Want to Improve Your Mental Health in 2023? This 5-Question Quiz Will Tell You What to Focus On

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Want to Improve Your Mental Health in 2023? This 5-Question Quiz Will Tell You What to Focus On   The research-backed mental health quiz will tell you what to focus for the biggest boost in happiness. Continued here

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Up close and personal: Dolphin POV caught on camera while hunting for tasty fish Scientists attached GoPro cameras to six dolphins and captured the sights and sounds of the animals as they hunted and devoured various species of fish—even squealing in victory at the capture of baby sea snakes, according to an August paper published in the journal PLoS ONE. While sound and video has previously been recorded for dolphins finding and eating dead fish, per the authors, this is the first footage combining sound and video from the dolphins' point of view as they pursued live prey while freely swimming. The audio element enabled the scientists to learn more about how the dolphins communicated while hunting. Continued here

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The last fisherman of Monaco It's often just past midnight when Eric Rinaldi unties the mooring lines and carefully manoeuvres his fishing boat Diego out of Monaco's harbour, Port Hercules. Contemplating the hours of inky darkness in front of him, he'll steer past rows of superyachts as he heads out into the open sea, their polished hulls and elaborate designs a stark contrast to the simple practicality of his fibreglass workboat. Onboard Diego – named for his young son – Rinaldi's biggest luxury is an old Nespresso machine, one of the few comforts among the jumble of nets, hooks, bright orange buoys and other tools of his trade.  Continued here

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What Squirrels Taught Me About Life After Divorce Only 25 percent of gray squirrels survive their first year. Success rates for second marriages are almost equally dire. Noah likes to feed the squirrels naked. I don’t know if he does it this way when I am not here. But like clockwork on the weekend mornings we spend together, the squirrels will start to tap on the window. And Noah will rise from the bed as if responding to a baby monitor. He will stumble to the kitchen, grab a handful of unsalted almonds from a jar in the cabinet, return to the bedroom, and crack the window an inch, popping the almonds out one by one so they land on the sill in a line. Continued here

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Does Influencer Marketing Really Pay Off? Influencer marketing is a huge industry, with companies around the world spending billions of dollars on these partnerships. But do these investments actually pay off? To quantify the ROI of influencer marketing, the authors analyzed engagement for more than 5,800 influencer posts and identified seven key variables that drive a campaign’s effectiveness, including characteristics of both the influencer and of their individual posts. They further found that by optimizing these variables, the average brand could boost ROI by 16.6%, suggesting that many companies are designing campaigns that leave substantial value on the table. By adopting these research-backed guidelines, brands can move past anecdotal evidence to ensure that their marketing dollars go toward the partnerships and content that are most likely to offer returns. Continued here

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With Only 6 Words, Patagonia Explained the Brilliant Reason It Closed All of Its Stores and Paid Its Employees to Take a Week Off Sometimes your employees need a break. Continued here

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Jorie Graham Takes the Long View The poet Jorie Graham is one of our great literary mappers of everything, everywhere all at once. As James Longenbach put it, she engages “the whole human contraption . . . rather than the narrow emotional slice of it most often reserved for poems.” Graham is a chronicler of bigness, the overawing bigness of our planet but also the too-bigness, at times, of the self. “I am huge,” she writes mournfully, in “Prayer Found Under Floorboard,” an elegy for what humans have already blotted out. Many of Graham’s subjects—politics, technology, natural history, and climate loss—have a sweeping scope. This year, she compiled four of her books on global warming—“Sea Change,” “Place,” “Fast,” and “Runaway”—into “[To] The Last [Be] Human,” which The New Yorker named one of the best books of 2022. In spring, Graham will publish “To 2040,” her fifteenth collection. (It begins: “Are we / extinct yet.”) Graham’s attention to bigness is set off by a gift for evoking smallness. She notices an “almost tired-looking” tendril of wisteria; she pauses to wonder “what it is we mean by / ok.” Our own comprehension of enormity, Graham writes, slides off of us “like a ring into the sea.” It’s a truism that poetry’s task is finding amazement in the everyday. Graham turns this into a terrifying as well as a moral project. (In her ocean metaphor, the ring is vast, and the unknowingness in which we lose it is vaster still. Perhaps her poems are salvage divers.) What makes Graham especially unique is her long, galloping line, a line that she consistently thematizes: she has described line breaks as cliffs that the reader tumbles down, over and over. Some of the poems in “[To] The Last [Be] Human” are right-justified; rather than fall off a ledge, the reader careens into a wall. Continued here

