   
CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!
 S40How to Follow Up with Someone Who's Not Getting Back to You   We’ve all been there. You email someone asking for a conversation, information, input, or an introduction, and you get no response. Whether you are reaching out to a coworker, a client, a recruiter, a classmate, or even an old friend, not everyone will get back to you on your timeline — if at all.
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S56S31'The Batman 2' Will Avoid a Classic Superhero Sequel Mistake  Superhero films are typically very crowded affairs. Nothing is too much when it comes to capes and cowls, a fact especially apparent for heroes with exciting rogues’ galleries. Batman is one such hero: no matter the film, you can count on a gaggle of villains raising hell in Gotham City. The Caped Crusader is one man against an army, and while that theme has produced a handful of truly brilliant conflicts, an equal number of Batman films turn out overstuffed.The Batman somehow managed to avoid this fate. Director Matt Reeves included a grand total of five villains in the 2022 film, but each served the story in fresh, subversive ways. It was a success, and with a sequel in the pipeline, there’s no reason why Reeves wouldn’t attempt that same balancing act again. That, at least, is what insiders have been suggesting since The Batman - Part II was announced.
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S70S16The care home sector got  The Coronavirus public inquiry has made public all manner of decisions taken by the UK government, during the pandemic, that have shocked the nation.In particular, Jenny Harries, current head of the UK Health Security Agency, has been accused of failing to protect care home residents, when it emerged that, as England’s deputy chief medical officer, she suggested in March 2020 that COVID-infected patients be discharged from hospital to care homes if the NHS were to be overwhelmed.
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S2815 Years Ago, David Fincher Made a Time-Bending Epic That Defied Expectations  Fincher isn’t usually known for warm and fuzzy feelings, but he embraces some romanticism in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.David Fincher is not a filmmaker whom many would associate with romance. You’re not left with many warm and fuzzy feelings after catching his gruesome take on the seven deadly sins, his cutthroat board room thriller, or treacherous take on a marriage story. Even his Christmas movies (more appropriately, the Fincher films that just so happen to release during the holiday season) are considered the “feel-bad” films of the year. And that’s as true for his take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — the infamous bearer of that aforementioned title — as it is for its predecessor, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
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S68Coming Soon: The Biggest Biodiversity Issues of 2024  Low-carbon fertilizer, printable DNA, bird-bashing buildings and a dozen other trends could greatly help or hurt biodiversity in 2024Omri Bronstein, from the University of Tel Aviv studies a Echinothrix Calamaris sea urchin at the laboratory of the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in the Israeli Mediterranean coastal city of Tel Aviv, on August 21, 2023. The Red Sea's spectacular coral reefs face a new threat, marine biologists warn, the mass death of sea urchins that may be caused by a mystery disease. Because the long-spined creatures feed on algae that can suffocate corals, their die-off could "destroy our entire coral reef ecosystem," a scientist said.
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S35The First Mirrors Of The World's Largest Telescope Just Arrived In Chile  The first mirrors for the European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) arrived at the scope’s future home in Chile just in time for Christmas, but the unboxing process is going to take a while longer — and there's definitely some assembly required.The 18 mirrors that sailed halfway around the world in late December are just the first of 798 hexagonal pieces that will eventually combine to form one, well, extremely large 128-foot-wide mirror. If everything goes according to plan, that giant mirror — the largest optical and infrared telescope mirror in the world — will start gathering light from alien worlds, ancient galaxies, and supermassive black holes in 2028.
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S69The Human Body Is Bags, Bags and More Bags  Your brain might be like a computer, and your digestive system like a tube, but in the end, your whole body is just a bag full of bagsYour kidneys are like filters. Your brain is like a computer. Your digestive system is like a tube. Your hands are controlled a bit like a marionette. These comparisons exist in part because doctors and scientists are desperate to find ways to visualize our bodies, in search of aids to understanding—with the bonus that it’s not quite as visceral as the real thing.
