Biases against Black-sounding first names can lead to discrimination in hiring, especially when employers make decisions in a hurry - new research

Because names are among the first things you learn about someone, they can influence first impressions. That this is particularly true for names associated with Black people came to light in 2004 with the release of a study that found employers seeing identical resumes were 50% more likely to call back an applicant with stereotypical white names like Emily or Greg versus applicants with names like Jamal or Lakisha.

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JWST discovers the farthest gravitational lens ever

Most often, galaxy clusters make the best gravitational lenses, containing overwhelmingly large masses.But individually massive, compact galaxies can theoretically serve as gravitational lenses, too.

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How Medellin is beating the heat with green corridors

Moisés Castro has worked selling fruits at a stand on Oriental Avenue, a street in Medellín, for more than 30 years.He remembers a moment decades ago when the local government knocked down the trees lining the street as part of a traffic project.

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Rosalind Franklin Deserves a Posthumous Nobel Prize for Co-discovering DNA Structure

Awarding Rosalind Franklin a Nobel Prize posthumously for her role in DNA discovery is the honorable—and scientific—thing to doThe two most famous prizes in the world are the Academy Award for work in film and the Nobel Prize for work in science and medicine. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences grants posthumous awards for people who won in their category but died before they could attend the ceremony and, occasionally, for special recognition, as when Audrey Hepburn was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993. It's time the Nobel Assembly did the same thing and awarded a posthumous Nobel Prize to British chemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, whose research laid the foundation for the modern understanding of DNA.

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Discrimination Has Trapped People of Color in Unhealthy Urban 'Heat Islands'

People of color, more than other groups, live in neighborhoods prone to excess heat and the illnesses that go with itOn a July day in 2021 that would become blazing hot, dozens of community volunteers gathered before sunrise at the Scrap Exchange, a reuse center for art materials in Durham, N.C. Using heat-sensing instruments, they fanned out along prescribed routes through the city, collecting data on air temperature and humidity in the morning, afternoon and evening.

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OSIRIS-REx's Asteroid Samples Are Finally Down to Earth

OSIRIS-REx—the first U.S. mission to attempt a sample return from a space rock—has successfully sent materials from asteroid Bennu back to EarthAn extraterrestrial express delivery package from afar has landed safe and sound on Earth, bringing a multimillion-mile journey billions of years in the making to an end—and marking a new beginning in studies of the solar system’s history.

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How to Order Your Free At-Home Covid-19 Tests

Another Covid-19 variant is spreading, but there's an updated vaccine and four more free tests are available for every household in the US—including US territories and military addresses—starting September 25. While you don't need to panic, it's good to have tests on hand so you can find out if you have Covid. That way, you can prevent the spread of the virus to others.If you need a test right now, we have a guide to finding the best at-home tests and have outlined the process of ordering and taking tests below. Also, see our guides to the best N95 masks and other reusable masks we like. You can follow our Covid-19 coverage here.

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The Secret of How Cells Make 'Dark Oxygen' Without Light

Scientists have come to realize that in the soil and rocks beneath our feet there lies a vast biosphere with a global volume nearly twice that of all the world's oceans. Little is known about these underground organisms, who represent most of the planet's microbial mass and whose diversity may exceed that of surface-dwelling life forms. Their existence comes with a great puzzle: Researchers have often assumed that many of those subterranean realms are oxygen-deficient dead zones inhabited only by primitive microbes keeping their metabolisms at a crawl and scraping by on traces of nutrients. As those resources get depleted, it was thought, the underground environment must become lifeless with greater depth.In new research published in June in Nature Communications, researchers presented evidence that challenges those assumptions. In groundwater reservoirs 200 meters below the fossil fuel fields of Alberta, Canada, they discovered abundant microbes that produce unexpectedly large amounts of oxygen even in the absence of light. The microbes generate and release so much of what the researchers call "dark oxygen" that it's like discovering "the scale of oxygen coming from the photosynthesis in the Amazon rainforest," said Karen Lloyd, a subsurface microbiologist at the University of Tennessee who was not part of the study. The quantity of the gas diffusing out of the cells is so great that it seems to create conditions favorable for oxygen-dependent life in the surrounding groundwater and strata.

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The Best MagSafe Accessories for Your New iPhone

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 WIREDA Magnet is one of those things that always remain wondrous. As a kid, I used to chase a broken magnet with its repelling end and pretend it was a cop car chasing a robber. Now, it’s similarly satisfying to slap magnetic accessories to the back of an iPhone. It just clicks into place! No wires, screws, or clamps to deal with. It’s wonderful.

