Is It Ever Really Possible To Make Someone Fall In Love With You?

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Is It Ever Really Possible To Make Someone Fall In Love With You? He was really tall. We had this stupid conversation about the worst household jobs, and I said it was taking out the food bin and he said it was pulling hair out of the drain. When our knees brushed under the table it felt like I’d been punched in the gut. I liked him so much. So, of course, a few days after we met, I found out that he’s going travelling for six months. Friends tend to appeal to fate in these circumstances. They tell you “what will be will be” and “what’s yours will find you”. And, I get it, there’s something soothing in outsourcing the problem to a higher power, to let ourselves imagine that there’s someone else taking care of it and that we can sit back and relax and wait for the inevitable. Continued here

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Why you could have 'face-ism' – an extreme tendency to judge people based on their facial features You’ve finally got an interview for your dream job. Dozens of applications, dozens of rejection letters – but now you’ve got a shot at the job you really wanted. In you go. Maybe you shake hands with the person who will decide your future, pour a glass of water to steady your nerves. But what you don’t know is that none of this matters. The second your interviewer set eyes on you, they decided you looked so incompetent and untrustworthy that you would never get this job. Because unfortunately, they are one of a subset of people who new research shows have a disposition to judge extreme personality traits from just a quick view of a person’s face. Continued here

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The Best Ways to Respond to Unfair Feedback at Work Early in my career I had an interaction with a boss I now regret. She began by saying, “I want to give you some feedback on your work.” With a list in front of her, she began to describe all the things she felt I had been doing poorly. She made little eye contact and had a deadpan tone. As she spoke, my heart pounded, and I began to sweat. I was angry. The first three were tasks I wasn’t responsible for; my coworker owned those duties. The remaining feedback was unexpected because it was about deliverables others had said were high quality. I had been working for her for almost a year and she had never indicated I was doing anything wrong. Not only did I feel dumped on but half of it was flat-out wrong. While I did correct her on the items that were inaccurate, I stayed silent on the other stuff. I left the meeting upset and feeling dejected. I decided she was a bad boss, held a grudge, and quit for full-time graduate school soon after. Continued here

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A Powerful Idea About Our Brains Stormed Pop Culture and Captured Minds. It’s Mostly Bunk. When Leonardo DiCaprio’s relationship with model/actress Camila Morrone ended three months after she celebrated her 25th birthday, the lifestyle site YourTango turned to neuroscience. DiCaprio has a well-documented history of dating women under 25. (His current flame, who is 27, is a rare exception.) “Given that DiCaprio’s cut-off point is exactly around the time that neuroscientists say our brains are finished developing, there is certainly a case to be made that a desire to date younger partners comes from a desire to have control,” the article said. It quotes a couples therapist, who says that at 25, people’s “brains are fully formed and that presents a more elevated and conscious level of connection”—the type of connection, YourTango suggests, that DiCaprio wants to avoid. YourTango was parroting a factoid that’s gained a chokehold over pop science in the past decade: that 25 marks the age at which our brains become “fully developed” or “mature.” This assertion has been used as an explanation for a vast range of phenomena. After 25, it’s harder to learn, a Fast Company piece claimed. Because “the risk management and long-term planning abilities of the human brain do not kick into high gear” until 25, an op-ed in Mint argued, people shouldn’t get married before then. In early 2020, Slate’s sex columnists Jessica Stoya and Rich Juzwiak fielded a reader question about the ethics of having sex with people under 25. “I am told, at least once every couple weeks, that if you’re under 25, you’re incapable of consent because your ‘frontal lobes are still developing,’ ” the distressed reader wrote. Continued here

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This is why streaming Netflix, Disney Plus, and HBO Max keeps getting more expensive Streaming services just keep creeping up in price. Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and Apple TV Plus all announced price hikes this year, which means we’re forced to have to pay more money to keep up with the shows that are actually relevant, like Andor or Stranger Things. The truth is, this trend isn’t going to stop anytime soon. Streaming services need to raise their prices or embrace advertising if they want to meet investors’ expectations. They’re just going to have to risk losing subscribers who don’t want to pay these jacked-up prices along the way. Continued here

