James' World 2

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He had only $106 left to his name. 

His acting career was going nowhere. He couldn’t afford the rent on his cheap Hollywood apartment. He even tried to sell his dog because he didn’t have enough money to buy dog food. 

To take his mind off things, he decided to watch the world heavyweight title fight. Reigning champion Muhammad Ali was facing off against Chuck Wepner, a relatively unknown club fighter. The fight was supposed to be an easy win for Ali. But defying all odds, Wepner fought for 15 rounds before being knocked out. 

Against one of the greatest boxers of all time, this supposed nobody held his own. Inspired by this triumph of the human spirit, the actor decided to write a screenplay. Since he couldn’t get acting jobs in other people’s movies, he would create a lead character for himself to play. He grabbed a Bic pen, lined sheets of paper, and started writing. 

He finished the script in just three and a half days. 

One day, on his way out the door from another failed audition, he turned around and, on a whim, mentioned his script to the producers in the room. Intrigued by the premise, the producers read the script, loved it, and offered him $25,000 to purchase the rights. But they had a condition: They wanted a big-name actor with a big box-office draw to play the lead. 

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Sylvester Stallone and his dog, Butkus, in a still from the 1976 film Rocky [Photo: United Artists/Courtesy of Getty Images]

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Perhaps it was the fact that my daughter was in her final year of high school while I was reading “The Tale of Genji,” a 1,300-page tome written more than 1,000 years ago by a lady-in-waiting at the court of a Japanese emperor. But when I reached a pivotal scene, a few lines of poetry nearly undid me.

Hikaru Genji, the titular hero, had asked one of his many wives to give up their daughter to be raised at court by another woman. As the little girl’s mother, Lady Akashi, watched the toddler climb into a carriage waiting to spirit her away, she recited a classical waka poem:

Its future lies in the far off distance
This pine seedling being taken from me
When will I see it spread its splendid shade

“Shedding tears,” I read, “she could say no more.”

In those lines, I foresaw my own grief. Soon I would be saying goodbye to a daughter, too, when we would leave her at a university thousands of miles away.

I had picked up “Genji Monogatari,” as it is known in Japanese, out of professional interest. As the Tokyo bureau chief for The New York Times, it felt like a gap in my knowledge never to have read the work by Murasaki Shikibu that is often described as the world’s first novel and a touchstone of Japanese literary history.

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References to Genji in Japanese art are one measure of its resonance over time. Here, a detail of “Murasaki Shikibu Gazing at the Moon,” a scroll by Mitsuoki Tosa held by Ishiyamadera Temple.

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If you’re wondering what an “ultra-processed” food is, you’re not alone. It’s a complicated topic.

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Yet soy foods are also burdened by an unsavory reputation. Ms. Bragagnini’s clients, for instance, routinely ask if soy foods are linked with cancer, a concern stemming from their relatively high levels of isoflavones, plant-based compounds that are structurally similar to the hormone estrogen.

The presence of isoflavones has also led to the worry that soy might negatively affect fertility or give men more feminine characteristics.

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Credit…Joyce Lee for The New York Times

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Strong glutes aren’t just for show. Vital for optimal movement and athletic performance, the gluteus maximus is the largest, most powerful muscle in the human body. Together, the gluteal muscles help to stabilize the upper body and pelvis and assist in hip flexion and locomotion movements like walking, swimming, jumping, and my sport of choice, running.

For a few years, I was just a runner. I logged 35–40 miles each week and regularly participated in half-marathons. Although I’d previously lifted weights regularly for over a decade, I decided to drop my strength workouts altogether in favor of yoga a couple of times a week because being sore after weightlifting hurt my pace. All I cared about was running. But that was a mistake.

The lack of resistance training rendered my gluteal muscles almost nonexistent; the muscles were technically there, but not strong enough to support my heavy mileage. I developed chronic lower-back issues. Twice-a-week chiropractor visits and massage sessions kept me going, but it wasn’t sustainable. I was over being in pain.

When I finally saw a physical therapist, he suggested a strength-training routine with an emphasis on the glutes. So I hired a personal trainer. As part of a full-body weight training routine, my trainer introduced me to a new move: the hip thrust. Sitting on the ground with my back against a flat bench, I put a light barbell over my hips. Then, with my chin tucked and my feet flat on the floor (and in line with my knees), I squeezed my glutes, raising my hips to full extension. It wasn’t easy. At first, I could only do 40 pounds.

