   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S17The iPhone's Notes App Is the Purest Reflection of Our Messy Existence   In 1994, French artist Jean-Marc Philippe conceived of a spacetime capsule named KEO. This satellite would launch into space and orbit the Earth while carrying samples of our dirt, air, and water. Philippe also envisioned that it would have billions of personal messages on CD-ROMs, a collection so vast it would be able to represent every stratum of human life. The satellite would travel around the globe for 50 millennia before it would return to the planet's surface, a ghost from the past reminding Earth's current inhabitants (whoever they are) of what we felt, what we thought, and who we were.KEO never actually launched. But if such a project were to be undertaken today, I would propose that every Earthling who owns an iPhone should download the current contents of their Notes app onto thumb drives and put them on the rocket.
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S3S4S5S6S7S8S9S10Taupo: The super volcano under New Zealand's largest lake  Located in the centre of New Zealand's North Island, the town of Taupo sits sublimely in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Tongariro National Park. Fittingly, this 40,000-person lakeside town has recently become one of New Zealand's most popular tourist destinations, as hikers, trout fishers, water sports enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies have started descending upon it.The namesake of this tidy town is the Singapore-sized lake that kisses its western border. Stretching 623sq km wide and 160m deep with several magma chambers submerged at its base, Lake Taupo isn't only New Zealand's largest lake; it's also an incredibly active geothermal hotspot. Every summer, tourists flock to bathe in its bubbling hot springs and sail through its emerald-green waters. Yet, the lake is the crater of a giant super volcano, and within its depths lies the unsettling history of this picturesque marvel.
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S11Message sticks: Australia's ancient unwritten language  The continent of Australia is home to more than 250 spoken Indigenous languages and 800 dialects. Yet, one of its linguistic cornerstones wasn't spoken, but carved.Known as message sticks, these flat, rounded and oblong pieces of wood were etched with ornate images on both sides that conveyed important messages and held the stories of the continent's Aboriginal people – considered the world's oldest continuous living culture. Message sticks are believed to be thousands of years old and were typically carried by messengers over long distances to reinforce oral histories or deliver news between Aboriginal nations or language groups.
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S12Did Australia's boomerangs pave the way for flight?  The aircraft is one of the most significant developments of modern society, enabling people, goods and ideas to fly around the world far more efficiently than ever before. The first successful piloted flight took off in 1903 in North Carolina, but a 10,000-year-old hunting tool likely developed by Aboriginal Australians may have held the key to its lift-off. As early aviators discovered, the secret to flight is balancing the flow of air. Therefore, an aircraft's wings, tail or propeller blades are often shaped in a specially designed, curved manner called an aerofoil that lifts the plane up and allows it to drag or turn to the side as it moves through the air.
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S13How New Zealand is reducing methane emissions from farming  The young bull's head disappears into a plastic green hood. He scoops up a mouthful of dried pellets, chews, flicks his ears, and exhales. The hood is attached to a contraption on wheels that looks a bit like a high-tech mobile pizza oven.But the only thing cooking up here is a precise measurement of methane, a highly potent gas that has a global warming impact 84 times higher than carbon dioxide (CO2) over a 20-year period.
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S14Why Do We Give Gifts? An Anthropologist Explains This Ancient Human Behavior  The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.Have you planned out your holiday gift giving yet? If you’re anything like me, you might be waiting until the last minute. But whether every single present is already wrapped and ready, or you’ll hit the shops on Christmas Eve, giving gifts is a curious but central part of being human.
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S152023 Ripple Rewind  From evolving workplace trends to achieving your goals, Wharton professors explain this year’s key research insights.In this special episode, listen to curated excerpts from this year’s Ripple Effect podcast, where Wharton professors discuss a range of trending business topics.
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S16Netflix's Big Data Dump Shows Just OK TV Is Here to Stay  Netflix just did the unthinkable: It released viewership numbers. After years of withholding information on how many hours subscribers spent watching its shows and movies, on Tuesday the streaming giant released a huge trove of data. It covers 18,000 titles, breaking them all down by how many hours viewers have watched of each during the period of January to June 2023. The winner, with 812 million hours viewed? The Night Agent.This bodes well for The Night Agent and maybe less good for people drawn to Netflix’s more esoteric fare. Because while the first season of Sex/Life—a steamy, soapy show about hooking up with a hot former lover—scored 126 million hours viewed, the first season of Sex Education—a warm, funny show about teenagers learning about intimacy and boundaries—landed just south of 28 million. The streaming giant was quick to point out that “success on Netflix comes in all shapes and sizes” and isn’t determined by this stat alone. Although, on a call announcing the numbers co-CEO Ted Sarandos put it somewhat differently: “This is the data we use to run the business.”
