Most Popular Editorials: To benefit from wonder, make sure you’ve got the genuine kind | Psyche Ideas

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To benefit from wonder, make sure you’ve got the genuine kind | Psyche Ideas Theologians have sometimes taken a jaundiced view of wonder expressed as curiosity, condemning its tendency to trespass into idle or forbidden knowledge. Augustine, the 5th-century theologian whose views on curiosity dominated European thought for several centuries, considered it a vainglorious vice that puffs one up with pride. Curiosity was a perversion of the intellectual appetite owing to its acquisitive, grasping impulse. While it reliably returns new knowledge, curiosity’s reach always exceeds its possessive grasp, consigning the wonderer to eternal dissatisfaction. Oddly, curiosity’s quest for knowledge is both closed and infinite – narrowly circumscribed by its fixation on a given object, yet interminable because its appetite cannot be sated. For Augustine, prideful curiosity stood in the way of virtuous, open-ended enquiry into all things, including the relationship of all things to God. In short, curiosity could distract the wonderer from God, while making a god of oneself.Philosophers have expressed ambivalence toward wonder as well. In the 17th century, Francis Bacon disparaged wonder as a form of broken knowledge, ‘nothing else but contemplation broken off, or losing itself’. Rather than convey the wonderer toward explanation, excessive wonder can engender stupefaction, prolonging instead of curing the conditions of ignorance that give rise to enquiry. Concerns about the soporific quality of wonder – its power to induce open-mouthed astonishment – hint at the quality of awe that sometimes infuses wonder. If curiosity can be faulted for its blinkered pursuit of solutions to puzzles, an excess of wonder can stall the mind, leading enquiry nowhere at all. Awestruck, gaping wonder might be admissible, Bacon believed, when contemplating the unparalleled greatness of God, whose mysteries science can never fully fathom. But it was at best unbecoming, and at worst a serious liability, for the scientist. Continued here

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Stop Telling Introverts to Act Like Extroverts It’s well-known that engaging in extroverted activities such as networking and public speaking can help people advance their careers. Research has further suggested that in some cases, even naturally introverted people may be energized and feel better in the moment when engaging in these behaviors. However, studies have also shown that acting more extroverted than you are can take a substantial mental toll in the longer-term, leading to lower energy levels and potentially cancelling out the personal and professional benefits. As such, the authors argue that naturally more-introverted people should carefully weigh the benefits of putting on an extroverted face, and should make sure to give themselves time to recharge if and when they do decide to participate in extroverted activities. Continued here

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How Do I Transition from a Corporate Leadership Role to Entrepreneurship? She’s had a successful career leading in the corporate world and now she’s decided to venture out on her own to build a consulting business from scratch. But she’s struggling with her move into entrepreneurship and wonders if she made the right decision. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through how to make the most out of her entrepreneurial journey. Continued here

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How to Recover from a Toxic Job You made the brave decision to say goodbye to a toxic workplace. Now you deserve to reclaim your confidence and leave the baggage of a negative environment behind you. In this article, the author offers strategies to help you heal, forge ahead, and be successful in your new role: 1) find closure, 2) take control of what you can, 3) plan for triggers and, 4) savor the positive moments. With patience and self-compassion, you can rise above and become more resilient than ever before. Continued here

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Strategic Planning Should Be a Strategic Exercise Many managers complain that strategy-making often reduces to an operational action plan that resembles the last one.  To prevent that from happening they need to remember that strategy is about creating a system whereby a company’s stakeholders interact to create a sustainable advantage for the company.  Strategic planning is how the company designs that system, which is very different from an operational action plan in that it is never a static to-do list but constantly evolves as strategy makers acquire more insights into how their system of stakeholders can create value.You might think that government departments or NGOs don’t have competitors. They do: Government departments compete for funds with every other department and agency, while NGOs scramble for grants. They also compete for employees with other government bodies and NGOs, and they compete for supplies with just about every other organization. And they compete for critical supplies and resources with other organizations that have the same needs — from transportation to software — albeit often for different services. Continued here

