9 Strategies to Improve Business Team Collaboration and Relationships

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9 Strategies to Improve Business Team Collaboration and Relationships There are many ways that workplace collaboration can go sideways, and only a few keys to making it work. Continued here

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Five Ways to Make Your One-On-One Meetings More Effective In the rush of day-to-day responsibilities and deadlines, pausing for a regular one-on-one meeting can feel like a waste of time. And for many, it not only feels unnecessary but also painful and stilted. According to research conducted at Humu, these feelings are so common that 1 in 4 people don’t have regular one-on-one meetings with their managers or direct reports at all. Unfortunately, things can go wrong without these regular touch points. People who don’t have one-on-ones with their managers are more likely to leave their organizations. And although skipping these meetings might give some time back to managers, they are more likely to miss out on opportunities to build trust and alignment within their teams. So, what can managers do to make regular check-ins more effective? In this article, I’ll share five science-backed steps that can help managers structure their one-on-ones with reports and team members so that people will feel energized rather than drained by these meetings in the year ahead. Continued here

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How SECURE 2.0 Helps Small Businesses Boost Retirement Benefits Nearly 75 percent small businesses don't offer retirement plans to their workforce. The SECURE 2.0 Act could change that. Continued here

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Astronomers Say They Have Spotted the Universe's First Stars | Quanta Magazine The largest stars in the present-day universe are a couple hundred times more massive than our sun. The first stars could have had as much as 100,000 times the sun’s mass. A group of astronomers poring over data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has glimpsed light from ionized helium in a distant galaxy, which could indicate the presence of the universe's very first generation of stars. Continued here

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This is what the fourth dimension looks like Left-right, up-down, back-forth: These are the three geometric dimensions that we’re able to perceive. But some theoretical physicists posit that additional spatial dimensions could exist beyond these. If it does indeed exist, what might a fourth dimension look like? Continued here

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6 Planning Steps for Virtual Meetings Follow these pointers to createproductive virtual meetings. Continued here

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ChatGPT Is Making Universities Rethink Plagiarism In late December of his sophomore year, Rutgers University student Kai Cobbs came to a conclusion he never thought possible: Artificial intelligence might just be dumber than humans.  After listening to his peers rave about the generative AI tool ChatGPT, Cobbs decided to toy around with the chatbot while writing an essay on the history of capitalism. Best known for its ability to generate long-form written content in response to user input prompts, Cobbs expected the tool to produce a nuanced and thoughtful response to his specific research directions. Instead, his screen produced a generic, poorly written paper he’d never dare to claim as his own.  Continued here

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The bosses who silently nudge out workers When marketing manager Eliza returned from holiday, she received an email from her boss asking her to arrive at work early the next day. “I instantly feared the worst,” she explains. “I knew the job wasn’t the best fit. I’d had my probation previously extended; there was an expectation of weekend working and post-work drinking that didn’t suit me. I thought he’d used my time off as an opportunity to fire me.” However, when Eliza arrived at her boss’s office, she wasn’t immediately let go. Instead, she was informed of a company restructure – her job description was being completely rewritten. Someone else would take over her tasks, and she would be expected to work remotely in a new admin role.  Continued here

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Count on old-school fun with these new calculator emulations Due to its price, size, and capabilities, I can still remember the graphing calculator I used in high school, even though I haven't needed to graph a parabola in ages. The Internet Archive just made it easier to relive those days by launching a series of online calculator emulations that you can click. Continued here

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How Luxury Brands Are Manufacturing Scarcity in the Digital Economy Traditional luxury goods companies have treated digital as a channel. But they’re now starting to treat it as a marketplace in its own right, thanks largely to Blockchain technology, which has delivered the Non-Fungible Token. Today, the key ingredients of luxury – rarity, exclusivity, and cost — can also apply to virtual products, as companies like Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci have realized. Continued here

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How heat pumps of the 1800s are becoming the technology of the future It was an engineering problem that had bugged Zhibin Yu for years — but now he had the perfect chance to fix it. Stuck at home during the first UK lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic, the thermal engineer suddenly had all the time he needed to refine the efficiency of heat pumps: electrical devices that, as their name implies, move heat from the outdoors into people’s homes. The pumps are much more efficient than gas heaters, but standard models that absorb heat from the air are prone to icing up, which greatly reduces their effectiveness. Continued here

