Moped taxi drivers want to ditch EVs and get their motorcycles back

Ita Puspita has been renting an EV from Grab to work as a bike-taxi rider in South Jakarta since September 2022. Of late, however, she struggles to get enough bookings through the ride-hailing app — and even when she does, they invariably end up in cancellations. Puspita told Rest of World she suspects the cancellations have increased because passengers don’t want to sit on the backseat of her EV bike, as they find it narrow and uncomfortable.When she does get a booking, she needs to constantly keep one eye on the battery at all times and be aware of nearby battery-swapping stations wherever she goes. “We can’t just go wherever we want to go. We need to be aware of how far our location is from the battery swap station,” Puspita said. “This is painstaking work for me. I really want to have a standard motorcycle, if I could.” Grab didn’t respond to Rest of World’s request for comments about Puspita’s concerns.

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Digital Advertising Is Propping Up the Marketplace Economy, and That's a Problem

Two-sided marketplaces are experiencing their first real dip since the pandemic.

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Banish Winter Sadness With These 4 Small Changes to Your Space

Author Katherine May explains how small changes to your space can have big impacts on your mood.

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4 Top Leadership Takeaways From (Almost) a Year of Modern CEO

The newsletter's editor looks back on a year of lessons in leadership, growth, innovation, and other issues and shares a few takeaways

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Don't Let Mediocrity Sabotage Your Team

Two steps effective leaders take to prevent 'average' from being normalized.

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My Employee Identifies Proudly as a Grump

Her self-professed work style is alienating co-workers.

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4 writing lessons from 'Sly,' Netflix's new documentary on Sylvester Stallone.

Four lessons to sharpen your writing and presentation skills.

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According to Neuroscience, the Best Leaders Are the Most Vulnerable

Why leading with vulnerability is an effective practice in creating trust.

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Blockbuster's Ending Wasn't a Horror Show, Says the CEO Who Tried to Save It

James Keyes blames the 2008 financial crisis for bringing Blockbuster to its knees.

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Research: The Benefits of a Pet-Friendly Workplace

As leaders consider what their organization should look like in our hybrid world, one area they may not be considering is the benefit that pets can have in the office. But a new research study indicates that there’s a lot of upside for developing a pet-friendly workplace, including increased employee well-being and collaboration, as well as playing a key role in recruitment and retention. In this article, the authors outline these benefits, explain the risks, and offer suggestions for how to develop your own organizational policy.

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Retaining the Best of Your Culture Amid Organizational Change

While leaders are often focused on how to transform their organizations — and, specifically, their cultures — an equally difficult challenge is keeping a culture steady. As companies go through big changes, they need to retain the best elements of their shared assumptions, values, and common behaviors. Based on the author’s work as an organizational and social psychologist and 20 years of advising firms and leaders on culture, soft skills, and performance, she offers four tactics to keep the culture you want: Clarify what you want to keep (and act on it); listen to your people’s concerns; know when you’re being nostalgic; and marshal data.

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Should I Continue to Climb the Corporate Ladder?

She’s a high-achiever who has defined herself through her achievements and promotions. But she’s hit some bumps in her career and she’s feeling less engaged in her work. Now she’s questioning the leadership track she’s on. Host Muriel Wilkins coaches her through defining what success looks like for her moving forward.

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4 Strategies to Cultivate an Authentic Corporate Purpose

In today’s corporate sphere, a growing disparity exists between companies’ declared values and their actions, leading to stakeholder skepticism. This divide prompts discussions about the feasibility of genuine societal contributions within capitalist frameworks. Companies can tread three paths: transactional (profit-focused), toxic (misaligned actions under a guise of societal benefit), or transcendent (true alignment of values and operations). This article introduces four pivotal strategies to help businesses achieve a transcendent purpose, ensuring a cohesive blend of profitability and genuine societal impact.

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So Many Feelings. Too Many?

Holding in anxiety, anger, or despair for the sake of appearing professional can feel impossible. When the emotions are just too much—your boss’s dismissive tone infuriates you, a direct report unloads, you can’t hold back tears in a meeting, a tragedy happens and you’re leading an all-staff tomorrow morning—what do you do?

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Surround Yourself with Colleagues Who Boost Your Performance

When it comes to building a network, new research shows that there is no one-size-fits-all strategy; different kinds of people benefit from different kinds of networks. The key challenge, then, is to figure out the right kind of network for you. In this article, the authors share the findings of their research, which shows that the key to building a performance-boosting network is to include people who support you in areas where your cognitive style is not naturally suited. Most people do just the opposite: they build networks that reinforce their existing strengths, rather than compensating for their weaknesses. Based on these insights, the authors share a three-step guide to boosting the power of your own network.

