Netflix Just Quietly Added the Most Underrated Superhero Thriller of the 2010s

Marvel has a bit of an X-Men problem. After The Marvels set up two huge initiatives in the Young Avengers and an X-Men crossover, it seemed like the story of a young mutant was inevitable. However, the only true success of this narrative has been in Logan (sorry, The New Mutants), and now that Logan is officially MCU canon, it can’t just be copied.But in 2018, while Marvel was busy fighting Thanos, an underseen indie movie crafted an original young mutant story that paints a perfect path for the MCU’s future. Luckily for both Marvel and you, that movie is now on Netflix.

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Yes: William Stafford's Poetic Calibration of Perspective

“No guarantees in this life.”

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Leading in the Flow of Work

Leadership development programs traditionally provide extensive training in how to influence and coach people, give feedback, build trust, and more. A new approach, which draws on faculties everyone already possesses, can greatly enhance those efforts. The leadership-in-flow model focuses on activating your inner core—your best self—by tapping into five energies: purpose, wisdom, growth, love, and self-realization. That can be done in the moment through one or more of 25 actions that take just seconds to perform, like appealing to purpose and values, creating the right frame, affiliating, and sparking joy. Now the basis of a popular course at Columbia Business School, leadership-in-flow can be used by people at all levels to unlock peak performance.

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Why Real-Time Leadership Is So Hard

Do you sometimes feel stuck as a leader, while at other times everything seems effortless? The explanation often lies in your own psychological state. When you’re in the zone, you express yourself naturally, venture beyond the familiar to pursue ambitious goals, embody your highest values, and embrace learning—and can accomplish extraordinary things. But four common stumbling blocks can prevent you from entering it: the misperceptions that there are no alternatives, that there is no hope, that there is no time, and that there is no need for leadership. Those misperceptions can be overcome, however, if you ask the right questions and follow a handful of practices designed to open your mind to a world of possibilities.

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Leading in a World Where AI Wields Power of Its Own

AI has been subtly influencing us for years, but a new generation of vastly more capable technology is now emerging. These systems, the authors write, aren’t just tools. They’re actors that increasingly will be behaving autonomously, making consequential decisions, and shaping social and economic outcomes.

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The New Rules of Executive Presence

Executive presence (EP) is typically perceived as consisting of three elements in descending order of importance: gravitas, skillful communication, and the “right” appearance. The author’s new research shows that while confidence and decisiveness are still paramount for gravitas, pedigree has become less central, and new weight is given to inclusiveness and respect for others. On the communication front, superior speaking skills and the ability to command a room still lead the list of desirable attributes, but comfort on Zoom, a “listen to learn” orientation, and authenticity are on the rise. Projecting authenticity is also key to the appearance component of EP; so are dressing for the “new normal,” having an online image, and showing up in person.

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Lessons from Large Family Firms About Choosing a CEO

Family businesses are infamous for nepotism and infighting, especially when it’s time to appoint a new CEO. But when global talent adviser Claudio Fernández-Aráoz and colleagues set out to help family firms improve their leadership transitions, they were surprised to find that large family businesses had much better succession practices than their nonfamily counterparts, and they outperformed on several measures after new appointees took the reins. Four practices could help other types of businesses ensure successful CEO transitions: approach succession proactively rather than in reaction to short-term performance issues, bring on a few long-term directors and empower them to lead the process, don’t obsess about formal procedures but double down on rigor, and empower new leaders from day one.

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We're Doing CEO Feedback Wrong - MIT Sloan Management Review

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.Maybe this sounds familiar: Once a year, your company’s leadership team takes an online survey or participates in individual interviews with the board chair or a leadership adviser about the CEO’s strengths and weaknesses. The resulting feedback is analyzed, prioritized, and then delivered to the CEO by the board chair: “You’re great at setting strategy, but your listening skills could be better.” An action plan is created and, with luck, revisited once or twice.

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Davos 2024: Can - and should - leaders aim to regulate AI directly?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is top of mind for many workers who are hopeful about its possibilities, but wary of its future implications.Earlier this month, researchers for the International Monetary Fund found that AI may affect the work of four in 10 employees worldwide. That number jumps to six in 10 in advanced economies, in industries as diverse as telemarketing and law. Additionally, a just-released report by the World Economic Forum showed half of the economists surveyed believed AI would become "commercially disruptive" in 2024 – up from 42% in 2023.

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Congo's blackwater Ruki River is a major transporter of forest carbon - new study

The Congo Basin of central Africa is well known for its network of rivers that drain a variety of landscapes, from dense tropical forests to more arid and wooded savannas. Among the Congo River’s large tributaries, the Ruki is unique in its extremely dark colour, which renders the water opaque below a few centimetres’ depth. As we watched the placid dark water of the Ruki flow by, we wondered just how much carbon this river was transporting and where it came from. To answer these questions, we decided to measure the carbon in the Ruki for one year to account for seasonal changes.

