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The Office of Strategy Management Most large organizations fail to achieve profitable growth—despite ambitious plans. Why the gap between intended and actual performance? There’s an alarming disconnect between the parts of the organization that formulate corporate strategy and the functions, processes, and people required to execute it. Continued here

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Delta Air Lines Quietly Made a Surprising Change that Will Make Its Best Customers Very Happy The airline revamped the dashboard for its frequent travelers. Continued here

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For Gen Z, the Career Grind is Dead. They See Things Differently in 1 Important Way The young'uns have less need for cognitive closure compared to their older counterparts. Continued here

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Why Are Your Employees Actually Quitting? You Can Narrow It Down to 1 Reason A basic understanding of human motivation, and what employees say they actually need will keep them from quitting. Continued here

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3 Powerful Ways to Reset a Bad Day and Turn It Into a Good Day, According to a Social Psychologist If you're having a bad day, don't just grit your teeth and power through. Continued here

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People With High Emotional Intelligence Use This Simple Language Trick to Become More Persuasive Give it a try. I do think you're going to find it's probably worth the simple effort. Continued here

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The parents who sever ties with their children Helen hasn’t spoken with her son in more than a year. The last she heard, he was in prison. Now aged 31, he’s been addicted to opioids for more than a decade. “He’s tried to call me, probably to ask for money, and I have not been picking up,” explains Helen, who lives in England. “Right now, that’s the right decision for my safety and sanity.” As the primary caregiver for her son’s young daughter, Helen’s focus is providing a loving and secure environment for her to grow up in. Continued here

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The silent struggles of workers with ADHD When Christian got laid off in late 2022, he wasn’t surprised. The 31-year-old, based in New York City, knew he’d fallen behind on his projects as a management consultant, and underperformed with essential job duties. “I had a tough time grappling with the sorts of executive functioning that our world operates by, like being able to set up meetings, follow through with things, focus and be detail oriented,” he says. His manager had pointed out these failings for months, which is why his termination was hardly shocking. Continued here

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The chefs reclaiming Lithuania's cuisine Imagine long strands of dill swimming in a cold, beetroot soup; soul-restoring potato dumplings with your choice of cottage cheese or meat on a freezing winter's day; fried black bread with garlic you vigorously rub onto the bread yourself. These are some of the staples of Lithuanian cuisine; hearty meat-and-potatoes fare to fill you up for the labour of the day. They're all delicious, comforting and satisfying, but that's only scratching the surface of Lithuanian cooking. Tourists are forgiven for their ignorance since the tiny Baltic nation has yet, for better or worse, to tickle the imagination of travel and food media at large. Continued here

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Toya Boudy's Yakamein: A New Orleans' noodle soup While it's typically foods like gumbo, charbroiled oysters, po'boys and jambalaya that lure people to New Orleans, lesser known yakamein has been a hot bowl of local comfort for decades. In Baltimore, it's called yat gaw mein, known colloquially as "dirty yak", a brown gravy-based udon noodle dish often mixed with shrimp and found at Chinese takeouts. Throughout the Tidewater region of Virginia, restaurants make a ketchup-based version called yock. But in New Orleans, the dish's birthplace, yakamein is a street-food staple worthy of more attention. It's a delicious bowl, carry-out box or Styrofoam cup stuffed with spicy spaghetti steeped in beef or chicken broth, Worcestershire and soy sauce, ketchup, and sometimes, hot sauce. The soupy dish also has meat (usually beef, chicken, pork or seafood), is generously spiced with creole seasoning (a blend of paprika, salt, black pepper, onion powder, cayenne pepper, oregano and thyme) served over spaghetti and garnished with green onions and a hard-boiled egg. Depending on preference, yakamein can be topped with a bit of extra hot sauce or ketchup for a finishing touch. Continued here

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Yiddishe Ribbenes (grilled Jewish ribs) A Michael Twitty recipe is always more than the ingredients and instructions written on the page. There's heart, soul and a sprinkling of dos pintele yid – a quintessential essence of Jewishness. That's why his recipe for Yiddishe Ribbenes goes well beyond its literal translation, "Jewish ribs".  "Yiddishe Ribbenes is first and foremost a product of my fever dream fusion," he said. "It sits at the intersection of possible and fantastical." Continued here

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Berbere-cured salmon with mustard seed and buckthorn "For me, it starts with the name," said chef Marcus Samuelsson, whose restaurant Hav & Mar recently debuted in New York City. Samuelsson, the James Beard Foundation award-winning chef and TV personality (featuring on Food Network's Chopped and Netflix's Iron Chef) behind Harlem's acclaimed Red Rooster and other restaurants worldwide, pays homage to his Swedish and Ethiopian heritage in this new endeavour.  Samuelsson was born in Ethiopia and raised on Smögen Island off the west coast of Sweden, eventually settling in New York City. "We all have different dualities. Mine is Swedish meets Ethiopian in New York," Samuelsson said. His cultural influences shaped his culinary path and inspired the name of his newest restaurant: Hav translates as "ocean" in Swedish and mar means "honey" in Amharic. "Mar means 'water' in so many Latin languages, too," he added. Continued here