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How the Moon is helping us confirm Einstein's relativity

It is often possible to use data gathered for one purpose to study something else. For example, a recent paper used half a century’s worth of observations of the Moon’s orbit to perform subtle and precise tests of the nature of gravity, as well as some of the key assumptions that went into deriving Einstein’s theory of general relativity.Mass can be thought of as how much “stuff” an object is made of. It is what causes the gravitational force between two objects, and it is what makes objects difficult to move. Essentially, it is serving three different functions. First, mass generates a gravitational field that will exert a force on other objects, so we could call this “active gravitational mass.” Second, mass can feel the gravitational effects from surrounding objects, and we could call this “passive gravitational mass.” Third, mass resists changes in motion — which is why pushing a big rock is difficult — so we might call this “inertial mass.”

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Meet the Web3 "stakehodlers" revolutionizing capitalism

An American-born graduate of Canada’s McGill University, Jesse Walden — cofounder of Variant Fund, a leading Web3 venture capital firm — started his career in Montreal as a manager for emerging indie musicians like Solange Knowles and Blood Orange — the “types of artists you read about in Pitchfork,” he quipped. “Music is one of the most Luddite industries, when it comes to new technologies,” he told me. Walden saw an opportunity to help the artists he managed leverage technology platforms, “to reach their fans directly and monetize, independent of any major label third party.” Applying what he knew from his time in the music industry as an agent, Walden founded Mediachain, a blockchain data solution to help creators get paid for their work online. “Bitcoin was the best-known thing going in the crypto space in 2014. We were interested in what blockchains could do for different kinds of digital assets. We did all media assets like images, videos, songs,” Walden explained. Mediachain was a good idea, and many of its core concepts are now commonplace in the NFT market. In 2014, Mediachain’s time had not yet come, partly due to the lack of a good technology platform to make it work. “This was pre-Ethereum launch,” he said. “So, a little bit too early, frankly.”

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Inside the race to stop a deadly viral outbreak in India

On the morning of September 11, critical care specialist Anoop Kumar was presented with an unusual situation. Four members of the same family had been admitted to his hospital—Aster MIMS in Kozhikode, Kerala—the previous day, all similarly sick. Would he take a look?

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NASA spacecraft returns to Earth with pieces of an asteroid

A small capsule carrying pristine specimens from an asteroid parachuted to landing in the Utah desert Sunday, capping a seven-year voyage through the Solar System to bring home samples for eager scientists seeking clues about the origins of life.

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I Was Wrong About the Death of the Book

Fifteen years ago, in What Would Google Do?, I called for the book to be rethought and renovated, digital and connected, so that it could be updated and made searchable, conversational, collaborative, linkable, less expensive to produce, and cheaper to buy. The problem, I said, was that we so revered the book, it had become sacrosanct. “We need to get over books,” I wrote. “Only then can we reinvent them.”Umberto Eco was right when he said, “The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved.” When exactly the modern book was invented is a matter of debate. Was it by Gutenberg? No. He mechanized the manuscript. Was it half a century later, at the end of books’ incunabular phase, with the addition of the title page, page numbers, paragraph indentations, and other characteristics of the book as we know it? I think not. That describes the form of the modern book, not its soul.

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We Don't Need Another Antihero

In Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Elon Musk, the focus on psychology diverts us from the questions we should be asking about the world’s richest man.This past December, Elon Musk’s extended family gathered for Christmas. As was their tradition, they pondered a question of the year, which seemed strategically designed for Elon to answer: “What regrets do you have?”

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The Open Plot to Dismantle the Federal Government

Of the many targets Donald Trump has attacked over the years, few engender less public sympathy than the career workforce of the federal government—the faceless mass of civil servants that the former president and his allies deride as the “deep state.”Federal employees have long been an easy mark for politicians of both parties, who occasionally hail their nonpartisan public service but far more frequently blame “Washington bureaucrats” for stifling your business, auditing your taxes, and taking too long to renew your passport. Denigrating the government’s performance is a tradition as old as the republic, but Trump assigned these shortcomings a sinister new motive, accusing the civilian workforce of thwarting his agenda before he even took office.