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Space traffic is about to get worse — thanks to the U.S. military Sometime this coming March, a network of 10 small satellites winged with solar panels is scheduled to launch into Earth's low orbit. Though likely invisible to the naked eye, the satellites will be part of a future herd of hundreds that, according to the Space Development Agency, or SDA, will bolster the United States' defense capabilities. The SDA, formed in 2019, is an organization under the United States Space Force, the newly formed military branch that operates and protects American assets in space. And like all good startups, the agency is positioned as a disruptor. It aims to change the way the military acquires and runs its space infrastructure. For instance, the forthcoming satellite network, called the National Defense Space Architecture, will collectively gather and beam information, track missiles, and help aim weapons, among other tasks. Continued here

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Here’s the truth about chronic pain — and what you can do to help When pain persists beyond the normal healing time, it is no longer considered simply a symptom but a disease in its own right. Imagine living with pain every day for months or even years — pain that is so intrusive it disrupts every day of your life. Continued here

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You've Been Choosing Your Goals All Wrong If you're getting ready to set your yearly goals for 2023, stop. Chances are, you're going about building and breaking habits all wrong, according to the experts—especially if you're extremely motivated in January, but find yourself getting distracted or overwhelmed come February. Before we get into the specifics of how to start or break a habit that you'll actually stick to, there are a few things you need to know. The most important thing is that habits are actually separate from goals. "Goals are how we make decisions—how we commit to an exercise program, or to eating healthily, or to saving money," says Wendy Wood, provost professor emerita of psychology and business at the University of Southern California and the author of Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science of Making Positive Changes That Stick. "But habits are how you stick with a behavior."  Continued here

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The Superhero Movie That Actually Pulls Off Blockbuster Magic Xochitl Gonzalez’s culture picks include Yellowjackets, the Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, and Black Panther This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Continued here

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The "McGurk effect" is a mind-blowing auditory illusion—and you can listen to it here This article was first published on Big Think in January 2022. It was updated in January 2023. Imagine you were locked in a dark room for a very long time with no sound, no light, and not the slightest hint of what might be happening outside of your room. Every so often, a man called McGurk would come into the room and tell you what’s going on in the outside world. Continued here

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Pope Benedict XVI: A man at odds with the modern world who leaves a legacy of intellectual brilliance and controversy To many observers, Benedict, who died on Dec. 31, 2022 at the age of 95, was known for criticizing what he saw as the modern world’s rejection of God and Christianity’s timeless truths. But as a scholar of the diversity of global Catholicism, I think it’s best to avoid simple characterizations of Benedict’s theology, which I believe will influence the Catholic Church for generations. While the brilliance of this intellectual legacy will certainly endure, it will also have to contend with the shadows of the numerous controversies that marked Benedict’s time as pope and, later, as pope emeritus. Continued here

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How to party if you're shy, socially awkward - or just plain boring Three writers who struggle with socialising explain how they make it through festive season Fanny Brice was right. People who need people are the luckiest people, at least when party season rolls around. Imagine, if you will, wanting to go to a party. Imagine knowing that you will have a good time - that the mere experience of being around people fills you, as a matter of course, with joy and contentment. That you go home with a spring in your step, a song in your heart, a smile on your lips - refreshed, restored, rejuvenated and ready for the next one. Continued here

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In-Person Events Are Back. How Activity-Based Businesses Are Striking a Balance Between Virtual and IRL In-person events are coming back. But businesses say they still need online services to survive in this gloomy economy. Continued here

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The 10 most exciting sci-fi movies coming out in 2023 2023 is looking to be a big year for science fiction. Marvel and DC both have highly anticipated new installments, while Brandon Cronenberg tries his hand at doppelgangers and Greta Gerwig tries her hand at satire. From Adam Driver fighting the dinosaurs to Timothée Chalamet riding sandworms, this year’s sci-fi movies offer a wide and exciting variety of stories. Whether you’re looking for original epic stories, exciting sequels, or the latest entries in your favorite fandom or franchise, here are 10 sci-fi movies that we’re looking forward to the most in 2023, ranked from least to most exciting. Continued here

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Tampa, Bali bombings, 9/11 and the Kyoto Protocol: today's cabinet paper release shows what worried Australia in 2002 Every year, the National Archives of Australia releases the cabinet records from 20 years earlier, and this year’s batch is out today. This release, from the cabinet records of 2002, is framed by two events of the previous year. Continued here

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Where did the new year's resolution come from? Well, we've been making them for 4,000 years As we welcome in the new year, a common activity across many cultures is the setting of new year resolutions. New year represents a significant temporal milestone in the calendar when many people set new goals for the year ahead. Here in Australia, over 70% of men and women (over 14 million Australians) are reported to have set at least one new year resolution in 2022. New year pledges or promises are not new. This practice has been around for some time. Most ancient cultures practised some type of religious tradition or festival at the beginning of the new year. Continued here

