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 S573 Easy Steps That Will Make You the Most Interesting Person in a Conversation   Too often, managers stifle conversation without realizing it - hijacking meetings without providing space for discussion and jumping in with their own solutions to problems that are brought to them. As a manager, if you don't leave room for conversation, they will happen anyway --on Slack, in hallways and the backchannels of Zoom calls - but you might not be privy to them.This habit of dominating dialogue creates a disconnect between managers and their teams and fosters cultures defined by a lack of mutual trust and collaboration. It also restricts the opportunities for employees to develop their own initiative, creativity and independent problem-solving skills required for high performance.
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S16How to Make Running Fun, According to Reddit  A running habit benefits your heart health, your mental health, your calorie burn, your muscles, your lungs, and much more. Great—so lace up your shoes! What's that? You find the act of running boring? Well, to spice things up a bit, I’ve collected recommendations to make running more fun from Reddit (and thrown in a few of my own). Try these games, strategies, and running route upgrades and never nod off during a run again. Later in this article I’ll talk about some enjoyable things you can do while you’re on a run. But it’s hard to take pleasure in anything while you’re out of breath and suffering. So remember that most of your runs should happen at an intensity that feels like work, but not torture. For most, this means slowing down your jogging pace or. if that’s not possible, alternating between a jog and a power walk.
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S649 Best Espresso Machines (2024): Dual Boilers, Budget, and Accessories 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 WIREDEspresso machines are intimidating. Just look at them, with their screaming-hot metal, scalding steam, and polished chrome tubes. Each and every one of those weird little parts plays a role in shaping the perfectly pulled shot. Espresso is as personal as it is technical, which means that shopping for a home espresso machine is kind of a nightmare. Everyone has different but adamant opinions, and the machines themselves tend to be expensive.
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S6712 Best Game Controllers (2024): PC, Switch, PS5, Xbox, Accessibility 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 WIREDYears ago, third-party game controllers were dirt cheap and notorious for poor craftsmanshipâespecially the eggshell-plastic MadCatz knockoffs. Every household had one. It was reserved for kid siblings and houseguests you maybe didn't like that much. Those kinds of controllers gave third-party gamepads a bad nameâone that persists to this day.
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S26S29HR's New Role - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)  Though the human resources function was once a strong advocate for employees, in the 1980s things changed. As labor markets became slack, HR shifted its focus to relentless cost cutting. Because it was hard for employees to quit, pay and every kind of benefit got squeezed. But now the pendulum has swung the other way. The U.S. unemployment rate has been below 4% for five years (except during the Covid shutdown), and the job market is likely to remain tight. So today the priorities are keeping positions filled and preventing employees from burning out. Toward that end HR needs to focus again on taking care of workers and persuade management to change outdated policies on compensation, training and development, layoffs, vacancies, outsourcing, and restructuring. One way to do that is to show leaders what the true costs of current practices are, creating dashboards with metrics on turnover, absenteeism, reasons for quitting, illness rates, and engagement. It’s also critical to prevent employee stress, especially by addressing fears about AI and restructuring. And when firms do restructure, they should take a less-painful, decentralized approach. To increase organizational flexibility and employees’ opportunities, HR can establish internal labor markets, and to promote a sense of belonging and win employees’ loyalty, it should ramp up DEI efforts.
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S31S37Netflix's Best Noir Thriller Ever Breaks a Pervasive TV Rule  Ripley isn't like anything else that's on TV right now. The Netflix series is, for starters, shot entirely in black and white by cinematographer Robert Elswit. That decision alone, which brings the noir aspects of Ripley's story and setting front and center, separates it from every other prestige TV drama in recent memory. Some viewers have inevitably taken issue with the show's monochromatic look, too, it only makes watching the series and all of its elliptical cutting patterns an even more hypnotic experience.It also reinforces the fact that Ripley is, among other things, an immensely visual show. It doesn't just encourage viewer engagement, it demands that one gives it their full, undivided attention. The series doesn't just do that by delivering more beautiful images in a single episode than most TV shows produce over entire seasons, but by filling its eight-hour runtime with long, dialogue-free scenes and sequences. Indeed, of all of the many surprising tricks that Ripley has hidden up its sleeves, not a single one is more effective or refreshing than its belief in the power of silence.
