- The top 25 stories curated by editors and fellow readers!
Editor's Pick |
| Work Today in History: January 19, Howard Hughes sets coast-to-coast flight record  Howard Hughes set a new transcontinental air speed record in his H-1 Racer aircraft, flying from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, in seven hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. |
| Work Three million years ago, our ancestors were vegetarian Human ancestors like Australopithecus -- which lived around 3.5 million years ago in southern Africa -- ate very little to no meat, according to new research published in the scientific journal Science. |
| Work How to Create Your Own Custom AI Bots in Google Gemini  Google hasn't been shy about pushing the Gemini AI bot into just about every app and device it can--from the Pixel 9 to your video calls--and most of the time you get the same experience when you call up the assistant. |
| Work Sheryl Lee Ralph's secret to a successful marriage Live apart  (CNN) -- Sheryl Lee Ralph is proudly celebrating 19 years of marriage to her husband Vincent Hughes, a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate, and part of the secret to their longevity as a wedded couple might seem a little unorthodox. In a wide-ranging interview with People earlier this month, the Emmy-winning "Abbott Elementary" star explained how the pair [...] |
| Work Elon Musk's gaming scandal deepens as X owner attempts to silence streamer Asmongold for blowing the whistle BYOn top of all his many accomplishments, Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk boasted he's among the world's top ranked video game players. Now he's getting called out by other gamers for supposedly lying about his record. |
| Work If 2025 is the Year of Intention, what is one thing you intend to make happen  The Democratic Party needs to be more intentional in selecting their next candidate, support them with donations and campaign support, and appeal to the new generation of voters in order to win the next election. |
| Work What are your thoughts on the Trump election interference case and Fani Willis' efforts to overturn her disqualification  The Democratic Party needs to be more intentional in selecting their next candidate, support them with donations and campaign support, and appeal to the new generation of voters in order to win the next election. |
| Work Renck: Broncos CEO Greg Penner once wondered why Stan Kroenke preferred to be alone on game days. "Now, I get it."  “It is the most stressful because there is absolutely nothing I can do,” Penner said. “To be a competitor and not be able to impact the outcome in real-time is hard. So there are times when I can’t keep socializing. I sit with Carrie on my left and Condi (Condoleezza Rice) on my right, and we just watch the game.” |
| Work Polis announces flags to be raised on Inauguration Day  Gov. Jared Polis announced the pause in a month of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter on Friday. |
| Work Clifford leads CSU Rams past Wyoming on Saturday in Laramie  “They’re really starting to buy into who they have to be,” CSU head coach Niko Medved said. “I said from Day 1 I thought this team could and would improve because of who they are and how they’re wired, and I think we’re seeing that.” |
| Work Women's basketball: CU Buffs falter down stretch, lose at Cincinnati  3-point goals – Colorado 9-20 (Formann 4-6, Garzon 2-8, Teder 1-2, Sanders 1-1, Nworie 1-1, Smith 0-2), Cincinnati 4-23 (Mann 3-8, Hylton 1-4, R. Jackson 0-4, A. Jackson 0-3, Hayes 0-2, Dunn 0-1, Holtman 0-1). Rebounds – Colorado 36 (Masogayo 7), Cincinnati 36 (Ndiba 12). Assists – Colorado 15 (Wetta 4), Cincinnati 7 (Hylton, Mann 2). Steals – Colorado 4 (Sanders 2), Cincinnati 9 (Hylton 3). Turnovers – Colorado 21, Cincinnati 12. Total fouls – Colorado 25, Cincinnati 18. Fouled out – Formann, Wetta, Hayes. Attendance – 1,649. |
| Work Keeler: Avalanche, please don't make Nuggets' mistakes. Pay Mikko Rantanen. Help Cale Makar. Don't break up the band.  “You’ve got to know you’re prepared in a bunch of different avenues of the game. But then you’ve got to go and play,” Bednar said of Rantanen. “So I think it’s just being a good pro — being focused on what you’re doing and staying in the moment, and putting everything you’ve got into whatever you’re doing at that time, is the key to it.” |
| Work Woman killed in scooter crash in Escondido identified  According to the Medical Examiner’s Office, Kristen Ryan was riding a Vespa scooter westbound on San Pasqual Valley Road not far from San Diego Zoo Safari Park with her husband following on another scooter on Jan. 12 when she was thrown from the vehicle after striking a rock in the road on a curve. |
