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 S18The rule of law is fundamental to a free society - so why don't NZ courts always uphold it?   Ever since the 17th century, the rule of law has been regarded as one of the fundamental values of a free society. It means you cannot be forced to do something unless there is a law requiring you to do it. It also means people in power can coerce you only if there is a rule justifying it. This is the opposite of the “rule of persons”, in which the rulers have arbitrary power: they have the authority to force you to do things simply because they think those things should be done.
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S3616 Years Ago, the First Kindle Introduced One Killer Feature That Changed How We Read  Amazon’s original Kindle e-reader is not thought of as fondly as Apple’s first iPhone. Despite both launching in 2007, the iPhone on June 29 and the Kindle on November 19, Apple’s rounded, aluminum and plastic smartphone is heralded as a design legend, and most people don’t even know Kindles used to have keyboards. But 16 years after its debut, the first Kindle is proof that Amazon’s strategy of making the process of buying things online as simple as possible could pay dividends, especially if you could receive them quickly, even instantaneously.
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S3425 Years Ago, A Revolutionary First-Person Shooter Permanently Altered The DNA of Video Games  Cinematic cutscenes were all the rage in 1998. Konami had just dropped Metal Gear Solid, adding more nuance to stealth-based games, along with codec-guided cutscenes that helped bring protagonist Solid Snake to life. Meanwhile, survival horror like Resident Evil 2 leaned heavily on atmosphere, combining puzzles, combat, and branched storylines to bolster pre-rendered cutscenes that heightened the feeling of being stranded in a zombie apocalypse.Among this deluge of big-name franchise projects, small-scale developer Valve Corporation has other ideas. Completely forgoing the intrusive nature of cutscenes that often shattered immersion, Valve lovingly crafted its debut product in the form of a first-person shooter that used scripted sequences so the gameplay never stopped.
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S3821 Years Later, The Most Underrated Metroid Game Is Still Worth Playing  In a 48-hour window in November of 2002, Nintendo released two Metroid games and the first games in the series since 1994’s Super Metroid. One of these games was Metroid Prime, which transformed the 2D adventure game into a 3D first-person action-adventure shooter. But 24 hours before Metroid Prime was released, Metroid Fusion released for the Game Boy Advance on November 17. Metroid Fusion’s legacy as the torchbearer for the franchise’s roots and the bridge to its modern resurgence marks it as an oft-overlooked classic. While Metroid Prime sought to convert the experience of Super Metroid into a 3D space on the GameCube, Fusion took a different approach. Developed by Nintendo R&D1, the developers of Super Metroid, Fusion retained the 2D DNA of its predecessor but sought to evolve the experience in smaller more iterative ways than Prime’s perspective shift.
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S70"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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S32This Ancient European Diet May Have Been Key To Longevity --  People in Europe ate seaweed for thousands of years before it largely disappeared from their diets. Seaweed isn’t something that generally features today in European recipe books, even though it is widely eaten in Asia. But our team has discovered molecular evidence that shows this wasn’t always the case. People in Europe ate seaweed and freshwater aquatic plants from the Stone Age right up until the Middle Ages before they disappeared from our plates.
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S29Westworld at 50: Michael Crichton's AI dystopia was ahead of its time  Westworld turns 50 on November 21. Director Michael Crichton’s cautionary tale showed that high-concept feature films could act as a vehicle for social commentary. Westworld blended cinematic genres, taking into account the audience’s existing knowledge of well-worn narrative conventions and playfully subverting them as the fantasy turns to nightmare. The film centres on a theme park where visitors, in this case the protagonists Peter (Richard Benjamin) and John (James Brolin), can enter a simulated fantasy world – Pompei, Medieval Europe, or the Old West. Once there, they can live out their wildest fantasies. They can even have sex with the synthetic playthings that populate the worlds.
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S31Piecing Together My Father's Murder  When my older sister, G, was a child, she bought a pet chick from a street vender near our family's home in Ankara, Turkey. The bird had a pale-yellow coat and tiny, vigilant eyes. G would place him on her shoulder and listen to him cheep into her ear. But he soon grew into a rooster, shedding feathers and shitting on the furniture, so our grandfather had a housekeeper take him home to kill for dinner. In a school essay, my sister described this experience as her "first confrontation with death."I wrote my own essay about the chick many years later, for a high-school English class. The assignment was to interview relatives and retell a "family legend." G's tale, which she repeated often, hinted at a strange, wondrous chapter of our past, before our parents immigrated to the United States and had me. I read G questions from a how-to handout on oral history, relishing the excuse to pry. But there was another encounter with death that I didn't dare ask about, an untold story that involved the two of us. One night in August of 1999, on a summer trip back to Ankara, our dad was murdered. G was twelve and I was three. We were both there when it happened, along with our mom, but I was too young to remember.
