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 S69The Equinox Is Not What You Think It Is   The equinox is not when day and night have equal lengths. Instead it’s something more nuanced but no less gloriousOn Saturday, September 23, at 6:50 A.M. UTC (2:50 A.M. EDT or 11:50 P.M. Friday PDT), the sun will be directly over Earth’s equator, which is how astronomers define the equinox.
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S1Zoom and Grindr return to office: Tech's surprising remote work U-turn  In August, Grindr gave its workers a return-to-office ultimatum: either agree to work twice a week in person from October, or lose their jobs. The policy meant employees hired remotely would need to relocate to Los Angeles, where the social networking and online dating app is headquartered, or one of its other US 'hub' cities, such as New York or Chicago. Many workers rejected the mandate. According to the Grindr union, 82 of the company's 178 employees have been let go for refusing to comply (Grindr didn't respond to multiple BBC requests for comment).
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S2Sweet and sour pineapple prawns  There's a deep love for sugar in Taiwan, a love so pervasive and distinct that it can be shocking. I've had pork sausages that taste like sweets (candy), and milkfish soup so saccharine that someone tasting it for the very first time could easily mistake it for dessert. "When we make spring rolls, we stir-fry the ingredients inside the roll with nothing but sugar," said Yen Wei, the food stylist for my new cookbook, Made in Taiwan, published this September. Wei was born and raised in the southern city of Tainan, the island's first metropolis and the birthplace of the country's sugar industry.
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S3'Cosy crime' novels: Are they brilliant entertainment or 'twee and insipid'?  A century ago, in 1923, crime fiction was truly flourishing. Agatha Christie's second novel featuring her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, Murder on the Links, was published. Dorothy L Sayers burst on to the scene with her debut novel Whose Body?, and introduced the world to Lord Peter Wimsey. Meanwhile Dublin-born detective author Freeman Wills Croft published The Groote Park Murder, his fourth novel, and went on to write 30 more.This period is known to aficionados as the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. However in recent years, books by those authors have earned a new label: "cosy crime".
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S5Seven tips for using the back-to-school mindset to help you stick to your goals  Even if it’s been many years since you were last in school, you might still associate this time of year with that “back-to-school” mindset – that feeling of a page turning, a new phase beginning and the chance to start anew and reinvent yourself.Temporal landmarks support our belief that we can reinvent ourselves, acting as a threshold to a new start and the chance to leave old habits behind. These landmarks open our minds up to novelty and the possibility of seeing the bigger picture – rather than being mired in our daily slog.
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S6Four things you need to know about your vagina vulva  When it comes to female anatomy, there’s still a lot that many of us don’t know. A 2019 survey from YouGov found that half of those questioned didn’t know where the vagina was on a diagram of a woman’s genitalia. The survey revealed a widespread lack of knowledge about female anatomy among both sexes, with around half of respondents not able to identify or describe the function of the urethra (58%), labia (47%) or vagina (52%).
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S7What would you take with you? Why possessions matter in times of war and displacement  In 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in Europe’s largest refugee crisis since the second world war. By March of that year, about a quarter of the country’s total population had fled to safer locations in Europe.The speed with which the war has escalated has seen Ukrainian citizens needing to flee, hurriedly and by any means available – including on foot. As is most often the case for those who find themselves displaced, most Ukrainian refugees could only take with them what they could carry.
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S8Fast fashion's waste problem could be solved by recycled textiles but brands need to help boost production  Earlier this year, fast fashion retailer Zara released its first womenswear collection made of recycled poly-cotton textile waste. The collection is available for sale in 11 countries, helping clothing made of blended textile waste reach the mass market. The collection came about after Zara’s parent company Inditex invested in textile recycler Circ. This follows a €100 million (£87 million) deal between Inditex and Finnish textile recycler Infinited Fiber Company for 30% of its recycled output. Zara’s fast fashion rival H&M has also entered a five-year contract with Swedish textile recycler Renewcell to acquire 9,072 tonnes of recycled fibre – equivalent to 50 million T-shirts.
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S9In sport, abuse is often dismissed as 'good coaching'  The head coach of the Welsh men’s rugby squad, Warren Gatland, has built a reputation as one of the best coaches in the world. But his “intense training methods” have drawn comparisons to waterboarding, and his training programmes have included “psychological challenges” such as players being put in hoods and subjected to the sounds of crying babies. Gatland said that the training described “wasn’t brutal”, and that the feedback from players was positive. In any other context, this behaviour from a boss might be (rightly) considered abuse. Professional rugby players, however, aren’t the first people who come to mind when people think of abuse victims.
