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 S69You Need to Watch the Most Deranged Sci-Fi Thriller on Hulu ASAP   Few contemporary filmmakers have had as much of an impact on the horror genre as James Wan. His 2004 breakout hit, Saw, not only spawned an entire, still-ongoing franchise but also briefly popularized a torture-centric form of horror filmmaking. Less than a decade later, he directed the first installments of what are now major franchises in Insidious and The Conjuring, both of which cemented his place as one of the most capable horror directors and stylists working today.While Wan has spent the past few years focusing more on action franchises like the DCEU and Fast and Furious, too, he did find time in 2021 to direct his wildest horror movie to date. The film in question, Malignant, hails from Wan and M3GAN screenwriter Akela Cooper, and it’s every bit as outrageous, horrifying, and fun as that creative pairing suggests. It is, perhaps, the most straightforward homage to Evil Dead director Sam Raimi that Wan has ever made — and it’s worth seeking out solely for its sheer, unabashed creative spirit.
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S1The Hard Side of Change Management  Everyone agrees that managing change is tough, but few can agree on how to do it. Most experts are obsessed with “soft” issues, such as culture and motivation, but, say the authors, focusing on these issues alone won’t bring about change. Companies also need to consider the hard factors—like the time it takes to complete a change initiative, the number of people required to execute it, and so forth.
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S2What Makes a Leader?  When asked to define the ideal leader, many would emphasize traits such as intelligence, toughness, determination, and vision—the qualities traditionally associated with leadership. Such skills and smarts are necessary but insufficient qualities for the leader. Often left off the list are softer, more personal qualities—but they are also essential. Although a certain degree of analytical and technical skill is a minimum requirement for success, studies indicate that emotional intelligence may be the key attribute that distinguishes outstanding performers from those who are merely adequate.
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S3Chap shuro: Pakistan's iconic, 'healthy pizza'  "You can use any meat you have for the filling," explained chef Lal Shahzadi as she deftly pinched two slightly speckled rotis together. Her hands worked with graceful precision, almost on autopilot, sandwiching fragrant minced-meat within fluted folds of dough. "You know, like yak."Casting a glance at me standing with my mouth agape and eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets at the thought of eating a shaggy mountain ox, she broke out in an impish grin. "Or chicken."
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S4Poor Things review: Emma Stone is 'perfectly cast' in this truly bizarre female Frankenstein story  Yorgos Lanthimos is the director of Dogtooth, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Favourite, so it's fair to say that he has made some weird films in his time. It's also fair to say that he has out-weirded himself with Poor Things, an extravagantly bizarre curio that sews together a Victorian mad-scientist chiller and a bawdy comic romp, with some slices of fairy tale around the edges.More like this: - Oppenheimer is 'a flat-out masterpiece' - Is Tom Cruise the last action hero? - The film that captured actors' AI fears
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S6Africa's vast underground water resources are under pressure from climate change - how to manage them  All countries have a variety of water resources – some are on the surface, like rivers, and some are beneath the ground. This groundwater provides almost 50% of all global domestic use and 43% of all the water used for agriculture.Groundwater is stored in aquifers, which come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They can be accessed in several ways, but mostly by drilling wells. Not all groundwater is useful to us – it depends on whether it’s fresh or mixed with salt and on how deep it is, as this will affect how easy it is to tap into.
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S7Lagos, Glimpsed from Seven Vantages  Traffic can be a nuisance on the streets of any city. In Lagos, it organizes daily life—for schoolchildren, for office employees, and for the scores of informal workers who sell beverages and snacks to commuters who traverse the megacity in danfos, or public buses. “The energies of Lagos life—creative, malevolent, ambiguous—converge at the bus stops,” the novelist and photographer Teju Cole writes in his hybrid travelogue of Lagos, “Every Day Is for the Thief.”Look through the eyes of the photographer Logo Oluwamuyiwa, however, and a fleet of danfos morphs into a phalanx of intersecting geometric planes, transforming the everyday experience of traffic into a striking modernist composition. Citing inspiration from the American mid-century street photographers Garry Winogrand and Robert Frank, Oluwamuyiwa has, since 2013, been recording the happenings of his home city and its inhabitants in the ongoing series “Monochrome Lagos,” a resplendent archive of stark black-and-white images that slow down the thrum of urban life.
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S8The Cryptic Crossword: Sunday, September 3, 2023  By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.© 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices
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S9Astronomers Are Watching a Black Hole Shred a Star to Pieces  When a black hole consumes a star, things can get quite messy. Take, for example, the event known as ASASSN-14li, where a massive star strayed too close to a supermassive black hole and paid the ultimate price.There are two main dangers posed by a black hole. The first is that they possess an event horizon. Mass curves, space, and black holes contain so much mass in such a small space that spacetime folds into itself, creating a cosmic trap. Anything that crosses the event horizon is lost forever. The second is the threat of tidal forces.
