   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S70This 'Extremely Rare' Bird Is Half Female, Half Male   The green honeycreeper is only the second of its species ever observed with this conditionâand the first recorded in more than 100 yearsResearchers have spotted an "extremely rare" green honeycreeper in Colombia that's half female and half male. The bird's plumage is divided directly down the middle, with blue feathers typical of males on its right side and the emerald-green feathers of females on its left. This individual is only the second of the species ever recorded exhibiting this traitâcalled bilateral gynandromorphismâand the first in more than 100 years.
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S2Rebel Moon review: Zack Snyder's new space opera is 'gushing Star Wars fan fiction'  There's a scene early on in Zack Snyder's new space opera, Rebel Moon (or, Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, to use its full title), in which an innocent farmer goes to a seedy cantina with a mysterious warrior in a hooded cloak. One of the ugly, pig-faced aliens there hassles the farmer, so the warrior uses some nifty fighting skills to defend him, and then they meet a roguish mercenary who agrees to take them off-planet aboard his spaceship. The mercenary is named Kai, rather than Han Solo, but it's fair to say that Rebel Moon is set in a galaxy that isn't far, far away from the one in Star Wars.More like this: - Chicken Run 2 soars above the original - The Iron Claw is 'shallow' and 'bland' - Wonka is 'relentlessly wacky' and 'over the top'
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S3Entangled Islands exhibition explores the history of Irish people in the Caribbean -  A new exhibition at Epic, Dublin’s Irish emigration museum, explores connections between Ireland and the Caribbean. Entangled Islands aims to tell “the stories of a wide range of Irish people who traversed and settled in the Caribbean”, while also outlining “our intersecting histories of colonisation and resistance”.One prominent theme is a reevaluation of Ireland’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. The topic has previously been tackled in books such as Ireland, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: 1812-1965 by Nini Rodgers (2007) and Ireland, Slavery and the Caribbean (2023), edited by Finola O’Kane and Ciaran O’Neill.
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S5Sandra Day O'Connor saw civics education as key to the future of democracy  Beyond her trailblazing role as the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor considered iCivics – a civics education nonprofit founded after she retired from the court – to be her “most important legacy.”“The practice of democracy is not passed down through the gene pool,” O’Connor once stated. “It must be taught and learned by each new generation.”
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S52S69Sun Unleashes Most Powerful Solar Flare Since 2017  Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this view of an X2.8-class solar flare erupting on Dec. 14, 2023.Our star unleashed an X-class solar flare today (Dec. 14), blasting out an immense pulse of high-energy radiation that was captured on video by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. (Solar physicists classify strong flares into three categories, with C being the weakest, M the middling group and X the most potent.)
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S56S60To Work Well with GenAI, You Need to Learn How to Talk to It  Natural language conversations are at the foundation of how people work — historically that’s been true for how we work together, and now that’s also true for how we work with our computers. These conversations contain a lot of knowledge that LLMs will unlock — your conversation with PowerPoint, for example, can now become an amazing presentation. But conversations aren’t just about facts and data, the grounding and structure are important as well — that is what prompt engineering is. And as we start to discover the new ways of work that LLMs unlock, this structure is going to evolve as well.
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S64Global gig worker slang, explained  On the inDrive Driver Unity Facebook group, drivers across Pakistan gather to share their daily challenges and struggles, from troubleshooting app-related glitches to comparing car fuel averages. Occasionally, they even curse other drivers — the smart alecs, whom they call shapar. “They’re shameless people,” Tariq Saeed, an inDrive driver from Karachi, wrote in a post last month. “Maybe you are a shapar yourself,” someone called Hamza responded. “All you do is cry.” There are 435 million gig workers globally, according to the World Bank. But despite their large numbers, they’re part of an increasingly isolated ecosystem. Rest of World’s reporting on gig workers shows that they band together in close-knit communities on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram groups — with a distinct vocabulary.
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S36Here's What Air Typing Is Like on the Apple Vision Pro's Virtual Keyboard  Even having tried the Apple Vision Pro briefly in three separate sessions, we still have yet to see how certain parts of the visionOS software works. You can read my hands-on with the Vision Pro at WWDC and my experience viewing spatial video and other media content here and here, but if you’re curious about what air typing on the virtual keyboard is like, just watch YouTuber Brian Tong’s video below.Tong’s thoughts on air typing start at around 14:05 into the video. He says there are two ways to interact with the keyboard.
