CEO Picks - The most popular editorials that have stood the test of time!
S1Visualizing the $100 Trillion Dollar World Economy in One ChartThe smallest economy in the world measured in the IMF rankings is Tuvalu at $66 million. Most of the bottom 50 are considered low- to middle-income and emerging/developing countries. According to the World Bank, in developing countries, the level of per capita income in 2022 will be about 5% below the pre-pandemic trends.
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| S2S3'Quiet quitting' is TikTok's answer to grind culture, but it's not what you thinkBefore the pandemic, 31-year-old digital strategist Jürgen* loved his job. He had a good team around him whom he considered friends, and the work he was doing was stimulating and manageable. "For a long time, I was genuinely excited to go to work every day," he says. "I was working for a company I was passionate about, on projects I thought were interesting, and with people I enjoyed working with." But, when Coronavirus and its resulting lockdowns hit, he found himself "working 15+ hours every day, due to cuts that were made across the company."
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| S4Facing the Fears That Hold You Back at WorkCommon fears that hold people back include the fear of failure, the fear of letting others down, the fear of looking bad or losing others’ respect, but also include more primal fears, such as that of being marginalized, rejected, or unable to support oneself. Often, these fears are not rational, but are visceral at their core. While they often operate below the surface, they are an active force in driving unproductive behavior. In this article, the authors offer strategies for how to unpack and challenging these fears and limiting beliefs so that you can dismantle your self-imposed barriers and achieve greater success.
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| S5S6S7S8Physicist Claims To Have Solved the Mystery of ConsciousnessThe ability of the brain to create consciousness has baffled people for millennia. The mystery of consciousness lies in the fact that each of us has subjectivity, with the ability to sense, feel, and think. In contrast to being under anesthesia or in a dreamless deep sleep, while we’re awake we don’t “live in the dark” — we experience the world and ourselves. However, it remains a mystery how the brain creates the conscious experience and what area of the brain is responsible.
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| S9S10S11S12S13S14S15Some of the world's most famous paintings were made with paint from ground mummiesPaint is made up of many different components, each fulfilling a different function. There’s the medium or binder, which alters the paint’s properties by making it thicker or thinner or extending its drying time. There’s the solvent, which can be added to prevent the formation of clumps and globs. Last but not least, there are pigments, which give paint its opaqueness and, crucially, color.
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| S16S17Watching Trump Play Golf: Decent Drives, Skipped Putts, Lots of SweatOn Thursday, Trump was a contestant in the pro-am tournament on the eve of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf event he is hosting this weekend at the lavish golf course he built in northwestern New Jersey. The intent of the outing was to team some celebrities and everyday golfers with the professionals, and Trump was, naturally, in the featured first grouping of the day.
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| S18Event Horizon Gets Better With AgeTwenty-five years ago, Paul W. S. Anderson released one of the gnarliest, most unforgettable science-fiction horror films ever made, but it took most people a few years to realize it. Starring Sam Neill, Laurence Fishburne, and a spaceship that had just returned from a journey through Hell, Event Horizon came out in August 1997 and bombed with critics and audiences alike. (Those of us who were fans of the picture back then can tell you how lonely an experience that was.) But over the years, Anderson’s film grew in reputation. This was due partly to the indelible quality of its imagery: its brief but deliriously grotesque glimpses of Hell, the medieval-torture-device-like design of its titular spaceship, not to mention a final act that featured a mad Sam Neill running around naked and on fire after gouging out his own eyes. (“Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.”) Anderson understood how to shock audiences — maybe too well, since members of his studio were notoriously outraged when they first saw the film — but Event Horizon carries a fascinating cautionary tale about our inability to let go of the past, a tale enhanced by a cast that brings real depth to what might, on paper, have looked like fairly disposable genre work. On the occasion of the movie’s release in a special 4K edition from Paramount, I talked to Anderson about the endurance of his now-classic film.
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| S19Where Is The Oldest Pub In Britain? | HistoryExtraThose in south-west England suggest that the oldest pub could be the appropriately named Old Inn in St Breward, Cornwall (with the original building dating from the 11th century). The Home Counties proudly offer Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in St Albans, Hertfordshire, as being in business since AD 793. That is still not as old as East Anglia’s proposal: the Old Ferry Boat Inn in St Ives, Cambridgeshire, where drinks may have been sold as early as c560 AD.