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S10You Need to Watch the Most Relevant Apocalyptic Dystopia on Amazon Prime ASAP  It’s tricky to get the tone of a dystopia just right. Done well, they can be searing insights into contemporary inhumanity, but make them too blunt and the lesson becomes ham-handed. A simple premise is usually the most effective; there’s a reason Nineteen Eighty-Four’s story of an authoritarian government is iconic, but a dozen overly-complicated YA dystopias have faded into the history books. “Look how awful humans are once the human experience is completely rewritten to be fundamentally miserable” isn’t much of an observation.Children of Men’s premise — that humanity has lost the ability to reproduce — is simple, but also inherently ridiculous. It’s not new, either. Frank Herbert dabbled with it, and The Handmaid’s Tale is going to take it to a sixth season of television. Yes, the slow extinction of our species would be a bit of a downer, thanks for pointing that out. But Children of Men works because of its execution, which is both unflinchingly bleak and audaciously optimistic.
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S112023's Weirdest Sci-Fi Thriller is an Absurdist Masterpiece  With his tantalizingly twisted Frankenstein riff, Yorgos Lanthimos has made his best and weirdest movie to date.This line, spoken in Poor Things, is actually at odds with the movie’s message, and more in line with what we’d typically expect from Yorgos Lanthimos as a chronicler of life’s cold, oddball characters. His new film, screened in competition at the Venice Film Festival, is surprisingly moving… as well as deliciously foul-mouthed. Slicked with sexy abandon, Poor Things takes Alasdair Gray’s “unfilmable novel” from 1992 and surgically transforms it into a mordantly funny fairytale about female agency and bodily autonomy. Flamboyant, florid, fantastic, and freakish, this might well be one of the most unique movies you’ll ever see.
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S1210 Indispensable Skill to Unlock ASAP in 'Starfield'  Starfield has an elaborate progression system, more in-depth than anything Bethesda has done before. It’s a massive game, so it’s only fitting that your skill system equals that. With 82 different skills to choose from, all of which have four tiers to unlock, it can be hard to know what to focus on first. You likely won’t be able to unlock all of Starfield’s skills on a first playthrough, even if you spend copious amounts of time sidequesting and exploring. Each level grants you one skill point, and each tier of a skill requires one point to unlock. That means you’d need to get to level 328 to unlock everything, if that’s even possible.
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S13Why Is My Cat Awake At Night? A Veterinarian Gives Tips on Nighttime Antics  Cats have strange habits. Among the most bizarre, to us humans at least, is their sleep schedules. They seem to laze around all day just to wake us up at 5 a.m. for some playtime. This begs the question: Are cats nocturnal?Though they seem keen on keeping us busy when we’re asleep, they’re not the creatures of the night we think they are. Understanding the reality of your kitty’s sleep-wake cycle can help you tune in to their schedule — and forgive them for batting your nose before the sun rises.
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S14Here's How to Romance Shadowheart in 'Baldur's Gate 3'  So you’re making your way through Baldur’s Gate 3, thwarting the Illithid empire, righting the wrongs of Faerûn, and protecting the innocent from harm. Now it’s time for the important part: smooching your fellow adventurers.As one of the first companions you recruit, and one who seems the least likely to kill you in your sleep, Shadowheart is a popular companion to romance. But romance can be tricky in video games, and there are often unintended consequences to your choices that might leave you long resting alone permanently. If you’re interested in giving your heart to Shadowheart, here are some tips to spark a connection.
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S15Plastic-Eating Critters and Bacteria Could Solve a Huge Environmental Issue  On an overcast spring morning in 2012, Federica Bertocchini was tending to her honeybees close to where she lived in Santander, on Spain’s picturesque northern coast. One of the honeycombs “was plagued with worms,” says the amateur apiarist, referring to the pesky larvae of wax moths that have a voracious — and destructive — appetite.Bertocchini picked out the worms, placed them in a plastic bag, and carried on with her beekeeping chores. When she retrieved the bag a few hours later, she noticed something strange: It was full of tiny holes.
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S1650 Cool Things Under $35 That Make Your Home Look So Much More Expensive  While you may think that you need to spend big bucks to make your home look and feel more high-end, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Amazon is a true gem for low-cost products that go a long way in upgrading different spaces throughout your residence, from a paintable TV cord cover for a mounted-installation look in the living room to a set of stepping stones that don’t get hot in the sun for your yard. And the best part is that each of these cool home upgrades is under $35 and has been vetted by reviewers, so you can rest assured that they’re worth a buy.Even a $5 bottle of wine will look good (and taste better thanks to aeration) poured from this hand-blown decanter. It’s large enough for an entire bottle of wine and is designed to hold any variety. The decanter is handcrafted from lead-free crystal.