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Managing Gen Z is like working with people from a ‘different country' Gen Z attitudes that may come across as lazy or entitled to a more seasoned worker are actually just different values and different approaches. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of taking the time to teach Gen Z employees about things that might have been considered “common sense” for other generations, says Pollak, who recently published Recalculating: Navigate Your Career Through the Changing World of Work. Tasks like making small talk with a client or writing a professional email is a no-brainer for those who have been employed for years. But many in this youngest generation didn’t grow up doing those things, or have been out of practice during the pandemic. “It’s like each generation is from a different country. You don’t speak the same language and you don’t have the same customs,” Pollak says. You may know how to do your job here in the U.S., but if your boss sent you to Dubai, you would probably have to change a few things because it’s a different culture. You’re smart, but there are some differences that would require adjustments and learning along the way. Continued here

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DeepMind’s game-playing AI has beaten a 50-year-old record in computer science Despite the calculation’s ubiquity, it is still not well understood. A matrix is simply a grid of numbers, representing anything you want. Multiplying two matrices together typically involves multiplying the rows of one with the columns of the other. The basic technique for solving the problem is taught in high school. “It’s like the ABC of computing,” says Pushmeet Kohli, head of DeepMind’s AI for Science team.The researchers describe their work in a paper published in Nature today. The headline result is that AlphaTensor discovered a way to multiply together two four-by-four matrices that is faster than a method devised in 1969 by the German mathematician Volker Strassen, which nobody had been able to improve on since. The basic high school method takes 64 steps; Strassen’s takes 49 steps. AlphaTensor found a way to do it in 47 steps. Continued here

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Here’s how I finally got myself to start exercising I skipped my training runs despite feeling like the importance of exercise and the good health it brings has never been more bracingly clear. Despite knowing that it would cut my risk of heart disease in half. Despite knowing that exercise radically reduces the probability we’ll get cancer or diabetes and that it’s as least as effective as prescription medication when it comes to reducing depression and anxiety, that it improves our memory and learning, and that it makes our brains more efficient and more powerful.Here’s why we need to be willing to be bad. Being good requires that our effort and our motivation need to be equivalent. In other words, the harder a thing is for us to do, the more motivation we need to do that thing. And you might have noticed that motivation isn’t something we can always muster on command. Whether we like it or not, motivation comes and motivation goes. When motivation wanes, plenty of research shows that we humans tend to follow the law of the least effort and do the easiest thing. Continued here

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How to Train Your Brain and Reach the Highest Levels of Success A common misconception tells us that we fail to reach our maximum potential because we only use 10% of our brain. This statistic is often repeated, but that doesn't make it true. In fact, functional magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, reveals that the majority of our brain is in use even during very simple tasks. The truth is that achieving our highest potential and entering the ranks of the ultra-successful has much more to do with how we are using our brain rather than how much of our brain we are using.Picture a successful entrepreneur stepping into an elevator that will take him to a critical business meeting. Years of strategic work and planning culminated in the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him to stand in that specific room surrounded by those specific people. Yet, instead of feeling excited, he is distressed. His mind is racing, but not with thoughts that will help him. The stress of the moment renders him overwhelmed, worried and anxious. How much stronger would his chances of success be if his mind was focused on reassuring, calming and empowering thoughts rather than "what-ifs" and worst-case scenarios?Related: How to Unlock Your Full Potential and Achieve the Impossible Continued here

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6 Yoga Poses to Stretch Tight Hip Flexors Tight hip flexors are right up there with back and knee pain when it comes to universal problem for many yogis. The proof: hip flexor stretches are among the most requested moves in yoga classes. Blame our sedentary lifestyle: sitting too much weakens your glutes and causes hip flexors and hip rotators to tighten. The more time the hip flexors remain in a shortened position, the less likely they are going to return to their optimal length—which is why many people notice a reduced range of motion in their hips over time. Continued here

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Elon Musk Is Totally Wrong About Population Collapse Early 20th-century France faced an existential threat: Its citizens weren’t having enough babies. In 1900, the average French woman gave birth to three children throughout her lifetime while over the border in Germany women were averaging five. For decades, France’s population had hovered stubbornly at around 40 million while that of its European rivals grew larger. “It is the most significant fact in French life. In no other country in the world is the birth rate so low,” wrote American journalist Walter Weyl in 1912.French society swung into action to avert the crisis. Pronatalist organizations sprung up, and by 1916 half of all French parliamentarians were part of a lobbying group that pushed policies aimed at raising birth rates. An annual prize was inaugurated, awarding 25,000 francs to 90 French parents who had raised nine or more children. Laws restricting abortion and contraceptives were passed, and mothers of large families were honored with medals according to how many children they had raised. Continued here

