   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S65Marvel's Most Divisive New Team-Up Movie Could Fix Its Biggest TV Blunder   If you’ve been keeping tabs on the many casting rumors orbiting Marvel’s Cinematic Universe, then you may not have been too surprised by the bombshell Invincible creator Robert Kirkman dropped this weekend. “My good friend Steven Yeun is playing the Sentry in a movie,” Kirkman said in a conversation with artist David Finch, confirming what a handful of insiders had previously leaked. Yeun was cast in a top-secret role in Marvel’s Thunderbolts back in February, and while the studio had yet to confirm this development, it’s difficult to imagine Kirkman being misleading.Marvel Studios has maintained their trademark radio silence following Kirkman’s reveal, but it’s getting easier to guess what to expect from Thunderbolts. The film will follow a group of Marvel’s most notorious anti-heroes as they’re recruited by CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) for a clandestine mission. Whatever their task, the introduction of Sentry will make things interesting... and complicated.
Continued here
|
S1
S2 Use Open Source for Safer Generative AI Experiments  Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Integrating artificial intelligence into the daily workflow of employees across organizations, from upper management to front-line workers, holds the promise of increasing productivity in tasks such as writing memos, developing software, and creating marketing campaigns. However, companies are rightly worried about the risks of sharing data with third-party AI services, as in the well-publicized case of a Samsung employee exposing proprietary company information by uploading it to ChatGPT.
Continued here
|
S3 Micro Utility With Gen AI: Shopify's Miqdad Jaffer  Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Miqdad Jaffer brings a background in engineering to his role as director of product for digital marketplace platform Shopify. Users might recognize the commerce platform as one that enables a fast and secure online checkout experience. On the merchant side, Shopify enables business owners to set up e-commerce sites where they can list and sell their products.
Continued here
|
S4Why US travellers are snubbing budget airlines  As prices rise across the globe, many Americans are looking to save money where they can, including travel. Yet the most recent slate of earnings reports from major US airlines indicates consumers aren't necessarily opting for budget airlines amid an inflation economy. During Q3 2023, low-cost airlines saw sluggish sales – while their legacy counterparts watched revenues spike.Frontier Airlines, one of the larger low-cost carriers, lost $32m (£26m) during Q3. Spirit Airlines, likewise, lost $157.6m (£197m). Southwest Airlines, which is considered a hybrid low-cost-full-service carrier in the industry, tallied a net income of $240m (£193m), which was a drop of roughly 30% from last year.
Continued here
|
S5Relais Routiers: Is this the best dining bargain in France?  With the surge of inflation over the last two years, it has become prohibitively expensive for many people to eat in restaurants in France – especially traditional ones. But the nation's network of 700 Relais Routiers or lorry (truck) drivers' inns, which are also open to the general public, have made a real effort to keep prices low. They know the lure of the fast-food franchises will win if they don't. The exceptional value of these friendly, no-nonsense, old-fashioned French eateries is assuring the survival of an almost century-old French tradition.La Marmite, a Routier 65km west of Paris near the A13 motorway, doesn't look like much. But there are several dozen lorries in its carpark, and if you're looking for value-for-money French cooking, that is worth more than stars. I take my place at the bar, order a pression (on-tap lager beer) for 2.70€ and notice that the server addresses me with the familiar "tu" (you) usually reserved for children, family members and people you know well.
Continued here
|
S6The 10,000-year-old origins of the sauna - and why it's still going strong  With the rise in popularity of cold-water swimming, there's now a renewed enthusiasm – even evangelical fanaticism – for the perfect counterpart to an icy outdoor dip, the hot, sweaty sauna. Across the Nordic region and beyond, new public and private saunas are opening, and existing saunas are overrun with visitors. And they're even making it on to the big screen. Anna Hints's Sundance Award-winning feature documentary Smoke Sauna Sisterhood follows a group of women in a traditional Estonian wood-fired smoke sauna.These spaces come in all shapes and sizes, from the positively rustic to the deluxe and even high-tech.