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Why the Future Is Analog | The Walrus During the pandemic, our digital lives hollowed us out. Getting back in touch with reality could make us whole again The wall we all hit at some point during the pandemic was digital. It was a wall of video meetings, Slack threads, text chains, and emails. A wall built from Netflix and Disney+, Facebook and TikTok, Instagram, and the endless onslaught of urgent tweets. It was the wall in our hands, on our desks, and beside our pillows, a wall that we turned to for salvation but kept smacking into and then wondering why on earth our bodies were so damn beat at the end of each day. The wall was the full unleashed reality of the digital future as it completely consumed our lives. Continued here

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A (Mobile) Work Of Art: The Vibrant Home Of India’s Truckers If you are asked to close your eyes and imagine a truck, the image in your mind can never be plain. The electric colours match the eccentric lines scrawled in a mix of Hindi and English script. On a regular day at Delhi’s Sanjay Gandhi Transport Nagar, you will spot at least one person squatting on the ground, elbow-deep in a can of paint. Although the endearing, mid-80s kitsch of elephant insignias and bulbous daffodils are fading, truckers still largely express themselves through the vehicle’s art.  Asif Dhan has been painting vibrant flowers and animals on trucks since the 80s and finds the new fad of subtle Urdu couplets less charming. “Drivers ask me to paint Shayari (Urdu poetry) or religious motifs. I rarely see the innocence and charm that once ruled.”  Continued here

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Here's how much Indian pilots earn Picture this: You have spent crores getting through flying school to fulfil your lifelong dream of becoming a pilot, undergone months of gruelling training in a high-stress environment and finally navigated machines that can give up on you anytime. Once you are out of the training period, the pandemic and its salary cuts crash on you. And then comes the most unexpected situation—while you are still in the cockpit, the Indian Oil employees are on standby and refuse to refuel your flight.  "This was a daily occurrence," says Ravinder, a 29-year-old First Officer, who prefers not be identified by his real name. "We always have to make a few calls to our bosses and simultaneously placate the passengers by telling them that the flight is delayed because of some technical glitch." Continued here

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Can health wearables help you sleep better? Here’s what your trackers are actually measuring In December 1963, 17-year-old Randy Gardner embarked on an ambitious science fair project: to stay awake for as long as humanly possible. This wasn’t the first time someone had placed this cruel task upon themself. In 1959, New York City disc jockey Peter Tripp went eight days without sleep. A few months later, another disc jockey in Honolulu reportedly cranked past 10 days. Gardner believed without a doubt he could exceed both records, according to a 2017 NPR report. Indeed, he went a full day longer: an incredible (and likely painful) 11 days, or 264 hours. Continued here

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Inside the secret world of the bodyguard On the surface, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s honeymoon tour of Europe looked really rather romantic. But look closer at the paparazzi pictures and a theme quickly emerges: the couple were never without a bodyguard or two. From the streets of Milan to the shores of Lake Como, a compact, smooth-headed chap in a safari jacket tracked their every footstep. When the couple arrived in Paris, the entourage came along for the ride. J-Lo likes a security detail: she even has one accompany her to the gym. Affleck is said to be less than enthused, but the heavies went on honeymoon regardless.  They are not alone. The past couple of years have seen a surge in private security firms offering personal protection services. Squint at any celebrity photo and you’ll undoubtedly spot a figure lurking near the star, from Jennifer Lawrence (who has employed a succession of absurdly handsome giants) to the Beckham children. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are never without theirs either. And King Charles’s equerry, kilted TikTok sensation Major Johnny Thompson, first served as bodyguard to Queen Elizabeth II. Emperor Augustus created the Praetorian Guard (the first historical record of humans employing bodyguards) to shield himself and his family from assassination, kidnap, robbery and, of course, the general public. Centuries later, the private security industry is booming. Continued here

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What is wrong with Amazon in India? US e-commerce behemoth Amazon had big dreams for its India business. Since 2013, it has invested more than $6.5 billion, eyeing the top market position in what is one of its fastest-growing overseas markets. The India unit on Monday (Nov. 28) announced discontinuing Amazon Distribution, launched in 2020 to integrate small retailers, pharmacies, and department stores more tightly with its business. Continued here