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Dietary fibre affects more than your colon: How the immune system, brain and overall health benefit too

However, most professionals would agree that a diet should be well balanced between the food groups, and it’s better to include more things like vegetables and fermented foods in your diet than restrict yourself unnecessarily. Eating foods that promote gut health improves your overall health too.Prebiotics aren’t actively digested and absorbed, rather they are selectively used to promote the growth of a beneficial species of microbes in our gut. These microbes then help digest foods for us so we can obtain more nutrients, promote gut barrier integrity and prevent the growth of harmful bacteria.

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Anti-racist, culturally responsive French immersion: Listening to racialized students is an important step towards equitable education

Programs are criticized for being elitist by some and praised for being exceptional by others. Research about students in Alberta has shown that language levels of French immersion graduates are low and many lack confidence in their French skills.

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Western moral credibility is dying along with thousands of Gaza citizens

Shaun Narine has contributed to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East and Jewish Voice for Peace.The western world’s feeble response to Israel’s attack on Gaza has severely damaged the West’s already tenuous moral credibility in the Global South and undermined the foundations of the human rights regime and international law developed after the Second World War.

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Undergoing cataract surgery when it's not necessary? Some do it to improve their eyesight, but it's not without risk

Professeur Titulaire. École d'optométrie. Expertise en santé oculaire et usage des lentilles cornéennes spécialisées, Université de Montréal Judy is an accomplished consultant who regularly travels for business meetings. She came to see me because she was finding her contact lenses uncomfortable and wanted to explore other options — notably surgical alternatives.

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Japan is now the 5th country to land on the Moon - the technology used will lend itself to future lunar missions

Japan landed its Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon, or SLIM, craft on the surface of the Moon on Jan. 20, 2024. Despite a power issue with the lander, the event holds both political and technical importance. It’s Japan’s first lunar landing – making it only the fifth country in the world to successfully land on the Moon. This is a significant achievement and solidifies Japan’s position as a leader in space technology. While the craft landed successfully on the lunar surface and deployed its rovers, SLIM’s solar cells were not functioning properly – meaning that the craft could likely only operate for a few hours.

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Is linking time in the office to career success the best way to get us back to work?

Working from home introduced in response to the harsh pandemic lockdowns in 2020 was expected to be a short term arrangement with staff returning to the office as soon as restrictions were lifted.Yet, almost four years later, most office workers are still following hybrid arrangements - splitting their week between home and office, with no plans to return full-time to the workplace anytime soon.

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Emily Wilson's fluent new translation of the Iliad honours the epic poem's power and beauty

A new translation of the Iliad of Homer is cause for a general celebration, especially when the translator is Emily Wilson of the University of Pennsylvania. Having turned her hand to translations of other Greek and Latin texts – notably Seneca, Euripides, Oedipus Tyrannos and Homer’s Odyssey – Wilson has moved on to the Iliad, joining an exclusive club of translators of this great work that includes Richmond Lattimore and Robert Fagles.

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I felt nothing at Madame Tussauds - until I found my brother's statue, and felt love

Spitting image, dead ringer, chip off the old block. Doubles, twins and doppelgangers have a funny way of tricking us. When I encountered Anne Zahalka’s photo portrait of Nicole Kidman at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, I assumed what I was looking at was a straightforward representation of the Hollywood actress.

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You can now order all kinds of medical tests online. Our research shows this is (mostly) a bad idea

Many of us have done countless rapid antigen tests (RATs) over the course of the pandemic. Testing ourselves at home has become second nature. But there’s also a growing worldwide market in medical tests sold online directly to the public. These are “direct-to-consumer” tests, and you can access them without seeing a doctor.

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It is time to draw down carbon dioxide but shut down moves to play God with the climate

Tim Flannery is Ambassador for RegenAqua, which uses seaweed and river grass to clean up wastewater before it flows out to sea and on to the Great Barrier Reef. He consults for the not-for-profit environmental charity, Odonata. He is Chief Councillor and Founding Member of the Climate Council, Governor at WWF-Australia, and sits on the board of the Kelp Forest Foundation, a philanthropic entity associated with Kelp Blue.The global effort to keep climate change to safe levels – ideally within 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures – is moving far too slowly. And even if we stopped emitting CO² today, the long-term impacts of the gas already in the air would continue for decades. For these reasons, we will soon have to focus not only on halting but on reversing global warming.

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There are 4 economic scenarios for the rest of the decade: I've reluctantly picked one

Percy Allan chairs The Reform Club which is a non-partisan public policy forum hosted by the ASX (Australian Securities Exchange).In January a year ago, two-thirds of the leading economists surveyed by the World Economic Forum forecast a global recession for 2023.