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| S20Why Is Butter Temperature So Important in Baking?In pretty much every baking recipe, no matter the diversity of the ingredients or range of final products, you can almost guarantee one thing: If the recipe calls for butter, you’re going to be told what temperature that butter should be. In pie, butter must be refrigerator-cold. In cookies, for the purpose of creaming with sugar, butter is best at room temperature. In breads — well, that depends. The number of guises butter wears in everyday recipes is enough to make you stare longingly at a bottle of canola oil: If we only used oil for everything, life would be so much simpler. “Butter temperature is really complex,” Jesse Szewczyk, author of the cookbook Cookies: The New Classics, says, and even an experienced baker can get it wrong.
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| S21Why there's no 'Dijon' in Dijon mustardTake a wander down any condiment aisle in France these days, and you'll notice a pervasive absence between le mayo and le ketchup. Since this May, France has faced a widespread dearth of Dijon mustard, leading one French resident to advertise two jars for sale to the tune of €6,000 or about £5,000 (since revealed to be merely in jest). The shortage has incited expats (this author included) to not-at-all-jokingly smuggle squeeze bottles of Maille back into the country from places like the US to get their fix, while author and Paris resident David Lebovitz even resorted to hunting his jars down at a local gardening store, of all places.
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| S22How To Actually Play Netflix's Surprisingly Terrific GamesYes, Netflix has some excellent games, but no one’s playing them. According to a recent report, less than 1 percent of people who subscribe to the streaming service actually avail themselves of its free games. That stat surely isn’t helped by the process you’ve gotta go through to play, which, while not totally byzantine, is more complicated than it needs to be.
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| S23Outer Sight: The Best Science Fiction Books You've Never Heard ofWelcome, book lovers, to another list of fabulous titles to topple your TBR! Today we’re looking at some of the Best Science Fiction Books You’ve Never Heard of. [Insert “they’re out of this world” joke here, bah-dum tiss.] Now, obviously, some of you will have heard of some of these. Like, if you’re the author, for instance. Or the publisher, the editor, the publicist, a huge science fiction reader, etc. The title of this post is there to get your attention and get more eyes on these books — and it worked!
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| S24S25S26Ask the 'Coupologists': Just What Was Jan. 6 Anyway? Even after this summer’s revelations by the House Jan. 6 committee, the riot at the Capitol Building seems to defy easy categorization. It was at once violent and farcical, premeditated and shambolic, clearly associated with a coordinated effort by the outgoing administration to nullify a free and fair election it had just lost yet lacking the muscle of military or police authorities.
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| S27S28Reckoning With Memories of BudapestIn early April, when my flight landed at Ferenc Liszt International Airport, László Borsos was waiting for me at the arrivals gate. I hadn’t seen the man in 28 years. I scanned the crowd and found him standing there with a wild grin on his face, his glasses dangling elegantly over a white collared shirt.
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| S29What it's like to go to the world's most remote discoA guy wearing steampunk goggles for no apparent reason has just arrived and taken up a central spot on the dancefloor with gusto. One woman in dungaree shorts and a man in a bright red bowtie are dancing as though it's their first ever club night, forcing everyone in their orbit to jump out of the path of their unpredictable flying limbs. Two people have had passionate, life-depends-on-it kisses (we weren't looking for them, they just crossed our eye line). There is a whoop and communal energy rush every time the antique, spotlit disco ball revolves into action, casting speckling gems of light around the hall.
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| S30Stop Undervaluing Exceptional WomenDespite progress toward gender equality at work, it still takes women longer to get promoted than men, and few make it to the top of the corporate ladder. The authors’ research suggests that the reason why comes down to gender-biased assumptions about how challenging it will be to retain them. Their findings illuminate how standout women employees can be taken for granted by companies because of gendered beliefs about who is and who isn’t a flight risk. Moreover, such gendered dynamics likely contribute to the glass ceiling and gender gaps in earnings. If companies assume women will place loyalty to the firm over advancing in their careers through outside opportunities, they won’t engage in preemptive retention efforts like bonuses, raises, promotions, or increased responsibility like they will for men. To stop taking talented women for granted and to avoid losing them to other firms, companies need to do more to recognize and address these biases.
