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 S41These Key Hunter-Gatherer Traits Could Drastically Improve Your Longevity   Many of us want to live long, happy, and healthy lives. Yet it’s often confusing to know the best way to achieve this, and many aspects of modern, westernized living conspire to keep us from achieving this goal.The solution may be to step back in time. For the bulk of our existence, we evolved following a hunter-gatherer lifestyle of foraging for food and hunting animals. Today, only a few hunter-gatherer communities still exist, such as the Hadza of Tanzania.
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S60Preventing Child Abuse Should Not Be Controversial. My Own Hate Mail Reveals That It Is  A deep dive into one scholar’s correspondence shows society prefers blame and punishment over protecting children from sexual violenceIn my senior year of college, I began my first job as a social worker, counseling victims of sexual assault. I began every morning determined to help my clients, who had experienced major trauma. But in sessions, I felt powerless, like there was never enough I could do for them. And by the time I left each evening, all I could feel was rage for my clients who had been sexually abused—especially when they were children. I wondered why their abuse hadn’t been prevented; why we weren’t stopping it before it began.
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S40'True Detective' Season 4 Easter Eggs Tease the Answer to a Decade-Long Mystery  It may end up being the coldest show of the year, but there’s something immediately warm and welcoming about True Detective: Night Country. HBO’s new season of True Detective couldn’t, in many ways, be any more different from the three that have come before it. For starters, none of the show’s original creative team members, including series creator Nic Pizzolatto, are involved in it. The season is instead produced by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins and created and directed by Tigers Are Not Afraid filmmaker Issa López.And yet, despite the behind-the-scenes changes that informed its creation and production, Night Country immediately feels like it fits right in with the first three seasons of True Detective. It announces itself as a new era for the beloved, long-troubled HBO crime procedural, and it does so without ever hitting you directly over the head. That’s one of the most impressive things about True Detective: Night Country’s premiere: How it connects itself tonally and narratively with its show’s past while also carving out an entirely new space for itself.
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S53S64Comedian Jay Pharoah on fear, forgiveness, and not fitting in  When Jay Pharoah started doing impressions at age 6, he viewed the hobby as a way to escape a difficult childhood. As he honed his skills, his talent turned into a tool to impress his peers – and ultimately, a springboard for a successful career in comedy. “I would say it was a comfort blanket when I was 16,” he tells us when we sit down for a chat with Big Think. “Because I wasn’t popular in school. And then all of a sudden, somebody told somebody that I did impressions. And then people would come and ask me to do it. So it was a way for me to make people like me because obviously the person that I was… I was just quiet. They didn’t like that, you know?”
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S42S55When an Active Pause Is the Best Strategic Choice  In the face of competitive threats, managers are tempted to do something, because being active feels better than being passive. In fact, an active pause can make the most sense. This is especially true in industries facing a big technological change, when going “all in” on a nascent technology may have larger long-term costs than benefits.
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S62S58How Spotify helped turn Afrobeats into a global phenomenon  Aoi Narita was a marketing consultant for Japanese startups in Kenya in 2021 when she first heard the song “Love Nwantiti” by Nigerian Afrobeats artist CKay, and fell in love with the music genre almost immediately. “I had no idea what he was saying but just the melody was always in my head,” she told Rest of World over text. “Since then, I started listening to different Afrobeats artists, and I still listen to them all the time.”In November 2022, Narita moved to Nigeria as an investment manager at early-stage venture capital firm Kepple Africa Ventures. “One of the reasons I wanted to live in Nigeria instead of Kenya was because of the music,” she said. Five of the top songs and artists she streamed on Spotify in 2023 were related to Afrobeats. “I think 98% [of the music] I’m listening to [is] Afrobeats. [The] other 2% is K-pop or Japanese songs … But because I only listen to Afrobeats/Amapiano, Spotify doesn’t recommend other types of music,” Narita wrote over text.
