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S2Emotional Intelligence Has 12 Elements. Which Do You Need to Work On?   Although there are many models of emotional intelligence, they are often lumped together as “EQ” in the popular vernacular. An alternative term is “EI,” which comprises four domains: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Within those domains are 12 EI competencies, starting with emotional self-awareness in the self-awareness domain. Emotional self-control, adaptability, achievement orientation, and a positive outlook fall under self-management. Empathy and organizational awareness make up social awareness. Relationship management includes influence, coaching and mentoring, conflict management, teamwork, and inspirational leadership. Leaders need to develop a balance of strengths across these competencies. Assessment tools, like a 360-degree assessment that uses ratings from yourself and those who know you well, can help you determine where your EI needs improvement. To best improve your weak spots, find an expert to coach you.
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S3 Are Everywhere Stores the New Face of Retail?  The winter 2024 issue features a special report on sustainability, and provides insights on developing leadership skills, recognizing and addressing caste discrimination, and engaging in strategic planning and execution.The winter 2024 issue features a special report on sustainability, and provides insights on developing leadership skills, recognizing and addressing caste discrimination, and engaging in strategic planning and execution.Nearly 30 years ago, a fledgling startup called Amazon made its first online sale, and a retail revolution began. Dubbed “the Everything Store” by Brad Stone in his book of the same name, Amazon leveraged digital technologies to expand the very nature of retail, demonstrating that selling physical goods no longer required a physical storefront.
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S4GTA 6: Grand Theft Auto VI could smash revenue records  It's been condemned by Britain, Germany and France. It's been outright banned in Brazil. Its violence and vehicular mayhem has drawn the ire of organisations including the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition, Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the UK's Freedom from Torture organisation. It's also spawned memes and a singular cult fandom.This subject of both controversy and culture – Grand Theft Auto – is expected to make its return in 2025 with Grand Theft Auto VI, widely known as GTA 6. It's the first release of the game since 2013 – and to call it "wildly anticipated" in its community is a great understatement.
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S5The one thing The Crown got wrong  Queen Elizabeth II is missed in so many ways. In reality, the worldwide mourning of her death in 2022 was a poignant reminder of her importance over the 70 years of her reign. And on screen, her diminished presence over the last two seasons of The Crown answers the question: what went wrong with the show?More like this:- The Crown season 6 review: 'A clumsy, predictable end'- How Dominic West transformed into King Charles III- The 18 best TV shows of 2023
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S6Trade rules and climate change: Africa stands to lose from proposed WTO policy tools  The World Trade Organisation launched its Trade Policy Tools for Climate Action during the COP28 conference. International economic law expert Olabisi D. Akinkugbe discusses whether the new Trade Policy Tools benefit Africa.The new tools offer opportunities for countries to mitigate the climate change effect of their trade practices. The tools align with the Paris Agreement, the 2015 legally binding United Nations Treaty on Climate Change.
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S7Buying indie video games over the holidays can help make the industry more ethical and fair  The 2023 Game Awards recently saw accolades doled out to the biggest and most celebrated games of the year — alongside a few lucky indie titles — and with the holidays fast approaching, many of those same games are starting to go on sale. Video game companies often time the release of their most popular titles for the holiday season. The biggest sales of the year happen between Black Friday and Christmas, and since publishers often push hard for new game releases in the last quarter of the year, now is the time to reflect on the political economy of video games and to think carefully about which games to buy and why.
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S8S9If a tree burns in Canada's unmanaged forest, does anyone count the carbon?  Earlier this fall, a commentary in the journal Nature Communications, Earth & Environment argued for a change to the implementation of the Paris Agreement’s reporting mechanisms. The authors called for all countries to report carbon emissions and removals taking place across their entire territories, not just within so-called “managed” lands (as is presently the case).However, this poses a challenge here in Canada, as there is deep uncertainty about the total carbon flux (balance of emissions and captures) in Canada’s “unmanaged” land.
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S10Why the American technological war against China could backfire  The technological war waged by the United States against China has the potential to backfire, supercharging China’s creation of an independent computer chip industry that would directly compete with American manufacturers. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has employed increasingly restrictive sanctions to prevent American and allied chip manufacturers from selling their most advanced products to China.
