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 S2How 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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S52Tesla's recall of 2 million vehicles reminds us how far driverless car AI still has to go  Director of Connected Autonomous Vehicles Lab at the University of Surrey, University of Surrey Tesla has recalled 2 million US vehicles over concerns about its autopilot function. Autopilot is meant to help with manoeuvres such as steering and acceleration, but still needs input from the driver. It comes just a few days after a whistle-blowing former Tesla employee cast doubt on the safety of the autopilot function.
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S56"Wrong Way" Takes the Shine Off the Self-Driving Car  Car companies have been experimenting with driverless cars for decades, but their presence on roads has exploded in recent years. It became increasingly common, beginning in the twenty-tens, to see robo-taxi prototypes driving around on public streets, albeit with human "safety drivers" sitting inside, ready to take over and compensate for machine error. Then the safety drivers started vanishing. Since last year, it has been possible to hail fully driverless taxis in Phoenix. Earlier this year, they hit the streets in San Francisco, and rollouts are planned in many other major American cities. It remains to be seen whether the robo-taxi companies have a path to profitability, how safe their vehicles will prove to be as time passes, and how regulators might respond. What's undeniable is that, at least for the moment, they're out there on our roads.This poses an interesting challenge for fiction. For sci-fi writers, driverless cars have long been a supremely efficient shorthand for dramatic change, an effective way of immediately grounding a story in the future, where things are different. The Czech American physician and author Miles J. Breuer's 1930 novel, "Paradise and Iron," is set largely on an island where most technology works without human input. The narrator gets a "queer feeling at the complete absence of wheel and gear-shift levers," or any person operating them. Sci-fi storytellers have been leveraging that queer feeling ever since, oftenâin the case of moviesâwith help from carmakers. Audi helped design the autonomous cars in "I, Robot" (2004) and "Ender's Game" (2013), which concretize the films' visions of the future.. But what happens when a long-standing symbol of the future arrives in reality? How do you write about it?
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S70The Last Time a Concert Documentary Saved the Movies  After the box-office triumph of Barbenheimer this past summer, Hollywood stumbled into an uneasy fall season. The dual writer and actor strikes contributed to delayed releases, which blunted the predicted slow-walk back to theaters in the wake of COVID restrictions. Yet the second half of 2023 also yielded welcome surprises, the most unexpected of which was the success of the concert documentary.Both Taylor Swift and Beyoncé made surprise announcements that their record-breaking tours were hitting the big screen. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour opened in theaters in October and domestically outgrossed several major studios’ franchise entries, including the most recent Mission: Impossible and Indiana Jones sequels. Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé dominated the first weekend of December, leveraging a historically light portion of the release calendar. Although Renaissance’s $21.8 million first-weekend box office didn’t match the juggernaut of The Eras Tour’s $92.8 million opening, it soared above the debut of any other concert film released in more than a decade. This made 2023 the first year in modern box-office reporting in which two concert documentaries reached No. 1.
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S62Here's Exactly How Long It Takes to Beat FFXVI's Echoes of the Fallen DLC  Final Fantasy XVI is a lengthy adventure that takes Clive across the land of Valisthea, but that journey just got a little longer. At The Game Awards, Square Enix shadow-dropped Echoes of the Fallen, the first of two planned DLC packs for FFXVI. As you might guess from the name, Echoes of the Fallen directly ties into the main story, and provides some fascinating details that help flesh out the game’s lore. However, there are a few hoops you’ll need to jump through to start the downloadable content, so here are the steps you need to take as well as how long you can expect Echoes of the Fallen to last. Echoes of the Fallen is a relatively short addition to Final Fantasy XVI, clocking in at roughly three hours of extra content. The expansion essentially functions as a final dungeon, something the game lacked before now.
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S60The Best Sci-Fi Movie of the Year Just Quietly Dropped on Amazon  The universe is a vast and overwhelming place. Like life, it’s as beautiful and invigorating as it is horrifying and paralyzing. The same is true of any attempts to try and uncover the secrets of it — most of which have a habit of leading you down endless rabbit holes or, worse yet, headfirst into oft-repeated clichés. Does the fact that the universe is, in and of itself, too big and complex for anyone to wrap their head around mean that we all should give up on trying to, though?That question is at the heart of the year’s best sci-fi film, Asteroid City. Writer-director Wes Anderson’s latest effort is a multilayered, puzzle-like dramedy that bridges the future-forward era of midcentury America with the curiosity-driven period of reinvention and exploration that shook up the Broadway world (and Hollywood) in the 1950s. In doing so, Asteroid City posits, among other things, that it may be just as easy to get lost in art as it is to get lost in life.