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S17Wild "Robot on a Leash" Concept Could Find Alien Life in Our Solar System  Europa and other ocean worlds in our Solar System have recently attracted much attention. They are thought to be some of the most likely places in our Solar System for life to have developed off Earth, given the presence of liquid water under their ice sheathes and our understanding of liquid water as one of the necessities for the development of life. Various missions are planned for these ocean worlds, but many suffer from numerous design constraints. Requirements to break through kilometers of ice on a world far from the Sun will do that to any mission. These design constraints sometimes make it difficult for the missions to achieve one of their most important functions — the search for life. But a team of engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory think they have a solution — send forth a swarm of swimming microbots to scour the ocean beneath a main “mothership” bot.
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S18Extreme Heat Could Ruin Our Technology, Too  Not only do people need to stay cool, especially in a summer of record-breaking heat waves. Many machines, including cell phones, data centers, cars, and airplanes, become less efficient and degrade more quickly in extreme heat. Machines generate their own heat, too, which can make hot temperatures around them even hotter.We are engineering researchers who study how machines manage heat and ways to effectively recover and reuse heat that is otherwise wasted. There are several ways extreme heat affects machines.
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S1965 Things Under $25 on Amazon That'll Impress the Hell Out of You  The world is full of clever, problem-solving gear that is so cool you will wish you knew about it sooner. Some of it is so slick, in fact, that you will wish you invented it. It’s too late to be the inventor but it’s not too late to save yourself time, effort, and regret by dropping these 65 things under $25 on Amazon that’ll impress the hell out of you into your cart and, thereby, improve your life. Buddy is your new kitchen helper. He will hold your tasting spoon like a good dog. He can handle the heat when you want to let steam out of a pot. Snap him onto the edge of the pan and he holds the lid up with his tail. And like any cute dog, he’s good company in the kitchen.
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S2010 Years Ago, Marvel Learned an Important Lesson -- And Promptly Forgot It  In 2013, a 15-minute short finally put the spotlight on a side character and proved women could carry their own MCU title.The MCU in 2023 looks very different than it did in 2013. In 2023, we’re gearing up for a massive team-up movie following three female heroes joining forces across the galaxy. In 2013, the MCU consisted of a number of huge blockbusters like The Avengers and Iron Man and yet only one female hero — Black Widow, who was unceremoniously introduced in The Avengers and wouldn’t get her own movie for more than half a decade.
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S21Why Do Almost Half of Moon Missions Fail? Here's Why Space Is Still So Risky  Moon missions, in particular, are still a coin flip, and we have seen several high-profile failures in recent years.In 2019, India attempted to land a spacecraft on the Moon — and ended up painting a kilometers-long streak of debris on its barren surface. Now, the Indian Space Research Organisation has returned in triumph, with the Chandrayaan-3 lander successfully touching down near the south pole of Earth’s rocky neighbor.
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S22'Ahsoka' is Failing Its Fan-Favorite Star Wars Hero  Ahsoka is about many things — the potential return of Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen), the shortsightedness of the New Republic, and Sabine Wren’s (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) Jedi training — but is it actually about Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson)? So far, the answer to that question seems, at best, to be “maybe.” Across its first three episodes, the Dave Filoni-created series has introduced so many characters and pieces of lore that it’s unclear exactly how its plot connects back to its eponymous former Jedi.To be clear: The canonical importance of, say, Grand Admiral Thrawn’s return is obvious. The same is true for the potential rescue of Ezra Bridger (Eman Esfandi). However, when it comes to its lead’s own, personal journey, Ahsoka has had little to offer outside of her master-apprentice relationship with Sabine, which hasn’t exactly been set up to succeed.
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S23Taupo: The super volcano under New Zealand's largest lake  Located in the centre of New Zealand's North Island, the town of Taupo sits sublimely in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Tongariro National Park. Fittingly, this 40,000-person lakeside town has recently become one of New Zealand's most popular tourist destinations, as hikers, trout fishers, water sports enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies have started descending upon it.The namesake of this tidy town is the Singapore-sized lake that kisses its western border. Stretching 623sq km wide and 160m deep with several magma chambers submerged at its base, Lake Taupo isn't only Australasia’s largest lake; it's also an incredibly active geothermal hotspot. Every summer, tourists flock to bathe in its bubbling hot springs and sail through its emerald-green waters. Yet, the lake is the crater of a giant super volcano, and within its depths lies the unsettling history of this picturesque marvel.
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S24The Australian town where people live underground  On the long road towards central Australia, as you travel 848km (527 miles) north from Adelaide's coastal plains, is a scattering of enigmatic sand-pyramids. Around them, the landscape is utterly desolate – an endless expanse of salmon-pink dust, with the occasional determined shrub.But as you venture further along the highway, more of these mystery constructions emerge – piles of pale earth, haphazardly scattered like long-forgotten monuments. Every now and then, there is a white pipe sticking up from the ground next to one.
