Divers join search teams scouring deep waters for any survivors, with eight people so far confirmed to have died
Nearly 20 people are still missing after a ferry capsized off northern Cyprus, killing at least eight, as divers join search teams scouring deep waters for any survivors.
The double-hulled ferry with 267 people onboard took in water and flipped over on Sunday just off the port city of Kyrenia, leaving survivors clinging to the upturned hull. They were rescued by passing vessels and members of the coastguard.
Я админю группу по блендеру много лет, и бывает отвечаю на вопросы. Вопросы бывают разные, на какие‑то просто ответить одним словом, фразой или предложением, а на какие‑то просто так не ответишь — нужно писать целую статью.
Вот, к примеру, кто‑то жалуется, у него свечение не сохранилось в png. Или это не свечение а полу‑прозрачный шейдер или огонь. В Blender есть, а в png нет — баг какой‑то. И как тут ответить одним сообщением? Тут и про разные типы альфа‑канала надо рассказать, и почему они нужны и для чего используются, и какие‑то способы проблему обойти нужно дать, потому что теория теорией, а что делать‑то?
Apparently a dedicated mud room will make you less stressed. But I have a very different approach
I was excited to learn that the latest interiors essential, according to the Washington Post, is a “dirty zone”. I’m ahead of the curve – I’ve already got a dirty zone by each main door (and also one directly outside the back door, where, rudely, a mystery animal has defecated). The fridge drawers are dirty zones thanks to the windfall apples I thought I would cook, but predictably left to liquefy. There’s a dirty zone next to the washing machine and a mildewy one inside it. There’s the festering compost bin I’m too chicken to tackle post-heatwave, plus the cupboard under the stairs, which we don’t talk about. Good luck finding a clean zone, basically.
Does this make me kinda chic? Unfortunately not: the Post is actually preaching the benefits of confining the sordid ephemera of life to carefully delineated and hidden areas: storage benches, monogrammed totes or even a “mud room” (for coats, shoes, skis, lacrosse sticks and dog-washing sinks – I think posh Britons call it a boot room). A 2021 study in the Netherlands found that participants who did chores in chaotic environments had higher levels of the stress marker salivary alpha-amylase. I always wonder what’s brewing in my mouth as I fall over piles of filthy shoes yet again while running to answer the door.
Public lands belong to all of us. No one should plunder those lands for profit
Do people still say a car was “sold for parts”? Because the US is being sold for parts or just handed over to the oligarchy. It’s a fire sale, a bankruptcy auction, it’s a planned dismantling of everything from its military to its institutions of higher education to its scientific research to its public lands.
And while the threat to sell off part of Yosemite national park is about a quarter-mile parcel on the park’s edge, Yosemite is a crown jewel in the national park system and, arguably, the world’s first national park.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
The space industry treats the sky as a place to dump what it no longer wants. We must develop a new model of accountability
On 5 August, a piece of a derelict SpaceX rocket traveling at 5,400 miles an hour met with the moon and punched a fresh hole into it near Einstein Crater. Astronomers were thrilled. The European Southern Observatory caught sodium and lithium flaring in the debris plume and called it a bonus. The media called it a light show. Nobody was physically hurt, so nobody is responsible, and within a week the story was gone.
I have spent 20 years tracking the junk humanity leaves behind in space for a living, and I want to tell you plainly what that crater actually is: a receipt. It’s what you get when an entire industry treats the sky, and now the moon, as a place to dump what it no longer wants, and calls the dumping “normal operations” or “space exploration”.
After a burglary, my parents decided we needed extra security. Jerry was the answer – and this hungry, handsome hound helped us all in countless ways
Jerry came into our lives because a burglar had broken in. My mum had woken in the middle of the night to find an intruder in our kitchen. He scarpered, but the psychological damage was done. Two days later, my dad came home with the cutest little rescue puppy, with traces of beagle and labrador in him. He was two months old, had a black, brown and white coat, and big, bashful eyes. We called him Jerry because we had a cat called Tom. “I’m not sure how he’ll protect us,” I said. “He will,” my dad replied.