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S39HBO Just Quietly Released a Shocking Sequel to a True Crime Classic  Those five words vaulted The Jinx to a new level of fame. The HBO docuseries made headlines in 2015 by seemingly catching a hot mic confession from real estate scion and suspected multiple murderer Robert Durst. But the story didn’t end with that statement — the real story only got stranger after Durst became a dark pop culture phenomenon. Now, The Jinx Part Two is concluding the story. And despite the added notoriety, it manages to sidestep many thorny true crime issues and focus on what made the first part so captivating by allowing the facts and people involved to speak for themselves.
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S48Middle East student dialogue: As an expert in deep conflict, what I've learned about making conversation possible  Associate Member, School of Public Policy & Executive Director, Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, Simon Fraser University On a dreary winter evening in a university building basement in March 2015, I stood before some 100 students for a dialogue on the conflict in the Middle East. University of British Columbia (UBC) undergraduates were voting in a referendum to decide whether their student union should boycott products and divest from companies that support Israel’s occupation of Palestine — part of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Many students present were visibly Muslim or Jewish, or had ties to the region.
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S70Why are groups of university students modifying Cadillac Lyriq EVs?  Across the country, teams of students at 15 different universities are in the middle of a four-year project, dissecting an electric vehicle and figuring out ways to make it even better. The program, called the EcoCar EV Challenge, was founded more than three decades ago by the US Department of Energy and is run by the DOE's Argonne National Laboratory.
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S3S4S9S21How did Jesus' parents become a couple? Here's what biblical scholars say. - History (No paywall)  In the New Testament, the Gospels tell the story of Jesus’ birth—the first Christmas. Set during the rise of the Roman Empire, the stories create a radiant image of a young couple giving birth to the son of God in Bethlehem. The Christian world has embraced the faithful story of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus for centuries. Yet, in those times—even without getting into the plausibility of a virgin birth—their situation would have been considered scandalous. Becoming pregnant out of wedlock was a crime punishable by death.The historical documentation for Mary comes from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, written roughly between A.D. 70 and 110. Mary, believed to have been quite beautiful, was born to Anne and Joachim in Nazareth. She would have had Middle Eastern features, with dark hair and eyes and spoken an Aramaic patois.
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S30S40S10S11S25Moving the conversation about obesity beyond the scale  Every so often, the conversations that people in health care have become so pervasive that they dominate the zeitgeist, intersecting with mainstream media and popular culture. Oprah Winfrey’s recent ABC special “Shame, Blame, and the Weight Loss Revolution” is a good example of this. Now streaming on Hulu, the broadcast garnered widespread attention, including coverage from People Magazine and The New York Times. Oprah delved into her personal struggles with weight, placing her narrative against the broader backdrop of societal views on obesity. It’s a journey many people have shared with Oprah since “The Oprah Winfrey Show” began in the mid-1980s.The public discussion on obesity and weight loss, particularly concerning GLP-1 receptor agonists — the technical name for drugs like Wegovy (semaglutide) and Zepbound (tirzepatide) — is evolving quickly. The introduction of these new medicines is contributing to the public’s acceptance of obesity as a disease rather than a lifestyle choice — finally catching up with what clinicians and others have been saying for years.
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S32Can Dogs Benefit from Psychedelics? Here's What the Latest Science Says  Catnip, also known as “kitty pot” or even “meowijuana,” in moderation, is a fun and harmless substance for our feline companions. But if you’ve ever tried to give your pup some of the relaxing herb, not much will happen: Dogs, just like humans, don’t really gain a benefit from the plant. But does that mean dogs are totally left out of the experience? Recently, scientists have been researching the effects of other psychoactive drugs not just on humans, but on our puppy pals too to see if there is a catnip equivalent for our canine friends.Psychedelic research on dogs is even more in its infancy than it is in humans, according to Carlo Siracusa, a veterinarian and professor of clinical behavior medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. Siracusa works on a collaborative team at UPenn, called the Penn Psychedelic Collaborative, which investigates how psychedelic drugs work across disciplines; he’s focused on how these psychoactive drugs affect dogs.