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S10Ukraine war: beware all the talk of 'breakthroughs' or 'gamechangers' - it's going to be a long, bloody and costly struggle  From some of the headlines of late, you might be forgiven for assuming that the worst was past for Ukraine’s assault troops. That recent advances by Ukrainian forces constitute “breakthroughs” or “breaches” and that it’s all downhill from here.Ukraine has recently claimed to have taken a couple of small villages, Andriivka and Klishchiivka, near the totemic remnants of Bakhmut the city in eastern Ukraine where, since August 2022. So many on both sides have given their lives for so little ground. This latest success, apprently, is another “important breakthrough”.
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S11Asian women are still a minority in diplomatic positions: this is how we can fix this  The 2022 Global Gender Gap Report showed Asian countries have managed to narrow the gender gap in economic, education and health sectors. But when it comes to political participation, the gap persists.Studies have shown in most Asian countries, women are still marginalised in the field of international relations. They are underrepresented in ambassadorial positions and their low involvement during negotiation processes.
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S12S13S14S15S16Spyware can infect your phone or computer via the ads you see online - report  Each day, you leave digital traces of what you did, where you went, who you communicated with, what you bought, what you’re thinking of buying, and much more. This mass of data serves as a library of clues for personalized ads, which are sent to you by a sophisticated network – an automated marketplace of advertisers, publishers and ad brokers that operates at lightning speed. The ad networks are designed to shield your identity, but companies and governments are able to combine that information with other data, particularly phone location, to identify you and track your movements and online activity. More invasive yet is spyware – malicious software that a government agent, private investigator or criminal installs on someone’s phone or computer without their knowledge or consent. Spyware lets the user see the contents of the target’s device, including calls, texts, email and voicemail. Some forms of spyware can take control of a phone, including turning on its microphone and camera.
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S17S18War in Ukraine is contributing to the erosion of global consensus over the spread of dangerous weapons  When Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Joe Biden, on Sept. 21, 2023, the topic of weapons supply was on the agenda. That same issue almost certainly came up between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when the pair met earlier in September.The fact is, with the conflict in Ukraine having now dragged on for more than a year and a half, both sides are increasingly desperate to keep the flow of arms going. And that has alarmed people like Izumi Nakamitsu, the United Nations’ high representative for disarmament affairs, who on Sept. 12 warned of violations of international resolutions against the illegal transfer of weapons and the risk of proliferation even after the war ends.
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S19South African hominin fossils were sent into space and scientists are enraged  University of Johannesburg provides support as an endorsing partner of The Conversation AFRICA.When a Virgin Galactic commercial flight soared into space on 8 September 2023, there were two Virgin Galactic pilots, an instructor and three passengers on board – as well as two fossils of ancient prehuman relatives from South Africa. Timothy Nash, a businessman, carried a clavicle belonging to Australopithecus sediba and the thumb bone of a Homo naledi specimen. The fossils’ brief journey – the VSS Unity’s flight lasted just an hour – was organised by palaeontologist Lee Berger, who led the team that discovered and described Homo naledi in 2015. Berger was granted an export permit in July by the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) to take the fossils from the country to the US launch site for VSS Unity. SAHRA is a “national administrative body responsible for the protection of South Africa’s cultural heritage”.
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S20Bones play an important role in our health -  Just as our muscles lose strength as we get older, so do our bones. This can have a serious effect on our lifestyle, and boosts risk of fractures – which are linked with an increased risk of death. Fortunately, just as we can build the strength in our muscles, we can build strength in our bones. Bones are far more than a simple scaffold within our bodies. Bone is a complex organ which comes in a multitude of shapes and sizes. It’s made up of a diverse mixture of organic and inorganic components – such as collagen and calcium. Combined together, these components create a structure that’s malleable enough that muscle can pull against it so we can move, while simultaneously being strong enough to protect critical organs.
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S21S22Andrey Rublev has been called the 'greatest Russian artist who ever lived' - but one of his most famous works is at risk under Putin  Andrey Rublev (or Rublyov – nobody is sure how his name was pronounced) has been described as “the greatest Russian artist who ever lived”, whose work had “a clarity of composition and suave tranquillity of mood peculiarly his own”. In May 2023, it was announced that under Putin, one of Rublev’s most famous works was to be removed from its restoration team and donated to the Russian Orthodox Church. This has prompted concerns about the conservation of his work.My new book Andrey Rublev: The Artist and His World is an overview of the master medieval Russian painter. Rublev, active around 1400 in and near Moscow, was a monk and painter of icons, frescoes and (possibly) manuscripts in the tradition of the Orthodox Church.
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S23Nine women share what it's like to have a miscarriage  Miscarriage is a common woman’s health experience, but one that affects people differently. Ten years of studying miscarriage has taught me that no two women will have the same experience, and that the same woman is likely to experience separate miscarriages very differently. There’s also a great deal of variation in types of miscarriage and a lack of understanding of this, which often leaves women adrift.