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S11S12S13Ghosts, grit and genius: the most gripping podcasts of 2023  Siobhan McHugh was a judge with the Walkley Foundation, which awarded the Walkley award for Audio Long Form Journalism to Dying Rose in 2023. She has had academic exchanges with podcast host Chenjerai Kumanyika and worked at the ABC with sound engineer Judy Rapley.Despite downturns at the corporate end of town, podcasts again this year proved to be a powerful medium for new voices and previously overlooked stories.
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S14S15Is it OK to take antidepressants while pregnant?  Mental health conditions including anxiety and depression are among the most common disorders affecting women during pregnancy and after birth. Evidence shows mental health conditions in pregnancy increase the risk of complications for the mother and baby.
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S16S18An austere Christmas is on the cards - but don't say recession  The rapid increase in interest rates over the past year and a half is causing many consumers to feel less than joyous this festive season. Spending in the lead up to Christmas is likely to remain subdued, with consumers more budget conscious than in previous years. The muted outlook for consumption has got some economists and media outlets predicting a possible recession in 2024.
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S19Housing and the Albanese government: a mid-term report card  The Albanese government can justly claim to have reasserted Commonwealth leadership on housing since its election in 2022. Media attention has focused mainly on the legislative stoush with the Greens over the Housing Australia Future Fund. But that’s only one element of a raft of initiatives from Canberra over this time.Many Australians have recently felt the impact of sharply rising rent and mortgage payments as household numbers and interest rates surged in the post-COVID period. However, several fundamental and enduring housing problems have been escalating for decades. These include:
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S20A long-dead soprano has taken to the stage with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Are holograms the future?  I was recently among a curious Melbourne audience who turned out to see a hologram of the long-dead soprano Maria Callas singing with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The stage was moodily lit, with 30 musicians in shadows. Loud reverberating footsteps foreshadowed Callas’ entrance and indicated potential humanness. When she eventually appeared centre stage, the audience gasped. Ripples of laughter followed when she and conductor Daniel Schlosberg played out a manufactured exchange of acknowledgement.
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S21North Queensland's record-breaking floods are a frightening portent of what's to come under climate change  Unprecedented rain brought by Tropical Cyclone Jasper has triggered widespread flooding in far north Queensland, forcing thousands of people to evacuate. Cairns airport is closed, roads are extensively damaged and residents in the city’s northern beaches are cut off by floodwaters.Some rain gauges in the Barron and Daintree River catchments recorded more than 2m of rain over recent days, and more rain is expected. Water levels in the lower Barron River have smashed the previous record set by devastating floods in March 1977. On Monday morning, the Daintree River was more than 2m higher than the previous 118-year-old flood level, recorded in 2019.
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S22Israel-Hamas war: a ceasefire is now in sight. Will Israel's prime minister agree?  The mistaken killing of three Israeli hostages by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) at the weekend has substantially increased pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire in the war against Hamas.The Biden administration is exerting maximum pressure to convince the Israeli government that the downsides of its prosecution of the war, particularly the shockingly high Palestinian civilian death toll, now outweigh the potential gains.
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S23Labor regains lead in Newspoll after tie, but Freshwater has a 50--50 tie  Election Analyst (Psephologist) at The Conversation; and Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne A national Newspoll, conducted December 11–15 from a sample of 1,219, gave Labor a 52–48 lead, a two-point gain for Labor since the previous Newspoll three weeks ago that had a 50–50 tie. Primary votes were 36% Coalition (down two), 33% Labor (up two), 13% Greens (steady), 7% One Nation (up one) and 11% for all Others (down one).
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S24Have we been trying to prevent suicides wrongly all this time?  Traditional approaches to preventing suicide have focused on “who is at risk?” The aim is to identify an individual and to help them get support.But that approach doesn’t seem to be working. Australia’s suicide rates have remained stubbornly high. There was an increase in the rate of suicides from 2012 to 2022.