Jerry was very laid-back and Zen. He became part of the family straight away. He also became the therapy dog we hadn’t realised we needed. With two teenagers in the house (me and my older brother) and a hyperactive younger brother, someone was always in a strop and needing to let off steam by taking him out for a walk. Each time, Jerry obliged. I’d bore him with my latest teen-romance trauma; he was a very good listener. Sometimes, he’d have five walks a day, with both of my parents taking their turn. He certainly got his steps in.
We’re watching today as Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, and Kevin Warsh, the chair of the Federal Reserve, deliver their opening remarks at the G20 meetings in Asheville, North Carolina.
Когда-то у каждого человека с плеером в кармане был ритуал: перед выходом из дома обязательно проверить, есть ли запасные батарейки. Не пауэрбанк, а именно батарейки – маленькие металлические цилиндры, от которых зависело, зазвучит ли музыка в автобусе или прогулка пройдёт в тишине.
Сейчас, в эпоху встроенных аккумуляторов и повсеместной зарядки, это кажется странным. Но именно батарейки AA и AAA были теми самыми расходниками, которые питали портативную свободу.
Together AI, which serves open-source artificial intelligence models, announced a deal to use compute from Humain in Saudi Arabia, where it can bypass U.S. backlash over data centers.
A growing number of former Israeli generals, intelligence officials and prime ministers are accusing settlers in the West Bank of committing ethnic cleansing with government support. “Once a society behaves this way,” one said, “that society is doomed.”
Prime Minister Balendra Shah, 36, rose to power this year on the back of youth anger with graft and mismanagement. His fledgling government now faces a huge test.
After a glacial flood last year, Chinese officials strengthened defenses at a border crossing with Nepal. But last week’s “cascade of hazards” overwhelmed them.
The administration has revoked funding for bike paths, and encouraged removing some. A cycling advocate said it is playing on the idea of “that dork on a bike.”
Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s civil rights unit, has extracted flashy agreements and personnel moves from big universities and sought to force states to turn over confidential voter data.
The meeting, which China and Russia are attending, is focused on the ongoing economic shock from the war in Iran, which has driven up oil prices globally.
State officials say they worry about the Postal Service’s ability to deliver votes this fall. They are urging voters to mail their ballots early or use drop boxes so their votes count.
At least $1 billion from anonymous donors is flowing into the midterm elections. Dark money is not new, but it now permeates nearly every major contest.
Hi readers! Shayla Love here, science journalist and longtime fan of Your Mileage May Vary. I’m honored to be subbing for Sigal Samuel while she’s out on parental leave. I’m diving into your questions as a way to help understand human nature and our choices through multiple lenses: philosophical, psychological, and beyond. Please send in any emotional, body/brain, sociological, perceptual, or other kind of life quandaries you might have.
My wife says I’m a people pleaser. I want to turn over a new leaf (maybe to please her?!) so I’m making a resolution to be less of a weathervane and stand up for myself more. But it’s hard — I love to fit in. I’m a joiner and a collaborator. It’s not that I’m passive, it’s more that I find other people’s “ways of being” contagious. Sometimes I catch myself slipping into imitation of the friends or colleagues I’m talking to.
What’s a chameleon to do? Or, more scarily, who am I when I’m alone? How do I find out who I really am?
Dear Identity Crisis,
At first glance, it’s a bit funny to be accused of being a people pleaser as if it’s entirely a bad thing. It sounds like you have others’ interests genuinely in mind, and that seems like a nice way to build connection.
But I find the term people pleaser to also be a sneaky euphemism. Do you want to know how this sort of behavior is often discussed in the psychological literature? In studies, it’s not always called people pleasing; it’s called lying.
