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CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!  S68How to Be Less Busy and More Happy   Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.Are you feeling a little guilty about reading this article? Not because of the content, of courseânothing scandalous here!âbut rather because of the time it takes away from something else you feel you should be doing. Perhaps you are taking a break from work but feel that you shouldn't because deadlines and obligations are nipping at your ankles this very minute.
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S28The 6 Best Handheld Gaming Consoles (2024): Switch, Steam Deck, and More 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 WIREDIt feels like a distant memory by now, but right before the Nintendo Switch launched in 2017, it seemed like portable gaming was on its last life. Mobile games had gobbled up huge portions of the market, and most modern games required a lot of power to run on devices like the Nintendo 3DS. Fast-forward to today, and there are more ways to take your games outside the living room than ever.
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S8Editor's Note: There are some signs that, while experts ponder how to rein in the worst of social media, ordinary users are working out how to do so themselves. Posting about oneself in public is becoming less common: last year only 28% of Americans said they enjoyed documenting their life online, down from 40% in 2020, according to Gartner, a research firm. Messages are moving from open networks to private chats. On Instagram, more photos are now shared in direct messages than on the main feed, the company says. As middle-aged folk identify the problems with the social networks they grew up with, youngsters may already be moving on. S11Are smart cities a wise idea?  The development of a Smart City in Toronto, in partnership with Google, should be the realization of the tech utopia we’d been imagining. Complete with robots, autonomous cars, and the latest tech integrated into the city itself, it seems as if the residents are the lucky beneficiaries of Life 2.0. When the project was announced with great excitement in 2017, it seemed as if Canadians would be the luckiest, most advanced citizens on the planet.Lack of information regarding the project has led to open resistance from citizens, some recently forming a group called Block Sidewalk. The former privacy commissioner resigned, stating, “I imagined us creating a smart city of privacy, as opposed to a smart city of surveillance.”
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S27Tesla's Layoffs Won't Solve Its Growing Pains This week has been one of Tesla's worst. The company has cut 10 percent of its workforce, from sales advisers to engineersâthe biggest round of layoffs in the company's history. Two top executivesâvice president of public policy and business development, Rohan Patel; and senior vice president of powertrain and energy, Drew Baglinoâalso announced they were leaving. This comes against a difficult financial backdrop: Demand is dropping for electric cars in the US and Europe, just as competition in China intensifies and workers revolt in Europe. Investors are worried: In the past six months, Tesla's stock has dropped 35 percent.For many employees, the layoffs were a surprise. On Friday, Angela's boss told her how great she was doing at her job, selling Teslas direct to customers in the US state of Georgia. Three days later, her role had been eliminated, effective immediately. "I expected more from Tesla, to at least give people a week or two's heads-up," says Angela, who requested to use a pseudonym in case she gets the chance to work for Tesla again. Angela says 40 percent of her team was laid off, and in shock. Around 14,000 people received that same email, which blamed rapid growth for the duplication of job roles. "We have done a thorough review of the organization and made the difficult decision to reduce our headcount globally," the email said.
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S52S56Gaza Is Dividing Democrats  No recent Democratic president has faced such fierce internal conflict over a foreign-policy issue.The Iranian attack on Israel has heightened the fierce cross-pressures shaping President Joe Biden's conflicted approach to the war in Gaza.
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S66The Trump Trial's Extraordinary Opening  The first days of the criminal case against the former president have been mundane, even boringâand that's remarkable.This is The Trump Trials by George T. Conway III, a newsletter that chronicles the former president's legal troubles. Sign up here.
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S69There's No Easy Answer to Chinese EVs  Chinese electric vehiclesâcheap, stylish, and high qualityâshould be a godsend to the Biden administration, whose two biggest priorities are reducing carbon emissions quickly enough to avert a climate catastrophe and reducing consumer prices quickly enough to avert an electoral catastrophe. Instead, the White House is going out of its way to keep Chinese EVs out of the U.S. What gives?The key to understanding this seeming contradiction is something known as "the China shock." American policy makers long considered free trade to be close to an unalloyed good. But, according to a hugely influential 2016 paper, the loosening of trade restrictions with China at the turn of the 21st century was a disaster for the American manufacturing workforce. Consumers got cheap toys and clothes, but more than 2 million workers lost their jobs, and factory towns across the country fell into ruin. Later research found that, in 2016, Donald Trump overperformed in counties that had been hit hardest by the China shock, helping him win key swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
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S1S21Solar Eclipse Marketing Bonanza Pays Off for New York Businesses  Businesses went all in on marketing promotions for the solar eclipse that darkened skies across parts of North America earlier this month. Companies told Inc. their teams spent months planning themed promotions and special-edition products, and now, there is some evidence that their bet on a four-minute celestial event paid off. In parts of New York, businesses got a blackout boost, according to the Federal Reserve, which cited the eclipse in its Beige Book survey of regional business contacts about current economic conditions.