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S18The Best Smart Christmas Lights to Make Your Home Merry and Bright  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDEvery year, the only smart device my husband asks about is something for the Christmas tree. But instead of grabbing whatever smart plug I had on hand, I came back with an armload of smart string lights we could use instead of our fake tree's built-in lights—and for decorating all over the house too. It was overkill, judging by his look of horror, but all in the name of research!
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S19Google Just Denied Cops a Key Surveillance Tool  A hacker group calling itself Solntsepek, previously linked to the infamous Russian military hacking unit Sandworm, took credit this week for a disruptive attack on the Ukrainian internet and mobile service provider Kyivstar. As Russia’s kinetic war against Ukraine has dragged on, inflicting what the World Bank estimates to be around $410 billion in recovery costs for Ukraine, the country has launched an official crowdfunding platform known as United24 as a means of raising awareness and rebuilding.Kytch, the small company that aimed to fix McDonald’s notably often-broken ice cream machines, claims it has discovered a “smoking gun” email from the CEO of McDonald’s ice cream machine manufacturer that Kytch's lawyers say suggests an alleged plan to undermine Kytch as a potential competitor. Kytch argues in a recent court filing that the email reveals the real reason why, a couple of weeks later, McDonald’s sent an email to thousands of its restaurant franchisees claiming safety hazards related to Kytch’s ice-cream-machine-whispering device.
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S20Gifts for People Who Just Need a Good Night's Sleep  If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDBetween anxiety and insomnia, I've always had trouble sleeping, and I'm not alone. Chances are, you or someone you know is not getting enough sleep, and that can have a serious impact on your health. In the past few years, a few of us on the Gear Team have worked tirelessly to transform our bedrooms into the comfiest, coziest places possible to help coax ourselves into that ever-elusive restful night of sleep.
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S21The Startup That Transformed the Hack-for-Hire Industry  If you work at a spy agency tasked with surveilling the communications of more than 160 million people, it’s probably a good idea to make sure all the data in your possession stays off the open internet. Just ask Bangladesh’s National Telecommunication Monitoring Center, which security researchers found connected to a leaky database that exposed everything from names and email addresses to cell phone numbers and bank account details. The data was likely just used for testing purposes, but WIRED confirmed at least some of the data is linked to real people.A fight is brewing in the United States Congress over the future of a powerful surveillance program. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is set to expire at the end of the year. With the December 31 deadline quickly approaching, members of Congress and civil liberties groups are criticizing Section 702 for enabling the “incidental” surveillance of Americans’ communications and “abuses” by the FBI. While a privacy-preserving update to the program has been introduced in Congress, some 702 critics remain concerned that lawmakers will push through reauthorization using other, “must-pass” legislation.
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S22Tiny biobots surprise their creators by healing wound  Tiny “biobots” made from human windpipe cells encouraged damaged neural tissue to repair itself in a lab experiment — potentially foreshadowing a future in which creations like this patrol our bodies, healing damage, delivering drugs, and more.The background: In a study published in 2020, researchers at Tufts University and the University of Vermont (UVM) harvested and incubated skin cells from frog embryos until they were tiny balls.
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S23S24S25Photos of the Week:  Swimming during a heat wave in Sydney, a sky-high interactive experience in New York City, extensive tornado damage in Tennessee, scarce resources and destruction in the Gaza Strip, ice-skating at a former coking plant in Germany, snowfall in northern China, a Santa Run in Germany, and much more A motorcyclist, Helton Garcia, dressed as Santa Claus, rides his motorcycle before handing out gifts to children in a rural school in Santo Antonio do Descoberto, Goiás, Brazil, on December 10, 2023. #
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S26Why Is the NBA Letting Josh Giddey Play?  The Oklahoma City Thunder player is getting lighter treatment than others suspected of misconduct off the court.The NBA has shown in the recent past that it is willing to discipline players just for tarnishing its brand. So the league’s remarkably passive stance on Josh Giddey, a 21-year-old Oklahoma City Thunder guard, seems strangely out of place.
