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 S44Alien 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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S46Black 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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S19Sam Altman's Sudden Exit Sends Shockwaves Through OpenAI and Beyond  More details of Sam Altman's sudden ousting as CEO of OpenAI have emerged, with several senior researchers quitting the company, and executives and investors from across the industry expressing shock and confusion at what is increasingly being perceived as a board coup.Hours after Sam Altman was booted from the company by its board, Greg Brockman, another OpenAI cofounder and the company's chairman, quit in protest. Brockman later posted details of Altman's removal suggesting that the company's chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, had orchestrated the effort to remove the CEO.
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S36Another 'Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly' for Elon Musk  The second liftoff of Starship, SpaceX’s giant new rocket-and-spaceship system, went beautifully this morning, the fire of the engines matching the orange glow of the sunrise in South Texas. The spaceship soared over the Gulf Coast, with all 33 engines in the rocket booster pulsing. High in the sky, the vehicles separated seamlessly—through a technique that SpaceX debuted during this flight—and employees let out wild cheers. The booster soon exploded, but the flight could survive that. What mattered was that Starship was still flying. It could still coast along the edge of space, and then plunge back to Earth, crashing into the Pacific Ocean off of the coast of Hawaii, as SpaceX planned.But then, as SpaceX mission control waited to hear a signal from Starship, there was only silence. Something had gone wrong after the ship shut off its engines in preparation to coast. The self-destruct system kicked in, and Starship blew itself up, according to SpaceX’s commentators, who were narrating the livestream. A “rapid unscheduled disassembly,” as SpaceXers call it.
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S21Ancient Buddhist painting can help you understand the art of Zen  For months, conservators at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco were hard at work fashioning a display case for Six Persimmons, the 13th-century ink painting at the center of their upcoming exhibit, “The Heart of Zen.” Its owner, the Kyoto National Museum in Japan, had provided the conservators with an extensive list of requirements concerning not just the material and measurements of the case itself, but the quality of the air inside it.Even to seasoned museum workers, the demands of the Kyoto team appear extreme, bordering on unreasonable. That is, until you consider the history of the art involved. Painted on a scroll by the famed Chinese monk Muqi, Six Persimmons is as fragile as it is coveted. For centuries, this minimalist still life of autumn fruit was owned by a wealthy Japanese family that only displayed it during their exclusive tea ceremonies. After ending up in the hands of Daitoku-ji, a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, it was moved to the National Museum — not to be displayed, but stored. “Heart of Zen” not only marks the first time Muqi’s masterpiece will be shown to the public since 2019, when it was exhibited at the Miho Museum, but also the first time it will be shown outside Japan.
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S32OpenAI board attempts to hit "Ctrl-Z" in talks with Altman to return as CEO  Just over a day since the surprise firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that sent shock waves through the tech industry, the OpenAI board is reportedly engaging in discussions with Altman to potentially return as chief executive of the company, according to The Verge, citing people familiar with the matter. The outlet says that Altman is "ambivalent" about returning and would want significant changes to how the company is run.
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S41How 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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S26S33The Women Who Saw 9/11 Coming  Many of the CIA analysts who spotted the earliest signs of al-Qaeda’s rise were female. They had trouble getting their warnings heard.One day toward the end of the 20th century, John Rizzo, a career lawyer at the Central Intelligence Agency, found himself chatting with Jack Downing—a former Marine and stalwart Cold Warrior who had been brought out of retirement to oversee the clandestine service.
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S38S40How 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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S14New Models Could Predict Climate Change Effects with Unprecedented Detail  Scientists have proposed a network of supercomputing centers that would focus on local climate impactsScientists have used computer models to predict global warming's implications for more than five decades. As climate change intensifies, these increasingly precise models require more and more computing power. For a decade the best simulations have been able to predict climate change effects down to a 25-square-kilometer area. Now a new modeling project could tighten the resolution to one kilometer, helping policymakers and city planners spot the neighborhoods—or even individual buildings—most vulnerable to extreme weather events.
