Why we need new words for life in the Anthropocene

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Why we need new words for life in the Anthropocene One day, Harold Antoine Des Voeux realised he lacked a word. It was the beginning of the 20th Century, and the doctor had been treating multiple people for lung ailments. Gradually, he figured out the reason for the excess illness he was seeing: it was the air pollution caused by nearby factories burning so much coal. In one 1909 incident that affected Glasgow, more than 1,000 people had died. There was no name for this pollution, so Des Voeux coined one: "smog" – a portmanteau of smoke and fog. "He didn't ask for permission. He didn't consult a linguist. He just put it in his paper and announced it," says Heidi Quante, an artist who specialises in new environmental vocabulary. "It became a neologism, because people were desperate to name what was in the air."­ Continued here

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Preparing to Announce Layoffs in a Virtual Meeting If your team is preparing to announce layoffs virtually, calculated preparation for your executive team is critical. This isn’t just another Zoom meeting; this is an announcement that affects people’s livelihoods and the future of your organization. With the proper preparation, though, you can effectively and compassionately address layoffs online. You’ll need to do the following: first, block out rehearsal time so you’re prepared. Visualize your audience of employees to project empathy. Use body language effectively to appear authentic. Look directly at the camera to show honesty. And finally, stay calm and project confidence by remembering to breathe. Continued here

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How to Master the Mind-Body Connection and Become a Better Leader Dr. Tara Swart discusses the mind-body connection, and how science can help you gain more discipline, calm, and clarity. Continued here

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The Summer-Camp Feeding Frenzy Has Already Begun The “every family for itself” approach to child care in the U.S. means parents’ options for three months of the year are shelling out for expensive camps, fighting for limited slots in affordable programs, or nothing. New Year’s resolutions had barely been resolved before parents across the nation started thinking ahead to summer. The scramble to sign kids up for summer camp begins in January, because limited slots and huge demand have led to a highly competitive environment that verges on absurd. Case in point: Rachael Deane, a mother in Richmond, Virginia, has a summer-camp spreadsheet. She joked to me that it is “more sophisticated than a bill tracker” she uses to follow legislation in her work at a children’s-advocacy nonprofit; the spreadsheet is color-coded, and registration dates are cross-posted onto her work calendar so she can jump into action as soon as slots open. Continued here

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The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think | Quanta Magazine People often think they know what causes chronic depression. Surveys indicate that more than 80% of the public blames a "chemical imbalance" in the brain. That idea is widespread in pop psychology and cited in research papers and medical textbooks. Listening to Prozac, a book that describes the life-changing value of treating depression with medications that aim to correct this imbalance, spent months on the New York Times bestseller list. The unbalanced brain chemical in question is serotonin, an important neurotransmitter with fabled "feel-good" effects. Serotonin helps regulate systems in the brain that control everything from body temperature and sleep to sex drive and hunger. For decades, it has also been touted as the pharmaceutical MVP for fighting depression. Widely prescribed medications like Prozac (fluoxetine) are designed to treat chronic depression by raising serotonin levels. Continued here

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ChatGPT Isn't the Only Way to Use AI in Education Soon after ChatGPT broke the internet, it sparked an all-too-familiar question for new technologies: What can it do for education?  Many feared it would worsen plagiarism and further damage an already decaying humanism in the academy, while others lauded its potential to spark creativity and handle mundane educational tasks.   Of course, ChatGPT is just one of many advances in artificial intelligence that have the capacity to alter pedagogical practices.  The allure of AI-powered tools to help individuals maximize their understanding of academic subjects (or more effectively prepare for exams) by offering them the right content, in the right way, at the right time for them has spurred new investments from governments and private philanthropies.   Continued here

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‘Unfortunate Family’ Mass shootings like the ones in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay shatter communities—and swell the number of those united by grief. 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. Continued here

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Foreign currency shortages are cutting Nigerians off from Apple Music, AliExpress, and more In July 2021, Lagos-based software engineer Sodiq Lawal was working on a project for a fintech startup when the Central Bank of Nigeria suddenly discontinued the sale of foreign currencies to independent traders. The directive, issued to stop the illicit flow of foreign currencies, led to a surge in demand for foreign currencies. Soon, banks in the country reduced or discontinued international payments via domestic debit cards. Lawal could no longer pay his monthly subscription fee for Amazon Web Services (AWS), which he needed for his project, using his naira card. By the time he figured out how to make the payment, his AWS subscription had become more expensive due to currency depreciation. Lawal was forced to limit the scope of his project to save server space and costs. “We removed some parts of the project” and rushed to make up for lost time, he told Rest of World, adding that this significantly reduced the project’s functionality. Continued here