Continued here
|
S7Did a magician help vanquish the Nazis in World War Two?  In the 1930s, Jasper Maskelyne was a superstar magician, performing to sell-out crowds at variety theatres all over Britain. A 1931 poster for his stint at the London Palladium billed him "England's Greatest Illusionist".He was a bit of a dandy, truth be told, with more than a dash of Errol Flynn about his pencil moustache and piercing eyes. Nimble, too, on the evidence of a 1937 Pathé film in which he appears to swallow a dozen razor blades. Less agile are the quips he bats to camera: "Awfully nice when they're fresh, you know."
Continued here
|
S8John Singer Sargent's portrait of Ena Wertheimer: The painting that challenged sexual norms  The painter John Singer Sargent and one of his sitters, Ena Wertheimer, were good friends. Their mutual rapport is evident in the striking portrait he painted of her in Cavalier fancy dress complete with dashing plumed hat, which can be seen in Fashioned by Sargent, currently showing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Smiling broadly as she turns to look over her shoulder, she clutches a piece of fabric carefully draped to resemble a cloak in her gloved hand. A broom poking out from beneath it stands in for a ceremonial sword. The dynamic nature of the portrait, which gives the impression of Ena being caught mid-action, led to the 1905 painting's Italian name, A Vele Gonfie, meaning "with full sails" or "with gusto".More like this: - The masterpiece that became a meme - The tragedy of art's greatest supermodel - 10 artworks that caused a scandal
Continued here
|
S9S10How do crystals form?  Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected] speaking, the term “crystal” refers to any solid that has an ordered chemical structure. This means that its parts are arranged in a precisely ordered pattern, like bricks in a wall. The “bricks” can be cubes or more complex shapes.
Continued here
|
S11Every state is about to dole out federal funding for broadband internet - not every state is ready for the task  Nearly two years later, the federal government informed the states exactly how much money each will be getting. The sizes of the awards are significant: 19 states will receive over $1 billion, and the average award across the 50 states is $817 million. Texas received the largest allocation at over $3.3 billion.The states are working with the federal government to develop plans for how they will distribute those funds. The states have until Dec. 27, 2023, to submit their initial proposals. As of Nov. 15, no state had completed that process.
Continued here
|
S12Pooling multiple models during COVID-19 pandemic provided more reliable projections about an uncertain future  There are few better examples of this challenge than the COVID-19 pandemic, when officials fervently compared potential outcomes as they weighed options like whether to implement lockdowns or require masks in schools. The main tools they used to compare these futures were epidemic models.But often, models included numerous unstated assumptions and considered only one scenario – for instance, that lockdowns would continue. Chosen scenarios were rarely consistent across models. All this variability made it difficult to compare models, because it’s unclear whether the differences between them were due to different starting assumptions or scientific disagreement.
Continued here
|
S13Being homeless means not being free - as Americans are supposed to be  Homelessness is a state of deprivation. Those who are homeless need shelter to be safe; they don’t have it. They need a toilet for basic bodily functions; they don’t have one. They need a shower to keep clean; they don’t have that, either. Because such deprivation dramatically affects the well-being of people who are homeless, public discussion of homelessness tends to focus on whether and to what extent the government should carry out anti-homelessness policy as a way of improving people’s overall quality of life.
Continued here
|
S14S15S16Thanksgiving stories gloss over the history of US settlement on Native lands  Too often, K-12 social studies classes in the U.S. teach a mostly glossed-over story of U.S. settlement. Textbooks tell the stories of adventurous European explorers founding colonies in the “New World,” and stories of the “first Thanksgiving” frequently portray happy colonists and Native Americans feasting together. Accounts of the colonies’ battle for independence frame it as a righteous victory. Native American removal might be mentioned as a sad footnote, but the triumph of the pioneer spirit takes center stage. As a scholar of Native American and Indigenous rhetorics, I argue that this superficial story hides the realities of what many historians and activists call “settler colonialism.” Historian Lorenzo Veracini asserts that colonial activity isn’t just about a nation sending out explorers and bringing back resources, or what scholars refer to as “classical colonialism.” It’s also about what happens when a new people moves in and attempts to establish itself as the “superior” community whose culture, language and rights to resources and land supersede those of the Indigenous people who already live there.
Continued here
|
S17Good profits from bad news: How the Kennedy assassination helped make network TV news wealthy  In journalism, bad news sells. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a famous industry catchphrase, which explains why violent crime, war and terrorism, and natural disasters are ubiquitous on TV news.The assassination of John F. Kennedy 60 years ago offers a case study. After a gunman killed the president, television news offered wall-to-wall, nonstop coverage at considerable cost to the networks. This earned TV news a reputation for public-spiritedness that lasted decades.
