead to Microsoft moving past yet another roadblock, Ubisoft comes out as an unexpected winner as it gains the cloud streaming rights to Activision Blizzard’s catalog of games — which is a saving grace for the company’s fledgling streaming service Ubisoft+.
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S67Scientists Just Worked Out How Color-Changing Fish Recognize Themselves  We’ve long marveled at color-changing critters like squid, chameleons, cuttlefish, and others as they flash brilliant hues. Animals across species possess this ability for a suite of reasons, including temperature adaptation, mate attraction, and camouflage. But the mechanisms through which they shift their pigmentations are still somewhat of a mystery. Now, researchers have identified a crucial cell involved that might reveal whether the creatures are aware — or even in control — of the color-changing process. The team discovered a set of specialized photoreceptors, or light-detecting cells, hiding underneath the hogfish’s color-changing cells (called chromatophores). They found these cells using transmission electron microscopy that rendered the cellular structure of hogfish skin, revealing these specialized cells.
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S68Microsoft's Xbox Series X Wraps Customize the Console in Seconds  If you’re tired of your Xbox Series X just looking like a black box, Microsoft has some official wraps to customize your console into something that’s a little more eye-catching. There’s no shortage of third-party skins from companies like dbrand that can dress up your Xbox Series X, but Microsoft’s is easy to take on and off and doesn’t require much precision. The Starfield-themed wrap gives the console a sci-fi makeover, while the two camo options are more artsy.
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S70Netflix Just Dropped The Trailer For Zack Snyder's Long-Awaited Sci-Fi Space Opera  Zack Snyder has dabbled in seemingly every genre. He’s done a zombie heist movie, a four-hour superhero opus, an animated fantasy about owls, and a girlboss action movie. Now, he’s leaning hard into a genre he’s only flirted with before: science fiction. Snyder’s dream space opera has always been a hard sell. It began life as a “Seven Samurai in space” Star Wars movie, but the fact it included no existing Star Wars characters made it a poor fit for Lucasfilm. So Snyder took his 172-page screenplay to Netflix, where it was split into two movies: Rebel Moon: Part One — A Child of Fire, and Rebel Moon: Part Two — The Scargiver.
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