A Caribbean island's quest to become the world's first climate-resilient nation

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A Caribbean island's quest to become the world's first climate-resilient nation   On a sunny Monday morning in September 2017, 67-year-old Faustulus Frederick was adding the finishing touches to a traditional wooden sculpture at his home in Salybia, on the Caribbean island of Dominica.The small village of Salybia is one of eight that make up the 3,700-acre (1,500-hectare) Kalinago Territory – the home of Dominica's indigenous people. At the territory's highest elevations, lookout points provide sweeping views of the tempestuous Atlantic Ocean thousands of feet below.  Continued here

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How to Design an AI Marketing Strategy   In order to realize AI’s giant potential, CMOs need to have a good grasp of the various kinds of applications available and how they may evolve. This article guides marketing executives through the current state of AI and presents a framework that will help them classify their existing projects and plan the effective rollout of future ones. It categorizes AI along two dimensions: intelligence level and whether it stands alone or is part of a broader platform. Simple stand-alone task-automation apps are a good place to start. But advanced, integrated apps that incorporate machine learning have the greatest potential to create value, so as firms build their capabilities, they should move toward those technologies. Continued here

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A Better Way to Map Brand Strategy   Companies have long used perceptual mapping to understand how consumers feel about their brands relative to competitors’, to find gaps in the marketplace, and to develop brand positions. But the business value of these maps is limited because they fail to link a brand’s market position to business performance metrics such as pricing and sales. Other marketing tools measure brands on yardsticks such as market share, growth rate, and profitability but fail to take consumer perceptions into consideration. Continued here

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After All That, I Would Still Publish the Dossier   When I realized the power of online journalism in the early aughts, I saw transparency as key to its promise. I’d watched Gawker X-ray New York’s media scene, and seen bloggers tear apart mainstream reporting on the 2004 presidential campaign. I found that I could drive the political conversation simply by telling my readers what I knew in plain English, when I knew it. At Politico in 2007, we adopted Gawker’s ethos that many of old-school journalists’ most interesting stories were the ones they told one another in bars, rather than the ones they printed, and applied it to American politics. We immediately hooked political junkies on a steady stream of scoops that assumed readers were on a first-name basis with Hillary and Barack, and that they didn’t need us to provide much context or analysis.At its best, this ethos bypassed the patronizing, gatekeeping practices that often led great American institutions to mislead the country on vital public subjects. At its worst, it encouraged journalists to publish things that their predecessors had good reason to pass over, such as leaked sex tapes. Continued here

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Work Speak: How to Say "No" to Extra Work   As an editor, my core responsibilities include writing and editing, analyzing business research and trends, thinking about our longer-term content strategy, and commissioning new authors from around the world. What do I typically do all day? Apart from my core tasks, I help colleagues write critical emails to clients. I review marketing materials for upcoming projects or events. I sit in on business strategy meetings. I mentor interns. I sometimes work on cross-functional teams that need editorial expertise. Occasionally, I plan office get-togethers or team building activities. None of these are a part of my job description. Continued here

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Why We Should Be Disagreeing More at Work   Disagreements are an inevitable, normal, and healthy part of relating to other people. There is no such thing as a conflict-free work environment. And you shouldn’t want to work in one. Disagreements – when managed well – have lots of positive outcomes, such as better work products, opportunities to learn and grow, better relationships, and a more inclusive work environment. To reap these benefits, you have to get over any fear you have of conflict. Start by letting go of wanting to be liked. Instead of trying to increase your likability, focus on respect, both giving it and earning it. Don’t think of disagreement as unkind. Most people are willing to hear a different perspective if you share it respectfully. You might also try to emulate someone who is comfortable with conflict. If you’re not yet good at dealing with tense conversations, try on the persona of someone who is. Whichever tactic you decide to try, practice in small doses. Be direct in a low-stakes conversation and see what happens, for example. Chances are it will go better than you expect. Continued here