Continued here
|
S18S19S20S21Airlines are frustrating travelers by changing frequent flyer program rules - here's why they keep doing it  As the U.S. holiday travel season picks up, many people are noticing that their frequent flyer benefits aren’t going as far as they used to. In September 2023, Delta Air Lines revamped its frequent flyer program to make it tougher to earn status — a tiered system offering travel privileges based on the reward points earned — only to partially reverse course a month later and make it easier. American Airlines also made big changes to its loyalty scheme in 2022 and minor changes in spring 2023. And British Airways recently announced that it is adjusting the way it awards points for travel.
Continued here
|
S22S23Thank gluten's complex chemistry for your light, fluffy baked goods  Within the bread, rolls and baked goods on many tables this holiday season is an extraordinary substance – gluten. Gluten’s unique chemistry makes foods airy and stretchy.I’m a chemist who teaches a chemistry of cooking class, and every year I ask my students, “What is gluten?” Common answers are “a sugar” or “a carbohydrate.” But rarely does anyone get it right.
Continued here
|
S24Autumn statement: what to expect, what they're not saying, and the traps for Labour  Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s budget on Wednesday, November 22 will put into place a major piece of the Conservative party’s strategy for the general election – the plan to turn the economy around and tackle the cost of living crisis. But with just over a year to go before an election must be called, will the measures be too little, too late?The government certainly derived some satisfaction from last month’s fall in the UK rate of annual inflation to 4.6%, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak quickly taking credit for meeting his target to halve the rate in 2023. Nonetheless, economic prospects look grim.
Continued here
|
S25Gaza war: how investigators would go about finding and verifying underground military complexes  Following the raid on the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza by units of the Israel Defence Forces on October 15, the IDF claims to have uncovered evidence of tunnels underneath the hospital. A video released on November 19 showed a tunnel running under the al-Shifa medical complex at a depth of ten metres, running 55 metres along to what IDF sources said was a blast-proof door.The tunnel’s entrance was reportedly exposed when a booby-trapped truck in a garage on the hospital’s grounds was exploded. The IDF claims this is evidence that there was a command and control centre beneath the hospital complex.
Continued here
|
S26How movies use music to manipulate your memory  Around one in five American adults manage to squeeze in watching a movie on a daily basis. It’s a great way to escape the daily grind and unwind with loved ones. But, what can you actually remember about last night’s film? You may be able to remember the title, the rough story outline or the Hollywood star who acted in it. But dig a little deeper. How easily does a specific movie sequence come to mind right now? And more importantly, can you hear or recognise the film’s musical score?
Continued here
|
S27S28S29JFK 60 years on: his leadership style and the reality behind the myths  John F. Kennedy retains an iconic status as an exemplary – even inspirational – public figure and his leadership approach has been influential for decades.The former US president (1961-63) projected an idealist image of leadership, which, at its best, demonstrated that the political system can address society’s most profound challenges. His was an optimistic and ambitious presidency that, although tragically cut short, achieved considerable success across a range of activities as diverse as poverty reduction, bans of nuclear weapons testing, and the Mercury and Apollo space programmes.
Continued here
|
S30Developmental amnesia: the rare disorder that causes children to forget things they've just learned  Even though it came out more than 20 years ago, many people still remember Finding Nemo thanks to one of its beloved main characters: Dory. The blue fish is remembered not only for her happy-go-lucky personality but for the condition she has, which makes her forget things almost as soon as they’ve happened.Viewers might have assumed Dory’s condition was the stuff of fantasy, crafted to spur the movie’s plot forward. What many may not realise is that Dory’s memory troubles are similar to a real but rare condition that affects children.
Continued here
|
S31JFK assassination 60 years on: seven experts on what to watch, see and read to understand the event and its consequences  November 22 2023 marks 60 years since US president John F. Kennedy was shot and killed as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. The event shocked the world. But it also sparked the minds of filmmakers, authors, artists and conspiracy theorists. To commemorate the anniversary of one of the most famous assassinations in history, we asked seven experts to recommend a film, artwork, book, resource or place that can help to understand the event – and its myriad consequences.Historians of the assassination of John Kennedy divide into two camps. There are those who accept the official version provided by the Warren Commission – that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was responsible for the murder and was himself assassinated by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby before he could face trial. And there are those who subscribe to one of the various conspiracy theories.
