Monday 20th May 2024
  • To Navigate Conflict, Prioritize Dignity

    The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.

    The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.

    Conflicts between businesses pursuing commercial objectives and communities defending their interests arise regularly and often inevitably, especially when companies don’t prioritize engagement with their neighbors. Consider the rapid expansion of the mining sector in Latin America, renewable energy projects that underestimate “not in my backyard” opposition, or the displacement of marginalized groups with unwanted facility siting. In many cases, the work has slogged on despite local protests, and drawn-out conflict has resulted.

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  • The Next Star Wars Show Could Bring Back a Sith Weapon that Rivals the Lightsaber

    The Acolyte will show the Star Wars universe in an old light. Set in the “last days of the High Republic,” which is about a century before the prequel trilogy, the upcoming Disney+ series depicts the Jedi at the peak of their power, when they protected the galaxy with (seemingly) infallible grace and benevolence.

    There are many reasons that environment is different from the Star Wars most fans know, but one of the most intriguing comes from the different combat styles that will apparently be on display. Now, as a sinister Sith plot unfolds, we may also see an ancient Sith artifact enter canon, and do its best to hold up against a lightsaber.

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  • Amazon’s Selling Out of These 55 Weird Things for Your Home That Are So Damn Clever & Cheap

    Often the thing that turns a house into a home isn’t an investment piece but a simple, cool, and cheap decor accent. Or maybe it’s whimsical takes on ordinary tools that make your space more functional. Or maybe it’s a storage hack for a more organized space. But no matter what those things are, they’re certainly clever and cheap. If you don’t believe these kinds of things can improve your home, keep scrolling for 55 weird, cheap, and clever things for your home that are selling out on Amazon.

    This pickle jar has two connected compartments separated by a strainer so you can put all your pickles in one side and let them marinate in pickle juice until you’re ready to take one out. Then, you simply flip it over, the juice sinks into the bottom compartment, and you can grab your pickle without creating a mess.

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  • 8 Years Ago, Google Beat Alexa. Then It Just Let the Assistant Waste Away

    Instead of leading the way, Google is again playing catch up, only this time it’s to OpenAI’s ChatGPT not Amazon.

    Google Assistant was supposed to be Google’s future. The voice assistant was an early attempt at ambient computing that gave customers a one-on-one relationship with all of the company’s products. Sure, Google was directly responding to Amazon’s announcement of Alexa and the Echo, but it was also deploying years of research it had already conducted on natural language processing and machine learning. In many ways, the Assistant was uniquely suited to supercharge a voice-driven Google Search.

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  • 65 Crazy Things on Amazon That Are Shockingly Clever

    You may not have known that you need a plush tablet stand or stainless steel chilling stone with a built-in suction cup, but after checking out this list, you’ll realize that there’s actually a lot of life-improving, clever stuff that you’re missing out on. These crazy things will make everyday life easier from your car to the kitchen and office (and everywhere in between).

    Add this refrigerator deodorizer to your cart and you won’t have to worry about replacing it for a whopping 10 years. It eliminates odors at the source by decomposing gases, making it more effective than baking soda and activated carbon. It can also be used in your closet or car — it will freshen up any area that you place it in.

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  • 35 Years Ago, an Underrated Vampire Thriller Barely Made it to Theaters

    The original Fright Night grossed nearly $25 million in the summer of 1985, an impressive figure for a horror movie only surpassed that year by the second outing of Freddy Kreuger. You’d expect its 1989 sequel to be something of a big deal, but thanks to various behind-the-scenes problems, it slipped so far under the radar that many fans weren’t even aware of its existence.

    The franchise’s slide into obscurity began when Columbia Pictures apparently decided that Oscar bait, rather than schlocky horror comedies whose only accolades came from the Saturn Awards, should be their forte. New Century/Vista took up the mantle instead, but as a much smaller company, it had to slash both its production and distribution budget: Fright Night Part 2 opened on just 148 screens, explaining why its box office haul was only a tenth of its predecessor.

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  • This Surprising Problem Occurs When You Rub Your Eyes Too Much

    Few can deny how good it feels to clench your fist and dig knuckle-first into your itchy eyeballs. Whether you’ve got seasonal allergies or some dust in your eye, everyone feels the urge to rub at some point. (My mom even has a crass description for how satisfying it feels to rub your eyes: ocular masturbation.) But as much as this habit might temporarily relieve discomfort, especially when you’re dealing with red, itchy eyes from allergies, experts warn it can do more harm than good.

    Rubbing your eyes introduces a host of potential issues, and even puts you at risk for vision problems. Worst of all? It probably doesn’t even help with itch.

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  • Why Scientists Are Frantically Trying To Document Millions of Viral Sequences Around the World

    Viruses are a mysterious and poorly understood force in microbial ecosystems. Researchers know they can infect, kill, and manipulate human and bacterial cells in nearly every environment, from the oceans to your gut. But scientists don’t yet have a full picture of how viruses affect their surrounding environments in large part because of their extraordinary diversity and ability to rapidly evolve.

    Communities of microbes are difficult to study in a laboratory setting. Many microbes are challenging to cultivate, and their natural environment has many more features influencing their success or failure than scientists can replicate in a lab.

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  • An Exoplanet's Huge Comet-like Tail Hides An Astronomical Secret

    WASP-69b offers astrophysicists a window into the dynamic processes that shape planets across the galaxy.

    Located 163 light-years from Earth, a Jupiter-sized exoplanet named WASP-69b offers astrophysicists a window into the dynamic processes that shape planets across the galaxy. The star it orbits is baking and stripping away the planet’s atmosphere, and that escaped atmosphere is being sculpted by the star into a vast, cometlike tail at least 350,000 miles long.

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  • Netflix Just Quietly Added the Most Misunderstood Marvel Movie of the Decade

    Is Madame Web a self-aware camp classic, or a spectacular overestimation of Sony’s Spider-Verse? It all depends on who you ask. From a box office standpoint, the 2024 film didn’t make Sony’s nascent franchise any more viable; it’s the lowest-grossing film based on a Marvel character, ever. The box-office and critical reception was so bad, that the failure of Madame Web might have Sony reevaluating its plans for the universe: the studio was reportedly building a handful of spin-offs around Dakota Johnson’s unlikely heroine but might have pulled the plug since.

    But perhaps time will be kind to Madame Web. Or rather, maybe Madame Web was never destined to find its audience as a movie theater blockbuster tentpole. Instead, it’s the kind of film that you watch watches with friends and forget a day later. Studios are now hungrier than ever for the next big phenomenon, the film that’s going to reshape the world. Madame Web was never going to be that, because it belongs to a bygone era, one where mid-budget chick flicks and low-risk cult classics had just as much pull as superhero tentpoles. It straddles those two worlds to varying success. Sure, it flopped at the box office, but it’s been getting a much warmer reception with the help of a platform like Netflix.

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