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Renewable Energy Needs Storage. These 3 Solutions Can Help. We can't get energy from the sun and wind all the time, so we need storage to help us fill the gaps. Red Zeppelin from Pexels In recent decades the cost of wind and solar power generation has dropped dramatically. This is one reason that the U.S. Department of Energy projects that renewable energy will be the fastest-growing U.S. energy source through 2050. Continued here

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Why This Iconic Bollywood Actor Went to Court to Ban Anyone Impersonating Him Shashikant Pedwal said he fell in love with Amitabh Bachchan’s acting when he was a child. The 50-year-old teacher from the Indian city of Pune says he “obsessively watched his movies,” before starting to impersonate the Bollywood icon 15 years ago as a job. “For millions of fans, Amitabh Bachchan is completely inaccessible,” Pedwal, who often gets mobbed on the streets as people mistake him for the 80-year-old, told VICE World News. “Through me, they feel close to him.” Continued here

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How artists and influencers set the stage for Hip-Hop's global rise Futura 2000's Break Train, 1980. Photograph by Martha Cooper. Martha Cooper hide caption After graduating from college in 1978, Michael Holman moved to New York City for a job on Wall Street, but he says his interests soon led him elsewhere. "I'd take myself to the 1 train stop on Hudson and Chambers and these trains would roll in with these graffiti burners, covering the train from top to bottom. And I just couldn't believe what I was seeing- it was this sort of beautiful vandalism." Continued here

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Prayers? Bombs? Hawaii history shows stopping lava not easy HONOLULU (AP) — Prayer. Bombs. Walls. Over the decades, people have tried all of them to stanch the flow of lava from Hawaii’s volcanoes as it lumbered toward roads, homes and infrastructure. Now Mauna Loa — the world’s largest active volcano — is erupting again, and lava is slowly approaching a major thoroughfare connecting the Big Island’s east and west sides. And once more, people are asking if anything can be done to stop or divert the flow. Continued here

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'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' at 35: An Oral History of One of the Most Beloved Road Movies Ever Made When Planes, Trains and Automobiles roared into theaters on November 25, 1987, it was somehow both a sure thing and a big risk. Its writer/producer/director, John Hughes, was coming off a string of hits (Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off among them), modestly budgeted character-driven dramedies whose big grosses meant big profits; leading actors Steve Martin and John Candy were among the biggest comedy stars in the country. But Hughes, who had established himself as the poet laureate of ’80s teendom, was telling a story about grown-ups for a change. Martin, whose biggest film successes thus far had come in broad comedies, was attempting to remake himself as a more intellectual screen presence. And although Candy was one of the brightest lights of the SCTV ensemble, he had found precious few film roles that put his tremendous talent to full use.  But these three comic legends collaborated to make movie magic, and in the 35 years since its release, Planes, Trains and Automobiles has become not only a holiday perennial, but one of the most beloved comedies of the ’80s. To mark that anniversary—as well as its recent 4K Blu-ray and video-on-demand release, featuring over an hour of previously unseen footage for those who purchase it—Vanity Fair spoke to nearly 20 members of the movie’s cast and crew, as well as the children of the late John Hughes and John Candy.   Continued here

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Murder and Loathing in Las Vegas The employees of the Clark County public administrator's office were at odds over their ambitious boss, Robert Telles. Then Vegas’s biggest newspaper ran an exposé on the chaos, the reporter behind the story turned up dead—and Telles was charged with his murder. Now his staff is left wondering: How did it come to this? Robert Telles isn’t willing to discuss how his DNA ended up under the fingernails of Jeff German. Or why his wife’s car was spotted near the sixty-nine-year-old investigative reporter’s house on a warm Friday morning in early September, a day before a neighbor discovered German’s lifeless body at the side of his Las Vegas home. Or how an outfit matching the one worn by the suspect captured on security-cam footage wound up in Telles’s home. Continued here

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Jyoti Bhatt: The photographer who preserved rural Indian life Jyoti Bhatt was among the early students of one of the first art schools set up after India's Independence in 1947. Born in the western state of Gujarat in 1934, Bhatt documented rural Indian culture and captured the traditional ways of life and craftsmanship that are at risk of vanishing. Continued here