Continued here
|
S32Disinformation campaigns are undermining democracy. Here's how we can fight back  Misinformation is debated everywhere and has justifiably sparked concerns. It can polarise the public, reduce health-protective behaviours such as mask wearing and vaccination, and erode trust in science. Much of misinformation is spread not by accident but as part of organised political campaigns, in which case we refer to it as disinformation. But there is a more fundamental, subversive damage arising from misinformation and disinformation that is discussed less often.
Continued here
|
S33S34No, antibiotics aren't always needed. Here's how GPs can avoid overprescribing  Antimicrobial resistance is one of the biggest global threats to health, food security and development. This month, The Conversation’s experts explore how we got here and the potential solutions.The growth in antibiotic resistance threatens to return the world to the pre-antibiotic era – with deaths from now-treatable infections, and some elective surgery being restricted because of the risks of infection.
Continued here
|
S35The Ethical Slut has been called 'the bible' of non-monogamy -  In 2022, University of Melbourne evolutionary psychologist Dr Khandis Blake estimated that among young people, “around 4-5 per cent of people might be involved in a polyamorous relationship, and about 20 per cent have probably tried one”. “To us, a slut is a person of any gender who celebrates sexuality according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you,” write the co-authors of The Ethical Slut, a now-classic guide to non-monogamy (tagged “the Poly Bible”).
Continued here
|
S36The media must stop enabling Trump's attention-seeking use of fascist rhetoric  Donald Trump is campaigning for the presidency of the United States the same way that Adolf Hitler in Germany and Benito Mussolini in Italy campaigned almost 100 years ago.Trump recently travelled to New Hampshire and delivered a speech that included a pledge to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”
Continued here
|
S37S38S39Could the good news story about the ecological crisis be the collective grief we are feeling?  A summer of wildfires across Canada sat alongside news of global deforestation, rapid loss of Antarctic ice mass and Swiss glacial ice depletion. Then in mid-October, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service delisted 21 species from the Endangered Species Act due to extinction. The barrage of bad news stories about the growing ecological crisis may cause people to feel overwhelmed, grief stricken, and at times paralyzed in fear. It is understandable to seek relief from these feelings and look to good news to foster hope.
Continued here
|
S40The 15-minute city is a popular planning approach, but relies on ableist assumptions  The 15-minute city is a popular urban planning concept that promotes people living close to essential services, and encourages the use of walking and biking. Public transit is sometimes included in the transport mix, preferred to automobiles, which are largely absent.Developed around 2016 by Paris-based urbanist Carlos Moreno, the idea of the 15-minute city has spread globally. Moreno subscribes to chrono-urbanism, or the idea of organizing cities around time including the 15-minute city.
Continued here
|
S41S42S43S44OpenAI's board is facing backlash for firing CEO Sam Altman - but it's good it had the power to  The sudden removal of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Friday was met with shock and disapproval by the company’s employees. More than 90% signed a letter threatening to leave OpenAI if the board didn’t resign and reinstate Altman – who has since apparently been poached by Microsoft, along with a number of other key former staff.The OpenAI employees had faith in Altman. They believed in his vision and they did not like that the board could dismiss him so easily.
Continued here
|
S45S46What's the point of journalism? To enable informed decisions  It’s to share information and keep people reliably informed. But if you dig a little deeper there’s a lot more to it. Why do people need to be reliably informed? Because people use the information and knowledge they gain from the media as the basis for important decisions in their lives.The most obvious one is who to vote for. In Australia, for example, the High Court has long recognised that democracy requires freedom of political communication. Without it, people have no reliable information on which to decide who should lead them.
Continued here
|
S47S48The election of Javier Milei and the challenges of an impoverished Argentina  Pesquisador do INCT – INEU e do GEDES, Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) In December 2001, Argentina experienced one of the most dramatic moments in its history. The collapse of convertibility – the monetary stabilisation plan that established parity between the dollar and the peso – brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets to protest against the government’s confiscation of their money, the “corralito”.
