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S28Faddish thinking is hobbling education in the rich world - The Economist (No paywall)That the pandemic messed up schooling is well known. Between 2018 and 2022 an average teenager in a rich country fell some six months behind their expected progress in reading and nine months behind in maths, according to the OECD. What is less widely understood is that the trouble began long before covid-19 struck. A typical pupil in an OECD country was no more literate or numerate when the coronavirus first ran amok than children tested 15 years earlier. As our special report argues, education in the rich world is stagnating. This should worry parents and policymakers alike. In America long-running tests of maths and reading find that attainment peaked in the early 2010s. Since then, average performance there has gone sideways or backwards. In Finland, France, Germany and the Netherlands, among other places, scores in some international tests have been falling for years. What has gone wrong?
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S33Costco Just Announced a Risky Change and It All Starts This FallThere are a lot of reasons people love Costco. For example, there are the $1.50 hot dog combo and $4.99rotisserie chickens. There's also the--by retail standards--very generous return policy. With a few understandable exceptions, you can pretty much return anything to Costco if you're not happy, no questions asked.Those are nice perks, but the real appeal is that Costco is exclusive. I mean, technically anyone can shop there, but you have a membership. It's a strategy that works well for the company, which has more than 130million members, all paying for the privilege of shopping at the discount warehouse retailer. Now those customers are about to pay a little bit more.
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S11CAR-T therapy's complications, as well as its benefits, become clearer in 'flurry' of cancer studies - STAT (No paywall)Researchers were perplexed when the Food and Drug Administration announced it was investigating whether CAR-T therapy, one of the most effective treatments for blood cancers, could cause lymphoma. This was always a theoretical risk of genetically engineered therapies like CAR-T, but it never materialized in the decades after the technologys birth.So, when the agency pointed late last year to a couple dozen cases of T cell lymphoma in patients who had previously been treated with CAR-T cells, it felt like an old question had been reignited. The field jumped to investigate whether CAR-T truly could cause new cancers and what the odds were if so. Those efforts have led to a flurry of publications, said Marcela Maus, a CAR-T researcher at Mass General Cancer Center.
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S7It's hard to reconnect with old friends. Science may have a solution. - National Geographic (No paywall)Hearing from an old friend youve lost touch with can be a pleasant surprise, and reviving those old friendships can be extremely fulfilling. Psychologists have long noted the benefits of more friendships and more diverse friendships. But according to a new study by psychologists from Simon Fraser University and University of Sussex, we often hesitate to initiate those reconnections.The study included seven large surveys of almost 2,500 participants. Over 90 percent of participants in the first survey could think of a particular friend with whom they had lost touch and would like to speak with again. However, even when participants expressed wanting to reconnect, thought the friend would be appreciative, and were given time to draft a message, only about a third actually sent the message.
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S6Your khaki pants have a history that may surprise you - History (No paywall)The first use of khaki fabric in military uniforms is attributed to Sir Harry Lumsden, founder of the Corps of Guides in India and his second-in-command William Hodson. Established in 1846 during the British East India Companys occupation, the Corps of Guides was made up of Indian soldiers who acted as scouts and participated in combat on behalf of the British Indian Army. In 1848, Hodson said he would make [the Guides] invisible in a land of dust.Khaki military uniforms were the first widespread use of tactical camouflage, and the light fabric was more suitable for combat in warm regions. In 1897, khaki became the official uniform for all British troops overseas. Other armies soon began to use khaki uniforms, including the U.S. Rough Riders fighting in the Spanish-American War and South African soldiers in the Boer War.
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S24PwC hits the brakes on summer Fridays as growth slows and salaries get squeezed - Fortune Europe (No paywall)The first target is its popular summer Fridays scheme allowing them to take a half day every week during the warmer months. Commonly found in New York, the scheme reportedly started as far back as the 1960s when execs downed tools early to pack their bags for holiday homes in the Hamptons. Some spots on the east end of Long Island are known for being as buzzy as Manhattan during the summer months, with business meetings and important networking held out of the city.Employees hailed the opportunity to start their weekends early. Nearly three-quarters said it had improved their wellbeing to a great extent, detailing in an internal survey how they would spend their extra time with friends and family. The employees also had the relief of a quieter email inbox on the days they would finish early.
