Most Popular Editorials: The Unlikely Rise of Slim Pickins, the First Black-Owned Outdoors Retailer in the Country

S2

The Unlikely Rise of Slim Pickins, the First Black-Owned Outdoors Retailer in the Country A nighttime stroll through downtown Stephenville evokes a certain small-town Texas vibe. All around the square, string lights illuminate weathered brick storefronts. The Erath County courthouse, with its thick limestone walls and Romanesque arched windows, was completed in 1892. Its pointed clock tower remains one of the tallest structures around. On the courthouse lawn is a Confederate memorial, dedicated in 2001, that pays tribute to the more than six hundred soldiers who now “rest beneath the rich soil of Erath County.” Nearby, on a corner of the square, stands a life-size statue of a dairy cow. The black-and-white Holstein, erected in 1972 and known locally as Moo-La, is a nod to the county’s state-leading dairy industry. The fire department has been known to hose her down, and she’s sometimes costumed in relevant attire: a flower necklace for the annual Moo-La Fest, a cloth mask at the height of the pandemic.  Continued here

�

�

S1

The Problem With Companies Promising to Pay for Abortion Travel On August 5, Indiana became the first state to pass an abortion ban since Roe v. Wade was overturned. The next morning, the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly announced that because of the new restrictions, it expected to have to start hiring outside the state. In the meantime, it was expanding its employee health plan to cover travel “for reproductive services unavailable locally.” In other words, it would help employees bypass the ban, which goes into effect next month, by paying for a trip out of state for an abortion. Continued here

You Might Like

�

�

�

S3

Quiet quitting: why doing the bare minimum at work has gone global Rather than working late on a Friday evening, organising the annual team-building trip to Slough or volunteering to supervise the boss’s teenager on work experience, the quiet quitters are avoiding the above and beyond, the hustle culture mentality, or what psychologists call “occupational citizenship behaviours”. Continued here

�

S4

In 4 Words, Google CEO Sundar Pichai Just Gave the Best Advice on How to Lead. It Also Works for How to Raise Successful Kids Pichai is encouraging leaders and parents to tap into the deep well of intrinsic motivation. Continued here

You Might Like

�

�

�

S5

Is Oxygen the Answer to Long Covid? She was dead tired but couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think straight, and could barely walk. The muscle pain in her arms and legs was so bad that she spent days in bed. When she did get up, she used a wheelchair. And she couldn’t focus on even the most trivial tasks, let alone work. But doctors couldn’t agree on what was wrong with 41-year-old Maya Doari. Continued here

�

S6

The Lifestyle Habits That Slow Down Aging, From a 100-Year-old Neurologist -- Eat This Not That It's pretty amazing to hear of someone living their best life for an entire century and beyond. It's even more extraordinary for that someone to be an accomplished neurologist and teacher at 100. (Heck, he even passed the State Bar in Ohio!) Dr. Howard Tucker from Cleveland, Ohio happens to be that person. According to People Magazine, Tucker has practiced medicine for 75 of his 100 years living on Earth, and he's still going strong to this day. This centenarian was even dubbed by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest practicing doctor in 2021, a title which Dr. Tucker admitted would "probably be the crowning achievement" for him. He reveals, "I think I'll live forever." Dr. Tucker is so intriguing, there's even a documentary in the works on the centenarian's life. Read on to learn about six lifestyle habits that slow down aging, inspired by this 100-year-old neurologist. Continued here

�

S7

Quantum Physics Could Finally Explain Consciousness, Scientists Say During the 20th century, researchers pushed the frontiers of science further than ever before with great strides made in two very distinct fields. While physicists discovered the strange counter-intuitive rules that govern the subatomic world, our understanding of how the mind works burgeoned. Continued here

�

S8

Did You Know You Could Name a Planet? This is a group project, so before you start thinking of names, you’re going to have to put a team together, or join one that already exists. And not just any team: One “composed of students and teachers, astronomy enthusiasts, amateurs astronomers, and exoplanetary scientists,” according to the IAU. But there’s no limit to the number of people that can join a team. Continued here