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The language that doesn't use 'no' Through the winter mist of the hills of the Terai, in lowland Nepal, 18-year-old Hima Kusunda emerges from the school's boarding house, snug in a pink hooded sweatshirt. Hima is one of the last remaining Kusunda, a tiny indigenous group now scattered across central western Nepal. Their language, also called Kusunda, is unique: it is believed by linguists to be unrelated to any other language in the world. Scholars still aren't sure how it originated. And it has a variety of unusual elements, including lacking any standard way of negating a sentence, words for "yes" or "no", or any words for direction. Continued here

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What happened to the world's ozone hole? In the late 1970s, Jonathan Shanklin, a meteorologist with the British Antarctic Survey, spent much of his time tucked away in an office in Cambridge working through a backlog of data from the southernmost continent on our planet. Shanklin was responsible for supervising the digitisation of paper records and computing values from Dobson spectrophotometers – ground-based instruments that measure changes in atmospheric ozone. Continued here

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A Guide to Doing Nothing for People Who Are Really Bad at It This article is part of SELF’s Rest Week, an editorial package dedicated to doing less. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that taking care of yourself, physically and emotionally, is impossible without genuine downtime. With that in mind, we’ll be publishing articles up until the new year to help you make a habit of taking breaks, chilling out, and slowing down. (And we’re taking our own advice: The SELF staff will be OOO during this time!) We hope to inspire you to take it easy and get some rest, whatever that looks like for you. Angela Neal-Barnett, PhD, finds solace under her hair dryer. That’s when, for just a few moments, she can truly relax. The psychologist and director of the Program for Research on Anxiety Disorders Among African Americans at Kent State University is legally deaf. She uses cochlear implants and hearing aids throughout the day, but when she dries her hair, there’s no noise. “I feel calmer and do my best thinking then. It’s forced relaxation,” Dr. Neal-Barnett tells SELF. Continued here

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The Best Advice I Ever Got: Fred Carl, Jr., Founder and CEO, Viking Range In 1986 I was working full-time in the construction business and renting an unfinished one-room office in an old cotton exchange building in downtown Greenwood, Mississippi, trying to start a company in my spare time. I had dozens of detailed sketches for what would be the first Viking range, and little else. Continued here

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Look up! 5 celestial events you can't miss in January 2023 Don't miss the full Moon, Earth's close approach with the Sun, a meetup of two bright planets, and more skywatching events in January 2023. Continued here

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Building Wealth: Our Favorite Reads At the time, my uncle’s explanation didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I nodded, let it go, and didn’t think more about it until a few years later when I finished grad school with massive debt from a student loan. The first job I took barely covered my expenses. I had to rely on a credit card, even when I didn’t fully understand how credit worked. Living in a city as overpriced as New York (and later New Delhi) was a daily reminder of how expensive life could get. Continued here

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The M.T.A. Holiday Train Shit Show If you enjoyed the Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden, you might want to catch the M.T.A. Holiday Train Shit Show, inspired by some of the greatest achievements of New York’s finest transportation system. All our displays are fabricated from a special compound of floor bagels, rat hair, and tunnel-stalactite juice. Continued here

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You need to play the best sci-fi brawler on Nintendo Switch Online ASAP Like any form of art, video games build on each other. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, this was especially apparent to anyone paying even moderate attention. Games were starting to take quite liberally from those around them, which sometimes resulted in lawsuits. To follow one specific strain, in 1986, Enix released the first-ever Dragon Quest game, an RPG in a fantasy world setting. In 1987, Technos released the first-ever Double Dragon game, a massive beat ‘em up hit about two brothers taking down endless hordes of bad guys. Elements of both were pulled for Sega’s 1989 arcade game Golden Axe, a beat ‘em up set in a fantasy world where you can ride dinosaurs and stab enemies. Continued here

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Marvel’s biggest movie ever could finally make the X-Men MCU canon The map of Marvel’s Multiverse Saga is a long and winding one, and the arc that began with WandaVision in 2021 will conclude with Avengers: Secret Wars in 2026. Since the beginning of Phase 4 and the weekly mystery of WandaVision, fans have speculated that Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) would usher mutants into the MCU in a reversal of her infamous “no more mutants” spell from the comic book storyline House of M. That proliferation of mutants hasn’t happened… yet. Sure, we’ve seen a few, including Professor X in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and the reveal that Ms. Marvel is a mutant herself. But we’re still pretty far away from a full-blown X-Men invasion of the MCU. Continued here

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What Are You Reading? Hey, thanks for coming over to catch up. How are you? Actually, let me stop you right there, because I have a more important question. Let’s dim the lights. I’ll recline on this lush, velvet daybed, and you can rest on that one. I’m lowering my eyelids, tilting my head a little bit, and settling into my deep Kathleen Turner voice. Continued here

