November 14, 2022 - Give and take: how gift-giving forges society, and ourselves | Aeon Essays

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Give and take: how gift-giving forges society, and ourselves | Aeon Essays is a postdoctoral College Fellow at Harvard University, where she teaches history and social theory. She is currently working on her first book, provisionally titled ‘Found in Translation: Colonial Power, Indigenous Knowledge, and the Invention of the Social Sciences’. ‘To receive from kings,’ the Mahabharata tells us, ‘is at first honey, at the end, poison.’ Honey because who doesn’t want the gift of a king’s riches? Poison because how will we ever repay? We all know, because it is written by our sages and scripted in our norms, that receiving a gift carries with it certain obligations: to say thank you and to reciprocate with a gift in return. ‘These people invited us for dinner,’ Elaine Benes explains to George Costanza on the TV show Seinfeld. ‘We have to bring something.’ But why, George asks? ‘I just don’t like the idea that, every time there’s a dinner invitation, there’s this annoying little chore that goes along with it,’ he complains. ‘The fabric of society is very complex, George,’ Jerry Seinfeld tells him. Continued here

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Social Media Is Dead Over the past few weeks, a flurry of discussion about the future of social media has been set off by investors punishing Facebook for its ten-year plan to build a metaverse and Elon Musk’s controlled demolition of his newly-acquired Twitter.  There are a lot of concerns that Musk will soon destroy Twitter, but we shouldn’t worry about this largely because social media networking is already dead. That is, the platforms that came to define "social media" as we came to know it over the last decade-and-change—Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, to be sure, but also Tumblr and even earlier progenitors like MySpace—are largely being left in the dust and out-competed, replaced by other platforms and their own models of online interaction.  Continued here

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Are we really prisoners of geography? A wave of bestselling authors claim that global affairs are still ultimately governed by the immutable facts of geography – mountains, oceans, rivers, resources. But the world has changed more than they realise Russia’s war in Ukraine has involved many surprises. The largest, however, is that it happened at all. Last year, Russia was at peace and enmeshed in a complex global economy. Would it really sever trade ties – and threaten nuclear war – just to expand its already vast territory? Despite the many warnings, including from Vladimir Putin himself, the invasion still came as a shock. Continued here

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Three-Way Entanglement Results Hint at Better Quantum Codes Last month, three scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work proving one of the most counterintuitive yet consequential realities of the quantum world. They showed that two entangled quantum particles must be considered a single system—their states inexorably intertwined with each other—even if the particles are separated by great distances. In practice, this phenomenon of “nonlocality” means that the system you have in front of you can be instantaneously affected by something that’s thousands of miles away. Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research develop­ments and trends in mathe­matics and the physical and life sciences. Entanglement and nonlocality enable computer scientists to create uncrackable codes. In a technique known as device-independent quantum key distribution, a pair of particles is entangled and then distributed to two people. The particles’ shared properties can now serve as a code, one that will keep communications safe even from quantum computers—machines capable of breaking through classical encryption techniques.But why stop at two particles? In theory, there’s no upper limit on how many particles can share an entangled state. For decades, theoretical physicists have imagined three-way, four-way, even 100-way quantum connections—the sort of thing that would allow a fully distributed quantum-protected internet. Now, a lab in China has achieved what appears to be nonlocal entanglement between three particles at once, potentially boosting the strength of quantum cryptography and the possibilities for quantum networks generally. Continued here

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Formerly Incarcerated Job Seekers Need More Than Training Every year, 600,000 people leave prison, and many seek jobs. And because research suggests that quality employment can help prevent recidivism—not to mention that working is often part of probation or parole requirements—the field of “prisoner reentry” has focused on helping people who were formerly incarcerated build employment readiness. Tech companies in particular have begun to recognize a social responsibility to train people who have been impacted by the criminal legal system—through a racial equity lens, and especially after the protests following the murder of George Floyd. In 2021, Google launched the Grow with Google Career Readiness for Reentry program, which aims to “bring digital skills to previously incarcerated jobseekers.” The program funds several nonprofits that deliver digital literacy support, including Fortune Society and The Last Mile. Other organizations focus more directly on helping people land jobs: The Next Chapter Project provides training, apprenticeships, and coaching in tech and engineering, recently helping place three formerly incarcerated people at Slack, and has plans to expand to 14 more companies. (Outside of tech, a number of companies, such as the restaurants Mod Pizza and All Square, have also made hiring people after prison central to their mission.) There are benefits for employers. People with criminal records are routinely recognized for how hard they work. The Society for Human Resources Management has fielded surveys of employers showing that two out of three employers have hired someone with a criminal record; of those employers, a strong majority agree that employees with records perform as well as those without records, and are often the most dedicated and long-term employees. Continued here