�

S9

How to Tell if You're Being Breadcrumbed in a Relationship, Friendship or at Work

S10

7 simple tricks to make your brain smarter (according to Harvard University) One of the lingering after-effects of CoVid-19 was the thought that brain fog–and its impact on our mind and long term memory–were terribly real. Everybody that came out of it began to second-guess whether they were still as sharp as they were before the virus hit. And while most of us might not really get the answer to that worrying question, there is definitely a solution for it. According to a series of studies and research by Harvard University, it’s not a hard thing to do to sharpen your mind with simple things you can do every day. Whether it's sprucing up your memory or challenging your mind to do things differently, these tricks will help you hone that brain power like nobody’s business. Continued here

S11

How much money would you need to live your ideal life? That’s the question at the crux of a recent study published in the journal Nature Sustainability, which surveyed about 220 people in each of 33 countries about the amount of wealth they’d require to live their version of an ideal life. Based on this number, participants were asked to choose the prize they’d hope to win in a lottery, with options ranging from $10,000 at the low end to $100 billion at the high end—an amount so large, the study’s author’s say, that it’s tantamount to unlimited wealth. Continued here

S12

Everything I own was stolen from the Uhaul I rented for a cross-country move Yeah, two months ago I had a lot of things. I had 31-years worth of things I’d accumulated and curated; you know how one does. I had spent time finding things I loved; that were me. Along with the many pairs of boots, a couch, a queen-sized bed, and a 45-inch TV (objects that money can replace), I had decades worth of invaluable things—an African mask from my father’s youthful trip to Ghana, his Morehouse College sweatshirt that had faded just right with time—all passed down to me when he died.  Continued here

S13

This Anti-Tracking Tool Checks If You're Being Followed Matt Edmondson, a federal agent with the Department of Homeland Security for the last 21 years, got a call for help last year. A friend working in another part of government—he won't say which one—was worried that someone might have been tailing them when they were meeting a confidential informant who had links to a terrorist organization. If they were being followed, their source's cover may have been blown. "It was literally a matter of life and death," Edmondson says. Continued here

S14

The End of Manual Transmission I drive a stick shift. It’s a pain, sometimes. Clutching and shifting in bumper-to-bumper traffic wears you out. My wife can’t drive my car, which limits our transit options. And when I’m at the wheel, I can’t hold a cold, delicious slushie in one hand, at least not safely. But despite the inconvenience, I love a manual transmission. I love the feeling that I am operating my car, not just driving it. That’s why I’ve driven stick shifts for the past 20 years. Continued here

S15

What We Gain from a Good Bookstore “Will the day come where there are no more secondhand bookshops?” the poet, essayist, and bookseller Marius Kociejowski asks in his new memoir, “A Factotum in the Book Trade.” He suspects that such a day will not arrive, but, troublingly, he is unsure. In London, his adopted home town and a great hub of the antiquarian book trade, many of Kociejowski’s haunts—including his former employer, the famed Bertram Rota shop, a pioneer in the trade of first editions of modern books and “one of the last of the old establishments, dynastic and oxygenless, with a hierarchy that could be more or less described as Victorian”—have already fallen prey to rising rents and shifting winds. Kociejowski dislikes the fancy, well-appointed bookstores that have sometimes taken their place. “I want chaos; I want, above all, mystery,” he writes. The best bookstores, precisely because of the dustiness of their back shelves and even the crankiness of their guardians, promise that “somewhere, in one of their nooks and crannies, there awaits a book that will ever so subtly alter one’s existence.” With every shop that closes, a bit of that life-altering power is lost and the world leaches out “more of the serendipity which feeds the human spirit.” Continued here

S16

This is what so many of us are getting wrong when we wash our clothes There’s no worse feeling than looking for your favourite top or pair of jeans and finding it sitting in a heaving pile of dirty washing, waiting for it to be cleaned. And while laundry might be a less-than-enjoyable household task, it turns out that most of us are actually washing our clothes wrong. Continued here