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The Best Places to Travel in 2023 It’s our favorite time of year: the Where to Go season, when AFAR reveals our list of the ultimate places to travel in the coming year. How to choose? Our editorial team reached out to writers, reporters, and correspondents around the world and curated 12 global destinations for 2023 that feel poised for a “moment": creative cities, seaside villages, national parks, and other places where wonder prevails. Read on and prepare to start wandering... Across this secluded and beautiful island state near Melbourne, irreverence and experimentation reign. Continued here

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Borrowing money isn't always a bad thing - debt can be a sensible way to build wealth Bomikazi Zeka works for the University of Canberra and does not use this platform, or any other, to provide financial advice. Debt, in some form or another, is part of our financial profiles whether we like it or not. And it can be a useful way to build wealth if it is managed carefully and wisely. Continued here

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Exploring the mathematical universe - connections, contradictions, and kale Science and maths skills are widely celebrated as keys to economic and technological progress, but abstract mathematics may seem bafflingly far from industrial optimisation or medical imaging. Pure mathematics often yields unanticipated applications, but without a time machine to look into the future, how do mathematicians like me choose what to study? Over Thai noodles, I asked some colleagues what makes a problem interesting, and they offered a slew of suggestions: surprises, contradictions, patterns, exceptions, special cases, connections. These answers might sound quite different, but they all support a view of the mathematical universe as a structure to explore. Continued here

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My favourite fictional character: Seven Little Australians' wild heroine, Judy, was equipped to conquer the world - but not to survive it I can’t remember if I first met Judy Woolcot on the TV screen or in print: the two versions have cohered into a single entity. The television series of Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians first aired in 1973, so if I met her on-screen, it must’ve been via re-runs. I know my mother’s paperback copy of the novel featured a still from the series on its cover: a family portrait — Meg, Bunty, Baby, Nell, Pip; the General in a nightshirt, clinging to his young mother. The ultra-Victorian Captain Woolcot, played by Leonard Teale, his chin jutting out so precipitously that it threatens to pierce through the picture. And Judy, with bundles of shoulder-length hair, perched on a sofa arm, seeming somehow too big, too angular for the frame. Continued here

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Making a New Year’s Resolution? Don’t Go to War With Yourself “The difference between not doing anything at all and doing 10 minutes a few times a week is absolute.” New Year’s resolutions are a time for reflection—a chance to think about the limited time we have on this Earth and how to use it wisely. Continued here