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S24What happens if a university goes bust?  Pro Vice Chancellor for the Faculty of Business and Law, Northumbria University, Newcastle Governments face difficult choices when industries fail. They can stand by while private businesses collapse and see the resulting loss of jobs and revenue. Or they can step in and use public money to prop up these firms.
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S25How ducks, geese and swans see the world - and why this puts them at risk in a changing environment  Each year, millions of birds fly into power lines, wind turbines and the other man-made structures that litter the open air space. These collisions frequently result in the death of birds and, if power systems go down, disrupt our lives and pose financial challenges for power companies.Numerous bird species, including macaws in Brazil, geese and swans in the UK, and blue cranes in South Africa have been found to be susceptible to collisions with power lines. But any flying bird can fall victim to such a collision.
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S26Farmed rhinos will soon 'rewild' the African savanna  With all the terrible news on climate change, it’s easy to lose track of what’s happening with particular species. So, in case you missed it, a new report has bad news for Earth’s five surviving species of rhino. Poaching for rhino horn continues to threaten populations of rhino in Africa, and the two smallest and most endangered species of rhino – the Sumatran rhino and the Javan rhino – tread ever closer to being unable to sustain themselves in the wild, due to habitat loss and low population sizes.
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S27Introducing our latest e-book: Women's Health Matters  Women’s Health Matters is a comprehensive resource designed to empower women and provide us with the information we need to make informed decisions about our health and wellbeing. This e-book is a culmination of weeks of exploration into a wide range of women’s health topics, including childbirth, contraception, menstrual health, menopause, mental health, and more.
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S28S29S30Zelensky Offers to Broker Peace Deal Between Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans  WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Calling the conflict raging in the U.S. Capitol “a clear and present danger to the world,” Volodymyr Zelensky offered to broker a peace deal between Representative Kevin McCarthy and his fellow House Republicans.The Ukrainian President warned that, if the fighting in Washington continued to escalate, it could spread to neighboring regions such as Maryland and Virginia.
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S31Scenes from an Impeachment  Follow @newyorkercartoons on Instagram and sign up for the Daily Humor newsletter for more funny stuff.By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
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S32Rupert Murdoch Takes a Step Back--Not Away  Like William Randolph Hearst, the American media baron to whom he is often compared, Rupert Murdoch, in old age, has already slipped the mortal coil and passed into Hollywood lore. For the 1941 film "Citizen Kane," the director Orson Welles and the screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz created a character, partly based on Hearst, who resides in Xanadu, a palatial Florida estate, but can never rest. On HBO's "Succession," Logan Roy, Murdoch's fictional alter ego, suffers from a similar affliction. Or, at least, he did, until the show's producers killed him off earlier this year in the final season of the series.Murdoch, the Fox News founder and the owner of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, along with conservative newspapers in Britain and Australia, once joked that he was convinced of his own immortality. At ninety-two, he has kept going despite suffering from, at various points, prostate cancer, COVID, and broken vertebrae and a spinal hematoma after falling on his eldest son's superyacht, in 2018. On Thursday, Murdoch announced that he was stepping down as chairman of his two main holding companies, Fox Corp. and News Corp. No doubt aware that the announcement would generate renewed speculation about his well-being, Murdoch wrote in a letter to staff: "Our companies are in robust health, as am I."
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S33Kelly Clarkson on "Chemistry," Her Divorce Record  The "American Idol" breakout star has long written anthems of love and heartbreak. Chronicling the end of a marriage for her recent album "Chemistry," she tells the staff writer Hanif Abdurraqib, was a very different thing. David Remnick talks with Hernan Diaz about "Trust," Diaz's very contemporary novel of financial misdeeds in the run-up to the crash of 1929. The novelist was interested in high finance as a realm of "pure abstraction" that isolates capital from the labor that produces it. Plus, Robert Samuels, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer on race and politics, shares his secret pastime: watching classic figure-skating videos on YouTube.The "American Idol" breakout star has long written songs of heartbreak. Writing about the end of a marriage for "Chemistry," she tells Hanif Abdurraqib, was a very different thing.