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S17Vivek Ramaswamy is the millionaire millennial running for US president. Is he running towards a career low?  “I am launching not only a political campaign but a cultural movement to create a new American Dream.” This was Vivek Ramaswamy’s rallying cry as he launched his bid for the Republican party’s presidential nomination.Ahead of the first US Republican primary in Iowa on January 15, Ramaswamy continues to pitch himself as a young radical who will abolish the FBI, the Department of Education, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Food and Nutrition Service.
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S25A Sense of Mystery and Wonder in a New "Color Purple"  The prime success of the new movie version of "The Color Purple" is its tone: it plays like legend, filtered through the pleasure and the pain of the telling. It's a musical, adapted from Alice Walker's novel and from Marsha Norman's book for the stage play (which is also a musical and provides the new movie with most of its songs). The interjections and interminglings of the musical sequences in the drama endow the story with narrative distance along with its emotional immediacy; this distance from within seemingly conveys the very notion of adaptation, the feeling of tales retold, reimagined, relived. The movie's director, Blitz Bazawuleâmaking only his second feature, following his ultra-low-budget dramatic fantasy "The Burial of Kojo," from 2018âcatches the sense of mysteries and wonders in his characters' lives, which are filled with extremes of sorrow and joy, with deep bonds of love, with enduring traditions, with collective memories spanning the land and baked into the bone.Bazawule starts the movie with a symbol clashâthe overhead view of a man on horseback, bearing a banjo, ambling slowly along a hard-baked dirt road, passing two girls in white dresses sitting in a tree and singing playfully, on Sunday morning, fretting about being late for churchâas, moments thereafter, a nearby group of women in backlight make their way down the road singing a rollicking gospel-inflected song. From the start, Bazawule suggests the conflicts between secular and religious Black American culture, between the spirit and the flesh, and between men's and women's worldsâand he does so by way of a crucial reference to one of the great works of art on these very themes, Julie Dash's 1991 film "Daughters of the Dust." Bazawule's adaptation of "The Color Purple" is set mainly in a small town on the Georgia coast; the story runs nearly forty years, from 1909 to 1947, and many of its images pay visual and tonal homage to Dash's movie (her sole Hollywood feature to date)âwomen on the beach, wearing white and light-colored lacy dresses, amid sere and stark trees, gathering spontaneously in formations of a hieratic splendor. (Even the image of the two girls that's part of the movie's extended and swooping first shot is a nod to a similar one from Dash's film.) With "Daughters," Dash places Black Americans' intimate dramas in a mighty historical arc with metaphysical dimensions; with his "Color Purple," Bazawule acknowledges Dash's work as a landmark in that history and a fundamental inspiration in his approach to historical drama.
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S382023's Most Gut-Wrenching Video Game Was a Redundant Spinoff  From a zombie apocalypse to a samurai drama, Like a Dragon isn’t afraid to get ambitious with its spinoffs. The latest entry, however, feels like it lands in a much more somber, introspective place. After the end of Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, it felt like series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu had the sendoff he deserved. But Like a Dragon Gaiden brought the hero back for another adventure, one that often felt like unnecessary filler. That is, until the end of the game, which brought along the most emotionally harrowing finale of the year. Spoilers up ahead if you’re not caught up.At the end of Yakuza 6, Kiryu faked his demise, walking into the sunset to protect the children he’s adopted and formed a family with. It was a bittersweet but poignant ending that felt in line with Kiryu’s entire arc across the series. For all intents and purposes, it felt like Kiryu was done and the torch was being passed to Ichiban Kasuga, the hero of Yakuza: Like a Dragon.
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S29The 10 Best Video Game Boss Battles of 2023, Ranked  In your typical Final Fantasy game, the drama builds to such incredible tension that the only release comes from murdering some version of god while an epic orchestral score plays in the background. It’s the perfect combination of emotional stakes, a jaw-dropping twist, and some rad new gameplay mechanic, all coming together to deliver another classic boss battle.Of course, there’s no formula for the perfect boss battle, but the best ones usually have some combination of those factors — and a gorgeous cinematic cut-scene doesn’t hurt either. In an excellent year for gaming at large, 2023 had no shortage of top-tier boss battles. So from Ganondorf and Venom to giant mechs and fire demons, here are the 10 absolute best of the year.