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Grilled rack of California lamb with collard-almond pesto Tanya Holland opens her new cookbook, California Soul, with a clear definition of who she is, both as a person and as a chef: "I am Black and I am African American. I use these terms interchangeably. Both are accurate descriptors. My skin is dark brown and my ancestors are from the African diaspora. I live in California and am a Californian. I claim it all…" She continues, "As an African American woman, the contribution that my ancestors made to what Americans eat and how we eat is significant. No matter where we migrated from or end up, our food comes from within us and tells our story. I am contributing and this is my story. I have a California Soul." Continued here

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Total Eclipse of the Heart: The most epic song ever written One day in the summer of 1982, Canadian vocalist Rory Dodd was summoned to the Power Station recording studio in New York City to lend his vocals to a song, written and produced by his colleague and friend Jim Steinman for Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler. "Jesus! Where's the kitchen sink?" Dodd cried, when he heard the final, jaw-dropping mix of the track. The song was Total Eclipse of the Heart. Released 40 years ago in February 1983, this gothic aria became an unprecedented international success that pushed the boundaries of melodrama in pop music. It topped the UK charts, unseating Michael Jackson's Billie Jean, was an even bigger hit in the US, and soared to number one in several countries. Tyler was an unlikely candidate for this level of chart dominance, her career having flatlined since her 1977 hit It's a Heartache. Impressed by his work composing and producing the Meat Loaf opus Bat Out of Hell (1977), Tyler asked CBS Records for Steinman to collaborate with her on her next album. "The record company at the time thought I was mad," she tells BBC Culture. "They never in a million years thought that this would come off." But Steinman agreed to work with Tyler, hearing untapped potential in her voice, which he compared in its rasping power to Janis Joplin. He has described Total Eclipse of the Heart as a "fever song" about the darker, obsessive side of love and as "an exorcism you can dance to." Continued here

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Why have so many earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria? Earthquakes in Syria and Turkey are common, but the magnitude 7.8 that shook the region on 6 February at 4:17am local time is clearly impressive. To find earthquakes this strong on this particular fault, we would have to go back to the year 1114. Ten minutes after the strongest earthquake, an aftershock of magnitude 6.7 struck near the epicentre. “Aftershocks” are earthquakes that occur after every major earthquake, and their statistical behaviour is well known. At the time of writing, others continue to affect an area stretching over 350 kilometres from eastern Turkey to the Syrian border. Continued here

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Parks versus people? Challenges facing the South African capital's greening efforts Gardens, parks, reserves and trees have been linked to cultural, spiritual and alternative medical solutions. Natural or semi-natural land areas can also deliver ecosystem services like food, storm water management and climate control. Cities can plan and manage these for maximum benefit. We discovered that Tshwane needs guidelines based on green infrastructure principles. An increase in green infrastructure awareness among city officials and residents will increase the many benefits that green spaces can deliver. Continued here

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Church of England to explore gender-neutral terms for God - women clergy's suggestions for replacing 'Our Father' The Church of England has announced it will explore alternative words to describe God, after some clergy asked to use more inclusive language in services. The dominance of masculine language for God certainly matters. As feminist theologian Mary Daly wrote: “If God is male, the male is god”. In other words, talking about the Christian God in exclusively masculine terms privileges men in society and underpins male dominance. Continued here

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'Love languages' might help you understand your partner - but it's not exactly science If you’ve ever flipped through the pages of a women’s lifestyle magazine, there’s a good chance you’ve stumbled onto a quiz promising to answer the question “what is your love language?”. Or if social media is more your speed, there’s no shortage of tweets, memes, GIFs and TikToks bringing the concept of “love languages” into the mainstream. Continued here

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Sylvia Plath's famous collection Ariel is far darker than she envisaged “Love” is the first word in Ariel, the collection of poems published by Faber and Faber in 1965 that made Sylvia Plath one of the most famous poets of the post-war generation. In many ways, Ariel, as Plath conceived it, is all about love. In the “restored” Ariel – the original manuscript that Sylvia Plath left on the desk of her London flat before her death – the word “love” recurs over 25 times. Continued here

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Burt Bacharach created music for all the ways men fall in love American composer Burt Bacharach, who has died at the age of 94, is arguably one the greatest songwriters of all time. With hits going back to the 1950s, Bacharach continued working until the age of 92. Together with lyricist Hal David, Bacharach created some of the most affecting, subtle and poignant songs of the second half of the 20th century. Within the best of them, you can hear an array of intricate characterisations, moving between the intimate and provocative, between easy listening and the more unsettling. Continued here

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Turkey-Syria earthquake: Assad blames west as agencies struggle to get aid to his desperate people It didn’t take long for Syria’s Assad regime to seek political and economic benefit from the devastation of an earthquake. As emergency services were reaching victims of the 7.8-magnitude tremor on February 6, regime-linked organisations demanded governments “immediately end the siege and unilateral coercive economic sanctions imposed on Syria and its people for 12 years”. Long-time supporters of the Assad line were just as prompt. Rania Khalek, a commentator on pro-Assad and Russian state-linked outlets, tweeted: “Syria has to deal with this horrific disaster while under US sanctions that have ruined its medical sector and capacity to respond, these sanctions are criminal.” Continued here

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How video evidence is presented in court can hold sway in cases like the beating death of Tyre Nichols Body camera and surveillance footage depicting the Jan. 7, 2023, fatal beating of Tyre Nichols was key in raising national awareness and prompting protests for police reform. It may now play a crucial part in any prosecution of those accused in his death. Five Memphis police officers have been charged with murder and are set to appear in court on Feb. 17. Additionally, the U.S. Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into Nichols’ death. Continued here

