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S1How Solar Storms Can Shut Down The Internet, Power Grids, And Even Tractors  The geomagnetic storm that began on May 10, 2024, generated stunning aurora borealis, more commonly known as the northern lights, that could be seen as far south as Mexico. They also generated headaches for farmers whose GPS-guided tractors were idled in the middle of planting season.
Geomagnetic storms occur when a large bubble of superheated gas called plasma is ejected from the surface of the Sun and hits the Earth. This bubble is known as a coronal mass ejection. The plasma of a coronal mass ejection consists of a cloud of protons and electrons, which are electrically charged particles. When these particles reach the Earth, they interact with the magnetic field that surrounds the planet. This interaction causes the magnetic field to distort and weaken, which in turn leads to the strange behavior of the aurora borealis and other natural phenomena.
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S28 Years Ago, Google Beat Alexa. Then It Just Let the Assistant Waste Away Instead of leading the way, Google is again playing catch up, only this time it’s to OpenAI’s ChatGPT not Amazon.
Google Assistant was supposed to be Google’s future. The voice assistant was an early attempt at ambient computing that gave customers a one-on-one relationship with all of the company’s products. Sure, Google was directly responding to Amazon’s announcement of Alexa and the Echo, but it was also deploying years of research it had already conducted on natural language processing and machine learning. In many ways, the Assistant was uniquely suited to supercharge a voice-driven Google Search.
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S3Why Scientists Are Frantically Trying To Document Millions of Viral Sequences Around the World Viruses are a mysterious and poorly understood force in microbial ecosystems. Researchers know they can infect, kill, and manipulate human and bacterial cells in nearly every environment, from the oceans to your gut. But scientists don’t yet have a full picture of how viruses affect their surrounding environments in large part because of their extraordinary diversity and ability to rapidly evolve.
Communities of microbes are difficult to study in a laboratory setting. Many microbes are challenging to cultivate, and their natural environment has many more features influencing their success or failure than scientists can replicate in a lab.
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S4The Details: could a 'quiet COVID book' win the 2024 International Booker prize? This year’s International Booker prize shortlist is neatly varied, offering generational sagas, magical realism, and personal and political narratives that are “implicitly optimistic” , exploring the current realities of racism and oppression, global violence and ecological disaster.
Among the shortlisted nominees, there is one very small, very quiet, COVID book from Sweden, inspired by the coronavirus pandemic.
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S5Why has an Israel-Hamas ceasefire been so elusive? A timeline of key moments in the search for peace Ever since armed conflict has existed, ceasefires have been thought of as a bridge between war and peace. Consequently, their success has been measured by their ability to stop violence between warring parties for a period of time.
However, ceasefires are not a panacea. This is as true for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as it is for many other conflicts around the world, like Ukraine, Syria and Sudan. Ceasefires are often just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what needs to be done to provide meaningful, structural security for those most affected by complex systems of violence that transcend times of war.
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S6Iran crash: President Raisi's death leaves Tehran mourning loss of regime loyalist Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed when his helicopter crashed on May 19, 2024 in a mountainous border region, was a consummate loyalist whose passing will be a severe blow to the country’s conservative leadership.
The discovery of wreckage and bodies followed an overnight search operation hampered by weather and terrain. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that there would be a five day period of public mourning in the country.
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S7What's the difference between fiscal and monetary policy? This article is part two of The Conversation’s “Business Basics” series where we ask leading experts to discuss key concepts in business, economics and finance.
How governments should manage their budgets, and how interest rates should be set, are two of the most important questions in economics.
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S9S10AI chatbots are intruding into online communities where people are trying to connect with other humans A parent asked a question in a private Facebook group in April 2024: Does anyone with a child who is both gifted and disabled have any experience with New York City public schools? The parent received a seemingly helpful answer that laid out some characteristics of a specific school, beginning with the context that “I have a child who is also 2e,” meaning twice exceptional.
On a Facebook group for swapping unwanted items near Boston, a user looking for specific items received an offer of a “gently used” Canon camera and an “almost-new portable air conditioning unit that I never ended up using.”
