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Before the first Molotov cocktail reached us, before the crowd with knives and machetes and wooden clubs arrived, it was a large rock that invaded our lunch table. It went past my left ear and bounced on our table, spilling food all over before hitting the restaurant’s glass window in front of me. It happened so fast that I initially thought it was a bug, like a praying mantis that had buzzed past. But the sound of glass shattering, followed by the cries of the restaurant workers, made our hearts beat fast—what we had been avoiding the past few weeks was here. The riot was at our doorstep. Minti and I had decided to go off campus to the Easy Go departmental store for groceries, and as we headed back with our driver, Satpal, a young man in his late twenties, we stopped at a roadside dhaba owned by one of his friends. We were just so tired of eating at the campus eatery. With the curfew in place, and the violence happening outside the campus gates, we had been locked up inside the thirty-acre university campus for two weeks and spent the time mostly inside our apartments, waiting for normalcy to return. The spring break had been extended indefinitely, and the university had advised students not to return to campus until further notice.

It wasn’t my idea to go there for lunch. I wanted to get to safety immediately, but Minti said it should be fine; Satpal knew the owner, and the media, the university authorities, the University Campus Safety Office, and her colleagues had all assured her that the violence on the streets was controlled and law and order restored.

More rocks followed the first, arriving like hailstones. In seconds, the windshields of four cars shattered into pieces. Our own car stood intact a few feet away, and I looked at Minti helplessly—we might have to run. One nearby family, who had just started eating, dragged themselves toward their small car. The man hugged a bag, the woman shouted and flailed her arms, and the young teenage boy pulled at his sister, who seemed stupefied.

“Rohit, watch your head!” Minti screamed.

I immediately covered myself with a steel dish to protect myself from a flying rock, letting the rice scatter on the concrete floor of the restaurant’s courtyard. “Run!” I shouted, and we headed toward our car.

Then we heard the screaming. A rock had broken through the family’s rear windshield where the woman and little girl sat. Minti started toward them but stopped short when a bottle swished through the space left by the crumbled window and erupted into flames.

“Get some water!” Minti shouted, pointing toward the jug on our table, and ran toward it.

But the car took off, barreling away down the street as the smoke and the screams of the family mingled. I didn’t have time to think if they would make it, if their car would explode into flames in the middle of the road. I turned away, saw the abandoned shiny leather and pink duffel bags that belonged to the family, and felt something tug at my heart. Did they do the right thing? What was the right thing to do in this situation? Should we run to our car?

The sounds of the angry crowd were coming closer—as if an entire marketplace, shouting and bargaining, was marching toward us like a swarm of bees.

Satpal suddenly came rushing out of the building that housed the dhaba, yelling, “Madam, we have to go.”

“What happened, Satpal?” Minti stood next to our table holding a fork, a piece of chicken still hanging from it.

“I saw from the terrace! They are armed!”

Satpal dragged us back to the building through a heavy iron door, leading to a storage room, followed by four fleets of stairs, up to the terrace of the dhaba. It was full of broken chairs, clotheslines, and a rotting mattress leaning against the waist-high wall that marked the boundary of the terrace. Near the roof’s edge, there was a giant water tank. It looked like an enormous hippopotamus sitting verti-cally on the wall, defying gravity. A ladder leaned against it.

“Where will we hide?” I asked.

Persuaded by a weeping Satpal, we climbed into the water tank using the ladder. Then Satpal covered it with the massive concrete lid sending us into a darkness so black that I couldn’t see my palms. The first thing I felt was the ice-cold winter water. We were knee-deep and enveloped in an eerie, cool stillness. I didn’t know how long we were inside; it was hard to hear what was happen-ing on the streets and ground floor. I heard a noise from outside. But it was just din: the din of people panicked, worried, screaming for help. It felt as though all that din, all that cumulative din, was coming from far; very far away. As if the cold-water tank had trans-ported us to another dimension.