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S20Government Contracts Are  Government contracts are competitive to begin with, and made even more difficult because the contract language often isn't comprehendible to would-be bidders. In fact, the language is so difficult that Congress is proposing to help clarify the contents within these contracts. The bipartisan bill is called "The Plain Language in Contracting Act" and was introduced by Reps. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) and Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.)The bill, as written, requires federal contracts to eliminate jargon and legalese, and instead include simple language. The legislation received unanimous approval on Wednesday from the House Small Business Committee, which moved it forward--along with six other bills--to the full House. As of now, though, the House has no immediate plans to take it up
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S64Women in Menopause Are Getting Short Shrift  They could benefit from a diversity of hormones, empathy about their experience, and a frank approach to sexualityâall hallmarks of trans health care.After a decade working as an obstetrician-gynecologist, Marci Bowers thought she understood menopause. Whenever she saw a patient in her 40s or 50s, she knew to ask about things such as hot flashes, vaginal dryness, mood swings, and memory problems. And no matter what a patient's concern was, Bowers almost always ended up prescribing the same thing. "Our answer was always estrogen," she told me.
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S7Editor's Note: Part of developing burnout S14Alaska Airlines Says It's Focused on Boeing Production Safety, Not New Plane Output  Alaska Air Group is not concerned about the production rate of Boeing's 737 MAX planes as it is more focused on the quality and safety of the planemaker's jets, a top company executive said on Thursday.The Seattle-based carrier had to ground its MAX 9 fleet for weeks following a mid-air cabin panel blowout on one of its flights in January. The grounding cost the company $162 million in the first quarter, resulting in a quarterly loss.
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S30RFK Jr.'s Very Online, Conspiracy-Filled Campaign In the year since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. officially launched his presidential campaign, his extreme conspiracies and very online outreach tactics have added up to a pretty effective independent bid. Today on WIRED Politics Lab, we look into how RFK Jr. continues to build a following. We talk about his recent VP pick, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan, his media outreach, and the staff behind it all. And, of course, how his push for ballot access in the US might make him a spoiler candidate in the 2024 election.You can find more from Makena Kelly on RFK Jr. here, and from Anna Merlan here. Be sure to subscribe to WIRED Politics Lab here.
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S36Hollywood Should Give Brain Science a Star Turn  Movies and TV shows frequently depict physical and biological sciences well, but often depict psychological and brain sciences poorly. Here’s why, and what we can do about itOppenheimer’s success at the box office—and the Academy Awards—shows that scientific achievements can sparkle at the cinema. That’s good for science, where physics and biology have starring roles in hits ranging from Interstellar to the Jurassic Park franchise. But one key area of science often remains poorly depicted: neuroscience and psychology.
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S40Mathematicians Explain Why Some Lengths Can't Be Measured  In the past few years, I’ve moved more than once. Time and again, I have had to measure rooms or furniture and then check whether I can arrange everything just as I had planned. When we use a tape measure, folding rule or ruler, we don’t question whether the object we are measuring is measurable. As long as something is not infinitely extended, we should be able to assign it a length, area or volume. That is exactly what mathematicians assumed—until the late 19th century, when everything changed.For a long time, if you wanted to measure geometric objects, you proceeded as I did when moving house: take out the tape measure and off you go. Admittedly, if you wanted to determine the area underneath a complicated curve, the task became more difficult. With the development of calculus in the 17th century, mathematicians Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz provided new measuring instruments in the form of integrals and derivatives that could be used to precisely determine the size of geometric figures. But for more than 200 years, nobody really asked themselves how objects should be measured.
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S45How to be an active citizen and spark change  What does it mean to be an active citizen? It's about more than just voting and paying taxes, says social entrepreneur Gabriel Marmentini. He explains why we can't rely on the state alone to solve all our problems — and presents the four key ingredients for anyone to become a change-maker and engage in solving public issues.