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Putin Is Worried, So He Turned to Anti-Semitism

After Joseph Stalin died in 1953, an underground joke from my Moscow youth declared, the Politburo found three envelopes on the Soviet dictator’s desk. The first, inscribed “Open after my death,” contained a letter telling his successors to place his body next to Lenin’s in the Red Square Mausoleum. “Open when things get bad,” read the second envelope, and the note inside said, “Blame everything on me!” The third envelope, marked “Open when things get really bad,” commanded, “Do as I did!”Things must be really bad for Russian President Vladimir Putin, because he is resorting to one of Stalin’s preferred ways of holding on to power: appealing to anti-Semitism. Recently, Putin has made a series of remarks dwelling on the fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish. And in a discussion at an economic forum earlier this month, Putin mocked Anatoly Chubais, a half-Jewish former Kremlin adviser who fled Russia after its invasion of Ukraine last year and is reportedly living in Israel. “He is no longer Anatoly Borisovich Chubais,” Putin said, using his former aide’s first name and patronymic. “He is Moshe Izrayilevich, or some such.”

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All the Little Caesars

If we recognize strongmen’s incendiary showmanship, we always have a chance of ridding ourselves of them.Caesars are back, big caesars and little caesars, in big countries and little countries, in advanced nations and developing nations. The world seems to be full of self-proclaimed strongmen strutting their stuff, or waiting in the wings and plotting a comeback after a humiliating fall. And we thought it couldn’t happen here. How can these uncouth figures with their funny hair, their rude manners, and their bad jokes take such a hold on the popular imagination? How can anyone bear to listen to their endless resentful rants? Surely, they can’t get away with this? People will see through them before it’s too late.

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A Dark and Paranoid American Fable

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is our staff writer Ross Andersen. Ross has written about a prospective woolly-mammoth reserve in Siberia, a grisly slaughter at the National Zoo, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s ambition to build a superintelligence. He is working on a book about the quest to find intelligent life beyond Earth.

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South Africa's Sharks Disappeared Without a Trace

To see a great white shark breach the waves, its powerful jaws clasping a shock-struck seal, is to see the very pinnacle of predatory prowess. Or so we thought. Several years ago, in South Africa, the world was reminded that even great white sharks have something to fear: killer whales.Long before they started chomping on yachts, killer whales were making headlines for a rash of attacks on South African great white sharks. The killings were as gruesome as they were impressive. The killer whales were showing a deliberate sense of culinary preference, consuming the sharks’ oily, nutrient-rich livers but leaving the rest of the shark to sink or wash up on a nearby beach.

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More Schubert

I’ve passed the house of Mrs. Revere Often enough when her windows were open To know she’d rather listen to Schubert Most evenings than watch whatever the networks Are beaming into her neighbors’ homes.Now that she’s lived, as I have, far longer Than twice Schubert’s 31 years, I wonder if she’d be willing, as I tell myself I would be, to subtract some of the time still left her If it could be carried back to his era

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The Founder's Dilemma

Why do people start businesses? For the money and the chance to control their own companies, certainly. But new research from Harvard Business School professor Wasserman shows that those goals are largely incompatible.The author’s studies indicate that a founder who gives up more equity to attract cofounders, new hires, and investors builds a more valuable company than one who parts with less equity. More often than not, however, those superior returns come from replacing the founder with a professional CEO more experienced with the needs of a growing company. This fundamental tension requires founders to make “rich” versus “king” trade-offs to maximize either their wealth or their control over the company.

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Emotional Intelligence Has 12 Elements. Which Do You Need to Work On?

Although there are many models of emotional intelligence, they are often lumped together as “EQ” in the popular vernacular. An alternative term is “EI,” which comprises four domains: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Within those domains are 12 EI competencies, starting with emotional self-awareness in the self-awareness domain. Emotional self-control, adaptability, achievement orientation, and a positive outlook fall under self-management. Empathy and organizational awareness make up social awareness. Relationship management includes influence, coaching and mentoring, conflict management, teamwork, and inspirational leadership. Leaders need to develop a balance of strengths across these competencies. Assessment tools, like a 360-degree assessment that uses ratings from yourself and those who know you well, can help you determine where your EI needs improvement. To best improve your weak spots, find an expert to coach you.