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The Flu-ification of COVID Policy Is Almost Complete For all the legwork that public-health experts have done over the past few years to quash comparisons between COVID-19 and the flu, there sure seems to be a lot of effort nowadays to equate the two. In an advisory meeting convened earlier today, the FDA signaled its intention to start doling out COVID vaccines just like flu shots: once a year in autumn, for just about everyone, ad infinitum. Whatever the brand, primary-series shots and boosters (which might no longer be called “boosters”) will guard against the same variants, making them interchangeable. Doses will no longer be counted numerically. “This will be a fundamental transition,” says Jason Schwartz, a vaccine policy expert at Yale—the biggest change to the COVID-vaccination regimen since it debuted. Hints of the annual approach have been dropping, not so subtly, for years. Even in the spring of 2021, Pfizer’s CEO was floating the idea of yearly shots; Peter Marks, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, teased it throughout 2022. This past September, Joe Biden officially endorsed it as “a new phase in our COVID-19 response,” and Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID czar, memorably highlighted the convenience of combining a flu shot and a COVID shot into a single appointment: “I really believe this is why God gave us two arms.” Continued here

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The Real Zombie Fungus That Inspired HBO's 'The Last of Us' Humans will probably never face a fungal apocalypse, but in the insect world, mind-controlling fungi can pose a serious threat In typical zombie apocalypse stories, like The Walking Dead, World War Z and Train to Busan, a virus quickly transforms people into bloodthirsty monsters. But The Last of Us, a new HBO show based on a video game of the same name, bucks convention in a couple of ways. Continued here

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The Workforce Is Failing Women. Business Leaders Can Stop It The past few years have shone a brighter light on women’s experiences at work: We’re exhausted, we’re underpaid, and we’re constantly battling for basic rights. In fact, we’re well in the depths of a “she-cession”: One in three women are looking to downshift their careers or leave the workforce entirely, joining the millions of women who have already exited these past few years.  This story is from the WIRED World in 2023, our annual trends briefing. Read more stories from the series here—or download or order a copy of the magazine. Continued here

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Sam Smith’s Radical Centrism Sam Smith’s music defines the word inoffensive—so why does the singer inspire so many arguments? For more than a decade, Smith’s distinctive voice has soaked through the collective consciousness like the syrup in a rum cake. But that success has also triggered annoyance from across the cultural spectrum. As a nonbinary person, Smith has been treated as a punch line by right-wing media. Earlier in their career, they also ticked off the queer commentariat by misstating gay history and tsk-tsking about Grindr. All along, critics have made sport of Smith for formulaic songwriting, mannered vocals, and a tendency to hire church choirs as if they’re available on Taskrabbit to install soul on demand. The latest round of sniping against Smith has been particularly vicious, and telling. Late last year, Smith donned two very standard pop-star outfits: a sparkly bodysuit at a concert, and a skimpy bathing suit for a series of Instagram photos taken on a boat. Whereas the Harry Styleses of the world had been ogled for doing the same, Smith received waves of mockery on social media for how they looked. That nastiness, Smith’s defenders quickly noted, provided an example of the double standards that queer people face. But it also demonstrated the ridiculous body standards that basically everyone, in one way or another, must navigate. After all, Smith had been singled out for flaunting proportions more common than those of a slender Styles or a sculptural Kardashian. 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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How Much of a Threat Is TikTok, Really? TikTok’s influence is expanding well beyond the social sphere. The app is increasingly being used for the types of internet searches one would normally rely on a web search engine for. The video-based social app might not seem like the best place to get answers to your burning questions, but many users have made it their tool of choice for finding bars and restaurants to visit, movies to watch, or clothes to wear. It’s a trend that has companies like Google more than a little concerned. The popularity of the app has also raised the hackles of US lawmakers, who have cited security concerns and even introduced legislation calling for a wholesale national TikTok ban. This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED's Lily Hay Newman joins us to discuss why all the kids are using TikTok for search and dig into whether the app’s ownership by a Chinese firm really makes it a national security threat. Continued here

