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 S69The One Number You Need to Grow   This finding is based on two years of research in which a variety of survey questions were tested by linking the responses with actual customer behavior—purchasing patterns and referrals—and ultimately with company growth. Surprisingly, the most effective question wasn’t about customer satisfaction or even loyalty per se. In most of the industries studied, the percentage of customers enthusiastic enough about a company to refer it to a friend or colleague directly correlated with growth rates among competitors.
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S3We Are Pivoting to Radical Empathy  Good morning, staff. Thank you for attending this all-hands meeting, or, as I prefer to think of it, all-hearts meeting. As you know, I am returning to the office after taking some legally mandated time away to listen to your recent complaints about me and learn from them.After summering contritely in Europe, I spent the past week at the Burning Man festival, consuming a daunting volume of psilocybin mushrooms in an attempt to expand my consciousness. I return to you a changed man. I have achieved an inner tranquility I had never even dreamed of before. For example, I’ve seen the deep inequities in our patriarchal system of marriage and have decided to live a life of ethical non-monogamy, a decision that I will share with my wife, Lisa, at home later tonight. Most important, I now understand the flaws of our capitalist society, and I’m ready to start making changes.
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S4An Old Technology Could Reveal New Insights About Venus' Core  Seismology has been ubiquitous on Earth for decades, and missions such as InSight have recently provided the same data for the inside of Mars. Understanding a planet’s inner workings is key to understanding its geology and climate. However, the inner workings of Venus, arguably our closest sister planet, have remained a mystery. The sulfuric acid cloud and scorching surface temperatures probably don’t help. But Siddharth Krishnamoorthy from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Daniel Bowman of Sandia National Laboratory think they have a solution — use seismometers hanging from balloons.As we reported previously, the idea has been around for a while. However, it might seem counter-intuitive — don’t seismometers usually have to sit on the ground to detect something? Typical seismometers do, yes. However, another type of seismometer is only now becoming more accepted. An infrasound seismometer monitors infrasound pressure waves created by seismic activity transmitted through a medium other than the ground – like an atmosphere.
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S5You Need to Watch the Most Surprising Cannibal Thriller on Amazon Prime ASAP  Bones and All is the kind of all-consuming love story that only comes around once a decade.So speaks Michael Stuhlbarg’s unsettling cannibal nomad Jake in Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, as he describes the sensation one can get from devouring a whole person down to their bones. Doing so would be a point of no return for young cannibals Maren and Lee, who are still trying to taper their flesh-eating urges after fleeing their old lives. But it also describes the sensation of watching Bones and All, a yearning, sensuous, bitterly beautiful road drama that finds the lovely, gory medium between Guadagnino’s swooning romances and grotesque horror flicks.
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S6'Ahsoka' Proves Star Wars Is Learning the Wrong Lesson from the MCU  It’s easy to forget now, but when The Mandalorian premiered in 2019, it wasn’t clear what the future of Lucasfilm’s Disney+ originals was. At the time, The Mandalorian seemed like nothing more than a fun but unimportant space Western about a bounty hunter. But once its Season 1 finale aired and viewers saw Moff Gideon emerge from his crashed ship holding the Darksaber, it became clear The Mandalorian would incorporate important Star Wars lore into its story.Four years later, The Mandalorian has launched two spin-offs, The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka, and become one of several Star Wars shows dedicated to fleshing out the franchise’s New Republic era. It was also revealed earlier this year that the stories of The Mandalorian, Boba Fett, and Ahsoka will culminate in a Dave Filoni-directed crossover film. If reading that makes you think of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you’re not alone.
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S7S8Can I Train My Cat To Use The Scratching Post? A Veterinarian Reveals An Ideal Solution  It’s a situation many a cat owner is familiar with: You buy your feline an elaborate, expensive scratching post only for them to completely ignore it and sink their claws into your couch instead.While a cat’s fussy diva quirks are often tolerated, even adored by the humans who love them, scratching is not one of them. According to a 2019 analysis by the American Veterinary Medical Association, destructive scratching accounts for 15 to 24 percent of behavioral complaints owners have against their cats. A 2020 report that studied a Texas-based animal shelter discovered that around 11 percent of adopted cats were surrendered because of "destructive tendencies."