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The Best TV Streaming Devices for Cord Cutters Most of us stream a majority of our content, if we haven’t abandoned cable altogether. Smart TVs rarely have good interfaces, so owning a separate device will make things a whole lot easier (more on that at the end of this guide). We’ve tried them all—you can get options from Roku, Apple, Google, Amazon, and even a cheap Walmart-owned brand—so you don’t have to go through a bunch to figure out what works for you, and we’ve separated each of our favorites by what they do best. Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you'd like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day. Continued here

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The Hunt for the FTX Thieves Has Begun Cryptocurrency has always offered a strange mix of temptations and challenges for anyone trying to steal it. As digital cash, held in multibillion-dollar sums on hackable, internet-connected networks, it presents a lucrative target. But once it's stolen, the blockchains that almost every cryptocurrency is built on make it possible to follow that money's every movement and, very often, to identify the thieves. So after a massive heist pulled nearly half a billion dollars worth of funds out of the already collapsing FTX cryptocurrency exchange yesterday, the world's crypto tracers are now closely tracking where that loot ends up—and looking for any clues that reveal the thief to be an FTX insider or just an opportunistic hacker. On Friday, hours after the major cryptocurrency exchange FTX had filed for bankruptcy in the wake of its epic, 10-figure collapse, FTX's remaining funds were drained of more than $663 million worth of cryptocurrency, much of which appears to have been stolen. "FTX has been hacked," wrote an administrator in FTX's Telegram channel. "FTX apps are malware. Delete them." Exactly how FTX might have been breached—and whether its apps are, in fact, compromised—is far from clear, and FTX hasn't officially announced any theft. But the company's US general counsel wrote in a tweet that "unauthorized access to certain assets has occurred." (FTX did not respond to WIRED's request for comment.) Soon, crypto-tracing and blockchain analysis firm Elliptic revealed that the $663 million outflow seemed to be a combination of FTX's movement of coins into its own storage wallets and a mysterious theft. According to Elliptic, fully $477 million of the funds appear to have been stolen, though another crypto-tracing firm, TRM Labs, puts the number at $338 million. Twenty-four hours after the theft, most of that money had moved into just a handful of cryptocurrency addresses—where the entire cryptocurrency tracing industry, a vast community of amateur crypto sleuths, and no doubt law enforcement agencies around the globe are now all watching it with an unblinking gaze. Continued here

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COVID origin case reopened: A lab leak is a legitimate question In 2023, the world finally may find out how the COVID pandemic began, as the U.S. Congress has signaled its intention to hold hearings and subpoena scientists who worked with colleagues in Wuhan. In addition, Chinese scientists and others who have information about the early days of the pandemic might soon begin traveling to the west again. Given the sophistication of modern biomedical technology, it is extraordinary that three years since the pandemic began, the origin of COVID remains unknown. Previous epidemics — SARS, MERS, Nipah, Hendra, Hanta, Marburg and other emerging viruses — usually have been quickly traced with moderate or high confidence to a date, a place, and an encounter with a species of animal. No such closure has happened this time. Yet unlike in those cases, millions are dead. Two main possibilities remain on the table: that there was an accidental infection at a laboratory in the Wuhan Institute of Virology or that somebody caught it from a mammal on sale in the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. Neither is popular with the Chinese regime, which championed both an aggressive push into high-risk virology experiments and the development of wildlife farming to serve Xi Jinping’s much favored interest in traditional Chinese medicine. Continued here

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Can cannabis replace opioids? Drug overdose deaths from opioids continue to rise in the U.S. as a result of both the misuse of prescription opioids and the illicit drug market. But an interesting trend has developed: Opioid emergency room visits drop by nearly 8% and opioid prescriptions are modestly lower in states where marijuana is legalized. Marijuana is produced by the cannabis plant, which is native to Asia but is now grown throughout the world. Individuals use marijuana for both its psychoactive, euphoria-inducing properties and its ability to relieve pain. Continued here

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Molten salt reactors could save nuclear power Molten salt reactors, a type of nuclear reactor first explored in the 1950s, could be the future of clean energy — if we can overcome the problems that have held them back for more than half a century. Nuclear fission occurs when a neutron slams into the nucleus of an atom, splitting the atom. This releases a tremendous amount of energy, as well as additional neutrons that can then split more atoms, creating a self-sustaining fission reaction.  Nuclear reactors control the fission process so that the energy, released as heat, can be used to boil water, creating steam that can spin electricity-generating turbines. Continued here

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This genetically engineered houseplant does the work of 30 typical plants For those of us with seasonal depression or anxiety, houseplants can offer immense comfort. In fact, adding loads of leafy things to your home has been shown to boost mood and relieve anxiety — in short, they help us (metaphorically) breathe a bit easier. But now, a specially designed plant can literally clear the air. A Paris-based startup called Neoplants aims to harness the natural air-filtering properties of plants and turn them up to 11. By genetically engineering both a pothos (Epipremnum aureum) plant and its associated root microbiome, the team behind Neoplants created an organism they claim is capable of doing the work of up to 30 air purifiers. The company’s first high-tech houseplant, called Neo P1, recently hit the market. Continued here S3 Why Did We All Have the Same Childhood? You might not think of typing “BOOBS” on a calculator as cultural heritage, but it is. The custom has been shared, preserved, and passed down through generations of children sniggering in math class. This sacred communal knowledge, along with other ephemera of youth—the blueprints for a cootie catcher, the words to a jump-rope rhyme, the rhythm of a clapping game—is central to the experience of being a kid. When children are together, they develop their own rituals, traditions, games, and legends—essentially, their own folklore, or, as researchers call it, “childlore.” That lore can be widespread and long-lasting—the mind boggles to think how many generations of children have played tag, for instance. Even seemingly more modern inventions, such as the “cool S”—a blocky, graffiti-ish S that has been etched into countless spiral-bound notebooks—are a shared touchstone for many people who grew up in different times and places in the U.S. How is it that so many children across time and space come to know the exact same things? Continued here � S6 Seoul Halloween crush: understanding the science of crowds could help prevent disasters – here's how Proper planning is absolutely key to public safety. Authorities need to anticipate potential risks, not just for specific events, but wherever large numbers of people are likely to gather. Calculating the safe capacity of spaces, anticipating crowd flows, dynamically assessing the size of crowds and ensuring that safe capacities aren’t exceeded on the ground are the bare minimum that should be done. We need to understand groups of people as complex, dynamical systems made up of human “parts” interacting with one another and with their environment, and move beyond the tired narratives of “mob”, “stampede” and “panic” that unfortunately still dominate discussions of crowds. This will require further support for an inter-disciplinary approach that draws on physics, computer science, social psychology, sociology, criminology, policing and politics. Continued here S7 How "Wordle editor" became a real job at The New York Times To start, Bennett clarified that "Wordle editor" is not a full-time job in and of itself. Bennet has been an associate puzzles editor at the Times since 2020, and that role continues to fill most of her professional time. Editing Wordle currently takes up an average of 30 minutes to an hour a day, Bennett said, a "startup rate" that will help "build a [word] list for the year going forward into the future." Working from Josh Wardle's original list of about 2,300 five-letter words (which were previously assigned randomly to different days), Bennett said she starts by just "looking at the list and seeing things pop out... I'm still choosing words in a kind of arbitrary way, but also in a well-informed way. ... I would call it intuitive, but it's really based on years of experience working with words from other puzzles." Continued here � S8 The inconvenient truth of global warming in the 21st century Despite sounding the alarm, the past three decades have led to a far more dire situation. As identified in 2021’s 6th IPCC report, carbon dioxide concentrations now sit at 412 ppm, Earth’s average temperature is a full 1.3 °C (2.3 °F) above pre-industrial levels, and our global carbon emissions have increased to a new all-time high: nearing 40 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, up from 22 billion in 1990. The best time to act was long ago, but the second best time to act is now. Here are the truths of the matter that everyone who’s vested in following what the science shows should know. The Earth, at present, is indisputably a warmer planet today than at any point in all of recorded human history. This isn’t because of the Sun; it isn’t because of Milankovitch cycles; it isn’t because of volcanic activity. It’s directly due to the human-caused emission of greenhouse gases, with the concentration of carbon dioxide being the dominant driving factor in increasing the Earth’s temperature. Continued here S9 Is There a Cure for Information Disorder? - JSTOR Daily It’s difficult to separate the vitality of democracy from the vibrancy of the information that fuels it. In their landmark work on political knowledge in America, the scholars Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter made the case that good information is “the currency of citizenship,” a necessary precondition for meaningful political participation. Their concern, articulated in the 1990s, was that despite the normative assumption that information is critical to democracy, most Americans have always been poorly informed. Like financial capital, factual understanding is disproportionately distributed among the population. More recently, this interest in the inequities of information has transformed into a more acute worry about the quality of information—from  specious (and strategic) claims of “fake news” to the widespread fear that misinformation is undermining democratic foundations. To grapple with information necessarily is to consider the medium of its representation. Our assumptions about the democratic role of information were forged in the era of the press, when the circulation of printed documents was the means of public information and newspapers were the central technology of citizenship. This modernist logic would reach its zenith in the mid-twentieth century, a moment of presumed consensus that the function of print-based journalism was to provide an objective accounting of public life that could serve as a resource for individual citizens’ rational decision making. The duty of the citizen was to “follow the news,” while the press was trusted to serve as gatekeeper, managing the representational space. Consider, for example, the longstanding claim of The New York Times that it provides “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” While the institutional effort to determine what information is “fit” to print has always been an exercise in privilege and exclusion, it also regulated the information environment, ostensibly to facilitate the functioning of democracy. Continued here � S10 Inside the Oscars of the watch world For the 22nd time, the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) - held in "the G-spot of the watch world" - brought together the weird and wonderful watchmaking fraternity. There was a buzzing red carpet with the Ryan Seacrest of horology seeking out all the biggest fits of the night. Among talk of who's gyrotourbillons were more bonkers, which complications were more complicated, and who had the most bling sapphire-set bezels, the glam squad were out and about with tuxedos here and khaki desert