Tuesday 3rd October 2023

The Moon and the Yew Tree: Patti Smith Reads Sylvia Plath's Haunting Portrait of Depression

“This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.”Continued here

After Love: Maxine Kumin's Stunning Poem About Eros as a Portal to Unselfing

It is one of the hardest things in life — discerning where we end and the rest of the world begins, negotiating the permeable boundary between self and other, all the while longing for its di…Continued here

How Generative AI Is Changing Creative Work

Generative AI models for businesses threaten to upend the world of content creation, with substantial impacts on marketing, software, design, entertainment, and interpersonal communications. These models are able to produce text and images: blog posts, program code, poetry, and artwork. The software uses complex machine learning models to predict the next word based on previous word sequences, or the next image based on words describing previous images. Companies need to understand how these tools work, and how they can add value.

Continued here

Keep Your Team on Track Amid Cost-Cutting, Layoffs, and Uncertainty

It’s natural for workers to feel distracted and lose their drive when times are tough. In this article, the author shares insights from three experts on management and motivation. Their recommendations include keeping team meetings short and quick and devoting more attention to one-on-one check-ins; seeking out ways to provide team members with more autonomy, growth experiences, and opportunities to do meaningful work; and offering space and time to talk openly about your employees’ concerns. 

Continued here

The Burden of Proof for Corporate Sustainability is Too High | Andrew Winston

Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.

Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.

Throughout 2023, tech companies have continually laid off workers. The year started with Amazon and Salesforce cutting 18,000 and 8,000 people, respectively, and sector momentum grew into the spring. An article in the April/May 2023 issue of Fortune magazine asserted that companies were “swapping exuberance for efficiency” and pointed out that they had collectively laid off more than 150,000 people since January. (By August, that number was up to nearly 225,000.)

Continued here

How 'strike culture' took hold in the US in 2023

On 14 September, when members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union walked off the job at three Midwest auto factories owned by General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, it seemed a fitting way for the US labour movement to cap this year's summer of strikes. And collective action is only continuing.

In 2023, we've seen labour stoppages in industries of all types. Beginning in May, Hollywood screenwriters in the Writer's Guild of America (WGA) walked the picket line for 148 days before reaching a tentative deal. Actors' union SAG-AFTRA, also struck in July, and remain off the job. Starbucks workers are participating in an ongoing series of labour actions; and frontline workers including nurses, hotel staff and pilots have also walked out, with some work stoppages continuing. There have also been major near-misses: in July, the package delivery company UPS narrowly averted a strike at the eleventh hour that would have been the largest single-employer labour stoppage in US history.



Continued here

Spicy curried mung bean sprouts

Ruta Kahate is a woman on a mission to demystify Indian cooking – particularly Indian spices – for an American audience.

This cookbook author, chef and restaurateur wants people to know that it is possible to make Indian food "without a gazillion spices". This is why she chose just six of them to star in her latest book, 6 spices, 60 dishes: Indian Recipes That are Simple, Fresh, and Big on Taste, published in January 2023. The book is a follow up to 5 spices 50 dishes, her 2007 book that went out of print a couple of years ago. As she explained, "People are intimidated by spices, or they are just unsure and don't know how to use them."



Continued here

12 of the best TV shows to watch this October

Today, David Beckham is best known as the head of a celebrity family, husband of Victoria and father of Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper, almost famous for being famous. This four-part documentary, co-produced by Beckham's own production company, looks back at what made him famous in the first place, his career as an astonishingly good athlete, whether he's called a footballer as in the UK or soccer star as in the US. The series goes back to his childhood, with comments from his mum and dad, moving through his grapples with fame and success and on to the present. Actor Fisher Stevens, known for playing the slimy communications tsar Hugo in Succession, directs, but he is no newcomer. His previous films include the 2016 climate change documentary Before the Flood and the 2021 drama Palmer, with Justin Timberlake. It may well offer an intimate portrait of its subject, though possibly not an objective one.

Fresh from contacting spirits by toying with an embalmed hand in this summer's hit horror film Talk to Me, Sophie Wilde has a much more down-to-earth role in this new Netflix series as teenaged Mia, who has spent months in a hospital recovering from an eating disorder. When she returns to school, she realises she has missed so much that she creates a bucket list to catch up. The items she is determined to check off that list include getting drunk, doing karaoke, going on a first date, and breaking the law. She is very determined. Everything Now is the latest show to take teenagers' real-life issues as a starting point, then exaggerate enough to be entertaining without losing relevance. Glamour UK captured the tone when it called the show a must "if you loved the cheeky high school angst of Sex Education and Heartstopper". Stephen Fry is the other notable cast member, as Mia's therapist.



Continued here

How often do you think about the Roman empire? TikTok trend exposed the way we gender history

Dominic Janes teaches at Keele University and the University for the Creative Arts. He is a member of the Liberal Democrats.

How often do you think about the Roman empire? This question, posed to men by their partners on social media app TikTok, has led to a storm of viral videos. Women are amused to discover the answer is often “every day”, or at least “several times a week”.

Continued here

Psychedelics plus psychotherapy can trigger rapid changes in the brain - new research at the level of neurons is untangling how

Dr. Higgins is an unpaid member of the safety board for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPA) for their phase 3 trials with MDMA for PTSD.

People may wish their brains could change faster – not just when learning new skills, but also when overcoming problems like anxiety, depression and addictions.

Continued here