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The paleolithic period – or ‘Stone Age’ – has an evocative place in the modern popular imagination. It looks both backward and forward, an ancient clean slate from which to project and describe humanity’s near future. While The Flintstones are a prehistoric family, their lives are enmeshed in the trappings of an emerging post-war modernity: domestic appliances, fast food and entertainment. We see this duality emerge once again, between the Stone Age and modernity, expressed in a new Modern Stone Age. The character of these spaces eludes and obscures the hand of human design and planning. The sinewy columns, misshapen doorways and globular window portals appear gelatinous, like extruded, misshapen bone marrow. Form is persistently organic, never repeating to the point of motif or feature. Territories morph and billow onwards, carrying…

DATA AS OF JULY 11, 2022 SOURCES: FACTSET, FORBES ASIA BAFANG ELECTRIC E-bike popularity accelerated during the pandemic as people looked to cycling for recreation and alternative transport. Riding the trend, sales at Suzhou-based electric motor and battery maker Bafang Electric surged 90% last year while net profit climbed 50%. It recently opened a new manufacturing plant in Poland to serve the European market. DOLLAR INDUSTRIES Following a recovery from Covid 19-induced trade and supply disruptions, Indian apparel maker Dollar Industries booked 30% sales growth for the fiscal year ended in March, with net profit surging 72%. Besides expanding its clothing range for women, the company also recently added a spinning mill and a warehouse. GIFT HOLDINGS The ramen restaurant company saw sales jump 22% to $124 million as pandemic restrictions lifted in Japan, bringing customers to…

On a sunny Tuesday morning in the town of Grândola, an hour and a half south of Lisbon, Sandy Chen steps out of an Uber and braces herself for the five home viewings she’s lined up for the day in Portugal’s Alentejo region. As Chen walks down a quiet street in the town of 14,000, dogs bark and elderly residents, alerted by the noise, emerge from their homes to check out the visitor. “If I buy a house here, I might be the only Chinese person in town,” she says. Chen, a retiree originally from Tianjin in northern China, is racing to find a property before Portugal slams the door on a program offering residency and a path to citizenship to foreigners willing to invest in the country. In 2021, Portugal…

In Kyrgyzstan, a member of parliament urgently called on the government to start creating jobs and setting up temporary housing for the information technology professionals now arriving daily from Russia. Even a poor Central Asian nation that exports cheap migrant labor for Russian construction sites and fast-food restaurants looks like a safe haven to thousands of educated Russians fleeing the cataclysm Vladimir Putin created by invading Ukraine. This can no longer be described as brain drain: It’s a stampede for the exits. Konstantin Sonin, an economist at the University of Chicago, has estimated that some 200,000 Russians fled in the first 10 days of the invasion—to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Israel—any country that admits Russians visa-free. That’s a small number compared with the 2.8 million refugees who’ve left Ukraine, but…

For details, see Resources. A COUPLE OF WINTERS AGO, WHEN Herb Sambol decamped from Manhattan to a tiny Palm Beach bungalow, he was trying it on for size—literally, and without even realizing it. Already the owner of two stunning homes in New York (a 1,700-square-foot aerie in a Richard Meier–designed glass-and-steel downtown tower, as well as a four-bedroom Sag Harbor residence), the real estate entrepreneur was not shopping for a third home, much less one the size of a studio apartment. But the “cozy cabin,” a short drive from the stable where Sambol keeps two horses, grew on him. At the end of his rental period, when he heard it was going on the market, he asked the owners to sell it to him. Sambol enlisted architect Lee F. Mindel, with whom…

A hundred years ago convalescence was seen as a necessary part of the recovery process. The word was part of the vernacular, describing a liminal space between health and illness: a phase when people were neither ‘sick’ nor ‘well’ but somewhere in between. Today the word is almost obsolete and, rather than taking time to rest and recuperate, most people return to work as soon as humanely possible. They are helped by wonder drugs like antibiotics, which, by dealing effectively with the extreme symptoms of illness, con the body into thinking it’s fully recovered when often it’s only part way there. COVID-19 has re-introduced us to the concept of a prolonged recovery, with numerous patients claiming they are not back to full health after more than 100 days. It has also seen…

Making people laugh connects us to one another. But what humour endures? For me, it’s personal life stories and experiences. Life, twisted and moulded until you find the funny, will always evolve, and therefore endure. I’ve found that the closer it cuts to the bone, the funnier it is. The beauty of life is that everyone is similar in some way. While we may not have the same experiences, everyone can relate to observations on life, family and the varieties of behaviour we all encounter every day as we go about our lives. Humour is very helpful in everyday life. For example, it can end tense situations. In my life, humour has ended arguments at home and at work too many times to mention. Finding humour can break tension immediately. My…