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The Solar System used to have nine planets. Maybe it still does? Here's your catch-up on space today

Coordinator Swinburne Astronomy Online | Program Lead of Microgravity Experimentation, Space Technology and Industry Institute, Swinburne University of Technology Some of us remember August 24 2006 like it was yesterday. It was the day Pluto got booted from the exclusive “planets club”.

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My favourite fictional character: Wintering's grotesque widows reveal the 'monstrous' woman as wise and progressive

A coven of faces. All women, all weathered. Old, middle-aged, younger; one teenager among them. […] They sat and breathed in each other’s stale exhalations. Breath like the grave. Jessica couldn’t help thinking that they were rotting inside. And now she was one of them. She had started to decompose.The widows are foul, unwashed, rank. They gather at an old farmstead with peeling wooden boards and “holes in the veranda you could put a fist though”. They give off a “urinous fug of sweat and unwashed clothing”. A woman in “a brown shapeless dress, sweat-stained at the armpits” grows long, dark hairs from her upper lip and neck. Their partners have all disappeared. And so has Jessica’s.

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You can pay to have your ashes buried on the moon. Just because you can doesn't mean you should

When NASA attempted to return to the Moon for the first time in 50 years on January 8, more was at risk than just US$108 million worth of development and equipment.The agency earned the ire of the Native American Navajo people, who made a bid to stop the launch because of an unusual inclusion in the payload.

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Why US strikes will only embolden the Houthis, not stop their attacks on ships in the Red Sea

As the Houthi militant group in Yemen ramps up its attacks on vessels in the Red Sea – ostensibly in response to what it calls Israel’s “genocidal crimes” in Gaza – the US and UK have responded with multiple military strikes in the last week. The US has also re-listed the group as a global terrorist organisation.The hope is these strikes will pressure the Iran-aligned Houthis to back down. It won’t, however. Short of a complete halt to Israel’s war in Gaza and a 180-degree shift in Western support for Israel’s approach, there is little that will dissuade the Houthis to change course in the foreseeable future.

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Wondering how to talk to your teen about drugs? Start the conversation early, be honest and avoid judgement

With several drug overdoses already this festival season, and recent news of three new recreational drugs identified by the drug checking service in Canberra, many parents of teenagers will be wondering how they can keep their kids safe from harmful drugs.It’s not the first time CANtest, Canberra’s fixed site drug checking service, has identified new drugs circulating. Worldwide, more than 1,000 new drugs have been released on to the illicit market in the past 15 years.

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TikTok's pomegranate obsession: the trendy fruit was also big during the Rennaissance to talk about female fertility

Pomegranates are hot right now, the red fruit with its glistening jewel-like segments has become the centre of a new TikTok trend. The hashtags #pomegranate and #pomegranategirl have been trending in videos featuring debates about sexuality and feminism.At the risk of sounding all staid and academic but this all is just so Renaissance. Actually, it is more than that, as the roots of pomegranate symbolism and its links to femininity and sexuality extend into classical writings. You’ll find the connection in Herodotus’ Histories and in many religious texts – from those belonging to Christianity and Islam to Zoroastrianism.

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British Gymnastics' new rules on weighing athletes - a sticking plaster solution

On November 29 2023, British Gymnastics (BG) released a new policy banning coaches from weighing gymnasts. The governing body’s CEO, Sarah Powell, described the new rule as a “significant and positive step forward for the sport”.Yet, when reading the policy in more detail, it seems like a light-touch response to an independent review that concluded BG “condoned” the emotional and physical abuse of gymnasts.

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The Architect of Our Divided Supreme Court

“Mrs. Justice Holmes died on Tuesday night,” the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, William Howard Taft, reported on May 5, 1929. Mr. Justice Holmes—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.—had relied on his wife, Fanny Bowditch, for nearly everything. They’d been married for fifty-seven years. Her death “seems like the beginning of my own,” Holmes wrote. And yet, on the very day of her death, Holmes, eighty-eight, drafted an opinion for the Court and sent it to the Chief. “I suppose there are a good many who are counting on his retirement,” Taft mused. “If so, they miss their guess.” In the end, it was Taft who went first, dying less than a year later, at the age of seventy-two.William Howard Taft is the only Chief Justice of the United States to have served as its President. If he cannot be said to have had the keenest legal mind, he had the strong and steady arm of an experienced executive. He ran the Court for only nine years, but during that time he ushered in sweeping reforms, changing not only how many cases the Court hears but also where it operates, elevating its power, its prestige, and, not least, its mystique. Originally, the Supreme Court heard essentially every case that reached its chambers; it had little choice. “Questions may occur which we would gladly avoid; but we cannot avoid them,” John Marshall, the longest-serving Chief Justice, wrote in 1821. A century later, in a country whose population had grown tenfold, the Court, still obliged to hear most cases brought before it, was overwhelmed by its backlog. Taft convened a committee that he charged with drafting legislation that would rationalize the Court’s docket. In what became known as the Judges’ Bill, the Justices proposed the certiorari system, by which they would, in most areas of law, be able to exercise their discretion to choose which cases they deemed worthy of their attention. Taft went before the House Judiciary Committee to explain the importance of “letting the Supreme Court decide what was important and what was unimportant.” Congress passed the bill in 1925. “Easily one-half of certiorari applications now presented have no justification at all,” Taft reported in the Yale Law Journal nine months later.

