   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S50Apple's Stealthy Space Black MacBook Pro Could Finally Bring Gaming to macOS   As I type these words, I have spent less than 72 hours with Apple's new 16-inch MacBook Pro equipped with its top-shelf M3 Max chip. (Yes, it's in “Space Black”.) Not long enough for a thorough review, but I do have some early thoughts on the laptop.How black is the "Space Black" color and does it live up to the black polycarbonate MacBook that was discontinued over a decade ago? Does the black-anodized aluminum really reduce fingerprints? How much faster is the M3 Max chip compared to the M2 Max chip? What's it like to play console-quality games? Read on for my first impressions.
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S48'Loki' Theory Reveals How the Season 2 Finale Could Blow Up MCU Canon  In the penultimate episode of Loki Season 2, the show’s eponymous trickster god (Tom Hiddleston) finally learns how to control his time-slipping problem. After witnessing all of his friends, including Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) and Mobius (Owen Wilson), get turned into spaghetti in front of him, Loki manages to travel back in time to moments before their deaths. Declaring that he knows how to “rewrite the story,” he goes into the past again — transporting himself back to the Time Variance Authority’s lower control room just minutes before the explosion of its Temporal Loom.The episode, in other words, ends on a decidedly more rousing note than its predecessor. By giving Loki the ability to travel back to any point throughout his existence, the Disney+ series has also opened the door for it to revisit some of its greatest moments. That is, in fact, exactly what some fans believe Loki will do in its Season 2 finale this week, which could see Tom Hiddleston’s cosmic outcast not only rewrite the show’s story, but undo it altogether.
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S34Sarah Jama's censure: Making people feel uncomfortable is part of the job  Sarah Jama, a member of the Ontario legislature for Hamilton Centre, recently faced censure from Doug Ford’s Conservative government. She was also removed from the Ontario NDP caucus by her own party.The NDP’s disciplinary response and the removal of her from caucus cannot be separated from the current climate. It is right in the middle of a nationwide Islamophobic backlash, where scores of others are also experiencing a wide range of institutional discipline.
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S40Why a State Department Official Lost Hope in Israel  For more than a decade, Josh Paul helped send American weapons overseas. After the Hamas attack, he resigned in protest of arming the Israeli response.On October 17th, ten days after Hamas launched its attack on southern Israel, a State Department official named Josh Paul quit his job and posted the resignation letter on LinkedIn. In Washington, sympathy with Israel was near-ubiquitous, and President Joe Biden’s vigorous support for the Israeli government had few public dissenters within the national-security state. This had the effect of drawing extra attention to Paul, who said he was resigning both because he disagreed with what the U.S. had already done to back Israel and because he feared what would likely come next. “I believe to the core of my soul,” Paul wrote, “that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support for both that response, and for the status quo of the occupation will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and Palestinian people—and is not in the long-term American interest.”
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S25Narcissism, immorality and lack of empathy: the dark psychology that can poison elites  Sexism, harassment and bullying plague the Red Arrows, the UK Royal Air Force’s display team. This revelation was the outcome of investigations into complaints of bad behaviour in this elite organisation. Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton said that “behaviour that would be classed as unacceptable was widespread and normalised on the squadron”.To me, the Red Arrows have always represented discipline, precision, skill, bravery and professionalism. They are the real-life Top Guns. Now, I’ll never be able to look at red, white and blue trails in the sky in quite the same way.
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S41Unchosen: Eleven Signs That You're a Former Gifted Kid  Let's face it, your twenties are hard. Being launched into the "real world" without a safety net is one of the scariest journeys you've had to make. And, if you've read a blog or scrolled through Twitter lately, you know that it's especially hard for F.G.K.sâformer gifted kids. Chances are, you know a former gifted kid. Heck, you may even be one yourself! If you're not sure, don't worry. We'll break it down for you with eleven signs that you're a former gifted kid. (No. 4 will shock you!)Peaking early is common among former gifted kids. Feeling like your best days are behind you can lead to anxiety and stress. It's not your fault you crushed fourth grade!