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Why aren't there better treatments for cystitis? For Melissa Wairimu, a video editor in Nairobi, the symptoms started at the age of 21. She was having to urinate constantly, and it burned when she did. Her back hurt as well. A urine culture test diagnosed her with a urinary tract infection (UTI). "I didn't even know there was something called a UTI at that point," Wairimu says. She was prescribed a broad-spectrum antibiotic for seven days, and told to drink plenty of water to flush things out. Continued here

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Help Your Employees Make Strong Passwords a Habit Password security is a major concern for companies, and one of the biggest challenges is getting employees to use better password hygiene. To shore up security, you need to find practices that your employees will actually use. To make it easier, consider sharing these five recommendations to help them find the right security practices for any given situation: 1) use a throwaway password, 2) use a password phrase, 3) use a password phrase that utilizes a pattern, 4) use a password phrase with two-factor authentication, 5) use password manager software with two-factor authentication. Continued here

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Has Progress on Data, Analytics, and AI Stalled at Your Company? Companies need to rethink how they’re investing in data, analytics, and AI — and whether these investments are creating real business value. Based on a recent survey of senior data and analytics leaders of Fortune 1000 companies, the author offers four recommendations: 1) focus on culture change and its business impact, 2) start small, 3) build strong business partners and sponsors at every stage, and 4) pay attention to data ethics. Continued here

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Massive Yandex code leak reveals Russian search engine's ranking factors Nearly 45GB of source code files, allegedly stolen by a former employee, have revealed the underpinnings of Russian tech giant Yandex's many apps and services. It also revealed key ranking factors for Yandex's search engine, the kind almost never revealed in public. Continued here

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How Thrive Market Reached $400 Million in Sales While Making Online Grocery More Sustainable Thrive co-founder Nick Green shares his approach to offering healthy food for cheap, in a way that helps the planet. Continued here

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The Essentials: Making Sound Decisions How to be thoughtful without overthinking. Continued here

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Charter settles with family of murder victim, says insurance will cover it Charter Communications was once on the hook for over $7 billion in a case involving a former cable technician who murdered an elderly customer in her home. But Charter is now on the verge of settling the lawsuit for less than $262 million, an amount that will apparently be fully covered by the company's insurers. Continued here

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Can a Successful Business Have Two Cultures? According to 23XI Racing Co-Owner (with Michael Jordan) Denny Hamlin, the Answer Is Yes 23XI co-owner Denny Hamlin and president Steve Lauletta on launching a new race team, balancing short- and long-term goals, and building a fairly unique culture. Continued here

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JWST's hunt for most distant galaxies gets double boost The expanding Universe dramatically shifts the emitted galactic light toward redder wavelengths. JWST, even with its incredible NIRCam instrument, only identifies ultra-distant galaxy candidates. Continued here

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How to Discover Your Strengths to Perform at Your Highest Potential When entrepreneurs seek self-knowledge, they get to redefine how high they can soar. Continued here

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Never-Before-Seen Photos by Paul McCartney Take You Inside Beatlemania Hundreds of images from 1963 and 1964 are going on display at London’s National Portrait Gallery In 1963, the Beatles were a musical sensation touring across the United Kingdom and Europe. By the time their plane landed in New York City in February 1964, kicking off their first visit as a group to the United States, the Fab Four were an international phenomenon. Continued here

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India's tech unions see an opening amid a layoff tsunami In October 2022, Rahul, an employee at an Indian edtech firm, received an unexpected email from his employer: He was being asked to resign, and the following week would be his last. He would not be receiving severance. It was a “complete surprise,” the 38-year-old, who had been working with this company for five years told Rest of World. Rahul asked to be identified using a pseudonym and requested not to name his former employer, as he still hopes to get a severance package from the company. In the termination letter, the company’s HR department asked Rahul to submit a resignation on an internal portal. While forcing someone to resign is illegal in India, the HR department threatened that it would withhold his experience letter, an important document for applying to new jobs, if he did not submit his resignation. “I was even told that the company will make negative remarks to my next employer if I don’t comply,” he said. Continued here

