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Voice messages provide the intimacy and sensory richness of a phone call without the burden of an immediate response A friend of mine met his wife on Twitter a few years ago. Because he was away travelling at the time, they didn’t go on a real-life date until two months into their courtship. Initially, his wife found his online persona a bit blunt. It wasn’t until they switched from text to voice messages their connection really flourished. My friend says he’s had similar feedback in the past – somehow his kind and curious nature is flattened into something harsher in text form. “So much more is communicated when you use your voice,” he says. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3AFFbAQ

A week before the Beijing Games start global partners are lying low amid a US-China diplomatic spat. from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/3ueCNzI

The league is down to its final four teams. Do Chiefs, Bengals, Rams or 49ers move on to Super Sunday stage?           from USATODAY - News Top Stories https://ift.tt/3g3xvPx

Privatisation mania in the 1990s led to a disastrous deal with Guy Hands – ministers are right to try to rectify the situation The government has sold assets at rotten prices many times over the decades, but the sale of Annington Homes in the dying days of John Major’s administration in 1996 was one of the very worst deals. Television’s Michael Portillo, the defence secretary at the time, was the man who approved the sale-and-leaseback of 57,400 Ministry of Defence homes to the Japanese bank Nomura for £1.7bn, a sum that a quarter of a century of house-price inflation has made look ridiculous. The worst part was that the MoD, in exchange for a 25-year discount on rent, took responsibility for maintenance and refurbishment, tasks that would normally fall to the landlord. When the National Audit Office reviewed the whole arrangement in 2018, it concluded that taxpayers were worse off by £2.2bn-£4.2bn during the first 21 years of a set-up intended to last for 200. Continue reading...

Xiomara Castro's arrival marks the end to the right-wing National Party's 12-year reign. from BBC News - World https://ift.tt/3G6NHtK

The polar vortex is a gigantic, circular area of cold air high up in the atmosphere that typically spins over the North Pole (as its name suggests).           from USATODAY - News Top Stories https://ift.tt/3s0n7O9

Planet likely to be spared from catastrophic end if 10km-wide Earthbound asteroid was spotted, analysis finds As a planet-killing asteroid hurtles towards Earth in the film Don’t Look Up , scientists Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio scramble to get the world to take the threat seriously. For many, the Netflix hit was an allegory of the world’s inaction on climate change , but now a pair of physicists have taken a more literal view of the question at the heart of the drama: if a 10km-wide asteroid is six months away from impact, is it possible to avert a planet-ending catastrophe? Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3IFsb0Y