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S9You Need to Play 2022's Buzziest Indie Before It Leaves Xbox Game Pass  The “are games art” debate has long been settled (they are), but it doesn’t change the fact that we often miss the forest for the pixels. Hardware is sold on the strength of visual fidelity, so it's no surprise graphics are such a dominant part of the conversation. But what if a game skipped being a game and went right into being a movie? What if it looked as good as anything you’d see in real life? How would you know what the game was?Immortality, from Sam Barlow of Her Story fame, was one of the hottest indie titles in 2022, and for good reason. It tasks players with reviewing archival film footage of actress Marissa Marcel to piece together the mystery surrounding her sudden disappearance (and reappearance). A horror/thriller/mystery with point-and-click roots and one of the most innovative takes on what a game could and should be, Immortality deserves your attention.
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S1050 Cool Things for Your Home That Are So Freaking Cheap on Amazon  If you’re looking for ways to upgrade the look and function of your home but don’t want to spend a ton of money, Amazon has a bunch of unique items that range from super useful and practical to fun and a bit quirky. They’re all budget-friendly and are small touches that pack a huge punch. Plus, they’re all quick and easy to use, and reviewers are impressed by how much they’ve improved their day-to-day living.Create the illusion of floating books along your wall with these clever shelves that feature a bottom panel designed to hide inside your book cover — making it look like there’s nothing underneath. The durable metal shelves can hold up to 15 pounds each, come in either gray or white, and would look great in practically any room.
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S11S12Amazon Keeps Selling Out of These 40 Clever Things That Make Your Home So Much Better  These days, a true testament as to whether something is worth buying (or not) is if it’s constantly selling out online. This likely means that the item is not only popular, but also extremely clever — potentially even offering solutions to problems you never thought could be solved. These ridiculously brilliant items, including everything from a lamp that doubles as charging station to Wi-Fi extenders, will make your home much better, so it’s no wonder that Amazon keeps selling out of them. To get your hands on 40 of most clever items, keep reading and strike while the iron is hot before they sell out... again.Rather than waste tons of aluminum foil or parchment paper each time you use your oven, try these reusable baking mats you can use over 3,000 times each instead. They’re made from nonstick silicone that can withstand temperatures of up to 400 degrees and that’s super easy to wipe down (or pop in the dishwasher) when it’s time to clean up.
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S1312 Years Later, Ahsoka Could Bring Back the Weirdest Star Wars Story Ever Told  Two episodes in, Ahsoka is already changing huge elements of Star Wars canon. After spending almost half a decade exploring a galaxy far, far away, Episode 2 revealed there’s another galaxy even farther away, and it could take a mystical journey to reach.It’s not the first time Star Wars TV has explored the galaxy’s metaphysical aspects; theories surrounding Ahsoka bringing Rebels’ World Between Worlds into live-action have run rampant for years. However, what Ahsoka may really be referencing is the weirdest arc of The Clone Wars.
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S14S15Sustainability on a Shoestring  We currently live in an unsustainable world. While the biggest gains in the fight to curb climate change will come from the decisions made by governments and industries, we can all play our part. This series aims to explore how each of us can individually live more sustainable lives, without breaking the bank.
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S16The rival to the Panama Canal that was never built  It is a traffic jam on a colossal scale. More than 200 ships, according to some estimates, float there, just waiting. Some are loaded with containers stuffed full of items including furniture, consumer goods or building materials. Some carry oil or gas. Others are transporting grain. They are all due to travel through one of the world's most famous bottlenecks – a vital gateway for global shipping – the Panama Canal.A highly unusual drought, right in the middle of Panama's supposed wet season, has lowered water levels in two reservoirs that supply the canal. As a result, operators have had to restrict the size and number of ships that pass through its system of locks each day.
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S17Welcome to the Republic of Cows  This story originally appeared in Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems, and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. It was published in collaboration with Earth Island Journal.The floatplane bobs at the dock, its wing tips leaking fuel. I try not to take that as a sign that my trip to Chirikof Island is ill-fated. Bad weather, rough seas, geographical isolation—visiting Chirikof is forever an iffy adventure.
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S18The Leaked Quest 3 Headset Video Teases Meta's VR Ambitions  It's the unboxing video heard around the metaverse. There's a fresh leak of Meta's upcoming mixed reality headset, the Meta Quest Pro 3. A video posted to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, by user @ZGFTECH shows a pair of hands pulling the black and white headset and controllers out of a cardboard box and wiggling them around. The headset and the controllers appear to be more compact than previous versions.The device looks almost exactly like it does in the promotional materials Meta released in June, shortly before Apple sucked up all the oxygen in the virtual room with its long-awaited Vision Pro mixed-reality headset.
