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CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!  S15S45The Cases Against Trump: A Guide   Fraud. Hush money. Election subversion. Mar-a-Lago documents. One place to keep track of the presidential candidate’s legal troubles.Not long ago, the idea that a former president—or major-party presidential nominee—would face serious legal jeopardy was nearly unthinkable. Today, merely keeping track of the many cases against Donald Trump requires a law degree, a great deal of attention, or both.
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S5The one simple change that will improve your media diet in 2024  Barely a month into 2024, it's difficult to know what shape the year will take. But one thing seems certain: politically, it's high-stakes. Elections will be held in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Bangladesh, India, Taiwan, South Korea, and South Africa, for the European Parliament, and, many predict, in the UK too. That's not to mention the international conflicts in Israel-Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere, the climate crisis, explosion of AI, and economic challenges – among the other large-scale problems that require an informed and engaged public to help solve. This means that it has, perhaps, never been more important to be a thoughtful, discerning citizen: no matter your country, you need a clear grasp of the world's issues – and of the policies put forward to solve them. People will never agree on the solutions, but surveys suggest most believe that a "good member of society" follows current affairs.
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S68Gallup Research Says This 15-Minute Weekly Habit Boosts Employee Engagement and Strengthens Relationships - Inc.com (No paywall)  Employees in the U.S. continue to feel detached from work, according to research firm Gallup's most recent employee engagement survey. Only 33 percent of employees were engaged, while 16 percent of workers reported being actively disengaged according to the survey, which focuses on 2023 and was shared yesterday.Because of increased remote and hybrid work, "collaboration and relationships are at risk," says Gallup. On the other hand, the company's research showed that when co-worker relationships are strong, employees are more likely to stay at a company longer and to recommend the company to others.
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S12The Forgotten Star of Radio Astronomy  Ruby Payne-Scott and her colleagues unlocked a new way of seeing the universe, but to keep her job, Ruby had to keep a big secret.Australian physicist Ruby Payne-Scott helped lay the groundwork for a whole new kind of astronomy: radio astronomy. By scanning the skies for radio waves instead of the light waves that we can see with our eyes, Payne-Scott and her colleagues opened a new window into the universe and transformed the way we explore it. But to keep her job as a woman working for the Australian government in the 1940s, Payne-Scott had to keep a pretty big secret.
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S16The climate solutions worth funding -- now  When it comes to climate solutions, "now is better than new, and time is more important than tech," says scientist Jonathan Foley. He presents a six-part framework to more efficiently address climate change, from better aligning capital with carbon to utilizing affordable solutions that are ready to go now. Learn more about what the data says to do — and how the solutions might be cheaper than we think.
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S25S37The Special Election That Could Give Democrats Hope for November  In late 2021, Tom Suozzi made an announcement that exasperated Democratic Party leaders: The third-term representative would give up a reelection bid for his highly competitive New York House district to mount a long-shot primary challenge against Governor Kathy Hochul.Suozzi got trounced, but the ripple effects of his ill-fated run extended far beyond his Long Island district. Democrats ended up losing their narrow majority in the House, in part because the seat Suozzi vacated went to a little-known Republican named George Santos. He’s not so little-known anymore. Nor is he in Congress, having been expelled in December after his colleagues discovered that his stated biography was a fiction and that his campaign was an alleged criminal enterprise.
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S24S46Why Republican Politicians Do Whatever Trump Says  The former president’s stories of business dominance were often exaggerated. With Republican politicians, he’s found a group he can control.The story Donald Trump tells about himself—and to himself—has always been one of domination. It runs through the canonical texts of his personal mythology. In The Art of the Deal, he filled page after page with examples of his hard-nosed negotiating tactics. On The Apprentice, he lorded over a boardroom full of supplicants competing for his approval. And at his campaign rallies, he routinely regales crowds with tales of strong-arming various world leaders in the Oval Office.
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S58Scientists Find Optimal Balance of Data Storage and Time | Quanta Magazine  About 70 years ago, an engineer at IBM named Hans Peter Luhn quietly changed the course of computer science. Luhn already held several patents, including one for a device that could measure a cloth's thread count and another for a guide that determined what mixed drinks you could make from the ingredients in your kitchen. But in a 1953 internal IBM paper, he proposed a new technique for storing and retrieving information that is now built into just about all computational systems: the hash table.Hash tables are a major class of data structures. They offer an especially convenient method for accessing and altering information in massive databases. But this technology comes with an unavoidable trade-off.
