Sunday 12th May 2024

Swimming in Data? Three Benefits of Visualization - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)

“A good sketch is better than a long speech…” — a quote often attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte The ability to visualize the implications of data is as old as humanity itself. Yet due to the vast quantities, sources, and sinks of data being pumped around our global economy at an ever increasing rate, the need […]

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Your Best Ideas Are Often Your Last Ideas - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)

Research has clearly shown that people’s creativity tends to increase or stay constant over the course of an ideation session. Nevertheless, most of us consistently underestimate the value of persistence in the creative process — a fallacy the authors refer to as the “creative cliff illusion.” While it is true that we tend to produce fewer ideas the longer we brainstorm, we inaccurately assume that that decline in productivity correlates with a decline in the creativity of the ideas we come up with. And this misperception can lead us to stop brainstorming too early, before we’ve reached our best ideas. Luckily, the authors’ research also suggests that increased awareness of this phenomenon — either through prior experience with the reality of creative work, or through explicit education — can reduce its potency. Based on these findings, the authors propose several tactical strategies for managers looking to foster creativity in their teams, including explaining and reminding people about the counterintuitive nature of the creative process, setting aside extra time for ideation, and constant experimentation and iteration to improve how teams come up with new ideas.

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A new understanding of tinnitus and deafness could help reverse both - New Scientist (No paywall)

Investigations of the paradoxical link between tinnitus and hearing loss have revealed a hidden form of deafness, paving the way to possible new treatments

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Longest-living cat breeds revealed by life expectancy study - New Scientist (No paywall)

Birman and Burmese cats typically live for more than 14 years while sphynxes live less than half as long on average, finds a study of pet cats in the UK

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Fusion reactors could create ingredients for a nuclear weapon in weeks - New Scientist (No paywall)

Concern over the risks of enabling nuclear weapons development is usually focused on nuclear fission reactors, but the potential harm from more advanced fusion reactors has been underappreciated

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Nintendo Just Quietly Released One of the Most Underrated Puzzle Games

Indie puzzle game Hand in Hand is delightfully understated, and so it would make sense if its May 11 release on Nintendo Switch escapes your notice. Trust us, you don’t want to let it. Hand in Hand is a fantastic Switch port offering something rare to video game — a seamless split-screen that is required even for single players.

Games don't feature a solo split-screen often, presumably, because controlling two characters at once is complicated. It can even feel overwhelming. Butt Hand in Hand, which plays gently with the idea of "soulmates," challenges that feeling gracefully. It takes cues from 2013 adventure game Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, probably the most popular instance of simultaneously controlling characters, and it heightens the drama; instead of mapping two different joysticks to two different characters, the way Brothers does, Hand in Hand makes you move both characters with the same joystick. Local co-op controls, however, are mapped to both joysticks the way Brothers is.

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'Doctor Who's Future is "Going to be Brilliant," Jodie Whittaker Says

The 13th Doctor couldn’t be more excited about the future — even if she’s a bit jealous.

Before the Disney+ era, before the 60th anniversary specials, bi-generation, and before Ncuti Gatwa got cast as the first Black actor cast in the lead role, Jodie Whittaker made Doctor Who history. After more than half a century of the Doctor portrayed as a man, she took on the role of the world-weary Time Lord with a newfound sense of childlike wonder and whimsy. “I never get bored of talking about it,” she tells Inverse. “I love it. It's my happiest time.”

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55 Weird Things on Amazon That Make Your Home Look 10x More Impressive

I love sprucing up my space to make it look more impressive. Whether I want to wow new friends or do it all for myself, I’m all about picking out things that will take my place to the next level. If you want to do the same, the Amazon finds on this list will add a touch of personality to your home, making you proud to show it off or stay in and enjoy it all to yourself.

This power scrubber is about to be your favorite cleaning sidekick with its ability to effectively clean grout lines, drains, and other tight spots in your home. The oscillating head is a force to be reckoned with, scrubbing a whopping 60 times per second for a deep clean with minimal effort on your part. It’s no wonder this battery-powered scrubber is backed by over 16,000 five-star ratings on Amazon.

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The Most Surreal Ghost Movie of the Year Just Quietly Dropped on Digital

So says the bedraggled British archaeologist Arthur (a terrific Josh O’Connor) to the head of a perfectly preserved Etruscan statue he and his crew of tomb raiders have found in a forgotten grave. Well, less found than pilfered — Arthur and his ragtag team are no more than common thieves who spend their days robbing graves and selling their stolen goods to a mysterious and powerful art collector Spartaco (Alba Rohrwacher). But this wistful little sentiment feels like it could apply to La chimera itself, Alice Rohrwacher’s haunting, elegiac drama that seems like it was lost to the sands of time — and was only just now unearthed for our viewing pleasure.

A heist story, a ghost story, and a love story all at once, La chimera is an entrancing trip through the Italian countryside in the ‘80s that feels something like a waking dream. It might be because it opens with Arthur dreaming of his deceased love Beniamina (Yile Vianello), reliving a memory that will haunt him through the rest of the film. But it is also likely because there’s a hazy sense of unreality to the entire film. La chimera doesn’t quite have the same level of magical realism as Rohrwacher’s last film Happy as Lazzaro, but it dances between life, and the afterlife, the past, and the present in a way that blurs together these planes of existence until you wonder whether those memories of Beniamina really might be apparitions, beckoning Arthur towards death. It might be why he spends his time searching through graves for skeletons that are no longer there, and rifling through these buried treasures for a glimpse of the divine. “Everyone’s searching for their chimera,” one of the crew remarks, and it’s clear that Beniamina is Arthur’s chimera.

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This Wild, Believable Theory Suggest AI Is Blocking Us From Alien Contact

What if AI represents a formidable bottleneck in the development of all civilizations, one so challenging that it thwarts their long-term survival?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed at an astounding pace over the last few years. Some scientists are now looking towards the development of artificial superintelligence (ASI) — a form of AI that would not only surpass human intelligence but would not be bound by the learning speeds of humans.

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