How Much Do You Need to Know to Be an Ally?

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How Much Do You Need to Know to Be an Ally? Well-meaning allies often get stuck at one of two extremes. At one extreme, people barrel into situations without enough knowledge. At the opposite extreme, people get so overwhelmed by their lack of knowledge that they opt out of allyship altogether. To help you find a middle path between these extremes, reflect on three aspects of knowledge: learning, asking, and scaling. Continued here

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André Leon Talley’s Caftans and Cufflinks Are Going Up for Auction In the world of high fashion, André Leon Talley is often described as a larger-than-life presence. The barrier-breaking Vogue magazine editor, who died last year at age 73, had a reputation for charming everyone around him while wearing designer caftans and theatrical jewelry.  Unbeknownst to many, Talley also spent a lot of his life in the naves of Black churches, where he was a committed community member.  Continued here

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Chief Revenue Officer Roles Are Growing Fast in 2023 An economy in flux, a demand for growth, and a strategic gap. Why three CEOs hired a chief revenue officer this year. Continued here

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4 Things High Achievers Do Differently We’ve all heard the saying, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Yet a recent Gallup study shows that many people are, in fact, not loving their work and are miserable in their jobs, with only 21% of employees engaged at work and 33% thriving in their overall well-being globally. Individually and as a society, we seem to have lost our hope for the future. People want to succeed, but the path to achievement is murky. No one wakes up aiming to be average, but all the messages we receive, consciously and unconsciously, appear to push us to that undistinguishable level. Continued here

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The Line That 'Velma' Crossed In Velma, HBO Max’s adult-oriented Scooby-Doo spin-off, familiar faces get involved in all sorts of gritty, R-rated activities. Velma (played by the show’s executive producer, Mindy Kaling) and Daphne (Constance Wu) sell drugs. Fred (Glenn Howerton) gets shot in both legs. Shaggy (Sam Richardson), known by his birth name, Norville, tries to sell a kidney on the black market. Scenes of gratuitous violence pad almost every episode: Limbs get severed, corpses roll out of trash bins, riots break out in prison. Meddling kids getting into wacky mysteries with their dog, this show is adamantly not. And in the months leading up to Velma’s debut, the creative team seemed to anticipate backlash to the bold changes they’d made. The creator, Charlie Grandy, argued that the writers’ alterations—including excising Scooby from the gang, reimagining Velma as a misanthropic South Asian teenager, and incorporating grotesque gags—felt authentic to the spirit of the original series. “We wanted to be respectful,” he explained. “We didn’t want to just kind of take these beloved characters and put them in outrageous or gross situations and say, ‘Isn’t it crazy you did that to Velma?’” Continued here

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How to Manage Your Time: Our Favorite Reads I was recently asked by a friend (let’s call her Alex) if I’d rather have more money or time. “What am I going to do with all the money if I don’t have time to spend it on things that bring me joy, like doing this pottery class with you?” I said. My answer didn’t seem to surprise her. Continued here

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How Blockchain Could Break Free of Crypto to Become an Essential Business Tool In a low-trust world, blockchain could keep your business secure when working with outside parties. Continued here

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What the Tech and Media Layoffs Are Really Telling Us About the Economy About 130,000 people have been dismissed from their jobs at large tech and media companies in the past 12 months. Why? This is Work in Progress, a newsletter by Derek Thompson about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here to get it every week. Continued here

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Are You a Difficult Person to Work For? You’re a new manager with fantastic technical skills, a passion for high-quality work, and the desire to expand your impact at the company. You’ve always been good at whatever you put your mind to. But now, for the first time, you’ve gotten some devastating feedback from HR, from a direct report, or from your own manager: You’re hard to please and difficult to work for. Continued here