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S19Making 'Diablo II' Was Pure Hell  Visit WIRED Photo for our unfiltered take on photography, photographers, and photographic journalism wrd.cm/1IEnjUHDavid L. Craddock is the author of more than a dozen books about video games, including Break Out, about the history of Apple II games, and Rocket Jump, about the history of first-person shooters.
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S20Scientists find enzymes in nature that could replace toxic chemicals  Some 900 miles off the coast of Portugal, nine major islands rise from the mid-Atlantic. Verdant and volcanic, the Azores archipelago hosts a wealth of biodiversity that keeps field research scientist, Marlon Clark, returning for more. “You’ve got this really interesting biogeography out there,” says Clark. “There’s real separation between the continents, but there’s this inter-island dispersal of plants and seeds and animals.”It’s a visual paradise by any standard, but on a microscopic level, there’s even more to see. The Azores’ nutrient-rich volcanic rock — and its network of lagoons, cave systems, and thermal springs — is home to a vast array of microorganisms found in a variety of microclimates with different elevations and temperatures.
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S21S22How pants went from banned to required in the Roman Empire  Go to a meeting with any male politician today and you’re almost certainly going to be standing in front of a man wearing pants, except perhaps in Bermuda, where the eponymous shorts are the nation’s official dress. But in Imperial Rome, obviously, things were a little different—no man of honor would think of wearing what was considered the garb of a savage barbarian.When Marcus Tullius Cicero, an eloquent orator and lawyer, was defending the former Gaul governor Fonteius from accusations of extortion, he cited the wearing of pants as a sign of the “innate aggressiveness” of the Gauls—and an extenuating circumstance for his client:
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S23Extreme gene therapy treatment for alcoholism slashes drinking by 90% in monkeys  A single shot — a gene therapy injected into the brain — dramatically reduced alcohol consumption in monkeys that previously drank heavily. If the therapy is safe and effective in people, it might one day be a permanent treatment for alcoholism for people with no other options.The challenge: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) means a person has trouble controlling their alcohol consumption, even when it is negatively affecting their life, job, or health.
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S24S25S26Gran Turismo Is Luxuriously Familiar  Behold: a video-game adaptation, a coming-of-age tale, and an inspirational sports biopic, in one sleek package.This year’s zippy The Super Mario Bros. Movie aside, video games have historically yielded less-than-satisfactory film adaptations. For the most part, they range from forgettable (Assassin’s Creed) to regrettable (Uncharted), the storytelling never quite capturing the thrill of actually interacting with a game.
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S27Online Ratings Are Broken  Not to boast, but my feedback is important. So important that, in the past couple of weeks alone, I’ve received a mountain of desperate requests for it.Amazon, for example, wanted to know if I’d recommend its company based on my Amazon Returns experience. (When the pillow insert I was returning first arrived, the company also asked me to rate my delivery experience.) EGO Power+, the makers of my broken string trimmer, wanted to know if the callback I requested from them yesterday, and missed at 7 a.m. today, had solved my problem—would I complete a survey? When I opened DoorDash to order an acai bowl, the app prodded me to rate Carlos, the dasher who had, days earlier, delivered my Vietnamese noodles, on a five-star scale. An Etsy seller in India from whom I’d purchased a rug sent a fourth message on the app begging me to please rate and review: “It will help my business.” Later, DoorDash also hoped I’d rate the acai joint (separately from the dasher, whom I was also asked to rate). A difficult question; I’d thought the bowl came with fresh fruits, but it turned out I’d have needed to select them manually. Is that the acai bowlery’s fault, or the app operator’s? And why am I being asked to unwind the matter?
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S28A Genetic Snapshot Could Predict Preterm Birth  Doctors are trying out a simple blood test to screen for some common pregnancy complications.For expectant parents, pregnancy can be a time filled with joyful anticipation: hearing the beating of a tiny heart, watching the fetus wiggling through the black-and-white blur of an ultrasound, feeling the jostling of a little being in the belly as it swells.
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S29The Rules of Flaking on Plans  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.Over the years, my fellow Atlantic writers have published many bold arguments. But the case Ian Bogost made this month is perhaps one of the bravest in recent years: Flaking on plans is not so terrible, he argued. I likely found Bogost’s claim so controversial because I was a flake in earlier eras of my life, and the feedback I received suggested it was not a good thing. But Bogost’s philosophical case was quite sensible: “Flaking, taken selectively, allows you to acknowledge that life is porous,” he writes. “Errors seep through its gaps.”
