   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S70S35Christmas consumption - what would the great economic philosophers think?   Even during a cost of living crisis, with interest rates and inflation high, the average spending per person for Christmas 2023 in the UK is expected to reach as much as £974. Retailers, advertisers and a sense of tradition continue to encourage us towards ever greater levels of consumption.Of course, excessive seasonal consumerism has long been a subject of concern. But what if this appetite for treating ourselves and our loved ones actually makes people feel happier during the coldest and darkest time of the year?
Continued here
|
S47How Accurate Was HBO's 'The Last of Us'? A Real Apocalypse Prepper Explains  How Bill’s story works in comparison with the real world — and what you can learn from it.The Last of Us is a lasting story. A decade after the original video game’s release, it’s garnered a remaster, a remake, a sequel, and an upcoming remaster of that sequel. But its heartbreaking tale of found family in a zombie apocalypse reached an entirely new audience in January 2023 when HBO premiered a big-budget TV adaptation starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.
Continued here
|
S34Most expectant mothers miss out on vitamins important for their health and their baby's, study finds  Our bodies require many important vitamins and minerals in order to function well. B vitamins, for example, are particularly important for many of our everyday functions – including energy levels, cell health and nerve function. These vitamins become even more important when a mother is pregnant, as low levels of some vitamins (such as folic acid, also known as vitamin B9) are associated with poor health outcomes during pregnancy and for the infant after birth.
Continued here
|
S58S673 Ways We Sabotage Our Goals (And How to Stop)  Goals can be a helpful way to enhance our performance, keep us moving in the right direction, and increase our happiness and well-being. However, we won’t reap any of those benefits if we don’t set them the right way. Here are three ways we tend to go wrong when setting goals, and what to do instead this time around.
Continued here
|
S33Britain likely to generate more electricity from wind, solar and hydro than fossil fuels for the first year ever in 2023  There are many milestones to pass in the transition from a high to low-carbon sustainable energy system. There is the first hour without coal, or oil, or gas generation (or all of them together) and the point when the last coal, oil or gas power plant (or all of them together) are finally retired. Another milestone that feels important is the first year when renewables generate more electricity than fossil fuels. For the past three months we have been tracking the data for Great Britain (not Northern Ireland, which shares an electricity grid with the Republic of Ireland) and we believe it is on track to pass this milestone in 2023, but it will be very close.
Continued here
|
S455 Years Ago, an Underrated Sci-Fi Movie Was Almost Good Enough to Save a Franchise  Love it or hate it, Michael Bay’s first Transformers movie was a hugely promising start to one of cinema’s most surprisingly profitable franchises. But after a decade of Bayhem generated over $5 billion at the box office, Paramount Pictures decided to shift gears with the charming, scaled-down Bumblebee in 2018. It still feels fresh today, but it’s also become clear that its much-needed pivot came a little too late.By the time Bay got to 2017’s Transformers: The Last Knight, things had gotten out of hand. 2014’s Age of Extinction was a remarkable commercial success, but it was a critical low-point, and there was a sense audiences were growing tired of Bay’s “more is more” approach to the series. The budgets had also ballooned beyond control, complicating things for Paramount. When The Last Knight garnered the worst reviews of the series and made $500 million less than its predecessor, it was clear the math no longer added up. The studio needed radical change, and that’s where Bumblebee came in.
Continued here
|
S36Six books (and one play) to read to understand British politics today  With a general election on the horizon in 2024, this holiday season is a good time to curl up with a book that explains the state of British politics and society today. We asked politics experts for their recommendations.Don’t let the colourful title put you off. Rob Burley is the former editor of BBC political programming, including The Andrew Marr Show and Politics Live – his book is both a hard-hitting expose of his time in the industry and a “deliciously irreverent” read.
Continued here
|
S5950 Ridiculously Cool Things Under $20 on Amazon  Whether you’re shopping for others or treating yourself, budget-friendly price points are always a plus. After all, no matter how awesome or useful something is, overpaying can suck the joy right out of the shopping experience. Luckily, the list below is packed with ridiculously cool things that you can score for under $20. So scroll on for clever tech gadgets, convenient cleaning tools, and other items that streamline life — all of which can be yours at bargain prices. Your phone can pick up a lot of smudges and debris throughout the course of the day, so keep it clean on the go with this touch-screen mist cleaner. This pocket-size gadget has a spray-dispensing button on top and is coated with a microfiber material, so you can clean and dry your device all in one go. Just refill the internal spray bottle with a cleanser of your choosing when it needs a top off.
