PFBNOW ADVENTURES!

  The Most Controversial Game on the Internet. Wyna Liu, the editor of the New York Times game Connections , discusses her process and the particular ire her puzzles inspire.   One morning earlier this month, I slammed my laptop shut. I was four cups of coffee deep and full of rage. My hands shook, and my vision blurred. It wasn’t politics, my usual subject matter, that had sent me spiraling. Liu is the New York Times editor who makes Connections, the online puzzle that is both the blessing and the bane of my mornings—and the days of millions of other people who regularly spend time tangling with Liu’s creation. Connections, which was released in 2023 by the Times ’ Games team, is the second-most-popular Times game after Wordle. The puzzle is all about identifying words that share a common thread, which can be very satisfying. Often, though, that common thread is so thin as to be invisible. Imagine a jigsaw puzzle made of riddles. Think crossword, but evil . One ...

  The Game-Changing Bedtime Hack That Helped Me Get an Extra Hour of Sleep. Who knew a step so small could help me fix my sleep schedule? I’m a creature of habit. I am also perma-tired. I’ve been going to bed around midnight for years, and getting up for work (not to mention getting through the day) has become an exhausting challenge. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) , 7 to 9 hours of sleep is recommended per night for adults, and those who clock in less than that per night (hello, me!) have more health issues. My six or so hours of sleep per night weren’t working for me, but going to bed before 11 p.m. felt like a punishment. I think I had some kind of sleep FOMO. I’d sneak a peek at my phone and then go down the rabbit hole of Google and Instagram. I was basically an adult toddler with an early bedtime I didn’t like, and I could never keep the schedule up for long. My drastic approach of forcing myself to tuck in an hour early wasn't sustainable....

How to Buy Residency in Another Country With a 'Golden Visa' So-called "golden visas" allow you to get residency (and possibly citizenship) abroad—but you'll need to pay up.       If you want the option to settle abroad but don't qualify for a work visa and have a few hundred thousand extra dollars to spare, you may be able to buy your way there: "Golden visas" give you a relatively quick (if expensive) path to residency in dozens of countries around the world. What is a golden visa? Also known as residency by investment , a golden visa allows wealthy people to live and work in a foreign country in exchange for purchasing property, starting a company, or infusing cash into certain assets or industries. In addition to residency and employment, visa holders are able to travel freely and receive local benefits like healthcare coverage and access to education. The minimum dollar amount required to obtain a golden visa var...

  What Is Lucid Dreaming, and How Do I Do It? Lucid dreaming can be a divisive topic among sleep and dream experts — like author and dream analysis expert Dr. Jean Benedict Raffa , who says, “My personal goal has not been to lucid dream — I’m more interested in how conscious I am when I’m awake, how self-aware I am and how much I know what’s happening inside of me.” Similarly, Em Hexe , a dreamworker and tarot reader, was initially resistant to the practice. “I was under the impression that it would mean I would be controlling my dreams ,” they explain. “Whenever I’m lucid dreaming, I’m already within a dream that I didn’t decide upon. My concern was that, by controlling my dreams, I wouldn’t be allowing my subconscious to do the things that it needed to do.” But as Hexe sees it now, lucid dreaming can be more about respectfully and consciously exploring the dreamscape rather than immediately changing it dramatically. So what actually is lucid dreaming? Can y...

In a painting of Jehangir’s turkey, a glimpse of the complex history of food. The emperor Jehangir was fascinated by a turkey. In his memoir Tuzk-e-Jahangiri , he wrote: “Its head and neck and the part under the throat are every minute of a different colour. When it is in heat it is quite red – one might say it had adorned itself with coral – and after a while it becomes white in the same places, and looks like cotton.” This is standard behaviour for a male Meleagris gallopavo , the North American turkey. The skin on its head can switch between blushing red, mottled blue and livid white because of collagen fibres interspersed with blood cells that lie just beneath the skin. As the blood vessels contract or expand according to the male turkey’s mood, they alter how light reflects off the skin, causing the colour to change.

  Mindfulness and Meditation Aren’t the Same—Here’s Exactly What Sets Them Apart. B oth meditation and mindfulness have gained popularity in recent years as powerful tools for reducing stress and improving mental health. While these terms are often used interchangeably, there is a difference between mindfulness vs. meditation. Each practice has unique characteristics and benefits to help you feel more grounded and relaxed in everyday life. But what exactly sets them apart? We asked our experts to lay down the differences in their origins, techniques, and potential health benefits.

  Einstein wins again: Exotic gravity theories take a blow from new observation. DESI has allowed astronomers to create an unprecedented 3D map of the Universe representing 20% of the entire sky. Key Takeaways Astronomers still struggle to understand phenomena that contradict our current understanding of gravity and the distribution of matter in the Universe. The most popular explanation for these observatio...

  How Gen Z Came to See Books as a Waste of Time. Young people might be responding to a cultural message: Reading just isn’t that important.

  “You know how you sometimes realize it has been raining only when it stops, silence falling on the roof, forming rivulets on the glass? This is the religious equivalent of that.” Fiction by Ben Lerner. newyorker.com “The Media” Fiction by Ben Lerner: “Tonight I’m around, promoting syllables, trying to avoi

  “For me, the feeling was, approximately: Astonishment at the dawning realization that this woman was being created in real time, directly from my own mind, per my deepest longings.” Revisit George Saunders’s short story “Escape from Vlogs.”