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S11S12How the Gaza humanitarian aid pier traces its origins to discarded cigar boxes before World War II
Curator of Military History, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Palestinians in Gaza have begun receiving humanitarian aid delivered through a newly completed floating pier off the coast of the besieged territory. Built by the U.S. military and operated in coordination with the United Nations, aid groups and other nations’ militaries, the pier can trace its origins back to a mid-20th century U.S. Navy officer who collected discarded cigar boxes to experiment with a new idea.
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S13California is about to tax guns more like alcohol and tobacco - and that could put a dent in gun violence Starting in July 2024, California will be the first state to charge an excise tax on guns and ammunition. The new tax – an 11% levy on each sale – will come on top of federal excise taxes of 10% or 11% for firearms and California’s 6% sales tax.
The National Rifle Association has characterized California’s Gun Violence Prevention and School Safety Act as an affront to the Constitution. But the reaction from the gun lobby and firearms manufactures may hint at something else: the impact that the measure, which is aimed at reducing gun violence, may have on sales.
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S14What could President Raisi's death mean for stability in Iran and beyond? Expert Q&A A helicopter carrying Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and other officials crashed in the mountainous north-west reaches of Iran on Sunday May 19, sparking a rescue operation in thick fog and driving rain. On Monday, search and rescue teams reached the crash site and “found no signs of the helicopter’s occupants being alive”.
The death of Raisi and his foreign minister will shake up Iranian politics. Who was Raisi? What happens now? And what could his death mean for stability in the country and beyond? We spoke with Scott Lucas, a Middle East scholar at University College Dublin, who has been writing about tensions in the Middle East for many years.
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S15S16 To Navigate Conflict, Prioritize Dignity The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.
The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.
Conflicts between businesses pursuing commercial objectives and communities defending their interests arise regularly and often inevitably, especially when companies don’t prioritize engagement with their neighbors. Consider the rapid expansion of the mining sector in Latin America, renewable energy projects that underestimate “not in my backyard” opposition, or the displacement of marginalized groups with unwanted facility siting. In many cases, the work has slogged on despite local protests, and drawn-out conflict has resulted.
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S17The Next Star Wars Show Could Bring Back a Sith Weapon that Rivals the Lightsaber The Acolyte will show the Star Wars universe in an old light. Set in the “last days of the High Republic,” which is about a century before the prequel trilogy, the upcoming Disney+ series depicts the Jedi at the peak of their power, when they protected the galaxy with (seemingly) infallible grace and benevolence.
There are many reasons that environment is different from the Star Wars most fans know, but one of the most intriguing comes from the different combat styles that will apparently be on display. Now, as a sinister Sith plot unfolds, we may also see an ancient Sith artifact enter canon, and do its best to hold up against a lightsaber.
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S18Amazon's Selling Out of These 55 Weird Things for Your Home That Are So Damn Clever & Cheap Often the thing that turns a house into a home isn’t an investment piece but a simple, cool, and cheap decor accent. Or maybe it’s whimsical takes on ordinary tools that make your space more functional. Or maybe it’s a storage hack for a more organized space. But no matter what those things are, they’re certainly clever and cheap. If you don’t believe these kinds of things can improve your home, keep scrolling for 55 weird, cheap, and clever things for your home that are selling out on Amazon.
This pickle jar has two connected compartments separated by a strainer so you can put all your pickles in one side and let them marinate in pickle juice until you’re ready to take one out. Then, you simply flip it over, the juice sinks into the bottom compartment, and you can grab your pickle without creating a mess.
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S1965 Crazy Things on Amazon That Are Shockingly Clever You may not have known that you need a plush tablet stand or stainless steel chilling stone with a built-in suction cup, but after checking out this list, you’ll realize that there’s actually a lot of life-improving, clever stuff that you’re missing out on. These crazy things will make everyday life easier from your car to the kitchen and office (and everywhere in between).