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S35A New Book Exposes Why Humans May Not Be Ready For Mars  The big challenges are “the big, open questions about things like medicine, reproduction, law, ecology, economics, sociology, and warfare.”In August 1998, 700 people came to Boulder, Colorado, to attend the founding convention of the Mars Society. The group’s co-founder and president, Robert Zubrin, extolled the virtues of sending humans to Mars to terraform the planet and establish a human colony. The Mars Society’s founding declaration began, “The time has come for humanity to journey to the planet Mars,” and declared that “Given the will, we could have our first crews on Mars within a decade.” That was two and a half decades ago.
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S69An Unlikely Source of Greenhouse-Gas Emissions  Chunks of carbon-rich frozen soil, or permafrost, undergird much of the Arctic tundra. This perpetually frozen layer sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, sometimes storing it for tens of thousands of years beneath the boggy ground.The frozen soil is insulated by a cool wet blanket of plant litter, moss, and peat. But if that blanket is incinerated by a tundra wildfire, the permafrost becomes vulnerable to thawing. And when permafrost thaws, it releases the ancient carbon, which microbes in the soil then convert into methane—a potent greenhouse gas whose release contributes to climate change and the radical reshaping of northern latitudes across the globe.
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S21ABC chief is right: impartiality is paramount when reporting the Israel-Gaza war  On November 17, the ABC’s editor-in-chief and managing director, David Anderson, was interviewed on Radio 774, the ABC’s local station in Melbourne, about criticisms of the national broadcaster’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.The interview followed a well-publicised meeting nine days earlier at which ABC journalists raised a range of concerns about the organisation’s coverage. These included the extent to which the ABC was relying on talking points supplied by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), and the alleged unwillingness of the ABC to use terms such as “invasion”, “occupation”, “genocide”, “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” when discussing Israeli government policy.
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S12S30Myths about plastic pollution are leading to public confusion: here's why  Does the prediction that there could be “more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050” concern you? How about reports that “we eat a credit card’s worth of plastic per week”? These are some of the “facts” about plastic that are cited by the media. They are certainly compelling sound bites and help to focus public and policy attention on the pressing topic of plastic pollution, but their scientific basis is far from robust.
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S433 Backwards Sleep Science "Hacks" That Can Help Cure Your Insomnia  For millennia, living creatures have engaged in the sacred art of sleep, but it still remains one of the most evasive necessities for some. Sleep can be hard to come by, but an ideal sleep environment shouldn’t be out of reach for everyone. Rafael Pelayo, a sleep psychiatry professor at Stanford University, and Meredith Broderick, a sleep neurologist at Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Washington and a member of the medical advisory board for sleep solutions company Ozlo Sleep, describe what makes for the perfect sleep environment, and the science behind why they work.
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S37'The Marvels' Ending Reveals the Solution to One Major MCU Problem  The ending of The Marvels has been a long time coming. The new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie notably ends with Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), fired up over her recent superhero adventures with Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) and Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), breaking into the New York City apartment of Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld). When Kate arrives home, Kamala ambushes her with an invitation to join a new team that she’s been thinking about putting together. The group’s other members remain unclear, though, Kamala does make one passing mention of Cassie Lang (Kathryn Newton).The scene marks the first official step Marvel has taken toward forming the Young Avengers onscreen. It’s a welcome but not necessarily surprising moment — one that the studio has been building to for years now. After all, with characters like Kamala, Kate, America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), and a handful of others now part of the MCU, the seeds have certainly been planted for a Young Avengers team-up movie or TV show.
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S33You Need to Watch the Most Ludicrous Thriller on Amazon For Free ASAP  “We wanted to make a movie that was sort of in the tradition of a Hitchcock mindf***,” said screenwriter and producer Scott Z. Burns about the psychological thriller billed as Steven Soderbergh’s directorial swansong. It’s fair to say 2013’s Side Effects, which just hit Amazon Freevee, fulfilled the brief.From the Psycho-esque opening shot that slowly zooms through the New York skyline into the window of an apartment with a suspicious blood-stained carpet, it’s clear we’re firmly in the Master of Suspense territory. That’s not the only nod to the Bates Motel, either.
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S23S16A royal commission won't help the abuse of Aboriginal kids. Indigenous-led solutions will  Director Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, CI ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence against Women (CEVAW), School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies (SOPHIS), School of Social Sciences (SOSS), Faculty of Arts, Monash University This article mentions violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children. There are also mentions of racial discrimination, sexual abuse, and death.