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S32Intuit's CEO Just Said AI Is the Reason He's Laying Off 1,800 Employees. His MemoI've written a number of times about CEOs sending out an all-company memo detailing how the company is laying off employees. It's not a fun thing to write about, but I do think it's important especially as there are lessons every leader can learn.The latest example comes from Intuit's CEO, Sasan Goodarzi, who announced the company would lay off around 1,800 employees, or 10 percent of its workforce. Interestingly, Goodarzi says the move isn't about cutting costs. Instead, it's about freeing up money for "additional investments to our most critical areas to support our customers and drive growth as detailed below."
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S30Find the AI Approach That Fits the Problem You're Trying to SolveAI moves quickly, but organizations change much more slowly. What works in a lab may be wrong for your company right now. If you know the right questions to ask, you can make better decisions, regardless of how fast technology changes. You can work with your technical experts to use the right tool for the right job. Then each solution today becomes a foundation to build further innovations tomorrow. But without the right questions, youll be starting your journey in the wrong place.
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S4Dingoes and Domestic Dogs: Common Ancestors, but Different Evolutionary Paths - Discover Magazine (No paywall)Although the scientists had anticipated the domestic-dingo divergence, the study still yielded surprises. First, they were able to recover full genomic data from dingo remains over 2,000 years old. Second, the data revealed significant variations between dingoes from the east and west parts of the continent dating back at least 2,500 years. And, finally, they discovered that modern dingoes did little to no interbreeding with contemporary dogs. If we look at things in term generation time, that is number of generations elapsed, on average, since dingoes arrived into Australia, that is equivalent to the number of generations humans have been out of Africa, Souilmi says. So dingoes are as genetically distinct as an Eskimo is from a Masai."
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S1Mapped: The Population Density of France - Visual Capitalist (No paywall)As a leading economic hub in France, Lyon is the second-most densely populated in the country, at 1,491 people per square kilometer. With one of the strongest GDPs in Europe, the city creates 10,000 new businesses annually across a highly diversified economy. Major sectors in the city include machinery, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and energy.
As the fifth-biggest metropolitan in the country, Nices primary economic driver is tourism. Located on the eastern coastline of France, roughly 40% of residents are employed directly or indirectly from the tourism industry. This is thanks to its rich architectural history and idyllic beaches in the French Riviera.
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S13S22S49Hurricane Beryl Likely Contributed to Boeing Starliner's Ongoing DelaysIts difficult to be away from your loved ones when theyre facing something difficult especially if youre 250 miles away, stuck on a very extended layover, in space.Starliners crew watched from above as Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Houston earlier this week, leaving thousands of people including their families and many of the engineers working on their ships thruster issues without electricity in the middle of a southeast Texas summer.
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S50Samsung's New Translation Feature Has Me Sold on Switching to a Foldable PhoneLooking at all the new Galaxy AI features that Samsung showed off at its Unpacked event, most people would probably be drawn to updates like turning your sketches into artwork or giving your profile picture a more refined look. Not me, though I kept returning to Galaxy AIs Interpreter feature getting the new dual-screen Conversation Mode thanks to compatibility with Samsungs latest foldables. This seems like the most practical and useful Galaxy AI feature.
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S21How Watermelon Cupcakes Kicked Off an Internal Storm at Meta - WIRED (No paywall)But when a club for Muslim workers revealed plans to spend $200 in company funds to serve nine dozen cupcakes in watermelon colors at the event, Meta management called the offering disruptive and demanded the group go another routesuch as traditional Muslim sweets, a staffer overseeing internal community relations wrote in a chat to an organizer. Watermelon references or imagery should not be included as part of materials or giveaways (e.g. cupcakes).Watermelon for decades has been a stand-in for Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation because its colors match the Palestinian flag. The fruits symbolic usage has grown since the latest fighting broke out last October. Jewish and Israeli tech workers have felt targeted as pro-Palestinian rhetoric and symbols sometimes get interspersed with what they view as antisemitic or anti-Zionist hate.