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S23Planet Earth III: how cookie cutter nature programming could fail to educate and inform audiences  Perhaps nothing embodies the BBC’s values of inform, educate and entertain more than its nature documentaries. Planet Earth III is the latest in a proud tradition going back to the founding of the BBC Natural History Unit in 1957 and has everything devoted fans (myself included) expect. There are sweeping shots, a soaring orchestral soundtrack, and exciting scenes of hunting, courtship and breeding. Tender family relations, desperate chases and amazing survival stories are all narrated in Sir David Attenborough’s signature style. Planet Earth III brings us all the beauty and wonder we know and love – which may be a problem when it tries to sound an urgent warning about the future of our world.
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S35S43Donald Trump's Contentious Day on the Witness Stand  Just after 10 A.M. on Monday morning, Donald Trump was sworn in at his civil trial, where he has already been found guilty of fraudulently inflating the value of his assets, and where the court is now considering other charges and penalties, which could include a fine of up to two hundred and fifty million dollars and a permanent ban on him running businesses in New York. As sunlight streamed into the packed courtroom, Trump looked the same way he always does: hefty, unnaturally tanned, and ready to do battle.Kevin Wallace, a lawyer from the New York attorney general's office, started off the questioning gently, but it didn't take long for Trump to go off track and start making political speeches. He complained about prosecutorsâ"all Democrats, all Trump haters"âwho he said were coming at him from "fifteen different directions. . . . weaponization, they call it." Wallace tried to guide him back to the issue at hand: the annual Statements of Financial Condition, put together by the Trump Organization, that included the inflated asset values that Judge Arthur F. Engoron, who is presiding over the case, has already ruled fraudulent. Trump sought to downplay the significance of the statements, saying that neither he nor the banks that lent him money paid very much attention to them.
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S44The Line Between Gaza and America  Last week, an Israeli air strike killed Mohammed Abu Hatab, a television journalist, along with eleven members of his family, in his home in southern Gaza. He was the thirty-sixth confirmed member of the media to die in the current conflict, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That number steadily ticks upward. An overwhelming majority have been local Gazans trying to cover the crisis amid continual bombardment. Until recently, no new foreign journalists or independent organizations have been allowed in to witness what is happening.Since early October, I’ve tried to capture fragments of life in Gaza from afar, largely through WhatsApp conversations with people there and with Palestinian Americans. It seemed that every other person knew someone who had died.
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S17Why are US politicians so old? And why do they want to stay in office?  When former President Bill Clinton showed up at the White House in early 2023, he was there to join President Joe Biden to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act. It was hard to avoid the fact that it had been three decades since Clinton was in office – yet at 77, he’s somehow three years younger than Biden.Biden, now 80 years old, is the first octogenarian to occupy the Oval Office – and his main rival, former President Donald Trump, is 77. A Monmouth University poll taken in October 2023 showed that roughly three-quarters of voters think Biden is too old for office, and nearly half of voters think Trump is too old to serve.
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S24Matthew Perry: the power of celebrities speaking publicly about their addiction  As the outpouring of tributes from celebrities and fans shows, the actor Matthew Perry and his Friends character, Chandler Bing, meant a huge amount to many people. But Perry, who died suddenly at 54, said himself that he did not want to be remembered solely for his role on the sitcom: “When I die I don’t want ‘Friends’ to be the first thing that’s mentioned, I want that [helping people] to be the first thing that’s mentioned. And I’m going to live the rest of my life proving that.”
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S32S49'Like a Dragon Gaiden' Review: Kiryu's Back, but at What Cost?  I have always wanted to be the type of person who enjoyed Yakuza games. Everybody I know keeps telling me to check out the series, now renamed Like a Dragon. I wanted to give these games a chance, but I’ve just never actually played any of them because there was always something more interesting I wanted to spend my limited time playing. I took the opportunity to review Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name as a way to force myself to actually play one of these games.After playing Like a Dragon Gaiden, I still wish I was the type of person who enjoyed this series – I just know I’m never going to be that type of person.