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| S31What Happens When Your Career Becomes Your Whole IdentityMany people with high-pressure jobs find themselves unhappy with their careers, despite working hard their whole lives to get to their current position. Hating your job is one thing – but what happens if you identify so closely with your work that hating your job means hating yourself?Psychologists use the term “enmeshment” to describe a situation where the boundaries between people become blurred, and individual identities lose importance. Enmeshment prevents the development of a stable, independent sense of self. While identifying closely with your career isn’t necessarily bad, it makes you vulnerable to a painful identity crisis if you burn out, get laid off, or retire. Individuals in these situations frequently suffer anxiety, depression, and despair. By claiming back some time for yourself and diversifying your activities and relationships, you can build a more balanced and robust identity in line with your values.
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| S32S33How to get better at speaking up in the momentA lot of people struggle speaking up in the moment. Sometimes, it’s due to the fear of saying or doing the wrong thing and suffering repercussions. Or maybe it’s because they’re not prepared and are caught off guard in the moment. The problem with not pushing back is that you don’t address the problem, says Amber Cabral, author of Say More About That . . . And Other Ways to Speak Up, Push Back, and Advocate for Yourself and Others.
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| S3410 common phrases that make you sound passive-aggressive in the workplace"For better or worse, digital communication, whether it's through email or direct messages on platforms like Slack, doesn't let us see each other's immediate reactions â which is why we look for ways to 'politely' express irritation," WordFinder representative Joe Mercurio tells CNBC Make It. "As a result, employee frustration and miscommunication are at an all-time high, with tone alone being misinterpreted quite a bit in email communication."
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| S35S36How to Use Your Breathing to Stop Stress Instantly, According to a Stanford NeuroscientistYou may have heard something similar from your yoga teacher, but hard science agrees that changing how you breathe can have profound effects on your mental and physical health. Learning to breathe more deeply can turn around debilitating chronic health conditions, while simple breathing exercises help cure insomnia. And according to Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist and Stanford professor, changing how you breathe can also halt stress in its tracks.
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| S37Explained: What are flash floods and why they may increase in the next few yearsExcessive or continuous rainfall over a period of days, or during particular seasons can lead to stagnation of water and cause flooding. Flash floods refer to such a situation, but occurring in a much shorter span of time. For instance, the US’s meteorological agency, the National Weather Service, says flash floods are caused when rainfall creates flooding in less than 6 hours. It adds that flash floods can also be caused by factors apart from rainfall, like when water goes beyond the levels of a dam.
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| S38S39How to Keep Life from Becoming a Parody of Itself: Simone de Beauvoir on the Art of Growing OlderEach month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings) going. For fifteen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference.
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| S40S41S42The HGTV-ification of AmericaYou’ve seen the gray flooring. You know its lifeless hue even if you haven’t been house hunting recently. The stuff is in old-house-rehab shows on HGTV, in the house next door that’s now on the market for the second time in nine months, in the ads for at least one but probably several new condo buildings in a rapidly gentrifying part of your city. It’s as omnipresent online as it is in real life, making frequent appearances in the newly purchased houses of 20-something TikTok-hustle influencers and in the homes that play background to Millennials trying to make their pets Instagram famous.
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| S43S44DeWalt gave my power tool battery the power of USB-CThe $100 DeWalt DCB094 USB Charging Kit lets you add that port to any DeWalt 20V power tool battery in a literal snap. Slide this quarter-pound adapter onto your battery pack, and you get a bi-directional 100W USB-C PD port. That means not only can you charge up to a MacBook Pro-sized laptop with a big enough DeWalt pack, you can charge those DeWalt packs with your laptop or phone’s USB-C charger as well.
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| S45S46Howard Carter stole Tutankhamun's treasure, new evidence suggestsThis year marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery by Carter and his financial backer, Lord Carnarvon, of the tomb of the boy king, filled with thrones, chariots and thousands of objects needed in the next world. Over the next decade, Carter supervised their removal and transportation down the Nile to Cairo to be displayed in the Egyptian Museum.
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| S4730 Years Of Premier League: What It Has Meant For IndiaTwo games are happening. Two of the biggest football clubs in India take on each other in a heated semifinal. Thousands of miles away, the defending champions of England play out a dead-rubber match against relegation fodder. On Hotstar, seventeen thousand people are watching the first. Four hundred and fifty thousand are watching the second. (More Football News)
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| S48Everything you need to know (but were afraid to ask) about the Qatar World Cup 2022The Qatar World Cup 2022 is almost upon us. If it seems like just yesterday that the England faithful were out in the streets en masse, shoving firecrackers up their backsides and hoisting the flags of St. George high in the sky, it's because it basically was. We're coming up to our third major football tournament in eighteen months, after our gallivanting successes at both the men's and women's Euros: the deeply controversial World Cup in Qatar. And it's just 100 days away.
