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S2AI Can Help You Ask Better Questions -- and Solve Bigger Problems   Most companies still view AI rather narrowly, as a tool that alleviates the costs and inefficiencies of repetitive human labor and increasing organizations’ capacity to produce, process, and analyze piles and piles of data. But when paired with “soft” inquiry-related skills it can help people ask better questions and be more innovative.
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S3How to Make Great Decisions, Quickly  As a new leader, learning to make good decisions without hesitation and procrastination is a capability that can set you apart from your peers. While others vacillate on tricky choices, your team could be hitting deadlines and producing the type of results that deliver true value. That’s something that will get you — and them — noticed. Here are a few of a great decision:
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S4How billion-dollar store makeovers are taking on the 'retail apocalypse'  At JCPenney stores across the US, shoppers may notice a fresh paint smell, better lighting and shiny new signage – with even more improvements planned for the coming months. Centralised checkout counters are replacing registers once spread across multiple departments, and posters promise a "new and improved shopping experience" once the remodels are complete. Change is afoot at the retailer, and not just in the form of upgraded carpet (though that, too, is on the list).The updates are part of a $1bn (£808m) investment the company announced in late August – a pricey effort to reinvigorate the brand following a high profile 2020 bankruptcy and subsequent restructuring. The funds will be partly dedicated to slicker technology and improved e-commerce features, but much of the focus remains on JCPenney's more than 650 physical stores.
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S5After WeWork's bankruptcy, what is the future of coworking?  WeWork as we know it is gone. Once valued at $47bn (£38bn), on 6 Nov, the global coworking company filed for Chapter 11 in New Jersey, US. With the news, its share price quickly tumbled, leaving the business valued at less than $50m (£41m). Although some locations will remain open, WeWork has begun closing offices around the world.The company's collapse has been spectacular, in part due to the riveting story of its rise and fall, documented on screen in a 2022 miniseries with Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto. Its name looms large in the public imagination, where "WeWork" has become practically synonymous with "coworking", like "Kleenex" to "tissue" or "Google" to "search".
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S6Why your balsamic vinegar is likely fake  From an accompaniment to French fries at the local burger joint to hint of acid added to Michelin-starred dishes, balsamic vinegar is one of the most recognisable condiments on the global table. And yet, many have never tasted the real "black gold" of Modena, Italy. It takes 12 years to make the best, aceto balsamico tradizionale (traditional balsamic vinegar), and at least 25 to make the finest, extra Vecchio.Because of traditional balsamic vinegar's painstaking artisanal production process, supplies are limited, and it tends to be rather pricey. And so, as the global demand for it has risen since the early 1980s, a market for imitation balsamic vinegar and cheaper products has exploded. In one instance in March 2019, a dramatic Interpol operation in northern Italy seized 9,000 tonnes of crushed grapes intended to be made into fake balsamic vinegar.
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S7Alien chic to clown shoes: 10 of the most absurd style trends of 2023  Last year, an abundance of attention-grabbing sartorial trends, spanning Barbiecore through to big suits, proved that, after two years spent largely indoors in loungewear, we were ready to embrace more eccentric means of expressing ourselves sartorially.And this year, it seems, we've only gathered steam, gravitating towards the absurd, the alien, the attention-grabbing and the flesh-flashing. Here, as 2023 draws to a close, we reflect back on some of its most extreme trends, both on and off the runway, from the playful and provocative to the clownish and controversial.
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S8Why Doctor Who is the ultimate British show  Sixty years old this year, Doctor Who is perceived around the globe as one of the greatest British TV shows ever made. But what's really at the heart of Doctor Who that makes it quite so quintessentially British?Journalist, and self-confessed Whovian, Dan John delves into the stories, the costumes, the characters and the origins of Doctor Who to unravel the very British DNA of the world's longest running science-fiction TV show. Interviews with Alexandra Benedict, a writer of official Doctor Who audio dramas, and Chris Oates, a political analyst and writer of the essay Doctor Who and the New British Empire, reveal how the show has become deeply ingrained in the language of British cultural identity itself.
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S9Black November: remembering Uganda's massacre of the opposition three years on  November marks a sombre anniversary in Uganda’s recent political history. In 2020, the east African country’s leading opposition politician, Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, was arrested. He was on the campaign trail ahead of the 2021 presidential elections. Mass demonstrations demanding the release of the popular musician-turned-presidential-candidate broke out in and around the capital, Kampala. Over two days, security agents of the regime of Yoweri Museveni – in power since 1986 – cracked down on the protests.