S17

Welcome to the Sean McVay Moment SEARCHING FOR A vodka soda, Sean McVay walks me through the expansive refurbished kitchen of his new 9,000-square-foot house in a double-security-gated Hidden Hills community that also is home to Drake, Miley Cyrus, the Jenners and Kardashians just up the 101 Freeway from Los Angeles. It's a May afternoon, in the spring after he got everything he ever wanted. He and his soon-to-be wife, Veronika Khomyn, have just moved in. Boxes are scattered. Shelves and walls and rooms are vast and mostly empty; a soft echo accompanies conversation. He just got home from work and wants to unwind. Where the vodka sodas are stored, he's unsure. He walks to a built-in cabinet and presses the door. It doesn't open. He presses it again. Nope. He moves to another. It opens, but it's empty. Continued here

S18

Cinema Pugilistica: A Century of Boxing on Film Entwined with the evolution of American culture, boxing movies have used the microcosm of the ring to tackle issues of race, class, gender, and labor. Continued here

S19

Who are the real queens of 'Six'? Authors Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss found inspiration for their hit musical in the lives and loves of King Henry VIII, but SIX tells the story from the women’s point of view. Each queen gets her moment in the spotlight to explain her fate of being “Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.” Continued here

S20

What you need to know to watch HBO's House of the Dragon House of the Dragon, the long-awaited prequel to Game of Thrones, is finally here, and you know what that means: It’s time for a refresher course on the Targaryens — the family that ruled for three centuries over all of Westeros. Thanks to one talented fanartist, we have a gorgeous family tree to help you figure out what’s happening when the show premieres Sunday night. Continued here

S21

The purest food on Earth? Today, he enjoys the subtle touch of ghee in many of his favourite Bengali dishes, adding it to steamed rice with fried kaatla fish (Indian carp) for ghee bhaat, and swirling it into phyaana bhaat, a one-pot rice dish cooked with its own starch, mashed potato and a boiled egg. Even his khichuri (also spelled khichdi), a comforting rice and lentil porridge Karmakar associates with rainy days, is incomplete without the ubiquitous fat. Continued here

S22

The Rise of Pumpkin Spice

S23

The needless drama of buying a PS5 Securing a PS5 is not easy, and it feels like it could be. With a combination of greed and incompetence, the stores selling PS5s in the United States have transformed the process into a weirdly dramatic affair where you’re forced to join Discords and follow overly exuberant guys on Twitter in the hopes that they’ll give you a heads-up on a PS5 “drop” — a store making a big shipment of PS5s available for purchase. These stores have turned every drop into an event, when really, buying a PS5 should be as easy as buying a pepper grinder. Continued here

S24

The Ballad of Razzlekhan and Dutch, Bitcoin's Bonnie and Clyde It was around 3 a.m. the first time they arrived. An unmarked, nondescript government-issued vehicle pulled up to the towering brown brick and blue glass building in downtown Manhattan known simply by its address: 75 Wall Street. The city that never sleeps was in that rare moment when the ostinato of car horns and rattling subway cars had been replaced by a deep, albeit brief, slumber. The agents stepped out of their vehicle and walked through the revolving doors of the 42-story building, crossing the shiny white oak floors of the lobby to reach the doorman on duty that night. It was 2021, in the midst of the second wave of the COVID pandemic, and the bottom 18 floors of "75," which had originally opened as the Andaz Hotel, had shuttered because of the virus. Seeing anyone at this hour was rare for the doorman, but seeing a group of federal agents was an utter anomaly. Continued here

S25

Parents who make these 3 mistakes are more likely to raise narcissistic kids, says parenting expert As a result, they'll have a hard time regulating their behaviors, which can lead to a host of problems as they get older — from numbing behaviors like addiction to protective behaviors like grandiosity, which is a common narcissistic trait. Studies have also found that shame, insecurity and fear are at the root of the narcissist's inner self. Continued here