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S25Amazon trails behind in latest U.K. compliance test and is threatened with investigation over poor supplier treatment - Fortune Europe (No paywall)The survey shows clearly that many suppliers do not believe that Amazon is complying with the code, said Mark White, the Groceries Code Adjudicator, in a statement. I will not hesitate to launch a formal investigation if appropriate and necessary to ensure Amazon is treating its suppliers fairly and lawfully. 2024 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice| Do Not Sell/Share My Personal InformationFORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.
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S16Joe Biden's Less-Than-Awful Press Conference Does Not Mean Everything Is Now O.K. - The New Yorker (No paywall)By the time Joe Biden took the stage on Thursday evening, almost an hour late, for his first solo news conference in eight months, it was hard to imagine what the President could say that would satisfy nervous Democrats who are wondering whether he needs to pull the plug on his relection campaign: I'm sorry? I'm going to do better? I quit? He didn't say any of those things, of course. Though maybe he should have.There was a bad whiff about the event well before it began. In the hours leading up to the press conference, more dire news stalked Bidena Pew Research poll found that seventy-one per cent of Biden's own voters wanted both him and former President Donald Trump to drop out; a steady drip of Democratic lawmakers was practically begging him to "do the right thing" and step aside; quotes to the press from anonymous Biden aides declared his candidacy all but dead as his approval rating sank to a new low of just under thirty-seven per cent in the FiveThirtyEight average. "He needs to drop out," one Biden campaign staffer told NBC News. "He will never recover from this."
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S8The Dysfunctional Superpower - Foreign Affairs (No paywall)The United States now confronts graver threats to its security than it has in decades, perhaps ever. Never before has it faced four allied antagonists at the same timeRussia, China, North Korea, and Iranwhose collective nuclear arsenal could within a few years be nearly double the size of its own. Not since the Korean War has the United States had to contend with powerful military rivals in both Europe and Asia. And no one alive can remember a time when an adversary had as much economic, scientific, technological, and military power as China does today.The problem, however, is that at the very moment that events demand a strong and coherent response from the United States, the country cannot provide one. Its fractured political leadershipRepublican and Democratic, in the White House and in Congresshas failed to convince enough Americans that developments in China and Russia matter. Political leaders have failed to explain how the threats posed by these countries are interconnected. They have failed to articulate a long-term strategy to ensure that the United States, and democratic values more broadly, will prevail.
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S9Will Pezeshkian's Win Lead to a Thaw in U.S.-Iran Relations? - Foreign Policy (No paywall)To the surprise of many, a relatively unknown candidate won Irans presidential elections. Masoud Pezeshkian, a parliamentarian and former health minister who had next to no name recognition outside Iran and is not even an especially high-profile figure domestically, prevailed against arch-hardliner Saeed Jalili in the runoff on July 5.To the surprise of many, a relatively unknown candidate won Irans presidential elections. Masoud Pezeshkian, a parliamentarian and former health minister who had next to no name recognition outside Iran and is not even an especially high-profile figure domestically, prevailed against arch-hardliner Saeed Jalili in the runoff on July 5.
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S10Unsettling truths about maternal mortality in the U.S. - STAT (No paywall)Both sides are partially right, because measuring maternal mortality is uniquely challenging. The question at the heart of identifying a maternal death Would this person have died if she hadnt been pregnant? often cant be answered simply from a medical record. In medical emergencies that occur during birth, such as unstoppable bleeding, the decision is straightforward. The answer in a death that occurs several months after giving birth, like was a stroke or opioid overdose related to the pregnancy, is a challenging judgment call and honest people can disagree.The U.S. uses three different systems to identify maternal deaths; each has its particular strengths and limitations. The National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) has the most timely, if least precise, data and makes it publicly available for analysis. The Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System (PMSS) is more reliable but slower, doesnt provide state level estimates, and is available only to CDC researchers. State Maternal Mortality Review Committees can do the richest analyses and provide concrete, localized recommendations, but theyre also generally the slowest, are not consistent across states, and dont provide national estimates.
