This article is part of our special report on global shopping. WARSAW — Every day outside of a shop at 61 Mokotowska Street, an intriguing dance of sorts happens: A smattering of men and women of all ages walk out onto the sidewalk and smell the top of their hands or the inside of their…
Ms. Stanton spent time with building managers, learning about the commercial real estate sector and reviewing data. “I came to realize that we have enough real estate already in big cities,” she said. “We don’t need to build more buildings; we need to use them better.” The company’s technology is also being used to improve…
AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Auckland’s Indigenous Maori name — Tamaki Makaurau — translates roughly to “Tamaki of a hundred lovers.” But falling for New Zealand’s largest city, which spills over dozens of dormant and extinct volcanoes, can be a process. Auckland is naturally beautiful, fringed with native forest and two coastlines of strikingly different beaches.…
This article is part of our special report on global shopping. HONG KONG — In a brightly lit cubicle tucked under the staircase of a tenement building in Hong Kong’s Jordan district, Cheung Shun-king guided a chisel over a pearly white mahjong tile to form a groove of concentric circles. “I have been doing this…
This article is part of our special report on global shopping. Nestled in the rugged Calchaquí Valleys of northwest Argentina, in the province of Salta, is a generations-old community of weavers producing some of the best examples of the ponchos and other woven goods that are emblematic of the country. In the pocket-size town of…
SOMETIMES A FRUIT is just a fruit. But since the beginning of recorded human thought, we have insisted on fruit as a sexual metaphor. “Marry me, / give me the fruit of your body!” the goddess Ishtar commands the hero in the Sumerian epic “Gilgamesh,” which was inscribed in cuneiform, the earliest known writing system,…
Discuss Holiday Plans Early Experts stress the importance of communication, establishing firm boundaries, and, above all else, presenting a united front. “Ideally, couples will navigate the holidays by sitting down together and exploring what matters most to each individual,” Ms. Earnshaw said. “Often, this will require each spouse to talk to their prospective families about…
Emojis have a special power to acquire meaning in real time, as some have theorized. “Unlike words, we know exactly when each individual emoji came into existence and are pre-warned of new ones,” reads a 2021 academic paper on the evolving meaning of emojis. Keith Broni, the editor in chief of Emojipedia.com, a reference site…
Those givers may have overestimated how much people wanted small animals. One 1910 police officer in Utah was given a raccoon as a “white elephant Christmas gift.” But by Dec. 29, The Ogden Standard reported, he was “trying to decide upon which particular friend to bestow the animal as a New Year’s gift.” Other organisms…
For years, Caroline Adams, known as Chuggie, had a guest list at Thanksgiving some 3,000 people strong. She found seats for them all at the Strongbow Inn, the roadside restaurant that her mother opened in 1940 on the family’s turkey farm in Valparaiso, Ind. The menu came from their flocks: hot turkey sandwiches and, later,…