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 S69Short naps can improve memory, increase productivity, reduce stress and promote a healthier heart   While some people view napping as a luxurious indulgence, others see it as a way to maintain alertness and well-being. But napping can come with drawbacks as well as benefits. As an orofacial pain specialist, I have extensive education in sleep medicine and how sleep impacts wellness, due mostly to the relationship between sleep and painful conditions such as headaches and facial pain. My training involved all aspects of sleep, especially sleep breathing disorders, insomnia and sleep-related movement disorders.
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S1Build a Winning AI Strategy for Your Business  Artificial intelligence is a kind of catalyst; it’s the next wave of truly transformative technology with potential we cannot yet fully envision or appreciate. Companies will start by using this new technology to do “old things” before discovering the new opportunities it creates. So, how should they go about this process? They should: start by experimenting, deploy for productivity, transform experiences, and then try to build new things. Throughout this process, they should prioritize security and responsible use.
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S2You're Not Powerless in the Face of Imposter Syndrome  Research shows that high achievers from underrepresented backgrounds often find themselves confronting imposter syndrome or feeling they don’t fit in, are not welcome, or don’t belong. But understanding imposter syndrome does little to end it. The author, who studied underrepresented board members for his PhD and who interacts with hundreds of aspiring and existing board directors in his role at an executive search firm, has found that attributes of moxie — strength of will, self-discipline, and the ability to persist despite challenges — were vital to underrepresented directors’ success. He recommends four tactics to help make moxie your own super power.
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S3How to Keep Working When You're Just Not Feeling It  Motivating yourself is one of the main things that sets high achievers apart, and it’s hard. How do you keep pushing onward when your heart isn’t in it? In her research, Fishbach has identified some simple tactics: Set goals that are intrinsically rewarding, and make them very specific. If a task isn’t satisfying, focus on aspects of it that are or combine it with pleasant activities. Reward yourself in the right way for getting things done. To avoid slumps, break objectives into subgoals; look at how much you’ve accomplished until you’re halfway there; and then count down what you have left to do. And use social influence: Let high performers inspire you, boost your get-up-and-go by giving advice, and keep the people you want to succeed for front of mind.
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S4You're Not Powerless in the Face of Imposter Syndrome Research shows that high achievers from underrepresented backgrounds often find themselves confronting imposter syndrome or feeling they don’t fit in, are not welcome, or don’t belong. But understanding imposter syndrome does little to end it. The author, who studied underrepresented board members for his PhD and who interacts with hundreds of aspiring and existing board directors in his role at an executive search firm, has found that attributes of moxie — strength of will, self-discipline, and the ability to persist despite challenges — were vital to underrepresented directors’ success. He recommends four tactics to help make moxie your own super power.
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S5Turn Your Boss Into a Sponsor  I asked this question while leading a workshop for about 80 professionals, ranging from early-career individuals to mid-level managers. To my surprise, only one hand went up. The rest, turns out, had never had a sponsor before. Many, including some senior leaders, were not even familiar with the concept.
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S6No, SCOTUS Did Not Make Your Company's DEI Programs Illegal  The most effective approach to DEI is also the best for controlling legal risk: Focus your DEI program on interrupting the bias that’s constantly transmitted through basic business systems. This is how most corporate DEI programs, which typically focus on trainings and tweaks to organizational systems to level the playing field, already work.
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S7Leading a Workforce Empowered by New AI Tools  New AI technology enables anyone to become a programmer — opening doors to faster analytics and automation but also presenting big challenges. Organizations need policies and strategies to manage the chaos created by what Tom Davenport calls “citizen developers.” Davenport is a professor of management and information technology at Babson College, and he’s been studying how employees are using new AI tools and how companies can both encourage and benefit from this work. He suggests practical ways for team and organizational leaders and IT departments to best oversee these efforts. Davenport is coauthor of the HBR article “We’re All Programmers Now” and the book All-in On AI: How Smart Companies Win Big with Artificial Intelligence.
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S8Arrange Your Meeting Schedule to Boost Your Energy  Most meeting advice focuses on how to make meetings more effective or how to cut down on the number of meetings you have altogether. But what about how to schedule your meetings alongside other work tasks to best manage your productivity? New research explores this question and finds that many people commit two key errors in organizing their schedules: stacking too many meetings together on the same day or pairing intense meetings with other intense tasks. Both strategies can actually diminish your ability to recharge and replenish during the day, which can be a detriment to your work. Instead, this article offers new tips for how to balance work and meetings and suggests questions you can ask yourself when planning your day.