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S45S58What Did COP28 Really Accomplish?  Three decades after agreeing to avoid “dangerous” warming, the nations of the world today acknowledged that this would involve “transitioning away from fossil fuels.” This can be found on page 5 of the final document that emerged from the latest round of climate negotiations—COP28—which just ended, in Dubai. Depending on how you look at things, the statement represents either a genuine breakthrough that will allow the globe to avert catastrophe or a point so obvious that what it really reveals is how far offtrack things have veered.First up, possibility No. 1: This year, greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil-fuel use are expected to total 36.8 billion metric tons. Emissions from changes in land use, mostly from chopping down forests, are expected to add another four billion tons. Meanwhile, the world is already experiencing what many scientists say is “dangerous” climate change: extreme heat waves, extreme rainfall, rapidly intensifying hurricanes, ever-increasing melt off of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. (Just in the final days of the COP, heat records were set in places as varied as Spain, China, and Mauritius.)
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S42How the Boston Tea Party's 'destruction of the tea' changed American history  Eliga Gould is a member of New Hampshire's Sestercentennial Commission for commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. On the evening of Dec. 16, 1773, a crowd of armed men, some allegedly wearing costumes meant to disguise them as Native American warriors, boarded three ships docked at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston. In the vessels’ holds were 340 chests containing 92,000 pounds of tea, the most popular drink in America. With support from the patriot group known as the Sons of Liberty, the intruders methodically searched the ships and dumped their tea into Boston Harbor.
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S53Grattan on Friday: Albanese government comes under more heat as it tries to navigate its position on Gaza conflict  For an issue in which Australia is not a player and has no direct influence, the Israel-Hamas conflict is putting serious strain on the Albanese government, internally and externally. Its decision this week to vote for the United Nations resolution that “demands an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” may ease the pressure from some of Labor’s internal pro-Palestinian advocates. But it has sharpened the external criticism from the pro-Israel lobby, including prompting some sharp words from the Israeli ambassador.
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S64Apple's Most Underrated Thriller is the Best TV Show You're Not Watching Right Now  Apple TV+ has spent the past few years building a library of TV and film titles that just seems to get more and more impressive. Indeed, while not all of the streamer’s creative efforts have paid off (see: Spirited, Surface), it’s also produced more genuine hits and worthwhile TV shows than many of its competitors — and in a similar or shorter period of time. Not for nothing, the platform has also played a sizable role in getting big-screen epics like Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon not only made, but also released in theaters.All that said, Apple TV+ has never, at any point throughout the past three years, been the home of the best show on television. In its third season, however, Slow Horses is making an increasingly compelling case for itself as not only the best show that’s currently airing new episodes but also the most consistently great thriller available to viewers right now.
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S68Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses Are Getting Two Features That Could Change The Game  Meta announced in a blog post update that it’s testing out multimodal AI-powered capabilities with the Ray-Ban smart glasses. Simply put, it means you’ll be able to do a lot more practical stuff. And considering Meta and Ray-Ban had built these smart glasses with AI in mind, it makes a lot of sense to push the virtual assistant even further. The enhanced AI feature isn’t available to the public yet, just to a limited number of customers who opt into this new program. Once it is widely available, don’t be too surprised when you see people ask their sunglasses for fashion advice.
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S40Schindler's List at 30: a look back at Steven Spielberg's shattering masterpiece  Schindler’s List, released 30 years ago, remains Steven Spielberg’s most highly acclaimed and emotionally sapping film. Winning seven Academy Awards, including best picture and best director, it was widely praised for its portrayal of the horrors of the Holocaust.Schindler’s List marked a turning point in Spielberg’s career. The director later said making the film changed his life.
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S69'Alan Wake 2's New Game Plus Cements Its Place in Gaming History  Alan Wake 2 is already a psychological experience that makes you question reality. But its recently released New Game Plus mode cranks it up to eleven, making you question your own memory. Called The Final Draft, the feature adds a host of new story elements, while letting you retain all of your upgrades, charms, and weapons. It’s a subtle but brilliant use of New Game Plus that plays directly into Alan Wake 2’s narrative themes. As a warning, because of the nature of The Final Draft, we’ll be discussing heavy spoilers for Alan Wake 2.
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S65Alex Garland's New War Epic Is a Disturbing Take on the Apocalypse  Alex Garland has a knack for making even the loftiest science fiction premise feel grounded and human, but in recent years he’s experimented with different forms, like folk horror Men and the underseen miniseries Devs. Now he’s moving back to the vein of 28 Days Later with an apocalyptic tale of society falling apart, but this time, the threat isn’t infection; it’s secession. A24’s upcoming Civil War follows an America divided, though it’s not exactly clear how. News clips in the trailer refer to almost 20 states leaving the union, and the President (Nick Offerman) refers to the “Western Forces” of California and Texas, which aren’t exactly the most ideologically similar states (there’s also something called the “Florida Alliance,” which you can interpret for yourselves).