jackets there, and among the non-descript black derby shoes, some Gucci loafers, Adidas Stan Smiths and black patent Louie-Bs stood out for those looking out. Inside Geneva's answer to LA's Dolby Theatre, the auditorium was a vision of red, black and gold. There were spotlights, there was a voiceover announcing nominations backed by suspense-building ambience music. There was drama, there were surprise winners, and at the heart of it all, Switzerland's answer to Ricky Gervais Edouard Baer cracking watch jokes and interrupting any overly-arduous speeches. Continued here S11 Can Glowing 'Ray Cats' Save Humanity? Olkiluoto is a pine-covered island jutting out into the Baltic Sea, just off the western coast of Finland. Beneath the surface, there’s 2-billion-year-old bedrock made mostly of gneiss, hard as steel. It’s here that engineers are digging a facility known as Onkalo, Finnish for “cavity” or “pit.” They’re constructing a tomb, a quarter of a mile underground, to store spent uranium rods from nuclear power plants for the next 100,000 years. And depending on who you ask, future generations might be warned away from sites like it by glowing cats. Onkalo, which when it begins operations around 2025 will be the world’s first permanent nuclear waste repository, is the product of decades of thinking around the fact that nuclear waste’s potential for harm won’t just outlive everyone alive today—it may outlive entire languages and civilizations. How do you protect people who will live further in the future than humans have even existed? Continued here S12 The Health Gap A special series about how men and women experience the medical system – and their own health – in starkly different ways. Continued here S13 Sustainable and inclusive growth: A weekly briefing More workers will be needed to accelerate efforts to produce renewable energy. But the Great Attrition, coupled with industry-specific challenges, has hollowed out the renewables workforce. This week, McKinsey research reveals strategies the sector can use to restock its talent pools. A separate McKinsey piece details the infrastructure that Europe will need to construct to keep the continent’s future electric vehicles (EVs) charged. Meanwhile, an article about reducing emissions that stem from the “built environment”—a term that encapsulates the life cycles of residential and commercial buildings—looks at business opportunities that could develop as buildings attempt to get greener. The fast-growing renewable-energy sector could require a quadrupling of its global workforce by 2030 (exhibit). Many of these jobs will demand specific technical expertise. Senior partner Jan Krause and coauthors suggest several ways for the industry to fill employment gaps. Among them: offer clearer career development paths, boost long-term incentives, and acquire qualified talent by buying related companies. Continued here S18 1 in 3 people cheat. Here’s what to do if you’re the 1. About one-third of people have committed infidelity at some point in their lives. If you’re one of them, should you confess it to your romantic partner? One way to answer the question is to consider whether you would want to know if your partner had cheated on you. Surveys show that 77% of people would want to know, but that still leaves about a quarter of us who would prefer ignorance. It’s also worth questioning your own motives: Maybe you only want to get the secret off your chest to make yourself feel better. It’s a difficult dilemma with no one-size-fits-all solution. But fortunately, as psychologist Michael Slepian explained to Big Think, recent research has revealed insights into the nature of secrets, what happens when we harbor them, and how and when we should consider revealing them. Continued here S22 A Massive LinkedIn Study Reveals Who Actually Helps You Get That Job If you want a new job, don’t just rely on friends or family. According to one of the most influential theories in social science, you’re more likely to nab a new position through your “weak ties,” loose acquaintances with whom you have few mutual connections. Sociologist Mark Granovetter first laid out this idea in a 1973 paper that has garnered more than 65,000 citations. But the theory, dubbed “the strength of weak ties,” after the title of Granovetter’s study, lacked causal evidence for decades. Now a sweeping study that looked at more than 20 million people on the professional social networking site LinkedIn over a five-year period finally shows that forging weak ties does indeed help people get new jobs. And it reveals which types of connections are most important for job hunters. The strength of weak ties “is really a cornerstone of social science,” says Dashun Wang, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, who was not involved in the new study. For the original 1973 research, Granovetter interviewed people late in their career and asked them about their experiences with job changes. Before his groundbreaking paper, many had assumed that new positions came from sources such as close personal friends who would put in a good word, headhunters who would seek out strong candidates or public advertisements. But Granovetter’s analysis showed that people actually got new jobs most frequently through friends of friends—often someone the job seeker had not known before they started looking for a new position. “That really shook people up because assumptions about how people find the best jobs in life doesn’t look to be true—it looks like actually strangers might be the best contacts for you,” says Brian Uzzi, also a professor at the Kellogg School of Management, who was not involved in the new study. Continued here S23 How to Encourage Your Team to Give You Honest Feedback Far too often, team members expect to be given downward feedback, but unless they’re explicitly invited to offer upward feedback, they won’t know that it’s even an option. As a manager, it’s your job to ask your employees for feedback on your own performance. How else will you know what you should keep doing and what you should be doing differently? Nevertheless, you might find that your direct reports are reluctant to give you the feedback you need to improve, or even sustain, what’s working. This article addresses five common barriers that managers face in getting helpful feedback from direct reports, and how to address them so that you can gain the insights you need. If you’re a manager, it’s not enough to be giving feedback to your direct reports. It’s part of your job to solicit feedback from your direct reports