Ketamine's unlikely conversion from rave drug to mental health therapy - New Scientist (No paywall)

S11

Ketamine's unlikely conversion from rave drug to mental health therapy - New Scientist (No paywall)     LAST year, to much ado in the press, Prince Harry wrote candidly in his memoir Spare about taking ketamine to help him deal with his mother’s death. He isn’t the only one talking about the substance, which has previously been known mainly as a horse tranquilliser and a psychedelic rave drug. It is hard to keep track of the many celebrities speaking openly about taking ketamine in an effort to improve their mental health.Across the US, hundreds of clinics have opened to provide intravenous infusions of the drug in a therapeutic setting, a trend that has now reached the UK too. Trailblazing firms, worried about their employees’ mental health, are starting to offer this therapy as a benefit. One even floated the idea of installing a ketamine clinic at its corporate headquarters. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies are developing over-the-counter ketamine products such as lozenges and topical creams. The drug has become the most commonly available psychedelic therapy. Continued here

S1

One Year After SVB's Collapse: What Has and Hasn't Changed? - Inc.com (No paywall)     When Jitendra Gupta found out about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, he was at an airport in India. The myYogaTeacher founder had just finished up a business trip. Facing what would be a 16-hour flight, the online fitness class founder had to act fast. Gupta called his team and directed them to open up a separate bank account at Charles Schawb to ensure that the company could still function in a worst-case scenario. "We were very nervous," Gupta recalls his thoughts during the 16-hour plane ride. "We were really concerned that we were going to be losing money."By the time he touched down in Cupertino, California, where his company is headquartered, the second bank account was ready to go. We all know how the story ends at this point. Gupta, and the thousands of other entrepreneurially-minded that banked at SVB, didn't lose a cent after regulators stepped in and made account-holders whole. But the events left a lasting mark.  Continued here

S2

3 Ways Your Morning Coffee Improves Your Life That Have Nothing to Do With Caffeine - Inc.com (No paywall)     Was it just that I enjoyed the taste? I'm sure that's part of it. Coffee is delicious. But according to a selection of diverse experts, the urge to pause for a hot morning brew -- either coffee or tea -- is driven by more than taste buds and tiredness. Your morning mug has a host of benefits for your focus, happiness, and even empathy. "Maybe don't drink the tea while you're checking your email, while you're on the conference call, while you have the TV on mute reading the crawl underneath. Maybe just drink the cup of tea. It's not going to take hours, and you're not going to ruin your workday, but it's a very different experience," she told me.  Continued here

S3

Who Are Latino Americans Today? - The New Yorker (No paywall)     Stereotype 1: all Latinos are recent arrivals. They are not. Arana—who uses “Latino,” a label that most commonly signifies Latin American heritage, and “Hispanic,” which denotes Spanish-speaking ancestry, interchangeably, to the point of referring to a Spaniard as having “Latino roots”—traces the “dawn of the Latino presence” in the United States to the conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, the first Spaniard to spend extensive amounts of time in what is now Florida, starting in 1528. She writes about the first free Black man to settle in what would become New York City, the Dominican Juan Rodríguez, who came to Manahatta Island, in 1613, on a Dutch merchant ship and decided to stay. She shares the story of Linda Chavez, a Republican commentator from New Mexico whose ancestors owned land in Nuevo Mexico before the Mexican-American War (1846-48), after which the United States took a vast amount of Mexican land, leaving a hundred thousand Mexican citizens on new American soil.Through other similarly personal portraits, Arana describes the multitude of national origins that make up the United States’ Latino population. These include the numerous Latin American countries whose people left them for the U.S. in search of money, safety, or opportunity. LatinoLand is populated not only by descendants of Mexicans, Cubans, and Puerto Ricans (some of the largest Latino communities in the country) but by Dominicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, Hondurans, Venezuelans, Colombians, Peruvians, Uruguayans, Argentines, and many more. Arana herself was born in Lima, the daughter of an American mother and a Peruvian father, and was nine years old when her family moved to the U.S., eventually settling in New Jersey. Continued here

S4

The Cure for Burnout Might Be ... Work? - The Atlantic (No paywall)     Some of my friends and I keep an accountability tracker to help us stay on top of our goals. Most of us use it to keep tabs on our weekly freelance assignments. Sometime last year, I also started using it to monitor my reading, which is all I really do with my free time anyway. My friends couldn’t understand why these novels needed to invade our tracker—but I liked having my recreational activities on my to-do list. Although it rebranded one of my favorite hobbies as work, this seemed natural enough to me: Anything that brings joy is serious business.This murky line between labor and leisure lies at the core of Hwang Bo-reum’s debut novel, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop. Through a constellation of characters that orbit the titular store, Hwang explores how a person might choose to counter workism without rejecting work entirely, and how a meaningful life might be built by applying oneself to even the most pleasurable pastimes. Continued here