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S27The Forgotten Tradition of Clemency  Minnesota reformed its system for granting mercy to those in prison. The federal government should take note.The governor, attorney general, and chief justice of the state supreme court sat atop a wide dais at the front of the Minnesota Senate hearing room on a warm day in June of 2019. One by one, petitioners for clemency—almost always without a lawyer—came to the podium and made their pitch for a pardon, which would erase many effects of their criminal convictions. One man with a long-ago, minor drug offense told the three officials, who comprise the Board of Pardons, about his 16 years of sobriety and desire to hunt with his son. An immigrant from Laos was supported by his wife, who had been the victim of his crime. Another man sought a pardon so he could adopt a stray dog. When each petitioner finished, the board discussed the case and voted as the petitioner listened intently.
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S28How Gas Prices Get in Our Heads  The price of gasoline plays an outsize role in shaping consumer sentiment—with big implications for the current “vibecession.”One of the defining characteristics of the second half of 2023 has been the gloominess of American consumers. Even as the economy remained unexpectedly robust—growing at a 5.2 percent clip in the third quarter—and inflation cooled, consumer sentiment as measured by the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index dropped steadily from the summer through the fall, and its rating hit a low of 61.3 in November.
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S29The Fate of Your Holiday-Season Returns  This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.When my colleague Amanda Mull “ventured into the belly of the holiday-returns beast,” she learned that somewhere in the midst of a complex system of transporters, warehousers, and resellers, a guy named Michael has to sniff the sweatpants.
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S30The Sound of Cruelty  The Zone of Interest is an eerie and restrained study of the Holocaust that never shows a single frame of the atrocity.Jonathan Glazer’s new film, The Zone of Interest, begins with a black screen that lingers for at least a full minute. There’s music in the form of a groaning score, as well as a smattering of noises—faint whispers, rustling leaves—that can be heard through the discordant notes. Otherwise, though, nothing appears.
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S31Biden's Domestic, Foreign, and Familial Issues  President Joe Biden faced a convergence of issues this week—domestic, foreign, and familial.The Biden administration’s request for additional aid for Ukraine has stalled as House and Senate Republicans are prioritizing negotiations over border-security policies. Tensions between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza have spilled into the open. And Hunter Biden, the president’s only surviving son, defied a congressional subpoena and instead offered again to testify in public in front of the Republican-led House committees investigating him. All of this comes as the House voted along party lines to officially open its impeachment inquiry into the president.
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S32What Great Data Analysts Do -- and Why Every Organization Needs Them  “Full-stack” data scientist means mastery of machine learning, statistics, and analytics. Today’s fashion in data science favors flashy sophistication with a dash of sci-fi, making AI and machine learning the darlings of the job market. Alternative challengers for the alpha spot come from statistics, thanks to a century-long reputation for rigor and mathematical superiority. What about analysts?Whereas excellence in statistics is about rigor and excellence in machine learning is about performance, excellence in analytics is all about speed. Analysts are your best bet for coming up with those hypotheses in the first place. As analysts mature, they’ll begin to get the hang of judging what’s important in addition to what’s interesting, allowing decision-makers to step away from the middleman role. Of the three breeds, analysts are the most likely heirs to the decision throne.
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S33Rebel 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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S34Entangled 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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S35S36Sandra 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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S37War in Gaza: An ethicist explains why you shouldn't turn to social media for information about the conflict or to do something about it  As the war between Israel and Hamas drags on, many on both sides have taken to social media to gather information and air their outrage. The impulse to do so is understandable: Political activism on social media provides people with an emotional outlet and gives them a sense that they can do something. The war is awful, and following it generates a sharp psychological need to get involved and do something.In the past few years, my colleagues and I at UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center have been studying the ethics of emerging technologies. I believe that political activism on social media is a counterproductive and sometimes even dangerous form of engagement. Here’s why.
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S38S395 things to know about US aid to Ukraine  But public opinion polls suggest that Americans’ support for Ukraine was waning even before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war drew international attention away from Ukraine. Political scientist Jessica Trisko Darden, author of “Aiding and Abetting: U.S. Foreign Assistance and State Violence,” explains how recent efforts by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to hold up aid to Ukraine reflects the perception that the U.S. is spending too much money on Ukraine at the expense of other domestic priorities, such as increased security at the U.S. southern border.
