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☆ Opinion | Don’t Wear the Goggles. Their Vision Is Bleak.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Ross Douthat | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

And our health as a society and species depends on sustaining it, no matter how sleek the goggles get. There are two possible futures for the virtual reality headset. Obviously, Apple, Meta and Google are all invested in the second future. So the clear goal of this competition is a future where the Vision Pro or the next Meta headset or some other competitor locks down an iPhone-level market, not just a boutique clientele. Back when Google Glass debuted, one could already foresee where the augmented or virtual reality experience would take humanity — toward deepened isolation, depressive solipsism, masturbatory anomie.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, masturbatory Organizations: Apple, Meta, Google Locations: V.R, Silicon Valley

☆ Why Do We Brand the Summer?
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-03 | by ( Callie Holtermann | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Feral Girl Summer is over and Married Girl Summer has arrived. Summer is coming, and with it the yearly onslaught of attempts to label a season that has not yet happened. Welcome to your Amy March Girl Summer. Many of these declarations are not meant to be taken seriously, and plenty will not succeed (see: Hot Vax Summer and, less consequentially, The New York Times’s endorsement of the Dirty Shirley). “No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike,” wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne, who died 155 years before he would have been able to listen to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hot Girl Summer.”

Persons: Ed Sheeran, Hugo Spritz, Amy, Shirley, ”, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Megan Thee Organizations: Media Locations: The, York

☆ Palestinian-American authors bring their culture to the heart of children's books
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Alaa Elassar | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +15 min

Today, Moushabeck, 36, is part of a burgeoning movement of Palestinian-American authors publishing children’s books in English with Palestinians as the main characters. Letting Palestinian children be childrenDespite recent strides in the arts, Palestinian-Americans, along with other Arab-Americans, are still woefully underrepresented in books. Between 2018 to 2022, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Education found that less than 1% of children’s and young adult books released by US publishers were about Arabs. The books also feature activities related to Palestinian culture, including a recipe for hummus and a tutorial for tatreez, traditional Palestinian embroidery. Bishara, whose own family was expelled from the Galilee in 1948, says it’s important to teach Palestinian children raised in diaspora about every aspect of Palestinian culture and history, including those that cause great pain.

☆ AI boom could expose investors’ natural stupidity
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Felix Martin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

Indeed, enthusiasm about AI has become the one ray of light piercing the stock market gloom created by the record-breaking rise in U.S. interest rates. It’s a good moment for investors to be especially alert to the tendency of natural stupidity to drive stock market valuations to unrealistic – and therefore ultimately unprofitable – extremes. However, the most important lessons of behavioural economics relate to a more fundamental question: Will the new generation of AI do what it promises? Behavioural economics offers some cautionary tales for such attempts to apply AI in the wild. For example, stock market returns can be affected by a small number of rare but extreme movements in share prices.

☆ The $2 billion Rwandan airport that could help African aviation take off
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Jack Bantock | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

For RwandAir CEO Yvonne Manzi Makolo, the problem of connectivity presents the “biggest challenge” to the African aviation industry. Pascal Pavani / AFP via Getty ImagesSolutionsBut solutions are touching down, starting with the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM). First proposed in 2018, if implemented the policy would create a single market for African aviation, facilitating the free movement of people, goods, and services. What is missing is the willingness of states to really implement it.”There is hope for a bright new future in African aviation. Because of scale, they can then open up the African continent a lot more.

☆ The Painter Who Inspired a New Ballet
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Ella Riley-Adams | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In Kylie Manning’s paintings, figures swirl and emerge from broad landscapes. The wall-filling pieces can provoke a physical reaction, akin to looking over the rail of a bridge across a river. But the rest feels less clear: Is there a third figure, head in hands, between the initial two? Manning’s figures aren’t gendered, and she wants viewers to interpret the subjects and settings on their own terms. “It’s about spending time with them, letting them unravel for you like a song,” she says.