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When Truman Capote’s Lies Caught Up With Him On October 21, 1970, Truman Capote went to jail. Considering he’d spent much of his life fascinated by crime, it nevertheless came as a shock, to him and others, when he was sentenced to three days on a contempt-of-court charge. “I've been in thirty or forty jails and prisons, but this is the first time I’ll ever be in one as a prisoner,” Capote told reporters at the time, his bravado a substitute, according to his biographer Gerald Clarke, for the “stark terror” he was actually feeling. Every true-crime writer has to contend with Capote. In Cold Blood, his rapturously received “nonfiction novel” (as Capote termed it) about a Kansas family’s homicide in 1959, is embedded in the DNA of every book in the genre. As Justin St. Germain wrote in his critical reexamination, “Capote spiked a vein, and out came a stream of imitators, a whole bloody genre, one of the most popular forms of American nonfiction: true crime.” (I’m no exception, as Capote ended up a minor character in my own recent nonfiction book, Scoundrel.) Continued here

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How Do You Adapt a Book Into a TV Show? On the challenges of translating the page to the screen: Your weekly guide to the best in books Literary adaptations are ruling the small screen: Scouts are turning to publishers for show material. TV deals are being negotiated at the same time as print ones. In 2020, for the first time ever, more books were made into TV series than into movies. Clearly, translating stories from the page to television is popular. But have we figured out the key to pulling it off? Continued here

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Why Family and Domestic Violence Is a Workplace Issue While there isn’t a single internationally agreed-upon definition of FDV, the term refers to a range of violent and non-violent abusive behaviors or threats committed in the context of intimate relationships. It’s not just about physical and sexual violence or abuse, it can also include emotional and psychological abuse, verbal abuse and intimidation, economic abuse, controlling behaviors that restrict one’s social movement and isolate them, damage to personal property, and the abuse of power. Continued here

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The Oscars Contenders You Need to See Shirley Li on what makes a good awards-show speech, the potential nominees to watch, and the movies that shouldn’t be overlooked Oscar nominations will be announced next week. I called our culture writer Shirley Li for her tips on the movies and the buzz you should know about. Continued here

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What to Do After Being Laid Off If you’re laid off, the last thing you want to do is send your resume to dozens of companies and pray a recruiter will call you. That’s not a strategy for success. What will make you successful is taking a minimum of 24 hours to process this shocking change to your employment status. Then, do these five things before you update your resume or start looking for a job: 1) Reconfigure your mindset; 2) Write down your accomplishments; 3) Know what you want; 4) Create a job-hunting schedule; 5) Find jobs that look interesting — but don’t apply yet. Continued here

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5 Reasons Leaders Shouldn't Worry That Generative A.I. Will Take Their Jobs ChatGPTis getting plenty of headlines, but it's unlikely it will get your job. Continued here

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How Transparent Should You Be with Your Team? Transparency is a critical leadership attribute. It helps to build trust, and it’s a prerequisite for building a constructive, high-performance culture. But it’s easy for leaders to get into trouble if they don’t understand the nuances of transparency. When is it critical to demonstrate full transparency? When is it more appropriate to offer no transparency at all? First-time leaders need to learn to make sound decisions about how much transparency is appropriate under a few different scenarios. Continued here

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Does It Feel Like Your Department Has Been Sidelined? As business needs and relationships at work continuously change, so does the relative influence of certain departments. In this piece, the author offers strategies to follow if you’re getting the sense that your department is being cast aside: 1) Reflect on the root cause of your exclusion; 2) Tie your department’s work to clear business needs; 3) Broaden your perceived value; 4) Keep driving results; 5) Build up those that are coming up after you. Continued here

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3 Ways to Strengthen Your Memory Recall We rely on our phones to store contact details, virtual calendars to remind us of peoples birthdays, and with Google, we rarely need to stretch our memory muscles in the way we once did. But memory tricks can be a powerful tool for impressing clients, peers, and important stakeholder at your company — especially if you’re new to the workforce and trying to build a good reputation. From remembering names to retaining detailed knowledge of their wants and needs, having excellent recall indicates respect, attentiveness, and intelligence. Continued here