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S25What sunscreen is best? A dermatologist offers advice on protecting your skin  Sunburn is a sign that skin has experienced significant levels of damage. Ultraviolet light can change a person’s DNA structure, which can lead to cancer. At the same time, choosing from the multitude of modern sunscreens can be overwhelming. Health & Medicine editor Nadine Dreyer asked dermatologist Bianca Tod what to look for in sun protection.People living in Africa are exposed to high levels of solar radiation. The continent includes a wide range of latitudes, as well as the Equator.
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S26Matthew Perry died of 'acute effects of ketamine' - what you need to know about the drug  Millions of people worldwide were left devastated by the death this year of 54-year-old Matthew Perry, the Friends star famous for bringing wise-cracking Chandler Bing to life. A global superstar, recently sober with an autobiography on the bestseller lists, it looked like his troubled past was behind him. So the world was especially shocked and saddened to learn of his untimely death by apparent drowning.This week, medical officials in Los Angeles, have confirmed that his drowning was more complex than initially suspected. Toxicology reports have indicated that two drugs were in Perry’s system at the time of his death. These were buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid drug addiction, and ketamine, sometimes referred to as special K or horse tranquilliser.
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S27Loneliness is a major public health problem - and young people are bearing the brunt of it  Writing in the Week, journalist Theara Coleman has declared 2023 “the year of the loneliness epidemic”. In May, the US surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, said loneliness posed a public health risk on a par with smoking and drinking. “It’s like hunger or thirst,” Murthy said. “It’s a feeling the body sends us when something we need for survival is missing. Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows, and that’s not right.”
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S28S29Musical Revolution in Cuba and Ohio  There’s nothing in music—nothing, really, in the entire world of sound—like human voices working in tandem. In unison or in harmony, vocal collaboration is a metaphor befitting music’s relation to society: if we can sing together, maybe we can work together, too.“Buena Vista Social Club”—a new musical, directed by Saheem Ali, for Atlantic Theatre Company, with a book by Marco Ramirez and music by the eponymous award-winning musical collective, the subjects of the 1999 documentary by Wim Wenders on which this show is based—draws its fun, its exuberance, and its occasional moments of emotional depth from its focus on how voices come together to change societies, or to convey their sicknesses. After a vivid opening number, the story begins in a recording studio in Havana, Cuba, where a young musicology student and bandleader, Juan de Marcos (Luis Vega), has come to ask a life-changing favor of the legendary singer Omara Portuondo (Natalie Venetia Belcon). He thinks that Cuban music hasn’t got its due, that it’s more than fit fare for tourists, that a voice like Omara’s and the history she symbolizes shouldn’t go unrecorded. He’s assembled a band and booked studio time; all she has to do is show up.
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S30You Need to Watch the Most Unnerving Thriller of the 2010s on Netflix ASAP  “Girl horror” does not have an official definition, but it’s still become a genre unto itself. Horror is often the ideal arena to unpack anxieties too nebulous to otherwise explain, and girlhood often feels like a scary enough experience as is. To be a girl is to always be subjected to pressure and performance, and the transformation to womanhood isn’t for the faint of heart, either. As women, we are expected to be perfect and prioritize the pleasure of others, often at the expense of our own. But the act of suppressing our urges is one of the surest ways to manifest a monster, and nowhere is that clearer than in Black Swan, a pastel pink nightmare that’s become a quintessential tale of female mania and monstrosity.
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S3135 Years Later, the Worst Final Fantasy Game Deserves a True Remake  The original Final Fantasy was a huge success for Square, and a massively influential game that would change RPGs entirely. What’s truly amazing, however, is that after that initial hit Square was ambitious enough to strike off in a different direction with its sequel, introducing wildly different gameplay mechanics on top of a more in-depth story. There are still great ideas at the core of Final Fantasy 2, ideas that could be brought to life by a true, from-the-ground-up remake. Thirty-five years later though, it’s clear that a lot of Final Fantasy 2’s ambition was misguided, and hindsight shows it was one of the most frustrating titles in the franchise. Square Enix loves remaking games, and the framework for a reimagining of Final Fantasy 2 already lies with one of the series’ most fascinating spinoffs. 2022’s Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is a brilliant metatextual satire that breaks down the legacy of the franchise and its use of the traditional hero story. It’s a fantastic way to reimagine the history of the franchise, and feels like a natural foundation that could be built upon for Final Fantasy 2. Nothing short of a complete reimagining would work for Final Fantasy 2, due to inherent flaws that are impossible to fix entirely.