Continued here
|
S46'Baldur's Gate 3' Is the Best Game of the Year -- And It Could Change the Industry Forever  When Baldur’s Gate 3 was still in Early Access, back in 2020, the Dungeons & Dragons-inspired game asked players to create two characters at the start of their adventures. The first was the protagonist. The second was the “Dream Lover,” who appears to the protagonist while they’re sleeping and exists somewhere within the game’s massive fantasy world. But as those early test players gave their feedback (all while paying full price), Belgian developer Larian Studios realized something wasn’t working.“As time went on, we rolled out more and more dream encounters between this seductive version of the character and the player,” principal narrative designer Lawrence Schick tells Inverse. “It became clear that it just wasn’t connecting. It wasn’t conveying what we wanted it to convey. Players were just confused.”
Continued here
|
S41Ross McDonnell's Life and Work Were All About Connection  In November, Ross McDonnell, the Irish filmmaker and photographer, died while swimming in the ocean at Fort Tilden beach, in Queens, New York. Ross was forty-four, a giant as a filmmaker and photographer, widely published and lauded for his photographs and cinematography. He was committed to the mission of documentary work: to make meaning from the events of our times."Swift Justice," by Victor Blue and Ross McDonnell, offers an unrivalled look at the heart of the Taliban's Afghanistan, after the group captured Kabul in 2021.
Continued here
|
S57SETI Research Say Aliens Could Use Black Holes as Quantum Computers  A recent paper suggests that alien civilizations might make tiny black holes to use as quantum computing hardware. Then, it gets weird.We’ve searched the skies for alien signals in the form of radio waves and reflected light from massive orbiting structures. But physicists Gia Dvali (of the Max Planck Institute for Physics) and Zara Osmanov (of the Free University of Tblisi) say we should also be looking for neutrinos and bursts of radiation from tiny black holes spawned as alien supercomputers.
Continued here
|
S66How to Encourage Your Team to Open Up to You  When you start managing a new team, it’s going to take time to build trust. Initially, your direct reports may be hesitant to be honest with you about their interests, goals, and challenge areas. So, how can you encourage people to open up about how they’re feeling about work and what might be impacting their motivation?
Continued here
|
S38Pay gaps and less chance of a top degree: the unequal experience of ethnic minority staff and students at English universities  David Mba works for Birmingham City University. Acknowledgments: the latest ERI report was co-authored by Chris Lloyd-Bardsley, Adam Weigel and Sandra Longville, all at the University of Arts London (UAL)A 2020 report on racial harassment published by industry body Universities UK drew attention to the “institutional racism and systemic issues that pervade the entire higher education sector”. In the same year, the Black Lives Matter movement drew attention to inequality faced by Black people across society. UK universities pledged to do more to root out racism.
Continued here
|
S37How universities can address the lack of Black scholars in academia  There are 165 Black professors in the UK – out of 23,515. The disparity becomes even more alarming when examining the representation of Black female professors. Only 61 UK professors are Black women. The project has provided mentorship to 46 scholars so far, as part of two cohorts of students. Six have already started PhDs, and a further four have been accepted for PhD study. Overall, we found that the project increased the confidence of students who, at the beginning of the programme, rated their skills as lower than their peers. One student said:
Continued here
|
S61Marvel's Most Overlooked Show Reveals an Unfortunate Truth About the MCU  It’s been almost three years since Marvel Studios’ Disney+ initiative began back in January 2021. Throughout that time, Marvel’s TV efforts have been met with increasing scrutiny and criticism. Shows like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Moon Knight, and Secret Invasion have all forced fans to question the state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and wonder whether or not the franchise has fully lost the kind of quality control that originally made it so popular and noteworthy.Now, Marvel is set to cap off 2023 with the release of What If…? Season 2. The animated anthology series’ long-awaited sophomore season comes well over two years after its first premiered in August 2021. Unlike What If…? Season 1, which unfurled weekly, the show’s newest episodes are set to be released across nine consecutive days. In case that wasn’t strange enough, Marvel’s promotion of What If…? Season 2 has also been strangely minimal.