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S42One Of Gaming's Guiltiest Pleasures Just Hit Xbox Game Pass  Junk food is bad. It’s highly processed, full of chemicals, devoid of nutritional value. Ask anyone on the street if it's good for you, everyone says “no.” But does it taste good? Hmmm. We humans love a junk food paradox. When you need something to hit, you don’t really care why bad things feel good. Gaming is no different. Objectively we know Disco Elysium or Alan Wake 2 are smart, award-winning games, but sometimes the lizard brain needs to eat, too. On those days, there’s Far Cry.It’s hard to find a franchise with more numbered entries than Far Cry, besides Japanese RPGs. Ubisoft’s latest, Far Cry 6, comes to Game Pass this week and brings with it all the sandbox shenanigans you’d expect. The formula has remained unchanged for over a decade. You’re in an isolated area run by a charismatic, yet psychotic villain and your job is basically to headshot every bad guy between you, your clearly-marked objectives, and the boss. After six entries, is it innovative? No. Is it intellectual? No. Is it fun? Hell yeah.
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S45How to Stop Saying "Um," "Ah," and "You Know"  When you get rattled while speaking — whether you’re nervous, distracted, or at a loss for what comes next — it’s easy to lean on filler words, such as “um,” “ah,” or “you know.” These words can become crutches that diminish our credibility and distract from our message. To eliminate such words from your speech, replace them with pauses. To train yourself to do this, take these three steps. First, identify your crutch words and pair them with an action. Every time you catch yourself saying “like,” for example, tap your leg. Once you’ve become aware of your filler words as they try to escape your lips, begin forcing yourself to be silent. Finally, practice more than you think you should. The optimal ratio of preparation to performance is one hour of practice for every minute of presentation.
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S62S61How to Handle an Emotionally Charged Negotiation  Research has shown that leaders who demonstrate strong negotiation and conflict resolution skills have a significant positive impact on their organizations. Yet, these skills are hard to learn and often take years of experience and practice. This article highlights a simple negotiation strategy that leaders can start using today to make their next tricky meeting most productive.
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S59What Every Leader Needs to Know About Carbon Credits  Many companies have begun to look into credits to offset their emissions as a way to support their net zero goals as their target years get closer and closer. As it stands, the carbon credit market is too small to bear the brunt of reducing companies’ impacts on the environment. However, the voluntary carbon market has the potential to drive billions of dollars over the coming decade into climate solutions. Here, the authors offer a primer for leaders to learn about the carbon credit market. What’s the best way to participate in the market? Which types of credits are considered to be the highest quality, and thus carry the least reputational risk? Who are the players when it comes to standards and regulation? The authors answer these questions and outline the characteristics of high-quality carbon credits.
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S55S48How to Bring Your Authentic Self to Work  Masking — covering or toning down the parts of ourselves that are not represented in or experienced by a dominant group — presents various consequences. Over time, it can take a big toll on our mind, on our body, and on the quality of our work. For example covering or masking core aspects of your identify can enhance feelings of shame or guilt around those parts of yourself, lowering your confidence and self-esteem. Here are some ways get more comfortable embracing your authentic self:
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S66Turns Out Undersea Kelp Forests Are Crucial to Salmon  Starre Vartan: I love a short cold-water swim in Puget Sound in Washington State. I start from a rocky shore near my home.Vartan: If I kept swimming just another 100 feet out, I could dive a few feet down through these clear waters into an underwater forest where animals such as shrimp, crabs and small fish like lingcod, rockfish—and maybe even salmon—like to live.
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S4045 Years Ago, a Classic Sci-Fi Thriller Revealed a Terrifying Threat to Humanity  It’s hard to imagine a more frightening existential threat than aliens landing on Earth, but one early sci-fi movie scared viewers on a visceral level by zooming into one eerily plausible way that extraterrestrials could invade our very bodies.In 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers — a remake of the 1956 movie of the same name — health inspector Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland) faces off with an alien after his scientist friend, Elizabeth, discovers pod-bearing pink flowers taking over Earth. By hitching a ride on these flower seed pods, alien microbes can invade and create duplicates of any sleeping human, effectively turning them into “pod people.”