as well. As much as you might believe that you know your strengths and weaknesses well, without external self-awareness — an understanding of how what you say and do impacts others — you’re unlikely to improve the habits, behaviors, and practices that may be holding you (or others) back. Continued here S24 Your Career Needs an Elevator Pitch Now that you’ve crafted a compelling definition of who you are and what you do, make sure to rehearse your speech. Don’t memorize it word for word, or else all anyone will remember is that you sounded like a nervous robot. The bottom line is that there’s no excuse for having nothing prepared when given the opportunity to pitch yourself. Give the people something to remember so that when an exciting opportunity comes along, they’ll be sure to “think of you.” Continued here S25 Jon Stewart: ‘Ain’t nothing as agile as authoritarian regimes’ We usecookiesand other data for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure,personalising content and ads, providing social media features and toanalyse how our Sites are used. Continued here S26 Putin, his commanders and Russia’s nuclear option in Ukraine Ever since his invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly reminded the world of the most dangerous weapons at his disposal. Continued here S27 Why More and More Girls Are Hitting Puberty Early Megan Gray was eight years old when she got her first period. She was playing hide-and-seek with her older sister and a friend at their friend’s house in suburban Sacramento. She was wearing pink jeans, which she had saved up for a long time to buy. She tied a sweatshirt around her waist to hide the bloodstain, and, later, threw the ruined pink jeans away; when her mother asked where they’d gone, she threw a tantrum to deflect the question. Gray had a close relationship with her mom, but she was so young that they’d had no conversations about puberty; her older sister had not yet gotten her period. “There was nothing, no context for understanding,” Gray told me. “I knew what a period was—I didn’t think I was dying or anything. But still, I didn’t tell anyone for months. I just used wadded-up toilet paper. It felt so awkward and shameful.” She did eventually talk with her mom about it. But this was the nineteen-eighties. “It wasn’t some big informational session. It was very Gen X—you just dealt with things by yourself and got on with it.” Gray was taller than her peers and wore layers of tops to conceal her developing breasts. She estimates that she was a C-cup by fifth grade. “There were assumptions about me because I had boobs. And I had never even kissed anyone. I was lucky, because nothing traumatic occurred. Yet I do think that there is a trauma in being sexualized.” Maritza Gualy got her first period when she was eight going on nine, at the end of the eighties. Her mom showed her how to use a thick Kotex pad. Eventually, her older sister introduced her to o.b. tampons—the ones with no applicator; they were small and easier to hide. The sisters, whose parents were Colombian immigrants, attended a majority-white Catholic school in Nashville. Her school uniform had no pockets, so whenever Gualy had her period, she had to hide tampons in her bra or in the waistband of her skirt. One day, an o.b. fell out of her skirt when she and her classmates were sitting on the rug together. Later, when they were back at their desks for a spelling test, Gualy recalled, “the teacher went around from kid to kid with the tampon. ‘Is this yours?’ ‘Is this yours?’ Except she was only asking the more well-developed girls! I knew I wasn’t going to admit to it.” Continued here S28 What’s the likelihood of Ukraine and Russia entering peace talks? Talks are a distant prospect, experts warn, as the battlefield reality and winter will dictate both sides’ strategic calculus. This past week, Ukrainian and Russian officials have made several public statements in an apparent willingness to re-engage in dialogue, blaming one another for stalling a possible negotiated solution after nearly nine months of fighting. But experts have said the prospect of meaningful talks remains distant. Ukraine, they say, will seek to achieve more battlefield gains before heading to the negotiating table, while Russia hopes the impact of winter on Ukraine’s allies will fracture international support for Kyiv and weaken its resolve. Continued here S29 Wild chimpanzees and gorillas can form long friendly associations that last decades – new research Chris Young does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. To survive, animals compete for resources, be it food, mating partners or territory. But a ground breaking recent study shows chimpanzees and gorillas form friendships, some lasting at least 20 years. They play, eat and socialise together. It is the first study of its kind to see such long-term, peaceful associations between apes. A team of scientists led by Crickette Sanz from Washington University, US, made this discovery using over 20 years of data from the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo. Continued here S30 Why is Everyone Fighting Over the Skull of 'Brigand Villella'? “On a dark, cold morning of December 1870, while analyzing brigand Villella’s skull, I had a sudden realization … and solved the problem of the delinquency’s nature.” With these words, Cesare Lombroso, a prominent Italian scientist from the late 19th century, described the moment many consider the symbolic beginning of criminal anthropology: the discovery of a physical trait in the human skull which Lombroso held accountable for all deviant behavior. The scientist is now long dead and his theories have been discredited, but the skull of this mysterious, controversial brigand—or outlaw—survives and is currently at a center of a passionate dispute between those who want to give Giuseppe Villella a proper burial and those who believe that the importance of this remain transcends its biological dimension and want to continue to display it as a cultural asset. Born in 1835, Cesare Lombroso lived in an age in which established religious truths were being challenged and replaced. He believed that the scientific method would offer a solution to all human queries. The scientist was particularly concerned with the problem of criminality; crime was ravaging the recently formed Italian nation and threatening its stability. Inspired by the evolutioary theories of Darwin, Lombroso was convinced that there was a genetic predisposition to savagery and that he would be able to identify criminal individuals