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S41From sexual liberation to fashionable heels, new research shows how women are changing North Korea  Kang began trading goods like rice, metals and petroleum to generate an income well beyond what she could have expected from state-sanctioned employment. Eventually, before reaching South Korea in 2013, her most lucrative business was a brokerage service for young women who wished to work in factories in China.What was most rewarding about the work was the money. I could pay for my younger sister’s university tuition, as well as my stepchildren’s. I could even buy [Workers’] Party membership for my husband, eventually making him a party secretary. I felt myself maturing through businesses.
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S55How Mark Duplass Fights the Sadness  On October 13th, the filmmaker and actor Mark Duplass posted a photo of himself on Instagram—what looked like a red-carpet closeup, with a bow tie on his neck and a forced smile on his face. “I have been struggling with anxiety and depression for most of my life,” Duplass wrote in the caption. “When I see pictures of myself like this one, I can see the fear and sadness behind the smile. Even at my most ‘happy’ times. But at times like these, when the world is so deeply terrifying and saddening, it’s a struggle just to stay on my feet and keep from crashing.” Supportive comments poured in, from the likes of Glenn Close, Carson Daly, Marisa Tomei, Sterling K. Brown, Rosie O’Donnell, and Jennifer Aniston—Duplass’s co-star on “The Morning Show”—as well as thousands of non-famous followers moved by his uncommon rawness. In the following weeks, Duplass posted apprehensive selfies, with real-time updates on his depressive episode. He shared musicians whose work had helped him “through the harder times” (the Weather Station, Phoebe Bridgers) and his “tools” for getting back on track (sleep, exercise). On November 11th, he wrote, “Things are turning for me and I’m actually doing really well.”Duplass, who is forty-seven, is probably best known as one half of the Duplass brothers. Starting in the two-thousands, he and his older brother Jay made a series of low-budget films, including “The Puffy Chair” (2005), “Baghead” (2008), and “Jeff, Who Lives at Home” (2011), that were central to the “mumblecore” movement of post-9/11 slacker cinema. Mark also starred on the brothers’ HBO show “Togetherness” and on the sitcom “The League.” On “The Morning Show,” he plays the beleaguered right hand to Aniston’s news diva. In many of his roles, he has an amiable-loser vibe, with a sprinkling of Gen X loathing. But his upward trajectory as indie darling and sardonic character actor has a shadow time line: the undulating mental-health struggle that has plagued him since childhood. At some point, he nicknamed it “the Woog.”
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S17S63S51S32The Middle East and Ukraine: The rules of war depend on the nature of the conflict  Even in war, there are rules that are supposed to be followed by way of several multilateral legal frameworks that govern warfare and issues like the treatment of combatants and civilians. Understanding what rules apply to what types of conflicts is important because it can lead to the greatest protections for civilians caught in the crossfire, and greater accountability to perpetrators of war crimes. At a time when two major wars are being waged — in the Middle East and in Ukraine — this understanding takes on a special urgency.
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S39S50S61You Need to Play the Most Nostalgic RPG of the Decade on Xbox Game Pass ASAP  The tricky thing about paying homage to one of the greatest games of all time is that, by definition, it’s hard to live up to the original. Any game that makes its debt to Chrono Trigger apparent is doomed to be compared unfavorably, no matter its own merits. While clearly inspired by giants of the 16-bit RPG era, Chained Echoes avoids feeling derivative by adding plenty of its own inventive ideas to the mix. And it’s leaving Xbox Game Pass on December 15.Chained Echoes wears its inspirations on its sleeve most in its visuals. It manages to feel like the classics with its gorgeous pixel art while capturing a style all its own. Especially in the giant sprites of its bosses and mechs (we’ll get to that later), Chained Echoes evokes the look of the great SNES RPGs while surpassing what was possible for the technology of the time.
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S67Here's How to Avoid Losing Your 'Baldur's Gate 3' Save File on Xbox  Xbox owners have been waiting months to get their hands on Baldur’s Gate 3. Thankfully, developer Larian Studios announced the game’s release on Xbox right after taking home Game of the Year at the 2023 Game Awards. Now, just a few days later, players are already experiencing one of the most terrifying issues to have with a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 — losing save files. However, there is finally an official response on how to keep the issue at bay.Baldur’s Gate 3 launched for Xbox on December 7, and over the weekend after release, players reported an issue with save files disappearing after a game crash. On December 11, the official Baldur’s Gate 3 Twitter account acknowledged the developers were aware of the issue. An update from Xbox was made available to help with the issue while the team continued working on a second fix with Microsoft that would solve the issue once and for all.
