En images, le retour spectaculaire d’une capsule spatiale pleine de médicaments fabriqués en orbite !

Le 21 février dernier, une capsule américaine de la société privée Varda Space est revenue sur Terre après avoir passé des mois en orbite basse. Plusieurs médicaments ont été fabriqués pendant la mission, une première ! Plus récemment, Varda Space a dévoilé une vidéo impressionnante de la...

Aquellum, le projet fou et futuriste d'une ville sous les montagnes en Arabie saoudite

Cela sera comme un gratte-ciel inversé : Aquellum est le nom de la ville futuriste qui s'intègre dans le gigantesque projet Neom, en Arabie saoudite, le long de la côte du golfe d'Aqaba. L'accès se fera par une luxueuse marina puis, par un canal souterrain car la singularité de cette cité sera...

Cette incroyable tour solaire produit de l’électricité même la nuit !

Des chercheurs ont mis au point une nouvelle tour solaire intégrant une double cheminée qui lui permet de produire de l’électricité même la nuit. Cette technologie pourrait produire plus de 750 MWh par an, à condition d’être placée dans un climat chaud et aride, avec un accès à l’eau…

Le jour où les continents ont sombré sous les eaux : un événement majeur dans l’histoire de la Terre

Inscrite dans les roches du Grand Canyon du Colorado, la Grande discordance est le témoin d’un événement majeur dans l’histoire de la Terre. Sa fin serait d’ailleurs marquée par un impressionnant épisode d’inondation. Une nouvelle étude fait la lumière sur les causes possibles de cet événement...

Un trésor inestimable de près de 50 000 pièces du IVe siècle découvert en Méditerranée

Après la découverte de quelques pièces antiques par un plongeur amateur, une équipe d'archéologues a exhumé plus de 30 000 pièces en bronze datant du IVe siècle. Un véritable trésor parfaitement préservé et enfoui à proximité des côtes de la Sardaigne, vestige de l'activité maritime à l'époque...

Here's an Early Look at Amazon's Black Friday Deals

After Best Buy, Target, and Walmart shared their Black Friday plans, Amazon finally announced its own. Big retailers are rolling out their deals especially early this year, so if you plan to shop, you should take advantage of them.

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La forme originelle du Sphinx devant les pyramides ne serait pas d’origine humaine !

Une partie du mystère qui entoure le Sphinx trônant devant les pyramides de Gizeh serait-il résolu ? Si l’on ne sait toujours pas où est passé le nez titanesque, on comprend mieux pourquoi les Égyptiens ont décidé de représenter le sphinx couché à cet endroit. L’inspiration est dans la nature…

What Is BVO, and Why Is the FDA Banning It in Drinks?

It’s pretty much an American tradition that the FDA only bans a controversial ingredient after companies have mostly stopped using it—that’s how it went with trans fats and with BPA in baby bottles. Now, brominated vegetable oil (BVO) stands ready to join the list. The additive was once used in Mountain Dew, and is…

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These Are the Best Food Deals and Freebies This Halloween

Whether Halloween is a hectic day in your household—getting people in costume, making sure the candy bowl is stocked, and putting the finishing touches on your spooky outdoor decor—or it’s just another day for you, you’re going to have to eat at some point.

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How to Hide Someone in Your Google Photos 'Memories'

Google Photos is a fabulous app that makes all your media available across your devices and acts as a solid backup in case, heaven forbid, your tech gets destroyed. It’s invaluable in so many ways, but it’s still prone to causing some pain: It loves to send you push notifications about what you were doing on a given…

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A world view: Talks from day 1 of TEDWomen 2023

TEDWomen 2023 kicked off in its new home of Atlanta, Georgia with a moving and wide-ranging session of talks and performances about the future of global democracy, the pursuit of freedom in Russia and Ukraine, the path to recovery for survivors and more.