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S32The Best Sci-Fi Show of the Year Just Tackled a Unique Genre Challenge  What happens when someone from Gen Z suddenly plays a boomer? In For All Mankind, stars Cynthy Wu and Coral Peña are playing two powerful women in their 40s, even though they’re in their 20s. And because For All Mankind Season 4 takes place in an alternate 2003, Kelly Baldwin and Aleida Rosales are part of what’s conventionally known as the Baby Boomer generation. What’s it like for actors to play characters of a very different generation?Neither Wu nor Peña sees humanity in those terms. As Season 4, Episode 6 of For All Mankind shakes things up for Kelly and Aleida, the performers behind the characters tell Inverse the show’s real power. Spoilers ahead for “Leningrad.”
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S332023's Best Movies Reveal an Important New Sci-Fi Trend  2023 was the year of the feminist fable — but its best films still miss the mark where it counts.2023 was a banner year for off-beat, unorthodox sci-fi. Barbie took the world by storm with the power of marketing and a manufactured enmity with its release date neighbor Oppenheimer. It was surprisingly philosophical for a film whose subject has become synonymous with airheadedness — whether that accurately describes Barbie or not. Writer-director Greta Gerwig took the title character from symbolic ideal to earnestly-human entity, all while delivering a pared-down treatise on patriarchal prisons, the burden of existence, and the fraught bonds between mothers and daughters.
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S34The Best Video Game Genre of the Decade Has Nowhere to Go But Up  Brain-soothing games have been on the rise ever since Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but the genre still has plenty of room to grow and evolve.If your favorite cozy game is like a cup of hot chocolate, then in 2023, the genre reached its whipped-cream peak. Google searches for the term have never been higher, and even The New York Times is recommending chill video games like Disney Dreamlight Valley and Alto’s Adventure to soothe your mind and help you unwind once you’re bored of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley.
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S35If You're Cheap But Want A Nicer Home, You'll Love These 50 Things  If you want to make your home nicer but you’re worried it’s going to be too expensive, check out the 50 products below: They’ll seriously upgrade various spaces around your home, starting at just $8. From problem-solving items like an absorbent coffee station mat to aesthetic picks like an adjustable planter that can hang from the ceiling or wall, everything has high-end vibes with budget-friendly prices.Display your wine bottles in style with this shiny gold metal rack — it features honeycomb-like slots for up to five bottles. “[S]imple but elegant wine rack that was easy to put together and is very sturdy,” wrote one shopper. Other styles and sizes are available in the listing.
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S36We Should Reject Using AI to Create Perfect Memories  The tech industry is obsessed with the idea of being able to remember everything, but when it comes to your personal life, there need to be limits.Artificial intelligence is built on the back of a huge corpus of data — words, images, and information that models have digested and “understand” in one way or another. That basic ability to recognize patterns and call up information is currently the most promising use for large language models (LLMs) as it stands today. Tools that look at what you've stored in your notes and documents and become quasi-experts that you can prod with questions.
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S37'Rick and Morty' Finally Solves Its Last Great Mystery  The Season 7 finale provided an unprecedented dive into Rick’s fractured psyche, with one big catch.Despite espousing the nihilistic belief that the infinite multiverse is a chaotic place devoid of meaning, Rick Sanchez went through all the feels in Rick and Morty Season 7. After years spent hunting down the man who murdered his wife across all realities (an evil variant of himself called Rick Prime), Rick finally got his bloody revenge in Episode 5. Now, as the season comes to a close, one final episode shines the spotlight on Rick’s dead wife Diane, revealing more about her character than ever before.
