Garden gnomes have returned to the Chelsea Flower Show, the great international temple of landscaping that has been held annually in London since 1913. This week, a collection of gnomes painted by a select group of celebrities, with the complicity of King Charles III, who plays a very active role in this prestigious floral festival, has been auctioned for charitable purposes. It had been almost a hundred years since gnomes were expelled from the competition. In 1927, the organization considered them incompatible with the distinction of the show. They were a tacky trinket that did not deserve to be part of the floral paradise associated with the British aristocracy. Footballer David Beckham, horticulturist Frances Tophill, and former BBC presenter Alan Tichmarsh have designed the garden with the monarch to reconcile with the little ceramic visitors.

In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, the second part of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the character Humpty Dumpty asks Alice how many days there are in a year. She replies 365. Then he asks how many birthdays a person has. And the protagonist says one. And Humpty Dumpty triumphantly concludes that this allows for 364 days a year to celebrate unbirthdays, non-birthdays. From a satirical and literary perspective, the proposal might seem attractive. But it is of absurd logic because the fun lies in celebrating the exception and not the norm. Years later, from Disney's version of Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter character sang A very merry unbirthday to you during the tea party. It was a way of telling us again that any occasion is good for a celebration without giving too much importance to the reason.

A young man gets off a train car of the Railways. He is not dressed up, but the intention to achieve a good appearance is noticeable. On his left arm, he carries a bouquet of roses, upside down. He holds it with theatrical nonchalance, as if the flowers were accidental. It is as if he were somewhat ashamed to walk around with that bounty of flowers. He is uncomfortable. It is inferred that he has to give them away, but until he delivers them, it seems he is also carrying an added dose of vulnerability that he tries to hide.

The Wall Street Journal, one of the main economic newspapers in the United States, has had a monthly column reserved for three years to talk about retirement. The section Retirement rookies (which could be translated as Retirement for beginners) is written by two people. It is signed by Stephen Kreider Yoder, one of the former editors of the newspaper, and his wife, Karen Kreider Yoder, both retired from professional activity and motivated to reflect on this new stage of life. The couple, who have not yet reached seventy years of age, live in San Francisco and are presumed to have a privileged and quiet retirement. They address everything from the most typical dilemmas such as the opportunity to travel, move to a quieter town or buy a motorhome, to some fears such as health, widowhood or staying in good shape. They delve into psychological and emotional aspects related to personal identity when you stop working. They also deal with economic issues, such as the anxiety of running short of savings, the need to reduce expenses or the consequences of inflation for retirees. However, from the first columns they wrote, a recurring concern of the Kreider Yoders about time management becomes evident and, above all, a certain demand to invest it wisely. In these three years, they have insisted on the complexity of finding a balance between doing a lot of activities and learning to disconnect, changing old routines for new ones, making lists of realistic plans without getting stressed or correctly distributing attention to the rest of the family. Time is a background headache that always appears.

In the magnificent novel Instructions for living without her, by Empar Moliner, the narrator explaining Claudia Pruna's story contrasts her husband's low energy with Pruna's productivity: “Perhaps this is the real difference between men and women. Women, past fifty, want to do a lot of things. They have energy, they laugh, they wet themselves laughing. Men lose it all and some never laugh again. It's like a transfer.”

An omnipresent element in Rosalía's concert is a large white canvas that serves as the backdrop for the stage, as if it were stretched over a wooden frame. It is the reverse of an immense cloth, as if you were seeing the back of an imposing painting. With a Palau Sant Jordi still with its lights on and the audience filling the stands in a hurry, the back of this canvas patiently awaits the start of the show until, when everything goes dark, it opens in half, as if we were entering the interior of the work of art. It is a way of telling us that what we are seeing is not just a musical performance, but also an artistic process that will unfold before us. It is much more than a concert, it is a total work of art, in motion, full of life, of references, and in constant evolution and transformation. Rosalía is the artist who completes her work during the two hours of the show.

During the launch of Artemis II in NASA's lunar mission, CNN interviewed William Shatner, the actor who played Captain Kirk in the series Star Trek. Shatner didn't just navigate the Universe in fiction. In 2021, at ninety years old, he traveled to space with Blue Origin. When asked about the experience of seeing Earth from so far away, he confessed that he felt immense sadness. In his memoirs, he explained that he couldn't stop crying: “My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration and, instead, it was a funeral. It was one of the most intense sensations I have ever experienced. The contrast between the ruthless coldness of space and the protective warmth of Earth, down there, filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day we learn of new destructions of Earth caused by ourselves: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna... things that have taken five billion years to evolve and which, suddenly, we will never see again due to human interference. It filled me with dread”.

