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 S59Air purifiers aren't enough to clean your home from wildfire smoke   When wildfire smoke turns the air brown and hazy, you might think about heading indoors with the windows closed, running an air purifier or even wearing a mask. These are all good strategies to reduce exposure to the particles in wildfire smoke, but smoky air is also filled with potentially harmful gases. Those gases can get into buildings and remain in the walls and floors for weeks.
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S2The AI Hype Cycle Is Distracting Companies  Machine learning has an “AI” problem. With new breathtaking capabilities from generative AI released every several months — and AI hype escalating at an even higher rate — it’s high time we differentiate most of today’s practical ML projects from those research advances. This begins by correctly naming such projects: Call them “ML,” not “AI.” Including all ML initiatives under the “AI” umbrella oversells and misleads, contributing to a high failure rate for ML business deployments. For most ML projects, the term “AI” goes entirely too far — it alludes to human-level capabilities. In fact, when you unpack the meaning of “AI,” you discover just how overblown a buzzword it is: If it doesn’t mean artificial general intelligence, a grandiose goal for technology, then it just doesn’t mean anything at all.
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S35 Ways to Future-Proof Your Career in the Age of AI  What can we do personally to stave off the displacement that may happen as a result of AI? In this article, the authors offer five strategies to future-proof your career in the age of intelligent machines: 1) Avoid predictability. It’s important to remember that AI isn’t generating new insights; it’s a prediction engine that merely guesses the most likely next word. 2) Hone the skills that machines strive to emulate. 3) Double down on “the real world.” 4) Develop your personal brand. 5) Develop recognized expertise in your field. Even if AI performs “first draft” functions, it still has to be double-checked by a trusted and reliable source. If that’s you, you’ll continue to be sought out because you have the authority to vet AI’s responses.
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S44 Areas of Cyber Risk That Boards Need to Address  In our technology-dependent society, the effectiveness of cyber risk governance of companies affects its stock prices, as well as short-term and long-term shareholder value. New SEC cybersecurity rules provide a solid basis for transparency. Unfortunately, monitoring the long-term effectiveness of a cyber risk management strategy is not easy to grasp. This article provides four critical areas investors should be informed about for evaluating its long-term effectiveness.
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S5 Why Pay Transparency Regulations Are a Strategic Management Opportunity  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.Touted as one remedy to the gender wage gap, pay transparency laws are increasingly being rolled out across the United States at the state and local levels. Nine states — including New York, as of September — are currently regulating some aspect of pay disclosure. The National Women’s Law Center reports that altogether, more than one-quarter of U.S. employees live in a location where pay information is regulated.
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S6The Eras Tour film has already grossed more than $100m. The Taylor Swift economy is unstoppable.  Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour didn't hit screens until 12 October – a date the superstar moved up, as a surprise for fans – yet AMC Theatres announced worldwide ticket pre-sales had already exceeded $100m (£81.5m). First-day sales alone topped $26m, breaking box office records. Many industry experts expect the film to land among Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie – both of which have grossed upwards of $1.3bn (£1.06bn) to date – for biggest opening weekends of the year.As astounding as these figures are, they're just another part of the economic effect of Taylor Swift's massive Eras Tour, which kicked off 17 March at 70,000-seat State Farm Stadium in Arizona, US. The tour has grossed an estimated $1bn, and will continue to smash records as Swift takes it to Canada, South America, Asia, Australia and Europe into late 2023 and 2024. Most dates are already sold out.