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S10300,000 Tanzanians were killed by Germany during the Maji-Maji uprising - it was genocide and should be called that  Political actors in Tanzania have in recent years demanded compensation from Germany for colonial atrocities committed in the early 20th century. In early 2017, the National Assembly of Tanzania stopped short of putting the label of genocide on the atrocities committed by German troops during the Maji-Maji uprising (1905–1907).During a visit to Tanzania recently, the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, asked for “forgiveness” and expressed “shame” for the colonial atrocities committed in what was then German East Africa. This was in reference to the killing of up to 300,000 people during the Maji-Maji uprising.
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S11S12Unthanksgiving Day: A celebration of Indigenous resistance to colonialism, held yearly at Alcatraz  Each year on the fourth Thursday of November, when many people start to take stock of the marathon day of cooking ahead, Indigenous people from diverse tribes and nations gather at sunrise in San Francisco Bay. Their gathering is meant to mark a different occasion – the Indigenous People’s Thanksgiving Sunrise Ceremony, an annual celebration that spotlights 500 years of Native resistance to colonialism in what was dubbed the “New World.” Held on the traditional lands of the Ohlone people, the gathering is a call for remembrance and for future action for Indigenous people and their allies.
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S13Gettysburg tells the story of more than a battle - the military park shows what national 'reconciliation' looked like for decades after the Civil War  On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to dedicate a cemetery at the site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Four months before, about 50,000 soldiers had been killed, wounded or captured at the Battle of Gettysburg, later seen as a turning point in the war.In his now-famous address, Lincoln described the site as “a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that (their) nation might live,” and called on “us the living” to finish their work. In the 160 years since, 1,328 monuments and memorials have been erected at Gettysburg National Military Park – including one for each of the 11 Confederate states.
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S145 marketing lessons from the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce romance  What happens when you unite the biggest pop star in the world and a two-time Super Bowl champion? A whole lot of excitement, as the romance of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce has shown. But amid all the cheering, canoodling and Instagram flirting, the situation lends some useful insights into marketing – and as an expert in sports marketing, I know that this is a topic worth focusing on. Here are five lessons the NFL and other experiential marketers can consider to enhance their brands and reputation.Great entertainment marketers know how to fill a blank space. And Swift has given the NFL a unique opportunity to expand its appeal to a demographic – young women – that may not have been interested in football before. Swifties, as Swift’s fans are known, are eager to see the pop icon embrace being in love. So whenever she visits a stadium to cheer on her new lover, Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Kelce – which she has done four times in the past two months and may well do again soon – a media frenzy follows.
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S15Thanksgiving sides are delicious and can be nutritious - here's the biochemistry of how to maximize the benefits  While people usually think first about the turkey or the ham during holiday meals, the sides are what help balance your plate. Colorful vegetables like green beans, collard greens, roasted carrots and mashed sweet potatoes are loaded with important micronutrients. But how you prepare them will help determine whether you get the most nutritional value out of each bite this holiday season.As a biochemist, I know that food is made up of many chemical substances that are crucial for human growth and function. These chemical substances are called nutrients and can be divided into macronutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats and proteins, and micronutrients, such as vitamins and minerals.
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S16S17S18S19S20Ukraine and Moldova have taken a huge step towards EU membership - but these hazards lie ahead  The European Commission has confirmed its support for opening the formal accession process for Ukraine and Moldova to become members of the European Union and for other nations in the western Balkans to move forward with their own bids.The wider context of war in Ukraine is a potent setup for commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s preference for a geopolitical union and a stronger voice for Europe in the world. Enlargement into the east is seen as a “geostrategic investment”.
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S21S22Christmas TV ads underscore how generosity, compassion and empathy still matter to people  Christmas ad campaigns have become headline-worthy moments in the British national calendar, hailed by pundits and awaited by an eager public. The fact that they are now teased, like big-screen cinema releases, is proof enough that, in calendar terms, the major-retailer Christmas ad is a seasonal event in itself. This year, two ads so far have garnered much attention. John Lewis’s Snapper the Perfect Tree features a young boy who plants what he is told is a Christmas tree seed, only to watch it grow into a giant, sentient Venus flytrap. With operatic flair, the plant sings and dances its way into the family’s hearts.
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S23What Xi got out of his meeting with Biden  China’s leader Xi Jinping flew into San Francisco to meet US president Joe Biden on November 15 for his first visit to the US since 2017. The meeting, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) conference, was slightly longer than expected, at four hours. This has been taken as a sign that the relationship between the two super powers is warming up slightly after a significantly rocky period, marked by a trade war and a Chinese spy balloon entering US airspace.