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S34The Biden Administration's Next Big Climate Decision  Earlier this year, the Biden Administration approved the Willow Project, a huge oil-drilling complex to be built in Alaska on thawing permafrost that may need to be mechanically refrozen before it can be drilled. Not surprisingly, Willow drew oppositionâmore than five million people, many of them young, signed petitions against the plan, and a million sent letters to the White Houseâwhich, the Times noted last month, could become "a wild card factor in next year's presidential race."But the Willow field is not the only major fossil-fuel project in the works. Soon, you may also be hearing a good deal about C.P.2, or Calcasieu Pass 2, an enormous liquefied-natural-gas export terminal that's been proposed for the Louisiana coast, and which the Biden Administration is likely to approve or reject this fall. The project, the largest of at least twenty L.N.G. terminals proposed by a handful of companies to take gas mostly from the Southwest's Permian Basin to overseas customers, is a poster child for late-stage petrocapitalism: it would help lock in the planet's reliance on fossil fuels long past what scientists have identified as the breaking point for the climate system. And it will bring to the fore one of the most crucialâand least-discussedâparts of the climate fight: America's rapidly increasing exports of oil and gas to the rest of the world. To give an idea of how big the battle at C.P.2 could turn out to be: according to the veteran energy analyst Jeremy Symons, the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with it would be twenty times larger than those from the oil drilling at Willow.
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S35"Early Short Films of the French New Wave" Is a Revelation  From the nineteen-fifties through the seventies, short films were a national cottage industry in France. Their production was funded in part by the government's official film-supporting bodies, both through direct subsidies and through the widespread practice of movie theatres showing shorts along with features. Almost all the major directors of the era made several short films en route to (and even during) their feature-film careers, and many of these shorts are prime entries in their bodies of work. I wrote recently of the urgency of getting and keeping hard copiesâDVDs or Blu-raysâof films that one cherishes. This week, Icarus Films put out exactly the kind of release that should be snapped up for prolonged cherishing, a two-disk set titled "Early Short Films of the French New Wave," which presents largely unfamiliar work of enduring power. (For viewers who prefer to stream, the films are also available on OVID.tv.)These films, which were made between 1956 and 1966, were produced by Pierre Braunberger, who had made his name in the nineteen-twenties and thirties with films directed by Jean Renoir. Most of the shorts in the set are by celebrated directors working in styles different from the ones for which they're famed. The set features a trio of films by Jean-Luc Godard (one co-directed by François Truffaut), two by Alain Resnais, one by Agnès Varda, and one by Jacques Rivette. Yet the five films that I consider mighty (albeit brief) masterworks come from less familiar filmmakersâor, in one case, a widely celebrated one in a surprising, unfamiliar context. They also show that the New Wave's new cinematic styles and forms were far more than decorative delightsâthey were new ways of looking at private lives and at the world at large.
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S36A Novel About the Therapeutic Impulse and Its Discontents  When the writer Susie Boyt was twenty years old, her boyfriend died in a climbing accident. After the funeral, Boyt went through severe depression, struggling with a grief that she couldn’t readily articulate to others. Eschewing the sympathy of friends and psychiatrists alike, Boyt sought help from an unlikely source: from autumn, 1989, to summer, 1990, she watched “Judy Garland: The Concert Years” every day. As Boyt recounts in her 2009 memoir, “My Judy Garland Life,” communing with the eighty-eight-minute PBS special featuring some of Garland’s most famous performances was, for a time, her only solace—a near-religious “extreme daily psychic pain ritual” in the solitary confines of her drafty living room. The pathos of Garland’s ecstatic renditions enabled Boyt to begin to work through her grief. “We sat it out together,” she writes, “and it kept me functioning in a very modest way, until the experts came in.”Boyt is no stranger to the everyday practices that sustain the psyche. “I was born into a family that takes making people feel better very seriously,” a chapter of “My Judy Garland Life” begins. This is an understatement: her great-grandfather was Sigmund Freud, the founding theorist of psychoanalysis. Born in London in 1969, Boyt is the youngest child of the British painter Lucian Freud and Suzy Boyt. (The latter, who trained as a painter, was one of Lucian’s pupils at art school.) The couple separated before Boyt’s birth, and her mother raised the children alone. Their “normal lives were straitened, no-frills, occasionally austere,” yet Boyt remembers Christmases as distinctly extravagant. Her mother’s “legendary” Christmas stockings (in fact just pairs of tights) were always “crammed with all manner of delights.” Gifts themselves could be transformative, while the holidays were at once “luxurious and sustaining.”
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S37Which War Does Washington Want?  The Washington Roundtable: Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, travelled to New York City and Washington, D.C., this week to request more support for his country. Before the United Nations General Assembly, Zelensky called Russia’s war an act of “genocide.” In Washington, the Ukrainian President met with senators, House members, President Biden, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy rejected Zelensky’s request to address Congress, saying that there wasn’t enough time, given the ongoing battle over funding the government. Meanwhile, some Republicans are arguing that attention should be turned away from Russia’s invasion and toward the threat that China poses to the U.S. How will the country’s foreign policy respond to these pressures? The New Yorker staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos weigh in.Personal History by David Sedaris: after thirty years together, sleeping is the new having sex.