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Why is a love poem full of sex in the Bible? Readers have been struggling with the Song of Songs for 2,000 years Many Americans have heard the expression “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine” – in fact, a quick Google search turns up myriad websites offering wedding bands inscribed with the much-loved line. Search Etsy for Valentine’s Day gifts, and you’ll see jewelry, T-shirts and coffee mugs printed with the phrase. But perhaps not all of the quotation’s admirers know that its origins lie in a biblical text: the Song of Songs, which has created difficulties for readers for 2,000 years. Also known as the Song of Solomon or Canticle of Canticles, the Song of Songs stands out in the Bible because of its extensive and candid sexual content. It is a work of sensual lyric poetry that portrays scenes of actual and imagined trysts between the poem’s female protagonist and her lover. Continued here

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Cancer evolution is mathematical - Cancer is often seen as a disease that arises from genetic mutations causing cells to divide uncontrollably and invade other parts of the body. But the spread of cells away from their origins is actually a normal process in some cases. The embryo burrows into the uterus during early pregnancy. Immune cells spread from lymph nodes to sites of infection to attack the invading bacteria. And germ cells migrate to where the gonad will be during early human development. Cancer is not a uniform disease. Rather, cancer is a disease of phenotypic plasticity, meaning tumor cells can change from one form or function to another. This includes reverting to less mature states and losing their normal function, which can result in treatment resistance, or changing their cell type altogether, which facilitates metastasis. Continued here

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A nagging cough can hang on for weeks or months following a respiratory illness - and there is precious little you can do about it When was the last time you walked into a public space and didn’t hear someone coughing? After three years of flinching at the sound, it can be disarming to hear so many people coughing – and embarrassing if it’s you. But take heart in knowing that you’re not alone. A long-lasting cough following illness from an upper respiratory infection is surprisingly common. And unfortunately, with the rise in seasonal flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus, or RVS cases in the fall of 2022 and winter of 2023, there’s been a lot of coughing lately. Continued here

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Use of psychedelics to treat PTSD, OCD, depression and chronic pain - a researcher discusses recent trials, possible risks The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, which have been edited for brevity and clarity. Jennifer Mitchell: Psychedelic basically means “mind manifesting,” suggesting that the compound assists one in uncovering subject matter that perhaps is otherwise deeply hidden from the conscious mind. Continued here

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Two years after its historic deep freeze, Texas is increasingly vulnerable to cold snaps - and there are more solutions than just building power plants Texans like to think of their state as the energy capital of the world. But in mid-February 2021, the energy state ran short of energy. An intense winter weather outbreak, informally dubbed Winter Storm Uri by the Weather Channel, swept across the U.S., bringing snow, sleet, freezing rain and frigid temperatures. Texas was hit especially hard, with all 254 counties under a winter storm warning at the same time. Continued here

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What are stock buybacks? A finance professor explains why President Biden wants to raise the tax on this controversial use of corporate capital Companies have been buying back their own stock at record levels – something President Joe Biden doesn’t care for. In his state of the union address, Biden said “corporations ought to do the right thing” and invest more of their profits in producing more goods and less in stock buybacks. To encourage them to do so, he proposed quadrupling the new tax on buybacks to 4%. But what are stock buybacks, and why do some people consider them to be a bad thing? We tapped D. Brian Blank, who studies company financial decision-making at Mississippi State University, to fill us in. Continued here

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A boon for sports fandom or a looming mental health crisis? 5 essential reads on the effects of legal sports betting A lifelong sports fan, I grew up hearing tales of sports figures felled by gambling scandals – baseball stars “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, the 1978-79 Boston College basketball team and NBA referee Tim Donaghy. Sports leagues wanted nothing to do with gambling, which they feared would taint the integrity of the game. They had lobbied heavily for the passage of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, also known as the Bradley Act, which banned sports betting in the U.S. Continued here

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Tanzania has ditched school rankings. It should replace them with something more useful While announcing the results of the 2022 Certificate of Secondary School Examination, Tanzania’s National Examination Council did not provide school rankings for the first time in decades. School rankings have been announced for national primary and secondary school exams every year since the early 1990s. The rankings have become the main national talking point and students and parents often use them to determine school choices. Continued here

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Turkey-Syria earthquake: why it is so difficult to get rescue and relief to where it is most needed The death toll from the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 has climbed above 21,000 in four days, exceeding the World Health Organization’s estimate of 20,000. But it continues to rise by the hour as more grim discoveries are made under the rubble. Search-and-rescue efforts are well under way in Turkey after an initially slow response, but have yet to really take off in northern Syria. Syrians in rebel-controlled areas were kept waiting for help due political tensions and shattered infrastructure following the earthquake and more than ten years of conflict. Continued here

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Fawlty Towers reboot: with farces out and 'dramedies' in, audiences could see a darker side of Basil Fawlty Approaching its 50th anniversary, Fawlty Towers is back in the news, due to the announcement of a reboot where Basil Fawlty is now running a boutique hotel in the Caribbean with his daughter – to be played by Cleese’s real-life daughter, stand-up comedian Camilla Cleese. One question this raises is how on earth did Basil Fawlty, the cantankerous parochial hotelier in the English seaside, somehow end up in the Caribbean? A second question is why are they bringing the show back at all? Stylistically Fawlty Towers is a farce, which is a genre of comedy built around a series of increasingly absurd, exaggerated and improbable situations. Continued here