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S38Lee Miller's Surrealist Lunch  Lee Miller is known as one of the great models, muses, and photographers of the twentieth century, a status soon to be affirmed by the movie "Lee," starring Kate Winslet, and a major show at Gagosian, "Seeing Is Believing: Lee Miller and Friends," which will hang her work alongside that of Man Ray, Max Ernst, and more. But after the Second World War, shattered by what she'd witnessed as a combat photographer, Miller hid her photos in the attic of Farley Farmâthe centuries-old house in Sussex where she lived with her last husband, the Surrealist artist and curator Roland Penroseâand suppressed her undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder in an orgy of entertaining and cooking. Some sample dishes: Cauliflower Breasts (cauliflower heads in pink mayonnaise and caviar), Gold Chicken (a bird covered with gold leaf), and Penroses (mushrooms topped with pale-pink foie-gras blossoms). Vogue once termed her food "Surrealist cuisine."The other day, three people held a Zoom meeting to discuss the opening party for the Gagosian show, which will re-create one of Miller's farmhouse lunches in a Fifth Avenue mansion. Michael Moore, the gallery's global-events director, joined Alice Garretti, of Acquolina Catering, and Ami Bouhassane, Miller's granddaughter, who was beaming in from her Farley Farm office, formerly a guest room where her grandparents had put up friends like Picasso.
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S51Elon Musk Is Making an Edgy AI Chatbot Called Grok and We Already Hate It  The AI is called Grok and it will learn from the darkest depths of X. What could possibly go wrong?You can get some pretty illicit responses from AI chatbots if you know how to trick them. What about an AI chatbot that scrapes from the unhinged corners of X (formerly known as Twitter)? Well, that’s going to inherently lead to some wild responses.
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S58This Wild Quest 3 Demo Turns Your House into a Flying Helicopter  We’ve been consistently impressed with the creative community behind the Quest 3, pumping out incredibly clever designs like this Super Mario 64 demo or a fully immersive movie-watching experience. If you’re more into flying around a city with your house as your personal aircraft, there’s a demo for that too.This mod takes advantage of the Quest 3’s upgraded color passthrough capabilities and swaps out the real world just beyond your apartment with a virtual one set in the skies.
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S65S37King's speech: what is it and why does it matter?  Today, King Charles will give his first speech from the throne as monarch. He delivered the queen’s speech once as Prince of Wales, deputising in May 2022 for his mother, who could not attend. This is the first speech by a king since 1951, though on that occasion King George VI was too ill to attend and the speech was read out by the Lord Chancellor.The king’s speech is the central part of the ceremony marking the state opening of parliament.
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S39The Agony of Waiting for a Ceasefire That Never Comes  When the war in Gaza started, my family fled to the Jabalia refugee camp. Then Israel started bombing the camp.It is 6:20 P.M. on Friday, October 27th. My children are playing in the house where we have taken refuge, in the Jabalia refugee camp. “I’m getting hungry,” my wife, Maram, whispers to me. “Let’s eat some snacks.” We sneak into the next room and sit on the stairs, where our children are less likely to see us. We miss these private moments, when we could spend time together and joke.