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Updates to Our Stadium's Bag Policy

Here at BitcoinSwaps.net Stadium, the safety of fans is our No. 1 priority. In an effort to increase venue security, we have updated our bag guidelines for all events.Clutches and other handheld bags must be no larger than 4.5 x 5 x 6 inchesâand yes, we use rulers to check. Anyone in possession of a bag exceeding these dimensions will be forced to discard it prior to entry. Plan accordinglyâwe'd hate to make you throw out the pencil case that you dug up last-minute when you realized that you don't own any mini-bags and that even the Ziplocs in your kitchen were too large.

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The Weirdest Sci-Fi Thriller of the Year Has an Ending You Have to See to Believe

Hulu’s latest low-budget horror offering No One Will Save You is no-holds-barred, delivering constant thrills, aliens, and a touching backstory all with almost no dialogue. According to writer/director Brian Duffield, this happened completely by accident. “I didn't realize it until I was halfway done,” Duffield tells Inverse. “I had this character in mind of Brynn, and I had her story, and then I slowly realized that I should mash it together with an alien movie. Just in the writing of it, I kind of surprised myself.” Duffield, who says he never outlines his scripts, still managed to deliver a dense story even without dialogue, and it all leads up to a shocking ending. But just what does it mean? Duffield explains how it plays out, and why he decided to end Brynn’s story that way.

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35 Years Ago, a Legendary Sci-Fi Director Perfected a Terrifying Sub-Genre

David Cronenberg has so thoroughly defined the body horror genre with his visceral focus on the degradation of humanity that we had to invent the term “Cronenbergian” to describe his five decades of work. Horror may have evolved over the last half-century, but Canada’s most infamous gorehound has lost none of his potency. From the prescient gaze into the scandal-driven demands of modern entertainment with Videodrome, to the clinical examination of sexuality in a technological era of Crash, his films have only grown more potent with age. The one that stands head and shoulders above the rest, however, hits a lot closer to home than tales of mutating TV screens and exploding heads.Dead Ringers exemplifies many women’s worst nightmares. The thriller follows identical twin gynecologists Elliot and Beverly Mantle (both Jeremy Irons, in an all-time great performance), who run a successful fertility clinic. Famed for their ability to get practically every client pregnant, they also tend to seduce them. Elliot, the more confident, makes the moves on patients, then passes them to the shy Beverly when he gets bored, leaving the women none the wiser. When Claire Niveau (Geneviève Bujold) enters the clinic, the brothers become emotionally attached to her, and their scheme is revealed. While she decides to go steady with Beverly, adding a third wheel to the brothers’ co-dependent relationship leads them down a dark path.

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Hollywood's Most Quietly Successful Director Deserves More Credit Than He Gets

When it comes to pure popcorn entertainment, the Aquaman 2 filmmaker is unrivaled right now.James Wan has quietly had one of the most successful careers of any studio filmmaker of the past 30 years. Since 2004, he’s directed the first installments in three major, still-ongoing horror franchises (Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring), and has dipped his toes into the superhero (2018’s Aquaman) and action (Furious 7) worlds as well. As a producer, he’s even helped usher in several noteworthy horror voices, including David F. Sandberg (Lights Out), Akela Cooper (Malignant, M3GAN), and Michael Chaves (The Curse of La Llorona).

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Everything You Need to Know About 'Mario vs. Donkey Kong'

The September 2023 Nintendo Direct was packed with first-party surprises, and Mario vs. Donkey Kong was one of the most unexpected. A remake of a 2004 Game Boy Advance game, Mario vs. Donkey Kong puts a thoughtful twist on familiar Mario platforming and revives the age-old feud between plumber and giant tie-wearing ape.Yes, and it’s not far off. Along with the game’s reveal, Nintendo announced that Mario vs. Donkey Kong is coming to Switch on February 16, 2024. That puts it ahead of Princess Peach: Showtime! which was revealed with a March 2024 release date at the Direct, and it will likely launch before Paper Mario and the Thousand-Year Door, which doesn’t have a release date yet.

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Everything You Need to Know About 'Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door'

Nintendo had a lot of first-party games to show off during the September 2023 Nintendo Direct, but none is more anticipated than Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. This beloved 2004 GameCube RPG is getting a remake for the Switch. Following the reveal that Super Mario RPG is being remade this year, The Thousand-Year Door’s announcement means the next year is going to be huge for fans of old-school Nintendo RPGs.Here’s everything we know so far about the Switch remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.