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S40A US ambassador working for Cuba? Charges against former diplomat Victor Manuel Rocha spotlight Havana's importance in the world of spying  Assistant Director, Applied History Project and Intelligence Project, Harvard Kennedy School The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Dec. 4, 2023, that Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. government employee, had been arrested and faced federal charges for secretly acting for decades as an agent of the Cuban government. Rocha joined the State Department in 1981 and served for over 20 years, rising to the level of ambassador. After leaving the State Department, he served from 2006-2012 as an adviser to the U.S. Southern Command, a joint U.S. military command that handles operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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S41Racism produces subtle brain changes that lead to increased disease risk in Black populations  The U.S. is in the midst of a racial reckoning. The COVID-19 pandemic, which took a particularly heavy toll on Black communities, turned a harsh spotlight on long-standing health disparities that the public could no longer overlook.We are clinical neuroscientists who study the multifaceted ways in which racism affects how our brains develop and function. We use brain imaging to study how trauma such as sexual assault or racial discrimination can cause stress that leads to mental health disorders like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
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S42Through its immigration policies, the UK government decides whose families are 'legitimate'  Amid another panic over high net migration to the UK, the government and new home secretary James Cleverly have proposed several changes to visa rules. The proposals apply to economic migrants, rather than other kinds of migrants such as asylum seekers, and have particular consequences for families.Under the proposals, people on health and care visas will no longer be allowed to bring family members with them to the UK. And British citizens and those with settled status will need to earn at least £38,700 in order for their non-British family members to live with them in the UK. This minimum income requirement is double the previous threshold, which has already had devastating effects on thousands of families.
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S43Google's Gemini: is the new AI model really better than ChatGPT?  Google Deepmind has recently announced Gemini, its new AI model to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While both models are examples of “generative AI”, which learn to find patterns of input training information to generate new data (pictures, words or other media), ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) which focuses on producing text. In the same way that ChatGPT is a web app for conversations that is based on the neural network know as GPT (trained on huge amounts of text), Google has a conversational web app called Bard which was based on a model called LaMDA (trained on dialogue). But Google is now upgrading that based on Gemini.
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S44Genetically modified crops aren't a solution to climate change, despite what the biotech industry says  The European Commission launched a proposal in July 2023 to deregulate a large number of plants manufactured using new genetic techniques. Despite extraordinary attempts by the Spanish presidency to force a breakthrough, EU members have not yet reached a consensus on this plan. But if the proposal were to be approved, these plants would be treated the same as conventional plants, eliminating the need for safety tests and the labelling of genetically modified food products.
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S45US election: how populists encourage blind mistrust - and how to push back  Populism is booming. The first US Republican primary is only weeks away and former president Donald Trump, who is a master of populist techniques, commands substantial support. Meanwhile one in three Europeans are now voting for populist parties.At the heart of liberal democracy lies the principle of pluralism, that there are diverse views on how society should work and that numerous institutions operate independently to balance competing interests. For this principle to work, it’s important that the public trust that these diverse voices act in good faith.
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S46Mark Drakeford: what the resignation of Wales' first minister means for the country and the Labour party  This week, Mark Drakeford announced his resignation as Wales’ first minister after five years as leader. Back in 2018, Drakeford built his leadership bid on a platform of “21st-century socialism”. As the manifesto reveals, the mantra was rooted in the ideas of “the radical tradition of Welsh socialism”, which would drive the creation of “a more equal, fair and just society”. While it’s difficult to assess his legacy so soon, it is worth reflecting on whether these initial aims have been achieved. And what does Drakeford’s departure mean for the future of Wales and the Labour party?
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S47Climate summits are too big and key voices are being crowded out - here's a better solution  Every year, the official UN climate summits are getting bigger. In 2021 at COP26 in Glasgow there were around 40,000 participants, COP27 in 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh had 50,000.But this year blew all previous records out of the water. More than 97,000 participants had badges to attend COP28 in Dubai in person. This raises questions about who is attending COPs and what they are doing there, who gets their voices heard and, on a more practical note, how this affects the negotiations.