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How to Keep Working When You're Just Not Feeling It Motivating yourself is one of the main things that sets high achievers apart, and it’s hard. How do you keep pushing onward when your heart isn’t in it? In her research, Fishbach has identified some simple tactics: Set goals that are intrinsically rewarding, and make them very specific. If a task isn’t satisfying, focus on aspects of it that are or combine it with pleasant activities. Reward yourself in the right way for getting things done. To avoid slumps, break objectives into subgoals; look at how much you’ve accomplished until you’re halfway there; and then count down what you have left to do. And use social influence: Let high performers inspire you, boost your get-up-and-go by giving advice, and keep the people you want to succeed for front of mind. Continued here

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10 Websites That Will Give You Superpowers A fabulous Twitter thread highlights the best, most useful websites you've never heard of. Continued here

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Report: Apple is planning both a foldable screen and a kickstand for the iPad Normally reliable sources are predicting a quiet 2023 for the iPad, with few if any major upgrades. But that may just be setting the tablet up for a big update in 2024—supply-chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Apple is working on a foldable iPad with a built-in kickstand for release at some point next year, along with a new version of the iPad mini in early 2024. Continued here

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Rising Physical Pain Is Linked to More 'Deaths of Despair' What’s happening in the body, as well as the mind, can be tied to increases in drug overdoses, suicides, and more Roughly 110,000 Americans died from a drug overdose between February 2021 and February 2022. That figure is part of a larger troubling trend. Overall life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2020 and again in 2021, after decades of progress—and deaths linked to alcohol, drugs, and suicide are a major part of that change. (So are deaths from COVID, of course.) Overdoses, suicides and other “deaths of despair”—a label proposed by economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton—have been climbing since the 1990s and may have accelerated in recent years. Continued here

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How Business Owners Can Overcome These 3 Challenges in 2023 With every new year comes new problems. Here is a strategy for each one. Continued here

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Decades-old law forms biggest obstacle to nationwide TikTok ban, lawmaker says As Congress prepares to vote on a nationwide TikTok ban next month, it looks like that ban may already be doomed to fail. The biggest hurdle likely won’t be mustering enough votes, but drafting a ban that doesn’t conflict with measures passed in the 1980s to protect the flow of ideas from hostile foreign nations during the Cold War. Continued here

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China Invests $546 Billion in Clean Energy, Far Surpassing the U.S. China accounted for nearly half of the world's low-carbon spending in 2022, which could challenge U.S. efforts to bolster domestic clean energy manufacturing China once again topped the world in clean energy investments last year, a trend that could challenge U.S. efforts to develop more homegrown manufacturing. Continued here

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"Give a f***, actually": The surprising benefits of being grateful for things you dislike This article has been excerpted from Give a F*ck, Actually: Reclaim Yourself with the 5 Steps of Radical Emotional Acceptance by Alex Wills. Copyright © 2023. Available from Skyhorse Publishing. As a young boy in the West, I sometimes felt like a “show child”—a high-achieving, but docile credit to my family name. There is a seed of truth in the American myth of the taciturn, emotionally uncommunicative cowboy. Throughout my childhood, I received the subtle and sometimes unsubtle message that certain emotions—sadness and anger in particular—were off limits. I used to think it was bad to raise my voice or to bite back like a German Shepard when its tail is yanked. I remember being scolded for looking like I was feeling sad—“buck up” and “stop moping around!” Continued here

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How to Improve Your Memory, Problem-Solving, and Mental Processing Speeds in Just 6 Minutes, Backed by New Research If you spend those six minutes the right way, of course. Continued here

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Gen Z and millennials are leading 'the big quit' in 2023—why nearly 70% plan to leave their jobs Almost 4.2 million people voluntarily left their jobs in November, marking the 18th straight month of record-breaking quits in the U.S. — and according to new research, even more Americans are planning to switch jobs soon, with younger employees leading the wave.  More than half of U.S. workers — 61% — are considering leaving their jobs in 2023, a new report from LinkedIn has found, noting that a higher percentage of Gen Z (defined by LinkedIn as ages 18-25) and millennial (ages 26-41) workers are planning to call it quits than any other generation. Continued here