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The Power of an Apology: Our Favorite Reads We say thank you because we believe that there is much to be grateful for. We say I’m sorry because we can always do better and be better therefore it is our duty to find, in every situation, our faults and our own wrongdoings. And we say I love you because we, the small community that went through imperialistic colonization, unwanted wars, and much foreign intervention, must look out for each other. Even in tough times, I was raised to empathize with others and to try to see the good in people. Continued here

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Google cuts 12,000 jobs, the largest layoff in the company's history Google CEO Sundar Pichai has been on a cost-cutting tear over the last six months, shutting down various projects inside the company. This Friday, the ax has finally fallen on a big chunk of Google's workforce. In its largest layoff ever, Google says it will cut 12,000 jobs across Google and its parent company, Alphabet. The cuts represent about 6 percent of Google's workforce and match similar recent moves by Microsoft and Amazon. Continued here

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5 Reasons to Fully Embrace Remote Work in 2023 Why some companies are skipping the return-to-office trend and going all-in on remote work. Continued here

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How to Make the Most Out of Your MBA No matter why you decide to apply, earning the degree comes with a handful of challenges. Candidates often liken the experience to drinking from a firehose. The intensity of the academic course load, mixed with a never-ending stream of business theories, constructs, cases, models, and frameworks, can feel incredibly overwhelming — especially for students who also have full-time jobs. Continued here

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3 tips to engage listeners on podcasts and webinars Teach the audience something new. Continued here

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How to Ask Someone to Be a Job Reference A reference check is a standard process most companies follow before they hand you an offer letter. During this time, employers speak with third parties to verify your work experience and speak about your qualifications and character. Although reference checks are usually the final step of the interview process, prospective employers may ask for their contact information up front. Early in your job search you will want to line up a few people who can speak credibly about you and your work. Continued here

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5 Questions to Ask When Starting a New Job The actions you take during your first few months in a new job have a major impact on your success or failure. The biggest challenge leaders face during these periods is staying focused on the right things. So it helps to have a set of questions to guide you. Here are the five most important ones to ask…and to keep on asking on a regular basis: How will I create value? How am I expected to behave? Whose support is critical? How will I get some early wins? What skills do I need to develop to excel in this role? Set aside 30 minutes at the end of each week to reflect on these questions and whether the answers are still clear or have changed in any way. Continued here

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See 25 Stunning Images From the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Contest Vote for your favorite among these photos shortlisted in the People’s Choice category until February 2 Featuring all sorts of captivating creatures, a handful of images are vying to earn the affection of the public—and with it, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award. Continued here

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Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: Our Favorite Reads I recently had a small get-together with friends, all of us women. At some point in the evening, we started talking about how we were feeling about our respective professional journeys. One friend, who had just gotten into a competitive PhD program, said she felt like her acceptance was luck. Another spoke about being a first-time manager. She was unsure if she was qualified for the job. A third spoke about how scared she was to launch her new career as a freelancer. Despite her years of experience and study, she didn’t know if she’d be any good. Continued here

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Why Kevin McCarthy Can’t Lose George Santos The Republican party in Santos's Long Island district wants him out. The Speaker has other ideas. Of America’s largest counties, few have turned more sharply toward the GOP than New York City’s neighbor to the east. This collection of Long Island suburbs swept Democrats out of local office in 2021, and last fall, Nassau County voted resoundingly Republican in New York’s gubernatorial race. Most important for the national GOP, the county helped elect three Republicans to Congress, including two candidates who flipped Democratic seats in districts that President Joe Biden had carried in 2020. Continued here

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Abortion Pills Will Be the Next Battle in the 2024 Election The next front is rapidly emerging in the struggle between supporters and opponents of legal abortion, and that escalating conflict is increasing the chances that the issue will shape the 2024 election as it did last November’s midterm contest. President Joe Biden triggered the new confrontation with a flurry of recent moves to expand access to the drugs used in medication abortions, which now account for more than half of all abortions performed in the United States. Medication abortion involves two drugs: mifepristone followed by misoprostol (which is also used to prevent stomach ulcers). Although abortion opponents question the drugs’ safety, multiple scientific studies have found few serious adverse effects beyond headache or cramping. Continued here

