   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S69
S1
S2 Five Ways Leaders Can Turn Pushback Into Progress   Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Effectively responding to pushback may well rank as one of the most important competencies that leaders can possess, and it’s especially critical during times of transition, like returning to the office post-pandemic. Such resistance to an organizational policy, directive, or decision can take many forms, ranging from voicing concerns and raising questions to active opposition and sabotage.1
Continued here
|
S3How much it costs to attend the Burning Man festival  It's not easy – or cheap – to pop up a bustling city from empty desert ground. But that's exactly what happens at the Burning Man festival, held annually in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.Burning Man started in 1986 at a San Francisco beach with 35 people united by "the pursuit of a more creative and connected existence in the world"; this week, nearly 70,000 people are making their way out of the muddy desert after Burning Man's 37th year. The now nine-day festival has morphed into a massive brand and destination, where so-called "Burners" from around the world build a civilisation together from scratch, complete with art installations, healing camps, inspiring talks and live DJs.
Continued here
|
S4Crystal Wahpepah's Native American corn thumbprint cookies  Corn is the lifeblood of Native American communities. It has been at the heart of many Indigenous cultures throughout the Americas for over 3,000 years. It's not just sustenance; it's a sacred plant that holds deep meaning. Among indigenous North American tribes, the Corn Mother is a maternal figure who is believed to be responsible for the origin of corn, and the first to give her people instructions on how to grow it. It is the American Indians who taught Europeans to grow, harvest and use corn in their diets, thus introducing the grain to a new continent when they brought it back home."When it comes to corn," said Crystal Wahpepah, the owner and head chef of Wahpepah's Kitchen in Oakland, California, "it's such an honour to still have it after all these [centuries], how strong it still is [in our community]."
Continued here
|
S5Why Martin Scorsese fears for the future of cinema  On the eve of the release of his new epic western crime drama, Killers of the Flower Moon, the great US filmmaker Martin Scorsese is sitting with me in a hotel suite overlooking New York's Central Park lamenting the state of contemporary Hollywood films. In a wide-ranging interview for the BBC's Talking Movies programme, he says of the current spate of blockbuster franchises: "They're not for me… as I get older I'm trying to figure out where the hell to spend my time. I can't do it with them."The sentiment is in keeping with an oft-quoted interview he gave four years ago to Empire Magazine, in which he stated that Marvel superhero movies resembled "theme parks" and were "not cinema".
Continued here
|
S6Liberia elections 2023: three things the next president must do  On 10 October, 46 political parties and 20 presidential candidates will compete for two million registered votes at 5,000 polling stations in 15 counties. Liberia is more divided than it has been since the end of its 14-year civil war in 2003. The war ended with the signing of a peace agreement, but its scars are still visible across the country.
Continued here
|
S7S8The Israel-Hamas war: No matter who loses, Iran wins  There will be only one winner in the war that has broken out between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. And it is neither Israel nor Hamas.In an operation coined “the Al-Aqsa Storm,” Hamas, whose formal name is the Islamic Resistance Movement, fired thousands of rockets into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters infiltrated Israel by land, sea and air. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed, more than 2,000 injured, and many taken hostage.
Continued here
|
S9S10There's a hidden source of excess nutrients suffocating the Great Barrier Reef. We found it  The Great Barrier Reef is one of Australia’s most important environmental and economic assets. It is estimated to contribute A$56 billion per year and supports about 64,000 full-time jobs, according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. However, the reef is under increasing pressure. While much public attention is focused on the impacts of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef and the debate around its endangered status, water quality is also crucial to the reef’s health and survival.
Continued here
|
S11S12Alienation and hidden histories: 'unsettling' new Australian stories reveal a distorted world  Three new Australian short-story collections are very different in their style and approach to short-form fiction. However, these books – by veterans of the form David Cohen and Laura Jean McKay, and debut writer John Morrissey – are united by their tendency to cross genres and present the contemporary world in distorted (and occasionally disturbing) ways. Review: The Terrible Event – David Cohen (Transit Lounge); Gunflower – Laura Jean McKay (Scribe); Firelight – John Morrissey (Text)
Continued here
|
S13Australia's teacher workforce has a diversity problem. Here's how we can fix it  Alice Garner was affiliated with the Victorian Department of Education between 2014 and 2019 when employed as a secondary school teacher. During this period she was a member of the Australian Education Union. Australia’s teaching workforce does not reflect the diversity of the Australian community, a situation that has far-reaching implications for our education system.