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S42How the Film Distributor Zeitgeist Made History  The film business is notoriously unstable, and the path is especially hazardous for any company that dares to think of cinema as an art as well as a business. So it’s a cause for celebration that Zeitgeist Films, one of the most eminent art-house film distributors, has just reached its thirty-fifth anniversary, and Metrograph is aptly celebrating with a monthlong series of in-theatre and online offerings, spotlighting some of Zeitgeist’s most significant releases. Even before I was a critic, when I paid little attention to the business side of film, I’ve been honoring Zeitgeist from afar. As it happens, the company was co-founded by a friend of mine from high school, Emily Russo, together with Nancy Gerstman, and I’ve always taken special vicarious pleasure in the company’s successes releasing independent and international films that might otherwise have gone entirely unseen in the United States.Zeitgeist’s influential releases are too numerous and varied to do justice to in a brief column. One could point to its release of Todd Haynes’s first feature, “Poison,” from 1991, which not only put that director on the map but helped launch the New Queer Cinema movement. Or one could note its line of ingenious docu-fictions, including Tony Buba’s “Lightning Over Braddock,” Agnès Varda’s “The Gleaners and I,” and Yvonne Rainer’s “Privilege.” Or one could recall that, with Jia Zhangke’s “The World,” Zeitgeist distributed one of the best films of the twenty-first century. But, in my view, no achievement has been greater than the vital role the company has played in bringing to the attention of American viewers one of the greatest of all filmmakers, Abbas Kiarostami, with the release of the 1997 film “Taste of Cherry” (which, now, is streaming on the Criterion Channel and Max).
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S20Nigeria's women vice-chancellors: I know what it's like to be one, and why there are so few  Nigerian Academy of Science provides support as a hosting partner of The Conversation AFRICA.The secretary-general of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors in Nigeria recently disclosed that only 38 women have been vice-chancellors of universities in Nigeria since 1960, out of more than 720 in total. The Conversation Africa asked Ekanem Braide, the Nigerian Academy of Science president and a former vice-chancellor, why this is so and how the country can have more women as university heads.
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S70S46You Need to Watch the Greatest Corporate Thriller of the Century on Netflix ASAP  Making a film about the modern world is no easy task. The present has always proven to be an elusive subject for filmmakers, and that’s perhaps never been truer than it is today. Few films have managed to offer a satisfying portrait of our age, one defined by overwhelming exposure to misinformation, ceaseless technological advancements, and toxic, arrogant disruptors.The Social Network, however, provided a compelling look at how we got to our post-Silicon Valley era. The David Fincher-directed film is a masterful corporate thriller, one of the most well-crafted and effortlessly engaging American dramas of the century. It is simultaneously immense and sleek, titanic yet digestible, and now it’s streaming on Netflix.
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S18What's your chronotype? Knowing whether you're a night owl or an early bird could help you do better on tests and avoid scams  Timing is everything. For early risers and late-nighters alike, listening to your internal clock may be the key to success. From the classroom to the courtroom and beyond, people perform best on challenging tasks at a time of day that aligns with their circadian rhythm.Circadian rhythms are powerful internal timekeepers that drive a person’s physiological and intellectual functioning throughout the day. Peaks in these circadian rhythms vary across individuals. Some people, known as larks or morning chronotypes, peak early and feel at their best in the morning. Others, known as owls or evening chronotypes, peak later in the day and perform best in the late afternoon or evening. And some people show neither morning nor evening preferences and are considered neutral chronotypes.
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S47Xbox Game Pass Just Quietly Released the Best Anti-Hero RPG  Fate is a four-letter word. It’s equal parts prison and hallucinogen, used to trap people into thinking there’s something special going on and that you, yes YOU, are a part of it. Our modern era has largely rejected the notion of fate (astrology notwithstanding) in favor of science, free will, and hedonism. Our video games? Not so much. Fated and fabled heroes still populate many of our favorite tales, and while the escapism is nice, the trope has long since worn out its welcome. Especially in RPGs. So where do you go if you’re looking for an “Oops! All Side Quests” vibe? Enter Wartales. The latest offering from Shiro Games, which just dropped on Game Pass, gives you all the adventure with none of the celestial pressure. Your hardy band of travelers isn’t on some world-saving sojourn or Hail Mary scheme to vanquish a once-in-an-epoch-level evil. You’re just people trying to find work and not starve in a world that is challenging and indifferent. Relatable.