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25 Years Ago, Nintendo Took a Huge Risk That Changed Pop Culture Forever

In an entertainment age full of shared franchises, we’ve come to expect crossovers between fictional universes as all but inevitable. However, back in 1999, Super Smash Bros. on the Nintendo 64 felt downright revolutionary as it brought to life things that previously, players had only experienced in hypothetical arguments on the school playground and in fanfiction.It’s no surprise that Nintendo, the most famous video game developer/publisher of all time, would amass a collection of iconic characters. And in the few years preceding Super Smash Bros., it’s made a series of impressive leaps; bringing Mario into the realm of 3D with Super Mario 64, redefining The Legend of Zelda series with Ocarina of Time, and introducing the ultra-hit Pokemon franchise to the world, to name a few. Just as many referred to video game consoles in general as “a Nintendo,” the renown of these series and characters now extended far past their console homes. They were pop culture royalty. Generations of kids grew up knowing who Link, Mario, and Zelda were simply through osmosis.

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44 Years Later, a Forgotten Force Phenomenon Can Fix Star Wars' Biggest Problem

Ahsoka wrote itself into a corner from the start. By incorporating Thrawn, Hera, Sabine, and Ezra, it alienated viewers who hadn’t seen Rebels, and while most of these characters were re-introduced in Season 1, there’s still one element that continues to confound viewers.This particular problem doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. However, with just one minor change, Ahsoka Season 2 could avoid repeating its big mistake, and incorporate a little-seen Force power that’s existed since Empire Strikes Back.

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50 Things for Your Home Trending on Amazon That Are Sick as Hell

Ready to give your house some love? Or maybe you’re happy with the furniture, but what about the little things? Those things that bring real comfort, charm, personality, and organization to your space. Luckily, there are so many hidden gems that can transform your home. From heating vent attachments that direct the air away from you to a charging station for all of your technology, these 50 things for your home are trending on Amazon because they are sick as hell.Take 10 minutes and transform the look of your TV or gaming rig with this TV backlight strip. It’s easy to install — just peel, stick, and plug it into a USB port — but makes an enormous difference to the visuals. By illuminating the wall behind the screen, it reduces contrast allowing your eyes to see more color and richer blacks. “You want some sick lights for [your] gamer setup? This is it,” said one reviewer. “Overall 11/10 epic.”

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16 Years Ago, Apple Changed Laptops With an Envelope

The introduction of the ultra-thin and lightweight MacBook Air in 2008 shifted expectations for laptops, and computers in general.The MacBook Air is Apple’s most affordable laptop and one of its most popular computers alongside the MacBook Pro. Paired with the company’s custom silicon chips and a more dramatic reinvention in 2022, it’s arguably only become more beloved as the years have gone on.

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The 45 Cheapest, Most Genius Hidden Gems On Amazon

When it comes to discovering a remarkable tool, kitchen appliance, or life hack, I love to scroll through the reviews on Amazon. I have no idea how anyone shopped or managed a home before the Amazon review hive was born. (Well, I do, actually. It took all weekend, every weekend, and cost a lot more.) But I am forever grateful to the hive for helping me on my mission to uncover the cheapest, most clever gems on Amazon — and now, for you, they are hidden no more. If camping, for you, involves recreating the inevitable scene in westerns where someone pours coffee made over a fire, you need this anodized aluminum camping kettle because it’s light enough to carry in a pack, is durable, has a short but smooth-pouring spout so you can do pour-over coffee. It even has a silicone-covered handle to keep your hands safe in the process.

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'True Detective: Night Country' Just Fixed Season 1's Divisive Ending

Episode 2 of True Detective: Night Country features an unexpected name-drop. During one of their conversations about the recent Tsalal Research Station murders, Peter Prior (Finn Bennett), tells his boss, Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), that he’s been looking into Tsalal’s funding. His research has led him to discover that Tsalal is funded by a shell company owned by Tuttle United. When Liz asks what Tuttle United does, Prior tells her, “Everything. I mean, glass, tech, video games, shipments, palm oils, cruise lines.”The company has never been mentioned before in True Detective, but the name “Tuttle” should be familiar to longtime fans. While it was Errol Childress who was revealed to be behind many of the ritualistic killings of True Detective Season 1, it was further revealed that he was part of a powerful, evil cult comprised mostly of members of the dynastic Tuttle family. The season’s detectives, Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson), succeed in stopping Childress, but they don’t take down arguably the most powerful member of the Tuttle Cult: Edwin Tuttle, a Louisiana governor turned U.S. senator who denies all connections between Childress’ crimes and his family.