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S25A Beautiful Newfound Fungus Mummifies Its Spider Prey  Deep in eastern Brazil's Atlantic Forest, a team of biologists spotted a fuzzy purple stalk protruding from the leaf litter on the ground. Following the spore-covered body down into the soil, they found a mummified spider swaddled in fungal filaments called hyphae.One of the mycologists, João Araújo, immediately recognized the purple protrusion as a new, undocumented species of predatory fungus belonging to the genus Purpureocillium. Spores from these fungi latch onto and kill their insect or arachnid prey—and then a fruiting body bursts from the corpse to spread more spores.
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S26S27The 48 Best Movies on Netflix This Week  Netflix has plenty of movies to watch, but it’s a real mixed bag. Sometimes finding the right film at the right time can seem like an impossible task. Fret not, we’re here to help. Below is a list of some of our favorites currently on the streaming service—from dramas to comedies to thrillers.If you decide you’re in more of a TV mood, head over to our collection of the best TV series on Netflix. Want more? Check out our lists of the best sci-fi movies, best movies on Amazon Prime, and the best flicks on Disney+.
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S28BMW's Latest Concept Car Gives the Storied Brand a Future-Friendly Face  In 2025, the BMW brand will undergo a transformation that gives it a new face and a new way of doing things. Sustainability will be a core pillar, as will easy-to-use tech and something called "phygital" design. WIRED took a look at the Bavarian firm's Vision Neue Klasse concept, and had a chat with BMW head of design Domagoj Dukec, the man behind BMW's recent, sometimes controversial motifs.BMW's picture of what the future might look like (if you squint) is, at first glance, rather traditional. It's not a big SUV, rather a white-with-a-yellow-tint sedan with an interesting face and no BMW blue badging. Its kidney grille, a BMW hallmark, isn't really a grille either. It's familiar, sure, but ever so slightly offâfor good reason.
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S29The Best Labor Day Deals on Grills, Vacuums, and Mechanical Keyboards  Ah, summer, we miss you and you’re not even over yet. But with Labor Day weekend underway, it means not just the traditional end of summer, but also a rash of end-of-summer sales on furniture, outdoor gear, and most everything else. We’ve rounded up the nicest deals from around the web, from ebikes to weighted blankets. Be sure to check out our Best Labor Day Mattress Sales roundup and REI Labor Day Sale as well. We also have a big list of back-to-school deals with more discounts that are worth your while.Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.
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S30The Pricey Leica Q3 Delivers Amazing Images  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 Leica Q3 is the latest version of the company’s fixed-lens, autofocusing rangefinder camera. It’s an incremental upgrade from the Q2 with enough new features to make it a worthy successor, including a new 60-megapixel sensor. But it still retains everything that made the Q2 great.
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S312 Polish Men Arrested for Radio Hack That Disrupted Trains  A monthslong WIRED investigation published this week revealed the inner workings of the Trickbot ransomware gang, which has targeted hospitals, businesses, and government agencies around the world. The investigation stemmed from a mysterious leak publish on X (formerly Twitter) last year by an anonymous account called Trickleaks. The document trove contained dossiers on 35 alleged Trickbot members, including names, dates of birth, and much more. It also listed thousands of IP addresses, cryptocurrency wallets, email addresses, and Trickbot chat logs. Armed with this information, we enlisted the help of multiple cybersecurity and Russian cybercrime experts to paint a vivid picture of Trickbot’s organizational structure and corroborate the real-world identity of one of its key members.
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S32Which iPhone Should You Buy (or Avoid) Right Now?  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 WIREDApple currently sells eight iPhone models, from the $429 iPhone SE to the $1,099 iPhone 14 Pro Max. But soon, it will introduce the iPhone 15 range. Should you wait? We’re here to help you separate the marketing slogans from reality—we’ve tested all the latest models and outlined their strengths and weaknesses. Our iPhone buying guide can help you make a decision.
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S337 Face Masks Your Kids May Actually Wear  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 WIREDFor three years, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued complicated—and occasionally contradictory—guidance on when you should wear a mask, depending on whether you're inside, outside, vaccinated, or not vaccinated. But no matter how cautious you are, if you're a parent, there is one significant way you're probably getting sick: Your kid is now in school.
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S34S35Large study demystifies female squirting during sex  The human male expels two fluids in response to sexual stimulation: semen (containing a variety of nutrients in addition to sperm cells) and pre-ejaculate (a colorless lubricant and an acid neutralizer that creates a favorable environment in the urethra for sperm).Females, on the other hand, expel four: vaginal lubrication (clear, slippery, and slightly acidic plasma), ejaculate (thick, whitish fluid from the Skene’s gland), coital incontinence (urine), and — the most mysterious — squirt. Occasionally, when a woman is highly aroused, a gush of ten or more milliliters of clear, watery fluid can erupt from her vagina.