In fact, wanting to please other people is an incredibly prevalent motivation for lying; it’s more common than lying for personal gain or pleasure. When psychologists evaluated the top reasons that people lied in their everyday life, many wanted to seem more agreeable. Their lies support seemingly magnanimous goals, like complimenting a friend or making sure a social interaction went well. But they were lies all the same, defined by the researchers as a “message that one gives to another in which they are deliberately deceiving them.”
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I find this shift in perspective helpful, if a little harsh, if you’re looking to break a people-pleasing habit. It’s one thing to think about yourself as dedicated to keeping other people pleased. But when you consider that actually, all of your interactions are suffused with lies, the approach becomes a bit more unsavory.
Imagine the situation in reverse: What if you found out that all the time you had spent with a close friend, they were keeping their real thoughts and feelings from you? You might feel differently about the time you’d spent together. I can bet it certainly wouldn’t feel as authentic.
I used to be a bartender, and I would be nice and mildly obsequious to frequent customers. Several of them I genuinely liked. But I’ll never forget the uncomfortable moments of running into a regular elsewhere — and their figuring out that we weren’t actually friends. There’s a distance between two people when one’s main role is to please the other. You are creating that distance, even if you may not realize it, and not even getting tipped for it.
So for starters, try trusting that the people around you are able to handle your real thoughts and feelings. But what areyour real thoughts or feelings? This points to the bigger conundrum you face: Who is your true self?
You’re in good company worrying about this. Religious figures, philosophers, and scientists alike have been trying to figure out if there even is a continuous self, and if there is, what is it made up of?
Scientifically speaking, there’s not a part of your brain that’s “truer” than others, or where the true self resides. But your ideas about your true self matter, according to research by Rebecca Schlegel, a social scientist at Texas A&M University. She has found that people have greater well-being and find their lives to be more meaningful if they think that they’ve made choices that align with who they “really” are.
When people make a decision that they think aligns with their own true self, it regularly leads to feeling more satisfaction with that decision — more so than choices steered by considering what other people want, by religious belief, or by advice from others.
Doing this yourself can be remarkably simple. In one experiment, Schlegel asked participants to make an arbitrary decision and told some to “use your true self” to make up their minds, and others to “use rational thinking.” Those who framed their choices as being guided by their true self were much happier with their selection. For you, it could be that just introducing the question — what would my true self do? — can start making your life feel more like it belongs to you.
If it feels odd to ask your true self what to do, defining your truest self as what’s moral about you isn’t a bad place to start. Researchers have found again and again that when they ask people which of their traits feel the “truest,” it’s usually the parts that are morally good. When I call my mother on her birthday, that’s my true self. When I say something hurtful to my friend, that’s a deviation from my true self, who knows better. I wasn’t myself this morning, I might say as an apology. So you could make a list of your best qualities, like your generosity or your creativity. Then, when you ask what your core self would do, you’ll have even more specific guideposts to follow.
Of course, if having a true self still doesn’t feel relatable, you can turn to an approach I’ve found helpful in my own life from Eastern traditions, like Buddhism and Taoism. They endorse the idea that there is no rigid self at all. In Buddhism, this is called anatman, which translates roughly to “no self.” This teaching emerged in response to an earlier Hindu belief: a concept called “atman,” which asserted that all people had an eternal and unchanging core, similar to a soul. Anatman was a rebuttal to that idea.
I’ve found that anatman relieves some of the pressure around all of this. We feel as if there should be an essence to us, some permanent quality that persists over time that you can point to. But anatmanreminds us that there’s no aspect of the self that doesn’t change.
Life is long, and we transform throughout it. As we grow, we learn new physical skills like playing soccer and the piano, and eventually acquire back problems and wrinkles. Our minds evolve too. We read novels, maybe we can do calculus, and we develop political convictions. Hopefully, we gain the skills of being kind and patient. In all of these developments, change is the only constant. This is why the Buddha thought that you couldn’t find the singular, stable self in any of these places — not the mind, the physical form, our habits, or our perceptions. “What is impermanent, subject to change…cannot be taken to be ‘me,’ ‘mine,’ or a ‘self,’” the Buddha taught.