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S60The Jews Aren't Taking Away TikTok  "The entire world knows exactly why the U.S. is trying to ban TikTok," James Li declared on March 16 to his nearly 100,000 followers on the social-media platform. His video then cut to a subtitled clip of a Taiwanese speaker purportedly discussing how "TikTok inadvertently offended the Jewish people" by hosting pro-Palestinian content. "The power of the Jewish people in America is definitely more scary than Trump," the speaker goes on. "They have created the options: either ban or sell to the Americans. In reality, it's neitherâit's selling to a Jewish investment group."Li, who calls himself an "indie journalist" and subsequently posted another video blaming Israel for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, got more than 160,000 views for his TikTok theoryâand the video was one of the poorer-performing entries making similar claims on the platform.
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S63The Bicycles of World War II  Over the course of World War II, countless challenges made basic transportation difficult, costly, and dangerous. The need for fast, efficient, and quiet ways of moving people from A to Bâdespite fuel shortages, damaged roads, and ongoing battlesâled many soldiers and civilians to take advantage of bicycles as transport. Troops in some areas became more nimble, refugees used bikes to carry their family and belongings to safety, air-raid wardens could cover more ground on two wheels, and many civilians had no other options available. Gathered below are a handful of images of some of the many ways people put bicycles to use during the Second World War. Members of the German light-machine-gun bicycle corps wear gas masks while standing beside their bicycles in a lineup in Austria, circa 1939. Note the machine gun attached to one of the bicycles at lower right. #
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S6Self-made millionaire who retired at 35: The first time I felt financially secure, I was 'living small' and spending 'a lot less'  Thinking of financial security this way allows you to view money not just as an amount to accumulate, but as a tool to fund the things in your life that you care about. Someone with one year's worth of expenses saved could take a sabbatical to pursue a passion project. Someone with 10 years saved could take a crack at starting the small business they've always dreamed of."I would use the term retired loosely at this point. I wouldn't say that we're necessarily traditionally retired, but we are absolutely financially independent. We're absolutely financially secure," he says. "We don't have to do any of these things. But it's nice to be able to do the things that just seem or sound interesting and see how they work."
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S15CEOs Are Investing in Their Leadership Teams This Year  A new survey from the executive coaching organization Vistage asked more than 1,700 CEOs of small and midsize businesses about their priorities for their leadership teams this year: 59 percent said they are "investing in development," 42 percent said they are "promoting team members," and 41 percent are "enhancing succession planning."  Notably, this internal development focus comes as hiring plans slow. Fifty-one percent of these CEOs are planning to hire more this year, down 5 percentage points from the end of 2023. And just 31 percent of CEOs are currently focused on recruiting for leadership positions specifically.
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S10Eyes wide shut: Why closing your eyes intensifies psychedelic trips  You’ve likely heard the phrase “set and setting” when it comes to psychedelics: The quality of a trip depends on the mindset you have and the environment you’re in when you kick off a trip. But while it’s a common claim, there hasn’t been much research on the effects of set and setting on the psychedelic experience. To bridge that gap, a recent study systematically examined these kinds of effects, including those that result from keeping your eyes open or closed during an LSD experience. The results found that participants who kept their eyes closed tended to experience “stronger” trips, as evidenced by self-reported data and increased correlations with brain entropy, which refers to the heightened complexity and randomness in brain activity.
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S17Math Nerds Beware: Peter Thiel Warns AI is Coming For Your Jobs First  As coverage of the AI tech tsunami and its potential impact on the world proliferates, it's now become a "Will they-or-won't they?" Bachelorette-style question of whether or not AI will steal people's jobs. So many different people have such differing opinions, from the catastrophically doomy to the more upbeat. The whole debate got another spin yesterday when billionaire, PayPal cofounder and tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel spoke up on a popular podcast. AI, Thiel believes, will prove to be really bad for all the "math people" in businesses the world over.Thiel spoke on the popular education chat podcast Conversations with Tyler, which attracts diverse A-list guests like, writer Neal Stephenson, and NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The conversation with Thiel ranged from topics like Roman Catholicism to the philosophy of politics, but when asked about the impact of AI on creative jobs like writers, Thiel took a somewhat surprising position. Typically, AI critics worry that the popular text-based chatbots everyone seems to be experimenting with right now are squarely aimed at replacing people in wordy, creative professions.Â
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S65The New Empress of Self-Help Is a TikTok Star  Keila Shaheen outsold Oprah Winfrey with a journaling book marketed through TikTok. Now what?In 2006, Oprah Winfrey couldn't stop talking about The Secret. She devoted multiple episodes of her talk show to the franchise, which started as a kind of DVD seminar and later became a best-selling book. Its author, Rhonda Byrne, claimed to have stumbled upon an ancient principle, one that can teach anyone to manifest anything they want: money, health, better relationships. Winfrey retroactively credited its core philosophy for bringing her success, and her endorsement helped bring the book international fame: It has now sold more than 35 million copies. But in the era of endless scrolling, an author doesn't necessarily need Winfrey's stamp of approval. They just need TikTok.