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A Sleep Scientist Reveals the Hidden Secrets to Overcoming Jet Lag

Jet lag is one of the worst parts of travel. It can steal precious hours from long-awaited exotic vacations and make the return to normal life even more difficult. However, understanding how the most primordial parts of our mind and body regulate themselves can help ease the discomfort of this phenomenon.The temporary full-body hangover affects every part of your body, starting with your central circadian clock. This “clock” is actually a small cluster of neurons in the brain’s suprachiasmatic nucleus within the hypothalamus, which helps us maintain homeostasis. The cycle, which runs on a nearly 24-hour rotation, doesn’t depend on external cues. A pioneering 1965 paper demonstrated this principle in groups of people who lived in bunkers for three to four weeks without any hints about time, and a subject’s average biological clock reset every 25 hours.

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The architectural style wars have started all over again | Aeon Essays

is a writer and editor living in south-east London. His work has been published in Architectural Review, The Guardian and the London Review of Books, and he is a commissioning editor at Jacobin. His books include A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (2010), Landscapes of Communism (2015), Artificial Islands (2022), and Transitional Objects (2023).The ultramodern architecture bubble has burst. Today, in much of the world, new public buildings are no longer designed by the ‘starchitects’ who dominated in the late 1990s and 2000s, including Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry. Cities are no longer filling with vaulting, flowing, gooey, non-orthogonal buildings engineered through advanced computing power. Architecture has been hit by a new sobriety. Tradition, apparently, is back.

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Naira pitches a new sport to her husband in this strange, sweet portrait of marriage | Aeon Videos

In the short film Pingpongs, the UK filmmaker George Gendi pairs audio from two candid exchanges between his parents with charmingly minimalistic pen-drawn animation. In the lighthearted first exchange, his mother Naira ponders the possibility of a game – in which pingpong balls are shot through basketball hoops – to her somewhat dubious husband, Nagui. In the second exchange, just before bedtime, Naira laments having missed her father’s funeral years ago, and wonders whether Nagui could have done more to help her attend it. A delightful interlude of improvised song between the pair connects the two scenes. With pingpong serving as both a subject and a metaphor, the short captures the back-and-forths of a decades-long loving relationship – distinctive in their details, but perhaps familiar in their broad strokes.

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3 Essential Traits

Whether hiring new employees or reshuffling your org chart, pay attention to these three factors for a more effecient and effective team.

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5 Things the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Has That Apple Must Include In The Next iPhone

Hopefully, the iPhone maker is paying attention.

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6 Keys to Transforming Your Business Goals Into Successful Results

Here is how to make sure your goals are reachable in today's changing business world.

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In 1 Sentence, NFL Star--and Travis's Brother--Jason Kelce Just Explained How Not to Make a Tough Decision

He could be Taylor Swift's brother-in-law one day. Meantime, will he keep playing football?

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How The Venture Capital Freeze Boosts Startup Quality

When the balance of power shifts to investors, here's is how to win scarce capital.

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How Employee Ownership Becomes Employee Engagement

Communities of practice can transform your employees into a real team

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The F-16 at 50: Why it's still in demand

Were it not for one test pilot's quick thinking 50 years ago, the entire F-16 programme might never have made it past its first fateful flight.When pilot Phil Oestricher climbed into the cockpit of the General Dynamics YF-16 prototype at Edwards Air Force Base in California on 20 January 1974, his mission was a relatively straightforward one – a high-speed taxi test where the aircraft would travel on the ground under the power of its own engine.

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This Game Console Gets the Whole Family Off the Couch

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 WIREDGaming is criticized for being a sedentary hobby, but it doesn’t have to be. The Nex Playground is a colorful cube-shaped console that gets you up off the couch and jumping around your living room. It reminds me of Microsoft's Kinect platform for Xbox—the Nex Playground similarly sports a motion-tracking camera that puts you in the game. You play physically with gestures and movements, without the need for a controller.

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Cryptographers Are Getting Closer to Enabling Fully Private Internet Searches

We all know to be careful about the details we share online, but the information we seek can also be revealing. Search for driving directions, and our location becomes far easier to guess. Check for a password in a trove of compromised data, and we risk leaking it ourselves.These situations fuel a key question in cryptography: How can you pull information from a public database without revealing anything about what you’ve accessed? It’s the equivalent of checking out a book from the library without the librarian knowing which one.

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Why the Polar Vortex Is Bad for Balloon Artists

It's been crazy cold this week, even down where I live in Louisiana, thanks to an outbreak of a polar vortex. This frigid air is bad for all kinds of things, including football helmets, apparently. But it's actually a great time to demonstrate one of the basic ideas in science: the ideal gas law.You probably have some balloons somewhere around the house, maybe left over from New Year's. Try this out: Blow up a balloon and tie it off real tight. Got it? Now put on the warmest jacket you have and take the balloon outside. What happens? Yes, with the drop in temperature the balloon shrinks—the volume inside decreases—even though it still contains the same amount of air!