| Work More than 83,000 customers warned they could lose power when wild Santa Anas hit San Diego Monday  “Recent fires have shown high resistance to control, with rapid spread and frequent spotting, with retardant often proving ineffective in the control of the fire environment,” the Southern California Geographic Area Coordinator said in a statement. |
| Work Motorcyclist killed in El Cajon accident identified  Anthony Crum was riding a Suzuki motorcycle with his juvenile daughter as a passenger westbound on East Main Street near Shady Lane at about 4:15 p.m. Jan. 12 when they were struck by a Chevrolet SUV making a left turn onto Orlando Street, according to the San Diego Medical Examiner’s Office and police. |
| Work Hope and dread: Thousands rally for women and justice over last weekend before Trump inauguration  Meanwhile in Hillcrest during a “One Fight, All Rights” march, a smaller group of demonstrators made their way down University Avenue carrying signs that read, among other things, “Trans Rights Are Human Rights” and “Injustice Anywhere Is a Threat to Justice Everywhere.” |
| Work TikTok goes dark in the US  Other investors have also been eyeing TikTok. “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary recently said a consortium of investors that he and billionaire Frank McCourt put together offered ByteDance $20 billion in cash. Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said last year that he was putting together an investor group to buy TikTok. |
| Work California attorney general says bidding wars aren't exempt from price-gouging rules  Andrew Khouri covers the housing market for the Los Angeles Times. Before coming to The Times he wrote about commercial real estate for the San Fernando Valley Business Journal. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and graduated from the University of San Diego with a degree in history. |
| Work Alhambra police fatally shoot man who came at them with knife, authorities say  Christopher Goffard is an author and a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. He shared in the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for the paper’s Bell coverage and has twice been a Pulitzer finalist for feature writing, in 2007 and 2014. His novel “Snitch Jacket” was a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel. His book “You Will See Fire: A Search for Justice in Kenya,” based on his Times series, was published in 2011. |
| Work 'After I Got Into the Cab, the Driver and I Began Chatting'  Then, suddenly, I remembered him, too. He had told me the last time we spoke that he was sending one of his teenage children to live with his parents for a while so they could get to know one another. |
| Work With 'City of Yes,' New York Finally Gets Real About the Housing Crisis  A new rezoning plan for the city aims to remove long-outdated barriers to building housing and to spread development across all the city's neighborhoods. |
| Work When Penguins Divorce, the Whole Colony Is Impacted  'In good times, they largely stick with their partners, although there's often a bit of hanky-panky happening on the side.' |
| Work The Life and Legacy of Peter Forrest, the Charismatic Lead Singer for 24-7 Spyz  On Jan. 13, some 30 years after he walked away from the band, Mr. Forrest’s remarkable life story came to a shocking end. Mr. Forrest, 64, was found beaten to death inside his ambulette at the end of Castle Hill Avenue in the Bronx, just a couple of miles from where he grew up. |
| Work Psychedelic drug DMT trialled on patients to treat alcohol addiction  A powerful psychedelic that is used in healing ceremonies by Indigenous groups in the Amazon is being trialled as a pioneering approach to reduce problematic alcohol consumption. |
| Work Why Is Every Human Being Riddled With Genetic Errors?  A vast mosaic of cells, some that are identical and some that are slightly different, make up the human body. Knowable Magazine You began when egg and sperm met, and the DNA from your biological parents teamed up. Your first cell began copying its newly melded genome and dividing to build a body. |
| Work A New Way to Test AI for Sentience : Make It Confront Pain  In the quest for a reliable way to detect any stirrings of a sentient "I" in artificial intelligence systems, researchers are turning to one area of experience--pain--that inarguably unites a vast swath of living beings, from hermit crabs to humans. |
| Work We need to protect the protocol that runs Bluesky  Last week, when Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta would be ending third-party fact-checking, it was a shocking pivot, but not exactly surprising. It's just the latest example of a billionaire flip-flop affecting our social lives on the internet. |
| Work Vintage cars survive Los Angeles area fires  A vintage car sits parked in front of a home destroyed by the Palisades Fire on January 12, 2025 in Pacific Palisades, California. Some classic and vintage cars survived the destructive Eaton and Palisades Fires even though they were parked directly in front of homes that burned. |