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S19S20OpenAI Is Testing Its Powers of Persuasion - WIRED (No paywall)This week, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of the health company Thrive Global, published an article in Time touting Thrive AI, a startup backed by Thrive and OpenAIs Startup Fund. The piece suggests that AI could have a huge positive impact on public health by talking people into healthier behavior.Altman and Huffington write that Thrive AI is working toward a fully integrated personal AI coach that offers real-time nudges and recommendations unique to you that allows you to take action on your daily behaviors to improve your health.Persuasiveness is a key element in programs like ChatGPT and one of the ingredients that makes such chatbots so compelling. Language models are trained in human writing and dialog that contains countless rhetorical and suasive tricks and techniques. The models are also typically fine-tuned to err toward utterances that users find more compelling.
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S23S31To Implement Change, You Don't Need to Convince Everyone at OnceManagers launching a new initiative often try to start big. They work to gain approval for a substantial budget, recruit high-profile executives, arrange a big kick-off meeting, then look to move fast, gain scale, and generate some quick wins. But starting with a big kickoff campaign is more likely to activate resistance than it is to win over a majority. Its also unnecessary. Decades of research shows that you dont need to convince everybody for an idea to take hold.In fact, a significant minority is completely sufficient to create change. So rather than trying to convince the skeptics from the outset, a much more effective strategy is to identify people who are already enthusiastic about the idea and want the transformation to succeed. Then, when people see that something is working, they want to be involved, and they bring in others who can bring in others still. Thats how you can grow your initiative and tip the scales toward widespread change.
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S26S29Efforts to teach character bring promise and perils - The Economist (No paywall)Aristotle TAUGHT his students the importance of managing their emotions. John Dewey, an early 20th-century reformer, sparked the idea that teachers must educate the whole child. For decades wealthy parents in Britain (and a few other places) sent kids to boarding schools in the hope that they would pick up traits such as independence and resilience. It is not controversial to argue that a young childs first years in education are as much about learning social skills and self-control as about anything else.Many educators today take enthusiastically to this thinking, under the auspices of social and emotional learning (SEL), a term as fuzzy as it is ubiquitous. Proponents of SEL say that teachers could be doing heaps more to instil in youngsters useful attributes such as optimism, empathy and emotional stability. The pandemic supercharged interest in this approach, as educators searched for ways to shore up young teens lagging social skills or give them techniques for beating the blues. Yet critics see a shiny distraction from the hard graft of academic learning. They worry that all sorts of spurious ideas are riding in on its coat-tails.
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S4825 Years Later, Star Wars is About to Retcon Anakin Skywalker's Origin StoryStar Wars loves a humble yet mysterious hero. Luke Skywalker was just a farm boy, but he was also Darth Vaders son. Anakin was born a slave, but he was also born of the Force. Reys parents were nobodies, but she also was technically related to Emperor Palpatine. The latest in this line are Osha and Mae, twins from the distant Brendok whose birth was as mysterious as Anakins. Both were seemingly virgin births, and now a new quote from Acolyte showrunner Leslye Headland suggests there may be more connections between these two mysteries than we thought.
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S5When Scientific Citations Go Rogue: Uncovering 'Sneaked References' - Discover Magazine (No paywall)A researcher working alone apart from the world and the rest of the wider scientific community is a classic yet misguided image. Research is, in reality, built on continuous exchange within the scientific community: First you understand the work of others, and then you share your findings.Reading and writing articles published in academic journals and presented at conferences is a central part of being a researcher. When researchers write a scholarly article, they must cite the work of peers to provide context, detail sources of inspiration and explain differences in approaches and results. A positive citation by other researchers is a key measure of visibility for a researchers own work.
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S18S40Houston Power Outages Will Continue Until Next WeekAbout half a million Houston-area homes and businesses will still be without electricity next week, the city's largest utility said, stoking the frustration of hot and weary residents and leading a top state official to call the pace of recovery from Hurricane Beryl "not acceptable."Jason Ryan, executive vice president of CenterPoint Energy, said power has been restored to more than 1 million homes and businesses since Beryl made landfall in Texas. And the company expects to get hundreds of thousands of more customers back online early next week. But many more will wait much longer.