You asked what you, as a chameleon, should do? You could frame everything you do as being in service to your deeper self. Or you could try halting the search for a strictly defined, enduring version of you, and start making decisions based on who you want that person to become.
Bonus: What I’m reading
My book club just read Love, Always, a novel by Ann Beattie, about a group of people who start a magazine in rural Vermont. It’s a summery tale, though somewhat frustrating, about what happens when people don’t change themselves, and only follow their worst instincts.
This is a fascinating story of multiple selves in Popular Mechanics by Michael Natale. It documented what happened when seven men confessed to being the culprit of a plane hijacking in 1973 in the Pacific Northwest.
Over the course of several nights recently, I watched the 1926 silent movie, Faust, directed by F.W. Murnau. It’s a haunting tragedy about the consequences of wanting to hold onto a quality of yourself indefinitely — in this case, staying young forever. I was amazed by the special effects they pulled off for that era! An evergreen reminder that if someone promises you something that’s too good to be true (especially if he looks like the devil), it probably is.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a food distribution center in the Brooklyn, New York on July 27, 2026. —Spencer Platt—Getty Images
As New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani works to implement his campaign promise to create public grocery stores, the initiative has been met with significant criticism, especially from economists. The criticism is, I believe, badly misplaced, based on the very models of the economy that have contributed to our slow growth, increasing inequality, and today’s affordability crisis.
There is indeed a strong economic argument for doing something along the lines that Mayor Mamdani proposes.
Traditional economists typically begin with the presumption that private, competitive markets are efficient and the desirable way to provide ordinary goods like groceries. Government should stick to where it is needed, these economists believe, like providing defense and environmental regulation.
But over the past 50 years, this presumption has been totally undermined, as we’ve come to understand better the many ways in which markets “fail,” especially in the presence of imperfect information. Even in the simple area of groceries, market incentives direct consumers to more profitable but less nutritious foods, contributing, for instance, to the childhood diabetes crisis. Public grocery stores, whose objective is to provide better, more affordable goods for all citizens—rather than just maximizing profits—hold out the promise of a healthier population and a more productive labor force.
The argument for private markets begins with unrealistic assumptions about perfect markets, with perfect competition and perfect information. Even seemingly competitive markets like grocery stores are better described by monopolistic competition than perfect competition. In a series of papers, I showed that the market equilibrium in such markets was not, in general, efficient. This is true even if profit margins of grocery stores are thin. Indeed, part of the problem is that to maintain even these thin margins, grocery stores often have to engage in exploitative activities that encourage the consumption of high-margin and often less-nutritious foods at the expense of lower-margin foods that would be better for everyone’s health.
To be sure, the objective of any business is to extract as much money from its consumers as it can. The issue is that the objective of grocery stores in a monopolistically competitive market—especially with consumers who are not fully informed and would be better described by models of behavioral economics than by models that assume perfectly rational and perfectly informed individuals maximizing expected utility over their lifetimes—can be at odds with the customers’ health, communities’ productivity, and society’s well-being.
The disparity between societal interests and the interests of profit-maximizing grocery stores can be seen in the food deserts—large areas throughout the country where nutritious food is simply not available—and at the checkout counters, where candy and other unhealthy snacks jostle for the attention at the eye level of children. And food deserts also demonstrate the high price of inequality, in which America’s poorest are ironically forced to spend more time and resources traveling farther to find healthy food, even if they have fewer resources to spare.
Of course, grocery stores are only one part of an ecosystem focused more on profits than health—including a food industry that pushes excessively processed and sugar-rich foods that contribute to the country’s childhood diabetes problem.
And what I have described so far are only some of the market failures rampant here. Risk (insurance) markets too are imperfect. What's more, fluctuations in grocery store prices put a disproportionately bigger burden on poor families, with a large reduction in their well-being. In a well-functioning economic system, these risks would be transferred to consumers who are better able to absorb them.
