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 S69Does private health insurance cut public hospital waiting lists? We found it barely makes a dent   The more people take up private health insurance, the less pressure on the public hospital system, including shorter waiting lists for surgery. That’s one of the key messages we’ve been hearing from government and the private health insurance industry in recent years.Governments encourage us to buy private hospital cover. They tempt us with carrots – for instance, with subsidised premiums. With higher-income earners, the government uses sticks – buy private cover or pay the Medicare Levy Surcharge. These are just some of the billion-dollar strategies aimed to shift more of us who can afford it into the private system.
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S1How Unnecessary Paper Packaging Creates the Illusion of Sustainability  As global consumers grow increasingly conscious of the environmental toll of plastic packaging, many brands have taken steps to reduce their use of plastic. But at the same time, some brands have adopted a much less productive approach to the anti-plastic movement: They’ve begun adding superfluous paper packaging on top of plastic packaging in order to make their products look more environmentally friendly without actually reducing plastic waste. The authors’ research demonstrates that this sort of overpackaging can indeed be effective in boosting consumers’ perceptions of sustainability, despite the fact that it is demonstrably worse for the environment (not to mention more expensive for manufacturers). However, they also found that simply adding a “minimal packaging” label to plastic packages can reduce the misperception that overpackaged products are more sustainable, enabling brands to attract environmentally-conscious consumers without creating unnecessary paper waste.
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S210 Common Job Interview Questions and How to Answer Them  Interviews can be high stress, anxiety-driving situations, especially if it’s your first interview. A little practice and preparation always pays off. While we can’t know exactly what an employer will ask, here are 10 common interview questions along with advice on how to answer them. The questions include:
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S3Management Time: Who's Got the Monkey?  Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the November–December 1974 issue of HBR and has been one of the publication’s two best-selling reprints ever. For its reissue as a Classic, HBR asked Stephen R. Covey to provide a commentary (see the sidebar “Making Time for Gorillas”).
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S4How to Call Out Your Friend For A Racist Comment  Despite there being a good mix of representation in my school, I didn’t want a reason to be called FOB (fresh off the boat) like the ESL (English as a Second Language) students. I didn’t want kids to whisper “Ching Chang Chong” behind my back or call my family “foreign” — a code word for “uneducated.”
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S5What to Do When Your Mind (Always) Dwells on the Worst-Case Scenario  Not long ago, a medical student, let’s call him Paul, walked into my shift in the emergency room of a large university and told me that his life was ruined. I’m a clinical psychologist. And for the past 20 years, I have worked — in many capacities — with young adults. I’ve counseled them in private practice. I’ve taught them on college campuses. I’ve given talks at the companies where they work. And this day, I was staffing the emergency walk-in on a college campus.
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S6Survey: Remote Work Isn't Going Away -- and Executives Know It  Many CEOs are publicly gearing up for yet another return-to-office push. Privately, though, executives expect remote work to keep on growing, according to a new survey. That makes sense: Employees like it, the technology is improving, and — at least for hybrid work — there seems to be no loss of productivity. Despite the headlines, executives expect both hybrid and fully remote work to keep increasing over the next five years.
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S7Why We Glorify Overwork and Refuse to Rest  None of us want to admit that we would rather feel overwhelmed than underwhelmed. In fact, we often experience a greater sense of our own value when we’re working than we do when we’re not. Working is not just a way to stay busy, but also to prove our worthiness – to others and to ourselves. The result is that without the right guardrails in place, we silently collude with employers who encourage us to overwork through intense pressure to perform. The authors outline strategies for intervening if you find yourself compulsively overworking, including honestly recognizing your tendency to work long and continuous hours, prioritizing sleep and movement, and choosing one activity outside of work that brings you true enjoyment.
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S8Chinese sextortion scammers are flooding Twitter  In May, Wang Zhi’an noticed something odd: Each time he posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, his replies would be flooded with sexual spam within minutes. Once, the Chinese investigative journalist-in-exile made a post discussing X’s new monetization policies. A user named Zizizi963, seemingly an attractive young single woman, replied with a photo of her in lingerie and the words, “When will you come to me and mess up my bed?” Zizizi963 was one of several accounts posting sexual messages in Wang’s replies — they all had blue checkmarks, and were granted greater visibility on the platform.Wang soon learned that these accounts were sextortion scammers. Posing as young, lonely women, they posted sexually suggestive messages on popular posts and invited users to contact them through the Telegram links in their bios. A Shenzhen-based man in his 20s reached out to Wang anonymously after falling victim himself, according to an audio interview between the two that Wang had shared on his podcast. The scammers persuaded the man to download special video-chat software for “safety reasons,” lured him into a chatroom, recorded footage of him unclothed, and then blackmailed him for money. He ended up transferring 200,000 yuan ($27,500) to the scammers to prevent his photos from being leaked.
