Crazy Rich Asians Is a Breath of Fresh Air
The Atlantic / 40min
The Young family of Crazy Rich Asians are, for lack of a better word, quite wealthy. They’re well-off. One might say they have oodles of money. There’s no ignoring the obvious here—the Youngs are absurdly rich, to the point where merely being close to them is exciting enough to serve as the premise of a major summer movie. Though Crazy Rich Asians is rightly being lauded for its groundbreaking na
The Meaning of Assad’s ‘Death Notices’
The Atlantic / 40min
CHTAURA, Lebanon—Sitting on a bench in the shade of giant fir trees at a monastery in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, Yasmin, a 30-year-old Syrian refugee from the town of Daraya, recalled what her father told her back in the spring of 2011 when protests against the regime of Bashar al-Assad began. “Why should we use force when we have brains? Let’s resist peacefully,” he would tell Yasmin and her siblin
Knowing why we age could help us learn how to live forever. Do we want to?
Explained Scientists are working to understand and even slow the aging process. We explored the possibilities on our new Netflix show, Explained. Two hundred years ago, no country on earth could expect its population to live past 40. Today, the average life expectancy is about 72 worldwide. Medical and technological developments — like the discovery of germs and the development of vaccines and an
Hackers are out to jeopardize your vote
Cyberattacks on the 2016 US election caused states to bolster the defenses of their voting systems. It hasn’t been enough, says the University of Michigan’s Alex Halderman.
7 most commonly wasted fruits and vegetables
If supermarkets focused on just these specific foods, they could go a long ways toward reducing overall food waste.
Why I Love International Diversity in the Lab
It makes me a better scientist -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
Plants Dominate the Planet's Biomass
About 80 percent of the Earth's biomass is plant life, with humans about equal to krill way down the heft chart. -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
Why I Love International Diversity in the Lab
It makes me a better scientist -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
Plants Dominate the Planet's Biomass
About 80 percent of the Earth's biomass is plant life, with humans about equal to krill way down the heft chart. -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
How to be a philanthropist while you’re on the job
Christian Science Monitor / 44min
A majority of employees say they want to work for an organization that encourages giving and volunteering. Here are five philanthropic options offered by corporate America.
Top 10 books about Americans abroad
Writers from Joan Didion to James Baldwin complicate the traditionally white and male tales of wide-eyed innocents at large My second novel, Feast Days , is narrated by a young American woman whose husband is relocated from New York to São Paulo. “We were Americans abroad,” she says. The novel of Americans far from home has a long history, and is perhaps distinct from its cousin, the novel of Bri
How to Prevent Houseflies, According to Experts
If you’re someone who would never hurt a fly, controlling pests in your home can become a kind of moral dilemma. But there’s no denying that a buzzing bug can be a nuisance. The key to getting rid of flies in your home is to prevent them in the first place. “Traps are kind of hit or miss for being a good control measure for flies,” says Mike Merchant, a professor and urban entomologist at Texas A
Elizabeth Warren has a plan to save capitalism
She’s unveiling a bill to make corporate governance great again. Elizabeth Warren has a big idea that challenges how the Democratic Party thinks about solving the problem of inequality. Instead of advocating for expensive new social programs like free college or health care, she’s introducing a bill Wednesday, the Accountable Capitalism Act, that would redistribute trillions of dollars from rich
London property slump puts brake on UK house price growth
Average price rise across UK falls to 3% as London prices and rents nosedive UK house price growth slowed in June to the lowest annual rate in five years, driven by falling prices in London, according to official figures. Average house prices across the country increased 3% in the year to June, down from a 3.5% gain in May, the lowest annual rate since August 2013, the Office for National Statist
Senior Chinese monk resigns amid sexual misconduct claims
Controversy around Buddhist abbot Shi Xuecheng seen as sign of #MeToo’s rise in China One of China’s most high-profile Buddhist monks has resigned from a national post after reports of sexual misconduct , a religious association has said. The Buddhist Association of China said on Wednesday its president, Shi Xuecheng, had passed his duties to a deputy. Continue reading...
The Merry Wives of Windsor review – Essex is not the only way
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon Fiona Laird’s production provides wheelie-bins, estuary accents, physical comedy and a first-rate Falstaff, but loses the sense of small-town life No one would go to the stake to defend Shakespeare’s exuberant comedy against innovative directors. All the same, I am puzzled by some of the choices made by Fiona Laird in her RSC debut. She endows the wi
Can Talk Therapy Help People Who Are Unable to Experience Joy?
Researchers are developing new treatments for a depression symptom called anhedonia -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
Can Talk Therapy Help People Who Are Unable to Experience Joy?
Researchers are developing new treatments for a depression symptom called anhedonia -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
The ancient seeds of the opioid crisis, a love letter to physics, and a ticket to the termite circus: Books in brief
Nature / 1h
The ancient seeds of the opioid crisis, a love letter to physics, and a ticket to the termite circus: Books in brief The ancient seeds of the opioid crisis, a love letter to physics, and a ticket to the termite circus: Books in brief, Published online: 15 August 2018; doi:10.1038/d41586-018-05940-1 Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week’s best science picks.
