Impact of high levels of toxic air ‘is equivalent to having lost a year of education’

environment

Using what one expert calls a ‘Wizard of Oz technique’, some companies keep their reliance on humans a secret from investors

AI, humans of late capitalism

When novelist and former mental health nurse Nathan Filer met a patient who wouldn’t take his pills, it started him on a journey into the complex and contradictory world of schizophrenia

mental health,

The prehistoric shift towards cultivation began our preoccupation with hierarchy and growth – and even changed how we perceive the passage of time.

inequality, growth

“Could consumerism turn into fascism? The underlying psychologies aren't all that far removed from one another. If you go into a huge shopping mall and you're looking down the parade, it's the same theatrical aspect: these disciplined ranks of merchandise, all glittering like fascist uniforms. When you enter a mall, you are taking part in a ceremony of affirmation, which you endorse just by your presence.” // 'I embraced surrealism - like a lover - and psychoanalysis, which closely abutted surrealism. Together, they represented what I wanted to do'. JG Ballard talks to James Campbell

Ballard

Nichole Gracely has a master’s degree and was one of Amazon’s best order-pickers. Now, after protesting the company, she’s homeless.

oligarchy

Low-calorie diet caused remission in 90% of trial patients who lost 15kg or more, even those who had been diabetic for six years, say researchers.

health, diabetes

In this wide-ranging interview, JG Ballard talks to Jeannette Baxter about globalisation and terrorism, government and the media, the internet and intimacy. // “A century is a long time. Twenty years ago no one could have imagined the effects the internet would have - entire relationships flourish, friendships prosper on the e-mail screen, there's a vast new intimacy and accidental poetry (from the osprey-tracking site to tours round old nuclear silos and the extraordinary aerial trip down the California coastline and a thousand others), not to mention the weirdest porn. The entire human experience seems to unveil itself like the surface of a new planet.” // “But there is something deeply suffocating about life today in the prosperous west. Bourgeoisification, the suburbanisation of the soul, proceeds at an unnerving pace. Tyranny becomes docile and subservient, and a soft totalitarianism prevails, as obsequious as a wine waiter. Nothing is allowed to distress and unsettle us. The politics of the playgroup rules us all. The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change. When Markham (not JGB) uses the phrase 'upholstered apocalypse' he reveals that he knows what is really going on in Chelsea Marina.”

Ballard

DNA tests on their Italian descendants show the 'tuscii' came from Turkey.

archeology, DNA