Friday, April 2, 2021

 


theatlantic.com

The Fourth Surge Is Upon Us. This Time, It’s Different.

A deadlier and more transmissible variant has taken root, but now we have the tools to stop it if we want.

newyorker.com

How Do Plague Stories End?

Last winter, when the gloom first fell, I saw an old woman, her back bent like a shepherd’s crook, walking watchfully through the freezing rain. She navigated the slush as she crossed the road, in black boots that she’d lined with plastic bags against the wet and the cold.

theverge.com

The robots are coming for your office

A conversation with NYT’s Kevin Roose on how robotic automation will impact our future.

fastcompany.com

How we cut our number of meetings in half—and got more done

The pandemic gave Ministry of Supply, a Fast Company most innovative fashion brand, the chance to rebuild its working culture in a way it says will last long after COVID is gone.

hazlitt.net

Molar City

It’s hard to imagine how truly full of dentists Los Algodones is. They are everywhere.

quantamagazine.org

Scientists Pin Down When Earth’s Crust Cracked, Then Came to Life

New data indicating that Earth’s surface broke up about 3.2 billion years ago helps clarify how plate tectonics drove the evolution of complex life.

dw.com

German efficiency: The roots of a stereotype

Germany has a reputation for getting things done in an efficient manner, even despite evidence to the contrary. Efficiency has played an important historic role in Germany — though not always a positive one.

theatlantic.com

The Real Roots of Midlife Crisis

What a growing body of research reveals about the biology of human happiness—and how to navigate the (temporary) slump in middle age.

theguardian.com

Cold comfort: how cold water swimming cured my broken heart

On my birthday last year, 6 October, my boyfriend and I split up, after almost a decade together. We were driving back from a holiday in Maine, a last chance to find a way to make it work. We had a lovely time; it didn’t change anything.

longreads.com

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Lost Album, Human Highway

How CSNY fumbled a chance to record their best album.

narratively.com

The Acrobatic Immigrant Who Invented Pilates in a Prisoner of War Camp

Interned during WWI, circus entertainer Joseph Pilates used found materials and his fellow prisoners as his test lab, and imagined an exercise system that would captivate millions.

latimes.com

‘One more!’ How Chadwick Boseman embraced life and his ‘Ma Rainey’ castmates

“He wanted to feel like he did everything he could possibly do,” says “Ma Rainey” costar Colman Domingo. “And he did.”

nytimes.com

The Beauty of 78.5 Million Followers

How social media stars like Addison Rae gave the cosmetics industry a makeover.

ideas.ted.com

How Cultures Around the World Think About Parenting

What can American parents learn from how other cultures look at parenting? A look at child-rearing ideas in Japan, Norway, Spain — and beyond.

theconversation.com

Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities

Globally, only one in 50 new cars were fully electric in 2020, and one in 14 in the UK. Sounds impressive, but even if all new cars were electric now, it would still take 15-20 years to replace the world’s fossil fuel car fleet.

damndelicious.net

Homemade Gnocchi

Super light, pillow-y and fluffy, and so easy to make with just 5 ingredients. You won’t be able to go back to store-bought gnocchi.

qz.com

The Five Universal Laws of Human Stupidity

We underestimate the stupid, and we do so at our own peril.

stylist.co.uk

Why am I always cold? This is why some people feel the cold more than others

“I’m freezing,” has to be my most used phrase. I’m not even talking about right now, during winter, when everyone’s cold. All year round you can find me complaining about the fact that I can’t feel my fingers or that I need a jacket.

wired.co.uk

Supercharged soil could pull carbon right out of the air

Fundamentally, two of the world’s most pressing challenges, climate change and soil degradation, boil down to a simple imbalance: there is too much carbon in the air, and not enough in the ground. And for Guy Hudson and Tegan Nock, the solution is patently obvious.

cbc.ca

Scientist behind COVID-19 mRNA vaccine says her team's next target is cancer

The scientist who won the race to deliver the first widely used coronavirus vaccine says people can rest assured the shots are safe, and that the technology behind it will soon be used to fight another global scourge — cancer.