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S9As Social Networks Get More Competitive, Which Ones Will Survive?  TikTok’s business model had focused on advertising as the principle source of revenue and by 2023, the app had become irresistible to many marketers. Meanwhile, competition in the market for short-form videos had intensified when Instagram introduced Reels and YouTube launched Shorts – innovations that imitated TikTok’s approach. In addition, YouTube had focused on using its larger scale and generous ad revenue sharing to attract creators.
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S10Do antibiotics really wipe out your gut bacteria?  Our bodies host trillions of bacteria that we can't live without – with the highest density in our guts. But are we permanently damaging this crucial part of our body every time we take antibiotics?"The gut microbiome is a complex network of microbiotic lifeforms and all the things they need to sustain themselves in the niche of the body," says James Kinross, a consultant colorectal surgeon at Imperial College London.
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S11Why young children don't understand 'pranks'  A small boy in a dinosaur shirt stands at a countertop in front of an empty bowl, looking expectant. Next to him, a woman – apparently his caregiver – holds an egg. As he watches, she goes to crack it – and smacks it on his forehead, not the bowl. "Ow!" he says, rubbing his head. "That hurt!"Cracking an egg on a child's head is one of the latest trends to go viral on social media. As of 25 August, the #eggcrackchallenge tag had accumulated nearly 70 million views on Tiktok. Most of the children in the videos appear to be young, often preschool- or toddler-aged. And while they all have their own unique reactions to getting an egg unexpectedly cracked on their head – whether saying it hurt, looking surprised, bursting into tears, or even pushing or hitting their parent – there is a common theme. Most do not seem to find it funny… even if their parents are guffawing in laughter.
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S12A former fish farmer's startup is flourishing during a tech downturn  Gibran Huzaifah is the co-founder of eFishery, Indonesia’s first aquaculture startup and its newest unicorn. The company provides digital tools for fish farm management to 70,000 farmers across 280 cities in Indonesia, and has bigger plans for building an aquaculture ecosystem. In early July, they announced $200 million in series D funding led by 42XFund, the Abu Dhabi-based global fund manager. At first, I never wanted to build a technology startup. I was a fish farmer. So I did not study the market opportunity, benchmarking the industry, etc. It was just not my direction. I had a fish pond and I wanted to make it bigger.
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S13Xiaomi tries to win back Indian consumers  After five years as the leader in the Indian smartphone market, Xiaomi dropped to third place during last year’s final quarter, behind rivals Samsung and Vivo. The first two quarters of 2023 were even worse — Xiaomi fell to the fourth and third position, respectively, in total smartphones shipped. Now, the Chinese manufacturer is changing its strategy to make its way back up.Xiaomi plans to reduce its smartphone launches and focus more on offline retail, the company’s India head, Muralikrishnan B, said at a news conference in July. “Our market position in offline is substantially lower than what it is online,” he told Reuters. “Offline is where you have other competitors who have been executing fairly well and have a larger market share.”
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S14Follow 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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S15New Air-Conditioning Technology Could Be the Future of Cool  Standard AC units cool buildings but contribute to global warming. New technology aims to change thatThis past July was the hottest recorded month in human history. Heat waves smashed temperature records worldwide and even brought summer temperatures to Chile and Argentina during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter. It’s more than just a matter of sweaty discomfort. Severe heat is the deadliest of all weather events; in the U.S. alone, it kills more people each year than floods, tornadoes and hurricanes combined. As climate change worsens, access to artificially cooled spaces is rapidly becoming a health necessity—and an issue of basic human rights.
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S16Will the Universe Ever Stop Expanding?  Scientists debate what the future of the cosmos looks like and whether space will ever stop getting bigger and biggerFrom Earth, the night sky looks fairly static. Sure, the stars rotate from evening to evening, and the planets move among them. But from a terrestrial perspective, the celestial sphere appears essentially unchanging.