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The First 'A.I. Lawyer' Will Help Defendants Fight Speeding Tickets Two people equipped with Bluetooth earpieces will repeat to a judge what the robot tells them It can make art, write essays and even play chess. Now, artificial intelligence will try something new: offering legal counsel. Next month, an A.I. will make its way to the courtroom to help two defendants fight speeding tickets. Continued here

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101 Very Simple Habits That Will Improve Your Life Today No. 33: Find a reason or opportunity to ride a bike. Continued here

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The New MacBook Pro Makes the Best a Little Better If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED When you need power from your laptop, it's smart to plug in the charger to eke out as much performance as possible. However, Apple's first M1-powered MacBook Pro models marked a sea change in this ideology, offering comparable performance whether you were hooked up to a wall outlet or not. The new 2023 MacBook Pro models—powered by the enhanced M2 Pro and M2 Max chipsets—progress the very same trick, though they don't add much else.  Continued here

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In Salman Rushdie's New Book, Stories Outlive Tyrants ‘Victory City’ comes just six months after the author survived a violent attack at a speaking event Salman Rushdie, the prolific writer behind award-winning novels such as Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses, is releasing a new book. It hits shelves on February 7—just six months after an assailant violently attacked him as he took a stage in Chautauqua, New York, to deliver a lecture. Continued here

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Have You Seen This David Bowie Dress? A London Museum Is Looking For It The Museum of London Docklands is hoping to locate lost garments for an exhibition on Jewish fashion designers If you happen to have the dress David Bowie sported on the cover of his 1970 album, The Man Who Sold the World, around the house, then a certain London museum wants to hear from you. Ditto if you’ve got Sean Connery’s original James Bond shirts hanging up somewhere. Oh, and also any Madame Isobel gowns you might have stashed away. Continued here

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Research: What Fragile Masculinity Looks Like at Work A large body of research has shown that when men feel that their gender identity is being questioned or threatened, they are much more likely than women in similar situations to respond by engaging in harmful behaviors. But how does the fragility of masculine identity impact the workplace specifically? The authors share insights from their recent research with employees from across the U.S. and China, in which they found that men (but not women) tend to respond to perceptions that their gender identity has been questioned with a wide variety of harmful workplace behaviors, including withholding help, mistreating coworkers, stealing company property, and lying for personal gain. To address this effect, the authors argue that men must acknowledge that it exists, learn to recognize it in themselves, and proactively embrace a healthier version of masculinity, while managers and leaders can take steps to dismantle the structures that may be driving men to feel that their masculinity is being threatened in the first place. Ultimately, the authors suggest that a workplace culture in which everyone feels that their gender identities are validated, rather than questioned or threatened on the basis of outdated stereotypes, will benefit everyone — both helping men feel more comfortable at work, and reducing the destructive behavior that so often follows when they don’t. Continued here

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Assessment: Identify Your Entrepreneurial Personality Type Are you more like Jeff Bezos or Arianna Huffington? Continued here

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Meet the Latest Housing-Crisis Scapegoat Blaming the housing crisis on hedge funds and private equity may be easy, but it’s dead wrong. In reporting on the housing crisis, I often hear some version of a simple story purporting to explain why so many Americans struggle to afford a place to live. The story goes like this: Housing costs are unaffordable because [INSERT BAD COMPANY HERE] is greedy and jacking up prices. The villain can be Airbnb or developers; it can be deep-pocketed foreigners or iBuyers. The story is compelling because it does not directly implicate regular people, sympathetic institutions, or elected officials. Continued here

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Asteroid Measurements Make No Sense A couple of newly discovered asteroids whizzed past our planet earlier this month, tracing their own loop around the sun. These two aren’t any more special than the thousands of other asteroids in the ever-growing catalog of near-Earth objects. But a recent news article in The Jerusalem Post described them in a rather eye-catching, even startling, way: Each rock, the story said, is “around the size of 22 emperor penguins stacked nose to toes.” Now, if someone asked me to describe the size of an asteroid (or anything, for that matter), penguins wouldn’t be the first unit that comes to mind. But the penguin asteroid is only the latest example of a common strategy in science communication: evoking images of familiar, earthly objects to convey the scope of mysterious, celestial ones. Usually, small asteroids are said to be the size of buses, skyscrapers, football fields, tennis courts, cars—mundane, inanimate things. Lately, though, the convention seems to be veering toward the weird. Continued here