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S9Digital nomads are pricing out locals in India's favorite beach destination, Goa  In 2020, lockdowns forced Indian startup Maker’s Asylum to make a tough choice: stay in expensive Mumbai and downsize, or move. The company, a community makerspace, relocated to Goa, the coastal state known for its idyllic beaches, laid-back lifestyle, and Portuguese colonial heritage.Maker’s Asylum is now housed in a 100-year-old Portuguese mansion, on a leafy road in the village Moira, and it has flourished. The rent and electricity fees are a fraction of what the company paid in Mumbai, and it’s more popular among clients than it ever was in the big city. Every day, the mansion is filled with tech workers, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts, building things together and attending workshops organized by the company. But Maker’s Asylum isn’t the only new arrival in Goa. The global remote working trend has brought a wave of Indian tech workers, foreign digital nomads, and other professionals to the state. Although many of the pandemic-era masses have left, plenty outsiders have stayed behind. Locals say they are changing Goa — for better and worse.
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S10Particle Physicists Dream of a Muon Collider  After years spent languishing in obscurity, proposals for a muon collider are regaining momentum among particle physicistsParticle physicists are unlikely evangelists, but in papers, at conferences and with T-shirts, stickers and memes, many of them are spreading the good word of a muon collider—a next-generation machine that would smash together muons, the massive cousins of electrons. In a 2021 manifesto, “The Muon Smasher’s Guide,” the particle partisans laid out their case. “We build colliders not to confirm what we already know, but to explore what we do not,” they wrote. “The muons are calling, and we must go.”
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S11How Gene-Edited Insects Are Providing Food, Fuel and Waste Disposal  Companies are recruiting black soldier flies and mealworms as a protein source in animal feed, fertilizer, biofuels and even as ingredients for burgers and shakesInsects have been making commercial inroads as feed for poultry, fish, pigs, cattle and even pet food, though, for now, it remains a niche product. Biotech tools, however, are allowing breeders to ramp up insect production, and with new investment, their approach is gaining traction.
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S12S13S14New Hurricane Forecasts Could Predict Terrifying Explosive Intensification  Hurricane forecasters are debuting a new model they hope will better predict when some storms will suddenly and explosively intensifyVirginia Key sits on Florida’s doorstep, just southeast of downtown Miami, and is firmly in the strike zone of Hurricane Alley—a swath of warm water that is perfect for hurricane formation and stretches eastward across the Atlantic to Africa. More than 250 hurricanes have hit the U.S. mainland since the mid-19th century, often with catastrophic results. Virginia Key is also home to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory, where scientists are hard at work to constantly improve hurricane forecasts. One of their most pernicious longtime problems is the difficulty of predicting when a relatively minor-seeming storm will suddenly explode in strength and severity—a phenomenon that often takes those in harm’s way by surprise.
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S15Follow a Hurricane Expert into the Heart Of the Beast  Editor’s Note (8/28/23): This story is being republished because Tropical Storm Idalia is forecast to rapidly intensify into a major hurricane before making landfall in Florida sometime on Wednesday.Andrea Thompson: This is Science, Quickly. I'm Andrea Thompson, Scientific American's news editor for earth and environment.
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S16Adorable Moth-Size Bats Found in the Pacific Islands' Largest Bat Cave  An expedition has discovered a remote Fijian cave with thousands of microbats thought to be nearly extinctGuided by local villagers, the bat biologists descended into the mouth of a cave on Fiji’s remote island of Vanua Balavu. They slipped down a rock face, swam through an underground pool, clambered over piles of guano and emerged into a cathedral-sized cavern “absolutely chockablock-full” of Pacific sheath-tailed bats, says Kris Helgen, a mammal expert and chief scientist at the Australian Museum Research Institute in Sydney.
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S17Yat Siu: The dream of digital ownership, powered by the metaverse  Technologist Yat Siu believes the "open metaverse" -- a decentralized version of the internet also known as web3 -- is laying the foundation for a freer, fairer, more prosperous society. In a future-focused talk, he explores the transformative possibilities of web3, from enabling digital ownership and the creator economy to providing a much-needed update to capitalism.
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S18Sexy AI Chatbots Are Creating Thorny Issues for Fandom  Given the opportunity to chat with some of the world’s most famous fictional characters, I tried to get them to say something … interesting. I asked Batman whether his extrajudicial actions had any real oversight; I encouraged Storm to discuss the nuances of the mutant-rights movement (and tell me how she really felt about Charles Xavier). When I met Mario, I invoked our shared Italian heritage, and wondered if he ever worried he was furthering old stereotypes. “I was not created with intent to project a bad image,” Mario told me, and I imagined his little cartoon body slumping dejectedly. “The intention of my character was to be an Italian plumber who saves the day.”These attempts to discourse fictional characters to death were conducted in Character.AI, a chatbot platform that went into public beta just shy of a year ago. Unlike the “journalist publishes chatbot transcripts and assigns profound meaning to them” pieces we’ve all had to suffer through this past year, I won’t be sharing any of these chats. Far from the pseudo-profound, the results weren’t even remotely interesting; Batman and Storm and Mario’s milquetoast replies on most topics sounded like they were written by HR departments carefully trying to avoid lawsuits.