The Easter break has multiplied photographs on social networks. The extra days of rest and the leisure activities that result from them cause an avalanche of postcards showcasing well-being to attest to their transformative power. Since a smile is a way to demonstrate this, experts have appeared on social networks offering advice on managing facial expressions to ensure their success. One should avoid the half-hearted smile of obligation or the strained grimace in order to be convincing or achieve a certain photogenicity. Shouting "Lluís!" while prolonging the "i", switching to English to say "cheese", or syllabifying "pa-ta-ta" is no longer in vogue.Now, the new trend is to explain the Duchenne smile theory almost as an infallible solution for communicating a true feeling of happiness. The Duchenne smile is the result of the activation of two facial muscles that supposedly cause a sincere and heartfelt laugh. The name comes from the neurologist who investigated this correlation between facial expressions and the association with the emotions that result from them. In the 19th century, Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne was obsessed with understanding the mechanisms of the face for expressing emotions. He applied electrical shocks to the facial muscles of his patients to stimulate them in a very specific way, to see what grimaces appeared and what emotions they seemed to correspond to. The result was recorded in a terribly disturbing book: Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine

In 2001, Martin Seligman, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, began to notice the emotional burden of decades of research into depression and mental illness. He felt that the professional approach based on trying to cure trauma was imbuing him with a certain sadness. This led him to reflect on psychological therapies, often so focused on repairing harm that they forget to inject us with a good dose of optimism that makes us face life with more enthusiasm and joy. Seligman had just been elected president of the American Psychological Association and paved the way in a new direction: the so-called positive psychology. He wanted to study, scientifically, what the mechanisms are that make us feel that life is worth living. He did not intend to build any abstract theory but to establish effective behaviors that could be tested and measured. In 2005, Seligman and his research team recruited four hundred and eleven volunteers and divided them into five groups. One group would make a list of positive memories, another would identify their personal strengths. A third group would introduce small specified changes in their daily lives and a fourth would limit themselves to describing childhood memories. The fifth group would undertake a more elaborate task: they would write a letter of gratitude to someone important in their life, someone to whom they had not properly thanked. Afterwards, they would call them by phone, arrange to meet without explaining the reason, and once they had the person in front of them, they would read the letter aloud. It could not be a card with a meager “thanks for everything” to get it over with. The letter had to be about three hundred words long and specify the reasons for the gratitude, the details of that event, and how that person's gesture had changed their life. They named this exercise the gratitude visit.

In the waiting room of a medical center, I meet a man, around sixty years old, with his arm in a sling. The poor cell phone reception forces us to put our phones away, and we discuss the slow patient care. We start a conversation about our respective ailments, and he tells me that he dislocated his shoulder while unloading a huge table from a truck. He works as a delivery driver for a logistics company. He's anxious because he's been off work for a month and isn't getting any better. He's lost strength in his arm and can't lift anything heavy. He can't drive either because of the pain. He's afraid of losing his job and, at his age, thinks it would be very difficult to find another one. He transports furniture that we buy online: tables, beds, wardrobes, chests of drawers, sofas, and all kinds of large furniture. He rattles off all the brands they sell because he's convinced I know them. And he's right. They're very popular home decor and furniture websites. He says I can't even imagine the sheer number of deliveries that go wrong each workday. Furniture that has traveled such a long way, from countries all over Europe, changing logistics centers and trucks multiple times, that the packaging deteriorates and the merchandise is damaged. Often, they unload very heavy packages, and once they leave it with the customer and the customer checks the condition of the furniture, they ask them to take it back. In fact, a large part of the trips are for returns. They have to go back and pick up what they delivered a few days earlier, either themselves or with their colleagues. He says there are times when he's been to the same house up to three times because of the unsuccessful attempts to get the furniture delivered properly. He also explains how often there aren't enough workers to carry the weight of the furniture. The day he was injured unloading the table, the transport document specified "minimum four workers." To put it on the truck at the warehouse, it took four men with the help of a crane. To deliver it to the customer's home, it took only two, which is the usual number. Every delivery is an adventure, and many end in failure. There are sofas or wardrobes that won't fit through the stairwell or in the elevator. After all the effort, they have to abandon their epic quest. Often, the failure is accompanied by boos and wails from dissatisfied customers. The man admits he doesn't know much about business, but he doesn't understand how these furniture companies survive given the losses he sees, both from damaged goods and failed deliveries. "It's just merchandise being thrown away," he tells me, "who knows where it'll end up." A huge amount of furniture, after being tossed around the city, will never reach the buyer's home. He's gotten used to it, but assures me that I'm not responsible for the number of pieces that are chipped, broken, or have manufacturing and assembly defects. It happens so often each day that when everything goes well, it feels like a miracle, because almost every delivery has a problem. He takes out his phone, opens the photo app, and starts scrolling through the images so I can see the pile of pictures he's accumulated on his phone to document the damage. He's not just doing it to submit the report, but to protect himself from any liability.