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How to Make Envy Work For You All through my childhood and adolescence, I felt this invisible pressure to shape my career a certain way. I was born into a family of educators and doctors. My parents and the society-at-large had fairly specific ideas about what a “suitable” career looked like. There was a sense that I needed to indulge them before my own curiosities. In India, if you are a reasonably good student, pursuing medicine or engineering is preordained. Continued here

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The Motiveless Malignity of the California Shootings A few years ago, a photographer in China captured a sign in a government office with one of those amusing translation errors. The sign said, in Chinese, 伤残评定办 (“Disability Assessment Office”), which was rendered in English as “Office of Mayhem Evaluation.” I found this phrase so charmingly bureaucratic that when I started writing about terrorism, I considered having it posted on my office door. We at the American bureau of the Office of Mayhem Evaluation have suffered through a busy and perplexing few days. On Saturday, 72-year-old Huu Can Tran allegedly shot and killed 10 people in Monterey Park, California. On Monday, 66-year-old Chunli Zhao allegedly shot and killed seven people in Half Moon Bay, about 400 miles up the California coast. The first shooter is dead and left only fleeting traces of a motive. Zhao is in custody, and his motives are similarly resistant to evaluation, although according to early reports he is an ornery type. Apparently he was once accused of threatening to attack someone with a knife, and of attempting to smother him with a pillow (that most comfy of deadly weapons). Adding to the perplexity are these men’s age and ethnicity: both senior citizens, and both ethnically Chinese. Continued here

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Kodak's Downfall Wasn't About Technology A generation ago, a “Kodak moment” meant something that was worth saving and savoring. Today, the term increasingly serves as a corporate bogeyman that warns executives of the need to stand up and respond when disruptive developments encroach on their market. Unfortunately, as time marches on the subtleties of what actually happened to Eastman Kodak are being forgotten, leading executives to draw the wrong conclusions from its struggles. Continued here

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3 Tips to Make Workplace Flexibility a Winning Proposition for Your Team Become an employer of choice with these simple steps to build trust, connection, and accountability. Continued here

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Whatever Happened to Toilet Plumes? In the dark early days of the pandemic, when we knew almost nothing and feared almost everything, there was a moment when people became very, very worried about toilets. More specifically, they were worried about the possibility that the cloud of particles toilets spew into the air when flushed—known in the scientific literature as “toilet plume”—might be a significant vector of COVID transmission. Because the coronavirus can be found in human excrement, “flushing the toilet may fling coronavirus aerosols all over,” The New York Times warned in June 2020. Every so often in the years since, the occasional PSA from a scientist or public-health expert has renewed the scatological panic. In retrospect, so much of what we thought we knew in those early days was wrong. Lysoling our groceries turned out to not be helpful. Masking turned out to be very helpful. Hand-washing, though still important, was not all it was cracked up to be, and herd immunity, in the end, was a mirage. As the country shifts into post-pandemic life and takes stock of the past three years, it’s worth asking: What really was the deal with toilet plume? Continued here

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You've Been Called Out for a Microaggression. What Do You Do? As a person who wants to be an ally to members of marginalized groups, how should you respond after a colleague calls you out for committing a microaggression? First, make sure the other person feels heard. Replace your instinctive defensiveness with curiosity and empathy. Listen with an open heart and mind. Be grateful: Your colleague is telling you how you’re showing up in the world in order to help you become a more evolved person. Next, offer a sincere apology. Say something like, “Thank you for telling me. I appreciate that you trust me enough to share this feedback. I am sorry that what I said was offensive.” Finally, commit to doing better in the future. Say, “I care about creating an inclusive workplace and I want to improve. Please keep holding me accountable.” Continued here