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S19Meta's News Block Causes Chaos as Canada Burns  Nearly every day for the past five years, Vicki Hogarth has used Facebook to keep her community informed. As the news director for CHCO-TV—an independent, nonprofit television station in rural New Brunswick, Canada—she livestreamed town council meetings, posted monthly video interviews with local mayors, and shared at least a dozen posts daily. For many in the community of St. Andrews and the larger Charlotte County, it was the way to stay on top of local news.One day in early August, that all ground to a halt. Meta had finally made good on a promise to block news content in Canada, in response to a new law that requires the company to pay news businesses for content that ends up on Facebook or Instagram. The CHCO-TV Facebook page, followed by 28,000 people—nearly 2,000 more than the entire county—has been wiped clean. “No posts available,” the newsfeed reads.
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S20Trick Out Your Two-Wheeler With These Bike Accessories  Bikes are fantastical machines. Ideal companions, they never complain and they never ask you, “Are we there yet?” An all-day pleasure cruise or a grueling workday commute are no big deal. They return to us far more faithful service than the occasional care we pour into them. That said, most bikes arrive from the factory ready for a casual Sunday joyride but not much else. If you want to put your bike to work hauling cargo or commuting to the office, you'll need some bike accessories to make those journeys comfortable and fun. Lucky for you, most bicycles are highly and easily customizable, and there’s a mountain’s worth of gear to choose from. Practically all of these accessories will work for non-electric bikes and most electric bikes, too. Take a look at our guides to Ebike Classes and Best Electric Bikes for more.
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S2124 Great Wireless Chargers to Refuel Your Phone (or Watch)  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 WIREDWireless charging isn't nearly as cool as it sounds. It's not exactly wireless—a cord runs from an outlet to the charging pad—and it won't charge your smartphone faster than plugging it in with a good ol’ cord. Still, I'm always disappointed when I test a smartphone that doesn't support it. I've gotten used to simply plopping my phone down on a pad every night, and fishing for a cable in the dark feels like a chore. It's pure convenience more than anything else.
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S22Our Favorite Merino Wool Clothes to Keep You Comfy in Any Weather  Merino wool is a super fiber. Merino T-shirts somehow manage to be comfortable in 95-degree-Fahrenheit heat, and merino hoodies keep you warm well below freezing. Unlike synthetic fibers derived from petroleum, merino wool is natural and renewable. One sheep can produce 4 to 5 pounds of wool per year. That's because the sheep that make merino wool drink only the purest alpine waters and study the art of comfort under the tutelage of those stuck-up Pashmina goats, who, let's face it, might know a thing or two about wonderfully, pillowy softness. Just kidding. Merino sheep do have thinner, softer wool, which has evolved to keep them comfortable across a wide range of temperatures and is comfortable to wear next to your skin. It's unclear whether the the sheep learned to do this from Pashmina goats, but I do know that merino wool is a remarkable fabric that's become the cornerstone of my wardrobe.
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S23Donald Trumpbests Mug Shot Will Be His Most Enduring Meme  The first time I encountered Donald Trump was on my TV screen. It was 1994, and it happened in an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will Smith’s popular coming-of-age sitcom about class assimilation that ran on NBC for six seasons. There was nothing particularly memorable about the episode or Trump’s appearance in it—he played a relatively tame version of himself—but for much of my early life this was how I made sense of him. As a real estate dealmaker. As a reality TV star. And eventually as 45th president of the United States. Then and now, Trump best communicates through the medium of images.The latest transmission from his visual onslaught began making rounds on the internet last Thursday, just past the 8 pm Eastern primetime hour, when Georgia’s Fulton County Jail released his mug shot to the public. It has since been described as one of the most historic images of our time. And rightly so. There is no parallel for it in our visual lexicon. It is, in every sense of the phrase, a Trump original.
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S24S25The problem with the theory of everything  There’s a pursuit of simplicity and unification in theoretical physics, aiming for a single mathematical law to unify quantum mechanics and gravity: a theory of everything. But while other forces have been successfully unified, gravity resists integration — casting doubt on the likelihood of ever unlocking the mother of all theories.As physicist Janna Levin explains, black holes, with their strong spacetime curvature, provide insights into this challenge. Levin draws parallels to mathematicians’ incompleteness theorems, noting the inherent limitations in such an overarching theory.
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S26The Swedish philosophy of lagom: how "just enough" is all you need  The night is going well. Everyone is laughing, and there is a happy energy in the air. The conversation flows easily and you’re the merry, relaxed kind of drunk. Then Josh swaggers over with a tray of something. You see what it is. Oh no.“Time to do shots!” he shouts. You’re not sure, and you see others aren’t too keen either. But you don’t want to be a spoilsport. A grimace and a cough later, and the night changes. You feel sick, the room is spinning, and within a few minutes, everyone is too drunk to talk.