Continued here
|
S14There are 750 unidentified human remains in Australia. Could your DNA help solve one of these cold cases?  Jodie Ward is also employed by the Australian Federal Police as the Program Lead of the National DNA Program for Unidentified and Missing Persons. She was involved in applying forensic investigative genetic genealogy to the unidentified human remains case found on Kangaroo Island, which assisted the South Australia Police to identify the remains as belonging to William Hardie. The National DNA Program for Unidentified and Missing Persons commenced in July 2020 and is currently funded under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (Cth) until December 2023.Yesterday it was announced the Australian Federal Police (AFP) National DNA Program for Unidentified and Missing Persons used advanced DNA technology to assist South Australia Police resolve a 40-year-old missing persons case.
Continued here
|
S15China's youth unemployment problem has become a crisis we can no longer ignore  Youth unemployment is a global problem, but in China the rate - 21.3% - is particularly alarming, not just because it’s high, but because it could affect other economies and geopolitical relations.The release of the rate, which more than doubled the pre-COVID rate of May 2018, coincided with China’s National Bureau of Statistics announcing it would no longer report age specific data because it needed to “improve and optimise labour force survey statistics”.
Continued here
|
S16S17S18Hamas assault echoes 1973 Arab-Israeli war - a shock attack and questions of political, intelligence culpability  Exactly 50 years and a day after being taken completely off guard by a coordinated military attack by its neighbors – Egypt and Syria – Israel was again caught by surprise.Early on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas militants invaded southern Israel by land, sea and air, and fired thousands of rockets deep into the country. Within hours, hundreds of Israelis were killed, hostages taken and war declared. Fierce Israeli reprisals have already taken the lives of hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza, and many more will surely be dead by the time this war is over.
Continued here
|
S19Romantic heroes or 'one of us' - how we judge political leaders is rarely objective or rational  Given the presidential style of modern politics, the intense media focus on party leaders is unavoidable. But this involves a degree of artifice. New Zealanders don’t vote directly for a prime minister, they vote for their preferred party and electorate candidate. Technicalities aside, though, party leaders play a key role in shaping their party’s policies and soliciting public support. The upside of the attention they receive, therefore, is that voters get to scrutinise before they “buy”.
Continued here
|
S20The unprecedented attack against Israel by Hamas included precise armed drones and thousands of rockets  Last Friday, Israeli newspapers were filled with stories about the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, also called the October War. In 1973, the country had nearly been defeated by co-ordinated surprise attacks from its Arab neighbors. Never again, people thought.So, Israelis were especially shocked to be awakened Saturday morning by rocket barrages and gunfire in the streets. Hamas militants from Gaza had launched a smaller but equally co-ordinated surprise attack. It came by land, air and sea.
Continued here
|
S21Why did Hamas attack, and why now? What does it hope to gain?  In hindsight, the drivers of Hamas’s startlingly well-planned, land-sea-air attack on Israel on Saturday were in plain sight.The operation reflects a pattern of four wars and regular outbreaks of violence between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza since 2005, when Israel withdrew its military posts and forcibly removed 9,000 Israeli settlers from the territory.
Continued here
|
S22S23You Need to Watch the Best Roman Empire Epic on Netflix ASAP  As Hollywood films become increasingly homogenous, many tried-and-true staples have been abandoned. Not only have mid-budget rom-coms and R-rated comedies become increasingly rare, but the high-profile historical epic, once reliable blockbuster fare for studios, is also endangered. The loss of the latter has been particularly noteworthy given how stale and safe the realm of blockbusters has become. Few movies prove the enduring value of big-budget historical epics more effectively than Gladiator. The Ridley Scott-directed smash hit cemented Russell Crowe as a bona fide movie star, and key moments have only become more iconic in the years since its release. Gladiator has become one of those rare movies that everyone feels like they know, regardless of whether they’ve seen it.
Continued here
|
S24The Case Against Ultra-Processed Foods Is Missing One Crucial Piece of Evidence  Ultra-processed foods are taking up more and more space in global conversations about public health and nutrition.From breakfast cereals and protein bars to flavored yogurt and frozen pizzas, ultra-processed foods are everywhere, filling aisle upon aisle at the supermarket. Fully 58 percent of the calories consumed by adults and 67 percent of those consumed by children in the United States are made up of these highly palatable foodstuffs with their highly manipulated ingredients.
Continued here
|
S25Xbox Game Pass Just Released the Grittiest Survival Shooter of the Decade  In 2008, Left 4 Dead crafted an entirely new sub-genre of shooter, one focused on intense co-op gameplay that pitted players against wave after wave of enemies as they traverse levels. Countless titles have tried to recapture the essence of what made Left 4 Dead so special, but only a few have managed to really succeed. However, one of the best imitators just got added to Xbox Game Pass. Warhammer 40,000: Darktide isn’t perfect, but it does a fantastic job of evoking that same relentless intensity that makes a great horde shooter — as well as the grim aesthetic that defines the Warhammer franchise.