After 25 years of marriage, a relationship problem in my home typically plays out like this. I go to the kitchen to make dinner and see my husband’s walking stick leaning against the drawers that contain my pots. (Ambrose has been nursing a bad knee.) I move the stick a metre over and rest it against the door frame. The next day, it is back leaning on the drawers. I move it again. This can go on for weeks. Neither of us mentions it to the other. It’s just a silent tug-of-war about where things belong in the house. I mentioned this to him the other day, about how hilariously low-stakes the romantic drama has become in our lives, and he countered that, actually, he hadn’t noticed that I kept moving…

It was only a matter of time before the realization struck the upper crust of NFL quarterbacks: WE DON’T HAVE TO SIT QUIETLY AND HOPE OUR WOEBEGONE FRANCHISE FINALLY FIGURES OUT HOW TO BUILD A ROSTER. WE DON’T HAVE TO KEEP UP THE FAÇADE THAT WE’RE MERELY EMPLOYEES. THERE’S NO NEED FOR US TO SQUANDER OUR ATHLETIC PRIMES. It took three superstar quarterbacks, over seven days in January, to embrace the notion that they no longer have to be anchored to a franchise for life. Aaron Rodgers’s MVP season—which had started with an unfulfilled request for upgraded receivers—ended with an upset loss to the Bucs on Championship Sunday; in a postgame press conference laced with subtle, coded messages, he talked about a future in which he’d no longer be part of…

The Stratofortress, Boeing’s strategic bomber whose long career shows no signs of ending, has proven a versatile platform. Among its many roles, one of the most colorful was the NB-52B (No. 52-0008) used to launch the X-15. This early airframe was mostly unpainted during early test flights and with its bright orange trim it belies the B-52’s unflattering sobriquet, BUFF, for big, ugly, fat… uh… fellow. Monogram modified its 1/72 scale B-52D to produce an NB-52 kit, but it is difficult to find. So I converted one of the bomber kits (No. 8292) and dressed it with Cutting Edge decals. For the load, I used an X-15 I built many years ago. 1 As part of the modifications done to the NB-52B, the tail-gun turret was removed. After cutting off the gun…

ON A STEAMY morning in July, Clay, 25, and Acaimie Chastain, 23, arrived at the base of Mount Liamuiga on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, ready for their first climb as husband and wife. They had married just five days earlier back home in Indiana, USA after meeting at university. Clay – a handsome farmer’s son with charming, puppy-dog energy – was immediately smitten by Acaimie’s beguiling smile. Like any good couple, they had their complementary differences. Acaimie had always been the worrier. “A realist,” she says. “A pessimist,” Clay replies. She liked order and structure. Clay, on the other hand, was a perpetual optimist – maddeningly carefree and easygoing, always certain that things would turn out just fine. So it was Clay who wanted to use a day of…

He must have had that nice window seat all the way from London. He looked under 40, medium height, slim and wore a blazer. It was October 2003 when I boarded the Emirates flight in Dubai and found that I had the aisle seat next to him. I attempted a smile as I sat down but his blank, distant look made me stop mid-smile. One of those, I thought. Each time I take a flight, I try to chat with the passenger next to me. Most people are responsive when they’re alone at 12,000 metres. Only those few, who barely even nod, make me keep to myself. So flying has helped me get to know perfect strangers. To a journalist, this could be the seed of an unexpected story or simply…

Recently, I was standing at a city intersection with a gaggle of others, waiting patiently for the light to turn green so that we chickens could cross the road. Suddenly, a young woman chatting on her phone bounced past us all and stepped into the intersection just as a car came along. One of the waiting pedestrians called out to warn her, and she swung her head around and snapped in our direction: “Do you mind? I’m on the phone.” For a moment, we all blinked in surprise, and then we started laughing. I believe military tacticians would refer to the woman’s behaviour as showing a ‘lack of situational awareness’. My cat attempting to walk across the stove when I’m cooking would be another example. Or someone ambling backwards towards a…

Two new sports class paragliding competition series have been launched for 2023, taking advantage of the new breed of two-line EN-C paragliders which are coming our way. The Sports-Class Racing Series (SRS) is being organised by British competition organiser Brett Janaway using the Airtribune competition platform, while the Paragliding Grand Prix is organised by Polish pilot Przemysław Czerwiński. Both competition series have adopted a similar concept, offering EN-B+ and EN-C pilots the chance to compete throughout 2023 in a series of European competitions. Both series have said they are trialling the concept for 2023 and might expand beyond Europe if things go well. Sports-Class Racing Series (SRS) “The idea for a sports-class racing series has been around for years, but it feels particularly timely with the birth of the two-line EN-C,” organiser Brett…