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The Stories That Lived in Our Heads Rent-Free This Year 2022 had more than its fair share of geopolitical disruptions and political power shifts. But amid an often overwhelming news cycle, there were a few (occasionally light-hearted and low-stakes) internet moments that the Very Online couldn't get enough of. We've rounded up some of the 2022 stories that lived rent-free in our heads, from a nation transfixed by a five-letter word game to our love of 'goblin mode' and exoplanets. Continued here

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The Woks of Life Is Shaping Chinese Home Cooking in America. And It's Only Getting Started "Do you like luffa? Chinese luffa, do you eat it?" Kaitlin asks. It's a sunny afternoon in September, and we're crouching in their parents' vegetable garden in New Jersey, near rows of asparagus, squash, tomatoes, and eggplants, the last of which we'll pick for a meal we'll cook later. The farm is part of the new headquarters for The Woks of Life, their nine-year-old blog that is arguably the internet authority on Chinese home cooking in America. I have no idea what the Leung sisters are talking about. My mind reels as I try to recall food memories from childhood that might contain the vegetable. Is it in that cold jellyfish and meat dish at Cantonese banquets? (No.) Is it another word for bitter melon? (No.) Continued here

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This Copyright Lawsuit Could Shape the Future of Generative AI The tech industry might be reeling from a wave of layoffs, a dramatic crypto-crash, and ongoing turmoil at Twitter, but despite those clouds some investors and entrepreneurs are already eyeing a new boom—built on artificial intelligence that can generate coherent text, captivating images, and functional computer code. But that new frontier has a looming cloud of its own. A class-action lawsuit filed in a federal court in California this month takes aim at GitHub Copilot, a powerful tool that automatically writes working code when a programmer starts typing. The coder behind the suit argues that GitHub is infringing copyright because it does not provide attribution when Copilot reproduces open-source code covered by a license requiring it. Continued here

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Want Happy Employees? Neuroscience Says Try This Simple Habit "This is where positivity comes into play." Continued here

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Adam Grant Says We Should All Switch to a 4-Day Work Week. Here's Why Productivity goes up. Carbon emissions go down. Should you give it a try? Continued here

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With 1 Sentence Elon Musk Explained His Biggest Flaw. It's a Brutal Lesson for Every Leader No one can do it all, even the wealthiest man in the world. Continued here

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After 20 Years, United Airlines Just Made a Brilliant Decision. (And Yes, You Should Definitely Copy It) "[T]his is good news for our pilots, our customers and our airline. Continued here

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The Cursed Goal Belgium’s elimination from the World Cup showed that sometimes, for no apparent reason, the ball just won’t go in. This is an edition of The Great Game, a newsletter about the 2022 World Cup—and how soccer explains the world. Sign up here. Continued here

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Taiwan Faces Its Ukraine Moment The island’s people seem blissfully oblivious of a looming conflict with China. The U.S. can’t afford that luxury. The night before boarding a flight home, at the end of a trip that had taken me from D.C. to Taiwan, Japan, Macedonia, Turkey, and back again, I came across a tweet that succinctly crystallized many of the fleeting impressions I had accumulated on the Pacific leg of my journey. The tweet was from Tanner Greer, a brilliant and iconoclastic China scholar, citing a quote about Taiwan sometimes attributed to Kurt Campbell, years before he became President Joe Biden’s chief Asia adviser on the National Security Council: “I thought I was going to find a second Israel; I found a second Costa Rica.” Continued here