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S24South Africa's police are losing the war on crime - here's how they need to rethink their approach  South Africa’s crime statistics for the third quarter of 2023 show that people continue to face a serious problem of violent crime, especially murder and attempted murder. The country’s per capita murder rate for 2022/23 was the highest in 20 years at 45 per 100,000 (a 50% increase compared to 2012/13).In response to this crisis, the South African Police Service has reconfigured its policing strategies and plans. Yet, these approaches offer very little innovation. They mostly reaffirm the way the police have typically pursued policing for the past three decades – fighting a “war” on crime and “sweeping away” criminals.
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S25Earthrise: historian uncovers the true origins of the 'image of the century'  The recent death of Frank Borman, commander of Nasa’s Apollo 8 mission in 1968, has focused attention on that incredible first voyage to the Moon. It took place eight months before Apollo 11, where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the lunar surface for the first time. However, the impact of Apollo 8’s “Earthrise” picture – the sight of the Earth from the Moon – now seems even greater than that of the first landing.
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S26New blood tests for dementia announced, but what can they tell us and who will benefit?  Of those seen by specialists in memory services, the vast majority are given a diagnosis of dementia based on their symptoms alongside cognitive tests, blood tests to rule out other explanations (such as hormone imbalances), and sometimes an MRI brain scan. A small percentage, particularly those who are younger or who have more complex symptoms, may be offered a more detailed investigation to look for some proteins (amyloid and tau) that can build up in the brain.
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S27Biden's low approval ratings don't mean he is bound to lose the 2024 US election -- here's why  US Democrats have been spooked by some recent polling which suggests that voters intend to pick Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden in some key states in the 2024 presidential election.A CNN poll reported on the website Real Clear Politics on November 8 put current US president Biden on 45% and Trump on 49% in such a contest. This lead of 4% is statistically significant, which means that it cannot be attributed to errors which can occur with all polls but represents a genuine lead of the former president over the current incumbent.
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S28Chickenpox vaccine recommended for NHS - here's why a jab is better than getting the disease  The chickenpox vaccine is already offered as part of childhood immunisation programmes in several countries, including Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand. Now the UK government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has recommended it be included as part of the routine immunisations children receive in the UK.Not only does evidence from these countries show us the chickenpox vaccine is safe, it also shows us just how effective the vaccine can be – and why it should be introduced in the UK.
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S29'Many sleepless nights': why scientists who predict landslides are under enormous pressure  In June 2023, in the eastern part of Switzerland, the small picturesque village of Brienz/Brinzauls narrowly avoided being wiped out by a huge landslide. The community sits at the foot of a steep slope that was on the move and eventually around 1.2 million cubic metres of rock collapsed, stopping just a few metres short of the village. The landslide was predicted well in advance. The village had already been evacuated and there was intense media interest. The slope even had a YouTube live stream. As an expert in landslides who has been involved in these sorts of tough evacuation decisions before, I know those involved in the monitoring of the site, and making decisions around keeping the population safe, will have endured many sleepless nights.
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S30Gaza: should global brands join the protests?  US doughnut chain Krispy Kreme has been involved in a humanitarian fundraiser for Palestinians in Gaza, putting itself on the same side as millions of protesters around the world. This might sound unsurprising in an era when global brands regularly align with popular causes, but virtually none has wanted to touch Gaza. Even Krispy Kreme’s involvement is only through a company programme that is neutral about who it supports. It allows anyone to set up a fundraiser in which donors can make contributions through buying doughnuts. In this case, the fundraisers were the University of California’s Middle Eastern Student Association, who raised around US$24,000 (£19,400) for humanitarian aid.
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S31Why Scotland needs a legal framework to protect its living cultural heritage  From the island of St Kilda 40 miles west of the Hebrides, to Edinburgh’s splendid Georgian New Town, Scotland is a nation rich in cultural heritage, some of which is Unesco-protected. As well as the country’s globally renowned castles and monuments, Scotland has an enormous resource of intangible cultural heritage (ICH).Sometimes referred to as “living heritage”, intangible cultural heritage includes the vast array of traditional songs, stories, crafts and practices that provide the character and backdrop to Scotland’s cultural identity. In Scotland, as everywhere, there are two main risks to living heritage. One, that it can be lost if it is not passed down from one generation to the next and two, that it is at risk of being misused, misinterpreted or misrepresented.