Add this refrigerator deodorizer to your cart and you won’t have to worry about replacing it for a whopping 10 years. It eliminates odors at the source by decomposing gases, making it more effective than baking soda and activated carbon. It can also be used in your closet or car — it will freshen up any area that you place it in.
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S2035 Years Ago, an Underrated Vampire Thriller Barely Made it to Theaters The original Fright Night grossed nearly $25 million in the summer of 1985, an impressive figure for a horror movie only surpassed that year by the second outing of Freddy Kreuger. You’d expect its 1989 sequel to be something of a big deal, but thanks to various behind-the-scenes problems, it slipped so far under the radar that many fans weren’t even aware of its existence.
The franchise’s slide into obscurity began when Columbia Pictures apparently decided that Oscar bait, rather than schlocky horror comedies whose only accolades came from the Saturn Awards, should be their forte. New Century/Vista took up the mantle instead, but as a much smaller company, it had to slash both its production and distribution budget: Fright Night Part 2 opened on just 148 screens, explaining why its box office haul was only a tenth of its predecessor.
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S21This Surprising Problem Occurs When You Rub Your Eyes Too Much Few can deny how good it feels to clench your fist and dig knuckle-first into your itchy eyeballs. Whether you’ve got seasonal allergies or some dust in your eye, everyone feels the urge to rub at some point. (My mom even has a crass description for how satisfying it feels to rub your eyes: ocular masturbation.) But as much as this habit might temporarily relieve discomfort, especially when you’re dealing with red, itchy eyes from allergies, experts warn it can do more harm than good.
Rubbing your eyes introduces a host of potential issues, and even puts you at risk for vision problems. Worst of all? It probably doesn’t even help with itch.
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S22An Exoplanet's Huge Comet-like Tail Hides An Astronomical Secret WASP-69b offers astrophysicists a window into the dynamic processes that shape planets across the galaxy.
Located 163 light-years from Earth, a Jupiter-sized exoplanet named WASP-69b offers astrophysicists a window into the dynamic processes that shape planets across the galaxy. The star it orbits is baking and stripping away the planet’s atmosphere, and that escaped atmosphere is being sculpted by the star into a vast, cometlike tail at least 350,000 miles long.
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S23Netflix Just Quietly Added the Most Misunderstood Marvel Movie of the Decade Is Madame Web a self-aware camp classic, or a spectacular overestimation of Sony’s Spider-Verse? It all depends on who you ask. From a box office standpoint, the 2024 film didn’t make Sony’s nascent franchise any more viable; it’s the lowest-grossing film based on a Marvel character, ever. The box-office and critical reception was so bad, that the failure of Madame Web might have Sony reevaluating its plans for the universe: the studio was reportedly building a handful of spin-offs around Dakota Johnson’s unlikely heroine but might have pulled the plug since.
But perhaps time will be kind to Madame Web. Or rather, maybe Madame Web was never destined to find its audience as a movie theater blockbuster tentpole. Instead, it’s the kind of film that you watch watches with friends and forget a day later. Studios are now hungrier than ever for the next big phenomenon, the film that’s going to reshape the world. Madame Web was never going to be that, because it belongs to a bygone era, one where mid-budget chick flicks and low-risk cult classics had just as much pull as superhero tentpoles. It straddles those two worlds to varying success. Sure, it flopped at the box office, but it’s been getting a much warmer reception with the help of a platform like Netflix.
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S24S25The abyss at the edge of human understanding - a voyage into a black hole | Aeon Videos Even if you were flying in the most sophisticated interstellar craft and wearing the snazziest futuristic spacesuit imaginable, a journey into a black hole would almost certainly be your last trip anywhere. Mercifully for anyone intrigued by the idea of such a voyage, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have developed this simulation of what, to the very best of our knowledge, it would look like if a camera approached and plunged through the event horizon of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. This version of the video simulates the experience of being sucked into the cosmic abyss before walking viewers through the Universe-bending hard science of it all. The resulting visuals are both awesome and deceptively simple – the result of a NASA supercomputer spitting out some 10 terabytes of data in a process that would take a normal personal laptop roughly a decade.
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