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The mysterious Viking runes found in a landlocked US state

"[Farley] spent the majority of her adult life researching the stone," said Amanda Garcia, Heavener Runestone Park manager. "She travelled all around the US, went to Egypt and went to different places looking at different markings."Faith Rogers, an environmental-science intern and volunteer at the Heavener Runestone Park, led me down a cobblestone path toward one of the 55-acre woodland's biggest attractions – which is also one of the US' biggest historical mysteries. We were deep in the rolling, scrub-forest foothills of the Ouachita Mountains in far eastern Oklahoma, and we were on our way to view a slab of ancient sandstone that still has experts scratching their heads and debating about the eight symbols engraved on its face.

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The true story behind the US' first federal monuments

"Are you sitting down? I have news for you." Gwen Marable's cousin from the US state of Ohio called her at home in Maryland about 27 years ago. "We are descended from the sister of Benjamin Banneker, Jemima."The Banneker family, which numbers over 5,000 known descendants today, only learned about this astonishing connection to their ground-breaking but little-known ancestor through the wonders of DNA testing. As such, no personal stories about him, no artifacts, were handed down through the generations.

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Duna de Bolonia: The Spanish sand dune hiding Roman ruins

Near the southern tip of Spain's Cádiz province, where Europe lunges into the Strait of Gibraltar as if reaching out for the North African coast, the Duna de Bolonia is one of the continent's largest sand dunes. Rising more than 30m high and sprawling 200m wide, the white mound spills into the azure sea and appears as if someone has dumped a massive pile of sugar atop the surrounding Estrecho Nature Park's protected green forest.Like all sand dunes, Bolonia is a constantly moving ecosystem that shifts with the winds. But as climate change has intensified the hurricane-force gusts coming from the east, the dune has increasingly migrated inland towards the ecologically important cork and pine forests and scrubland – revealing remnants of the many past cilivilisations who have passed through here in the process.

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Is Santa Claus buried in Ireland?

Amid green hilly pastures dotted with grazing sheep and a cemetery with graves dating back to the 13th Century, the ruins of St Nicholas Church tower over the family home of Maeve and Joe O'Connell. Among those resting eternally here are early inhabitants of the estate, parishioners of the church and – according to local legend – St Nicholas of Myra. Yes, the St Nick who inspired Santa Claus.Today, the O'Connells are the owners and sole (living) human inhabitants of Jerpoint Park, a 120-acre deserted 12th-Century medieval town located 20km south of the town of Kilkenny, Ireland. Located along the crossing point of the River Nore and Little Arrigle River, the settlement (formerly called Newtown Jerpoint) is thought to have been founded by the Normans, who arrived in Ireland around 1160 CE. According to a conservation plan compiled by Ireland's Heritage Council, the town flourished into the 15th Century, with archaeological evidence revealing homes, a marketplace, a tower, a bridge, streets, a mill, a water management system and nearby Jerpoint Abbey, which still stands today. But by the 17th Century, the town's occupants were gone, likely from a combination of violent attacks and a plague.

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A secret site for the Knights Templar?

In a hole in the ground beneath the Hertfordshire market town of Royston, dimly illuminated by flickering light, I was looking at a gallery of crudely carved figures, blank-faced and bearing instruments of torture. Cave manager Nicky Paton pointed them out to me one by one. "There's Saint Catherine, with her breaking wheel. She was only 18 when she was martyred," Paton said, cheerfully. "And there's Saint Lawrence. He was burnt to death on a griddle."Amid the grisly Christian scenes were Pagan images: a large carving of a horse, and a fertility symbol known as a sheela na gig, depicting a woman with exaggerated sexual organs. Another portrayed a person holding a skull in their right hand and a candle in their left, theorised to represent an initiation ceremony – a tantalising clue as to the cave's possible purpose. Adding to the carvings' creepiness was their rudimentary, almost childlike, execution.

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Taupo: The super volcano under New Zealand's largest lake

Located in the centre of New Zealand's North Island, the town of Taupo sits sublimely in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Tongariro National Park. Fittingly, this 40,000-person lakeside town has recently become one of New Zealand's most popular tourist destinations, as hikers, trout fishers, water sports enthusiasts and adrenaline junkies have started descending upon it.The namesake of this tidy town is the Singapore-sized lake that kisses its western border. Stretching 623sq km wide and 160m deep with several magma chambers submerged at its base, Lake Taupo isn't only New Zealand's largest lake; it's also an incredibly active geothermal hotspot. Every summer, tourists flock to bathe in its bubbling hot springs and sail through its emerald-green waters. Yet, the lake is the crater of a giant super volcano, and within its depths lies the unsettling history of this picturesque marvel.

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Message sticks: Australia's ancient unwritten language

The continent of Australia is home to more than 250 spoken Indigenous languages and 800 dialects. Yet, one of its linguistic cornerstones wasn't spoken, but carved.Known as message sticks, these flat, rounded and oblong pieces of wood were etched with ornate images on both sides that conveyed important messages and held the stories of the continent's Aboriginal people – considered the world's oldest continuous living culture. Message sticks are believed to be thousands of years old and were typically carried by messengers over long distances to reinforce oral histories or deliver news between Aboriginal nations or language groups.

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