Continued here
|
S26Weird, Clever Things for Your Bathroom & Kitchen That Are Getting Wildly Popular on Amazon  Sometimes you need a quirky (but super helpful) solution for those overfilled kitchen cabinets or a practical fix to a problem in your bathroom you didn’t even know you had — and that’s exactly where these popular things on Amazon come in. They might seem a bit weird at first, but they’re all so clever that you’ll immediately wonder how you’ve been existing in your home every day without them.Of course, these clever fixes are getting wildly popular, so it’s a good idea to start scrolling and shopping ASAP.
Continued here
|
S2718 Years Later, 'Ahsoka' Proves Star Wars Still Doesn't Get Its Female Characters  The new Star Wars series made history with its female cast, but failed to live up to the hype.Admittedly, Ahsoka had a lot working against it. It never seemed prudent to continue a decade-long animated adventure in live-action. It’d be similarly difficult for casual fans — most of whom hadn’t seen a lick of The Clone Wars or Rebels, and who only had a vague knowledge of Anakin Skywalker’s erstwhile padawan — to get on board. If the growing serialization of Marvel Studios projects is teaching us anything, it’s that audiences don’t actually want to read an explainer or watch a recap to understand what’s happening in their favorite franchise.
Continued here
|
S28These Extremely Tiny Earbuds Are Great If You're Cool With Big Compromises  I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are a lot of wireless earbuds out there. And in that vast sea of buds, most of them share, more or less, the same set of features. There’s active noise cancellation (ANC), maybe personalized EQ, touch or squeeze controls, a beefy charging case for keeping them juiced on the go.Those are all really nice things to have, and once you have them, there’s really no going back — I love Nothing’s Ear 2 wireless earbuds and don’t have any current plans of jumping ship.
Continued here
|
S29Of All the Cheap Home Upgrades on Amazon, These Are the Most Impressive  Over the past several months, I’ve spent just about every free minute I have making upgrades to my home. Sure, some projects were expensive and challenging, but believe it or not, when people come over, those aren’t the first things they notice. Instead, they say things like, “Everything’s so organized” and “Did you replace this bathtub?” (I didn’t.) In other words, sometimes the easiest, cheapest home improvement projects make the biggest difference. Clutter-reducing organizers, upgraded bedding, and cleaning products that actually work go a long way. And since Amazon has tons of brilliant products that improve the aesthetic and functionality of your home, you never even have to leave the house.
Continued here
|
S30Should You Close The Toilet Lid Before Flushing? The definitive answer to end all debates  Toilet lids are weird. Some toilets have them, while many others don’t. And whether or not you are supposed to use them is its own can of worms.Various studies have used lasers, surface samples, and ultraviolet light to show that every flush turns your toilet into an invisible fountain, spraying and splattering its contents. In turn, this research demonstrates that a toilet lid is a superb cover against these plumes. The question remains: How much does closing the toilet lid actually reduce our chances of getting sick?
Continued here
|
S31'Loki' is Doing One Simple Thing Better Than Every Other Marvel Show  Over two years after its debut season came to an end, the Marvel Cinematic Universe TV series has returned with its long-awaited sophomore season. While Loki’s new episodes were created by a slightly different creative team than its first six installments, it doesn’t seem like the Disney+ original show has lost any of what made it special in the first place. On the contrary, Loki’s Season 2 premiere has only further cemented the series’ place as the best Disney+ title that Marvel Studios has produced up to this point.The Loki premiere, titled “Ouroboros,” doesn’t do that by delivering a constant succession of major twists or by progressing the show’s overarching plot forward all that much, either. Instead, the episode leans into all of the things that made Loki Season 1 such a welcome addition to the MCU. In doing so, it’s revealed why Loki has always been Marvel’s best Disney+ original series.
Continued here
|
S32NASA Redirected Its Asteroid Mission To This Menacing Object Near Earth  Apophis is an asteroid with a loathsome name. It’s borrowed from the serpentine Egyptian god of evil for what seemed like very apt reasons two decades ago when astronomers first discovered it.Apophis once sourced an existential fear: a violent asteroid impact in 2029. Now, though, current predictions say that’s barely a remote possibility. The asteroid will not strike Earth this century, but it will come intriguingly close. On April 13, 2029, the infamous space object will be visible with binoculars east of the Atlantic Ocean while it cruises closer than geostationary weather satellites.
