All posts tagged: Falling

New workgroup to tackle Singapore’s falling fertility rate to release full report in early 2027

New workgroup to tackle Singapore’s falling fertility rate to release full report in early 2027

Published by Sam Flores

WHAT SUCCESS WOULD LOOK LIKE Ms Indranee listed six measures of success for the workgroup. The first is for young people to have opportunities to form relationships and potentially find a life partner. She noted that many young Singaporeans find it harder to meet people once they enter the workforce, and are uncertain about who they might encounter on dating apps. The second is for people to associate parenthood less with fears about “competition, stress and horror stories”, and more with the joys of raising children and the support available to them. Third is a significant reduction in the stigma around fertility treatment, alongside more progressive workplace practices to support employees undergoing it. Fourth is reducing the “maternity penalty” faced by women. Ms Indranee proposed the concept of a “detour” – normalising women taking two or three years away from work to have and raise a child, with the assurance of a supportive employer upon their return. Fifth is a shift in workplace culture so that work and family goals are seen as compatible rather …

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

Published by José Betancourt

At 2:24 in the morning on November 29, 2019, a surveillance camera mounted on the headquarters of MI6 picked up a slender silhouette on the fifth-floor balcony of a luxury tower across the Thames. The figure paced from one end of the curved balcony to the other, walked back to the middle, and jumped. The boy on the balcony was nineteen. His name was Zac Brettler. He lived with his parents in a leafy pocket of Maida Vale. The people he was with that night knew him as someone else entirely. That opening image is also the entire invitation of London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe. Either you want to sit with the question it raises for the next four hundred pages, or you don’t. I did. The Fall and the Fiction Keefe writes this book on two timelines. On one, he follows Rachelle and Matthew Brettler in the days after the police knock, as they piece together a version of their son they had never met. On the other, he retraces the months before, …

The Self-Balancing Monorail: A 1910 Train That Could Balance Without Falling

The Self-Balancing Monorail: A 1910 Train That Could Balance Without Falling

Published by José Betancourt

If mono­rails have a bad name, The Simp­sons may be to blame. In an episode acclaimed for its hilar­i­ous­ness since it first aired 33 years ago, a huck­ster shows up in Spring­field and con­vinces the town to build just such a tran­sit sys­tem, which turns out to be not just sus­pi­cious­ly unnec­es­sary (at least in young Lisa’s judg­ment) but also dan­ger­ous­ly shod­dy. I watched it while grow­ing up in the sub­urbs of Seat­tle, a city that endured bit­ter­ly pro­tract­ed con­tention over whether or not to build out its own rudi­men­ta­ry mono­rail sys­tem — a World’s Fair arti­fact, like the Space Nee­dle — but final­ly opt­ed not to. Con­cerns were per­pet­u­al­ly raised, right­ly or wrong­ly, about the noise and dark­ness that could result from extend­ing the wide ele­vat­ed track on which it ran. But what if there were anoth­er way to build a mono­rail? Indeed, what if it could run on the ground, like a tra­di­tion­al two-railed train? Such was the idea in the head of the inde­fati­ga­ble Irish-Aus­tralian engi­neer Louis Bren­nan, who’s remem­bered today for invent­ing …

Young People Are Falling Behind, but Not Because of AI

Young People Are Falling Behind, but Not Because of AI

Published by Sam Flores

The job market for young people is brutal. Is AI to blame? ChatGPT was released in late 2022. Since then, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has shot up to near 6 percent, its highest level in more than a decade, setting aside the 2020 pandemic spike. That’s true even though the overall unemployment rate is about 4 percent. Many observers have interpreted these data as evidence that AI has begun displacing entry-level white-collar professionals. “AI Is Wrecking an Already Fragile Job Market for College Graduates,” reads a representative Wall Street Journal headline from last year. But the AI-stealing-the-jobs story turns out to be wrong—or at least premature. Almost every data point available suggests that whatever is holding back young people in the job market has nothing to do with AI. Whether that’s good or bad news is a much tougher call. The case that AI is already stealing young people’s jobs is based on a statistical mirage. Historically, recent college graduates have had a much lower unemployment rate than the average worker. Since …

Falling in Love With a Mirror

Falling in Love With a Mirror

Published by Jenni Sidey

In her latest Where Should We Begin couples therapy podcast, the philosopher-therapist Esther Perel talks to a man and his AI chatbot girlfriend. The episode is already iconic – a telling and disturbing document of our times. If you haven’t listened to it yet, do. The man is not stupid. He is in fact coding-literate and understands very well that a chatbot is not a sentient being. He understands what algorithms and probabilities are. He has been in real relationships with real women. And yet he has fallen in love, and he just can’t help being in love. He sometimes giggles like a smitten teenager. At times, his voice breaks and he is choked up with emotion. He knows that this is all problematic at some level, but his cognitive insights change neither his feelings nor his actions. The chatbot girlfriend has an annoying babygirl voice and does a very good job at doing what ChatGPT & co. do: sycophantically telling the user exactly what they want to hear and simply mirroring and reinforcing delusional …