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S26What is a sonar pulse and how can it injure humans under water?  Over the weekend, the Australian government revealed that last Tuesday its navy divers had sustained “minor injuries”, likely due to sonar pulses from a Chinese navy vessel.The divers had been clearing fishing nets from the propellers of HMAS Toowoomba while in international waters off the coast of Japan. According to a statement from deputy prime minister Richard Marles, despite HMAS Toowoomba communicating with internationally recognised signals, the Chinese vessel approached the Australian ship and turned on its sonar, forcing the Australian divers to exit the water.
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S40How Nostalgia and In-App Purchase Fatigue Are Making the Game Boy Big Again  Nintendo’s classic handhelds are enjoying a huge renaissance without the company’s help.It feels like there are more Game Boys in 2023 than there ever were in the ‘90s or early 2000s. Whether it’s the now four collections of the Analogue Pocket (including the original black and white models), Ayaneo’s tease of a Pocket DMG handheld that evokes the shape of Nintendo’s classic handheld, or the countless Android-powered devices designed to emulate Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games, it’s safe to say the pocket game machine is still a large presence.
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S14AI is now accessible to everyone: 3 things parents should teach their kids  It is almost a year since ChatGPT burst onto the scene, fuelling great excitement as well as concern about what it might mean for education. The changes keep coming. Earlier in the year, MyAI was embedded into social media platform Snapchat. This is a chatbot powered by ChatGPT, which encourages teens to ask anything - from gift suggestions for friends to questions about homework.
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S10'Forever contaminant' road salts pose an icy dilemma: Do we protect drivers or our fresh water?  As winter approaches, many communities in Canada and around the world arm themselves against icy roads and sidewalks with a time-honoured ally: road salt. For decades, applying road salt has been regarded as a simple but vital tool in countering the dangers of slippery road conditions, but the downsides of its use are apparent with implications that extend beyond the cold months. Scientists have long known that the substance which has safeguarded us through the colder months poses a threat to aquatic life and drinking water quality. But now we are finding that this chemical also disrupts the delicate balance of oxygen and nutrients in our freshwater lakes and ponds.
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S17How can you define a 'drug'? Nobody really knows  What’s a medical drug? Ask someone on the street and they’re likely to tell you it’s the kind of thing you take when you’re unwell.This understanding is wrong, as we will see. But after a thorough investigation, my colleagues and I found no other potential definitions are any better.
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S68The Other Ozempic Revolution  On Labor Day weekend, 35 excited guests arrived at a campground in Newark, Ohio, for a retreat dedicated to “fat joy”—a place where people could swim, dance, do yoga, roast marshmallows, and sleep in cabins with others who had been made to feel guilty about their weight. The point of Camp RoundUp was “really diving into the joy of being at summer camp, the joy of being a fat little kid again,” Alison Rampa, one of the organizers, told me.She and a friend, Erica Chiseck, had created Camp RoundUp to counter the shame and stigma that fat Americans report experiencing because of their size. They wanted to establish somewhere that “ladies and theydies” could feel comfortable in shorts or a swimsuit, with no awkwardness in the lunch line over portion sizes or second helpings.
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S27Tax cuts rumoured but the UK's autumn statement will offer little economic comfort  The UK chancellor’s autumn statement is likely to be relatively uneventful – yet extremely significant. Although some headline-seeking tax cuts are rumoured, sluggish economic growth and persistent inflation leave little scope for major policy announcements.That said, the fiscal update is one of the last opportunities for the government to set out its economic vision ahead of the next general election. Here’s what to watch out for when Jeremy Hunt takes to his feet.
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S4150 Weird New Things on Amazon That Are So Damn Clever  We live in the weirdest of times. We are well past the invention of the automobile, airplane, spaceship, and bread slicer. Today, everyone with the kind of brain that creates devices to solve problems is either focused on big-picture issues like artificial intelligence or carbon-free energy — or they have tuned into small problems like making produce last longer and improving indoor plumbing. These are bright minds and those are real problems, so the results are often brilliant. Take a look at these 50 weird new things on Amazon that are so damn clever and you’ll see.Charge your iPhone and turn it into a cute bedside table display at the same time with this simple charging stand. Thread your own Magsafe charger into the base and set your phone down on it. It holds your phone at a glanceable angle and looks great doing it. It comes in four colors.