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Burt Bacharach mastered the art of the perfect pop song - and that ain't easy Easy on the ear, perhaps. But the label of “easy listening” often attached to the songs of Burt Bacharach belies the mastery of his talent in crafting perfect moments in music. Yes, Bacharach’s back catalog is filled with memorable, catchy melodies – whether they were written with longtime partner and lyricist Hal David, former wife Carole Bayer Sager or in collaboration with more contemporary artists such as Elvis Costello, Adele and Dr. Dre. Continued here

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COVID vaccines: why the UK needs to rethink its decision to stop boosters for young and healthy people Stephen Griffin is affiliated with Independent SAGE and is a Champion for the Long COVID Kids Charity. Stephen would like to thank Christina Pagel for her comments on an earlier draft of this article. The UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) recently recommended that the current autumn booster campaign, offering additional COVID vaccine doses to higher-risk groups, including people with certain medical conditions and those aged over 50, will end on February 12. Continued here

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Bahamas songbird is under threat of extinction -- but preserving old pine forests will help save it The Bahama warbler, a small songbird found exclusively on Grand Bahama and Abaco, two islands in the north-east Bahama archipelago only “became” a species in 2010. But due to its limited range and increasingly fragmented habitat, the warbler was immediately treated as a species of conservation concern. In 2016, these islands were devastated by a category five storm called Hurricane Matthew. Storms of this strength pose a serious threat to the Bahamas’s unique birdlife. So as conservation biologists, we wanted to determine how well the warbler had fared. Continued here

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Dungeons & Dragons licence changes threaten the fan community the game relies upon - legal expert explains Dungeons & Dragons has a longstanding appeal as a role-playing game – or as some players prefer to call it, a storytelling medium. But retaining users in the face of competition is far from easy, despite a recent resurgence thanks to Netflix hit Stranger Things, the uptake in remote activities sparked by COVID lockdowns and an upcoming film adaptation. To maintain its competitive edge, the owner of Dungeons & Dragons – Wizards of the Coast – is proposing changes to the ownership of the game’s intellectual property and the way it makes money. Continued here

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Managing stress at work: three things your employer could do for you Earning a living can be stressful. Whether it’s time constraints, difficult colleagues, a lack of autonomy, or an unreasonable workload, it’s hard to think of a job that doesn’t come with a certain amount of pressure. This can have a negative impact on a person’s mental and physical health, and is a major cause of long-term absence from work. An excessive level of stress is bad for people, and it’s also bad for the organisations they work for. Continued here

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The Super Bowl -- what we love but mostly hate about it This weekend, millions of North American (and worldwide) eyeballs will be glued to their TVs, beer and chicken wings in hand, to celebrate perhaps the last truly bipartisan “national holiday” that America has left: the Super Bowl. While the Super Bowl is ostensibly a football game for the NFL championship, it is really a combination of sporting event, concert and advertising convention. Continued here

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What to watch for when you are watching the Super Bowl: 5 essential reads The Super Bowl – an annual celebration of advertising, calorific bar food, Roman numerals and occasional on-field action – is upon us, again. At 6:30 EST on Feb. 12, 2023, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles will take the field in Arizona before moments later trundling off for one of the many breaks that are a feature of football. Continued here

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Should We Watch the Super Bowl? Follow @newyorkercartoons on Instagram and sign up for the Daily Humor newsletter for more funny stuff. © 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices Continued here

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“I Owe Turkey, Because I Was a Refugee”: A Young Syrian on the Earthquake’s Devastation The earthquake that struck southern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday morning, as much of the region slept, has yielded images of unthinkable torment. Thoroughfares that once hummed with the traffic and chatter of city life have been reduced to smoking, inscrutable ruins. Parking lots and paved roads have become open-air morgues, with unidentified bodies swaddled in dusty tarps and blankets. In the worst-stricken areas, civilian rescue crews have toiled in chilling temperatures to dig with their bare hands through debris, pulling out survivors and, too often, corpses. Five days in, those still awaiting word of missing loved ones acknowledge that the window for hope has narrowed. The death toll has surpassed twenty thousand, making the tragedy one of the worst so far this century. For each improbable mercy circulated on social media—a family reunited in an open field, a survivor extracted from wreckage to cheers of relief—there remain countless moments of immeasurable anguish, much of it heard but unseen. Families sleeping outdoors, for fear of aftershocks, have described the dwindling screams of survivors trapped out of reach beneath rubble. Perhaps the most harrowing reels that have surfaced show children: a baby girl born beneath wreckage and rescued after her mother's death, or an adolescent survivor recording what he'd assumed were his last moments, from beneath the remains of his home. Joe English, a UNICEF spokesperson, told the Times that "it is unlikely that a single child has emerged unscathed in the areas that have been devastated by the earthquake, physically or psychologically." Yeter Erel Tuma, a thirty-eight-year-old children's-rights activist from the majority-Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, has been staying with her family in a low-rise building that houses the local chamber of commerce while she coördinates civilian relief efforts. "We spent the night in two rooms—five families, twenty-five of us in total," she told me, in Turkish, on Tuesday. She added that volunteers had been working with AFAD, the Turkish disaster-management agency, to distribute aid. One priority for Tuma is providing psychological support in tent cities "so that children can get by without further trauma," she said. In addition to the demand for tents, blankets, sleeping bags, and clean clothes, "we need to set up play tents and need materials for that: toys, stationery, chairs for children to sit in." Continued here

