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'We're Out There' So Protect Us, Protesting Workers Tell Amazon, Target, Instacart

Workers at Amazon, Target and other companies walked off the job on Friday to demand safer working conditions and transparency about how many front-line workers have gotten sick during the pandemic.




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Passwords Become A Pastime: A Dramatization

Working from home requires a lot of technical setup, which is ... not a smooth process for some. NPR's Scott Simon and Jessica Hansen play out a scenario many might be familiar with.




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The Tie That Binds These Grandparents In Isolation? TikTok

NPR's reporter in Nairobi finds his parents connecting with his kids through TikTok. Formerly the realm of Gen Z, the app's now a family board game where Grandma and Grandpa reveal their silly selves.




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Supreme Court Livestreams Oral Argument For 1st Time In History

The Supreme Court, for the first time, livestreamed its oral argument on Monday. It has discussed whether generic terms can become protected trademarks by the addition of a dot-com domain.




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California Sues Uber And Lyft For 'Cheating' Drivers And Taxpayers

The state accuses the ride-hailing apps of flouting a labor law by classifying drivers as independent contractors instead of employees.




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Airbnb Cuts 1,900 Jobs, 25% Of Its Workforce, As Pandemic Freezes Travel

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky described the global pandemic as the "most harrowing crisis of our lifetime" and said the coronavirus has cut the company's anticipated revenue in more than half.




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Uber Cuts Thousands of Jobs, Citing Coronavirus Pandemic

The ride-hailing company is cutting 3,700 jobs. It's the latest U.S. tech company to turn to layoffs to deal with fallout from the coronavirus crisis.




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How To Listen To The Recordings Of The Supreme Court Hearings

The Supreme Court is now holding hearings over a teleconference, making the audio publicly available. Jerry Goldman, the founder of the Oyez Project, offers some guidance on how to listen to it.




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Facebook Oversight Board On Removing Objectionable Content Announces Members

The company has faced criticism in recent years for its handling of issues ranging from user privacy to policing hate speech to stopping the spread of disinformation.




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Why Fake Video, Audio May Not Be As Powerful In Spreading Disinformation As Feared

"Deepfakes" have received a lot of attention as a way to potentially spread misleading or false information and influence public opinion. But two specialists say that might not be a huge concern.




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Zoom To Crack Down on Zoombombing, In Deal With NY Attorney General

The company has agreed to launch a new internal data security program and will take other steps to combat hacker disruptions.




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Some Companies Are Turning To Tracking Technologies To Ensure Safe Reopening

Companies are trying to figure out how to welcome back employees to their offices, and keep them safe once they return. The new normal might involve smartphone apps and badges to track employees.




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Karissa Sanbonmatsu: What Can Epigenetics Tell Us About Sex And Gender?

We're used to thinking of DNA as a rigid blueprint. Karissa Sanbonmatsu researches how our environment affects the way DNA expresses itself—especially when it comes to sex and gender.




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Your Boss May Soon Track You At Work For Coronavirus Safety

Companies around the country are figuring out how to safely reopen office during the pandemic. The new normal might involve smartphone apps and badges to track employees.




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Google Says Most Of Its Employees Will Likely Work Remotely Through End of Year

The tech giant announces it is extending its previous work-from-home plans for most of its staff and will begin reopening offices this summer.








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Maati Baani: ‘Music is A Powerful Medium for Peace’

The world music duo on reinventing their 2011 track ‘Karpur Gauram’ with 17 musicians from nine countries

The post Maati Baani: ‘Music is A Powerful Medium for Peace’ appeared first on My Site.




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Indo-American Sister Duo LULLANAS Drop Debut EP ‘Before Everything Got Real’

Twin sisters Nishita and Atisha Lulla talk about recording a previous single in Mumbai, the country-folk influence and more

The post Indo-American Sister Duo LULLANAS Drop Debut EP ‘Before Everything Got Real’ appeared first on My Site.







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Little Richard, Founding Father of Rock Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87

Pianist-singer behind “Tutti Frutti,” “Good Golly Miss Molly” and “Long Tall Sally” set the template that a generation of musicians would follow

The post Little Richard, Founding Father of Rock Who Broke Musical Barriers, Dead at 87 appeared first on My Site.






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SpaceX has fired Starship’s Raptor engine, and the vehicle still stands

The Raptor rocket engine burned for about 4 seconds.




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NASA planning to launch an integrated Lunar Gateway in 2023

NASA has already assessed the viability of the Falcon Heavy for the task.











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Twitter failing to curb misinformation “superspreaders,” report warns

Posts from high-profile accounts tout questionable virus therapies and cures.




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Co-mingling with COVID? Harvard expert weighs in on safe reopening options

Dr. Joseph Allen studies where building design meets health—he took our questions for 30min.