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S32Price inflation is slowing, but here's why it still feels like we're in a cost of living crisis  The latest UK consumer price index (CPI) data has been hailed as a win for prime minister Rishi Sunak’s aim to half inflation, announced earlier this year. Prices rose by 4.6% in October 2023, bringing the rate of price growth down to its lowest point since an October 2022 peak of 11.1%. But inflation coming down gradually does not mean prices are falling – they are merely increasing at a slower pace. Prices remain high, deepening the cost of living crisis for many, especially those whose nominal wages have not increased at pace with inflation in recent years.
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S33More young people in the UK are living with parents and grandparents - here's what you need to know if you're considering it  In a recent court case in Pavia, northern Italy, the judge sided with the complainant, a 75-year-old woman, and ordered her adult two sons to move out of her home. The woman’s case was a last-ditch attempt to get the men to find what one journalist termed, somewhat elliptically, “more autonomous living arrangements”. Italy has long had a culture of multigenerational living. As news reports have rightly noted, however, the cost of living crisis and the jobs market combined have resulted in more and more young professionals living with their parents for longer.
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S34Why Are Millennials Still Attached to American Girl?  The American Girl doll was invented in the nineteen-eighties by an enterprising former grade-school teacher and news anchor in her mid-forties named Pleasant Rowland, during a visit to Colonial Williamsburg. Rowland was also a successful author of textbooks and other educational materials, and wanted to capitalize on what seemed to her to be the obvious draw of historically accurate, immersive play. Missing from the Barbie-and-baby-doll eighties play landscape, she also noticed, was a doll for little girls who was herself a child. Playing with dolls their own age might slow girls’ premature rush into what Rowland saw as a “too sour and cynical” adult world. She designed the original three American Girl dolls—the well-to-do orphan Samantha Parkington, from the Progressive Era; the Swedish immigrant Kirsten Larson, on the 1854 Minnesota frontier; and the bespectacled Midwesterner Molly McIntire, on the home front of the Second World War—to have heavy, plush bodies and appealing faces. Each came with a set of six books about their lives, in which we meet them as nine-year-olds and follow them in the course of about one year during a significant point in American history.From the beginning, Rowland’s invention wasn’t just a doll but a brand. “The draw for American Girl was not just the stories, but the whole package,” the historians and podcast hosts Mary Mahoney and Allison Horrocks observe in “Dolls of Our Lives: Why We Can’t Quit American Girl,” their recent book that traces millennials’ and Gen Z-ers’ enduring emotional attachment to American Girl. Rowland sold the toys directly to parents and kids through catalogues that pictured the dolls in enticing tableaus where “everything in the image was for sale: furniture, accessories, and extra outfits.” In its first four months, Rowland’s Pleasant Company, which sold to Mattel in 1998 for seven hundred million dollars, sold $1.7 million worth of product. By the nineteen-nineties and two-thousands, it was the dominant life-style brand for girls, and had accumulated a dizzying array of touchpoints and spinoffs: infant Bitty Baby dolls, cookbooks, theatre kits, paper dolls, D.I.Y. craft kits, a clothing line, an annual Girl of the Year and another model set in modern times that was customizable in tens of skin and hair tone combinations, an influential puberty book for girls (“The Care and Keeping of You”), pen-pal opportunities, a bimonthly magazine, immersive American Girl Place flagships in three cities, and the American Girl catalogue, which one woman tells the authors of “Dolls of Our Lives” that she demanded to be read from like it was a bedtime story.
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S35A Rise in Antisemitism; and a Conversation with the A.I. Pioneer Geoffrey Hinton  The State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, the historian Deborah Lipstadt, says the prejudice is coming “from all ends of the political spectrum, and in between.” It threatens not only Jews, she says, but the stability of democracies. Lipstadt and David Remnick discuss how antisemitic sentiments may overlap in complicated ways with political opposition to Israel, including anti-Zionism. Plus, The New Yorker’s ideas editor speaks with Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist known as the godfather of A.I. Hinton pioneered neural networks, the artificial brains that power ChatGPT, for example. Hinton is now sounding the alarm that the technology is or will soon be smarter than humans, and has the potential to make goals for itself that may not align with the goals we want for it.Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt talks about antisemitism “from all ends of the political spectrum, and in between.” It threatens not only Jews, she says, but the stability of democracies.