Continued here
|
S33Finance fraud is not a deviation from the norm but a reflection of it | Aeon Essays  is an associate professor of sociology at University College London. He is the author of Speculative Communities Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World (2022). His next book, Real Fake, will be published by MIT Press in 2025.When the German banking giant Wirecard collapsed in June 2020 amid a roaring fraud scandal, public opinion was shocked. The company, praised as the country’s innovative answer to the fintech industry of Silicon Valley, had been widely seen as a ‘German miracle’ following recovery from the 2008 financial crisis. Its bankruptcy involved a massive state prosecution that sent shockwaves through world markets. To the astonishment of German and international observers, Wirecard executives were found to be involved in all manner of deception: direct falsification of accounts, fake cash-flows, re-routing of payments through non-existing shell companies, ghost subsidiaries. While forging profits, they had obscured a mammoth debt of €3.5 billion.
Continued here
|
S34How to Design an Agenda for an Effective Meeting  To prevent holding a meeting in which participants are unprepared, veer off track, or waste the team’s time, you should create an effective meeting agenda that sets clear expectations for what needs to occur before and during the meeting. Seek input from your team members to ensure the agenda reflects their needs and keeps them engaged. If your entire team is meeting, then the issues discussed should affect everyone present and require the whole team’s effort to solve. Addressing topics that don’t impact everyone at the meeting wastes individuals’ valuable time. Another tactic for creating a better meeting agenda is listing topics as questions to be answered. Instead of writing “office space reallocation,” try “Under what conditions should we reallocate office space?” Let your team know if the purpose of the discussion is to share information, seek input on a decision, or make a decision. And indicate on the agenda who is leading each discussion so that they can prepare. These tips, and five others, will help your team stay focused in meetings.
Continued here
|
S35S36The Easiest Ways to Access Your Computer Remotely  From music streaming to video calling, the internet has given us so much. It has also made it much easier to get to your computer when you're not actually sitting in front of it. There are now numerous remote access programs to choose from that will connect one computer to another across the web. What's more, a lot of the basic tools are free to use.Windows and macOS both have built-in remote access tools, but they’re not particularly straightforward to use, nor are they cross-platform. That’s why we’re focusing on free third-party options here.
Continued here
|
S37How These Nobel-Winning Physicists Explored Tiny Glimpses of Time  To catch a glimpse of the subatomic world’s unimaginably fleet-footed particles, you need to produce unimaginably brief flashes of light. Anne L’Huillier, Pierre Agostini, and Ferenc Krausz have shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering work in developing the ability to illuminate reality on almost inconceivably brief timescales.Between the 1980s and the early 2000s, the three physicists developed techniques for producing laser pulses lasting mere attoseconds—periods billions of billions of times briefer than a second. When viewed in such short flashes, the world slows down. The beat of a hummingbird’s wings becomes an eternity. Even the incessant buzzing of atoms becomes sluggish. On the attosecond timescale, physicists can directly detect the motion of electrons themselves as they flit around atoms, skipping from place to place.
Continued here
|
S38The Best Camping Cookware  Spend any time in the backcountry or the campground at your local state park, and you'll quickly realize the importance of a good meal outdoors. You need the calories for hiking, and good food helps soothe the pain of a long day and turn that rained-out trip into an “at-least-we-ate-well” adventure.Bringing the kitchen to the outdoors isn't always as simple as it sounds. I've been a professional chef and have also guided quite a few groups through the wilderness, and in that time I discovered what every professional guide knows: Food makes or breaks the trip. Here, I've put together a menu of ideas, from the gear you'll need to advice on meal planning. There's something here for everyone, whether you're new to camping or a seasoned tent slinger. Be sure to check out our other outdoor guides for more tips, including the Best Camping Gear and Best Tents.
Continued here
|
S39Israel's Failure to Stop the Hamas Attack Shows the Danger of Too Much Surveillance  The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. It’s also one of the most heavily locked down, surveilled, and suppressed. Israel has evolved an entire intelligence apparatus and aggressive digital espionage industry around advancing its geopolitical interests, particularly its interminable conflict in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Yet on Saturday, Hamas militants caught Israel unaware with a series of devastating land, air, and sea attacks, killing hundreds of people and leaving thousands wounded. Israel has now declared war.Hamas’ surprise attack on Saturday is shocking given not only its scale compared to previous attacks, but also the fact that it was planned and carried out without Israel’s knowledge. Hamas’ deadly barrage underscores the limitations of even the most intrusive surveillance dragnets. In fact, experts say the sheer quantity of intelligence that Israel collects on Hamas, as well as the group’s constant activity and organizing, may have played a role in obscuring plans for this particular attack amid the endless barrage of potentially credible threats.