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Mikéah Ernest Jennings, Prince of a Lost World On Monday, a crowd of theatremakers, artists, and friends packed into the Chocolate Factory, an experimental performance venue in Long Island City, to memorialize the actor Mikéah Ernest Jennings. The dazzling forty-three-year-old died suddenly last year, a shocking loss both to his loved ones and to the theatre at large. His face was everywhere in the room, in both pictures and videos—a queer Black Adonis, his hair as high as a peacock's fan, septum piercing flashing, eyes wide and delighted or slumberous and coy. The actor Heather Litteer, a colleague from Big Art Group, pulled on a pair of Jennings's fingerless leather gloves as she read a eulogy for her "Meeks"; the cellist Melody Giron, weeping, wore a pair of his sunglasses to play a piece by Bach. Jennings was a powerful actor, particularly in hybrid styles—dance theatre, for example, and the kind of live-camera stage performance pioneered by Big Art—and he also clearly had a gift for binding people close. For a long, wonderful while, Jennings was a New York fixture. Glamorous and dancerly, he was an acknowledged beauty—at his memorial, three different speakers mentioned the splendor of his calves alone. He always dressed to stun: a linen shorts-coverall with no shirt to go to the dump; scarves worn with Isadora Duncan panache; eventually, blouses with deep V-necklines to show off his cardiac-surgery scar. It was his combination of technical precision and puckish sprezzatura, though, that made him so crucial to difficult work onstage. Complex text was like water to him. He could make seventeenth-century English political theory sound casually modern (Caryl Churchill's "Light Shining in Buckinghamshire"); he could rattle off sci-fi nonsense in a Ludlamesque "intergalactic gay extravaganza" ("I Promised Myself to Live Faster," with Pig Iron Theatre Company); he could holler an aria against the N-word (Marcus Gardley's "The Box") right into your deep memory. A 2016 Signature Theatre production of three expressionist plays showcased his extraordinary capacity: in María Irene Fornés's "Drowning," he played a potato-shaped alien naïf, who falls in love with a picture in the newspaper; in Adrienne Kennedy's "Funnyhouse of a Negro," he dragged himself across the stage as an excruciated Jesus. I can think of no other actor who could span that particular octave in a single evening. Continued here

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Will Football Leaks Finally Blow Up the Premier League? In the spring of 2019, I was in Lisbon, reporting on the case of Rui Pinto, a young Portuguese computer hacker and antiques dealer, who had set up Football Leaks, a one-man WikiLeaks-style operation that published millions of pages of secret documents from Europe’s largest soccer clubs, exposing tax fraud, corruption, and numerous other horrors. In Portugal, Pinto was best known for his work targeting Benfica, the country’s most successful and influential club. (An executive at the time compared the scale and suddenness of the leaks to a terrorist attack.) One evening while I was in town, Benfica played Sporting Lisbon, one of its historic rivals, in the semifinals of the Portuguese Cup, and I went to a sports bar in the center of Lisbon hoping to interview fans about O Mercado do Benfica (the Benfica Market), a salacious Web site, mainly comprising leaked e-mails, that Pinto was also accused of running. (He has always denied this.) Somewhat to my surprise, the Benfica fans whom I spoke to that night were pretty reasonable—gracious, even—when talking about Pinto. At the time, he was thirty years old and in jail. Pinto was arrested in Hungary, in January, 2019, on charges of blackmail and computer fraud, and was extradited to Lisbon, where he was being held separately from other prisoners, for his own protection. Then, as now, Pinto was something of a Robin Hood figure in Portugal—a stubbornly anarchic member of the geração à rasca (generation in trouble), whose futures were choked by the eurozone’s economic crisis. While I was chatting to the equanimous Benfica fans, I happened to mention Football Leaks’ disclosures about the wild spending of Manchester City, the champion of the English Premier League. At that point, a middle-aged Englishman—a Manchester City fan—confronted me. What documents? Who was I? What was I talking about? A journalist? Making shit up as usual. He didn’t look like he was going to hit me. But he wasn’t going to let it go, either. I made my excuses and left. Continued here

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A Life Begun Amid the Ruins of a Syrian City It’s a boy, they said, when he first emerged from the rubble. The video of his rescue shows a man in a red-and-white kaffiyeh bounding across the ruined stones with a limp, naked creature pressed to the front of his body. Several seconds later, another man runs after him and flings a green blanket into the air. It is too late. The blanket falls short. It hangs and sways, useless, off the edge of a rescue vehicle. It’s a girl, they said, when the panic and confusion surrounding her rescue had cleared. She was not Turkish, but Syrian. She was not born in Aleppo, as some of the newspapers had initially reported, but in Jindires, a rebel-held town that has been the site of some of the deadliest and most protracted fighting of the Syrian civil war. These corrections were issued with moral outrage, as if the errors were indicative of the larger erasure of the refugee crisis, which they very well may have been; the fact that she was rescued at all, given the lack of infrastructure and the violence in the area, was itself astonishing. But no one pointed out how senseless it was to fight over the nationality of a baby whose mother, father, and four siblings had died when the five-story apartment building they lived in had collapsed. In the ordinary sense, she belonged nowhere and to no one. Continued here