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When Your Company's Results Fall Short, Grab a Mirror If effort doesn't match results, the problem is usually in the C-Suite.Continued here S8 12 ways to finally achieve your most elusive goals The best advice when making resolutions is to set goals that are “SMART” – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant (to you) and time-bound. Read more: Three ways to achieve your New Year’s resolutions by building 'goal infrastructure' Continued here S26 This insidious urban wildfire health risk happens after the fires stop One of the most destructive wildfires on record in Colorado left behind a trail of destruction. On Dec. 30, 2021, one of the most destructive wildfires on record in Colorado swept through neighborhoods just a few miles from our offices at the University of Colorado Boulder. The flames destroyed over 1,000 buildings, yet when we drove through the affected neighborhoods, some houses were still completely intact, right next to homes where nothing was left to burn. Continued here S30 50, 100 & 150 Years Ago: January 2023 “The basic dilemma represented by what has been termed the ‘world energy crisis’ can be simply stated: the earth’s nonrenewable fossil-fuel reserves will inevitably be exhausted, and in any event the natural environment of the earth cannot readily assimilate the byproducts of fossil-fuel consumption at much higher rates without suffering unacceptable levels of pollution. Major energy-consumption categories as transportation, space heating and heavy industrial processes are primarily supplied with fossil-fuel energy. If the ‘energy gap’ of the future is to be filled with nuclear power in the form of electricity, then the U.S. will have gone a long way toward becoming an ‘all-electric economy.’ A case can be made for utilizing the nuclear energy indirectly to produce a synthetic secondary fuel that would be delivered more cheaply and would be easier to use than electricity in many large-scale applications: hydrogen gas.” “Although the volume of secret Government research conducted in U.S. universities has declined sharply in the past decade, in part because of protests by students and faculties, a number of large institutions, chiefly state universities, continue to undertake classified projects. In fiscal year 1972 the Department of Defense has at least 29 classified contracts with universities, not counting contracts for work done at off-campus facilities. Of the contracts, 12 are with two institutions: the University of Texas and the University of Michigan.” Continued here S3 Life Expectancy Just Hit the Lowest Point in Decades. Here's a Leading Physician's Formula (and 4 Simple Tests) for Living a Longer, Healthier Life You take care of your business, but do you take care of yourself? As with most things, success often comes down to doing a few things right, over and over again. Continued here S47 Wolf Moon: You need to see the first Full Moon of 2023 next week The Wolf Moon will dazzle the night sky just days after the start of the new year. But the first Full Moon of 2023 will appear smaller than usual. The glow of moonlight is a reflection of sunlight. When the far side of the Moon is lit up, its near side is all dark: that’s New Moon. But when it comes time in the month for the near side to get the star’s illumination, it’s quite a sight. The Full Moon is one of the most spectacular lunar phases, and in January, it will appear about a week into the new year. Continued here S18 Netflix's 'Kaleidoscope' is creating a new way to watch television The stars of Netflix’s new heist series talk about how the show makes the viewing experience personal. One of the most under-appreciated elements of streaming television is just how tailored the experience can be. From the second you open Netflix, the algorithm suggests a whole row of shows and movies that fit your viewing profile. Even the thumbnail that appears on the screen for each of those suggestions is changed according to your interests. Continued here S9 It's OK to aim lower with your new year's exercise resolutions - a few minutes a day can improve your muscle strength One of the most popular new year’s resolutions is to exercise more. Many of us set ambitious goals requiring a big, regular commitment, but then abandon them because they’re too much to fit in. Plans to exercise more in the new year are often broken within a month. If the aim is to build long-term fitness and health, the exercise must be sustainable. It may be achievable to resolve to do an extra few minutes of muscle-strengthening exercises every day. Continued here S13 Did Black Lives Matter Change Broadway? During the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, Broadway theatres were among the many institutions to announce a commitment to equity and protecting Black lives. But, for many Black performers, the promise rang hollow. Frustrated by what he perceived to be a lack of accountability, the actor Britton Smith and his colleagues at Broadway Advocacy Coalition organized events that pointed to the industry’s failures and called for genuine change. B.A.C. won a Tony Award for its work. Two years later, however, “the fire [has] crumbled into ashes, and now the ashes are starting to settle,” Smith tells Ngofeen Mputubwele. “You have to go through a process of [finding] peace. . . . Some people are horrible. Some people want to learn, some people don’t. Some people want to keep their power, some people don’t.” © 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 S61 How to watch Netflix's 'Kaleidoscope': The "correct" episode order, explained The non-linear series will appear in your profile randomly, but you can choose a straightforward order. Kaleidoscope is trying to change the way you watch television. The Netflix heist series, starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tati Gabrielle, and Rufus Sewell, portrays an ultra-complicated crime with a 25-year backstory. Continued here S46 The 9 most anticipated games that definitely won't come out in 2023 2023 will see the release of many highly anticipated games, like Final Fantasy XVI. But many of the most hotly anticipated games have no chance of being released next year, no matter how hard we wish it weren’t so. Here are the 9 most anticipated games that have no chance of seeing the light of day in 2023 Continued here S15 You need to watch the most contentious sci-fi sequel on HBO Max ASAP In 1984, two very different Bill Murray movies appeared in theaters. One was a slow and serious film about a man searching for meaning after facing the trauma of trench warfare. It was an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel The Razor’s Edge, and it was Murray’s first attempt to expand beyond his