Machon: The French breakfast you don't know
Among the high-rise apartment blocks of Vaise, one of Lyon's newer quartiers (districts), I stepped into a little restaurant where time seemed to have stood still for 100 years. From the outside, Les 4G, a Lyonnais bouchon (traditional restaurant), looked much like the nondescript cafe-cum-tobacco shops that can be found in most small French towns, but inside the decor was as warm and inviting as a country pub. The red gingham tablecloths matched the chequered napkins, which were neatly stored in shelving units along the wall with brass plaques indicating each owner's name – regular clientele who had their own napkin stored for them. As I sat down, sandwiched between jolly retirees Pierre-Loïc Delfante and Jean Paul Pillon, I realised that I was the youngest in the group by more than 30 years. The cheese delivery had just arrived, and the chef was unpacking brown paper bags containing soft balls of cervelle de canut, an unappetising name that translates as "silk workers' brain" but looks like cottage cheese. Delfante filled my glass with a crisp white wine from Beaujolais. It was 9:00 in the morning. Continued here |
Why Family and Domestic Violence Is a Workplace Issue
While there isn’t a single internationally agreed-upon definition of FDV, the term refers to a range of violent and non-violent abusive behaviors or threats committed in the context of intimate relationships. It’s not just about physical and sexual violence or abuse, it can also include emotional and psychological abuse, verbal abuse and intimidation, economic abuse, controlling behaviors that restrict one’s social movement and isolate them, damage to personal property, and the abuse of power. Continued here |
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The Best Travel Bags for Wherever You're Headed
If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED These days, traveling is a bonkers circus of marathon flight delays, rental-car price gouging, and wildly shifting weather patterns that make the stock market look like a model of stability. Make one thing easy on yourself and bring good luggage that's lightweight, rolls easily or fits comfortably on your back, and won't split open en route to your destination. Continued here |
Where Companies Go Wrong with Learning and Development
Not only is the majority of training in today’s companies ineffective, but the purpose, timing, and content of training is flawed. Want to see eyes glaze over quicker than you can finish this sentence? Mandate that busy employees attend a training session on “business writing skills”, or “conflict resolution”, or some other such course with little alignment to their needs. Like lean manufacturing and the lean startup before it, lean learning supports the adaptability that gives organizations a competitive advantage in today’s market. It’s about learning the core of what you need to learn, applying it to real-world situations immediately, receiving immediate feedback and refining your understanding, and then repeating the cycle. In order to begin practicing lean learning, organizations need to move from measuring credits earned to measuring business outcomes created. Lean learning ensures that employees not only learn the right thing, at the right time, and for the right reasons, but also that they retain what they learn. Continued here |
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How Einstein challenged quantum mechanics and lost
Quantum mechanics is notoriously weird. Even though it ranks as the most accurate and powerful scientific theory ever developed, it is a platform that has launched a thousand puzzles, paradoxes, and conundrums. Quantum physics seems to tell us that events can occur without a cause, that objects can be in two places at the same time, that observing the Universe may irrevocably disturb it, and that systems with elements located across the galaxy can act as an instantaneous whole. Given all these affronts to both common sense and classical physics, you would be forgiven if you figured there must be something wrong with quantum physics. Albert Einstein certainly did. The story of his intuition about the deficits of quantum theory is worth recounting if we want to understand where that theory stands now. Continued here |
How to Overcome Your Fear of Failure
People are quick to blame themselves for failure. But not doing something because you’re afraid to get started isn’t going to help you grow. Here are four strategies to help you get over the hump. Start by redefining what failure means to you. If you define failure as the discrepancy between what you hope to achieve (such as getting a job offer) and what you might achieve (learning from the experience), you can focus on what you learned, which helps you recalibrate for future challenges. It’s also important to set approach goals instead of avoidance goals: focus on what you want to achieve rather than what you want to avoid. Creating a “fear list” can also help. This is a list of what may not happen as a result of your fear — the cost of inaction. And finally, focus on learning. The chips aren’t always going to fall where you want them to — but if you expect that reality going into an event, you can be prepared to wring the most value out of whatever outcome. Continued here |
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What Great Sponsors Do Differently