In late March last year, just a month after Pakistan’s first reported case of COVID-19, I returned to my village, Shujghal. The village sits at the highest peak of the Hindu Kush mountain range in the eastern valley of Tirich Mir. It is comprised of just 16 houses, and each one belongs to members of my family. As is the case during the winter months, when resources are more scarce in the villages, most of us head to cities such as Islamabad, Peshawar and Lahore. I teach English at a private school in Peshawar but the COVID-19 lockdown meant I had to return to Shujghal. On the upside, the lockdown reunited my cousins and I for the first time in years. To pass the time, most nights after dinner we would play…

We’ve written at length about retail’s key strategies for physical space in an increasingly online-oriented market. In short: create a destination, foster communities, engage your audience. But more recently there’s been another shift that’s less about what retail spaces offer and more about how they offer it. It stems from a growing consensus that fixed equals risky, whether that ‘fixed’ refers to a fit-out or a tenancy agreement. As retail expansion director Doortje van der Lee of eyewear brand Ace & Tate explained in Frame 140: ‘Traditionally retail has been about signing a lease for five to ten years and staying in one place… Landlords are starting to open up to different ways of working together, and creating modular stores gives us the flexibility to pick up our concept and…

我們是美國，沒有什麼事情是我們無法一起做到的！」美國時間七月四日晚間，美國總統拜登在白宮南草坪舉辦的國慶日園遊會上，用這段話，為將近十五分鐘的致詞作結。 這場約千人出席的「派對」，相較於七月一日在北京天安門廣場舉行的中共建黨百年慶祝大典，規格顯得迷你；拜登著重美國如何逐漸擺脫疫情陰霾的談話，也明顯少了中共總書記習近平一番警告外來勢力恐將「頭破血流」的霸氣。 兩大強權，一周內的兩場慶典，東方巨龍的聲勢更為浩大，但華裔美籍的中國研究專家裴敏欣在中共建黨百年大典隔天撰文評論，對中國而言，「拜登，可能是更可怕的敵人。」理由是：「不同於川普以侮辱、威脅和關稅疏遠盟友，拜登修復了美國的聯盟，成功形塑一條相對團結的抗中戰線。」 六月，當台灣社會聚焦於新冠疫情，太平洋另一端的拜登政府則是連續出手，從最外顯的地緣政治，到5G戰、科技戰、金融戰，都像是在這一個月內完成了關鍵布陣，上任至今許多曖昧或決斷的背後意義，也似乎在此一個月間豁然開朗，攸關全球政經格局的「拜登規則」瞬間清晰──如同裴敏欣的解讀，這是一套「比川普更兇狠」的對中戰略。…

Pre-pandemic co-working was popular mainly with freelancers and start-ups, but the ongoing backdrop of uncertainty has seen traditional businesses de-risk by setting small teams of their employees up in local hubs. ‘Businesses today are looking for flexible rental options that are versatile and highly responsive to changing market dynamics,’ says Kong Wan Sing, founder of JustCo. Before the pandemic, 50 to 60 per cent of the Southeast Asian flex space provider’s deals were with enterprises. As of last December, it was 90 per cent. Sing told Coworking Insights: ‘The combination of businesses seeking to deploy less capital into real estate, and employees expecting more choices over how and where they work, will fuel expectations toward flexible office space to complement primary real estate needs over the next decade.’ In Australia, major…

One thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear is that some people who get the virus don’t suffer much, while others become very sick indeed. And while the elderly have been particularly hard hit, some do survive – even centenarians. As for younger people, whose immune systems are supposed to be more robust, many have nevertheless died of it. So, what factors give some people a stronger immune system than others, regardless of age? What does it mean if, for example, your partner or child gets sick, and you don’t – or vice versa? We know that our immune-system function slowly declines with age. Just like when you see a photo of yourself from ten years ago versus one taken this afternoon, you see changes in your face, skin and…