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New York Public Library Acquires Joan Didion's Letters, Drafts and Notes The archive includes 240 linear feet of papers from Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne The New York Public Library has acquired the literary archive of Joan Didion, who died in late 2021, and her husband John Gregory Dunne, who died in 2003.  Continued here

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This Black Bear Took Hundreds of ‘Selfies’ on a Wildlife Camera A black bear in Boulder, Colorado, decided to "say cheese" for a motion-activated wildlife camera—400 times. The curious animal took a liking to the device, which had been set up by the City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks department (OSMP) to learn more about the local fauna. Among 580 images captured by the camera in mid-November, about 400 were of the black bear, according to a recent tweet from the department. Continued here

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The world’s longest straight line connects Portugal to China This article was first published on Big Think in January 2019. It was updated in January 2023. What connects the Chinese port of Quanzhou with Sagres, a tiny parish in southern Portugal? No, it’s not the New Silk Route, the Sino-European rail link inaugurated in 2017 (1). The answer is so arcane that it will surprise most inhabitants of either place: they are the extreme points of the world’s longest straight line over land (2). Continued here

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A Famed Dolphin-Human Fishing Team Up Is in Danger of Disappearing A call for help sounds to ensure survival of a 140-year-old fishing partnership pairing cetaceans and humans People in Laguna proudly refer to their southern Brazilian city as the “national capital of fish-herding dolphins.” For at least 140 years, artisanal fishers and bottlenose dolphins have worked together in careful synchrony to catch mullet in a lagoon there. The spectacle of nets flying through the air while dolphins dive into the murky water has become a popular attraction for tourists and is recognized by local authorities as an intangible cultural heritage. Continued here

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Sony: Would-be PlayStation 5 buyers "should have a much easier time" now In a blog post published on Monday, Sony hardware VP Isabelle Tomatis announced that there is now an "increased supply" of PlayStation 5 game consoles after more than two years of shortages. "If you’re looking to purchase a PS5 console, you should now have a much easier time finding one at retailers globally," she wrote. Continued here

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Neural Imaging Reveals Secret Conversational Cues Studying human conversations isn’t a simple challenge. For instance, when humans start to talk to one another in a conversation, they coordinate their speech very tightly—people very rarely talk over one another, and they rarely leave long, unspoken, silent gaps. A conversation is like a dance with no choreography and no music—spontaneous but structured. To support this coordination, the people having the conversation begin to align their breath, their eye gaze, their speech melody and their gestures.  This story is from the WIRED World in 2023, our annual trends briefing. Read more stories from the series here—or download or order a copy of the magazine. Continued here

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MusicLM: Google AI generates music in various genres at 24 kHz On Thursday, researchers from Google announced a new generative AI model called MusicLM that can create 24 KHz musical audio from text descriptions, such as "a calming violin melody backed by a distorted guitar riff." It can also transform a hummed melody into a different musical style and output music for several minutes. Continued here

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ChatGPT just passed an MBA final exam at a top business school. Next, it's changing the business world. ChatGPT vs. Wharton MBA Exam: What Generative A.I. Means for Business Continued here

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GitHub says hackers cloned code-signing certificates in breached repository GitHub said unknown intruders gained unauthorized access to some of its code repositories and stole code-signing certificates for two of its desktop applications: Desktop and Atom. Continued here

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How to Extend Your Eero Mesh With Amazon Echo Speakers If you have an Eero mesh system, you can extend your Wi-Fi network with select Echo devices. Amazon acquired Eero in 2019, and the company has continued to turn out some of the best mesh Wi-Fi routers around. The Eero range is especially good for Alexa-based smart homes, offering tight integration if you link your Amazon and Eero accounts. Read on to find out which Echo devices can act as Eero Wi-Fi extenders and how to set them up, but note that Eero Built-in is only available in the US and Canada for now. If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Continued here