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S4S18The Startup That Transformed the Hack-for-Hire Industry  If you work at a spy agency tasked with surveilling the communications of more than 160 million people, it’s probably a good idea to make sure all the data in your possession stays off the open internet. Just ask Bangladesh’s National Telecommunication Monitoring Center, which security researchers found connected to a leaky database that exposed everything from names and email addresses to cell phone numbers and bank account details. The data was likely just used for testing purposes, but WIRED confirmed at least some of the data is linked to real people.A fight is brewing in the United States Congress over the future of a powerful surveillance program. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is set to expire at the end of the year. With the December 31 deadline quickly approaching, members of Congress and civil liberties groups are criticizing Section 702 for enabling the “incidental” surveillance of Americans’ communications and “abuses” by the FBI. While a privacy-preserving update to the program has been introduced in Congress, some 702 critics remain concerned that lawmakers will push through reauthorization using other, “must-pass” legislation.
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S22"Iron Man" material made from DNA and glass is 4x stronger than steel  One of the cool things about science fiction is that it can inspire real science and innovation. Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea emboldened underwater exploration. William Gibson’s Neuromancer influenced the development of the internet, while Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash popularized the concept of the metaverse. Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy introduced the idea of e-books — in addition to giving us the answer to life, the universe, and everything.Who knows what other real advances science fiction will successfully inspire? Flying cars? Space cities? Iron Man suits?
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S28Globalism vs. the scientific revolution  How did science get started? A few years back, we looked at one answer to that question in the form of a book called The Invention of Science. In it, British historian David Wootton places the origin within a few centuries of European history in which the features of modern science—experiments, models and laws, peer review—were gradually aggregated into a formal process of organized discovery.
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S45Why 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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S7S13Poem: 'In Conversation with Elizabeth Fulhame'  She has a map spread at her feet, a lit carpet of gold citiesand silver rivers, each tributary wire-drawn with the tipof a squirrel's tail. Everything is very damp.It seems like a dream, even in the dream. Saucers of silkline the sills like a grand banquet for clothes moths.The round table (pocked with scorch marks) throngs
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S34It's Not That Hard to Stop Birds From Crashing Into Windows  This article originally appeared in longer form in bioGraphic. Every spring, as the daylight lengthens and the weather warms, rivers of birds flow north across the Midwest. They fly high and at night, navigating via the stars and their own internal compasses: kinglets and creepers, woodpeckers and warblers, sparrows and shrikes.They come from as far as Central America, bound for Minnesotan wetlands, Canadian boreal forests, and Arctic tundra. They migrate over towns and prairies and cornfields; they soar over the black tongue of Lake Michigan in such dense aggregations that they register on radar. Upon crossing the water, many encounter Chicago, where they alight in whatever greenery they can find—office parks and rooftop shrubs and scraggly street trees and the sparse landscaping outside apartment-complex lobbies.
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S43Why 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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S42After 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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S69Price 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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S37Trump's Apocalyptic Rhetoric  Former President Donald Trump has never been moderate in rhetoric and action. But there’s a real sense out there that, as he comes under further legal pressure, he’s become more apocalyptic: During a Veterans Day speech, echoing the language of authoritarian dictators, he described his political foes as “vermin.”Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, a rash of angry altercations erupted this week. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, allegedly elbowed fellow GOP Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee in the kidneys, and Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma, challenged a hearing witness to a fight.
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S20What Sam Altman's Firing Means for the Future of OpenAI  Sam Altman always insisted that he wasn’t the most important person at OpenAI despite being its CEO. As he traveled the world this year meeting world leaders—the world’s unofficial ambassador of AI—Altman would soft-pedal his role, even as he stole glances at his phone to keep up with what was happening in OpenAI’s luxe San Francisco offices.“We have an incredibly great team here that can do a lot of things, so mostly, I defer to them,” he told me in May when I asked him how the company ran in his absence. “But some things only a CEO can do—some HR thing of the moment, or you have to kill some project, or something with a major partner.” Those items would accumulate on his phone and at the end of the day he’d bat out responses. Then he would go back to speechifying, meeting developers, and taking tea with prime ministers.
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S9Message sticks: Australia's ancient unwritten language  The continent of Australia is home to more than 250 spoken Indigenous languages and 800 dialects. Yet, one of its linguistic cornerstones wasn't spoken, but carved.Known as message sticks, these flat, rounded and oblong pieces of wood were etched with ornate images on both sides that conveyed important messages and held the stories of the continent's Aboriginal people – considered the world's oldest continuous living culture. Message sticks are believed to be thousands of years old and were typically carried by messengers over long distances to reinforce oral histories or deliver news between Aboriginal nations or language groups.