“Minti, are we going to die here?” I whispered. “Rohit, nothing will happen to us. We will be fine.”

We heard a male voice on the terrace. “Look there, under that rotting mattress!”

Minti covered my mouth. I pulled out my phone from my back pocket. In the dim light produced by the phone, I could see the whites of her eyes widen.

My legs ached from the icy water. They turned numb as if they had melted into the water, and I was just floating; it felt like nothing existed beyond my thighs. My legs started to burn. It was then I felt it: something warm, cutting through the icy water. Fresh water was entering the tank. Had one of the vandals entered the kitchen downstairs and switched on the motor? It felt so lovely. The warm freshwater was moving up inch by inch toward my thighs, then to my waist, then to my chin. My legs came back to life. The ache from the icy water was gone.

Is this how it feels to drown?

I shouldn’t have come back home. Everyone had told me to accept the job I was offered in rural Minnesota. But I would never have fallen in love if I had not returned to India. I had just started my life. And in turn, my heart had shattered. I deserved to get some time to mend it. I deserved to experience the heaviness of a broken heart.

Is this how a life ends?

__________________________________

From How to Date a Fanatic by Aruni Kashyap and reprinted with permission from HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2026.

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It's been over 30 years since Bane broke the bat and made DC Comics history in the process. Coming around the same time as The Death of Superman , the moment the masked villain defeated Batman and shattered his back in the process forever changed the course of the character on the page and has become one of the most recognizable pieces of Bruce Wayne's lore, even to those who have never read the Knightfall storyline it came from. Christopher Nolan made it an iconic part of his superhero trilogy capper, The Dark Knight Rises , while everything from Robot Chicken to Rick and Morty has parodied the exact scene where Bane delivers the signature blow. Yet, only now is the saga where it originated from getting a proper adaptation for the screen.

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Cheats have been a foundational part of video games since the medium’s earliest days. At first, most of them were used as development tools to facilitate playtesting for the game’s creators. The most famous early example of this is the Konami Code , created for the NES port of the space shoot-’em-up Gradius in 1986. To get a full set of power-ups and make the game far easier than its arcade version, you’d simply press up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, then A at the title screen. The cheat became more widely known after the 1988 release of Contra for the NES, where inputting the Konami Code gives you a whopping 30 extra lives.

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Low-agency people tend to believe in what I call the “myth of willpower,” the idea that virtue lies in exerting extreme effort to overcome obstacles. This is different from putting on a show of effort to impress others or to cover your ass. This is about truly believing that success attained without effort is actually bad, bordering on immoral. You can see this in the discourse around Ozempic and other weight-loss drugs, in the way some people insist on shaming those who “cheat” at weight loss instead of “earning” it via diet and exercise.

The alternative mentality looks like U.S. Navy officer William Sims. In the year 1900, he was serving abroad in Hong Kong and learned that a British captain had developed a new way of shooting from ships in rocky seas. It was much more accurate than the default way, which was to wait until the point in each wave where the ship happened to be tilted the right way, and then fire. The British captain instead had his sailors continuously adjust the gun. This might seem obvious in retrospect — you know, aiming the gun — but it required additional training and modifications to equipment. Sims recognized this method as superior and wrote several reports about it, which the officers above him ignored. So, he took a shortcut. He wrote a letter directly to President Roosevelt, who realized that Sims was correct. In 1902, Sims was appointed Inspector of Target Practice. He saw that the new system was implemented, and the U.S. Navy became much more effective in gun battles.

“Just write to the president” is the kind of shortcut that, in my experience, high-agency people are always looking for. They are never thinking, “I need to increase my hours of grinding hard work.” They’re thinking instead, “How can I get results faster by optimizing my effort?” I learned from those I know to try to accomplish goals with as little effort as possible, because there are endlessly good uses of my time. Spending less energy on a task when I can frees me to spend it on the next thing. This is another rendition of what is perhaps this book’s most important advice: Resist the seduction of artificial goals and go after what you want directly.