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S36Economists Struggle to Come to Terms with "Immaculate Disinflation"  A little more than a year ago, the Wall Street Journal surveyed economists about their forecasts for 2023. The respondents, who included more than seventy experts from academia, business, and Wall Street, said that a recession was the likeliest outcome, as the Federal Reserve was keeping interest rates high to bring down inflation. They predicted that G.D.P. would shrink slightly in the first half of the year and that job growth would turn negative. In other words, the cost of bringing down inflation would be an economic slump. "Soft landing will likely remain a mythical outcome that never actually comes to pass," one respondent said.In January of this year, when the Journal carried out its next survey, economists were still predicting a recession and job cuts. "For 2023 as a whole, economists expect that payrolls will decline by 7,000 a month on average," the paper reported. These predictions couldn't have been more wrong. About the only thing the economists got right was that inflation would continue to fall, but even there they underestimated the pace of decline. Earlier this week, the Labor Department reported that the consumer-price inflation fell to 3.2 per cent in October, reversing a slight pickup over the summer. And with gas prices still falling, it seems perfectly possible that the the November figure for consumer-price inflation could begin with a two.
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S37The Trauma of Gaza's Doctors  From the time Israel began bombing Gaza following Hamas's October 7th attack, the charity Médecins Sans Frontièresâwhich is often referred to as M.S.F., or by its English name, Doctors Without Bordersâhas been documenting the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, where more than eleven thousand people have already been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. I recently spoke by phone with Anne Taylor, the head of mission for M.S.F. in Palestine; she's based in Jerusalem. She discussed what her organization has witnessed, and what life is like for her staff on the ground. Taylor has been with the organization for two decades, and has worked in a number of conflict zones. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the conditions for M.S.F. employees in Gaza, how the organization tries to avoid politics, and what makes this conflict different from others Taylor has witnessed.We've had a program there for many years. We worked in various hospitals supporting the Ministry of Health. We did some secondary health care, including surgical work with burns. And we worked in Al-Shifa hospital, in Gaza City. We also had our own private clinic. We had a couple of other clinics that were run alongside the Ministry of Health. And at Al-Awda hospital, and we worked down in the south, at the Nasser Medical Center. So there were various hospitals that we were associated with and some of our own primary health-care facilities as well. That was all before the dreadful things that happened on 7th of October, which seems a long time ago.
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S38"Saltburn" Is a "Brideshead" for the Incel Age  If the rich blithered as much in real life as they do in the movies, they'd have been eaten long ago. The fantasy that the privileged are easily gulled has a powerful lure. By placing riches in opposition to acumen, it reassures us that luxury and status are probably unearnedâthat, just as youth is said to be wasted on the young, wealth is wasted on the wealthy, and that it wouldn't take much to get it into the right hands. That's the premise of the British writer and director Emerald Fennell's satire "Saltburn," her second feature, which, for all the obviousness of its setup and its allocation of sympathy points, is diabolically clever. Yet the ingenuity of the story's twists and turns ultimately left me feeling cheated, because of the cagy way that plot points are dispensed. It may seem odd to discuss the movie's form before detailing the story, but the story's essence is inextricable from Fennell's way of telling it. There are, in effect, two movies at work in "Saltburn"âthe one that Fennell puts onto the screen and the one that it impliesâand the implied movie is better.The movie is set mainly in 2006 and 2007, and the action begins in Oxford, where its protagonist, Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), is a freshman. Nerdy, awkward, and provincial, Oliver is cruelly teased and becomes fixated on the sophisticated in-crowd surrounding a wealthy, well-connected student named Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who is handsome, witty, and seductive. Yet we've already heard a bit about Felix before he's ever seen, because the movie opens with Oliver's brief retrospective monologue about him, delivered to camera. He wasn't in love with Felix, he says, but certainly loved him. The movie is largely a flashback showing how the unalluring Oliver's affections take dramatic effect.
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S39Trump's Vindictive Second-Term Agenda  In recent weeks, Americans have begun to get a clearer picture of what a second Donald Trump Administration could look like. Some clues have come from organizations like the Heritage Foundation, which has laid out policy proposals for the Trump campaign. Others have come from the former President himself. Trump has said he would appoint a prosecutor to "go after" Joe Biden and his family; on Veterans Day, this past weekend, he pledged to root out opponents and critics who he said "live like vermin within the confines of our country." "Trump wants to get rid of all of these guardrails that protect the government from becoming a spoil system," the staff writer Jane Mayer says, including by firing members of the federal civil service. Ultimately, how different would a second Presidency be from the last time that Trump was in the White House? "There are two words that I would say really underscore the difference this time, and why Trump in 2024 is arguably a much bigger threat in many ways than he was even eight years ago," the New Yorker staff writer Susan B. Glasser says. "The two words are 'retribution' and 'termination.'Â " The staff writer Evan Osnos joins Mayer and Glasser to weigh in.By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
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S40The Art of Bouldering  Follow @newyorkercartoons on Instagram and sign up for the Daily Humor newsletter for more funny stuff.By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
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S412023's Twistiest Gothic Thriller Is Secretly a Monster Movie  Emerald Fennel’s new film is a prickly class satire wrapped in an opulent tale of desire.Tales of the rich would not be nearly as compelling without an outsider looking in. There’s one in every generation: Gen X had Captain Charles Ryder of Brideshead Revisited, while ‘90s babies had Matt Damon’s talented Mr. Ripley. But their heady, hedonistic exploits pale in comparison to those of Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), the steely-eyed narrator of Emerald Fennell’s latest trip, Saltburn.
