'The most discredited financial instrument in history' makes comeback in Canada. Will it solve a problem with retirement savings? The tontine is an investment fund with a dark twist – all participants benefit when one among them dies. In the most extreme version, shareholders commit their money for life, with the entire sum of capital going to the last survivor, making tontines a classic plot device in Agatha Christie novels, murder mystery dinner theatre, and even an episode of The Simpsons. Continued here |
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I Just Sold My Business for a Boatload of Money, but My Family Still Thinks I'm a Lazy Leech Should I pour wine on them to escape the conversation? Continued here |
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Ready to Move Faster in Your Career? Here's How. Telling people to “pay their dues” to move up the career ladder is no longer useful advice. We’re in a time where companies want to see immediate impact. Performing tedious or unchallenging busy work for years isn’t going to show that, and worse, it could burn you out in the process. So, how can you sidestep this outdated adage and get to where you want to go? Continued here |
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This Meeting Should Have Been an Email: 5 Steps to Improve Workplace Communication I've been contributing to PCMag since 2011, at times as an analyst and columnist, and currently as deputy managing editor for the software team. My column, Get Organized, has been running on PCMag since 2012. It gives advice on how to manage all the devices, apps, digital photos, social networks, email, and other technology that can make you feel like you're going to have a panic attack. Continued here |
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A daily multivitamin could keep your memory sharp as you age But these studies weren’t randomised, placebo-controlled trials – the best kind of medical evidence – and when such trials were done, they found no benefit from taking supplements for most healthy people. It seemed the earlier results arose because vitamin tablets are more popular with people who look after their health in many other ways. Continued here |
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Want to sound and feel more confident? Ditch these 11 phrases from your vocabulary, say psychologists When you face a new challenge by immediately telling yourself that you'll never get your mind around it, you're making it sound like it's an unchangeable fact. This means you're subtly telling yourself that you can't change or grow, which, of course, is nonsense. We are all works in progress. Continued here |
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How to Start Meditating A gentle yet excuse-busting guide to starting a meditation practice that works for you. Even if that means squeezing in a mindfulness break in the car. Continued here |
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White House shines light on Republicans criticizing student debt cancellation after their PPP loans were forgiven The White House used its Twitter account to point the finger at a handful of GOP lawmakers. Continued here |
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T-Mobile Makes Its Home Internet Open to Everyone, but With Data Limit Catch Home Internet Lite will work anywhere T-Mobile has service -- but if you go over your data cap, prepare to be severely slowed down. Continued here |
The E-bike Is a Monstrosity I’d like to drive less, exercise more, commune with nature, and hate myself with a lesser intensity because I am driving less, exercising more, and communing with nature. One way to accomplish all of these goals, I decided earlier this year, was to procure an e-bike. (That’s a bicycle with a motor, if you didn’t know.) I could use it for commuting, for errands, for putting my human body to work, and for reducing my environmental impact. A cyclist I have never been, but perhaps an e-biker I could become. Continued here |
Out of thin air: new solar-powered invention creates hydrogen fuel from the atmosphere The researchers envisage the device could be a useful tool in regions where liquid water is not readily available for producing hydrogen. “Large parts of the world have water scarcity problems,” Li said. “When you have lots of renewable energy – wind or solar – you [often] don’t have much fresh water for this type of hydrogen production.” Continued here |
What will actually happen when the so-called 'Doomsday Glacier' disintegrates? Here’s what’s new in our understanding of this situation: This new study involved analyzing ridges on the sea floor. These rib-like formations reveal strong evidence of the glacier’s location for centuries as the tide nudged it each day. This is different from previously gathered data about the glacier, which was pulled from satellite maps of the ice as it edges closer and closer toward a total (or near total) collapse into the ocean. Continued here |