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S7The 300-year-old Japanese method of upcycling  Earlier this year, visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Kimono Style would have been treated to a stunning example of Japanese craftsmanship. Made in the late 1800s, the Meiji Period, the fisherman's jacket or donza featured indigo-dyed sleeves and tunic delicately sewn over with white geometric patterns using sashiko, a quilting technique of simple running stitches used to reinforce or patch textiles – or, as in this jacket, join layers of cloth together, in a technique known as boro. The piece had a particular flourish: the yarns were dyed with small geometric patterns before being used to sew and stitch. This luxurious adjunct aside, the jacket's makers would have been astonished at the sight of it hanging on the wall of one of the world's most prestigious museums. Sashiko emerged through necessity, particularly in poor rural areas, during the Edo period. "Cotton came late to the north of Japan," explains craft and design writer Katie Treggiden. "So the only way people could get hold of it was as tiny rags of fabrics, that were either passed around or bought from tradesmen from the south. Sashiko – literally, 'little stabs' – was a way of connecting all those little pieces into a quilted fabric, known as boro, that would keep them warm."
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S8S9The hidden risks of buy now, pay later: What shoppers need to know  Buy now, pay later is a relatively new form of financial technology that allows consumers to purchase an item immediately and repay the balance at a later time in instalments.Unlike applying for a credit card, buy now, pay later doesn’t require a credit check. Instead, these programs use algorithms to perform “soft” credit checks to determine a shopper’s eligibility.
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S10India's accusation of 'terrorism' is a ploy to hide its own human rights abuses  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has accused India of being involved in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh leader, on Canadian soil. Narendra Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian government is defiant and denies involvement. Indian officials have instead admonished Canada for being a “safe haven” for Sikh “terrorism,” a pejorative for Sikh self-determination.
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S11The impact of work on well-being: 6 factors that will affect the future of work and health inequalities  Work has long been considered a social determinant of health. Like housing, education, income security and other matters of economic and social policy, work can be a key factor in creating, maintaining or exacerbating unequal health outcomes across different societal groups. In these articles, we suggest that if public health bodies and policymakers put greater focus on improving the work environment, it could achieve major gains in population health and reduce health inequities.
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S12How climate change-induced stress is altering fish hormones -- with huge repercussions for reproduction  In 1981, scientists discovered that female fish exposed to high temperatures developed testes instead of ovaries. Since then, over 1,100 studies on different animal species, including 400 on freshwater fish, have found similar results.Fish reproductive organs are highly adaptable to environmental changes as, unlike mammals, they have simple structures. Remarkably, even slight changes in water conditions can directly and significantly impact fish metabolism and physiology.
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S13How the 'laws of war' apply to the conflict between Israel and Hamas  The killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas and retaliatory airstrikes on the densely populated Gaza Strip by Israel raises numerous issues under international law.Indeed, President Joe Biden made express reference to the “laws of war” in comments he made at the White house on Oct. 10, 2023, noting that while democracies like the U.S. and Israel uphold such standards, “terrorists” such as Hamas “purposefully target civilians.” Speaking the same day, the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell condemned Hamas’ attack but also suggested that Israel was not acting in accordance with international law by cutting water, electricity and food to civilians in Gaza.
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S14S15S16S17'I hope I've honoured you well': Shanelle Dawson reclaims her mother's story in one of two new books on Lyn Dawson  When Shanelle Dawson was just four years old, her parents were at the centre of a suburban tragedy when Lyn Dawson suddenly went missing. Her mother’s disappearance would not be classified as murder until 2001, with her father eventually held responsible for the crime in 2022.Just hours after her mother disappeared from her life, Shanelle’s teenage babysitter, Joanne Curtis (whom she refers to as “J” in her new book) moved into her mother’s bed, wore her mother’s clothes, and (from 1984), her mother’s wedding ring.
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S18Slime after slime: why those biofilms you slip on in rivers are vitally important  You might have noticed it after sliding on a rock in a Melbourne creek. Or it could have been wading through a Northern Territory waterhole. It’s slime, and our rivers are full of it. That’s a good thing. Wherever there are hard surfaces like snags and rocks in our rivers, you’ll find slime. Or, as ecologists call it, biofilm. Biofilms consist of communities of microorganisms that include algae, cyanobacteria, bacteria, fungi and protozoa. Together, they’re fixed in a matrix of natural polymers made by bacteria and other tiny creatures. It’s this matrix which gives the slippery, slimy texture we encounter when swimming in rivers.