| Work Year-End Bonuses Rise -- but Fewer Workers Are Getting Them, Report Finds  The average end-of-year bonus rose about 2% in 2024, according to an exclusive look at data from Gusto. |
| Work It's Decided -- Parents Tend to Favor Daughters and Conscientious Children  Learn more about the traits of children who are more likely to be treated better by parents. |
| Work We need to talk about human genome editing  You have full access to this article via your institution. Scientists know about tens of thousands of DNA variants that are associated with human diseases. On their own, the vast majority of these variants have small effects. But taken together, the result can be substantial. |
| Work A Novel 'Kiss and Capture' Event Gave Pluto Its Largest Moon, Charon, New Study Suggests  A composite of enhanced color images of Pluto (lower right) and Charon (upper left), taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015. |
| Work "Only three jobs will survive AI": Bill Gates paints a grim picture for the future of work  As technology continues to evolve at a breakneck pace, the future of work is becoming a hot topic of conversation. Renowned tech visionary Bill Gates has recently shared a startling prediction: only three professions will withstand the tidal wave of artificial intelligence (AI) advancements. |
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| Work AI Social Media Users Are Not Always a Totally Dumb Idea  Meta caused a stir last week when it let slip that it intends to populate its platform with a significant number of entirely artificial users in the not too distant future. |
| Work The pointy-shoed corruption of medieval London  Perhaps one of the oddest moral panics - a fear that some evil threatens the wellbeing of society - was one that arose in medieval times. |
| Work How to Stop Doomscrolling--With Psychology  The act of doomscrolling--spinning continuously through bad news despite its disheartening and depressing effects--and social media envy, like the fear of missing out, present greater risks to your health than were previously realized. |
| Work Mastodon becomes nonprofit to make sure it's never ruined by billionaire CEO  And perhaps in a nod to Meta's recent changes, Mastodon also vowed to "invest deeply in trust and safety" and ensure "everyone, especially marginalized communities," feels "safe" on the platform. |
| Work Aspiring Parents Have a New DNA Test to Obsess Over  An emerging field of genetics promises to let parents choose the "healthiest" baby. The first time Jamie Cassidy was pregnant, the fetus had a genetic mutation so devastating that she and her husband, Brennan, decided to terminate in the second trimester. |
| Work The Silicon Valley venture capitalists who want to 'move fast and break things' in the defence industry  I'm a propagandist, I'll twist the truth, I'll put forward only my version of it if I think that's going to propagandise people to believe what I need them to believe. This is not a soundbite from a particularly ebullient moment in the hit television show Mad Men. |
| Work What Spotify Took From Us by Giving Us Everything  Liz Pelly's new book examines how playlists reshaped our culture. |
| Work Bridging theory and practice in engineering strategy.  Some people I've worked with have lost hope that engineering strategy actually exists within any engineering organizations. I imagine that they, reading through the steps to build engineering strategy, or the strategy for navigating private equity ownership, are not impressed. |
| Work The Pros and Cons of the Best TikTok Alternatives  With the TikTok ban approaching, users are seeking alternatives. There are three obvious platforms to migrate to: Red Note, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. But do they compare? |
| Work Mark Zuckerberg says companies need more 'masculine energy.' What does that even mean?  Women make up just 35% of the tech workforce and hold only 11% of executive roles. |
| Work BMI Sidelined in New Obesity Definition That Favors Health Evaluation  Amid the rising buzz around Ozempic and similar weight-loss drugs, a group of 58 researchers is challenging the way obesity is defined and diagnosed, arguing that current methods fail to capture the complexity of the condition. They offer a more nuanced approach. |
| Work Citigroup Lays Off Data Analysis Roles, Managing Directors  Citigroup is cutting certain roles as part of a broader corporate restructuring to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs by 2026. |
| Work Mark Cuban Asks for TikTok Alternative Built on AT Protocol  Mark Cuban has been one of Bluesky's most vocal supporters in recent months. And now that the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban, the billionaire entrepreneur is looking for something new. Bluesky is built on the AT Protocol, an open, decentralized network for building apps. |