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S53Graffiti Artists Tag 27 Floors of Abandoned Skyscraper in Los Angeles /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/b1/f3/b1f34586-0ed4-45e0-8adf-964954deba9a/gettyimages-1981892684.jpg) The street art brought new attention to a $1 billion project that’s been stalled since 2019Graffiti artists broke into downtown Los Angeles’ Oceanwide Plaza skyscraper development earlier this month and tagged over 27 floors with bright, bold letters. The work was a collaboration between local artists, who spray painted the complex over the course of three days with words like “Dank” and “Amen.”
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S7Like, subscribe, and vote: India's 2024 elections depend on YouTube  On September 27, 2023, YouTube celebrated the 15th anniversary of its presence in India. The event started with a video address by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who said YouTube could “awaken the nation” and “initiate a movement.” He called himself a YouTuber in his speech, ending with the quintessential influencer sign-off: “Subscribe to my channel and hit the bell icon to receive all my updates.”Being influential on YouTube is essential for Modi as India gears up for general elections later this year, where the 73-year-old is seeking a third consecutive term. The Google-owned video-sharing platform has emerged as a strong tool for political messaging in the country, partly due to its large user base: YouTube has 467 million users, while Facebook has 314 million and X (previously Twitter) has 27 million, according to digital insights platform DataReportal.
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S19Will EVs match the cost and convenience of gas cars? Not anytime soon.  Although electric vehicle (EV) sales are rapidly rising in the United States, they still made up just 7.9% of new car sales in the third quarter of 2023.When Pew Research Center asked Americans in July 2023 about their views of EVs, 50% of those surveyed replied that they were “not too or not at all likely” to purchase one, while 38% said that they were “somewhat or very likely” to do so. Chief amongst EV skeptics’ gripes were concerns about range, charging speed, and price.
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S32I Don't Know If I Can Call Myself a Mom  I’ve had three miscarriages, seven reproductive surgeries, and one infant loss. I still don’t have a child.The first walk I took by myself after my baby died was just to my neighborhood coffee shop a block away, but it felt like a mile. I had a heavy pad in my underwear because I was still actively bleeding, a belly band velcroed tightly above my C-section scar, and nipple covers tucked into my nursing bra to soak up the last of my milk.
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S43'Evidence Maximalism' Is How the Internet Argues Now  On Friday afternoon, news broke that the beloved actor Carl Weathers had died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 76. No cause of death was announced. Within hours, anti-vaxxers offered an unsolicited explanation for his passing: They pointed to a tweet, posted by Weathers in 2022, in which the actor noted that he was “vaxxed and boosted.” Weathers became the latest celebrity to have their death co-opted by the #DiedSuddenly conspiracy theory, in which vaccine skeptics insinuate that people are dropping dead after receiving a COVID vaccine. Four days later, the same cycle repeated itself following the death of the country-music artist Toby Keith. For these anti-vaxxers, celebrity deaths are never random or senseless. Each one is a piece of evidence that is instantly compiled to explain and sustain a particular, dangerous worldview.Conspiracy theorists and propagandists have always tried to spin current events. But on the internet, it has become unnervingly common to encounter brazen conspiratorial ideas. As my colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote last year, #DiedSuddenly has thrived on social media, especially X. These days, some headlines can sound as if they’re describing events occurring in a parallel American timeline. An airplane experiencing a serious mechanical failure becomes “Yes, DEI Will Make More Planes Fall out of the Sky.” The most famous pop star in the world dating one of the NFL’s best players turns into a shadowy “deep state” plot: “Right-Wingers Say Super Bowl Is Rigged So Taylor Swift Can Endorse Biden.” Online, no event can stand alone. It is immediately thrust into a sweeping narrative.
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S62It's Time to Redefine Our Gendered Idea of "Ambition" - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)  Last fall, McKinsey’s “Women in the Workplace” report found that women continue to face blockers in the transition from entry-level positions to management roles. The problem — likened to a “broken rung” on the career ladder — has stunted women’s advancement and led to a persistent gender gap in senior leadership positions. The trend is most dire for women of color, who this past year have seen previous gains slip substantially.
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S63Got a Radical Idea at Work? Find a Partner. - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)  Imagine you have an unorthodox idea — one that challenges the dominant assumptions in your organization and industry. How do you develop it? Moving forward alone is hard. On the other hand, you are unlikely to attract or be provided with a large team to pursue an idea that most see as crazy. Our research suggests that such radical thinkers thrive in a unique organizational setting by finding one other individual to work with — by operating in pairs.