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S19All the reasons you might be having night sweats -  You’ve finished a workout, so you’re hot and drenched with perspiration – but soon you begin to feel cool again. Later, it’s a sweltering summer evening and you’re finding it hard to sleep, so you kick off the covers. Sweating is a normal part of the body’s cooling system, helping to release heat and maintain optimal body temperature. But regularly waking up during the night, soaked through from excessive sweating is not.
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S20How mistaken identity can lead to wrongful convictions  Hayley Cullen previously worked on a voluntary basis for Not Guilty: The Sydney Exoneration Project, an organisation that reviews cases of potential wrongful conviction. She was not involved in any of the cases discussed in this article.In March 1976, American Leonard Mack was convicted of sexual assault and holding two female victims at gunpoint. In September 2023, Mack’s wrongful conviction was finally overturned by a New York judge on his 72nd birthday with the help of the Innocence Project, an organisation that uses DNA evidence to prove factual innocence.
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S21Critically endangered scalloped hammerheads gather in seas off Perth. They need protection  Unlike nearly every other species of shark, scalloped hammerheads are highly social. They gather in large groups, or aggregations, numbering in the hundreds. But why? We don’t know. Scalloped hammerheads – one of ten species in the hammerhead family – prefer warm waters. But they have become regular visitors to the waters off Perth in summer, now the southernmost part of their range. The sharks are not considered dangerous to humans.
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S22S23Wolf protection in Europe has become deeply political - Spain's experience tells us why  Wolves are staging a comeback in many areas of Europe after centuries of persecution. Over the past decade alone, they have expanded their range on the continent by more than 25%.This resurgence was brought into sharp focus in September 2023 following a controversial statement by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. She said: “The concentration of wolf packs in some European regions has become a real danger for livestock and potentially also for humans. I urge local and national authorities to take action where necessary.”
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S24S25Terence Davies: four films that reveal the pain and poetry of the director's own life  Terence Davies, who has died at the age of 77, was a key figure in British and European cinema. The Liverpool-born director extended the formal possibilities of film, and had a unique capacity for depicting memory and personal history. Much of Davies’ early work was directly informed by his difficult childhood in Liverpool, his relationship with his father, Irish Catholicism and a complicated adolescence. He discovered his homosexuality as a teenager, and in his work attempts to deal with the profound sense of shame and guilt this caused.
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S26When a Novelist Carries On What Another Novelist Started  Elizabeth Hand’s “A Haunting on the Hill” (Mulholland) is, the book jacket notes, “the first novel authorized to return to the world of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.” Authorized—by whom? Not by Jackson, who died in 1965, but by her heirs. “A Haunting on the Hill” is, therefore, a ghost story conjured by representatives of a deceased author’s estate. It all sounds a little uncanny.Isn’t that the case, though, whenever we try to resurrect dead writers? In the past decade, a resurgence of acclaim has fully established Shirley Jackson as the queen of dark literary fiction, and there is no surer sign of an author’s success than the arrival of a new generation of writers eager to channel her spirit, rereading and reimagining her work. So much for the death of the author. These days, it seems, fan-fiction writers start posting their rewrites the moment a book leaves the printer—sometimes over the author’s vociferous objections.
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S27You Need to Watch the Best Found-Footage Thriller on Amazon ASAP  The found footage genre, popularized by The Blair Witch Project in 1999, is a gift to low-budget filmmakers. With little need for sophisticated effects — and an active incentive to cast unknown actors — the name of the game is authenticity. Paranormal Activity and its endless sequels have since seized the genre’s crown, but an obscure horror flick that went straight to video on demand in 2016 arguably outshines (and outscares) its more famous competitor. An energizing addition to an oversaturated genre, Hell House LLC proved the found footage horror still has juice.Like many haunted house stories, the film’s tension hinges on the siren song of real estate. The main characters may not actually own the ominous Abaddon Hotel, but it’s undeniably their meal ticket. On a bitterly ironic note, the hotel’s creepy vibes are precisely why they moved there in the first place.