S26

Why a Life-Threatening Pregnancy Complication Is on the Rise It’s impossible to pinpoint when ob-gyns sensed that preeclampsia—a surge in blood pressure in the later stages of pregnancy that endangers both mother and baby—was increasing among their patients during the COVID pandemic. Preeclampsia affects some two hundred thousand pregnant people in the U.S. per year, and case numbers had been ticking steadily upward for a couple of decades (although some of this increase was attributable to improvements in how doctors diagnose the disease). But this seemed to be more than an uptick; this felt like a jump. Physicians describe not a eureka moment but a creeping realization, a longitudinal hunch. Group texts and Facebook forums lit up with talk of more patients whose labor had to be induced early owing to blood-pressure spikes; doctors told one another that they were seeing more preterm births and more stillbirths. “Right away, there was chatter about more hypertension and preeclampsia being noticed in the COVID hot spots,” Jennifer Jury McIntosh, a maternal-fetal-medicine specialist in Milwaukee, said. Continued here

S27

Popper was right about the link between certainty and extremism | Psyche Ideas In terms of irrational confidence, many people at opposite ends of the political spectrum seem to have something in common Continued here

S28

The Untold History of the Biden Family In 2019, I wrote a piece for this magazine about Hunter Biden, the younger son of the current President, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Hunter, describing his childhood in Wilmington, Delaware, told me that after church his father would sometimes drive him and his brother, Beau, through wealthy neighborhoods, where they would sneak onto empty estates that were either abandoned or on the market. If the front door was locked, the boys’ father would hoist them through a second-floor window, and they would run downstairs and let him in. If a real-estate agent arrived when they were there, Biden, who at this point was a senator, would charm the agent into giving them a tour. Continued here

S29

3 questions that turn a trip - even a day trip! - into a life-changing one One of the keys to a life-changing journey is taking the time afterwards to unpack your experiences, and not just your suitcases. Celebrated travel writer Pico Iyer explains how. Continued here

S30

Turkey's underground city of 20,000 people Violent gusts whipped loose soil into the air as I hiked through Cappadocia's Love Valley. Pink- and yellow-hued hillsides coloured the rolling landscape scarred with deep red canyons, and chimneystack rock formations loomed in the distance. It was arid, hot, windy and devastatingly beautiful. Millennia ago, this volatile, volcanic environment naturally sculpted the spires surrounding me into their conical, mushroom-capped shapes, which now draw millions of visitors to hike or hot-air balloon in the central Turkish region. Continued here

S31

Solving Tough Problems Requires a Mindset Shift Leaders face a daily barrage of competing demands and multiple stakeholders with different opinions and incentives. To navigate the chaos, most people’s brains default to “either-or” thinking when “both-and” thinking would lead to more creative and novel solutions. Drawing on 20 years of research, the authors provide a three-step process for solving tough problems by adopting a paradox mindset — a comfort and willingness to accept competing demands as a potential source of new ideas and opportunities. Continued here

S32

Performance Management Shouldn’t Kill Collaboration Companies today need cross-silo collaboration to survive a volatile competitive environment and grow revenue. But often their performance management systems discourage it. Indeed, in research involving more than 8,000 senior managers in biotech, banking, consumer products, energy, law, and other sectors, the authors found that a siloed approach to performance targets is a huge barrier to collaboration. Too many companies incentivize employees to take an overly narrow, short-term view, which makes them scramble to hit their numbers and lose sight of their organizations’ bigger objectives. Continued here

S33

If at first you don't succeed, raise $350 million and try again Housing in the United States has a problem. And Adam Neumann, the charismatic founder known for successfully rebranding shared office space as WeWork, and unsuccessfully running it, thinks he has a solution: Flow. This residential real estate startup wants to address a wide variety of issues, including housing availability, a lack of social interactions in a remote world, and the inability of renters to gain equity. Continued here

S34

Caste in California: Tech giants confront ancient Indian hierarchy The update came after the tech sector - which counts India as its top source of skilled foreign workers - received a wake-up call in June 2020 when California's employment regulator sued Cisco Systems (CSCO.O) on behalf of a low-caste engineer who accused two higher-caste bosses of blocking his career. Continued here