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S17Why Delays in Delivering Justice Lead to Harsher Sentencing  People want swift punishment and will even penalize perpetrators for delays outside their controlTime is supposed to heal all wounds and to help people forgive and let go of past transgressions. But what if that’s not always the case? What if, instead of leading to forgiveness, the passage of more time before a crime is punished leads judges to levy more severe penalties?
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S18Hurricane Idalia Is Turning into a Monster Storm because of Heat in Gulf of Mexico  Abundant warm ocean waters are set to cause Hurricane Idalia to rapidly intensify into a major hurricane before striking the Gulf Coast of Florida and bringing significant impactsThe ingredients are coming together for Florida to once again be hit by major hurricane less than a year after Hurricane Ian caused widespread damage across the state. Hurricane Idalia is moving into the Gulf of Mexico, where widespread ocean warmth is expected to cause it to rapidly intensify into a major hurricane (defined as a Category 3 or higher storm) before slamming into the state’s Gulf Coast. Idalia is predicted to bring a substantial storm surge, winds and flood-inducing rains to Florida and other parts of the Southeast.
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S19Endangered California Condors Get Bird Flu Vaccine  After avian influenza killed 21 endangered California Condors, government officials are testing a vaccine that could protect the massive scavengers from infectionThe threat of avian influenza became real for Ashleigh Blackford in March. Three years after the world took drastic steps to slow the spread of a different respiratory virus, she found herself living a twisted version of that experience—this time with the nearly 600 iconic birds she oversees as California Condor coordinator at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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S20Pension Schemes Are Eroding. What's the Solution?  In an excerpt from his book ‘The Perennials,’ Mauro Guillén examines the retirement pension crisis and what stands in the way of reform.Programs like subsidized child care, unemployment insurance, and public pension schemes exist to help those in need. But when money is tight, who gets priority? In The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society, Wharton professor Mauro Guillén examines the issues plaguing different generations and how solutions for one generation may create problems for another. The following excerpt from his book zeroes in on retirement pension cuts and reform, challenging leaders to rethink disruptive strategies and plan for a more equitable future.
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S21Why Stock Valuation Hinges More on Returns Than Future Earnings  Growth stocks don’t generate the long-term returns that would justify their high multiples, according to the 2023 Jacobs Levy Center’s “Best Paper,” co-authored by Wharton’s Sean Myers.In the long run, returns on investment drive the price-earnings ratios that determine the stock valuations of firms far more than profitability does, according to a new research paper by experts at Wharton and elsewhere, titled “The Return of Return Dominance: Decomposing the Cross-section of Prices.” That finding has added a new dimension to the popular belief that price-earnings ratios are more strongly related to future profitability than they are to future returns. The paper won the 2023 Best Paper prize from Wharton’s Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research and will be recognized at the Frontiers in Quantitative Finance Conference in September.
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S22Morten Bo Christiansen: The first-ever cargo ship powered by green fuel  The shipping industry is vital to the global economy, but it's also a huge contributor to the climate crisis. Morten Bo Christiansen, a leader of the energy transition for the global shipping company A.P. Moller – Maersk, talks to TED's Lindsay Levin about the launch of the first-ever cargo ship powered by green methanol, the industry's urgent need to shift away from fossil fuels -- and what it could all mean for people's pockets.
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S23Why rivals are working together to transform shipping  What would it take to make global supply chains cleaner and greener? Bo Cerup-Simonsen -- who's helping decarbonize the maritime industry as CEO of the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping -- discusses why tenacious collaboration is key to orchestrating systemic change. In conversation with TED's Lindsay Levin, he shares important lessons on collective problem-solving and decision-making that could benefit any industry making a green transition.
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S24This Countertop Gadget Keeps Your Sourdough Starter in the 'Goldilocks' Zone  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 WIREDI love making bread, but I never had that sourdough-fanatic phase that many people went through and many spouses tolerated, sometimes happily. Yet Maurizio Leo's fantastic 2022 cookbook, The Perfect Loaf, opened my mind a bit, and a gadget at my favorite trade show got me to break down and make some starter.