Continued here
|
S49S50New cyber policy to harden defences against our 'fastest growing threat'  The Albanese government’s cyber security policy aims to make Australian citizens, businesses and government agencies harder targets as they face what minister Clare O'Neil describes as “the fastest growing threat that we face as a nation”. The policy, to be released on Wednesday by O'Neil, who is Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Cyber Security, is also designed to enable victims to bounce back faster from attacks that can’t be prevented.
Continued here
|
S51No compelling evidence that air purifiers prevent respiratory infections - new study  The COVID pandemic led to many calls for improved indoor air quality with claims that doing so would reduce the risk of the virus spreading. But the real-world evidence to support these claims has been lacking and studies undertaken during the pandemic have not yet been reported. So my colleagues and I reviewed the evidence before COVID and found that the balance of evidence was that air treatment does not, in fact, reduce illness from respiratory infections.
Continued here
|
S52S53How to Stay Calm During Turbulence  Keep in mind that turbulence is simply a result of flying through fluctuating pressure pockets of air, so it’s really the ground you should feel anxious about.Keep the plane in the air with your thoughts—because, hey, it won’t work if you don’t try it and maybe all the worrying will make you so tired that you simply conk out.
Continued here
|
S54The Droll Capitalist Parable of Cabbage Patch Kids  It was forty years ago, so the memory has likely degraded beyond recognition, but what I seem to recall is that I never expected to be given a Cabbage Patch Kid. A couple of my first-grade classmates got in on the craze early—one, I remember, had a boy with a shock of dark hair the texture of a shag rug—but soon the dolls were running scarce. Throughout the holiday shopping season of 1983, desperate parents were lining up outside stores in freezing predawn temperatures, brawling in the aisles, and still leaving empty-handed. Some five thousand shoppers mobbed a single department store in Charleston, West Virginia. In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a thousand people waited for as many as eight hours outside a Zayre discount store; in the scrum that eventually erupted, one woman suffered a broken leg, and the store manager resorted to defending himself with a baseball bat. I wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid, of course, but in the same sense that nowadays I want a town house in the West Village.And yet, one afternoon, I got off the school bus and walked through my front door to find a Cabbage Patch Kid waiting for me, still in the box with its clear plastic front, sparkling with the same aura of serendipitous mystery that surrounded our household’s cable hookup. She was epicene in appearance, with short, sandy, tightly curled yarn hair and corduroy overalls. Her given name, personal to her and stamped on her “Birth Certificate,” was Tilly Magdalene. The bruised beatitude of the name couldn’t reach me, as I knew nothing then of God’s favorite sex worker. I called her Maggie. Like all of her Cabbage Patch brethren, she had a slight overbite, plump cheeks, not much of a chin, and close-set, wide-open eyes, giving her a mien of meek, adorable pleading. Her cloth arms were flung upward, as if she were cheering good news or asking for a hug.
Continued here
|
S55The Next Power Plant Is on the Roof and in the Basement  On any given Monday in Vermont, Josh Castonguay, the vice-president of innovation at that state’s Green Mountain Power utility, told me, he studies the forecast for the days ahead, asking questions like “What’s it looking like from a temperature standpoint, a potential-of-load standpoint? Is there an extremely hot, humid stretch of a few days coming? A really cold February night?” If there is trouble ahead, Castonguay prepares, among other things, Vermont’s single largest power plant, which isn’t exactly a power plant at all—or, at least, not as we normally think of one. It’s an online network, organized by the utility, of forty-five hundred electric storage batteries (currently, most of them are Tesla Powerwalls), spread out across more than three thousand Vermont homes. The network also includes a broad array of residential rooftop solar panels, which produce the energy stored in those batteries, and smart water heaters and E.V. chargers. The people who have these assets aren’t off the grid; they’re Green Mountain Power customers who, for a discount on their bills, agree to plug their batteries (most of which are leased to own) and appliances into the utility’s network and let the company control the devices so that they use less power at critical moments. (If customers need to override the company’s commands, they can.) This means that Castonguay (or, really, his algorithms) can program storage batteries to be charged a hundred per cent before a storm hits. Or, if it’s going to be a hot day, he can preheat water heaters in many homes in the morning, so that in the afternoon, as