by using physiognomy—a pseudoscience that held that the shape of the human head was an indicator of the individual’s personality. Continued here S31 What Thailand's Push for Marriage Equality Means for One Family Gina Milintanapa and Lee Battia are proud parents. Their oldest boy, Chene, 8, is a budding actor who regularly appears in television commercials. His 6-year-old brother, Charlie, is ranked number two in swimming for his age cohort in Thailand and recently recorded a time of 21.3 seconds for 25 meters. (Most adults, for comparison, would be happy with anything less than 20). The two boys—adopted at birth in Thailand from separate biological mothers—are also learning piano and enjoy tearing up the soccer pitch. Little wonder the family home in Bangkok is festooned with many of the photographs of the boys that Milintanapa has amassed on her hard drives—three terabytes worth. “My mother says from now on she will only accept five-by-seven photos,” laughs Battia, 63, originally from Farmington Hills, Michigan. “There’s a lot of grandkids and great-grandkids and so she doesn’t have the wall space.” But this loving, tight-knit family is not a family at all in the eyes of the Thai government. Continued here S32 Why there's more to being smart than intelligence In the late 1920s, a young working-class boy nicknamed Ritty spent most of his time tinkering in his "laboratory" at his parents' home in Rockaway, New York. His lab was an old wooden packing box, equipped with shelves that contained a storage battery and an electric circuit of light bulbs, switches and resistors. One of his proudest inventions was a homemade burglar alarm that alerted him whenever his parents entered his room. He used a microscope to study the natural world and he would sometimes take his chemistry set into the street to perform tricks for other children. Ritty's early academic record was unremarkable. He struggled with literature and foreign languages, while, in an IQ test taken as a child, he reportedly scored around 125, which is above average but by no means genius territory. As an adolescent, however, he showed a flair for mathematics and started teaching himself from elementary textbooks. By the end of high school, Ritty reached the top place in a state-wide annual maths competition. Continued here S33 Forward Thinking on progress in science funding, immigration, and biosecurity with Alec Stapp In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, co-host Michael Chui talks with Alec Stapp, co-CEO of the Institute for Progress, a Washington, DC, think tank he co-founded in January 2022. Progress is a policy choice, its founders say, and they have chosen to focus initially on three topics—meta-science, high-skill immigration, and biosecurity. Why those three? Their view is that each one is important, neglected by other researchers, and potentially tractable politically. An edited transcript of this episode follows. Subscribe to the series on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Continued here S34 Overcoming the fear factor in hiring tech talent A hiring manager with a regional bank has been searching fruitlessly for a software developer to create a better digital customer experience. Yet no one among the hundreds of applicants checks off more than a few of the items on the long list of required technical skills, including knowledge of the obscure programming language the bank uses. A hospital system needs to build a network that will seamlessly link patient records across its locations. When its human resources department finally identifies a seasoned engineer who has done similar work, he turns the offer down and takes a more senior position with a cloud-services firm. With every company needing to harness the full power of technology to remain competitive, there is now a perpetual stampede to hire tech talent. Demand is growing exponentially for skills such as software engineering, data management, platform design, analytics-based automation, customer experience design, and cybersecurity. Eighty-seven percent of global senior executives surveyed by McKinsey said their companies were unprepared to address the gap in digital skills—and that was before the pandemic caused dramatic shifts toward remote work and e-commerce. The pressure is particularly acute for employers outside the tech sector. Continued here S35 Securing Europe's competitiveness: Addressing its technology gap This report builds on an MGI article from May 2022, “Securing Europe’s future beyond energy: Addressing its corporate and technology gap.” Europe as it is today has been forged in times of crisis. The European Union (EU) was created in response to the ravages of World War II. The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the start of a period of economic catching up by economies in Central and Eastern Europe. The 2008 financial crisis and the eurozone crisis that followed led to more financial cooperation among European countries. The COVID-19 pandemic then triggered a higher level of fiscal coordination through the NextGeneration EU fund. Continued here S36 Elon Musk Introduces Twitter Mayhem Mode The United States took to the polls this week to vote in a high-stakes midterm election. With public trust in election systems at an all-time low, the secret ballot is more important now than ever before. We also took a look at a flawed app built by prominent right-wing provocateurs that has been used to challenge hundreds of thousands of voter registrations. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice announced that a Georgia man has pleaded guilty to wire fraud nine years after stealing more than 50,000 bitcoins from the Silk Road, the legendary dark-web market. You may have heard that things are chaotic over at Twitter, with a wave of corporate impersonations plaguing the platform hours after the rollout of a service that allows anyone who pays $8 a month to get a blue check mark showing they are “verified.” It’s a gift for scammers and grifters of all shades. New analysis shows that two large ships, with their trackers off, were detected near the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the days before the gas leaks were detected. Officials suspect sabotage, and NATO is investigating. Plus, Russian military hackers are pivoting to a new strategy that favors faster attacks with more immediate results. Continued here S37 Red meat is not a health risk. New study slams years of shoddy research Studies have been linking red meat consumption to health problems like heart disease, stroke, and cancer for years. But nestled in the recesses of those published papers are notable limitations. Nearly all the research is observational, unable to tease out causation convincingly. Most are plagued by confounding variables. For example, perhaps meat eaters simply eat fewer vegetables, or tend to smoke more, or exercise less? Moreover, many are based on self-reported consumption. The simple fact is that people can’t remember what they eat with any accuracy. And lastly, the reported effect sizes in these scientific papers are often small. Is a supposed 15% greater risk of cancer really worth worrying about?  