The event: Session 1 of TEDWomen 2023, hosted by TEDWomen editorial director Pat Mitchell, TED’s head of curation Helen Walters and activist, filmmaker and entrepreneur Maya Penn

When and where: Wednesday, October 11, 2023, at the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, Georgia

Speakers: Yordanos Eyoel, Irina Karamanos Adrian, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Jane Ferguson, Dasha Navalnaya, Ava DuVernay, Christine Schuler Deschryver, Chris Anderson

Music: Introduced by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director Nathalie Stutzmann, chamber music group The Merian Ensemble open the week with an evocative and transporting performance of Nicole Chamberlain’s “Atalanta” for flute, oboe, bass clarinet, harp and viola.

It’s not news that democracy is under attack globally. In order to encourage new democracies (and protect established ones), we need more than robust institutions — we need grassroots action, says democracy entrepreneur Yordanos Eyoel, who explores innovative ways to nurture nascent pro-democracy groups wherever they’re threatened.

As a feminist, Irina Karamanos Adrian was not thrilled to become Chile’s First Lady. She shares how she overturned the position’s institutionalized responsibilities in an effort to make them more transparent, asserting that it’s undemocratic for an unelected position to have such power.

How do we defend people’s freedom and dignity against authoritarianism, asks human rights lawyer Oleksandra Matviichuk. In the face of Russian troops occupying Ukraine, she emphasizes the extraordinary capabilities of ordinary people — and urges us all to stand together.

Women journalists shape the way the world sees wars, says war reporter Jane Ferguson. Illuminating the historic impact of female-led reporting, she highlights the perspective-broadening power of humanizing stories from war zones.

Dasha Navalnaya is the daughter of an important man: Alexey Navalny, the leader of the Russian opposition and one of Vladimir Putin’s top critics. She shares the story of her father’s poisoning and imprisonment — and why Russians need your help to bring down Putin’s authoritarian regime.

In conversation with TEDWomen editorial director Pat Mitchell, writer, producer and filmmaker Ava DuVernay discusses how she turned Caste — Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer-Prize winning nonfiction analysis of race in the US — into Origin, a gripping narrative film exploring both the book’s thesis and the author’s life story.

Human rights activist Christine Schuler Deschryver shares how her organization, City of Hope, is modeling a new recovery program for women survivors of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one that allows women to reclaim their bodies while developing skills to become future community leaders.

We’re well aware of how quickly hate and misinformation go viral. But in a one-of-a-kind preview of his upcoming book, head of TED Chris Anderson argues generosity can be infectious as well — creating powerful ripple effects that help us thrive.

Closing performance: Mahogany-N-Motion, a student-run women’s dance group from Spelman College — a historically Black liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia — close out the session with an energetic, drumline-infused performance that brought the TEDWomen crowd to its feet.

Today’s NYT Connections Hints (and Answer) for Thursday, September 28

If you’re looking for the Connections answer for Thursday, September 28, 2023, read on—I’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solutions to all four categories. Beware, there are spoilers below for September 28, NYT Connections #109! Scroll to the end if you want some hints (and then the answer)…

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Vision: Notes from Session 5 of TED2022

In a classically wide-ranging Session 5 of TED2022, six speakers shared their vision for the future — from building the world’s most powerful telescope to the next generation of the creator economy to finding ways to bridge divides and create peace through unlikely collaborations.

The event: Talks from TED2022, Session 5: Vision, hosted by TED’s Chris Anderson

When and where: Tuesday, April 12, 2022, at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada

Speakers: John C. Mather, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Jennifer Heldmann, Adam Mosseri, Cordae, Georgette Bennett

The talks in brief:

John C. Mather, telescope builder

Big idea: The James Webb Space Telescope will reveal the secrets of the universe and help to answer the question: “Are we alone?”