Continued here
|
S40Why free will is required for true artificial intelligence  The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has always taken inspiration from neuroscience, starting with the field’s founding papers, which suggested that neurons can be thought of as performing logical operations. Taking a cue from that perspective, most of the initial efforts to develop AI focused on tasks requiring abstract, logical reasoning, especially in testing grounds like playing chess or Go, for example — the kinds of things that are hard for most humans. The successes of the field in these arenas are well known.Recent years have witnessed stunning advances in other areas like image recognition, text prediction, speech recognition, and language translation. These were achieved mainly due to the development and application of deep learning, inspired by the massively parallel, multilevel architecture of the cerebral cortex. This approach is tailor-made for learning the statistical regularities in masses and masses of training data. The trained neural networks can then abstract higher-order patterns; for example, recognizing types of objects in images. Or they can predict what patterns will be most likely in new instances of similar data, as in the autocompletion of text messages or the prediction of the three-dimensional structures of proteins.
Continued here
|
S41How could we tell if those "alien bodies" in Mexico are legit?  Last week, I was contacted by a German documentary producer, asking if I was willing to be interviewed about two mummified bodies presented at a Mexican congressional hearing by TV personality Jaime Maussan, who claimed they were aliens.I declined, explaining that I didn’t have any inside knowledge about the alleged discovery. But I did say in a written statement that I was skeptical. The “bodies” shown at the hearing look a little too humanoid to me. That is what we have come to expect from decades of science fiction movies, but in actuality, I would not necessarily expect aliens to look like us.
Continued here
|
S42Amazon's Project Kuiper satellites add to astronomers' light-pollution woes  Amazon is set to launch two satellite prototypes for its Project Kuiper network, which will eventually number more than 3,200 orbiters. Project Kuiper could become a rival to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, which is now nearly 4,800 strong. Amazon’s launch is planned for 2 pm Eastern time today, with a backup launch window tomorrow. This rapid growth of the satellite industry has come at a cost for astronomers and fans of the night sky, as two new studies and panels at an international astronomy conference stressed this week.
Continued here
|
S43Lamplighters League is light stealth, heavy pulp style, and XCOM gun battles  Lamplighters League is a modern XCOM-style turn-based strategy game with a Weird War-ish, Indiana Jones-like feel, a light stealth element, and it’s made by the folks who made Battletech and the Shadowrun Returns series. If you pay for Game Pass, or you see this game at any price that feels reasonable (including its debut $50), that should tell you enough about whether to try it. I think you should.
Continued here
|
S44Enhance your calm: Demolition Man turns 30  Thirty years ago today, Demolition Man first hit theaters, pitting Sylvester Stallone against Wesley Snipes in a crime-free but killjoy future where even minor vices have been declared illegal. The passage of time hasn't quite elevated this sci-fi action comedy to the legendary status of Die Hard or Lethal Weapon, but it's still an under-appreciated gem of '90s action movies, precisely because it unapologetically leans into the massive explosions and campy humor.
Continued here
|
S45The Least-Known Rock God  A new biography of the Velvet Underground founder, Lou Reed, considers the stark duality of the man and his music.Early in the movie Almost Famous, the gruff journalist Lester Bangs sizes up the young music writer William Miller with a litmus test: “And you like Lou Reed?”
Continued here
|
S46Donald Trump Is Any Defense Attorney's Nightmare  They say that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client. So, perhaps, does a person who represents Donald Trump.To most people, attacking someone with influence over one’s freedom and fortunes is self-evidently unwise, but that is precisely what Trump has been up to. This week, the former president attended a civil trial in Manhattan to determine what damages he might have to pay in a case about his company committing a massive, yearslong fraud. Justice Arthur Engoron, the judge in the case, has already ruled that fraud did occur, and Trump is furious about it.