Last week, actor Ryan Gosling, famous for his role as Ken in Barbie, was a guest at The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to promote his new film. The interview paused when Gosling mentioned that it was his wife's birthday that day and that she was there at the television studios. The host and the actor wanted to surprise actress Eva Mendes, who was discreetly waiting for her husband in the guest room. An assistant escorted her to the set, and a band was brought out to play for her. Happy birthday With all the fanfare. Eva Mendes, who hasn't participated in film projects since marrying Gosling, was very grateful and affectionate with her partner. The next day, the American media rushed to retrieve the image and announced in headlines something they found unusual: it had been more than ten years since the couple had appeared together in public, not even at red carpet events. Of course, preserving the privacy of the family and their two daughters must be a major reason for this decision. It's a way of trying to protect the marriage and the children as much as possible from the pitfalls of fame. But Hollywood, no matter how many feminist Barbies it creates, hasn't changed that much. The film industry really likes to manage the public's desires. After all, it's an industry that thrives on illusions and the ability to fascinate. Great seducers have always had to appear available to the public, even if only symbolically. It's not that their real lives have to be hidden, but they prefer not to project their own personalities onto the greats. sex symbols The emotional and affective responsibilities of a father committed to domestic routines.

The American professional women's hockey league, the PWHL, founded in January 2024, has quickly become one of the most significant phenomena in women's sports. The first game, broadcast simultaneously on all three Canadian national networks, drew nearly three million viewers. Since then, audiences and arena attendance have steadily increased. In the second season, average attendance doubled compared to the inaugural season, and the league has consistently broken attendance records. Merchandise sales have also been remarkable. Furthermore, the gold and silver medals at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics were won by the United States and Canada, respectively. Most of their players compete in the PWHL, further enhancing the league's prestige.

Gisèle Pelicot, the woman whom her husband drugged for many years in order to rape her and offer her to other rapists while recording the acts, has just published the book A hymn in life (Now available in books translated by Imma Falcó). The title perhaps forces a vital optimism that's hard to embrace while reading, although the author is determined to make her resilience a plea for a better society and a personal desire to be happy despite everything.

Heathrow Airport users have long complained about the airport's congestion problems. Beyond the debate about whether or not a third runway is needed, many criticisms focus on the large number of passengers who wander haphazardly through the terminals, hindering smooth passenger flow. Heathrow serves a large number of passengers in a smaller area than other major airports. hubs Europeans. A week ago, when asked about this issue, the airport's general manager, Thomas Woldbye, placed the blame squarely on the users. In his opinion, it's not a problem of space, but rather that people are walking where they shouldn't. The newspaper The Guardian He quoted his remarks: "The problem is that all the British keep to the left, and Europeans usually keep to the right. And they do it in both directions. So we end up bumping into each other, and I say that from personal experience." Woldbye suggested that if it weren't for that, everything would be easier: "We just need to make sure that everyone going in the same direction keeps to the left and everyone going in the opposite direction keeps to the right. I know it's an oversimplification, but it's the approach we need right now."

First came the images of restaurant dishes on the mobile screen: coffees with drawings made with very dense milk foam, appetizing hamburgers and brunches Photographic images that functioned as gastronomic postcards seemed to be evolving into a lifestyle. Food entered social media as a visual spectacle and as a promotional strategy for restaurants. Then came simple recipes designed to be replicated on a phone, a home cooking experience accelerated by the rhythm of a short, effective video. The pandemic contributed to their popularization, and curiosity became almost a necessity. The trend evolved into much more complex recipes that no one intended to ever cook but that invited viewers to watch the process as if observing a magical ritual: fermenting doughs, unusual mixtures, slow cooking, and sophisticated marinades. The viewer was captivated, not because they thought about trying it in their own kitchen, but to see what that meticulous preparation would become. Saturated with culinary offerings, the focus quickly shifted from the plate to the act of eating: people in front of the camera amplified the sound of each bite to create a sensory stimulus for the viewer. Extreme close-ups of the bite, the sauces dripping, the crunch of certain ingredients, the delicate crackling of the bread's fluffiness, the sound of the spoon cutting across the plate. A food fetish where the interest no longer lay in the kitchen or the place, but in the enjoyment of texture and sound. Gradually, eating has ceased to be a pleasurable activity and has become a pretext for companionship: the emergence of videos Eat with me, the Come with me. There's no recipe here, and no exceptional dish is required. The spectacle doesn't need to be enticing either. It's simply someone sitting at a table with a camera in front of them, as if they were eating with you. They place a plate on the table or open a Tupperware container, like any of those people take to work. It might be some rather mediocre scrambled eggs accompanied by sad boiled rice. It doesn't need to look appetizing. The menu might not even be part of their own culinary culture. All the person is doing is inviting you to share that moment. They offer company to someone who has to eat alone. They make their work break more pleasant, whether to stave off hunger or simply to mask a domestic silence that's too uncomfortable to bear. Some people put these videos on in the background while they eat at their work computer, like someone turning on the radio. But it's just the creation of an illusion. In reality, there's no interaction. There are videos where the diner eats slowly and silently, setting a healthy eating pace for others to follow. Others explain circumstances related to the act of eating, as if they were having a conversation. They talk about the importance of chewing a certain number of times or being mindful of each spoonful. It's a light presence that demands no effort from the viewer. Simply keep chewing and become familiar with a stranger pretending to address a hypothetical someone on the other side of the screen.