S35

10 Ways to Overcome Ageism While Job Hunting During Retirement It's never too late to start a new job. It's estimated that, on average, a typical American worker now has more than ten jobs over the course of their lifetime. But unfortunately, whether you're inspired to enter a new field or want a new job after you retire, one of the biggest obstacles to re-entering the workforce can be ageism. Continued here

S36

What Comes After Ambition? Something’s been happening with the ambitious women in my life. A friend who used to be focused on climbing the corporate ladder in her marketing job—while dabbling in a series of side hustles—is trying to figure out how to backpedal. A lawyer at a big tech company who’s the breadwinner for her family is taking a leave of absence. A creative force of nature who burned out mid-pandemic is trying to make peace with the not-that-difficult job she took just to hold on to her health insurance. Continued here

S37

Stop drinking, keep reading, look after your hearing: a neurologist's tips for fighting memory loss and Alzheimer's You walk into a room, but can't remember what you came in for. Or you bump into an old acquaintance at work, and forget their name. Most of us have had momentary memory lapses like this, but in middle age they can start to feel more ominous. Do they make us look unprofessional, or past it? Could this even be a sign of impending dementia? The good news for the increasingly forgetful, however, is that not only can memory be improved with practice, but that it looks increasingly as if some cases of Alzheimer's may be preventable too. Continued here

S38

Why Waking Up in the Middle of the Night Is Actually Normal | Well+Good To be clear, that doesn’t mean waking up and staying awake or struggling to fall back asleep should also be your norm. But a few middle-of-the-night awakenings occur naturally as a product of our sleep architecture, meaning the way we cycle between sleep stages throughout the night. “A sleep cycle lasts from 90 to 120 minutes, including the time it takes to transition from lighter to deep sleep and then into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep,” says Dr. Peters. “As a period of REM ends, the person will briefly wake up.” Continued here

S39

You Have No Idea How Good Mosquitoes Are at Smelling Us Nothing gets a female mosquito going quite like the stench of human BO. The chase can begin from more than 100 feet away, with a plume of breath that wafts carbon dioxide onto the nubby sensory organ atop the insect’s mouth. Her senses snared, she flies person-ward, until her antennae start to buzz with the pungent perfume of skin. Lured closer still, she homes in on her host’s body heat, then touches down on a landing pad of flesh that she can taste with her legs. She punctures her victim with her spear-like stylet and slurps the iron-rich blood within. Continued here

S40

How mammals won the dinosaurs' world Through darkness, ash and deadly heat, a tiny furry animal scurries through the hellscape left behind by the worst day for living things in Earth's history. It picks through the wreckage, snatches an insect to eat, and scuttles back to its shelter. All around it are the dead and dying bodies of the dinosaurs that have terrorised mammals for generations.  Continued here

S41

How to set an effective boundary Your parents may have taught you that “no” is a complete sentence, but actually saying it — or setting a boundary in general — can be tricky. Sometimes, you feel uncomfortable setting the boundary; sometimes, the other person hates it and has a strong reaction. But the fact remains that in your romantic relationships, at work, in your family, and in friendships, you’re going to have to set some boundaries one way or another. Continued here

S42

Plunge Into Powerful Introspection With These 100 Deep Quotes! As we go through each day, there are many ups and downs. We have moments where everything is just chugging along perfectly and other times where there are challenges—our focus gets cloudy and we likely feel pulled into distractions. In these times of frenzy, we all need a little encouragement to remember what really matters and possibly change our perspectives. If you are looking for a little inspiration and motivation to dive deeper into what's all around us, these 100 deep quotes will help to get you back on track. Continued here

S43

Why So Many Cars Have Rats in Them Now But in January 2021, the mechanics at Urban Classics Auto Repair in Bedford-Stuyvesant were stumped: The “check engine” message kept flashing on the dashboard of Ms. Denault’s car, despite the vehicle’s driving just fine. “They did a bunch of tests and couldn’t figure out what it was,” she said. Continued here