Saturday Night Live persona. It was a complete flop. The other movie was Ghostbusters. While it’s unlikely that Murray expected his art-house drama to do as well as his special effects-laden comedy, the strong reactions to both were enough to drive him away from the screen for years. He ditched America and went to study philosophy in France, and when he finally returned to the big screen he seemed to have accepted his fate. His first two movies upon his return were about ghosts: The Christmas Carol-focused Scrooged in 1988, and then, in 1989, Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters II. Continued here S21 A Large Hadron Collider discovery could point the way to dark matter For decades, astrophysicists have theorized that the majority of matter in our universe is made up of a mysterious invisible mass known as dark matter (DM). While scientists have not yet found any direct evidence of this invisible mass or confirmed what it looks like, there are several possible ways we could search for it soon. One theory is that dark matter particles could collide and annihilate each other to produce cosmic rays that proliferate throughout our galaxy — similar to how cosmic ray collisions with the interstellar medium (ISM) do. Continued here S65 The Rise of the Chief Project Officer Thirty years ago 80% of the resources in an organization were dedicated to operations, and 20% to projects; today, that ratio has flipped. Despite this massive disruption, most organizations still don’t have one senior leader overseeing or supervising all the project activities. A chief project officer (CPO) should fill that void. The role goes far beyond the direct sponsorship of individual projects. The CPO reports directly to the CEO. They must push their organization toward adopting a project-driven structure and foster a collaborative and empowering culture that reaches across silos. They must also ensure that project-management competencies are developed throughout the organization. This article will explore the benefits a CPO can bring, how to understand whether your organization needs a CPO, and how to hire one. Continued here S33 What does it look like to “turn on” a gene? In the murky darkness, blue and green blobs are dancing. Sometimes they keep decorous distances from each other, but other times they go cheek to cheek — and when that happens, other colors flare. The video, reported last year, is fuzzy and a few seconds long, but it wowed the scientists who saw it. For the first time, they were witnessing details of an early step — long unseen, just cleverly inferred — in a central event in biology: the act of turning on a gene. Those blue and green blobs were two key bits of DNA called an enhancer and a promoter (labeled to fluoresce). When they touched, a gene powered up, as revealed by bursts of red. Continued here S19 Six classic stories that could become video games in 2023 The first day of the new year marks Public Domain Day. This annual occurrence marks the day numerous works enter into the United States public domain and are free to use by anyone with no fear of any copyright claims being levied against them. In 2023, works entering the public domain date to 95 years ago, so the hottest media from 1927 is soon to be rife for adaptation. What better source could there be for game studios to take ideas from? Here are the six best properties that should be adapted into video games ASAP. Video games and movies have a back-and-forth of homage and adaptation that goes both ways. While video games based on movies and movies based on video games both have their good, bad, and ugly titles it is hard to deny cinema’s influence on gaming. The 2010s solidified a style of cinematic game that we still see today in games like God of Wår Ragnarok. Continued here S25 Super popular & insanely clever home upgrades people are making that are under $35 on Amazon Maybe your kitchen and bathroom are begging for a complete remodel, but you don't have a ton of cash to spend on upgrades. Don't worry: Small improvements don't have to cost a fortune. My specific approach is starting with the little things because they can make a big difference. For example, before I change the cabinets, I change the handles — and before I replace the flooring, I put down throw rugs. It's possible to make these kinds of changes without spending hundreds of dollars, especially with these Amazon products that are under $35. That's right: Thanks to the items on this list — which range from home improvement tools to luxurious bed sheets — upgrading your space can be easy and affordable. From an adjustable mount that lets you put a recipe screen in the kitchen to a curtain made of glistening string lights to help create a soothing atmosphere, you'll find loads of terrific, cost-effective, and fun home upgrades. There are even things like silicone furniture feet to help protect your hardwood floors, along with peel-and-stick backsplash for your kitchen. Continued here S50 The best boss battle of 2022 made this Nintendo shooter an instant classic Imagine getting duped by a giant, ink-spattered grizzly bear into helping him wipe out your entire species. Nintendo has never been afraid to get weird, and Splatoon 3, with its absurd and surprisingly detailed lore, is the ultimate expression of that weirdness. The game’s final boss battle is a stunning culmination of both the story and various game mechanics in wacky ways that make you ask, “Is this really happening!?” about every 30 seconds. Continued here S60 100 years ago, Stan Lee was born. He changed superheroes — and the world. Lee wrote the first lines of dialogue for Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the X-Men. But his influence goes far beyond that. December 28, 2022, marks 100 years since the birth of the world’s most famous comic book writer: the late Stan Lee. Continued here S27 The 10 most exciting sci-fi TV shows coming out in 2023 As we enter a new year, there’s another slate of exciting sci-fi TV shows on the horizon. Popular franchise installments, follow-ups to some of the best shows of yesteryear, new adaptations of manga and games, and brand-new ideas will keep genre fans glued to their screens in the months to come. These are the shows we know are confirmed for a 2023 release date (no “2023 or 2024” here), so mark your calendars and plan your snacking strategy for the next 12 months. Continued here S24 Medieval manuscripts reveal why humans loved cats — with one big exception Cats had a bad reputation in the middle ages. Their presumed links with paganism and witchcraft meant they were often treated with suspicion. But despite their association with the supernatural, medieval manuscripts showcase surprisingly playful images of our furry friends. From these (often very funny) portrayals, we can learn a lot about medieval attitudes towards cats — not least that they were a central fixture of daily medieval life. Continued here S53 You need to play the most relaxing sim on Xbox Game Pass ASAP Capitalism is the best. Well, the best we’ve done so far (looking at you, Divine Right of Kings). Exchanging our labor for cold, hard cash is the foundation of civil society. Commerce makes the world go round, but the actual economics are rarely fun. It’s why most video game economies are only there to quantify all the shooting and looting. Is there a game that shows us that business can be pleasure? Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator from developer niceplay games does this, and does it better than any game in recent memory. As the title implies, you’re an alchemist brewing potent potables in a medieval village for everyone from witchers who need healing draughts to wimps who need elixirs of strength. The hook of the game isn’t in the numbers as you buy and sell, but rather in an innovative crafting system that’s part puzzle, part cartography. It’s chill AF and endlessly addictive. Continued here S17 Quadrantids: You need to see 2023's most elusive meteor shower just after New Year's Day The Quadrantids, peaking just after the New Year, are one of the most spectacular but hardest-to see meteor showers of the year. The Quadrantids meteor shower is known for lighting up the sky with bright fireball meteors — but only if you can catch them during their few hours of peak awesomeness, which will happen on the night of January 3-4, 2023, between midnight and dawn. The Moon will be nearly full, so the best viewing will be in the very early morning hours, in the dark hour just before dawn. Continued here S58 2,700 years later, ancient rock carvings reveal the most stunning city in the world Archaeologists in northern Iraq, working on the Masaki and Adad gate sites in Mosul that were destroyed by Islamic State in 2016, recently uncovered 2,700-year-old Assyrian reliefs. Featuring battle scenes and trees, these rock carvings add to the bounty of detailed stone panels excavated from the 1840s onwards, many of which are currently held in the British Museum. They stem from the ancient city of Nineveh, which, for a time, was likely the most dazzling in the world. There is evidence of occupation at the site already by 3,000 BC, an era known as the late Uruk period. But it was under King Sennacherib (705-681 BC), son of Sargon and grandfather of Ashurbanipal, that Nineveh became the capital of Assyria, the greatest power of its day. Continued here S49 Shipwrecks, new species, and more: 9 biggest deep-sea discoveries of 2022 Peculiar lifeforms and toxic environments are just part of everyday life in some of the darkest, coldest, places on Earth. Continued here S55 Trillions of tiny, self-replicating satellites could unlock interstellar travel Inspiration for space exploration can come from all corners. One of the most inspiring, or terrifying, sources of inspiration for some in space exploration came from computer science expert John von Neumann, who laid out a framework for self-replicating machines in a series of lectures he gave in 1948. Ever since then, scientists and engineers have been debating the advantages, and the perils, of such a system. However, while technology has indeed advanced a long way since the 1940s, it still seems like we are still a long way from having a fully functional von Neumann machine. That is unless you turn to biology. Even simple biological systems can perform absolutely mind-blowing feats of chemical synthesis. And there are few people in the world today who know that better than George Church. The geneticist from Harvard has been at the forefront of a revolution in the biological sciences over the last 30 years. Now, he’s published a new paper in Astrobiology musing about how biology could aid in creating a pico-scale system that could potentially explore other star systems at next to no cost. Continued here S59 'Kaleidoscope' review: Netflix's gimmicky heist doesn't pay off When streaming blew up, its biggest strength against primetime television was that it allowed the viewer to watch shows at their own speed. You could watch one episode a week like a regular show, or binge the entire thing. Suddenly, appointment television was a thing of the past and water cooler conversations started with, “Have you finished it yet?” But one element remained the same — everyone watched the shows in the same order. With Kaleidoscope, Netflix’s newest heist show starring Giancarlo Esposito, this model is disrupted. But while the format is intriguing, it’s not the case for another upheaval of how we watch TV. Continued here S63 The Psychology Behind Unethical Behavior Leaders are often faced with ethical conundrums. So how can they determine when they’re inching toward dangerous territory? There are three main psychological dynamics that lead to crossing moral lines. First, there’s omnipotence: when someone feels so aggrandized and entitled that they believe the rules of decent behavior don’t apply to them. Second, consider cultural numbness: when others play along and gradually begin to accept and embody deviant norms. Finally, when people don’t speak up because they are thinking of more immediate rewards, we see justified neglect. There are several strategies leaders can use to counter these dynamics, including relying on a group of trusted peers to keep you in check, keeping a list of things you will never do for profit, and looking out for ways you explain away borderline actions. Continued here S52 How a fantasy masterpiece led to the discovery of a real psychological condition Some 40 years after Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was first published in 1866, accounts of hallucinations similar to those described by Lewis Carroll began to appear in the medical literature. In 1904, William Spratling, one of the first American epileptologists, published case studies of several patients for whom “everything looked bigger” just before their seizures; three years later, in 1907, the great British neurologist William Gowers also reported epilepsy patients who perceived objects to look “twice their size” during the aura preceding their seizures; and in 1913, the German neurologist Hermann Oppenheim noted that he had “seen a case of genuine hemicrania [“one-sided headache”] in which there was during an episode of violent migraine an indescribable feeling of detachment of the trunk or extremity after an hour or even a day of spontaneous dizziness.” Continued here S31 A Drug to Treat Aging May Not Be a Pipe Dream Life expectancy in the best-performing countries has been increasing by three months per year every year since