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| S49From Romeo + Juliet to 10 Things I Hate About You, these are the most adventurous Shakespeare adaptations of all timeLeonardo DiCaprio starred as Romeo and Claire Danes as Juliet in Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy. The film’s setting is a twist on the original: instead of Verona, Italy, events take place in a seaside metropolis called ‘Verona Beach’, which bears a resemblance to modern-day Miami and has been ravaged by the ongoing feud between the Capulets and Montagues. In true Luhrmann style, the film's vibrant costumes, excessive set design and well-curated soundtrack add to the magic of Shakespeare’s timeless story of star-crossed lovers.
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| S50Why Does Everything On Netflix Look Like That?You know what I’m talking about—the so-called “Netflix Look.” Netflix’s in-house produced television shows and movies tend to all have the same look and feel, to the point that it’s sometimes really distracting. Although it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly makes all Netflix shows look the same, a few things stand out: The image in general is dark, and the colors are extremely saturated; Especially in scenes at night, there tends to be a lot of colored lighting, making everything look like it’s washed in neon even if the characters are inside; Actors look like the makeup is caked on their faces, and details in their costumes like puckering seams are unusually visible; Most annoying to me, everything is also shot in an extremely conventional way, using the most conventional set ups to indicate mystery or intrigue as possible—to indicate that something weird is going on the framing always has a dutch angle, for example—or more often just having everyone shot in a medium close up.
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| S51Colonial Culinarians continue to influence our eating habitsWe will be celebrating our momentous 75th Independence Day tomorrow with unprecedented grandeur, pride and gaiety. This year, there is a seemingly intense excitement among the populace at large, especially since apart from being the 75th anniversary of our Independence, it will also be the most grandly observed national holiday in the last two years since during that period we were fighting another battle, one that some referred to as the second battle for independence, the battle to defeat another foreign occupier — the cruel and cunning coronavirus — to come out unscathed, stronger and rid ourselves of the virus once and for all, just as we did the Brits.
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| S527 monsoon drink recipes to stay warm and healthy this seasonWhen it starts to pour outside all we want to do is curl up on the bed with a warm beverage for company. Although tea and coffee are undoubtedly a crowd favourite, what we really need is something that feels special and helps us relax. Here are some comforting monsoon drink recipes that are not just delicious but also nourishing.
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| S53Teens are rewriting what is possible in the world of competitive TetrisWhen the Classic Tetris World Championship (CTWC) debuted in 2010, the kill screen was the game’s final, unbeatable boss. Players pushed to get the highest score possible before level 29, at which point the game’s pieces started falling at double speed. It seemed humanly impossible to keep up with the falling shapes, which would pile up on players’ screens and spell death for their game.
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| S54After the Zodiac Killer's '340' Cipher Stumped the FBI, Three Amateurs Made a BreakthroughThe envelope arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle in November 1969 without a return address, its directive to the recipient, in handwriting distinctively slanted and words unevenly spaced, to “please rush to editor.” The Chronicle newsroom had seen the scrawl before, on previous letters sent from the Zodiac, a self-monikered serial killer who threatened to go on a “kill rampage” if the paper didn’t publish his writing on its front page. By the time of the November letter, the Zodiac had already attacked seven people, murdering five. His most recent murder—of a San Francisco cab driver, by gunshot—had occurred just four weeks before this new envelope arrived. The Zodiac had mailed the Chronicle a piece of the victim’s bloodied shirt as evidence of the crime.
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| S55Opinion | The Movement to End Homework Is WrongAs a parent and a former teacher, I have been pondering this question for quite a long time. The teacher side of me can acknowledge that there were assignments I gave out to my students that probably had little to no academic value. But I also imagine that some of my students never would have done their basic reading if they hadn’t been trained to complete expected assignments, which would have made the task of teaching an English class nearly impossible. As a parent, I would rather my daughter not get stuck doing the sort of pointless homework I would occasionally assign, but I also think there’s a lot of value in saying, “Hey, a lot of work you’re going to end up doing in your life is pointless, so why not just get used to it?”