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S25It Costs Just $400 to Build an AI Disinformation Machine  In May, Sputnik International, a state-owned Russian media outlet, posted a series of tweets lambasting US foreign policy and attacking the Biden administration. Each prompted a curt but well-crafted rebuttal from an account called CounterCloud, sometimes including a link to a relevant news or opinion article. It generated similar responses to tweets by the Russian embassy and Chinese news outlets criticizing the US.Russian criticism of the US is far from unusual, but CounterCloud’s material pushing back was: The tweets, the articles, and even the journalists and news sites were crafted entirely by artificial intelligence algorithms, according to the person behind the project, who goes by the name Nea Paw and says it is designed to highlight the danger of mass-produced AI disinformation. Paw did not post the CounterCloud tweets and articles publicly but provided them to WIRED and also produced a video outlining the project.
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S26Our Favorite Gear for Everyday Sun Protection  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 WIREDThe sun is shining and it's back for revenge, but we're ready. We've got sunblock, SPF lip balm, and we've got everyday clothes that will not only keep you cool but protect you from the sun's harmful rays. Each of our picks is SPF or UPF rated to provide protection from skin-damaging UVA and UVB radiation. Keep in mind, though, the best defense against sunburn is a multilayered approach, so be sure to wear sunscreen and cover up. Now get out there and take the fight back to the sun!
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S27The Weird, Big-Money World of Cybercrime Writing Contests  Cybercriminals can be inventive—especially if there’s money on the table. One hacker has penned a 50-page essay on how to invest in cryptocurrency and sell at the right time to make a profit. Another put together a guide for how to create a fake version of blockchain.com that could be used to steal people’s usernames and passwords. And another produced instructions—cryptically titled “Elegantly breed daddies on lavender”—explaining how to scam money from people who pay to watch webcam models perform.The unusual collection of documents and tutorials were all produced by cybercriminals and hackers trying to win money for their ideas, technical skills, and writing ability. Once they finish their articles, they submit them to be judged in competitions on Russian-language cybercrime forums. These contests, which can pay out thousands of dollars, are one of the forums’ more peculiar aspects.
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S28Mission to Neptune Is the MoonSwatch for a Super Blue Moon  When it launched in 2022, there was just one problem for the MoonSwatch—well, aside from the near-riots at Swatch shops around the world, the supply shortages that saw $260 MoonSwatches being flipped for prices into the thousands, mixed messaging around online availability, and a faking industry that swung into action at lightning pace.For Swatch and its bioplastic take on Omega’s famed Speedmaster Moonwatch, all that was grist to a hype phenomenon that has delivered admirably for Swatch Group, owner of both brands. Millions have been sold, and the company said that the MoonSwatch has had a significant impact on an operating profit that rose 36.4 percent for the first half of this year, with the strongest growth in its lowest priced segment.
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S29The 21 Best Movies on Hulu This Week  In 2017, Hulu made television history by becoming the first streaming network to win the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy, thanks to the phenomenon that is The Handmaid’s Tale. While that painfully prescient adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel remains one of the best TV shows to watch on Hulu, it also set a bar for quality entertainment that the network has continued to match—and sometimes exceed—with original series like The Bear, The Great, and Only Murders in the Building. While Netflix has largely cornered the streaming market on original movies, and even managed to convince A-listers like Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Martin Scorsese to come aboard, Hulu is starting to find its footing in features too. Below are some of our top picks for the best movies (original and otherwise) streaming on Hulu right now.
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S30Hurricane Idalia Is About to Slam Florida With a Wall of Water  Early Tuesday morning, Tropical Storm Idalia strengthened into Hurricane Idalia, charting a course for Florida’s west coast and panhandle. Its maximum sustained winds have already reached nearly 100 miles per hour, and it’s expected to keep feeding on exceptionally warm ocean waters and intensifying before making landfall early Wednesday. It will pound Florida—including heavily populated Tampa Bay—with a trifecta of compounding hazards: high winds, pouring rains, and a huge storm surge, which could reach up to 15 feet. The National Hurricane Center expects that “life-threatening” surge to bring “catastrophic impacts.”
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S31Never tell a scientist it's "just a theory"  Whenever someone tells you that they “have a theory,” you’re probably a mix of curious and skeptical, and with good reason. Most often, you’re going to hear a wild tale that’s a mix of true and dubious facts, possible but suspicious links between them, guesses that range from informed hypotheses to extravagant speculations, and an important caveat at the end: that they have no proof of this, as it’s “only a theory.” In common, informal use, the word theory is tossed around as casually as words like:among others. In other words, when someone shares their pet theory with you in this regard, you might humor them by considering it, but you’d be well within the bounds of reasons to dismiss their “theory” without putting too much weight behind it.