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The secrets being revealed by ocean garbage patches When the clean-up first started, so much solid waste sat on top of the water that it had to be removed by hand; women volunteers waded into the polluted waters with little to no protective gear before dredging could begin. "They needed to dig deep to get things out, wearing nothing but gloves for protection," Penaflor recalls. "I decided to work with them and could only last half a day. I couldn't stop itching and I couldn't get rid of the stench."Britta Denise Hardesty, a senior principal research scientist of the oceans and atmosphere for Australia's national research body, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), says there are plenty of misconceptions involving the waste we see in the ocean. While in some places we can see it floating within our line of sight, at others ocean currents can sweep it out to sea and cause it to accumulate in distant plastic soups, such as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch", which sits between Hawaii and the west coast of the United States. Continued here

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How ballroom dancing went from elite pastime to dance hall craze The oldest dance step recognized in modern-day ballroom competition, the waltz emerged from commoners’ courtship dances in 18th-century Germany and Austria. Taking its name from the German term walzen, meaning “to revolve,” the dance challenged upper-class social mores with its free-wheeling motions. But when aristocrats caught on to their servants’ dance moves by observing their rambunctious parties, they tried it—and liked it.Unlike the carefully choreographed, aloof minuet popular at the time, waltzing allowed partners to have close contact and improvise—and led to the creation of the public dance hall in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. There, people could mingle with strangers and twirl and swirl the night away to the tunes of composers like Johann Strauss. As historian Ruth Katz notes, waltzing provided a chance for freedom, romanticism, and social mixing between the upper and lower classes. (Subscriber exclusive: How the waltz became Vienna's forbidden dance.) Continued here

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Shehan Karunatilaka: "There's a Sri Lankan gallows humour" | we've been through a lot of catastrophe Born in 1975, Shehan Karunatilaka is the Sri Lankan author of two novels. Chinaman (2010) won the Commonwealth book prize and was declared the second-best cricket book of all time by Wisden. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is set in war-torn Sri Lanka in 1989, and is about a dead war photographer trying to find out who killed him; last month it was shortlisted for the Booker prize (the winner will be announced on 17 October). Karunatilaka lived in London and New Zealand, among other places, before returning to Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital.Congratulations on your Booker shortlisting. Why do you think The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida appealed to the judges so much?That's a tough one. I've been writing this book for some time, and each time the prizes roll on, I see the judges saying: "We prefer realistic fiction," or "We prefer tomes." So I stopped trying to guess. This year there's a few satirical, magical books. I'm looking forward to meeting [the judges] and sucking up to them and saying nice things about their great taste. Continued here

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Women in war: A psychologist helps Ukrainian soldiers’ families Maryna is a psychologist at the Lviv Centre for the Provision of Services to Combatants in western Ukraine, which offers free legal, psychological and social support to soldiers and their families. She is used to seeing soldiers who have served in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where government forces have been battling Russian-backed separatists since 2014. But since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February, her workload has increased.“They’re living in tension and are hearing explosions constantly, so it’s difficult for them to get used to life without the euphoria of survival,” says Maryna, a woman with a piercing gaze and a solemn expression who has a commanding air about her. “There’s a sense that they’ve seen things that most people haven’t, and that it earns them the right to be aggressive. The easiest way for them to let it all out is by drinking or abusing drugs.” Continued here