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Incredible video shows Hayabusa2 pogo-bouncing off asteroid

A new paper analyzes what we know about the sample the probe grabbed last year.






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Rocket Report: Military space plane returns to pad, SLS engine costs soar

LauncherOne to cap eight years of development with upcoming flight.




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China’s new spacecraft—which resembles a Crew Dragon—just landed

China now has a capsule potentially capable of returning from the Moon.





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Caddis fly larvae are now building shelters out of microplastics

Caddis fly larvae typically construct protective cases out of sand grains and silk.




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On the trail of Patrick Leigh Fermor in Greece

Ahead of a new Patrick Leigh Fermor biography, our writer visits the Mani peninsula, home of the great man and unsung resting place of another British travel writing giant, Bruce Chatwin

To read an extract from Leigh Fermor's book, Mani, Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, click here

Old Mr Fotis turned my question over in his mind while sipping his morning coffee. Below the veranda some youths had been playing noisily on the harbour wall, but now they all dived into the turquoise sea and set off on the long swim to the rocky island in the bay. It had a fragment of crenellated wall on top of it, the ruins of a Venetian fortress. Fotis watched them go, half-smiling.

"We do seem to attract a lot of writers," said the old man eventually. "But that's a name I don't remember."

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Big in Japan: why Tokyo is top

The travel writer Pico Iyer has known Tokyo - Guardian readers' favourite non-European city - for decades but is still captivated by its curiosities and contradictions

It makes perfect sense that Tokyo is Guardian readers' favourite overseas city. Now that Shanghai looks in parts like Beverly Hills and Delhi is lighting up with Thai restaurants, there are few cities on the planet that are less western than Tokyo – even if it's not necessarily a part of any east that you might recognise. The abiding allure of Japan's huge network of tiny details is that, like something in a Salman Rushdie novel, it seems to blur all notions of high and low, east and west, old and new into one state-of-the-art global amusement park that is wildly fresh and novel in its best incarnations, and at least zany in its worst.

I've lived at a safe distance from Japan's capital for 23 years now, in Kyoto and Nara, three or four hours away by train and several centuries away in terms of their antique pasts. But if I were going to Tokyo tomorrow, I would, on arrival, hold off on the "maid cafes" in the nerds' electronic hive of Akihabara, on the Hysteric Glamour fashions around Harajuku, even on the gleaming shops of the Ginza that have long made Tokyo seem an early visitor from the 23rd century. Instead I'd begin by looking for the old.

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Novelist Jessie Burton on Amsterdam

The author of The Miniaturist on the beguiling blend of tradition and modernity (and pancakes) in a city that provided the inspiration for her 17th-century-set debut novel and Waterstones Book of the Year 2014

Amsterdam is classically romantic but is also funky, forward-thinking and citizen-friendly. In the old centre, around the southern canal belt, there are these beautiful 17th-century merchants’ houses that 21st-century Amsterdammers still live in. I’ve always thought it wears its historical cloak quite casually and doesn’t just dwell in the past.

The Rijksmuseum is stunning and I love it as a fascinating, cool, accessible museum, as well as for the part it played in inspiring The Miniaturist. I came across Petronella Oortman’s doll’s house there by chance. It’s an exact scale replica of her real home, and Oortman spent a fortune having it created. I thought at the time it was an interesting story, but I didn’t think I was going to write a novel about it. I’m in its debt, really.

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Uzbekistan's magnificent cities: where Soviet style meets Islamic heritage

From Tashkent to Samarkand and Bukhara, travel writer Caroline Eden believes Uzbekistan offers a dazzling mix of traditional style and a modern outlook

Twenty five years after the fall of the USSR, it’s interesting how the Soviet-era hangover lingers in Uzbekistan. Hulking apartment blocks are gradually being upgraded, and while you won’t spot statues of Lenin (they’ve been replaced by the nomadic conqueror Tamerlane and celebrated medic Ibn-Sina) you will see plenty of samovars (Russian kettles) and Soviet military medals for sale in the markets. But you will also see master ikat weavers reviving weaving traditions, and many musicians and artists are now turning to their Islamic heritage for influence. This mix of Soviet legacy and Uzbek Islam is one of the things that makes the country so fascinating.

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‘Kathmandu is still a place of magic’: Sir Chris Bonington

Despite much change, the Nepalese capital’s staggering views and warm memories are as vivid as ever for the veteran mountaineer and leader of 19 Himalayan expeditions

My first sight of Kathmandu and the Himalayas was in 1960 as part of Lt Col Jimmy Roberts’s expedition – we made the first successful ascent of Annapurna II. At 7,937 metres, it’s a superb peak that’s just short of what mountaineers see as the magical height: 8,000 metres.

Arriving in Kathmandu was extraordinary. There was only one hotel, the Royal, an old palace run by a wonderful, eccentric Russian called Boris. There was also just one guesthouse, and practically no tourists.

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