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Aaron Bastani: The case for free, universal basic services Several crises are set to define the next century -- but journalist Aaron Bastani believes we have the technological ability to meet our biggest challenges and create unprecedented levels of prosperity for all. He shows how we could get there by ditching capitalism as the world's economic operating system and adopting "universal basic services," where governments would freely provide life essentials like housing, health care, education and transport. (Followed by Q&A with head of TED Chris Anderson and public finance expert Maja Bosnic) Continued here

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Post-traumatic growth: Finding strength and purpose after trauma Copyright © 2023 by Gabriella Rosen Kellerman and Martin E. P. Seligman. From Tomorrowmind: Thriving at Work with Resilience, Creativity, and Connection—Now and in an Uncertain Future by Gabriella Rosen Kellerman and Martin E. P. Seligman. Reprinted by permission of Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. “The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side; it has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his full psychological height. It is as if psychology had voluntarily restricted itself to only half its rightful jurisdiction, and that the darker, meaner half.” —Abraham Maslow, 1954 Continued here

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Black Women Aren't Paid Fairly - And It Starts as Early as Age 16 For every dollar a white man makes, a Black woman makes 63 cents. This pay inequality begins early. From age 16, Black girls are consistently paid less than boys, and the disparity follows them throughout their careers. While this is a systemic issue, beginning your career with an eye on pay equity can help close the gap. Continued here

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The George Santos Saga Isn’t (Just) Funny Have you heard the latest ridiculous turn in the George Santos story? No, not that one. The newer one. Oh wait: That’s out of date now, too. This week alone we’ve learned that Santos’s mother, who he said was in the Twin Towers on 9/11 and died years later from complications, probably wasn’t even in the United States that day. We’ve heard an allegation that he stole $3,000 he had raised for a military veteran’s ailing dog, a story that seems too cartoonish to make up. We’ve also seen a photo that a Brazilian drag queen insists is Santos in drag, though he denies it. In more scandalous sartorial news, a former roommate says that the scarf Santos sported at a Stop the Steal rally was, fittingly, stolen. Continued here

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Gonorrhea is becoming unstoppable; highly resistant cases found in US The most highly drug-resistant cases of gonorrhea detected in the US to date appeared in two unrelated people in Massachusetts, state health officials announced Thursday. Continued here

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What I Wish I Had Known About My Mother What often feels like unrequited love between immigrant parents and their first-generation children is common, yet even more commonly, it is not openly discussed. In this article, Professor Lan Chaplin discusses her relationship with her mom, who immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam with her husband and 14 children. She talks about their misunderstandings, what she wishes she had known sooner, and what others can learn from her experience: Continued here

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Startups, Don't Pin Your Hopes on VC Dry Powder The startup world is currently debating when venture capital investing will return to its pre-2022 heights. The bullish case is that VCs have lots of “dry powder” — capital that’s already been committed. That money will get invested one way or another, the thinking goes. But that’s not the whole story. In fact, VCs may slow their pace of investing and may focus on helping the companies they’ve already backed, making fundraising harder for newer startups. For that reason, startups should reconsider their fundraising strategy and some should consider aiming for profitability sooner than they’d planned. Continued here

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D&D maker still wants to revoke earlier versions of "open" gaming license WotC says this proposed "deauthorization" of OGL v1.0a won't affect any original content that was published under that earlier license since its debut in the early '00s and that such content won't need to be updated or relicensed to comply with any new OGL language. But any content published after the proposed OGL v1.2 goes into effect would not be able to simply choose the earlier license instead, according to the update as drafted. Continued here