☆ Judge Acquits Aerospace Executives Accused of Rigging Labor Market
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Dave Michaels | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Justice Department under the Biden administration has aimed to push the boundaries of antitrust law. Photo: ALEXANDER DRAGO/REUTERSWASHINGTON—The Justice Department’s push to prosecute employers over alleged deals to fix wages or stop workers from getting better jobs has a major defect: Courts don’t see any crime committed. On Friday, a federal judge in Connecticut threw out criminal charges against six aerospace-industry executives accused of agreeing to not poach one another’s employees. The result is the latest trial defeat for the Justice Department, which is trying to prosecute conduct previously treated as civil wrongdoing.

CNN —President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden capped South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s official state visit with a glamorous state dinner at the White House Wednesday night to celebrate the two nations’ 70-year alliance. May we do it together for another 170 years.”But Biden wasn’t the only leader who took the mic. Following a round of musical performances, his South Korean counterpart joined him on stage to give his own – a karaoke rendition of Don McClean’s “American Pie” – which received a standing ovation from the crowd. The elaborate dinner is the result of weeks of careful diplomatic preparations, with each detail meticulously planned by a team of White House chefs, social staff, and protocol experts. U.S. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden pose with South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol and first lady Kim Keon Hee in front of the Grand Staircase of the White House before an official State Dinner, in Washington, U.S. April 26, 2023.

☆ Naked sunbather: German landlord wins right to keep sunbathe nude
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Nadine Schmidt | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Berlin CNN —A German landlord has won the right to sunbathe naked in the courtyard of his Frankfurt building, in spite of complaints from his tenants. The landlord, who has not been named, resorted to taking legal action after a human resources company that rented premises in the building withheld payments because of his fondness for sunbathing nude in a common courtyard area, according to Frankfurt’s highest regional court. The firm, which has also not been identified, had reduced and partially withheld payments that it owed for its office space in the residential building in an upscale neighborhood of the city. “On the contrary, the plaintiff had credibly stated that he always wore a bathrobe, which he only took off directly in front of the sunbed,” it said. There are about 600,000 Germans registered in more than 300 private nudist or FKK clubs and a further 14 affiliated clubs in Austria.

☆ How a Missed Tummy Tuck in Mexico Led to a Deadly Kidnapping
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Jacey Fortin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Within minutes of riding into Mexico in a rented white minivan last month, Latavia McGee knew that she was lost. She and three of her closest friends — close enough that she called them brothers — had driven from South Carolina to Matamoros in the state of Tamaulipas so that she could get a tummy tuck procedure. But this time, she was running late, had no phone service and had veered off course, Ms. McGee recalled in a recent interview. Also in the wayward van were Zindell Brown, Shaeed Woodard and Eric Williams, old companions with whom she had grown up in South Carolina. That morning in Mexico, they had been enjoying one another’s company, Ms. McGee said, as Mr. Brown, the best Spanish speaker of the four, asked strangers for directions.

☆ They dated as teenagers. 40 years later, she decided to go on vacation with him
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Francesca Street | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +13 min

“Our hallways in this school, they were outside, and so there’s this beam of sunlight shining down on her,” recalls Bo. “I’d say, ‘Come to my window and I’ll talk to you through the window,’” recalls Beverly. The former flames, now both 60, received invites to their 40th high school reunion, taking place at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock. A high school reunionBo and Beverly reunited at a high school reunion and got to know one another on a subsequent sailing vacation. It was “literally a shack of driftwood and washed up lumber slapped together haphazardly on a remote beach,” recalls Bo.

☆ Aerospace Executives Go to Trial Over Alleged No-Poach Deals
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-26 | by ( Dave Michaels | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Justice Department has struggled to convince jurors to convict defendants accused of crafting agreements that restrict workers’ mobility. WASHINGTON—Federal prosecutors are scheduled to begin a trial Monday in which a former Pratt & Whitney manager is accused of conspiring with his suppliers to prevent them from poaching one another’s workers, in a new test of the government’s more aggressive antitrust strategy. The case, in federal court in Bridgeport, Conn., is the latest example of a new category of prosecution: collusion among employers to restrict workers’ mobility or wages. The Justice Department has struggled to convince jurors at three prior trials to convict defendants accused of crafting such agreements.