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S3818 Years Ago, the Best Sci-Fi Show of the Century Took an Unprecedented Step Into the Unknown  For a lot of hardcore TV fans, Lost is a four-letter word. Mention it in the wrong group chat or in front of an over-eager coworker and you may find yourself trapped in an hour-long debate over how the beloved sci-fi show jumped the shark and delivered the worst series finales of all time. (And if you’re anything like me, you’re probably happy to have that exact conversation at least once per year.)But there was a time when Lost was pure. When the possibilities for the ABC phenomenon seemed endless and we all still believed the island and its many sprawling mysteries could be neatly resolved with enough hour-long episodes of primetime television. It was at that exact moment that showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse delivered one of most iconic episodes of Lost (or any show) ever made — and inadvertently doomed the series forever.
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S39Marvel's Most Exciting New Show Is Using a Underhanded Disney Tactic  Marvel loves a callback, and in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, we got a callback for the ages: the return of Matt Murdock, Daredevil from the Netflix series Daredevil. Now, Disney+ is reviving the Daredevil franchise, but under a new name: Daredevil: Born Again. But why the rebrand? Is it a way to differentiate itself from the old iteration now under a new streamer? Is it a way to mark a miniseries the way comic book subtitles do? The series’ old showrunner suggests this move may actually be a way to skirt union rules, and there’s a precedent to back it up. After the HBO series Winning Time was canceled after two seasons, Twitter user @t_NYC, an IATSE union member who worked on the Netflix series Daredevil, took to the platform to explain how premature cancellations can affect a show. The tweet referenced a past thread, where the user claimed, “I worked on all three seasons of Netflix Daredevil. We get wages/conditions based on seasons, and season three is when we get our full wages/conditions. They cancelled it at season three. It will comes back as ‘season one.’”
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S40John Wick's Prequel Show Learned a Crucial Lesson From Star Wars, Director Says  Albert Hughes is well-known as one half of the duo behind Menace II Society and The Book of Eli, two films that mix heady existential themes with blistering, breakneck fight sequences. While he and his twin brother, Allen, were inseparable creative partners for 30 years, the John Wick spinoff The Continental sees the elder Hughes striking off on his own — and trying his hand at some lighter fare.That’s not to say The Continental is a walk in the park. Hughes was as much inspired by neo-noirs like Taxi Driver as he was by boogie-down musicals like Saturday Night Fever. The three-part prequel is a period piece, one that explores what the world of John Wick would have looked like in 1970s New York City. It’s a glorious melting pot of influences: Disco blends seamlessly with punk rock; vampy blaxploitation coexists with somber noir — and it all somehow manages to work, because that’s the very thing that we’ve come to expect from the John Wick franchise.
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S41Inside the Secret World of the Real-Life Pok  When you think of Pokémon, it probably conjures up images of adventure, friendship and adorable creatures fighting for their lives. This endearing fantasy has captured the imaginations of millions, with tall grass in local parks everywhere inspiring a sea of Poké-possibility for budding trainers.And every year, at the Pokémon World Championships, this fictional fantasy becomes very real. From children’s brackets to adult finals, the globe’s greatest video game and trading card players duke it out to earn the title of World Champ, in a series of dramatic showdowns that would make the Elite Four blush. And it’s not just trainers that are made real in the glitzy world of competitive Pokemon, but it's smiling scientists — the Pokémon Professors.
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S42'Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty' Reveals CD Projekt Red's Secret Strength  CD Projekt Red had a lot to prove with Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the only expansion to the base game. After the game’s disastrous release in 2020 and years of trying to fix problems and win back players, Phantom Liberty is the studio’s second chance — which it succeeds at. Phantom Liberty is great, even better than the base game. But this isn’t the first time CD Projekt Red has shown that its best work is down after the initial release of a game.The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt came out in 2015 and was praised for its storytelling and well-designed world. It has deservedly gained a reputation for being one of the best RPGs of the last decade. But one year after the game’s release, CD Projekt Red delivered the second of two expansions which managed to be even better. That expansion is Blood and Wine.
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S43NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission Will Drop An Asteroid Sample Sunday --  But like a college kid dropping off their laundry, the spaceship is just passing through on its way to another adventure.After seven years alone in space, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is speeding back toward Earth with a long-awaited delivery: a capsule containing about eight ounces of rock and dust from a nearby asteroid called Bennu.
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S44Everything You Need To Know About 'Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth'  The ongoing remake series of Square Enix’s seminal 1997 classic, Final Fantasy VII, still has a lot more ground to cover. The first entry, Final Fantasy VII Remake, set in the smoggy metropolis of Midgar, expands the first several hours of the original game into an epic 40-hour adventure. In other words, there’s plenty more story to tell. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is going to be the second entry in the trilogy, and based on what we have already seen from the game it looks to be even more ambitious than its predecessor. Here’s everything we know about the second entry.