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S4245 Years Ago, Star Wars Survived The Single Worst Moment in Franchise History  To love Star Wars is to hate Star Wars. You probably think the prequels are stupid, or the sequels took the wrong direction, or the Disney+ offerings are aimless. No fan likes everything, yet they sit down and watch it all anyway, willing to waste their time just in case the latest release recaptures what made Star Wars special to them.This is the fate of all franchises. Star Wars was a scrappy little sci-fi series overcome by the need to sell merchandise and pad Disney’s bottom line. But Star Wars becoming a soulless mercantile enterprise isn’t a modern phenomenon; it sold out years before The Empire Strikes Back cemented its legacy.
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S43This Stunning, High-Resolution Image Reveals The Bizarre Aging Process of Stars  The highest resolution of a star ever taken by ALMA, this image of R Leporis could help us understand the lives of geriatric stars.This stunning close-up of the red supergiant R Leporis is one of the highest-resolution images of a star (other than our Sun) ever taken. It looks a little blurry, but its actual resolution is roughly the equivalent of seeing a 30-foot-long bus parked on the surface of the Moon.
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S44Persona 5 Tactica Proves It's Time to Retire the Phantom Thieves  Persona 5 is the game that catapulted the franchise to mainstream success, garnering immense critical praise and becoming the best-selling game in the franchise in mere days. It makes sense that Atlus has tried to capitalize off that success in the years since, bringing back The Phantom Thieves for multiple new adventures. However, with the release of the latest spinoff, Persona 5 Tactica, it might finally be time to retire the team once and for all. While Tactica brings an interesting strategic spin to the series’ trademark gameplay, I can’t help but feel like the Phantom Thieves are played out, and their roles in this story could have been filled by pretty much anyone. The Persona 5 timeline is incredibly strange: there are multiple spinoffs that happen in quick succession but take place in “alternate” worlds. Persona Q2 is set sometime during the Casino Palace of the main game, Dancing in Starlight happens sometime near the end of the game, and now Tactica takes place between the second and third semesters. That’s not even including Strikers, which takes place after the original, as well as the new content in Persona 5 Royal.
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S45When Does Apple's Epic New Godzilla Series Take Place in Monsterverse Timeline? The Showrunners Explain  Remember when Godzilla destroyed San Francisco? If you didn’t watch the Gareth Edwards-directed 2014 film Godzilla, there’s a chance that you won’t understand some of the references in the new Apple TV+ series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. Then again, maybe not fully grasping the connections to the cinematic Monsterverse is part of the point of this show. Unlike the MCU, the new series isn’t meant to give you homework, nor is it actually that beholden to the preexisting Monsterverse canon. However, the timeline and setting of this series are very specific, making it a kind of sideways prequel to Kong: Skull Island, but also a mid-quel between the 2014 Godzilla movie and the two films that have followed. To sort out all the secrets of Monarch’s timeline, Inverse chatted with executive producers Chris Black and Matt Fraction. Here’s what they told us about why they’re “creating our own characters and telling our own story.”
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S46New "Robot" Pill Can Track Your Heart Rate And Knows If You Stop Breathing  A group of researchers published the results of the first in-human trial of a vitals-monitoring pill. Pills are not just for taking a vitamin or relieving pain anymore. Devices like the PillCam and the SmartPill can help doctors detect and monitor diseases in areas of the gastrointestinal tract that they can’t easily reach. And engineers are constantly developing new advancements. These “technopills” could change the way we collect health data and even treat diseases.
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S47Michael Fassbender Doesn't Rule Out X-Men Return: "Never Say Never"  Now that we’re knee-deep in the MCU’s multiverse era, absolutely everything is on the table. The MCU timeline is now a branching tree held together by Loki, allowing all sorts of variants and alternate worlds to exist. This was proven in The Marvels post-credits scene which, in a very surprising appearance, brought someone notable from the old X-Men continuity into the MCU.With the dam broken, we may just see more X-Men join the modern Marvel timeline. But what other stars are willing to return to play their beloved mutant characters? Michael Fassbender is open to it... under the right circumstances.