I’m not saying you should never work hard, and there is probably something vital about the human condition that you miss out on if you never experience the application of dogged endurance to an endeavor that can’t be accomplished in any other way. Training for narrowly difficult tasks that require mastery or conditioning — like playing Bach’s violin partitas or tackling the Alps — can force you to confront your physical and emotional limits in a way that’s both personality expanding and healthily humbling.

What I’m saying is that you should choose hard work if hard work is the desired result. If it’s not, and you can take a shortcut, take a fucking shortcut.

This is [a] lesson that was brought home to me by addiction. When you are addicted, you are fundamentally dealing with an unfair fight. The enemy substance has infiltrated your reward centers and eaten your joy until taking more of it is your only relief. Quitting would mean giving up the only thing you still love. But the thing you love is destroying you.

To have a hope of winning against addiction, you have to make the fight as easy as possible. If you’ve made addict friends, as many people do, you almost always have to cut them out of your life. You also have to change your environment, placing yourself as far as possible from stimuli that might trigger you to relapse, like a bar where you used to get wasted. The point is to eventually find a way to frictionlessly live without the substance, to the extent possible.

Having won this fight, I have zero compunctions about making my goals as easy to achieve as possible. For example, my body has made it clear that I need to do resistance training with weights, or I’ll wither up and go crazy. But I find the gym powerfully repellent — I don’t consider the scrutiny of scantily clad strangers motivating. So, I pay a trainer who comes to my house and berates me for not picking up the weights. Maybe I could demand more discipline of myself if I didn’t have a job that requires most of it. But given that I never managed to make time for exercise when I was a poker player, it seems unlikely. I feel more than fine about this shortcut because I am happier and healthier as a result.

Hiring a personal trainer is a fairly common shortcut. There are some lesser-known tactics I would also advocate. Here’s one.

Right-Sizing Your Task

Let’s say there’s a viewpoint you want to promote. Do you really need to write a 400-page treatise or a 10-part blog series to lay out every single argument in favor of your position? Or would a short, crisp manifesto do the job better? Perhaps you would get more credit from a certain group of intellectuals for writing the treatise. But maybe you’d have a larger effect on the world with the pamphlet.

Consider the example of philosopher James Carse. He wrote a sprawling book extolling his theory of reality and then lost the manuscript. A few years later, he sat down to summarize what he remembered. That effort became Finite and Infinite Games , and it’s become a cultural classic, probably because it’s not a cumbersome tome.

But it’s not always easy to tell when you’re doing things the hard way. (Weirdly, many philosophers think all of their words are necessary.) To get clear on this, I find it helpful to import some concepts from negotiation practice. In negotiation, the thing you claim to want from a negotiating partner is your “position,” but the thing you ultimately want is your “interest.” To use an example popularized by the classic book Getting to Yes , by Roger Fisher and William Ury, saying “I want all the oranges, I need them to make orange juice tomorrow,” is a position, but “orange juice tomorrow” is the underlying interest.

It’s almost always better to negotiate based on interests rather than positions, because your current position might not actually be the only (or best) way to achieve your interest. Perhaps the person lusting after your oranges just wants the zest to bake a cake, and if you know that, you can keep the juice while giving them the zest. Or they might be happy to drive to the store later to get some more oranges for juice if you agree to let them have the current bag now.

High achievers, like everyone else, vary in how much they can grind — but what is almost invariable is a commitment to cutting to the nub without much wasted effort.

The way to downsize a task is to apply this negotiation principle to yourself. It might be your position that you want to run a marathon. Cool, why? Is it because you want to improve your cardiovascular health? Well, interval training could be a lot more efficient. Is it because you want to impress your dad, who’s a runner? Perhaps a thoughtful gift would be better at facilitating that particular goal.

Teasing apart your real underlying interest from your position allows you to ask, “What is the simplest possible way I could get what I actually want?”