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The eccentric pioneers of vegetable electricity   There's a good chance you're familiar with Frankenstein's monster. But have you heard about his garden?Around the time the scientist who inspired Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein was busy electrocuting live animals and dead prisoners, several of his contemporaries were doing the same to perennials and root vegetables. And just as these 18th Century forays into electrical stimulation purported to make the human body more robust (by delivering it from maladies ranging from paralysis and depression to diarrhoea and venereal disease), they were also being investigated for the betterment of plant life. Experiments on electrified gardens were alleged to produce a range of benefits, from brighter flowers to tastier fruit. Before long, this pursuit went the way of its cousin, medical electro-quackery, and by the end of the 19th Century, respectable science had largely jettisoned both. Continued here

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These 10 Chrome Extensions Will Supercharge Your Productivity   Add these to yourbrowser to stay focused, save money, and even leverage A.I. in real time. Continued here

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Barbara Corcoran Has Launched a New Entrepreneurial Fund--and She's Looking for 3 "Unpopular" Traits in the Winner    The "Shark Tank" star has partnered with the founder of a Kentucky-based bourbon brand to support budding entrepreneurs. Continued here

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5 Ways to Read More Books Now   The easiest way is to have them around you all the time. Continued here

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3 Ways to Hire the People Your Company Actually Needs   Many companies are hiring using template job posts and interview questions. To stand out and fill open roles, you must revamp your recruiting process. Continued here

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How Female Founders Thrive in the Complex Cannabis Industry   Despite challenges, the cannabis industry is showing its growth potential--and women are paving their own way. Continued here

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These Founders Are Making Gen Z-Friendly Apps. Here's Why They're a Hit    Gen Z-led startups HotDrop, SoundMind, and Fanfix use authenticity and strategic app interfaces to capture Gen Z's attention. Continued here

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The End of Recommendation Letters   Early spring greened outside the picture window in the faculty club. I was lunching with a group of fellow professors, and, as happens these days when we assemble, generative artificial intelligence was discussed. Are your students using it? What are you doing to prevent cheating? Heads were shaken in chagrin as iced teas were sipped for comfort.But then, one of my colleagues wondered: Could he use AI to generate a reference letter for a student? Faculty write loads of these every year, in support of applications for internships, fellowships, industry jobs, graduate school, university posts. They all tend to be more or less the same, yet they also somehow take a lot of time, and saving some of it might be nice. Other, similar ideas spilled out quickly. Maybe ChatGPT could help with grant proposals. Or syllabi, even? The ideas seemed revelatory, but also scandalous. Continued here

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Yes, It's Possible to (Gracefully) Talk Politics at Work   Several years ago, on a cold February morning, ABC News released a music video by Will.I.Am aimed at increasing the voter turnout for the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The video, “Yes We Can,” quickly went viral and became a rallying call for those supporting Barack Obama’s campaign. Continued here

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Achieving Entrepreneurial Freedom: Tips for Making Your Business Independent of You   Implementing the right policies, processes, and procedures can allow entrepreneurs more freedom while improving the company's overall efficiency. Continued here

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Want a Taste of Lemon8? Here’s What Companies Need to Know    Downloads for TikTok's sister app, Lemon8, surged in April. But small-business owners need to ask: Is this new app suited to their brand's needs? Continued here

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New White House Program Is Offering Covid Vaccines At No Cost. It's Good News for Businesses   A new $1.1 billion program will help ensure employees are vaccinated after the federal supply is exhausted, regardless of whether they have health insurance. Continued here

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See Inside the World’s Longest Purpose-Built Cycling Tunnel   The 1.8-mile-long tunnel in Norway is part of a broader effort to encourage residents to ditch their carsCyclists and pedestrians have an innovative new way of getting around in Bergen, Norway: a purpose-built tunnel that's off-limits to cars. Continued here

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The IRS Wants to Change the Way Businesses Report Tips   The new proposal seeks to streamline reporting and increase compliance. Continued here

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Why Your Organization Needs a Bill of Rights for Employee Data   The boundaries between personal and employee data will continue to blur as technology advances and worker expectations shift. An employee data bill of rights — consistently enforced and transparently communicated — will help organizations unlock the full potential of their data resources to both support employees as humans and achieve their business goals. It should consist of four key concepts: the right to purpose (meaning there’s a legitimate business purpose to collect the data); the right to minimization (that the employer won’t collect more data than it needs); the right to fairness (that data will be used to reinforce equity in the workplace); and the right to awareness (that the employer will be clear about what data is being used for what purpose). Continued here