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Most Criminal Cryptocurrency Funnels Through Just 5 Exchanges For years, the cryptocurrency economy has been rife with black market sales, theft, ransomware, and money laundering—despite the strange fact that in that economy, practically every transaction is written into a blockchain’s permanent, unchangeable ledger. But new evidence suggests that years of advancements in blockchain tracing and crackdowns on that illicit underworld may be having an effect—if not reducing the overall volume of crime, then at least cutting down on the number of laundering outlets, leaving the crypto black market with fewer options to cash out its proceeds than it’s had in a decade. In a portion of its annual crime report focused on money laundering that was published today, cryptocurrency-tracing firm Chainalysis points to a new consolidation in crypto criminal cash-out services over the past year. It counted just 915 of those services used in 2022, the fewest it’s seen since 2012 and the latest sign of a steady drop-off in the number of those services since 2018. Chainalysis says an even smaller number of exchanges now enable the money-laundering trade of cryptocurrency for actual dollars, euros, and yen: It found that just five cryptocurrency exchanges now handle nearly 68 percent of all black market cash-outs.  Continued here

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U.S. and European markets are "very hard to please": VinFast's CEO on its global ambitions Founded in 2017, Vietnam-based automaker VinFast pivoted to exclusively making electric vehicles just five years after launch. In 2022, it began exporting to the U.S. market, announcing it would set up a factory in North Carolina and pursue an IPO. Its ambitions have given it a reputation as a fast-moving force, but it’s also caused confusion: Where did VinFast come from, and why is the upstart already challenging giants like Tesla on their home soil? VinFast not only has the backing of its powerful parent company, Vingroup, but it also fits the conglomerate’s pattern of trying new ventures, from smartphones to e-commerce. EVs, however, are a challenge on another scale. Continued here

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In Alaska, Hungry Wolves Have Started Eating Sea Otters After devouring their island’s deer, these canines may be the first land predators to rely on sea otters as a main food source Wolves on an Alaskan island have turned to hunting and eating sea otters as their main source of food, after decimating the local deer population. This might be the first case of these marine mammals becoming the primary food source for a land-based predator, per a statement. Continued here

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3 Considerations to Help You Succeed in Any Market Condition Cultivating a resilient mindset is the surest path to sustained success. Continued here

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Why You Should Approach Your Career Like a Game A gamer is someone who maneuvers, anticipates, adjusts, and responds to the world. Someone who thinks, plans, and acts with intention and forethought. In other words: a human being. You have a goal. You use actions to achieve that goal. Your actions are driven by strategy. Every time you use a strategy to achieve your goals, you play a game. Continued here

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3 Ways to Effectively Differentiate Your Company Differentiation is never more important than in tough times. Here are three ways to make sure your brand stands out. Continued here

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The Meme That Defined a Decade Over the past 10 years, the “This Is Fine” dog has evolved from a joke into an indictment. Memes rarely endure. Most explode and recede at nearly the same moment: the same month or week or day. But the meme best known as “This Is Fine”—the one with the dog sipping from a mug as a fire rages around him—has lasted. It is now 10 years old, and it is somehow more relevant than ever. Memes are typically associated with creative adaptability, the image and text editable into nearly endless iterations. “This Is Fine,” though, is a work of near-endless interpretability: It says so much, so economically. That elasticity has contributed to its persistence. The flame-licked dog, that avatar of learned helplessness, speaks not only to individual people—but also, it turns out, to the country. Continued here

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Everything You (Don't) Want to Know About Raising Capital Most entrepreneurs understand that if the fundamentals of a business idea—the management team, the market opportunities, the operating systems and controls—are sound, chances are there’s money out there. The challenge of landing that capital to grow a company can be exhilarating. But as exciting as the money search may be, it is equally threatening. Built into the process are certain harsh realities that can seriously damage a business. Entrepreneurs cannot escape them but, by knowing what they are, can at least prepare for them. Continued here

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Robot Cars Are Causing 911 False Alarms in San Francisco For some residents of San Francisco, the robotic future of driving is just a tap away. Ride-hailing services from GM subsidiary Cruise and Alphabet company Waymo allow them to summon a driverless ride with an app. But some riders have become perhaps too comfortable with the technology. In a letter filed with a California regulator yesterday, city agencies complained that on three separate occasions since December, Cruise staff called 911 after a passenger in one of its driverless vehicles became “unresponsive” to the two-way voice link installed in each car. Each time, police and firefighters rushed to the scene but found the same thing: a passenger who had fallen asleep in their robot ride. Continued here