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Psychoactive drug helps veterans with traumatic brain injury

A single dose of the psychoactive drug ibogaine appears to reduce the symptoms of a traumatic brain injury in military vets, according to a small Stanford University study, though more research is needed to confirm the promising results.The challenge: A traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when you hit or jerk your head hard enough that your brain moves violently inside your skull. This may cause brain damage that leads to problems with cognition, emotion, or movement.

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'Pok

Who would have guessed that the next great Pokémon show would be an office comedy? Netflix’s new animated series Pokémon Concierge is set on a small island resort where human and nonhuman guests can get away from it all—if they can figure out how to relax. The show is designed to be a guaranteed hit with children—four short episodes, cute animal characters, almost no plot—but, given its workplace setting, it’s just as much fun for an adult audience. The show introduces Haru (voiced by Non in Japanese and by Karen Fukuhara in the English dub), a young human stuck at a crossroads familiar to any 20- or 30-something. After a series of mishaps in her professional and social life, Haru packs up and arrives at the Pokémon Resort, landing a job as a concierge.On her second day, the kindly hotel boss, Ms. Watanabe, tells Haru that her job is to “make the Pokémon feel the exact same way that you do”—happy and relaxed. The only catch is that anxious, type-A Haru can’t stop working and struggles to take things in stride. Any small task or straightforward question tips Haru into an abyss of overthinking. When Ms. Watanabe asks Haru how her first day went, Haru pulls up an entire slideshow presentation replete with graphs and charts before realizing that her boss just wanted to know how she felt. Watching a Pokémon show whose main character has a job and social anxiety feels like watching the franchise grow up alongside its audience. For the Millennials who traded Pokemón cards in the 1990s, this series manages to address the nuances and worries of early adulthood.

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The Pianist Upstairs

The poet Erica Funkhouser grew up on a farm in Massachusetts, and it was there—many times while wandering through the woods—that she grew enchanted by language. She loved the music of words, “the kind of clang of them together and the sound and the playfulness of them,” she later said in an interview. Throughout her career, she has continued to describe, joyfully, the natural world, “where all the discoveries, wondrous or desperate, come without names.”At some point, though, she also realized that writing can fail to capture real brutality. “The risks are innumerable: sentimentality, over-generalization, over-simplification, distortion, and preaching, to name a few,” she wrote in a 2005 essay on war poetry. The same year, she published “The Pianist Upstairs,” a poem in which she sounds exhausted, doubtful of the essential goodness of language or even of the possibility that art can heal much at all. Listening to her neighbor play the piano, she’s moved by the way he expresses emotional truth without trying to wrangle it into words. But his song, she notes, won’t change anything beyond the stairway where she sits.

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What Did Top Israeli War Officials Really Say About Gaza?

Journalists and jurists point to damning quotes from Israel’s war cabinet as evidence of genocidal intent. But the citations are not what they seem.In late November, the NPR reporter Leila Fadel interviewed the international-law scholar David Crane about a disquieting subject: potential genocide in Gaza. Crane was uniquely qualified to opine on this fraught topic, having served as the founding chief prosecutor for the UN’s Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he indicted the president of Liberia for war crimes. On air, he explained why he did not think Israel’s actions met the criteria.

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The Unexpected Joy of an Overcrowded Museum

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 or editor reveals what’s keeping them entertained. Today’s special guest is a familiar one: Lora Kelley, an associate editor and writer for The Daily. Aside from her wide-ranging newsletter work, which includes essays on air travel, Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial, and politicians’ obsession with shoes, she has also written about an emoji’s day in court and the digital reimagining of first dates.

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Trump Is About to Steamroll Nikki Haley

If one word could sum up Nikki Haley’s ambivalent challenge to Donald Trump in the New Hampshire Republican primary, that word might be: if.If as used by New Hampshire’s Republican Governor Chris Sununu, Haley’s most prominent supporter in the state, when he concluded his energetic introduction of her at a large rally in Manchester on Friday night. “If you think Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, don’t sit on your couch and not participate in democracy,” Sununu insisted. “You gotta go vote, right?”

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We Get It, He's a Heartthrob

If you know two things about the Saltburn and Priscilla star Jacob Elordi, you’re probably aware that he’s very tall (Google says 6 feet 5 inches) and very handsome in a classical way (sharp cheekbones, strong chin). If you were seeking more information, you didn’t get it from his hosting gig on last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live.Nearly every time Elordi was on-screen, the show made sure to remark on his beauty, and it made for a fairly sleepy 90 minutes in which attractiveness became a lazy shorthand for charisma. Trying as he might to show off his range by putting on different accents, Elordi was, in sketch after sketch, tasked with being hot so that he could be fawned over by the women in the cast. The resulting jokes felt regressive—yes, ladies were into the big, gorgeous man—and frustratingly stale.