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What Biden Didn’t Say in the State of the Union President Biden gave a boisterous second State of the Union address earlier this week, sparring with Republicans over Social Security and Medicare. Designed to advance the President's agenda, a State of the Union address is always overstuffed. But there were several hot-button issues that Biden hardly discussed, including abortion rights, the United States' relationship with China, and the war in Ukraine. The staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos gather for their weekly conversation and consider what barely got a mention, and what that tells us about the current balance of power in Washington and the 2024 campaign. © 2023 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices Continued here

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The Forgotten History of Head Injuries in Sports In July, 2015, Stephen Casper, a medical historian, received a surprising e-mail from a team of lawyers. They were representing a group of retired hockey players who were suing the National Hockey League; their suit argued that the N.H.L. had failed to warn them about how routine head punches and jolts in hockey could put them at risk for degenerative brain damage. The lawyers, unusually, wanted to hire a historian. A form of dementia called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., had recently been posthumously identified in dozens of former pro football and hockey players; diagnosable only through a brain autopsy, it was thought to be caused by concussions—injuries in which the brain is twisted or bumped against the inside of the skull—and by recurring subconcussive blows to the head. In the media, C.T.E. was being described as a shocking syndrome that had never been noticed in sports outside of boxing. In essence, the legal team wanted a historian to tell them what science had known about head trauma, and when. Casper, a history professor at Clarkson University, in upstate New York, had majored in neuroscience and biochemistry, worked in a lab studying dementia in mice, and earned his Ph.D. in the history of medicine from University College London. His dissertation explored the emergence of neurology in the U.K.—a history that included the study of shell shock and head injury in the First and Second World Wars. Casper agreed to work for the hockey players. He turned his attention to a vast archive of scientific and medical papers going back more than a century. In constructing a time line of how knowledge on head injuries evolved from the eighteen-seventies onward, he drew on more than a thousand primary sources, including medical-journal articles, textbooks, and monographs. Continued here

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New Godzilla Show Will be the Anti-MCU in One Liberating Way There won't be major overlap between Matt Shakman's Godzilla series and Adam Wingard's upcoming Godzilla movie. MCU mainstay Matt Shakman may have directed WandaVision — and is currently helming Fantastic Four — but the director’s plans for the Godzilla and the Titans series won’t resemble his prior work for Marvel Studios. Continued here

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You Need to Watch the Most Influential Superhero Reboot Ever on HBO Max ASAP After everyone from Superman to the Power Rangers was made edgier, it was easy to forget how fresh Nolan’s first superhero movie felt. As unprecedented as it is to say, we’re getting two completely different live-action Batmen on-screen at the same time in the next few years, which is a far cry from the uncertainty of the early 2000s. After the spectacular failure of 1997’s Batman and Robin, Warner Bros. had somehow taken one of the most lucrative properties in their catalog and turned it radioactive. As the years rolled by, the studio entertained every possibility from a live-action Batman Beyond film to a Darren Aronofsky/Frank Miller collaboration, but in truth, it was almost as if the bat was biding its time. Continued here

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Scientists Proposed a Massive Moon Dust Shield to Combat Climate Change. Could It Really Work? In 1991, the Philippine volcano Mt. Pinatubo erupted, sending millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere — and kicking off the modern era of thinking about geoengineering. Solar radiation management, the process of modifying the amount of sunlight that warms the Earth, has been an ongoing topic of early-stage scientific investigation and debate. But a paper published today in PLOS Climate argues that the best place to start looking at cooling the Earth might not be on the Earth at all. It might be the moon — at least that’s what a team led by Benjamin Bromley, an astrophysicist at the University of Utah, argues. Continued here

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Everything You Need to Know About Atlus' 'Etrian Odyssey Origins' Atlus might be known for Persona, but it's got plenty of other IPs too. On February 8, Nintendo announced a remastered HD collection of the first three Etrian Odyssey games. The dungeon-crawler RPG series has been on Atlus’ backburner since Etrian Odyssey Nexus was released in 2019 for the Nintendo 3DS. In fact, it’s been so long that the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection will be the first games from the franchise to be released on the Nintendo Switch. In short, it’s about time. Here’s everything we know about the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection and the Etrian Odyssey HD remasters. Yes, the Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection will launch on June 1, 2023 for PC and Nintendo Switch. Pre-orders are already available on Steam and the Nintendo Switch eShop. Continued here

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The most underrated dungeon-crawler of the decade is finally available in the America Even after rolling credits 50 hours into the experience, it asks you to start over. But instead of dumping you into a traditional New Game Plus, a completely new storyline emerges with brand-new characters and even more complex mechanics that fundamentally change how you navigate dungeons and take down the monsters inside. Occasionally overwhelming and almost always compelling, Labyrinth of Galleria winds up being one of the most robust dungeon-crawling RPGs ever — so long as you can handle its intense runtime. Continued here

