Mark Xavier
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Stories (52/0)
5 Mistakes We Make When We’re Overwhelmed
The following are five common self-sabotaging mistakes overwhelmed people tend to make. There are practical solutions for each that will help you feel like you’re on top of things and do a better job of navigating your most important tasks and solving problems.
By Mark Xavier4 months ago in Motivation
How will we feed Earth’s rising population? Ask the Dutch.
Part of Against Doomerism from The Highlight, Vox’s home for ambitious stories that explain our world. An hour north of Amsterdam, some of the world’s largest seed conglomerates — the first step in a long journey that brings food from the farm to our plates — occupy what the industry calls “Seed Valley.” It’s a play on Northern California’s famous tech hub, but there is no actual valley here — the Netherlands is notoriously flat — and there are no Google buses or towering redwood trees. Instead, in this quiet, rural pocket, rows of pristine greenhouses stand beside small experimental farm plots and low-slung office buildings, all without a ping-pong table in sight. While touring a few seed companies there last month, I couldn’t even order an Uber.
By Mark Xavier5 months ago in Motivation
When Mary wollstonecraft Was Duped by Love...
one windy day in June 1795, Mary Wollstonecraft, her 1-year-old daughter, and her nanny, with a small crew of men, pushed off in a boat into rough waters from a port on the eastern shore of England. Wollstonecraft’s baby wriggled in her arms as the boat rocked and swayed in the gigantic gray waves of the North Sea. Yet Wollstonecraft would not be deterred by the dangers of the passage. This was an opportunity for her to write about her travels and to capitalize on her reflections by selling her stories. When the jagged shoreline of Sweden finally appeared after days of endless ocean, she began to record her observations.
By Mark Xavier5 months ago in Photography
THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION OF YOUR LIFE
Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money, and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room.
By Mark Xavier5 months ago in Motivation
7-Up With Milk Is a Revelation...
nIn early 1994, my family and I packed up our lives in the United Arab Emirates to move in with my grandmother in Lahore, Pakistan. When Ramadan began a few weeks later, in mid-February, I found that the rituals I had grown up with — the cannon being fired in Sharjah to mark the beginning of the month, being warned not to drink water on the commute to school — were replaced by different traditions: the banging of drummers patrolling the streets each morning to wake people up before the fast, and with family now nearby, interminably long evening meals at relatives’ houses.
By Mark Xavier6 months ago in Humans
How to tell if a Photo is a AI-Generated Fake
You may have seen photographs that suggest otherwise, but former president Donald Trump wasn’t arrested last week, and the pope didn’t wear a stylish, brilliant white puffer coat. These recent viral hits were the fruits of artificial intelligence systems that process a user’s textual prompt to create images. They demonstrate how these programs have become very good very quickly—and are now convincing enough to fool an unwitting observer.
By Mark Xavier6 months ago in Education
The Harvest Moon Lights the Night as Autumn Arrives
In the northern hemisphere, the full moon that occurs closest to the autumn equinox (when day and night are roughly equal around the world) is called the Harvest Moon. For several days in a row, the moon will rise near sunset to provide extra light, which farmers can use to harvest summer crops before winter arrives.
By Mark Xavier6 months ago in Earth
The Mystery of Dark Stars
Dark stars are thought to be some of the earliest stars in the universe, forming in the genesis of it all. That would be nearly 13 billion years ago, or about 80 to 100 million years after the Big Bang, when clouds of hydrogen and helium gas began to cool. Astrophysicists suspect that dark matter might have fueled these early stars. And now, with the new James Webb Space Telescope, scientists are looking back through time to find out more about dark stars and the unseen dark matter that makes up about 95% of all matter in the universe.
By Mark Xavier6 months ago in Education
Roots in a Sky : An Astronaut's Guide to Farming on Mars
Beyond M&Ms, space espresso and astronaut ice cream, a lot of work remains when it comes to securing nutrition in space. Knowing how to cultivate, culture and cycle consumable nutrients will be necessary for humans to successfully settle deep space. And it might be helpful for feeding hungry mouths on our home planet, too.
By Mark Xavier6 months ago in Earth
Mushrooms May Lead to the Development of a Biodegradable Computer Chip
What if we could make a computer chip out of mushrooms? While it may not be the first question that springs to mind around electronic enhancement, it turns out that using fungi as a functional substrate for integrated circuits (ICs) is actually a great idea.
By Mark Xavier6 months ago in Education
Were There Aquatic Dinosaurs?
Were there aquatic dinosaurs roaming the oceans once upon a time? And if there were, what did they look like? In short, they did exist millions of years ago, and thanks to the fossil record, we have a pretty good idea of what they looked like. From toothier versions of today’s dolphins to enormous Komodo-dragon-like sea monsters, these fabulous beasts once ruled the seas.
By Mark Xavier6 months ago in Earth