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Kibbeh labaniyeh: Lebanese meatballs to start a new year

To start the year with a clean slate in Lebanon, the hearty dish of kibbeh labaniyeh (meatballs in a thick mint yoghurt sauce) is served at family tables on New Year's Day. For award-winning cookbook author, food consultant and president of Slow Food Beirut, Barbara Massaad, kibbeh labaniyeh is "comfort food with a capital C"."My kids always make fun of me because I say it 10 times when we're eating it," Massaad said from her home in Beirut, as she cracked eggs into a pan of heated yoghurt. "Kibbeh labaniyeh is white, pure… it's so good. Everything that has to do with dairy is nurturing and delicious."

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1 billion people left dangerously exposed to heat stress by gaps in climate monitoring

2023 was the hottest year on record. Humidity is rising too. Heat and humidity are a dangerous combination, threatening all aspects of our lives and livelihoods.Climate change is pushing humid heat dangerously close to the upper limits of what people can survive. Parts of the world are on track for conditions beyond the limits of human tolerance.

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Antoinette Lattouf sacking shows how the ABC has been damaged by successive Coalition governments

The dispute between the ABC and Antoinette Lattouf, the stand-in radio presenter it recently sacked ostensibly for disobeying a managerial directive, encapsulates several problems that have bedevilled the national broadcaster in recent years.One is the issue of how to deal with journalistic staff posting on social media about issues in the news. Another is whether it has the backbone to protect its journalists and presenters from external attack. A third is whether the organisation is culturally capable of respecting and supporting staff from diverse backgrounds.

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South Africa's ageing population comes with new challenges. How best to adapt to them

Young people – under the age of 15 – currently make up 29% of South Africa’s population. But this will soon change: the aged portion of the population is forecast to rise from 2030, bringing many challenges. Lauren Johnston, an economics and political economy expert, recently published a paper on the subject. We asked her to put the developments into perspective.South Africa is “young” among the Brics countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), but “old” by African standards. For example, seniors make up 5.9% of South Africa’s population and children 28.6%. This compares with Russia’s 15.8% seniors and 17.2% children, and China’s 13.7% seniors and 17.7% children.

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Ava DuVernay Wants to Build a New System

Richard Brody, whose writing about movies runs under the rubric The Front Row, never ceases to surprise me, and enlighten me, with his critical judgment. Like another colleague, Anthony Lane, he has introduced me to the work of more classic filmmakers and films than I could possibly enumerate. I never quite know where Richard will land—and we don’t always agree. He still insists, for example, that Eddie Murphy’s “Norbit” deserves to be “hailed as a masterwork.” Let’s just say that we have discussed this more than once. More recently, and on an arguably higher plane, Richard took a swipe at the “thinly imagined inner lives” of the protagonists of “Oppenheimer” and “Maestro”—two movies I admired. The swipe came by way of praising Ava DuVernay’s latest film, “Origin,” which is a kind of bio-pic, too, centering on the journalist and historian Isabel Wilkerson. Brody wrote, “It’s hard to recall a movie made for general audiences that takes ideas so seriously, that makes the pursuit of them appear so thrilling, or that is so replete with the intellectual substance of the protagonist’s endeavors.” This time, we were aligned.In 2010, Wilkerson, a former reporter at the Times, published “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.” It was rightly, and almost uniformly, praised both as a history of the epochal twentieth-century migration of Black Americans from the rural South to Northern cities across the country and as a feat of sheer storytelling. “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” which was published in 2020, and formed the basis of DuVernay’s film, is a work of no less industry, elegance, and exploration, but its controversial thesis—that what unifies societies as seemingly disparate as India, Nazi Germany, and the Jim Crow South is not so much race as caste—is less narrative in its design.

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Amazon Just Quietly Released the Weirdest Time-Travel Show of 2024

Time travel is a classic plot device for a reason. Everyone wishes they could use hindsight to make smarter decisions, undo something they regret, or even take a second crack at their entire life. But we can’t do that, so we watch fictional characters use DeLoreans, phone booths, and hot tubs to explore the space-time continuum instead. While time travel is used in all sorts of genres, its application in romance is unique. If you can go back and fix regrets, the one who got away (or the one you never should have been with at all) is sure to be on the top of the list. Those ideas are explored in a new time-travel series on Prime Video that combines sci-fi and K-drama in the best possible way.

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How The Best Platformer of 2024 Fixed a Classic Video Game Design Flaw

Developers spent years crafting and refining each option to ensure they could benefit disabled players, right up until launch.The Metroidvania genre encourages exploration. Whether progressing through the main storyline or retracing your steps for collectibles and upgrades, the desire to find every hidden item or zone is a core theme for these games. However, the constant need to memorize where to go can pose numerous inaccessible barriers for certain players. That’s where Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown shines. Launched on Thursday, it touts innovative accessibility features like Guided Mode and Memory Shards that remove the barriers typically associated with Metroidvania games.