In a new, unprecedented effort, scientists at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) scrutinized decades of research on red meat consumption and its links to various health outcomes, formulating a new rating system to communicate health risks in the process. Their findings mostly dispel any concerns about eating red meat.  Continued here S38 What is brown noise? Can this latest TikTok trend really help you sleep? The latest TikTok trend has us listening to brown noise. According to TikTok, this has multiple benefits including helping you relax and quickly fall into a deep asleep. Getting insufficient sleep, and insomnia are common. So it’s no wonder many people are looking for ways to improve their sleep. Brown noise, the better-known white noise, and even pink noise are examples of sonic hues. These are “constant” noises with minimal sound variation – highs, lows and changing speeds – compared with sounds such as music or someone reading aloud. Continued here S39 NASA detects 50+ methane "super-emitters" from space A new instrument aboard the International Space Station (ISS) has been used to identify more than 50 “super-emitters” of methane — a major step toward slashing global warming. The challenge: To combat global warming, we need to cut our greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon dioxide accounts for the majority of those emissions, and transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy will significantly reduce those. Methane is a much less common greenhouse gas than CO2, but it’s far more potent, with each ton emitted causing 80 times as much warming in the 20 years after its release. Continued here S29 Wild chimpanzees and gorillas can form long friendly associations that last decades – new research Chris Young does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. To survive, animals compete for resources, be it food, mating partners or territory. But a ground breaking recent study shows chimpanzees and gorillas form friendships, some lasting at least 20 years. They play, eat and socialise together. It is the first study of its kind to see such long-term, peaceful associations between apes. A team of scientists led by Crickette Sanz from Washington University, US, made this discovery using over 20 years of data from the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo. Continued here S30 Why is Everyone Fighting Over the Skull of 'Brigand Villella'? “On a dark, cold morning of December 1870, while analyzing brigand Villella’s skull, I had a sudden realization … and solved the problem of the delinquency’s nature.” With these words, Cesare Lombroso, a prominent Italian scientist from the late 19th century, described the moment many consider the symbolic beginning of criminal anthropology: the discovery of a physical trait in the human skull which Lombroso held accountable for all deviant behavior. The scientist is now long dead and his theories have been discredited, but the skull of this mysterious, controversial brigand—or outlaw—survives and is currently at a center of a passionate dispute between those who want to give Giuseppe Villella a proper burial and those who believe that the importance of this remain transcends its biological dimension and want to continue to display it as a cultural asset. Born in 1835, Cesare Lombroso lived in an age in which established religious truths were being challenged and replaced. He believed that the scientific method would offer a solution to all human queries. The scientist was particularly concerned with the problem of criminality; crime was ravaging the recently formed Italian nation and threatening its stability. Inspired by the evolutioary theories of Darwin, Lombroso was convinced that there was a genetic predisposition to savagery and that he would be able to identify criminal individuals by using physiognomy—a pseudoscience that held that the shape of the human head was an indicator of the individual’s personality. Continued here S31 What Thailand's Push for Marriage Equality Means for One Family Gina Milintanapa and Lee Battia are proud parents. Their oldest boy, Chene, 8, is a budding actor who regularly appears in television commercials. His 6-year-old brother, Charlie, is ranked number two in swimming for his age cohort in Thailand and recently recorded a time of 21.3 seconds for 25 meters. (Most adults, for comparison, would be happy with anything less than 20). The two boys—adopted at birth in Thailand from separate biological mothers—are also learning piano and enjoy tearing up the soccer pitch. Little wonder the family home in Bangkok is festooned with many of the photographs of the boys that Milintanapa has amassed on her hard drives—three terabytes worth. “My mother says from now on she will only accept five-by-seven photos,” laughs Battia, 63, originally from Farmington Hills, Michigan. “There’s a lot of grandkids and great-grandkids and so she doesn’t have the wall space.” But this loving, tight-knit family is not a family at all in the eyes of the Thai government. Continued here S32 Why there's more to being smart than intelligence In the late 1920s, a young working-class boy nicknamed Ritty spent most of his time tinkering in his "laboratory" at his parents' home in Rockaway, New York. His lab was an old wooden packing box, equipped with shelves that contained a storage battery and an electric circuit of light bulbs, switches and resistors. One of his proudest inventions was a homemade burglar alarm that alerted him whenever his parents entered his room. He used a microscope to study the natural world and he would sometimes take his chemistry set into the street to perform tricks for other children. Ritty's early academic record was unremarkable. He struggled with literature and foreign languages, while, in an IQ test taken as a child, he reportedly scored around 125, which is above average but by no means genius territory. As an adolescent, however, he