Faced with hyperinflation, a worthless local currency and a risky black market for dollars, Venezuelans are increasingly turning to bitcoin as a tool for survival in the world’s worst-performing economy.
Texas has banished hundreds of prisoners to more than a decade of solitary confinement, an extreme form of a controversial punishment likened to torture. Many of these prisoners aren’t sure how—or, in some cases, if—they will ever get out.
From the Buddhist perspective, cooking is a form of spiritual practice that produces nourishment to prepare the body for hard work and meditation. Its goals are nothing less than permanent enlightenment, nirvana, the fundamental transformation of the human mind and society.
Start your habit by reading, say, five pages of a book that interests you every day. Once you’re hitting five pages a day, try ten, then twenty, and keep pushing your goal horizon upward. Focusing on your own interests is key.
From the moment we start to learn about wine, we are taught that drinking responsibly is a social activity. Wine is for sharing, for drinking with friends or family over a meal. But self-imposed isolation does not require you to forgo good food or good wine, despite the social stigma.
If you have ever traveled somewhere, especially to countries that are either a good deal richer or poorer than your own, you might have noticed that some places are certainly a lot more expensive than others. There seems to be a strong correlation between the average wealth of a country and the cost of goods and services.
From building in a crowded capital threatened by rising sea levels to creating modern housing alongside historic landmarks, this is how small cities around the world are overcoming some remarkable challenges.
Extremism flourishes on Amazon’s self-publishing arm. The company gives extremists and neo-Nazis banned from other platforms unprecedented access to a mainstream audience — and even promotes their books.
Maja, a six-year-old Serbian girl, is dropped off at the kindergarten by her father. They have only been in Denmark for a short period of time. Everything is new, especially the language, which makes it difficult for Maja to interact with the other kids. After a long day, her parents come to pick her up, but we soon realize her day is not yet over. Based on a true story.
Xinjiang, northwest China, is in a state of surveillance lockdown. Every message, word and movement is monitored for its extremist potential. A million Uyghur muslims are being held in concentration camps.
Dom Cook discovered craft beer by accident. A Bronx father searching for inspiration after the death of his infant son, he picked up The Search for God and Guinness, his eye drawn to “Search for God.” In 2017 Cook launched Beer Kulture, a lifestyle brand that welcomes black drinkers to the craft community.
In keeping with recent research, both focus and unfocus are vital. The brain operates optimally when it toggles between focus and unfocus, allowing you to develop resilience, enhance creativity, and make better decisions too.
Unlike traditional prosecutors, Krasner does not measure success by accumulating convictions and toting up lengthy prison sentences. Instead, he has promised to address abuses by the criminal justice system and imprison fewer people for less time. And he thinks all of that can drive down gun crime.
This is the pursuit of a much longer, healthier life span using science and genetics to achieve it. Who hasn’t dreamed of staying young but how far will you be prepared to go to achieve that dream? BBC’s Gabriela Torres meets the self-experimenters and scientists who are trying to dramatically extend our lives.
For years Donald Heathfield, Tracey Foley and their two children lived the American dream. Then an FBI raid revealed the truth: they were agents of Putin’s Russia. Their real names were Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova. Their sons tell their story.
The control Disney has on pop culture is kind of terrifying. Marvel’s superhero movies and Star Wars are two of—if not the—biggest franchises in the world. Add those to Pixar’s beloved library of films and its own perennially popular movies, and Disney is effectively in charge of what people watch.
In 1982, American Airlines had an idea to offer a lifetime free first-class air travel pass to its wealthiest customers. The person holding this pass could fly on American Airlines at any time it wanted, to any destination it wanted, for as many times it wanted, for the rest of its life after paying a one-time fixed membership fee.
Unfold is an app and toolkit for storytellers. It’s used by celebs, influencers and other Instagram power users. Create beautiful and engaging stories from minimal and elegant templates. The app is available for iOS and Android.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Baltic region has strengthened economic integration with the West and all three nations have become increasingly prosperous as a result. However, the Baltic success story also highlights NATO’s vulnerabilities in the region.
President Xi Jinping’s government has cordoned off much of the central Chinese province of Hubei, practically blockading more than 50 million people, in the biggest large-scale quarantine in the modern era. The Politburo Standing Committee, the nation’s top decision making body, has taken charge of the crisis.