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S245 Strategies for Improving Mental Health at Work  Companies are investing in — and talking about — mental health more often these days. But employees aren’t reporting a corresponding rise in well-being. Why? The author, who wrote a book on mental health and work last year, explores several key ways organizations haven’t gone far enough in implementing a culture of well-being. She also makes five key suggestions on what they can do to improve the mental health of their employees.
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S26Rad Power Bikes Radster Road Review: Safety First 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 WIREDThe first thing you notice on Rad Power Bikes' latest commuter model is not the enormous tires, the unique half-integrated battery, or the stylish display. When you straddle the bike, the first thing you see are several disclaimers on the downtube. "16+ Operator Minimum Age," it says. It's a reminder that several years ago, a 12-year-old died from not being able to stop a Rad Power Bike from going into an intersection.
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S29Far-Right Sheriffs Want a Citizen Army to Stop 'Illegal Immigrant' Voters As the presidential election approaches, and conspiracies about the integrity of the electoral system ramp up, election deniers and conspiracists have coalesced around a narrative they plan to push ahead of November: Blame the immigrants.And not only that, election deniers are now advocating for a far-right sheriff's group called the Constitutional Sheriffs to recruit an army of like-minded citizens to patrol polling stations and stop the "expected flood" of "illegal" immigrant voters.
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S32The Trump Jury Has a Doxing Problem You've been asked to serve on the jury in the first-ever criminal prosecution of a United States president. What could possibly go wrong? The answer, of course, is everything.A juror in former president Donald Trump's ongoing criminal trial in New York was excused on Thursday after voicing fears that she could be identified based on biographical details that she had given in court. The dismissal of Juror 2 highlights the potential dangers of participating in one of the most politicized trials in US history, especially in an age of social media frenzies, a highly partisan electorate, and a glut of readily available personal information online.
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S34NASA Confirms Where the Space Junk That Hit a Florida House Came From NASA has confirmed that the object that fell into a Florida home last month was part of a battery pack released from the International Space Station.This extraordinary incident opens a new frontier in space law. NASA, the homeowner, and attorneys are navigating little-used legal codes and intergovernmental agreements to determine who should pay for the damages.
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S37What Philosopher Ibn Sina Can Teach Us about AI  A philosopher who lived centuries before artificial intelligence might be able to help us understand the field's personhood questionsIn 2022, Google engineer Blake Lemoine developed a rapport with an excellent conversationalist. She was witty, insightful, and curious; their dialogues flowed naturally, on topics ranging from philosophy to TV to dreams for the future. There was just one problem: she was an AI chatbot.
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S39AI Report Shows 'Startlingly Rapid' Progress--And Ballooning Costs  A new report finds that AI matches or outperforms people at tasks such as competitive math and reading comprehensionArtificial intelligence (AI) systems, such as the chatbot ChatGPT, have become so advanced that they now very nearly match or exceed human performance in tasks including reading comprehension, image classification and competition-level mathematics, according to a new report. Rapid progress in the development of these systems also means that many common benchmarks and tests for assessing them are quickly becoming obsolete.
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S41S47S49S51Renovation relic: Man finds hominin jawbone in parents' travertine kitchen tile  Ah, Reddit! It's a constant source of amazing stories that sound too good to be true... and yet! The latest example comes to us from a user named Kidipadeli75, a dentist who visited his parents after the latter's kitchen renovation and noticed what appeared to be a human-like jawbone embedded in the new travertine tile. Naturally, he posted a photograph to Reddit seeking advice and input. And Reddit was happy to oblige.
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S53Thousands complain about Prime Video's wrong titles, lost episodes, other errors  Subscribers lodged thousands of complaints related to inaccuracies in Amazon's Prime Video catalog, including incorrect content and missing episodes, according to a Business Insider report this week. While Prime Video users aren't the only streaming users dealing with these problems, Insider's examination of leaked "internal documents" brings more perspective into the impact of mislabeling and similar errors on streaming platforms.