S44

The Best Free (or Cheap) Financial Courses for Beginners Money is a weirdly taboo subject, and many of us made it through our entire educational careers without partaking in any serious money management lessons—undoubtedly to our detriment. A lot of us manage to buy houses and earn and save surprisingly large amounts of income without really understanding anything at all about our money. Perhaps that’s one reason the average amount American has only saved a measly $65,000 for retirement, while carrying an average debt of $90,460. Continued here

S45

Archive of Our Own's 15-year journey from blog post to fanfiction powerhouse In May 2007, fanfiction and traditionally published author Naomi Novik wrote a post on LiveJournal. “We are sitting quietly by the fireside, creating piles and piles of content around us, and other people are going to look at that and see an opportunity,” she wrote, referring to LiveJournal’s booming fanfiction community. Continued here

S46

All of Your Smart Devices Are Spying on You At this point, it’s obvious that our smartphones and computers are data-leakers. Plenty of us now cover our laptops’ webcams (although we always forget about the mics), while our smartphones track our locations with us wherever we go. Unfortunately, these tools are so indispensable in modern life, we accept the privacy hit in order to function with the rest of society, and do what we can to keep our data secure. Continued here

S47

75 years of India partition: How tech is opening window into past As India-Pakistan tensions hamper visits, social media helps people connect and online projects share oral histories. Continued here

S48

How a Coerced Confession Shaped a Family History

S49

More than a summit to scale At around 8:30 p.m. on May 11, the eight members of the Full Circle Everest Expedition reached their summit window, where they would begin the climb to the worl… Continued here

S50

The Olympics don't want competitive lifesaving. But maybe they should. - Sports Illustrated Bright orange, they lurk at the far end of the pool, lying in wait until they can be reached and rescued by the swimmers. Known in the parlance of the sport as manikins, they may be inanimate, but they’re the main characters: These are the titular lives that need to be saved. Actual liveliness notwithstanding. Continued here

S51

Inside the Final Days of 'The Wendy Williams Show' For 12 years she was one of daytime’s most bold and beloved personalities. Then she was gone, replaced by a string of guest hosts amid tabloid rumors. Now a behind-the-scenes look at what really went down with TV’s queen of the purple throne. Continued here

S52

Bring that beat back: why are people in their 30s giving up on music? For the last few years, I have felt the inescapable disappearance of music from my friends’ lives. Even people with whom I have longstanding relationships that were born from a shared love of music have simply let it go, or let it fade deep into the background. A 2015 study of people’s listening habits on Spotify found that most people stop listening to new music at 33; a 2018 report by Deezer had it at 30. In my 20s, the idea that people’s appetite to consume new music regularly would be switched off like some kind of tap was ludicrous. However, now I’m 36, it’s difficult to argue with. Continued here

S53

How To Start Cooking There’s nothing better for your health, wallet, or personal sense of accomplishment than learning how to cook. We’ve pulled together the best resources to help you establish confidence in the kitchen, from proper preparation and creative shortcuts to mastering simple but brilliant techniques. Grab your knives (carefully!) and let’s get started. Continued here

S54

Why Do So Many Recipes Call for So Little Garlic? As the memes go, the proper way to measure garlic is with your heart. One clove is not enough for any recipe, unless it’s a recipe for “how to cook one clove of garlic,” in which case you should still use two. More extreme: When the recipe calls for one clove, use at least a head. Why? Because there is no such thing as too much garlic. Continued here

S55

The Best Ways to Play Vintage Games on Your Modern TV So, you want to play retro video games? Excellent. Whether you’re exploring old favorites or digging for new treasures, there’s a huge library of titles out there waiting for you. Some retro enthusiasts (like your dear author) will fall down the rabbit hole of era-appropriate hardware— original consoles, game paks, and CRTs—but not everyone wants to deal with those hassles (or costs). Fortunately, playing retro games on your flatscreen can be just as beautiful and satisfying as lugging a 120-pound CRT up three flights of stairs to your apartment. Continued here