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| S56What to Actually Do About an Unequal PartnershipFor a long time, I sat stewing in general confusion that so many relationships who ostensibly believe in the ideals of feminism (some queer, but mostly straight) almost always defaulted to an unequal distribution of labor — one that got significantly worse once kids entered the picture. And honestly? I find the entire situation pretty infuriating. For those who carry the bulk of the unpaid labor load, it’s a root cause of burnout — even and especially amongst those with full-time jobs with flexibility. I’ve seen this sort of inequality fester and create relationship-breaking resentment; I’ve seen people complain and then gradually, over the years, reconcile themselves to it. And no matter how much theory you read, no matter how much you believe in cultivating a different way of dividing labor than your parents or grandparents did, so many relationships (my own included!) fall into these bullshit rhythms and norms that, once established, are incredibly difficult to change.
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| S57The Supreme Court Is Making America UngovernableLike many governmental agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency has an elaborate process for developing important rules. As I saw during the Obama administration, when I headed the EPA office that oversees this process, getting a major rule over the finish line can take years. Almost every step of the way offers obstacles to addressing any serious environmental problem.
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| S58S59The 37 most beautiful train stations in the worldBeautiful train stations are arguably a city’s most treasured architectural landmark. With nonstop flights going seemingly everywhere, people tend to prefer the sky over the rail. That said, there’s something nostalgic—and even glamorous—about boarding a train that simply cannot be replicated in any other form of transportation—especially planes, which are getting more modern by the year. After all, trains are often credited with completely transforming the United States in nearly every regard (socially, politically, and economically) during the most financially lucrative period, the Gilded Age.
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| S60S61High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here’s How to Create ItThe highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety — the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake. Studies show that psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off — just the types of behavior that lead to market breakthroughs. So how can you increase psychological safety on your own team? First, approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary. When conflicts come up, avoid triggering a fight-or-flight reaction by asking, “How could we achieve a mutually desirable outcome?” Speak human-to-human, but anticipate reactions, plan countermoves, and adopt a learning mindset, where you’re truly curious to hear the other person’s point of view. Ask for feedback to illuminate your own blind spots. If you create this sense of psychological safety on your own team starting now, you can expect to see higher levels of engagement, increased motivation to tackle difficult problems, more learning and development opportunities, and better performance.
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| S62S63The Problem With Companies Promising to Pay for Abortion TravelOn August 5, Indiana became the first state to pass an abortion ban since Roe v. Wade was overturned. The next morning, the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly announced that because of the new restrictions, it expected to have to start hiring outside the state. In the meantime, it was expanding its employee health plan to cover travel “for reproductive services unavailable locally.” In other words, it would help employees bypass the ban, which goes into effect next month, by paying for a trip out of state for an abortion.
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| S64The Unlikely Rise of Slim Pickins, the First Black-Owned Outdoors Retailer in the CountryA nighttime stroll through downtown Stephenville evokes a certain small-town Texas vibe. All around the square, string lights illuminate weathered brick storefronts. The Erath County courthouse, with its thick limestone walls and Romanesque arched windows, was completed in 1892. Its pointed clock tower remains one of the tallest structures around. On the courthouse lawn is a Confederate memorial, dedicated in 2001, that pays tribute to the more than six hundred soldiers who now “rest beneath the rich soil of Erath County.” Nearby, on a corner of the square, stands a life-size statue of a dairy cow. The black-and-white Holstein, erected in 1972 and known locally as Moo-La, is a nod to the county’s state-leading dairy industry. The fire department has been known to hose her down, and she’s sometimes costumed in relevant attire: a flower necklace for the annual Moo-La Fest, a cloth mask at the height of the pandemic.
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| S65S66S67Is Oxygen the Answer to Long Covid?She was dead tired but couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think straight, and could barely walk. The muscle pain in her arms and legs was so bad that she spent days in bed. When she did get up, she used a wheelchair. And she couldn’t focus on even the most trivial tasks, let alone work. But doctors couldn’t agree on what was wrong with 41-year-old Maya Doari.