the temperature rises, more power will be available to run air-conditioners. He can also precool some big buildings in the morning. “Then, if you think about it, the building itself is the battery,” he said, in the sense that it stores chilled air for later in the day. “We have about fifty megawatts” of this distributed power, Castonguay told me. “At the scale of Vermont, that’s a lot.” Utilities have always been able to dispatch supply, bringing power plants, which are often in idle mode, online as demand requires. Now they’re increasingly able to call up small, individual home power plants and dispatch demand as well, turning down thermostats or delaying car charging.Green Mountain Power is at the forefront of this push; last month, it announced plans to install storage batteries for many of its customers—two hundred and seventy thousand homes and businesses, in total—in the next decade, pending regulatory approval. (Castonguay says it is testing a new home battery system, from FranklinWH—a company named for Ben Franklin, who actually coined the term “battery”—and that this apparatus seems to work as well as the Powerwall.) But other companies are starting to follow. Green Mountain Power’s former C.E.O., Mary Powell, left three years ago and soon took over Sunrun, which supplies rooftop solar panels and storage batteries for hundreds of thousands of homes nationwide, and serves as a third-party power aggregator for several utilities. “We’re sitting on more than 1.1 gigawatt-hours of installed storage capacities just with our customers now,” she told me recently, much of it in California, where the company is based. From August through October, as a series of heat waves pushed consumption up in that state, Pacific Gas and Electric was buying up to thirty megawatts of power through Sunrun every evening to keep peak demand down in its grid system. Sunrun’s customers who provided the energy got a check for seven hundred and fifty dollars. “We went from contract to operation in six months,” Powell said. “You simply could not get a resource of that size built and operationalized any other way in that time frame.” And, she added, “it’s not just that we can make a more reliable, resilient grid” by drawing on the scattered resources; “We can also make a much more affordable grid,” because being able to use residential power means not having to build big, new power plants to meet peak demand. Taking in that money saved, she added, “We can shave ten billion dollars a year off the price of the country’s power system.”
Continued here
|
S56Israeli Forces Reportedly Detain a New Yorker Contributor  Mosab Abu Toha, who has lately contributed a poem and two essays to The New Yorker, lives with his wife and three children in Gaza. In an essay published here last month, he wrote about Israeli air strikes in his neighborhood. “One idea in particular haunts me, and I cannot push it away,” he wrote. “Will I, too, become a statistic on the news?” Over the weekend, Israeli forces reportedly detained Abu Toha in central Gaza. His whereabouts are now unknown. The New Yorker joins other organizations in calling for his safe return. Read more of his work below.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.
Continued here
|
S57Elon Musk's Poisoned Platform  Last Wednesday, an account on X named @breakingbaht posted a message that read, "Jewish communties [sic] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them." The post went on to espouse a line of conspiratorial thinking that is sometimes called the "great replacement" theory, suggesting that Jews were driving "hordes of minorities" to supplant white people. @breakingbaht has less than six thousand followers, and the account's casual, blatant antisemitism might easily have passed with little notice. Since Elon Musk's acquisition of X last October, the company has slashed its content-moderation staff, and countless virulent posts proliferate daily. This time, though, Musk himself replied, telling @breakingbaht, "You have said the actual truth."Musk often posts on X upward of a dozen times a day, to more than a hundred and sixty-three million followers, and he had expressed shades of antisemitism and racism repeatedly on the platform before. But this time, amid a brutal Israel-Hamas war, with antisemitism and Islamophobia inflamed around the world, he seemed to have finally crossed a line. On Thursday, the watchdog group Media Matters published a report showing that the ads of major corporations were appearing on X alongside antisemitic material. On Friday, a statement from the White House called Musk's remark "unacceptable," and major advertisers, including I.B.M., Disney, and the European Union, began suspending their purchases on the platform. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th and the ensuing war, antisemitism has been surging on X; according to Memetica, a digital investigations firm, the hashtag #hitlerwasright has appeared forty-six thousand times since October 7th, compared with fewer than five thousand times per month previously. Far from combatting the ballooning hatred on his platform, Musk was openly amplifying it.