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The Endings of 'The Last of Us' and 'Knock at the Cabin' Are Opposites. Which One is Right? Knock at the Cabin and The Last of Us are two parallel tales of the apocalypse that come to very different conclusions. The major twist at the heart of M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film, Knock at the Cabin, isn’t really a twist at all. The story follows Andrew and Eric, a gay couple, and their daughter Wen as they are held captive by four religious zealots who are firmly convinced that the world will end if this family doesn’t choose to sacrifice one of their own. The twist, it turns out, is that everything these zealots said was true, and a sacrifice will indeed be necessary to stave off the apocalypse. Continued here

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Starship Orbital Flight: SpaceX Successfully Fired Enough Engines for Liftoff SpaceX’s giant rocket to Mars and beyond could take its first orbital flight sometime within the next year — but questions around where it will fly from caused delays in the company’s planning applications. Now, we know that the company will launch Starships from the SpaceX Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas (which has prompted controversy). So far, SpaceX has tested all six Raptor engines on its Starship upper-stage prototype called Ship 24. The vehicle will be launched by Booster 7 — a prototype for the Super Heavy first-stage rocket. On February 9, the company fired 31 of the 33 Raptor engines. Continued here

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Everything you need to know about the 'Resident Evil 4' remake It will feature a “reimagining” of the storyline while preserving the essence of the original. After what has felt like years of rumors and speculation, Capcom finally announced the Resident Evil 4 remake during the June 2022 State of Play presentation. And what an announcement it was. It showed off the new game in action, with footage of familiar characters such as Leon Kennedy, Ashley Graham, Ada Wong, and even the deadly villagers, all in beautiful 4K. Though Capcom still has plenty of surprises up its sleeve ahead of the game’s launch in 2023, there is quite of bit of information about the stunning remake to dig through. Here is everything you need to know about the Resident Evil 4 remake. Continued here

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'Fast X' Trailer Reveals Jason Momoa's Awesome New Character After going to space in F9, where do the Toretto family go next? Fast X shows us the next stop. When Dom Toretto said he lives life a quarter mile at a time, he may not have realized how much the miles would add up. But when Fast X drifts into theaters on May 19, the Fast & Furious series will be among the longest-running Hollywood franchises of all time. Continued here

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'Hogwarts Legacy' Merlin Trials guide: How to Solve All 9 Puzzle Types It doesn’t matter what house you’re in, you can prove you’re one of the smartest wizards or witches in Hogwarts Legacy by solving Merlin Trials. One of the most iconic wizards of all time is the legendary Merlin, and in the Wizarding World, Merlin was a member of Slytherin house. With a keen mind and a penchant for riddles, Merlin left puzzles all over the grounds just outside of Hogwarts. When you first see the Merlin Trials, it’s easy to get a bit overwhelmed. That’s where this guide comes in. Here’s what you need to know in order to solve every one of the Merlin Trials in Hogwarts Legacy. Continued here

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Everything you need to know about 'Sea of Stars' the game Retro indie games have been a common occurrence in the past few years, a trend that nobody is mad at because it keeps providing players with incredible experiences. One of the most interesting games on its way from the genre is Sea of Stars, a Chrono Trigger-inspired RPG set in the same universe as the underrated Ninja Gaiden-like platformer The Messenger. The game has been in development for a couple of years at this point and we have lots of exciting information on it. Here’s everything you need to know about the next Hollow Knight-level indie darling. According to the latest Nintendo Direct, Sea of Stars will be released on August 29, 2023. Continued here

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Take-Two's CEO Just Dropped a Cryptic 'GTA 6' Release Date Clue The video game industry is shrouded in secrecy, as numerous projects are developed quietly behind closed doors. That doesn’t stop the leaks from happening, though, and few are as infamous as the Grand Theft Auto 6 leak from September 2022. This is arguably the most substantial leak in video game history in terms of volume, as over 90 videos of early footage were shared around the world. Despite this, the leak doesn’t seem to have impacted the game’s development schedule, according to a statement from Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick — a great sign for players looking forward to GTA 6. As part of an interview with IGN, Strauss Zelnick said he doesn’t think the leaks will impact the business side of GTA 6. Continued here

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Patrick Stewart Hints at a Charles Xavier Appearance in 'Deadpool 3' The exceptionally powerful telepath has been murdered on-screen multiple times in different timelines. After his tragic end in Logan and his gruesome slaughter in Doctor Strange 2, it seemed unlikely that audiences would get to see poor Charles, played by Patrick Stewart, alive on-screen again. Veteran Wolverine actor Hugh Jackman confirmed last month that Deadpool 3 takes place on both Fox’s X-Men Universe timeline (before Logan in 2029) and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s timeline (as it enters Phase 6). Deadpool 3’s unique place on two converging Marvel timelines could be a neat way to incorporate scenes with Professor Xavier. Continued here

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'Hogwarts Legacy's Opening is Ridiculous and Morbid All At Once I named my Hogwarts Legacy character Cornelius Grumblefarts expecting the game would deliver a pretty frivolous Wizarding World experience, but I was shocked to quickly discover that the game is, in fact, hardcore and ridiculous. We all remember Harry Potter as a lighthearted affair, but we also forget that the last three books are grim AF. As a reformed Potterhead who paid little attention to the Hogwarts Legacy hype cycle, I went into the experience with pretty neutral expectations and little to no information about its plot. Almost immediately, my bullshit detector began firing off. You’re admitted to Hogwarts as a fifth-year? You get some kind of special dispensation to practice underage magic? Basic rules of the Harry Potter universe are broken for the sake of making a video game plot hook “work,” but it does plop you right into a situation with two bumbling old wizards with silly names as plucky orchestral music plays in the background. In short: At least it has the right vibes. Continued here