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S28Star Wars Just Came Up With a Brilliant Solution For Its Obvious Jedi Problem  Everyone knows nearly all the Jedi in the galaxy were extinct by the time of The Last Jedi. But how many Jedi lived in other galaxies? The Ahsoka finale established another galaxy as a plausible destination for Jedi and other Force-sensitives, and while the canonical path forward for post-Ahsoka stories remains unclear, the existence of this other galaxy may provide a kind of retroactive backdoor escape route for Jedi who lived in the centuries before the era the movies portray. With The Acolyte still on the horizon, and plenty of new adventures taking place in the High Republic era, it seems possible that Star Wars canon may have found a way to save doomed Jedi by simply relocating them.As depicted in comics, novels, and the children’s cartoon Young Jedi Adventures, the High Republic era covers the events from about 500 to 100 years before The Phantom Menace. This is a time when the Jedi are in their prime, and are exploring the galaxy in ways almost more appropriate for Star Trek. Young Jedi Adventures specifically is set about 232 years before A New Hope, so two centuries before little Anakin Skywalker has his fateful podrace. The long-lived Yoda is around, but do all the other Jedi we see in this era simply expire of old age before the movie saga begins? And do any other long-lived Jedi still around during Revenge of the Sith all get wiped out by Order 66?
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S2931 Years Later, Marvel's Most Underappreciated Villain Could Be Out for Revenge in 'Loki'  Loki Season 2 has already delivered on several elements fans have been waiting for, like time travel, glimpses of the lives TVA agents used to live, new villains, and, of course, the everlasting bromance between Loki and Mobius. But there’s one character who’s been missing in Season 2: Judge Ravonna Renslayer, the protector of the TVA who left in search of “free will” in the Season 1 finale. Just where did she go, and how will she factor into Season 2? A deep dive into Marvel comics reveals she may be using her newfound free will to take on a new identity, one almost as terrifying as Kang the Conqueror himself.
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S306 Years Later, 'Rick and Morty' Just Completely Redefined Its Most Underrated Character  Imagine if Jerry was still the butt end of every joke but he wasn’t a selfish, weak-willed twerp. Then he might be a Gene instead. (Warning! Spoilers ahead for Rick and Morty Season 7 Episode 1.)Wait…Gene who? The biggest surprise in the Rick and Morty Season 7 Episode 1, “How Poopy Got His Poop Back,” is how much of a spotlight it shines on the Smiths’ oft-forgotten neighbor, transforming him into one of the show’s most lovable characters. He’s basically Jerry without any fear or shame.
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S31Psychedelics Seem to Change How Fast Our Brains Learn -- Researchers Might Finally Understand How  There are times when the brain can make rapid, enduring changes, leaving an indelible imprint on the brain.The human brain can change — but usually only slowly and with great effort, such as when learning a new sport or foreign language or recovering from a stroke. Learning new skills correlates with changes in the brain, as evidenced by neuroscience research with animals and functional brain scans in people. Presumably, if you master Calculus 1, something is now different in your brain. Furthermore, motor neurons in the brain expand and contract depending on how often they are exercised — a neuronal reflection of “use it or lose it.”
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S32S33Ancient Tool Discovery Could Redefine a Chapter of Early Human History  Discovery of a half-a-million-year-old wooden structure shows we’re wrong to underestimate our ancient relatives. To most people, complex technologies separate modern humans from their ancestors who lived in the Stone Age thousands or hundreds of thousands of years ago. In today’s fast-changing world, older technologies, even those from a few years ago, are often described dismissively as the “Stone Age.”
