Ring And Nest Helped Normalize American Surveillance And Turned Us Into A Nation Of Voyeurs
The allure of monitoring people silently from afar has also proved more tempting than many expected. Customers who bought the cameras in hopes of not becoming victims joke that instead they’ve become voyeurs.

Couples Living Apart Together And Why It Works
Living apart together has its tangled roots in both the aristocracy and queer culture, and its contemporary branch comprises couples looking to prioritize individualism and moments of intentional solitude as features of longterm relationships, not roadblocks to togetherness.

How Would Anyone Benefit From Sending Unsolicited Amazon Packages To Random Addresses?
First came a cell phone case that no one had ordered and that didn’t match a phone in the house. The next week brought unusual kitchen supplies. Then a mass of assorted holiday-themed items. All of these deliveries were from Amazon.

The Future Of Energy Storage Beyond Lithium-Ion
Over the past decade, prices for solar panels and wind farms have reached all-time lows. However, the price for lithium-ion batteries, the leading energy storage technology, has remained too high. So researchers are exploring other alternatives, including flow batteries, thermal batteries, and gravity-based systems.

A Simple Way To Map Out Your Career Ambitions
The challenge is that you’re competing against every individual in your industry who wants to be a high performer. If you grow more capabilities more quickly than they do, you’ll perform better today, earn opportunities to perform better in the future, and a virtuous cycle will take hold.

Unmarried, Happily Ever After
Despite the increasing number of dating apps, matchmakers, and love advice designed to facilitate romantic connections, many women are opting out of relationships. They are declaring to be happily unmarried and proudly find solace in living solo.

Panasonic Develops World’s first UHD HDR Virtual Reality Glasses
Panasonic launched a new type of virtual reality headgear with the world’s first HDR-compatible VR eyeglasses. The company’s VR eyeglasses are the first to feature High Dynamic Range (HDR) and are much more compact compared to what is currently on the market from the likes of Oculus and HTC.

Extreme Loneliness Or The Perfect Balance? How To Work From Home And Stay Healthy
More and more people are working where they live and living where they work, attracted by the promise of greater flexibility. Beyond the lack of interaction with colleagues – there are no ideas by osmosis, no overhearing others talking – there is also the lack of interaction with the wider world.

The Art Of Losing Friends And Alienating People
Our culture long ago made peace with the fragility of matrimony, but we still have high expectations for friendships. If you really care about someone, you should be able to pick up where you left off, no matter how long it’s been. Friendship’s something you don’t really lose, right?

How Artificial Intelligence Will Change Architecture
Artificial Intelligence remains a Pandora’s Box of possibilities, with the potential to enhance the safety, efficiency, and sustainability of cities, or destroy the potential for humans to work, interact, and live a private life.

What Separates Champions From ‘Almost Champions’?
For a recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, talent development researchers Dave Collins, Áine MacNamara, and Neil McCarthy examined the differences between athletes who overcame adversity and went on to become world-class and those who struggled in the face of hardship.

Deepfake Video: The Weaponization Of Fake News
The technology to manipulate video has become so sophisticated that words can literally be put into people’s mouths. Mark Kelley explores how it’s done and why the implications have led the U.S. Defence Department to work to protect itself against the “weaponization” of fake news.

The Curse Of America’s Illogical School-Day Schedule
The average start time for public high schools, 7:59, requires teens to get up earlier than is ideal for their biological clocks, meaning many teens disrupt their natural sleep patterns every school day. The world, apparently, does not revolve around parents either. Their lives also tend to be mismatched with school-day schedules.

An Effortless Way to Improve Your Memory
New research suggests that we should aim for “minimal interference” during 10-15 minutes breaks – deliberately avoiding any activity that could tamper with the delicate task of memory formation. You really need to give your brain the chance for a complete recharge with no distractions.

It’s Not You. Phones Are Designed To Be Addicting.
Today’s phones are hard to put down. Push notifications buzz in your pocket, red bubbles demand attention, and endless distractions sit at your fingertips. It can feel impossible to pull away from. The 3 design elements that make smartphones so hard to put down, explained by Google’s former design ethicist.

Why We Need To Stop Striving For Work-Life Balance
When you separate work and life, it’s a little bit harder to make that connection. But when you think of work as part of a full life and a holistic experience, it becomes easier to see that success in one aspect often supports another.

Before Tinder, There Was Dateline
Operation Match was a computer dating service started at Harvard in 1965 by two undergraduates, that paired students together for dates for $3 a pop. Students filled in questionnaires which were processed by an IBM 1401 before receiving the names and telephone numbers of their matches in the post.

Former FBI Agent Explains How To Read Body Language
Former FBI agent and body language expert Joe Navarro breaks down the various ways we communicate non-verbally. What does it mean when we fold our arms? Why do we interlace our fingers? Can a poker player actually hide their body language?

Kudos, Leaderboards, QOMs: How Fitness App Strava Became A Religion
Strava is a fitness and sports tracking platform that launched in 2009 and bills itself the “number one app for runners and cyclists”. The app offers community, training data and motivation to millions of athletes. Even runners who dislike tech can’t bear to be without it.

Why Millennials Are The “Death Positive” Generation
Why do people in the prime of their lives seem to be preparing for their demise? The answers vary widely, from eminently practical concerns, such as crushing debt and climate change, to social factors, like wellness culture, diverse spiritual practices, and the desire of some millennials to “curate their afterlives.”

What Great Listeners Actually Do
Good listening is much more than being silent while the other person talks. To the contrary, people perceive the best listeners to be those who periodically ask questions that promote discovery and insight. These questions gently challenge old assumptions, but do so in a constructive way.