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A Simple Way to Boost Your Listening Skills Less than 2% of the worldwide population has received formal education on listening effectively. Research points to a “crisis in listening” as organizations spend 80% of their corporate communication resources on speaking. But good listening skills are essential. Whether you’re helping your team pick a great idea, debating options for that next marketing campaign, or helping your client solve a problem — great listeners are seen as more trustworthy and empathetic. Inspired by the science of optimal problem-solving, here is a three-step listening tool to help you listen better. Continued here

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The Time Has Come for Trusts Trusts aren't just for the rich. Now more than ever, middle-class investors need to protect and preserve their wealth, too. Continued here

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The Best Personal Safety Devices, Apps, and Alarms From a young age, women learn that doing such normal activities as living alone, jogging, going on dates, leaving the house, or not leaving the house, could put them in harm's way. We repeat mantras to ourselves and each other: Don't go anywhere alone. Never leave a drink unattended. Check your car's back seats and lock your doors immediately after getting in.  Unfortunately, it's not always a stranger lurking in the dark who poses the biggest threat; it's often the ones we love and live with who are capable of the most harm. While we've devised many strategies to protect ourselves, a focus on personal responsibility overlooks the responsibility of those who do the harm. It also assumes that others nearby might not be able (or willing) to help—which is an important part of the conversation about personal safety. How many of us were told to scream “Fire!” rather than “Help!” should we be in trouble, and how many times have we heard of people faking injury or distress in order to victimize someone? Continued here

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How Startups Can Land a Second Meeting with a Corporate Partner For start-ups, even securing an initial meeting with a corporation can be tough — let alone establishing a partnership. To understand what works, the authors attended 150 one-on-one meetings between start-ups and corporations such as IBM, Sony, SAAB, L’Oréal, Scania, Toyota, and AstraZeneca. Our observations helped identify five best practices to help start-ups generate corporate interest in collaborating after the meeting: 1) Have clear but flexible goals; 2) Address existing problems and needs; 3) Address ease of integration and collaboration; 4) Present use cases and new value propositions; and 5) Assemble the right team. Continued here

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Why the Model Minority Myth Is So Harmful In large, conservative industries, there’s historically been a trend of promoting a small percentage  of minority professionals, who the organization then considers to be sufficient for equitable representation on their leadership teams. As a result, the one or two people of color who do make it into senior roles often have to overcompensate, or act as the “model minority.” There is huge pressure on their shoulders to assimilate in order to make themselves more palatable for their non-diverse team members, along with a fear that, if they don’t, their opportunity may be taken away. Continued here

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Italy Celebrates Return of Looted Artifacts Worth $20 Million At an unveiling ceremony in Rome on Monday, Italy celebrated the return of some 60 looted ancient artifacts and artworks, collectively valued at around $20 million.  “For us Italians, the value of these artworks, which is the value of our historic and cultural identity, is incalculable,” said Vincenzo Molinese, head of Italy’s Carabinieri art squad, at a press conference, per Artnet’s Min Chen. Continued here

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Should You Disclose an Invisible Marginalized Identity at Work? When I was a freshman in college, I worked overnights as a shift manager at the local McDonald’s. One night, my team members in the prep line were talking about their love lives. A colleague made a comment about their friend who happened to be in a queer relationship. The response was universal: disgust. I had yet to come out to my peers and was left in the uncomfortable position of leading a group of people who found me repulsive. I was terrified. What if my girlfriend popped in for lunch? What if my classmates saw me at the register and mentioned my personal life? Despite my positional power, I felt unsafe. Continued here

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Tips for Spotting Opportunities From a Salvage Expert Jim DiGiacoma of Olde Good Things Architectural Salvage shares his strategies for recognizing hidden opportunities. Continued here

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MSG probed over use of facial recognition to eject lawyers from show venues The operator of Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall is being probed by New York's attorney general over the company's use of facial recognition technology to identify and exclude lawyers from events. AG Letitia James' office said the policy may violate civil rights laws. Continued here

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How ChatGPT Is Changing the Writing Industry Human-led A.I. is the future of content, and I'm here for it. Continued here

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Worried About ChatGPT? This Cloud CEO Shares Tips to Prepare for the Coming A.I. Shift Generative A.I. is booming. Box CEO Aaron Levie shares 3 tips for navigating this moment in tech. Continued here