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S36Starts With A Bang podcast #97 - Tiny Galaxies And Us  When we look at our nearby Universe, it’s easy to recognize our own galaxy and the other large, massive ones that are nearby: Andromeda, the major galaxies in nearby groups like Bode’s Galaxy, the group of galaxies in Leo, and the huge galaxies at the cores of the Virgo and Coma Clusters, among others. But these are not most of the galaxies in the Universe at all; the overwhelming majority of galaxies are small, low-mass dwarf galaxies, and if we want to understand how we formed and where we came from, it’s these objects that we need to be studying more intensely.So what is it that we already know about them? What has recent research revealed about these tiny galaxies in the nearby Universe, both inside and beyond our Local Group, and what else can we look forward to learning in the relatively near future?
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S37New obesity treatments could reshape the world  This article is an installment of Future Explored, a weekly guide to world-changing technology. You can get stories like this one straight to your inbox every Thursday morning by subscribing here.Based on the most common medical standard — body mass index (BMI) — nearly 1 billion people were obese in 2020, and if current trends continue, 1.9 billion people will be obese by 2035. That’s an estimated 24% of the world’s population, with another 27% in the overweight category.
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S38A massive, mysterious object washed up on an Australian beach  On Sunday, July 16, 2023, a hulking mystery object the size of a small car was dragged ashore by a curious couple in Western Australia. Greenhead, a town previously known for its wildflowers and pristine beaches, is now abuzz with an international mystery. Theories about the identity of the object have raged on the internet—from a piece of a passing ship, to a pressurized tank, to a part of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, which went missing over the Indian Ocean in 2014.The encrusted object is now being held in a secure storage facility for further investigation. The Australian Space Agency subsequently tweeted: “The object could be from a foreign space launch vehicle and we are liaising with global counterparts who may be able to provide more information.”
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S39S40Apple details reasons to abandon CSAM-scanning tool, more controversy ensues  In December, Apple said that it was killing an effort to design a privacy-preserving iCloud photo scanning tool for detecting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on the platform. Originally announced in August 2021, the project had been controversial since its inception. Apple first paused it that September in response to concerns from digital rights groups and researchers that such a tool would inevitably be abused and exploited to compromise the privacy and security of all iCloud users. This week, a new child safety group known as Heat Initiative told Apple that it is organizing a campaign to demand that the company “detect, report, and remove” child sexual abuse material from iCloud and offer more tools for users to report CSAM to the company.
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S41S42The U.S. and Europe Are Splitting Over Ukraine  The GOP’s populist wing would abandon Kyiv—and endanger the world’s most successful military alliance.Europe and the United States are on the verge of the most momentous conscious uncoupling in international relations in decades. Since 1949, NATO has been the one constant in world security. Initially an alliance among the United States, Canada, and 10 countries in Western Europe, NATO won the Cold War and has since expanded to include almost all of Europe. It has been the single most successful security grouping in modern global history. It also might collapse by 2025.
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S43How Can You Save What's Already Gone?  As Lahaina’s religious leaders look to rebuild, they draw from memories of a more distant past.Whenever Ai Hironaka, the resident minister of Lahaina Hongwanji Mission, looks at the widely published photo showing the temple burning, he thanks the photographer. After driving his family out of the fires, he tried to go back and save the Amida Buddha statue, but the wall of heat and smoke held him off. He thinks the photo was taken soon after his retreat, at the moment he looked back and saw the roof of Waiola Church, also in the frame, burning. To him, the picture shows the temple fighting to save what he could not. “You must be in pain,” he tells the temple in the photograph. “You did enough to protect this place. You did enough. You can lie down now.”
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S44Why Biden Just Can't Shake Trump in the Polls  Like so many bands of wind and rain, hurricane-strength squalls of bad news have battered former President Donald Trump all year. Since April, he’s been indicted four times, on 91 separate felony charges, compared with zero counts for all of his White House predecessors. Trump often likes to claim that anything associated with him is the most spectacular, even when it’s not, but when it comes to accumulating criminal charges, he’s the undisputed champ of former presidents.President Joe Biden, by contrast, has been basking in mostly good news. Over recent months, inflation has mostly moderated, job growth has remained steady, and the stock market has recovered briskly. Seemingly every week, Biden cuts a ribbon for an ambitious infrastructure project or new clean-energy plant made possible by a trio of sweeping laws he signed during his first two years. The chaos predicted at the southern border when Biden ended Title 42, the pandemic-era Trump policy, never materialized. Crime rates are declining in many major cities.
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S45The Journey of the American Shopper  This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.In 1962, an Atlantic essay called “Money Isn’t Everything” described a very optimistic future: “It is my belief,” Edward T. Chase wrote, “that in fact we in the United States are evolving beyond what J.K. Galbraith calls the ‘consumption society’—one that has mastered the problems of production—and are approaching a new order of society, the society of self-realization.” As my colleague Becca Rosen wrote in 2015, “Man, if this guy could see today.” “A half-century of cultural edification has passed, and money and material accumulation still enthrall this country,” Becca reminded us then. Now, with the proliferation of online shopping, buying things is perhaps a more enthralling prospect than ever.