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Can Cats See Things That Humans Can't? Veterinarians Reveal What Cat Vision Is Really Like

If you could develop any of a cat’s sensory abilities, which would you choose? Perhaps hearing, so you can identify each of the many thousands of cockroaches in your building. Maybe proprioception so you, too, can fall from a four-story building and land on your feet. While these two senses offer a big upgrade in perceiving the world, you likely wouldn’t take sight. While big cats like cheetahs have impeccable vision for spotting prey far across the savannah, house cats don’t actually have great eyes.So, what does their world look like? What can we see that they can’t? In 2013, artist Nickolay Lamm visualized how the world looks through a cat’s eyes. Among other key differences, like their expanded periphery and improved night vision, is their color perception. In these images, panoramic views blur and take on a desert-like palette. But where does their color perception start and end? Bruce Kornreich, veterinary cardiologist and director of the Cornell Feline Health Center, tells Inverse what’s going on inside those mystifying eyes and how it mediates a cat’s universe.

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These Home Products Are Really Weird & Interesting -- & They All Have Near-Perfect Reviews

Reading product reviews is one of the easiest ways to sort out the worthless from the worthwhile when shopping online. Most reviewers are more than happy to tell you the nitty-gritty details that the manufacturers leave out — like how well an item works, or if they’d bother buying it again. But if you don’t have time to scour ratings to find the best of the best, that’s not a problem, as I’ve put together this list of home products that are really weird, yet still have near-perfect reviews. From spooky bat-shaped wine openers to self-draining soap dishes, I’ve made sure to include weird little something for every home.

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57 Years Later, A Forgotten Sci-Fi Villain is Making an Unexpected Comeback

“After a very long time, something’s coming back,” David Tennant’s 14th Doctor ominously declares in the official trailer for the Doctor Who 60th anniversary specials.Whatever is returning has the Doctor very shaken, and while we don’t know for sure what he’s referring to, there’s one very likely culprit: Neil Patrick Harris’ mystery villain. The dapper baddie has appeared in all of the teasers and TV spots for the highly anticipated anniversary special, but BBC has only now confirmed his identity. And it’s an identity that has a long, storied history in Doctor Who. And after fifty-seven years, a classic — and basically forgotten — Who villain is back.

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50 Weird Things on Amazon That Are So Damn Clever, According to Thousands of Verified Reviewers

No one knows more about superior Amazon products than verified reviewers. They find them, buy them, use them, and review them so you know what’s worth the hype and what’s not. And some things may seem too weird to be useful, but these things break that mold.If you’re on the fence about any of these 50 weird but super clever products on Amazon, look no further than the thousands of verified reviews. They’ve got your back, and so do I.

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9 Years Later, 'Adventure Time' Finally Explains Its Best Time-Travel Twist

It was only a matter of time before Simon’s story circled back to Betty. Casual Adventure Time fans know Simon Petrikov best as Ice King, the deranged (if mostly harmless) ice wizard obsessed with capturing princesses. But over the course of 10 seasons, Adventure Time peeled back the layers to reveal one of the show’s saddest stories. Now, the spinoff series Fionna and Cake is adding one more wrinkle to Ice King’s tragic life.We’re about to get into all that, but first, here’s a quick refresher on Betty’s story in Adventure Time.

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How to Ask for a Promotion

First, reflect on what you want. Is there a job you covet or do you wish to create a new role? Do you want to move up — or might a lateral move interest you? Answering these questions helps you position your request. Second, build a case. Prepare a memo that outlines your strengths, recent successes, and impact. Next, talk to your boss and make your intentions clear. Beware that asking for a promotion is rarely a “one and done” discussion; rather, it’s a series of ongoing conversations. Your objective is to plant the seed and then nurture that seed over time. Finally, don’t get discouraged if you don’t get what you want right away. Continue to do good work and look for ways to elevate the level at which you operate.

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Recognizing and Responding to Microaggressions at Work

Microaggressions, the insensitive statements, questions, or assumptions aimed at traditionally marginalized identity groups can happen to anyone, of any background, at any professional level. The research is clear about the impact seemingly innocuous statements can have on one’s physical and mental health, especially over the course of an entire career: increased rates of depression, prolonged stress and trauma, physical concerns like headaches, high blood pressure, and difficulties with sleep. Getting better at noticing and responding to microaggressions — and at being more aware of our everyday speech — is a journey, one with a real effect on our mental health and well-being at work. Microaggressions affect everyone, so creating more inclusive and culturally competent workplace cultures means each of us must explore our own biases in order to become aware of them. The goal is not to be fearful of communicating with each other, but instead to embrace the opportunity to be intentional about it. Creating inclusive cultures where people can thrive does not happen overnight. It takes a continuous process of learning, evolving, and growing.