S5

What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later     A variety of data — about children’s academic outcomes and about the spread of Covid-19 — has accumulated in the time since. Today, there is broad acknowledgment among many public health and education experts that extended school closures did not significantly stop the spread of Covid, while the academic harms for children have been large and long-lasting.Source: Fahle, Kane, Patterson, Reardon, Staiger and Stuart, “School District and Community Factors Associated With Learning Loss During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Score changes are measured from 2019 to 2022. In-person means a district offered traditional in-person learning, even if not all students were in-person. Continued here

S6

Few Smartphones, Some Beer: A Christian Village Grapples With Modernity     It was early afternoon on a sunny winter Thursday, and the Fox Hill community looked like a well-manicured ghost town abandoned in the 1950s. Stately multistoried homes were scattered across a parklike landscape of gently rolling hills and ponds, a bucolic settlement of 60 acres in the Hudson Valley of New York State. But where was everyone?Then lunch let out from the communal dining hall. Women in long, loosefitting dresses, some wearing head scarves in muted colors, looked as if they had just stepped out of a Currier and Ives print from the 19th century. The men wore jeans and winter jackets. A band of adolescent boys dashed among knots of sober-seeming elders. Nobody was staring at a cellphone, and there wasn’t a car on the road. Continued here

S7

The Balancing Act Of Gender Imbalance In Business Education - Forbes (No paywall)     Every March, during Women's History Month, there is an opportunity to highlight women's accomplishments toward true gender equality. This period also provides a significant space for reflection on any pressing issues facing women. Gender inequality is still present in many areas, with the most severe examples being in war zones, conflict areas, and poverty-ridden life circumstances in some parts of the world. In addition, the often-hidden suffering in abusive situations within family circles hinders women's ability to fulfill their true potential. As the lower layers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs are addressed in women's lives, access to education and the ultimate pursuit of equal standing at the workplace become one of the main areas where progress needs to be made.The 2022 Graduate Management Admission Council's findings show that women and men place the same value on pursuing graduate management education to improve career outcomes. However, the gender difference upon graduation shows that men have a 13% higher success rate in owning a business than women at the same degree level. Continued here

S8

Opinion | One Way to Help a Journalism Industry in Crisis: Make J-School Free     Many uncertainties haunt the field of journalism today — among them, how we can reach our audience, build public trust in our work, and who is going to pay for it all. But one thing is certain: as complicated and dark as the world looks today, it would be much worse if journalists were not there to report on it.This might sound counterintuitive given the state of the industry. Shrinking revenue and decreasing subscription figures have led to a record number of newsroom jobs lost. Much of the local news industry has fallen into the hands of hedge funds focused on squeezing the last drops of revenue out of operations by decimating them. Billionaires who appeared as saviors just a few years ago have grown tired of losing money on the media organizations they bought. Public trust in the value of news is at historical lows, while a growing percentage of people are avoiding the news altogether. Continued here

S9

H.R. Chiefs Are Rising In Power. Two Signs: Bigger Titles And Much More Pay - Forbes (No paywall)     From keeping people healthy in a global pandemic to managing the battle over hybrid work, the job of human resources chiefs—which lately has entailed managing the “Great Resignation,” layoffs, and everything in between—has become an increasingly powerful and far more difficult role in recent years.Those challenges—as well as a greater breadth of responsibilities and the rotation of business executives into the job—are some of the reasons H.R. leaders, according to a new analysis by researchers at Stanford University, are seeing much bigger titles and far higher paychecks over the past three decades, finally nearing the pay of their peers in the C-suite. Continued here