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S20The Taste of Things review: this gastronomic French tale is a feast for the senses  Trần Anh Hùng, the Vietnamese-born French director known for his Oscar-nominated film The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) and Norwegian Wood (2010), returns with another gorgeous work, The Taste of Things. Due for UK release in February 2024, the film is already out in France. As its title indicates, the film is about gastronomy. The Taste of Things has already won the best director award at Cannes, and has now been chosen as the French entry for best international feature film (over Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall) at the 2024 Oscars.
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S21Being an 'authentic' CEO is a job in itself for women  Late last year I ended an almost six-year stint as a public- and policy-facing CEO in London to move to the countryside and work part-time. Prior to that, I’d spent three decades rising up the ranks in the media and university leadership. It has taken a clean break from the boardroom to clear the mental clutter. One bizarre realisation that has bubbled up is that I haven’t seen my natural hair colour in 40 years.Like so many of my female contemporaries who began work in the 1970s and 80s, I found it necessary to conceal some personal characteristics and perform others to achieve seniority, then maintain it. This reminds me of a boss I once worked for and admired. On “dress down Fridays”, this powerful, experienced manager rocked up in an impeccable denim two-piece with shoulder pads and a silk business-dress shirt. In the same way, for decades I’ve masked parts of who I really am at work – how I look, sound and naturally act.
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S4A Michelin-starred chef, Gucci table settings and donated food  It was just after 17:00 on a mid-September evening at the historical Emanuel AME Church in Harlem, New York City. But instead of parishioners seated in pews waiting for a sermon, members of the surrounding, mostly low-income Black neighbourhood were sat at dining tables on chairs upholstered in blue and red patterned Gucci fabric while artworks like Carlo Benvenuto's pane metafisico (metaphysical bread) adorned the walls. In front of them was a menu listing three courses: caramelised onion and Pecorino tart; roasted chicken with Brussel sprouts and butternut squash puree; and vegan chocolate cake.Each dish was prepared with "leftover" ingredients, offered free of charge and placed alongside a coordinating blue cloth napkin with a tag that read, "you are loved" in hand-written script.
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S26The Year of the Orca  On the night of May 4th, the skipper Werner Schaufelberger was sailing the Swiss yacht Champagne toward a Spanish port town on the Strait of Gibraltar when he heard a loud rumble. His first thought was that the boat had hit something, but he quickly realized that the vessel was under assault—by a group of orcas. “The attacks were brutal,” Schaufelberger told the German magazine Yacht. Three orcas, the large black-and-white dolphins also known as killer whales, worked in tandem; a large orca rammed the boat from the side while two smaller ones gnawed at the rudder until it was destroyed and the yacht was taking on water. Schaufelberger radioed for help, and the Spanish Coast Guard sent a helicopter and rescue cruiser to collect the four people on board. None were injured. The only casualty was the Champagne itself, which sank while being towed toward land.The orcas that sunk the Champagne are part of a small group, thought to number fifteen altogether, that have been having run-ins with boats in and near the Strait of Gibraltar since 2020. That was the third vessel that they had sunk in a year. It wasn’t the last. The orcas have continued their disruptions—with encounters happening almost every day in May and June—and coverage in both traditional and social media has bloomed. One sailor said that the orcas had playfully thrashed his boat around “like a rag doll,” removed the rudders, and left him marooned for days. Another, Captain Dan Kriz, described an encounter with the same group of orcas that had rammed his boat three years earlier: they had honed their strategy, he reported, working more quickly and quietly than they had before. On Instagram, a video of the orcas tailing Kriz’s boat showed two of them tidily detaching both rudders. “Check the rudder in its mouth! This is crazy!!” the caption exclaimed (posted only after the crew was safe on land). In those summer encounters, the damaged vessels stayed afloat. In late October, several orcas spent the better part of an hour ramming and otherwise roughing up a yacht called the Grazie Mamma II, off the Moroccan coast. Everyone on board was safely rescued, but the Grazie Mamma II sank.