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The Truth in a Violent Santa Sparkly tinsel, fresh-fallen snow, a nutcracker, a Christmas-tree sculpture, a tree-topping star: These are some of the objects used as weapons in the most heartwarming holiday film of the year. Violent Night, the dark comedy that premieres this week, features David Harbour as a Santa Claus who has stopped believing in himself—and who, on Christmas Eve, happens to be on the scene when a group of military-grade thieves takes a wealthy family hostage. Thankfully for the Lightstones, this new version of the jolly old elf knows his way around a war zone. Like John McClane swathed in blood-spattered furs, the St. Nick of Violent Night yippee-ki-yays his way across the Lightstone property, fighting greedy foes at every turn. “Ho, ho, ho-ly shit!” he exclaims gleefully while picking off the people on his “naughty” list. They say that monsters are culture-wide fears cast screenward. Frankenstein’s creation gave shape to panic about technological anarchy; Godzilla’s breath of fire captured the terror of atomic weapons; poltergeists and other formless demons suggest the dangers of a digitizing world. Holiday movies can do the same kind of work, but from the other direction: They reflect what people most fear by making claims about what they most value. It’s a Wonderful Life, premiering in the 1940s, considered both economic and achingly personal depression—and argued that each could be dissolved through the heady warmth of community. Home Alone’s story of a boy abandoned and then lovingly reclaimed by his family arrived during a time when “latchkey kids” were media bogeymen. More recently, an era of loneliness and unpredictability and cynicism has brought the ascendance of the Hallmark-style rom-com: a genre that centralizes love, fetishizes formula, and refuses to apologize for its sugar-sprinkled earnestness. Continued here

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How Vast Is the Cosmos, Really? This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. There are billions of planets in our galaxy, and billions of galaxies in the observable universe. Those numbers are impossible to picture, but NASA’s newest space telescope is helping us see the universe’s depths in unprecedented detail. Still, there’s one big mystery that humans might never be able to solve: How vast is the cosmos, really, and what does it contain? Continued here

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Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson Don’t Understand the First Amendment Last night, Matt Taibbi, an independent journalist, wrote a lengthy Twitter thread he called “THE TWITTER FILES.” The thread purported to expose how Twitter made the decision to dramatically suppress discussion of the contents of a hard drive from Hunter Biden’s laptop. But it inadvertently did something else entirely: It exposed the new Twitter owner Elon Musk’s profound misunderstandings about the First Amendment. Taibbi’s documents provided further evidence demonstrating what Twitter’s critics (including me) have long argued—that the decision to suppress the information was both incoherent and inconsistent. Twitter suppressed the information based on its so-called hacked-materials policy, but the application of that policy was hardly clear in this instance, especially given that the platform had, at the time, just permitted widespread sharing of New York Times stories about Donald Trump’s leaked tax information. Continued here

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The American Soccer Bar Wakes Up This is an edition of The Great Game, a newsletter about the 2022 World Cup—and how soccer explains the world. Sign up here. When the Polish team captain Robert Lewandowski stole the ball from Abdulelah Al-Malki in last Saturday’s World Cup match between Poland and Saudi Arabia, and went on to score his first goal ever in the tournament, the Poland fans at Cleos Bar and Grill in Chicago erupted in cheers. Continued here

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The Joy and Anguish of Argentine Soccer Following decades of economic turmoil and civic distrust, Argentines place the weight of their nation’s hopes on a World Cup win This is an edition of The Great Game, a newsletter about the 2022 World Cup—and how soccer explains the world. Sign up here. Continued here

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What the Jerry Jones Photo Reveals About the NFL A 1957 image of the Dallas Cowboys’ owner highlights long-standing inequities in the NFL. If you’re wondering why, in professional football, so few Black coaches get hired and Black players struggle to be heard, you can learn a lot from a 65-year-old image of Jerry Jones. In a 1957 photo published late last month by The Washington Post, the future owner of the Dallas Cowboys, then 14, stood among a group of white teenagers who were blocking six Black students from desegregating his Arkansas high school. Continued here