Rock Lititz is a one-of-a-kind production community in Amish Country. They aim to be a one-stop shop for major bands: They build the stage, they design the lighting, they do the sound, and after a couple days or a week or a month of rehearsals, they send you off to tour the world.
Nearly half of 3- to 6- year old girls say they worry about being fat. For decades, the medical community has ignored mountains of evidence to wage a cruel and futile war on fat people, poisoning public perception and ruining millions of lives. It’s time for a new paradigm.
With a separate license in Europe and a factory in Flimby, United Kingdom, New Balance has had the attention of sneakerheads abroad for more than a decade and a half. In the United States, however, where the brand was founded in 1906, it hasn’t enjoyed the same youthful appeal.
You’ve seen the pop-ups: “This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Please accept cookies.” Without cookies, the online world we know today couldn’t exist. But that world relies on advertising, which gives three kinds of companies a strong incentive to track your online behavior.
His first commission documented the Compton Cowboys, a group of people who created a ranch in a notoriously violent part of Los Angeles. His latest Wrangler commission was in Marfa, Texas, where he was tasked with capturing the Wall of Death group – America’s original extreme motorcycle show.
Derek Haoyang Li is the founder of Squirrel AI, an education company that offers tutoring delivered in part by humans, but mostly by smart machines, which he says will transform education as we know it. Other entrepreneurs are making similarly extravagant claims about the power of online learning.
“Dirty Machines: The End of History” a highly polished sci-fi teaser for a longer-form series that envisions a future where time travel has become a form of tourism. It’s stylish, but beyond the undeniable aesthetic panache, Matthew Olson’s film feels completely transformative as a world-building exercise.
A deep learning model developed by NVIDIA Research turns rough doodles into highly realistic scenes using generative adversarial networks (GANs). Dubbed GauGAN, the tool is like a smart paintbrush, converting segmentation maps into lifelike images.
Few countries in history have experienced as sudden a transformation as Saudi Arabia. The discovery and exploitation of oil brought an unprecedented influx of wealth. Photographer Peter Bogaczewicz captures the past and present of the oil-rich kingdom as it undergoes dramatic transformation.
Philanthropists are putting record sums into tackling the world’s most pressing problems. And unlike the mega-donors of the past today’s philanthropists want to see the results in their lifetimes. But how altruistic is this new golden age of giving? Have these mega-donors become too powerful?
The 14 most popular last names in Vietnam account for well over 90 percent of the population. The 14 most popular last names in the US? Fewer than 6 percent. In Vietnam, the most popular last name is Nguyen.
Andrew comes home from a trip, finds a rose petal in his bed and becomes immediately convinced that his girlfriend is cheating on him. The confrontation that ensues ranges from blackly comic to something decidedly darker as words escalate into distinctly visceral consequences.
Star Wars fans know him, the little droid R2-D2. Through him, friends of space can now look into the stars, more precisely into the Zweibrück starry sky. Because Hubert Zitt, professor at the Zweibrücken University of Applied Sciences, has redesigned the Zweibrück Observatory of the Natural Science Association.
Dubai – perhaps the best-known city of the United Arab Emirates, with a reputation for attracting the glamorous and the wealthy. Less than 5% of its GDP comes from oil, but it essentially has made its success through diversifying into property real estate, aviation, trade, banking and finance. But what’s going on beneath the surface?
The manufacturer profits by hawking a replacement phone; the carrier profits double, by locking the crime victim into a new contract, then opening an account with whomever ends up with the stolen phone. Telecom companies even profit from the specter of phone theft, by selling expensive insurance policies to protect their users.
A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition that spared him.
A team of designers in Portland, Oregon, tasked their artificial intelligence system with building a new team sport for us humans. The result of that pet project, Speedgate, is being heralded as the first viable AI-created field game. It has since become an indie sports phenomenon, with proposed leagues in more than 50 countries worldwide.
Jachymov, a small uranium mining town in the northwest of the Czech Republic, has been key in the field of radioactivity research. More than a century ago, Marie and Pierre Curie based their revolutionary work on radioactivity on material brought from there.
A century ago, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, as much of the world was still recovering from the devastation of World War I. Rebuilding was just beginning, refugees were returning home, orphans were being cared for, and a global influenza outbreak was being battled.
MoviePass tried to change the moviegoing experience altogether, with a simple idea. For a monthly fee, subscribers could go to the cinema once a day, every day. Ironically, too many subscribers would eventually be a bad thing. MoviePass went from being a hit to entirely collapsing, in just 3 days. How?