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S48The Most Exciting Tactics RPG of 2024 Could Redefine the Genre  When Unicorn Overlord was revealed at the September Nintendo Direct, I only needed to see one thing to get excited: the Vanillaware logo. The developer of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, Dragon’s Crown, and Odin Sphere has yet to make a bad game, and its signature hand-drawn art style looks as good now as it always has. With Vanillaware at the helm, Unicorn Overlord immediately became one of my most anticipated games of 2024 — even if I’m not quite sure what it’s about yet.Thanks to a fresh press release from publisher Atlus, however, we now know a good deal more about Unicorn Overlord. The game takes place on the continent of Fevrith, where five nations are ruled over by the Zenoiran Empire. Fevrith is populated by distinct groups of angels, elves, humans, and wolf girls in metal bikinis (Vanillaware isn’t here to judge what you’re into).
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S49'Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent's Newest Hero Seems Very Familiar  Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent, the free-to-play mobile game in Square Enix’s retro-inspired RPG series, is getting its latest hero. The new warrior is a noble princess dressed in a shining suit of silver armor with accents of red cloth, not to mention her dazzling white hair. The character is named Aedelgard and ... wait a minute, let me look at that art a little closer. That’s just Edelgard von Hresvelg from the critically acclaimed Nintendo Switch exclusive Fire Emblem: Three Houses, isn’t it?Hey, Square Enix isn’t even being subtle about it! The character design itself feels like it could be an alternate outfit for Eldegard in her own game, as the silver armor and red accents are nearly identical to so much of her attire. The white hair is also a pretty distinctive feature. But what really gets me is that Square Enix named the character Aedelgard - A Edelgard. This has got some very strong “you can copy my homework if you change the answers a little bit” energy.
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S507 Years Later, Taika Waititi Reveals Why He Went Back to His Cinematic Roots  Next Goal Wins is a homecoming of sorts for Taika Waititi. The Thor: Love and Thunder director honed his craft in low-budget character comedies like Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. So after more than half a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, he was itching to get back to something smaller.“That's the place I developed what I do, is doing these small films,” Waititi tells Inverse. “[It was] a 25-day shoot on this one, which is the same as my first four movies. Eagle vs Shark, Boy, What We Do in the Shadows, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, all 25 days. I just felt very comfortable in this world.”
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S51'Dune: Part Two' Release Date, Cast, And Everything We Know  Here is everything you need to know about the sequel to Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, including the cast, the release date, and more.Dune takes audiences on an unforgettable journey. As you likely know from watching the movie, Dune: Part One is only half of the whole story. But fear not. Fear is the mind-killer! A sequel is coming. Adapted from Frank Herbert’s classic science fiction series, the first movie is just the beginning and builds its story with a sequel planned.
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S5265 Weird but Genius Gifts Under $35 on Amazon for People Who Are Hard to Please  Buying gifts for loved ones can be tricky, but buying gifts for people who are hard to please? Now that can take some real thought. Luckily, there are tons of genius gifts available on Amazon that are sure to thrill even the pickiest people — including that distant uncle who shows up once every blue moon. And since each item costs $35 or less, you can grab something for everyone without breaking the bank.Whether you’re suffering from a migraine or woke up with tired, puffy eyes, this mask may be able to help. It’s made without any latex, making it suitable for use on sensitive skin — and the gel beads on the inside retain both hot and cold temperatures. Simply send it through the microwave if you’re in the mood for some hot therapy, or keep it in the fridge so that it’s always ready to help cool you down.
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S53S54Lasers Could Unlock A New Era In Space Communication -- And Help Take Us To Mars  The first tests of optical communications far from Earth will occur aboard the asteroid-bound Psyche spacecraft. NASA’s recently launched asteroid hunter, Psyche, is designed to give us a look at a body that could resemble depths far within the Earth, where we can never go. But one instrument tagging along for a ride is exciting scientists who specialize in a completely different field — that of space communications. Since the dawn of the Space Age, they have depended on radio waves, just a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. But scientists hope to expand into another part of the spectrum soon. Their aim is to add lasers to our cosmic communications toolkit.