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S53Amazon's Bloodiest Superhero Spinoff Repeats a Marvel Mistake  A spinoff can try a few different strategies to be successful. They can be a carbon copy of the original in a new setting, like Saved By The Bell: The College Years. They can introduce a tonal shift by focusing on one character, like Frasier. Or you can use the old “backdoor pilot” strategy to debut a completely off-the-wall premise (Mork & Mindy, as we all know, was spawned from an episode of Happy Days). Gen V, the younger-skewing spinoff of Prime Video’s massively successful superhero series The Boys, seemed to have the perfect premise. After The Boys introduced the superpower-granting Compound V, a new generation of Supes attended Godolkin University and discovered a conspiracy lurking underneath the school. But in its last moments, Gen V threw away its unique perspective by stumbling into the same massive franchise trap Marvel has blundered into time and time again.
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S19S67S527 Years Later, Star Wars Finally Acknowledged Its Dumbest Plot Hole  Recent Star Wars shows like The Mandalorian and Ahsoka have sometimes felt less interested in entertaining us and more intent on filling in plot holes from the sequel trilogy. The Force Awakens reintroduced us to a galaxy caught in a battle against a new Empire, which nullified the work Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and the Galactic Rebellion did in the original trilogy. It didn’t help that the First Order apparently came out of nowhere, rising to prominence within a few years after only decades of supposed peace. Novels like Bloodline confirmed the threat of a new Empire was relatively new, which made the sudden transition all the more jarring. While The Mandalorian and Ahsoka have been working to answer questions the sequels raised, there’s still a disparity between the galaxy as it is and the future that awaits it. Rumors of an Imperial “deep state” are compelling, and we’ve seen how negligent the new regime has been in addressing the here-and-now threat of Imperial warlords. But how have the likes of Moff Gideon slipped under the New Republic’s nose so easily? We may finally have an answer thanks to, of all things, a new visual guidebook.
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S63S21My parents are from two different African countries: study shows how this shapes identity  More than a third of migration in sub-Saharan Africa happens within the continent. This mixing of people means that some children have parents of different national origins. Yet not enough is known about the lives of these children: how they form their identity and what impact migration has on them. We are sociologists who study migration and identity and we have seen that studies tend to take the perspective of the parents in the African context. The voices of the children are missing.
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S27Why term-time holidays can be a lifeline for children and young people with attachment needs  The holidays are over, and children are back in school – apart from the ones going on a term-time vacation. The combination of the cost of living crisis and the fact that holidays can be significantly cheaper in term time makes taking children out of school for a holiday tempting for parents and carers. It has been reported that unauthorised holidays in term time accounted for over five million lost school days in England in the 2021-22 academic year.
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S57Silent Hill 2 Remake Rumor Reveals a Worrisome Change  The last few years have seen some of the most beloved games of all time receive massive remakes, from Resident Evil 4 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake to Super Mario RPG. Konami is just the latest to join the trend of reimagining industry-defining titles with Silent Hill 2.We know very little about the Bloober Team-developed remake, but a new listing on Best Buy Canada gives us a small glimpse of what to expect, including a potential origin story for the iconic Pyramid Head — an idea that feels horribly misguided at best, and just about the worst thing this remake could do.
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S26Fluoride: very high levels in water associated with cognitive impairment in children  Fluoride is one of the more abundant elements naturally found in drinking water, and levels around 0.7mg per litre have been proven to reduce tooth decay. This is why some countries add fluoride to drinking water.However, fluoride in drinking water is a controversial topic. There is concern about the potentially harmful effects of adding fluoride to our water and food. Scientists debate the pros and cons of fluoridation, and for many of us it may be hard to decide what conflicting scientific results mean for our health and that of our families.
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S59'World of Warcraft' Reveals Its Massive 20th Anniversary Update  World of Warcraft has been around since 2004, but if the MMORPG’s 2023 BlizzCon presentation is anything to go by, Blizzard has plenty of ideas left for the future of Azeroth. With its 20th anniversary kicking off next year, World of Warcraft is set to start a bold new chapter with the Worldsoul Saga. At the same time, World of Warcraft Classic will add another old-school expansion that will change the game forever.Here’s everything you need to know about the World of Warcraft’s Worldsoul Saga and WoW Classic’s next update.
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