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S33How Many More Ozempic-like Drugs Are In the Pipeline --  Few drugs have achieved the stardom that semaglutide, marketed in the United States as Ozempic or Wegovy, has today. A synthetic, injectable version of an intestinal hormone, it is the flagship of a new category of drugs initially developed for diabetes that rose to fame in the medical and public arena as an effective weapon against obesity. Semaglutide has proved so successful that its manufacturer, the Danish company Novo Nordisk, is unable to keep up with demand.The US Food and Drug Administration approved semaglutide in 2017 to improve the control of blood sugar levels in adults with type 2 diabetes — and then, in June 2021, for chronic weight management in adults who are obese or overweight and have related risk factors, such as high blood pressure or diabetes.
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S36S38What Causes Hoarding? New Research Suggests It Can Start in Childhood  A lot of people think of hoarding as something extreme – a home crammed to the ceiling with possessions. However, it tends to start gradually, and research has found that it can begin in adolescence or even childhood.The information people have about it often comes from documentaries about severe cases, focusing on overflowing piles of possessions. However, this narrow view of hoarding means people often don’t get help until the behavior is devastating their lives.
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S49The Best Ever VICE Drug Stories  By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content.
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S50Should we cancel political parties?  In 1796, President George Washington lambasted political parties for allowing “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” to “subvert the power of the people.”His indictment seems brutally timely today, just a few months after 147 Republican US congress members publicly challenged the results of a free and fair general election. But even long before then, many Americans shared Washington’s concern. The popularity of parties is at a nadir, with both the Democratic and Republican parties widely condemned as not only unrepresentative but also hopelessly corrupt and hijacked by elites. Indeed, a steadily increasing share of American voters — 38 percent in 2018 — are identifying as unaffiliated with either party. That proportion is now larger than the share of voters identifying with either Republicans or Democrats. Asked why he thought Donald Trump was “charismatic,” TV talk show host Bill Maher said: “I think it’s because he hates both parties.”
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S59How to Find Your Goldilocks Period for Fundraising in 2024  It's no secret that 2023 was a tough year for both startups and VCs. Economic turbulence, inflation spikes, and widespread tech sector layoffs had a trickle-down impact that saw 38 percent of investors sit out on deal making in 2023. Meanwhile, 45 percent of all Series A funding rounds were bridge rounds in 2023 Q4, indicating a landscape in which founders were seeking to extend the runway between major rounds. If fundraising was challenging before, data indicators from 2023 suggest the road ahead will require dedication. Founders need to be prepared to earmark a significant amount of time and energy to conduct a highly organized and methodical fundraising process.Â
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S65How to Buy a Hearing Aid: Top Questions and Answers For decades, the only way to get a hearing aid was to visit a doctor and have one prescribed for youâprobably in a strip mall office advertised on the marquee only with "HEARING AIDS" in block letters. These centers still exist, but they're fortunately a dying breed, because in August 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration finally enacted a rule (years in the making) that allowed consumers to purchase hearing aids over the counter, without a prescription, medical exam, professional fitting, or a trip to the mini-mall.The arrival of OTC products has upended the hearing aid category, with numerous major audio companies acquiring hearing aid businesses to quickly enter the market and lean on their established brands. Meanwhile, old-guard hearing aid companies have scrambled to adapt, many now offering a cheaper OTC alternative while also trying to keep their cash cow prescription products alive. (To be sure, OTC hearing aids are formally approved for those with "mild to moderate hearing loss." Users with severe hearing loss are still advised to visit a doctor.)
