All posts tagged: much time

Baby Food Pouches Are Unavoidable

Baby Food Pouches Are Unavoidable

Published by Sam

[ad_1] On Sunday evening, I fed a bowl of salmon, broccoli, and rice to my eight-month-old son. Or rather, I attempted to. The fish went flying; greens and grains splattered across the walls. Half an hour later, bedtime drew near, and he hadn’t eaten a thing. Exasperated, I handed him a baby-food pouch—and he inhaled every last drop of apple-raspberry-squash-carrot mush. For harried parents like myself, baby pouches are a lifeline. These disposable plastic packets are sort of like Capri-Suns filled with blends of pureed fruits and vegetables: A screw-top cap makes for easy slurping, potentially even making supervision unnecessary. The sheer ease of baby pouches has made them hyper-popular—and not just for parents with infants who can’t yet eat table food. They are commonly fed to toddlers; even adults sometimes eat baby pouches. But after my son slurped up all the goo and quickly went to sleep, I felt more guilty than relieved. Giving him a pouch felt like giving up, or taking a shortcut. No parent has the time or energy to make …

Joe Biden’s Most Urgent State of the Union Priority

Joe Biden’s Most Urgent State of the Union Priority

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] As President Joe Biden prepares to deliver his State of the Union address tonight, his pathways to reelection are narrowing. His best remaining option, despite all of the concerns about his age, may be to persuade voters to look forward, not back. In his now-certain rematch against former President Donald Trump, Biden has three broad possibilities for framing the contest to voters. One is to present the race as a referendum on Biden’s performance during his four years in office. The second is to structure it as a comparison between his four years and Trump’s four years as president. The third is to offer it as a choice between what he and Trump would do over the next four years in the White House. The referendum route already looks like a dead end for Biden. The comparison path remains difficult terrain for him, given that voters now express more satisfaction with Trump’s performance as president than they ever did while he was in office. The third option probably offers Biden the best chance to …

How to Think Big Like Schopenhauer

How to Think Big Like Schopenhauer

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. “How do you write a book?” Like most authors, I get this question often. Sometimes, I find that the person is asking about overcoming specific obstacles, such as getting started (answer: first spend three months talking about your idea to anyone who will listen) and how to deal with writer’s block (answer: lower your self-imposed standards and just get words down). But sometimes, underlying the question is a more general curiosity or concern about how to do a really big thing requiring a great deal of time and intense personal discipline. A similar question might be “How do you run a marathon?” or “How do you play the piano?” People want to know how to do a big thing because in a life full of quotidian trivia, a major project—even if it isn’t necessary to support oneself—conveys significance and permanence. It can be proof to oneself of being able to accomplish something out of …

What Trump’s Victory in Iowa Reveals

What Trump’s Victory in Iowa Reveals

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Donald Trump’s victory in the Iowa caucus was as dominant as expected, underscoring the exceedingly narrow path available to any of the Republican forces hoping to prevent his third consecutive nomination. And yet, for all Trump’s strength within the party, the results also hinted at some of the risks the GOP will face if it nominates him for a third consecutive election. Based on Trump’s overwhelming lead in the poll conducted of voters on their way into the voting, the cable networks called the contest for Trump before the actual caucuses were even completed. It was a fittingly anti-climactic conclusion to a caucus contest whose result all year has never seemed in doubt.  In part that may have been because none of Trump’s rivals offered Iowa voters a fully articulated case against him until Florida Governor Ron DeSantis unleashed more pointed arguments against the front-runner in the final days. Trump steamrolled over the opposition of the state’s Republican and evangelical Christian leadership to amass by far the largest margin of victory ever in a …