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Lost 'Dune' Movie Script Reveals a Vital Lesson Denis Villeneuve Shouldn't Ignore

Just how creepy is Dune? When you consider that the basic story involves controlled breeding, holy wars, assassinations, and the secretions of giant sandworms, the idea that one character is brought back from the dead as a metal-eyed zombie feels almost tame. And yet, in the novel Dune Messiah, the resurrection of Duncan Idaho at the hands of the secretive Bene Tleilax is perhaps the most pivotal and strangest continuity leap in the entire Dune saga, second only to Leto II mutating into a half-sandworm creature in Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune.But can any of the wild leaps of the Dune book sequels be shown on screen? Well, the short answer is yes, they already have been. The 2003 Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, Children of Dune, depicted all the events of that third novel but also used its first part to adapt Messiah. To date, the John Harrison script for Children of Dune represents the only major screenwriting for Dune sequels that tackle elements of the novels beyond the first one. That is, until now.

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Can this Common Element Cure America's Sleep Problems?

Magnesium is one of the key ingredients of the viral “sleepy girl mocktail.” Here’s the science behind its purported sleep benefits. For some of us, sleep isn’t a gentle drift into blissful slumber but a desperate plea to Morpheus himself for even an hour of shut-eye. If you’re among the millions of people in the US not getting enough zzz’s, you’re probably well familiar with purported sleep aides like melatonin or, in more recent years, cannabis.

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Can a Chiropractor Help My Pet? Here's What An Expert Thinks

Chiropractor videos garner tons of attention on social media. Viewers like to see these spinal adjustments and love to hear their snaps, crackles, and pops. It may be surprising to learn these services are also available for pet cats, dogs, rabbits, and other animals.The thought of a pet chiropractor may seem jarring. A person yanking your dog’s head or body slamming your cat might not seem therapeutic, but it’s an option available in the face of injury or a chronic condition. Tending to the needs of a pet’s musculoskeletal system may be the help they need to regain mobility after sustaining an injury or learning to live with conditions like arthritis.

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Samsung's Galaxy AI Actually Feels Like the Future of Phones

Galaxy AI can do wild things like translate phone calls live, but it's always focused on utility first rather than something that's only futuristic.Galaxy AI, if everything Samsung demoed at its Unpacked event works as shown, is our first glimpse of a realistic vision of how AI fits into the phone of the future. Samsung’s Galaxy S24 line doesn’t look too entirely different from the S23 phones that came before them, in fact, Galaxy AI is really their only key differentiator, save a new color, display, or material. But what’s really surprising about the new AI suite is that rather than gamble on some kind of futuristic all-purpose assistant, Samsung seems to have decided AI should be useful first.

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40 Weird Things on Amazon That Make Your Home Look 10x More Impressive

I love sprucing up my space to make it look more impressive. Whether I want to wow new friends or do it all for myself, I’m all about picking out things that will take my place to the next level. If you want to do the same, the Amazon finds on this list will add a touch of personality to your home, making you proud to show it off or stay in and enjoy it all to yourself. This floating corner shelf lends lots of style and functionality to a space you might have previously overlooked. It installs easily using the included hardware and can hold up to 11 pounds of weight. Choose from seven different finishes such as natural, rustic blue, or walnut, and use it to display your favorite decor from art to books to plants.

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Can We Make Middle Age Less Miserable?

Today is my 47th birthday. This morning I got up at 6:45, made oatmeal for my 15-year-old, located my 13-year-old’s skating bag, cleared my husband’s wet towel from the banister, folded one load of laundry and started another. My parents called and asked the same question they’d posed the past few times we’d talked: How would I celebrate? My (unchanged) answer: A day of work, three hours of kid chauffeuring, and back-to-school night. Happy birthday to me!

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Should Your Nonprofit Charge Its Beneficiaries?

No matter how creative and ambitious they may be, nonprofits that rely solely on donations and grants to finance their growth often fall short. One way to improve both funding and impact is to add a “more commercial” strategy to the mix—by charging recipients for what the organization would otherwise provide for free. Though that may sound uncharitable, the authors’ research shows that paying nominal fees can give beneficiaries a sense of ownership, boost their engagement, and empower them to demand results. Meanwhile, the revenue from the fees can go back into providing help to even more people.

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Conservative CEOs Pursue Riskier International Deals Than Liberals Do

Though evidence suggests that conservatives are generally more risk-averse than liberals are, the reverse is true when it comes to foreign expansion. A recent study showed that conservatives leaned toward overseas acquisitions, which are more perilous than alliances (an approach liberals favored). Why? Because acquisitions gave them greater control, and the desire for it outweighed their fear of loss.

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