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S38How to Check IVs in 'Pokemon Scarlet and Violet'  Every single Pokémon you catch and hatch has an IV (or Individual Values), which essentially determines the Pokémon’s Stats. These are randomly assigned from 0 to 31, with the best possible IB being 31. As all of these stats are unique to that specific Pokémon (meaning that if you catch two Charizard, for example, they will have different IVs), it’s good knowing your Pokémon’s IV when considering if you want to keep them or not.Creating a competitive team in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet will require paying attention to our Pokémon’s IVs. If you’re wondering how to check then, we’ve got you covered.
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S39'Oppenheimer's Success Reveals a Dark Truth About One Type of Movie  Christopher Nolan’s heady biopic was predicted to fade into obscurity opposite its flamboyantly pink rival Barbie for several reasons: The biopic is also an infamously tough genre to crack. Last year alone, the genre had multiple flops including Blonde, I Wanna Dance with Somebody, and A Journal for Jordan. But Oppenheimer defied expectations, outrunning 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody to become the highest-grossing biopic to date (even if it couldn’t come close to Barbie’s billion-dollar run).
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S40S41Messages born of melody - hear the whistled language of the Hmong people | Aeon Videos  In rural stretches of northern Laos, several scattered practitioners keep one of the world’s few remaining whistled languages alive. An ancient tradition among the Hmong people, this unique form of communication originated as a means of helping hunters, farmers and shepherds communicate across vast, open distances. It’s also used in courting rituals and as a means of communicating with the spirit world. At once speech and music, this system of whistles can be augmented when blown through a leaf, a bamboo flute or a traditional instrument known as a qeej. However, as Birdsong (2023) details, modernity and especially urbanisation have driven this ancient Hmong tradition to the verge of extinction. Profiling three whistlers from the village of Long Lan, the short documentary offers a fascinating peek into a disappearing world, alongside insights into the evolution and extraordinary diversity of language.
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S42S43S44S45S46S47S48S49S50How Britain's taste for tea may have been a life saver  Tea has been many things in its time – a global commodity, a comforting beverage, and even, in the eyes of some Bostonians 250 years ago this week, a symbol of oppressive politics. But one role you might not have attributed to tea is that of a life-saving health intervention.In a recent paper in the Review of Statistics and Economics, economist Francisca Antman of the University of Colorado, Boulder, makes a convincing case that the explosion of tea as an everyman's drink in late 1700s England saved many lives. This would not have been because of any antioxidants or other substances inherent to the lauded leaf.
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S512023 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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S52This Sony OLED Is the Most Stunning TV Money Can Buy  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 WIREDSony’s A95K TV (9/10, WIRED Recommends) was a breakthrough in picture quality, becoming an instant hit with critics and videophiles everywhere. Part of the first generation of QD-OLED TVs, which marry a layer of quantum dots with a more traditional OLED display to boost brightness and color volume, the A95K and Samsung’s 2022 S95B both helped push OLED technology into a new era of performance.
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S53The Best Apps for Your Foldable Phone  If you're in the market for a new smartphone, you could choose one of the best folding phones—like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 or the Google Pixel Fold—rather than opting for a traditional single-screen model. The foldable form factor is getting more popular, even though it comes at a price premium. However, you get two screens rather than one, and (with a book-style foldable) the larger display opens out to something approaching tablet size.Are there apps that take advantage of that extra space though? Apps that aren't afraid to expand to take up the extra room? Sure, but they're mostly big names you know already. These are our favorite ones so far—and they're all on Android of course, while we wait for a folding iPhone that may never come.
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S54The Best Travel Mugs to Keep Drinks Hot or Cold  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 WIREDIf it isn't wine or whiskey, you shouldn't be drinking it at room temperature. Even river water on a warm day of hiking is refreshingly cooler than the ambient air temperature. Lukewarm coffee is a great way to get your whole day off to rough start, and nobody daydreams about relaxing by the pool with a tepid glass of 70-degree water by their side.
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S55Keep an Eye on Fido With These Pet Cameras  Our furry friends are important members of the family, and leaving them at home while we go out to do people things can be hard. However, pet cameras—specifically designed to keep watch over dogs and cats—can make the human's absence from the home less stressful for both parties. If you've considered getting a pet camera, there's no better time than now.Read our Best Indoor Security Cameras, Best Outdoor Security Cameras, Best Dog Tech and Accessories, Best Dog Beds, and Best Cat Tech and Supplies guides for more.