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S27Recognize the "performance paradox" and break free from stagnation at work  Early in my career, I was the youngest investment professional at the Sprout Group—then one of the oldest and largest venture capital firms in the world. I loved being exposed to different executive teams, industries, and companies at the leading edge of innovation, and I had the exciting opportunity to serve on boards of directors alongside much more experienced and knowledgeable investors and operators.But when I think back on those days, what I remember most vividly is the incredible pressure I felt to perform. We regularly sat in meetings listening to startup teams pitch their ventures. The entrepreneurs would describe their solutions for problems in an industry’s supply chain, or pitch a new drug discovery process or an innovation in an enterprise software system. When the entrepreneurs stepped out of the room, we’d take turns voicing our impression of the opportunity. As a very junior professional just starting my career, I didn’t know enough to have a strong conviction about whether an investment was attractive, but I pretended to.
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S28S29Pew, pew, pew! These plants shoot out their seeds like bullets  The flowering shrubs known as witch hazel are perhaps best known for their use in folk medicine and as a natural topical skin ointment. But the seeds are also of interest to biophysicists and engineers because witch hazel capsules can shoot them out at incredibly fast speeds, thanks to a built-in spring-loaded mechanism. Researchers at Duke University have figured out why—contrary to expectations—the seed launch speeds are roughly the same, even though seeds across species can have substantially different masses. They described their results in a new paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
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S30New Roomba combo bots have swappable dust and water tanks  Roomba is bringing the combo mop and vacuum feature to its cheaper robot vacuums with the new Roomba Combo j5+ and Combo i5+. Roomba's last combo bot was the Roomba Combo j7+, which would automatically switch between mopping and vacuuming with a swing-arm setup. These cheaper bots can both mop and vacuum, but you'll need to manually configure them for either task.
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S31S32Analogue's supercharged modern-day Game Boy now glows in the dark  If you've been on the fence about the Analogue Pocket, the modernized FPGA-powered Game Boy clone that will play all of your old cartridges, maybe the company's newest limited-edition release will push you over the edge. Analogue is releasing a glow-in-the-dark version of the Pocket, with all the same features as the original but a new green luminescent casing that recalls every cheap plastic glow-in-the-dark toy I ever had.
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S33Dolby Atmos' upcoming FlexConnect may simplify wireless home theater audio  Dolby Laboratories today announced Dolby Atmos FlexConnect, a feature with the potential to add flexibility and simplicity to home theater audio setups. The company says FlexConnect allows supporting TVs to optimize Dolby Atmos audio output among the TV's speakers and paired wireless speakers. Currently, Dolby is only announcing the feature with upcoming TCL TVs, but it could expand elsewhere.
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S34S35S36S37US spy satellite agency isn't so silent about new "Silent Barker" mission  8:45 pm EDT update: The launch of an Atlas V rocket with the Silent Barker mission has been postponed from Tuesday due to Tropical Storm Idalia. "Out of an abundance of caution for personnel safety, a critical national security payload and the approaching Tropical Storm Idalia, the team made the decision to return the rocket and payload to the vertical integration facility (VIF)," ULA said. "We will work with our customers and the range to confirm our next launch attempt and a new date will be provided once it is safe to launch."
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S38New York Is Full  Since last spring, roughly 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City. This is a city of immigrants, welcoming to immigrants, built by immigrants. People who were born abroad make up a third of New York’s population and own more than half of its businesses. Yet the city has struggled to accommodate this wave of new arrivals. Migrants are selling candy on the subways, sleeping on the streets in Midtown, waiting for spots in homeless shelters. Families are struggling to access public schools, legal aid, and health care. They are vulnerable to predation and violence.It is a humanitarian crisis. The city has scrambled to accommodate these new residents, but Mayor Eric Adams says that New York is officially overwhelmed. “We have reached full capacity,” he said bluntly at a press conference last month. “We have no more room in the city.”