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FTC: Shkreli may have violated lifetime pharma ban, should be held in contempt Infamous ex-pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli is yet again in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission, which announced today that the convicted fraudster has failed to cooperate with the commission's investigation into whether he violated his lifetime ban from the pharmaceutical industry by starting a company last year called "Druglike, Inc." Continued here

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Drag Shows Are Free Speech Efforts by GOP legislators to impose absurd and onerous regulations on them violate the Constitution. Gun homicides and car accidents are the leading causes of youth death. American children confront challenges as varied as bullying, poverty, gangs, sexual abuse, mental illness, and drug addiction. A state legislator hoping to protect kids might reasonably focus on any number of issues. Drag shows, those improbable culture-war flash points, are not among them. Yet Republican legislators in at least seven states are pushing bills to restrict shows where performers may deviate from traditional gender norms. Continued here

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Entrepreneurs, Is a Venture Studio Right for You? Startup founders often look to incubators and accelerators to help them find product/market fit and raise initial capital. But there’s another option for entrepreneurial founders who want to go out on their own but maybe lack the right idea or team. Venture studios don’t fund an existing idea — they incubate their own ideas, build a minimum viable product, find product/market fit and early customers, and then recruit entrepreneurial founders to run and scale the business. Examples of companies that have emerged from venture studios include Overture, Twilio, Taboola, Bitly, Aircall, and the most famous alum, Moderna. However, in exchange for de-risking much of the early-stage startup process, venture studios take anywhere from 30% to 80% of a startup’s equity. The author explains how venture studios work, why they might be an attractive option for some entrepreneurs, and what questions to ask if you’re considering joining one. Continued here

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3 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Gain a Competitive Advantage While many businesses fret about their competition, the old adage to only worry about what you can control still rings true. Continued here

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The bitter dinosaur feud at the heart of palaeontology In the chilly Berlin winter of 1863, two talented American palaeontologists got talking at an otherwise unremarkable scientific meeting. The younger of the two was a tall and handsome 23-year-old named Edward Drinker Cope, who wore his thick hair slicked sideways and talked a lot. He had been sent to Europe by his genteel Philadelphian family to put an ocean between him and a young lady they deemed unsuitable. The man he was talking to was Othniel Charles Marsh. He'd been born to a poor farming family in rural New York, but had the benefit of a very rich uncle to fund his education. At 32 years old, Marsh was reserved and a little pompous. He wore a drooping walrus moustache and his hair was beginning to thin. Continued here

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How ChatGPT Will Destabilize White-Collar Work No technology in modern memory has caused mass job loss among highly educated workers. Will generative AI be an exception? In the next five years, it is likely that AI will begin to reduce employment for college-educated workers. As the technology continues to advance, it will be able to perform tasks that were previously thought to require a high level of education and skill. This could lead to a displacement of workers in certain industries, as companies look to cut costs by automating processes. While it is difficult to predict the exact extent of this trend, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the job market for college-educated workers. It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks. Continued here

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Research: How Price Changes Influence Consumers' Buying Decisions Whether on retailers’ own platforms or through third-party price tracking services, today’s consumers often have access to detailed information regarding changes in a product’s price over time. But how does this visibility influence their purchasing decisions? Through a series of studies, the authors found that buyers are more likely to buy now if they see a single large price decrease or a series of smaller price increases, because they’ll assume that the price will go up if they wait. Conversely, they’re more likely to hold off on buying if they see a single large price increase or a series of smaller decreases, because they’ll assume the price will fall. As such, they argue that sellers should consider this effect when pricing their products, while buyers should recognize and question this natural tendency — to expect price streaks to continue and single large changes to reverse — before acting on it. Continued here

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300+ models of MSI motherboards have Secure Boot turned off. Is yours affected? Secure Boot is an industry standard for ensuring that Windows devices don’t load malicious firmware or software during the startup process. If you have it turned on—as you should in most cases, and it's the default setting mandated by Microsoft—good for you. If you’re using one of more than 300 motherboard models made by manufacturer MSI in the past 18 months, however, you may not be protected. Continued here