Continued here
|
S58All the Newspapers' Men  The Washington Post might stand alone among American newspapers in being as well known for its leadership as for its daily work. Ben Bradlee, the lanky lion in dress socks who led the paper as executive editor for twenty-three years, became a mascot of the Post's stolidity in its coverage of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, and was played by Jason Robards in "All the President's Men." The paper's publisher, Katharine Graham, who steered it then and beyond, was similarly admired and, in what may be our era's highest tribute outside Stockholm, played in gallant style by Meryl Streep in "The Post." In 1979, when leadership of the paper passed to Katharine's son Donald, the aura carried, too. "Today, as in the rest of my life, my mother has given me everything but an easy act to follow," he said.And yet the Grahams' dynasty followed itself for decades, with stewardship of the newspaper eventually passing to Katharine Graham's granddaughter Katharine Weymouth, who, in 2012, hired the already distinguished fifty-eight-year-old leader of the Boston Globe, Martin Baron, as the Post's executive editor. (In the film "Spotlight," about the Globe's investigation into child-abuse coverups in the Catholic Church, Baron was played by Liev Schreiber.) By then, the newspaper business was struggling under a waning advertising market, and Baron was unsurprised to find Weymouth running out of rope. "I've been publisher of The Post five years. Every one of those years, I had to cut expenses and lay off people when it was bad for the newspaper," she told Don Graham, who was then the chair and C.E.O. of the Post Company. Within a year, Graham told Baron that the family would sell the paper to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, for a sum later revealed to be two hundred and fifty million dollars. "Would you let me apologize?" Graham said.
Continued here
|
S596 'Doctor Who' Episodes to Watch Before the 60th Anniversary Special  Everything you need to know about The Doctor and Donna Noble before their glorious reunion.Doctor Who is probably the most daunting science fiction series to get caught up on. Not only is there now 60 years’ worth of content, but also 13 different stars, countless Christmas specials — not to mention multiple episodes completely lost to time. However, you don’t need to watch everything in order to understand the three 60th anniversary specials releasing over the next few weeks.
Continued here
|
S6020 Years Ago, the Best Revenge Thriller of the Century Unleashed a Major Rival to Hollywood  The late 20th century revitalized South Korean cinema. Censorship laws had previously made filmmaking a stringent process, and further laws limited the country’s exposure to foreign films. Once these laws were weakened, South Korea entered a cinematic renaissance. The success of this boom period pushed the country onto a larger stage; from the ’80s onward, South Korean films began making confident strides into international markets and the global awards scene.South Korea’s renewed attention reflected a broader trend. The ubiquity of the internet, a growing receptive audience abroad, and a thriving home video market meant Asian films that would’ve previously just been tidbits in a film journal, like Takashi Miike’s gruesome Audition, were becoming better known to western enthusiasts, and relatively easy to track down. But one name, Park Chan-wook, was at the head of the pack in the early aughts, and this era of success would be exemplified by his now classic Oldboy.
Continued here
|
S6125 Years Ago, Nintendo Made the Best Zelda Game Ever -- With One Massive Flaw  The Legend of Zelda formula used to be simple: find the dungeon, solve the dungeon, gain a new power, and repeat until it’s time to defeat Ganondorf. Link’s more recent adventures have swapped complex, puzzle-filled dungeons for an open world full of smaller bite-sized challenges, but 25 years ago, one Zelda game nailed that classic formula.The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of the most famous adventure games ever made, and in the twenty-five years since its release on the Nintendo 64, a particular dungeon has also become one of the most infamous.
Continued here
|
S62Nothing's Carl Pei Explains Why Making Tech Fun Again is Damn Near Impossible  We went to London to get a firsthand look at Nothing’s design studio and talk to the people waging a battle against an army of boring gadgets.On the surface, that sounds like a bad thing for a self-appointed visionary to be — especially one whose entire brand is built on “making tech fun.” But as the founder of Nothing explains to me while touring the company’s posh design studio in London, boredom isn’t a fatal flaw, it’s actually the key.
Continued here
|
S63'Napoleon' Review: Ridley Scott Reimagines a Tyrant in an Explosively Funny War Epic  In his essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon — about the coup d’état staged by Napoleon’s nephew — Karl Marx famously opined that history repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” What Ridley Scott’s historical biopic presupposes is: What if it was farcical the first time around?The trailers for Napoleon sell a straight-faced Shakespearean tragedy about a mad king who steals the throne of France, and while the film retains the tone and scale of Scott’s other period war epics (Kingdom of Heaven, in particular), it turns out to be the year’s funniest stealth comedy, at least in its first half. Clocking in at 2 hours and 37 minutes, it collapses several decades of French sea change into its runtime, from its socio-politics to major military battles, all while focusing on history’s sweatiest tactician and most indignant cuckold.