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S32The moral mystery of serial killers with no evident mental illness or trauma  Earlier this month, the face of serial killer Lucy Letby appeared on the front pages of almost all of the UK’s newspapers. Letby is a former nurse who was found guilty of murdering seven babies under her care. She has no known history of abuse, no known underlying mental health conditions, and no known association with extremist groups. By all accounts, she was raised in a normal household in a rich country that afforded her a comfortable middle-class upbringing. And yet she murdered babies. It’s commonly supposed that people are not born wicked — that our moral propensity for good and evil stems from our upbringing and environment. So how are we to reconcile the existence of evil people who were raised in a caring, nurturing environment? Although the debate over “nature vs. nurture” is far too complex an area to answer here (if we even can answer it), a look at history’s philosophers and sages might shed some light on the issue and teach us where our own intuitions lie.
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S33A surprising explanation for the global decline of religion  Religion has been retreating across the world since the beginning of the 21st century. According to results from the World Value Survey, conducted between 2007 and 2019, the importance of God declined on average in 39 of the 44 countries analyzed. Moreover, the percentage of people identifying as nonreligious has risen by more than 10% in nations like Singapore, Iceland, Chile, and South Korea over the past decade.The decline of religion is most striking in the United States. Between 1940 and 2000, church membership hovered around 70%, according to Gallup. But as the new millennium got underway, it fell off a cliff. By 2020, church membership had cratered to 47%. Between 2007 and 2020, the proportion of Americans not affiliated with any religion grew from 16% to 30%.
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S346 brilliant authors who only wrote one novel  Some authors are known for their prolific output. Far more romantic, however, is the image of the suffering author who dedicated their time to a single masterpiece. Here, we look at six authors who wrote only a single book in their lifetimes. (For our purposes, a “book” means a full-length novel. Some of these authors are well-known for their other writings, which tend to be shorter.)Boris Pasternak was a Russian poet, author, and translator whose translations of Shakespeare are both highly controversial and still adored by many Russian readers and theatergoers. But his best-known work is his only novel: Dr. Zhivago, the mammoth epic of Russian history.
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S35The 1957 pandemic your grandparents forgot about  The symptoms came on without warning. “We had dipped out of the dissecting room at St Thomas’s for a mid-morning break and strolled along the Embankment to Lambeth Bridge,” wrote microbiologist T. H. Pennington of a particular day in medical school. “Going there I felt fine. Coming back was terrible because of fever and aching limbs.” Ed Susman, a newspaper delivery boy in upstate New York, was hit even more suddenly: “I distinctly recall feeling very warm in one of the tenement houses where I had a number of customers. I walked out on the back porch, and I literally felt as if I had been hit by a moving wall. My knees buckled and I fell back against the wall of the building. I truly do not remember how I finished the route.”
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S36Oppo's Find N3 Flip fashion phone is ready for its close-up  Oppo's newest flip phone is the Oppo Find N3 Flip, a 6,799 yuan (~$932) foldable debuting in China but heading to the rest of the world soon. The Find N3 Flip will be taking on the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Motorola Razr, and while both of those phones have tried to power up with a big front screen, the N3 Flip's front display is basically the same size as last year. Oppo is making up for that with a pretty big spec sheet, though.
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S37S38We now know who killed the "Lady of the Dunes"  Last year, after nearly 50 years, the FBI finally identified the murdered woman known as the "Lady of the Dunes," found in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1974: Ruth Marie Terry. And now the Massachusetts State Police have officially closed the case after identifying her killer: Terry's husband, Guy Rockwell Muldavin, who died in Salinas, California, in 2002.
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S39S40Age of Empires and live ants used to test theoretical ideas on combat  Anyone who has played a real-time strategy game probably ponders this question when preparing for a fight: Is it better to have a huge number of relatively weak units or a smaller number of extremely powerful ones? But the question predates computer games and virtual war machines. Theoreticians started tackling the problem in response to the real-world carnage of World War I, where it was posed as a question of army size versus fighting strength.