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S56The Best Bluetooth Speakers to Take Your Tunes Anywhere  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 WIREDThe best Bluetooth speakers still have a place near and dear to our hearts, even as we've seen better (and more portable) smart speakers creeping into the universe. It's fun and easy to ask an Amazon Echo or Google Nest speaker to play your favorite track or tell you the weather, but smart speakers require stable Wi-Fi and updates to work. By (mostly) forgoing voice assistants and Wi-Fi radios, Bluetooth speakers are more portable, with the ability to venture outside of your house and withstand rugged conditions like the sandy beach or the steamy Airbnb jacuzzi. They'll also work with any smartphone, and they sound as good as their smart-speaker equivalents.
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S57Suckup software: How sycophancy threatens the future of AI  If you wanted to make a quick buck in sixth-century Athens, you could do worse than denounce someone for smuggling figs. These informers — sykophantes, literally “those who showed the figs” — stood to gain financially from the courts, whether or not the report was true, thanks to an aggressive ban on the export of all crops but olives. According to Robin Waterfield, a classical scholar and the author of Why Socrates Died, this is where we get the term “sycophant,” someone who sucks up for personal gain.Today, the term appears mostly in politics, but according to a recent paper by researchers at Anthropic — the AI startup founded in 2021 by a handful of former OpenAI employees, which has since raised over $6 billion and released several versions of the chatbot Claude — sycophancy is a major problem with AI models.
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S58How Microsoft's cybercrime unit has evolved to combat increased threats  Governments and the tech industry around the world have been scrambling in recent years to curb the rise of online scamming and cybercrime. Yet even with progress on digital defenses, enforcement, and deterrence, the ransomware attacks, business email compromises, and malware infections keep on coming. Over the past decade, Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) has forged its own strategies, both technical and legal, to investigate scams, take down criminal infrastructure, and block malicious traffic.
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S59America's Peace Wave  Rents, average monthly temperatures, grocery prices—most things in American life seem to be rising these days.But not everything. In 2023, murder rates in the United States dropped at an astonishing rate, probably among the highest on record. That’s according to data gathered by Jeff Asher, an independent criminologist, from cities with publicly available numbers. In the sample of 175 cities, murder is down by an average of almost 13 percent this year.
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S60The Postal Service Wasn't Built for Boxes  Packages are bringing in much-needed revenue, but the agency can’t be saved without Congress.You might have read the recent news report that Amazon now delivers more packages than established companies including UPS and FedEx—the latest sign of the e-commerce company’s dominance. But if you read closely, you also saw that the U.S. Postal Service still handles more parcels (about 7 billion a year) than any of these companies, and in fact delivers hundreds of millions of packages for them.
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S61The Myth of the Unemployed College Grad  A bachelor’s degree continues to be a great investment. Why does the media keep suggesting otherwise?Perhaps no puzzle has consumed the American media more in the past few months than the chasm between official measures of the economy and how average people feel about it. Inflation is down, and wages are up—yet voters remain gloomy. Young people are, at least by some measures, the most pessimistic. They think the economy is bad and getting worse. Why? The answer has major implications, not least on the outcome of the next presidential election. You can’t blame the media for being so eager to figure it out. But pundits and reporters might want to look harder at their own penchant for writing stories that make the economy look worse for young people than it really is, including, above all, by incorrectly declaring that college diplomas aren’t what they used to be.
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S62A Young-Adult Blockbuster With Staying Power  This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Welcome back to The Daily’s Sunday culture edition, in which one Atlantic writer reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is Elise Hannum, an assistant editor at The Atlantic who has written about Snoopy as the hero Gen Z needs and the joy of watching awards-show speeches.