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S27S66'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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S35What Humans and Nature Get From Each Other  It’s not a coincidence that America is getting both lonelier and more indoorsy, an Atlantic writer argues.This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
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S8Taupo: The super volcano under New Zealand's largest lake  Located in the centre of New Zealand's North Island, the town of Taupo sits sublimely in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Tongariro National Park. Fittingly, this 40,000-person lakeside town has recently become one of New Zealand's most popular tourist destinations, as hikers, trout fishers, water sports enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies have started descending upon it.The namesake of this tidy town is the Singapore-sized lake that kisses its western border. Stretching 623sq km wide and 160m deep with several magma chambers submerged at its base, Lake Taupo isn't only New Zealand's largest lake; it's also an incredibly active geothermal hotspot. Every summer, tourists flock to bathe in its bubbling hot springs and sail through its emerald-green waters. Yet, the lake is the crater of a giant super volcano, and within its depths lies the unsettling history of this picturesque marvel.
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S15The real gold of our economy is in our hands  The vast majority of our time at work is spent trudging through redundant and outdated workflows, says operations visionary Salvatore Cali. Laying out the most common time-wasting pitfalls, he urges policy leaders and businesses to reevaluate what they ask of both employees and consumers. "By rethinking the true purpose of each task, you will discover what is waste and what is the real gold of your company: the creation of value," says Cali.
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S25Lotus Eletre R is a 900-horsepower SUV that weirdly slays the competition  The Lotus Eletre R is an electric SUV with 900 hp (671 kW), a curb weight of approximately 5,820 lbs (2,640 kg), and a six-figure sticker price. If you’re a longstanding fan of the British brand—look around, is there a small model of a race car within sight or Colin Chapman biography on your bookshelf?—that opening sentence likely causes some distress. If you are like most Americans, however, a mention of "Lotus" is just as likely to conjure up thoughts of gardening as grands prix.
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S29Details emerge of surprise board coup that ousted CEO Sam Altman at OpenAI  On Friday, OpenAI fired CEO Sam Altman in a surprise move that led to the resignation of President Greg Brockman and three senior scientists. The move also blindsided key investor and minority owner Microsoft, reportedly making CEO Satya Nadella furious. As Friday night wore on, reports emerged that the ousting was likely orchestrated by Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever over concerns about the safety and speed of OpenAI's tech deployment.
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S17SpaceX's Starship Lost Shortly After Launch of Second Test Flight  SpaceX's Starship failed its test flight this morning when the automated flight termination system triggered, and engineers lost contact with the craft about 10 minutes into its journey. This marks the company's second attempt at sending a Starship on a near-orbital trip, a 90-minute voyage that would have gone almost around the world. An initial test flight also failed in April, exploding four minutes after liftoff and flinging debris throughout the surrounding area.As before, today's launch took place at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. But this time, all of the 33 Raptor engines appeared to ignite properly, and the Starship's stage separation from the Super Heavy booster worked more or less as planned. The vehicle survived max q, or the point in its ascent when it's under the most pressure from the atmosphere and its own velocity. About three minutes after launch, the Starship successfully separated from the Super Heavy booster, after which the booster exploded, something SpaceX officials typically refer to with the euphemism "rapid unscheduled disassembly," or RUD.
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S23How an entire continent went missing  A continent the width of the U.S. has been missing for 155 million years. Scientists have long puzzled whether this chunk of northwest Australia has been either floating somewhere unseen, resting on the ocean floor, or slowly fusing to the underbelly of a larger landmass. Modern mapping largely ruled out the first two theories, but let’s say a 3,000-mile slab of terra firma did get lodged beneath another continent. Experts believe they would have at least been able to find some trace of it. Really, how could something so large just completely vanish?Furthermore, if we can just lose a massive piece of land like that, that could mean scientists have been completely wrong about Pangea and our understanding of the Earth’s geological history in general.
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S24S30The FCC says new rules will curb SIM swapping. I'm pessimistic  After years of inaction, the FCC this week said that it's finally going to protect consumers against a scam that takes control of their cell phone numbers by deceiving employees who work for mobile carriers. While commissioners congratulated themselves for the move, there’s little reason yet to believe it will stop a practice that has been all too common over the past decade.
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S39AI 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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