Continued here
|
S44The Poignant Physicality of Zac Efron  If we had our druthers, celebrities would kindly cast themselves in amber. Stray too far, too fast from the looks that made them famous and they’re likely to be slapped with a charge: “unrecognizable,” a judgment that, like any other, betrays much about the beholder. We assign the term less often to those who dare to age than to those who go to conspicuous lengths to avoid doing so. In the Olympic spectatorship of modern star worship, “unrecognizable” reflects the tenacious belief that public faces are public property.One of those public faces, that of the thirty-six-year-old actor Zac Efron, has been dogged by accusations of unrecognizability since 2021, when fans noted a conspicuous change in his jawline. Transforming from boyish to Cro-Magnon seemingly overnight, he was accused of having undergone something more than the natural maturing of a once-upon-a-time Disney star—a surgical intervention, perhaps. Vanity had exacted a price on our boy, and we weren’t going to let his altered visage go unexplained. Last fall, Efron finally addressed “jaw-gate,” telling Men’s Health that he’d slipped and shattered his jaw back in 2013, causing certain muscles in his face to overcompensate. “The masseters just grew,” he said. Whatever could be made of that tale, the new face—his face—was here to stay.
Continued here
|
S14Scrutiny of OpenAI and Microsoft relationship could affect how AI industry grows and innovates  The boardroom of OpenAI, the business that developed ChatGPT, has seen some turbulent times recently. But while the drama around the sacking and reinstatement of CEO Sam Altman has subsided, the company now faces investigation by the UK competitor authority – a regulator that’s been increasingly training its spotlight on big tech in recent years. After the surprise sacking of Altman by OpenAI’s board in November, he was immediately hired by tech giant Microsoft, which also pushed for him to be reinstated as CEO of OpenAI. A few days later it was confirmed that Altman was back as OpenAI CEO, alongside a new board on which Microsoft was granted a non-voting observer seat.
Continued here
|
S43Should the Fourteenth Amendment Be Used to Disqualify Trump?  “We travel in uncharted territory,” the Colorado Supreme Court observed on Tuesday, as it ruled that Donald Trump’s name cannot appear on that state’s Republican Presidential-primary ballot. Indeed, the court’s 4–3 majority found that Trump had taken part in an insurrection on January 6, 2021, and that Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment thus disqualifies him from serving as President or in “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State.” This would suggest that Trump—and many others involved with January 6th—is not even eligible for a job running his local post-office branch, or as the property appraiser for Palm Beach County, Florida, where he lives.On a personal level, Trump probably shouldn’t be trusted to put a stamp on an envelope. In recent weeks, he has talked about being a bit of a dictator and accused migrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.” But, on a legal level, as the dissenting justices in Colorado recognized, the question of trust is not just about him. The case, Norma Anderson et al. v. Jena Griswold—Anderson is a Republican voter and Griswold is Colorado’s secretary of state—raises fundamental questions for our democracy about whom we trust to effectively bar people from taking part in governing the country. Serious jurists have good-faith doubts about whether Trump is eligible to be on the ballot; others, just as serious, find this use of Section 3 profoundly unsettling. Similar cases are pending in more than a dozen states. The Colorado majority, noting “the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us,” stayed the decision until at least January 4th, before the state’s ballots are due to be finalized, in order to give Trump a chance to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Continued here
|
S40When Americans Are the Threat at the Border  This fall, I visited the U.S. District Court in Tucson, Arizona, to observe proceedings in several cases involving U.S. citizens who had smuggled immigrants, drugs, or weapons across the border. One defendant was arrested when Customs and Border Protection officers spotted her stopping along a desert road to let a migrant into her car. A woman had tried to enter the United States with fentanyl stuffed in her clothing; others hid it in the crevices of their bodies. In one case, fentanyl was stitched into the lining of a purse. Some were caught trying to enter Mexico with AK-47 rifles, magazines, or rounds of ammunition stashed under their cars’ hoods or floorboards.The defendants, who pleaded guilty to these crimes, ranged in age from their twenties to sixties. They were men and women, Black, Latino, and white. One woman said that a man had approached her about smuggling in Tucson, Arizona. Another said she had been visiting friends in Mexico when a stranger asked whether she wanted to smuggle pills. When one man was asked whether he knew he was carrying weapons in his vehicle, he responded, “I never really know what it’s going to be.” He continued, “Today, I didn’t know what I had in the truck. It just got loaded and I just drove.”
Continued here
|
S56'Bayonetta Origins'' Emotional Finale Made Me Fall in Love With the Series All Over Again  How Bayonetta Origins' emotionally charged finale makes it the beating heart of the franchise.With its storybook aesthetic and puzzle platforming gameplay, there is little about Bayonetta Origins that truly connects it to the series it serves as a (loose) prequel to. Even after playing the game — and loving it — it's astounding that PlatinumGames turned one of the most overtly erotic characters in games into a family-friendly affair. At times, I found myself asking: “Does this even need to be a Bayonetta game?”