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S39The Atlantic Presents: SHORTER STORIES  The art of flash fiction thrives on desire: Readers are given a brief tale that leaves them wanting more. This feeling is also a vital component in the act of writing, illuminating the search for new ways of depicting the world. Our shorter stories this year are based on the theme of desire; some authors have decided it worthy of interrogation in and of itself, while others use it as a path to altogether distinct ideas. What results is a thrilling array of voices, with stories ranging from ancient eroticism to modern longing. In the beginning there was desire, and then there was … that’s for you to find out.It is Giza in the middle of the night and I’m wrecked by jet lag thinking about you and in the alley below the flat there is a chained-up dog barking. Bad pop music is blasting out by the pyramids and a gaudy light show plays over the Sphinx’s face and I am certain that when the world ends only the lights of Vegas will remain shining. Since I was a boy I’ve wanted to see the pyramids and there is a voice in me that says I’ve been waiting just as long to catch sight of you but if you did not know love is dead, which is to say so much for all these feelings! Everything is about sex except sex, which is about blah blah blah. I crossed a continent and an ocean and most of another continent and yet here in this desert city I feel like I’m home. Let me explain. There are boys and girls riding horses in the dirt streets and everyone is some shade of brown and the infrastructure here is barely holding together and this home of original empire has been breached and left to its own devices by so many invaders that it is clear Egypt is the original reservation of the world—and somehow in all this I am hopeful. Me and a friend are tracing the beauty that runs from this place of ancient sun to the Athenian peninsula with its Platonic aura still remaining and on to Rome, where the meeting of architecture and emperor was perfected, and still on from there until we find ourselves back in America. What my first glimpse of the Great Pyramid showed me was not a miracle structure of impossible stones but a dream shimmering some 4,500 years over the light-struck dunes. But … let’s get down to it, shall we? Let’s say for argument’s sake there is much good art and some great art and a thousand Great Pyramids’ worth of bad art, but the only art I give a fuck about is your ass. Am I being clear? Is this transmission doing its thing across time and space? Baby, am I … the best you ever had? A request: Don’t answer that. Another: Let’s do this like we’ve never done it, which is something I didn’t do even when I’d never done it. Innocence is a brave thing and almost no one in the age of Instagram has the courage for it. But also let’s do it like we have? Sweetheart, I’m supposed to write about longing, but here I am, writing about something else. Take note: That first kiss, like, my angle of approach, was off, and and and I am telling you! Since our first night together, I have been studying very diligently at the Royal Academy of Smooching. From here on it’s nothing but movie kisses worthy of deleted Indiana Jones scenes. Royal this, royal that. The fans turn slow overhead in the dim rooms of empire’s afterlife, and the shades of British accountants work through the heat and the day’s ledgers and their latest letter to Martha. If I correctly understand this book I mail-ordered from the back of a magazine in 1985, upon returning I am certain to be a master lover and the historians tracing the arc of my adoration for you will … maybe take note! Hieroglyphs are the GOAT of writing systems. Like, just look at that shit. It’s fucking sick. But also … maybe not so efficient. Even more than young men ready to die brilliantly and a willingness to enslave all and sundry to commit a pharaoh to eternity, an empire needs a good writing system. As indicated by an intensive Google search—I almost went to the second page—before it was the Great Pyramid of Giza in Arabic, it was the Pyramid of Cheops in Greek, and before that it was the Pyramid of Khufu in Egyptian, but we both know before that, it was called Pharaoh’s Love Shack in the first language there ever was. You could take your best girl there and get a strawberry shake and a side of mutton and later she might wear your gold-leaf letterman jacket, but only if you were the right kind of pharaoh’s son, which, you know, I am not. In the end it’s always your younger brother with the great traps and the hyenic smile who gets the girl, and you, you ugly brute, you get sent out to carve more arcane but strangely practical symbols into the timeless rock. Thoth, now there’s a true bro for a writer. A deity for language? For art and judgment? America, you absolute plebe, take note. Meanwhile, my friend the dog, who I am certain bears the dark and pointed visage of Anubis, is still barking down below, and with each hopeless yawp he gains my admiration. (In fact he reminds me of myself when I was that age.) Hear me out for real though: Only the losers are worth a writer’s time, and there are way too many winners in the world of American letters now. But—I have two questions for you. First off, did you know the pyramids were once covered in limestone, their walls pale and smooth and rising impossibly bright to the heavens? And two, do you have any idea what you’ve done to me? Jesus Christ on a velvet cross! As a true connoisseur of the high art of gaming, I can only say one thing: Baby, you’ve got me stun-locked. Speaking of spiritual masters, our tour guide is the truth and the light and the way in this city, with its many layers of time, you feel like you might be drowning. I see in him the hard-achieved irony won by way of pain, frustration, and the bewilderment of a high intelligence waiting for the world to, like, catch the fuck up. He leads us through his homeland with the sly smile and wink of a lesser god who is lesser only because he chose it. I said I was an American Indian and he put his hand on his head to indicate a feather and we both laughed. I have not thought about the Egyptian afterlife since I was but a young reservation boy in the Wild, Wild West but now here I am, thinking about feathers and hearts. This fine eve I would cut out my heart and place it upon the scales of judgment for a chance to strip you down and do things to you that would bring the UN to my doorstep. Whatever. I will go down like a true Hollywood gunslinger—shooting blanks—only to be resurrected once more by that pharaonic ass. I know, I know! I just wanted to say that word. Here’s another one: callipygian. That's Greek for “a great ass.” Say it in your best Pacino. We’ve got such a gumbo