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‘Nature Has Its Own Way of Ending Life. I’m Changing the Manner and the Time.’ A few weeks ago, my partner Adam’s grandpa David called to let us know he was proceeding with his plan to have a peaceful, dignified death. David had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s ten years earlier, and in the last two years, as his mobility and quality of life had slowly declined, he’d been openly considering what is commonly referred to as voluntary assisted death (VAD). When he was initially diagnosed, he’d gone so far as to reach out to a facility in Switzerland, one of the only places where the practice is legal (it’s legal elsewhere, but often with many contingencies, including the necessity of a terminal illness). So we — Adam and I, David’s three kids, and his extended family and friends — knew he would likely go through with it down the line, but not now, not when he was only 85 years old, in moderately good health, and still able to live a relatively independent life (he’d just moved to a senior-care facility and was certainly having some health problems, but he had his own apartment and general freedom to move about the city of Chicago as much as he was able). In other words, we were prepared for the ultimate act, but we were surprised by the timing.At the time, Adam and I were both recovering from COVID-19. He was a few days ahead of me and already testing negative, so he booked an early flight the next day and headed to Chicago to say good-bye to his beloved grandpa, who had been a father figure to him ever since he’d suddenly lost his dad at age 15. Frustratingly, I wasn’t quite healthy enough yet to travel, so I called David up on a Wednesday morning — five days before his planned Swiss exit — to have my own final conversation with him. David and I have not always been close. In fact, for many years, our relationship was contentious and difficult. I found him intense and overly aggressive; he found me withholding and stubborn. But over the 17 years that I’ve been with Adam, David and I eventually came to a sort of mutual love and understanding, and learned to not just tolerate but even enjoy each other. Continued here

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Breaking The ‘Colour Bar’: When Malcolm X Joined An Indian’s Fight Against Racism in UK I ordered a drink and the barmaid already knew me and she said that, ‘My [landlord] doesn’t allow Black people to drink here. You can have a drink in the bar’ … Malcolm X said there was no point, and we walked into the bar where several IWA members were. He had a soft drink and chatted with different people about the colour bar. He was there for 15 minutes, and he said, ‘Keep up the fight. The only way to defeat the colour bar and racism is to fight it back.’In an interview with International Socialism in 2019, he recalled, “My family was actively involved in the Indian ­pre-independence movement. My cousin was imprisoned in 1941 for five years by British authorities. While he was on the run before 1941, the police kept raiding my family house and taking my parents and other relatives to the police station, questioning them and beating them. That was my early childhood as I remember it.”  Continued here

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The True Story Behind Netflix's 'The Watcher' In the series, streaming now, Dean and Nora Brannock (played by Bobby Cannavale and Naomi Watts) move to an idyllic New Jersey neighborhood where they assume their kids will be cocooned from the evils of the world. But these affluent suburbs hide something sinister. Shortly after settling into their new home, the couple starts receiving threatening letters from someone calling themselves “The Watcher.” This unwelcome penpal begins to terrorize the family in ways that should make any American Horror Story fan feel right at home. The Watcher, which also stars Jennifer Coolidge and Rosemary Baby’s Mia Farrow, gives AHS: Murder House a run for its money by taking more than a few liberties with the frighteningly true story on which it’s based. But that doesn’t mean the real events aren’t a terrifying tale all their own. Keep reading, if you dare, to learn the real story behind Netflix’s latest horror series that might make you think twice before signing your next lease. Continued here

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9 tactical tips for remote teams—user manuals, dogfooding, Slack norms, and more While remote work is now a staple of the modern workplace, gathering in person at work has its benefits. Time spent together builds trust, and every casual conversation or impromptu brainstorming session shared in the office naturally forges stronger relationships. These are the moments that enable company culture to grow and develop organically. But for remote teams, these opportunities must be thoughtfully planned and organized in order to happen.As the CEO of Tango, the browser and desktop application that automatically generates how-to guides, I lead a fully remote team of 30 people across 15 states, with two employees overseas. As a result, we’ve had to get creative with how we build relationships and trust across time zones. We’re excited to share what we’ve learned and how we approach operating a fully-remote company in Tango’s remote playbook. Here are nine of our favorite strategies to build connection, communication, and culture. Continued here

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Hurricane Ian Destroyed Retirees’ Life Savings Southwestern Florida has seen some of the fastest and most concentrated growth among seniors, many of whom purchased homes with the expectation that Florida real estate values would hold steady or rise. With many of their homes now gone, the prospect of renting, building or buying new houses comes as the state faces surging prices for building materials, labor shortages and what is expected to be an acute housing shortage. Continued here