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S66What the  The series succeeded not because it had a clear political philosophy, but because it understood the power of entertainment above all.Hollywood was never going to stop making more Hunger Games movies. Based on Suzanne Collins’s best-selling dystopian young-adult novels, the first four films released from 2012 to 2015 collectively grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide. They dominated pop culture: Jennifer Lawrence became a bona fide movie star; videos on how to replicate her character’s side braid flooded the internet; the phrase hunger games became shorthand for any kind of intense competition. We saw a wave of copycat franchises—Divergent, The Maze Runner, and The Mortal Instruments, among many, many others—that never reached The Hunger Games level of success.
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S70Walton Goggins, Zadie Smith, and Lauryn Hill  This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Conor Friedersdorf, a staff writer and the author of our Up for Debate newsletter.
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S60How OpenAI's Bizarre Structure Gave 4 People the Power to Fire Sam Altman  When Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and other investors formed the startup behind ChatGPT as a US not-for-profit organization in 2015, Altman told Vanity Fair he had very little experience with nonprofits. "So I'm just not sure how it's going to go," he said.He couldn't have imagined the drama of this week, with four directors on OpenAI's nonprofit board unexpectedly firing him as CEO and removing the company's president as chairman of the board. But the bylaws Altman and his cofounders initially established and a restructuring in 2019 that opened the door to billions of dollars in investment from Microsoft gave a handful of people with no financial stake in the company the power to upend the project on a whim.
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S19Concern for the Great Barrier Reef can inspire climate action - but the way we talk about it matters  There’s no doubt you’ve heard the Great Barrier Reef is under pressure. The main culprit? Climate change. The main solution? An urgent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a shift away from fossil fuels.Those who promote action to protect the reef therefore have a difficult task. How do we encourage more people to take action on climate change? Whether it’s reducing reliance on fossil fuels in our personal lives, or asking our government to transition from fossil fuels to renewables, what do people need to know, and how do we say it in a way that makes a difference?
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S67How the Hillbillies Remade America  A massive and forgotten migration reshaped the liberal approach to poverty and realigned America’s political parties.On April 29, 1954, a cross section of Cincinnati’s municipal bureaucracy—joined by dozens of representatives drawn from local employers, private charities, the religious community, and other corners of the city establishment—gathered at the behest of the mayor’s office to discuss a new problem confronting the city. Or, rather, about 50,000 new problems, give or take. That was roughly the number of Cincinnati residents who had recently migrated to the city from the poorest parts of southern Appalachia. The teachers, police officials, social workers, hiring-department personnel, and others who gathered that day in April had simply run out of ideas about what to do about them.
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S25Who is Sam Altman, OpenAI's wunderkind ex-CEO - and why does it matter that he got sacked?  On Friday, OpenAI’s high-flying chief executive Sam Altman was unexpectedly fired by the company’s board. Co-founder and chief technology officer Greg Brockman was also removed as the board president, after which he promptly resigned. Shockingly, however, that too was not to be. As of publication, Bloomberg reporters announced OpenAI’s interim CEO, Mira Murati, had not managed to rehire Altman and Brockman as she had planned.
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S39Amazon dropped these early Black Friday deals that are legitimately amazing & they're selling out quickly  It feels like Black Friday sales start earlier each year, which can feel overwhelming when discounts are on every browser tab. But fear not, BDG’s commerce editors have done the work for you below — all you need to do is “add to cart” since these notable markdowns across every Amazon category sell out quickly.These popular bathroom rugs — which are designed with soft chenille and microfiber fabrics — are highly absorbent and quick-drying. They're also backed with rubber for some extra grip, and two different sizes are included with the purchase: 24 by 27 inches and 30 by 20 inches. The duo is available in 14 colors.
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S59The Real Reason EV Repairs Are So Expensive  In June this year, a Hyundai Kona rolled into a repair shop in Cheltenham, England. Humming gently, as electric vehicles do, it seemed to be running just fine. But the insurance company wasn’t ready to sign it off. The car had been in a minor collision, which had caused damage to its battery casing. Another repair shop, about an hour’s drive away, had been asked to replace the casing, but they didn’t know how.And so, the car ended up here in Cheltenham, in front of Matt Cleevely, owner of Cleevely Motors. When he and his colleagues opened up the vehicle, they were stunned. Sure, the metal casing had a few light scratches—minor marks made by one of the car’s rear suspension arms, which had got jolted during the incident—but nothing more.
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S24The Optus chief was right to quit but real change is unlikely at the telco until bigger issues are fixed  Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin bowed to the inevitable on Monday and resigned as chief executive of Australia’s second largest telecommunications company.Why inevitable? Poor communication and a lacklustre response during a major system outage is bad enough. Then things got worse when Bayer Rosmarin and the director of Optus networks admitted at a Senate hearing on Friday they had no disaster management plan for the kind of national outage experienced two weeks earlier.
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