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S34Valve Needs a Steam Deck 2 -- And Soon  No one can deny that the Steam Deck was a genre-defining device that set the new bar for gaming handhelds, but technology has a way of moving pretty fast.Even though the Steam Deck was just released in early 2022, Valve already has lots more competition. Since its release, we’ve seen gaming handhelds pop up left and right — longtime players like Ayaneo and Ayn are really turning up the heat and have released top-of-the-line machines the Ayaneo Kun and the Ayn Loki Max.
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S3550 Weird Things Under $30 on Amazon That Are Clever as Hell  There are plenty of bizarre things for sale on the internet that beg the question: Who would buy this? Then there are these weird things on Amazon that are so damn clever, you’ll wonder who wouldn’t add them to their cart immediately. Why? Because they’re weird in the most helpful ways. From ingenious tools that streamline cooking and cleaning, to products that help you save money in the long run, you’ll find plenty of finds that will upgrade your routine. You’ll also discover some items that are just, well, fun. Because we all deserve to have a little more fun (don’t we?). If you’d rather not dedicate an entire cupboard to food storage containers, stock up on these reusable silicone lids that cover everything from bowls to pots to half pieces of fruit. Made from silicone, each one is ultra-stretchy to fit a variety of containers, making them surprisingly versatile. They’re freezer-, microwave-, and dishwasher-safe.
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S36Should you try an all-meat diet? Here's what it actually does to your health  In grade school, we learn about carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores. Carnivores eat meat; herbivores eat plants; omnivores eat both. Humans are omnivores. Our bodies run on a bevy of amino acids, vitamins, and minerals from many sources.But in the past few years, interest in an all-meat or carnivore diet has skyrocketed, perhaps influenced by Joe Rogan’s January 2020 stunt where he only ate meat for a month or Australian body-builder Brian Johnson’s raw meat diet, both of which gained considerable views. Since then, the carnivore diet has been gaining steam on numerous social media platforms, especially as a weight loss tool. However, experts Inverse spoke to say a diet of exclusively meat is associated with a number of risks to human health, lacks essential nutrients, and might not even be a good tool for weight loss.
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S37Can Cats Eat a Vegan Diet? A New Study Challenges a Long-held Assumption  Recently, there’s been a trend of people wanting to feed their pets a diet that follows their own dietary preferences — which often means a meat-free diet.Vets have long maintained that feeding cats a meat-free diet is a big no-no. But a new study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE challenges this assumption. The researchers write in the abstract:
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S38Ozempic is Grossly Distorting How We Think About Health  We’ve encountered these headlines before. Time and again, dubious and ineffective solutions for obesity gain prominence. Pills, tonics, elixirs, Zumba, Noom, and now Ozempic.The latest wonder drug is a semaglutide drug invented to help diabetics regulate blood glucose levels but has the notable side-effect of severe weight loss — for which it is prescribed off-label. It has been heralded by many to culminate in the elimination of fat bodies.
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S39'Loki' Season 2 Succeeds Where 'Secret Invasion' Failed  So far, Loki Season 2 has been welcomed with open arms by both die-hard Marvel Cinematic Universe fans and casual viewers alike. The season hasn’t gotten off to a perfect start by any means, but it’s not hard to see why the newest episodes of Loki have received such positive responses. The Disney+ show not only looks better than it ever has before, but it has only continued to double down on all the things about its debut season that made it so great.That’s particularly clear in Episode 2 of Loki Season 2, titled “Breaking Brad,” which suffers from a few plotting problems that make the actual point of the episode a bit unclear at times. Despite some of its more apparent flaws, though, “Breaking Bad” proves that Loki still understands something about the MCU that recent misfires like Secret Invasion and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania don’t.