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'Street Fighter 6' Release Date, Roster, Trailers, Platforms, and Gameplay Details Street Fighter 6 was first revealed back in February 2022. The sixth entry in the franchise will mark more than 35 years of the long-running series. After a long period of silence, Capcom has been showing off more information starting with Sony’s 2022 State of Play event in early June 2022. There are some big changes coming, but when will they be here? Street Fighter 6 will be released on June 2, 2023. Capcom previously announced it would release in the summer of 2023, so it’s still right on schedule. Continued here

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Amazon Can Barely Keep These Genius Items In Stock One of the simplest ways to make positive changes to your daily routine is by finding the clever cleaning products, car accessories, and kitchen tools on Amazon that will make your everyday chores faster and easier. To save you the scroll time, each item below has been chosen for its rave reviews (which are growing by the minute). Add just one of the genius items below to your cart and you’ll be wondering how you ever lived without it — so stock up now before they sell out ... again. If you’ve ever panicked when your car windows fogged up while driving, you’ll want to ensure you have this defogger on hand. The smooth pad instantly removes condensation without scratching the glass. Because it can be used wet or dry, you don’t need any additional products for it to work. When it’s time to refresh the perforated fabric, throw it in the washing machine for a quick fix. Continued here

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Star Wars Just Changed Darth Vader Canon in One Brilliant Way Darth Vader has made his fair share of enemies, and that list only grows longer as his spinoff comic explores the Sith warrior’s lesser-known adventures. The canon series published by Marvel and titled simply Darth Vader takes place in between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but its most recent plotline connects directly to a crucial scene from Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. In the process, Star Wars is retconning a piece of prequels history to give Darth Vader an exciting new enemy unlike any we’ve seen before. Continued here

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The Wildest Sci-Fi Show on Netflix Defies the Rules of Dream Science Alice in Borderland's Season 2 plot might have something interesting to say about mutual dreaming. For all our technological advancements, the nature of dreams still largely eludes our scientific understanding. One little-understood concept — mutual dreaming — makes an appearance in Season 2 of the hit Netflix sci-fi show Alice in Borderlands, and it raises an interesting question: can two or more people independently experience the same dream? Continued here

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The Permissionless Corporation Digital technologies are pushing decision-making ability to the edges of the organization, allowing businesses to adopt structures that are flatter and more reconfigurable than those they have traditionally used. When AI and other software make information transparent to all authorized decision-makers on the front lines, directly and without managerial filters, it unleashes their creative and collaborative potential instead of trapping them in endless reporting and coordination loops. It can help to create, in other words, a “permissionless corporation.” Continued here

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The 2 Types of Data Strategies Every Company Needs Although the ability to manage torrents of data has become crucial to companies’ success, most organizations remain badly behind the curve. More than 70% of employees have access to data they should not. Data breaches are common, rogue data sets propagate in silos, and companies’ data technology often isn’t up to the demands put on it. Continued here

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In Praise of the Incomplete Leader It’s time to end the myth of the complete leader, say the authors. Those at the top must come to understand their weaknesses as well as their strengths. Only by embracing the ways in which they are incomplete can leaders fill in the gaps in their knowledge with others’ skills. The incomplete leader has the confidence and humility to recognize unique talents and perspectives throughout the organization—and to let those qualities shine. Continued here

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What Does Wellness Mean When You're Living With an Incurable Disease? Muscular dystrophy came for my vision first, although I did not know it at the time. On the second Friday morning of April 2020, I realized quite suddenly I couldn’t read out of my right eye. I could see, but I couldn’t distinguish words. In the bedroom, I asked my wife to place a book I had never seen on the dresser. With my left eye covered, I turned around and: nothing. The cover was blended like the clouds of a Bob Ross painting. Four days later, an ophthalmologist examined me. I hadn’t noticed anything wrong with my left eye (yet), but he certainly did. You have cataracts, he told me, in both eyes, at age 31. Two months later, I started feeling this immense ache up and down my arms. Then I began losing strength in my hands, which I noticed while changing the oil in my car. With the wrench in my right hand, I went to loosen the plug on the oil pan, and my wrist and fingers felt like Jell-O. When I tried to let go of the wrench, my fingers instead curled toward my palm, contorting my hand like a claw. It was the same if I tried opening a jar or turning a doorknob.  Continued here

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How Restrictive Contracts Stifle and Control Creativity in the Video Game Industry Phillip Woytowitz was a software engineer on the hardware infrastructure team at the graphic cards company NVIDIA, a job with many hats that, depending on the day, could involve debugging graphics features to testing games. One day, he got the itch to make a video game. The problem for Woytowitz, however, was one facing a lot of workers at gaming or tech companies who want to make something separate from the company they work for: they’re not allowed to. Continued here

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The Death of Office Culture Leads to Boom Times for Used-Chair Salesman The warehouse was packed, filled to the brim with used Herman Miller Aeron chairs, Herman Miller Mirra 2 chairs, Herman Miller sit-to-stand desks, and other remnants of the daily commute era. “There’s so much product. We have no room in our warehouses,” Zachary Unger said excitedly. “At this point, we need to get, like, another 10 warehouses. It's crazy.”  Continued here