The market failures in the provision of food should not be a partisan matter. One of Mamdani's predecessors, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, also tried to improve the health, nutrition, and productivity of New Yorkers, with lasting benefits. He left a legacy of corner fruit and vegetable stands. He tried mightily to curb the exploitative efforts to encourage excessive sugar consumption in movie theatres—with enormous pushback from the food companies profiting from the sales.
Ongoing research at Columbia University shows that in markets that are not perfectly competitive, the provision of an alternative public option can increase societal welfare, and this is true even if the public option is less efficient than the private sector and even if it runs at a loss.
No doubt, New York City will face a big challenge in running these grocery stores, but there are models of successful alternatives to the current system, including co-ops in many places around the world.
It behooves all of us to do what we can to ensure that this important initiative succeeds.
And it behooves us not to write off fresh ideas based on stale definitions of what a healthy economy looks like.
The planned reductions — targeting programs that combat the spread of deadly diseases — coincide with an administration push to make developing nations spend more.
A security researcher discovered nine vulnerabilities impacting ATM encryption and authentication software. But the problems extend far beyond your local cash machine.
Kameron Glasgow of Florida honors wife Kenya and daughter Kennedi at local vigil after last week’s tragedy
A Florida man whose wife and toddler daughter were killed by a lightning strike while he was near them recently has implored people to “hold … tight” to their loved ones.
Kameron Glasgow made that arresting remark to local media at a weekend gathering honoring the memories of his wife, Kenya, and two-year-old daughter Kennedi after they died on 23 August from an exceedingly rare cause.
Over the years, Julianne Holt-Lunstad has fielded many requests from startups looking for her help. These entrepreneurs came to the Brigham Young University professor with the well-meaning goal of “solving” loneliness; they believed their app or company could help consumers build genuine connections, and wanted Holt-Lunstad’s opinion on this feature or that business tactic.
Across the pond, University College London professor Noreena Hertz was getting the same calls. They wanted her to join their boards, to advise them, to give their proof of concept a stamp of approval.
“Of the many startups who’ve approached me, and it’s probably about 50 or 60 in the space,” Hertz told Vox, “there hasn’t been one where I felt convinced by their business model.”
In the years since Hertz gave it a name, the loneliness economy has only ballooned. As public attention to loneliness has mounted — despite the fact that research doesn’t consistently show whether a loneliness epidemic exists in the first place — the market stepped in to offer solutions. No longer are the lonely limited to joining a running club, they can now rent friends and cuddlers. They can hire acoach to help vanquish loneliness and build a community. (One charges $3,000 for a three-month program.) They can attend a $1,000 weekend-long summer camp to make friends (with the option to pay in installments via Klarna). They can buy a $250 pendant that listens to their every word and can communicate back via voice or text. They can join a coworking space meant to quell loneliness with a nearly $300 a month price tag. They can enroll in a bootcamp for how to be less shy, hop in a group travel excursion with other solo venturers, download an app where AI pairs you with other strangers for activities. Loneliness is no longer a societal issue with mental and physical costs and structural solutions but one businesses hope consumers can buy their way out of.
But is it possible to disrupt the slow burn that is making a friend? To outsource the intimacies of friendship to AI? To put a price tag on human connection?
“I would caution developers to really critically evaluate their business model and the barriers to who they’re actually reaching,” Holt-Lunstad told Vox. “Think about ways that [connection] can occur organically without monetizing it.”
The cottage industry of loneliness services is just another example of capitalism wrapping its tentacles around human desire. But in most cases, the cost of the app, or product, or experience is going to be much higher than the possibility of eliminating loneliness.