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S48Ukraine: opening EU accession talks is an important boost for Zelensky despite Orb  Hungarian prime minister, Victor Orban, threw a major tantrum at the European Council meeting in Brussels on December 14 2023. Essentially doing the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s bidding, he prevented agreement on a major €50 billion (£25.7 billion) financial package for Ukraine. His only concession was to abstain from a vote that delivered the long-awaited approval of opening accession talks with Ukraine. Though symbolically important, this does not address some of the key problems that Ukraine is facing as Russia’s full-scale war of aggression is about to enter its third year.
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S49Cancer: people living in England's poorest areas at higher risk of death - new study  Each district’s socioeconomic status was measured using data from the English Indices of Deprivation. This estimates the proportion of the population experiencing deprivation due to low income. The team only included cancer deaths that occurred before the age of 80. This was to ensure the data was accurate, as multi-morbidity (the presence of two or more long-term health conditions) becomes more common after 80, and this makes it difficult to know whether a person has died from cancer or a different cause.
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S50Harold Shipman was arrested a quarter of a century ago, but we still have problems with prescribing controlled drugs  Catherine Hudson drugged two patients on the stroke ward of Blackpool Victoria Hospital to give herself an easier life. She has been jailed for seven years and two months. Her colleague, Charlotte Wilmot, who conspired with her to drug a third patient, was given a three-year jail term.The trial highlighted the easy access staff had to controlled drugs. The drug regimen on the stroke ward was described during the trial as “dysfunctional”. But why is this still happening? Wasn’t it all meant to have been sorted following the Shipman Inquiry?
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S51How 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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S52S53As another lobbying scandal erupts in the Conservative party, are tougher rules finally on the horizon?  Vice Chancellor Illuminate Fellow, School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen's University Belfast Conservative MP Scott Benton has become the latest British politician to face suspension for breaking lobbying rules in what is becoming a regular cycle of scandals. Parliament’s committee on standards has recommended a 35-day suspension for Benton after he was alleged to have lobbied for the gambling industry and given company access to confidential government documents.
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S54Can a Memoir Say Too Much?  “Should I be allowed to make this said?” Blake Butler writes in his new memoir, “Molly.” By the time he asks, it’s too late. He has already written more than two hundred and seventy pages; no turning back now. The question of allowance, of permission to expose, bubbles beneath so much writing, but it is at the very heart of memoir, where the people are real, and so are the consequences. How to tell the truth about other people, especially people we love—and why? What do we owe to others, and what do we owe to ourselves?Molly was the poet Molly Brodak, Butler’s wife. They lived in Atlanta and married in 2017. On March 8, 2020, a few weeks before her fortieth birthday, Molly—I will call her Molly, because that is what Butler does—left the house, lay down in a field, and shot herself. That was the end of her life, and the beginning of Butler’s book. In its first pages, he describes their final morning together: Molly propped up on the bed in the guest room, where she would often go to write, “clearly feeling extremely down again”; Butler holding one of the chickens that the couple kept in their yard up to the window to try to get her to smile. As he leaves for a jog, she e-mails him the manuscript of the book of poems she has been working on. Alarmed, Butler doubles back and finds her in the kitchen. “The room around us in that moment—dim, traced with a glow, half-hollow where the walls arrange themselves against the black side of my mind—will remain burned in my memory forever as the last time I’d see Molly alive,” he writes. He leaves again and, when he returns, finds Molly’s suicide note taped to the front door.
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S55The Year in Moviegoing  As yet, we cannot tell whether 2023 will be remembered for the movies that we saw or for the movies that were hobbled and hog-tied by industrial action. The strikes called by SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America caused productions to be paused and release dates to be pushed back. If you missed Jeff Nichols’s new film, “The Bikeriders,” with Austin Butler and Tom Hardy, when it kicked off the Telluride Film Festival, at the end of August, but hoped to see it when it opened in early December, tough. Having been passed from one studio to another—20th Century Studios to Focus Features—like a difficult foster child, the movie will now be sent forth into the world next year. (It’s worth the wait.) Amid this gloom, there were sparks of cheering news; not all artistic endeavors fell afoul of the strikes. I can’t be the only person who cried for joy upon learning that “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” as MovieWeb reports, “was able to continue filming without actors present.” The Union of Working Hedgehogs has declined to comment.Of the many grievances that were voiced by striking actors and writers, the most notable—and the one that linked them most closely to practitioners in other trades—was a dread of artificial intelligence. Whether you’re a star or a background extra, it’s alarming (and vaguely insulting) to realize that your likeness, and your voice, could be cut and pasted from one movie to the next. In which case, will you even need to show up on set? Will you be paid for the pasting? And, should you be so clumsy as to die, will that not simply mean less paperwork for the studios, as they carry on copying you forever, and maybe for free? Ghosts get lousy residuals.
