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The App That Wants You to Treat Self Care Like a Garden

Amber Discko’s descent into a state of emotional turmoil started as a slow trickle. It began around the time Donald Trump won the presidential election in November 2016 and when Discko’s social media and voter registration work for the Hillary Clinton campaign ended. But then, when Trump was inaugurated in January 2017, the emotional levee broke. The extremes of the campaign—working late into the night just to start again at 4 am, day after day—had drained Discko of all their usual enthusiasm and radiance. Discko, who uses they/them pronouns, hustled…

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While Many Restaurants Struggle, Here’s How One Is Thriving

Driving through eerily quiet Seattle on Friday, I tuned into an widely-echoed sentiment. Making the rush-hour trip in a fraction of the time it normally takes to cross town, I was on my way to see one of the only chefs I know who's offering a bit of hope. When the world is not under siege from a deadly virus, Eric Rivera runs Addo, a busy restaurant with constantly changing offerings, from inexpensive homestyle Puerto Rican to high-end, multi-course meals with wine pairings. Now, though, as despair has seized other…

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The Secret to Enjoying Nature Is Your Phone

An essential part of having a smartphone is hating yourself for it. The self-awareness that smartphones are bad for us, and that tech companies are evil for addicting us to their apps, is proof of sanity. In recent years, the predictable masochism we feel while scrolling has found an equally predictable remedy: nature. Nature is the opposite of smartphones—it is as good for us as smartphones are bad. And the call of the wild has never been stronger. Going on an unplugged yoga retreat in Costa Rica, renting a cabin…

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Jeff Weiner Updates His LinkedIn Profile

The last three and a half years haven’t been so great for social media platforms. They’ve been accused of breaking Western democracies, and Ryan Roslansky, a senior vice president of product at the company who was the first person Weiner hired. confused with Tinder. Throughout, the company’s origins shaped its tone and its culture. People’s identities were tied to their résumés, which meant that they acted like their bosses were always looking. This decreases racist shitposting and increases the colloquial use of PowerPoint clichés. The company went public in 2011…

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Country life: the young female farmer who is now a top influencer in China

Li Ziqi, 29, has garnered millions of followers with her videos of her idyllic life in rural Sichuan. Is she too good to be true? Since she began posting rustic-chic videos of her life in rural Sichuan province in 2016, Li Ziqi, 29, has become one of Chinas biggest social media stars. She has 22 million followers on the microblogging site Weibo, 34 million on Douyin (Chinas version of TikTok) and another 8.3 million on YouTube (Li has been active on YouTube for the last two years, despite it being…

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From renewables to Netflix: the 15 super-trends that defined the 2010s

It was the decade of austerity, fracking, populism and internet lies. But not everything about the 2010s was terrible The plastics backlash Garbage, including plastic waste, is seen at the beach in Costa del Este, Panama City. Photograph: Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images It was once the height of metropolitan chic: the dash into Starbucks for a skinny decaf caramel latte en route for work, the takeaway cup a mark of upward mobility. Those were the days of Sex and the City, when the culture of doing everything on the…

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