One person’s loneliness is another’s business opportunity
Since the early 2000s when Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam warned of the decline of civic and social spaces in his seminal work Bowling Alone, we have witnessed the “privatization of community,” according to Sam Pressler, a fellow at the Harvard Human Flourishing Program who studies community, connection, and class. Gathering spaces shifted away from places of worship and union halls to boutique fitness centers and private, members-onlyclubs. “There was already this dynamic in place where you could, at a premium level, sell people on community,” Pressler said.
Naturally, the startup world began to see a business opportunity, Pressler said. WeWork founder Adam Neumann launched a new residential real estate company with a goal of “solving loneliness” and $350 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz. The app 222, which uses AI to pair strangers for group activities based on personality-based questions, raised $10 million in funding. “You then get this anchor within startup land that really has an approach of solve customers’ problems and pain points, in that loneliness is a customer problem or pain point to be solved, through productized market solutions,” Pressler said.
Brian Choi had heard of the male loneliness epidemic, but luckily didn’t feel like he fell into that category. He grew up in the Los Angeles area, where he still lives, and has plenty of friends, but he signed up for 222 several years ago as a way to supplement his social life and meet people who might be interested in activities his existing friends aren’t.
“Dance, for me, means a lot,” the 34-year-old video game character artist, told Vox. “For my best friends, hard to sell them on that. So 222 is a good angle on sharing that experience with other people who are presumably also open to dance.”
But most of the platform’s events, Choi found, were centered around dinner and drinks, which didn’t appeal to him. If there was a meetup with an interactive element, like brunch and a pottery class, he was more likely to engage. But despite attending about a dozen 222 events over the years, Choi hasn’t fostered any serious friendships. “It’s dependent on individuals to be proactive about inviting folks into their lives after the 222 event,” Choi said. “And that can be scary for a lot of people.”
Once a market emerged for loneliness-adjacent services and products, influencers started promoting them. Over the last few years, the content creator Zaid Khan observed his peers hosting “community” events that seemed well-meaning enough until a few common themes emerged: The events seemed to be furthering the creators’ brands, they often came with a ticket price, and they were attended mostly by young, white people. This widespread commodification of community is what Hertz refers to as “WeWashing” — like greenwashing — because an occasional knitting club with a $50 fee does not a community make.
Charging any sort of premium for a social event or service runs the risk of exacerbating inequities. According to Holt-Lunstad’s research, people with only a high school education or less or those who made less than $75,000 a year were less socially connected than those with higher education and incomes. People who stand to benefit the most from interventions to build relationships often can’t afford a $200 a month gym, or lack the time to swipe for friends. These spaces can then become, like Khan observed, homogenized by race, class, and ability. “I’m sorry, but young, attractive, white, straight, 20-somethings living in New York will have no issue. … You can walk into any West Village bar and meet those people,” Khan said. “It’s excluding the people who, I think, genuinely could need it.”
“Masking” a symptom
There is a contradiction at the heart of the loneliness economy: the need for human connection in the modern world is difficult to solve, let alone value and commodify. In order to make money, companies either have to charge top dollar for their social club or camp, or, they need their product to be used by as many people as possible, as often as possible, which inherently flies in the face of how relationships are fostered.
“The ethical problem begins when a company intentionally exploits a consumer’s loneliness, insecure attachment, or fear of missing out to pressure that person into purchasing.”
Cindy Rippé, Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia
Relationships are projects of patience. They unfold after repeated interactions in a physical space, after slow revelations and disclosures and laughs. The loneliness economy isn’t built on unhurried bonding. Instead of consistently showing up to a community event and slowly building connections, some apps are effective at connecting users with strangers for one-time events, but are less focused on encouraging users to exchange numbers and hang out again. “We know from the research that relationships take time to develop, and that there needs to be consistency also over time. When you get to know someone, it takes time,” Holt-Lunstad said. “If you’re only doing it sporadically or once, that’s going to be less likely. If it’s all virtual, that’s going to be less likely.”