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S45'Ahsoka's Nielsen Ratings Prove Disney's Star Wars Strategy Is Paying Off  Ahsoka has always had a mind of her own. She was Anakin’s padawan even when fans insisted that wasn’t possible, she walked away from the Jedi when she realized they weren’t the epitome of justice, and she made the jump from animation to live-action when that seemed like an uncrossable barrier. Now, Ahsoka is changing the game in another way. Her Mandalorian spinoff show mixed up Disney+’s release schedule by dropping episodes at primetime instead of midnight, and it seems like the strategy is paying off. If so, the way we watch streaming TV could change forever.
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S46'Honkai: Star Rail' Build Makes Fu Xuan the Best Tank in the Game  Just like any other party-based RPG, having a character who tanks is an important part of team composition in Honkai: Star Rail. Until recently there have only been three characters in the Preservation path that fit the ball. Though with the latest banner of version 1.3 Fu Xuan has hit the ground running as the best Preservation character in the game, and a welcome addition to any team. Here’s how to build Fu Xuan so you are making the most of her potential.Fu Xuan is a five-star Quantum Preservation character that changes the way players heal and buff in Honkai: Star Rail. Unlike most other Preservation characters, when building Fu Xuan the stat to pay attention to is HP. Most of Fu Xuan’s skills don’t involve putting shields on allies, but instead redirecting enemy attacks to herself, almost like a tank in an MMO. When choosing Relics, Ornaments, and Light Cones always choose things that activate based on HP degradation or DMG intake.
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S47Fujifilm's Impossibly Tiny Instant Camera is the Size of An AirPods Case  Fujifilm Instax may already have a lineup of Mini instant cameras, but the Instax Pal is its smallest offering yet. Technically, the Instax Pal should be categorized as a digital camera since it can’t print instant photos on its own, but it still embodies all the fun of Fujifilm’s instant cameras in an unbelievably small form factor.While the Instax Mini series may be Fujifilm’s most popular instant camera lineup, the Instax Pal will definitely serve as the most portable. Fujifilm essentially stripped away all the bulk of its instant cameras and reduced it to something that’s about the size of an AirPods case.
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S48A Creepy New Demonic Thriller is Keeping 'Get Out's Legacy Alive  It’s wild for Bishal Dutta’s first film to be spoken about in the same sentences as an all-time horror classic like Get Out. But the It Lives Inside director isn’t letting the hype around his feature debut get to him.“I’ve certainly been very lucky to be coming at the heels of some of these incredible films, whether it’s Get Out or The Babadook or It Follows or Hereditary,” Dutta tells Inverse.
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S49Amazon Thinks Chatbots Can Fix Alexa's Most Infuriating Flaws  Large language models like the kind that power ChatGPT are now at the backbone of the Alexa experience. If you were sick of hearing about AI-powered chatbots, I’ve got some bad news for you: Amazon — and pretty much every other tech company with an app for that matter — is pushing full steam ahead.
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S502023's Most Ludicrous Sci-Fi Movie is a Gloriously Gory Love Letter to Schlock  You don’t need to have seen Troma’s cult classic The Toxic Avenger to appreciate the inhumanity that director Macon Blair unsubtly orchestrates with his excessively out-of-bounds remake — but it helps. Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman’s The Toxic Avenger (1984) introduced a tutu-wearing New Jersey superhero by turning hapless health club custodian Melvin Ferd Junko III into a muscly green brute who starts cleaning Tromaville’s streets with uber-violent justice. It built the house of Troma, spawning a few sequels, a Toxic Crusaders cartoon series, tie-in action figures, and even a rock musical. With his new Toxic Avenger remake, Blair squeezes as much Troma DNA into his “mainstream” version of the hero as he could under a studio banner, striving to honor the underdog scrappiness of both Troma’s cobbled-together exploitation trademarks and Melvin’s cult-iconic legacy as a 98-pound zero to hero whose brutal mutilation of stock character thugs won over the hearts of B-Movie diehards.The reboot cements Peter Dinklage’s rock n’ roll take on Winston Gooze as standalone canon, leaning into an unlikely hero’s journey riddled with dismemberment and good intentions. It’s Troma-like in its wishy-washy commitment to in-depth story development, all part of the film’s midnight movie charm. That might scare away viewers who aren’t prepared for smash-cuts from one chaotic display to the next instead of boring exposition, but at least you’ll find out real quick if The Toxic Avenger is your speed.