showed a flair for mathematics and started teaching himself from elementary textbooks. By the end of high school, Ritty reached the top place in a state-wide annual maths competition. Continued here S33 Forward Thinking on progress in science funding, immigration, and biosecurity with Alec Stapp In this episode of the McKinsey Global Institute’s Forward Thinking podcast, co-host Michael Chui talks with Alec Stapp, co-CEO of the Institute for Progress, a Washington, DC, think tank he co-founded in January 2022. Progress is a policy choice, its founders say, and they have chosen to focus initially on three topics—meta-science, high-skill immigration, and biosecurity. Why those three? Their view is that each one is important, neglected by other researchers, and potentially tractable politically. An edited transcript of this episode follows. Subscribe to the series on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Continued here S34 Overcoming the fear factor in hiring tech talent A hiring manager with a regional bank has been searching fruitlessly for a software developer to create a better digital customer experience. Yet no one among the hundreds of applicants checks off more than a few of the items on the long list of required technical skills, including knowledge of the obscure programming language the bank uses. A hospital system needs to build a network that will seamlessly link patient records across its locations. When its human resources department finally identifies a seasoned engineer who has done similar work, he turns the offer down and takes a more senior position with a cloud-services firm. With every company needing to harness the full power of technology to remain competitive, there is now a perpetual stampede to hire tech talent. Demand is growing exponentially for skills such as software engineering, data management, platform design, analytics-based automation, customer experience design, and cybersecurity. Eighty-seven percent of global senior executives surveyed by McKinsey said their companies were unprepared to address the gap in digital skills—and that was before the pandemic caused dramatic shifts toward remote work and e-commerce. The pressure is particularly acute for employers outside the tech sector. Continued here S35 Securing Europe's competitiveness: Addressing its technology gap This report builds on an MGI article from May 2022, “Securing Europe’s future beyond energy: Addressing its corporate and technology gap.” Europe as it is today has been forged in times of crisis. The European Union (EU) was created in response to the ravages of World War II. The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the start of a period of economic catching up by economies in Central and Eastern Europe. The 2008 financial crisis and the eurozone crisis that followed led to more financial cooperation among European countries. The COVID-19 pandemic then triggered a higher level of fiscal coordination through the NextGeneration EU fund. Continued here S36 Elon Musk Introduces Twitter Mayhem Mode The United States took to the polls this week to vote in a high-stakes midterm election. With public trust in election systems at an all-time low, the secret ballot is more important now than ever before. We also took a look at a flawed app built by prominent right-wing provocateurs that has been used to challenge hundreds of thousands of voter registrations. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice announced that a Georgia man has pleaded guilty to wire fraud nine years after stealing more than 50,000 bitcoins from the Silk Road, the legendary dark-web market. You may have heard that things are chaotic over at Twitter, with a wave of corporate impersonations plaguing the platform hours after the rollout of a service that allows anyone who pays $8 a month to get a blue check mark showing they are “verified.” It’s a gift for scammers and grifters of all shades. New analysis shows that two large ships, with their trackers off, were detected near the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the days before the gas leaks were detected. Officials suspect sabotage, and NATO is investigating. Plus, Russian military hackers are pivoting to a new strategy that favors faster attacks with more immediate results. Continued here S37 Red meat is not a health risk. New study slams years of shoddy research Studies have been linking red meat consumption to health problems like heart disease, stroke, and cancer for years. But nestled in the recesses of those published papers are notable limitations. Nearly all the research is observational, unable to tease out causation convincingly. Most are plagued by confounding variables. For example, perhaps meat eaters simply eat fewer vegetables, or tend to smoke more, or exercise less? Moreover, many are based on self-reported consumption. The simple fact is that people can’t remember what they eat with any accuracy. And lastly, the reported effect sizes in these scientific papers are often small. Is a supposed 15% greater risk of cancer really worth worrying about?  In a new, unprecedented effort, scientists at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) scrutinized decades of research on red meat consumption and its links to various health outcomes, formulating a new rating system to communicate health risks in the process. Their findings mostly dispel any concerns about eating red meat.  Continued here S38 What is brown noise? Can this latest TikTok trend really help you sleep? The latest TikTok trend has us listening to brown noise. According to TikTok, this has multiple benefits including helping you relax and quickly fall into a deep asleep. Getting insufficient sleep, and insomnia are common. So it’s no wonder many people are looking for ways to improve their sleep. Brown noise, the better-known white noise, and even pink noise are examples of sonic hues. These are “constant” noises with minimal sound variation – highs, lows and changing speeds – compared with sounds such as music or someone reading aloud. Continued here Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Followers Blog Archive ►  2025 (1) ►  January (1) ►  2024 (4) ►  December (4) ►  2023 (542) ►  December (2) ►  November (33) ►  October (27) ►  September (37) ►  August (45) ►  July (30) ►  June (73) ►  May (3) ►  April (33) ►  March (17) ►  February (84) ►  January (158) ▼  2022 (387) ►  December (84) ▼  November (41) Gain hands-on coding experience in NUS Business Sc... 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