自從我們建立了洲際公路系統、打贏了太空爭霸賽，美國就再也沒有足堪比擬的計畫，直到現在……。這是二戰以來美國最大的一筆投資！」美國總統拜登（Joe Biden）四月七日發表這段演說時，語氣其實頗為平淡。畢竟，他在一周前的三月底已對外公布這項計畫，今天頂多算是補充說明。 他的後方站著美國副總統賀錦麗（Kamala Harris），再後方則是一片背板。在拜登所屬民主黨代表色藍色襯底的背板上，畫著幾位在高塔上賣命施工的工人剪影，簡單卻精準，傳達了這項計畫的基本意涵。 它的名稱是「美國就業計畫」（American Jobs Plan，簡稱AJP），短期目標是創造就業機會，達標的手段是翻修、興建美國基礎建設；而拜登四月七日的「補充說明」，則成功強化了這項計畫的想像空間，一種史詩級般的想像空間。 他說這是「二戰以來最大投資」，這句話憑藉的，是二．六五兆美元的計畫總額。即使扣掉其中關於「綠能產業租稅抵免」的四千億美元，政府支出的手筆仍達二．二五兆美元，相當於六十三兆元台幣。…

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HOLDS THAT 2021’S much anticipated hot vax summer never happened, but John Waters knows different. Cinema’s Pope of Trash rents a home in Cape Cod’s queer party destination Provincetown every summer, and last year “it was like the movie The Swarm, but with gay people,” Waters laughs. Although the season marked the filmmaker, author, and cultural icon’s 57th in Ptown, the convergence was like nothing he had seen before. “I hid,” he says—writing in the mornings and spending afternoons on the beach. A self-described “filth elder” who spent his 20s making movies transgressive enough to send his parents’ generation into conniptions, the Pink Flamingos auteur sympathizes with the youth, whose decadent and libidinous urges he knows well. “I feel bad for them,” he says. “They’re quarantined and aroused, horny,…

If you want to know how the world is preparing for the next global pandemic, consider Rolaing, a Cambodian village on a tributary of the Mekong River. For a few days in February this isolated spot became a hive of public-health activity after an 11-year-old girl died of H5N1, the most virulent strain of avian flu. It was the country’s first fatality from the disease since 2014. A rapid response team of health workers from the region was dispatched to the village, which is in Prey Veng province and a two-hour drive from the capital, Phnom Penh. Health workers found a community of almost 2,000 people living cheek by jowl with their livestock and chickens. In just 24 hours they set up a makeshift testing center, identified a dozen of the…

Just weeks after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan, a cash crisis has crippled its already feeble economy. The tight supply of money, along with border restrictions and increasing international isolation, is robbing many Afghans of their livelihoods and driving the cost of food and other essentials higher, setting the stage for a humanitarian crisis. During the 20-year U.S. occupation, the economy was propped up mainly by international aid and U.S. dollars, which circulate alongside the local currency—the afghani—and are used regularly to pay for imported goods, as well as for big-ticket transactions such as buying a home or paying for private school tuition. Shah Mehrabi, a board member of Afghanistan’s central bank who’s now in the U.S., estimates that dollars accounted for about two-thirds of bank deposits and half of…

Cancer, heart disease, dementia, diabetes: in the lexicon of ageing and disease, these are some worrisome words. But researchers have suspected for years that all of these health issues, and more, have at their heart one common trigger: chronic low-grade inflammation. And now they may finally have proof. In 2017 researchers in Boston reported on a clinical trial with more than 10,000 patients (mean age: 61) from 39 countries that tested whether an anti-inflammatory drug, canakinumab, could lower rates of heart disease. They discovered that it could, but they also found that it reduced lung cancer mortality by more than 67 per cent. Reports of gout and arthritis, which are conditions linked to inflammation, also fell. “In flammation plays a role in everyone’s health,” says rheumatologist Dr Dana DiRenzo. When inf lammation…

The first-ever dictionary The earliest single-language dictionary in the English language was known as A Table Alphabeticall. Produced by Robert Cawdrey in 1604, it contained around 3000 words. It didn’t give definitions so much as synonyms; the author’s purpose, he wrote, was to introduce more complicated words to “ladies, gentlewomen, or any other unskillful persons”, so they could better understand scriptures and sermons. The word with the most meanings You might be surprised to learn that the most ‘complicated’ word in English – the word with the largest number of separate definitions – is a three-letter word. Although set held the title in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1989, with 430 separate definitions, in more recent times it has been outrun by a competitor. According to the editors,…

The winds this April morning were giving Wayne Boone’s massive 2007 semitrailer a good lashing. A driver for a paper recycling company in Virginia, US, Boone steered the empty 18-wheeler up a stretch of the highway, to pick up his first load of the day. The 53-year-old driver pulled into the eastbound left lane of the G.A. Treakle Memorial Bridge, known to locals as the I-64 High Rise, a four-lane drawbridge traversing the Elizabeth River. On the span, the storm let loose its full force, finding no obstacles in its path but vehicles, which it pummelled. Boone slowed as wind and rain hammered his windshield. At the bridge’s crest, 21 metres above the rushing estuary, the concrete road gave way to steel decking. Boone’s front wheels met the slick steel just as…