Continued here
|
S47S48An Unwelcome Discovery in the Colorado River  In July 2022, a National Park Service biologist named Jeff Arnold was hauling nets through a slough off the Colorado River, several miles downstream from Glen Canyon Dam, when he captured three greenish fish lined with vertical black stripes. He texted photos of his catch to colleagues, who confirmed his fears: The fish were smallmouth bass, voracious predators that have invaded waters around the West. Worse, they were juveniles. Smallmouth weren’t just living below the dam—they’d likely begun to breed. It was a grim discovery. Smallmouth bass, whose native range encompasses rivers and lakes throughout the eastern United States and the Great Lakes, have long plagued the Colorado River. State agencies and anglers probably began stocking them in the watershed in the mid-1900s, and they’ve since conquered much of the basin, including Lake Powell, the reservoir that sloshes above Glen Canyon Dam. Downriver from the dam, however, lies the Grand Canyon, whose sandstone depths have historically provided a bass-free haven for native fish—most of all, the humpback chub, a federally threatened species endowed with an odd dorsal bulge. Now, biologists realized, neither the canyon nor its chub were safe. Scientists have been dreading this development. As Lake Powell has shrunk over the past two decades, drained by overallocation and drought, its diminishment has created prime conditions for bass to infiltrate the Grand Canyon. But Brian Healy, a postdoctoral researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey and the former fish biologist at Grand Canyon National Park, says that even though he and his colleagues expected the species to eventually become a problem, “we didn’t realize it would be an issue so quickly.” Preventing a bass takeover won’t be simple, biologically or politically. The Colorado’s users expect it to simultaneously serve as a pipeline for water conveyance, a source of cheap electrons, a recreational playground, and, not least, a suitable habitat for native fish. For decades, the river’s human managers have uneasily balanced these often-contradictory purposes—and now they must also work to exclude smallmouth bass, an immense challenge that may well compete with the river’s many other functions. “The best way to think about this is that everything in the Colorado River is connected to everything else,” Jack Schmidt, a watershed scientist and an emeritus professor at Utah State University’s Center for Colorado River Studies, says. “Everything has a ramification.”Forty million people rely on the Colorado River’s largesse, from Wyoming ranchers to the residents of sprawling Arizona subdivisions to the lettuce farmers in California’s Imperial Valley. Less visibly, the river is also a lifeline for 14 native species of fish. They are rarely seen by humans—the river they inhabit is as turbid as coffee, and they’re seldom fished for sport—yet they require a healthy Colorado as much as any Angeleno or Tucsonan. Today, however, four of those fish—the humpback chub, the Colorado pikeminnow, the razorback sucker, and the bonytail—are federally listed as threatened or endangered. Lake Powell commandeered the Colorado’s payloads of silt and stymied natural floods, erasing channels and backwaters where chubs and suckers once spawned and reared. And smallmouth bass and other invasive species devastated native fish in tributaries such as the Yampa River. (“Smallmouth” is a misnomer: Bass have maws so cavernous they can gulp down prey more than half their own size.) Bass arrived in Lake Powell in 1982, courtesy of a hatchery manager who dumped 500 spare smallmouth into the reservoir. The bass, he crowed decades later, “performed magnificently,” adding, “Anglers have caught millions of smallmouth bass over the past 30 years.”
Continued here
|
S49Rauschenberg & Johns  You clear your throat & spit into the sink. Downstairs, a frothing fills my canvas like the sea. A need once met & met again. The fleetingness of meeting given way. Each day, the paper on the stoop ripe for the taking, for the making into something better than the news. On the record player, something bluesy, not too sweet. On the hot plate, eggs. We’ve got one fridge between us. One decent suit. One roof. And every shade of red & gray. The way these things combine: a strip of cotton, a smear of paint, the smell of turpentine. Pine in it like a thing I used to do. You walk across the floor; my ceiling creaks. You watch the falling light, & my brush moves.
Continued here
|
S50Five Observations About the War in Israel  Yesterday, Hamas launched a multifront attack that shocked Israel, infiltrating the Gaza border by land, sea, and air. The attack took place on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, nearly 50 years to the day after an Arab coalition’s surprise attack on Israel—the last assault of this scale—spurred the Yom Kippur War in 1973.More than 600 Israelis have been killed, according to local reports. Thousands more are injured, and an unknown number of civilians and soldiers are being held hostage in Gaza. More than 300 Palestinians have been killed and more than 2,000 injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Last night, Israel’s security cabinet voted to officially put the country at war, and Israeli fighter jets have begun air strikes on targets inside Gaza.
Continued here
|
S51A Shocked and Frazzled Collective Mind  I will never forget that mild, golden early-October day almost exactly 50 years ago: the jarring sound of the sirens that tore into the otherworldly silence of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement; the ultra-Orthodox men, still wrapped in their snow-white High Holiday robes and fringed prayer shawls, riding on army jeeps that drove them to their volunteer positions in hospitals and military morgues—an inconceivable sight. But the most unsettling memory is of the famous speech that the prime minister, Golda Meir, delivered that evening on Israeli television, her voice trembling, her appearance bewildered. I was only 9, but I will never forget the fear in the eyes of the grown-ups. We were gathered around the clunky, old-fashioned TV set in my grandmother’s house in Jerusalem, and there was the distinct feeling that they were no longer in control of reality, that they themselves were like lost children.Waking up yesterday and glancing at my cellphone to see what was new in the world, learning about the horrific attack that Hamas had launched against so many civilians in the south of Israel, sent me straight back to that day, to the boy I was then. Shock, bewilderment, a slight nausea, a sudden urge to fight back the tears that welled in my eyes. The frightened look on the face of my parents and my aunts and uncles was the first thing that came to my mind—but now I, we, all Israelis, were those frightened grown-ups who’d lost the sense of control over our reality.