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S27S42You Can't Fake the Old-Fashioned Star Power of 'Fly Me to the Moon'The conspiracy theories about the Apollo 11 moon landing being faked have proven unfortunately durable, and have been echoed on screen for decades as well. 1977s Capricorn One switched the mission to a Mars trip, while the justifiably obscure 2015 comedy Moonwalkers took off from the rumor that Stanley Kubrick, who at the time had redefined cinematic travel to the cosmos with 2001: A Space Odyssey, oversaw the bogus Apollo jaunt.Now it has fueled part of the plot of the romantic comedy Fly Me to the Moon, though not quite as much of it as the promotion might have you believe.
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S43"I Don't Care." Samsung Responds to AirPods Copycat Accusations.Anyone with a pair of working eyes can see the obvious: Samsungs new Galaxy Buds 3 and Buds Pro 3 strongly resemble AirPods. Sure, the charging case on Samsungs wireless earbuds has a transparent top lid; they come in silver (in addition to white); the stems sorry, blades on the Buds 3 Pro light up for various functions. But come on, they look like AirPods. Naturally, the internet is roasting Samsung for copying Apple.
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S17John Fetterman's War - The New Yorker (No paywall)On a cool, sunny evening in April, John Fetterman, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, relaxed into the passenger seat of his robin's-egg-blue Ford Bronco, which was parked just outside the U.S. Capitol. He was headed to his parents' house, in York, Pennsylvania, where he grew up, and did not seem unhappy to be leaving Washington. A few hours earlier, in an elevator off the Senate chamber, he had closed his eyes and let his head slump against the control panelwhether from exhaustion or annoyance, it was hard to tell. Now, as an aide inched the Bronco through traffic, Fetterman mentioned that his Republican opponent in 2022, the TV doctor Mehmet Oz, had spent twenty-seven million dollars of his own fortune on the campaign. "And I'm, like, for what?" Fetterman said. "The glamour? I live in a tiny, very expensive apartment. It's basically a couch and a bed. I go home and I order Grubhub."A certain geographic specificity has been essential to Fetterman's riseif Donald Trump represented a Republican version of what the politics of industrial decline might look like, then Fetterman, a left-of-center populist from western Pennsylvania, could embody the Democratic one. He is six feet eight and thickly built, a onetime college offensive tackle with a shaved head, a prominent brow, and a laconic, watchful demeanor. No matter how formal the setting, he dresses in a hoodie and athletic shorts, a costume that inspired the passage of a bipartisan billthe Show Our Respect to the Senate (SHORTS) Actrequiring business attire of every senator in the chamber. Fetterman's wardrobe reinforces his populist politics, but it also has physical advantages. One of his former aides told me, "I've been in big-and-tall stores with him. It is impossible to find a suit that looks decent when you are that big."
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S47'The Acolyte' Finale Will Solve the Show's Biggest Mystery, Showrunner ConfirmsAll good things must come to an end, but in the case of The Acolyte Season 1, there are still a few questions to answer first. The series latest episode, Choice, addressed one of its bigger mysteries: what truly happened on Brendock, and why is Sith-in-training Mae (Amandla Stenberg) hunting members of the Jedi Order? The episode essentially flipped the series cat-and-mouse game on its head. Frustratingly, though, The Acolyte is still withholding the major mystery of how Mae and her twin sister Osha (also Stenberg) were created, and for what purpose.Mae and Oshas origins have become one of The Acolytes more polarizing topics. The series first flashback in Episode 3 strongly implied that they were created with the Force, an idea that drew parallels to another Star Wars character, Anakin Skywalker. Episode 7 doubled down by revealing that the twins genetic makeup is exactly the same, making them an anomaly. Oshas future Jedi Master, Sol (Lee Jung-jae), naturally wonders how this was possible. Where did they come from? he asks his colleagues. How were they created?
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