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S5150 Cool Things That Are Blowing Peoples' Minds on Amazon  It’s a special moment when a product you stumble on has the capacity to stop you in your tracks with intrigue and astonishment. It can be something as party-ready as a charcuterie board set that includes a secret built-in drawer of cheese knives or something as day-to-day as a stackable lunch box and perfectly airtight condiment containers. These, amongst so many others, are a few of the cool things that are blowing peoples’ minds on Amazon — so, browse away below and prepare your “oh, wow” face now.
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S52S53NASA Needs To Solve One Critical Problem Before Humans Can Travel To Mars  When 17 people were in orbit around the Earth all at the same time on May 30, 2023, it set a record. With NASA and other federal space agencies planning more manned missions and commercial companies bringing people to space, opportunities for human space travel are rapidly expanding.However, traveling to space poses risks to the human body. Since NASA wants to send a manned mission to Mars in the 2030s, scientists need to find solutions for these hazards sooner rather than later.
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S54You Need To Play the Best Racing Game of the Year on Nintendo Switch ASAP  It’s important to have a little hope. Sure, it’s easy to wish for the big things like climate change projects, medical breakthroughs, or more episodes of Succession but the little hopes matter too. You imagine your DoorDash order hitting just right, or that your latest swipe right might be your last. Hope abounds in gaming too. We all want to win, hoping to be the best. How often do we get to prove it? If you have a Nintendo Switch, the answer is right now.F-Zero 99 traffics in hope. The 99-person battle royale premise invites a certain level of optimism. While zooming around the futuristic yet retro track, you have to wonder am I good enough? Usually, no, you are not. Older gamers who used to dominate the local neighborhood back in the SNES era now have to reckon with the current immeasurable online talent pool. The skill gap doesn’t matter, because this classic homage still manages to deliver one of the best racing experiences of this, or any other, year.
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S55S56S57How to Choose the Right Forecasting Technique  To handle the increasing variety and complexity of managerial forecasting problems, many forecasting techniques have been developed in recent years. Each has its special use, and care must be taken to select the correct technique for a particular application. The manager as well as the forecaster has a role to play in technique selection; and the better they understand the range of forecasting possibilities, the more likely it is that a company’s forecasting efforts will bear fruit.The selection of a method depends on many factors—the context of the forecast, the relevance and availability of historical data, the degree of accuracy desirable, the time period to be forecast, the cost/benefit (or value) of the forecast to the company, and the time available for making the analysis.
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S58Mistakes First-Time Managers Make When Giving Feedback  Many managers view giving feedback as one of the most challenging and unpleasant parts of their jobs. Critiquing someone’s performance can be an emotional, anxiety-inducing experience. It can be especially difficult for first-time managers, who may be lacking the training they need to give constructive feedback effectively.
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S59How the Food Industry Is Using Cross-Training to Boost Service  Cross-training employees on a variety of tasks can be a powerful tool for improving operations, as well as for attracting and retaining workers. When employees are cross-trained to perform a variety of both customer-facing and non-customer-facing tasks, they can adjust their work depending on demand and business needs. Of course, that’s good for the business, but it also makes the job better for workers. For one thing, when employees are more productive and contribute more, companies can pay them more. Cross-training helps employees build capabilities that they can leverage in their career growth. It also enables more stable schedules. This article shows how several small food companies were able to use cross-training to improve service and job quality. Any industry can learn from these approaches to improve operations, customer experience, and employee experience.
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S605 Types of Stories Leaders Need to Tell  Storytelling is an important leadership skill, and executives who want to succeed should master five types of narrative: Vision stories, which inspire a shared one; values stories that model the way; action stories that spark progress and change; teaching stories that transmit knowledge and skills to others; and trust stories that help people understand, connect with, and believe in you.
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S61How Software Companies Can Avoid the Trap of Product-Led Growth  Companies like Slack and Dropbox have pioneered the use of Product-Led Growth (PLG). They start by building a product that’s indispensable for small teams, then count on low friction and customer advocates to expand throughout the organization. PLG works, at least at first. But it can create challenges for growing companies. The answer isn’t to reject PLG. It’s to embrace it — but to plan ahead. Eventually, even the best PLG company will need an enterprise sales strategy which takes years to develop. Don’t wait until product-led growth stalls to plan for a multi-pronged sales strategy.
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S62Web3 Could Change the Business Model of Creative Work  Web3 — the read-write-own web — could offer a new model for creative work. By offering new tools to earn and own assets, build wealth, and wrestle back control from powerful platforms and intermediaries, it has the potential to simplify how creators fund their ventures and new ways to earn a living, not just on the first sale of a work of art but in perpetuity thanks to programmatic royalty streams paid via smart contracts, self-executing code that can move and store money. If Web1 and Web2 democratized access to information and made it easier to collaborate online, Web3 equips creators with a new toolkit to build real wealth from their work, on a globally level playing field.