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S65Boomers believe they don't have enough money to retire. Signs point to them being, sadly, right - Fortune (No paywall)  If baby boomers didn’t already have a head of grays, considering the prospect of retirement is likely enough to transform them into a regular Anderson Cooper. It’s no secret that leaving the workforce is no walk in the park, though the process has recently become more like an Ironman Triathlon as employees struggle to compete with the cost of living. Just ask the current class of retirees for confirmation of the broken system, as 66% of them claim that the nation has entered a “retirement crisis,” per real estate company Clever’s recent survey of 1,000 U.S. retirees. The goalposts seemingly keep moving forward, as the current prospect of retirement requires a larger nest egg than in the past. Now, the price tag on a comfortable retirement carries a cost of more than $1 million. Of course, that’s not in the cards for many Americans, given that the median retiree has just $142,500 in savings, while 25% haven’t saved anything at all.
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S50Personal and political shaming is running hot, yet it doesn't work | Psyche Ideas  Accused of collaboration, Simone Touseau carries her baby, whose father was a German soldier, through Chartres in France; August 1944. Her head is shaved as an act of shaming. Photo ©Robert Capa © ICP/ MagnumAccused of collaboration, Simone Touseau carries her baby, whose father was a German soldier, through Chartres in France; August 1944. Her head is shaved as an act of shaming. Photo ©Robert Capa © ICP/ Magnum
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S54S17S22Apple overhauls its entire Windows app suite, including iCloud and Apple Music  Big news for people who prefer iPhones but also prefer to use Windows PCs: Apple has quietly overhauled its entire suite of Windows apps, including non-beta versions of the Apple Music, Apple TV, and Devices apps that it began previewing for Windows 11 users over a year ago. Collectively, these apps replace most of the functionality from the iTunes for Windows app; iTunes for macOS was discontinued all the way back in 2019. Apple has also released a major iCloud for Windows update with an overhauled design.
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S39Trump's 'Knock on the Door'  Confrontations over immigration and border security are moving to the center of the struggle between the two parties, both in Washington, D.C., and beyond. And yet the most explosive immigration clash of all may still lie ahead.In just the past few days, Washington has seen the collapse of a bipartisan Senate deal to toughen border security amid opposition from former President Donald Trump and the House Republican leadership, as well as a failed vote by House Republicans to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for allegedly refusing to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. Simultaneously, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, supported by more than a dozen other GOP governors, has renewed his attempts to seize greater control over immigration enforcement from the federal government.
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S66The Rural Ski Slope Caught Up in an International Scam - The New Yorker (No paywall)  As the general manager of the Jay Peak ski resort, Bill Stenger rose most days around 6 A.M. and arrived at the slopes before seven. He’d check in with his head snowmaker and the ski-patrol staff, visit the two hotels on the property, and chat with the maintenance workers, the lift operators, the food-and-beverage manager, and the ski-school instructors—a kind of management through constant motion. Stenger is seventy-five, with white hair, wire-rimmed reading glasses, and a sturdy physique that makes him look built for fuzzy sweaters. He told me recently, of skiing, “I love the sport. It’s a dynamic sport, and, if it’s properly taught, it is life-changing.” On April 13, 2016, he had finished his morning rounds and was drinking coffee with the head of the snow-grooming department when his assistant called. “You need to come over to the office right away,” she said, sounding nervous. “Some folks from the S.E.C. are here.”Stenger shows an ability to cling to optimism even when the facts don’t warrant it. He didn’t panic at first. “For all I knew, they were coming to take a tour of the place,” he told me. He drove down to the cluster of trailers that served as the resort’s administrative hub and noticed five or six black S.U.V.s in the parking lot. Inside the office, his staff was standing around awkwardly. A lawyer named Jeffrey Schneider told Stenger that the Securities and Exchange Commission was seizing the resort from Stenger’s business partner, Ariel Quiros. It was also seizing Burke Mountain, another ski hill owned by Quiros, an hour away. At that moment, Quiros’s office in Miami was being raided by S.E.C. agents. Schneider handed Stenger an eighty-one-page document alleging that Stenger and Quiros had committed fraud.
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S55S11How to Explain April's Total Solar Eclipse to Kids  The total solar eclipse over North America this April is a great opportunity for kids to understand the dance of the Earth, sun and moonOn April 8, 2024, a broad swath of North America—including parts of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada—will experience a total solar eclipse. It will be an awesome experience for people of any age, as well as an educational one for kids.
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S18What was it like when life first sprang forth on Earth?  If you came to our Solar System right after it formed, you would have seen a completely foreign-looking sight. Our Sun would have been about the same mass it is today, but only a fraction as luminous, as stars heat up and shine more brightly as they age. The four inner, rocky worlds would still be there, but three of them would look extremely similar. Venus, Earth, and Mars all had thin atmospheres, the capacity for liquid water on their surfaces, and the organic ingredients that could give rise to life. Earth had a large, close moon, Mars had three, while Venus had none, as far as we can tell. Even though all of these worlds were hot and volcanically active, they all had almost completely given up their primordial, hydrogen-and-helium-rich envelopes, as photoevaporation had boiled them all away.While we still don’t know whether life ever took hold on Venus or Mars, we know that by the time Earth was only a few hundred million years old — possibly after as little as 100 million years but no later than 700 million years — there were organisms living on its surface. After billions of years of cosmic evolution gave rise to the elements, molecules, and conditions from which life could exist, our planet became the one where life not only arose, but where it continued to thrive for billions of years subsequently, even giving rise to us, humanity, as part of its cosmic story. To the best of our scientific knowledge, here’s what those first steps of life’s emergence were like.