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S30Murdered by My Replica?  Margaret Atwood responds to the revelation that pirated copies of her books are being used to train AI.Remember The Stepford Wives? Maybe not. In that 1975 horror film, the human wives of Stepford, Connecticut, are having their identities copied and transferred to robotic replicas of themselves, minus any contrariness that their husbands find irritating. The robot wives then murder the real wives and replace them. Better sex and better housekeeping for the husbands, death for the uniqueness, creativity, and indeed the humanity of the wives.
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S31The GOP Denouncement--And Defense--Of Donald Trump  Former President Donald Trump surrendered to authorities at the Fulton County Jail on Thursday evening on felony charges connected to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential-election results in Georgia.The Republican front-runner’s booking in Atlanta came a day after Trump skipped the first Republican presidential debate, opting instead for an interview with the former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson.
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S32How Companies Can Improve Employee Engagement Right Now  A year and a half into the pandemic, employees’ mental “surge capacity” is likely diminished. Managers must take proactive steps to increase employee engagement, or risk losing their workforce. Engaged employees perform better, experience less burnout, and stay in organizations longer. The authors created this Employee Engagement Checklist: a distilled, research-based resource that practitioners can execute on during this critical period of renewed uncertainty. Use this checklist to boost employee engagement by helping them connect what they do to what they care about, making the work itself less stressful and more enjoyable, and rewarding them with additional time off, in addition to financial incentives.As the world stumbles toward a Covid-19 recovery, experts warn of a surge of voluntary employee departures, dubbed the “Great Resignation.” For instance, one study estimates that 55% of people in the workforce in August 2021 intend to look for a new job in the next 12 months. To counteract the incoming wave of employee turnover, organizations — more than ever — need to focus on cultivating employee engagement.
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S33The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Antidote to the Cult of More: A Lovely Vintage Illustrated Poem About the Meaning and Measure of Enough  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.“Enough is so vast a sweetness, I suppose it never occurs, only pathetic counterfeits,” Emily Dickinson lamented in a love letter. In his splendid short poem about the secret of happiness, Kurt Vonnegut exposed the taproot of our modern suffering as the gnawing sense that what we have is not enough, that what we are is not enough. This is our modern curse: A century of conspicuous consumption has trained us to be dutiful citizens of the Republic of Not Enough, swearing allegiance to the marketable myth of scarcity, hoarding toilet paper for the apocalypse. Along the way, we have unlearned how to live wide-eyed with wonder at what Hermann Hesse called “the little joys” — those unpurchasable, unstorable emblems of aliveness that abound the moment we look up from our ledger of lack.
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S34The Simple Power of Communicating with Kindness  In today’s world a host of issues are eating away at our connections with each other: Lack of focus, high-speed interactions, political polarization seeping into professional interactions, lack of trust. It’s easy to let daily civilities go by the wayside — or to approach difficult conversations with anger and ferocity — but, the author tells us, her experience as a corporate communications executive points to the benefits for leaders who double down on kindness instead. She outlines three tactics that work: Breaking down defensiveness with graciousness, giving credit, and making space.
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S35Fraughan fool: Ireland's whipped cream and local berry treat  Along hedgerows and up Ireland's boggy hillsides grow small, wild berries, sweetened by summer sun and heralding the beginning of harvest. These purple berries are known as fraughans, from the Irish fraochán. Other names include herts (hurts or hursts), bilberry, whortleberry, whimberry or cowberry. They are the wild cousin to the cultivated blueberry, with an intense sweetness and juiciness that belies their diminutive size.Their peak ripeness coincides with harvest-time celebrations, such as hay making, an important time of feasting and festivals throughout Ireland. On the first Sunday in August, it's customary for local people to descend upon places where fraughans flourish to pick and gorge on as many as they can. This day is known as Fraughan Sunday, also Garland Sunday, and coincides with the old Celtic festival of Lughnasa, one of four important "cross-quarter days" that occur at the midpoint between each solstice and equinox.
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S36Are big cats prowling the UK? What science tells us  Rumours that there are big cats in Britain stubbornly keep cropping up. The thought of a large predator lurking in the rural landscapes of Britain is an exciting one. The most recent widely published claim of a big black cat in the UK does actually show a photo of a big cat species, which can be identified by the small ears relative to the size of the head. But this image turns out to have been photoshopped. The original image can be found on Getty Images, using the search term “big black cat sitting in grass”.
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S37Niger's resource paradox: what should make the country rich has made it a target for predators  A month after the coup in Niger that toppled the democratically elected civilian government of Mohamed Bazoum, the country’s neighbours are still debating the possibility of military intervention. The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) – a coalition of west African countries, which includes Niger – has said it intends to send in a taskforce to topple the military junta led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani, which ousted Bazoum on July 26.