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Visual thinking: How to understand the inner lives of animals Excerpted from VISUAL THINKING: THE HIDDEN GIFTS OF PEOPLE WHO THINK IN PICTURES, PATTERNS, AND ABSTRACTIONS by Temple Grandin published on October 11, 2022 by Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2022 Temple Grandin. It always struck me as ridiculous to think that a dog or a cow does not have consciousness, yet people continue to debate the subject. Aristotle believed that what set men above animals was the ability to reason. Where humans were capable of perception and rational thinking and communicated through language, animals were driven by sensation and impulse. Continued here

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Man wanted for attempted murder is using dating apps while on the run, cops say Dating apps are helping an attempted murderer evade capture in Oregon, the Grants Pass Police Department warned last week after the suspect escaped arrest. Continued here

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COVID is still a global health emergency, but end may be near, WHO says The World Health Organization on Monday renewed its declaration that the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC)—the agency's highest level of alert—but acknowledged that the 3-year-old crisis may be nearing an "inflection point," after which the virus could be downgraded to a less dire but permanent fixture in the gamut of human pathogens. Continued here

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Lam Ho: How to participate in your own legal defense Lawyers are advocates for their clients -- and, in court, they're usually the ones who do the talking. Should that always be the case? In an effort to shift this power dynamic, TED Fellow and legal aid activist Lam Ho shares how lawyers can create space for people to tell their own stories in the courtroom, making them active participants in the legal process and producing surprisingly positive results. Continued here

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Despite Layoffs, It's Still a Workers' Labor Market Despite a wave of headlines covering layoffs, primarily at tech companies, the U.S. labor market remains tight and hiring remains difficult. Layoffs are actually at a relatively low rate by historical standards, largely because of Covid deaths and the effects of long Covid. As long as workers remain scarce, it will remain a workers’ market and recruitment will be a challenge. Continued here

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New Apps Aim to Douse the Social Media Dumpster Fire Social media makes us miserable, but can “positive apps,” such as Gas and BeReal, make a difference? After Elon Musk’s recent acquisition of Twitter, many habitual tweeters announced their intentions of switching to other social platforms. Some blamed their defection on fears of an increase in hate speech and misinformation on the site. But even before the takeover, social media platforms such as Twitter already had a major problem that was driving users away: they make people miserable. Continued here

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Airplane Toilets Could Catch the Next COVID Variant Airplane bathrooms are not most people’s idea of a good time. They’re barely big enough to turn around in. Their doors stick, like they’re trying to trap you in place. That’s to say nothing of the smell. But to the CDC, those same bathrooms might be a data gold mine. This month, the agency has been speaking with Concentric, the public-health and biosecurity arm of the biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks, about screening airplane wastewater for COVID-19 at airports around the country. Although plane-wastewater testing had been in the works already (a pilot program at John F. Kennedy International Airport, in New York City, concluded last summer), concerns about a new variant arising in China after the end of its “zero COVID” policies acted as a “catalyst” for the project, Matt McKnight, Ginkgo’s general manager for biosecurity, told me. According to Ginkgo, even airport administrators are getting excited. “There have been a couple of airports who have actually reached out to the CDC to ask to be part of the program,” Laura Bronner, Ginkgo’s vice president of commercial strategies, told me. Continued here

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5 Major Things Employees Need The Most From Their Managers Right Now   These core needs haven't changed and will continue to matter, even as we pass through pandemics and recessions. Continued here

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Iceberg Twice the Size of New York City Breaks off From Antarctica A massive 600-square-mile iceberg separated from Antarctica last week in the second major break-away—or calving—from the area in the past two years. Scientists say the event was expected and not related to climate change, per a statement from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). “Large ice sheets around Antarctica do occasionally calve large icebergs, just as part of the natural process of the ice moving towards the sea,” Grant R. Bigg, an Earth systems scientist at the University of Sheffield in England, tells Newsweek’s Jess Thomson. “It has been known for some years a rupture would occur, and there have been significant size icebergs from this area before.” Continued here

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We’ve Lost the Plot Our constant need for entertainment has blurred the line between fiction and reality—on television, in American politics, and in our everyday lives. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.       Continued here