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S41S42iFixit tears down a McDonald's ice cream machine, demands DMCA exemption for it  McDonald’s soft-serve ice cream machines are regularly broken, and it’s not just your perception. When repair vendor and advocate iFixit was filming a video about the topic, it checked tracking map McBroken and found that 34 percent of the machines in the state of New York were reported inoperable. As I write this, the nationwide number of broken machines is just above 14 percent.
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S43Google's $30-per-month "Duet" AI will craft awkward emails, images for you  On Tuesday, Google announced the launch of its Duet AI assistant across its Workspace apps, including Docs, Gmail, Drive, Slides, and more. First announced in May at Google I/O, Duet has been in testing for some time, but it is now available to paid Google Workspace business users (what Google calls its suite of cloud productivity apps) for $30 a month in addition to regular Workspace fees.
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S44S45S46It's a Weird Time for Driverless Cars  The robotaxi is recording me sitting in the backseat, and I am recording it. Someone in the neighboring car is recording us both.It’s an unusually hot day in San Francisco, and I am in a self-driving car named Charcuterie, operated by Cruise. Next to me is William Riggs, a professor at the University of San Francisco who studies self-driving cars. The front seats are both empty, and the wheel silently shifts as the car maneuvers itself along a thoroughfare next to Golden Gate Park.
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S47The Fourteenth Amendment Fantasy  The Constitution won’t disqualify Trump from running. The only real-world way of stopping him is through the ballot box.Eminent jurists are promising that it will. They argue that language in the Fourteenth Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, should debar the coup-plotting ex-president from appearing on a ballot for any office ever again. Their learning is undisputed. Their conclusions are another story. The project to disqualify Trump from running for president is misguided and dangerous. It won’t work. If it somehow could work, it would create problems worse even than Americans already face. In an ideal world, Trump’s fellow Republicans would handle this matter by repudiating his crimes and rejecting his candidacy for their presidential nomination. Failing that—and it certainly seems as if that hope is failing—opponents of Trump must dig deep and beat him at the polls one more time. There is no cheat code to win this game.
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S48How Bad Could BA.2.86 Get?  Until the future of the new COVID variant becomes clear, three scenarios are still possible.Since Omicron swept across the globe in 2021, the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 has moved at a slower and more predictable pace. New variants of interest have come and gone, but none have matched Omicron’s 30-odd mutations or its ferocious growth. Then, about two weeks ago, a variant descended from BA.2 popped up with 34 mutations in its spike protein—a leap in viral evolution that sure looked a lot like Omicron. The question became: Could it also spread as quickly and as widely as Omicron?
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S49Hypodermics on the Shore  The “syringe tides”—waves of used hypodermic needles, washing up on land—terrified beachgoers of the late 1980s. Their disturbing lesson was ignored.The first tide of syringes washed ashore on Thursday, August 13, 1987. Hundreds of unmarked hypodermic needles spilled out of the surf that afternoon, accompanied by vials and prescription bottles, along a 50-mile stretch of New Jersey beaches during peak tourist season. By the next morning, New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, an environmentalist Republican with national ambitions, was aloft in a helicopter surveying the floating slick of medical waste and other garbage that now stretched from Manasquan to Atlantic City. Disembarking onto Island Beach State Park for a press conference, Kean vowed in front of a huddle of news cameras that New Jersey would join legal action to “sue in federal court to have the guilty party pay every penny of damage that this tide of garbage has caused.”
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S50Reader Questions for the GOP Candidates  Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week I asked readers, “If you could pose one earnest question to any of the Republican candidates, what would it be?”
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S51A Robotaxi Experiment  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.Driverless taxis have arrived on the streets of San Francisco. The self-driving car companies Cruise and Waymo got the green light to expand their robotaxi fleets in the city earlier this month. The cars’ arrival was met with creative protests, curiosity, and long waitlists to take a ride. I spoke with Caroline Mimbs Nyce, an Atlantic writer covering technology, about her trip to San Francisco to give the robotaxis a try.
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S52The Pumpkin Spice Latte Turns 20 /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/9e/7c/9e7c6e5a-1dd1-4065-abc2-cc770de42d5d/starbucks-psl.jpg) Heat waves may have swept across the country last week, but for Starbucks, fall has officially arrived. On August 24, the coffee chain began offering its lineup of seasonal drinks—fronted, of course, by the pumpkin spice latte, which turns 20 this year.Since 2003, the drink, sometimes known as a PSL, has become an autumnal harbinger for Starbucks customers and a major moneymaker for the company. It’s Starbucks’ most successful seasonal drink, and hundreds of millions have been sold since its launch, reports Dee-Ann Durbin of the Associated Press (AP).