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S69The GMO tooth microbe that is supposed to prevent cavities  About seven years ago, Aaron Silverbook and his then-girlfriend, a biologist, were perusing old scientific literature online. “A romantic evening,” joked Silverbook. That night, he came across a study from 2000 that surprised him. Scientists had genetically engineered an oral bacterium that they said could possibly prevent tooth decay: “I read it and sort of boggled at it and said, ‘Wow, this is a cavity vaccine. Why don't we have this?’”
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S1S2S6S7S12Facts about the Moon: Dorianne Laux's Stunning Poem about Bearing Our Human Losses When Even the Moon Is Leaving Us  “Hearing the rising tide,” Rachel Carson wrote in her poetic meditation on the ocean and the meaning of life, “there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before… of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean current, from past to unknown future.” There is indeed in the physics of the tides — that gravitational dialogue between our planet and its only satellite — something of the existential, something reminding us how transient all things are, how fluid the future, how slippery our grasp of anything we hold on to, how relational every loss. The tides bridge the earthly and the cosmic, science and symbol: They cause drag that slows down our planet’s spin rate; because gravity binds the two, as the Earth loses angular momentum, the Moon overcompensates in response; as it speeds up, it begins slipping out of our gravitational grip, slowly moving away from us. The prolific English astronomer Edmund Halley first began suspecting this haunting fact in the early 18th century after analyzing ancient eclipse records. It took another quarter millennium and a giant leap into the cosmos for his theory to be tested against reality in a living poem of geometry and light: When Apollo astronauts placed mirrors on the surface of the Moon and laser beams were aimed at them from Earth, it was revealed that the Moon is indeed drifting away from us, at the precise rate of 3.8 centimeters per year. The Moon, born of the body of the Earth billions of years ago, is drifting away at more than half the rate at which a child grows.
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S13S15S17Should you have a 5 to 9 routine after your 9 to 5 job?  When the clock strikes 5 pm, a flurry of activity begins for many working professionals. While some head straight home, others lace up their dancing shoes, don their chef's aprons, or hit the gym, eagerly embracing the hours between 5 and 9 to explore personal passions and cultivate a life beyond the 9-to-5 grind.The emerging 5-to-9 trend reflects a growing desire among the working class to achieve better work-life balance and find fulfilment outside their careers. No longer content to simply collapse on the couch after a long day at the office, many individuals are now aiming to make the most of the hours before and after the typical workday—pursuing creative outlets, entrepreneurial ventures, and personal development.
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S18Great Barrier Reef suffering 'one of the most severe' coral bleaching events  This underwater photo taken on April 5, 2024, shows bleached and dead coral around Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, located 270 kilometres (167 miles) north of the city of Cairns. Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef is teetering on the brink, suffering one of the most severe coral bleaching events on record -- the fifth in eight years -- and leaving scientists unsure about its survival.| Photo Credit: AFPThis underwater photo taken on April 5, 2024, shows bleached and dead coral around Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, located 270 kilometres (167 miles) north of the city of Cairns. Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef is teetering on the brink, suffering one of the most severe coral bleaching events on record -- the fifth in eight years -- and leaving scientists unsure about its survival.| Photo Credit:AFP
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S19Visualizing the Average Lifespans of Mammals  Notably, human lifespans have experienced a remarkable surge. According to the UN Population Division, the global average life expectancy has surged from 47 years in 1950 to 72 years in 2022, marking a 25-year increase. This is attributed to advancements in nutrition, medication, and essential resources.
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S20S22S23S24S27S28A New Generation of Drug Therapies Requires New Business Strategies - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)  The shift to advanced therapeutic modalities (ATMs) promises to change the nature of competition in the pharmaceuticals industry. ATMs include engineered cell therapies that reprogram cells to fight disease, gene therapies that involve replacing or editing dysfunctional genes, and nucleic acid therapies that promote or shut down production of a protein. They are shifting the nature of drug R&D risk and establishing manufacturing as a critical strategic priority alongside therapeutic safety and efficacy while also introducing new commercialization challenges.