The Biggest Mistake I See College Freshmen Make Don’t use that AP credit! At least, not that way. Continued here |
Three Traditions Which Highlight Indian Cultural Diversity Up in the Himalaya, in the twin villages of Saloor-Dungra (Uttarakhand), local people celebrate a festival called Rammam in honour of the presiding deity Bhumiyal Devta. Consisting of a complex set of rituals, including reciting from the Ramayana and holding masked dances, the participatory roles are divided among all the castes and occupational groups. For example, Brahmins lead the prayer; Bhandaris of the Kshatriya caste enjoy the right to wear the most sacred masks, including that of Narasimha; young and old alike join in the dancing. The multiform cultural event, which ‘reflects the environmental, spiritual and cultural concept of the community, recounting its founding myths and strengthening its sense of self-worth’, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009. Usually, the festival is held in late April. Continued here |
Farewell to Roger Federer, the greatest player in an era of greats | Barney Ronay Time and simple human wear-and-tear told us Roger Federer had to stop playing professional tennis at some point. Here is a man who was winning grand slam tournaments before the iPhone was invented, while Tony Blair was still a very popular prime minister, and who first won Wimbledon two months after Carlos Alcaraz was born. Continued here |
MMQB Week 1: Steelers rally, Wentz passes test, news and notes - Sports Illustrated Albert Breer’s weekly thoughts on this weekend’s college action, geared mostly toward what should be of interest to NFL fans. This week: Notes on Will Anderson’s impact game against Texas, and why he is likely to be the top non-QB drafted. Plus, the environment for Quinn Ewers in Austin and an interesting effect of the transfer portal on mid-majors. Continued here |
Indian Predator: The Diary of a Serial Killer — The real story of the gut-wrenching show everyone's been talking about The second part of Netflix's Indian Predator: Diary of a Serial Killer takes us into the mind of one of India's most dreaded serial killers, Raja Kolander, who is still alive and serving a life sentence for his crimes. The series shows us how often criminals have no deep, layered motives behind committing crimes. Continued here |
Mid-budget movies as we knew them are in decline. What does that mean for cinema? | CNN Many have lamented the perceived demise of the mid-budget movie in recent years, as superhero flicks and remakes take over theatrical releases. But to say that mid-budget movies don't exist anymore isn't completely true, film experts said. Continued here |
How to Grill the Perfect Steak The smell of searing meat over an open flame brings us back to a primal state. Whether you prefer the fatty goodness of a ribeye, the lean and clean flavor of a flank, or a good old-fashioned T-bone, the keys to perfection are proper heat and timing. Follow the quick-hit guidelines above, and if you desire further details, we’ve got a full-length article and video here. Continued here |
Green, herbaceous, seasonal: 10 Yotam Ottolenghi recipes perfect for the Australian spring Now that the moral outrage around iceberg is over, we can collectively agree that its cousin, cos (or romaine), is superior in every way. Here, it’s charred and served with a simple tomato and capsicum salsa and a corn relish – the latter calls for urba biber, a dried Turkish pepper, but standard chilli flakes should also suffice. Continued here |
Help! I Want to Model My Life After the Golden Girls. My Kids Have Other Plans. They took it as a personal offense. Continued here |
What kind of prime minister will Liz Truss be? Declinism, that dull fear of Britain’s sunset, has shaped the country’s post-war politics. It propelled Britain into the European Economic Community, the eu’s precursor, and fuelled Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution. Now it has helped Liz Truss into Downing Street. On September 5th Ms Truss was declared the winner of the ballot of 172,000 Conservative members to replace Boris Johnson as the Tory leader. The next day, at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, the queen invited her to form a new government. Continued here |
A luxury cruise ship will allow residents to permanently live at sea. See inside its 237-square-foot studios selling for $1 million. Storylines' residential cruise ship will indefinitely travel around the world beginning in 2025. Just be prepared to trade your house for one room. Continued here |
Will China's economy ever overtake America's? CHINA WAS once, centuries ago, the world’s biggest economy. Many analysts expect it to regain that distinction in due course. But a host of difficulties besetting the Asian giant, some of which are self-inflicted, will delay the day it overtakes America to return to pole position. A growing number of economists now think that day may never arrive. Continued here |