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Europe's stunning digital divide, in one map It’s not just the spear-shaking Sentinelese or the adamantly analog Amish who shun the 21st century. There are also a considerable contingent of Europeans who still don’t use the internet. As this map illustrates, Europe’s offliners are concentrated in the southeast of the continent. On the other hand, almost everyone in northwestern Europe is online. The map shows the share of people in regions and countries across Europe who have “never” accessed the internet. It is based on data for 2021 from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency. And it clearly shows a glaring digital divide across Europe. (To clarify, this map also shows data from non-EU states, like the UK, Switzerland, and Turkey.) Continued here

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Rumored overhaul for Windows File Explorer would tie into OneDrive, Microsoft 365 Microsoft is working on an overhaul of the File Explorer app in Windows 11, according to a report from Windows Central. The new Explorer will reportedly feature redesigned and more touch-friendly navigation, better photo viewing with larger previews, keyword and color tagging for organizing files, and tighter integration with Microsoft 365 and OneDrive. Continued here

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Q4 2022 was a disaster for smartphone sales, sees the largest-ever drop With a million layoffs and rising inflation, it turns out consumers also aren't interested in spending a ton on a new smartphone. The International Data Corporation has the latest numbers for worldwide smartphone sales in Q4 2022, and it's a disaster. Shipments declined 18.3 percent year-over-year, making for the largest-ever decline in a single quarter and dragging the year down to an 11.3 percent decline. With overall shipments of 1.21 billion phones for the year, the IDC says this is the lowest annual shipment total since 2013. Continued here

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Deepfakes for scrawl: With handwriting synthesis, no pen is necessary Thanks to a free web app called calligrapher.ai, anyone can simulate handwriting with a neural network that runs in a browser via JavaScript. After typing a sentence, the site renders it as handwriting in nine different styles, each of which is adjustable with properties such as speed, legibility, and stroke width. It also allows downloading the resulting faux handwriting sample in an SVG vector file. Continued here

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Melaku Belay: The ecstasy of Eskista, an ancient Ethiopian dance By mastering the Eskista, an ancient Ethiopian dance, TED Fellow Melaku Belay survived a childhood on the streets and became a voice for his country. He shares how traditional dances can connect the wisdom of the past to the energy of the future -- and, after the talk, delivers a thrilling performance of Eskista accompanied by a free-jazz ensemble. (In Amharic with consecutive English translation by filmmaker Mehret Mandefro) Continued here

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Airlines and cattle ranchers have beef with Google's climate math Flying premium from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a common trip for some Californians, could generate 101 kilograms of carbon emissions, or perhaps 142 or even 366 kilograms—depending on what source you search online. Continued here

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How to Avoid Writing Toxic Emails That Put Your Employees Down Cut out toxic email habits to improve productivity and grow a healthier workplace culture. Continued here

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Antibiotic resistance induced by the widespread use of... antidepressants? Jianhua Guo is a professor at the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology. His research focuses on removing contaminants from wastewater and the environmental dimensions of antimicrobial resistance. One of those dimensions is the overuse of antibiotics, which promotes resistance to these drugs. Continued here

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Do mechanical keyboards really need arrow keys? Which keys are absolutely essential to a keyboard? Many will tell you the entire numpad is, while others demand macro keys. I personally insist on a volume knob for my home office setup. And as someone who has tested 60 percent keyboards, which have no numpad or arrow keys, I'd add that for productivity and my sanity, arrow keys are also mandatory. Continued here

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Without this genius optical trick, those gigantic telescopes aren't any better than the one in your backyard The world’s most powerful modern telescopes dwarf the models you might buy to use on your porch. A decent-quality amateur telescope (costing around $1000) has an 8” to 12” mirror. Research telescopes — like Keck in Hawaii, the Subaru telescope next door to Keck, and the Gran Telescopio Canarias in the Canary Islands — range from 327” to 410” in mirror diameter and collect roughly 1,000 times more light than a backyard scope.  The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), currently under construction in the Atacama Desert in Chile, will have seven 330” mirrors, allowing it to collect 7000 times more light than an amateur device. However, each of these telescopes needs adaptive optics (AO) to exercise their size advantage over the humble backyard telescope. Why?  Continued here