☆ Woody Harrelson Can Play Anyone. It’s Being Himself That’s Hard.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +17 min

“I’m an A personality and a B facade,” says Woody Harrelson, and that’s as good an explanation for his charm and success as you’re likely to find. I don’t know. I could go hang off one of those big mountaintop-remover coal things, but that’s not going to stop it. I meet with the director, and I’m going to do it — they’re making it for like $500,000 — then the guy just goes with someone else! I have a gluttonous side, and I know that’s not going to help me be a spiritually better person.

☆ Collecting Pharma’s Scraps Can Pay Off for This Biotech
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-13 | by ( David Wainer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Roivant’s unique model of creating a whole new company for each therapy might turn some investors off, creating a buying opportunity. One person’s trash can be another’s treasure. That is essentially the idea behind Roivant , a biotech company with a handful of drugs it got from pharma’s dustbin. Roivant was founded by the controversial billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy on the premise that large biotech and pharma companies are often too big and complex, creating an opportunity for companies that can focus on a single therapy. The company, which creates a subsidiary “vant” for each new drug it gets, has had both failures and successes, including a notable late-stage flop in Alzheimer’s as well as the $3 billion sale of five of its companies to Japan’s Sumitomo Pharma .

☆ Black women on TikTok want to know, ‘Where’s our Alix Earle?’
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Uwa Ede-Osifo | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +7 min

TikTok creator Danessy Auguste has spent the past few weeks feeling confused over the frenzy surrounding influencer Alix Earle. But for white women, their least successful videos, on average, still have the capability to reach millions of viewers, Boffone said. What would it take to get a ‘Black Alix Earle’? Adding another dimension to the Alix Earle discourse, one influencer posed a provocative question:“Do we deserve an Alix Earle?” Niké Ojekunle, who goes by @specsandblazers on TikTok, said in a video. Communal support with trends such as #BlackGirlFollowTrain have already allowed Black women to intentionally engage with one another’s content.

☆ Renault-Nissan-alliance: Automakers restructure their longstanding alliance
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Michelle Toh | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

Hong Kong CNN —Carmakers Renault and Nissan have agreed to restructure their longstanding partnership, with the French company whittling down its stake in the Japanese firm to 15%. Under the agreement, Renault will transfer 28.4% of its shares in the Yokohama-based company into a French trust. Renault (RNLSY) and Nissan (NSANF) will each retain a 15% stake in one another’s businesses through a cross-shareholding agreement, with voting rights. Previously, Nissan (NSANF) had held a 15% non-voting stake in the French company, while Renault (RNLSY) owned about 43% of Nissan (NSANF). In its Monday statement, Nissan said the two would continue to work together on projects in Europe, India and Latin America.

☆ ‘The Drop’ Review: An Accident’s Comic Aftermath
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-11 | by ( John Anderson | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

NBC’s “The Slap” of 2015, based on an Australian novel and TV series, was about a group of friends melting down after one of them slapped another’s child at a birthday party. A viewer might have felt like slapping the entire cast before the show had gotten very far, but the idea was provocative and the what-ifs abundant. “The Drop” is scary for other reasons, namely the state of film comedy and a certain kind of humor that won’t go away. But it begs comparison with the earlier show, even if the element of guilt has been drastically diluted: Instead of a dislikable man hitting a dislikable child on purpose, a woman drops a baby by accident. And whose reactions to the “incident” are meant to provide us access to their lives, and the shallowness within.

But too often, this behavior is an excuse for avoiding the mucky work of maintaining relationships, both personal and professional. Many managers and employees want to escape the unchecked animus they experience online, preferring the workplace feel like a safe cocoon. This year we should all work to reverse the trend and lean in to conflict — and conflict resolution — instead. Perfectionism affects and, in turn, limits the ways we feel safe communicating, which makes perfect sense. The pandemic, not surprisingly, is another culprit, exacerbating students’ experience of relational tension.