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Musk testifies in fraud trial, points out that not everyone believes what he says Elon Musk began testifying today in the jury trial over whether his false tweets in 2018 about taking Tesla private caused investors to lose billions of dollars. Continued here

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It's Time to Cement Telehealth's Place in U.S. Health Care The use of telehealth soared during the pandemic and demonstrated its value in improving the delivery of and access to health care. But that increase in usage was made possible by the relaxation of federal and state waivers. To capitalize on what was learned during the pandemic, federal and state legislators should revamp regulations. Five priorities should guide their actions. Continued here

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ChatGPT Stole Your Work. So What Are You Going to Do? If you’ve ever uploaded photos or art, written a review, “liked” content, answered a question on Reddit, contributed to open source code, or done any number of other activities online, you’ve done free work for tech companies, because downloading all this content from the web is how their AI systems learn about the world. Tech companies know this, but they mask your contributions to their products with technical terms like “training data,” “unsupervised learning,” and “data exhaust” (and, of course, impenetrable “Terms of Use” documents). In fact, much of the innovation in AI over the past few years has been in ways to use more and more of your content for free. This is true for search engines like Google, social media sites like Instagram, AI research startups like OpenAI, and many other providers of intelligent technologies.  Continued here

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The Small but Mighty Danger of Echo Chamber Extremism One of the top concerns when it comes to the harms of social media and political polarization in the United States is the fear of echo chambers or people operating in media bubbles. If people are only hearing opinions they already agree with or seeing stories that align with their worldview, they may become more entrenched in their beliefs, whether or not their beliefs reflect the real world. They may also become easier to manipulate and more extreme. Interestingly, research largely shows the vast majority of people don’t inhabit perfectly sealed-off echo chambers. It’s been found that only about 4 percent of people operate in online echo chambers, and most people on Twitter, for example, don’t follow any political accounts. Essentially, most people aren’t following politics, and a lot of people who do are getting at least a little bit of information from different sides of the political spectrum. That said, echo chambers and media bubbles are an issue because they can radicalize people, negatively affect the people who inhabit them, and distort the broader political landscape. Continued here

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Need to Fire Employees? 10 Strategies Leaders Use to Get It Right Preparation protects future growth. Continued here

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Twitter retroactively changes developer agreement to ban third-party clients "Long-standing" can apparently mean "later this week" at Elon Musk's Twitter, as the company has changed its developer agreement to seemingly justify its banning of third-party clients. The change happened two days after a vague tweet about "enforcing long-standing API rules" without pointing to any. Continued here

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Netflix 3.0 Is Coming Reed Hastings, the cofounder of Netflix and its CEO during the company’s 25-year history, announced on Thursday he would step back from the role. It’s the end of an era for the company that first killed Blockbuster and then led cable TV to slowly bleed out. It’s an end that has, perhaps, been a long time coming. Netflix once stood alone in the streaming space, but at the start of 2023 faces a cluttered landscape, one occupied by streamers like Disney+ and HBO Max and video platforms like TikTok and YouTube. Hailed for standout original hits like Stranger Things and Wednesday, Netflix’s seemingly endless stream of original content has also been criticized in recent years for emphasizing quantity over quality. This combination of increased competition and flagging content led to a tumultuous 2022 that slowed the company’s growth.  Continued here

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US school runs lights 24/7/365: The smart lights have been broken since 2021 The lights at Massachusetts' Minnechaug Regional High School burn ever bright. They actually never turn off. They can't turn off. The smart lighting system for the entire building is broken, and it's stuck in the "on" position. It has apparently been this way for over a year now, and the electric bills are really starting to pile up. Continued here

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There’s Snow on Mars Let’s go over that again. A snowman on Mars? That desertlike, desolate planet over there? The one covered in sand? What an unusual daydream. But Alsaeed knows a few things that the rest of us don’t. She is a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder whose work relies on data from a NASA spacecraft that orbits Mars. She studies the red planet’s polar regions and the peculiar molecules suspended in the atmosphere above them. She knows that on Mars, it snows. Continued here