S10

A Stoic's Key to Peace of Mind: Seneca on the Antidote to Anxiety     “The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is,” Kurt Vonnegut observed in discussing Hamlet during his influential lecture on the shapes of stories. “The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad,” Alan Watts wrote a generation earlier in his sobering case for learning not to think in terms of gain or loss. And yet most of us spend swaths of our days worrying about the prospect of events we judge to be negative, potential losses driven by what we perceive to be “bad news.” In the 1930s, one pastor itemized anxiety into five categories of worries, four of which imaginary and the fifth, “worries that have a real foundation,” occupying “possibly 8% of the total.”A twenty-four-hour news cycle that preys on this human propensity has undeniably aggravated the problem and swelled the 8% to appear as 98%, but at the heart of this warping of reality is an ancient tendency of mind so hard-wired into our psyche that it exists independently of external events. The great first-century Roman philosopher Seneca examined it, and its only real antidote, with uncommon insight in his correspondence with his friend Lucilius Junior, later published as Letters from a Stoic (public library) — the timeless trove of wisdom that gave us Seneca on true and false friendship and the mental discipline of overcoming fear. Continued here

S12

Five climate megaprojects that might just save the world - New Scientist (No paywall)     WHEN it comes to fighting climate change, many strategies require relatively small actions from large numbers of people. It is about millions of us installing heat pumps, switching to electric vehicles, eschewing meat in our diets and so on. But given the sheer scale of the challenge, there are those who insist we need to think bigger and bolder too.They are talking about audacious infrastructure projects that would cost billions and carry high risks, but could, if they work out, have a truly transformative impact on our stuttering efforts to get carbon emissions down to zero – and even mitigate the worst effects of current warming. They include plans to build a huge solar power station in space, regreen vast swathes of desert and prop up melting glaciers to hold back city-threatening sea level rise. Continued here

S13

4 Ways To Distinguish Good Debt From Bad Debt - Forbes (No paywall)     Reverse mortgages are frequently marketed to retirees, but they have drawbacks. Withdrawing equity via a reverse mortgage actually means taking out a loan and pledging your home equity as collateral. That gives the lender a stake in your home, or if you die, a potential stake in your heirs’ assets.The bottom line is: Good debt strategically employs leverage to invest profitably and grow assets. Bad debt can become an albatross, weighing down your personal balance sheet. Distinguish wisely between the two types, based on their effects on your cash flow and equity. Debt isn't universally good or bad — it depends on how skillfully it’s used. Continued here

S14

Running vs. Walking: Which Is Better for Lasting Health?     Walking is among the world’s most popular forms of exercise, and far and away the most favored in the United States. And for good reason: It’s simple, accessible and effective. Taking regular walks lowers the risk of many health problems including anxiety, depression, diabetes and some cancers.When considering the health benefits of an activity like walking or running, there are two connected factors to keep in mind. One is the workout’s effect on your fitness — that is, how it improves the efficiency of your heart and lungs. The second is the ultimate positive outcome: Does it help you live a longer life? Continued here

S15

Why Does My Neck Look So Much Older Than My Face?     The skin on your neck also doesn’t heal as well as it does elsewhere on the body because the skin there is less durable and has fewer stem cells and other structures that help repair it, said Dr. Katie Given, a board-certified dermatologic surgeon in the Bay Area who has written about skin aging in the lower face and neck. When it comes to slowing the aging process for neck skin, she said, “the trick is prevention, prevention, prevention.”“Sun is your neck’s enemy,” Dr. Mauro said. Many signs of aging on the neck can be traced back to sun exposure. When your skin is exposed to even a little sunlight, she explained, ultraviolet A waves reach the dermis, or the skin’s inner layer, and damage the cells that are responsible for producing collagen and elastin. Continued here

S16

Health Misinformation Is Evolving. Here's How to Spot It.     The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday in a case that involves the Biden administration’s efforts to communicate with social media sites about posts officials believed made false or misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines and the pandemic. While the case primarily focuses on a debate around free speech, it also spotlights the potential harms of medical misinformation — which experts say has become increasingly complex and difficult to identify.Health hacks not backed by science have spread widely on social media platforms. The same kinds of conspiracy theories that helped to fuel vaccine hesitancy during the Covid-19 pandemic are now undermining trust in vaccines against other diseases, including measles, as more people have lost confidence in public health experts and institutions. And rapid developments in artificial intelligence have made it even harder for people to tell what’s true and what’s false online. Continued here