Light, dark, moist, dry, heavy, spongy, leavened, unleavened. All around the world there are many variations of the Christmas cake that started in Britain in the 14th century as porridge. Yes, you read that correctly. Porridge. In 567, the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed that Christmas Day to Epiphany (January 6), later called the 12 Days of Christmas, would be a sacred and festive season. The pre-Christmas period, or Advent, was traditionally a season for fasting when the faithful prepared themselves for the coming of the newborn King, and for the celebration of the feast of Christmas. On Christmas Eve, to help line their stomachs, many ate something called plum porridge, or ‘frumenty’. According to Hazel Flight, a nutritionist at Edge Hill University, frumenty was made from hulled wheat that was boiled…

Marjon van Eijk was excited. The 57-year-old from the Netherlands and her family had just landed on the Spanish island of Mallorca for the wedding of her daughter Iris. It was a day she’d dreamed about. The intimate ceremony was taking place the next day, October 10, 2018. Twenty-one guests were planning to gather at a stunning villa in the hills beyond the picturesque town of Sant Llorenç des Cardassar, just under an hour’s drive from the airport. “I can’t wait for the barbecue tonight, never mind the wedding,” Marjon told her mother, Bets Kasiu. Bets was a sharp, warm-hearted 84-year-old, but she wasn’t in the best of health. A year earlier, she had had emergency surgery on a perforated intestine and now wore a colostomy bag. Hip problems meant she had to…

I have long wondered why Antares (Alpha [α] Scorpii) gets to be the Rival of Mars — Ares is the Greek name for the Roman god Mars, so Antares (“Anti-Ares”) is essentially named “Anti-Mars.” But the Red Planet also battles Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis) and Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri) — both are of similar brightness and color. This month, you can see the fight for yourself as Mars marches off to war against these two titans at nightfall. The three scarlet sentinels all shine around 1st magnitude and are within about 35° of one another. When March opens, they form a line to the southeast. By midmonth, eastward-moving Mars will have bent that line into a shield. Then, by month’s end, the three will morph into a spearhead, with Betelgeuse at the tip. A…

In late March last year, just a month after Pakistan’s first reported case of COVID-19, I returned to my village, Shujghal. The village sits at the highest peak of the Hindu Kush mountain range in the eastern valley of Tirich Mir. It is comprised of just 16 houses, and each one belongs to members of my family. As is the case during the winter months, when resources are more scarce in the villages, most of us head to cities such as Islamabad, Peshawar and Lahore. I teach English at a private school in Peshawar but the COVID-19 lockdown meant I had to return to Shujghal. On the upside, the lockdown reunited my cousins and I for the first time in years. To pass the time, most nights after dinner we would play…

André Sougarret won global acclaim in 2010 as the chief engineer on a rescue of 33 Chilean miners who’d spent more than two months trapped 2,300 feet underground. Now, as chief executive officer of Codelco, he must attempt another difficult feat: digging the world’s No. 1 copper producer out of its current hole. At the state-owned behemoth, output is running at its lowest in a quarter century, costs have surged, and profit has slumped—all at a time when Chile’s government needs more money to fight festering inequalities and the world needs more copper for batteries and electric grids as it transitions away from fossil fuels. Codelco’s production is down by about a fifth from only six years ago. After a double-digit percentage drop in 2022, it’s expected to fall as much…

«Il nostro obiettivo è stato creare un luogo dove la quotidianità vive nella bellezza di una contemplazione del passato, del presente e del prossimo futuro»Paola Moretti Il tempo nel design non ha confini. Ne è convinta Paola Moretti, progettista d’interni con alle spalle un lungo percorso – tra Parigi, Londra, Stati Uniti e la sua natia Brescia – nel cinema d’autore, nella moda e nello styling. E ne è persuasa Elisabetta Morandini, collezionista d’arte ed esperta di moda che a lei ha affidato un compito assai arduo. Quello di trasformare il piano nobile di un antico e imponente palazzo – sale e saloni dagli alti soffitti che custodiscono elaborate decorazioni murarie del tardo Settecento – in un appartamento che si ispira a un minimalismo colto e raffinato. Un luogo che, in…