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S56The 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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S57Coming of Age While Confronting Arab Stereotypes, in "Simo"  Simo, a typical teen-ager, lives in the shadow of Emad, his older brother, and their domineering dad, in the suburbs of Montreal, where the family emigrated from Egypt. One night, Simo impersonates Emad in a live-stream gaming session. That simple act leads to serious consequences, when a racist false accusation escalates and puts his brother at risk.Bold cinematography and a soundtrack of throbbing Egyptian rap beats set the scene and compound a sense of social alienation that affects these men yet strengthens the family. "Drawing heavily from my own life experiences, I couldn't ignore the elephant in the room," the film's writer and director, Aziz Zoromba, says, regarding "the stereotypes associated with being an 'Arab' in the West."
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S58A 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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S59Watching Rudy Giuliani Self-Destruct at a Defamation Trial in Washington  When Rudy Giuliani finally arrived at Elijah Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse, in Washington, D.C., on Monday—stiff-legged, about ten minutes late, unapologetic—his attorney, a former U.S. Army Ranger named Joseph Sibley, tucked him into the large and lonely defense table where the two of them sat, alone, with their giant bottles of water. Sibley had drained much of his while waiting. The former mayor of New York began pulling items out of an overstuffed black backpack that looked like something a sixth grader might bring to school. He’d arrived for the most recent phase in a defamation suit brought by two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, whose backs remained turned to him throughout the day.Beginning on December 3, 2020, during a hearing before the Georgia State Senate, and continuing to the present day, Giuliani has claimed that Freeman and Moss—to quote just a few passages of the fable—participated in a “heist” of the 2020 Presidential election, “passing around USB ports as if they were vials of heroin or cocaine,” which they used “to infiltrate the crooked Dominion voting machines.” As evidence, he shared edited surveillance footage from State Farm Arena, in Atlanta, where the two women counted Fulton County votes, purportedly showing them holding the devices. He called the two women “serial criminals” who’d stolen the election from Donald Trump using “suitcases” of ballots, a claim he repeated on podcasts and TV episodes, and on the Web site formerly known as Twitter. Later, Trump mentioned Freeman more than a dozen times in an infamous phone call with the Georgia secretary of state. Soon, millions of Americans were parroting the narrative, and not only from the remove of the Internet. A few showed up at Freeman’s home, threatening to make citizen’s arrests. She went into hiding.
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S60What Would It Mean to Treat Animals Fairly?  A few years ago, activists walked into a factory farm in Utah and walked out with two piglets. State prosecutors argued that this was a crime. That they were correct was obvious: The pigs were the property of Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the country. The defendants had videoed themselves committing the crime; the F.B.I. later found the piglets in Colorado, in an animal sanctuary.The activists said they had completed a “rescue,” but Smithfield had good reason to claim it hadn’t treated the pigs illegally. Unlike domestic favorites like dogs, which are protected from being eaten, Utah’s pigs are legally classified as “livestock”; they’re future products, and Smithfield could treat them accordingly. Namely, it could slaughter the pigs, but it could also treat a pig’s life—and its temporary desire for food, space, and medical help—as an inconvenience, to be handled in whatever conditions were deemed sufficient.
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S6145 Years Ago, a Foundational Superhero Movie Caught Lightning in a Bottle  Superman is generally considered the simplest superhero. Not just because he’s the model by which the American superhero genre was eventually defined, but because his most consistent feature over the past 85 years is that he’s good. He’s a good dude who wants to do good, and when the going gets tough, he tries his best to stay good. This, of course, provides a conundrum for writers and creators: a story requires an emotional arc, so how do you make Superman, the eternal Boy Scout, interesting? So far, the movie that best answers this question is the original 1978 Superman, the only Superman film to completely trust in the idea that Superman’s efforts to do good are inherently interesting.Directed by Richard Donner, the filmmaker behind The Omen, Lethal Weapon, and The Goonies, Superman posits that Superman’s goodwill toward mankind is his most relatable aspect. And it is! Aside from Lex Luthor, a man whose base nature is to try and bend his fellow man under his thumb, every other character, including supporting antagonist Eve Teschmacher, inevitably leans toward communal kindness. Even Superman actor Christopher Reeve admitted that, to the outside eye, Superman’s devotion toward “truth” and “justice” seems naive, but the proof is in the outcome. Superman’s example becomes humanity’s duty.