| Work The Women on the Frontlines of the Los Angeles Wildfires  They are firefighters and aid workers, chefs and booksellers--and they're all on a mission to show up for their Los Angeles community. |
| Work TikTok goes dark in the US ahead of ban  TikTok users in the US have been defecting not to YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels, though both of those products will likely see a post-ban boost, but to Xiaohongshu, otherwise known as RedNote, a Chinese video-sharing app. |
| Work aCreative use of punishmenta: Covid-style lockdowns proposed for criminals in England and Wales  A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "The Lord Chancellor launched the Independent Sentencing Review to create a more effective criminal justice system and ensure that no government is ever forced to release prisoners early again. |
| Work Frankenstein inspired by suicide of Mary Shelleyas half-sister, book reveals  Her show, produced by Pilot Theatre and Hull Truck Theatre and with songs by musician Billy Nomates (aka Tor Maries), will tell the story of Wollstonecraft's adventurous career and was prompted by the thought that she had never known her most famous child, Mary Shelley. "I wanted to do a show about how we raise girls and young women, because a lot of what Wollstonecraft wrote still feels so modern," said Lennon. |
| Work aUnwillinga coroners failed us, say families of gambling addicts who took their own lives  In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116123, or email [email protected] or [email protected]. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org |
| Work Marcus Rashfordas holiday scheme for kids wins reprieve from spending cuts  Shona Goudie, from the Food Foundation, said the programme had been "one of the major successes of Marcus Rashford's campaign to end child food poverty" that had become a lifeline to some of England's poorest families. "Beyond just providing critical nourishment, the scheme offers enriching activities to combat learning loss and provides childcare to help hardworking parents who can't afford to take time off work," she said. |
| Work Quarter of English councils may have to sell homes to balance books, study finds  In September last year, 109 councils around England jointly signed up to a series of recommendations for measures aimed at improving the situation, including a replacement for the 2012 Housing Revenue Account (HRA), the supposedly self-financing arrangement for social housing expenditure and income, which councils said is unsustainable. |
| Work Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas comes into force following delay over release of hostage list a live  Damari holds British citizenship, and her club, Tottenham Hotspur, came together with Arsena during the north London derby last week to honour her, releasing yellow balloons in the seventh minute of the game - the colour adopted by the hostages' families. |
| Work aAnimals can feel good and evila: film puts new perspective on Ukraine war  Kokhan described the film about animals as part of a "cultural front" in a bigger battle. "We are in an information war, and cinema is one of the most persuasive instruments," he said. |
| Work Thousands attend pro-Palestine rallies in Australian cities ahead of hoped-for ceasefire  “We would be in a situation where we were saying no to nurses, no to police officers, no to teachers, but yes to psychiatrists specifically, because they threatened to cripple the public health system if we didn’t,” Minns said. |
| Work aNet zero heroa myth unfairly shifts burden of solving climate crisis on to individuals, study finds  Van Laer said those wanting to take individual action should not feel disempowered but recommended contextualising efforts to electrify homes or install solar alongside the role of industry and government. |
| Work Man charged with attempted murder after allegedly setting woman on fire at home south of Brisbane  The minister said she had commissioned a report into the service with an interim report due in March, as well as an expert panel to oversee and guide domestic and family violence reforms that sought to put a “focus on perpetrators and perpetrator accountability”. |
| Work Baby dead and five injured in horrific house fire in Tasmania  Firefighters pulled a child and adult from the Rokeby home on Sunday morning but were unable to reach the infant in time |
| Work Liberals dangle tax breaks for business lunches as leaders target marginal seats  “Peter Dutton is yet to come out with serious policy announcements. And when he does come out with, finally, a costing, he came out with a nuclear costing that said there’d be 40% less energy use compared with what the Australian Energy Market Operator says will be needed in 2050.” |