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S201.63-billion-year-old fossil may rewrite the history of multicellular life  The first time Dr. Maoyan Zhu saw the fossil that would change how he thought about early life on Earth, he was visiting his friend, Shixin Zhu, in his home in North China.“Next to Shixin’s sofa were several beautiful fossils,” Dr. Zhu, a paleobiologist from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, told Big Think. “One was exceptionally large—it reminded me of modern seaweed fossils. When Shixin told me that the rock was 1.56 billion years old, I instantly realized that this was something special.”
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S29These states are basically begging you to get a heat pump  Death is coming for the old-school gas furnace—and its killer is the humble heat pump. They’re already outselling gas furnaces in the US, and now a coalition of states has signed an agreement to supercharge the gas-to-electric transition by making it as cheap and easy as possible for their residents to switch.
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S34Blinken's Make-or-Break Tour of the Middle East  Whether Washington can de-escalate tensions will determine the future of its regional authority.The United States has probably never been under so much pressure to solve the problems of the Middle East. The war in Gaza threatens to spill across the region, and whether Washington can resolve, or even simply contain and de-escalate, the tensions surrounding it may well determine the future of American authority in the Middle East. Whatever the outcome, the current imbroglio is almost certain to mark a turning point for Washington’s role in the region.
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S40The Despots of Silicon Valley  The intellectual origins of the movement that self-described “techno-optimists” are advancing is dark—and deeply familiar.On the day that Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, he tweeted, “the bird is freed,” a very short phrase, even by the standards of Twitter (now X). And yet it contains so many innuendos and unanswered questions. Was the bird shackled before? Is the man who freed it … a liberator? Freed to do what exactly?
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S60Europe is importing a solar boom. Good news for (nearly) everyone - The Economist (No paywall)  A banner running down the side of the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels depicts cartoon workers recladding its 13-floor façade with solar panels. The illustration might come across as a cruel joke to residents of the Belgian capital, for whose leaden skies the phrase “fifty shades of grey” could have been coined. But thanks to green edicts devised by the Euro-wallahs at the commission, the continent’s fields and rooftops are being paved with very real photovoltaic cells. In 2023 the equivalent of one nuclear reactor of solar power was installed every single week. In the past three years nearly as many panels have been plugged into EU power grids as had been since the industry dawned at the century’s start. By 2030 the bloc is aiming to triple the number of solar panels installed, thus covering an area bigger than 300,000 football pitches, two dozen times the size of Paris.
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S6Are cars getting too big for the road?  The 2024 Chevrolet Suburban, a nine-passenger sports utility vehicle (SUV), measures 225.7 inches (18ft/5.5m), and is advertised as "a room with a view". A seven-seat, fully electric crossover vehicle designed by Kia houses an 800-Volt battery that weighs, on average, 1,000lb (450kg). An electric Hummer SUV, meanwhile, has a maximum width, including mirrors, of 93.7in (2.4m).Large cars are becoming ever more popular. In fact, the size of the average car is growing wider at a rate of 1cm (0.4in) every two years, according to the non-profit Transport and Environment. With this increase in size comes some equally large problems, from environmental repercussions to safety hazards, and the sheer difficulty of manoeuvring cars in streets and parking spaces designed for smaller models.
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S52How to Watch the Spectacular Total Solar Eclipse in April 2024 /https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/b6/bf/b6bf5fc7-b6c1-4d86-abb4-840cb48a9381/1dld.jpg) The moon will appear to completely block the sun’s light across parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada on April 8âhere’s how to make the most of this rare celestial phenomenonAnticipation is building for the total solar eclipse on April 8. On that day, parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada will be plunged into twilight-like darkness as the moon passes between the sun and the Earth.
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S14S21S23S28S31The Founders' Guide to Happiness  Today people think of happiness as something that results from the pursuit of pleasure, but the Constitution’s Framers had other ideas.In 1815, the head of a boarding school in Maine wrote to Thomas Jefferson asking for some wisdom to pass along to his students. Jefferson responded by sending a passage from a Stoic self-help manual, Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, that he had copied down as a teenager to console himself after his father’s death. “If the Wise, be the happy man, as these sages say,” Jefferson paraphrased, “he must be virtuous too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be.”
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