S56

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask was never supposed to exist [Ed. note: Earlier this week, Boss Fight Books launched a crowdfunding campaign for Season 5 of its ongoing game book series. The campaign has already exceeded its goal, but is open for backers interested in books on Final Fantasy 6, Resident Evil, Silent Hill 2, Red Dead Redemption, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask. Below, we have an excerpt from the book on Majora’s Mask.] Continued here

S57

Yes, you have to brush your kid's baby teeth. Even though they're going to fall out. Is it really that important for kids to brush baby teeth that are going to fall out anyway? Continued here

S58

Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022 The landscape of social media is ever-changing, especially among teens who often are on the leading edge of this space. A new survey of American teenagers ages 13 to 17 finds that TikTok has established itself as one of the top online platforms for U.S. teens, while the share of teens who use Facebook has fallen sharply. Continued here

S59

What the Alex Jones trial means for the future of conspiracy culture New York (CNN)The Texas jury's decision last week to have Alex Jones face punitive damages of more than $45 million in a lawsuit filed by the parents of Sandy Hook shooting victim Jesse Lewis was a "reckoning that was 10 years in the making," CNN's chief media correspondent Brian Stelter said. Continued here

S60

How many Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine? What we know, how we know it and what it really means. The estimates range from 1,351 and 43,000, but this much is clear: Russia has a manpower problem. Continued here

S61

Bangkok's oldest street reinvents itself - now it's the hippest place to be Charoenkrung Road was the first in Bangkok to be paved. Now it runs through what has become arguably the Thai capital’s hippest neighbourhood, with five-star hotels, quirky street art and stores, and classy bars. Continued here

S62

Are these the most offbeat places in South India? Known for being a paradise for trekkers, it’s an ancient mountain fortress located around 3 km from Chikkballapur. It can be best explored in a day trip from Bengaluru. As you reach the place, embark on a 2-hour easy trek up a well-marked route on the 1350 m high peak. And as you reach the top, you are rewarded with some gorgeous views around, and not to forget, some fresh air. Continued here

S63

Why Companies’ Attempts to Close the Gender Pay Gap Often Fail Gender pay equity has become a big point of contention at many companies. But the most common approaches for identifying a pay gap and resolving it are full of pitfalls for the unwary. That’s because it’s a tall order: you have to calculate the gap the right way and figure out how to fix it without ballooning your wage bill, all while truly helping underpaid women, maintaining your incentive structure, and avoiding the creation of new legal liabilities. The authors have extensively researched the most common ways companies try to fix a pay gap – and how these fail or cause other problems. They’ve found that closing a gender gap without regard to cost effectiveness can be prohibitively expensive; however, only focusing on cost (as many managers do) creates more problems than it solves. They suggest first identifying which employees are contributing the most to the gender pay gap at your firm, and then allocating raises as efficiently as possible to close the gap — while working within the framework of your HR strategy and norms of fairness. Continued here

S64

If Your Company Were a Political Party, Which Would It Be? There’s a taboo around political conversations at work. We assume work is separate from the real and sensitive politics of the external world. The state, as a proxy for a political system, is seen to be responsible for climate, collective problems, management of violence and maintenance of our human capabilities. It promotes welfare, justice, equality, freedom, peace and many other values. Meanwhile, the sole responsibility of business is to make money. Business aims for profit and it’s just ‘different’. Continued here

S65

Two Keys to a Calmer Emotional Life Life can feel like an emotional rollercoaster sometimes, swinging from highs of joy and love to lows of grief and betrayal. Yet we all probably know someone who seems to be less jostled by the turbulence of it all. Continued here

S66

How Amazon Consumed All of Commerce If you’ve ever tried to research how the Big Bad Tech Monopolies of our time got so big and bad, you’ll find that these stories are typically pretty straightforward. Google, for example, started as a search engine company in the mid-90's, and spent decades buying and bullying competitors until it swallowed just about all of the search engine market. Facebook started as a social network, and then copied or bought out the competition until it became the most popular social network on the planet. But Amazon... well, Amazon’s a bit different. Continued here

S67

The Crypto Geniuses Who Vaporized a Trillion Dollars Everyone trusted the two guys at Three Arrows Capital. They knew what they were doing — right? Continued here