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S38S39S40Hotels and employment aren't major 'pull factors' for refugees - here's what really draws people to move  People make decisions about where to live, when to leave and where to move based on several complex factors. Among policymakers and people who study immigration, the term “push” factor is used to describe what drives people to leave a country (for example, violence, persecution or poverty).For many years, the UK and other governments have claimed they can stop or reduce irregular migration by removing “pull” factors – those that attract people to a particular country. These might include a generous public welfare system or job opportunities.
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S41Why Japan has started pumping water from Fukushima into the Pacific - and should we be concerned?  Japan’s decision to release water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant has been greeted with horror by the local fishing industry as well as China and several Pacific Island states. China – which together with Hong Kong imports more than US$1.1bn (£866m) of seafood from Japan every year – has slapped a ban on all seafood imports from Japan, citing health concerns.Tokyo has asked for the ban to be lifted immediately. The Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, told reporters on Thursday: “We strongly encourage discussion among experts based on scientific grounds.” Japan has previously criticised China for spreading “scientifically unfounded claims”.
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S42How educational research could play a greater role in K-12 school improvement  Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, test scores were beginning to decline. Results from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress,, or NAEP – the most representative assessment of what elementary and middle school students know across specific subjects – show a widening gap between the highest and lowest achievement levels on the NAEP for fourth grade mathematics and eighth grade reading between 2017-19. During the same period, NAEP outcomes show stagnated growth in reading achievement among fourth graders. By eighth grade, there is a greater gap in reading achievement between the highest- and lowest-achieving students.Some education experts have even suggested that the chances for progress get dimmer for students as they get older. For instance, in a 2019-2020 report to Congress, Mark Schneider, the Institute of Educational Sciences director, wrote: “for science and math, the longer students stay in school, the more likely they are to fail to meet even NAEP’s basic performance level.”
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S43How some Muslim and non-Muslim rappers alike embrace Islam's greeting of peace  Ever since the United States’ “war on terror” began, American media has been rife with stereotypes of Muslims as violent, foreign threats. Advocates trying to push back against this characterization sometimes emphasize that “Islam means peace,” since the two words are derived from the same Arabic root.Indeed, the traditional Muslim greeting “al-salamu alaykum” means “peace be upon you.” Some Americans were already familiar with the phrase, thanks to an unexpected source: hip-hop culture, which often incorporated the Arabic phrase.
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S44S45AI scores in the top percentile of creative thinking  Of all the forms of human intellect that one might expect artificial intelligence to emulate, few people would likely place creativity at the top of their list. Creativity is wonderfully mysterious – and frustratingly fleeting. It defines us as human beings – and seemingly defies the cold logic that lies behind the silicon curtain of machines. New AI tools like DALL-E and Midjourney are increasingly part of creative production, and some have started to win awards for their creative output. The growing impact is both social and economic – as just one example, the potential of AI to generate new, creative content is a defining flashpoint behind the Hollywood writers strike.
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S46Trump out on bail - a criminal justice expert explains the system of cash bail  For several days, former President Donald Trump and his 18 co-defendants in a Georgia election interference case trickled into the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta to surrender for arrest, fingerprinting and mugshots before the noon Aug. 25, 2023, deadline. Charged in the same alleged conspiracy to overturn results in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, the defendants did not draw the same bail agreements or amounts.Trump’s bail was set at US$200,000, while his former attorney Rudy Giuliani’s bail was set at $150,000. Meanwhile, attorneys John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell each had bail set at $100,000. Bail for other co-defendants ranged from $10,000 to $75,000.
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S47Why CEOs and footballers attract different levels of outrage about high pay  The average pay of FTSE100 CEOs rose by 16% from £3.38 million in 2021 to £3.91 million in 2022, according to the latest figures from thinktank the High Pay Centre. In the same week this was reported, UK political figure Nigel Farage called outgoing NatWest boss Alison Rose’s £2.4 million payout “a sick joke”. She recently resigned for leaking private financial information about him to the BBC. On the other hand, senior NHS doctors are embarking on a second round of strikes in response to recent pay erosion and a “final” pay offer of 6% from the government. In the last two months, teachers have agreed to settle for 6.5%. Train drivers, nurses and university lecturers are also among a growing list of employees for whom proposed pay increases are failing to beat inflation.
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S48Who won the first US Republican presidential debate? An expert reviews the highlights  The reigning champion, and undisputed winner, from the first Republican debate of presidential hopefuls? Donald Trump. Even in his absence, he was the main spectacle. That much was predictable. Although many tried to dance around him, every candidate had to address the “elephant not in the room”. That put Trump centre-stage, in the limelight — exactly where the 2024 Republican favourite wanted to be.
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S49Setting the stage for a better understanding of complex brain disorders  We often compare the brain to a machine with wheels, cogs, and belts. In this analogy, when something breaks, the entire mechanism skips a beat or grinds to a halt. However, more often than not this isn’t what happens with our brains. Instead, they’re more like a theatre. Here, neurons are the musicians, actors, and dancers, and they improvise a performance that shapes our thoughts and lives.I’m an electronic and computer engineer at the DSS Lab of the National Technical University of Athens. In December 2019, Ioannis Stavropoulos, a neuroscientist at King’s College London, introduced me to his colleague Elissaios Karageorgiou of the Neurological Institute of Athens. They wanted to talk about an idea they had about neurology and, in a way, theatre, over coffee.
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S50S51Lucy Letby: child murder case highlights need to regulate managers and improve whistleblowing procedures  The recent conviction of Lucy Letby, the neonatal nurse who murdered seven infants and attempted to murder six others while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015-2016, has raised fundamental questions about how something like this could have happened – and why it took so long to stop her.The fact is attempts were made to stop her. Two medical consultants, Dr Stephen Brearey and Dr Ravi Jayaram, both raised concerns about unexplained infant deaths as early as July 2015. By October 2015, both brought specific concerns about Letby, who had been on duty during each of the deaths, to the senior director of nursing.
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S52Trump's Mug Shot Is His True Presidential Portrait  It's not really a victory for anybody, this photograph, but lots of us will insist on reading it that way. Before it ever existedâwhen it was only a twinkle in the insistent eye of the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willisâthe mug shot of former President Donald Trump, released Thursday night, had already been combed for meaning by the political observers who sat impatiently refreshing their Twitter feeds, waiting for the picture to "drop" as if it were a hot album. Much of the anticipation seemed to come from liberals who hoped that the sight of the mug shot would bring home just how surreal Trump's alleged criminal attempts to overturn the 2020 election were. Maybe a national trance would lift and the remaining dead-enders would shake their delusions.But anybody inclined, at this late date, to follow Trump and lend him a vote won't mind this new image too muchâread innocently, it looks like a passport photo taken on a bad day, of some twerpy kid who doesn't feel like flying anyway. It's hard to parse the mug shot because our desire to see Trump get his just deserts keeps getting thwarted, and each fresh hope makes us interpret before we really see.
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S53Vivek Ramaswamy Is Not the Next Trump  Presidential debates, especially those held more than a year before the actual election, are both tedious and chaotic. We all know at this point to not make too much of them. But, much like preseason football, they provide exciting, if illusory, bits of narrative possibility.For the entrepreneur and political novice Vivek Ramaswamy, the early story line is that he put on the most Trump-like performance of all the Republican candidates who took the stage on Wednesday night. The evidence for that claim comes from the obnoxious way that Ramaswamy dealt with his opponents. He claimed to be the only candidate who hadn’t been “bought off,” made a series of frankly confusing hand gestures while his opponents were speaking, and spent almost the entirety of the debate with what we will generously call an impish grin on his face. He seemed, more than anything, to be having a lot of fun at the expense of the other candidates, whose behavior ranged from confused earnestness (Doug Burgum) to polite indignation (Mike Pence) to random yelling (Ron DeSantis).
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S54What We Lose When Streaming Companies Choose What We Watch  To have or not to have, that is the question. The problem with having is obvious when looking around at the many shelves for books and CDs and the filing cabinet for DVDs that line the walls and fill floor space at home. It’s especially an issue for city people whose apartment space is at a premium and who lack basements or attics or (imagine!) a spare room to hold their hoard. Ditching physical media in favor of streaming is a liberation of sorts—an unburdening that goes beyond clutter and, in a sense, lightens life itself. It’s a moveable feast for those who live precariously and for others who travel often. In Michael Mann’s thriller “Heat,” Robert De Niro delivers this line: “A guy told me one time, ‘Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.’ ” So much for the personal library. At least he’ll have his Criterion Channel subscription.I was out of town for a couple of weeks recently, and I had my subscriptions, too. The permanent smorgasbord of streaming services, whether of movies or music, is a diabolical temptation. Curiosity is easy to satisfy—at least within the wide limits of what’s available. Moreover, a month’s subscription to the Criterion Channel costs less than the purchase of any one Criterion Collection disk, while offering access to hundreds of classics. Even a small basketful of various subscriptions would likely add up to less than one might easily spend on a batch of CDs or DVDs or Blu-rays (not to mention the devices to play them on). Not only is streaming a good deal; given the huge losses recorded by many major streaming services, it may be too good a deal, as suggested by the surprising news this week—even as Netflix is ending its original DVD-by-mail service—that Bob Iger, the C.E.O. of Disney, is contemplating restoring physical media to the company’s offerings.