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S34Amazon's Selling a Ton of These 55 Cheap Home Upgrades Because They Look So Cool  Investing in budget-friendly home upgrades that make a surprisingly big difference will give your space that cool factor — and Amazon is chock-full of them. To give you a good head start, I rounded up this list of 55 budget-friendly upgrades that will make your space look elevated, upgraded, and seriously impressive. So grab a few (or more than a few) and start refreshing your space with these cool finds.This clever kitchen sink splash guard fits around faucets, and its sloped design will automatically drain water right back into the basin. Store hand soap, sponges, and other kitchen items on its spacious surface. Its dishwasher-safe silicone will keep your sink free of water spots and soap scum.
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S3525 Years Ago, a Freakish Sci-Fi Thriller Predicted a Major Medical Breakthrough  Overshadowed at the time by The Matrix, eXistenZ floundered at the box office but went on to become a cult classic.In 1999, two sci-fi movies left us questioning our reality. One was full of heart, groundbreaking special effects, and Keanu Reeves — a predestined blockbuster. The other brought body horror, Willem Dafoe leaning into madness in a scene-stealing bit part, and a truly edgy biopunk spin on VR that all led to it being overshadowed and overlooked.
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S41S42Esther Mahlangu: how the famous South African artist keeps her Ndebele culture alive  Esther Mahlangu is having a retrospective of her world famous art in Cape Town. Now 88, the South African visual artist is best known for her colourful large-scale murals in the traditional patterns and colours of the Ndebele people of South Africa – once famously displayed on a BMW as part of a global advertising campaign. But how is she regarded by her people and what does her work represent? We asked Sifiso Ndlovu, an expert in the art and identity of the Ndebele people, to tell us more.Esther Nostokana Mahlangu was born on 11 November 1935 in the Middelburg area of South Africa’s mostly rural Mpumalanga province. Today she lives in Mthambothini village, a few hours away.
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S43Blue whales: first discovery near Seychelles in decades - what our study found  Blue whales are fascinating animals. At 24-30 metres in length (longer than a basketball court) they are the largest creatures on Earth. They are also among the rarest. Estimates suggest that there are only around 5,000 to 15,000 blue whales left in the world. Their populations experienced a 89-97% decline due to commercial whaling activities worldwide that started in the North Atlantic in 1868. Blue whales were primarily valued for their blubber, transformed into oil and used in cosmetics and soap, for the lubrication of industrial equipment, and as lamp oil. In 1978, the last deliberate capture of a blue whale was recorded off Spain.
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S44South Africa's security forces once brutally entrenched apartheid. It's been a rocky road to reform  One of the important tasks that faced South Africa’s democratic government after 1994 was to reform the apartheid-era security apparatus. The African National Congress (ANC), which was voted into power, had a laudable vision in the 1990s for reforming the police, military and intelligence services. Determined that South Africans would never again be subject to the brutality of the security forces, it ensured that the core principles it stood for were written into the country’s democratic constitution.
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S45Lagos' slum dwellers are excluded from decisions that affect them. 3 ways to change that  Lagos is a city of two halves: money dripping in the corridors of corporate offices, and stagnant water dripping in the slums that are home to over 20 million. Residents of informal settlements grapple with the daily challenges that come with inadequate infrastructure, limited access to essential services, and social exclusion.Social exclusion means being excluded from participating wholly in the society, often as a result of belonging to a minority group or residing in less advantaged areas or regions.
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S46Earth Day 2024: 4 effective strategies to reduce household food waste  Post-doctoral Fellow, EAT-Lancet 2.0 Commission, Stockholm Resilience Centre, University of Guelph The global food system produces enough food for everyone, yet, in 2023, 333 million people worldwide were food insecure and 783 million were chronically hungry. An estimated 1.3 billion tons of food — 14 per cent of all produced — is lost or wasted globally every year.
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S47Language matters in preventing suicide  Chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, McMaster University Of all the issues in psychiatry, even in all of medicine, suicide may be the most challenging to discuss responsibly in public.
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