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S46Why 2024 Could Be the Most Unusual Presidential Race in History  Events this week delivered further proof that the 2024 presidential race could be one of the most unusual in U.S. history. On Monday, D.C. District Court judge Tanya S. Chutkan set former President Donald J. Trump’s federal election-interference trial for March 4, 2024—the day before Super Tuesday. And on Thursday, Trump pleaded not guilty to charges in Georgia for his alleged efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results. It’s unclear whether the collision between Trump’s trials and the political calendar will influence voters, as Trump remains the runaway leader in the GOP polls.Concerns are also growing about the advanced age of America’s influential political leaders. On Wednesday, for the second time in as many months, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell froze while answering questions from reporters. McConnell’s health issues come at a challenging time for President Joe Biden; a new Associated Press–NORC poll found that three-quarters of the public think he is too old to serve another term.
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S47What Leaders Really Do  Leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think. Leadership isn’t mystical and mysterious. It has nothing to do with having “charisma” or other exotic personality traits. It is not the province of a chosen few. Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it. Rather, leadership and management are two distinctive and complementary systems of action. Each has its own function and characteristic activities. Both are necessary for success in today’s business environment. Management is about coping with complexity. Its practices and procedures are largely a response to the emergence of large, complex organizations in the twentieth century. Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change. Part of the reason it has become so important in recent years is that the business world has become more competitive and more volatile. More change always demands more leadership. Most U.S. corporations today are over-managed and under-led. They need to develop their capacity to exercise leadership. Successful corporations don’t wait for leaders to come along. They actively seek out people with leadership potential and expose them to career experiences designed to develop that potential. Indeed, with careful selection, nurturing, and encouragement, dozens of people can play important leadership roles in a business organization. But while improving their ability to lead, companies should remember that strong leadership with weak management is no better, and is sometimes actually worse, than the reverse. The real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to balance the other.
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S48Maya Feller's Rastafarian ital stew  In Jamaica, there's nothing more comforting than a bowl of ital. The popular island stew eaten by the Rastafarian community is a medley of fresh vegetables, herbs and spices, all simmered in coconut milk.Rastafarians are practitioners of Rastafari, a religion founded in Jamaica in the 1930s. It is also classified as a social movement to oppose systems of oppression by the country's then-dominant British colonial rule. Historically, as Rastafarians continued to challenge Jamaica's colonial society by expressing themselves through their African roots, they wore their hair in dreadlocks, which represented a connection to Africa and a sense of pride in African physical characteristics. They smoked marijuana because they believed its use was directed in biblical passages, and they played reggae music as a voice of the oppressed.
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S49King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden: 50 years of banal royalism  The death of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022 and the subsequent coronation of King Charles III eight months later, were international media events of historic proportions. People around the world observed, in close detail, how the UK’s royal institution consolidates its authority by using ritual to link to the past. Over the weekend of September 15 and 16 2023, Sweden will celebrate its own royal occasion, the golden jubilee of King Carl XVI Gustaf. This represents a significant national moment. Several TV documentaries have been made. A plethora of books and magazines have been published. Podcasts have been recorded.
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S50A winter energy crunch in Europe looks a distinct possibility  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine imposed a sudden energy shock on Europe 18 months ago. Faced with the prospect of much less Russian gas, there were fears that Europe’s energy infrastructure would not cope with winter 2022-23, causing economies to crumble. Yet a mild winter and the EU’s gradual rollout of a plan to reduce its energy consumption and buy more from alternative suppliers saw it emerge shaken but not beaten on the other side.
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S51S52White men have controlled women's reproductive rights throughout American history - the post-Dobbs era is no different  More than a year after the Supreme Court ended federal protection for abortion rights in the United States, disagreements over abortion bans continue to reverberate around the country. Candidates sparred over the idea of a federal abortion ban during the Aug. 23, 2023, Republican presidential debate. And abortion is likely to figure prominently in the November 2023 contest for a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, removing women’s federal constitutional right to get abortions and giving states the power to pass laws about the legality of the procedure, the 6-3 vote was by a four white men, one Black man and a white woman majority.
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S53As concern about Mitch McConnell's health grows, his legacy remains strong  Even if Mitch McConnell’s health prevents him from accomplishing his stated goal of serving as Senate Republican leader through 2024, he will still be the longest-serving Senate leader of any party, one who remade the federal judiciary from top to bottom. The impact of that achievement will outlive the 81-year-old Kentuckian, who appeared to freeze during two recent public appearances, one in July 2023 at the U.S. Capitol and then again on Aug. 30 while talking with reporters at an event in his home state. His doctor has said the episodes are part of the normal recovery from a concussion McConnell experienced in March, but political circles are concerned about his ability to continue to serve.