CAMI TÉLLEZ ISN’T AFRAID of a little neon. On a recent rainy afternoon, the 24-year-old CEO and creative director opens the door to her Tribeca apartment in a silky chartreuse blouse and trousers. Parade, the irreverent underwear brand she launched with cofounder Jack DeFuria in 2019—backed by $3.5 million from venture capital investors—has a new offce a few minutes’ walk away. But Téllez still frequently works from her giant circular dining-room table, surrounded by coffee-table books. One focuses on photographer Oliviero Toscani, known for his campaigns for United Colors of Benetton, while another, titled The Art of Playboy, is full of the surreal and sensual images that filled the magazine’s pages in the 1960s. The books—and the brand they helped germinate—represent a different aesthetic universe than the one Téllez encountered while…

“We’ve been trying to be very quiet about it, because it’s not proven out, and we don’t want to promise anything.” Nathaniel Ru, Sweetgreen’s co-founder and chief brand officer, is standing inside a soon-to-open location of the bougie salad chain. He’s talking about a steel-and-glass contraption the size of a 1960s computer mainframe that’s looming behind the front counter. The device is called the Infinite Kitchen, and its job will be to assemble the hundreds of harvest bowls, kale Caesars and many other permutations of kinda-fancy salads this restaurant will churn out daily. A small team of engineers is on-site here in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, working out any last-minute kinks in the automated assembly line. Michael Farid, one of the Infinite Kitchen’s inventors, is excited to show off what…

The experience of architecture happens across various scales, from a building’s situation to its skin, and from the entire interior down to the most minute of fittings. There’s a big difference between selecting products from a catalogue and developing something specifically for a project, something that conveys the very essence of the architectural concept. Laufen has realized the need to add this degree of influence to the bathroom, a space whose fittings haven’t historically received such high levels of customization. Laufen wants to move beyond the role of manufacturer to become an ‘industrial partner’. This means that in addition to offering its already extensive product portfolio, the brand can work with architects, designers and investors to create bespoke bathroom products that meet their individual specifications. Part of the goal of the Bespoke…

I grew up in a bar. When most kids my age were at the park playing ball or riding bikes, I was watching old men shoot pool and play shuffleboard. I saw a bar-room fight before I ever saw a sporting event on TV. I don’t imagine that Dr Spock’s book on child rearing, which was so popular 50 years ago, advised exposing children to dimly lit drinking at an early age. But lessons can be taught by unlikely teachers in unusual environments. All that is needed are instructors with pure hearts. Clear eyes are optional. My parents owned a bar called the M Ninety-Seven, named for a nearby highway in Detroit. Built in the ’30s, it had a long wooden bar that was on the right as you walked in.…

Tom de Dorlodot knows a thing or two about travelling and flying. A professional paraglider and paramotor pilot he has literally turned his passion for flying, adventure and travel into a career. He entered his first Red Bull X-Alps when he was 21, and has since travelled and flown in more than 60 countries around the world. He set up the Search Projects in 2011 to travel and fly remote areas, and has crossed Africa overland north to south, sailed the Pacific and Atlantic, and covered an estimated 13,000km during different vol-bivouac trips. Last year he was back in the Karakoram, where he has flown seven times over the last 12 years. At our Cross Country Subscribers’ Masterclass in November he shared some of what he knew. Here are some of his…

The first time I met Piero Castellini Baldissera was at his home in Casa degli Atellani in the center of Milan. Nicolò Castellini Baldissera, his son and my partner, hadn’t provided much forewarning about his family palazzo—about its likely connection to Leonardo da Vinci while he was painting the Last Supper at Santa Maria delle Grazie church across the street, or about the attached apartment building filled with members of his extended family, or even about the museum and café run by his cousin in the middle of the compound’s courtyard. When Piero’s ancestor Ettore Conti purchased the 15th-century palace in 1919, he enlisted the help of the legendary architect Piero Portaluppi (the husband of Conti’s niece Lia Baglia, whom he later adopted) to restore it. He engaged him a second…

Cheater’s Mac and Cheese Replacing a traditional béchamel sauce with cream cheese, which melts almost instantly, makes this recipe ultraspeedy. Feel free to swap in other vegetables, such as fresh or frozen cauliflower florets or peas, for the broccoli. 4 ounces short pasta, such as penneKosher salt and freshly ground black pepper (optional)1½ cups fresh or frozen broccoli florets2½ ounces cream cheese (⅓ cup)1 tablespoon unsalted butter½ ounce Parmigiano-Reggiano, finely grated (⅓ cup), plus more for serving 1. Cook pasta in a pot of generously salted boiling water 2 minutes less than per package instructions. Reserve 1 cup pasta water and cover to keep warm. Add broccoli to pot; continue boiling until pasta is al dente and broccoli is bright green, 1 to 2 minutes more. Drain. Return pot to medium heat; add…