Continued here
|
S64The Director Behind Netflix's Best Thriller of 2023 Reveals His Canceled Next Project  Mike Flanagan created a slew of miniseries for Netflix, but two, in particular, shared an unmistakable style: The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor were both anthologies based on classic novels. Now, Flanagan has revealed that he’d hoped to have made a third Haunting series... and there’s a chance it could still happen. BloodyDisgusting has reported that Mike Flanagan wanted Richard Matheson’s Hell House to have been the basis of a third Haunting series. “Had there been a third season, I wanted that season to be The Haunting of Hell House. It was actually the first title we explored when Hill House was over, but the rights were spoken for and there did not seem to be a path forward,” Flanagan wrote in the foreword to a new edition of Matheson’s novel.
Continued here
|
S66Researchers Watched Bat Porn for Science -- Here's What They Learned  In a first, researchers have observed that serotine bats mate using non-penetrative sex, making them the first mammals known to do so. A serotine bat male’s bulbous-tipped, erect member is seven times longer and wider than its counterpart, making it physically impossible to deposit sperm. Don’t worry: It turns out nature gave it another role. A paper published today in the journal Current Biology divulges the dirty details of Eptesicus serotinus’s sex organ, and how it facilitates what’s known as contact mating.
Continued here
|
S67'The Last of Us Part II Remastered' Highlights a Tiresome Gaming Trend  In 2020, Naughty Dog released The Last of Us Part II on PlayStation 4, the sequel to one of the most critically acclaimed games ever made. Now, only three years later, Naughty Dog and Sony have announced The Last of Us Part II Remastered for PlayStation 5, which will release in January 2024. While the remaster will add new bells and whistles, I can’t help but wonder who is asking for this and why we need it at all.The existence of The Last of Us Part II Remastered leaked on November 17 and was subsequently revealed by Sony on X (formerly Twitter) a few hours after the leak. The reveal is disappointing, to say the least, as it highlights a larger problem within the industry — an obsession with remakes and remasters.
Continued here
|
S68Epic New 'Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth' Art Reveals the Biggest Pitfall of Video Game Remakes  Recreating the world of Final Fantasy 7 in a higher fidelity, more realistic style is one of the biggest promises of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. It’s also the most boring one.Don’t get me wrong — seeing Midgar come to life in Final Fantasy 7 Remake was a thrill, and I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of Gaia rendered with the same depth in Rebirth. Being able to see the game’s characters as real people, rather than one step up from Lego minifigs, is a particularly important upgrade, giving another emotional dimension to their stories.
Continued here
|
S69'PC Gamer's Recent Controversy Exposes a Bigger Problem in Gaming  Zelda, Lara Croft, Princess Peach, Samus Aran. You can’t even imagine games without these essential characters. And yet, even in 2023, some people still seem to believe that the video game industry and the press that covers it consists entirely of men.The latest incident occurred last week when PC Gamer published its most recent print edition commemorating 30 years of the magazine through a series of interviews with former editors and employees. But readers noticed that the lengthy package of stories largely left out the women who worked at PCGamer over those three decades. So women in gaming received another round of rote but overwhelming disappointment, commiserating with each other online, including through a post on the subreddit r/GirlGamers with over 800 upvotes.
Continued here
|
S70Super Mario RPG Melody Bay: How to Complete All Three Toadofsky Songs  Like most RPGs, Super Mario RPG’s world is filled with little details and side quests to uncover. One of the lengthier side quests involves the aptly named musician Toadofsky, and you can find the composer on the right side of Tadpole Pond, called Melody Bay, where he’s endeavoring to create the perfect symphony. Your job, of course, is to find the pieces of music and use the tadpoles in the pond to create them. While the game does give you clues on how to do this, it can be a bit confusing, so we’ll help guide you through how to solve the Melody Bay puzzle and compose all three songs in Super Mario RPG.
Continued here
|
 |
TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 10,00,000 Industry Executives About Us | Advertise Privacy Policy Unsubscribe (one-click) You are receiving this mail because of your subscription with TradeBriefs.
Our mailing address is GF 25/39, West Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110008, India |