Continued here
|
S20What are the origins of Santa Claus?  We’re all familiar with the jolly, white-haired and bearded overweight man who sneaks down chimneys on Christmas Eve delivering presents to children. But where did this come from? With roots in Christianity, the origins of the world’s most beloved gift-giver transcend time, culture and religion.
Continued here
|
S23India's new manual for water supply will replicate past failures  Water utilities in India supply residents with water for an average of only four hours per day. Within cities, some neighbourhoods receive water almost all the time, while some receive less than half an hour per week. Intermittent supply of water inconveniences everyone and often disproportionately burdens the poorest and most vulnerable. Yet intermittent water supply has been the norm in India since at least 1873.
Continued here
|
S19What octopus DNA tells us about Antarctic ice sheet collapse  If we want to understand the future, it’s often useful to look at the past. And even more useful if you use octopus DNA to peer into worlds long gone. About 125,000 years ago, the Earth was in its last warm period between ice ages. Global average temperatures during this interglacial period were about 0.5–1.5°C warmer than pre-industrial levels.
Continued here
|
S32S69S16Ukraine recap: as cracks appear in western support, 2024 looks set to be a desperate fight for survival  While it may seem glib to repeat the notion of a new cold war, winter 2023-2024 has brought with it the sense that there is now an ever-more uncertain faultline between the west and an increasingly aggressive Russia – perhaps more vividly than at any time since the late 1980s. While it is considered a given that a united and determined response from Nato would have the capacity to outgun Russia in the event of the war in Ukraine escalating, US military planners need to factor in the need to maintain a sufficient deterrent force to counter any Chinese moves on Taiwan.All of which increases the stakes in Ukraine. If Russia were to conquer the whole of Ukraine (remembering it already effectively controls neighbouring Belarus), its border with Nato would extend across Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. Moldova, which – while having cordial relations with Nato is not a member, so not protected by the group’s mutual self-defence principle – would be more exposed. There have already been attempts to destabilise the country via the Russian separatist enclave of Transnistria.
Continued here
|
S26S42Colorado's Top Court Kicked Trump Off the Ballot. Will the Supreme Court Agree?  On December 19th, a 4-3 majority of Colorado's Supreme Court ruled that the former President Donald Trump is barred from holding office again because of his role during the January 6th riot at the Capitol, which led to at least seven deaths and dozens of injuries. Similar suits are proceeding in several other states. The Colorado court found that, according to Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, Trump "engaged in insurrection" and is therefore ineligible to serve in any federal, civil, or military position. The decision did not address the general election, but instead directed the Colorado secretary of state to leave Trump's name off the ballot for the Republican primary on March 5, 2024. The case is almost certain to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which, unlike the Colorado Supreme Court, has a strong conservative majority. (The Colorado court put its ruling on hold until next month to allow for Trump's legal team to file an appeal.)To understand how the Supreme Court might approach the case, I recently spoke by phone with Richard H. Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at New York University and an expert on election law. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed what the dissents in the Colorado decision suggest about the case's potential weaknesses and whether the results of the federal case against Trump for attempting to interfere with the transfer of power after the 2020 election will affect his ability to remain on the ballot.
Continued here
|
S30Hollywood's first major Black female superhero: how Wakanda Forever broke the mould  Black Panther: Wakanda Forever rewrote Hollywood’s script for superhero movies. English professor Diana Adesola Mafe was recently involved in an academic roundtable that offers a critical conversation about it and another film set in an African kingdom, The Woman King. She argues that Wakanda Forever is a breakthrough film. We asked her why.As big budget productions with Black female heroes, The Woman King and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever invite discussion and debate about Hollywood representations of Africa and the kinds of roles that women and girls can and should play. They lend themselves to discussing topics ranging from the importance of historical accuracy to the power of imagining alternative histories and fantastical futures.
Continued here
|
S64Scene Stealers 2023: The 10 Best Supporting Performances Across TV and Film  In a year chock-full of splashy starring vehicles, 2023 was surprisingly kind to the little guys. Some of the year’s biggest blockbusters boasted ensemble casts the size of football teams, a practice made cool again with the help of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Though their title characters will inevitably take some of the spotlight, a handful of the year’s most talked-about performances came from actors who made the most of their limited screen time.At the end of each year, Inverse looks back on the performances that stuck with us long after the credits rolled, and the actors who stole the show without top billing. From internet boyfriends to Oscar winners and relative unknowns, these 10 scene stealers each surpassed conventional expectations, delivering performances that went beyond what they were given on the page.