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Uncertainty Can Speed Up Climate Action Certainty is the currency of politics and social media, where boiling down complex issues into simple, bite-sized nuggets is now the norm. In his new book, The Primacy of Doubt, climate physicist Tim Palmer argues that the science of uncertainty is woefully underappreciated by the public even though it is central to nearly every field of research. Embracing uncertainty and harnessing “the science of chaos,” he says, could help us unlock new understandings of the world, from climate change to emerging diseases to the next economic crash.The first section is a dense discussion of major questions and concepts in physics that illustrates how, among other things, systems can go from a stable state to a wildly chaotic one with little warning, but the book picks up speed when Palmer gets specific with accessible, everyday examples. The sharpest chapter is a crash course on how to predict the weather, a process Palmer helped to modernize. He explores the history of the forecast, starting with the first public storm warning in 1861 that used data from telegraphic stations from around the U.K. and taking us to ENIAC, the first programmable electronic computer. Continued here

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How Do You Make a Decision When Every Option Looks Bad? While the decision to “go purpose” instead of “going public” has been heralded by many as setting a new standard in corporate citizenship, it was still not an easy one for Mr. Chouinard to make. Patagonia explored every option, he says, including selling the company privately — a decision that ran the risk of new owners not sharing his values or vision for the environment. In a statement published on Patagonia’s website, he writes: “Another path was to take the company public. What a disaster that would have been. Even public companies with good intentions are under too much pressure to create short-term gain at the expense of long-term vitality and responsibility. Truth be told, there were no good options available. So, we created our own.”If you’ve led an organization, a function, or a team, you’ll probably be familiar with the dilemma that faced Patagonia’s leadership. There are times and situations — oftentimes, crisis situations — where the stakes are incredibly high and none of the choices ahead of you look good. Whatever decision you make, there’ll be trade-offs to negotiate, risks to navigate; and all eyes will be on you as the person whose responsibility it is to figure out the way forward. So what do you do? How can you do as Mr. Chouinard did, and create your own solution? Continued here

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Why these seabirds stage a rowdy springtime love-in For 36 years, biologist Ian Jones has been studying the crested auklet (Aethia cristatella). The small seabirds flock in ocean waters between Siberia and Alaska. They nest in colonies on rocky coasts of remote islands. And each spring, they hold courtship displays that resemble rowdy, carnal swim parties. Jones, a professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland, has observed the birds’ eight-week breeding season: the sights, sounds, smells, and moves. In sum, he says, “it looks like some sort of 1960s-style love-in.”If a female likes a male’s show, she approaches him. If there’s mutual interest, both birds pose and vocalize, and stroke each other with their bills. That distributes a tangerine-scented substance released from a gland beneath their nape feathers. The smell may be an auklet turn-on—and the bird is already “extremely gregarious,” Jones says. “You can have a one-meter-square flat rock with hundreds of birds on it, jostling, crowding, and doing all sorts of weird things.”  Continued here

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How blindsight answers the hard problem of consciousness | Aeon Essays The cover of New Scientist magazine 50 years ago showed a picture of a rhesus monkey, with the headline ‘A Blind Monkey That Sees Everything’. The monkey, named Helen, was part of a study into the neuropsychology of vision, led by Lawrence (Larry) Weiskrantz in the psychology laboratory at the University of Cambridge. In 1965, he had surgically removed the primary visual cortex at the back of Helen’s brain. Following the operation, Helen appeared to be quite blind. When, as a PhD student, I met her a year later, it seemed nothing had changed.But something puzzled me. In mammals, there are two main pathways from the eye to the brain: an evolutionarily ancient one – the descendant of the visual system used by fish, frogs and reptiles – that goes to the optic tectum in the mid-brain, and a newer one that goes up to the cortex. In Helen, the older visual system was still intact. If a frog can see using the optic tectum, why not Helen? Continued here

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Improve Your Mental Health With These 6 Mind-Changing Exercises Thought exercises can help you see experiences in a new light, and change how much power your negative thoughts have over you. Not only can thought exercises help you ease stress in the moment, they also can help us to make our subconscious thoughts go in more productive, helpful directions over time. Let's go through the top six thought exercises you can do to improve your mental health. We'll even show you how to perform them. Thought exercises are new ways to think about a given circumstance or experience that can help us get out of a stuck or unhelpful way of thinking. While some thought exercises have been studied extensively by psychological researchers, others are offered by psychologists and clinical mental health counselors because they've been helpful anecdotally for specific types of patients. Thought exercises may be suggested by your therapist, whether they are online or in-person. Continued here