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S49The Most Popular Ascend Articles of 2023  As the year draws to a close, we want to take a moment to show our appreciation and gratitude for you — our readers. This year, we published novel ideas from a vast range of voices and perspectives with the intention of making a positive impact on the workplace (and in your world). Through your messages, emails, comments, likes, and shares, you’ve let us know exactly what has been the most meaningful to you and what you’d like to see more of in 2024.
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S24Rivka Galchen on the Inner Lives of the Dead  In “Crown Heights North,” your story in this week’s issue, a dead man downloads a running app—that’s the setup, both simple and deeply complicated. The man was in his mid-fifties when he died, and he now finds himself in an afterlife that bears a strong resemblance to the world he knew prior to his death. What appealed to you about an afterlife that didn’t involve bliss or damnation?Bliss has always creeped me out, and damnation doesn’t sound very compelling, either. That said, my own afterlife preferences were outweighed by other emotions and experiences, at least one of which is the intimacy and privacy of moving through a landscape with a voice in your ear that nobody else around you can hear. That really is like being in an alternate world, while still being in the same one. Or it is for me! Many other contemporary humans have been walking around with recorded voices piping through their headphones for years, but I never went around much with my own private soundspace until I started to go on runs with recorded coaching voices.
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S8Where do all of James Bond's gadgets come from? A geologist tells the raw truth  Laser watches, fingerprint guns, explosives and, of course, over-equipped cars: the list of gadgets flaunted by James Bond is as bewildering as the mind of their inventor, Q. While some of these gadgets actually exist (laser, fingerprint recognition, back reactor), others, as we shall see, are more fanciful. But they all have one thing in common: the raw materials needed to make them, and in particular the mineral resources that geologists are helping to extract from the earth’s crust. Below are some that jumped out of the screen for me.
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S70Yes, the Climate Crisis Is Now 'Gobsmacking.' But So Is Progress  Scientists are running low on words to adequately describe the world's climate chaos. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could already say earlier this month that there was more than a 99 percent chance that 2023 was the hottest year on record. That followed September's sky-high temperaturesâan average of 0.5 degrees Celsius above the previous recordâwhich one climate scientist called "absolutely gobsmackingly bananas." When one of this summer's rapidly intensifying hurricanes, fueled by extraordinarily high ocean temperatures, leapt from a 60-knot tropical storm to a 140-knot Category 5, one scientist simply tweeted: "Wait, what???"For many climate scientists, words are failingâor at least getting as extreme as the weather. It's part of the conundrum they face in delivering ever more shocking statistics to a public that may be overwhelmed by yet more dismal climate news. They need to say something urgent ⦠but not so urgent that people feel disempowered. They need to be shocking ⦠but not so shocking that their statements can be dismissed as hyperbole. But what can they do when the evidence itself is actually extreme?
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S50S45The C-Suite Skills That Matter Most  Landing a job as a CEO today is no longer all about industry expertise and financial savvy. What companies are really seeking are leaders with strong social skills. That’s what the authors discovered after analyzing nearly 5,000 job descriptions for C-suite roles. Their explanation for this trend? Business operations are becoming more complex and tech-centered; workforce diversity is growing; and firms face greater public scrutiny than ever before. Those conditions call for leaders who are adept communicators, relationship builders, and people-oriented problem solvers. To succeed in the future, the authors argue, companies will need to focus on those skills when they evaluate CEO candidates and develop in-house talent.
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S55S34'Percy Jackson' Just Reworked an Iconic Character in One Controversial Way  With original author Rick Riordan on board, Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians is poised to be one of the most faithful adaptations of a book series in recent history. In some ways, the series can be even more faithful to the original myths than the books could. In Episode 3 of the new fantasy series, Percy, Annabeth, and Grover come face to (veiled) face with one of the most iconic villains in myth, but her story veers from the original books in a way that makes her much more interesting. Percy Jackson Episode 3, “We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium,” follows the newly formed questing trio as they set out for Los Angeles. But after being attacked, their original plan of taking the bus is foiled and they have to explore the forests of New Jersey, a decision that leads them to a strange house.