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Photos of the Week: Epiphany Dips, Pet Blessings, Chicken Feet A theater festival in Chile, horses leaping through flames in Spain, a Russian missile strike in Ukraine, flooding in Germany, surfing in Hawaii, a green field in Saudi Arabia, flamingos at a sanctuary in Turkey, and much more A large inflatable mannequin depicts Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama decorating the French luxury brand Louis Vuitton's flagship store on the Champs-Élysées avenue in Paris, France, on January 13, 2023. # Continued here

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Supreme Court allows Reddit mods to anonymously defend Section 230 Over the past few days, dozens of tech companies have filed briefs in support of Google in a Supreme Court case that tests online platforms’ liability for recommending content. Obvious stakeholders like Meta and Twitter, alongside popular platforms like Craigslist, Etsy, Wikipedia, Roblox, and Tripadvisor, urged the court to uphold Section 230 immunity in the case or risk muddying the paths users rely on to connect with each other and discover information online. Continued here

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Ask Ethan: What could an array of space telescopes find? Out there in the deep, dark recesses of space are mysteries just waiting to be discovered. While the advances we’ve made in telescopes, optics, instrumentation, and photon efficiency have brought us unprecedented views of what’s out there, arguably our largest advances have come from going to space. Viewing the Universe from Earth’s surface is like looking out at the sky from the bottom of a swimming pool; the atmosphere itself distorts or completely obscures our views, depending on what wavelength we’re measuring. But from space, there’s no atmospheric interference at all, enabling us to see details that would be completely inaccessible otherwise. Although Hubble and JWST are the two best-known examples, they’re simply one-off observatories. If we had an array of them, instead, how much more could we know? That’s the question of Nathan Trepal, who writes in to ask: Continued here

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We may not be alone in the Universe. Should we reach out? SETI has been looking for life among the stars since 1985. For even longer than that, we have wondered whether we are alone in this massive Universe. And so far, while the stars are brilliant and beautiful, they are quiet.  Rather than just passively searching, some take a more proactive approach. They believe we can announce our presence — in other words, help ETs find us. It’s the “personal ad” method: Young civilization looking for a partner to contemplate space and hold slow conversations over incredibly huge distances.    Continued here

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The US State Department Ditches Times New Roman for Calibri The US Department of State will soon change its default typeface from the stalwart, stodgy Times New Roman to the younger, cooler Calibri. It’s a move the State Department says is intended to improve the readability of its internal communications between embassies and elsewhere in the department. The order came in the form of an email sent by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which was then intercepted by John Hudson at The Washington Post. After Hudson tweeted about the email, font fanatics across the internet got keyed up, either praising the move, decrying it, or reacting with a resounding, “Huh?” As a 21st-century update, Calibri makes sense. It is a digital-first typeface, as opposed to Times New Roman, which was created in 1931 for print newspapers and then reverse-engineered into a digital font. Calibri also has a larger character set, allowing it to be used for more languages and in more use cases than Times. But while it’s younger than Times, Calibri is not the most modern of fonts. Microsoft adopted Calibri as its default typeface in 2007, but in 2021 the company indicated plans to phase it out. Continued here

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All the Obnoxious Ways People Are Leaving Twitter There are only two kinds of tweeters: winners and losers. The winners are still on the platform, winning. The losers … well, they've lost. They are the Sad People for whom Twitter was a second home. They found influence there, and validation. Now they must, per their tribal allegiances, go. Go where? Anywhere else! Some are outraged. Others, depressed. All are embarrassed—and embarrassing. This is, from worse to worst, what they sound like: “It’s been real. It’s been fun. But it hasn’t been—actually, you know what, Twitter *was* real fun. I found community here. I found love. This was a good site. Fuck Elon Musk.” Continued here