Five years later though, my personal record is 300 pounds. The best part? Those glute gains have eradicated my back pain.

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Illustration/animation by Rob Donnelly.

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A lot of people find it difficult to embrace the idea of regular exercise, even though they know it’s good for their physical and mental health. Yet committing to a workout routine doesn’t necessarily entail going to the gym or running around your neighborhood.

Gardening is a great example of a popular hobby that’s accessible and can also be used as a workout.

Working in your garden or yard is a source of moderate to vigorous physical activity in younger adults while providing low to moderate physical activity in older adults, research has shown. The pastime is also a muscle-strengthening activity, according to the US Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, and one of the physical activities with the lowest injury rates.

More good news: Puttering in your garden just two hours a week could help boost your mood, while the communal gardening that’s proliferating in communities and schools provides social benefits that can alleviate stress and help combat isolation and even dementia, according to studies.

With all these benefits, gardening for fitness will be a trend this year, predicts Rishi Mandal, San Francisco-based co-founder, and CEO of the fitness coaching app Future. “Our clients at Future have already been asking their coaches to add gardening and landscaping activities into their routines,” Mandal said, “because it’s easy to access, fits into their lifestyle, and offers meditative benefits.”

This demand fits with the overall interest he’s seeing among clients for less intensive fitness routines that are accessible and mesh with an on-the-go lifestyle.

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Gardening is a popular outdoor activity that can help build muscle strength and burn calories, according to the US Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. Joshua Resnick/Adobe Stock

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In-app purchases are inescapable. An app might be free to download, but more likely than not, a pop-up will immediately inform you the best features are locked behind a monthly fee or an annual subscription. Before you go ahead and subscribe to (or make a digital purchase in) the app, though, it’s worth your time to try to pay in a browser instead. The extra effort might save you some money.

In-app purchases can be more expensive

When you buy something from within an app on your iPhone or Android device, the developer isn’t getting the full amount of that purchase. Both Google and Apple take a hefty percentage of that payment for their own, as part of the agreement they have with developers for hosting apps on their digital marketplaces in the first place.

Apple charges developers 30% for any digital goods and services they sell inside iOS apps (or 15% if the developer earns less than $1 million, and qualifies for the small business program). That means if an app charges $10 per month for a subscription, Apple is actually getting $3 of that fee. If you buy a game for $5, Apple nets $1.50. If a user sticks with a subscription for more than a year, however, Apple drops its fee to 15%.

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Photo: platinumArt (Shutterstock)

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At a location he keeps secret, John Honovich was on his laptop, methodically scouring every link on a website for a conference half a world away. Hikvision, the world’s largest security camera manufacturer, was hosting the event—the 2018 AI Cloud World Summit—in its hometown of Hangzhou, a city of about 10 million people not far from Shanghai. Honovich, the founder of a small trade publication that covered video surveillance technology, wanted to find out what the latest Hikvision gear could do.

He zeroed in on one section of the conference agenda titled “Eco-Friendly, Peaceful, Relaxed” and found a description of an AI-powered system installed around Mount Tai, a historically sacred mountain in Shandong. A video showed Hikvision cameras pointed at tourists climbing the thousands of stone steps leading to the famous peak. Piano music played as a narrator explained, in Mandarin with English subtitles, that the cameras were there “to identify all visitors to ensure the safety of all.” The video cut to a shot of a computer screen, and Honovich hit pause. He saw a zoomed-in view of one visitor’s face. Below it was data that the camera’s AI had inferred. Honovich downloaded the video and took screenshots of the computer screen, for safekeeping. 

Later, with the help of a translator, he scrutinized every bit of text on that screen. One set of characters, the translator explained, suggested each visitor was automatically sorted into categories: age, sex, wearing glasses, and smiling. When Honovich pointed at the fifth category and asked, “What’s this?” the translator replied, “minority.” Honovich pressed: “Are you sure?” The translator confirmed there was no other way to read it.

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Photograph: Makoto Oono

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Irene Suosalo

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