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S55The Best Video Game Remake of the Year Reveals the Problem With 'Super Mario RPG'  Remakes have become incredibly common in video games as countless developers seek to reimagine beloved games for present-day audiences. It can often be tricky to find a balance between honoring the original and updating it appropriately, but Star Ocean The Second Story R manages to execute that idea to near perfection. It’s a remake that manages to be faithful to the original PlayStation 1 classic while also feeling like a modern release. It’s a clear blueprint for how to reimagine decades-old classics, especially when compared against other recent remakes, namely Super Mario RPG.Even Second Story R’s aesthetic feels hand-crafted to embrace the game’s PS1 origins, but make it feel modern.
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S56Rethink Your Employee Value Proposition  A lot of leaders believe that the formula for attracting and keeping talent is simple: Just ask people what they want and give it to them. The problem is, that approach tends to address only the material aspects of jobs that are top of employees’ minds at the moment, like pay or flexibility. And those offerings are easy for rivals to imitate and have the least enduring impact on retention. Companies instead should focus on what workers need to thrive over the long term, balancing material offerings with opportunities to grow, connection and community, and meaning and purpose.
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S57Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45  It’s widely believed that the most successful entrepreneurs are young. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg were in their early twenties when they launched what would become world-changing companies. Do these famous cases reflect a generalizable pattern? In fact, the average age of entrepreneurs at the time they founded their companies is 42. But what about the most successful startups? Is it possible that companies started by younger entrepreneurs are particularly successful? Research shows that among the top 0.1% of startups based on growth in their first five years, the founders started their companies, on average, when they were 45 years old.
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S58How Venture Capitalists Make Decisions  For decades now, venture capitalists have played a crucial role in the economy by financing high-growth start-ups. While the companies they’ve backed—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and more—are constantly in the headlines, very little is known about what VCs actually do and how they create value. To pull the curtain back, Paul Gompers of Harvard Business School, Will Gornall of the Sauder School of Business, Steven N. Kaplan of the Chicago Booth School of Business, and Ilya A. Strebulaev of Stanford Business School conducted what is perhaps the most comprehensive survey of VC firms to date. In this article, they share their findings, offering details on how VCs hunt for deals, assess and winnow down opportunities, add value to portfolio companies, structure agreements with founders, and operate their own firms. These insights into VC practices can be helpful to entrepreneurs trying to raise capital, corporate investment arms that want to emulate VCs’ success, and policy makers who seek to build entrepreneurial ecosystems in their communities.
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S59The New Science of Customer Emotions  When a company connects with customers’ emotions, the payoff can be huge. Yet building such connections is often more guesswork than science. To remedy that problem, the authors have created a lexicon of nearly 300 “emotional motivators” and, using big data analytics, have linked them to specific profitable behaviors. They describe how firms can identify and leverage the particular motivators that will maximize their competitive advantage and growth. The process can be divided into three phases. First, companies should inventory their existing market research and customer insight data, looking for qualitative descriptions of what motivates their customers—desires for freedom, security, success, and so on. Further research can add to their understanding of those motivators. Second, companies should analyze their best customers to learn which of the motivators just identified are specific or more important to the high-value group. They should then find the two or three of these key motivators that have a strong association with their brand. This provides a guide to the emotions they need to connect with in order to grow their most valuable customer segment. Third, companies need to make the organization’s commitment to emotional connection a key lever for growth—not just in the marketing department but across every function in the firm.
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S60S61S62S63S64S66S67S68S69Research: How Women Improve Decision-Making on Boards  This article reports on a study of women and men directors at more than 200 publicly traded companies on the major stock exchanges in the U.S. and Europe. The results provide key insights on how the presence of women influences boards. First, it turns out that women directors come to board meetings well-prepared and concerned with accountability. Second, women are not shy about acknowledging when they don’t know something, are more willing to ask in-depth questions, and seek to get things on the table. As a result, the presence of women improves the quality of discussion.
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S70Leaders, Make Curiosity the Core of Your Organizational Culture  Great corporate cultures are not just good for performance, but for the flourishing and engagement of the people who work in them and to deliver greater meaning and purpose. But oft overlooked is the central role that curiosity plays in crafting an organizational culture. To unlock the potential of their institutions and the people within them, great leaders need to demonstrate consistent curiosity in four key areas. First, they must be curious about the values and motivations of their employees in shaping and maintaining a corporate culture. Second, curiosity must be extended to customers to find out not just about your products and services but about “why” your customers love your organization. Third, leaders must reflect with open-mindedness and curiosity on their own roles, especially as they change. Finally, leaders must stay curious about the changing nature of their companies and contexts over time, and adjust their cultures accordingly.
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