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S53Turtle Shells Keep a Record of Humans' Nuclear History /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/77/c1/77c1152e-6c1e-4fda-8dbf-4461901d45d4/gettyimages-520573018_1.jpg) Scientists can measure uranium isotopes in tortoise and turtle shells to understand the environmental impact of past nuclear events, a new study reportsNuclear explosions can have far-reaching consequences on the environment and people surrounding a detonation site. After a nuclear weapon test, for example, particles and gases from an explosion called nuclear fallout contaminate the environment and leave lingering radionuclides—atoms with unstable nuclei.
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S54Drought in Texas Reveals World War I Shipwreck /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/7b/30/7b30a16c-d094-4ae6-948e-8c965bc0e8bf/368609543_1049779286366552_8420248415186665126_n4.jpg) Plagued by scorching temperatures and drought, the Neches River in southeast Texas has revealed the remains of a World War I shipwreck.The man who stumbled upon it, Bill Milner, was jet skiing on the river when he ran into something. He looked down and saw the remains of what appeared to be a large wooden boat. Milner took 250 photos and videos, then got in touch with the experts at the Ice House Museum in Silsbee, Texas.
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S55Doctors Pulled a Wriggling, Three-Inch Worm From a Woman's Brain /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/1e/27/1e2726be-ed90-45f5-959d-212ef00d6c3d/screen_shot_2023-08-29_at_105948_am.png) The incident in Australia is the first known occurrence of the roundwormâtypically found in snakesâinfecting the brain of a mammalDoctors pulled a live, three-inch worm from a 64-year-old Australian woman's brain last year, marking the first time the species has been found inside the brain of any mammal. The roundworm, Ophidascaris robertsi, normally infects snakes, so the discovery was quite a shock to the neurosurgeon who pulled the wriggling creature from the patient's head.
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S56The Harlem Renaissance Is Coming to the Met /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/e3/dc/e3dcf307-f333-43fc-a104-2b1a139e31e4/archibald_j_motley_jr_black_belt.jpg) A new exhibition will be the first survey of the cultural movement in New York City since 1987Begining in the early 20th century, artists of the Harlem Renaissance produced groundbreaking works that celebrated Black culture and captured everyday life. Soon, more than 150 of those pieces will go on display at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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S57Farmers Are Breeding Cows to Withstand Heat Waves /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/34/16/34160e49-f14c-4a2d-85eb-0354927f26bb/d1192-1.jpg) A gene that occurs naturally in some cow breeds may be the key to helping cattle thrive as temperatures rise because of climate changeFarmers across the world are breeding cows with a mutation that gives them a higher heat tolerance—an advantage that could prove crucial as climate change leads to rising global temperatures. The mutation, called the “slick gene,” is associated with shorter coats and more active sweat glands.
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S58In a Monster Star's Light, a Hint of Darkness | Quanta Magazine  Dark cosmic lenses reveal themselves by warping and magnifying faraway starlight. Scientists hope these lenses will be the key to unlocking the nature of dark matter.Last October, as the James Webb Space Telescope beamed down its first long exposures of the sky near the constellation Eridanus, astronomers began to piece together the story of a dim, flickering point of light that seemed to emerge from the deepest recesses of the universe.
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S59Excellent Advice for Living: Kevin Kelly's Life-Tested Wisdom He Wished He Knew Earlier  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.“No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,” Nietzsche wrote as he reckoned with what it takes to find yourself. And yet where would the world be if each generation didn’t plank its crossing with the life-tested wisdom of its elders? Often, that wisdom comes so simply worded as to appear trite — but it is the simplicity of a children’s book, or of a Zen parable: unvarnished elemental truth about what it means to be alive, hard-won and generously offered. That is precisely what Kevin Kelly gathers in Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier (public library) — an herbarium of learnings that began as a list he composed on his 68th birthday for his own young-adult children, a list to which he kept adding with each lived year.