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How Ahmad Jamal Expanded the Spatial Frontiers of Jazz The new releases of previously unissued recordings by the pianist Ahmad Jamal and his trio, from 1963 through 1966, “Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse,” is among the jazz events of the year. (The two double albums are out on LP, CD, and digitally, from the new Jazz Detective label.) The Penthouse, a club in Seattle, was a prime musical venue in the sixties (it’s where John Coltrane’s live-in-Seattle recordings were made). In recent years, the producer Zev Feldman, working with Charlie Puzzo, Jr., whose father owned the club, has been bringing out treasures from the club’s vaults. These new albums, delights in themselves, are also crucial elements in the intellectual history of jazz. Jazz is a soloist‘s art, but it’s inseparable from the collaboration of bandmates. In the nineteen-fifties, Jamal pared down the turbulent textures of bebop to emphasize the expanses of musical space—the perfect placement of the telling note or the emblematic phrase. His idea of improvisation was bound up with his group conception—with arrangements that had the ample and intricate feel of orchestrations, he turned the minimal combo of the piano trio (first, with guitar and bass; then, with bass and drums) into a virtual big band. His musical concept was one of the great innovations of the time, even if its spare, audacious originality was lost on many listeners (including, alas, Whitney Balliett, of The New Yorker, who reviewed it negatively). It was not lost on Miles Davis, who, in his autobiography, goes into detail on the great impression that Jamal’s music—both his solos and his small-group arrangements—made on him. By decade’s end, Jamal had a hit on his hands: the album “But Not for Me,” recorded live, in 1958, at Chicago’s Pershing Lounge, which featured his tight yet rollicking eight-minute version of “Poinciana,” an instant classic. Continued here

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After the January 6th Committee This summer, shortly before a jury in Texas ordered Alex Jones, the conspiracy peddler, to pay forty-nine million dollars in damages to the parents of one of the first graders killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, there was a legal scuffle over a piece of evidence. Jones’s defense team had accidentally sent the parents’ lawyer, Mark Bankston, a digital copy of the data on Jones’s phone—a lapse that Bankston had revealed in a cross-examination of Jones. Jones’s lawyer F. Andino Reynal belatedly pleaded with Judge Maya Guerra Gamble to keep the materials out of view. Bankston said that this might be a problem. “I’ve been asked by the January 6th committee to turn the documents over,” he told the court, and he was ready to do so. “Well, I don’t know if you get to stop that anyway,” Judge Gamble told Reynal, with a laugh. Jones was of interest to the committee because of the noisy role he had played in the events leading up to the assault on the Capitol. He had hyped Donald Trump’s tweet urging supporters to be at his “wild” January 6th rally as “the most important call to action on domestic soil since Paul Revere and his ride in 1776”; Jones had attended himself, toting a megaphone. Part of the committee’s work has been to map out the Trumpist ecosystem of right-wing media, extremist groups, Republican officials, Fox News favorites, legal grifters, and even pillow salesmen. Jones was, in fact, questioned by the committee—one of more than a thousand witnesses it interviewed—and said afterward that he’d taken the Fifth Amendment. But he wasn’t the only prominent person telling Trump’s followers that they were victims of a fraud: many of those who did so held, and still hold, elected office. Continued here

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American Terror: A Podcast About the Most Militant Far-Right Extremist Groups in the U.S. The United States is fighting a forever war at home, against far-right extremism. Join host Ben Makuch as he exposes domestic terror groups and breaks down what you need to know - and how they might be stopped. Description: Reporter Ben Makuch goes deep into neo-Nazi terror groups and domestic extremism. Continued here

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The Full Cold Moon: December’s Full Moon in Gemini During the Full Cold Moon of 2022, which takes place on December 7, the sun in Sagittarius opposes the moon in Gemini, which means discussions may come to a climax and information may come to light, and with this full moon joining Mars retrograde in Gemini, quite a bit of closure may take place!  According to the Farmers’ Almanac, December’s full moon is named the Full Cold Moon due to the dropping temperature. This full moon is also sometimes called the Long Night’s Moon because as we approach the winter equinox the nights get longer and longer, and this full moon is situated above the horizon for a longer stretch of time. Continued here

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Why Molecule 01 Is the Best Cult-Fave Fragrance for Gifting My first experience with “gatekeeping” happened way back in the mid 2000s, when a very cool, rich-girl friend (or, in retrospect, frenemy) refused to tell me what her signature scent was. It was alluring, mysterious, and honestly, it’s probably what Rihanna smells like. But being the budding investigative journalist (greedy little teen) I was, I made it my mission to find out. All she would disclose was that it was from Fred Segal, because of course it was, and I made my mom drive me there to sleuth it out. If you’re an olfactory fanboy or -girl, you might’ve guessed that the intoxicating scent is Escentric Molecules Molecule 01, but if this is your first time hearing about it, don’t be embarrassed. It’s a niche fragrance that, in my memory, is the first perfume to have a serious word-of-mouth cult following, leading the way for notorious scents like Le Labo’s Santal 33 and Byredo’s Gypsy Water becoming “what all the cool kids smell like.”  Continued here