Sponsorship initiatives are increasingly popular today, but few sponsors are given any guidance about how best to work with the people they’ve been asked to work with, and as a result the relationships often don’t develop as productively as they should. Aspiring sponsors need more practical guidance. In this article, drawing on their long experience with sponsorship, the authors describe six important steps all sponsors should take. Continued here |
The Core Consumers Of Tomorrow: 3 Tips For Connecting With Gen Z Why you should be focused on Gen Z--even if they aren't your target market. Continued here |
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China's Declining Population Can Still Prosper
Earlier this week, the National Bureau of Statistics in China announced that the Chinese population has decreased for the first time in 60 years. The population decrease does not come as a complete surprise. Curbing population growth was the entire point of the one-child policy in effect between 1980 and 2015, and women in China have been having fewer babies than needed to sustain the population since the early 1990s. But even before the one-child policy, fertility in China had been on a downward trend. Fertility dropped from over six to just three children per woman in just the 11 years between 1967 and 1978. And aside from a slight uptick in the years immediately after the end of the one-child policy, fertility has continued to decrease since 2017. According to various estimates, the total fertility rate in China now stands at just over one child per woman. Many people see China's low fertility and declining population as a threat to its economic prosperity, assuming the labor force will shrink at the same time that social security costs and the number of older dependents will explode as the population gets older. Such alarmist reactions are typical in the discourse about low fertility and population aging. But while low fertility and population aging certainly pose a number of challenges, they need not spell demise. Continued here |
Research: The Unintended Consequences of Right-to-Repair Laws
Right-to-repair legislation is designed to break manufacturers’ monopoly on the repair market, thereby allowing consumers to hold on to their old products longer, so they do not throw away used products and buy new ones as quickly. This would reduce the environmental impact by reducing e-waste and new production. New research, forthcoming in the journal Management Science, challenges this conventional wisdom and finds that the right-to-repair legislation may in some instances lead manufacturers to flood the market with cheap goods, thereby damaging the environment, and in other instances lead manufacturers to dramatically raise the price of goods, thereby hurting consumers. Lawmakers should examine specific product categories, including their production cost and environmental impact, and guard against sweeping, one-size-fits-all legislation. Continued here |
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Mathematicians Roll Dice and Get Rock-Paper-Scissors | Quanta Magazine
As Bill Gates tells the story, Warren Buffett once challenged him to a game of dice. Each would select one of four dice belonging to Buffett, and then they'd roll, with the higher number winning. These weren't standard dice — they had a different assortment of numbers than the usual 1 through 6. Buffett offered to let Gates choose first, so he could pick the strongest die. But after Gates examined the dice, he returned a counterproposal: Buffett should pick first. Gates had recognized that Buffett's dice exhibited a curious property: No one of them was the strongest. If Gates had chosen first, then whichever die he chose, Buffett would have been able to find another die that could beat it (that is, one with more than a 50% chance of winning). Continued here |
Twitter's 'Vox Populi' Is a Lie
In the year 798, the noted scholar Alcuin of York penned a letter to Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Lombards, to (as was his wont) advise the mighty king on affairs of state. Writing in Latin, he said to his king and patron: Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit—"And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness." I do wonder whether the old monk would be pleased at how many enthusiastic new admirers he's gained on Twitter. So many have cited these words as proof that Elon Musk's now infamous invocation of "vox populi, vox Dei" after his Twitter polls—which supposedly guide his policy implementation on the platform—is ignorant. "He foolishly fails to cite the whole phrase! It was a warning!" they cry. Continued here |
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We Need to Talk About Your Stove
Gas stoves are so hot right now. A recent report found that emissions from gas cooktops are worsening both the environmental crisis and the health of the humans who use them. This knowledge has stoked a heated cultural debate in the US. Some people have piped up to advocate for phasing out gas stoves, while others have fired back that the government can pry gas stoves out of their cold (presumably because they stopped paying the gas bill) dead hands. While the controversy has blown up, the reality is that gas is a problematic energy source with many worrisome issues. Reducing our dependence on the appliances and the fossil-based fuels they consume will be no easy task. This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED staff writer Amanda Hoover joins us to re-spark the gas stove debate, and talk about what we can actually do to fix the problems these old-school appliances are causing. Continued here |
What Do Your Customers Want in 2023?