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S3915 Years Ago, EA Learned the Wrong Lesson From Its Boldest Flop  In 2018, USA Today named Electronic Arts the fifth-most hated company in America, which was actually an improvement from when The Consumerist awarded them the gold medal two years in a row. The case wrote itself: EA shutters once-profitable studios, aggressively pushes obnoxious loot boxes, and has long forced crunch on developers, among other sins.Perhaps the most common complaint is that EA fails to innovate. Fans and critics have called out their overpriced Sims 4 content packs, the laziness of their yearly sports titles, and their undercooked sequels to legacy franchises. But it wasn’t always this way. In 2008, EA took a genuine creative risk on two new franchises… and was punished for it.
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S38Donald Trump Coasts to Victory in the Iowa Republican Caucuses  Donald Trump spent 2023 working to insure that the Republican primaries would be organized around him—that within the closed circuit of the G.O.P., at least, he could run as if he were actually the incumbent, with the prerogatives still intact. He ducked the debates, draining them of drama; persuaded some Republican officials in states around the country to adjust primary and caucus rules to make them more favorable to him; and used the many legal cases against him as a way of amplifying his victimhood. The nominating contest’s long preamble concluded on Monday evening, with Trump winning the Iowa caucuses with around fifty per cent of the vote. Trump had spent last year largely ignoring the Party’s more moderate candidates and fixating on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the only challenger who seemed to threaten to pry the Party’s most conservative voters away from him. The results on Monday, in a state dominated by social traditionalists, proved Trump had succeeded. DeSantis came in a distant second, mustering only about twenty per cent of the vote. In conservative country, Trump’s campaign is moving with the brutal efficiency of clockwork.The candidates in the current Republican Presidential primaries have generally been so dyspeptic, and the voters so broadly indifferent, that the early campaign has been drained of its usual political romance and contingency. The deep icy chill that covered Iowa over the final weekend, with wind chills reaching forty below, brought a flicker of the old weirdness. “After passing nearly 50 jackknifed semis on the final 100-mile stretch of 1-80, we’re awaiting the arrival of Nikki Haley in eastern Iowa,” the Huffington Post’s Liz Skalka posted on X. The situation made Trump himself sardonic. “Even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it, remember,” he told a pre-caucus rally in Indianola.
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S453 Questions Sales Teams Should Ask After Losing (or Winning) a Deal  When salespeople lose a deal, most prefer to move on rather than linger over the specifics of the loss. Similarly, when they win a deal, most are quick to celebrate. But very few take the time to assess why they won the business. In the authors’ experience leading and coaching sales teams, they see evidence that a brief, well-pointed sales retrospective, where you unpack the reasons behind a win or a loss, can significantly improve a team’s future win rate. Beyond the obvious benefits for the sales team — for whom the process can help identify the best messaging and behaviors to use going forward — unpacking wins and losses also provides valuable insights for product, marketing, and finance teams. Teams should ask three questions: 1) How would the customer articulate the value of their choice? 2) Who was the most influential voice in and out of the room? 3) Beyond price, what were the key deciding factors in the client’s decision?
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S37A Drug-Decriminalization Fight Erupts in Oregon  In the early months of the pandemic, joggers on the Bear Creek Greenway, in southern Oregon, began to notice tents cropping up by the path. The Greenway, which connects towns and parks along a tributary of the Rogue River, was beloved for its wetlands and for stands of oaks that attracted migrating birds. Now, as jobs disappeared and services for the poor shut down, it was increasingly a last-ditch place to live. Tents accumulated in messy clusters, where people sometimes smoked fentanyl, and “the Greenway” became a byword for homelessness and drug use. On a popular local Facebook page, one typical comment read, “Though I feel sorry for some of the people in that situation, most of them are just pigs.” In Medford, the largest city along the trail, police demolished encampments and ticketed people for sleeping rough.One September evening in Medford, a white cargo van belonging to a nonprofit called Stabbin Wagon parked near the Greenway, between an auto-repair shop and a Wendy’s. For unhoused people across Oregon, cargo vans have become a symbol of help. Some contain primary-care clinics and food pantries. Others, like Stabbin Wagon’s, distribute a more controversial kind of aid: safe supplies for drug users.