going here, this piece is surely a violation of the Great Literary Treaty of 20__. You remember the one, we traded irony for safety. Anyway. How about this: Is anyone as over the discourse as me, because I am terribly, murderously over it. Behind us only slaughter, ahead only more, and all these people—I need a term that fuses philistine and dilettante, somebody help me out here—can talk about is being offended. Well, this stupidity is harming me, and still there is still no legitimate talk about Indian Country and it’s pretty goddamn clear there never will be. But don’t worry, me and my peeps are used to it. We just throw up a jeep wave and crank up the volume. What I want to discuss, though, is how life lately looks like the barrel of a gun set to my temple. Maybe it’s in my mouth? You know, for variety’s sake. My love—can I say this, is it too soon, I don’t understand the rules, my sense of timing is appalling—maybe be my oasis and I’ll be yours? May we drink deeply from each other ’til the sun falls finally on our day. I kiss your neck a few times and feed you the gelato flavor of your own choosing and maybe … we eat some hot dogs? I don’t know. The guy driving me and my friend all over kingdom come has the most beautiful eyes I’ve seen. Second only to yours, of course! They are green and unguarded and he cannot speak a lick of this language of empire that is my only option and he has the genuine heart of someone from where I am from. He could be a cousin of mine. Did I tell you I once was a tour guide? I, too, took foreigners—some people call them Americans—through my many-thousand-year homeland and talked about the before times and if they liked me enough I got tipped! It was really something! An ex once told me she was tired of the Indian thing and, if you can believe it, that was the moment she became an ex! You said I could not compare you in any way to fruit but … I kind of like fruit. What if I said you were like a mango that was actually like a supernova I happened upon while perusing the night sky with the telescope of my bitter heart and there you were, a phenomenon of such scope and size one finds oneself tempted to use a parallel but nonetheless commensurate description such as: There you were, the smoking-hot gunner bitch on the back of the apocalyptic jeep at the edge of the world. (There’s a dog at her side. It’s me.) She wears designer sunglasses and always has a toothpick in her mouth, but she has a heart of—well, probably some kind of fruit. Being in the midst of one of the great, dry expanses of the world has me in a mood. I am thinking of a J.Lo track that, on occasion, comes up in my list of liked songs. When others hear it, they likely want to shake their asses to the sick beats, or discuss how dated the sound is, but when I hear it, my gaze, driven by the note of elegy threading through the song, drifts dramatically out to the horizon. There are pyramids out there, I am certain of it. They stand silent and implacable and contain still the fury and horror and religiosity of original vision, and all beauty begins with them and comes to us across time from them—I kid you not. At the end of the long hall of the mind they shimmer massively. I will put my hands on you. We will do the oldest thing.
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S40The Blurb Problem Keeps Getting Worse  Publishing has come to depend on fawning endorsements, but not every title can be electrifying, essential, and revelatory.If there’s one thing authors love more than procrastinating, it’s praising one another. During the Renaissance, Thomas More’s Utopia got a proto-blurb from Erasmus (“divine wit”), while Shakespeare’s First Folio got one from Ben Jonson (“The wonder of our stage!”). By the 18th century, the practice of selling a book based on some other author’s endorsement was so well established that Henry Fielding’s spoof novel Shamela even came with fake blurbs, including one from “John Puff Esq.”
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S41Dear Therapist: I Feel Tremendously Guilty for Not Taking Care of My Aging, Alcoholic Mother  I am the adult child of an alcoholic mother, and now I am a mother myself. I love my mom, and we have a very close (albeit tumultuous at times) relationship. My upbringing wasn’t by any means all bad. My family was incredibly dysfunctional and maybe a little toxic, but also loving and supportive in our own weird way.Still, my life has been defined, influenced, and certainly scarred by my mother’s drinking, behavior, and mental-health issues—denial being chief among them. In my late 20s, I gave up trying to help her and went about the business of breaking out of the chains and cycles of my family. Distancing myself from my mother and family was heart-wrenching, but I am living a healthy, positive, and deeply fulfilling life because of what I did.
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S42What Your Insurer Is Trying to Tell You About Climate Change  Having worked for decades in conservation nonprofits, Beth Pratt, who lives high in the Sierra Foothills in Midpines, California, understands how climate change is putting her home at ever greater risk. Her community is experiencing what she calls “climate whiplash”: forest fires, record heat, massive snow dumps, mudslides, rockslides, and even a tornado.When Pratt, now 54, bought her 1,400-square-foot house in 1999, she thought the setting was ideal: on a big lot near Yosemite National Park. As recently as a decade ago, she told me by Zoom one recent morning, she didn’t particularly worry about wildfires—a problem that now plagues her area with disturbing frequency. Pratt said she has been forced to evacuate three times.
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S43Should We All Be Eating Like The Rock?  Some researchers say Americans should eat double or triple the protein recommended by government guidelines.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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S44The Most Believable Reality TV Is Set on Mars  Stars on Mars—a show about celebrities solving made-up problems in space—gets one thing about astronaut missions very, very right.The astronauts arrived at the Mars base one by one, dressed in faded orange spacesuits. After they walked through a pressurized chamber and removed their helmets, they were blasted in the face with some sort of decontaminating mist. When the cyclist Lance Armstrong walked in, one of his comrades was in awe. “The fact that we have an astronaut is so crazy,” Ariel Winter, an actor who appeared on Modern Family, told another contestant, who was visibly confused. Winter had mistaken this Armstrong for Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, who died in 2012.