  What is money? From where does it derive its value? newyorker.com The Invention of Money In three centuries, the heresies of two bankers became the basis of our modern economy.

  A future generation of robots will not be programmed to complete specific tasks. Instead, they will use A.I. to teach themselves.

  Donald Trump has spent years painting the press as the “enemy of the people.” While he finds refuge and amplification in friendly ports—Fox News, Newsmax, Joe Rogan’s podcast, Elon Musk’s X—he has increasingly made plain his intent on doing battle with the rest. Media lawyers now fear that Trump will ramp up the deployment of subpoenas, specious lawsuits, court orders, and search warrants to seize reporters’ notes, devices, and source materials. They are gravely concerned that reporters and media institutions will be punished for leaking government secrets. Trump’s lawyers have already threatened or taken legal action against the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, Penguin Random House, and others. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, meanwhile, calls for ending federal funding to NPR and PBS. It insists that there is “no legal entitlement” for the press to have access to the White House “campus.” (Although Trump disavowed Project 2025 during his camp...

 

  In October, as a novice volunteer knocking on doors in Allentown, Pennsylvania, for the Kamala Harris campaign, Julia Preston’s task was to make sure that committed Democrats voted, and to persuade undecided voters that Harris was the better choice. She had quit her job as a journalist, she writes, as she felt she “could no longer comply with its rules proscribing partisan activity.” Just as she was being initiated into the world of political activism, she was presented with a historic chance to help elect America’s first woman President. “This is what I was up against,” Preston writes. “Donald Trump was broadcasting on some direct wavelength with his followers, and he had drawn them into his alternate universe of looming economic disaster, menacing migrants, and outrages perpetrated by Democrats against their children, which only he was visionary enough to see and strong enough to combat.” “From walking my Allentown turf, I learned that not even the most disciplined campaign cou...

 

  One of Rachel Syme’s abiding pleasures in life is finding small but transformative thingamabobs—frivolous and not at all necessary items that don’t cost much but can make life a bit sparklier, a bit easier, or just a bit sillier. See her gift guide of little treats.

 

  After Anna Kanika Jhamtani separated from her ex-husband, she fell into a dark place and went through an epic dry spell—more than ten years without sex or even dating. Then she met “The Italian.”

  “The World’s Longest Yard Sale” was founded in 1987, and currently stretches across six states and nearly 700 miles. Paige Williams road trips through America’s heartland to see what people are buying and selling.

  Adultery may still be, as Anthony Burgess described it, the “most creative of sins,” but, thanks to Tinder et al., engineering a tryst requires significantly less ingenuity and craft now than at any other time in human history. newyorker.com In Defense of Adulterers Esther Perel’s new book argues for a more compassionate understanding of our unruly desires.

  What Kind of Future Are We Building for Our Children? Despite the importance of public investment towards children, our investments have not only been suboptimal always but also reducing.   November, in some ways, is the month for children. November 14 is celebrated as children’s day in India, marking the birth anniversary of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and November 20 is the International or World Children’s Day. It is also the date on which the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN-CRC) in 1989. UNICEF also releases its flagship report on the State of World’s Children (SoWC) during this month. This year’s SoWC 2024 report is devoted to the world in which children will live in 2050 and identifies three ‘megatrends’ that are shaping their futures. All three are particularly relevant for India and call for urgent priority to children and their rights. 2050: A third of the world’s children will live in four countries The first is t...

  Who Invented Indian Butter Chicken? (Encore). Butter chicken, one of India's most loved dishes, is at the centre of a culinary storm with two competing restaurant chains claiming to be the inventors of the lip-smacking preparation. In an episode we first brought you in March, we consider butter chicken. It is a much-loved Indian dish, both within that country and around the world. But who can claim they invented it? That question is the subject of a lawsuit. Our reporter tries to get to the bottom of butter chicken's origin and finds out that it is a journey through India's history. You can find celebrated Indian chef Madhur Jaffrey's recipe for butter chicken here .

Ranked: The 25 Best Cities To Live In The World, According To Expats. What are the best cities to live in the world? Find out with the Expat Insider 2024—a new report that ranks the world’s best places to live. Valencia, Spain was just named the world's best city to live in a new report. Pictured here: the Plaza de la Virgen in Valencia's old town. Looking for the best cities to live in the world? You’re not alone: In the wake of the U.S. presidential election, droves of Americans are thinking of moving abroad. So the timing couldn’t be better for InterNations’ annual Expat City Ranking, a report on the best places to live in the world. InterNations is the largest global community for people who live and work abroad. This year, the winner is Valencia, Spain, reclaiming its spot as the number one city in the newly released 2024 list. Last year , Valencia came in third and Malaga, Spain won. This year’s report is based on data from over 12,500 expats living in 53...

  How does science explain déjà vu? It’s a brain glitch with a purpose. Your mind is a sense-making machine. Although it is unclear why humans have this experience, most research into déjà vu suggests that it is a phenomenon related to the brain’s process for retrieving memories.   Do you know that strange sensation of walking into a room and feeling like you’ve been there before, even though you know you haven’t? Or when you hear someone say something for the first time, but there’s a certain familiarity to it that gives you pause? That’s déjà vu–a phenomenon that’s not well understood, but scientists have some ideas.  Déjà vu is the eerie feeling that you have had the same novel experience before . It’s a spontaneous, elusive sensation that reveals the workings of consciousness, allowing us to se...