The New Year is often a time of optimism, hope, and change. But how do consumers’ shifting priorities affect businesses? The authors share findings from a recent survey exploring how U.S. consumers are thinking about their New Year’s Resolutions this year and offer seven strategies to help businesses attract and retain customers in this critical time: Help your customers build healthy habits, reach out to new customers, introduce new products, foster consumer loyalty, help customers meet their financial goals, prioritize value, and help your customers do good. Ultimately, the authors argue that retailers must understand how the New Year’s mindset may impact their business — and make their own resolution to anticipate customers’ evolving needs and provide the value that today’s buyers are looking for. Continued here |
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ChatGPT and How AI Disrupts Industries
ChatGPT, from OpenAI, shows the power of AI to take on tasks traditionally associated with “knowledge work.” But the future won’t just involve tasks shifting from humans to machines. When technology enables more people to complete a task, with help from a machine, the result is typically entirely new systems with new business models and jobs and workflows. AI will be no different: To truly unlock the potential of ChatGPT, the world will need new and different kinds of organizations. Continued here |
The Truth About Blockchain
Blockchain promises to solve this problem. The technology behind bitcoin, blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that records transactions safely, permanently, and very efficiently. For instance, while the transfer of a share of stock can now take up to a week, with blockchain it could happen in seconds. Blockchain could slash the cost of transactions and eliminate intermediaries like lawyers and bankers, and that could transform the economy. But, like the adoption of more internet technologies, blockchain’s adoption will require broad coordination and will take years. In this article the authors describe the path that blockchain is likely to follow and explain how firms should think about investments in it. Continued here |
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Most day traders end up losing money over time. Here’s why.
The goal of trading is deceptively simple: buy low and sell high. Traders that manage to do that by correctly timing the markets will net a profit, and all they had to do, really, was press a couple of buttons on one of the many digital exchanges where you can trade stocks, currencies, cryptocurrencies, and other assets nearly instantaneously. It sounds easy, but the data shows the opposite is true: The vast majority of traders end up losing money over time. A report from the investment platform eToro suggests that 80% of its users lost money over a 12-month period. Other reports offer slightly different numbers, but none come close to suggesting that a majority of traders net a profit over long periods of time. Continued here |
How Chinese companies are challenging national security decisions that could delay 5G network rollout
British prime minister Rishi Sunak recently declared that the “golden era” of UK-China relations is over. The next day, the government removed China General Nuclear Power Group, a Chinese state-owned company, from the construction of the UK’s Sizewell C nuclear power station. Other countries have made similar moves in recent years. In 2020, for example, then-US president Donald Trump attempted to ban social media platform TikTok in the US. The move was subsequently stopped by two US judges following a lawsuit by TikTok, and eventually dropped by current president, Joe Biden. Continued here |
Will the Metaverse Live Up to the Hype? Game Developers Aren't Impressed
The perfect version of the metaverse, to hear tech heads like Mark Zuckerberg tell it, marries social media, entertainment, and—most exciting of all—meetings in one pristine virtual space. Long ago foretold in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, it is a place where the online world offers more experiences than the flesh-and-bone one. But whereas Stephenson's metaverse was part of an apocalyptic future, modern inventors have promised a digital utopia.  Unfortunately, the metaverse they've built has, so far, lived up to those expectations about as well as a Craigslist apartment rented based on photos alone. Zuckerberg's Horizon Worlds, clunky and strange, may have been at its most thrilling when Meta informed users that legs for their avatars were "coming soon." The hardware needed to visit such virtual worlds—often a headset like Meta's Quest Pro—can be pricey and cumbersome, and once you get there, it's no party. Continued here |
The parents who sever ties with their children
Helen hasn’t spoken with her son in more than a year. The last she heard, he was in prison. Now aged 31, he’s been addicted to opioids for more than a decade. “He’s tried to call me, probably to ask for money, and I have not been picking up,” explains Helen, who lives in England. “Right now, that’s the right decision for my safety and sanity.” As the primary caregiver for her son’s young daughter, Helen’s focus is providing a loving and secure environment for her to grow up in. Continued here |