Time Management Tips From the Universe

Time Management Tips From the Universe

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Time can feel like a subjective experience—different at different points in our lives. It’s also a real, measurable thing. The universe may be too big to fully comprehend, but what we do know could help inform the ways we approach our understanding of ourselves, our purpose, and our time. Theoretical physicist and black-hole expert Janna Levin explains how the science of time can inspire new thinking and fresh perspectives on a much larger scale. Listen and subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts The following transcript has been edited for clarity: Janna Levin: “The one sense in which time is frustratingly different is that I cannot extend equally in each direction. I cannot just turn around and go into the past. And I seem to be always driven forward into the future. I can stand still in space, but I can’t seem to stand still in time.” Becca Rashid: Welcome to How to Keep Time. I’m Becca Rashid, co-host and producer of the show. Ian Bogost: And …

Time Management Tips From the Universe

Time Management Tips From the Universe

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Time can feel like a subjective experience—different at different points in our lives. It’s also a real, measurable thing. The universe may be too big to fully comprehend, but what we do know could help inform the ways we approach our understanding of ourselves, our purpose, and our time. Theoretical physicist and black-hole expert Janna Levin explains how the science of time can inspire new thinking and fresh perspectives on a much larger scale. Listen and subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts The following transcript has been edited for clarity: Janna Levin: “The one sense in which time is frustratingly different is that I cannot extend equally in each direction. I cannot just turn around and go into the past. And I seem to be always driven forward into the future. I can stand still in space, but I can’t seem to stand still in time.” Becca Rashid: Welcome to How to Keep Time. I’m Becca Rashid, co-host and producer of the show. Ian Bogost: And …

The Most Important Technology of 2023 Wasn’t AI

The Most Important Technology of 2023 Wasn’t AI

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] One day in late November, I cradled a red Samsung flip phone in my hands as if it was a ruby gemstone. To me, it was just as precious. Deep inside an overstuffed dresser in my childhood bedroom, I had spotted the glint of my first-ever cellphone, a Samsung SGH-A707 purchased in the waning days of the George W. Bush presidency. The device, no bigger than a credit card, had long ago succumbed to the spider web of cracks on its screen. For a moment, I was brought back to life before the smartphone, clicking the phone’s plastic keys for the first time in more than a decade. This device, and every other phone like it, of course, was made obsolete by the touchscreen slabs now in all of our pockets. Perhaps you have heard that we are now on the cusp of another iPhone moment—the rise of a new technology that changes the world. No, not that one. Despite the post-ChatGPT frenzy, artificial intelligence has so far been defined more by speculative hype …

The endurance of the holiday movie

The endurance of the holiday movie

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Plus: 20 movie families to spend your holidays with RKO Pictures / Getty December 23, 2023, 8 AM ET This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. The question “What is a Christmas movie?” might seem straightforward. But there’s one film that has scrambled the logic of the holiday movie for years now—at least for those who probably spend too much time online. “Because of the dreaded incentives of social media, we force debate upon ourselves all the time, even at the most wonderful time of the year,” my colleague Kaitlyn Tiffany wrote in 2021. “According to Google Trends, search traffic for the phrase Is Die Hard a Christmas movie jumps every November and December.” Today’s newsletter doesn’t purport to solve that particular debate, but it will explore the many meanings of the holiday movie, from its inherent cheesiness to its ability to move people …

The uncanny experience of year-end roundups

The uncanny experience of year-end roundups

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Features such as Spotify Wrapped confirm that you’re the main character of your internet. Matteo Giuseppe Pani; Source: Getty December 22, 2023, 5:43 PM ET This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Why are “year in review” roundups so pleasing to users? First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: The Mundanities of a Private Life Every December, sites and services that spend the year hoovering up personal information spit out a summary of users’ activity. Call it the year-end quantification-industrial complex. The trend isn’t new: As early as 2014, the exercise-tracking app Strava was releasing a Year in Sport feature, and Seamless was summarizing food deliveries. But especially since Spotify hit word-of-mouth marketing gold with its shareable Spotify Wrapped feature, companies of all kinds have been delivering year-end nuggets of data to their users, whether personalized or in aggregate. These summations appear on …