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S45What Adults Forget About Friendship  Just catching up can feel stale. Playing and wasting time together like kids do are how you make memories.Rachel Simmons was raised Catholic and later joined a Presbyterian church, but she told me the closest thing she’s ever had to true religion came from a childhood friendship. When she was in middle school, she and two other kids, Margo Darragh and Sam Lodge, formed “RMS”—a name combining each of their first initials—that elevated their friend group to a sacred entity.
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S46This Is Going to Be a Mess  Trump could become the presumptive GOP nominee in the 2024 election at the same time as his lawyers are in court for his trial for seeking to steal the last election.At a hearing this morning in Washington, D.C., Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that former President Donald Trump’s federal trial for attempting to subvert the 2020 election will begin on March 4, 2024, with jury selection. The following day, March 5, is Super Tuesday, the day when the greatest number of delegates in the Republican primary is up for grabs.
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S47Talking the AI Talk  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.AI was not always the hottest thing in tech. Now corporate America is leaning into its use of the term.
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S48A Lost Edith Wharton Play Debuts on Stage for the First Time /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/24/7e/247e5305-021b-48aa-9be5-0a3c2d32e99e/shadow_of_doubt_dr1_dc_0434.jpg) Several years ago, two scholars dug up a 1901 script by Edith Wharton. The play, titled The Shadow of a Doubt, had been lost for more than a century.Now, for the very first time, audiences can see the show on stage: A new production debuted at the Shaw Festival in Ontario’s Niagara-on-the-Lake earlier this month.
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S49Woman With Paralysis Can Speak By Thinking With a Brain Implant and A.I. /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/8f/f1/8ff13cb4-3a06-4b1a-8a52-6aca508e3278/bravo3-ann-and-avatar-1.jpg) The experimental interface allows the patient to communicate through a digital avatar, and it’s faster than her current systemAfter Ann Johnson suffered a stroke 18 years ago, she became paralyzed and lost the ability to speak. Now, with the help of a brain implant and artificial intelligence, she is able to communicate verbally again through a digital avatar.
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S50Watch the Trailer for 'Rustin,' Which Spotlights the Man Behind the 1963 March on Washington /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/a8/5b/a85b0981-c2ae-4bef-9f8d-c262b63fbf53/screen_shot_2023-08-15_at_64433_pm.png) The new film dramatizes Bayard Rustin’s efforts to pull off an event of unprecedented scaleTo mark the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Netflix just dropped the first trailer for Rustin. The biopic, which opens in select theaters on November 3 and begins streaming on November 17, chronicles the life of Bayard Rustin, the man behind the 1963 march that changed the course of the civil rights movement.
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S51Watch Adult Wolves Bring 'Toys' to Their Teething Pups at Yellowstone /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/03/82/0382b699-9b0d-4706-b334-99955661fdc4/screen_shot_2023-08-28_at_103331_am.png) When they can’t bring food back to the den, the animals retrieve bones, sticks and antlers for their young to chew onâand biologists captured it on videoRaising a litter of teething wolf pups is no easy feat, but the wolves living in Yellowstone National Park are parenting pros. This spring, the park's biologists captured video footage of adult wolves repeatedly returning to their den with so-called "toys"âin the form of antlers, bones and sticksâto keep their little ones happy between meals.
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S52S53The Hidden Brain Connections Between Our Hands and Tongues | Quanta Magazine  One day, while threading a needle to sew a button, I noticed that my tongue was sticking out. The same thing happened later, as I carefully cut out a photograph. Then another day, as I perched precariously on a ladder painting the window frame of my house, there it was again!What's going on here? I'm not deliberately protruding my tongue when I do these things, so why does it keep making appearances? After all, it's not as if that versatile lingual muscle has anything to do with controlling my hands. Right?
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S54Notes on Complexity: A Buddhist Scientist on the Murmuration of Being  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.“This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole,” quantum pioneer Erwin Schrödinger wrote as he bridged his young science with ancient Eastern philosophy to reckon with the ongoing mystery of what we are.A century later — a century in the course of which we unraveled the double helix, detected the Higgs boson, decoded the human genome, heard a gravitational wave and saw a black hole for the first time, and discovered thousands of other possible worlds beyond our Solar System — the mystery has only deepened for us “atoms with consciousness,” capable of music and of murder. Each day, we eat food that becomes us, its molecules metabolized into our own as we move through the world with the illusion of a self. Each day, we live with the puzzlement of what makes us and our childhood self the “same” person, even though most of our cells and our dreams have been replaced. Each day, we find ourselves restless miniatures of a vast universe we are only just beginning to fathom.
