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Vladimir Putin's money machine is sputtering - The Economist (No paywall)
FROM KALININGRAD to Vladivostok, something has changed. A high-frequency index produced by Goldman Sachs, a bank, suggests that, since the end of last year, Russia’s annualised economic growth has fallen from around 5% to around zero (see chart). VEB, the Russian development bank, finds similar trends in its estimate of monthly growth. A high-frequency measure of business turnover compiled by Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender, has dipped. Although more circumspect, the government acknowledges that something is up. In early April the central bank noted that recently “a number of sectors recorded lower output because of plummeting…demand”.
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Vladimir Putin's money machine is sputtering - The Economist (No paywall)
FROM KALININGRAD to Vladivostok, something has changed. A high-frequency index produced by Goldman Sachs, a bank, suggests that, since the end of last year, Russia’s annualised economic growth has fallen from around 5% to around zero (see chart). VEB, the Russian development bank, finds similar trends in its estimate of monthly growth. A high-frequency measure of business turnover compiled by Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender, has dipped. Although more circumspect, the government acknowledges that something is up. In early April the central bank noted that recently “a number of sectors recorded lower output because of plummeting…demand”.
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20 Mother's Day Gift Ideas Our Editors Have Tried and Love (2025)
From photo books and iPads to board games and bike bags, we have a pick for every type of mom and mom figure.
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How To Use Gemini AI To Summarize YouTube Videos
The big AI companies are continually promising that their tech will save us time and boost our productivity—albeit with big questions about copyright abuse, illegal content, and skyrocketing energy use hanging rather inconveniently around in the background. But if you're looking to put more time back into your busy schedule, AI can be a useful tool, and maybe in some ways you haven't even thought about.
One of those might be summarizing YouTube videos. AI has already shown it can be a fairly reliable summarizer (although not always), and if you just need to extract a few salient points from a series of videos that are 15 or 30 minutes long, the time saved can quickly add up.
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A New Quantum Algorithm Speeds Up Solving a Huge Class of Problems
For computer scientists, solving problems is a bit like mountaineering. First they must choose a problem to solve—akin to identifying a peak to climb—and then they must develop a strategy to solve it. Classical and quantum researchers compete using different strategies, with a healthy rivalry between the two. Quantum researchers report a fast way to solve a problem—often by scaling a peak that no one thought worth climbing—then classical teams race to see if they can find a better way.
This contest almost always ends as a virtual tie: When researchers think they've devised a quantum algorithm that works faster or better than anything else, classical researchers usually come up with one that equals it. Just last week, a purported quantum speedup, published in the journal Science, was met with immediate skepticism from two separate groups who showed how to perform similar calculations on classical machines.
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How to Watch the Eta Aquariids Meteor Shower
This meteor shower is underway and peaks on the night of May 5-6. Here's everything you need to know to watch it and the other major showers that will appear in 2025.
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Lam Ho: How to participate in your own legal defense
Lawyers are advocates for their clients -- and, in court, they're usually the ones who do the talking. Should that always be the case? In an effort to shift this power dynamic, TED Fellow and legal aid activist Lam Ho shares how lawyers can create space for people to tell their own stories in the courtroom, making them active participants in the legal process and producing surprisingly positive results.Continued here
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Luisa Neubauer: The fairy tales of the fossil fuel industry -- and a better climate story
The fossil fuel industry is a factory of fairy tales, says activist and School Strike for Climate organizer Luisa Neubauer. Tracing the industry's five-decade trickle of lies about climate science, she busts the myth that economic growth and stability are dependent on fossil fuels -- and issues a resounding message about how we can actually move towards a just world. "[The future] won't be built for those who have brought us into this mess," she says. "It will be built for everyone else."Continued here
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How Black queer culture shaped history
Names like Bayard Rustin, Frances Thompson and William Dorsey Swann have been largely erased from US history, but they and other Black queer leaders played central roles in monumental movements like emancipation, civil rights and LGBTQ+ pride, among others. In this tribute to forgotten icons, queer culture historian and TED Fellow Channing Gerard Joseph shares their little-known stories, connecting the origins of drag in the 1880s to the present day and exploring the awesome power to choose how we define ourselves.Continued here
Monday 28th April 2025
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