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How Putting Healthcare Professionals at the Center Turned FIGS into a Billion+ Company    Trina Spear went from selling scrubs out of her car to a $5 billion publicly traded company. Continued here

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Greg Brockman: The inside story of ChatGPT's astonishing potential   In a talk from the cutting edge of technology, OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman explores the underlying design principles of ChatGPT and demos some mind-blowing, unreleased plug-ins for the chatbot that sent shockwaves across the world. After the talk, head of TED Chris Anderson joins Brockman to dig into the timeline of ChatGPT's development and get Brockman's take on the risks, raised by many in the tech industry and beyond, of releasing such a powerful tool into the world. Continued here

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Illegal gold mining influencers are tearing up the Amazon   Brazilian creators on TikTok and YouTube are documenting a modern-day gold rush. Among them is Garimpeiro Solitário, who has become somewhat of a mining influencer. His point-of-view (POV) videos show him using metal detectors and going river-diving for gold, giving viewers a glimpse into the garimpeiro (prospector) lifestyle. Several are chock-full of close-ups of rubies, garnets, and gold. In one post, the unnamed creator claims he once earned roughly $40,000 in just three weeks of mining — the Brazilian monthly wage is $560. “I’m making more than $5,000 a day in nature,” he says in the YouTube video. “The amount of gold in these rivers is still unknown. To get it, you need to be brave.”  Continued here

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Do You Really Know The Financial Impacts of Your Digital Transformation? - SPONSOR CONTENT FROM DELOITTE   Embarking on digital transformation holds enormous promise for your organization in the form of reduced costs, increased operational efficiencies, greater value to your customers, and future-proofing for tomorrow’s business landscape. The bad news is that around 70% of digital transformation efforts fail. Continued here

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The Most Successful Approaches to Leading Organizational Change   When tasked with implementing large-scale organizational change, leaders often give too much attention to the what of change — such as a new organization strategy, operating model or acquisition integration — not the how — the particular way they will approach such changes. Such inattention to the how comes with the major risk that old routines will be used to get to new places. Any unquestioned, “default” approach to change may lead to a lot of busy action, but not genuine system transformation. Through their practice and research, the authors have identified the optimal ways to conceive, design, and implement successful organizational change. Continued here

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How to Avoid Burnout for Shift Workers   Just-in-time scheduling is great for employers but exhausting for employees. A new Wharton study offers scheduling alternatives to help firms reduce turnover and retain staff.Unpredictable schedules are so disruptive to the lives of employees that even 30 days of high shift variability in a year increases the chances a worker will quit by 20%, according to a new study from Wharton experts. Continued here

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SpaceX's Starship Explodes During First Orbital Test Flight   SpaceX's Starship—a spacecraft that might one day transport people to Mars—has completed its first integrated launch, but made it only a few minutes into its highly-anticipated debut long-distance flight.Just four minutes after liftoff from the company's launch site in Boca Chica in southern Texas, when the Starship stage was supposed to separate from the Super Heavy rocket, both the stage and rocket experienced a "rapid unscheduled disassembly"—a euphemism that Elon Musk and his SpaceX colleagues sometimes use for a rocket explosion. Continued here

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Does Money Buy Happiness? Here’s What the Research Says   Reconciling previously contradictory results, researchers from Wharton and Princeton find a steady association between larger incomes and greater happiness for most people but a rise and plateau for an unhappy minority.Are people who earn more money happier in daily life? Though it seems like a straightforward question, research had previously returned contradictory findings, leaving uncertainty about its answer. Continued here

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The Curtain Lowers on 'Phantom of the Opera' on Broadway   After 35 years and nearly 14,000 performances, the music of the night is officially over. The final production of The Phantom of the Opera, Broadway’s longest-running show, took place over the weekend at the Majestic Theatre. The show ended with a reprise of “The Music of the Night” performed by current and past cast and crew members—including Sarah Brightman who originated the role of Christine Daaé. Continued here