the early 1800s. Throughout most of human history, you had a roughly 50–50 chance of making it into your twenties, mainly due to deaths from infectious diseases and accidents. Thanks to medical advances, we’ve gradually found ways to avoid and treat such causes of death; the end result is perhaps humanity’s greatest ever achievement—we’ve literally doubled what it means to be human, increasing lifespans from 40 to 80 years. On the other hand, this has allowed one scourge to rise above all the others to become the world’s largest cause of death: aging. Aging is now responsible for over two-thirds of deaths globally—more than 100,000 people every day. This is because, counterintuitive though it may sound, the chief risk factor for most of the modern world’s leading killers is the aging process itself: Cancer, heart disease, dementia, and many more health problems become radically more common as we get older. We all know that factors such as smoking, lack of exercise, and poor diet can increase the risk of chronic diseases, but these are relatively minor compared to aging. For instance, having high blood pressure doubles your risk of having a heart attack; being 80 rather than 40 years old multiplies your risk by ten. As the global population ages, the magnitude of death and suffering caused by aging will only increase. Continued here S54 New drugs could turn the clock back on aging — will they work? James Kirkland started his career in 1982 as a geriatrician, treating aging patients. But he found himself dissatisfied with what he could offer them. “I got tired of prescribing wheelchairs, walkers, and incontinence devices,” recalls Kirkland, now at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. He knew that aging is considered the biggest risk factor for chronic illness, but he was frustrated by his inability to do anything about it. Continued here S57 Animal brains use complex calculations to evade getting eaten Scientists are beginning to unravel the complex circuitry behind the split-second decision to beat a hasty retreat. Survival of the fittest often means survival of the fastest. But the fastest doesn’t necessarily mean the fastest moving. It might mean the fastest thinking. When faced with the approach of a powerful predator, for instance, a quick brain can be just as important as quick feet. Continued here S56 50 cheap ways to upgrade your home you'll wish you knew about sooner I’ve been doing small weekend projects on my house lately and they have transformed the place. I haven’t spent much time or money, but it’s easier to cook in my kitchen, my stairs are no longer dangerous, there is less clutter, and my once-crappy shower is suddenly amazing. I don’t have the money or patience at the moment for tearing out walls or upgrading appliances, but these little improvements have had a huge impact. And along the way, I discovered 50 cheap ways to upgrade your home you'll wish you knew about sooner. Lighting is one of the first things I tackled and I’m super pleased with the results. I love it when the laundry room light turns on when I enter, since my hands are full carrying laundry baskets, and turns off again when I leave. It’s more convenient and it saves power. So I installed lights in my closets and on the stairs that do the same thing. I also found a quick and easy way to declutter my bathroom, installed an incredible shower head, and found a permanent home for my electric toothbrush. Each of these fixes took less than 10 minutes yet the results please me every day. Continued here S48 You need to watch the most subversive alien invasion thriller on HBO Max ASAP Going back to your hometown can be a strange experience. You might be surprised and delighted to realize that very little has changed since you left, but the town will likely still feel, in some odd, unexplainable way, different than it did before. More often than not, that feeling is the natural result of how much you’ve changed and grown. But what if that nagging feeling wasn’t just the result of your own experience? What if there really was a new secret suddenly lurking beneath the surface of the town you once called home? That’s the idea at the center of The World’s End, Edgar Wright’s 2013 sci-fi comedy thriller. The final installment in Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost’s Cornetto Trilogy offers the most absurd answer to the question. Continued here S62 This overlooked biometric on fitness trackers could reveal how healthy your heart is Your heart beats around 100,000 times every day. Heart rate is a key marker of cardiovascular activity and an important vital sign. But your pulse is not as steady as a precision clock — nor would you want it to be. As a cardiovascular physiologist, I measure heart rate in nearly every experiment my students and I perform. Sometimes we use an electrocardiogram, such as you’d see in a medical clinic, which uses sticky electrodes to measure electrical signals between two points of your body. Other times we use a chest strap monitor, like ones you might see on someone at the gym, which also detects heartbeats based on electrical activity. Continued here S51 'Alice in Borderland' Season 2 ends with a surprisingly kind message — and one character is proof One character in Alice in Borderland Season 2 represents the show's unexpectedly kind message. Alice in Borderland’s cast of characters is an embarrassment of riches. It’s one of the many story elements that makes this Japanese deadly competition drama a must-watch in the era of peak entertainment. In the Netflix series, no character is too small to get a flashback, expanding the world far beyond protagonists Arisu and Usagi. In Season 2, this means new characters for Arisu, Usagi, and us viewers to get to know. And one character in particular has stolen the show. Continued here S64 The Rise of the Chief Project Officer Thirty years ago 80% of the resources in an organization were dedicated to operations, and 20% to projects; today, that ratio has flipped. Despite this massive disruption, most organizations still don’t have one senior leader overseeing or supervising all the project activities. A chief project officer (CPO) should fill that void. The role goes far beyond the direct sponsorship of individual projects. The CPO reports directly to the CEO. They must push their organization toward adopting a project-driven structure and foster a collaborative and empowering culture that reaches across silos. They must also ensure that project-management competencies are developed throughout the organization. This article will explore the benefits a CPO can bring, how to understand whether your organization needs a CPO, and how to hire one. Continued here Contributors Dharmendra Kumar Priya Ranjan Powered by Blogger.