How Pakistanis, young and old, stepped in after flood disaster “Millions and millions of people have no access to water, shelter and food. We have seen children who are malnourished and suffering from skin diseases, diarrhoea, everything you can imagine,” Abdullah Fadil, the Pakistan representative for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told Al Jazeera. Continued here |
How Patagonia's ownership bombshell changes the game for American business In moving all ownership of the company to the Patagonia Purpose Trust and Holdfast Collective, the Chouinards have once again forced other companies and their leaders to confront just how they will reconcile their own company structures with their stated goals of addressing the climate catastrophe. And guess what? No matter what they do, their customers are going to confront them on it. Just as Patagonia has helped move the goalposts on sustainability in the supply chain, and speaking out on social and environmental issues, it has now established a new standard for how a company can truly walk the walk on its values far beyond an ESG or CSR strategy. Continued here |
How to Build a Career in a New Industry Deciding to switch career paths can feel daunting. Where do you even begin? In this piece, the author offers four concrete ways to ease the transition: 1) Start by mapping the terrain. Read the bios and LinkedIn profiles of senior leaders or fast-rising colleagues and reverse-engineer the path they followed. This will enable you — if you wish — to craft a similar roadmap. 2) Recognize that you’ll need to take the lead. 3) Network to give yourself optionality. As a new entrant in your field, it’s possible you may have landed at a suboptimal company (for instance, one with a toxic work environment or declining fortunes) without realizing it, because it’s likely easier for outsiders to break into an industry at a firm that insiders are avoiding. So network widely, because if your initial landing pad isn’t a fit, you’ll want to change quickly. 4) Identify emerging opportunities. If you can become the “go-to” person around an area that’s growing in importance, you can often build a career path around it. Continued here |
The 4-7-8 method that could help you sleep The 4-7-8 technique is a relaxation exercise that involves breathing in for four counts, holding that breath for seven counts and exhaling for eight counts, said Dr. Raj Dasgupta, a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, via email. Continued here |
Why Pain Feels Worse at Night It’s long been a mystery why one of the most basic human experiences—feeling physical pain—fluctuates in intensity throughout the day. Since the early days of medicine, doctors and patients have noticed that many types of pain tend to get worse at night. Most research so far has tried to link mounting nighttime pain to sleep deprivation or disrupted sleep, but with limited success. Continued here |
One of Long COVID's Worst Symptoms Is Also Its Most Misunderstood On March 25, 2020, Hannah Davis was texting with two friends when she realized that she couldn’t understand one of their messages. In hindsight, that was the first sign that she had COVID-19. It was also her first experience with the phenomenon known as “brain fog,” and the moment when her old life contracted into her current one. She once worked in artificial intelligence and analyzed complex systems without hesitation, but now “runs into a mental wall” when faced with tasks as simple as filling out forms. Her memory, once vivid, feels frayed and fleeting. Former mundanities—buying food, making meals, cleaning up—can be agonizingly difficult. Her inner world—what she calls “the extras of thinking, like daydreaming, making plans, imagining”—is gone. The fog “is so encompassing,” she told me, “it affects every area of my life.” For more than 900 days, while other long-COVID symptoms have waxed and waned, her brain fog has never really lifted. Continued here |
Go on, admit it. You're multitasking. Here's how to do it better | Psyche Ideas Our limited mental resources make multitasking inefficient. As you’re unlikely to stop it, you can learn to do it better Continued here |
Unselfing Social Each month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) going. For fifteen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference. Continued here |
How to Cope With Anticipatory Grief Grieving is hard and complicated after a loss, but some people may find themselves dealing with anticipatory grief, which is grief that comes before a loss. Anticipatory grief can happen in situations such as when a friend or family member has been diagnosed with a terminal illness—when a loss is known to be coming, but it hasn’t happened yet. Continued here |
Rent or buy? In Canada's broken housing market, the real choice is between freedom or stability The Canadian housing market is broken. It’s no longer affordable for either renters or homeowners – but both groups still need to navigate it. Major cities are seeing rapidly increasing rents alongside decreasing property values, while Bank of Canada interest rate hikes have steadily pushed variable rate mortgage payments higher. Continued here |