S17

Opinion | The Spectacle of the Ambani Wedding Event Reveals India's Inequality     On a long weekend in early March, members of the global elite gathered to celebrate the impending nuptials of the billionaire business titan Mukesh Ambani’s youngest son, Anant, and Radhika Merchant. Monarchs, politicians and the ultrawealthy, including Bill Gates and Ivanka Trump, descended on an oil refinery city in the western Indian state of Gujarat for an event so extravagant you’d be forgiven for thinking it was, well, a wedding. But that will take place in July. For the long windup to the big day, some of Bollywood’s biggest stars, though invited as guests, took to the stage to sing and dance in what amounted to a bending of the knee to India’s most powerful family.Watching the event, I couldn’t help thinking of the 1911 durbar, or royal reception, when King George V was proclaimed emperor of India. Once India won its independence from Britain in 1947, it committed itself to becoming a democratic welfare state — an audacious experiment that resulted in what is now the world’s largest democracy. But in advance of this year’s general election, expected to begin in April, the Ambani-Merchant matrimonial extravaganza shows us where true power in India now lies: with a handful of people whose untrammeled wealth and influence has elevated them to the position of India’s shadow leaders. Continued here

S18

Opinion | The Best Way to Find Out if We Can Cool the Planet     As the disastrous effects of climate change mount, Congress has asked federal scientists for a research plan, private money is flowing and rogue start-ups are attempting experiments — all signs that momentum around solar geoengineering is building fast. The most discussed approach involves spraying tiny particles into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight and cool the planet. Other proposals include injecting sea salt into clouds to increase their reflectivity or using giant space parasols to block the sun.It might all sound like dystopian science fiction, but some techno-futurists, like OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, are already normalizing it: “We’re going to have to do something dramatic with climate like geoengineering as a Band-Aid, as a stop gap,” he said in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Continued here

S19

Consultants Are Paid to Fix Businesses. Why Can't They Fix Their Own? - WSJ (No paywall)     At Boston Consulting Group, junior staffers have been peppering more senior consultants with a now-familiar query: Do you have work for me?The answer has often been no.Big and established consulting firms such as McKinsey, BCG and Deloitte, which are paid to predict the future for the world's biggest corporations, have gotten their own destiny wrong.The fallout is messy. Continued here

S20

A Video Captures a Searing Portrait of the Subway, and of the City Above     A nearly five-minute recording of a fight on the A train shows New York’s gravest problems, like illegal guns and mental illness, distilled in a single subway car. Continued here

S21

We should be open about organoid research to avoid a backlash - New Scientist (No paywall)     SCIENTIFIC advances and societal norms rarely progress at the same pace, a mismatch that is behind some of the biggest controversies in science, from the theory of evolution to genetically modified foods. Should scientists be doing more to take the public with them as research fields develop?Researchers behind a high-tech advance in healthcare (see “Organoids made from uterus fluid may help treat fetuses before birth”) should be praised for their open approach. The work involves obtaining cells that have been shed by a fetus in the uterus and coaxing them into forming tiny balls of tissue, sometimes called… Continued here

S22

Quit-Tok: why young workers are refusing to leave their job quietly - FT (No paywall)     Videos of people resigning or being made redundant are going viral on social media in bid for workplace transparency Continued here

S23

Erich Fromm on What Self-Love Really Means     “We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not,” Joan Didion famously wrote in making her case for the value of keeping a notebook. But many of us frequently find it hard enough to be on nodding terms even with the people we currently are. “We have to imagine a world in which celebration is less suspect than criticism,” psychoanalyst Adam Phillips wrote in contemplating the perils of self-criticism and how to break free from the internal critics that enslave us. And yet can we even imagine self-celebration — do we even know what it looks like — if we are so blindly bedeviled by self-criticism? Can we, in other words, celebrate what we cannot accept and therefore cannot love?How to break this Möbius strip of self-rejection is what the great humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm (March 23, 1900–March 18, 1980) explores in a portion of his timeless 1956 treatise The Sane Society (public library) — the source of Fromm’s increasingly timely wisdom on our best shot at saving ourselves from ourselves. Continued here

S24

The TV Shows That Don't Solve Their Mysteries - The Atlantic (No paywall)     In 1996, the Fox network exploited our worries about the coming of the year 2000 with a show titled Millennium, and it was, initially, superb. Millennium followed the adventures of a possibly psychic former FBI agent who seemed to be on the trail of a rising tide of mayhem sparked by the approaching new era. But Millennium wasn’t a crime procedural: Something huge was going on in the show, something that involved demons, a shadowy group (maybe Nazis, maybe not) searching for chunks of the cross of Jesus Christ, and deranged killers shouting things like “The thousand years is over!”I know, I know. Almost everyone loved Jodie Foster and Kali Reis in True Detective, and they were great. The show lured us in with a horrifying mystery: a “corpsicle” of naked, mutilated, frozen bodies in the Alaskan snow. Characters began to see ghosts. The dead spoke to the living. Body parts showed up in a mysterious lab. And after several episodes, we finally learned … Continued here