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S55Vivek Mania Sweeps the Country  Follow @newyorkercartoons on Instagram and sign up for the Daily Humor newsletter for more funny stuff.By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
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S56How Much Do Words Matter?  Compared with other widely spoken languages, English has few guardrails against the will of the masses. We have no governing body equivalent to the Real Academia Española, much less the notoriously hard-core Office Québécois de la Langue Française, and our self-appointed language police, the bow-tied vigilantes behind usage guides and dictionaries, have for the last fifty years seen their power wane. Grammar is out, relativism is in, and the very project of telling (alt: teaching) other people how to speak or write has come to be seen by many Americans as authoritarian on its face. Depending on whom you ask, the language tyrants are either a cultural élite bent on gender-neutral pronouns and sensitivity training or a racist overclass clinging to power by refusing to take seriously anyone who ends a sentence in a preposition. Either way, it’s worth remembering that, outside the small fiefdoms of H.R. seminars and classrooms, the English language has no actual nobility.The frustrations of language democracy are just those of democracy in general: that we must, to a large and sometimes intolerable extent, abide by the votes of other people. And so, in language as in any other democratic process, we campaign. Perhaps you ask your roommates not to say “moist,” or you get married and insist that your co-workers use your new last name. Your roommates may not agree that “moist” is objectionable. Your co-workers may disapprove on feminist grounds of you taking your husband’s last name. But if they value keeping the peace at home and work more than they value their unfettered free expression—and, in practice, almost everyone does, almost all of the time—they will, at least to your face, obey.
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S57"Braiding Sweetgrass," and a Lesson in Extreme Heat  Robin Wall Kimmerer is an unlikely literary starâa botanist by training, specializing in moss. But she set out to bridge the gap between Western science and Indigenous teaching with high ambition. "So much of the environmental movement to me is grounded in fear," she says. "And we have a lot to be afraid aboutâlet's not ignore thatâbut what I really wanted to do was to help people really love the land again. Because I think that's why we are where we are: that we haven't loved the land enough." What she created was a surprise best-seller and literary phenomenon called "Braiding Sweetgrass." The New Yorker's Parul Sehgal went to visit Kimmerer to talk about the book's origins and impact on its tenth anniversary. Plus, during the hottest summer in history, the medical correspondent Dhruv Khullar undergoes testing in a specialized heat chamber with researchers who are studying how rising temperatures will affect the body.During the hottest summer in history, The New Yorker's Dhruv Khullar undergoes testing in a specialized chamber where researchers monitor the effects of heat on the body.
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S58At a Trumpless G.O.P. Debate, Trumpism Dominates  The Washington Roundtable: In the first debate of the Republican Presidential primary, which took place in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, six of the eight potential nominees onstage raised their hands to indicate that, if Donald Trump is their party’s choice, they will support him—even if he is convicted in a court of law. Trump wasn’t present. The following day, the former President had his mug shot taken in a Fulton County jail. Trump was booked on thirteen charges, among them that he, along with eighteen others, conducted a “criminal enterprise” to overturn his 2020 defeat in Georgia. The two events signal the G.O.P.’s dilemma regarding Trump, and his grip on the contest for the nomination. What motivates the Republican primary contenders to defend a man whom they are ostensibly trying to defeat? The New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos weigh in.By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
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S59Into the Invisible Elsewhere  By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.© 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices
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S60You Need to Watch the Most Epic Heist Movie of 2023 on Amazon Prime ASAP  Over the past 20 years, moviegoers have been exposed to a wide variety of takes on the fantasy genre. Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy not only boosted the genre’s popularity, but showcased the wide array of tones it can contain, from lighthearted whimsy all the way to grim self-seriousness. In the years since Game of Thrones premiered, however, an increasing number of films and shows have stuck disappointingly close to HBO’s oppressively dark take on the genre.That’s one reason Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves felt like such a tonic when it was released earlier this year. The film, which was written and directed by Game Night directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, is a clever and cheerful fantasy romp. Even more importantly, it managed to capture the unshakeable sense of camaraderie, improvised chaos, and self-awareness of its tabletop game source material without ever losing control of its story. And now it’s officially available to stream on Amazon Prime.