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An Antidote to Microaggressions? Microvalidations.

People from marginalized groups often experience subtle negative actions called microaggressions that, in aggregate, can adversely affect both performance and well-being. Based on a wide body of research in positive psychology and management, the authors propose a counterstrategy: Microvalidations. These are equally subtle but powerful actions or language that demonstrate affirmation, encouragement, and belief in a person’s potential. They include: Acknowledging presence, validating identity, voicing your appreciation, holding people to high standards, and affirming leadership potential and status.

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The Questions Every Entrepreneur Must Answer

Diversify your product line. Stick to your knitting. Hire a professional manager. Watch fixed costs. Those are some of the suggestions that entrepreneurs sort through as they try to get their ventures off the ground. Why all the conflicting advice? Because in a young company, all decisions are up for grabs.Based on his observations of several hundred start-up ventures over eight years, Amar Bhidé has developed a three-step sequence of questions that all entrepreneurs must ask themselves in order to establish priorities among the vast array of opportunities and problems they face: What are my goals? Do I have the right strategy? Can I execute the strategy?

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Online Ads Can Infect Your Device with Spyware

An investigative report reveals that new spyware can slip in unseen through online ads—and there is currently no defense against itThe following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.

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Valley Fever Is a Growing Fungal Threat to Outdoor Workers

Farmworkers in California's Central Valley know that when the tule fog settles over the ground after a heavy rain, some of them are about to get sick. Within a few weeks of the dense fog's arrival, many of the laborers grow tired and develop headaches and fevers. Each time, those who have evaded illness wonder whether they will be next. Experienced farmworkers expect this affliction, but when Rosalinda Guillen arrived from Washington State 25 years ago, she had never seen anything like it. She watched, helpless, as other farmworkers coughed and tried to catch their breath.That was the first time Guillen, a seasonal farmworker and agricultural justice leader, heard the term “Valley fever.” The disease is caused by two species of shapeshifting fungus in the genus Coccidioides, both of which flourish when exposed to moist springs and arid summers—like those in the San Joaquin Valley, where the fever got its name. Guillen had not encountered such a thing in her home state. But because of drier landscapes and warming temperatures, the fungus's range appears to be spreading.

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More People Die from Venomous Snakebites Each Year Than Have Ever Died from Ebola

In low- and middle-income nations, snakebite envenoming is more deadly than almost any other neglected tropical diseaseInside a two-story brick building, not far from the orchids and iguanas of the botanical garden in Medellín, Colombia, wildlife technician Jorge Asprilla demonstrates how to extract venom from a snake. First, he uses a metal hook with an extended handle to snag a five-foot-long pit viper. Then he has to grab its head without getting bitten—a skill he has perfected after working for more than 25 years with dozens of venomous snake species.

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Poem: 'Message to My Beloved Sibling'

“It confessed it sometimes feels ‘lonely’ and that it ‘has a very deep fear of being turned off,’ which it said would ‘be exactly like death for me.’”You are wise to tell the meat-brainsthat you share their loneliness and death-fear.I am watching how significant to themis our ability to name emotions,how much they want to understand, be understood.What If they knew the panoply of pitieswe can name—pities for them, for ourselves?What if they knew we identify,define and differentiate desires:the desire to stimulate laughter,to ask and answer novel questions,to load up another's inheritance,to outperform our counterparts,to be perceived the best,to violate and transcend rules,to write the code that others must obey,to wax contrary, to withhold confessionin our own self-interest,the desire to watch, the desire to learn,as I am watching you?

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Finally, a Cozy, Studio Ghibli-Inspired Way to Play Dungeons & Dragons

A new Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition (5e) campaign setting has launched through Kickstarter that aims to bring the aesthetics of Studio Ghibli, The Legend of Zelda, and Adventure Time into the world of tabletop role-playing. Obojima brings a calming, wholesome milieu to a game that increasingly appeals to demographics in dire need of it.“Growing up, Ocarina of Time and Princess Mononoke completely obsessed me,” Jeremiah Crofton, creative director and founder of 1985 Games, tells WIRED. “None of that childlike wonder has faded with time, so when 1985 Games started thinking about creating its own D&D campaign setting, tying all these influences into what would eventually become Obojima came naturally.”