Can We Give Our 17-Year-Old a Bedtime?
Stories from Slate / 1h
Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Email careandfeeding@gmail.com or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group .
July 2018 finance reports: City of Houston
Off the Kuff / 1h
Every level of government requires finance reports in January and June, whether or not there is an active election cycle in that year. That includes the city of Houston, whose january report data we inspected here . Our next election is in 2019, and while this is still traditionally a little early for there to be much activity, there are the finance reports. Here’s what we’ve got: Candidate Offic
James Corden made Mayim Bialik put her face on a mop and it's surprisingly endearing
Watching fully grown adults nuzzling their faces up against different things is cute for some inexplicable reason. Actress Mayim Bialik and basketball player Ben Simmons were guests on James Corden's The Late Late Show , where they played a game of "Nuzzle Whaaa?" against Corden and his resident drummer, Guillermo Brown. Blindfolded, each player has to rub their faces up against something to gues
Weird circles in the sky may be signs of a universe before ours
New Scientist - News / 1h
A theory suggesting that the universe is constantly reborn could be proved right by ‘Hawking points’ – signs of evaporated black holes from a time before the big bang
Why taking ayahuasca is like having a near-death experience
A psychedelic drug produces effects similar to near-death experiences. The finding suggests changes to brain activity may explain such paranormal phenomena
Sterile fish could help wild salmon dodge the ‘gene pollution’ effect
New Scientist - News / 1h
Farmed Atlantic salmon make the local wild salmon population weaker. Making them sterile could work – but there’s a catch
Sticking brain cells together with glue could boost and protect memory
New Scientist - News / 1h
Can a chemical that reinforces the connections in our brains prevent the destruction of memories in ageing and Alzheimer’s? It seems to work in mice
We have finally figured out how to snap spaghetti into two pieces
Snap a piece of dry spaghetti and you will always end up with three or more pieces - but now mathematicians have figured out how to get a single clean break
Why forecasting how hot it will be in 2022 is mostly a gimmick
New Scientist - News / 1h
It will never be possible to forecast weather years ahead, but we can predict the average global temperature four years from now. Trouble is, that’s not that useful
US police testing AI that learns to spot crimes in CCTV footage
New Scientist - News / 1h
Police in Orlando have been testing a system that automatically scans CCTV looking for potentially illicit activity – with some success
Google tracks your location even if you switch off location tracking
New Scientist - News / 1h
Google records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to, an investigation by the Associated Press has found
DeepMind’s AI can spot eye disease just as well as top doctors
DeepMind's system trains on eye scan data taken from thousands of NHS patients and determines which should be seen sooner
Why allergies aren’t nuts at all
New Scientist - News / 1h
Faced with airline peanut bans, it’s easy to dismiss allergies as imaginary modern maladies. They’re not – and we need to understand why they’re on the up
Google just made it much harder to build a serious quantum computer
New Scientist - News / 1h
To reach quantum supremacy, a quantum computer has to do a task no ordinary computer can. Google has made that harder with an algorithm that beefs up regular PCs
Ancient natural nuclear reactors show how to store radioactive waste
Billions of years ago, uranium in the Earth’s crust underwent nuclear reactions on its own, and the remnants demonstrate a way to keep nuclear waste under control
We’ve identified the brain cells that let you control urination
New Scientist - News / 1h
We’ve all been there – desperately holding on for a toilet. Now the brain cells that help us do it have been identified, which may lead to new incontinence treatments
Asteroid strike may have forged the oldest rocks ever found on Earth
New Scientist - News / 1h
The oldest rocks ever found are over four billion years old and we don’t know how they formed – but a massive asteroid bombardment may be responsible
Orca who carried her dead infant is not alone – many animals grieve
A female orca has been seen carrying the body of her dead calf for 17 days, apparently grieving. Such displays of grief are remarkably common in nature
Rock layers show our sun has been in same cycle for 700 million years
New Scientist - News / 1h
Our star gets more and less active in a repeating cycle that lasts 11 years, and ancient rocks suggest it behaved the same way over 700 million years ago
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is on its way to the sun, via Venus
New Scientist - News / 1h
After a false start on Saturday, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe blasted off on Sunday to begin a mission to enter the sun’s scorching atmosphere
America's hottest export? Sperm
An American and a Danish company dominate the global sperm market – and both claim their supply is biggest Ella Rasmussen’s doctors started to prod her about children when she turned 30. She was single, suffered from endometriosis, and contemplated a hysterectomy. After several years, the nudges took hold. Because she wasn’t a good candidate to freeze only her eggs, she was advised to undergo IVF
Casting Jack Whitehall as a gay Disney character is an act of queer erasure | Caspar Salmon
Gay people can act straight convincingly, but the reverse is far trickier – just look at Dominic West dancing in the film Pride News greets us this week of yet another triumphant milestone for LGBTQ+ rights, with the casting of Disney’s “first openly gay character” (tell that to Ursula from The Little Mermaid), in Jungle Cruise, a film loosely based on a rollercoaster. We’ve come a long way since
Brexit gags, catsuits and coke-snorting cops: A Beggar's Opera for our times
John Gay’s 18th century satire is a work whose essential remit is to confront the uncomfortable. How is Robert Carsen’s take dealing with the homeless crisis, Brexit and the #metoo movement? Lads in tracksuits hurl themselves across the stage, all hoods and fists and aggro. There’s no music, but screeching sirens and dense thuds of bodies hitting the floor and each other. Then the overture kicks
WHO says DRC conflict hindering push to stem Ebola outbreak
World Health Organization urges ceasefire as death toll rises to at least 41 people in DRC's North Kivu province.