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Why AI Will Never Fully Capture Human Language In clipped yet lyrical prose, the novel goes on to narrate a road trip from New York to New Orleans taken by six friends. The narrator of the novel is not one of the friends, however. It’s the car itself: an artificial intelligence network on wheels equipped with a camera, a GPS, and a microphone. The various gadgets fed information into a laptop running AI software, then a printer spat out sentences—sometimes coherent, sometimes poetic—as the group glided south down the highway.This experiment in novel writing using AI, led by artist and technologist Ross Goodwin from his lab at New York University in 2017, prompted people to consider the crucial role language plays in creating culture. Was the resultant novel, 1 the Road, a free-prose manuscript modeled after Jack Kerouac’s famous On The Road, a genuine piece of art? Or was it merely a high-tech version of fridge magnet poetry? “Who’s writing the poetry?” asked Goodwin’s colleague Christiana Caro from Google Research. “I really don’t know how to answer that question.” Continued here

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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ghee Ghee holds sacrosanct value in my culture. It is used in cooking, worship, and alternative medicine. In the Indian culinary universe, ghee is a beloved cooking fat, and also a luxurious one. It is ambrosial, treasured for its nutty flavor and grainy mouthfeel. Its role in everyday as well as festive dishes is critical. Whether it’s used for a tadka, the ingenious technique of blooming whole spices in fat, or for deep-frying sweets and snacks for the gods, or as a final flourish over a bowl of khichdi or chapati, the role of ghee is so critical that traditional home cooks make sure they never run out of it.Traditionally, ghee in India is made from cow’s milk using the bilona process, which is believed to have existed since the Vedic times. It involves boiling and cooling the milk, then inoculating it with curd and leaving it to set overnight. The resulting fermented curd is then churned the next morning using a bilona, or wooden beater, to separate the butter and buttermilk. To make ghee, the butter is melted over heat until its water content has evaporated, leaving a clear residue. The process, which takes two days to complete, is now dying off due to the rise of mechanized production. Continued here

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Opening the Stasi files: Would you read the secrets your government kept on you? In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Belcerebon people of the planet Kakrafoon were highly irritating. They grated on everyone so much that they were condemned to the worst punishment known to the Galactic Tribunal: telepathy. The Belcerebon people suddenly had all of their thoughts broadcast for everyone to hear. There were to be no secrets, no social politeness, and no biting your tongue. Every thought — mean, lewd, and weird — was exposed for everyone to hear. As a result, the Belcerebon resolved to talk very loudly, so loudly as to drown out the thoughts of everyone else.As Douglas Adams knew well, there is such a thing as too much knowledge. For a long time, philosophers, scientists, and academics have assumed that knowledge is an absolute good; the more knowledge you have, the better. Yet there is an increasing focus on the concept of “deliberate ignorance” — that is, weighing up the costs and benefits of knowing a certain thing, and then deciding not to learn about it. For instance, with the great boom in genetic health testing, some people willingly choose not to know if they are predisposed to some horrible medical condition. I don’t want to know if I’m at risk of brain cancer. Continued here

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Nirula's: How Deepak Nirula made burgers and pizzas popular in India The death of the man behind India's first fast-food chain Nirula's has evoked a flurry of memories. For anyone who grew up in capital Delhi during the 1970s and 1980s, Nirula's - run by the family of Deepak Nirula who died last week - is more than a restaurant. It's an emotion. The restaurant transformed the eating-out culture in the city and introduced an entire generation to fast food, American style, before McDonald's and KFC came into the country. For many it was synonymous with its hot chocolate fudge.Nirulas. The place we went to from school and college to celebrate. The place where we took our children to relive the many happy memories linked with Nirulas. Can only thank them for thinking ahead of their time and giving us memories of a lifetime. RIP Deepak Nirula. Continued here

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The Spooky Science of Why Mirrors Can Freak Us Out So Much Beyond the Las Vegas Strip’s dazzling lights, something darker awaits Sin City visitors who venture into celebrity ghost hunter Zak Bagans’s Haunted Museum. There, the spooky memorabilia ranges from Ted Bundy’s glasses to fragments of Charles Manson’s bones, scraped from the incinerator after his body was cremated. There’s also a rather plain-looking mirror, about two feet tall and shaped like a tombstone. Bagans has said that, of his entire collection, it’s one of the things that unnerves him the most.Allegedly, the mirror once belonged to Dracula actor Bela Lugosi. The story goes that he used it in occult attempts to contact his deceased wife, but instead invited something unwanted and otherworldly. The mirror’s next owner was murdered and, in the years that followed, subsequent owners have reported seeing a dark entity reflected in it. Some even claim to have been attacked, waking from uneasy dreams covered in scratch marks. Continued here

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Searching For The Secrets To Life Everlasting  | NOEMA The animals were Hydra vulgaris, tiny marine organisms about a quarter of an inch long that cling to rocks and vegetation and other surfaces underwater. They look like plants but are carnivorous animals — technically a freshwater polyp (in the same biological class as corals), with spindly arms and a simple nervous system. They feed mostly on water fleas and other tiny crustaceans.  Martínez had heard a rumor that these peculiar creatures were, in fact, immortal. “I thought that that was bullshit,” he told me recently. But in the time he monitored the ones he gathered from the estuary, he noticed no signs of aging. He kept them in separate tanks, made sure to remove new ones that appeared (hydra can reproduce asexually and he wanted to make sure he tracked only the original ones), and three times a week he fed them a steady diet of tiny shrimp similar to what they would’ve eaten in the wild. When he moved across the country, he tucked them safely into a cooler in the back of a U-Haul and took them along with him.  Continued here

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How a popular startup failed despite billionaire backers and a 35,000-person waiting list The email represented the culmination of the epic rise and tumultuous fall of a business built around what its founders once billed as a “women’s utopia.” Founded by Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan in 2016, the Wing saw its valuation peak at $365 million as investors like WeWork’s Adam Neumann, Sequoia Capital’s Jess Lee, and even soccer player Alex Morgan flocked to the mission of empowering women through community. But scandal chipped away at the Wing’s polished veneer. A 2019 lawsuit forced the Wing to drop its ban on membership by men, who were previously only allowed to visit as guests. Members and staff criticized management for mishandling an allegedly racist incident. Hourly employees, most of whom were Black or Brown women, went public with reports of mistreatment that contradicted the Wing’s uplifting, empowering brand. Gelman’s exit in June 2020 kicked off a round of CEO musical chairs. COVID forced the Wing to shut its locations and shed staff. A larger co-working company eventually bought a majority stake in the startup; under new ownership, the Wing staged an ambitious reopening of six locations in 2021 that lasted just months.  Continued here

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What Exactly Is Tooth Decay, and How Do You Prevent It? | Livestrong.com Eating a lot of sugar and not brushing and flossing your teeth or seeing a dentist regularly are related causes of tooth decay, according to Marisol Tellez, BDS, PhD, associate professor and graduate program director of Dental Public Health at Temple University's Maurice H. Kornberg School of Dentistry. Family history and not having enough saliva, which has protective properties against tooth decay, may contribute to tooth decay, Tellez says. Medications and acid reflux also cause tooth decay. Continued here

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An antidote to heartbreak? Science reveals how to hack loneliness When science writer Florence Williams heard such descriptions, she dismissed them as histrionic complaints of relationships gone wrong. But then, after her three-decade partnership ended abruptly, she found herself “adrift in the ocean,” she tells me, facing the same physical suffering as those mourning writers expressed. Her anxiety skyrocketed, she developed diabetes, and she lost weight rapidly.It turns out Williams’ physical symptoms weren’t all in her head. Emerging scientific data suggests that social rejection — often in the form of heartbreak — can spark a similar firestorm of brain activity as physical pain. People can also experience elevated stress and inflammation after relationships end. If the physiological side effects of rejection and loneliness aren’t resolved within months or years, the symptoms can contribute to diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s, and even hasten death. Continued here