Want to Change? 3 Surprisingly Simple Habit Hacks You Should Follow Today It doesn't matter if you've faltered in improving yourself. It's easy to get back on track. Continued here |
How to Manage Your Diabetes in the Office
Diabetes can affect almost every aspect of life. A 2019 study revealed that one in eight new cases of Type 2 diabetes is occurring in 18- to 40-year-old adults. While it’s unusual for diabetes to restrict occupation or job choices, the major challenges experienced by people working a nine-to-five surround maintaining dietary and exercise plans that will keep their blood sugar at a healthy level. Here are some ways to reduce the overwhelm that comes with managing diabetes at work. Continued here |
David Byrne’s Disco Musical About Imelda Marcos Comes to Broadway
‘Here Lies Love’ is an immersive stage production about the Philippines' former first lady When the average person thinks of Imelda Marcos, who served as first lady of the Philippines for two decades during her husband's dictatorship, they probably don't think of a disco musical. Continued here |
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15 leadership training topics for forward-thinking organizations
A list of today’s most important leadership training topics would’ve likely raised some eyebrows a few decades ago. But the world is now a very different place due to generational shifts, technological innovation, new business models, and not to mention, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we’ll share 15 leadership development topics designed to help businesses navigate the times and prepare for the future. The world of work is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and employees now have very different expectations of their leaders. The business environment has also become hyper-competitive and difficult to predict, presenting new challenges that require big decisions to be made in short order. Leaders are going to need a new set of skills to thrive in these volatile conditions. Let’s dive in. Continued here |
U.K.'s Oldest Toy Museum Shuts Its Doors
Thousands of historic toys will sit in storage until Pollock's Toy Museum finds a new home For more than 50 years, Pollock's Toy Museum was a cheerful fixture of London's Fitzrovia district, its colorful exterior beckoning visitors to explore the vast collection of historic playthings within. Victorian toy theaters, antique wax dolls, wartime tin toys and an ancient Egyptian clay mouse were among the eclectic artifacts that lined the museum's rooms and winding staircases. Continued here |
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5 Super Awkward WFH Moments You've Probably Experienced
At my first job out of college, my coworker and I would often fight over the title of “most awkward person in the office.” I know it doesn’t seem like a title you would want, but it was our way of coping with the inevitable feelings of social awkwardness that we all experience at work sometimes — you know, waving to a colleague who is waving to the colleague behind you, or having to jog for the door because your boss waits, holding it, a whole 30 feet ahead. Continued here |
Study reveals why some people are more creative than others
Creativity is often defined as the ability to come up with new and useful ideas. Like intelligence, it can be considered a trait that everyone – not just creative “geniuses” like Picasso and Steve Jobs – possesses in some capacity. It’s not just your ability to draw a picture or design a product. We all need to think creatively in our daily lives, whether it’s figuring out how to make dinner using leftovers or fashioning a Halloween costume out of clothes in your closet. Creative tasks range from what researchers call “little-c” creativity – making a website, crafting a birthday present or coming up with a funny joke – to “Big-C” creativity: writing a speech, composing a poem or designing a scientific experiment. Continued here |
Physics is in crisis. Quantum cosmology can save it and point us toward the theory of everything
Excerpted from The One: How an Ancient Idea Holds the Future of Physics by Heinrich Päs. Reprinted with permission of Basic Books, Copyright © 2023. Ever since the discovery of the atom, physicists adhered to the philosophy of reductionism. According to this idea, nature could be grasped in a unified understanding by decomposing everything around us into pieces made up from the same tiny constituents. According to this common narrative, everyday objects such as chairs, tables, and books are made of atoms, atoms are composed of atomic nuclei and electrons, atomic nuclei contain protons and neutrons, and protons and neutrons consist of quarks. Elementary particles such as quarks or electrons are understood as the fundamental building blocks of the universe. Continued here |
This 'Jousting' Trilobite Might Be the First Known Creature to Fight for a Mate
Using a "trident" attached to its head, the arthropod may have competed for sexual dominance 400 million years ago At the bottom of the ocean 400 million years ago, a knight in shining armor may have used a long trident to joust against the competition and win the hand of a fair lady. Continued here |
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The Battery That Never Gets Flat