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Why the origin of life and the Universe itself might be forever unknowable Humanity has two old, profound questions. The first question concerns the origin of all that exists, the cosmos itself. The second question asks how a lifeless world could spontaneously generate self-replicating organisms that go on to conquer the planet. These two questions of origins share a thin set of connections. The first involves Einstein’s grand General Theory of Relativity, describing the fundamental nature of space and time, and the Standard Model of particle physics, which offers ornate descriptions of the quantum fields emerging from the Big Bang. The second question focuses on the geobiochemistry of RNA replication in hydrothermal vents, as well as information-theoretic concerns about error correction in such replication.  Continued here

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Meta will allow Donald Trump back on Facebook, sparking wave of criticism Meta will restore Donald Trump's access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts "in the coming weeks" but "with new guardrails in place" to prevent real-world harm, the company said in a blog post yesterday. Continued here

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Bonhoeffer's "theory of stupidity": We have more to fear from stupid people than evil ones There’s an internet adage that goes, “Debating an idiot is like trying to play chess with a pigeon — it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.” It’s funny and astute. It’s also deeply, depressingly worrying. Although we’d never say so, we all have people in our lives we think of as a bit dim — not necessarily about everything, but certainly about some things. Most of the time, we laugh this off. After all, stupidity can be pretty funny. When my friend asked a group of us recently what Hitler’s last name was, we laughed. When my brother learned only last month that reindeer are real animals — well, that’s funny. Good-natured ribbing about a person’s ignorance is an everyday part of life. Continued here

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This one-page calendar will change how you view the year Each year, most of us throw out our old calendar and replace it with a new one. Each month, we flip our calendar forward another page, and if we ever need to know which day-of-the-week corresponds to a particular day/month combination, we have to either calculate it ourselves or flip forward/backward to the relevant month. Simple but curious questions, such as: aren’t so easy to figure out unless you actually flip to the needed month (or look up all of the months) to figure out what the proper answer is. Continued here

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Housekeeping Is Part of the Wild World Too The idea that Black people can write out of a personal relationship to nature and have done so since before this nation’s founding comes to many as a shock. Almost every day since the beginning of 2020’s COVID-19 lockdown, I have texted with my friends Suzanne and Kate. We’re not all that similar. I am Black, and they are white. We live in different parts of the country. They are in long-term, child-free relationships. I am married and have a child. But we are all writers who share a deep connection with the natural world. And our writing reflects our frustration at the way many people’s stories are erased from books held up as masterpieces of environmental literature. Continued here

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200 years of exploring Antarctica Antarctica is the remotest part of the world, but it is a hub of scientific discovery, international diplomacy and environmental change. It was officially discovered over 200 years ago, on Jan. 27, 1820, when members of a Russian expedition sighted land in what is now known as the Fimbul Ice Shelf on the continent’s east side.  Early explorers were drawn there by the mythology of Terra Australis, a vast southern continent that scholars imagined for centuries as a counterweight to the Northern Hemisphere. Others sought economic bounty from hunting whales and seals, or the glory of conquering the planet’s last wilderness. Still others wanted to understand Earth’s magnetic fields in order to better navigate the seas.  Continued here

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Get your first look at the OnePlus Pad, OnePlus' first tablet OnePlus is scheduled to launch the OnePlus 11 smartphone internationally on February 7, but it looks like a big surprise is coming along with that event: OnePlus' first tablet. On the event teaser page for the US, a new banner image features the upcoming phone and earbuds sitting on a big tablet. On the event's Indian page, there's even a new tab for the "OnePlus Pad" and an extra picture. Continued here

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By learning to hunt otters, wolves decimate a deer population People love otters, wolves, and deer. Respectively, they’re crafty, intelligent, and majestic. Put them all together on an island, though, and things get unpleasant pretty quickly. These are the findings of a new paper analyzing how a wolf population came to Pleasant Island in Alaska, learned to hunt otters, and, using this unexpected food source, thrived to the point of wiping out the native Sitka black-tailed deer population. Continued here

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4 misleading personal finance tips Financial advice is everywhere, and some popular rules-of-thumb are so commonplace that we might not stop and question them. So just how reliable are these common financial tips? “Popular advice tends to be about doing what is simple and seems easy to stick to, since people have limited willpower,” says James Choi, PhD, professor of finance at Yale’s School of Management. “But much advice is over-simplified and doesn’t take into account economic research or people’s unique circumstances.” Continued here