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S54'The Blind Side' lawsuit spotlights tricky areas of family law  What’s the difference between adoption and conservatorship? Millions of dollars and the freedom to make your own choices, if you ask retired football player Michael Oher.Oher, whose story was made into the 2009 movie “The Blind Side,” says he believed he signed papers to be adopted by an affluent white couple, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, in 2004. But papers filed in court recently indicate Oher was in fact never adopted. Rather, he has been under a court-imposed conservatorship all this time. Further, it is alleged that the arrangement allowed the Tuohys to “gain financial advantages” by striking deals in Oher’s name.
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S55North America's summer of wildfire smoke: 2023 was only the beginning  Canada’s seemingly endless wildfires in 2023 introduced millions of people across North America to the health hazards of wildfire smoke. While Western states have contended with smoky fire seasons for years, the air quality alerts across the U.S. Midwest and Northeast this summer reached levels never seen there before.The smoke left the air so unhealthy in Philadelphia on June 7, 2023, that the Phillies-Detroit Tigers Major League Baseball game was postponed. That same week, New York City residents hunkered down indoors for several days as a smoky haze hung over the city, turning the skies orange and exposing millions of people to the worst air quality in the world.
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S56S57Local journalism: why a tiny news operation could inspire a different approach and is attracting big name support  The sums involved aren’t huge, but the significance for local journalism in the UK should not be underestimated. The Mill is expanding as local newspapers around the UK, and the world, are closing down or shedding staff, creating news deserts where local issues go unreported. So what is the Mill doing right and could it be a model for a new type of local journalism? As someone who has worked in local journalism, including the much-missed Liverpool Daily Post, I have watched as newspapers have shut their local offices, contracted newsrooms and in some cases stopped printing and turned to web-only operations, so the success of The Mill as part of this climate is worth noting.
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S58'I almost lost my will to live': preference for sons is leaving young women in China exploited and abused  China has a gender crisis. The country has a huge surplus of men – around 722 million compared to 690 million women in 2022. This is largely because of sex-selective abortions linked to China’s one-child policy, which ended in 2015. Though popular belief is that the policy was strictly enforced, many Chinese couples managed to have more than one child by paying fines, accepting benefit deprivations, or proclaiming their membership of a minority ethnic group. Often, they chose to do so because their first child was a girl. The one-child policy lasted three and a half decades, replaced by the two-child policy in 2016 and the three-child policy in 2021. But even today, the belief that boys have more value than girls persists.
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S59Why the UK government is relaxing rules for river pollution  The UK government has announced plans to enable the delivery of 100,000 new homes by 2030 that are currently being held up by a controversial EU law designed to protect water bodies from pollution. This move will undoubtedly benefit the housing sector, delivering an estimated £18 billion to the economy and also helping the government meet its housing targets. But will it lead to further water pollution at a time when just 36% of the UK’s surface water bodies are in “good” or better condition?
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S60Pulverised fuel ash: how we can recycle the dirty byproduct from coal-fired power stations  The ash from burning coal in coal-fired power stations lies in thousands of landfills around the world. This waste material, generally considered a hazard, is now being put to good use in the construction industry.More than 6,000 coal-fired power stations produce this powdery byproduct, which is properly known as “pulverised fuel ash” (PFA) or “fly ash”. Traditionally, it was released into the atmosphere from the smoke stack after the coal was burned, but, because of its effect on air quality, it is now captured and stored in landfills.
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S61Women are less happy than men - a psychologist on why and four things you can do about it  A recent survey conducted by the American Psychological Association may hold some clues as to why. The results found that most US women are unhappy with how society treats them. Many women are still the main caregivers for children and elderly relatives. Most also have the double burden of managing the home and family arrangements on top of paid work responsibilities. And within the workplace three in five women have experienced bullying, sexual harassment or verbal abuse.
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S62Coup in Gabon: Ali Bongo the eighth west African leader to be ousted by military in two years  Gabon’s prime minister, Ali Bongo, has become the latest in a string of African leaders to be ousted by a military coup in recent years. Bongo, who had just won a third term in power, was ousted by a junta of senior officers who have named General Brice Oligui Nguema – the former head of the presidential guard and Bongo’s cousin – as the country’s new “interim president”.The coup in Gabon is the eighth in west and central Africa since 2020, and the second – after Niger – in as many months. He is being held under house arrest from where he made an emotional plea for help for him and his family from international “friends of Gabon” to “make noise”.
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S63Women's sexual desire often goes undiscussed - yet it's one of their most common health concerns  Female sexual desire is frequently misunderstood. Despite desire (also known as libido or sex drive) being the most common sexual health concern for women, most women aren’t really taught about it growing up. And if they are, the information is often inaccurate. This lack of education not only perpetuates misinformation, stigma and shame about female sexual desire, it can also have a major effect on wellbeing and perceptions of satisfaction in intimate relationships.