S68

Don't Focus on Your Job at the Expense of Your Career The gap between what we have to do today and where we see ourselves in the future can be vexing. We’d like to advance toward our goals, but we feel dragged down by responsibilities that seem banal or off-target for our eventual vision. In this piece, the author offers four strategies you can try so that you can simultaneously accomplish what’s necessary in the short-term while playing the long game for the betterment of your career. Continued here

S69

Remote workers are starting new businesses behind their bosses' backs Her full-time job involves helping dentists in California, but her new business, Blurred Bylines, focuses on small firms and nonprofits in Michigan, where she lives and works remotely. Rose says her main job is still her main priority. She also says her job is aware of her startup and is okay with it. Continued here

S70

What scientists know -- and don't know -- about how monkeypox spreads In some ways, the virus is acting differently than it has in the past. For decades, researchers in West and Central Africa, where the virus is endemic, have observed that outbreaks there tend to be self-limiting. A single case or small cluster would pop up occasionally, caused by hunting and handling infected animals or being bitten by one, but those spillover events rarely kicked off long chains of transmission within communities. Continued here

S71

Your body may be pushing you to make worse choices after a day of hard thinking, study finds Does it feel like you don't have much control over the decisions you make after a long day of hard thinking? You are not alone. New research has shown the biological processes behind cognitive fatigue, and experts share what you can do about it. Continued here

S72

What Lies Beneath: Our Love Affair With Living Underwater In November 1966, the Gemini 12 spacecraft, carrying two astronauts, splashed down in the Pacific. The four-day mission was a triumph, proving that humans could work in outer space, and even step into the great unknown, albeit tethered to their spacecraft. It catapulted the US ahead of the USSR in the space race. Continued here

S73

The Coming California Megastorm This vapor plume will be enormous, hundreds of miles wide and more than 1,200 miles long, and seething with ferocious winds. It will be carrying so much water that if you converted it all to liquid, its flow would be about 26 times what the Mississippi River discharges into the Gulf of Mexico at any given moment. Continued here

S74

That's It. You're Dead to Me. Last spring, my boyfriend sublet a spare room in his apartment to an aspiring model. The roommate was young and made us feel old, but he was always game for a bottle of wine in the living room, and he seemed to like us, even though he sometimes suggested that we were boring or not that hot. Continued here

S75

Habit Stacking Will Trick Your Mind Into Adopting a New Habit | Well+Good Developed by self-help author S.J. Scott in his book Habit Stacking: 97 Small Life Changes That Take Five Minutes or Less, the concept of habit stacking is just what it sounds like. You identify any regular habit (which can be as small as brushing your teeth or closing your laptop at the end of a workday), and build a new habit on top of that existing habit. Think: “After I brush my teeth, I will wash my face.” Just like with an actual building, the stronger or more ingrained the foundational habit, the better you’ll be able to construct a new habit on top of it and secure it in place—at which point, you can add another on top of that one, and so on. Continued here

S76

The Work of Radical Frugality There are some people who are frugal by nature, some who practice frugality as a mandate of their faith, and some, like myself, who embrace frugality by necessity. I live within a limited income as a bulwark against a consumer culture and capitalist agenda that would prefer we consume our way to oblivion—both ours and the planet’s. We are in a quagmire given the conundrum of the capitalist agenda, a system that requires endless consumption and growth to survive, and a planet that is begging we cease. Personally, I’d rather take my instruction from Mother Earth.  Continued here

S77

From Netflix to Disney Plus, This Clever Trick Can Save You Money on Streaming Cut back on your streaming TV budget with this useful method. Continued here

S78

Why you should really stop charging your phone overnight Do you plug in your phone every night right before you go to bed? Here's what you should be doing instead. Continued here

S79

How to revive your old computer As a man of a certain age, I know that everything slows down as it gets older. But with computers, that decline can be especially precipitous. After just a couple of years, bootups can grow sluggish, apps may take longer to load, and the spinning wheel of death can become a more frequent feature of your user experience. Continued here