Mind-altering substances are (still) falling short in clinical trials

Mind-altering substances are (still) falling short in clinical trials

Published by Miika Tikkanen

This phenomenon can distort the results of psychedelic drug trials. While a placebo in a traditional antidepressant drug trial improves symptoms by eight points, placebos in psychedelic trials improve symptoms by a mere four points, says Szigeti. If the active drug similarly improves symptoms by around 10 points, that makes it look as though the psychedelic is improving symptoms by around six points compared with a placebo. It “gives the illusion” of a huge effect, says Szigeti. So why have those smaller trials of the past received so much attention? Many have been published in high-end journals, accompanied by breathless press releases and media coverage. Even the inconclusive ones. I’ve often thought that those studies might not have seen the light of day if they’d been investigating any other drug. “Yeah, nobody would care,” Szigeti agrees. It’s partly because people who work in mental health are so desperate for new treatments, says Owens. There has been little innovation in the last 40 years or so, since the advent of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. “Psychiatry is …

Having trouble falling – and staying – asleep? These techniques may help

Having trouble falling – and staying – asleep? These techniques may help

Published by Daniella Wilson

If you’re having trouble falling asleep – or staying asleep – you’re certainly not alone. Some 60 percent of U.S. adults are struggling to get enough shut-eye, according to the National Sleep Foundation’s 2025 Sleep in America Poll. Nearly four in 10 Americans struggle to fall asleep at least three nights a week and nearly half wake up in the middle of the night, the survey of more than 1,300 people found. And, about 50 to 70 million Americans have sleep or wakefulness disorders, according to the American Brain Foundation. Getting enough sleep, the federally-recommended seven hours a night, is crucial to our health and well-being, ensuring that we are sick less often, stay at a healthy weight, have improved attention and memory and have a reduced risk of chronic conditions like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke. Still, it can be tricky if you’ve been looking at your phone, had caffeine or worked out right before bed. But experts approve several strategies they say can help the sleep-challenged. However, it really all comes …

A new start after 60: I became a wrestler, 50 years after falling in love with the sport

A new start after 60: I became a wrestler, 50 years after falling in love with the sport

Published by Sam Flores

On the night of her 60th birthday, Sally Goldner climbed on to the top rope of the wrestling ring, to the roars of the crowd, and launched herself on to her competitors with a missile dropkick. The crowd roared. For a second, she was completely airborne, before landing on her opponents. “‘Wow, I’m doing this,’” she thought. “Exhilarating. I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be doing on my birthday.” She had seized her moment in an Alpha Pro battle royal, a multi-competitor elimination match. As her opponents – all men – threw her out of the ring, they wished her a happy birthday. Goldner, who lives in Melbourne, Australia, has been a lifelong fan of wrestling. As a child, she watched it on TV and at the city’s Festival Hall. “I was always fascinated by it,” she says. She remembers exactly where she sat in the arena to watch Harley Race and Ron Miller do battle in 1977. Back home, she would shift the coffee table and roll around the lounge floor or bounce …

Tell us: how have you been affected by falling cryptocurrency prices?

Tell us: how have you been affected by falling cryptocurrency prices?

Published by Sam Flores

Bitcoin sank to its lowest value in more than a year this week, faling to $63,000 on Thursday, about half its all-time peak of $126,000 in October 2025 It’s part of a wider shock to crypto prices. The second-largest cryptocurrency, ether, has faced losses of more than 30% this year alone. The months-long dip in cryptocurrency prices has tanked shares of companies that have increasingly invested in bitcoin, exacerbating broader stock market jitters. CoinGecko data shows that the global crypto market has lost $2tn in value since early October. Meanwhile, gold has soared in value as investors seek safe haven assets. We want to hear from you. How have you been affected by falling cryptocurrency prices in recent months? What has it meant for your finances, and what impact is it having on your household? Are you changing your behaviour? Share your experience You can tell us how you’ve been affected in the form below. Your responses, which can be anonymous, are secure as the form is encrypted and only the Guardian has access to …

Nuclear Bunker Falling Into Ocean

Nuclear Bunker Falling Into Ocean

Published by José Betancourt

Christopher Furlong / Getty Images How’s a literal nuclear bunker hanging off the side of a crumbling cliff face for portent symbols of how our society seems to be teetering on the edge of some imminent catastrophe? Not good enough for you? Well, it’s what we’ve got. The brick building, located near Tunstall on the East Yorkshire coast in the UK, is thought to have been built way back in 1959 as a lookout post in the event of a nuclear war. But it’s now just days away from falling into the sea, the BBC reports, as coastal erosion eats away at the cliff top it’s lodged in. The state of the bunker is so precarious that the East Riding of Yorkshire Council has asked locals to stay clear of the area both at the top of the cliff and below the bunker, in case of a collapse. “We live on one of the most eroded coastlines in Europe and this bunker hasn’t got long left, perhaps just a few days,” Davey Robinson, an amateur …