Humans are complex machines, with moving parts that bend, squish, stretch, flow, quiver, and beat. Scientists are now plugging into these energy sources to solve a common problem afflicting sensors, wearables, and implanted medical devices—the dreaded flat battery. Devices that are self-powered by design could be the solution, and researchers have discovered that the human body itself can be a handy power source—just in time to power the exploding market in wearables. “Electroceuticals” are starting to challenge pharmaceuticals in medicine, so more people will depend on devices such as implanted electrostimulators and pacemakers in order to stay healthy. Continued here |
Anil Ananthaswamy: Where does your sense of self come from? A scientific look
Our memories and bodies give us clues about who we are, but what happens when this guidance shifts? In this mind-bending talk, science writer Anil Ananthaswamy shares how the experiences of "altered selves" -- resulting from schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, foreign limb syndrome or other conditions -- shed light on the constructed nature of identity. He breaks down where our sense of self comes from and invites us to challenge our assumptions about who we are, with the aim of building a better you and a better world. Continued here |
'Sensational' Runestone Discovered in Norway May Be the World's Oldest
The find promises to shed new light on lingering questions about runic writing’s early history During the fall of 2021, archaeologists excavating a grave in eastern Norway unearthed a block of red-tinged sandstone etched with spidery runes, an ancient system of writing used by Germanic peoples of northern Europe. This in itself was not unusual; thousands of stones with runic inscriptions, dating to the Viking period, have been found in Scandinavia alone. But the carvings on this particular stone were inscribed up to 2,000 years ago, making it “the oldest datable runestone in the world,” according to the University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History, which announced the find in a statement this week. Continued here |
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Pioneering Apple Lisa goes "open source" thanks to Computer History Museum
As part of the Apple Lisa's 40th birthday celebrations, the Computer History Museum has released the source code for Lisa OS version 3.1 under an Apple Academic License Agreement. With Apple's blessing, the Pascal source code is available for download from the CHM website after filling out a form. Continued here |
How Joe Biden Wins Again
The year after a midterm election is presidential purgatory. Congressional investigators from the opposing party devote themselves to flaying the incumbent. Stripped of any possibility of grand legislative accomplishments, presidents busy themselves with foreign policy and patiently wait for their domestic foes to overplay their hand. For Joe Biden, this is all intimately familiar. He experienced this discomfort as Barack Obama’s vice president. And he walked away with a sense of how he might get through it differently himself, how he could profitably survive this awkward year—and leverage it as the basis for reelection. Continued here |
Indian teenagers from small towns are taking YouTube Shorts by storm In a remarkably short time, RG Factboy became one of the world’s most popular YouTube Shorts channels. The creator behind it is Rohit Gupta, a 17-year-old student based in the remote Indian town of Kushinagar in Uttar Pradesh. Gupta’s Shorts had sensational Hindi voice-overs to viral videos of other creators, and ended on a plea for viewers to subscribe. The channel, created in April 2022, had 11 million subscribers before it was abruptly deleted on January 11 for violating YouTube’s rules. Unlike viral YouTubers who thrive on long-form videos, RG Factboy only posted YouTube Shorts: vertical-format videos with a maximum length of 60 seconds. “YouTube is working hard to promote Shorts,” Gupta told Rest of World. “They want audiences to move from Instagram to YouTube. Because of this, creators are active on Shorts day in and day out.” Between November 1 and January 11, RG Factboy had gained 4 million subscribers, according to social media analytics company SocialBlade. Continued here |
Freshwater Fish Contain Harmful 'Forever Chemicals'
Eating one serving of locally caught fish could equate to drinking contaminated water for a month, a new study finds Freshwater fish locally caught in the United States contain high levels of dangerous “forever chemicals” that stick around in the environment and can cause health problems in humans, a new study finds. Continued here |
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Can the SEC Cut Down on Insider Trading?
The SEC is amending a specific rule in hopes to make insider trading more difficult for company executives. Wharton’s Dan Taylor explains how it works. Wharton’s Daniel Taylor speaks with Wharton Business Daily on SiriusXM about the amendment of SEC Rule 10b5-1. Continued here |
Know What Your Customers Want Before They Do
Shoppers once relied on familiar salespeople to help them find exactly what they wanted—and sometimes to suggest additional items they hadn’t even thought of. But today’s distracted consumers, bombarded with information and options, often struggle to find products or services that meet their needs. Continued here
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