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S41The Salty Belly Of A Saturn Moon May Contain Building Blocks Of Life  In 2017, the Cassini spacecraft barrelled toward Saturn for the final time. NASA officials had elected to terminate the mission in a death dive. Obliterating the probe in a controlled maneuver would safeguard Saturn’s precious rings, moons, plus whatever else Cassini’s Earthly material could damage, or even contaminate. Like, perhaps, life.Currently, scientists have never detected biosignatures in another world. But space exploration is providing tantalizing ideas. The latest such notion comes from a frigid moon of Saturn. The work is detailed in a study published this week in the journal Nature Astronomy.
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S53S63Mexican politicians are harnessing Swiftie fandom on TikTok  As an aspiring presidential candidate in 2022, former Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard turned to TikTok to create a political buzz with younger voters. He tried every trick in the TikTok book: dance challenges, memes, self-deprecating edits — but nothing gave him the viral boost he was looking for. Finally someone on Ebrard’s team suggested posting a video in which he outed himself as a BTS fan, according to Rafael Morales, a political consultant in Mexico City who worked on Ebrard’s digital strategy. The video drew over one million views and hundreds of comments. Some commenters even promised to vote for Ebrard if he managed to bring a BTS concert to Mexico. Ebrard followed up with a video where he promised to bring the K-pop group to the country if he won the presidency.
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S58S68Water Scarcity Changes How People Think  Lacking money makes people focus on the present—but lacking water makes them plan for the futureOur brain is sensitive to scarcity. The lack of something we consider vital, such as time or food, can powerfully shape our thinking and behavior. Take money, for example. When people play a game that makes some players abruptly wealthier or poorer, those who lose money start making decisions that result in them being better off now but worse off later.
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S25The Federal Reserve Is Trying to Catch Up with Falling Inflation  On Wall Street, happy days are here again, and Jay Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, is the toast of the market. On Wednesday and Thursday, stock prices surged after Powell and his colleagues indicated that they are likely to cut a key interest rate three times next year. Market interest rates, which are tied to the Fed’s actions, fell sharply in anticipation of the central bank’s policy pivot becoming a reality.Just a couple of weeks ago, Powell, who has spent the past two years trying to bring down inflation, said that it was too early to consider interest-rate cuts. But, in a press conference on Wednesday, following a gathering of Fed policymakers, he said, “That’s really what happened in today’s meeting.” A set of new projections showed that Fed officials now expect the federal funds rate, which they control, to be roughly 4.6 per cent at the end of next year, which is about a three-quarters of a percentage point below its current level. Analysts translated these figures into three interest-rate cuts in 2024—a quarter point each time. “Powell played Santa Claus early,” Diane Swonk, the chief economist at the accounting firm KPMG, told the Wall Street Journal.
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S50S57S32'Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth' Is Bringing Back a Beloved Series Tradition  One of the most enduring elements of the original Final Fantasy 7 is the in-universe play (and poem) Loveless. While a poster for the show is one of the first things we see in the opening cutscene, we never really learn much about it. Over the years, new entries into the FF7 universe have expanded our understanding of Loveless, and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth looks to be another major step for the fictional show. Putting Loveless center stage in the Golden Saucer will also mark a return to one of the best long-time obsessions of the franchise: Theater. During the 2023 Game Awards, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth debuted its’ theme song in a gorgeous trailer that placed the game’s cast in a theatrical production that was inter-spliced with gameplay footage. At the time it just seemed like a comical bit to go along with the live performance at the awards show, but the official Final Fantasy 7 Twitter account revealed on December 13 that this theatrical showcase will be a new addition to the ever-expansive remake project.
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S44Writing a Rejection Letter (with Samples)  I have a friend who appraises antiques — assigning a dollar value to the old Chinese vase your grandmother used for storing pencils, telling you how much those silver knickknacks from Aunt Fern are worth. He says the hardest part of his job, the part he dreads the most, is telling people that their treasure is worthless.