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S7S10How to get the most out of a visit to an art gallery with kids  In our house we have a favourite story about the time our toddler was dragged from the National Portrait Gallery kicking and screaming “I want to see more paintings!!!” She needed lunch, we had to go, but she really loved the “Nick Cave Gallery”, as she called it, with his luminous portrait by Howard Arkley on display.
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S53S32PlayStation Executive Tells Us How The Best Indie Games Are Judged  A giant cop watching a suspect from stories above, a telephone hotline for domestic cryptids, the horror of having a bad landlord who’s also a witch — those are just a few unexpected things on display at this year’s Day of the Devs: The Game Awards Edition stream. For more than a decade, Day of the Devs has been the go-to showcase for the best in-development indie games you won’t see anywhere else.Originally conceived as a launch party for Double Fine’s Broken Age, Day of the Devs has grown from a single party to a worldwide event with an in-person festival and multiple showcase streams. For the first time, Day of the Devs partnered with The Game Awards this year, bringing it to even more people.
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S51S37'Baldur's Gate 3': How To Finish The Masterwork Weapon  Baldur’s Gate 3 frequently rewards players who take the time to painstakingly comb over every nook and cranny of its expansive world with a scavenger hunt for worthwhile, early-game items. Scouring an abandoned house in the Blighted Village (X: 26 Y: 424) unveils schematics for masterwork weapons. Here are the steps you’ll need to craft a Masterwork Weapon. Although Highcliff’s journal doesn’t disclose where you can find the blueprints for masterwork weapons, you won’t have to stray far to locate them. As the kids say, the call is coming from inside the house. The Eastern side of the very same building you’re in has a giant web covering a hole in the ground. Torch that web, grab the old key on the box next to it (for later), and leap inside the hole. If you pass a perception check, you should avoid a booby trap lying in wait for you on a wooden chest. Disarming the chest requires a level 10 Sleight of Hand check (quick save before attempting!). Inside, you’ll find Highcliff's Blueprints which reveal that you’ll need to use Sussur Tree Bark to craft the Masterwork Weapons.
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S33This Wild EV Projects a 100-Inch Movie Screen From Its Headlights  Not every EV needs a gimmick, but a good one goes a long way — and the Aito M9 has a very good one.For this recently announced electric SUV, it’s the headlights, which go from projecting important driver info in front of you to a full-blown movie up to 100 inches. The electric six-seater SUV comes from a joint venture between Huawei, which is more known for designing smartphones, and Seres, a Chinese EV brand.
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S36S13S57S5Discover the five best ramen spots in Tokyo  Ramen might be Japan's best-adapted import. A version of Chinese wheat noodle soups said to have reached Japan via Yokohama's Chinatown in the late 1800s or early 1900s, it has become the ultimate Japanese comfort food.For some, the frenzied slurping of noodles from a piping-hot soup is the culinary hug that makes a bad morning in the office feel better. For others, it's a satisfying (and cheap) way to cap a day out with friends or recover from a night of drinking. Some will even wait in line for hours to try the noodles at a famous ramen joint.
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S9S42When Great Minds Don't Think Alike  As organizations strive to make their workforces more diverse with respect to race, gender equity, and people with disabilities, leaders need to apply these same strategies to employees with different kinds of minds. The author, who has more than 50 years of experience in industry and academia, explains how she processes information as a visual thinker and shares how business leaders can harness the power of different kinds of thinkers. Doing so will increase creativity, ignite problem solving, and lead to more cohesive workplaces.
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S22Can golf courses help save the planet? Ask a herd of wild pigs  An Arizona golf course, so picture-perfect it was described as “the Imax of golf”, was wantonly trashed by intruders in the autumn of 2023. But no, this was not Just Stop Oil back for another round, nor the result of a disgruntled golfer. In fact, it was the work of a squadron of javelinas.Javelinas (or peccaries) are small but feisty relatives of the domesticated pig, found across the southern US and into South America. Like many of their relations, javelinas are bright, enterprising and with an extensive palate that includes everything from tubers to roadkill, though cacti are a firm favourite.
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