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Cache of Ancient Severed Hands May Have Been Part of a Ritual   Twelve right hands found in an Egyptian palace courtyard were likely battle trophies that warriors exchanged for goldWhile excavating an ancient Egyptian palace, archaeologists made a macabre discovery: a cache of 12 severed right hands buried in pits in the courtyard. After the find in 2011, researchers were divided about the hands’ histories—whether they were cut off as a punishment or as part of a ritual, reports Andrew Curry for Science.  Continued here

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Why do mirrors flip left-and-right but not up-and-down?   If you’ve ever looked in a mirror, you’ve likely noticed that everything you see is flipped. When you raise your left hand, your reflection raises their right hand. When you wink with your right eye, your reflection’s left eye winks back. And if you write a message and hold it up, you’ll see your reflection hold up the identical sign, but everything appears backward, even the individual letters themselves. It appears that everything you see reflected in the mirror has their left-and-right reversed. But, for some reason, up-and-down don’t appear to be reversed. Your mirror reflection still has their feet on the ground, their ceiling up above, and all the letters on your mirror image’s writings aren’t flipped upside down, but remain right side up.Why is this the case? It’s not just humans who experience this: whether you’re a sea star, an insect, a jellyfish, a parakeet or a cat — whether in space or on Earth or anywhere else in the Universe — you’ll still see the same thing. When you look into a mirror that’s mounted on any wall, they all appear to reverse left-and-right, but not up-and-down. This isn’t a deficiency in your mirror at all; it’s a consequence of how reflections work at a fundamental level. Continued here

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Elon Musk’s Disastrous Week   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.The tech world’s most attention-grabbing man had a very busy week. Elon Musk launched a rocket, dealt with bad news at Tesla, stoked fear that AI could end humankind, and rolled out another controversial change on Twitter. Through it all, Musk exemplifies the danger of what happens when technology and ego collide. Continued here

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Which Streaming Services Are Actually Worth Your Money?   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 WIREDIt has never been easier to access countless hours of the latest and greatest TV shows and best movies from the comfort of your couch. The explosion of streaming services offering video-on-demand has given us ample choice, but what sets them apart? Join us as we break down the key points to consider and delve into the best streaming services for you. Continued here

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Twitter permanently suspended journalist who interviewed Matt Walsh's hacker   This week, The Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh got hacked, leading a hacker called Doomed to gain unfettered access to his Twitter, Google, and Microsoft accounts. A journalist named Dell Cameron then tweeted to encourage the hacker to contact him, then published an interview with Doomed for Wired. Tweeting out that story—Cameron confirmed on Mastodon—ultimately got the tech policy reporter permanently suspended from Twitter for violating the social platform’s policy on distributing hacked materials. Continued here

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The People Who Still Love Renting DVDs From Netflix   For you, the start of an evening in front of Netflix might begin with the tudum jingle. But for some, it still starts with opening a small red envelope. Not for long. The end of Netflix’s DVD rental business might be long overdue, but for some it was Netflix—and for all of us, its demise is a reminder that streaming captures just a tiny fraction of the movie industry’s storied history. Soon, that will be much harder to find.“My parents subscribed to Netflix way back when it was just DVDs,” says Jeff Landale, who works in the digital rights and privacy space. While Landale and his brother moved to Netflix’s streaming service some time ago, their parents—in their late sixties and early seventies, and living outside Boston—still treasured the mail-order service. Continued here

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Workers Are Worried About Their Bosses Embracing AI   The Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank that tracks public opinion, released a report today on how workers feel about AI. The technology has become an increasingly common workplace fixture over the past few years. And its role is likely to grow as AI becomes more capable, thanks to advances such as the large language models, like GPT-4, that gave us ChatGPT and a growing number of other tools. Continued here

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After 25 Years, Netflix Ends DVD Rentals   In a bygone epoch of Blockbuster, the red-and-white envelopes that carried Netflix DVDs to homes around America were instantly recognizable. The company has shipped over 5.2 billion discs since its inception in 1998.But now, after 25 years, Netflix has announced that the DVD-by-mail service will end on September 29, 2023. Executives cited decreasing interest as a vast majority of their users have moved to online streaming.  Continued here