How? Launched on Christmas morning 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the most powerful telescope ever built. Situated at a specific point in space about a million miles from Earth and featuring a hexagonal, 21-foot, gold-coated mirror that’s protected by a five-layer metalized plastic sunshade the size of a tennis court, JWST will allow scientists to see the universe in unprecedented detail. The telescope is so sensitive that it could see a bumblebee across the distance of the Earth to the moon. It’s intended to operate for 20 years, during which time it will study places in our solar system, like Europa and Titan, that we think might harbor life, as well as Earth-like exoplanets further out in the universe. “Astronomers travel with the speed of light and with the speed of imagination,” Mather says.

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, theoretical physicist

Big idea: The cosmos that we know, with its luminous stars and orbiting planets, largely consists of elements that we can’t actually see and therefore don’t fully understand — like dark matter. With the help of a new generation of telescopes and the enduring curiosity of the world’s most brilliant space scientists, we could be on the brink of demystifying our universe in unprecedented ways.

How? “The universe is more queer and fantastical than it looks to the naked eye,” says theoretical cosmologist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, who invites us into the fantastical world of dark matter. She and her team are using mathematical models, computer simulations and planned observations to test hypotheses about this colorless particle that makes up 80 percent of normally gravitating matter in the universe — a particle whose name isn’t the only counterintuitive thing about it. While dark matter presents questions that stretch the boundaries of modern astrophysics, Prescod-Weinstein notes that highly sophisticated telescopes and facilities like those at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile are supporting an exciting frontier of exploration that will help us gain clarity on its mysterious nature. Describing what could be the ultimate tag team of discovery, she explains that while these telescopes help to provide a high-level overview of dark matter, she and others are working to determine which minuscule particles — like axions — give it substance. From her perspective, this dedicated research could have far-reaching implications not just for science but for us as cosmic beings, too. “I expect the universe to force us to reevaluate what we thought we knew,” she says. “When we honor the land and sky as our galactic relations and their indigenous stewards, it becomes possible for us to imagine new ways of being good in relations with each other.”

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Jennifer Heldmann, planetary scientist

Big idea: We’re about to explore space in a bold new way.

How? For the first time ever, humans will explore space using a super-sized spacecraft. The Starship vehicle, developed by SpaceX, promises to shuttle more payload and power than any previous spacecraft — and it’s reusable. Historically, rockets are one-and-done, but with Starship, missions could evolve past the singular boutique and bespoke-style specialty expeditions to mass-produced, large-scale operations thanks to SpaceX’s non-traditional approach to rocketry. Heldmann highlights real-life examples that Starship would be perfect for, such as investigating galactic ocean worlds for signs of life and seeding large telescopes through the cosmos to collect crucial data to answer deep, scientific questions. In the long walk of human history, we are on the cusp of matching our technological capability with our scientific know-how as it applies to building a future away from our home planet. Heldmann outlines how this could become a reality on Mars, but says the opportunities Starship affords is more than that: it has the potential to usher in a moment where we’ll answer life’s biggest questions across the solar system.

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Adam Mosseri, design thinker

Big idea: The next decade will see a dramatic shift in power online, away from large tech platforms and towards creators.

How? Adam Mosseri expects that web3 — a new iteration of the internet built on blockchain and encompassing ideas such as cryptocurrency, NFTs, smart contracts, DAOs and more — will empower creators over the platforms that host their content. Currently, creators can use platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Patreon, Substack and many more to host content and get paid, but they’re still beholden to the whims of each individual platform. With blockchain-enabled technologies, creators could fully own their relationship with their fans: just as people invest in startups, so too could fans “buy a share” of their favorite creators through terms codified in a smart contract, removing the need for a platform as the intermediary. This would help creators build a community of people directly invested in their long-term success, Mosseri says, shifting power away from the internet’s gatekeepers and towards the people themselves. No single company can build this model alone: it’ll take people across the tech industry, alongside the experimentation of pioneering creators, to get to scale. But if it happens, Mosseri says, “We will have helped to realize the great promise of the internet.”

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Cordae, hip hop artist

Big idea: A “hi-level mindset” helps you pursue positive thinking and channel it into your desires with disciplined action.