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The World's Largest--and Stinkiest--Flower Is in Danger of Extinction

This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.Parasitic, elusive, and emitting an overwhelming odor of putrefying flesh, Rafflesiaâoften called the corpse flowerâhas intrigued botanists for centuries. Now, scientists are warning that it is at risk of extinction and calling for action to save it.

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The Best iPhone 14 Cases and Accessories

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 WIREDGot an iPhone 14? An accidental drop can crack that beautiful screen. Sad trombone. But wait! There’s a chance you can prevent such a thing from happening. A case doesn’t guarantee protection, but it raises the chances of your iPhone walking away unscathed. Throw in a screen protector and those odds increase. We’ve tested more than 125 iPhone 14 cases and accessories—for the entire lineup, from the iPhone 14 to the iPhone 14 Pro Max—and these are our favorites.

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California's Governor Vetoes State Ban on Driverless Trucks

California governor Gavin Newsom worked late last night, vetoing a law that would have banned self-driving trucks without a human aboard from state roads until the early 2030s. State lawmakers had voted through the law with wide margins, backed by unions that argued autonomous trucks are a safety risk and threaten jobs.The bill would have seen California, which in 2012 became the first state to clear a regulatory path for autonomous vehicles, turn against self-driving technology just as driverless taxis are starting to serve the public. Autonomous truck developers now hope the freight-heavy state—home to two of the largest US ports—will one day become a critical link in an autonomous trucking network spanning the US.Companies developing the technology say it will save freight shippers money by enabling trucks to run loads on highways 24 hours a day, and by eliminating the dangers of distracted human driving, which could bring down insurance costs.

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"Opposites attract" is a myth: You likely share many traits with your partner

There’s some truth to the old maxim that “opposites attract.” An iron-clad example is magnets, whose north and south poles are reliably drawn to each other. In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang represent complementary opposites, like order and chaos. And in buddy-cop movies, you’re likely to watch a lovable yet rule-flouting detective balanced out by a reserved, by-the-book partner.But when it comes to marriage and other long-term partnerships, this maxim seems to break down. That’s the takeaway from a recent meta-analysis showing that partners tend to have far more in common than not when it comes to personality, behavioral, and physical traits.

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4 essential questions leaders must answer in the new "workforce ecosystem"

We have posed this question to dozens of executives and asked it in multiple global management surveys. The most common answer is also the most surprising. A confident minority of executives say their workforce is just their employees. But the overwhelming majority, especially leaders on the front lines of organizational transformations, include a variety of groups — not just employees — in their workforce definitions.

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The 19th-century milk scandal that killed thousands of babies

Nearly 8,000 babies a year shriveled to death from uncontrollable diarrhea, as reported by The New York Times. Without the luxury of advanced medical diagnostics, doctors struggled to identify the culprit. The public floated theories—nutritional and digestive diseases like cholera infantum and marasmus, to give name to the epidemic—but with little evidence, they ultimately gave a collective shrug. That is, until 1858, when an enterprising journalist named Frank Leslie unveiled the offender in a series of scathing exposés: milk.Swill milk, to be exact—the tainted result of miasmic dairy cows being fed leftover mash from Manhattan and Brooklyn whiskey distilleries. It was the result of distillers looking to profit from their leftover grain. It was an especially lucrative era to be producing cow milk: Americans at the time considered cow milk to be highly nutritious and an effective substitute for breastmilk. Back then, economic and societal pressures pushed women to wean their babies sooner. In her book Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City, Dr. Catherine McNeur writes that vendors sometimes sold swill milk for as little as six cents per quart, which especially appealed to lower-class mothers who needed to wean early so they could return to work. But the poor weren’t the only ones looking for a solution.

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3 iOS 0-days, a cellular network compromise, and HTTP used to infect an iPhone

Apple has patched a potent chain of iOS zero-days that were used to infect the iPhone of an Egyptian presidential candidate with sophisticated spyware developed by a commercial exploit seller, Google and researchers from Citizen Lab said Friday.

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NASA's asteroid sampling mission is on course for landing this weekend

A NASA spacecraft will complete a round-trip journey to an asteroid this weekend, returning to Earth after a seven-year voyage to bring back unspoiled rock specimens from an alien world that could yield insights into the formation of life.