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Opinion: Artemis should be the last NASA mission to send astronauts to the Moon Neil Armstrong took his historic “one small step” on the Moon in 1969. And just three years later, the last Apollo astronauts left our celestial neighbor. Since then, hundreds of astronauts have been launched into space but mainly to the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. None has, in fact, ventured more than a few hundred kilometers from Earth. The U.S.-led Artemis program, however, aims to return humans to the Moon this decade — with Artemis 1 on its way back to Earth as part of its first test flight, going around the Moon. Continued here

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USDA approves GMO purple tomato with brain-boosting and cancer-fighting properties The first genetically modified (GM) food ever made commercially available to the public was a tomato, invented in the U.S. in 1994. Since then, a number of different genetically modified foods have been created, including corn, cotton, potatoes, and pink pineapple. Although genetically modified foods still get a bit of a bad rap, there are actually many good reasons why modifying an organism’s genetics may be worthwhile. For example, many breeds of genetically modified foods have made them more resistant to disease. Continued here

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If You're Lazy But Want Your Home To Look Good, You'll Love These Clever Things Under $35 On Amazon The very last thing I ever want to do is organize my closet. Or maybe it’s clean the kitchen? No, wait! It’s live through the chaos and expense of a bathroom or kitchen remodel. On the other hand, I do love to curl up on the couch in a home that looks clean and gorgeous. And that’s why I have spent so much time discovering hacks to make cleaning, organizing, and even redecorating super fast, cheap, and easy. If you are lazy like me but want your home to look good, you’ll love these 45 things under $35 on Amazon. One terrific hack for creating a space that’s both organized and looking good is to use your everyday items as decor. These wall racks, for example, display towels or wine bottles so they are within easy reach while also decorating the walls. Another trick I like is to find functional items that are beautiful enough to serve from, even at a party, so I don’t have to get out anything special when people come over. These elegant yet practical pitchers are a perfect example. And updating a tired kitchen or bathroom does not have to involve sawdust and demolition. Sometimes a simple thing like updating the cabinet hardware will change the look of a place and takes only a few minutes to do. Continued here

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Astronomers spot an incoming small asteroid — and make a big breakthrough Humanity is getting better a planetary defense — at least from external threats from outer space, as long as they’re just dumb rocks that follow the laws of physics. And a group of extraordinary humans proved it last week when the planetary defense community jumped into action to accurately track and predict exactly where a relatively small meteor would fall on November 19. That meteor, now known as 2022 WJ1, was first noticed by the Catalina Sky Survey at around midnight Eastern on that date (the time zone in which it ended up landing). Catalina is one of the most prolific discoverers of asteroids and is a crucial link in the planetary defense chain. A NASA press release details the steps that come afterward that result in a successful landing prediction. Continued here

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Elon Musk's 'Dune' misquote reveals a deep misunderstanding of Frank Herbert Why did Elon Musk misattribute a Jung quote to Dune? Probably because Musk doesn't get Dune. Elon Musk may be the God Emperor of Twitter, but he is certainly not the God Emperor of Dune. On November 21, 2022, Musk tweeted what he claimed was a quote from Dune, but was really a quote from Carl Jung. Many dunked on Musk right away, and his own company, Twitter, flagged the tweet as inaccurate. However, what’s most telling here isn’t just that Musk got the quote wrong, but that his misquote probably suggests he misunderstands Dune. Continued here

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Everything we know about 'Dune: The Sisterhood' Before the Spice could flow and Paul Atreides was born, the sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit existed in the world of Dune. In the lore of this dark and dangerous sci-fi galaxy — as depicted in Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 blockbuster, and its 2023 sequel — it’s difficult to overstate the power wielded by the order of the Bene Gesserit. But for those unfamiliar with Frank Herbert’s Dune novels, the importance of the Bene Gesserit can be confusing to explain. Continued here