Biden's Income-Driven Repayment plan would turn student loans into untargeted grants The sleeper news in President Biden’s announcement to forgive roughly half a trillion dollars in student loans is his proposed changes to Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans that are to take effect in January 2023. The changes mean that most undergraduate borrowers will expect to only repay a fraction of the amount they borrow, turning student loans partially into grants. It’s a plan to reduce the cost of college, not by reducing tuition paid, but by offering students loans and then allowing them not to pay them back. In the absence of action from Congress, Biden has no other obvious policy levers to reduce college costs. But using government loans to subsidize college has important disadvantages and will lead to unintended and unfortunate consequences for borrowing, student outcomes, higher education costs, equity, and the federal budget. Continued here |
How Much Can You Spend in Retirement? Answer These Questions First. Too often, though, we forget that people don’t just accumulate savings over time—they also accumulate differences. By the time workers are approaching retirement, some are in excellent health; others have multiple health risk factors. Some want to claim Social Security right away; others want to delay claiming for a bigger benefit. Some want to cross items off their bucket lists; others want to put money aside for bequests. Continued here |
'Mind-Reading' Technology Translates Brainwaves into Photos “By developing this technology, it would be fascinating to decode and recreate subjective experiences, perhaps even your dreams,” Dado says. “Such technological knowledge could also be incorporated into clinical applications such as communicating with patients who are locked within deep comas.” Continued here |
Rethinking Intelligence In A More-Than-Human World | NOEMA If we humans are going to gain a better understanding of the vibrant world around us — and the damage we are doing to it — we’re going to need a new conception of nonhuman intelligence. Continued here |
Could the Internet Archive Go Out Like Napster? Many fear a lawsuit from early in the pandemic could destroy the Internet Archive. Here’s what’s really going on. Continued here |
Just Like That, We're Making Oxygen on Mars Millions of miles away on Mars, in a barren crater just north of the equator, a rover is wandering around, carrying a gold-coated gadget the size of a toaster. The machine inhales the Martian air and strips away contaminants. It splits the atmospheric gas into constituent parts, takes what it needs, and then reassembles that blend to create something that is in very short supply on Mars: oxygen. Real, breathable oxygen, the kind you took in as you read these sentences. Continued here |
Peak Cuteness, and Other Revelations from the Science of Puppies Neanderthals didn’t live with puppies. But Homo sapiens have done so for thousands of years. The guarding that wolves and dogs provided to early humans perhaps contributed to why we thrived and Neanderthals ultimately did not. In “Animals in Translation,” from 2005, the scientist Temple Grandin presents this argument, and also points out that many of the ways in which Homo sapiens differ from other primates are curiously doggish. Like dogs, we came to hunt in packs and to have same-sex friendships. Grandin explains that as dogs became domesticated, their brains shrank. But it wasn’t just the dog brains that were altered. Around the time that the fossil record shows Homo sapiens giving dogs (or possibly wolves) formal burials, our brains were shrinking. Was it because the dogs could do the smelling and guarding work for us? And we could plan for them? Though there is much debate about how, when, and why this all came about, in as many ways as we have domesticated dogs, they have also perhaps domesticated us. Continued here |
The tiny murder scenes of forensic scientist Frances Glessner Lee A husband and wife, lying in their bedroom, their baby in her crib in the adjacent nursery. A typical family on a typical morning, minus the red bloodstains on the beige bedroom carpet and the pink and white striped wallpaper behind the crib. All three family members, mother, father and baby, have been shot to death. Continued here |
'One of the most momentous occasions': Inside the 3am rehearsals for the Queen's funeral At about 3am on Saturday morning, over 700 members of the military assembled in Windsor to rehearse the procession Continued here |
Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Pickleball Explained | Livestrong.com "It's vital that teams call balls in and out during gameplay," Dutrieuille says. "Remember that whichever side the ball is landing on, it's that team's call on whether the ball is in or out. If a team is uncertain and does not have 100 percent certainty, then they may ask the opposing team. If a team cannot call a ball with 100 percent certainty, then the ball call will remain in." Continued here |