More than their penchant for hard work, it is this ruthless focus on achieving the real goal, as easily as possible, that distinguishes the high achievers I know. I think people who haven’t been around top performers in business sometimes imagine that they are busywork athletes who stare longer at spreadsheets and cram in more meetings than other people. High achievers, like everyone else, vary in how much they can grind — but what is almost invariable is a commitment to cutting to the nub without much wasted effort.

Some people hesitate to take shortcuts because they disdain the whole idea of taking the easy route. This position is something like: Life is about dealing with complex, thorny problems. If you take all the chores out of your life, all the strain and difficulty, some of the humanness goes out of your existence. We’re meant to weed the soil, to write the thank-you note, to have unnecessary conversations.

I absolutely agree with this. My vision of a good life isn’t one where I’m some sort of disembodied switchboard, just routing ideas and decisions around. However, I want to have a choice about the complexity I am spending time with. I want to use my brainpower to tackle the thorny problems that really inspire me, to play the role in the giant human ecosystem that I can play best while leaving others with their ideal labor.

Taking shortcuts is a way to skirt around problems, sure. You can also see it as a way to get to the problems you deserve faster.

This article Stop worshipping hard work — find smart shortcuts instead is featured on Big Think .

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This image taken by NASA’s Perseverance rover on Sept. 7, 2021, PDT (Sept. 8, EDT).

NASA/SP-20260005907 – Martian Dust Exposure Limits: Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs), toxicological risks, and health standards for Martian dust as discussed by the Mars dust working group (February 20 and 27, 2026)

Background

Human exploration of Mars will expose crews to a persistent, fine particulate environment whose physicochemical properties and health implications remain only partly understood. Because no samples of authentic Martian airborne dust have been returned to Earth, NASA must rely on lunar dust toxicology, Martian regolith simulants, and extensive rover/lander geochemical and mineralogical datasets to develop an initial, risk‑informed Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL). The Johnson Space Center (JSC) Lunar and Martian Dust Risk Custodian, the JSC Toxicology group, and the OCHMO Standards team worked together to draft a preliminary standard for incorporation into NASA-STD-3001 NASA Spaceflight Human-System Standard, Volume 2: Human Factors, Habitability, and Environmental Health.

The Martian Dust Limit Working Group was assembled to review this draft standard and associated evidence. Across two working sessions in February 2026, panel members reviewed mission architecture drivers, the current scientific understanding of Martian dust composition, and the toxicological evidence base supporting the establishment of a Mars dust PEL. Discussions emphasized the critical interplay between dust standards and Mars mission design elements including Extravehicular Activity (EVA) cadence, dust ingress characteristics, and the performance of habitat environmental control systems; these features highlight the need for a limit that is conservative, verifiable, and adaptable as the Mars architecture evolves. Panel members for the Working Group were David Damby, Claire Horwell, Brian Hynek, Shaunna Morrison, and Joyce Tsuji; NASA presenters were Katie Borremans, Elizabeth Rampe, and Torin McCoy; the OCHMO organizers/moderators were Douglas Ebert, David Francisco, and Kim Lowe. The Working Group meetings were also attended by members of Space Medicine and Operations group and JSC Toxicology.

The Martian Dust Limit Working Group Primary Goals

Evaluate NASA’s proposed derivation of this initial standard

The panel concluded that NASA’s approach to deriving a 30‑day continuous PEL of 0.1 mg/m³ is reasonable and appropriately conservative for early short‑stay missions. This value originates from the established lunar 30‑day PEL (0.4 mg/m³), reduced by a 3x database uncertainty factor to account for knowledge gaps in Martian dust toxicity, higher iron content, amorphous constituents, and differences between simulants and actual dust. Members supported this framework, noting that a continuous limit applied using measured time‑weighted averages is more practical than making assumptions tied to fixed dust clearance rates given the diversity of spacecraft designs. They also acknowledged that near‑term exposures will be peak‑driven (e.g., post‑EVA suit ingress) and therefore recommended that the standard explicitly address the need to manage short‑duration spikes.

Identify chemical constituents requiring further scrutiny

The panel affirmed that overall dust mass remains the primary near‑term engineering concern, but several chemical constituents warrant attention. Chromium 6 + , manganese, and perchlorate were all considered low‑risk in the context of inhaled Martian dust, provided the overall dust PEL is applied (see below). However, perchlorate was recommended for broader agency‑level exposure management across multiple intake routes (e.g., ingestion due to in situ crop growth). Iron was discussed in detail due to its high abundance in Martian regolith and its potential to generate Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), though current toxicology shows no clear link between iron‑driven ROS and pulmonary harm; still, knowledge gaps led the panel to prioritize iron for further study and potential Spacecraft Maximum Allowable Concentration (SMAC) development. Arsenic was judged unlikely to pose meaningful risk at present.

Weigh the merits of an overall dust limit versus separate SMACs

Chemical constituents embedded within Martian dust were evaluated with respect to whether independent SMACs are warranted. Based on rover observations indicating predominantly trivalent chromium, low airborne perchlorate, and manganese concentrations well below conservative SMAC thresholds at the proposed PEL, the group agreed that the overall dust limit is likely sufficiently protective for expected 30‑day missions. However, panel members advised that SMACs be maintained for select constituents such as perchlorate and manganese for mission‑planning crosschecks. From the requirement perspective, an overall Martian dust PEL approach was favored for practicality and clarity, with constituent-specific SMACs retained or developed only where they add tangible operational value.

Refine the standard’s technical language for operational use

The working group also refined the standard language to ensure clarity and consistency in implementation. Members recommended that the limit apply to a specified time‑weighted average measurement period but also making it explicit that the requirement is for protection during continuous exposure. They encouraged incorporation of peak‑exposure management within the rationale, and highlighted uncertainties related to iron content, nanophase iron, and oxidative potential so that future revisions can incorporate emerging scientific insight.

Martian Dust Contamination Limits

The new requirement established for NASA-STD-3001 is as follows:

[V2 6253] The system shall limit the concentrations of Martian dust particles less than 10 μm in size in the habitable atmosphere below a 24-hour time-weighted average of 0.1 mg/m3 during exposure scenarios lasting up to 30 days in duration.

Conclusions

Taken together, the working group’s deliberations reinforce that an initial Martian dust standard must balance conservatism with operational feasibility while accommodating architectural and scientific uncertainty. The proposed requirement provides a defensible, evidence‑informed foundation for design, verification, and risk communication. As additional Martian data and toxicological research become available, this standard should be periodically revisited to ensure continued protection of crew health during human exploration of Mars.

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Jul 21, 2026

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Curiosity (Rover)

Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate

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Human Spaceflight Mission Directorate

Human System Risks

Humans in Space

Johnson Space Center

Mars

Mars 2020

Mars Campaign Development Division

Mars Climate Orbiter

Mars Exploration Rovers (MER)

Office of the Chief Health and Medical Officer (OCHMO)

Perseverance (Rover)

Sojourner (Rover)

Spirit (Rover)

The Human Body in Space

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Before The Studio was winning Emmys and Ted Lasso had viewers believing, Apple TV's standout comedy was the underrated British sitcom Trying . The streamer's first attempt at a more humorous project has continued humming along in the background since debuting in 2020, following young couple Nikki ( Esther Smith ) and Jason ( Rafe Spall ) on their complicated journey to having children, first through conception and then the arduous process of adoption. Each season of the heartwarming hit has only been met with further acclaim as the pair enter new phases of their lives, from finally welcoming kids into their home to navigating their tumultuous teenage years. Now in Season 5, there are no signs things are slowing down , with the show boasting an overall Rotten Tomatoes score of 96% and Collider's Tania Hussain calling it "one of the best-written, best-acted, and most emotionally rewarding comedies on television" in her 9/10 review of the new episodes.