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S40S41Moments of poetry pierce through the mundane at a small-town grocery | Aeon Videos  A curiously compelling short, From Fish to Moon chronicles the rather unremarkable goings-on at a small grocery store in the town of Pahokee, Florida. Starting the day early, an employee, Jean Voltaire, makes small talk with coworkers and regulars, fiddles around with an in-store slot machine and, in the quiet moments, reads the epic poem The Conference of the Birds (c1177) by the Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar. Subdued and contemplative, the US filmmaker Kevin Contento’s work seems to ask viewers to find poetry, as his subject does, in small moments and the unlikeliest of places.
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S42S43S44S45S46S47S48S49S50S51Earth's newest 'baby volcano'  On the afternoon of 10 July, the Earth cracked open. Three fissures appeared north-east of the base of Litli-Hrútur – a small mountain on the Reykjanes Peninsula in south-western Iceland – and began to spew molten lava high into the air accompanied by plumes of gas.Iceland's latest eruption wasn't a total shock; Litli-Hrútur (which translates to "Little Ram") is part of the Fagradalsfjall volcanic area that erupted in March 2021 and August 2022 after a break of almost 800 years, and the surrounding area had been shaking for several days with more than 12,000 earthquakes recorded prior the start of the eruption.
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S52We Need to Think about Conservation on a Different Timescale  Restoring habitats to how they were centuries ago, not years ago, could mean more successful conservation effortsTime is one of humanity’s greatest blind spots. We experience it as days, months, or years. But nature functions on much grander scales, measured in centuries, millennia and even longer intervals often lumped together as “deep time.” As paleontologists, we were trained to think in deep time. Yet, as conservationists, we’ve come to realize that time can be confounding.
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S53The Best Mattresses for Side Sleepers  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 WIREDThere’s no such thing as the best mattress for everyone. Not when there are so many different sleeping positions. However, most people are side sleepers. The numbers vary by study and how rigidly you define a side sleeper, but between half and three-quarters of people sleep on their side. (The older and heavier you are, the more likely you are to be a side sleeper, and it's recommended that pregnant women sleep on their side.)
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S54Gear and Tips to Winter-Proof Your Home  We think of our homes as refuges from the outdoors. Sequestered away from the wildfire smoke and the pollution outside, we tailor our indoor environments right down to the degree as if we were all weather forecasters with magic wands. But homes leak an incredible amount of air. All that expensive heating you pay for during fall and winter mingles with the cold air continuously spilling in through windows, doors, floors, and electrical sockets. Buildings—even new ones—are a lot draftier than one would expect, and the volume of cold winter air that can seep through the tiniest crack or pinhole is mind-bogglingly significant.There are ways to mitigate it with a few quick fixes. Take a cursory look around your place to find the cold spots in your home before you drop money on a thermal leak detector. You can get an idea if there are gaps in your door frames and baseboards and if you can feel the cold air rushing in through the weather stripping around your windows.
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S55Which Nanoleaf Smart Lights Should You Buy?  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 WIREDNothing changes a room like good lighting. What's even better? A wall of great lights. Nanoleaf has been making smart light panels since 2012, and the brand is synonymous with colorful, geometric lighting. The company's lineup has expanded into various lighting kits over the years, with different wall panel shapes, and even a soon-to-launch skylight.
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S56These Are the 15 Android Phones Worth Buying  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDThe best Android phone means something different to everyone—it's hard to find one that caters to every need. But chances are there's a smartphone that comes close to what you're looking for. From the bottomless pit of phone choices, these are our favorite Android handsets, including the Google Pixel 7A, our top pick. All the phones we've selected have their own advantages, and we've laid them out as best we can based on our extensive testing.
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S57The "Roof of the World," in eight simple lines  For ages, the mountain people of the Pamir had been calling their homeland Bam-i-Dunya. Only by the mid-19th century, after British explorers had reached Asia’s rugged interior, did the translation catch on worldwide: “Roof of the World.”In its original and narrowest definition, that term applied only to the Pamir Plateau. But “Roof of the World” is a phrase so compact and expressive that it was soon transferred to other parts of High Asia, including to the Himalayas, and specifically to Everest, but also to the Tibetan Plateau.