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The Incredible Technology That Made Humanity's Moon Dreams a Reality At the center of the newly revamped “Destination Moon” exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, visitors can stand directly beneath the business end of an F-1 rocket engine, the massive power plant for the Saturn V launch vehicle. Angled within the ceiling are several mirrors that create the illusion that the artifact—a single engine—is at the center of an array of five. These massive engines were positioned at the bottom of the first stage of the Saturn V rockets, which carried astronauts to the moon six times between 1969 and 1972.But visitors climbing the gallery’s red stairs—made conspicuously to look like NASA’s gantry—to the new mezzanine will find artifacts that are less imposing but equally fascinating. These objects are powerful reminders of how the lunar landing was not merely the triumph of a handful of exceptionally capable and courageous Apollo astronauts, but of tens of thousands of people who contributed in ways that those who have never blasted beyond Earth’s atmosphere will find more relatable. Continued here

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Kindness is cool. This online game rewards it. This is precisely the type of daydreaming that indie game developer Ziba Scott and artist-designer Luigi Guatieri were doing in 2019, as they watched the internet continue its downward spiral of toxicity and negativity. They thought a solution could lie, paradoxically, in an online game. So they set out to design a video game that doubles as a gentler social media platform — something that would accentuate the positive aspects of online interconnectivity while shutting out the trolls, bubble-builders, and other trappings of the almighty social algorithm.You send the letter into the ether. But instead of being mocked, bullied, minimized, or perhaps worst of all, ignored, you receive responses — usually within hours or even minutes — of sympathy and encouragement from real, anonymous people all over the world. Some have been through what you’re going through and offer perspective (“Sometimes I never figure it out”); some may be in the same situation now (“You and me both, friend”). And others have no idea but try to lift your spirits anyway (“I hope you feel better”). Sometimes it’s a little bit of all of this.             Continued here

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Emotional Intelligence Has 12 Elements. Which Do You Need to Work On? Although there are many models of emotional intelligence, they are often lumped together as “EQ” in the popular vernacular. An alternative term is “EI,” which comprises four domains: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Within those domains are twelve EI competencies, starting with emotional self-awareness in the self-awareness domain. Emotional self-control, adaptability, achievement orientation, and a positive outlook fall under self-management. Empathy and organizational awareness make up social awareness. Relationship management includes influence, coaching and mentoring, conflict management, teamwork, and inspirational leadership. Leaders need to develop a balance of strengths across these competencies. Assessment tools, like a 360-degree assessment that uses ratings from yourself and those who know you well, can help you determine where your EI needs improvement. To best improve your weak spots, find an expert to coach you.Esther is a well-liked manager of a small team. Kind and respectful, she is sensitive to the needs of others. She is a problem solver; she tends to see setbacks as opportunities. She’s always engaged and is a source of calm to her colleagues. Her manager feels lucky to have such an easy direct report to work with and often compliments Esther on her high levels of emotional intelligence, or EI. And Esther indeed counts EI as one of her strengths; she’s grateful for at least one thing she doesn’t have to work on as part of her leadership development. It’s strange, though — even with her positive outlook, Esther is starting to feel stuck in her career. She just hasn’t been able to demonstrate the kind of performance her company is looking for. So much for emotional intelligence, she’s starting to think. Continued here

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The messy morality of letting AI make life-and-death decisions At least that’s the idea. Nitschke has not yet been able to sidestep the medical establishment fully. Switzerland requires that candidates for euthanasia demonstrate mental capacity, Nitschke says, which is typically assessed by a psychiatrist. “There’s still a belief that if a person is asking to die, they’ve got some sort of undiagnosed mental illness,” he says. “That it’s not rational for a person to seek death.”He believes he has a solution, however. Exit International is working on an algorithm that Nitschke hopes will allow people to perform a kind of psychiatric self-assessment on a computer. In theory, if a person passed this online test, the program would provide a four-digit code to activate the Sarco. “That’s the goal,” says Nitschke. “Having said all that, the project is proving very difficult.”  Continued here

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Why You Need a Bedtime While many of us feel frequently exhausted, reputable time diary studies show that even busy people actually get adequate sleep from a quantitative perspective. The problem is that for many people it’s disorderly sleep: short some nights and unexpectedly (or desperately) long others. Consistent sleep — best achieved by giving adults a bedtime right alongside the kids — is the secret to making life feel like less of a slog. Continued here