Just like hunger and thirst cue you to eat and drink, loneliness is a sign to interact. Swiping for friends may feel productive and occupy time, but without actually hanging out, it may just be a distraction, Holt-Lunstad said. “What I worry is that [apps] may be effective in masking that symptom without actually fulfilling any social needs,” she said. “It would be like no longer feeling thirsty, but we’re not actually drinking any water.”
The loneliness economy also fails to take into account the barriers preventing people from making friends in the first place. In recent surveys, the results of which have not been published, Holt-Lunstad has found both internal and external obstacles to connection, including anxiety, a fear of rejection, physical and mental health limitations, the economic cost of participation, and the time investment required with joining a club. “It might be, that’s a great program, but it’s too far away, or that’s a great program, but it costs too much,” Holt-Lunstad said. “And then, of course, there’s the internal barriers where there’s so much shame and stigma associated with this that many people don’t want to feel like I have to have an app or a program to make friends.”
These potentially lonely consumers may be more vulnerable to companies’ marketing efforts, even though the products are unlikely to solve the underlying issue. According to research, when people feel like they are lacking close, intimate relationships, they are more likely to buy themselves things. “One of the things, for instance, could be spending money to go on group activities rather than individual activities,” Aulona Ulqinaku, an associate professor of marketing at Università Carlo Cattaneo LIUC in Italy, told Vox. People could spend money to join a club you aren’t particularly interested in just to feel a part of something.
Shopping can also serve as a social experience in itself, Cindy Rippé, a senior lecturer in the Department of Marketing at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, told Vox in an email. Employees and other patrons can become familiar and friendly faces, effectively turning a retail space into a third place. A paid social experience, such as a club, could theoretically achieve the same fulfilling effects as shopping, Rippé said. But spending money isn’t what makes people feel better; it’s repeated social interaction, familiarity, belonging.
Because companies can track your activity online, users who search for local clubs or interact with these groups on social media may be repeatedly served ads for other community-centric businesses and thus spend more money on services that may not be effective.
“I hope that we are looking at a world where marketing can be looked at as an instrument for helping people rather than exploiting people,” Ulqinaku said. “The aim should not be, ‘I make money [off] of you.’ The aim should be, ‘I want to make you feel better. I don’t want to exploit you.’”
Putting a price tag on relationships
The pairing of lonely consumers who might be willing to spend money and businesses that definitely want to make it may be good for the bottom line in the short-term, but perhaps not for social health or for revenue in the long-term. (After all, if these products don’t work, people will stop paying for them, and if they do work as promised, people will also stop paying for them.) Friendship isn’t a product you can advertise or put a dollar amount to, Pressler said, and we shouldn’t apply market solutions to non-market goods.
“You can approach it with a consumptive mindset where it’s like, ‘Well, I just need to consume more relationships, and if I consume more relationships, ergo, I will not be lonely or disconnected,’” he said — but that’s not how real-world interactions work. The power imbalance between the companies earning money and the consumer spending it to fulfill a core human need may veer on exploitative, too, Rippé said: “The ethical problem begins when a company intentionally exploits a consumer’s loneliness, insecure attachment, or fear of missing out to pressure that person into purchasing.”
Which isn’t to say communal gatherings with a price tag are inherently exploitative. Live music and events, like concerts, successfully bring people together for shared experiences, according to Hertz, the professor and author. (Of course, tickets have become so expensive that seeing your favorite act perform is becoming a luxury.) Groups centered around an activity have the potential to connect people, too. But buying your own yarn and needles to bring to a weekly craft night at your local knitting shop is different from paying $50 to join a one-off “knitting club” organized by a VC-backed friendship app.
Because social health touches so many aspects of life — the physical spaces we inhabit, the technology that both facilitates and inhibits socialization, the costs of interacting — the path toward connection is more complex than marketable products or individual purchases. It involves government investment in public spaces and low- or no-cost community events; policies that allow everyone to lead a dignified life, which includes the space for leisure activities; and a societal shift that prioritizes slow, intentional relationship building instead of instant connection.