Notes to my garden denizens
Feeding birds, planting asparagus – even sleeping at night – are hardly routine.
Tucker Carlson claims there’s no white nationalism. His show’s obsessive racism suggests otherwise
Fox host’s claim that virulent racism is a myth is belied by the millions who tune into his show every night
Top 4 supermarket chains for sustainable seafood
TreeHugger / 1h
Greenpeace's annual survey of national retailers' progress on sustainable seafood reveals the leaders and the losers.
Munich widows: Jeremy Corbyn 'has no place in politics or in decent humane society' per The Jewish Chronicle
Not a sheep / 1h
'... in a Morning Star article Mr Corbyn wrote shortly after the event, he said said that wreaths had been laid "on the graves of those who died that day" in 1986, "and on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991." There were no Palestinians killed in Paris by Mossad in 1991. However, there were in 1992 – members of the Black September terror group who had been responsible fo
Republican Candidates Can’t Keep Trump Out of Their Districts
When Donald Trump told Sean Hannity not long ago that he’s tanned, rested, and ready for the midterm campaign trail—“I’ll go six or seven days a week when we’re 60 days out, and I will be campaigning for all of these great people that do have a difficult race”—the response from virtually all those candidates was silence. And who can blame them? A president saddled with a 39 percent approval ratin
New Mexico Compound Members Are Granted Bail; Judge Receives Death Threats
Prosecutors allege that a child's body recovered at the site is a compound member's disabled son. Defendants' bail is set at $20,000 each. (Image credit: Roberto E. Rosales/AP)
“We Didn’t Really Want to Weigh In”
Stories from Slate / 1h
Henry Kissinger may be 95 years old, with his crucial years of government service long behind him, but in many influential circles his reputation as a master diplomat remains undimmed. He offers advice to Republican and Democratic administrations; counsels presidential candidates of both parties; and is deemed a source of wisdom by a wide variety of media outlets and foreign leaders. This is in s
We the Animals Is a One-of-a-Kind Movie Adapted From a Seemingly Unadaptable Novel
Stories from Slate / 1h
Justin Torres’ We the Animals is a slim, lyrical gut-punch of a novel. Composed of vignettes that offer unfettered access to the interior life of their protagonist and little dialogue, it’s all formative feelings and scattered recollections that swing between the dreamily poetic and the painfully precise. These same qualities that make Torres’ semi-autobiographical debut so powerful would also se
Question Time - Should The Burka Be Banned? 07/11/2013
Not a sheep / 1h
https://youtu.be/oowFjF8UKAM Watch from 6:57 I don't recall lefty types up in arms at Emily Thornberry's comments re wearing the burqua. "I wouldn't want my four year old looked after by somebody wearing a burka. I wouldn't want my elderly mum looked after by somebody wearing a burka. They need to be able to show their face," she told a BBC Question Time audience in 2013. One might think that Bor
The baking Pacific Ocean is changing the weather on the Southern California coast
Ocean temperatures off the Southern California coast have been profoundly warm in August, with a number of all-time high temperatures recorded in San Diego's almost bath-like waters. These extreme marine temperatures — created by weather patterns and boosted by climate change — have a sphere of influence beyond the oceans, as this heat has contributed to unusual heat and mugginess on the heavily-
Trump’s Texas beneficiaries
Off the Kuff / 1h
Interesting . Six Texas Republican in Congress received a show of financial support from their party’s leader this week. President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign announced Thursday that it was donating the maximum contribution possible to around 100 House and Senate Republican candidates ahead of midterm elections in which multiple polls suggest Democrats could be poised for big wins. Republ
Day Seven flood bond EV totals
Off the Kuff / 1h
The word of the week is “slow” . Fewer than 46,000 ballots have been cast in the first week of early voting on Harris County’s $2.5 billion flood bond referendum, but county officials on Monday said they expect many more voters leading up to the Aug. 25 anniversary of Hurricane Harvey’s landfall. According to the county clerk’s office, 2,692 voters went to the polls in person Monday. Combined wit
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment