FlaglerLive

“Microdosing” originally meant taking tiny amounts of psychedelics (such as mushrooms) to enhance mood or performance, with fewer side effects. But the term has taken off to mean anything where you incorporate a much lower “dose” of something – and still reap the benefits. So, does this work for exercise? If you can’t make time for a 30-minute run, will shorter bursts of activity do anything for your health? Here’s what the evidence says.

Brigitte Bardot’s death, at the age of 91, brings to a close one of the most extraordinary careers in post-war French cultural life. Best known as an actress, she was also a singer, a fashion icon, an animal rights activist and a symbol of France’s sexual liberation. Famous enough to be known by her initials, B.B. symbolized a certain vision of French femininity – rebellious and sensual, yet vulnerable.

Jane Austen’s work might shake the blinkered out of an unhelpful way of seeing the world, or reveal hidden depths in overlooked friends and acquaintances. It can take people away from those who do not appreciate them, and introduce them into new communities in which they thrive.

Every year, editors for publications ranging from the Oxford English Dictionary to the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English select a “word of the year.” This year’s slate largely centers on digital life. But rather than reflecting the unbridled optimism about the internet of the early aughts – when words like “w00t,” “blog,” “tweet” and even “face with tears of joy” emoji (😂) were chosen – this year’s selections reflect a growing unease over how the internet has become a hotbed of artifice, manipulation and fake relationships.

In 1986 Baudrillard was noting that in society “the scene and the mirror have given way to a screen and a network”. He predicted the use of the smartphone, foreseeing each person in control of a machine which would isolate them “in a position of perfect sovereignty”, like “an astronaut in a bubble”. Such insights helped him go on to devise perhaps his most famous concept: the theory that we were stepping into the era of “hyperreality”.

Authoritarian countries are engaged in continuous and more expansive projects aimed at creating a tilted political reality. They seek to subtly undermine the image of western democracies, presenting themselves, and their growing bloc of authoritarian partners, as the future. Crafting this political reality includes the use of blatant falsities, but the narrative is typically grounded in a much more insidious manipulation of information.