“The need is real,” Hertz said. “The purported solutions are many. Some of them I think can be part of the solution. Some of them may well end up making us lonelier as a society.”
We’re watching today as Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, and Kevin Warsh, the chair of the Federal Reserve, deliver their opening remarks at the G20 meetings in Asheville, North Carolina.
Divers join search teams scouring deep waters for any survivors, with eight people so far confirmed to have died
Nearly 20 people are still missing after a ferry capsized off northern Cyprus, killing at least eight, as divers join search teams scouring deep waters for any survivors.
The double-hulled ferry with 267 people onboard took in water and flipped over on Sunday just off the port city of Kyrenia, leaving survivors clinging to the upturned hull. They were rescued by passing vessels and members of the coastguard.
Пользователи слышат из ChatGPT собственный голос, внезапные крики и плач. Некоторые из этих историй звучат как байки с Reddit, но похожие сбои OpenAI фиксировала ещё во время тестирования голосовых моделей. Я попробовал разобраться, откуда они берутся и почему современный Voice Mode иногда ведёт себя настолько странно.
На днях говорил с мамой, она довольно часто пользуется ChatGPT. Есть одна формулировка, которая стабильно вызывает у неё ужас: она рассказывает какую-нибудь историю, а модель отвечает ей «у меня мурашки». Если честно, от этих ответов мурашки скорее у моей мамы.
Я каждый раз объясняю, что никаких мурашек там, конечно, нет. Модель подобрала реплику, которая хорошо смотрелась бы в человеческом разговоре. Но чем естественнее и чаще становятся такие ответы, тем сложнее воспринимать их как обычный вывод программы.
Недавно я наткнулся на случай, где эта граница стала ещё менее очевидной. Здесь я бы уже маму не успокоил.
Быть визионером — здорово, но не всегда полезно. Особенно не полезно для инвесторов, которые порой тратят золотые горы на то, что обречено остаться на обочине истории. Сегодня мы поговорим о таких странных проектах, которые казались феерическим «хайпом», но часто даже не доходили до прилавка.
Что общего у Бенджамина Франклина, японских пенсионеров и американских зумеров? Всех их спрашивали о смерти, бессмертии и о том, сколько они хотят прожить. Только данные разбросаны по сотням статей, сайтов, стат. сборников и архивов.
Если биологи и медики уже давно каталогизируют данные о продлении жизни, то социальные данные — что люди об этом думают — до сих пор лежали мертвым грузом. Никто не сводил их в одну таблицу.
Я решил, это исправить. В этой статье я расскажу, как родился проект «Кто хочет жить вечно», почему вопрос бывает важнее ответа и как я собирал со всего интернета материалы, упаковывая их в инфографику на 40 графиков.
ИИ-агент способен пройти путь от анализа задачи до создания и запуска сценария в Vanessa Automation. Но практический результат зависит не столько от выбранной модели, сколько от качества тест-плана, ограничений для агента и организации всей цепочки.
Вводный вебинар предварял стартующий 1 сентября 2026 года курс «Автоматизированное тестирование в 1С». Его провел ведущий разработчик ИТ-лаборатории Инфостарта и автор курса Александр Кунташов. Эксперт показал, как с помощью ИИ и Vanessa Automation пройти путь от исходной инструкции до работающего автотеста, а затем отдельно разобрал вопросы участников о безопасности данных, MCP, сопровождении сценариев и интеграции с CI/CD...
Rights group claims 300 homes were destroyed in Tibet and number of missing people is ‘far higher’ than Beijing admits
A Tibetan advocacy group says hundreds of homes were destroyed on the Tibetan side of the border in last week’s deadly floods, raising questions about Beijing’s official account of the scale of the disaster.
Public discussion about the flash floods has been restricted, with security officials in Tibet announcing on Sunday that it had penalised at least 10 people for sharing “false disaster information”. There was no further information on the nature of the penalties.