How? “These misfortunes are just gonna make my triumph story a lot cooler.” That powerful thought set Cordae on the path to developing what he calls a “hi-level mindset.” Well, that and the original creator, his mom. How you handle trying times is what defines your destiny, he says. From being voted “Most Likely To Be Famous” in high school to a rocky freshman year of college, it took choosing positivity to get through the highs and lows of dropping mixtapes that didn’t immediately match his expectations of blowing up. Two Grammy nominations later, he’ll tell you that making the most out of your life takes intention and action. You can’t be hi-level if you don’t know what you want, he says. Whether it’s making a vision board or just writing down your goals, Cordae believes that it comes down to is discipline and removing negativity. So buckle down, he says, and get rid of the negativity in your life. “We only have one life to live, 110 years maximum if you’re a health guru and you have great health insurance,” he says. “How are you gonna maximize your time on this Earth?”

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Georgette Bennett, peace builder

Big Idea: Establishing peace isn’t always easy, but it is possible. When encountering a conflict, look for an entry point, identify a gap and find something doable to fill that gap.

How? As the child of Holocaust survivors and a World War II refugee herself, Georgette Bennett deeply resonated with the suffering of those attempting to survive as their homes and cities were destroyed during the Syrian civil war. Bennett first found an entry point: she mobilized religious communities in the US into the Multifaith Alliance for Syrian Refugees. Then, she identified the gap: people in the southwestern part of Syria desperately needed help, but due to regime blockades, it was nearly impossible for aid organizations to reach them. However, it would be very easy to enter that part of Syria through the Golan Heights in Israel. Now that there was a clear goal, Bennett and a small group of Israeli and Syrian civilians began to meet with world leaders in 2015 to convince them to set up humanitarian aid delivery routes from Israel directly into Syria. Despite the fact that Syria and Israel have been stuck in a perpetual war since 1948, Israel launched Operation Good Neighbor in the fall of 2016, officially opening the border so aid could flow into Syria. This international collaboration helped stabilize the region, delivering more than 120 million dollars in aid, including medical equipment, medicine, food and clothing. They even built an industrial bakery! Bennett’s three-step formula has worked for her in other contexts, too, like in 1971 when she worked with the New York Police Department to establish the first sex crimes unit in the country. Finding the path to peace is rarely easy, but it’s always necessary, she says.

Free to Dream: TED Talks in partnership with American Family Insurance

We all deserve the right to dream and to pursue better, richer and fuller lives. In fact, this ideal is often referred to as the American Dream. And yet, the country’s criminal justice system denies many people the freedom to truly dream — even after they have been technically “freed” from incarceration. In an evening of talks, four speakers and a performer challenged the definition of the word “freedom” and laid out new ideas for how to engage in systems change, close equity gaps and reimagine what it means to be free to dream.

The event: TED Salon: Free to Dream, curated and hosted by Whitney Pennington Rodgers, in partnership with American Family Insurance

Opening remarks: Bill Westrate, president and CEO-elect of American Family Insurance, welcomes the audience to the salon.

Music: A soaring musical interlude from The Resistance Revival Chorus, a collective of women artists and activists who use their voices to amplify freedom, justice reform and the power of dreaming.

Reuben Jonathan Miller, sociologist, writer

Big idea: For the nearly 20 million Americans with a felony record, punishment doesn’t end with a prison sentence. We need to embrace the politics of radical hospitality, where we make a place in society for all people, even those who’ve done harm.