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'The White Lotus' Season 2 Episode 6 trailer teases a shocking new betrayal Going into the final episodes of the White Lotus Season 2 there’s still a lot that remains unresolved amongst the guests at the show’s Sicilian resort. In fact, as of last week, a few more bombshells were dropped. Without a doubt, The White Lotus Season 2 Episode 6 will bring on even more tension that has the audience begging to see what goes down in the season finale. Before you dive into the season’s penultimate episode, here’s everything you need to know about White Lotus Season 2 Episode 6’s release date and time, plot, and a recap of last week’s episode. Continued here

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'Rick and Morty' takes on an epic new genre in Season 6 Episode 9 In the penultimate episode of the season, Rick and Morty are stuck in an otherworldly medieval adventure. Believe it or not, the Rick and Morty Season 6 finale is just around the corner. With two more episodes to go, fans of the Adult Swim show are eager to see how this run of episodes concludes —and how it sets the series’ future. In what has been a very different season, these remaining episodes will likely come with some big reveal or cliffhanger that complicates the multiverse for the animated duo in their future adventures. Continued here

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Is 'Wednesday' Season 2 coming out? Everything we know about the Netflix show’s future Wednesday made a bloody splash on Netflix over Thanksgiving break, and now Netflix says it enjoyed the platform’s biggest opening week ever. With Season 1 in the books, what lies in the future for Netflix’s most sullen teen? Will we see more adventures at Nevermore Academy? Here’s everything you need to know about where we left off, and what could come next. It’s a bit soon to tell. Netflix is often hesitant to offer a renewal for even its biggest hits until well after release, so there may still be a while to wait until we find out if we’ll revisit Wednesday’s world. But the series isn’t canceled either, so if you’re more of an optimistic Enid than a downer Wednesday, you can focus on that fact. Continued here

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This commonly overlooked health problem can have serious consequences — here’s how to spot it For several months during the summer of 2022, my dog Scout vomited at 3 a.m. nearly every day. If you have a dog, you know the sound. And each time, she gobbled up her mess before I could get to it, making a diagnosis of the cause difficult. The vet and I eventually settled on my hydrangeas as the source of the problem – but keeping Scout away from them didn’t work. She started to seem tired all the time – highly concerning in a typically hyper yellow Lab puppy. Continued here

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Stonestreet Museum of 19th Century Medicine Built in 1852 by Samuel Stonestreet for his son, Dr. Edward Elisha Stonestreet after he had graduated from medical school at the University of Maryland, this one-room doctor’s office has been moved on two separate occasions, and now lives on as a museum on the grounds of Beall-Dawson House. The office was initially located in the front yard of the Stonestreet Family House at the intersection of East Montgomery Ave. and Monroe St. Dr. Stonestreet practiced medicine there for 51 years until his death in 1903. Continued here

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Love Me Tender They tell me not to publish the book, they tell me not to talk about girls, they tell me not to talk about fucking, they tell me I mustn’t do anything to hurt Laurent, they tell me I mustn’t shock the judges, they tell me to give myself a pen name, they tell me to let my hair grow, they tell me to become a lawyer again, they tell me to stop getting tattoos, they tell me to put on make-up, they ask if that’s it now, no more guys, they tell me to try and talk to him, they tell me he might have taken things too far but it can’t be easy for him, they tell me it’s only normal for my son to push me away, they tell me a child needs a mother, they tell me a mother can’t exist without her son, they tell me I must really be suffering, they tell me I don’t know how you do it, they tell me, they tell me, they tell me. A backdrop of water towers, regional train stations, abandoned football fields, a Lidl carpark, ugly concrete, patchy grass, the stinking, muddy banks of the Loire river, all of it bathed in a golden light. The taxi came to pick me up in Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, we drove past Camélinat stadium, the railway workers’ estate, avenue Lénine, a bar called La Loco, we took route de la Levée, we drove along the Loire, the river was low, it was a gray day, we went past Leclerc, it has a McDonald’s drive-thru now, we took the road up through the village, the driver dropped me off outside the house. My dad in front of the TV, the chimney full of ash, the nurse coming by to give him his Buprenorphine and whatever else he takes, the little bottles of Label 5 he buries at the bottom of the bin before I get there, the broken radiators, the cold tiles, the crumbling bathroom, the dust covering everything. Sometimes I love Montlouis because of how ugly it is, sometimes I just hate it. Continued here