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S60 Protecting Society From AI Harms: Amnesty International's Matt Mahmoudi and Damini Satija (Part 1)  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.Amnesty International brings together more than 10 million staff members and volunteers worldwide to advocate for social justice. Damini Satija and Matt Mahmoudi work with Amnesty Tech, a division of the human rights organization that focuses on the role of government, Big Tech, and technologies like artificial intelligence in areas like surveillance, discrimination, and bias.
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S61Butter-poached scallops with coconut sauce  In Jamaica, "run down" – or rondón, run dun or rundung as it's also known – is a meltingly tender seafood stew or sauce made by cooking down coconut milk with spices and fish like salt cod or mackerel. It's traditionally served with Jamaican staples like yams, bananas and plantains. The dish is called run down because the fish is cooked down until it essentially falls apart. It's comfort food that chef Andrew Black grew up eating in his hometown of Barracks River, St Mary in Jamaica.Today, run down forms the foundation for a stunning dish of scallops in coconut sauce that is featured on the tasting menu at Black's Grey Sweater restaurant in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This is a city long overlooked as a dining destination, but this perception is changing thanks to chefs like Black, who was awarded Best Chef: Southwest from the James Beard Foundation this past June.
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S62India's beloved mosur dal  The everyday dish of simmered lentils known as dal is more than just food to most Indians; it is comfort, it is nourishment and very often, it is the taste of home."For me, dal is comfort food and I have it every day. When I am tired, or when I'm having a bad day, dal with rice uplifts my mood in a way that nothing else can, not even coffee or chocolate," said cookbook author Archana Pidathala.
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S6310 churches around the world given amazing new life  In a 19th-Century church built for the British Navy on an island in the Thames Estuary, one cantilevered staircase has been rebuilt, and the other has been conserved as a ruin. For the project's architect Hugh Broughton, this acts as a metaphor for his thinking behind a new use for this church.Completed in 1828, the grade II* listed Sheerness Dockyard Church had languished as a ruin since it was ravaged by fire in 2001. It now has a new lease of life as a workspace hub for young entrepreneurs on the Isle of Sheppey, one of the most deprived parts of Kent in the south of England.
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S64S65International ransomware gangs are evolving their techniques. The next generation of hackers will target weaknesses in cryptocurrencies  In May 2023, the Dallas City Government was hugely disrupted by a ransomware attack. Ransomware attacks are so-called because the hackers behind them encrypt vital data and demand a ransom in order to get the information decrypted. The attack in Dallas put a halt to hearings, trials and jury duty, and the eventual closure of the Dallas Municipal Court Building. It also had an indirect effect on wider police activities, with stretched resources affecting the ability to deliver, for example, summer youth programmes. The criminals threatened to publish sensitive data, including personal information, court cases, prisoner identities and government documents.
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S66S67Medication can help you make the most of therapy - a psychologist and neuroscientist explains how  There is mounting recognition in the scientific community that combining different treatment approaches for mental health conditions can create a benefit greater than the sum of its parts.Anxiety and depression are the most prevalent mental health conditions around the world. Globally, about 280 million people experience depression, and as many as 1 in 3 will meet the diagnostic criteria for an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. There are numerous effective treatment options for both conditions, including medications, psychotherapy, lifestyle changes and neurostimulation.
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S68FDA's greenlighting of maternal RSV vaccine represents a major step forward in protecting young babies against the virus  With the Food and Drug Administration’s Aug. 21, 2023, approval of the first vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, for use during late pregnancy, the U.S. will soon have a major new tool at its disposal to protect infants against the highly contagious virus. RSV is the most common cause of lower respiratory infections in young children and can be especially severe for infants under 6 months of age. It is the leading cause of infant hospitalization in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year, RSV is associated with half a million emergency room visits, nearly 100,000 hospitalizations and 300 deaths in young U.S. children.
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S70Judicial orders restricting Trump's speech seek to balance his own constitutional rights  In each of former President Donald Trump’s four indictments, he has been allowed to stay out of jail before his trial so long as he abides by certain conditions commonly applied to most people accused of crimes in the U.S.In the New York state case regarding alleged falsification of business records, Trump has been ordered “not [to] communicate about facts of the case with any individual known to be a witness, except with counsel or the presence of counsel.” In the federal case in Florida, about his handling of classified documents, he is under a similar order. In the federal case in Washington, D.C., he is under a protective order with the same types of restrictions, barring him from speaking to people involved in the case except through or with his lawyers.
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