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S4320 Years Ago, a Completely Unhinged Crime Thriller Was Ahead of Its Time -- By About 7 Years  In 2004, Fast & Furious was barely even a franchise. While the first movie, about a cop who infiltrates a street racing gang, was a hit at the box office, nobody could have predicted where the saga would eventually lead. And although 2 Fast 2 Furious helped establish a unique approach to sequel titles (and added Ludacris to the family), it was a critical flop that didn’t even feature Vin Diesel.In other words, in the early 2000s, the road to franchise domination for a movie series about cool dudes and their super-fast vehicles was wide open. Enter: Torque.
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S47S59Space and Submarine Explorers Are Right to Take Risks  What lessons does the loss of the Titan submersible have for preventing spaceflight disasters?As we await the final investigation results from the loss of the Titan submersible, which killed five people last summer at a depth of over 12,000 feet in the Atlantic, the tragedy has drawn questions far above the ocean depths, asking whether similar hazards face the burgeoning private exploration of space.
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S28S31S65Want to build trust in your  One day Steve Jobs was asked to describe what he found most important in the development of a product. His response is worth reading in full: “You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was that after I left, John Scully got a very serious disease. And that disease, I’ve seen other people get it too: it’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work.
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S44On the shared histories of reconstruction in the Americas | Aeon Essays  Orizaba (desde el puente de Paso del Toro) (1877) by Casimiro Castro. From Album of the Mexican Railway. Courtesy of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TexasOrizaba (desde el puente de Paso del Toro) (1877) by Casimiro Castro. From Album of the Mexican Railway. Courtesy of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas
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S51S57Why the hovercraft's time might have finally arrived  The 12.30pm midweek hovercraft departure from Portsmouth is already respectably half-full when we step on board. Marketed as the world's only year-round scheduled passenger hovercraft service, the Union Jack-emblazoned machine flies for a thrilling 10 minutes, hovering just inches above the water’s surface. It is the fastest way to reach Ryde on the Isle of Wight, a Detroit-sized island off the south coast of England. A rival vehicle, the FastCat ferry, takes more than twice as long, around 22 minutes.The hovercraft's engines roar (no louder than an airliner on take-off) as its beefy cushion inflates, lifting the vehicle gently five feet (1.6m) into the air. Then, it turns and slides seamlessly into the sea on its dash to Ryde. The 78-seater craft's unique ability to fly over sand and mud without damaging the fragile ecosystems underneath means that passengers may board even at low tide.
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S67Are electric vehicles actually cheaper to own? Maybe not.  Electric vehicles (EVs) have undeniably entered the mainstream in the United States. According to estimates from Kelley Blue Book, more EVs were sold last year than were sold between 2011 and 2018. The roughly 1.2 million new EVs put into service in 2023 represented 7.6% of the total U.S. car market. Cox Automotive’s Economics and Industry Insights team boldly predicted that this share will climb to 10% in 2024.EVs’ impressive growth has played out even though they remain significantly more expensive to purchase than gasoline-powered cars, with only a handful of options priced below $40,000. EV proponents counter this drawback by claiming that EVs are actually cheaper to own over the long term, with lower fuel and maintenance costs making up for the higher sticker price. Studies examining cars’ total cost of ownership back their assertions.
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S52S49S32The scene in the West Bank's Masafer Yatta: Palestinians face escalating Israeli efforts to displace them  Our ride pulls over on the side of the highway to let us out and we begin our 20-minute hike into the village of Wadi Tiran in the occupied West Bank. Before Oct. 7, 2023, there was a road that went all the way to the village, but Jewish settlers have since blocked it. Considering that in November, settlers threatened to kill anyone who didn’t leave the Palestinian village within 24 hours, the hike seems like a small price to pay for Palestinians to remain on their land. But this is not the only community that has been threatened with death if villagers don’t leave the land they have lived on for thousands of years.
