It’s easy to shrug off a bit of numbness in your hand or losing your footing here and there. Unfortunately, as actor Christina Applegate learned in 2021, those usually not-so-worrisome symptoms can sometimes be a sign of something more serious. Applegate was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) during filming of the third—and what was already to be the final season—of the Netflix show Dead to Me.
Though MS was first defined by a neurologist in 1868, the medical community still doesn’t know what causes it. The disease impacts the central nervous system—the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. Think of it as the wiring that runs through bodies and drives movement, thought, mood and, basically, everything a person thinks or does throughout their day. Those hits on the nervous system can lead to symptoms both short-term and long-lasting. Each attack on the nervous system leaves behind lesions that, together, tell the story of MS in a person’s body. One isolated symptom doesn’t tell the story of MS. It takes multiple lesions to lead to a diagnosis.
Read the full story on Fortune Well.
What we can learn from creative city initiatives, from Sydney to Paris.
What makes a city great? Whether you’re living in Durban, South Africa, or Medellín, Colombia, perhaps no two people living in one place will have the same answer. But ask residents across different cultures and regions about challenges facing their own cities, and common issues will emerge, like the need for more affordable housing, better public transportation and access to resources and services.
Get-togethers before the COVID years had their challenges, but they were more of the I wonder if that person who hogs the conversation is going to be there this year variety. Since COVID-19 entered our lives, party hosts also have to consider how careful invitees are about keeping COVID at bay.
When you run a seasonal tourism business, there’s no making up the revenue later.
Colleen Stephens, president of Stan Stephens Glacier & Wildlife Cruises in Valdez, Alaska, grew up with that knowledge.
As the coronavirus epidemic started to spread this past winter, Stephens watched carefully to see how it might end up impacting Alaska’s short tourism season. The company—which has three other full-time employees and a team of seasonal employees, all from the town of Valdez (population 4,000)—usually sends day cruises out between mid-May and mid-September. That’s just four months to take in a year’s worth of revenue with the company’s two 149-passenger vessels. Approximately 75% of the day-cruise passengers come from outside Alaska.
Fortune spoke with Stephens for a new series, The Coronavirus Economy, to find out how she’s navigating the pandemic for her business and crew.
Read the Q&A on Fortune.com.
The first of four pieces that will take readers through a year of the farmer training program at Calypso Farm & Ecology Center. The Ester, AK-based program "brings together traditional in-the-field education with an extensive curriculum ranging from farm business plans to animal husbandry, blacksmithing, and seed saving. 'The main thing I left there with was this confidence and inspiration and drive to go out and start farming on my own. And I did,' says Stephanie Stallman, a Minnesota resident who went through the program's launch year."
The cookies—neatly frosted half black, half white—came in a brushed metal tin stamped with the Dean & Deluca logo. They were thick, dollar-coin-sized versions of the normally super-sized, cakelike black and white cookies that, as a New York City-area kid, had long been my go-to comfort food. Rugelach and macaroons rated high too, but I’m sure Jewish kids from the Los Angeles area remember them fondly as well. Montrealers too. And all of America owns chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies. Black and whites belong to NYC, and I was in need of of as much comfort as I could get.
After opening the tin that came with the day’s mail, I cried. I was weeks into a new role: breast cancer patient, 43 years old and just 11 months into my life in Alaska—which I’d finally moved to after falling in love with it a decade earlier on an expiring frequent flyer miles-motivated trip. My new home city, Anchorage, is 4431 driving miles away from NYC’s delis, bagel bakeries, and bodegas. This was the cookie version of my friend coming over to sit with me, to just listen.
Larry LeSueur is used to former peers from the software world asking him, "What the heck are you doing?" It's a reasonable question, considering the decidedly different turn he and his former Microsoft colleague Jose Lugo took in 2010 when they founded Redmond, Wash.-based WISErg, anxious to solve the growing problem of food waste in America.
That's right—the duo went from high-tech to food scraps, hoping to address the fact that 40 percent of food in the U.S.—about $165 billion worth per year—goes uneaten, with most ending up in landfills, according to a 2012 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Read the rest of the piece about the wizards of food waste.
Amp up your iPhone with apps that make easy work out of making and tracking your food choices.
Move over red wine and chocolate--your favorite movie treat is also rich in polyphenol antioxidants.
I researched and wrote 10 of the items that went into a special section of ideas and products to help readers live (work and play) easy this summer.