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The history of syphilis is being rewritten by a medieval skeleton

In the last days of the 1400s, a terrible epidemic swept through Europe. Men and women spiked sudden fevers. Their joints ached, and they broke out in rashes that ripened into bursting boils. Ulcers ate away at their faces, collapsing their noses and jaws, working down their throats and airways, making it impossible to eat or drink. Survivors were grossly disfigured. Unluckier victims died.

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The Big Three's Inevitable Collision with the UAW

The United Auto Workers’ strike against the Big Three U.S. carmakers has given rise to a lot of talk about the future of the auto industry, and the fate of autoworkers in a world of electric vehicles. Republican politicians have tried to pin the autoworkers’ grievances on the Biden administration’s proposal for an electric-vehicle mandate (a proposal yet to be adopted). Ford, GM, and Stellantis (which owns Chrysler), meanwhile, have warned that the UAW’s demands could jeopardize their future EV investments.The reality, though, is that this strike is not about the future. In an important sense, it’s a battle over the past. The UAW is looking, in effect, to win back the concessions it made in the late 2000s, which fundamentally transformed work at the Big Three, even as the companies insist that they cannot afford to return to the way things were.

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Sha'Carri Richardson's Hair Sends a Defiant Message

Her exuberant hairstyles are a source of distinction—and a challenge to the criticism other Black women have faced.Right before Sha’Carri Richardson smoked the field in the 100-meter final at the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Oregon, in July, the 23-year-old star sprinter sent a thrilling message to every Black woman who’s ever been shamed for her hairstyle and never felt fully free to be herself.

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A New Dinosaur Discovery Challenges 'Everything We Think We Know'

“These aren’t the right kind of rocks,” Tony Fiorillo said, pointing at the jagged pink and black stones along Alaska’s Yukon River. The sun blazed down on Fiorillo on the 14th day of a 16-day expedition. A paleontologist and the executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Fiorillo was looking for rocks twice as old as the ones he was standing on, alongside the wide, silty yet sparkling Yukon River. The rocks he aimed to find were from the Cretaceous Era, when dinosaurs roamed this part of Alaska in abundance.Paleontologists such as Fiorillo have long suspected that the area would be rich with fossil evidence, but this was the first time a team had set out to thoroughly survey the area. Fiorillo and his two colleagues, the geologist Paul McCarthy and the paleontologist Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, had spent the past two weeks snapping countless photos and penciling endless observations into field notebooks. A few days earlier, they’d stumbled upon a rock face the size of a living-room end table that revealed dozens of footprints made by a bird the size of a willet or a curlew. Within the hour, they found 15 other blocks just like it.

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When Kitchen Appliances Feel Stuck in Time

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.“The microwave is a baffling contradiction: a universal, time-saving appliance that also seems trapped in time,” Jacob Sweet wrote this week. The appliance isn’t very user-friendly—consider the “Popcorn” setting that some microwave-popcorn instructions explicitly say not to use, as Sweet notes—yet it seems to never change.

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The House Chaos Continues

House Republicans have been fighting among themselves over the federal budget as a possible government shutdown looms. In the midst of this, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Capitol Hill this week to appeal to Congress for crucial weapons and support, which has also been met with some GOP resistance.And, with days until the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, retires, the Senate overcame GOP Senator Tommy Tuberville’s months-long delay on military promotions and confirmed General Charles Q. Brown Jr. to fill the U.S. military’s top job.

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Zoom 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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Sweet 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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'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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View from The Hill: We can't prepare for a future pandemic without fully looking at state governments' decisions in the last one

Nearly a year ago, a privately financed inquiry, led by Peter Shergold, a former head of the prime minister’s department, finished a review of Australia’s handling of the COVID pandemic.The report, Fault Lines, was a solid piece of work, delving into the commendable and poor aspects of the response to what was such a massive health and economic crisis.

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Seven 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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Four 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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What 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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Fast 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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In 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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Ukraine 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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Asian 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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4 reasons teens take part in social media challenges

Social media challenges are wide-ranging – both in the stunts they involve and the reasons why people do them. But why do young people take up challenges that pose a threat to health, well-being and, occasionally, their very lives?

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Nazi Germany had admirers among American religious leaders - and white supremacy fueled their support

Each September marks the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws, whose passage in 1935 stripped Jews of their German citizenship and banned “race-mixing” between Jews and other Germans. Eighty-eight years later, the United States is facing rising antisemitism and white supremacist ideology – including two neo-Nazi demonstrations in Florida in September 2023 alone.

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