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S63Bored  When the poet and novelist Margaret Atwood was a child, she spent much of each year in the forests of northern Quebec. Her father was an entomologist—he kept an insect lab up there—and the family went along with him to the freezing wilds without electricity. “Places choose you,” the adult Atwood once said when asked how she decided where to locate a story. In a sense, that was also true of her early life. Her father chose the place, or the place chose her; she certainly didn’t choose it herself. What young person does?Reading Atwood’s poem “Bored,” I imagine her in this period: a typical tween who “could hardly wait to get / the hell out of there.” She’s rolling her eyes about holding logs to saw, carrying wood, sitting in a boat. I’ll admit, I don’t really know if Atwood was writing about that time of her life. But I do know that she published this poem in 1994 after her father died in 1993, and here her memory feels saturated with grief. She’s gripped with the regret that so many of us know: What felt unbearably mundane in the moment reveals itself later to be precious, if only because it passed in the company of a loved one.
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S64Why Isn't the Government Doing More About the Housing Crisis?  The Department of Housing and Urban Development should consider doing some housing and urban development.The Department of Housing and Urban Development is the agency responsible, one would imagine, for housing and urban development. Over the past two decades, America has done far too little urban development—and far too little suburban and rural development as well. The ensuing housing shortage has led to rising rents, a surge in homelessness, a decline in people’s ability to move for a relationship or a job, and much general misery. Yet the response from the federal government has been to do pretty much nothing.
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S65The Curious 'SNL' Return of Kate McKinnon  When Kate McKinnon departed the Saturday Night Live stage in May 2022, along with a slew of others including Pete Davidson and Aidy Bryant, the clock immediately began counting down to her return. Davidson had the honor of being the first among that departing cohort to host, earlier this season, but McKinnon got her chance last night, closing out the year with SNL’s annual Christmas episode. As she discovered, it’s one thing to steal the scene and quite another to steer the show.“I’ve always felt more comfortable in a weird costume,” she admitted in her opening monologue, referring to the many oddball personalities she played on SNL. Since leaving, she jokingly confessed, she’s been struggling to figure out who she is apart from those roles, quipping, “I’ve been trying to assemble a human personality.” (Her spin as Weird Barbie in the blockbuster Barbie film perhaps complicated that effort.) Indeed, McKinnon’s turn—well earned after 11 seasons that made her one of the show’s longest-running female cast members, and easily one of its most popular—revealed the disparity between the spotlight of hosting and the camouflage of ensemble comedy. McKinnon didn’t seem entirely comfortable breaking away from the unity of the cast to assertively claim the audience’s attention. It made for a night that was less a victory lap than a reminder of the delights of collaborative live performance.
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S66S67Madhur Jaffrey: The woman who gave the world Indian food  At a spirited 90 years of age, Madhur Jaffrey takes centre stage on the streaming platform MasterClass, her screen presence marked by a shiny bob, smoky-lined eyes, vivid red lips and a trove of lively, endearing anecdotes from her rich life. A true polymath, Madhur is more than a versatile actress whose cinematic impact has spanned several decades, she's a culinary chronicler and food icon. With over 30 cookbooks to her name, spanning the flavours of India, Asia and global vegetarian cuisine, as well as many television cookery shows (including on the BBC), Madhur Jaffrey is a household name for anyone with a taste for South Asian cuisine.As Indian-born Nobel Laureate and cookbook author Abhijit Banerjee shared during this year's annual HC Mahindra Lecture at Harvard University, "While I could cook many Western dishes, I did not know how to cook Indian food. My first step was smart – to buy her [cookbook], An Invitation to Indian Cooking, and follow it with a certain amount of diligence. And that's how I learned to cook Indian food."
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S68Brack: a fruit cake to celebrate Women's Christmas  Twelfth Night is the last great frolicking feast of Christmas. It's the day decorations are taken down and stored away – woe betide anyone who takes them down sooner, tempting bad luck for the coming year. Across the British Isles, 6 January is most associated with this hand-me-down piece of folklore, rather than the arrival of the Three Kings to Bethlehem bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh for the baby Jesus.On the south-western edge of Ireland, in Cork and bordering parts of Kerry, Twelfth Night is still celebrated in style, and exclusively by women. It's a night for soaking up the last vestiges of Christmas spirit in rambunctious merriment rather than a staid religious observance.
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S69S70Coming 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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