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Twitter hired experts for case against Musk--now Musk won't pay them, lawsuit says Twitter was sued yesterday by a consulting firm that says it was never paid for work it did on the lawsuit that forced Elon Musk to complete his purchase of the company. Continued here

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Americans are among the most loving, Chinese and Germans the least An international team of nearly 100 scientists has conducted one of the largest studies on love of all time. Their work is published in the journal Scientific Reports. Psychologist Piotr Sorokowski based out of the University of Wrocław in Poland is first author of the Herculean (or perhaps more Shakespearean) scientific effort. He and numerous colleagues from dozens of countries joined together to survey 9,474 individuals over 18 years old in romantic relationships spread across 45 countries about their experiences of love. Specifically, the authors were curious how country-level factors such as modernization, gender equality, and collectivism were correlated with levels of love. Out of curiosity, they also explored whether a country’s average temperature was correlated with warmer feelings. Continued here

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Visualizing cells at previously impossible resolutions provides vivid insights into how they work All life is made up of cells several magnitudes smaller than a grain of salt. Their seemingly simple-looking structures mask the intricate and complex molecular activity that enables them to carry out the functions that sustain life. Researchers are beginning to be able to visualize this activity to a level of detail they haven’t been able to before. Biological structures can be visualized by either starting at the level of the whole organism and working down, or starting at the level of single atoms and working up. However, there has been a resolution gap between a cell’s smallest structures, such as the cytoskeleton that supports the cell’s shape, and its largest structures, such as the ribosomes that make proteins in cells. Continued here

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Why Does AI Art Look Like a '70s Prog-Rock Album Cover? Sometimes we stumble upon insight in unexpected places. Late last year, for example, I read perhaps the most precise description ever written about AI-generated art in The New York Times comments section. The article described what happened when a man named Jason Allen submitted an image generated by the AI program Midjourney to an art contest and won. (Long story short: Artists got mad.) While the story focused on the debate over the ethics of AI image generators, the comment had nothing to do with thorny moral considerations. Instead, it described how the winning work looked. "Congratulations to Mr. Allen on coaxing an algorithm to spit out an image that looks like a 1970s prog rock album cover," it read. The commenter's handle? Cynical Observer. Cynical, maybe. Observant, definitely. "Like a 1970s prog rock album cover" is a perfectly pithy way to convey what this new generative AI art scene frequently mimics. Allen's winning entry resembles a French neoclassical painting with a sci-fi twist. Womanly figures in flowy sienna and white robes stand in a vast ornate chamber with a vaguely alien cityscape in the background. It's not offensive or anything—calling it "moderately groovy" is apt—but let's just say the first-place award would make more sense if the judges of the art contest were, like, all the remaining living members of Jethro Tull.  Continued here

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T-Mobile's $150 Million Security Plan Isn't Cutting It Yesterday, mobile giant T-Mobile said that it suffered a data breach beginning on November 26 that impacts 37 million current customers on both prepaid and postpay accounts. The company said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing that a “bad actor” manipulated one of the company's application programming interfaces (APIs) to steal customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, billing addresses, dates of birth, account numbers, and service plan details. The initial intrusion occurred at the end of November, and T-Mobile discovered the activity on January 5.   T-Mobile is one of the US's largest mobile carriers and is estimated to have more than 100 million customers. But in the past 10 years, the company has developed a reputation for suffering repeated data breaches alongside other security incidents. The company had a mega breach in 2021, two breaches in 2020, one in 2019, and another in 2018. Most large companies struggle with digital security, and no one is immune to data breaches, but T-Mobile seems to be approaching companies like Yahoo in the pantheon of repeated compromises. Continued here

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Sun Tzu: 4 battle principles for business leaders Business leaders can gain valuable insights from history’s great military strategists. Martin Roger, an author and the former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, suggests examining The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Although the text is more than 2,000 years old, Roger argues that it contains timeless philosophy that applies not only to the battlefield, but also to modern business strategy. Continued here