Stephen Curry Is Putting It All on the Line The NBA superstar has changed the game of basketball for the better. Now, can he help change America? Continued here |
A Portrait of David Bowie as an Alienated Artist The last time I saw David Bowie—in many ways, the ultimate rock star for my generation—who died in 2016, I was cheating on him with another pop artist. We were on a rooftop in Williamsburg. Journalists, musicians, and the like had gathered on that late-spring evening in 2006 to watch TV on the Radio perform a short set from their second album, the eclectic and catchy “Return to Cookie Mountain.” I had fallen hard for the group’s co-lead vocalist, Tunde Adebimpe, with his thick spectacles, sweet demeanor, and idiosyncratic voice. Sometimes Adebimpe sounds like a stoned drill sergeant, and at other times like a kid on the brink of adolescence. Like Bowie, he is what I call a character singer—someone who sings in the imagined voice of the character in a song. That night, the group performed a strong set, and when I wasn’t watching Adebimpe I was looking at Bowie. Standing in the middle of the crowd, clutching a beer, the then fifty-nine-year-old star was lithe, moving to the music. He was a husband and a father for the second time, but age had done nothing to dim his apparent enthusiasm for the new, especially if it was off-center and indisputably itself, like TV on the Radio. Continued here |
Is fandom a cult? The religious fervor fueling Star Wars, Marvel, and more Being a fan means sharing a story, or even a worldview, with others. It means gathering people together to talk about the story. But some stories are so vital as to define entire civilizations, while others are trivial. If that’s true, then where does the Marvel Cinematic Universe fall? Or Star Wars? Are super-fans in some Disney-controlled cult? Ultimately, recognizing fandom as religion may be the best thing to happen to you. Continued here |
We Made a Lemon Version of the Popular "Magic" Cake--and It's a Hit! This recipe for lemon custard cake uses just six simple ingredients to produce a cake with surprising results. The baking process for this cake produces three different layers, each with a markedly different texture. Paired with the light addition of lemon, it’s the ideal dessert to serve for any occasion. Continued here |
15 Trees Every Outdoor Lover Should Learn to Identify I know, I know—it’s not as cool to walk around with your nose in a book as it is to sling lead or light stuff on fire. But at the end of the day, plants give us so much that we’d be crazy not to pay attention to them. Some of the most helpful (and long-lived) plants are trees, and it’s our job as survivalists to learn the merits and problems with each species we encounter. Continued here |
I raised 2 successful CEOs and a doctor—here's the parenting style I never used on my kids It could be in the kitchen cooking, for example. We all cook. Teach your kid how to make their own breakfast. They can pour cereal and milk. Older kids can make a scrambled egg. Or they can all learn to make a salad. It's so simple: Wash the lettuce, cut a tomato or an avocado, add dressing ... and voilà ! Continued here |
Help! I Left My Girlfriend With My Puppy for Three Weeks. She Made a Horrible Confession When I Got Back. Am I nuts for leaving her over this? Continued here |
Fraudulent Document Cited in Supreme Court Bid to Torch Election Law This fall, the court will hear Moore v. Harper, an audacious bid by Republican legislators in North Carolina to free themselves from their own state constitution’s restrictions on partisan gerrymandering and voter suppression. The suit also serves as a vehicle for would-be election subverters promoting the so-called “independent state legislature theory” — the notion that state legislators have virtually absolute authority over federal elections — which was used as part of an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Continued here |
A Lesson From the Past for Ron DeSantis Harris, who was Black, traveled to Hyannis in search of work, with funding and encouragement from Little Rock’s White Citizens’ Council, one of many local organizations comprised of middle-class white professionals who, while dedicated to the preservation of segregation, styled themselves as the respectable, moderate alternative to the Ku Klux Klan. Continued here |
The Best Carry-On Luggage It may be time to dust off old luggage or consider new replacements as you consider even newer destinations. We’ve tested 47 bags over the past five years and are convinced that the Travelpro Platinum Elite is the best carry-on luggage for most travelers. It packs five days’ worth of clothes into standard US carry-on dimensions1 and has premium build-quality touches you’d expect from a $500 bag at about half the price. It’s a bag that you can rely on for life, even if it’s damaged by airlines—a rarity at any price. Continued here |
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