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7 Pieces of Bad Career Advice Women Should Ignore Young women entering the workforce are typically inundated by a wide range of career tips to help them succeed. Although most of this advice is probably well intended, that doesn’t necessarily make all of it helpful. In fact, many suggestions are more likely to perpetuate than reduce gender bias, by legitimizing the status quo, focusing on fixing women rather than the system, and blaming women for not behaving like incompetent men. Continued here S63 How Purpose Can Energize a High-Growth Venture My lessons from a conversation with Mona Ataya, CEO of Mumzworld Continued here S49 The Snow Monkeys of Nagano Approximately 150 Japanese macaques live in the mountain valleys of the Jigokudani Yaen-koen monkey park in Yamanouchi, Nagano prefecture, Japan. Also called snow monkeys, the wild macaques are well known for spending their winter months keeping warm and relaxing in the waters of a natural hot spring. For years, the park has been a top destination for tourists, and its popularity is now rebounding as Japan has relaxed some of its COVID-19 restrictions. Japanese macaques huddle together at the Jigokudani Yaen-koen monkey park in Yamanouchi, Nagano, Japan, on January 28, 2023. # Continued here S52 Florida Has a Right to Destroy its Universities This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Elections have consequences. Florida’s governor has decided to root out wrong-think at one of Florida’s public colleges, and his harebrained meddling will likely harm the school, but he has every right to do it. Continued here S48 Angry Football Fans Keep Punching Their TVs Last week, the Dallas Cowboys’ playoff run ended the same way their last 11 have—without a trip to the conference championship. For one fan, squatting maybe four feet from the TV, this was apparently more than he could take. He leapt to his feet and—in front of a room full of people—punched a massive crater in the screen. The impact sounded like the popping of a very large balloon. The screen instantly went dark. He then lifted the TV off the console table, smashed it over his knee WWE-style, and unleashed a primal scream. This display, captured on video and turned into a pair of viral TikToks last week, might seem completely psychotic. And make no mistake—it is! But it’s also fully in keeping with a great sporting tradition. When things don’t go their way, most fans are content to sulk. Some might curse and shout a little. But for certain fans—more, perhaps, than you would think—that is not enough. For them, the thing to do is to destroy their TV. And then post about it online. Obviously. Continued here S41 Republicans’ 2024 Magical Thinking Lots of Republicans want Donald Trump to disappear from politics. Their main strategy is hope. Press them hard enough, and most Republican officials—even the ones with MAGA hats in their closets and Mar-a-Lago selfies in their Twitter avatar—will privately admit that Donald Trump has become a problem. He’s presided over three abysmal election cycles since he took office, he is more unstable than ever, and yet he returned to the campaign trail this past weekend, declaring that he is “angry” and determined to win the  GOP presidential nomination again in 2024. Aside from his most blinkered loyalists, virtually everyone in the party agrees: It’s time to move on from Trump. Continued here S42 “We’re Already Living in the Metaverse”: For March cover story, Megan Garber shows how reality is blurred, boredom is intolerable, and everything is entertainment The metaverse started as science fiction. In his 1992 novel, Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson imagined a world of visual entertainment so immersive that people could essentially live within it. In her cover story for The Atlantic, Megan Garber argues that this new era of entertainment has already arrived—we just haven’t realized it yet. Instead of something we choose, channel by channel, or stream by stream, today’s entertainment encompasses us: Reality is blurred, boredom has become intolerable, and Americans risk becoming so distracted and dazed by our fictions that we lose our sense of what is real. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. “This could be how we lose the plot,” Garber writes. “This could be the somber finale of America: The Limited Series.” “We’re Already Living in the Metaverse” is The Atlantic’s March-issue cover story, and is online today. The rest of the issue will be released in the coming two weeks. Continued here S43 Dear Therapist: Can I Cut My Mom Off From My Children If She Won’t Seek Therapy? She hasn’t been a great parent to me, and I don’t want her repeating those patterns with my future kids. My husband and I are planning to have children in the very near future, and I have concerns about my mother’s ability to be a positive influence in their lives. Is it inappropriate to ask her to see a therapist as a condition for being present in the lives of my children? Continued here S50 Elaine Hsieh Chou on the Ethics of ‘Trauma Porn’ “If you are retraumatizing the very audience a piece of media is supposedly for, can it really be for them?” “Background” is a new story by Elaine Hsieh Chou. To mark the story’s publication in The Atlantic, Chou and Katherine Hu, an assistant editor for the magazine, discussed the story over email. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity. Continued here S40 ‘Ordinary People Had Their Money Stolen’: Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alleged Crimes Have Real Victims Greg Sanders is doing fine. He’s not a guy who needs sympathy, he told me. He’s in his 30s and college-educated, with a secure corporate job. He has enough money to pay his bills. His wife is not mad at him. His friends are still his friends. He knew that investing was risky and investing in crypto especially so. But Sam Bankman-Fried stole just shy of $10,000 from him, he told me. And he wants his money back. Sanders was one of an estimated 9 million customers who kept some or all of their crypto holdings with Bankman-Fried’s Bahamas-based exchange group, FTX. Last fall, rumors that the firm had become insolvent spread on social media, spurring customers to pull their funds and leading to the company’s collapse. Since then, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York have charged Bankman-Fried with a long list of crimes, arguing that FTX was an uncomplicated, Ponzi-like fraud: Its executives were misappropriating customer funds and using the money to finance trades at a failing hedge fund as well as their luxurious lifestyle, Bankman-Fried’s penchant for sleeping on a bean bag in the office notwithstanding. Continued here S44 ‘Breakup Chili’ Season in Brooklyn Kaitlyn: What is life but a series of meals, some of which are given dramatic titles to imbue them with random significance? I once received an email from the comms team at Reddit promoting the company’s end-of-year data that made the claim that the top post of the preceding 12 months had been a recipe for something called “Divorce Carrot Cake.” Of course you’ve heard of Engagement Chicken, the roast chicken that reportedly brought about the betrothal of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, as well as that of Howard Stern and his second wife, Beth. Continued here S54 Genetics Society Issues Apology for Ties to Eugenics and Racism In a new report, the American Society of Human Genetics details its failures to address false and unjust uses of the field The American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) apologized last week for the participation of several of its former leaders in the American eugenics movement. As an organization, it said, it failed to consistently acknowledge and oppose the unjust ways human genetics has been used to feed racism and systemic discrimination. Continued here S51 What Makes a Good Cop This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here. Last week I asked, “​​What is the best way forward for Americans who want to improve policing and the criminal-justice system?” Continued here S45 Never Underestimate Jennifer Coolidge Even before her comeback, the actor excelled at humanizing characters who were written as mere laughingstocks. Jennifer Coolidge’s comeback has been one of the best feel-good Hollywood narratives in recent years. Since starring in The White Lotus as the lovably loony Tanya, she’s enjoyed the kind of critical acclaim and career resurgence that few actresses in their 60s—let alone those who work mostly in comedies and broke out decades ago—ever do. In the past few months, she’s won her first Golden Globe and her first Emmy. She nabbed nominations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards two years in a row. Entertainment Weekly named her Entertainer of the Year. Continued here S53 Worried you’re not normal? Don’t be – there’s no such thing | Psyche Ideas is a research fellow at Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions in London. She is the author of Psyche on the Skin: A History of Self-Harm (2017) and Am I Normal? (2022). Have you ever wondered whether or not you are normal? Think about the last time you asked yourself that question. What did you mean? Maybe you were considering if an attribute was healthy or not. Perhaps you were concerned that the way you look or behave didn’t quite meet a perceived ideal. Or maybe you simply wondered whether you fitted in: do you think and act and live ‘like everyone else’? Continued here S46 Montana’s Black Mayor Wilmot Collins fled a civil war in Liberia with big ideas about what America can be. But can it ever live up to what he imagined? In his office overlooking Sixth Avenue in Helena, Montana, Wilmot Collins leans back in a chair at his conference table and recounts all of the ways his being here, as a Liberian refugee who in 2018 became the first Black mayor of any city in Montana since the state joined the union, was unlikely to happen. Continued here Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Followers Blog Archive ►  2025 (7) ►  March (5) ►  January (2) ►  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) A Physical Theory For When the Brain Performs Best... January 31, 2023 - Strike action over Macron’s p... 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