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S67An Experimental Treatment Could Help COVID Smell Distortion  An injection that targets nerves in the neck appears to relieve parosmia related to COVID infection in some people, but more rigorous studies are neededSmell loss, or anosmia, is a well-known symptom of COVID. Some people don’t experience full-blown loss but rather changes in or distortion of smell, a condition known as parosmia. Studies estimate that between 25 and 75 percent of those with a COVID infection experience long-term parosmia. Now an injection that blocks nerve pain could potentially provide relief for some people.
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S39What We Know About the Cybertruck's 15-Speaker Sound System So Far  Just as you might expect, Elon Musk has hyped the Cybertruck’s sound system as “epic.”If you still have a lot of questions about the Cybertruck, you’re not alone. Even with its release, we’re still getting insight on the EV pickup in drips. For example: the inclusion of a special “Wade Mode” or whether it’s equipped for off-roading.
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S54S20How COP28 failed the world's small islands  As the gavel came down on the latest round of climate talks in Dubai, there were declarations of “we united, we acted, we delivered” from the COP28 presidency. This was met by a sense of déjà vu among delegates of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), an intergovernmental organisation representing the nations most vulnerable to climate change.In her post-summit statement, Aosis lead negotiator Anne Rasmussen expressed confusion that the UAE Consensus, COP28’s final agreement, was approved when representatives from small-island developing states (or Sids were not in the room.
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S38Xbox Game Pass Just Quietly Added the Most Inventive Shooter of 2023  We all know the Soulslike formula by now. You get a big sword, venture into some gloomy castle or wilderness, and hit a bunch of monsters with it, resetting to a checkpoint and losing progress if you’re defeated. But hear me out — what if you could do all that with guns instead of a sword? That’s the pitch of Remnant: From the Ashes and its sequel, Remnant II (which was nominated for Best Action Game at this year’s Game Awards), both of which came to Xbox Game Pass this month.To be fair, Remnant getting stuck with the description “Dark Souls with guns” is a little reductive, but it’s not inaccurate. As with any Soulslike game, it involves trekking through hostile terrain from checkpoint to checkpoint, gaining currency as you slay monsters that will be lost when you’re taken down unless you can take it back from the foe who got the best of you. It also bears the grim and gritty aesthetic that characterizes so much of the subgenre.
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S46To Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking, Stop Thinking About Yourself  Even the most confident speakers find ways to distance themselves from their audience. It’s how our brains are programmed, so how can we overcome it? Human generosity. The key to calming the amygdala and disarming our panic button is to turn the focus away from ourselves — away from whether we will mess up or whether the audience will like us — and toward helping the audience. Showing kindness and generosity to others has been shown to activate the vagus nerve, which has the power to calm the fight-or-flight response. When we are kind to others, we tend to feel calmer and less stressed. The same principle applies in speaking. When we approach speaking with a spirit of generosity, we counteract the sensation of being under attack and we feel less nervous.
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S27A Harrowing Detention in Gaza  While trying to flee the bombardment of Gaza with his family, the poet Mosab Abu Toha, a New Yorker contributor, was erroneously identified as a Hamas activist by Israeli forces at a checkpoint. He was stripped naked and beaten in detention. “I kept saying, ‘Someone please talk to me,’ ” Abu Toha recalls. After an interrogation, he was finally released. Abu Toha talks with David Remnick about his experience, and how it affected his hopes for a resolution to the conflict. Plus, the Reverend M. William Howard, Jr., recounts the extraordinary Christmas he spent in 1979 at the United States Embassy in Tehran, performing services for the Americans held captive during the Iran hostage crisis.Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer and New Yorker contributor, was mistaken by Israeli forces for a Hamas activist while he tried to flee Gaza with his family.
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S352024's Most Anticipated Tactics RPG Copies the Best 'Fire Emblem' Mechanic  Sure, tactical battles and epic stories of revenge are fun, but can they really compare to going on dates with your video game crush? Didn’t think so. Unicorn Overlord, the next game from 13 Sentinels developer Vanillaware, has already shown off its intriguing strategy side, and a new update reveals the more romantic cues it’s taking from one of the giants of the strategy RPG genre.Fire Emblem is far from the only game to mix turn-based battles with character relationships, but it’s one of the series’ most defining traits. Various games in the series have let characters go on cute lunch dates, get married, and have children. With its engaging cast of characters, these interactions are some of Fire Emblem’s biggest selling points.
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