After Chloe Kim returned home from the 2018 Olympics in South Korea, she put her gold medal in what felt at the time like the right place: a trash bin at her parents’ house. “I hated life,” Kim, now 21, recalls over plates of pad thai in the airy four-bedroom home in the west side of Los Angeles she shares with her boyfriend, skateboarder Evan Berle. It’s early December, and a 10-ft. Christmas tree with an ornament featuring the paw print of her beloved mini Australian shepherd, Reese, looms over the living room. Upstairs, a mishmash of snowboarding awards are piled into a box, since Kim and Berle haven’t built enough shelving to display all the hardware. But it wouldn’t be surprising if many of them stay there. Kim has a…

When Deb Menicos walks a strawberry field, she doesn’t look at just the berries. Menicos, who holds a doctorate in plant breeding from Ohio State University and works as a senior scientist at Driscoll’s Inc., will often find herself counting leaves and examining the small stalks protruding from the base of the plant. These parts, known as trusses, are important because they’re where the flowers and berries grow. “We want a small plant, with compact leaves and trusses poking out—not too long, because we don’t want them to touch the dirt,” she says. Developing a new berry variety at Driscoll’s takes at least five years. It begins with a crop of 25,000 genetically distinct plants that grow in the company’s breeding field near its headquarters in Watsonville, California. Menicos and her…

I’ve always held the opinion that a backyard astronomer should never go outside without an organized list of objects to observe. Whether designed for a single evening or as part of a goal-oriented observing program, having a plan helps you avoid night after night of aimless searching, which could diminish your interest in the hobby. I offered ideas for one-night observing lists in my February 2020 column, “February’s Finest Sights.” But this time around, we’ll look at some extensive compilations of deep-sky objects that can keep you engaged for nights on end. Perhaps the best known deep-sky list is the Messier Catalog. And while it can serve as a single night list (if you’re adventurous enough to tackle a Messier marathon), its 110 entries are better subdivided into a series of…

Groundhandling. Pull up, stabilise, turn around, tilt the wing to one side, collapse it, control it, move with it, stay centred, move forwards, feel the wind, balance on one foot, feel the pressure, play with the brakes, turn, pull, collapse, control. These, and much more, are a standard part of any good paragliding groundhandling training day, and over time will result in giving the pilot a high level of confidence both on the ground and in flight. Sometimes though it takes a little effort to practise these exercises after a great day’s flying, or to look for the best place to unpack the glider just for groundhandling when the weather is not right for flying. But what if you could do these training exercises at speed on skis on the snow…

I was standing in the main street of Pompeii, Italy, on a cool November day in 1992. The Via dell’Abbondanza – the street of abundance – a broad avenue running north-south through the ruined city, was completely empty save for me. There was not a single person between the brooding hulk of Mount Vesuvius off in the distance and me. It felt more abandoned than abundant, but I didn’t mind. I’d first read about the city of Pompeii as a ten year old. An ancient Roman city smothered one night in 79 CE in a thick blanket of ash when Vesuvius erupted and killed most of its inhabitants. It had seemed like a mythological place, not a place I would ever get to visit myself. Years later, here I was. The…

Since ancient times, I, the esteemed pomegranate (Punica granatum), have been regarded with reverence as a symbol of your human central beliefs. In many cultures and virtually every religion, I have come to represent life and death, fertility and marriage, beauty and abundance. Why, you may ask? It all has to do with my seeds (my name means ‘apple with many seeds’), while my orb shape and crown of sepals take on a different meaning all together. Buddhists revere me as one of the three blessed fruit (the other two are peach and citrus); in some Hindu traditions I’m a symbol of prosperity and fertility, while for Muslims I’m a symbol of beauty. As a romantic symbol I have featured in sonnets and literature, as well as Renaissance paintings. Sandro Botticelli and…

Every day, it seems, a new techy term pops up, leaving us non-techies asking questions in what sounds like a foreign language. “What is an NFT?” for example. And “Where, exactly, is the metaverse?” If you’re confused, you’re not alone. While it might feel as if technology is speeding up, it follows a predictable formula called Moore’s Law, which has correctly predicted the pace of human advancements in technology for nearly six decades. Moore’s Law suggests that the number of transistors on a computer chip will double about every two years. This is a reliable indicator of how much and how quickly technology will change. And while Moore’s Law has held true for all this time, it hasn’t stopped other key trends in tech from accelerating far faster than computer chips can…