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S61'Gran Turismo' is Neill Blomkamp's Worst Movie For One Disappointing Reason  The director was once one of Hollywood’s brightest up-and-coming voices, but not anymore.Fourteen years ago, Neill Blomkamp burst onto the Hollywood scene with his feature directorial debut, District 9. A modest, partly-found footage sci-fi film, District 9 received rave reviews for Blomkamp’s inspired direction and its pointed political themes. It went on to receive numerous Oscar nominations in 2010, including one for Best Picture, which seemed to cement Blomkamp’s place as one of the most lauded and promising filmmaking voices of his generation.
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S6232 Years Later, The Most Underrated Star Wars Spaceship Is Finally Canon  If you were reading edgy Star Wars comics in 1991 and 1992, there’s a very real chance you poured over a small smattering of panels featuring the E-wing starfighter, a sleek Star Wars ship that was supposed to be even better than the X-wings of the classic movies. Set six years after Return of the Jedi, the iconic Dark Horse Comics miniseries, Dark Empire, didn’t feature this slick ship prominently, but did posit a Star Wars future in which this ship was the default most powerful fighter around. And now, 32 years after the first issue of Dark Empire dropped on December 12, 1991, the 2023 Disney+ series Star Wars: Ahsoka has finally brought the E-wings into live-action canon.
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S63'Persona 3 Reload' Release Date, Trailer, Story Content, and Platforms  The Xbox Games Showcase 2023 saw the official reveal of the long-rumored (and recently leaked) Persona 3 Reload. Not to be confused with Persona 3 Portable, which received a port in early 2023, Persona 3 Reload is a completely remade version of the Atlus RPG’s original release.Persona 3 Reload will come to PlayStation, Xbox, and PC on February 2, 2024. That means you should have plenty of time to play Persona 5 Tactica, due out November 17, 2023, before Reload launches.
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S64The Biggest Sci-fi Movie of 2023 is in Serious Trouble  Two years after a global pandemic curtailed a box office break for Dune: Part One, its sequel is facing another setback. Dune: Part Two was originally slated for a November 2023 release, but distributors at Legendary and Warner Bros. have pushed the film back to Spring 2024. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Dune: Part Two will now hit theaters on March 15, 2024. The delay has also been accompanied by a later release of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, one month later to April 12, 2024.
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S65Of All The Weird, Wildly Popular Stuff on Amazon, These 50 Things Actually Deserve the Hype  A lot of things on Amazon go viral. If you have ever looked at a dress that everyone says is a “must-have” item and wondered how anyone could fall for that hype, you know that the reasons are not always compelling. Some things become popular only because someone popular got paid to wear them. But that’s not the case with any of these things. Of all the weird, wildly popular stuff on Amazon, these 50 things actually deserve the hype. If you always sleep through your alarm, it will affect everything from your grades to your career and relationships. But you can rely on CLOCKY to get you up. Clocky makes the kind of ruckus even you can’t sleep through. It leaps off the bedside table and tears around the room, making you get up and chase him to stop the alarm. This little guy saved me,” said one reviewer. “As soon as he hits the floor I'm up.”
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S66S67Futuristic Geoengineering Projects To Solve Climate Change Could Have Drastic Side Effects  Changing Earth’s complex and interconnected climate system may have unintended consequences. When soaring temperatures, extreme weather, and catastrophic wildfires hit the headlines, people start asking for quick fixes to climate change. The U.S. government just announced the first awards from a US$3.5 billion fund for projects that promise to pull carbon dioxide out of the air. Policymakers are also exploring more invasive types of geoengineering — the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of Earth’s natural systems.
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S68Strategy for Start-ups  In their haste to get to market first, write Joshua Gans, Erin L. Scott, and Scott Stern, entrepreneurs often run with the first plausible strategy they identify. They can improve their chances of picking the right path by investigating four generic go-to-market strategies and choosing a version that aligns most closely with their founding values and motivations. The authors provide a framework, which they call the entrepreneurial strategy compass, for doing so.
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S70A Better Way to Map Brand Strategy  Companies have long used perceptual mapping to understand how consumers feel about their brands relative to competitors’, to find gaps in the marketplace, and to develop brand positions. But the business value of these maps is limited because they fail to link a brand’s market position to business performance metrics such as pricing and sales. Other marketing tools measure brands on yardsticks such as market share, growth rate, and profitability but fail to take consumer perceptions into consideration.
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