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S58New superbug vaccine turns the immune system into "the Hulk"  A “superbug” vaccine that temporarily puts the immune system on high alert could one day reduce the number of people who contract MRSA, pneumonia, and other infections while in the hospital.The challenge: One out of every 31 hospital patients in the U.S. is battling an infection they contracted while in the hospital for a different health issue. These healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) can extend a patient’s stay, increase their hospital bill, or worse — every year, more than 90,000 Americans die of an HAI.
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S60The Gal  By the late 19th century, whalers, settlers, and pirates had changed the ecology of the Galápagos Islands by poaching some native species—like Galápagos giant tortoises—and introducing others, such as goats and rats. The latter species became pests and severely destabilized the island ecosystems. Goats overgrazed the plants the tortoises ate while rats preyed on their eggs. Over time, the tortoise population plummeted. On Española, an island in the southeast of the archipelago, the tortoise count fell from thousands to less than 20. Along the way, as goats ate all the plants they could, Española—once akin to a savanna—turned barren.In the following century, conservationists set out to restore the Galápagos giant tortoise on Española—and the island ecosystem. They began eradicating the introduced species, and capturing Española’s remaining tortoises and breeding them in captivity. With the goats wiped out and the tortoises in cages, the ecosystem transformed once again. This time, the overgrazed terrain became overgrown with densely packed trees and woody bushes. Española’s full recovery to its savanna-like state would have to wait for the tortoises’ return.
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S61A Masterpiece of Cringe  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 associate editor Kate Cray. Kate edits for our Family section; she’s also reported on what semi-retirees know about work-life balance and made the case against the fun fact.
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S62The Pumpkin Spice Latte Is Designed to Make You Feel Death  I drink the Pumpkin Spice Latte to commune with autumn. Not first for its taste, warmth or color, though also for those things. I order pumpkin spice to fuse my body with the leaves, the crisp air, the gentle reminders of death, and all the other trappings of fall. Twenty years ago this month, Starbucks brought this flavor to the world. In so doing, autumn was perfected.The Pumpkin Spice Latte—the PSL, to its devotees—was not, of course, the first mass-marketed seasonal coffee beverage. By 2003, Starbucks had already introduced a pair of Christmas drinks: the eggnog latte (born in 1986) and the peppermint mocha (2002). But these precedents were different in kind. Eggnog is a beverage of its own; peppermint is a normal flavoring. The PSL was something else entirely: a concoction of known elements recombined into a new seasonal essence that somehow came to seem as though it had always been around.
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S63Pete Davidson Might Be the Comedic Hero We Need Now. No, Really.  The SNL alum returned to host the show’s much-anticipated return—and was somehow the perfect choice for it.The first Saturday Night Live episode since the end of the months-long writers’ strike started with a somber message from the series alum Pete Davidson. He began his cold open by referencing “the horrible images and stories from Israel and Gaza,” then quickly addressed the elephant in Studio 8H: “I know what you’re thinking—who better to comment on it than Pete Davidson?”
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S64ORA | 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.
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S65S66S67S68S69From a red tide in 2020 to blood on the floor in 2023 - NZ slams the door on Labour  Close, but so far no “baubles of office” for Winston Peters and NZ First. “We have done the impossible,” he told supporters on election night. But as the old saying goes, politics is the art of the possible. For the past two weeks, as the polls showed NZ First climbing towards and then past the 5% threshold for securing seats in parliament, all the talk was about how Peters – the great survivor of New Zealand politics – might exercise the balance of power.
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S70Elephant teeth: how they evolved to cope with climate change-driven dietary shifts  Seeing elephants in the wild is a timelessly awe-inspiring experience. There are only three living species today: the African savannah elephant, African forest elephant, and Asian elephant. They are the remnants of a once prosperous lineage of megaherbivores called proboscideans, whose evolutionary epic spanned 60 million years and some 200 species. The African continent was the centre stage of this story.
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