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S70Meta verification proved useless--and my family is still locked out of Instagram  The trouble began three days before Christmas. When my sister-in-law Amy tried to log in to her Instagram account shortly before midnight, she was notified that an unauthorized user had tried to access her account. Instagram suggested that she change her password. Wanting to protect the security on her account—an important tool for her successful photography business—Amy did so.
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S56Survey: GenAI Is Making Companies More Data Oriented  Although cultural change generally requires human intervention, it appears that new technology — especially a new technology like generative AI that captures human imaginations — can play a role in catalyzing a data-oriented culture. In an annual survey assessing attitudes about data, analytics, and AI, data and technology leaders in large companies reported significant improvement in their organizations’ data culture. Given that the 2023 survey was fielded just before ChatGPT was announced, generative AI seems the likely cause of the leap in positive responses around culture. To take advantage of this, companies need to invest in experimentation, production deployment, and education.
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S50S69S61A Scandal Is Tearing the World of Record-Breaking Dogs Apart .jpg) When Bobi, the world’s oldest dog, died in October 2023, the outpouring of grief online was immediate. But it wasn’t long before that sadness turned to suspicion, as experts raised doubts about whether the Portuguese dog really did make it to 31 years and 163 days. In December, a (totally serious) WIRED investigation revealed that a government agency that was supposed to have verified Bobi’s age didn’t actually have evidence he was born in 1992.Now the doubts surrounding Bobi’s longevity are spiraling into an even bigger scandal that is rocking the world of record-breaking dogs. Guinness World Records, which verifies the longest-lived dogs in the world, says that it has temporarily paused the records for the oldest living dog and oldest dog ever while it reviews the evidence behind Bobi’s record. For now, the throne of the world’s oldest dog remains empty.
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S46A Sports Analogy for Understanding Different Ways to Use AI  The potential impact of generative AI on the economy, society, and work is polarizing, swinging from the positive benefits of a technological revolution to doomsday scenarios. The authors have come to think about this issue as points on a spectrum and have created a sports analogy to help think about it: AI tools can range from steroids, to sneakers, to a coach, each representing a different relationship between human users and the technology. Steroids elevate short-term performance, but leave you worse off in the long term. AI-powered tools can instead be used to augment people’s skills and make them more productive — much like a good running sneaker. On the most desirable end of the spectrum, AI-powered tools can be used like a coach that improves people’s own capabilities. This framework can be used to help conceptualize how we might craft AI-based tools that enhance rather than diminish human capabilities.
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S68Einstein's 7 rules for a better life  When it comes to living your best life, Albert Einstein — notorious as the greatest physicist and genius of his time, and possibly of all-time — probably isn’t the first name you think of in terms of life advice. You most likely know of Einstein as a pioneer in revolutionizing how we perceive the Universe, having given us advances such as:But Einstein was more than just a famous physicist: he was a pacifist, a political activist, an active anti-racist, and one of the most iconic and celebrated figures in all of history.
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S23Post Office Horizon scandal: four reasons why the government's model for outsourcing is broken  For over a decade, the Post Office and its supplier, Fujitsu, insisted that the Horizon system used in its branches was completely “robust”. When discrepancies appeared in hundreds of branch accounts across the country, the Post Office refused to believe the system was at fault and didn’t challenge the information it got from Fujitsu. Instead, it blamed the shortfalls on sub-postmasters, made them pay the losses, and prosecuted over 700 of them.The multimillion-pound contract between the Post Office and Fujitsu is at the heart of the scandal. The way the contract worked meant that Fujitsu was incentivised to fix bugs quickly rather than well. The Post Office didn’t have the expertise it needed to understand what was going wrong. The Post Office’s dependence on Fujitsu also meant that it protected its relationship with them at the expense of sub-postmasters and the public.
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S22Six ways inequality holds back climate action  Are improvements to green technologies, like better batteries and more efficient solar panels, enough on their own to tackle climate change? Unfortunately not. Our behaviour and lifestyles must change too.Rolling out the solutions to climate change (electric vehicles, solar power, heat pumps) will require confronting the enormous gulf in wealth and resources separating the richest and poorest people – both within countries and between them.
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