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S62Nintendo Switch Just Quietly Released the Last Must-Play RPG of 2023  Twelve years ago, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 was released on Nintendo DS, and it was the last North America would see the sub-series, despite multiple games being released in Japan. That is until now, with the release of Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, a game that breathes new life into the series’ most vibrant spinoff. The Dark Prince is a fantastic monster-catcher that takes elements from Pokémon and Shin Megami Tensei, but applies it all to a Dragon Quest framework, oozing with charm. In many ways, it doesn’t feel like a spinoff, but rather the next main Dragon Quest adventure. While it slipped in under the radar, coming at the end of this year, for RPG and monster-catching fans, The Dark Prince is the final must-play game of an incredible year for games.
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S63'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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S64Netflix's Biggest Sci-Fi Movie of 2023 is a Thrilling Spectacle Cut Short  Love him or hate him, Zack Snyder is the undisputed king of what can only be classified as a “trailer moment.” In his latest effort, Rebel Moon, those moments are myriad, complete with the speed-ramped, stylized violence that made Snyder the most divisive auteur of the 21st century. As with his previous efforts, Snyder paints the world of Rebel Moon in big, bombastic strokes. The characters therein aren’t fully fleshed-out beings so much as they are vessels for this supersized, galaxy-spanning legend-in-the-making. Rebel Moon infamously started off as Snyder’s pitch for an earnest, R-rated Star Wars story, and in the broad strokes, the film plainly evokes the galaxy far, far away. But despite its well-publicized Star Wars parallels, Snyder’s sci-fi epic is still very much its own thing. Rebel Moon is a melting pot of modern myth, cherry-picking some of our most recognizable legends to craft a tale that’s stately, sexy, and fiercely entertaining. Snyder & co. have clearly done their homework in crafting this new, original world, and it shines best in the tactility of its worldbuilding — if only it slowed down long enough to relish in it.
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S65How To Free Shadowheart In 'Baldur's Gate 3'  The opening moments of Baldur’s Gate 3 unapologetically throw you headfirst into one dire situation after the next. Your protagonist is kidnapped on a Mindflayer’s ship, has a tadpole parasite forcibly placed behind their eye, and now has to battle a swarm of imps while said ship is on a collision course with the unforgiving earth below. Luckily, you aren’t going through this nightmare alone. you’ve got the chance to fight your way out of this hellscape with fellow kidnapees Lae’zel and Shadowheart. While Lae’zel is already free from her pod-shaped prison, Shadowheart requires additional assistance to free her from her Nautiloid tank. Here’s how you free her. Unfortunately, tinkering with the console by her tank won’t free Shadowheart from her confines. As much as it might pain you to leave Shadowheart by her lonesome, you must do exactly that to liberate her. Don’t worry, you’ll only be gone a minute in the adjacent room before you return. In the farthest corner of the next room, you’ll find a Thrall corpse with an Eldritch Rune in its inventory. Loot that corpse. Why? Well, the Eldritch Rune suspiciously placed in that Thrall’s pocket-less corpse can unlock the controls next to Shadowheart’s pod.
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S662024'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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S67Here'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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S68The Last of Us Online Getting Cancelled Is Actually Good for Gamers. Here's Why.  It’s been four years since Naughty Dog first teased the stand-alone multiplayer project that would come to be known as The Last of Us Online. In that time we have received vague details, a couple of pieces of concept art, and several delays. Now, without even a second of gameplay ever being shown off, The Last of Us Online is officially canceled.Naughty Dog explains why in a lengthy blog post on its website — it comes down to a desire to keep Naughty Dog from becoming a live-service studio. While any project cancellation is sad, the end of The Last of Us Online has more than one silver lining to come out of a game that never should have existed in the first place.
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S69Xbox 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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S70What 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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