How? When a previously incarcerated person comes home, they return to a hostile world — what Reuben Jonathan Miller calls an alternate legal reality. In the United States, more than 44,000 laws and policies dictate where a person with a felony record can live, what jobs they can hold, how they can spend their time and whether or not they can vote or see their kids. As a sociologist, Miller has spent more than two decades “following the people we’ve learned to be afraid of.” For people like a man Miller calls Jimmy, who was released from prison into Detroit, punishment never ends. Miller explains how the terms of Jimmy’s release required that he find housing, report to his parole officer for weekly drug screenings, complete a workforce development program and get a job — without providing him with any resources or support. His mother wanted him to come home, but he couldn’t even sleep on her couch because landlords can evict families for housing relatives with criminal records. What’s the solution? How do we end perpetual punishment? We need to change the laws, Miller says, but we also need to change our commitments. He points to Ronald Simpson Bey as someone who models the politics of radical hospitality. Bey spent 27 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and since he’s come home has become one of the nation’s leading advocates for justice. When a 14-year-old boy murdered his son, Bey even advocated on behalf of the boy to ensure that he would be tried as a minor, giving the boy a second chance in life. As Miller says, people like Bey help us imagine alternatives for the formerly incarcerated; they invite us “to help remake the world, so we all belong, simply because we’re fully human participants in a human community.”

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Nyra Jordan, social impact investor

Big idea: Corporations can engage in justice reform by making it easier to hire someone with a criminal record.

How? Corporate commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) often leave out people impacted by the criminal justice system, even though employment is one of the best ways to prevent someone from returning to prison. As social impact investment director for American Family Insurance, Nyra Jordan has pioneered fair chance hiring for people with a criminal record. Under her leadership, the company eliminated any “check here if you have a criminal record” boxes from their job applications and started including programs that train incarcerated individuals in their talent pipeline. Now, she shares four steps to implement fair chance hiring at your company.  First, she says, hire based on skills. If a person has the skills they need for the job, then a gap in their resume for time spent in prison shouldn’t matter. Second, make sure there’s a clear path for promotion for justice-impacted individuals. Third, help justice-impacted employees adjust to your corporate culture. And last, include criminal justice education and anti-bias training as part of your company’s DEI strategy to ensure a positive work environment for all fair chance hires. Someone who’s been involved in the criminal justice system can very much be a qualified candidate. “For many reasons, they might end up being your most motivated, most dedicated, most hard-working employees because their stakes are so much higher,” Jordan says.

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Brittany K. Barnett, attorney, entrepreneur, author

Big idea: The freedom journey doesn’t end when someone is released from prison. In many ways, it begins. True liberation must include a vision for restoring, investing in and nurturing the creative ingenuity of justice-impacted people.

How? Brittany K. Barnett realizes that we cannot rely on the glacially slow legislative process, or on lawmakers indifferent to those suffering behind bars. Instead, she champions “sustainable liberation” — a concept by which economic freedom, equity and access to resources and capital opens doors for incarcerated creatives to impact their communities both inside and outside of prison walls. In addition to numerous initiatives investing in the businesses of the formerly incarcerated, Barnett and her clients cofounded the Buried Alive project — a joint effort fighting to free those snared by outdated drug laws. Through these programs, Barnett helps restore the dreams of those whose lives have been shattered by prison. “When we lose sight of the humanity of those we unjustly sentence, we lose sight of all of the brilliance they might bring into the world,” she says.

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Nick Turner, president and director of Vera Institute of Justice, interviewed by TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers

Big idea: With the Vera Institute, Nick Turner seeks to transform the “criminal legal system” — referred to as such because the so-called “criminal justice system” does not dispense justice. Instead, this system feeds America’s oppressive legacy of racial injustice, established through centuries of slavery and “Black Codes.” Disguised by euphemisms such as “War on Crime,” rather than fixing social problems, our current legal system preserves racial divides and economic inequities. 

How? Democracy can do better than this, Turner says. We must shrink the system, make it less brutal and ensure that there is “some modicum of justice that is provided.” Among other initiatives, the Vera Institute helped overturn the congressionally imposed ban on Pell grants for incarcerated students, which extended to 20,000 students the opportunity to earn a degree. There’s a lot of work to do to build a just justice system, Turner says, but it’s crucial that we recognize the humanity of those caught in it, rather than bow to our fear of violent crime (which police and prisons do relatively little to minimize).