Continued here
|
S52Is Israel at War With Iran?  The October 7 attacks on Israel by the Palestinian terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are being compared to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. In fact, with more than 600 Israelis dead at the time of this writing, the proportional death toll is several times higher than that of 9/11, and the factor of surprise is arguably greater than at Pearl Harbor.But 9/11 and Pearl Harbor weren’t just tragic attacks. They were casus belli for seismic wars. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declared his country to be heading into “a long and grueling war.” The air attacks he ordered in Gaza have already resulted in hundreds of Palestinian casualties. Will October 7 also lead to a broader conflagration in the region? Most important, can Israel rightly consider itself to be engaged in a shadow conflict with Iran?
Continued here
|
S53ORA | Psyche Films  The experimental dance film ORA (2011) was inspired by the French painter Paul Gauguin’s post-impressionist masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (1897-98), and it’s as entrancing and enigmatic as its muse. Eschewing traditional filmmaking methods in which light is exposed to film stock or a digital camera sensor, the Canadian filmmaker Philippe Baylaucq instead captured six dancers in motion using thermal imaging technology that’s sensitive to even minor heat fluctuations. Together with the Canadian choreographer José Navas and the Canadian musician Robert M Lepage, who provides the dreamy, propulsive score, Baylaucq deploys these innovative methods to create his own impressionistic dive into self-exploration and existential questions.The work’s ethereal beauty contains a clever artistic inversion: the infrared technology used to make the piece was first invented as a tool of warfare. This novel approach, combined with innovative staging that included shooting in a warehouse covered in heat-reflective aluminium panels, required Baylaucq to push the boundaries of cinema to create an otherworldly effect. These innovative techniques are evident in the final product, which is surely unlike anything anything you’ve seen before. As the dancers’ illuminated forms move in contrast with the dark yet reflective background, their bodies appear at once surreal and yet intensely human.
Continued here
|
S54Strategy for Start-ups  In their haste to get to market first, write Joshua Gans, Erin L. Scott, and Scott Stern, entrepreneurs often run with the first plausible strategy they identify. They can improve their chances of picking the right path by investigating four generic go-to-market strategies and choosing a version that aligns most closely with their founding values and motivations. The authors provide a framework, which they call the entrepreneurial strategy compass, for doing so.The Syracuse University professor Carl Schramm argues that contrary to the teaching at many business schools, entrepreneurs really have no alternative to learning by doing.
Continued here
|
S55S56S57S58Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, in prison for speaking up against human rights violations, has been a voice for women for almost two decades  “Woman, Life, Freedom,” the slogan adopted by Iranians to protest the unjust death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 is, according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the most suitable way to describe the work of the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Narges Mohammadi.Mohammadi is the second Iranian woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, exactly 20 years after Shirin Ebadi was awarded the prize for her work to promote democracy and initiate legal reform under Islamic law in 2003. Mohammadi is the fourth Nobel Peace Prize laureate to be chosen while still incarcerated, joining the ranks of Aung San Suu Kyi and Ales Bialiatski.
Continued here
|
S59S60S61S62S63The Atlantic Ocean's major current system is slowing down - but a 21st century collapse is unlikely  Whether the water at your local beach is being roiled by nasty weather or is a perfectly calm expanse of blue, there’s always a great deal going on under the surface. The ocean is composed of various currents and water masses; those currents flow around the world through what is called thermohaline circulation. This circulation drives the distribution of heat, salinity and nutrients throughout the world’s oceans, ensuring that our whole planet is habitable for life.
Continued here
|
S64The Land of Trump and Gaetz  Has there been a politician both as broadly despised, including in his own party, and yet as improbably effective as Matt Gaetz? When the Florida congressman—previously best known for his unflinching support of Donald Trump’s election denialism and for being investigated over allegations of sex trafficking (he denied them, and the Department of Justice declined to bring charges)—engineered the removal of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, last week, he had the support of exactly seven other House Republicans, out of two hundred and twenty-one. McCarthy’s supporters denounced Gaetz’s faction on the floor as “chaos” agents “running with scissors.” Even Newt Gingrich, a spiritual grandfather of Gaetz’s intraparty Molotovism, later called for him to be ejected from the Republican caucus. In a sense, Gaetz was doing what Trump has been doing this month as he contests a court case: testing whether the MAGA movement can operate simply as an ongoing insurrection against whatever it is that its principals don’t like.And yet, in the decisive hour-long debate over vacating the Speakership on Tuesday afternoon, Gaetz also demonstrated a keen eye for political weakness. McCarthy’s supporters rose in waves, protesting that it wasn’t fair to fire a Speaker who had made such progress in passing bills and in oversight. Gaetz kept asking, What progress? Many of the bills that the McCarthy faction was bragging about (some proposing steep cuts to social spending and unwinding the Biden Administration’s energy policies), having been dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate, “are not law,” Gaetz said. “It is difficult to champion oversight when House Republicans haven’t even sent a subpoena to Hunter Biden,” he added. “It sort of looks like failure theatre.” As the chamber braced for the final vote, Gaetz, standing in front of a bank of Democrats who were regarding him skeptically but would nonetheless be voting with him, laid down his notes and stopped speaking, almost totally friendless and yet the central figure in Washington.