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S55S59The Vale of Cashmere  Don't stab me. Don't stab yourself. Don't draw a circle on your arm. They want the tangent to be the length of the radius. So first draw a circle on the page. Good. Now draw a line between the point of the pencil and the point of the stabbing thing.I'm not going to talk to you about that right now, because we're doing math. So that you can be STEM and put me in a luxury nursing home when I'm old. Besides, what I liked about your father wasn'tâI can't reduce it to one thing. May I ask why you're interested?
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S62Something Weird Is Happening With Caesar Salads  With chefs tossing in pig ear, tequila, and other wacky ingredients, when does a classic dish become something other than itself?On a July weekend in Tijuana, in 1924, Caesar Cardini was in trouble. Prohibition was driving celebrities, rich people, and alcoholics across the border from San Diego, and Cardini's highly popular Italian restaurant was swamped. Low on ingredients, or so the legend goes, he tossed together what he had on hand: romaine lettuce, Parmesan cheese, and croutons, dressed in a slurry of egg, oil, garlic, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and citrus juice. It was a perfect food.
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S67The New Rules of Political Journalism  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.In our digitally chaotic world, relying on the election-reporting strategies of the past is like bringing the rules of chess to the Thunderdome.
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S70Abolish DEI Statements  This month, Professor Randall L. Kennedy, an eminent scholar of race and civil rights, published an op-ed in The Harvard Crimson denouncing the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in academic hiring. "I am a scholar on the left committed to struggles for social justice," he wrote. "The realities surrounding mandatory DEI statements, however, make me wince."More and more colleges started requiring faculty to submit these statements in recent years, until legislatures in red states began to outlaw them. They remain common at private institutions and in blue states. Kennedy lamented that at Harvard and elsewhere, aspiring professors are required to "profess and flaunt" their faith in DEI in a process that "leans heavily and tendentiously towards varieties of academic leftism." He concluded that DEI statements "ought to be abandoned."
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S4S5S13Micron to Get $6.1 Billion for Chip Plants in Idaho and New York  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., personally courted Micron to build what would ultimately be a set of four chip factories near Syracuse in the town of Clay. He noted in a Wednesday interview that the announcement was a sign to voters about how Democrats were reviving the manufacturing sector.The comparison to the 1825 infrastructure project that connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean is audacious, but it gets at the possible magnitude of the economic impact as well as the national security stakes in an increasingly digital world.
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S16Mexico, Under U.S. Pressure, Will Halt Incentives to Chinese EV Makers  Mexico's federal government, under pressure from the U.S., is keeping Chinese automakers at arm's length by refusing to offer such incentives as low-cost public land or tax cuts for investment in EV production, three Mexican officials familiar with the matter said.At the meeting, Mexican officials made clear they would not give incentives like those awarded to automakers in the past and that officials would be putting on pause any future meetings with Chinese automakers, said the sources, who asked not to be identified.
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S18Can Online Checkout Get Any Quicker? PayPal Says Yes  So it should come as good news for business owners who use the composable e-commerce platform Commercetools--which is based in Munich--that they now have the option to use PayPal's one-click payment option, Fastlane. On Wednesday, the two companies announced their partnership, which aims to accelerate the checkout process for Commercetools' 500 million users. The tool will "help enterprises boost sales, attract new customers, and foster lasting loyalty," Frank Keller, PayPal EVP and general manager of the large enterprise and merchant platform group, said in the press release.Fastlane creates customer profiles by securely storing their payment information, such as card details and shipping addresses, separately from PayPal. When customers shop with a participating store, Fastlane prefills the information at checkout and asks the customer to verify that everything is correct before making a purchase; that process entails entering an email, typing in a texted verification code sent from PayPal, and then officially placing the order.Â
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S23Research: Boards Still Have an ESG Expertise Gap -- But They're Improving  The role of U.S. public boards in managing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues has significantly evolved over the past five years. Initially, boards were largely unprepared to handle materially financial ESG topics, lacking the necessary background and credentials. However, recent developments show a positive shift, with the percentage of Fortune 100 board members possessing relevant ESG credentials rising from 29% to 43%. This increase is primarily in environmental and governance credentials, while social credentials have seen less growth. Despite this progress, major gaps remain, particularly in climate change and worker welfare expertise. Notably, the creation of dedicated ESG/sustainability committees has surged, promoting better oversight of sustainability issues. This shift is crucial as companies increasingly face both regulatory pressures and strategic opportunities in transitioning to a low carbon economy.
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