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S19A road map for the lawful use of stop-and-frisk in Philadelphia - and elsewhere  As a candidate, Cherelle Parker suggested she would support using stop-and-frisk to combat gun violence. After being elected, Parker reiterated her stance, but emphasized “there is no place for unconstitutional stop-and-frisk.” The ACLU of Philadelphia objected to the incoming mayor’s position during the campaign. The civil liberties advocacy organization pointed to the lawsuit it brought against the Philadelphia Police Department in 2010, stop data that continued to show persistent racial disparities, and the lack of empirical support for the effectiveness of the strategy.
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S49Israel is accused of using white phosphorous. Would this be against international law?  Israel’s military is accused of using white phosphorous in an October attack on the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, which allegedly injured at least nine civilians. US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said this week the Biden administration was “concerned” about the possible use of white phosphorus munitions and that it would be “asking questions to try to learn a bit more.”
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S66This Party Drug Completely Restructures The Brain's Dopamine System, Scientists Find  Prolonged ketamine exposure switches up the brain’s dopamine system in ways that could help people struggling with a variety of mental health issues.Our brains are not static objects — they adapt and reorganize to the ebb and flow of new information, sensations, and even physical trauma. But when this impressive neuroplasticity is impaired, it can cause psychiatric disorders like major depression and schizophrenia. To help heal these mental maladies, scientists are turning to a formerly illicit drug to help rewire — and ultimately heal — the brain.
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S35We calculated the UK's greenhouse gas emissions from people breathing out - here's what we found  Those breath emissions are a mere 0.05% and 0.1% of the UK’s total human-generated emissions of the two gases respectively. Their overall contribution to the country’s collective carbon footprint of course pales in comparison to fossil fuel burning and other major sources of emissions. The project appealed to us because, while we know about most greenhouse gas emissions that are a result of human activities, we also know we are missing many small emission sources that are required to complete our understanding of global processes.
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S36An educational psychologist explains how to think about your ATAR and set post-school goals  All this week and into next, Australian Year 12 students are receiving their final results. As an educational psychologist, I know this is a momentous time for many students, as their schooling and future prospects seem to come down to “one number”. But it is also vital students and their families have perspective on the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (or ATAR) and their goals going forward in their post-school lives.
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S38AI can already diagnose depression better than a doctor and tell you which treatment is best  Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to revolutionise the way we diagnose and treat illness. It could be particularly helpful for depression because it could make more accurate diagnoses and determine which treatments are more likely to work. Some 20% of us will have depression at least once in our lifetimes. Around the world, 300 million people are currently experiencing depression, with 1.5 million Australians likely to be depressed at any one time. Because of this, depression has been described by the World Health Organization as the single biggest contributor to ill health around the world.
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S18Nonalcoholic beer: New techniques craft flavorful brews without the buzz  The holiday season for me includes socializing over drinks with friends and family. But all the celebrating tends to catch up with my waistline, and by New Year’s Day, it’s time to get back in shape. Besides vowing to hit the gym more, my approach involves a “Dry January.” But as someone who teaches brewing science, spends a lot of time around breweries and bars, and thoroughly loves beer, abstaining is no easy task.Thankfully, I can still enjoy beer while cutting back on my alcohol intake and calories by switching to nonalcoholic beers.
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S47When the heat hits, inland waters look inviting. Here's how we can help people swim safely at natural swimming spots  People love to hang out around water, especially on hot summer days. And, for those who aren’t near the ocean, Australia is blessed with beautiful inland waterways. In New South Wales, the government wants to increase access to these “blue” natural environments, especially for people living far from the coast. One of these swimming sites is Penrith Beach, which has just opened to the public for the summer. This new site in the heart of Western Sydney is part of the state government’s Places to Swim program. It’s likely to be an important refuge for locals to seek relief from intense summer heat.
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S59The Delicate Chemistry Behind Your Favorite Holiday Candy  Breaking into a bar of chocolate is among life’s greatest simple pleasures. In fact, a shattering, melting piece of processed cocoa can turn a day around.That characteristic snap is the result of tempering, a highly scientific and notoriously thorny process that has taken down even the most accomplished professional chocolatiers.
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S37We reviewed the arguments for and against 'high-stakes' exams. The evidence for using them doesn't stack up  Across Australia, students are receiving and digesting important exam results. University students began receiving their semester 2 results at the end of November. This week and early next week, Year 12 students are also receiving their final marks.For almost as long, debate has raged about whether they are useful for assessing learning. And while there has been a shift towards course work or other forms of assessments in some contexts, exams are still a major part of the way we assess student learning.
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S43S20S46Canadian scientists are still being muzzled, and that risks undermining climate policy  Interference is used to describe intentional and unfair constraints on scientists that restrict their ability to conduct and communicate their work. Examples of interference include restrictions on ability to communicate work to the public or colleagues (muzzling), workplace harassment, and undue modifications made to findings that alter the data or its interpretation.Even more seriously, interference can lead to downplaying environmental risks or a lack of good information to support decision-making and policies about resource extraction and the environment.
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