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S63What It Means to Be a Moral Leader  Dov Seidman makes people think, hard, not just about what they do but about how they do it. He’s so focused on the “how” that he created the HOW Institute for Society, which encourages leaders to pursue a path of moral leadership. He even wrote a book called How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything. In this episode of our weekly live series “The New World of Work,” Seidman provides insights and inspiration about what good, moral leadership looks like these days — in an era of perpetual disruption. His central message is that the old leadership approach no longer works. He challenged viewers to come up with even one command-and-control-style mayor or big-company CEO or professional coach who has enjoyed success in recent years. He has a point. Our expectations for what we require from our leaders – with the glaring example, perhaps, of national political figures – now include empathy, vulnerability, integrity, and morality.
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S64A new mission to see Titanic  Four-hundred miles from St Johns, Newfoundland, in the choppy waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, a large industrial vessel swayed from side to side. Onboard, Stockton Rush expressed a vision for the future:"There will be a time when people will go to space for less cost and very regularly. I think the same thing is going to happen going under water."
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S65Pakistan's lost city of 40,000 people  A slight breeze cut through the balmy heat as I surveyed the ancient city around me. Millions of red bricks formed walkways and wells, with entire neighbourhoods sprawled out in a grid-like fashion. An ancient Buddhist stupa towered over the time-worn streets, with a large communal pool complete with a wide staircase below. Somehow, only a handful of other people were here – I practically had the place all to myself.I was about an hour outside of the dusty town of Larkana in southern Pakistan at the historical site of Mohenjo-daro. While today only ruins remain, 4,500 years ago this was not only one of the world's earliest cities, but a thriving metropolis featuring highly advanced infrastructures.
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S66A new life for London's lost rivers  Though most visitors to London think only of the River Thames, the city is a myriad of waterways. Old maps show a skein of rivers and brooks that provided "blue corridors" traversing the city for centuries, providing both sources of food and recreation. But as London boomed, these waterways faded from consciousness – encased by walls, turned into polluted backwaters or simply covered over to run unseen beneath busy streets.But these "secret" rivers are imprinted on London's geography. Marylebone started life as St Mary by the bourne (an old name for a watercourse, in this case the Tyburn); while Bayswater, Knightsbridge, Westbourne and Holborn are all named by waterways that ran through them. Deptford was the site of a deep ford over the Ravensbourne, while Wandsworth is named after the River Wandle. East Ham and West Ham get their names from an old word for an area between rivers (hamm) – in their case, the Lea and the Roding. And while Britain's leading newspapers have left Fleet Street, the River Fleet still runs beneath.
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S67Scientists built this listening network to detect nuclear bomb tests. It found blue whales instead  For generations, the creatures swam through the ocean without crossing paths with any human beings. Some of them grew to 24m (80ft) long and weighed 90 tonnes. But if these enormous animals did encounter any boats, those meetings went unrecorded. Until recently, we didn't even know they were there: a pod of pygmy blue whales in the Indian Ocean.Their discovery in 2021 was all the more striking because of how they were found. We wouldn't have come across them if it wasn't for nuclear weapons.
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S68A little-understood role in a global VC could also be one of the most influential  Ana Jiménez is the Mexico City-based chief of staff for the Latin America branch of 500 Global — an early-stage venture capital firm and seed accelerator. It was founded in the U.S. as 500 Startups in 2010, and now has an international presence.Although it has been around for many years in the government and the military, the position of chief of staff (CoS) is relatively new in business. It is a leader’s trusted person from whom they expect strategic vision. In my case, that’s Santiago Zavala, who is a partner at 500 Global. I help him across the board — from fundraising to team organization, roadmap prep, tracking OKRs [objectives and key results]. The work of a CoS depends on the focus of the leader or the organization. Since 500 is going from being local to global, it needs the team to keep in lockstep by standardizing processes, while always “tropicalizing” components for each region.
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S70Fixing Air Pollution Could Dramatically Improve Health Disparities  The most marginalized people are breathing the most polluted air, and improving it could improve health equity worldwideDolores Perales was 10 years old the first time she couldn't take a breath and thought she was going to die. Parts of the memory remain vague: she knows it was early April, the start of softball season, and she was playing outside. What she remembers clearly is the tightness in her chest and the rising panic. After it happened repeatedly, her mother took her to a doctor, who diagnosed her with asthma. “Ever since then I just had my inhaler,” she says. “One of my younger brothers had asthma; my cousin across the street had asthma. So many of the kids in my classroom had asthma,” Perales says. “As a kid, you kind of start thinking this is something normal.”
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