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S64Jobs are up, wages less so - and lower purchasing power could still lead the US into a recession  Yes, the U.S. economy added 187,000 jobs in August 2023 – faster than the revised 157,000 increase for July and above most analysts’ expectations for the month. And yes, gains were seen across most industries, with health care and social assistance adding 97,300 positions, leisure and hospitality boosting numbers by 40,000, construction up by 22,000 jobs, and 16,000 additional general manufacturing jobs.But there was also enough in the data released by Bureau of Labor Statistics on Sept. 1 to give comfort – of sorts – to the “Jeremiahs” among us economists. I’ll explain.
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S65Tory MP's historic family links to slavery raise questions about Britain's position on reparations  “Reparations have been paid for other wrongs and obviously far more quickly, far more speedily than reparations for what I consider the greatest atrocity and crime in the history of mankind: transatlantic chattel slavery.” So noted the eminent Jamaican international jurist Judge Patrick Robinson, when launching the 115-page Brattle Report in June 2023. The economic consultancy, The Brattle Group, was asked to draw up a report estimating the scale of reparations that should be paid for the chattel trade between 1510 to 1870, covering 31 countries that engaged in transatlantic slavery. This would include compensation for loss of life and liberty, uncompensated labour, personal injury, mental pain and anguish and gender-based violence.
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S66The Era-Defining Aesthetic of "In the Mood for Love"  Wong Kar Wai's 2000 masterwork has influenced filmmakers ranging from Barry Jenkins to Sofia Coppolaâand innumerable teens on TikTok.There is a particular aesthetic floating abroad in the world. You could call it an atmosphere, a vibe, or just an essence of style. It's made up of a collection of ingredients: humid alleyways in dense cities, neon lights cutting through darkness, quietly flashy fashion, nostalgic music, tragic romanticism, and the smoke of many, many cigarettes. It evokes glamour with a streak of grittiness, and the feeling of being adrift. It partakes of Golden Age Hollywood but is more international, modern, and self-aware.
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S67CNN's New White Knight  During the past week, news trickled out via competing scoops that Mark Thompson, the former C.E.O. of the Times and director-general of the BBC, would become CNN's C.E.O. and editor-in-chief. Sir MarkâThompson was knighted in June by King Charles IIIâwho will officially take over in early October, will find a network in crisis. CNN, like so many cable outfits, is in a period of steady decline. Fewer and fewer people subscribe to cable, and the television-ad market has dwindled. CNN's profit margins show it: in 2017, the network made a billion dollars; this year, that number is projected to be closer to eight hundred million. Thompson himself told a British audience, in 2021, that TV news in the U.S. "seems completely unchanged since the nineteen-eighties. I think it is in dead trouble."Some of CNN's problems, though, are particular to its place in American life. During the Trump years, the network positioned itself as the outspoken institution for journalistic truth. Its anchors' antagonistic questions at the White House made the rounds on liberal Twitter, and ratings were good. But the post-Trump years have found CNN floundering somewhat. In 2022, after a mammoth corporate merger, CNN became a subsidiary in Warner Bros. Discovery, whose C.E.O., David Zaslav, wanted a news network that would attract less ire from centrists and conservatives. He appointed Chris Licht, a co-creator of "Morning Joe" and the executive producer of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," but fired him thirteen months later after a tenure mired by low staff morale and ratings.
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S68Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison  The first time I heard about Taylor Swift, I was in a Los Angeles County jail, waiting to be sent to prison for murder. Sheriffs would hand out precious copies of the Los Angeles Times, and they would be passed from one reader to the next. Back then, I swore that Prince was the best songwriter of my lifetime, and I thought Swift’s rise to teen-age stardom was an injustice. I’d look up from her wide-eyed face in the Calendar section to see gang fights and race riots. The jail was full of young men of color who wrote and performed their own raps, often about chasing money and fame, while Swift was out there, actually getting rich and famous. How fearless could any little blond fluff like that really be?In 2009, I was sentenced to life in prison. Early one morning, I boarded a bus in shackles and a disposable jumpsuit, and rode to Calipatria State Prison, a cement fortress on the southern fringes of California. Triple-digit temperatures, cracked orange soil, and pungent whiffs of the nearby Salton Sea made me feel as though I’d been exiled to Mars. After six years in the chaos of the county jail, however, I could finally own small luxuries, like a television. The thick walls of Calipat, as we called the place, stifled our radio reception, but an institutional antenna delivered shows like “Access Hollywood,” “Entertainment Tonight,” and “TMZ.” I was irritated by the celebrity gossip, but it was a connection to the outside world, and it introduced me to snippets of Swift’s performances for the first time. Here and there, I’d catch her on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” or “Fallon,” and was surprised by how intently she discussed her songwriting. I didn’t tell anyone that I thought she was talented.
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