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'Abbott Elementary' Lets Black Kids Be Kids   If we’re being honest, Janine Teagues, the lead of Abbott Elementary, has always been a little bit childish. I don’t mean that derisively. Quinta Brunson, the show’s creator, plays Janine as an openhearted optimist, decked in colorful sweaters and puff sleeves. She practically vibrates with excitement when she sets upon an ambitious new plan to zhuzh up the underfunded halls of Abbott or reconcile two sparring second graders; her warm, if sometimes naive, enthusiasm is an important part of how she relates to and supports her young students. But at the start of the show’s second season, Janine is eager to grow up, fast. She declares herself “a fully formed adult” who can handle any obstacle. By the finale, which aired yesterday, she’s lost her cool, made mistakes, and had to lean on her co-workers, who, thankfully, meet her growing pains with grace. “You just got to go through it, not over it,” her fellow teacher Melissa Schemmenti (played by Lisa Ann Walter) presages in the season’s first episode. “And you’re at the beginning, not the end.”That advice could just as easily apply to any of Abbott’s students, such as Mya (a darling Blaiz Bhasi), who struggles with reading in the “Read-A-Thon” episode. The second grader fudges the numbers in her book log, but the storyline doesn’t end with a reprimand for cheating on homework; instead, Melissa empathizes with Mya, sharing her own comprehension strategies in a nonjudgmental way. That gentler approach is characteristic of Abbott Elementary, which seems uninterested in punishment. Even when the kids disregard instructions, become hyper, or get especially silly—when they act like kids and not like saints—the show refrains from condemning them as “problem students.” They’re students who have a problem that they need help resolving. That distinction might seem small, but on a show that features an all-Black cast of children, it’s one of Brunson’s grandest and most moving gestures. Continued here

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The Internet of the 2010s Ended Today   If you’re curious to know what it was like to work at BuzzFeed News in the salad days of the mid-2010s, here is a representative anecdote: I was sitting at my desk one morning, dreadfully hungover and editing a story titled “The Definitive Oral History of the Wikipedia Photo for ‘Grinding,’” when the sounds of a screaming man broke my trance. I looked up to see Tracy Morgan three feet away, surrounded by a small entourage of handlers.Morgan was barreling through the office, lifting his shirt up, smacking his belly, and cracking jokes about how pale all of us internet writers looked. I remember our lone investigative reporter, Alex Campbell, scurrying away from his desk, a row away from mine, to continue his reporting call in silence. A few months later, the story he’d been working on would help free an innocent woman from prison. Morgan’s chattering faded, and the newsroom returned to its ambient humming of frenetic keyboard clacking—the sound of the internet being made. Hardly anyone had batted an eye. Continued here

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Amazon introduces new feature to make dialogue in its TV shows intelligible   Amazon has introduced a new feature to Prime Video called Dialogue Boost. It's intended to isolate dialogue and make it louder relative to other sounds in streaming videos on the service. Continued here

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Stack Overflow Will Charge AI Giants for Training Data   Developing the AI systems behind tools such as ChatGPT and the image generator Dall-E costs hundreds of millions of dollars—and it’s about to get more expensive.OpenAI, Google, and other companies building large-scale AI projects have traditionally paid nothing for much of their training data, scraping it from the web. But Stack Overflow, a popular internet forum for computer programming help, plans to begin charging large AI developers as soon as the middle of this year for access to the 50 million questions and answers on its service, CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar says. The site has more than 20 million registered users. Continued here

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Research: Why Women Trust Their Employers Less Than Men Do   In a 2021 study, a team at Deloitte measured trust levels of 5,000 U.S. employees across job types and industries. They found that while women and men enter the workforce with essentially the same level of trust in their employers, women’s trust rapidly falls behind men’s and continues to lag throughout their careers. By the time women reach the director level, they trust their employers 30% less than men at the same level. Scores only begin to recover as women enter the senior leadership ranks, but they never fully catch up. Why aren’t employers’ efforts to create a more transparent and equitable workplace translating into greater trust for women? A key reason, the authors posit, is that the well-intentioned policies that should promote equity between men and women, such as flex time and performance-based compensation, tend not to benefit women as much or in the same ways as they do men. Through an iterative process of measurement, experimentation, and refinement, organizations can better identify the ways in which their policies treat people differently and make changes that will continue to narrow the trust gaps between men and women. Continued here