One of the most entertaining and talked-about sections of New York Times This is the advice column of philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah. In his weekly column, The EthicistThe New York University professor answers readers' questions about life's most delicate situations and moral dilemmas: "After 35 years, do I still have to cook for my husband?", "An old friend of mine is dying. Serious problems, should she get a vasectomy?", "My children are grown now. Can I stop hiding what I think of their father?", "Should I tell my family that our beloved origin story is false?"

Oh, noble turn signal! Rhythmic companion on so many journeys! Practitioner of automotive courtesy! Always prudent! Always bright! Always blinking with admirable modesty! Today we mourn you! You have been turned into a relic of the past. You, little mechanical arm that once illuminated our intentions on the road, that protected us, that anticipated our movements, have been relegated to darkness and apathy. A mass of drivers who rely on the gift of road telepathy, who cross the navel of the world, have condemned you to ostracism. Why on earth should they signal their maneuvers, if the rest of the drivers can just try to guess them?

In October 2019, a session of the Folketing, the Danish parliament, went viral. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who had been in office for four months, was seized by a fit of laughter that spread to the rest of the chamber. During the opening of the parliamentary debate, Frederiksen had to announce a government expenditure: they had purchased four elephants and a camel from a circus to prevent the animals from being exploited. The five animals were retired together because they had lived together for many years, and there was a risk that the sadness of separation would affect their health. When speaking about the four elephants and their inseparable camel, Frederiksen became so carried away that she couldn't stop. When someone has high political aspirations, they imagine that they will have to participate in major international debates, make decisions in geopolitical conflicts, negotiate balances within the European Union, and manage decisions that affect the economy, security, and future of the country. Talking about the friendship between elephants and camels and the logistics of ensuring them a decent retirement broke the usual mold of parliamentary speeches. Frederiksen was perfectly aware that she was announcing a government decision, but it seemed like a joke. She herself realized the disproportion between the state apparatus and the prosaic nature of the matter. They weren't laughing at the poor animals, but at the communicative situation. The formality typical of institutional speeches clashed with the domestic vicissitudes of circus animals. The other members of parliament, sensitive to the exceptional nature of these circumstances, burst into laughter when they saw the prime minister losing control of the situation.

To mark National Bird Day in the United States, the Smithsonian Institution released a striking photograph: a woman standing upright in the middle of a vast warehouse, surrounded by hundreds of open crates filled with dead birds. There must be tens of thousands, perfectly classified by species and color. A fascinating, yet somewhat macabre scene. What are all those embalmed creatures doing there, stored as if sleeping side by side? It's not some museum eccentricity. It's the result of the immense work of Roxie Laybourne, the woman in the photograph. A scientist who dedicated her career to meticulous and almost invisible, yet crucial, work. A career that marked a turning point in ornithological research and has had a direct impact on air safety worldwide.

Several business-focused websites have reported on a supposedly innovative strategy for hiring workers. They've dubbed it the coffee test And it's put into practice during the preliminary interview process. It consists of offering the candidate a coffee—or a similar beverage—and, at the end of the conversation, observing what they do with the cup. If they forget and leave it dirty on the table, it's assumed they're not a good fit because it reveals a lack of willingness to work. It denotes a disregard for the work environment. However, if they offer to wash the cup, it demonstrates initiative and a good fit with the company culture. As is often the case, the method's scope has been exaggerated because the idea is that it simplifies the complex. It's presented as a very simple trick that reveals a supposed human understanding of a candidate. It detects what can't be verified in a resume. It's obvious that the idea is cynical and absurd, but it's also true that in the world of business and human resources, there are all kinds of individuals who have become fond of turning irrelevance into genius, especially if it allows them to speed up their work. These are ideas that replace objective criteria, which are not guaranteed to be accurate, with vague moral criteria. It's the world of shaman-like managers, who camouflage incompetence and error with the fallacy of intuition and a sixth sense. The clairvoyant boss who ends up knowing more about the candidate than the candidate themselves.