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| S68The Lifestyle Habits That Slow Down Aging, From a 100-Year-old Neurologist -- Eat This Not ThatIt's pretty amazing to hear of someone living their best life for an entire century and beyond. It's even more extraordinary for that someone to be an accomplished neurologist and teacher at 100. (Heck, he even passed the State Bar in Ohio!) Dr. Howard Tucker from Cleveland, Ohio happens to be that person. According to People Magazine, Tucker has practiced medicine for 75 of his 100 years living on Earth, and he's still going strong to this day. This centenarian was even dubbed by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest practicing doctor in 2021, a title which Dr. Tucker admitted would "probably be the crowning achievement" for him. He reveals, "I think I'll live forever." Dr. Tucker is so intriguing, there's even a documentary in the works on the centenarian's life. Read on to learn about six lifestyle habits that slow down aging, inspired by this 100-year-old neurologist.
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| S69S70Did You Know You Could Name a Planet?This is a group project, so before you start thinking of names, you’re going to have to put a team together, or join one that already exists. And not just any team: One “composed of students and teachers, astronomy enthusiasts, amateurs astronomers, and exoplanetary scientists,” according to the IAU. But there’s no limit to the number of people that can join a team.
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| S71S727 simple tricks to make your brain smarter (according to Harvard University)One of the lingering after-effects of CoVid-19 was the thought that brain fog–and its impact on our mind and long term memory–were terribly real. Everybody that came out of it began to second-guess whether they were still as sharp as they were before the virus hit. And while most of us might not really get the answer to that worrying question, there is definitely a solution for it. According to a series of studies and research by Harvard University, it’s not a hard thing to do to sharpen your mind with simple things you can do every day. Whether it's sprucing up your memory or challenging your mind to do things differently, these tricks will help you hone that brain power like nobody’s business.
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| S73How much money would you need to live your ideal life?That’s the question at the crux of a recent study published in the journal Nature Sustainability, which surveyed about 220 people in each of 33 countries about the amount of wealth they’d require to live their version of an ideal life. Based on this number, participants were asked to choose the prize they’d hope to win in a lottery, with options ranging from $10,000 at the low end to $100 billion at the high end—an amount so large, the study’s author’s say, that it’s tantamount to unlimited wealth.
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| S74Everything I own was stolen from the Uhaul I rented for a cross-country moveYeah, two months ago I had a lot of things. I had 31-years worth of things I’d accumulated and curated; you know how one does. I had spent time finding things I loved; that were me. Along with the many pairs of boots, a couch, a queen-sized bed, and a 45-inch TV (objects that money can replace), I had decades worth of invaluable things—an African mask from my father’s youthful trip to Ghana, his Morehouse College sweatshirt that had faded just right with time—all passed down to me when he died.
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| S75This Anti-Tracking Tool Checks If You're Being FollowedMatt Edmondson, a federal agent with the Department of Homeland Security for the last 21 years, got a call for help last year. A friend working in another part of governmentâhe won't say which oneâwas worried that someone might have been tailing them when they were meeting a confidential informant who had links to a terrorist organization. If they were being followed, their source's cover may have been blown. "It was literally a matter of life and death," Edmondson says.
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| S76The End of Manual TransmissionI drive a stick shift. It’s a pain, sometimes. Clutching and shifting in bumper-to-bumper traffic wears you out. My wife can’t drive my car, which limits our transit options. And when I’m at the wheel, I can’t hold a cold, delicious slushie in one hand, at least not safely. But despite the inconvenience, I love a manual transmission. I love the feeling that I am operating my car, not just driving it. That’s why I’ve driven stick shifts for the past 20 years.
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| S77What We Gain from a Good Bookstore“Will the day come where there are no more secondhand bookshops?” the poet, essayist, and bookseller Marius Kociejowski asks in his new memoir, “A Factotum in the Book Trade.” He suspects that such a day will not arrive, but, troublingly, he is unsure. In London, his adopted home town and a great hub of the antiquarian book trade, many of Kociejowski’s haunts—including his former employer, the famed Bertram Rota shop, a pioneer in the trade of first editions of modern books and “one of the last of the old establishments, dynastic and oxygenless, with a hierarchy that could be more or less described as Victorian”—have already fallen prey to rising rents and shifting winds. Kociejowski dislikes the fancy, well-appointed bookstores that have sometimes taken their place. “I want chaos; I want, above all, mystery,” he writes. The best bookstores, precisely because of the dustiness of their back shelves and even the crankiness of their guardians, promise that “somewhere, in one of their nooks and crannies, there awaits a book that will ever so subtly alter one’s existence.” With every shop that closes, a bit of that life-altering power is lost and the world leaches out “more of the serendipity which feeds the human spirit.”