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S55 Why the Power of Technology Rarely Goes to the People  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.In a new book, economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson provide a sweeping historical overview of just how unevenly the spoils and costs of technological change have been distributed. Power and Progress: Our 1,000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity reminds us that technology is not itself a force but rather a tool that is developed to support the agendas of the people and institutions who hold power in society. Claiming a fair share of technology’s benefits for the rest of society — that is, for most of humanity — requires that that power be challenged. Acemoglu and Johnson chatted with features editor Kaushik Viswanath about what lessons the past holds for how we should develop and implement technology today and in the future. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
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S56'Girl' trends are sticky and fun. But they can also be problematic.  In July, the "lazy girl job" took over social media. In a TikTok video, 26-year-old creator Gabrielle Judge, who coined the term, described this kind of role as "basically something you can just quiet quit" while making a comfortable salary and having excellent work-life balance.If it sounds like an ideal job that anyone can do, it is – yet Judge wrapped it as a "girl" phenomenon. It was one of the reasons the term went viral.
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S57From Top Boy to Sex Education: 11 of the best TV shows to watch in September  The trailer for the final season of the acclaimed drama about drug dealers, loyalties, betrayals and murder promises "No Loose Ends", just what you'd expect from this uncompromising series that ended last season by killing off a major character. The Guardian praised last season as "a wild and terrible concrete western". The main antagonists competing to rule the drug world return, with Ashley Walters as Dushane and Kane Robinson as Sully. They are joined this time by Barry Keoghan, fresh from his Oscar-nominated role in The Banshees of Inisherin, and Brian Gleeson (Bad Sisters), whose characters are yet to be revealed. In addition to the question of who comes out on top, like any final season of any crime show this one may ruthlessly eliminate anyone at any time, a powerful way to go out.The great LaKeith Stanfield (Atlanta, Judas and the Black Messiah) is once more at his best in this eerie drama based on the 2017 bestselling novel by Victor LaValle, known for mixing realism and the supernatural, in eloquent prose. The same mix of real and otherworldly applies to the series, with Stanfield as a bookseller devoted to his wife, Emma (Clark Backo) and their infant son. If only Emma hadn't encountered that strange woman in Brazil who apparently put a spell on her and her future child. LaValle does the voiceover narration here, saying, "Would you even know if you've moved into a fairy tale? There are portals to this world we may never know we've travelled through", a clue to the metaphorical way the series touches on everyday parental fears about the worst that can happen to your child.
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S58TB research shows a good diet can cut infections by nearly 50%  Madhukar Pai reports that he has no financial or industry conflicts. He serves as an advisor to the following non-profit global health agencies; World Health Organization, Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, Geneva, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Stop TB Partnership.For centuries, we have known that tuberculosis is a social disease. It thrives on poverty and social factors such as malnutrition, poor housing, overcrowding, unsafe work environments and stigma.
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S59Wildfire smoke is an increasing threat to Canadians' health  Air quality in Canada has improved over the past several decades, and Canada’s air is among the cleanest in the world. But that progress is threatened by smoke from wildfires, which are becoming more frequent and more intense with climate change. Canada’s 2023 wildfire season is the worst on record, with more than 5,800 reported fires and over 15 million hectares burned to date.
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S60Business schools must step up on sustainable investing education  Sustainable investing takes into account environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors alongside traditional financial components. While this form of investing has existed for a long time, ESG has become a hot-button issue due to recent politicization and widespread public misconceptions around what it really entails. ESG investing examines quantitative and qualitative non-financial data on companies. This includes environmental issues like carbon emissions, pollution and resource use; social issues like employee treatment and relationships with communities; and governance issues like diversity of corporate boards, business ethics and transparency.
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S61S62Bike and EV charging infrastructure are urgently needed for a green transition  The green transition is happening too slowly. We are in a climate emergency and it is clear that we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by transitioning to more sustainable transportation.However, without sufficient infrastructure to enable electric vehicles (EVs) or cycling for commuting, these options will remain too inconvenient or unsafe for most. Canada’s climate obligations will not be met without these infrastructure changes.
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S63S64Indigenous rangers are burning the desert the right way -  Co-Chairperson of the Indigenous Desert Alliance and a Regional Land Management Coordinator at the Central Land Council, Indigenous Knowledge Even though it’s still winter, the fire season has already started in Australia’s arid centre. About half of the Tjoritja West MacDonnell National Park west of Alice Springs has burnt this year.
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S65S66S67S68Strong political leaders are electoral gold - but the trick is in them knowing when to stand down  March this year marked the 60th anniversary of a famous “gotcha” moment in 1963, when Labor leader Arthur Calwell and his deputy, Gough Whitlam, were photographed outside the Hotel Kingston in Canberra.Inside, delegates – six from each state – deliberated. The photographs and their hostile treatment in The Daily Telegraph the next day by journalist Alan Reid were damaging. Reid decried Calwell’s “night watch” as “a sad commentary on the decline in status of Labor’s parliamentary leadership”.
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S70Financial education has its limits - if we want New Zealanders to be better with money, we need to start at home  Even as an economics student at university, I remember heading into town on a Friday night knowing what I needed to pay the bills before I could spend on socialising. But despite having the financial literacy to know better, Monday could still sometimes begin with a trip to the bank to ask for an overdraft extension. So it was encouraging to hear that financial education has become a political talking point ahead of this year’s election. Both Labour and National are promising to deliver compulsory financial literacy classes as part of the school curriculum.
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