☆ U.S. soccer journalist Grant Wahl died of an aortic aneurysm while covering World Cup in Qatar, his wife says
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Doha Madani | Marlene Lenthang | Doha Madani Is A Senior Breaking News Reporter For Nbc News. Pronouns | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

Soccer journalist Grant Wahl died of an aortic aneurysm in Qatar, where he was covering the World Cup, his wife said Wednesday, citing an autopsy. "He had an autopsy done here in New York by the New York City medical examiner’s office, and it showed that he had an aortic aneurysm that ruptured," she said on the show. Clive Brunskill / Getty ImagesShe added that the autopsy revealed “Grant died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium. Aortic aneurysms or aortic dissections were the cause of 9,904 deaths in 2019, the CDC said. On Wahl's website, Gounder wrote: "While the world knew Grant as a great journalist, we knew him as a man who approached the world with openness and love.

☆ 5 key takeaways from Xi’s trip to Saudi Arabia
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-10 | by ( Nadeen Ebrahim | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +11 min

Here are five key takeaways from Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Press Agency//ReutersDuring Xi’s visit, Saudi Arabia and China released a nearly 4,000-word joint statement outlining their alignment on a swathe of political issues, and promising deeper cooperation on scores of others. China is the world’s biggest buyer of oil, with Saudi Arabia being its top supplier. China is also keen to cooperate with Saudi Arabia on security and defense, an important field once reserved for the kingdom’s American ally. Saudi Arabia was, however, keen to reject notions of polarization, deeming it unhelpful.

☆ Lensa, the AI portrait app, has soared in popularity. But many artists question the ethics of AI art.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-06 | by ( Morgan Sung | Morgan Sung Is A Trends Reporter For Nbc News Digital. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +12 min

Social media has been flooded with Lensa AI portraits, from photorealistic paintings to more abstract illustrations. In a lengthy Twitter thread posted Tuesday morning, Prisma addressed concerns of AI art replacing art by actual artists. For some artists, AI models are a creative tool. While the value of art is subjective, the crux of the AI art controversy is the right to privacy. Without decades of examples to learn from, he said, the AI images that looked just like his illustrations would never exist.

☆ Quentin Tarantino’s Greatest Hits of the ’70s
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Tom Shone | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

CINEMA SPECULATION, by Quentin TarantinoMost film directors would no more comment on one another’s movies than they would score each other’s performance in bed. Then there is the Quentin Tarantino approach. “When Daryl Hannah walks down the hall of the hospital in ‘Kill Bill Vol. Any film critic would give her left arm to have made that connection. He never sees Reggie again, and whenever young Quentin brings him up, his mother just shrugs her shoulders and says, “Oh, he’s around.”

☆ Opinion | Science Has a Nasty Photoshopping Problem
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-29 | by ( Elisabeth Bik | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +14 min

One evening in January 2014, I sat at my computer at home, sifting through scientific papers. Manipulated imagery in scientific papers can look ordinary at first glance. However, this ability, combined with my — what some might call obsessive — personality, helped me when hunting duplications in scientific images by eye. So when a scientist’s research shows a negative result, cheating can be tempting. Legitimate criticism of scientific research should receive legal protection.

☆ The Great Propagandist of the American Revolution
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-21 | by ( Stacy Schiff | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

They were meant to return an unruly town—increasingly resistant to parliamentary efforts at taxation—to order. Vindex warned that the troops were more likely to have the opposite effect. There was no better court in which to try those who abused public office. The colonies were not represented in Great Britain. Was it not clear that “No man can take another’s property from him without his consent?”

☆ The Truss tax plan cushions the wealthy while pushing borrowers toward a financial cliff
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-27 | by ( Allison Morrow | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

That’s because the Bank of England is now widely expected to hike interest rates even further to tackle inflation that will be exacerbated by the government’s sweeping tax cuts. That means many as 1.8 million borrowers are now hurtling toward a financial cliff as they prepare to refinance next year, when the mortgage rate may well have doubled. The vast majority (nearly two-thirds) of the tax gains go to the wealthiest one-fifth of households, according to one think tank estimate. According to the US Treasury, tax cuts reduced federal revenues by about 9% in the first couple of years. However, Congress eventually decided the sweeping tax cuts were unsustainable and, with Reagan’s approval, raised taxes by a lot in 1982.

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