Picture the scene: you’ve spent years working towards a specific goal. You’ve put in countless hours of work and made many sacrifices, but now you’ve got there it’s not how you imagined. Instead of celebration, elation and pride, you feel emptiness, confusion and doubt. Welcome to the anti-climax. The often-experienced but seldom-discussed downside of achieving life’s biggest milestones. Many of us work tirelessly towards our goals. We may spend our lives dreaming of the day we get married, publish our first book or purchase our first home. However, often, when we achieve these things it doesn’t feel quite as expected. In fact, the achievement of these goals feels a bit of a letdown. So why do we often experience an anti-climax when achieving big goals? “An anti-climax can be an unexpected by-product…

MILLIONS OF PAIRS OF UNSOLD Yeezys are sitting in purgatory, stacked in warehouses from the US to China. Sneakers—some looking like cozy turtleneck sweaters for your feet, others like they’ve grown teeth on their soles or solidified into pillowy clouds—that once would’ve sold out in limited-edition drops, often flipped for much more on StockX and Goat, now await their fate seven months after one of the biggest corporate meltdowns in history. Their owner, Adidas AG, couldn’t decide what to do with all the tarnished merchandise created by the man who was, until recently, its most prominent business partner: Kanye West, who now goes by Ye. The total value of these sneakers: about $1.3 billion. At Adidas headquarters in the medieval town of Herzogenaurach, Germany, senior executives have spent months mulling their…

This year marks the 11th time we have examined the universe of astronomical products to find some of the best telescopes, binoculars, and accessories available. Whether you are a veteran observer or a brand-new stargazer, you’ll doubtlessly find items of interest in our 2021 Star Products. Enjoy our preview of these 35 outstanding entries, presented in alphabetical order by manufacturer. Phil Harrington is a contributing editor of Astronomy as well as a dedicated equipment collector. 1 APM HDC XWA 13mm eyepiece From Saarbrücken, Germany, comes APM Telescopes’ new 13mm “x-treme” wide-angle eyepiece. With nine fully multicoated lens elements set in six groups, fully blackened lens edges and spacers, 13mm eye relief, and a cavernous 100° apparent field of view, the HDC XWA will whisk viewers away on a true star trek. The skirted…

Pam Bales stepped onto the snow-covered Jewell Trail. She planned a six-hour loop hike through New Hampshire’s Mount Washington State Park. She had packed for almost every contingency and intended to walk alone. A note on the dashboard of her SUV detailed her itinerary: start up Jewell Trail, traverse the ridge south along Gulfside Trail, summit Mount Washington, follow Crawford Path down to Lakes of the Clouds Hut, descend Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail and return to her car before some forecasted bad weather was scheduled to arrive. Bales always left her hiking plans in her car, as well as with two fellow volunteers on the Pemigewasset Valley Search and Rescue Team. It was just before 8am on October 17, 2010. Based on her experience, Bales knew that her hike was realistic. Besides,…

In 2014, I qualified to play in the ‘Cock o’ the Walk’ golf event at a course on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, where players competed against one another according to their handicaps. My first opponent was Don – a former first-grade footballer, who, at over 1.8 metres tall, was all muscle. “Good luck,” said my wife, Margaret, as I left for the match. “Think of it as David versus Goliath,” I replied. I didn’t feel confident. I had played with Don in other rounds and he was a very good player with a low handicap. However, this was a handicap event so I was allowed an extra stroke on a number of holes. We shook hands at the first tee and wished one another the best. “Keep an eye on the crows,” I warned.…

Coping with everything from daily stress to things that are out of our control takes some practise. Sometimes, having a snack or a drink does the trick to manage stress momentarily. But there are healthier alternatives to help you unwind, calm your mind and make you feel better. Here are a few things you could consider trying. Benefits of yoga “One of the healthiest and most satisfying choices you can make for yourself to de-stress is yoga, and it’s kilojoule-, caffeine-, sugar-, glutenand alcohol-free,” says yoga teacher Lisa Rosenthal. Yoga helps to ease breathing, reduce muscle tension and flood the body with oxygen, all of which help to reduce stress’s detrimental effects on the body and brain. She says that yoga is designed to integrate mind, body and heart, decrease brain chat…

Adria Arjona hopes I won’t mind meeting her family. She’s just returned to Los Angeles after filming Los Frikis in Santo Domingo, and her mom and brother have surprised her with a visit. We’d made plans to meet up at an outdoor café, but when we arrived to find it unexpectedly closed, Arjona was quick to invite me to her place, just a few minutes up the road. It’s starting to get dark when we pull up to her serene, airy ranch house, where her family has settled in. Outside the café, I’d barely recognized the 29-year-old actress, who was masked and bundled up against an unusual L.A. cold snap in a cozy, chunky gray sweater; cropped, wide-leg Celine pants; and lug-soled Chelsea boots, her dark brown hair (often blown out…