Continued here
|
S65Waking to an Attack from Hamas  At seven this morning, our son and daughter waded into our bedroom, a sleepy Saturday in Tel Aviv, the tail end of the long Sukkot holiday. We all snuggled together in bed, bleary-eyed. The kids started a game that soon turned into low-grade squabble, when, suddenly, an air-raid siren blared. We ducked into our building’s stairwell, our “safe space” for lack of any other in this old area of the city. Some neighbors were already there, in their pajamas, everyone smiling at one another awkwardly. We spoke of previous rounds of rocket fire, all of which had been intercepted by the Israeli military to a high degree, so panic was not in the air; even the kids were acting blasé. But then we opened our phones.Surreal sights and early reports from around the country began to trickle in: Israeli vehicles had been taken over by Palestinian militants, and were barrelling through southern Israeli cities; ski-masked terrorists were shooting indiscriminately at oncoming cars and into homes in Israeli towns. Several gunmen were seen paragliding across the border, and there were news reports that an Israeli military base had been commandeered by Hamas. Friends posted about their relatives living in kibbutzim on the Gaza border whose homes had been raided while they were huddled inside with small children, pleading for help. Images emerged purporting to show four Israeli men, stripped down to their underwear on a sidewalk of an unspecified southern city, militants standing next to them, holding rifles over the Israelis’ heads. The coming hours and days will tell us the details, the facts, the numbers—but the fear is immediate.
Continued here
|
S66Notes from Your Home Inspection  The back yard is currently infested with people hoping your offer falls through so that they can spring in with offers of their own and finally get a godforsaken house. None of them know you. All of them hate you.The refrigerator may look brand new and top of the line, but it’s actually an extreme threat to your safety for reasons we can’t get into right now. We would be willing to take it off of your hands for the low price of three hundred dollars.
Continued here
|
S67Amazon's Most Ambitious New Sci-Fi Movie Had One Major Hurdle  Foe is a unique story. In Iain Reid’s original novel, readers are dropped into the lives of Hen and Junior, a couple living on a remote farm in the near future. But their marriage is threatened by a stranger who announces that Junior has been selected to travel to an orbital space station. To keep Hen company while Junior is on his two-year assignment, the aerospace corporation the stranger works for will create a biomechanical duplicate of Junior, right down to his personality and memories. Readers of Foe will notice a structural quirk: only some characters get quotation marks with their dialogue. It’s a clever narrative trick the author uses to reveal a jaw-dropping twist.But in Garth Davis’ feature adaptation of Foe, the filmmaker had to figure out a different way to lay out this twist. Davis, who co-wrote the script with Reid, solved the problem by shifting the story’s point of view.
Continued here
|
S68Do Cats Need To Exercise? A Veterinarian Reveals The Ultimate Feline Workout  From apex predators and kings of the jungle (savannah, actually) to goblin babies unable to kill a cockroach, cats have near-perfect physiques. The latter, however, likely doesn’t need to hunt for its food. Even if today’s house cat doesn’t need to work to survive, keeping their body healthy is still critical to a long, healthy life with their human. Indeed, exercise for cats is indeed necessary.Feline exercises, however, shouldn’t feel like a chore for you or your cat. In fact, you’re probably helping your cat exercise every day already. Dr. Jardayna Werlin, a veterinarian and the medical director at Veterinary Centers of America (VCA) City Cats Hospital in Massachusetts, suggests how much time your kitty needs to frolic every day to stay in good health.
Continued here
|
S70The Real Reason Science Can't Explain Why People Lose Their Sense Of Smell  The pandemic brought attention to an overlooked condition. Researchers are still fighting to show smell matters.Growing up, Julian Meeks knew what a life without a sense of smell could look like. He’d watched this grandfather navigate the condition known as anosmia, observing that he didn’t perceive flavor and only enjoyed eating very salty or meaty foods.
Continued here
|
 |
TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 10,00,000 Industry Executives About Us | Advertise Privacy Policy Unsubscribe (one-click) You are receiving this mail because of your subscription with TradeBriefs.
Our mailing address is GF 25/39, West Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110008, India |