Continued here
|
S6256 Years Ago, a Trailblazing Sci-Fi Thriller Had a Ridiculous Twist That's Never Been Matched  The trailblazing alien-invasion movie wrapped itself in the trappings of an even more popular genre.“The aliens!” a skeptical character scoffs in the opening moments of Bollywood’s earliest sci-fi efforts. The object of his derision: a newspaper headline reporting rumors of UFOs in India. Minutes later, he’ll be dead. A mysterious assailant, pointedly left off-screen, will soon visit the doomed man as if in divine retribution – with only its scaly, three-fingered hand lingering in view, clutching a smoking “laser ray” weapon.
Continued here
|
S2Steve McQueen: Occupied City, a Nazi-era documentary that connects the past to the present  Oscar-winning British filmmaker Steve McQueen's mammoth documentary Occupied City arrives in US cinemas on Christmas Day, presenting a chilling chronicle of the systematic and brutal efforts to remove the Jewish population from Amsterdam during World War Two. It is a bold undertaking, four hours and 22 minutes long, and quite different from McQueen's other celebrated features, including 2014 best picture winner 12 Years a Slave, for which he is probably best-known.More like this:- Small Axe: 'The most exhilarating director working today'- The artists who outwitted the Nazis- Did a magician help vanquish the Nazis in WW2?
Continued here
|
S3Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom review: 'never attempts anything original or honest'  Ten years ago, Zack Snyder's Man of Steel was the first film to be set in a universe shared by DC's superheroes. The enterprise has had its ups and downs since then, and the last four DC films – Black Adam, Shazam: Fury of the Gods, The Flash and Blue Beetle – were definitely downs. It's probably for the best, then, that Warner Bros is now rebooting DC's cinematic universe, starting with James Gunn's Superman: Legacy in 2025. But that means that Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is officially the final film in the continuity that began back in 2013. It's the end of an era. And yet it's unlikely that anyone who sees the film will be shedding a tear.Not that the sequel to 2018's Aquaman is especially terrible. It has its own distinctively cartoony undersea setting that sets it apart from every other superhero film, even if it does bear a marked resemblance to the world of The Little Mermaid. And it hurtles along, delivering all of the explosions, fight sequences and quips that we’ve come to expect from today's superhero blockbusters. Any parents who fancy a two-hour snooze over the Christmas holiday while their young children are stimulated by loud noises and colourful lights could do worse than to buy some tickets.
Continued here
|
S4S5S6AI could improve your life by removing bottlenecks between what you want and what you get  Artificial intelligence is poised to upend much of society, removing human limitations inherent in many systems. One such limitation is information and logistical bottlenecks in decision-making.Traditionally, people have been forced to reduce complex choices to a small handful of options that don’t do justice to their true desires. Artificial intelligence has the potential to remove that limitation. And it has the potential to drastically change how democracy functions.
Continued here
|
S7UK supreme court rules Guant  The UK supreme court has ruled that a detainee in Guantánamo Bay can sue the UK government under English law over its alleged involvement in his detention and torture. This is the first case concerning the UK government’s liability for its participation in abuses committed by the CIA during the “war on terror”.Abu Zubaydah brought a claim for damages against the UK government in 2020. The court has not yet ruled on the merits of this claim. Rather, it has ruled on an important, though obscure, part of the case to do with which country’s law applies – English law, or those of foreign countries. The answer, according to the court, is English law.
Continued here
|
S8Christmas at Kew: what the royal household of King George III ate for their festive dinner in 1788  Picture the scene: a cosy but grand rural retreat. A long mahogany table is dressed for Christmas with evergreen foliage. Flickering flames in a huge stone fireplace reflect off crystal chandeliers, gold candelabras, and the jewelled tiaras of ladies sitting down to dine. A parade of footmen arrives carrying 21 different dishes – sweet and savoury – which they carefully place along the length of the table. Thanks to a number of menu books from the time – kept by the kitchens at Kew Palace to monitor the royal household’s spending – we know precisely what dishes the Kew cooks created to feed not just the royal family, but every member of this household.
Continued here
|
 |
TradeBriefs Publications are read by over 10,00,000 Industry Executives About Us | Advertise Privacy Policy Unsubscribe (one-click) You are receiving this mail because of your subscription with TradeBriefs.
Our mailing address is GF 25/39, West Patel Nagar, New Delhi 110008, India |