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| S78S79Welcome to the Sean McVay MomentSEARCHING FOR A vodka soda, Sean McVay walks me through the expansive refurbished kitchen of his new 9,000-square-foot house in a double-security-gated Hidden Hills community that also is home to Drake, Miley Cyrus, the Jenners and Kardashians just up the 101 Freeway from Los Angeles. It's a May afternoon, in the spring after he got everything he ever wanted. He and his soon-to-be wife, Veronika Khomyn, have just moved in. Boxes are scattered. Shelves and walls and rooms are vast and mostly empty; a soft echo accompanies conversation. He just got home from work and wants to unwind. Where the vodka sodas are stored, he's unsure. He walks to a built-in cabinet and presses the door. It doesn't open. He presses it again. Nope. He moves to another. It opens, but it's empty.
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| S80S81Who are the real queens of 'Six'?Authors Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss found inspiration for their hit musical in the lives and loves of King Henry VIII, but SIX tells the story from the women’s point of view. Each queen gets her moment in the spotlight to explain her fate of being “Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived.”
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| S82What you need to know to watch HBO's House of the DragonHouse of the Dragon, the long-awaited prequel to Game of Thrones, is finally here, and you know what that means: It’s time for a refresher course on the Targaryens — the family that ruled for three centuries over all of Westeros. Thanks to one talented fanartist, we have a gorgeous family tree to help you figure out what’s happening when the show premieres Sunday night.
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| S83The purest food on Earth?Today, he enjoys the subtle touch of ghee in many of his favourite Bengali dishes, adding it to steamed rice with fried kaatla fish (Indian carp) for ghee bhaat, and swirling it into phyaana bhaat, a one-pot rice dish cooked with its own starch, mashed potato and a boiled egg. Even his khichuri (also spelled khichdi), a comforting rice and lentil porridge Karmakar associates with rainy days, is incomplete without the ubiquitous fat.
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| S84S85The needless drama of buying a PS5Securing a PS5 is not easy, and it feels like it could be. With a combination of greed and incompetence, the stores selling PS5s in the United States have transformed the process into a weirdly dramatic affair where you’re forced to join Discords and follow overly exuberant guys on Twitter in the hopes that they’ll give you a heads-up on a PS5 “drop” — a store making a big shipment of PS5s available for purchase. These stores have turned every drop into an event, when really, buying a PS5 should be as easy as buying a pepper grinder.
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| S86The Ballad of Razzlekhan and Dutch, Bitcoin's Bonnie and ClydeIt was around 3 a.m. the first time they arrived. An unmarked, nondescript government-issued vehicle pulled up to the towering brown brick and blue glass building in downtown Manhattan known simply by its address: 75 Wall Street. The city that never sleeps was in that rare moment when the ostinato of car horns and rattling subway cars had been replaced by a deep, albeit brief, slumber. The agents stepped out of their vehicle and walked through the revolving doors of the 42-story building, crossing the shiny white oak floors of the lobby to reach the doorman on duty that night. It was 2021, in the midst of the second wave of the COVID pandemic, and the bottom 18 floors of "75," which had originally opened as the Andaz Hotel, had shuttered because of the virus. Seeing anyone at this hour was rare for the doorman, but seeing a group of federal agents was an utter anomaly.
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| S87S88Why a Life-Threatening Pregnancy Complication Is on the RiseIt’s impossible to pinpoint when ob-gyns sensed that preeclampsia—a surge in blood pressure in the later stages of pregnancy that endangers both mother and baby—was increasing among their patients during the COVID pandemic. Preeclampsia affects some two hundred thousand pregnant people in the U.S. per year, and case numbers had been ticking steadily upward for a couple of decades (although some of this increase was attributable to improvements in how doctors diagnose the disease). But this seemed to be more than an uptick; this felt like a jump. Physicians describe not a eureka moment but a creeping realization, a longitudinal hunch. Group texts and Facebook forums lit up with talk of more patients whose labor had to be induced early owing to blood-pressure spikes; doctors told one another that they were seeing more preterm births and more stillbirths. “Right away, there was chatter about more hypertension and preeclampsia being noticed in the COVID hot spots,” Jennifer Jury McIntosh, a maternal-fetal-medicine specialist in Milwaukee, said.
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